Chapter I: HAD been a partner in the house of Whittaker, Johnson, and Marsh, in (2)

I was so much attracted to the watchmaker that I often called on him, when I had no business with him. He had a wife and daughter, both of whom were his companions. Melissa, the daughter, was about nineteen. She was not beautiful according to the Grecian model, but her figure was elegant, there was depth in her eyes, and she was always dressed with simplicity and taste. She spoke correctly, and surprised me by the justness of her observations, not merely on local and personal matters, but upon subjects with which women of more exalted rank are not usually familiar. Admission had been refused to her by every school in Bath, but she had been taken in charge by two elderly gentlewomen, distant relations of her grandfather, who had instructed her in the usual branches of polite learning, including French. I will content myself, _Mr. Rambler_, with informing you that I fell in love with Melissa, and that she did not discourage my attentions. I had not altogether overlooked the possibility of embarrassment at A., but my passion prevented the clear foresight of consequences. I have often found that evils which are imaginary will press upon me with singular vivacity, while those which may with certainty be deduced from any action are but obscurely apprehended, so that in fact intensity of colour is an indication of unreality. I must add that if the future had presented itself to me with prophetic distinctness, my love for Melissa was so great that I should not have hesitated. My frequent visits to B. had not passed unnoticed at A., and the reason was suspected. Hints were not wanting, and the custom-house surveyor told me a harrowing tale of a fellow-surveyor who had alienated all his friends and had been obliged to leave his house near Tower Hill because he had chosen to marry the daughter of a poor author who lived in Whitefriars. One day early in the morning I was in B. and met the squire’s young ladies with their mother. She was a very proud dame. Her maiden name was Bone, and her father had been a sugar-baker in Bristol, but this was not a retail trade, and she had often told me that she was descended from Geoffrey de Bohun, who was in the retinue of William the Conqueror and killed five Saxons with his own hand at the battle of Hastings. Her children, she bade me observe, had inherited the true Bohun ears as shown in an engraving she possessed of a Bohun tomb in Normandy. I walked with the party up the High Street, and had not gone far when I saw Melissa coining towards us. O, _Mr. Rambler_, can I utter it! She approached us, she knew that I must have recognised her, but I turned my head towards a shop-window and called my companions’ attention to the display of silks and satins. After Melissa had passed, my lady asked me if that was not the watchmaker’s daughter and whether I knew anything about her. I replied that I believed it was, and that I had heard she was a respectable young woman. My lady remarked that she had understood that she was virtuous, but that she had been unbecomingly brought up, and considered herself superior to her position. Her ladyship confessed that she would not be surprised any day to hear that Miss — had been obliged to leave B., for she had noticed that when a female belonging to the lower orders strove to acquire knowledge unsuitable to her station, the consequence was often ruin. It is almost incredible—I was silent!—but when I reached home I was overcome with shame and despair. This then was all that my love was worth; this was my esteem for intelligence and learning; and I was the man who had thanked God I was not as my neighbours at A.! If in the beginning I had deliberately resolved that it would be a mistake to ally myself with Melissa’s family because my usefulness might be diminished, something might have been pleaded on my behalf, but I was without excuse. I had sacrificed Melissa to no principle, but to detestable vulgar cowardice. It was about two hours after noon when I returned, and in my confusion a note from Melissa which lay upon my table was not at once noticed. It had been written the day before, and it tenderly upbraided me because I had been absent for a whole week. Enclosed was a copy of verses by Sir Philip Sidney beginning, ‘My true love hath my heart.’ I mounted my horse again, and in less than half an hour was in B. I flew to Melissa. She received me in silence, but without rebuke. Indeed, before she had time for a word, I had knelt at her feet and had covered my face with her hands. On my way through the town I had seen my lady with her children, and one or two fashionably-dressed women, friends who lived in B. My lady was completing her purchases. I implored Melissa immediately to come out with me. She was astonished and hesitated, but my impetuosity was so urgent that she feared to refuse, and without any explanation I almost dragged her into the street. On the opposite side I descried my lady and her party. I crossed over, took Melissa’s arm in mine, came close to them face to face, bowed, and then passed on. We then recrossed the road and turned into Melissa’s house. I looked back and saw that they were standing still, stricken with astonishment. We went into the little parlour: nobody was there. Melissa threw her arms round my neck, and happier tears were never shed. In all the long years which have now gone by since that memorable day I have never had to endure from that divine creature a word or a hint which even the suspicion of wounded self-respect could interpret as a reproach.

