Chapter III: Front Matter (3)

Time wore on, and brought round the Christmas vacation. I thought it due to myself, as all young men do, to get up to town for a week or two if possible; and being lucky enough to have an old aunt occupying a very dark house much too large for her, and who, being rather a prosy personage, a little deaf, and very opinionated, and therefore not a special object of attraction to her relations, (her property was merely a life-interest,) was very glad to get any one to come and see her--I determined to pay a visit, in which the score of obligations would be pretty equally balanced on both sides. On the one hand, the tete-a-tete dinners with the old lady, and her constant catechising about Oxford, were a decided bore to me; while it required some forbearance on her part to endure an inmate who constantly rushed into the drawing-room without wiping his boots, who had no taste for old china, and against whom the dear dog Petto had an unaccountable but decided antipathy. (Poor dog! I fear he was ungrateful: I used to devil spunge biscuit, internally, for him after dinner, kept a snuff-box more for his use than my own, and prolonged his life, I feel confident, at least twelve months from apoplexy, by pulling hairs out of his tail with a tweezer whenever he went to sleep.) On the other hand, my aunt had good wine, and I used to praise it; which was agreeable to both parties. She got me pleasant invitations, and was enabled herself to make her appearance in society with a live nephew in her suite, who in her eyes (I confess, reader, old aunts are partial) was a very eligible young man. So my visit, on the whole, was mutually agreeable and advantageous. I had my mornings to myself, gratifying the dowager occasionally by a drive with her in the afternoon; and we had sufficient engagements for our evenings to make each other's sole society rather an unusual infliction. It is astonishing how much such an arrangement tends to keep people the best friends in the world.

I had attended my respectable relation one evening (or rather she had attended me, for I believe she went more for my sake than her own) to a large evening party, which was a ball in every thing but the name. Nearly all in the rooms were strangers to me; but I had plenty of introductions, and the night wore on pleasantly enough. I saw a dozen pretty faces I had never seen before, and was scarcely likely to see again--the proportion of ugly ones I forbear to mention--and was prepared to bear the meeting and the parting with equal philosophy, when the sight of a very familiar face brought different scenes to my mind. Standing within half-a-dozen steps of me, and in close conversation with a lady, of whom I could see little besides a cluster of dark curls, was Ormiston, one of our college tutors, and one of the most universally popular men in Oxford. It would be wrong to say I was surprised to see him there or any where else, for his roll of acquaintance was most extensive, embracing all ranks and degrees; but I was very glad to see him, and made an almost involuntary dart forward in his direction. He saw me, smiled, and put out his hand, but did not seem inclined to enter into any conversation. I was turning away, when a sudden movement gave me a full view of the face of the lady to whom he had been talking. It was a countenance of that pale, clear, intellectual beauty, with a shade of sadness about the mouth, which one so seldom sees but in a picture, but which, when seen, haunts the imagination and the memory rather than excites passionate admiration. The eyes met mine, and, quite by accident, for the thoughts were evidently pre-occupied, retained for some moments the same fixed gaze with which I almost as unconsciously was regarding them. There was something in the features which seemed not altogether unknown to me; and I was beginning to speculate on the possibility of any small heroine of my boyish admiration having shot up into such sweet womanhood--such changes soon occur--when the eyes became conscious, and the head was rapidly turned away. I lost her a moment afterwards in the crowd, and although I watched the whole of the time we remained, with an interest that amused myself, I could not see her again. She must have left the party early.

So strong became the impression on my mind that it was a face I had known before, and so fruitless and tantalizing were my efforts to give it "a local habitation and a name"--that I determined at last to question my aunt upon the subject, though quite aware of the imputation that would follow. The worst of it was, I had so few tangible marks and tokens by which to identify my interesting unknown. However, at breakfast next morning, I opened ground at once, in answer to my hostess's remark that the rooms had been very full.

"Yes, they were: I wanted very much, my dear aunt, to have asked you the names of all the people; but you really were so much engaged, I had no opportunity."

"Ah! if you had come and sat by me, I could have told you all about them; but there were some very odd people there, too."

"There was one rather interesting-looking girl I did not see dancing much--tallish, with pearl earrings."

"Where was she sitting? how was she dressed?"

I had only seen her standing--I never noticed--I hardly think I could have seen--even the colour of her dress.

"Not know how she was dressed? My dear Frank, how strange!"

"All young ladies dress alike now, aunt; there's really not much distinction: they seemed all black and white to me."

"Certainly the balls don't look half so gay as they used to do: a little colour gives cheerfulness, I think." (The good old lady herself had worn crimson satin and a suite of chrysolites--if her theory were correct, she was enough to have spread a glow over the whole company.) "But let me see;--tall, with pearls, you say; dark hair and eyes?"

"Yes."

"You must mean Lucy Fielding."

"Nonsense, my dear Ma'am--I beg a thousand pardons; but I was introduced to Miss Fielding, and danced with her--she squints."

