VAURIEN: OR, SKETCHES OF THE TIMES: EXHIBITING VIEWS OF THE PHILOSOPHIES, RELIGIONS, POLITICS, LITERATURE, AND MANNERS OF THE AGE.
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. II.
—LIVING AS THEY RISE!
POPE.
LONDON: Printed for T. CADELL, junior, and W. DAVIES, (Successors to Mr. CADELL) in the Strand; and J. MURRAY and S. HIGHLEY, No. 32, Fleet-Street. 1797.
CONTENTS.
CHAP. XVII. SOME of Emily's unfashionable Accomplishments. A female Polemic of the last Century 1
CHAP. XVIII. Emily meets Charles and Vaurien. The Dissentions of two great Critics, shewing the Utility of Christian Names 23
CHAP. XIX. A English Woman poised between a Briton and a Gaul. A clerical Buck. A philosophical Voluptuary 45
CHAP. XX. A Conversation with a philosophical Voluptuary 71
CHAP. XXI. Of loving by Anticipation. A Year of Patronage 89
CHAP. XXII. Vaurien's Friendships 103
CHAP. XXIII. A Declaration of Love not known to the Lover 113
CHAP. XXIV. The Punishment continued when the Crime has ceased 131
CHAP. XXV. The Misery of Shame without Guilt. A novel Species of Authorship 147
CHAP. XXVI. The Platonist 165
CHAP. XXVII. Vaurien visits the Platonist. The Language and Manners of Animals. The silent Voice of Gesture 183
CHAP. XXVIII. A Jewish Philosopher. A Dissertation on the Jews, tending to prove that they should not be burnt 214
CHAP. XXIX. A Committee of Public Safety. A Massacre. An Universal Peace. Grammar and Reason 251
CHAP. XXX. A final Project of the Gaul. A Character of the French Nation 275
CHAP. XXXI. More of Vaurien's Loves and Friendships 292
CHAP. XXXII. A great and vicious Man, capable even of Virtue 308
SKETCHES OF THE TIMES.
CHAPTER XVII.
Some of Emily's unfashionable Accomplishments. A female Polemic of the last Century.
IN the house of Miss Million, the character of Emily had opportunities of unfolding itself not hitherto presented. Rarely had she quitted the side of a blind parent to enter into a contracted circle; and if this circumstance had been detrimental to her sagacity in human nature, it proved not unfavourable to the high culture of her elegant accomplishments. In the enthusiasm of solitude fine talents are pursued with an intensity not experienced by those whose active circle, diversified by the festivities of dissipation, or the bustle of business, can only enable them to become lovers of art, and not artists. Solitude, which so frequently excites the querulousness of genius, is a severe mother who forms a lovely progeny; what in the great world had only been a momentary amusement, there becomes a permanent occupation. Sweet is the uninterrupted industry of genius, magical it's contracted day, and delicious that inebriation of taste which becomes an absorbing passion. In solitude alone can now be acquired that difficult facility, which, though it performs its miracles of art instantaneously, has been the slow and painful acquisition of great practice and greater meditation. Emily rose with the fun; her prayer was a silent orison of aweful pleasure; her crayon was in her hand during her morning walks, and if she brought home some romantic figure, some tenderer tint, from the aspect of nature, it was a new enjoyment. The clock told the hour of midnight, when, with regret, she relinquished her volume, and dissolved the enchantment of her fancy. Often, as she sat by her father, her busy spirits were so diffused in her little employments, that Balsour could only hear her gentlest suspirations; and would say afterwards, I could almost
see
you Emily very busy.
Emily, when she now compared her talents with those of the favourites of fashion, including some professional artists, felt a new confidence in her powers: but she was silent, as well as modest; for she found that she was inferior to all, if that inferiority is to be allowed because she was inexpert in the dull and formal routine of life. A person of true genius is soon placed beneath the level of equality among the frivolous, because talents give no real superiority among such associates; they are applauded rapidly from an old custom; but having been applauded without feeling, are as rapidly forgotten. The permanent interests of such a society, consist in every thing that is the reverse of genius; so that a certain mark of mediocrity of talent, is the pleasure which such a circle affords. To Emily their conversation was a language, of which the rudiments were unknown; their amusements passed away, too numerous and too rapid to leave any delight; and their most important concerns seemed the burlesque of human life, while what occasioned the most voluble lamentations, excited her interior smile. Her beauty was likely to occasion some trouble from the men; but her extreme docility, and unpresuming manners, rendered her at first supportable to the women. She conciliated their favour by her willingness to be considered as an inoffensive cypher, which of itself was of no value, unless placed by those who made a figure in the present circle.
It is but performing an act of justice to Miss Million to declare, that she was infinitely delighted by the varied powers of her new companion; she told all the world so; and evinced as much pleasure in exhibiting the performances of Emily, as if they had been her own. Emily could not but feel a warm gratitude for such incessant partiality; but it often cost her the pang of a deep blush, and the disgust of an amplification, of which herself was at once the divinity worshipped and the victim immolated. There was such a roughness in the gentleness of Miss Million; of her incense she was prodigal; but in her zeal, she ever threw censer and incense together in the face of her divinity. In vain Emily entreated the favour of being placed in the shade, Miss Million felt too much not to exhale her admiration in panegyrics. This amiable lady, it must be acknowledged, lost nothing by this excess of kindness; the higher the praise she bestowed on Emily, the stronger it's dazzling reflection fell on her own cherished person. Was it not evident, that the more she talked of "the old blind lieutenant's daughter," her benevolence was amply displayed? The more she was enraptured by the brilliant finger of Emily on her harp, it was clear the nerves of her intendered soul caught the melodious vibrations; and no one could say, when she overflowed in raptures concerning light and shade, as she pointed to her paintings, but that Miss Million must have a very sensible taste for the magic of her canvas. Emily, however, received the approbation and esteem of Lady Belfield, whose favour she felt an ambition to enjoy; for Lady Belfield was herself a woman of talents, and might have been a woman of genius, and therefore knew the real value of her varied and felicitous accomplishments.
Miss Million's circle was by no means confined; she was proud of the acquaintance of every person of fashion; and besides her passion for masquerades and botany, she was a distinguished patroness of literary merit; her name was enrolled among the earliest subscriptions; she had received the honour of a dedication of a novel, which was decorated not only by her name, but by the splendour of her engraved arms; and besides these literary distinctions, it was rumoured, that she herself had written one sonnet, yet preserved in the virgin modesty of a manuscript. She was indeed declared to be a prodigy of genius by several of her friends, but particularly by three or four great critics (one of whom it was universally whispered wrote in one Review, if not in all of them) and who did her the honour of dining with her regularly three days in the week.
