Chapter II: Part 2

The time at length arrived when he was to perform what was then thought a long and somewhat perilous journey, to the mansion of the early friend who had calculated his nativity. His road lay through several places of interest, and he enjoyed the amusement of travelling more than he himself thought would have been possible. Thus he did not reach the place of his destination till noon, on the day preceding his birthday. It seemed as if he had been carried away with an unwonted tide of pleasurable sensation, so as to forget, in some degree, what his father had communicated concerning the purpose of his journey. He halted at length before a respectable but solitary old mansion, to which he was directed as the abode of his father's friend. The servants who came to take his horse, told him he had been expected for two days. He was led into a study, where the stranger, now a venerable old man, who had been his father's guest, met him with a shade of displeasure as well as gravity on his brow. "Young man," said he, "wherefore so slow on a journey of such importance?" "I thought," replied the guest, blushing and looking downwards, "that there was no harm in travelling slowly and satisfying my curiosity, providing I could reach your residence by this day; for such was my father's charge." "You were to blame," replied the sage, "in lingering, considering that the avenger of blood was pressing on your footsteps. But you are come at last, and we will hope for the best, though the conflict in which you are to be engaged will be found more dreadful the longer it is postponed. But first accept of such refreshments as nature requires to satisfy, but not to pamper, the appetite." The old man led the way into a summer parlour, where a frugal meal was placed on the table. As they sat down to the board, they were joined by a young lady about eighteen years of age, and so lovely, that the sight of her carried off the feelings of the "young stranger" from the peculiarity and mystery of his own lot, and riveted his attention to every thing she did or said. She spoke little, and it was on the most serious subjects. She played on the harpsichord at her father's command, but it was hymns with which she accompanied the instrument. At length, on a sign from the sage, she left the room, turning on the young stranger, as she departed, a look of inexpressible anxiety and interest. The old man then conducted the youth to his study, and conversed with him upon the most important points of religion, to satisfy himself that he could render a reason for the faith that was in him. During the examination, the youth, in spite of himself, felt his mind occasionally wander, and his recollections go in quest of the beautiful vision who had shared their meal at noon. On such occasions, the astrologer looked grave, and shook his head at this relaxation of attention; yet, on the whole, he was pleased with the youth's replies. At sunset the young man was made to take the bath; and, having done so, he was directed to attire himself in a robe, somewhat like that worn by Armenians, having his long hair combed down on his shoulders, and his neck, hands, and feet bare. In this guise he was conducted into a remote chamber totally devoid of furniture, excepting a lamp, a chair, and a table, on which lay a Bible. "Here," said the astrologer, "I must leave you alone, to pass the most critical period of your life. If you can, by recollection of the great truths of which we have spoken, repel the attacks which will be made on your courage and your principles, you have nothing to apprehend. But the trial will be severe and arduous." His features then assumed a pathetic solemnity, the tears stood in his eyes, and his voice faltered with emotion as he said, "Dear child, at whose coming into the world I foresaw this fatal trial, may God give thee grace to support it with firmness!" The young man was left alone; and hardly did he find himself so, when, like a swarm of demons, the recollection of all his sins of omission and commission, rendered even more terrible by the scrupulousness with which he had been educated, rushed on his mind, and, like furies armed with fiery scourges, seemed determined to drive him to despair. As he combated these horrible recollections with distracted feelings, but with a resolved mind, he became aware that his arguments were answered by the sophistry of another, and that the dispute was no longer confined to his own thoughts. The Author of Evil was present in the room with him in bodily shape, and, potent with spirits of a melancholy cast, was impressing upon him the desperation of his state, and urging suicide as the readiest mode to put an end to his sinful career. Amid his errors, the pleasure he had taken in prolonging his journey unnecessarily, and the attention which he had bestowed on the beauty of the fair female, when his thoughts ought to have been dedicated to the religious discourse of her father, were set before him in the darkest colours; and he was treated as one who, having sinned against light, was, therefore, deservedly left a prey to the Prince of Darkness. As the fated and influential hour rolled on, the terrors of the hateful Presence grew more confounding to the mortal senses of the victim, and the knot of the accursed sophistry became more inextricable in appearance, at least to the prey whom its meshes surrounded. He had not power to explain the assurance of pardon which he continued to assert, or to name the victorious name in which he trusted. But his faith did not abandon him, though he lacked for a time the power of expressing it. "Say what you will," was his answer to the Tempter; "I know there is as much betwixt the two boards of this Book as can insure me forgiveness for my transgressions, and safety for my soul." As he spoke, the clock, which announced the lapse of the fatal hour, was heard to strike. The speech and intellectual powers of the youth were instantly and fully restored; he burst forth into prayer, and expressed, in the most glowing terms, his reliance on the truth, and on the Author, of the gospel. The demon retired, yelling and discomfited; and the old man, entering the apartment, with tears congratulated his guest on his victory in the fated struggle. The young man was afterwards married to the beautiful maiden, the first sight of whom had made such an impression on him, and they were consigned over at the close of the story to domestic happiness.--So ended John MacKinlay's legend.