We were married at B. The custom-house surveyor never entered his parish church again, but went over to B. once every Sunday. He wrote me a letter to say that it was with much regret that he left the church of his own village, but that it was no longer possible to derive any edification from the services there. The captain remained, but discontinued his civilities. The squire informed me that as I was still a priest and possessed authority to administer the holy sacraments he should continue his attendance, but that of course all personal intercourse must cease. I expected that the common people would have been confirmed in their attachment to me, but the opinion of the little village butcher was that I had disgraced myself, and the farmers and labourers would not even touch their hats to my wife when they met her. However, we did not care, and in time it was impossible even to the squire not to recognise her tact, manners, and sense. Her father had constructed an ingenious sun-dial which he had placed on the front of his shop. The great Mr. Halley was staying with Mr. M., who lives about five miles from B., and seeing the dial when he was in the town, called on my father-in-law, and was so much struck with him that he obtained permission to invite him to dinner. There the squire met him and was obliged to sit opposite him, amazed to hear him converse on equal terms with Mr. Halley and his host, and to discover that he knew how to behave with decency. Hostility continued to wear away. Few people are endowed with sufficient perseverance to continue a quarrel unless the cause is constantly renewed.

My betrayal of Melissa has not been altogether without profit. I had imagined myself morally superior to my parishioners, and if I had put the question to myself I should have said with confidence that it was impossible that there should exist in me a weakness I had never suspected, one which every day moved me to laughter or to scorn. But, sir, I now feel how true it is that in our immortal poet’s words, ‘Man, proud man, is most ignorant of what he’s most assured, his glassy essence.’ I hope you will pardon a reference to sacred history: I understand how the Apostle Peter came to deny his Lord. A few minutes before the dreadful crime was committed he would have considered himself as incapable of it as he was of the sale of his Master for money or of that damning kiss, and a few minutes afterwards he would have suffered death for His sake. This, _Mr. Rambler_, is the lesson which induced me to write to you. Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall; and indeed he may take all heed and yet will fall, unless Divine Providence mercifully catches him and holds him up.

A LETTER FROM THE AUTHORESS OF ‘JUDITH CROWHURST’

YOU have asked me to tell you all about _Judith Crowhurst_. I will tell you something more and begin at the beginning. You will remember that Miss Hardman said to Mrs. Pryor, Mrs. Hardman’s governess: ‘WE need the imprudences, extravagances, mistakes and crimes of a certain number of fathers to sow the seed from which WE reap the harvest of governesses. The daughters of tradespeople, however well educated, must necessarily be under-bred, and as such unfit to be inmates of OUR dwellings, or guardians of OUR children’s minds and persons. WE shall ever prefer to place those about OUR offspring, who have been born and bred with somewhat of the same refinement as OURSELVES.’ I was one of those unhappy women who, mercifully for the upper classes, inherit manners and misery in order that the children of these superior creatures may not put an ‘r’ at the end of ‘idea’ and may learn how to sit down in a chair with propriety. My father was a clergyman holding a small country living. He died when I was five-and-twenty, and I had to teach in order to earn my bread. I obtained a tolerably good situation, but at the end of two years I was informed that, although a clergyman’s daughter would ‘do very well’ so long as her pupils were quite young, it was now time that they should be handed over to a lady who had been accustomed to Society. I had become thoroughly weary of my work. I was not enthusiastic to instruct girls for whom I did not care. I suppose that if I had been a born teacher, I should have been as happy with the little Hardmans as I was in the nursery with my youngest sister now dead. I should not have said to myself, as I did every morning, ‘What does it matter?’ In my leisure moments and holidays during those two years I had written a novel. I could supply conversation and description, but it was very difficult to invent a plot, and still more difficult to invent one which of itself would speak. I had collected a quantity of matter of all kinds before I began, and then I cast about for a frame in which to fit it. At last I settled that my hero, if hero he could be called, should fall in love with a poor but intelligent and educated girl. He had a fortune of about two thousand pounds a year, nearly the whole of which he lost through the defalcations of a brother, whose creditors received about five shillings in the pound. He felt that the fair name of his family was stained, and he was consumed with a passion to repay his brother’s debts and to recover possession of the old house and land which had been sold. He went abroad, worked hard, and met with a lady who was rich whom he really admired. His love for his betrothed had been weakened by absence, the engagement, for some trifling reason, was broken off, and he married the heiress. At the end of five years he returned to England, discharged every liability, and in two years more was the owner of his birthplace. The marriage, alas! was unhappy. There was no obtrusive fault in his wife, but he did not love her. She could not understand his resolution to take upon himself his brother’s debts, and she thought the price he paid for the house was excessive, as indeed it was. She was a good manager, but without imagination. He was rejoicing, in her presence, one spring morning that he had been wakened by the clamour of the rooks with which he had been familiar ever since he was a boy, and her reply was that an estate equal in value to his own and possessing a bigger rookery had been offered him for less money by one-third than he had thrown away. Unfortunately it is not in management or morality that we crave companionship. It is in religion and in the deepest emotions that we thirst for it. Gradually he became wretched, and life was almost unbearable. She took no pleasure in the ancient place and its beautiful garden, he never asked her to admire them, and there was neither son nor daughter to inherit his pious regard. At this point I was obliged to introduce the _Deus ex machina_, and the wife died. The widower sought out his first love; she had never wavered in her affection to him; they were married, had children, and were happy.