An important person in the house of Million, was Mrs. Bully the housekeeper. She was a colossus of vulgarity, a daemon of religion, and a dragon of virtue. On one occasion "her stars" had doomed her to make a slight slip; but religion had now so completely varnished over this ancient piece of English china, that it was a secret flaw, rather than a visible crack. Nature had been kind to her fellow-creatures, in exhibiting her character in her appearance, but its glaring grossness was frequently subdued by her ingenuity. Philosophy exults in teaching men to conceal or ameliorate their defects, and shrewd vulgarity is not inferior to philosophy. The tones of a voice, gross as the furred porch from which they issued, she could render not displeasing to some by adulation; arms, that might have wielded the spear of Goliah, were rendered not repulsive by officiousness; and the heavy circumference of her body, could on occasion roll with celerity to the service of her patrons. She was indeed a mansion-house of mortality; and to look on her was to admire the solidity of those materials, which Nature can form when she simply works with mere flesh and blood. Nature, indeed, had committed no error in the formation of Mrs. Bully; every
part
was uniformly gross; but Nature's blunder consisted in the
whole.
A being so nervous and athletic, should never have been a woman.
Nor was her mind of an inferior size to her body. Since her slippery adventure, above hinted, she had held a most pious abstinence from human flesh; her constitutional ideas, however, occasionally flamed in her expressions, but were smothered in her actions; of the latter she was fastidiously nice, so as to be enabled to discover, in those of other people, a hundred little peccancies against chastity, which escaped their consciousness; for it is observable, that persons who are themselves not of the cleanest part of the human species, are wonderfully alert in discerning the slightest atoms of dirt on a very clean person. Her mind was as active as it was robust; and her strong passions, not having any more an opportunity of venting themselves in the mollifications of love, made most terrible explosions in obsolete theology and politics. She read few books published within this century. The period of her researches was those days of fanatical controversy, which so long disgraced unenlightened England, when, neither stationary in her religion or her politics, every feverish reformer promulgated a system of his own. The national genius, therefore, had no system at all, and branched out into reciprocal persecutions. What then was occasioned by the energy of religion and politics, may, perhaps, be renewed in this age, on an inverse ratio, because we have no religion and no politics.
Mrs. Bully had, therefore, high-church arbitrary notions, and jacobite
jure divino
principles. Some of her favourite authors were Prynne, and Sir Roger L'Estrange. Filmer, on the divine right of kings, gave her political creed; she studied the orthodoxy of that holy buffoon, South; and was recreated by the merry jests of Timothy and Philalethes. The wickedness of the age she derived from Socinianism; it's spirit of sedition from the usurpation of the Calvinistic William; and every loss of the English, and their allies, she attributed to a judgment of heaven, for that cool and tolerant spirit of religion, which, much to her sorrow, she now saw prevailing in the kitchen as well as in the drawing-room.
When Emily made her appearance in this family, she gave rise to numerous speculations among the domestics. As they could not possibly conceive how Miss Million could want a companion, who lived in one continued series of company, some supposed, that the life of Emily was as precious to Mr. Million as that of his over-gorged Bob. Mrs. Betty, the confidential maid of Miss Million, being the mere looking-glass of her mistress, reflected her panegyrics. But Mrs. Bully, their president in high council, observing that Emily went rarely to church, posed Mrs. Betty, and alarmed some in the council, by enquiring which was her religion? This question, perhaps, is one of the most difficult enquiries that can be made in the present day. Mrs. Bully had formed dreadful suspicions of Emily's orthodoxy, because of her irregular church attendance; and yet to dislike a church, does not indicate any irreverence for religion; for since the church is personated by the parson, we conceive it is no impiety to forsake any house of God, when we find that the fashionable clerical seems more inclined to pay his respects to his parishioners than his reverence to his God.
She one day bounced into her apartment, and seating herself, began her inquisitorial examination. She opened by an high eulogium of reading, which she compared to cookery. "I love (said she) the old firloin, and plain round of beef, where 'tis cut and come again; none of your flimflams and French dishes. Your modern books are like enough proper for their authors' wits, being very small and thin. I like your books big as Bibles; ay, and the Bible is the best book. Novels are the reading of your fine ladies; but if we like love-stories, there's a mort of um in the Bible."
"I think, Mrs. Bully, (replied Emily) most of them had better have been omitted."
"The Lord preserve your soul! not a tittle must be done away. Every word there is God's word. Read St. Austin's City of God; and the church has decided. Let me tell you, Miss, that the church of England is without spot or wrinkle; mark that! and cursed are all dissenters."
"I am no dissenter, Mrs. Bully; but these are matters for different heads than mine."
"What is your eternal salvation to be obtained by others, as the cursed papists say? Mayharp, Miss, you don't believe in the Athanasian creed?"
"I do not understand it."
"That's an old vile excuse for not believing. Now a syllable can be done away. Does'n't it tell you, that you must be damned if you don't believe in it? Take my word for it, that Saint Athanasius knew more about his own creed than that fiend Arius. And what think you of Constantine the Great?"—
"Some say he was a felon."
"I tell you, Miss, he was a saint, Don't you know, Miss, the distinctions and the differences between Trinunities, Coessentialities, Modalities, eternal Generations, eternal Processions, Incarnations, and Hypostatical Unions?"—
"What is all this, Mrs. Bully? Are such terms, points of faith? They seem fitter for a Conjurer than a Christian."
"Oh! that I had lived in those blissful days of controversy, where the concerns of a whole city consisted in disputes about the Consubstantiality; when, in quitting the shop of a trader, one not only got by one's divinity a great bargain, but also the man to change his religion; when the dear boys in the street would fight one another for Arius and Athanasius! To be sure Arius had the best of it while he lived; and Constantine wrote to them, that they were both fools for disputing about what no one could understand: but didn't Arius die, like the Empress of Russia? Foul heretics should die in foul places; dark holes for poisoned rats. And pray, Miss, what do you think of Tim and Phil?"
"I am not acquainted with the names of all the servants in the house."
"Servants! I am so used to them, that I always call them by these familiar names. I mean the dialogues of Timothy and Philalethes. There your Tom Paines, and all such Sadducees, are answered. Have you got, Miss, all Sir Roger's works, and a good number of the pamphlets of Cromwell's times? I collect and read all;—small type, large paper, and thick volume. I love tugging at a book, not skimming like a mealy butterfly."
"Really, Mrs. Bully, all your authors are not even known to me by name. I have only two books, I think printed by one of Cromwell's party, and those are the Paradises of Milton."
"Abominable! I marvel, Miss, how you can bear a page of such "a blind guide," as Sir Roger wittily called him. His eyes shewed a judgment of heaven. No wonder he drew the devil so well, for he was only describing his protector Oliver. He'll protect him finely in the eternity of hell torments; secretary now to Lucifer! And pray, Miss, how do you like South for his joking sermons; and the elegant Stanhope on the epistles, who observes, that an unbeliever, if he were in heaven, would find no more pleasure there, than a pig in a drawing-room; and Scott, and Archbishop Laud, and Bishop Blackhall, whose works are in three folios, heavier than I can hold in my hands, and which I bought the other day for three-pence each? A curse on this Arian age! All weighty books now are selling by weight!"
"My favourite sermons are those of Blair."