"My dear Frank, don't say such a thing!--she will have half the Strathinnis property when she comes of age. But let me see again. Had she a white rose in her hair?"

"She had, I think; or something like it."

"It might have been Lord Dunham's youngest daughter, who is just come out--she was there for an hour or so."

"No, no, aunt: I know her by sight too--a pale gawky thing, with an arm and hand like a prize-fighter's--oh no!"

"Upon my word, my dear nephew, you young men give yourselves abominable airs: call her a very fine young woman, and I've no doubt she will marry well, though she hasn't much fortune. Was it Miss Cassilis, then?--white tulle over satin, looped with roses, with gold sprigs"----

"And freckles to match: why, she's as old as"----; I felt myself on dangerous ground, and filled up the hiatus, I fear not very happily, by looking full at my aunt.

"Not so very old, indeed, my dear: she refused a very good offer last season: she cannot possibly be above"--

"Oh! spare the particulars, pray, my dear Ma'am; but you could not have seen the girl I mean: I don't think she staid after supper: I looked every where for her to ask who she was, but she must have been gone."

"Really! I wish I could help you," said my aunt with a very insinuating smile.

"Oh," said I, "what made me anxious to know who she was at the time, was simply that I saw her talking to an old friend of mine, whom you know something of, I believe; did you not meet Mr Ormiston somewhere last winter?"

"Mr Ormiston! oh, I saw him there last night! and now I know who you mean; it must have been Mary Russell, of course; she did wear pearls, and plain white muslin."

"Russell! what Russells are they?"

"Russell the banker's daughter; I suppose nobody knows how many thousands she'll have; but she is a very odd girl. Mr Ormiston is rather committed in that quarter, I fancy. Ah, he's a very gentlemanly man, certainly, and an old friend of the family; but that match would never do. Why, he must be ten years older than she is, in the first place, and hasn't a penny that I know of except his fellowship. No, no; she refused Sir John Maynard last winter, with a clear twelve thousand a-year; and angry enough her papa was about that, every body says, though he never contradicts her; but she never will venture upon such a silly thing as a match with Mr Ormiston."

"Won't she?" said I mechanically, not having had time to collect my thoughts exactly.

"To be sure she won't," replied my aunt rather sharply. It certainly struck me that Mary Russell, from what her brother had told me, was a person very likely to show some little disregard of any conventional notions of what was, or what was not desirable in the matter of matrimony; but at the same time I inclined to agree with my aunt, that it was not very probable she would become Mrs Ormiston; indeed, I doubted any very serious intentions on his part. Fellows of colleges are usually somewhat lavish of admiration and attentions; but, as many young ladies know, very difficult to bring to book. Ormiston was certainly not a man to be influenced by the fortune which the banker's daughter might reasonably be credited with; if any thing made the matter seem serious, it was that his opinion of the sex in general--as thrown out in an occasional hint or sarcasm--seemed to border on a supercilious contempt.

I did not meet Miss Russell again during my short stay in town; but two or three days after this conversation, in turning the corner of the street, I came suddenly upon Ormiston. I used to flatter myself with being rather a favourite of his--not from any conscious merit on my part, unless that, during the year of his deanship, when summoned before him for any small atrocities, and called to account for them, I never took up his time or my own by any of the usual somewhat questionable excuses, but awaited my fate, whether "imposition" or reprimand, in silence; a plan which, with him, answered very well, and saved occasionally some straining of conscience on one side, and credulity on the other. I tried it with his successor, who decided that I was contumacious, because, the first time I was absent from chapel, in reply to his interrogations I answered nothing, and upon his persevering, told him that I had been at a very late supper-party the night before. I think, then, I was rather a favourite of Ormiston's. To say that he was a favourite of mine would be saying very little; for there could have been scarcely a man in college, of any degree of respectability, who would not have been ready to say the same. No man had a higher regard for the due maintenance of discipline, or his own dignity, and the reputation of the college; yet nowhere among the seniors could the undergraduate find a more judicious or a kinder friend. He had the art of mixing with them occasionally with all the unreservedness of an equal, without for a moment endangering the respect due to his position. There was no man you could ask a favour of--even if it infringed a little upon the strictness of college regulations--so readily as Ormiston; and no one appeared to retain more thoroughly some of his boyish tastes and recollections. He subscribed his five guineas to the boat, even after a majority of the fellows had induced our good old Principal, whose annual appearance at the river-side to cheer her at the races had seemed almost a part of his office, to promulgate a decree to the purport that boat-racing was immoral, and that no man engaged therein should find favour in the sight of the authorities. Yet, at the same time, Ormiston could give grave advice when needed; and give it in such a manner, that the most thoughtless among us received it as from a friend. And whenever he did administer a few words of pointed rebuke--and he did not spare it when any really discreditable conduct came under his notice--they fell the more heavily upon the delinquent, because the public sympathy was sure to be on the side of the judge. The art of governing young men is a difficult one, no doubt; but it is surprising that so few take any pains to acquire it. There were very few Ormistons, in my time, in the high places in Oxford.