My tale was a youthful blunder. It was not really a tale. I introduced, in order to provide interest, all sorts of accessories—aunts, parsons, gamekeepers, nurses, a fire and some hairbreadth escapes, but they were none of them essential and they were all manufactured. The only parts not worthless were those which were autobiographical.

One of them I remember very well, although my MS. was burnt long ago. I believed then that Nature is not merely beautiful, but that she can speak words which we can hear if we listen devoutly, and that if personality has any meaning she is personal,

‘The guide, the guardian of the heart and soul.’

Towards the end of an autumn afternoon I had rambled up to the pillar which was a landmark to seven counties. It was wet during the morning, but at five o’clock the rain ceased and a long, irregular line of ragged cloud, dripping here and there, stretched itself above the opposite hills from east to west. Underneath it was a border of pale-golden, open sky, and below was the sea. The hills hid it, but I knew it was there. I was hushed and reassured. When I got home I transferred my emotion to my deserted heroine, and tears blotted the paper. But it was a mere episode, without connection and, in fact, an obstruction.

I sent my manuscript to a publisher and need hardly say that it was returned as unsuitable. I tried two others, but with no success. The third enclosed a copy of his reader’s opinion. Here it is:—

‘ . . . is obviously a first attempt. It evinces some power in passages, but the characters lack distinction and are limited by ordinary conventional rules. I cannot recommend it to you for its own sake, and there is no prospect in it of anything better. The author might be capable of short stories for a religious magazine. It is singular that Miss C.’s _Mariana_, which you also sent me, should be on somewhat the same lines, but Mariana, his first love, is seduced by the man who forsakes her and, in the end, marries her as his second wife. During his first marriage his intimacy with Mariana continues and Miss C. thereby has an opportunity, which she used with much power, for realistic scenes, that I believe will prove attractive. I had no hesitation therefore in advising you to purchase _Mariana_, although the plot is crude.’ I could not take the publisher’s hint. I put my papers back into my box and obtained another situation. In about a twelvemonth, notwithstanding my disappointment, I was unable to restrain myself from trying again. I fancied that I might be able to project myself into actual history and appropriate it. I had been much attracted to Mary Tudor, and I had studied everything about her on which I could lay my hands. I did not love her, but I pitied her profoundly, and the Holbein portrait of her seemed to me to indicate a terrible and pathetic secret. I cannot, however, give a complete explanation of her fascination for me. It is impossible to account for the resistless magnetism with which one human being draws another. The elements are too various and are compounded with too much subtlety. Bitter Roman Catholic as Mary was, I wished I could have been one of the ladies of her court, that I might have offered my heart to her and might have wept with her in her sorrow. But my intense feeling for a picture of the Queen was no qualification to paint the original, and although I strove to keep close to facts she insensibly became myself. I was altogether stopped when I happened to meet with Aubrey de Vere’s _Mary Tudor_ and Tennyson’s _Queen Mary_.

Soon afterwards I read _Jane Eyre_ again, and was more than ever astonished at it. It is not to be classed; it is written not by a limited human personality but by Nature herself. The love in it is too great for creatures who are ‘even as the generations of leaves’; the existence of two mortals does not account for it. There is an irresistible sweep in it like that of the Atlantic Ocean in a winter’s storm hurling itself over the western rocks of Scilly. I do not wonder that people were afraid of the book and that it was cursed. The orthodox daughter of a country parson broke conventional withes as if they were cobwebs. _Jane Eyre_ is not gross in a single word, but its freedom is more complete than that of a licentious modern novel. Do you recollect St. John Rivers says to Jane: ‘Try to restrain the disproportionate fervour with which you throw yourself into commonplace home pleasures. Don’t cling so tenaciously to ties of the flesh; save your constancy and ardour for an adequate cause; forbear to waste them on trite, transient objects. Do you hear, Jane?’

She replies—‘Yes; just as if you were speaking Greek. I feel I have adequate cause to be happy, and I _will_ be happy. Good-bye!’

Therein speaks the worshipper of the Sun. Do you also recollect that voice in the night from Rochester? She breaks from St. John, goes up to her bedroom and prays. ‘In my way—a different way to St. John’s, but effective in its own fashion. I seemed to penetrate very near a Mighty Spirit; and my soul rushed out in gratitude at His feet. I rose from the thanksgiving—took a resolve—and lay down, unscared, enlightened—eager but for the daylight.’ The Mighty Spirit, who was Jane Eyre’s God, had directed her not to go to India as St. John’s bride to save souls from damnation by conversion to Jehovah, but to set off that very day to Rochester at Thornfield Hall.