"Abominable! why they contain nothing but morality! not a word on the contested points of faith, the incarnation, the consubstantiality, grace, and justification; little asthmatic periods, as if he wanted sense to carry him through a dozen words. You have a great deal to learn, Miss, on the score of religion and politics. You think I don't read novels; but I like much those in folio. I am now reading the great Cassandra, and the noble Oroondates. That Oroondates was a brave fellow; he killed above fifty heroes, almost as brave as himself; and his speeches are ten honest pages in length; none of your squeaking heroes, who are afraid to speak out like men; but I know the reason, for their authors have nothing for them to say."
"I could never read (said Emily) those voluminous romances. Their heroes and heroines are a distinct order of beings from ourselves; and I have my suspicions, whether they ever existed but in the prurient fancies of their authors. Their descriptions are never local, one place is depicted like another; their style is insufferably languid; their incidents, without being romantic, violate the known customs of every age; and their authors seem to have merely despoiled Homer of his true heroes, to transform them into the disgusting petit-maitres of Paris. A race that, when they existed, were only ridiculed, and that now are quite obsolete. Such are their protracted conclusions, that we cannot but quite forget what we had read, should we ever arrive at the close of the twelfth volume."
"Abominable! I forget nothing. Since, Miss, you don't like bulky books, mayhap you have never read the Bible through?"
"Many parts I have never finished. I would neither corrupt my imagination with impurity, nor steel my heart by barbarous narratives and sanguinary persecutions."
"Then the Lord preserve you from damnation! Samuel hewed Agag alive, and he did well; he was an Arian of his day. And the Philistines, the Canaanites, the Hittites, and the Jebusites!—(she rose from her chair gradually) noble work in those days! Oh! that I could send this arm, like another Samson, among your Arian dogs, your Socinian wolves, and your roaring lions of Priestleyites! I tell you the church of England is without spot or wrinkle; and James the III. not William the III. was our king. Why does the French rebellion prosper, but because people don't go to church on Sundays? No wonder that the wind blew so boisterously last night, that three trees have been blown down in the park, and their majesties were obliged to rise from bed.—We are all a-going! The earth reels like a drunkard! as nobly saith Isaiah. Manifold are our sins! as Moore says in his last year's almanack. We are an abomination before the Lord! Oh! that I could eschew this Babylon! I tell you, Miss, the church of England is without spot or wrinkle."
So saying, she hurried out of the room, and, flinging the door, hastened to communicate her intelligence to the kitchen; horror for Emily's Arianism, and contempt for her taste for novels in folio, spread from her through all the lower part of the house.
CHAPTER XVIII.
Emily meets Charles and Vaurien. The Dissentions of two great Critics, shewing the Utility of Christian Names.
LADY Belfield contracted with Emily a more passionate degree of friendship than a lady of her high rank, in general, is capable of experiencing; but her Ladyship is one of those not very rare instances, we imagine, where we observe an amiable and ingenious female studiously annihilating her virtues and her talents in the giddy, and often criminal, vortex of dissipation. Nature will sometimes prevail over Fashion.
One morning, when these two ladies were conversing with Miss Million, Charles and Vaurien were announced. When they entered, their eyes were at once directed on Emily; she recognised Vaurien, and deeply blushed; her confusion was fortunately concealed, while Miss Million introduced these gentlemen. Lady Belfield said, "Dear Miss Emily, allow me to speak a word for one of these men; for that great child is as silent as a Turkish mute, (looking on Charles); and half a word for the other, who, I am sensible, wants no aid of mine to engage the attentions of an accomplished girl." Vaurien made a very elegant compliment, and Charles a very silent bow. Neither of the two ladies suspected that they had ever met before; and they themselves did not chuse to notice their former rencounter at Mrs. Wilson's; for which, no doubt, each had some peculiar reason, and which to discover may serve, if the reader thinks proper, to exercise his thinking powers, as well as his eyes, although the latter are generally considered as the only requisites for novel reading.
Vaurien was the soul of the conversation. He flew from topic to topic, and poured out to Miss Million all the little news that he had collected in the course of that morning's perambulation. He hinted at a marriage, narrated a duel, discovered an intrigue, and informed them, that last night Lady Bab lost ten thousand pounds at one sitting, and was obliged to retire for the unexpected delivery of a son and heir. He was a volume of secret memoirs; and every trifle was embellished by the graces of his manner. To Emily he directed a richer vein of conversation: he listened to the copious catalogue of her talents, as given by Miss Million; and when one of her paintings was pointed out to his observation, he gazed on it for some time, commended it in a few energetic expressions, and, at the same time, exhibited his accuracy of taste by some slight corrections, and his picturesque fancy, by describing how, from that subject, another might be formed more romantic to the imagination. Emily was more gratified by this discriminating criticism than the general applause of others, and formed a high conception of that opulence of fancy, which seemed always to enrich what it found. Lady Belfield intreated her to touch her harp; she played with her accustomed ease; and while she was receiving the thanks of her fair friends, Vaurien swept his hand carelesly over the instrument, and called forth the tenderest air. Solicited to proceed, he said: "Ah, no! I venture not above a prelude, after harmonies like those which have now charmed. All my skill is only an effusion of the heart, and all my airs are only a few associations of the memory, when I wandered in the viny vales of Languedoc." Emily, it must be confessed, was delighted by the singular versatility of his powers. Lady Belfield rallied Vaurien upon this discovery of his harp music: "What a dangerous man are you, Vaurien, when you can conceal even little accomplishments, that they may be reserved to surprise and delight on the most impressive occasion. It is to Miss Emily we owe your performance on the harp. But you, Charles, neither say, nor do any thing."
"Your Ladyship knows (replied Charles) that some are born to embellish life by all that it has of the agreeable, while others must restrict themselves to admire and love that merit they dare not rival."
Emily liked Charles for this liberal commendation of a person who was evidently his rival; that is a merit (she thought) superior to the merit itself.
Vaurien had now come down to the very last morning anecdote; and he knew that there was a certain point in conversation, when an able and sagacious talker takes his departure. It is that point, at which what we have said leaves a lively impression on our friends; a quarter of an hour more would weary, or less would not satisfy. It exacts no ordinary judgment to know when to quit a chair. The exhausted Frenchman was now rising, when the two great critics, Mr. Acrid and Mr. Antique, were announced. With indecent haste Antique rushed in, breathless. "I have," cried he "got near a whole page traced accurately on oiled paper. I tell you, Mr. Acrid, 'tis an original. We have had a secret committee; but no one can read it except Ireland; he is inspired; he reads it just as if it were his own writing!"
"And have you a page of Shakspeare never read before?" said Miss Million.
Antique. "I heard Dr. Parr say, that he must express his
conviction
in periods more
dignified
than Ireland could roll. I saw Boswell fall on his knees, raise his hands, and thank God!"