On that morning, however, Ormiston met me with evident embarrassment, if not with coolness. He started when he first saw me, and, had there been a chance of doing so with decency, looked as if he would have pretended not to recognise me. But we were too near for that, and our eyes met at once. I was really very glad to see him, and not at all inclined to be content with the short "How d'ye do?" so unlike his usual cordial greetings, with which he was endeavouring to hurry on; and there was a little curiosity afloat among my other feelings. So I fairly stopped him with a few of the usual inquiries, as to how long he had been in town, &c., and then plunged at once into the affair of the ball at which we had last met. He interrupted me at once.

"By the way," said he, "have you heard of poor Russell's business?"

I actually shuddered, for I scarcely knew what was to follow. As composedly as I could, I simply said, "No."

"His father is ruined, they say--absolutely ruined. I suppose _that_ is no secret by this time, at all events. He cannot possibly pay even a shilling in the pound."

"I'm very sorry indeed to hear it," was all I could say.

"But do you know, Hawthorne," continued Ormiston, taking my arm with something like his old manner, and no longer showing any anxiety to cut short our interview, "I am afraid this is not the worst of it. There is a report in the city this morning, I was told, that Mr Russell's character is implicated by some rather unbusinesslike transactions. I believe you are a friend of poor Russell's, and for that reason I mention it to you in confidence. He may not be aware of it; but the rumour is, that his father _dare_ not show himself again here: that he has left England I know to be a fact."

"And his daughter? Miss Russell?" I asked involuntarily--"his children, I mean--where are they?"

I thought Ormiston's colour heightened; but he was not a man to show much visible emotion. "Charles Russell and his sister are still in London," he replied; "I have just seen them. They know their father has left for the Continent; I hope they do _not_ know all the reasons. I am very sincerely sorry for young Russell; it will be a heavy blow to him, and I fear he will find his circumstances bitterly changed. Of course he will have to leave Oxford."

"I suppose so," said I; "no one can feel more for him than I do. It was well, perhaps, that this did not happen in term time."

"It spared him some mortification, certainly. You will see him, perhaps, before you leave town; he will take it kind. And if you have any influence with him--(he will be inclined to listen, perhaps just now, to you more than to me--being more of his own age, he will give you credit for entering into his feelings)--do try and dissuade him from forming any wild schemes, to which he seems rather inclined. He has some kind friends, no doubt; and remember, if there is any thing in which I can be of use to him, he shall have my aid--even to the half of my kingdom--that is, my tutorship."

And with a smile and tone which seemed a mixture of jest and earnest, Mr Ormiston wished me good-morning. He was to leave for Oxford that night.

Of Russell's address in town I was up to this moment ignorant, but resolved to find it out, and see him before my return to the University. The next morning, however, a note arrived from him, containing a simple request that I would call. I found him at the place from which he wrote--one of those dull quiet streets that lead out of the Strand--in very humble lodgings; his father's private establishment having been given up, it appeared, immediately. The moment we met, I saw at once, as I expected, that the blow which, to Ormiston, had naturally seemed so terrible a one--no less than the loss, to a young man, of the wealth, rank, and prospects in life to which he had been taught to look forward--had been, in fact, to Russell a merciful relief. The failure of that long-celebrated and trusted house, which was causing in the public mind, according to the papers, so much "consternation" and "excitement," was to him a consummation long foreseen, and scarcely dreaded. It was only the shadow of wealth and happiness which he had lost now; its substance had vanished long since. And the conscious hollowness and hypocrisy, as he called it, of his late position, had been a far more bitter trial to a mind like his, than any which could result from its exposure. He was one to hail with joy any change which brought him back to truth and reality, no matter how rude and sudden the revulsion.

He met me with a smile; a really honest, almost a light-hearted smile. "It is come at last, Hawthorne; perhaps it would be wrong, or I feel as if I could say, thank God. There is but one point which touches me at all; what do they say about my father?" I told him--fortunately, my acquaintance lying but little among men of business, I could tell him so honestly--that I had not heard a syllable breathed to his discredit.

"Well, well; but they will, soon. Oh! Hawthorne; the utter misery, the curse that money-making brings with it! That joining house to house, and field to field, how it corrupts all the better part of a man's nature! I vow to you, I believe my father would have been an honest man if he had but been a poor one! If he had never had any thing to do with interest tables, and had but spent his capital, instead of trying to double and redouble it! One thing I have to thank him for; that he never would suffer me to imbibe any taste for business; he knew the evil and the pollution money-handling brings with it--I am sure he did; he encouraged me, I fear, in extravagance; but I bless him that he never encouraged me in covetousness."

He grew a little calmer by degrees, and we sat down and took counsel as to his future plans. He was not, of course, without friends, and had already had many offers of assistance for himself and his sister; but his heart appeared, for the present, firmly bent upon independence. Much to my surprise, he decided on returning at once to Oxford, and reading for his degree. His sister had some little property settled upon her--some hundred and fifty pounds a-year; and this she had insisted on devoting to this purpose.

