Chapter VI: Conclusion (2)

One day when I was sitting with Landor, and he, as usual, was discoursing of "lang syne," he rose, saying, "Stop a bit; I've something to show you,"--and, leaving the room for a moment, returned with a small writing-desk, looking as old as himself. "Now I want you to look at something I have here," he continued, seating himself and opening the desk. "There, what do you think of that?" he asked, handing me a miniature of a very lovely woman.

"I think the original must have been exceedingly handsome."

"Ah, yes, she was," he replied, with a sigh, leaning back in his chair. "That is the 'Ianthe' of my poems."

"I can well understand why she inspired your muse, Mr. Landor."

"Ah, she was far more beautiful than her picture, but much she cared for my poetry! It couldn't be said that she liked me for my books. She, too, has gone,--gone before me."

It is to "Ianthe" that the first seventy-five of his verses marked "Miscellaneous" are addressed, and it is of her he has written,--

"It often comes into my head
That we may dream when we are dead,
But I am far from sure we do.
O that it were so! then my rest
Would be indeed among the blest;
I should forever dream of you."

In the "Heroic Idyls," also, there are lines

"ON THE DEATH OF IANTHE.

"I dare not trust my pen, it trembles so;
It seems to feel a portion of my woe,
And makes me credulous that trees and stones
At mournful fates have uttered mournful tones.
While I look back again on days long past,
How gladly would I yours might be my last!
Sad our first severance was, but sadder this,
When death forbids one hour of mutual bliss."

"Ianthe's portrait is not the only treasure this old desk contains," Landor said, as he replaced it and took up a small package, very carefully tied, which he undid with great precaution, as though the treasure had wings and might escape, if not well guarded. "There!" he said, holding up a pen-wiper made of red and gold stuff in the shape of a bell with an ivory handle,--"that pen-wiper was given to me by ----, Rose's sister, forty years ago. Would you believe it? Have I not kept it well?" The pen-wiper looked as though it had been made the day before, so fresh was it. "Now," continued Landor, "I intend to give that to you."

"But, Mr. Landor--"

"Tut! tut! there are to be no buts about it. My passage for another world is already engaged, and I know you'll take good care of my keepsake. There, now, put it in your pocket, and only use it on grand occasions."

Into my pocket the pen-wiper went, and, wrapped in the same old paper, it lies in another desk, as free from ink as it was four years ago.

Who Rose was no reader of Landor need be told,--she to whom "Andrea of Hungary" was dedicated, and of whom Lady Blessington, in one of her letters to Landor, wrote: "The tuneful bird, inspired of old by the Persian rose, warbled not more harmoniously its praise than you do that of the English Rose, whom posterity will know through your beautiful verses." Many and many a time the gray-bearded poet related incidents of which this English Rose was the heroine, and for the moment seemed to live over again an interesting episode of his mature years.

* * * * *

"Dear! dear! what is the old creature to do for reading-matter?" Landor exclaimed after having exhausted his own small stock and my still smaller one. "Shakespeare and Milton are my daily food, but at times, you know, we require side-dishes."

"Why not subscribe to Vieusseux's Library, Mr. Landor?"

"That would be the best thing to do, would it not? Very well, you shall secure me a six months' subscription to-morrow. And now what shall I read? When Mr. Anthony Trollope was here, he called on me with his brother, and a clever man he appeared to be. I have never read anything of his. Suppose I begin with his novels?"

And so it happened that Landor read all of Anthony Trollope's works with zest, admiring them for their unaffected honesty of purpose and truth to nature. He next read Hood's works, and when this writer's poems were returned to me there came with them a scrap of paper on which were named the poems that had most pleased their reader.

"Song of a Shirt.

"To my Daughter.

"A Child embracing.

"My Heart is sick.

"False Poets and True.

"The Forsaken.

"The last stanza of Inez is beautiful."

Of the poem which heads the list, he wrote:--

"'Song of the Shirt' Strange! very strange,
This shirt will never want a change,
Nor ever will wear out so long
As Britain has a heart or tongue."

Hood commanded great love and respect from Landor. Soon the reign of G. P. R. James set in, and when I left Florence he was still in power. I cannot but think that a strong personal friendship had much to do with Landor's enthusiasm for this novelist.

* * * * *

We took many drives with Landor during the spring and summer of 1861, and made very delightful jaunts into the country. Not forgetful in the least of things, the old man, in spite of his age, would always insist upon taking the front seat, and was more active than many a younger man in assisting us in and out of the carriage. "You are the most genuinely polite man I know," once wrote Lady Blessington to him. The verdict of 1840 could not have been overruled twenty-one years later. Once we drove up to "aerial Fiesole," and never can I forget Landor's manner while in the neighborhood of his former home. It had been proposed that we should turn back when only half-way up the hill. "Ah, go a little farther," Landor said nervously; "I should like to see my villa." Of course his wish was our pleasure, and so the drive was continued. Landor sat immovable, with head turned in the direction of the Villa Gherardesca. At first sight of it he gave a sudden start, and genuine tears filled his eyes and coursed down his cheeks. "There's where I lived," he said, breaking a long silence and pointing to his old estate. Still we mounted the hill, and when at a turn in the road the villa stood out before us clearly and distinctly, Landor said, "Let us give the horses a rest here!" We stopped, and for several minutes Landor's gaze was fixed upon the villa. "There now, we can return to Florence, if you like," he murmured, finally, with a deep sigh. "I have seen it probably for the last time." Hardly a word was spoken during the drive home. Landor seemed to be absent-minded. A sadder, more pathetic picture than he made during this memorable drive is rarely seen. "With me life has been a failure," was the expression of that wretched, worn face. Those who believe Landor to have been devoid of heart should have seen him then.