Consider also how inseparably the important incidents in _Jane Eyre_ are linked with one another and with character. Jane refused Rochester at first and St. John finally. She could not possibly do otherwise. But I must stop. You did not ask for an essay on Charlotte Bronte. Suffice it to say that when I had finished _Jane Eyre_ I said to myself that I would not write any more. Nor did I ever attempt fiction again. _Judith Crowhurst_ is a plain, true story, altered a little in order to prevent recognition. I knew her well. There is no suffering in any stage tragedy equal to that of the unmarried woman who is well brought up, with natural gifts above those of women generally, living on a small income, past middle-age, and unable to work. It is not the suffering which is acute torture ending in death, but worse, the black, moveless gloom of the second floor in Hackney or Islington. Almost certainly she has but few friends, and those she has will be occupied with household or wage-earning duties. She is afraid of taking up their time; she never calls without an excuse. What is she to do? She cannot read all day, and, if she could, what is the use of reading? Poets and philosophers do not touch her case; descriptions of moonlit seas, mountains, moors, and waterfalls darken by contrast the view of the tiles and chimneys from her own window. Ideas do not animate or interest her, for she never has a chance of expressing them and, lacking expression, they are indistinct. Her eyes wander down page after page of her book, but she is only half-conscious. Religion, such as it is now, gives no help. It is based on the necessity of forgiveness for some wrong done and on the notion of future salvation. She needs no forgiveness unless she takes upon herself a burden of artificial guilt. She rather feels she has to forgive—whom or what she does not know. The heaven of the churches and chapels is remote, unprovable, and cannot affect her in the smallest degree. There is no religion for her and such as she, excepting that Catholic Faith of one article only—_The clods of the valley shall be sweet unto him_. As I have said, I knew Judith Crowhurst well, and after she was dead I wrote her biography, because I believed there are thousands like her in London alone. I hoped that here and there I might excite sympathy with them. We sympathise when we sit in a theatre overpowered by stage agony, but a truer sympathy is that which may require some effort, pity for common, dull, and deadly trouble that does not break out in shrieks and is not provided with metre and scenery.

You were kind enough to get _Judith Crowhurst_ published for me, and it has had what is called a ‘success,’ but I doubt if it will do any good. People devour books but, when they have finished one, they never ask themselves what is to be done. It is immediately followed by another on a different subject, and reading becomes nothing but a pastime or a narcotic. _Judith_ may be admired, but it is by those who will not undergo the fatigue of a penny journey in an omnibus to see their own Judith, perhaps nearly related to them, and will excuse themselves because she is not entertaining.

I was asked the other day if I was not proud of some of the reviews. Good God! I would rather have been Alice Ayres, {148} and have died as she died, than have been famous as the author of the _Divine Comedy_, _Paradise Lost_, or _Hamlet_. She is now forgotten and sleeps in an obscure grave in some London cemetery. No! there will be nothing more. I have said all I had to say.

CLEARING-UP AFTER A STORM IN JANUARY

A WESTERLY storm of great strength had been blowing all day, shaking the walls of the house and making us fear for the chimneys. About four o’clock, although the wind continued very high, the clouds broke, and moved in a slow, majestic procession obliquely from the north-west to the south-east. Here and there small apertures revealed the undimmed heaven behind. Immense, rounded projections reared themselves from the main body, and flying, ragged fragments, apparently at a lower level, fled beside and before them. These fragments of lesser density showed innumerable tints of bluish grey from the darkest up to one which differed but little from the pure sky-blue surrounding them. Just after the sun set a rosy flush of light spread almost instantaneously up to the zenith and in an instant had gone. Low down in the west was a long, broadish bar of orange light, crossed by the black pines on the hill half a mile away. Their stems and the outline of each piece of foliage were as distinct as if they were but a hundred yards distant. Half the length of the field in front of me lay a small pool full to its grassy margin. It reflected with such singular fidelity the light and colour above it that it seemed itself to be an original source of light and colour. Of all the sights to be seen in this part of the world none are more strangely and suggestively beautiful than the little patches of rain or spring water in the twilight on the moorland or meadows. Presently the wind rose again, and a rain-squall followed. It passed, and the stars began to come out, and Orion showed himself above the eastern woods. He seemed as if he were marching through the moonlit scud which drove against him. How urgent all the business of this afternoon and evening has been, and yet what it meant who could say? I was like a poor man’s child who, looking out from the cottage window, beholds with amazement a great army traversing the plain before him with banners and music and knows nothing of its errand.