"I love her too well," said Russell, "to refuse her: and trifling as this sum is,--I remember the time when I should have thought it little to keep me in gloves and handkerchiefs,--yet, with management, it will be more than I shall spend in Oxford. Of course, I play the gentleman-commoner no longer; I shall descend to the plain stuff gown."

"You'll go to a hall, of course?" said I; for I concluded he would at least avoid the mortification of so palpable a confession of reduced circumstances as this degradation of rank in his old College would be.

"I can see no occasion for it; that is, if they will allow me to change; I have done nothing to be ashamed of, and shall be much happier than I was before. I only strike my false colours; and you know they were never carried willingly."

I did not attempt to dissuade him, and soon after rose to take my leave.

"I cannot ask my sister to see you now," he said, as we shook hands: "she is not equal to it. But some other time, I hope"----

"At any other time, I shall be most proud of the introduction. By the way, have you seen Ormiston? He met me this morning, and sent some kind messages, to offer any service in his power."

"He did, did he?"

"Yes; and, depend upon it, he will do all he can for you in college; you don't know him very well, I think; but I am sure he takes an interest in you now, at all events," I continued, "and no man is a more sincere and zealous friend."

"I beg your pardon, Hawthorne, but I fancy I _do_ know Mr Ormiston very well."

"Oh! I remember, there seemed some coolness between you, because you never would accept his invitations. Ormiston thought you were too proud to dine with him; and then _his_ pride, which he has his share of, took fire. But that misunderstanding must be all over now."

"My dear Hawthorne, I believe Mr Ormiston and I understand each other perfectly. Good-morning; I am sorry to seem abrupt, but I have a host of things, not the most agreeable, to attend to."

It seemed quite evident that there was some little prejudice on Russell's part against Ormiston. Possibly he did not like his attentions to his sister. But that was no business of mine, and I knew the other too well to doubt his earnest wish to aid and encourage a man of Russell's high principles, and in his unfortunate position. None of us always know our best friends.

The step which Russell had resolved on taking was, of course, an unusual one. Even the college authorities strongly advised him to remove his name to the books of one of the halls, where he would enter comparatively as a stranger, and where his altered position would not entail so many painful feelings. Every facility was offered him of doing so at one of them where a relative of our Principal's was the head, and even a saving in expense might thus be effected. But this evident kindness and consideration on their part, only confirmed him in the resolution of remaining where he was. He met their representations with the graceful reply, that he had an attachment to the college which did not depend upon the rank he held in it, and that he trusted he should not be turned out of two homes at once. Even the heart of the splenetic little vice-principal was moved by this genuine tribute to the venerable walls, which to him, as his mistress's girdle to the poet, encircled all he loved, or hoped, or cared for; and had the date been some century earlier--in those remarkable times when a certain fellow was said to have owed his election into that body to a wondrous knack he had at compounding sherry-posset--it is probable Charles Russell would have stepped into a fellowship by special license at once.

He had harder work before him, however, and he set stoutly to it. He got permission to lodge out of college--a privilege quite unusual, and apparently without any sufficient object in his case. A day or two after his return, he begged me to go with him to see the rooms he had taken: and I was surprised to find that although small, and not in a good part of the town, they were furnished in a style by no means, I thought, in accordance with the strict economy I knew him to be practising in every other respect. They contained, on a small scale, all the appointments of a lady's drawing-room. It was soon explained. His sister was coming to live with him. "We are but two, now," said Russell in explanation, "and though poor Mary has been offered what might have been a comfortable home elsewhere, which perhaps would have been more prudent, we both thought why should we be separated? As to these little things you see, they are nearly all hers: we offered them to the creditors, but even the lawyers would not touch them: and here Mary and I shall live. Very strange, you think, for her to be here in Oxford with no one to take care of her but me; but she does not mind that, and we shall be together. However, Hawthorne, we shall keep a dragon: there is an old housekeeper who would not be turned off, and she comes down with Mary, and may pass for her aunt, if that's all; so don't, pray, be shocked at us."