The author of Waverley had imagined a possibility of framing an interesting, and perhaps not an unedifying, tale, out of the incidents of the life of a doomed individual, whose efforts at good and virtuous conduct were to be for ever disappointed by the intervention, as it were, of some malevolent being, and who was at last to come off victorious from the fearful struggle. In short, something was meditated upon a plan resembling the imaginative tale of Sintram and his Companions, by Mons. Le Baron de la Motte Fouqué, although, if it then existed, the author had not seen it. The scheme projected may be traced in the first three or four chapters of the work, but farther consideration induced the author to lay his purpose aside. In changing his plan, however, which was done in the course of printing, the early sheets retained the vestiges of the original tenor of the story, although they now hang upon it as an unnecessary and unnatural encumbrance.

* * * * *

Sir Walter then points out his departures from this rude sketch, and mentions the prototypes of several of his principal characters; such as Jean (and her granddaughter Madge) Gordon, of Kirk Yetholm, for Meg Merrilies; and a nameless individual for Dominie Sampson. "Such a preceptor as Mr. Sampson," says he, "is supposed to have been, was actually tutor in the family of a gentleman of considerable property. The young lads, his pupils, grew up and went out in the world, but the tutor continued to reside in the family, no uncommon circumstance in Scotland (in former days), where food and shelter were readily afforded to humble friends and dependents. The laird's predecessors had been imprudent, he himself was passive and unfortunate. Death swept away his sons, whose success in life might have balanced his own bad luck and incapacity. Debts increased and funds diminished, until ruin came. The estate was sold; and the old man was about to remove from the house of his fathers, to go he knew not whither, when, like an old piece of furniture, which, left alone in its wonted corner, may hold together for a long while, but breaks to pieces on an attempt to move it, he fell down on his own threshold under a paralytic affection. The tutor awakened as from a dream. He saw his patron dead, and that his patron's only remaining child, an elderly woman, now neither graceful nor beautiful, if she had ever been either the one or the other, had by this calamity become a homeless and penniless orphan. He addressed her nearly in the words which Dominie Sampson uses to Miss Bertram, and professed his determination not to leave her. Accordingly, roused to the exercise of talents which had long slumbered, he opened a little school, and supported his patron's child for the rest of her life, treating her with the same humble observance and devoted attention which he had used towards her in the days of her prosperity."

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NOTES OF A READER

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JOHN KEMBLE AND MISS OWENSON.

There is more of the patter and fun of fashion in Lady Morgan's books than in any other chronicles of the _ton_. Her last work, the _Book of the Boudoir_, to use an Hibernicism, is not yet published; but from one of its scenes shifted into the _Court Journal_, we pick the following anecdote of John Kemble and her ladyship, (then Miss Owenson), about twenty years since. All the town were then running mad after her "wild Irish girl," and Miss O. was invited to a blue-stocking party, at the mansion of the Dowager Countess of Cork, in New Burlington Street.