THE END OF THE NORTH WIND

FOR about six weeks from the middle of February we had bitter northerly winds. The frost was not very severe, but the wind penetrated the thickest clothing and searched the house through and through. The shrubs, even the hardiest, were blackened by its virulence. There was scarcely any sunshine, and every now and then a gloomy haze, like the smoke in London suburbs, invaded us. The rise and fall of the barometer meant nothing more than a variation in the strength of the polar current. Growth was nearly arrested, although one morning I found three primroses in a sheltered hollow. Never had the weather seemed more hopeless than towards the close of March. On the last evening of the month the sky was curiously perplexed and agitated notwithstanding there was little movement in the air above or below. Next morning the change had come. The wind had backed to the south, and a storm from the Channel was raging with torrents of warm rain. O the day that followed! Massive April clouds hung in the air. How much the want of visible support adds to their charm! One enormous cloud, with its base nearly on the horizon, rose up forty-five degrees or so towards the zenith. Its weight looked tremendous, but it floated lightly in the blue which encompassed it. Towards the centre it was swollen and dark, but its edges were dazzling white. While I was watching it, it went away to the east and partly broke up. A new cloud, like and not like, succeeded it . . . I followed the lane, stopped for a few minutes at a corner where the grassy road-margin widens out near the tumble-down barn, looked over the gate westward across the valley to the hills beyond, and then went down to the brook that winds along the bottom. It runs in a course which it has cut for itself, and is flanked on either side by delicately-carved miniature cliffs of yellow sandstone overhung with broom and furze. It was full of pure glittering moor-water, which seemed to add light to the stones in its bed, so brilliant was their colour. It fell with incessant, rippling murmur over its little ledges, gathering itself up into pools between each, and so it went on to the mill-pond a mile away. Close to me a blackbird was building her nest. She moved when I peeped at her, but presently returned. Her back was struck by the warm sun and was glossy in its rays. A scramble of half a mile up a rough track brought me to the common, and there, thirty miles distant, lay the chalk downs, unsubstantial, a light-blue mist.

Youth with its heat in the blood may be more capable of exultation at this season, but to the old man it brings the sounder hope and deeper joy.

ROMNEY MARSH

‘Proceeding from a source of untaught things’

(_Prelude_ xiii. 310)

HERE is Appledore; over there is Romney Marsh. The sky has partly cleared after heavy, south-westerly rain. On the horizon where the sea lies the clouds are in a line, and the air is so clear that their edges are sharp against the blue. Nearer to me they are slowly dissolving, re-forming, and moving eastwards, and their shadows are crossing the wide grassy plain on which in the distance Lydd Church is just discernible. I can report something of those greys and that azure, but the best part of what is before me will not outline itself to me. Still less can I shape it in speech. Necessity, majestic inevitable movement, the folly of heat and hurry, all this emerges and again is blended in the simple unity of transcendent loveliness. But beyond there is something so close, so precious! and yet elusive of every effort to grasp it.

She came to meet me from the line
Where lies the ocean miles away;
And now she’s close; she must be mine:
I wait the word that she must say.

The magic word is not for me:
The vision fades, and far and near
The west wind stirs the grassy sea
In whispers to the watching ear.

AXMOUTH

A TRUE Devonshire village, sloping upwards from the Axe. The cottages are thatched, and the walls are of cobbles, plastered. A little gurgling stream runs down the village street, and over the stream each cottage on its bank has a little bridge. The poor brook is much troubled, unhappily, by cabbage leaves and the like defilement, and does its best to oversweep them and carry them away, but does not quite succeed. In a few minutes, however, it will be in the Axe, and in half an hour it will be in the pure sea. A farmhouse stands at the end of the village with a farmyard of deep manure and black puddles coming up to the side-door. The church, once interesting, has been restored with more than usual barbarity, blue slates, villa ridge-tiles, the vulgarest cheap pavement, tawdry decorations and furniture, such as are supplied to churchwardens by ecclesiastical tradesmen. But the tower is still grey, and has looked unchanged over the Axe estuary for hundreds of years. Turning up from the main street is a Devonshire lane eight feet wide or thereabouts. It ascends to a farm on the hillside, and its steep high banks are covered with ferns and primroses. A tiny brooklet twitters down by its side. At the top of the down is a line of old hawthorns blown slantingly by south-west storms into a close, solid mass of shoots and prickles. They are dwarfed in their struggle, but have thick trunks, many of them covered with brilliant yellow lichen.

For miles and miles before it comes to Axmouth, and above Axminster, the Axe flows in singular loops, often returning almost upon itself, reluctant to quit the lovely land of its birth, youth, and maturity; but now it is straighter, for it is in the lowlands and feels the tide. Flocks of seagulls wade or float in it. It passes quietly under its last bridge, but beyond it is confronted by a huge shingle barrier. Sweeping alongside it, it suddenly turns at right angles, cuts its way through with an exulting rush, holds back for a few yards the sea waves that ripple against it, and is then lost.

THE PREACHER AND THE SEA

THIS morning as I walked by the sea, a man was preaching on the sands to about a dozen people, and I stopped for a few minutes to listen. He told us that we were lying under the wrath of God, that we might die at any moment, and that if we did not believe in the Lord Jesus we should be damned everlastingly. ‘Believe in the Lord,’ he shouted, ‘believe or you will be lost; you can do nothing of yourselves; you must be saved by grace alone, by blood, without blood is no remission of sins. Some of you think, no doubt, you are good people, and you may be, as the world goes, but your righteousness is as filthy rags, you are all wounds and bruises and putrefying sores; the devil will have you if you don’t turn to the Lord, and you will go down to the bottomless, brimstone pit, where shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth for ever and ever. Believe,’ he roared, ‘now is the accepted time, now is the day of salvation.’