* * * * *

During another drive he stopped the horses at the corner of a dirty little old street, and, getting out of the carriage, hurriedly disappeared round a corner, leaving us without explanation and consequently in amazement. We had not long to wait, however, as he soon appeared carrying a large roll of canvas. "There!" he exclaimed, as he again seated himself, "I've made a capital bargain. I've long wanted these paintings, but the man asked more than I could give. To-day he relented. They are very clever, and I shall have them framed." Alas! they were not clever, and Landor in his last days had queer notions concerning art. That he was excessively fond of pictures is undoubtedly true; he surrounded himself with them, but there was far more quantity than quality about them. He frequently attributed very bad paintings to very good masters; and it by no means followed because he called a battle-piece a "Salvator Rosa," that it was painted by Salvator. But the old man was tenacious of his art opinions, and it was unwise to argue the point.

* * * * *

The notes which I possess in Landor's handwriting are numerous, but they are of too personal a character to interest the public. Sometimes he signs himself "The Old Creature," at another, "The Restless Old Man," and once, "Your Beardless Old Friend." This was after the painting of his portrait, when he had himself shorn of half his patriarchal grandeur. The day previous to the fatal deed, he entered our room saying, "I've just made an arrangement with my barber to shear me to-morrow. I must have a clean face during the summer."

"I wish you had somewhat of the Oriental reverence for beards, Mr. Landor, for then there would be no shaving. Why, think of it! if you've no beard, how can you swear?"

"Ah, _Padrone_ can swear tolerably well without it, can he not, Giallo? he will have no difficulty on that score. Now I'll wager, were I a young man, you would ask me for a lock of my hair. See what it is to be old and gray."

"Why, Mr. Landor, I've long wanted just that same, but have not dared to ask for it. May I cut off a few stray hairs?" I asked, going toward him with a pair of scissors.

"Ah no," he replied, quizzically, "there can be but one 'Rape of the Lock!' Let me be my own barber." Taking the scissors, he cut off the longest curl of his snow-white beard, enclosed it in an envelope with a Greek superscription, and, presenting it, said, "One of these days, when I have gone to my long sleep, this bit of an old pagan may interest some very good Christians."

* * * * *

The following note is worthy to be transcribed, showing, as it does, the generosity of his nature at a time when he had nothing to give away but ideas.

"MY DEAR FRIEND,--Will you think it worth your while to
transcribe the enclosed? These pages I have corrected and
enlarged. Some of them you have never seen. They have occupied
more of my time and trouble, and are now more complete, than
anything you have favored me by reading. I hope you will be
pleased. I care less about others.... I hope you will get
something for these articles, and keep it. I am richer by
several crowns than you suspect, and I must scramble to the
kingdom of Heaven, to which a full pocket, we learn, is an
impediment.

"Ever truly yours,

W. S. L."

The manuscripts contained the two conversations between Homer and Laertes which two years ago were published in the "Heroic Idyls." I did not put them to the use desired by their author. Though my copies differ somewhat from the printed ones, it is natural to conclude that Landor most approved of what was last submitted to his inspection, and would not desire to be seen in any other guise. The publicity of a note prefixed to one of these conversations, however, is warranted.

"It will be thought audacious, and most so by those who know the least of Homer, to represent him as talking so familiarly. He must often have done it, as Milton and Shakespeare did. There is homely talk in the 'Odyssey.'

"Fashion turns round like Fortune. Twenty years hence, perhaps, this conversation of Homer and Laertes, in which for the first time Greek domestic manners have been represented by any modern poet, may be recognized and approved.

"Our sculptors and painters frequently take their subjects from antiquity; are our poets never to pass beyond the mediaeval? At our own doors we listen to the affecting 'Song of the Shirt'; but some few of us, at the end of it, turn back to catch the 'Song of the Sirens.'

"Poetry is not tied to chronology. The Roman poet brings Dido and AEneas together,--the historian parts them far asunder. Homer may or may not have been the contemporary of Laertes. Nothing is idler or more dangerous than to enter a labyrinth without a clew."

* * * * *

At last the time came when there were to be no more conversations, no more drives, with Walter Savage Landor. Summoned suddenly to America, we called upon him three or four days before our departure to say good by.

"What? going to America?" Landor exclaimed in a sorrowful voice. "Is it really true? Must the old creature lose his young friends as well as his old? Ah me! ah me! what will become of Giallo and me? And America in the condition that it is too! But this is not the last time that I am to see you. Tut! tut! now no excuses. We must have one more drive, one more cup of tea together before you leave."

Pressed as we were for time, it was still arranged that we should drive with Landor the evening previous to our departure. On the morning of this day came the following note:--

"I am so stupid that everything puzzles me. Is not this the day
I was to expect your visit? At all events you will have the
carriage at your door at _six_ this evening.

To drive or not to drive,
That is the question.

You shall not be detained one half-hour,--but tea will be ready
on your arrival.

"I fell asleep after the jolting, and felt no bad effect. See
what it is to be so young.

"Ever yours affectionately,

"W. S. L."