"Mr. Kemble was announced. Lady C----k reproached him as 'the late Mr. Kemble;' and then, looking significantly at me, told him who I was. Kemble, to whom I had been already presented by Mrs. Lefanu, acknowledged me by a kindly nod; but the intense stare which succeeded, was not one of mere recognition. It was the glazed, fixed look, so common to those who have been making libations to altars which rarely qualify them for ladies' society. Mr. Kemble was evidently much pre-occupied, and a little exalted; and he appeared actuated by some intention, which he had the will, but not the power, to execute. He was seated _vis-à-vis_, and had repeatedly raised his arm, and stretched it across the table, for the purpose, as I supposed, of helping himself to some boar's head in jelly. Alas, no!--the _bore_ was, that my head happened to be the object which fixed his tenacious attention; and which being a true Irish _cathah_ head, dark, cropped, and curly, and struck him as a particularly well organized Brutus, and better than any in his _repertoire_ of theatrical perukes. Succeeding at last in his feline and fixed purpose, he actually struck his claws in my locks, and addressing me in the deepest sepulchral tones, asked--"Little girl, where did you buy your wig?"

Lord Erskine "came to the rescue," and liberated my head.

Lord Carysfort exclaimed, to relieve the awkwardness of the scene, "_les serpents de l'envie ont sifflés dans son coeur_;" on every side--

"Some did laugh,
And some did say, God bless us,"

--while I, like Macbeth--

"Could not say, Amen."

Meantime Kemble, peevish, as half-tipsy people generally are, and ill brooking the interference of the two peers, drew back, muttering and fumbling in his coat-pocket, evidently with some dire intent lowering in his eyes. To the amusement of all, and to my increased consternation, he drew forth a volume of the "Wild Irish Girl," (which he had brought to return to Lady C----k) and, reading, with his deep, emphatic voice, one of the most high-flown of its passages, he paused, and patting the page with his forefinger, with the look of Hamlet addressing Polonius, he said, "Little girl, why did you write such nonsense? And where did you get all these d--d hard words?"

Thus taken by surprise, and "smarting with my wounds" or mortified authorship, I answered, unwittingly and witlessly, the truth: "Sir, I wrote as well as I could, and I got the hard words out of Johnson's Dictionary."

The eloquence of Erskine himself would have pleaded my cause with less effect; and the "_J'y allois_" of _La Fontaine_ was not quoted with more approbation in the circles of Paris, than the _naïveté_ of my equally veracious and spontaneous reply. The triumph of my simplicity did not increase Kemble's good humour; and, shortly after, Mr. Spenser carried him off in his carriage, to prevent any further attacks on my unfortunate head--inside or out.

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WOMAN.

There is no doubt that the proper study of mankind is WOMAN; and Mr. Pope was wrong; for the endless variety of character among the sex is of itself a mine, endless and inexhaustible; but to study them in their domestic capacity, is the sweetest of all--

Man may for wealth or glory roam,
But woman must be blest at home.
To this her efforts ever tend,
'Tis her great object and her end.

So says one poet, I have forgot his name. Another hath this expression--

O woman! lovely woman! Nature form'd thee
To temper man; we had been brutes without thee.

But the sweetest thing that ever was said of woman in this amiable capacity, or ever will be said again, is by a contemporary:--"A woman's whole life is a history of the affections. The heart is her world; it is there her ambition strives for empire; it is there her avarice seeks for hidden treasures. She sends forth her sympathies in adventure; she embarks her whole soul in the traffic of affection; and if shipwrecked, her case is hopeless, for it is a bankruptcy of the heart!"--_The Ettrick Shepherd._

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BURMESE TEMPLES.