Sunny clouds lay in the blue above him, and at his feet summer waves were breaking peacefully on the shore, the sound of their soft, musical plash filling up his pauses and commenting on his texts.

CONVERSION

IN 1802 Lady B. was living at M— Park. She was a proud, handsome, worldly woman about fifty-five years old, a widow with no children, but she had a favourite nephew who was at the Park for the larger part of the year and was the heir to her property. She had been gay in her youth, was the leader of society in her county, and when she passed middle life still followed the hounds. She was a good landlord, respected and even beloved by her tenantry, and a staunch Tory in politics. The new evangelical school of Newton and Romaine she detested bitterly, as much in fact as she detested Popery. The nephew, however, came under Newton’s influence and was converted. His aunt was in despair. She could not conquer her affection for him, but she almost raved when she reflected that the inheritor of her estates was a pious Methodist, as she called him. She had a good-looking, confidential maid who had lived with her for years. In one of her fits she told this maid that she would give half of what she possessed if her nephew were like other young men. ‘I don’t want him to be a sot or to gamble away my money,’ she cried, ‘but there’s not much else I should mind if he were but a man.’

A few days afterwards she spoke to her maid again. ‘Look you here, Jarvis, I shall go distracted. This morning he began to speak to me about my soul—the brave boy that he used to be, talking of my soul to _me_! Listen to what I tell you and be reasonable. I know perfectly well, and so do you, that before he took up with this sickening cant he was in love with you and you were in love with him. I saw it all and said nothing. I understand there’s no more flirting now. Ah, well, his blood is red yet; I’ve not forgotten what five-and-twenty is, and he’ll come if you whistle. You can’t marry him, of course, but you can and shall live comfortably afterwards for all that, and when he has done what all other young fellows do there will be an end to the prayer-meetings.’

The girl was a little staggered, but after a time her mistress’s suggestion ceased to shock her, for the nephew was a handsome fellow capable of raising passion in a woman. What the aunt had said was really true. She now threw the girl in his way. She was sent to him with messages when he was alone, and one evening when he had gone over to a prayer-meeting in the town about two miles away, she was directed to go there on an errand, to contrive to be late, and to return with him. She had half an hour to spare and was curious to know what the prayer-meeting was like. She stood close to the inner door, which was slightly ajar, and heard her master praying earnestly. He rose and spoke to the little congregation for five minutes. When he had finished she started for home, and he came up with her before she had passed the last house. It was nearly dark, but he recognised her by a light from a window, and asked her what she was doing in the town at that hour. She excused herself by unexpected detention, and they went on together. About half a mile further at the top of the hill was the stile of the pathway that was a short cut to the park. From that point there was an extensive view over the plain eastwards, and the rising moon was just emerging from a line of silvered clouds. They were both struck with the beauty of the spectacle and stood still gazing at it.

Suddenly she dropped on her knees and with violent sobbing called upon God to help her. He lifted her up, and when she was calmer she told him everything. They went on their way in silence. Now comes the remarkable part of the story. It was he who would have been the tempter and she had saved him. When they reached the Park he found his aunt ill, and in a fortnight she was dead. In less than two years nephew and maid were married. His strict evangelicalism relaxed a little, but they were both faithful to their Friend. Lovers also they were to the last, and they died in the same month after each of them had passed seventy-five years.

I fancy I read a long while ago somewhere in Wesley’s _Journal_ that an attempt was made to ruin him or one of his friends with a woman, but I think she was a bad woman. If there is anything of the kind in the _Journal_ it shows that Lady B’s plot is not incredible.

JULY

IT is a cool day in July, and the shaded sunlight slowly steals and disappears over the landscape. There are none of those sudden flashes which come when the clouds are more sharply defined and the blue is more intense. I have wandered from the uplands down to the river. The fields are cleared of the hay, and the bright green of the newly mown grass increases the darkness of the massive foliage of the bordering elms. The cows are feeding in the rich level meadows and now and then come to the river to drink. It is overhung with alders, and two or three stand on separate little islands held together by roots. The winter floods biting into the banks have cut miniature cliffs, and at their base grow the forget-me-not, the willow-herb, and flowering rush. A brightly-plumaged bird, too swift to be recognised—could it be a kingfisher?—darts along the margin of the stream and disappears in its black shadows. The wind blows gently from the west: it is just strong enough to show the silver sides of the willow leaves. The sound of the weir, although so soft, is able to exclude the clacking of the mill and all intermittent, casual noises. For two hours it has filled my ears and brought a deeper repose than that of mere silence. It is not uniform, for the voices of innumerable descending threads of water with varying impulses can be distinguished, but it is a unity. Myriads of bubbles rise from the leaping foam at the bottom, float away for a few yards and then break.

It is the very summit of the year, the brief poise of perfection. In two or three weeks the days will be noticeably shorter, the harvest will begin, and we shall be on our way downwards to autumn, to dying leaves and to winter.