And so the old housekeeper did come down, and Mary with her; and under such guardianship, a brother and an old servant, was that fair girl installed within the perilous precincts of the University of Oxford; perilous in more senses than one, as many a speculative and disappointed mamma can testify, whose daughters, brought to market at the annual "show" at commemoration, have left uncaught those dons of dignity, and heirs-apparent of property, whom they ought to have caught, and caught those well-dressed and good-looking, but undesirable young men, whom they ought not to have caught. Mary Russell, however, was in little peril herself, and, as little as she could help it, an occasion of peril to others. Seldom did she move out from her humble abode, except for an early morning walk with her brother, or sometimes leaning on the arm of her old domestic, so plainly dressed that you might have mistaken her for her daughter, and wondered how those intensely expressive features, and queen-like graces, should have been bestowed by nature on one so humble. Many a thoughtful student, pacing slowly the parks or Christchurch meadow after early chapel, book in hand, cheating himself into the vain idea that he was taking a healthful walk, and roused by the flutter of approaching female dress, and unwillingly looking up to avoid the possible and unwelcome collision with a smirking nurse-maid and an unresisting baby--has met those eyes, and spoilt his reading for the morning; or has paused in the running tour of Headington hill, or Magdalen walk, by which he was endeavouring to cram his whole allotted animal exercise for the day into an hour, as that sweet vision crossed his path, and wondered in his heart by what happy tie of relationship, or still dearer claim, his fellow-undergraduate had secured to himself so lovely a companion; and has tried in vain, over his solitary breakfast, to rid himself of the heterodox notion which would still creep in upon his thoughts, that in the world there might be, after all, things better worth living and working for, prizes more valuable--and perhaps not harder to win--than a first class, and living personations of the beautiful which Aristotle had unaccountably left out. Forgive me, dear reader, if I seem to be somewhat sentimental: I am not, and I honestly believe I never was, in love with Mary Russell; I am not--I fear I never was or shall be--much of a reading man or an early riser; but I will confess, it would have been a great inducement to me to adopt such habits, if I could have ensured such pleasant company in my morning walks.

To the general world of Oxford, for a long time, I have no doubt the very existence of such a jewel within it was unknown; for at the hours when liberated tutors and idle undergraduates are wont to walk abroad, Mary was sitting, hid within a little ambush of geraniums, either busy at her work, or helping--as she loved to fancy she helped him--her brother at his studies. Few men, I believe, ever worked harder than Russell did in his last year. With the exception of the occasional early walk, and the necessary attendance at chapel and lecture, he read hard nearly the whole day; and I always attributed the fact of his being able to do so with comparatively little effort, and no injury to his health, to his having such a sweet face always present, to turn his eyes upon, when wearied with a page of Greek, and such a kind voice always ready to speak or to be silent.

It was not for want of access to any other society that Mary Russell spent her time so constantly with her brother. The Principal, with his usual kindheartedness, had insisted--a thing he seldom did--upon his lady making her acquaintance; and though Mrs Meredith, who plumed herself much upon her dignity, had made some show of resistance at first to calling upon a young lady who was living in lodgings by herself in one of the most out-of-the-way streets in Oxford, yet, after her first interview with Miss Russell, so much did her sweetness of manner win upon Mrs Principal's fancy--or perhaps it will be doing that lady but justice to say, so much did her more than orphan unprotectedness and changed fortunes soften the woman's heart that beat beneath that formidable exterior of silk and ceremony, that before the first ten minutes of what had been intended as a very condescending and very formal call, were over, she had been offered a seat in Mrs Meredith's official pew in St Mary's; the pattern of a mysterious bag, which that good lady carried every where about with her, it was believed for no other purpose; and an airing the next day behind the fat old greys, which their affectionate coachman--in commemoration of his master's having purchased them at the time he held that dignity--always called by the name of the "Vice-Chancellors." Possibly an absurd incident, which Mary related with great glee to her brother and myself, had helped to thaw the ice in which "our governess" usually encased herself. When the little girl belonging to the lodgings opened the door to these dignified visitors, upon being informed that Miss Russell was at home, the Principal gave the name simply as "Dr and Mrs Meredith:" which, not appearing to his more pompous half at all calculated to convey a due impression of the honour conveyed by the visit, she corrected him, and in a tone quite audible--as indeed every word of the conversation had been--up the half-dozen steep stairs which led to the little drawing-room, gave out "the Master of ---- and lady, if you please." The word "master" was quite within the comprehension of the little domestic, and dropping an additional courtesy of respect to an office which reminded her of her catechism and the Sunday school, she selected the appropriate feminine from her own vocabulary, and threw open the door with "the master and mistress of ---- if you please, Miss." Dr Meredith laughed, as he entered, so heartily, that even Mary could not help smiling, and the "mistress," seeing the odds against her, smiled too. An acquaintance begun in such good humour, could hardly assume a very formal character; and, in fact, had Mary Russell not resolutely declined all society, Mrs Meredith would have felt rather a pleasure in patronising her. But both her straitened means and the painful circumstances of her position--her father already spoken of almost as a criminal--led her to court strict retirement; while she clung with redoubled affection to her brother. He, on his part, seemed to have improved in health and spirits since his change of fortunes; the apparent haughtiness and coldness with which many had charged him before, had quite vanished; he showed no embarrassment, far less any consciousness of degradation, in his conversation with any of his old messmates at the gentlemen-commoners' table; and though his communication with the college was but comparatively slight, nearly all his time being spent in his lodgings, he was becoming quite a popular character.