There was little to cheer any of us in that last drive, and few words were spoken. Stopping at his house on our way home, we sipped a final cup of tea in almost complete silence. I tried to say merry things and look forward a few years to another meeting, but the old man shook his head sadly, saying: "I shall never see you again. I cannot live through another winter, nor do I desire to. Life to me is but a counterpart of Dead Sea fruit; and now that you are going away, there is one less link to the chain that binds me."

Landor, in the flood-tide of intellect and fortune, could command attention; Landor, tottering with an empty purse towards his ninth decade, could count his Florentine friends in one breath; thus it happened that the loss of the least of these made the old man sad.

At last the hour of leave-taking arrived. Culling a flower from the little garden, taking a final turn through those three little rooms, patting Giallo on the head, who, sober through sympathy, looked as though he wondered what it all meant, we turned to Landor, who entered the front room dragging an immense album after him. It was the same that he had bought years before of Barker, the English artist, for fifty guineas, and about which previous mention has been made. "You are not to get rid of me yet," said Landor, bearing the album toward the stairs. "I shall see you home, and bid you good by at your own door."

"But, dear Mr. Landor, what are you doing with that big book? You will surely injure yourself by attempting to carry it."

"This album is intended for you, and you must take it with you to-night."

Astonished at this munificent present, I hardly knew how to refuse it without offending the generous giver. Stopping him at the door, I endeavored to dissuade him from giving away so valuable an album; and, finding him resolute in his determination, begged him to compromise by leaving it to me in his will.

"No, my dear," he replied, "I at least have lived long enough to know that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush." Whereupon he carried the book down stairs and deposited it in the carriage, deaf to our entreaties, and obstinately refusing assistance. "Now I am sure that you will have the album," he continued, after we were all seated in the carriage. "A will is an uncanny thing, and I'd rather remember my friends out of one than in one. I shall never see you again, and I want you to think of the foolish old creature occasionally."

The carriage stopped at our door, and "the good by" came. "May God bless you!" murmured the lonely old man, and in a moment Walter Savage Landor was out of sight.

He was right. We were never to meet again. Distance did not entirely sever the friendly link, however, for soon there came to me, across the sea, the following letters:--

August 28, 1861.

"By this time, my dear friend, you will be far on your way over
the Atlantic, and before you receive the scribble now before
you, half your friends will have offered you their
congratulations on your return home.

"People, I hear, are flocking fast into Florence for the
exhibition. This evening I received another kind note from the
Countess, who tells me that she shall return to Florence on
Saturday, and invites me to accompany her there. But I abhor
all crowds, and am not fascinated by the eye of kings. I never
saw him of Italy when he was here before, and shall not now.

"I am about to remove my terrace, and to place it under the
window of the small bedroom, substituting a glass door for the
present window. On this terrace I shall spend all my October
days, and--and--all my money! The landlord will not allow one
shilling toward the expense, which will make his lower rooms
lighter and healthier. To him the advantage will be
permanent,--to me (God knows) it must be very temporary. In
another summer I shall not sit so high, nor, indeed, _sit_
anywhere, but take instead the easiest and laziest of all
positions.

"I am continuing to read the noble romances of my friend James.
I find in them thoughts as profound as any in Charron, or
Montaigne, or Bacon,--I had almost added, or Shakespeare
himself,--the wisest of men, as the greatest of poets. On the
morning after your departure I finished the 'Philip Augustus.'
In the thirty-eighth chapter is this sentence: 'O Isidore! 't
is not the present, I believe, that ever makes our misery; 't
is its contrast with the past; 't is the loss of some hope, or
the crushing of some joy; the disappointment of expectation, or
the regrets of memory. The present is nothing, nothing,
nothing, but in its relation to the future or the past.' James
is inferior to Scott in wit and humor, but more than his equal
in many other respects; but then Scott wrote excellent poetry,
in which James, when he attempted it, failed.

"Let me hear how affairs are going on in America. I believe we
have truer accounts from England than your papers are disposed
to publish. Louis Napoleon is increasing his naval force to a
degree it never reached before. We must have war with him
before a twelvemonth is over. He will also make disturbances in
Louisiana, claiming it on the dolorous cry of France for her
lost children. They will _invite_ him, as the poor Savoyards
were _invited_ by him to do. So long as this perfidious
scoundrel exists there will be no peace of quiet in any quarter
of the globe. The Pope is heartily sick of intervention; but
nothing can goad his fat sides into a move.

"Are you not tired? My wrist is. So adieu.

"Ever affectionately,

"W. S. L."

With this letter came a slip of paper, on which were these lines:--

"TO GIALLO,

"Faithfullest of a faithful race,
Plainly I read it in thy face,
Thou wishest me to mount the stairs,
And leave behind me all my cares.
No: I shall never see again,
Her who now sails across the main,
Nor wilt thou ever as before
Rear two white feet against her door."

"Written opposite Palazzo Pitti,
September, 1861."

"February 15, 1862.

".... The affairs of your country interest me painfully. The
Northern States had acknowledged the right of the Southern to
hold slaves, and had even been so iniquitous as to surrender a
fugitive from his thraldom. I would propose an accommodation:--

"1. That every slave should be free after ten years' labor.

"2. That none should be imported, or sold, or separated from
wife and children.

"3. That an adequate portion of land should be granted in
perpetuity to the liberated.