A SUNDAY MORNING IN NOVEMBER

THE walk from the high moorland to the large pond or lake lies through a narrow grassy lane. About half-way down it turns sharply to the left; in front are the bluish-green pine woods. Across the corner of them, confronting me, slants a birch with its white bark and delicate foliage, light-green and yellow in relief against the sombre background. Fifty yards before I reach the wood its music is perceptible, something like the tones of an organ heard outside a cathedral. In another minute the lane enters: it is dark, but the ruddy stems catch the sun, and in open patches are small beeches responding to it with intense golden-brown. Along the edge of the path, springing from the mossy bank they grow to a greater height. A pine has pushed itself between the branches of one of them as if on purpose to show off the splendour of its sister’s beauty. It is stiller than it was outside; the murmur descends from aloft. There was a frost last night and the leaves will soon fall. A beech leaf detaches itself now and then and flutters peacefully and waywardly to the ground, careless whether it finds its grave in the bracken or on the road where it will be trodden underfoot. The bramble is beginning to turn to blood. It is strange that leaves should show such character. Here is a corner on which there are not two of the same tint, but they spring from the same root, and the circumstances of light and shade under which they have developed are almost exactly similar.

It is eleven o’clock, and with the mounting sun the silence has become complete save when it is broken by the heavy, quick flap of the wood-pigeon or the remonstrance of a surprised magpie. Service is just beginning all over England in churches and the chapels belonging to a hundred sects. In the village two miles away the Salvation Army drum is beating, but it cannot penetrate these recesses. Stay! a faint vibration from it comes over the hill, but now it has gone. A fox, unaware of any human being, walks from one side of the lane to the other, stopping in the middle. There is a breath of wind and the low solemn song begins again above me.

UNDER BEACHY HEAD: DECEMBER

AT the top of the hill the north-westerly wind blows fresh, but here under the cliffs the sun strikes warm as in June. There is not a cloud in the sky, and behind me broken, chalk pinnacles intensely white rise into the clear blue, which is bluer by their contrast. In front lies the calm, light-sapphire ocean with a glittering sun-path on it broadening towards the horizon. All recollection of bare trees and dead leaves has gone. The tide is drawing down and has left bare a wide expanse of smooth untrodden sand through which ridges run of chalk rock black with weed. The sand is furrowed by little rivulets from the abandoned pools above, and at its edge long low waves ripple over it, flattening themselves out in thin sheets which invade one another with infinitely complex, graceful curves. I look southward: there is nothing between me and the lands of heat but the water. It unites me with them.

It is wonderful that winter should suddenly abdicate and summer resume her throne. On a morning like this there is no death, the sin of the world is swallowed up; theological and metaphysical problems cease to have any meaning. Men and books make me painfully aware of my littleness and defects, but here on the shore in silence complete save for the music of the ebbing sea, they vanish.

When I am again in London and at work the dazzling light will not be extinguished, and will illuminate the dreary darkness of the city.

24TH DECEMBER

MY housekeeper and her husband have begged for a holiday from this morning till Boxing-day, and I could not refuse. I can do without them for so short a time. I might have spent the Christmas with one of my children, but they live far away and travelling is now irksome to me. I was seventy years old a month past. Besides, they are married and have their own friends, of whom I know nothing. I have locked the door of my cottage and shall walk to No-man’s Corner.

It is a dark day; the sky is covered evenly with a thick cloud. There is no wind except a breath now and then from the north-east. It is not a frost, but it is cold, and a thick mist covers the landscape. It is no thicker in the river bottom than on the hills; it is everywhere the same. The field-paths are in many places a foot deep in mud, for the autumn has been wet. They are ploughing the Ten Acres, and the plough is going along the top ridge so that horses and men are distinctly outlined, two men and four horses, but the pace is slow, for the ground is very heavy. I can just hear the ploughman talking to his team. The upturned earth is more beautiful in these parts than I have seen it elsewhere—a rich, reddish brown, for there is iron in it. The sides of the clods which are smoothed by the ploughshare shine like silver even in this dull light. I pass through the hop-garden. The poles are stacked and a beginning has just been made with the weeds. A little further on is the farmhouse. It lies in the hollow and there is no road to it, save a cart-track. The nearest hard road is half a mile distant. The footpath crosses the farmyard. The house is whitewashed plaster and black-timbered, and surrounded by cattle-pens in which the oxen and cows stand almost up to their knees in slush. A motionless ox looks over the bar of his pen and turns his eyes to me and my dog as we pass. It is now twelve, and it is the dinner-hour. The horses have stopped work and are steaming with sweat under the hayrick. The men are sitting in the barn. Leaving the farmyard I go down to the brook which steals round the wood and stop for a few minutes on the foot-bridge. I can hear the little stream in the gully about twenty feet below, continually changing its note, which nevertheless is always the same. In the wood not a leaf falls. O eternal sleep, death of the passions, the burial of failures, follies, bitter recollections, the end of fears, welcome sleep!