"Mere antiquaries are ever to be duped," replied Mr. Acrid with a dictatorial tone. "Without taste to discern, penetration to decide, or that illuminating sagacity that combines it's unerring calculations; with a brainless head and sightless eyes, you pore on inscriptions, sepulchral monuments, and manuscripts that would never have been such, had they merited literary honours. You only read the dullness of other times, and call this erudition; the gross jests of our gross forefathers, and you conceive you are men of wit. You discover some clumsy utensil, and you engrave it as a model for modern elegance. The dullest writer of a dull age, becomes to the mere antiquary the most precious of his own times; and yet such bear no other resemblance to Midas than by his exterior sign, their touch cannot turn lead into gold. You have already stifled poor Shakspeare by your commentaries, the text cannot breathe freely amidst your incumbrances. Here is a man who writes with an orthography of his own invention, and in a style that has no invention at all; and every fool of learning is summoned to admire a modern skeleton in an ancient leaden coffin. But did not my friend George take the true dimensions of the intellects of the director of your worshipful society? A curved corner of an old chimney-piece, duly steeped in what shall be nameless, till it became variegated with the dark rainbow hues of antiquity, and, tasted by his sagacious finger, smelt of other times, was engraved with some Saxon characters, and the name of Hardycknute; at length, being properly vinegared and verdigreased, it excited his antiquarian curiosity; he doats on it to madness, makes syllables of letters and words of syllables, and enriches the archives of your society with a most learned dissertation on the drinking-horn of Hardy
knute! Lay your Ireland's Shakspeare on this curved corner of an old chimney-piece."
The laugh went against Mr. Antique, who sat down much cooler than he came in, muttering vengeance. A circumstance occurred to these two great critics, which may serve as an exemplary lesson to some greater ones, to understand each other when their disputes run loud and swelling as a rus
ing torrent, or quick and fiery as kindled straw. Mr. Antique was a virtuoso and a collector, more famous for his library than his learning; wealthy in medals, profound in title-pages, an ogler of statues, and a great admirer of the works of nature when they appeared in the forms of butterflies, pebbles, and conchae veneris; he therefore was tolerably read in authors who had written on
curious
subjects; but Mr. Acrid held such authors in sovereign contempt, and vociferated his raptures for writers of taste. In point of understanding, or intellectual power, he was much on an equality with his brother critic, whom he so much contemned. Not but that his criticisms were extremely just, which they could not fail to be, as they were, with little variation, the sentiments of the noblest critics; and yet we are informed, that his entire library consisted of only two biographical dictionaries, so that he travelled on the high roads of literature merely at the public expence; and when it happened that he was stopped at a turnpike-gate, he only discovered his extreme poverty. The following dialogue now ensued:—
Antique. "You will find a very minute detail of that picture in Richardson."
Acrid. "Richardson detail a picture! Not he. He was no petty virtuoso."
Antique. "Mr. Richardson no virtuoso! Give me leave to affirm, that he is at the head of our virtuosos. He was both a curious collector and a very minute describer."
Acrid. "Richardson a puny collector! Sir, it is false, very false. That he was a minute describer I agree."
Antique. "I repeat he was a curious collector. I retort your charge. I know he prolonged his tour, and remained above a year at Rome. It took him three months only to describe one of Poussin's pictures."
Acrid. "He never was out of England. His imagination was a true British sea-coal fire, and borrowed not a spark from a foreign rival."
Antique. "Not out of England! I shall grow mad! 'Tis a calumny which only an insidious enemy could propagate. His very minute descriptions testify his ocular examination. His works give us the very attitudes."
Acrid. "So, Sir, you think that a man must travel out of England to catch those correct resemblances which true taste admires. Truly your taste is singular; but his works are immortal."
Antique. "Immortal! Why no man of any taste would give them house-room."
Acrid. "Not Richardson's works house-room! (he lifted his hands higher than his head)
"O! for shame, Mr. Antique," said Miss Million. "No one can agree with you there."
Antique. "Why they are all daubs; mere garret furniture."
Acrid. "I lose my patience—I am nearly suffocated with rage. Do you mean, Mr. Antique, to insult me by insulting Richardson?"
Antique. "Mr. Acrid, do you mean to reflect on my connoisseurship, by supposing that I could approve of his wretched works? Where are they now to be found? All gone and forgotten!"
Here Mr. Acrid rose in great passion, looked with a distortion of countenance on Mr. Antique, a mixture of fierceness and contempt; then smoothing his face into a sardonic smile, that is, with a gay countenance and an aching heart, he turned to the ladies, and appealed to them, if Richardson's works were not in every body's hands, and in every collection of taste?
Antique. "In every body's hands, and in every collection of taste! Was ever man so provoked and insulted as I am?"
Acrid. "His fable is protracted, but his lively and delicate strokes place every object before the eye."
Antique. "What do you mean by his fable? But I confess his minuteness is admirable."
Acrid. "Every character is so prominent, it is as in the great original of nature."
Antique. "Agreed, as to the great original; but nature is quite a superfluous term.
Acrid. "The artless sentiments of Pamela, the refined delicacy of Clarissa, the elevation of Sir Charles Grandison."
Antique. "What connexion have these novels with the works of Richardson? I could never read them. No facts, all imagination.
Acrid. "With this avowal, you yet presume to appreciate the merits of Richardson; you aspire to dictate as an arbiter of taste!"
Miss Million. "Dear Mr. Antique, is this possible? never read Richardson!"
Antique. "Have you all conspired together to make me crazy? I shake with indignation. Do you suppose that I, who attend every picture sale in town, can read such enormous novels? I have enough to do to read through all the sale catalogues of books and pictures; and I have an entire collection, with their prices marked, for these twenty years past; an invaluable library of catalogues. If Jonathan Richardson the father, not Jonathan Richardson the silly son, the first of whom I have been talking of, had seen them, what volumes of criticism had come out!"
Acrid. "
Jonathan
Richardson! why, man, we have been talking of
Samuel
Richardson! I know nothing of your pair of
Jonathans!
"
Antique. "Then, positively, my dear Acrid, we are all in a mistake! I mean Richardson the painter, and you Richardson the novelist! You know the first has published some very curious dissertations on his art; a great critic in painting, but the worst of painters! I praised his fine descriptions of pictures, but could never agree that his own works had any merit. How the deuce has all this happened? As for the
other
Richardson, I know nothing about him; a collector never values
such writers.
Acrid (with an air of triumph). "There, ladies, Mr. Antique has confessed he has never read the great Richardson, the Shakspeare of novelists; and yet he will assert and assure you, that he can decide on Shakspeare in manuscript."
Antique. "That, my dear friend, entirely consists in the foxiness of the ink, and the dingy fine yellow brown of the paper, with the water-mark of the jug; all worthy of the divine man! Let us not part in anger. Critics should be more cautious in their controversies, and christian names are full as useful as surnames."
Through the intercession of Miss Million, peace was established between this couple of critics; but a latent revenge rankled in the breast of Antique, for Acrid's contempt of him, and Ireland's Shakspeare; and when Miss Million enquired the literary news of the day, he took an opportunity to distil his gall on Acrid's discernment. We shall therefore resume our dialogue.
Antique. "We have some important intelligence in the republic of letters; you have not then heard concerning Eliza?"
"All that we understand (said Miss Million) is that the amatory effusions of Eliza are only known for their delicacy, their harmony, and their poetic beauty, so often admired by Mr. Acrid. The fair still is in the shade."