"The proprietor would be fully indemnified for his purchase by
ten years' labor. France and England will not permit their
commerce with the Southern States to be interrupted much
longer. It has caused great discontent in Manchester and Leeds,
where the artificers suffer grievously from want of employment.

".... May you continue to improve in health as the warmer
weather advances. Mine will not allow me to hope for many more
months of life, but I shall always remember you, and desire
that you also will remember

"W. S. LANDOR."

"January, 1863.

".... Your account of your improved health is very satisfactory
and delightful to me. Hardly can I expect to receive many such.
This month I enter on my eighty-ninth year, and am growing
blind and deaf.... I hope you may live long enough to see the
end of your disastrous civil war. Remember, the Southrons are
fighting for their acknowledged rights, as established by the
laws of the United States. Horrible is the idea that one man
should be lord and master of another. But Washington had
slaves, so had the President his successor. If your government
had been contented to decree that no slave henceforth should be
imported, none sold, none disunited from his family, your
Northern cause would be more popular in England and throughout
Europe than it is. You are about to see detached from the Union
a third of the white population. Is it not better that the
blacks should be contented slaves than exasperated murderers or
drunken vagabonds? Your blacks were generally more happy than
they were in Africa, or than they are likely to be in America.
Your taxes will soon excite a general insurrection. In a war of
five years they will be vastly heavier than their amount in all
the continent of Europe. And what enormous armies must be kept
stationary to keep down not only those who are now refractory,
but also those whom (by courtesy and fiction) we call free.

"I hope and trust that I shall leave the world before the end
of this winter. My darling dog, Giallo, will find a fond
protectress in ----.... Present my respectful compliments to
Mrs. F., and believe me to continue

"Your faithful old friend,

"W. S. LANDOR."

"September 11, 1863.

".... You must be grieved at the civil war. It might have been
avoided. The North had no right to violate the Constitution.
Slavery was lawful, execrable as it is.... Congress might have
liberated them [the slaves] gradually at no expense to the
nation at large.

"1. Every slave after fifteen years should be affranchised.

"2. None to be imported or sold.

"3. No husband and wife separated.

"4. No slave under twelve compelled to labor.

"5. Schools in every township; and children of both sexes sent
to them at six to ten.

"A few days before I left England, five years ago, I had an
opportunity of conversing with a gentleman who had visited the
United States. He was an intelligent and zealous Abolitionist.
Wishing to learn the real state of things, he went on board a
vessel bound to New York. He was amazed at the opulence and
splendor of that city, and at the inadequate civilization of
the inhabitants. He dined at a public table, at a principal
inn. The dinner was plenteous and sumptuous. On each side of
him sat two gentlemen who spat like Frenchmen the moment a
plate was removed. This prodigy deprived him of appetite. Dare
I mention it, that the lady opposite cleared her throat in like
manner?

"The Englishman wished to see your capital, and hastened to
Washington. There he met a member of Congress to whom he had
been introduced in London by Webster. Most willingly he
accepted his invitation to join him at Baltimore, his
residence. He found it difficult to express the difference
between the people of New York and those of Baltimore, whom he
represented as higher-bred. He met there a slaveholder of New
Orleans, with whom at first he was disinclined to converse, but
whom presently he found liberal and humane, and who assured him
that his slaves were contented, happy, and joyous. 'There are
some cruel masters,' he said, 'among us; but come yourself,
sir, and see whether we consider them fit for our society or
our notice.' He accepted the invitation, and remained at New
Orleans until a vessel was about to sail for Bermuda, where he
spent the winter.

"Your people, I am afraid, will resolve on war with England.
Always aggressive, they already devour Canada. I hope Canada
will soon be independent both of America and England. Your
people should be satisfied with a civil war of ten or twelve
years: they will soon have one of much longer duration about
Mexico. God grant that you, my dear friend, may see the end of
it. Believe me ever,

"Your affectionate old friend,

"W. S. LANDOR."

It was sad to receive such letters from the old man, for they showed how a mind once great was tottering ere it fell. Blind, deaf, shut up within the narrow limits of his own four walls, dependent upon English newspapers for all tidings of America,--is it strange that during those last days Landor failed to appreciate the grandeur of our conflict, and stumbled as he attempted to follow the logic of events? Well do I remember that in conversations he had reasoned far differently, his sympathy going out most unreservedly to the North. Living in the dark, he saw no more clearly than the majority of Europeans, and a not small minority of our own people. Interesting as is everything that so celebrated an author as Landor writes, these extracts, so unfavorable to our cause and to his intellect, would never have been published had not English reviewers thoroughly ventilated his opinions on the American war. Their insertion, consequently, in no way exposes Landor to severer comment than that to which the rashly unthinking have already subjected him, but, on the contrary, increases our regard for him, denoting, as they do, that, however erroneous his conclusions, the subject was one to which he devoted all the thought left him by old age. The record of a long life cannot be obliterated by the unsound theories of the octogenarian. It was only ten years before that he appealed to America in behalf of freedom in lines beginning thus:--

"Friend Jonathan!--for friend thou art,--
Do, prithee, take now in good part
Lines the first steamer shall waft o'er.
Sorry am I to hear the blacks
Still bear your ensign on their backs;
The stripes they suffer make me sore.
Beware of wrong. The brave are true;
The tree of Freedom never grew
Where Fraud and Falsehood sowed their salt."

In his poem, also, addressed to Andrew Jackson, the "Atlantic Ruler" is apostrophized on the supposition of a prophecy that remained unfulfilled.