In the Burman towns and villages the number of temples seem to exceed the number of dwellings, which is not unusual. The former are as splendid as gilding can make them, and the latter as humble as can be conceived from the frail materials of which they are constructed--bamboos, palm leaves, and grass. The wealth of a Burman, always insecure, is very generally expended on the luxury of temple-building. Religious merit, indeed, consists mainly in the construction of one of these huge, costly, and showy edifices; and is not considered as increased by building a durable one. No one ever thinks of repairing or restoring an old temple; and the consequence is, that in every part of the country may be seen half-finished structures of enormous magnitude--the respective founders having died before they were completed.--_Crawfurd's Embassy to Ava._

* * * * *

Valmontone, on the road from Naples to Rome, is a strange but enchanting spot, enveloped in shade, with magnificent rocks (agglomerated volcanic ashes) hollowed into caverns, which afford coolness in this burning climate, and where an incredible number of nightingales make the whole air musical. The little town rose picturesquely on its rocky pedestal, with a large building like a monastery inhabited by myriads of swallows, darting in and out at its sashless windows. A solitary guardian eyed us through a door a-jar, but did not come out, while we went round the church, and admired some good pictures remaining on its walls. The stillness of death prevailed in the town--a sort of unburied Pompeii through its narrow lanes, up and down zig-zag stairs cut in the rock, we sauntered alone, and the noise of our iron-shod heels on the pavement, was the only sound we heard. The rich abbey, it was evident, had formerly fed the town clustering round it, the inhabitants of which cultivated its vast domains under a paternal administration. These domains, it was also evident, had passed into the hands of upstart speculators, strangers to the people, and indifferent to their welfare, who did not even know how to make their wealth productive to themselves.--_Simond's Tour._

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ENGLISH AND FRENCH MURDERS.

When will the French nation be able to afford a Thurtell--a man who could turn his pistol round in his _friend's_ brains; not in any insane paroxysm of jealousy, or hatred, or revenge, but merely to ascertain _satisfactorily_ that he had completely effected his business--who could then walk in to his supper of pork chops, with the same composure as if he had come from giving a feed of oats to his horse--a clever and acute man, too, without any stupid insensibility of mind--a man who, when seized and put on his trial, gets off by heart a long and eloquent speech, full of the most solemn and false asseverations of his innocence; not that he clung with desperate eagerness to the hope of escaping, but that, as there was a chance, it was prudent not to throw it away--who, when condemned displayed neither terror nor indifference, neither exquisite sensibility nor sullen brutality, and at the last swung out of life from the gallows with the settled air of a man who feels he has lost the game at which he played, and that he may as well pay the stake calmly? There was a true British composure about the unutterable atrocity of this villain--murderer he was, and a most detestable murderer too--but his character belongs to our country as fully as that of our heroes. Hunt and Probert were pitiful wretches, fit for the Bicêtre. Doubtless the agony of Hunt's feelings until his reprieve came, would, if properly divided into chapters, make a good romance.--_Blackwood's Mag._

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PETROLEUM.

Petroleum wells supply the whole Burman empire with oil for lamps, and also for smearing timber, to protect it against insects, and particularly the white ant. Its consumption for burning is stated to be universal, until its price reaches that of sesamum oil, the only other kind used for lamps. The wells, which occupy a space of about sixteen square miles, vary in depth from two hundred to two hundred and fifty feet; the shaft is square, not more than four feet each side, and is formed by sinking a frame of wood. The oil, on coming up, is about the temperature of ninety degrees of Fahrenheit. It is thrown into a large cistern, in the bottom of which are small apertures for the aqueous part to drain off, when the oil is left for some time to thicken. It is then put into large earthen jars, placed in rude carts drawn by oxen, and carried to the banks of the river, from whence it is sent by water-carriage to every part of the empire. By the number and burden of the boats employed in this trade, and the number of voyages they are supposed to make in the course of a year, the exportation from the wells is estimated to amount to 17,568,000 _vis_, of twenty-six pounds and a half each. Thirty _vis_ a-year is reckoned to be the average consumption of a family of five persons and a half; and about two-thirds of the oil are supposed to be employed for burning.--_Crawfurd's Embassy to Ava._

* * * * *

SIGNS OF THE TIMES.