Acrid here made a very curtailed bow, and quickly retired.
Antique. "Ay! Ay! let him go! let him go! to insult me with my defective taste for Shakspeare! Now, ladies, judge what kind of discernment Mr. Acrid is blest with. Eliza! Ha! ha! ha!"
"Eliza" exclaimed Miss Million "is certainly a delightful poetess! she has two great merits; she not only writes finely, but copiously and incessantly. Her last sweet pastoral of 500 lines, is excellent; but I wish she had divided it into five pastorals. But these lines are fanciful beyond poetical fancy; they are quite fashionable poetry: observe the brilliant
concetto
of the close!
The
muslin'd
MOON mid STARS of
tissue
hung,
The
gauzy
AIRS a
silky
softness FLUNG;
Bright rose the MASQUERADE of Fancy's
dream
;
A CONCERT, seemed the SOLO of the
stream.
Antique. "You don't know the news, I see. You will agree with me, that they must be execrable. Why they are Dick Distich's!"
Miss Million. "O shocking! what is Eliza, Dick Distich?"
Antique. "Hear the anecdote! Dick Distich, you know, wrote verses in all measures; but, in quantity, they were without measure. As he was so kind as to reverse his name at the close of his poems, it was of use to the incautious. Ridiculed, but not so fortunate as to be neglected, he retreated to the country in a nervous fever. His name he knew would damn his works; so calling himself Eliza, and getting a female friend to transcribe his poems, he sent them to the famous paper. All the old Cruscans rose to a man! Odes, elegies, and sonnets, were poured on Eliza, enough to have made a fine snow-shower at Drury Lane. Eliza was rather broad and warm in her diction. She was a Sappho, a tenth muse, and a fourth grace. Our poets were enamoured of this most sensitive Eliza. Acrid was as clamorous in his raptures, as fifty amorous cats on the pantiles. He imagined her to be the old Laura; so he addressed her with this tender billet: "Amiable Eliza! I love you; can you pardon the avowal? But I have made it; and I know not to repeat of it. My passion is like your genius; it terrifies or soothes; hope and despair prey on my soul. Hope! alas! I do not hope, and yet I love." The answer of Eliza to this amatory note, was the most consolatory, and bid him hope for every favour; but she added, "What if you knew me? would your classical eye approve of my person? Alas! I am short and brown; but so was Sappho; my nose is snubbed; but so was the beautiful Poppaea's; I have a singular custom when I kiss to bite; but such were the marks of fondness which Flora left on her Pompey. If my personal defects can thus be forgiven, as so many classical imitations are in my verses; then will Sappho receive you as her Phaon; but, I fear, faithless and accomplished as that boy." An appointment was made. Dick invited several friends to witness the lover's first interview. We stood behind a screen; the great critic arrived; when lo! to the credit of his critical talents, his Eliza stood before him, in the contemned person of poor Dick Distich. What's the consequence? The critic's reputation has received the
coup de grace,
while Eliza's verses are now all condemned in one mass. What was sweet fancy in Eliza, is rank dulness in Dick Distich. The poetical hermaphrodite has gained nothing; and the sex are but ill complimented; for when Dick was supposed to be a woman, those verses were applauded, which are now condemned because he is a man. So, ladies, I recommend the poor devil to your protection."
"Lord! I wish I had known all this before," cried Miss Million. "Here is a confusion in the realms of taste! We have been applauding the narcotic infusions of Dick Distich, while we thought them the dissolving effusions of a Sappho. How can one judge of people's poetry, if they deceive us with names?"
"In these cases" observed Charles, "we can never fail, if we read poems without regarding names. Should the reader then blunder, he must not blame the author. You may now exclaim with Juliet,
What's in a name?—
and then,
O Distich, Distich, wherefore art thou Distich?
CHAPTER XIX.
An English Woman poised between a Briton and a Gaul.—A clerical Buck.—A philosophical Voluptuary.
VAURIEN had become the
friend
of Lady Belfield; and this word, even in the dictionary of fashionable language, has not degenerated into a non-entity; but the adroitness of vice, knows to disguise it's impurities, by adorning them with the holy titles that are sacred to virtue; it is thus that it's grossness is concealed, it's deformity invites, and it's horrors are crowned with delights that are not it's own. We think, at first, that we enjoy love, when we grasp at lust; that we are soothed by friendship, when we listen to sycophancy; and that we pursue amusement when we are heavily dragged through dissipation. To the clear eye of reason, the pleasures of vice pay an involuntary tribute of honour to virtue, by assuming it's name; and it is at least a consolation to some, and a conviction to many, that vice would lose half of its seduction, did it not at first appear in the disguise of some virtue.
Lady Belfield, enamoured of the gay and accomplished. Frenchman, was for some time occupied in his enjoyment; but it was no soothing alliance of the heart; no imperishable union of two kindred virtues; it was merely an inflammation of the senses; a flame that raged at intervals, and often sunk in the dying embers of passion, and left behind them the disgusts of criminal pleasure, the cold ashes of satiety. The modest and reserved Charles, still agitated her soul with those delicate impressions, by which the blushing form of unpolluted man touches and irritates even the bosom of corruption. His modesty but inflamed desire, and his apathy was a mystery she could not penetrate. In vain she planned occasions to surprize him into seduction; his principles were firm; and could they ever have yielded, another passion at this time came to his aid, and his heart was filled with the image of Emily.
Charles had frequently entered into conversations with this amiable girl, and she had discovered in him a secret value which was more delightful to her feelings when absent, than the recollection of Vaurien's more applauded and dazzling qualities. Vaurien fascinated in her presence; Charles enchanted in his absence; one was to be looked at, and the other was remembered. The one was all that imagination could form of the agreeable, and the other all that sentiment could form of the tender. The voice of Vaurien was music that regaled the ear, but the voice of Charles penetrated the abstract ear of memory. Vaurien exhibited the most agile graces of form, the most delightful amenity of manners; and, never uniform, varied a thousand shapes, and charmed in all. Charles had nothing of this versatility; he mused, and was rarely gay; but there was a sweetness in his seriousness, and a dignity in his comportment, which, by it's very uniformity, impressed a heart susceptible of reflection and sentiment, with features more prominent and energetic, than the softer lineaments of Vaurien. Vaurien never gained on reflection, all was seen at once; nothing was concealed for the private eye; he seduced the public applause, but could not fix the individual affection. Charles exhibited a latent merit. His commonest action proceeded from a superior impulse. In the silence of meditation, in that secret hour when absent from our friends, we try, without passion, their merits, their follies, and their weaknesses, Vaurien appeared a common man, who seemed to perform uncommon actions; and Charles an uncommon man, whose actions were set off neither by ostentation nor singularity. Vaurien possessed the mind of Emily, but Charles was the inmate of her heart.