"Up, every son of Afric soil,
Ye worn and weary, hoist the sail,
For your own glebes and garners toil
With easy plough and lightsome flail.
A father's home ye never knew,
A father's home your sons shall have from you.
Enjoy your palmy groves, your cloudless day,
Your world that demons tore away.
Look up! look up! the flaming sword
Hath vanished! and behold your Paradise restored."

This is Landor in the full possession of his intellect.

* * * * *

For Landor's own sake, I did not wish to drink the lees of that rich wine which Lady Blessington had prophesied would "flow on pure, bright, and sparkling to the last." It is the strength, not the weakness, of our friends that we would remember, and therefore Landor's letter of September, 1863, remained unanswered. It was better so. A year later he died of old age, and during this year he was but the wreck of himself. He became gradually more and more averse to going out, and to receiving visitors,--more indifferent, in fact, to all outward things. He used to sit and read, or, at all events, hold a book in his hand, and would sometimes write and sometimes give way to passion. "It was the swell of the sea after the storm, before the final calm," wrote a friend in Florence. Landor did not become physically deafer, but the mind grew more and more insensible to external impressions, and at last his housekeeper was forced to write down every question she was called upon to ask him. Few crossed the threshold of his door saving his sons, who went to see him regularly. At last he had a difficulty in swallowing, which produced a kind of cough. Had he been strong enough to expectorate or be sick, he might have lived a little longer; but the frame-work was worn out, and in a fit of coughing the great old man drew his last breath. He was confined to his bed but two or three days. I am told he looked very grand when dead,--like a majestic marble statue. The funeral was hurried, and none but his two sons followed his remains to the grave!

One touching anecdote remains to be told of him, as related by his housekeeper. On the night before the 1st of May, 1864, Landor became very restless, as sometimes happened during the last year. About two o'clock, A. M., he rang for Wilson, and insisted upon having the room lighted and the windows thrown open. He then asked for pen, ink, and paper, and the date of the day. Being told that it was the dawn of the 1st of May, he wrote a few lines of poetry upon it; then, leaning back, said, "I shall never write again. Put out the lights and draw the curtains." Very precious would those lines be now, had they been found. Wilson fancies that Landor must have destroyed them the next morning on rising.

* * * * *

The old man had his wish. Years before, when bidding, as he supposed, an eternal farewell to Italy, he wrote sadly of hopes which then seemed beyond the pale of possibility.

"I did believe, (what have I not believed?)
Weary with age, but unopprest by pain,
To close in thy soft clime my quiet day,
And rest my bones in the Mimosa's shade.
Hope! hope! few ever cherisht thee so little;
Few are the heads thou hast so rarely raised;
But thou didst promise this, and all was well.
For we are fond of thinking where to lie
When every pulse hath ceast, when the lone heart
Can lift no aspiration, ... reasoning
As if the sight were unimpaired by death,
Were unobstructed by the coffin-lid,
And the sun cheered corruption! Over all
The smiles of Nature shed a potent charm,
And light us to our chamber at the grave."

Italy recalled her aged yet impassioned lover, and there, beneath the cypresses of the English burying-ground at Florence, almost within sound of the murmur of his "own Affrico," rest the weary bones of Walter Savage Landor. It is glorified dust with which his mingles. Near by, the birds sing their sweetest over the grave of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Not far off, an American pine watches vigilantly while Theodore Parker sleeps his long sleep; and but a little distance beyond, Frances Trollope, the mother, and Theodosia Trollope, her more than devoted daughter, are united in death as they had been in life.

"Nobly, O Theo! has your verse called forth
The Roman valor and Subalpine worth,"

sang Landor years ago of his _protegee_, who outlived her friend and critic but a few months. With the great and good about him, Landor sleeps well. His genius needs no eulogy: good wine needs no bush. Time, that hides the many in oblivion, can but add to the warmth and mellowness of his fame; and in the days to come no modern writer will be more faithfully studied or more largely quoted than Walter Savage Landor.

"We upon earth
Have not our places and our distances
Assigned, for many years; at last a tube,
Raised and adjusted by Intelligence,
Stands elevated to a cloudless sky,
And place and magnitude are ascertained."

Landor "will dine late; but the dining-room will be well lighted, the guests few and select." He will reign among crowned heads.

THE DEAD SHIP OF HARPSWELL.

What flecks the outer gray beyond
The sundown's golden trail?
The white flash of a sea-bird's wing,
Or gleam of slanting sail?
Let young eyes watch from Neck and Point,
And sea-worn elders pray,--
The ghost of what was once a ship
Is sailing up the bay!

From gray sea-fog, from icy drift,
From peril and from pain,
The home-bound fisher greets thy lights,
O hundred-harbored Maine!
But many a keel shall seaward turn,
And many a sail outstand,
When, tall and white, the Dead Ship looms
Against the dusk of land.

She rounds the headland's bristling pines.
She threads the isle-set bay;
No spur of breeze can speed her on,
Nor ebb of tide delay.
Old men still walk the Isle of Orr
Who tell her date and name,
Old shipwrights sit in Freeport yards
Who hewed her oaken frame.

What weary doom of baffled quest,
Thou sad sea-ghost, is thine?
What makes thee in the haunts of home
A wonder and a sign?
No foot is on thy silent deck,
Upon thy helm no hand;
No ripple hath the soundless wind
That smites thee from the land!