DREAMING

DURING the retreat from Moscow a French soldier was mortally wounded. His comrades tried to lift him into a waggon. ‘No bandages, no brandy!’ he cried; ‘go, you cannot help me.’ They hesitated, but seeing that he could not recover, and knowing that the enemy was hard upon them in pursuit, they left him. For half an hour he was alive and alone. The Emperor, whom he worshipped, was far away; his friends had fled; to remain would have been folly, and yet! It was late in the afternoon and bitterly cold. He looked with dim and closing eyes over the vast, dreary, snowy and silent plain. What were the images which passed before them? Were they of home, of the Emperor and the retreating army, of the crucifix and the figure thereon? Who can tell? Death is preceded by thoughts which life cannot anticipate. Perhaps his herald was a simple longing to be at rest, joy at his approach blotting out all bitterness and regret. Who can tell? But I dream and dream; the dying, wintry day, the dark, heavily-clouded sky, the snow, and the blood. A Cossack came up and drove his lance through him.

OURSELVES

LORD BACON says that ‘To be wise by rule and to be wise by experience are contrary proceedings; he that accustoms himself to the one unfits himself for the other.’ It is singular how little attention, in the guidance of our lives, we pay to our own needs. It is a common falsehood of these times that all knowledge is good for everybody, the truth being that knowledge is good only if it helps us, and that if it does not help us it is bad. ‘Whatever knowledge,’ to quote from Bacon again, ‘we cannot convert into food or medicine endangereth a dissolution of the mind and understanding.’ We ought to turn aside from what we cannot manage, no matter how important it may seem to be. David refused Saul’s helmet of brass and coat of mail. If he had taken the orthodox accoutrements and weapons he would have been encumbered and slain. He killed Goliath with the rustic sling and stone. No doubt if we determine to be ignorant of those things with which the world thinks it necessary that everybody should be familiar we shall be thought ill-educated, but our very ignorance will be a better education, provided it be a principled ignorance, than much which secures a local examination certificate or a degree. At the same time, if any study fits us, it should be pursued unflaggingly. We must not be afraid of the imputation of narrowness. Our subject will begin to be of most service to us when we have passed the threshold and can think for ourselves. If we devote ourselves, for example, to the works and biography of any great man, the pleasure and moral effect come when we have read him and re-read him and have traced every thread we can find, connecting him with his contemporaries. It is then, and then only, that we understand him and he becomes a living soul. Flesh and blood are given by details.

We are misled by heroes whom we admire, and the greater the genius the more perilous is its influence upon us if we allow it to be a dictator to us. It is really of little consequence to me what a saint or philosopher thought it necessary to do in order to protect and save himself. It is myself that I have to protect and save. Every man is prone to lean on some particular side and on that side requires special support. Every man has particular fears and troubles, and it is against these and not against the fears and troubles of others that he must provide remedies. A religion is but a general direction, and the real working Thirty-nine Articles or Assembly’s Catechism each one of us has to construct on his own behalf.

A not insignificant advantage of loyalty to our Divine Director will be a more correct and generally a more lenient criticism of our fellow-creatures. We shall cease to judge them by standards which are not applicable to them. Much that we might erroneously consider wrong we shall discern to be a necessary effort to secure stability or even to preserve sanity. We shall pardon deviation from the obvious path. The boat which crosses the river may traverse obliquely the direct line to the point for which it is making, and if we reflect that perhaps a strong current besets it we shall not call the steersman a fool.

THE RIDDLE

MEN had sinned against the gods, and had even denied their existence. Zeus had a mind to destroy them, but at last resolved to inflict on them a punishment worse than death. He sent Hermes to one of the chief cities with a scroll on which a few magic letters were written, and the wise men declared they contained a riddle. Its solution would bring immortal happiness. The whole human race, neglecting all ordinary pursuits, applied itself ceaselessly to the solution of the mystery. Professors were appointed to lecture on it, it was attacked on all sides by induction, deduction, and by flights of inspiration, but nobody was able to unravel it. At last a child, seeing the perplexity in which her father and mother were, took one of the copies of the scroll which were hung in all the public buildings of the city, and secretly set off to consult a distant oracle of Phœbus Apollo of which she had heard. She had to traverse thirsty deserts, and not till she was nearly dead did she reach the shrine. She told her story and handed in her scroll to a priestess, who disappeared in an inner chamber. In a few minutes the temple of the Sun-god was filled with blazing light, the child prostrated herself on the floor, and she heard the words, _There is no riddle_. She lifted herself up, and, fortified with some food given her by the priestess, began her journey home. She was just able to struggle through the city gates and deliver the message before she fell down lifeless. It was not believed; the Secret, the Secret, everybody upheld it, the professors lectured, the mad inquisition and guesses continued, and the vengeance of Zeus is not yet satisfied.

AN EPOCH