Meanwhile, a change of a different kind seemed to be coming over Ormiston. It was remarked, even by those not much given to observation, that his lectures, which were once considered endurable, even by idle men, from his happy talent of remark and illustration, were fast becoming as dull and uninteresting as the common run of all such business. Moreover, he had been in the habit of giving, occasionally, capital dinners, invitations to which were sent out frequently and widely among the young men of his own college: these ceased almost entirely; or, when they occurred, had but the shadow of their former joyousness. Even some of the fellows were known to have remarked that Ormiston was much altered lately; some said he was engaged to be married, a misfortune which would account for any imaginable eccentricities; but one of the best of the college livings falling vacant about the time, and, on its refusal by the two senior fellows, coming within Ormiston's acceptance, and being passed by him, tended very much to do away with any suspicion of that kind.

Between him and Russell there was an evident coolness, though noticed by few men but myself; yet Ormiston always spoke most kindly of him, while on Russell's part there seemed to be a feeling almost approaching to bitterness, ill concealed, whenever Ormiston became the subject of conversation. I pressed him once or twice upon the subject, but he always affected to misunderstand me, or laughed off any sarcastic remark he might have made, as meaning nothing; so that at last the name was seldom mentioned between us, and almost the only point on which we differed seemed to be our estimation of Ormiston.

THE ROMANTIC DRAMA.

Macaulay says, that the object of the drama is the painting of the human heart; and, as that is portrayed by the events of a whole life, he concludes that it is by poets representing in a short space a long series of actions, that the end of dramatic composition is most likely to be attained. "The mixture," says he, "of tragedy and comedy, and the length and extent of the action, which the French consider as defects, is the chief cause of the excellence of our older dramatists. The former is necessary to render the drama a just representation of the world, in which the laughers and the weepers are perpetually jostling each other, in which every event has its serious and ludicrous side. The latter enables us to form an intimate acquaintance with characters, with which we could not possibly become familiar during the few hours to which the unities restrict the poet. In this respect the works of Shakspeare in particular are miracles of art. In a piece which may be read aloud in three hours, we see a character gradually unfold all its recesses to us. We see it change with the change of circumstances. The petulant youth rises into the politic and warlike sovereign. The profuse and courteous philanthropist sours at length into a hater and scorner of his kind. The tyrant is altered by the chastening of affliction into a pensive moralist. The veteran general, distinguished by coolness, sagacity, and self-command, sinks under a conflict between love strong as death, and jealousy cruel as the grave. The brave and loyal subject passes step by step to the excesses of human depravity. We trace his progress step by step, from the first dawnings of unlawful ambition, to the cynical melancholy of his impenitent remorse. Yet in these pieces there are no unnatural transitions. Nothing is omitted; nothing is crowded. Great as are the changes, narrow as is the compass within which they are exhibited, they shock us as little as the gradual alterations of those familiar faces which we see every evening and morning. The magical skill of the poet resembles that of the dervise in the _Spectator_, who condensed all the events of seven years into the single moment during which the king held his head under water."[4]

In this admirable passage, the principle on which the Romantic Drama rests, is clearly and manfully stated; and it is on the possibility of effecting the object which is here so well described, that the whole question between it and the Greek unities depends. As we have decidedly embraced the opposite opinion, and regard, after much consideration, the adherence to the variety and license of the romantic drama as the main cause of the present degraded condition of our national theatre, we have prefaced our observations with a defence of the romantic drama by one of its ablest advocates, and shall now state the reasons which appear to us conclusive in favour of a very different view.

The drama is part of the great effort of mankind for the representation of human character, passion, and event. Other sister arts--History, the Historical Romance, the Epic poem--also aim in some degree, by different methods, at the same object; and it is by considering their different principles, and necessary limitations, that the real rules of the drama will best be understood.

HISTORY, as all the world knows, embraces the widest range of human events. Confined to no time, restricted to no locality, it professes, in a comparatively short space, to portray the most extensive and important of human transactions. Centuries, even thousands of years, are sometimes, by its greatest masters, embraced within its mighty arms. The majestic series of Roman victories may occupy the genius of one writer: the fifteen centuries of its decline and fall be spanned by the powers of another. The vast annals of Mahommetan conquest, the long sway of the Papal dominion, present yet untrodden fields to future historical effort.[5] But it is this very greatness and magnitude of his subject which presents the chief difficulty with which the historian has to contend. With the exception of a very few instances, such lengthened annals are necessarily occupied by a vast variety of characters, actions, states, and events, having little or no connexion with each other, scarce any common object of union, and no thread by which the interest of the reader is to be kept up throughout. Hence it is that works of history are so generally complained of as dull: that, though they are more numerous than any other class of literary compositions, the numbers of those generally read is so extremely small. Enter any public library, you will see hundreds of historical works reposing in respectable dignity on the shelves. How many of them are generally studied, or have taken hold by common consent on the minds of men? Not ten. Romance numbers its readers by hundreds, Poetry by fifties, where History can with difficulty muster one. This amazing difference is not owing to any deficiency of ability turned to the subject, or interest in the materials of which it is formed. It can never be supposed that men will be indifferent to the annals of their own fame, or that the groundwork of all human invention--real event--can be wanting in the means of moving the heart. It is the extraordinary difficulty of this branch of composition, owing to its magnitude and complication, which is the sole cause of the difference.