For never comes the ship to port
Howe'er the breeze may be;
Just when she nears the waiting shore
She drifts again to sea.
No tack of sail, nor turn of helm,
Nor sheer of veering side.
Stern-fore she drives to sea and night
Against the wind and tide.

In vain o'er Harpswell Neck the star
Of evening guides her in;
In vain for her the lamps are lit
Within thy tower, Seguin!
In vain the harbor-boat shall hail,
In vain the pilot call;
No hand shall reef her spectral sail,
Or let her anchor fall.

Shake, brown old wives, with dreary joy,
Your gray-head hints of ill;
And, over sick-beds whispering low,
Your prophecies fulfil.
Some home amid yon birchen trees
Shall drape its door with woe;
And slowly where the Dead Ship sails,
The burial boat shall row!

From Wolf Neck and from Flying Point,
From island and from main,
From sheltered cove and tided creek,
Shall glide the funeral train.
The dead-boat with the bearers four,
The mourners at her stern,--
And one shall go the silent way
Who shall no more return!

And men shall sigh, and women weep,
Whose dear ones pale and pine,
And sadly over sunset seas
Await the ghostly sign.
They know not that its sails are filled
By pity's tender breath,
Nor see the Angel at the helm
Who steers the Ship of Death!

DOCTOR JOHNS.

LXIII.

Reuben had heard latterly very little of domestic affairs at Ashfield. He knew scarce more of the family relations of Adele than was covered by that confidential announcement of the parson's which had so set on fire his generous zeal. The spinster, indeed, in one of her later letters had hinted, in a roundabout manner, that Adele's family misfortunes were not looking so badly as they once did,--that the poor girl (she believed) felt tenderly still toward her old playmate,--and that Mr. Maverick was, beyond all question, a gentleman of very easy fortune. But Reuben was not in a mood to be caught by any chaff administered by his most respectable aunt. If, indeed, he had known all,--if that hearty burst of Adele's gratitude had come to him,--if he could once have met her with the old freedom of manner,--ah! then--then--

But no; he thinks of her now as one under social blight, which he would have lifted or borne with her had not her religious squeamishness forbidden. He tries to forget what was most charming in her, and has succeeded passably well.

"I suppose she is still modelling her heroes on the Catechism," he thought, "and Phil will very likely pass muster."

The name of Madam Maverick as attaching to their fellow-passenger--which came to his ear for the first time on the second day out from port--considerably startled him. Madam Maverick is, he learns, on her way to join her husband and child in America. But he is by no means disposed to entertain a very exalted respect for any claimant of such name and title. He finds, indeed, the prejudices of his education (so he calls them) asserting themselves with a fiery heat; and most of all he is astounded by the artfully arranged religious drapery with which this poor woman--as it appears to him--seeks to cover her short-comings. He had brought away from the atmosphere of the old cathedrals a certain quickened religious sentiment, by the aid of which he had grown into a respect, not only for the Romish faith, but for Christian faith of whatever degree. And now he encountered what seemed to him its gross prostitution. The old Doctor then was right: this Popish form of heathenism was but a device of Satan,--a scarlet covering of iniquity. Yet, in losing respect for one form of faith, he found himself losing respect for all. It was easy for him to match the present hypocrisy with hypocrisies that he had seen of old.

Meantime, the good ship Meteor was skirting the shores of Spain, and had made a good hundred leagues of her voyage before Reuben had ventured to make himself known as the old schoolmate and friend of the child whom Madam Maverick was on her way to greet after so many years of separation. The truth was, that Reuben, his first disgust being overcome, could not shake off the influence of something attractive and winning in the manner of Madam Maverick. In her step and in her lithe figure he saw the step and figure of Adele. All her orisons and aves, which she failed not to murmur each morning and evening, were reminders of the earnest faith of her poor child. It is impossible to treat her with disrespect. Nay, it is impossible,--as Reuben begins to associate more intimately the figure and the voice of this quiet lady with his memories of another and a younger one,--quite impossible, that he should not feel his whole chivalrous nature stirred in him, and become prodigal of attentions. If there were hypocrisy, it somehow cheated him into reverence.

The lady is, of course, astounded at Reuben's disclosure to her. "_Mon Dieu!_ you, then, are the son of that good priest of whom I have heard so much! And you are Puritan? I would not have thought that. They love the vanities of the world then,"--and her eye flashed over the well-appointed dress of Reuben, who felt half an inclination to hide, if it had been possible, the cluster of gairish charms which hung at his watch-chain. "You have shown great kindness to my child, Monsieur. I thank you with my whole heart."

"She is very charming, Madam," said Reuben, in an easy, _degage_ manner, which, to tell truth, he put on to cover a little embarrassing revival of his old sentiment.

Madam Maverick looked at him keenly. "Describe her to me, if you will be so good, Monsieur."

Whereupon Reuben ran on,--jauntily, at first, as if it had been a ballet-girl of San Carlo whose picture he was making out; but his old hearty warmth declared itself by degrees; and his admiration and his tenderness gave such warm color to his language as it might have shown if her little gloved hand had been shivering even then in his own passionate clasp. And as he closed, with a great glow upon his face, Madam Maverick burst forth,--

"_Mon Dieu_, how I love her! Yet is it not a thing astonishing that I should ask you, a stranger, Monsieur, how my own child is looking? _Culpa mea! culpa mea!_" and she clutched at her rosary, and mumbled an ave, with her eyes lifted and streaming tears.