Emily and Charles, amidst their brilliant circles, seemed only to taste of a fugitive happiness, when they could contrive to sit together, and indulge their sympathy of sentiment. In the eyes of Emily might be read her soul; she looked her thoughts; she had none to disguise; but some perplexities, some blushes, some tremors, she experienced in these short interviews with Charles. He read to her, one day, the close of the Spring of Thomson, where, with peculiar sensibility, that poet of lovers raises a little fairy existence of conjugal felicity; a fading dream, that claims a tear from the eye it has solaced; a heaven of love, that charms and pains it's trembling, it's suffering, it's doubtful martyr. As he proceeded, his eyes wandered from the book to Emily; he pronounced words while attention wandered; he stopped suddenly; Emily leant on his shoulder, to look at the verse; she saw a tear glisten on the page. "You have missed whole lines, Sir," said she. "I will recommence the passage, Miss Emily; I was thinking that the tender Thomson loved and was beloved, yet knew not the only felicity of Love. I proceed—
What is the world to them!
Who in each other clasp, whatever fair
High fancy forms and lavish hearts can wish,
Something than beauty dearer, should they look
Or on the mind, or mind-illumin'd face—
Charles raised his eye from the volume; the face of Emily was covered with blushes; she gazed on him, and seemed to withdraw her eye with timidity, reluctance, and alarm. When he came to these lines,
An elegant sufficiency, content,
Retirement, rural quiet, friendship, books,
Ease and alternate labour, useful life,
Progressive virtue, and approving Heaven.
Charles uttered an audible sigh. Emily, smiling, said, "Sure that sigh was not for Thomson!"—"Ah! no, Miss Emily, I wonder why I sigh; what lines can have a less-adorned simplicity? and yet they penetrate my heart. I fear that sigh was nothing but vanity and selfishness; it was for myself."
It is evident, that when Thomson is read by two young persons of either sex, with this taste and sensibility, the Seasons threaten to disturb the repose of friendship by the intrusion of love; and when love is conducted by poetry, his armed hand is wrapt beneath a gay mantle, and strikes more deeply a perfidious blow.
Emily's quiet was attempted to be disturbed by others. The Reverend Ephraim Dandelion enlisted among her admirers. He was a boyish divine, a cassocked huntsman, and a clerical buck. His visits to Miss Million were not so uninterrupted as he desired, owing to his father, an opulent Rector residing in the vicinity of Salisbury, and also to the Bishop of that diocese, who, as he observed, was "a blockhead of the old school." Indeed, this Bishop was by no means a man of fashion; he bore a most religious antipathy towards all those young clergymen who were in full possession of a plurality of livings, and who escaped from them all to reside in the metropolis, and to dress their hair as they thought proper. Ephraim was the hope of his family, because he was the eldest son; he had therefore been his father's favourite in his cradle; in which place the sacerdotal infant may be said to have felt a simoniacal propensity, for indeed simony was a
constitutional
vice in that family. There, by some ingenuity of his pious father the Rector, he was inducted into two good advowsons, so that ere the young gentleman issued from his pupillage, he
presented himself
to his own livings, and piously undertook the cure of the souls of several parishes. He was a young man of modest dispositions, and held in veneration the holy profession; and as he at once was a Nimrod in the field, and a Narcissus within doors, he decently procured two persons to perform his own duties. For this purpose he found two fathers of large families, at the market-price then of forty pounds a year. He was also a rigid observer of the utmost solemnity in the performance of all church services, and testified an uncommon zeal for ecclesiastical rights; the former consisted in the personal appearance of his curates; and whenever he heard the slightest complaint of a nasal twang, or a guttural digestion of words, or of a brownish black coat, such a curate was discharged at a week's notice; and his zeal for ecclesiastical rights was evidently exhibited in his seizure of all bands, black gloves, white favours, funeral scarfs, and the christening or marriage guinea. On the whole, he was a most orthodox supporter of the
church
; understanding by this word a certain ancient building, encircled by a burying-ground, and the interior furnished with a certain water-bason, vulgarly denominated the baptismal fount; burials and christenings, therefore, producing no inconsiderable income, he most zealously supported the aforesaid
church.
But although a sturdy advocate for church subordination, he could not consent to grant this to his Bishop. Too active in field sports during the summer, and quite exhausted in town dissipa
ions during the winter, he most justly complained of the incessant and personal attacks of his said Bishop; who, particularly at one of his annual dinners given to his assembled brethren, did most indelicately reprimand our fashionable Rector; Vicar, and Prebendary, for all these honours and their appurtenances were united in young Ephraim. He resolved now to throw off the yoke of ecclesiastical jurisdiction; and, to the great comfort of our sacerdotal bucks, they may enjoy the revenues of an ecclesiastic, without the
borish
performance of the functions. Ephraim had great interest with the Prince, for two reasons: In a drunken frolic at Brighton, he had received the honour of being thrown into a gravelpit, by which means he broke his leg; but as his neck was entire, he did not much lament the fracture, since it was a kind of claim on princely patronage; and the other reason was, that the Reverend Ephraim Dandelion was a person of inimitable talent, in imitating the bray of an ass and the whine of a pig. The ass and the pig, with the above-mentioned dash into the gravel-pit, procured him an honorary place in the Prince's army of Chaplains. This honour brings with it the useful privilege of enabling the possessor to hold as many livings as he can get, while it comfortably relieves him of the tedious duty of residence; so the happy Ephraim, aspiring now to a Bishoprick, never more entered the palace of his Bishop.
Although we know of no facts (for of facts should all true histories like the present consist) that might tend to accuse him of any venial liberalities to his miserable curates, yet he was well enabled to commit such follies; for he now held, in livings and
ceteras,
above two thousand a year, according to his own frequent avowal, and little less he expected from the worthy Rector his father, who was of a most plethoric habit, was a Gargantua in point of stomach, one of the most orthodox venison eaters in his county, and had been twice touched by an apoplexy.
A character more singular and interesting was the voluptuous Sedley. A passion for self-enjoyment was the source of his actions; his life was a system of refined Epicurism; his study was an art to irritate desire, and to protract enjoyment; to throw over the nudities of imagination a thin and brilliant veil, woven by the Graces. He was born with a sensitive heart and a romantic fancy, but his natural benevolence was frequently sacrificed to his artificial gratifications; yet of his dangerous talent, his numerous victims rather murmured than complained; their ruin seemed adorned; despair was half soothed by the memory of it's past enjoyments; and, at least, the sincerity of their master was evinced in his having become his own victim. His fortune and his felicity were alike exhausted in the fatal ravages of his passions; a dark vacuity in his heart terrified his solitude; with all the fervour of affection he found he could not▪ love; with all the curious felicity of enjoyment he found he had never enjoyed; enervated by the anguish of disappointment, yet stimulated by the fever of hope, he wandered in a tumultuous pursuit of that pleasure, which, if fugitive, tormented with desire; and, if embraced, sickened with satiety.