The HISTORICAL ROMANCE is founded on history, but it differs from it in the most essential particulars, and is relieved from the principal difficulties with which the annalist of actual occurrences has to contend. It selects a particular period out of past time, and introduces the characters and events most remarkable for their interest, or the deep impress they have left on the minds of men. This is an immense advantage; for it relieves the writer from the great difficulty with which the general historian has to contend, and which, in ninety-nine cases out of an hundred, proves fatal to his success. Unity in the midst of confusion is given to his subject. Room is afforded for graphic painting, space for forcible delineations of character. It becomes possible to awaken interest by following out the steps of individual adventure. Though the name of historical romance is not to be found in antiquity, the thing itself was far from being unknown. Its most charming Histories are little other than Historical Romance; at least, they possess its charm, because they exhibit its unity. The _Cyropaedia_ of Xenophon, the _Lives_ of Plutarch, many of the heart-stirring _Legends_ of Livy, of the profound _Sketches_ of the Emperors in Tacitus, are in truth historical romances under the name of histories or biography. The lives of eminent men owe their chief charm to the unity of the subject, and the possibility of strongly exciting the feelings, by strictly adhering to the delineation of individual achievement. So great is the weight of the load--crushing to the historian--which is thus taken from the biographer or writer of historical romance, that second-rate genius can effect triumphs in that department, to which the very highest mind alone is equal in general historical composition. No one would think of comparing the intellect of Plutarch with that of Tacitus; but, nevertheless, the _Lives_ of the former will always prove more generally attractive than the annals of the latter. Boswell's mind was immeasurably inferior to that of Hume; but for one reader of his _History of England_, will be found ten of the _Life of Johnson_. Sir Walter Scott's _Life of Napoleon_ proves that he was not altogether qualified to take a place among the great English historians; but, to the end of the world, Richard Coeur-de-Lion, Queen Mary, and Elizabeth, will stand forth from his canvass more clearly than either from the rhetoric of Hume, or the eloquence of Robertson.

The EPIC POEM confines within still narrower limits the narration of human events. As it borrows the language and is clothed with the colours of poetry, so it is capable of rousing the feelings more powerfully than either biography or romance, and, when crowned with success, attains a fame, and takes a hold of the hearts of men, to which nothing in prose composition can be compared. Elevation of thought, fervour of language, powerful delineation of character, are its essential qualities. But all these would prove unavailing if the one thing needful, _unity of subject_, were awanting. It is that which is its essential quality, for that alone lets in all the others. All the great Epic Poems which have appeared in the world are not only devoted to one interest, but are generally restricted in point of space and time within limits not materially wider than those of the Greek drama. The _Iliad_ not only relates exclusively the latter stages of the siege of Troy, but the whole period of its action is forty-eight days--of its absorbing interest, (the time from the storming of the Greek lines by Hector to his death by the heaven-defended Achilles,) thirty-six hours. The _Paradise Lost_ adheres strictly to unity both of subject and time: the previous battles of the angels is the subject of narrative by the angel Raphael; but the time that elapses from the convocation of the devils in Pandemonium to the expulsion of Adam and Eve from paradise is only three days. The _Jerusalem Delivered_ has the one absorbing interest arising from the efforts of the Christians for the deliverance of the Holy Sepulchre; and its time is limited to a few weeks. Virgil was so enamoured of his great predecessor that he endeavoured to imitate, in one poem, both his great works. The _AEneid_ is an _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ in one. But every one must feel that it is on the episode with Dido that the interest of the poem really rests; and that all the magic of his exquisite pencil can scarcely sustain the interest after the pious AEneas has taken his departure from the shores of Carthage. The _Lusiad_ of Camoens, necessarily, from its subject, embraced wider limits; but the one interest of the poem is as single and sustained as that of the discovery of the new world by Columbus. If any of these writers had professed in rhyme to give a history of a wider or more protracted subject, the interest would have been so much diffused as to be lost. The confusion of ideas and incidents so painfully felt by all the readers of _Orlando Furioso_, and which the boundless fancy of Ariosto was unable to prevent, proves that epic poetry has its limits, and that they are narrower than either history or romance.