Reuben looked upon her in wonder, amazed at the depth of her emotion. Could this be all hypocrisy?

"_Tenez!_" said she, recovering herself, and reading, as it were, his doubts. "You count these" (lifting her rosary) "bawbles yonder, and our prayers pagan prayers; my husband has told me, and that she, Adele, is taught thus, and that the _Bon Dieu_ has forsaken our Holy Church,--that He comes near now only to your--what shall I call them?--meeting-houses? Tell me, Monsieur, does Adele think this?"

"I think," said Reuben, "that your daughter would have charity for any religious faith which was earnest."

"Charity! _Mon Dieu!_ Charity for sins, charity for failings,--yes, I ask it; but for my faith! No, Monsieur, no--no--a thousand times, no!"

"This is real," thought Reuben.

"Tell me, Monsieur," continued she, with a heat of language that excited his admiration, "what is it you believe there? What is the horror against which your New England teachers would warn my poor Adele? May the Blessed Virgin be near her!"

Whereupon, Reuben undertook to lay down the grounds of distrust in which he had been educated; not, surely, with the fervor or the logical sequence which the old Doctor would have given to the same, but yet inveighing in good set terms against the vain ceremonials, the idolatries, the mummeries, the confessional, the empty absolution; and summing up all with the formula (may be he had heard the Doctor use the same language) that the piety of the Romanist was not so much a deep religious conviction of the truth, as a sentiment.

"Sentiment!" exclaims Madam Maverick. "What else? What but love of the good God?"

But not so much by her talk as by the every-day sight of her serene, unfaltering devotion is Reuben won into a deep respect for her faith.

Those are rare days and rare nights for him, as the good ship Meteor slips down past the shores of Spain to the Straits,--days all sunny, nights moon-lit. To the right,--not discernible, but he knows they are there,--the swelling hills of Catalonia and of Andalusia, the marvellous Moorish ruins, the murmurs of the Guadalquivir; to the left, a broad sweep of burnished sea, on which, late into the night, the moon pours a stream of molten silver, that comes rocking and widening toward him, and vanishes in the shadow of the ship. The cruise has been a splendid venture for him,--twenty-five thousand at the least. And as he paces the decks,--in the view only of the silent man at the wheel and of the silent stars,--he forecasts the palaces he will build. The feeble Doctor shall have ease and every luxury; he will be gracious in his charities; he will astonish the old people by his affluence; he will live--

Just here, he spies a female figure stealing from the companion-way, and gliding beyond the shelter of the wheelhouse. Half concealed as he chances to be in the shadow of the rigging, he sees her fall upon her knees, and, with head uplifted, cross her hands upon her bosom. 'T is a short prayer, and the instant after she glides below.

"Good God! what trust!"--it is an ejaculatory prayer of Reuben's, rather than an oath. And with it, swift as the wind, comes a dreary sense of unrest. The palaces he had built vanish. The stars blink upon him kindly, and from their wondrous depths challenge his thought. The sea swashes idly against the floating ship. He too afloat,--afloat. Whither bound? Yearning still for a belief on which he may repose. And he bethinks himself,--does it lie somewhere under the harsh and dogmatic utterances of the Ashfield pulpit? At the thought, he recalls the weary iteration of cumbersome formulas, that passed through his brain like leaden plummets, and the swift lashings of rebuke, if he but reached over for a single worldly floweret, blooming beside the narrow path; and yet,--and yet, from the leaden atmosphere of that past, saintly faces beam upon him,--a mother's, Adele's,--nay, the kindly fixed gray eyes of the old Doctor glow upon him with a fire that must have been kindled with truth.

Does it lie in the melodious aves, and under the robes of Rome? The sordid friars, with their shaven pates, grin at him; some Rabelais head of a priest in the confessional-stall leers at him with mockery: and yet the golden letters of the great dome gleam again with the blazing legend, _AEdificabo meam Ecclesiam!_--and the figure of the Magdalen yonder has just now murmured, in tones that must surely have reached a gracious ear,--

"Tibi Christe, redemptori,
Nostro vero salvatori!"

Is the truth between? Is it in both? Is it real? And if real, why may not the same lips declare it under the cathedral or the meeting-house roof? Why not--in God's name--charity?

LXIV.

The Meteor is a snug ship, well found, well manned, and, as the times go, well officered. The captain, indeed, is not over-alert or fitted for high emergencies; but what emergencies can belong to so placid a voyage? For a week after the headlands of Tarifa and Spartel have sunk under the eastern horizon, the vessel is kept every day upon her course,--her top-gallant and studding sails all distent with the wind blowing freely from over Biscay. After this come light, baffling, westerly breezes, with sometimes a clear sky, and then all is overclouded by the drifting trade-mists. Zigzagging on, quietly as ever, save the bustle and whiz and flapping canvas of the ship "in stays," the good Meteor pushes gradually westward.

Meantime a singular and almost tender intimacy grew up between Reuben and the lady voyager. It is always agreeable to a young man to find a listening ear in a lady whose age puts her out of the range of any flurry of sentiment, and whose sympathy gives kindly welcome to his confidence. All that early life of his he detailed to her with a particularity and a warmth (himself unconscious of the warmth) which brought the childish associations of her daughter fresh to the mind of poor Madam Maverick. No wonder that she gave a willing ear! no wonder that the glow of his language kindled her sympathy! Nor with such a listener does he stop with the boyish life of Ashfield. He unfolds his city career, and the bright promises that are before him,--promises of business success, which (he would make it appear) are all that fill his heart now. In the pride of his twenty-five years he loves to represent himself as _blase_ in sentiment.