There was something grand and romantic in his entire establishment. All the luxuries of Europe were his domestic enjoyments; every sense was flattered, and the imagination itself was attempted, to be satisfied. He held a correspondence with foreign parts, to import every novelty of refined sensuality; and the same ship often conveyed to him, a picture of Raphael, a hogshead of Montepulciano, and a female selected for some peculiarity of seature. His houses resounded with music; and all the arts of amenity crouded to the opulent idler. The heats of summer were cooled by the ices of winter; and his winter garden was prodigal of the roses of summer. Every day he religiously gratified his five senses. It was this Englishman of whom Mercier relates, that he boasted of having acquired a sixth sense. It consisted in the singular fancy of assembling females, who resembled by their features the beauties of other times. He dispersed throughout Europe portraits of his ancient favourites; and sometimes prolonged his mornings with the Scottish Mary and Anne Bullen, and sometimes was seated at supper between Cleopatra and Poppaea. The illusion was still further promoted by preserving their
costume,
and dressing every beauty according to the country and the age she personified.
In his country retreat he was charmed by an Arcadian taste, and realized the romance of the golden age. There he would habit himself as a shepherd, and walking by the side of a stage-dancer, his favourite sultana, while she played on a little harp, he held a crook in his hand, a basket at his side, and wore a straw hat wreathed with roses. In the semblance of peace and enjoyment, he wandered through the winding alleys of spring, and disported in the rich shrubberies of his ground. His companions at distance warbled their tenderest airs, and the symphonies of musical instruments responded to the harp of his shepherdess. Nightingales, trained for this purpose, issued from their nests, and settling, some near the fantastical Arcadian, and some on the harp of his mistress, rivalled her provoking melodies, fluttered, fainted, and fell at her feet.
To such puerilities can descend the inordinate indulgence of an ungoverned fancy; and in vain will the incredulous, in his circumscribed experience, censure these instances, as the ideal pictures of an author's heated fancy, since these are facts sanctioned by their truth; and others, not of an inferior extravagance, not long ago amused the tedium of the existence of a noble Lord.
But in Sedley, his puerilities were not unaccompanied with taste, nor was his voluptuousness inhuman and void of elevation. Voluptuousness had made him no otherwise to be condemned, than in those seducing powers, and those brilliant illusions, which betrayed the sensibility of the feminine heart. The voluptuousness of a woman can never be pardoned; chastity is like a seal to a rich casket, which, while preserved entire, we know can never have been pillaged of it's gems. Sensuality is masculine, for it is gross; let the crime and the punishment be reserved for man. Sedley was, otherwise, the friend of human nature, and loved the enjoyments of others, because to him it was an enjoyment. But when, at certain intervals, his senses were exhausted, recollection obtruded itself on his startled mind; it came in the wan form of satiety, that spectre of departed pleasure! The images of those he had rendered miserable, of some the suicides, and of others the lives, gave to his repentant heart the pains themselves had experienced. The gay Sedley shed the bitterest tears in silence; and he mourned at once the unhappiness of his companions and his own. "I am a wretch," he would say, "but not from the malice of my heart, but from it's pervading softness; I perish with those that I have lost, and I have not inflicted one pang on others, which I would not bear myself—Not I! but Nature is inhuman; I listen to her voice, the wanderings of my heart are her inspirations, and if she betrays those whom she conducts, who can wrestle with the divinity of Nature? She has given too few senses, and too numerous desires; and nature forms herself the torturing scourge, that affrights and afflicts the gentlest of the human race!" Such was the character, and such the reflections of Sedley.
At a morning visit to Miss Million, Emily, not being present, became the subject of their animadversions.
"She is certainly a d
fine girl, only too modest," said the Reverend Ephraim Dandelion.
"O!" exclaimed Miss Million, "you can't conceive what vast pleasure it has given me, to have found out the old blind Lieutenant's daughter. When I saw her at Exmouth, I repeatedly pressed her with invitations to Portman-square, but never expected to see the poor thing. There she was quite solitary and timid.
"We shall then beat her hollow," cried Dandelion, "for a hare is solitary and timid, but yields as fine sport as a fox."
"She is a delicious creature!" cried Sedley.
"The most amiable and accomplished!" said Lady Belfield.
"The most fascinating!" said Vaurien.
"I think" gravely observed Charles, "she will be in some danger among us all."
"What danger, Sir?" sharply reprimanded Lady Belfield. "I will answer for you positively. A young woman is never in danger in the great world, among the most polished part of society. We do not blazon forth every casual indiscretion; an honourable silence protects a woman; while in your plebeian circles, the slightest gallantries are construed into unpardonable levities; the most agreeable fleurettes are supposed to be declarations of love; and if an assignation should be discovered, the whole family, venerable papa, the little sister, and the tall brother, and the whole generation take the alarm. A duel and a divorce complete the vulgar farce; nothing less will do than an absolute Lucretia! whose history no one credits more than Curtius leaping into the great gulf."
"Indeed, Lady Belfield," replied Miss Million, "I had forgot to mention to you, that half of Mr. Charles' merits are lost in his morality. What is meant by this same morality? I am sure it gives no knowledge of the world; for Lord Chesterfield's divine works they say are immoral, and the insupportable Rambler they say is a very moral work. But, Lord! don't let us talk of morality! it always brings on my nervous complaint. I do not know what to do with myself this whole day. (the yawned) I wish I had some new place to go to."
"Just now," said Vaurien, "the Lord Mayor's show is setting off from the Mansion-house. What do you think of a ride to the city?"
"O, vulgar!" cried Miss Million, "I never drive into the city but on Sundays; the streets are so narrow, and the carts are so broad! But what does your Ladyship think of this show?"
"I am quite disengaged, Miss Million," said Lady Belfield.
"Why then we'll set off directly. Well, but my dear Vaurien, what shall we do after the show?"
"Trust to good fortune! There is the wax-work in Fleet-street."
"Absolutely childish! What thinks your Ladyship?"
"It would be so great a novelty to me, that I am sure I should be pleased."
"Well, then we'll go to the wax-work in Fleet-street" said Miss Million. "I dare say it will be in all the papers tomorrow. Then where can we pass two hours more? I can't think of coming home to dress till five. Then, from five to seven are my two regular desperate hours; 'tis a melancholy interval of time, when one is quite dress'd for dinner, and wishes for it, without appetite, merely to see company. All the nobility are miserable from five to seven."
"I have many!" cried Vaurien, "The ventriloquist, and the stone-eater; the Corsican fairy, and the Polish dwarf. There's a collection of Chinese curiosities; three monsters, with throats as large as their bodies; a full-grown elephant; and a lap-dog, which may be put in a snuffbox, going to be shipped off for the Dutch governor of Batavia; and, above all, there is a
poupée
of Madame Tallien, who now reigns like the Queen of France, and which is just brought over by a French milliner, as a model of the present Parisian fashion; not three persons in town have seen it! the dress is richly fanciful, and perfectly in the old Roman style; the breasts uncovered, one side of the robe drawn up, which delightfully exhibits the whole leg, and a little higher; it is the most voluptuous and most brilliant dress."
"Delightful!" exclaimed Miss Million, "let us set off."
"My dear friend," said Sedley, "pray give me the address, that I may have a copy of the poupee of Madame Tallien."