Think how the dog, fond and faithful creature as he is, from being the most docile and obedient of all animals, is made the most dangerous, if he become mad; so men acquire a frightful and not less monstrous power when they are in a state of moral insanity, and break loose from their social and religious obligations. Remember too how rapidly the plague of diseased opinions is communicated, and that if it once gain head, it is as difficult to be stopt as a conflagration or a flood.--_Southey._

* * * * *

SOFT MUSIC.

The effect of soft music is to produce pleasure or pain, according to the state of the hearer. Thus, while a musician has been known to be _cured_ by a concert in his chamber, the celebrated sentimental air of the "_Ranz des Vaches_" has also been known to have the opposite effect of _killing_ a Swiss. Indeed, the extraordinary effect produced by it upon Swiss troops has caused it to be forbidden, under _pain of death_, to be played to them.

* * * * *

THE GATHERER.

A snapper up of unconsidered trifles.
SHAKSPEARE.

* * * * *

BEETLES

Are unsightly insects--yet how many of them have been spared by the recollection of Shakspeare's beautiful lines--

--The poor beetle, that we tread upon.
In corporal suffering finds a pang as great
As when a giant dies.

* * * * *

SNAILS.

Snails, though in England they cannot be mentioned as an article of food without exciting disgust, are esteemed in many places abroad a delicacy even for the tables of the great. In Paris they are sold in the market; they are much esteemed in Italy, and are of so much consequence in Venice that they are attended and fattened with as much care as poultry are in England.

* * * * *

THE BITER BIT.

Zeno, the philosopher, believed in an inevitable destiny, and acknowledged but one God. His servant availed himself of this doctrine one day while being beaten for a theft, by exclaiming, "Was I not destined to rob?" "Yes," replied Zeno, "and to be corrected also."

* * * * *

PRIDE.

Theophile, the French poet, dedicated a book to James I. of England, in the hope of being personally introduced to that monarch, but being disappointed in this expectation he wrote the following lines on the subject:--

"Si Jacques Roi de grand savoir
N'a pas trouvé bon de me voir,
En voici la cause infallible;
C'est que ravi de mon ecrit
Il cout que j'etois tout esprit
Et par consequent invisible."

A.B.M

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LONGEVITY.

The English have two instances on record of remarkable longevity, that of Henry Jenkins, a Yorkshire fisherman, who died 1670, aged 169; and Thomas Parr, who died 1635, aged 152. The Russians appear to be the longest lived of any people, as a proof of this the following article from _La Clinique_, a Parisian medical journal, will be sufficient:-- "Last year (1828) 604 individuals died between 100 and 105 years old; 145 between 105 and 110; 104 between 110 and 115; 46 between 115 and 120; 16 between 125 and 130; 4 between 130 and 135; 1 at the age of 137; and 1 at 160."

J.F.C.

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SIR WILLIAM WALWORTH.

In St. Michael's Church, Crooked-lane, there is a handsome monument to the memory of Sir William Walworth, with this inscription:--

Here under lies a man of fame,
William Walworth called by name,
Fishmonger he was in lifetime here,
And twice Lord Mayor, as in books appear,
Who with courage stout and manly might,
Slew Wat Tyler in King Richard's sight,
And for which act done, and heere intent
The king made him a knight incontinent,
And gave him arms as here may see,
To declare his fact and chivalrie.
He left his life the year of our God,
Thirteen hundred fourscore and three odd.

* * * * *

Collins was never a lover, and never married. His odes, with all their exquisite fancy and splendid imagery, have not much interest in their subjects, and no pathos derived from feeling or passion. He is reported to have been once in love; and as the lady was a day older than himself, he used to say jestingly, that "he came into the world _a day after the fair_."

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