What epic poetry is to romance or biography, THE DRAMA is to epic poetry. As the former selects from the romance of history its most interesting and momentous events, and makes them the subject of brilliant description, of impassioned rhetoric, so the latter chooses from the former its most heart-stirring episodes, and brings them in actual dialogue and representation before the mind of the spectator. Immense is the effect of this concentration--still more marvellous that of the personation with which it is attended. Imagination assumes the actual form of beings; conception is realised. The airy visions of the past are clothed in flesh and blood. The marvels of acting, scenery, and stage effect, come to add to the pathos of incident, to multiply tenfold the charms of poetry. It is impossible to conceive intellectual enjoyment carried beyond the point it attained, when the magic of Shakspeare's thought and language was enhanced by the power of Siddons or Kemble's acting, or is personified by the witchery of Helen Faucit's conceptions. But for the full effect of this combination, it is indispensable that the principles of dramatic composition be duly observed, and the stage kept within its due limits, more contracted in point of time and place than either romance or epic poetry. Within those bounds it is omnipotent, and produces an impression to which, while it lasts, none of the sister arts can pretend. Beyond them it never fails to break down, and not only ceases to interest, but often becomes to the last degree wearisome and exhausting. It is not difficult to see to what this general failure of the drama, when it outstrips its proper bounds, is owing. It arises from the impossibility of awakening interest without attending to unity of emotion; of keeping alive attention without continuity of incident; of making the story intelligible without simplicity of action.

Dramatic authors, actors, and actresses, how gifted soever in other respects, are the worst possible judges on this subject. They are so familiar with the story, from having composed the piece themselves, or made it the subject of frequent repetition or rehearsal, that they can form no conception of the difficulty which nine tenths of the audience, to whom the piece is entirely strange, experience in understanding the plot, or acquiring any interest in the incidents or development of the piece. It may safely be affirmed, that a vast majority of the spectators of the dramas now habitually represented, with the exception of a few of Shakspeare's, which have become as household words on the English stage, never understand any thing of the story till the end of the third act, and are only beginning to take an interest in the piece when the curtain falls. Dramatic authors and performers would do well to ponder on this observation; they may rely upon it that it furnishes the key to the present degraded state of the English drama.

It is not obtuseness on the part of the audience which occasions this. So complicated is the story, so lengthened the succession of events, in most of our modern theatrical pieces, that the most acute understanding, fortified by the most extensive practice, requiring alertness of intellect, will long be at fault in comprehending them. We have seen many a barrister famed for cross-examination unable to comprehend, till the piece was half over, the drift of Sheridan Knowles's dramas. Is it surprising, when this is the case, that the vast majority of the audience complain of weariness during the representation, and that the managers of theatres, sensible of this difficulty, are fain to eke out the proper interest of the drama by the meretricious aids of scenery, and dancing, and decorations?

What is constantly complained of by all classes at the theatre is, that it is so tiresome; that the back is broken by sitting without a support; that they cannot comprehend the story; that they do not understand what it is all about; and that the performance is infinitely too long. This last observation is, undoubtedly, frequently well founded: no where is the truth of old Hesiod's maxim, that a half is often greater than the whole, more frequently exemplified than in dramatic representations. But still the fact of the complaint being so universally made, and equally by all classes, is very remarkable, and pregnant with instruction, as to the limits of the drama and the causes of the decline of its popularity so painfully conspicuous in the British empire. No one complains of his back being broken for want of support at a trial for murder; on the contrary, all classes, and _especially the lowest_, will sit at such heart-stirring scenes, without feeling fatigue, for ten, twelve, sometimes eighteen hours consecutively. Nor can it be affirmed that this is because the interest is real; that the life of a human being is at stake. Every day's experience proves that fiction, when properly managed, is more interesting than reality. The vast multitude of novels which yearly issue from the press, the eagerness with which they are sought after by all classes, the extraordinary extent of their circulation, sufficiently prove this. No one complains that the best romances of Sir Walter Scott or Bulwer are too long; on the contrary, they are generally felt to be too short; and those who are loudest in their declamations against the intolerable fatigue of the theatre, will sit for days together with their feet at the fire, devouring even an indifferent novel.

The general complaint now made in Great Britain against the tedium of theatrical representations was unknown in other ages and countries. The passion of the Greeks for their national theatre is well known, and the matchless perfection of their great dramatists proves to what a degree it is capable of rousing the human mind. The French, prior to the Revolution, were passionately fond of the drama, which was then entirely founded on the Greek model. The decline complained of in the Parisian theatre has been contemporary with the introduction of the Romantic school. In Italy, it is, with the opera, the chief, almost the sole public amusement. There is not a city with forty thousand inhabitants in the classic peninsula that has not a theatre and opera, superior to any thing to be met with in the British islands out of London. The theatre is in high favour in Germany and Russia. Complaints, indeed, are frequently made, that the drama is declining on the Continent, and the present state of the lesser Parisian theatres certainly affords no indication that, in departing from the old land-marks and bringing romance on the stage, they have either preserved its purity or extended its influence. But the decline of the theatre is far greater and more remarkable in England than in any of the continental states. It has, indeed, gone so far as to induce a serious apprehension among many well-informed persons, that it will cease to exist, and the country of Shakspeare and Garrick, of Kemble and Siddons, be left altogether without a theatre at which the legitimate drama is represented. Such a result in a country overflowing, in its great cities and metropolis at least, with riches, and with a population passionately desirous of every species of enjoyment, is very remarkable, and deserving of the most serious consideration. It may well make us pause in our career, and consider whether the course we have been pursuing has, or has not, been likely to lead to perfection and success in this noble and important branch of composition.