Madam Maverick has been taught, in these latter years, a large amount of self-control; so she can listen with a grave, nay, even a kindly face, to Reuben's sweeping declarations. And if, at a hint from her,--which he shrewdly counts Jesuitical,--his thought is turned in the direction of his religious experiences, he has his axioms, his common-sense formulas, his irreproachable coolness, and, at times, a noisy show of distrust, under which it is easy to see an eager groping after the ends of that great tangled skein of thought within, which is a weariness.

"If you could only have a talk with Father Ambrose!" says Madam Maverick with half a sigh.

"I should like that of all things," says Reuben, with a touch of merriment. "I suppose he 's a jolly old fellow, with rosy cheeks and full of humor. By Jove! there go the beads again!" (He says this latter to himself, however, as he sees the nervous fingers of the poor lady plying her rosary, and her lips murmuring some catch of a prayer.)

Yet he cannot but respect her devotion profoundly, wondering how it can have grown up under the heathenisms of her life; wondering perhaps, too, how his own heathenism could have grown up under the roof of a parsonage. It will be an odd encounter, he thinks, for this woman, with the people of Ashfield, with the Doctor, with Adele.

There are gales, but the good ship rides them out jauntily, with but a single reef in her topsails. Within five weeks from the date of her leaving Marseilles she is within a few days' sail of New York. A few days' sail! It may mean overmuch; for there are mists, and hazy weather, which forbid any observation. The last was taken a hundred miles to the eastward of George's Shoal. Under an easy offshore wind the ship is beating westward. But the clouds hang low, and there is no opportunity for determining position. At last, one evening, there is a little lift, and, for a moment only, a bright light blazes over the starboard bow. The captain counts it a light upon one of the headlands of the Jersey shore; and he orders the helmsman (she is sailing in the eye of an easy westerly breeze) to give her a couple of points more "northing"; and the yards and sheets are trimmed accordingly. The ship pushes on more steadily as she opens to the wind, and the mists and coming night conceal all around them.

"What do you make of the light, Mr. Yardley?" says the captain, addressing the mate.

"Can't say, sir, with such a bit of a look. If it should be Fire Island, we 're in a bad course, sir."

"That's true enough," said the captain thoughtfully. "Put a man in the chains, Mr. Yardley, and give us the water."

"I hope we shall be in the bay by morning, Captain," said Reuben, who stood smoking leisurely near the wheel. But the captain was preoccupied, and answered nothing.

A little after, a voice from the chains came chanting full and loud, "By the mark--nine!"

"This 'll never do, Mr. Yardley," said the captain, "Jersey shore or any other. Let all hands keep by to put the ship about."

A voice forward was heard to say something of a roar that sounded like the beat of surf; at which the mate stepped to the side of the ship and listened anxiously.

"It 's true, sir," said he coming aft. "Captain, there 's something very like the beat of surf, here away to the no'th'ard."

A flutter in the canvas caught the captain's attention. "It 's the wind slacking; there's a bare capful," said the mate, "and I 'm afeard there's mischief brewing yonder." He pointed as he spoke a little to the south of east, where the darkness seemed to be giving way to a luminous gray cloud of mist.

"And a half--six!" shouts again the man in the chains.

The captain meets it with a swelling oath, which betrays clearly enough his anxiety. "There 's not a moment to lose, Yardley; see all ready there! Keep her a good full, my boy!" (to the man at the wheel).

The darkness was profound. Reuben, not a little startled by the new aspect of affairs, still kept his place upon the quarter-deck. He saw objects flitting across the waist of the ship, and heard distinctly the coils flung down with a clang upon the wet decks. There was something weird and ghostly in those half-seen figures, in the indistinct maze of cordage and canvas above, and the phosphorescent streaks of spray streaming away from either bow.

"Are you ready there?" says the captain.

"Ay, ay, sir," responds the mate.

"Put your helm a-lee, my man!--Hard down!"

"Hard down it is, sir!"

The ship veers up into the wind; and, as the captain shouts his order, "Mainsail haul!" the canvas shakes; the long, cumbrous yard groans upon its bearings; there is a great whizzing of the cordage through the blocks; but, in the midst of it all,--coming keenly to the captain's ear,--a voice from the fore-hatch exclaims, "By G--, she touches!"

The next moment proved it true. The good ship minded her helm no more. The fore-yards are brought round by the run and the mizzen, but the light wind--growing lighter--hardly clears the flapping canvas from the spars.

In the sunshine, with so moderate a sea, 't would seem little; in so little depth of water they might warp her off; but the darkness magnifies the danger; besides which, an ominous sighing and murmur are coming from that luminous misty mass to the southward. Through all this, Reuben has continued smoking upon the quarter-deck; a landsman under a light wind, and with a light sea, hardly estimates at their true worth such intimations as had been given of the near breaking of the surf, and of the shoaling water. Even the touch upon bottom, of which the grating evidence had come home to his own perceptions, brought up more the fate of his business venture than any sense of personal peril. We can surely warp her off in the morning, he thought; or, if the worst came, insurance was full, and it would be easy boating to the shore.

"It's lucky there's no wind," said he to Yardley.