Emily now entering, was invited by Miss Million to the whole circle of these morning amusements; but she pleaded indisposition, and the company retired. Sedley, however, gave up the poupee of Madame Tallien, for the present moment, and returning into the breakfast-room, found himself alone with Emily. It was a moment he had long desired, but which had hitherto eluded his attempts. What passed between our amiable heroine and our refined voluptuary, is, perhaps, entitled to the honours of a separate chapter.
CHAPTER XX.
A Conversation with a philosophical Voluptuary.
"I HAVE brought," said Sedley, as he returned, "a version of my favourite poet; here it is, Miss Emily, for you was it composed; but even you have failed to inspire me with the delicacy and amenity of the voluptuous Anacreon of France.
L'Art d'Aimer
of Bernard cannot be translated, at least permit me thus to console my own inability. Could you but catch the seductive graces of the original, I should trace, in the touching languor of your eye, the enchantment of your heart. He is the Albano of poetry. In his amiable miniatures he paints the playful triumphs or the children of love; fervid, yet chaste; true, yet flattering. It is only nature embellished.
"Bernard was my friend, as well as master; he was the most amiable man at the most amiable court. An arbiter elegantiarum in the most refined circles at Paris; the art of pleasing in conversation was still more sensibly felt than the art of delighting by his graceful and dissolving verse. Voltaire considered him as a prodigy of elegant voluptuousness
In noticing Saint Bernard, and another Bernard celebrated for his wealth, he adds,
Le troisieme est l'enfant de Phébus,
Gentil Bernard,
dont la Muse feconde,
Doit saire encore les delices du monde,
Quand des premiers on ne parlera plus.
VOLTAIRE
. His verses respire a continued softness, are gay with a thousand pictures, and are the enamellings of poetry. In his manners, what easy, yet resistless grace! No man had so much of that light flower of taste which blooms but for a rapid moment, those brilliant colours that fade while we gaze on them. Ah! that any thing of Bernard should be perishable!"
"Mr. Sedley," interrupted Emily, "I love all kinds of enthusiam; but in this case, as you labour with great perplexity to describe your master, tell me at once he was an effeminate, refined, and lively Frenchman."
"For your sex his passion was excessive; but he was inconstant; and yet, Miss Emily, he was beloved. Not a Parisian beauty complained of his infidelities; for the charms of his genius they pardoned the wanderings of his heart; and he censures his own inconstancies with such gaiety, that they seem to be only so many triumphs.
"I know not how it happened, but poor Bernard survived himself. In my last residence at Paris, I found the voluptuous poet a mere shadow of existence; and he who had charmed by the lightness and the tenderness of his effusions, was then a mute idiot. I have been at the opera with him when they performed his own admirable Castor and Pollux. He gazed with a vacant eye, and we could draw no other conversation from him than incessant enquiries if his Majesty was satisfied? If Madame de Pompadour was pleased? Courtier to the last, the royal favour was the solitary sentiment that occupied the insensate idiot. Ah! Miss Emily, it was an humiliation for the man of pleasure and the man of wit, to view their gay and amiable chief with eyes that distilled unmeaning tears, an exanimate frame that sat motionless, and whose voice could not utter an expression but which confirmed his idiotism."
"The title of his poem," observed Emily, "is to me a condemning criticism. I should be very sorry, I assure you, to be
taught
an "Art of Love." I fear it is a misfortune for most in these times to be in love without art. But by your account of Bernard I am much gratified; you know I am delighted by a moral tale, and I think your's is extremely moral; it is a true and melancholy picture of those foolish wits, who, abandoned to the fury of their passions, are not less pernicious to themselves than to their neighbours. Since you have printed this dangerous poem, have the candour to give this last anecdote of Bernard's life, as a preface or a postscript. Mr. Sedley will believe me, when I say I am not fastidiously moral; I do not consider every deviation from our own accustomed habits to be turpitude, or even error. I have seen prudes grow outrageous at freedoms with their persons, which I should consider as very inoffensive. If I were in France, where, I am told, the ladies indulge in many familiarities, more harmless than they seem, I think I should only consider them as local customs. But libertinism, Mr. Sedley, in whatever form it comes, whether it be gay with the spirits of youth, or vapid with the tremors of age, adorned by the charms of verse, or systematized by the philosophy of prose, is irreconcilable to my feelings. I will not look for the reasons that may have excited its abhorrence; it is enough for me, that it's inspection raises a disgust so natural and energetic, that I lose my patience when I seek for reasons. I do not know that I could give any satisfactory reason why I prefer perfumes to ordures, but that my organs are so framed as to be attracted by the one, and to be repulsed by the other. In these cases, the best reason will be, in not attempting to reason; as, to return to your poem, all my art of love will, I hope, be, to have no art at all."
"A slight misconception, not a difference in opinion, amiable Miss Emily! has afforded you this vindictive exultation. How justly you observe, that there are rapid sensations which are so natural as not to exact the frigid and impotent efforts of an inactive reason. Do not form such serious, such gloomy notions of love; look not on it's innocent pleasures with the melancholy eye of reason. You have been told, that the desires of love are crimes, but they are only amusements; you consider him as a tyrant or a traitor, but he is only an amiable boy; he exacts but one gentle concession, so well expressed by Thomson, when he says—
Thought meeting thought, and will preventting will,
With boundless confidence—
It is this submissive sentiment, tender and ingenuous; prompt, yet durable; ardent, yet continued that diffuses the soul in the senses; and, fertile and eager in desire, lives and increases on the o'erflowing lap of pleasure
Sedley is repeating in prose what his friend Bernard has sung in verse:—
Ce sentiment soumis, tendre, ingénu,
Prompt, mais durable; ardent, mais soutenu—
Ce trait de feu gui des yeux passe à l'ame,
De l'ame aux sens; qui fecond en desirs,
Dure, et s'augmente, au comble des plaisirs.
. Who more modest and retired than a sensitive lover? In shade and in silence are all the surtive caresses of love received. Love is a secret enjoyment, it admits of no participation; it is for the applause of his mistress, and not for that of the world, a lover pants.
"Lament then with me, my dear Miss Emily, the prejudices of our age and our country; how rarely does love unite two hearts in the sanctioned pleasures of matrimony! The conjugal couch we consider as polluted, when two congenial spirits meet—but meet too late; and should they love as nature dictates to the heart, we reproach them, we disgrace them, we harass them with the iron manacles of law. Unnatural laws, but most natural loves! How often have I wished to have been an inmate of those countries which we call barbarous, but which I admire, as the only regions where nature is not offended by the haughty temerity of man! O! happy people, where the lover composes his fragrant letter with the freshest flowers; where the yellow jonquil tells his despair; the crimson rose, the consenting blushes of his beloved; and the chaste lily, the consummation of his amatory hopes. Nor do the Canadians, with a concise rudeness, experience perhaps inferior delight, when they send a lighted match to their mistress, and if she blows it, they are happy. But precipitated love loses half it's pleasures. Sweet and romantic is the varied interval between desire and enjoyment. The delight of the chace is not in it's game, but it's pursuit. Let a bashful mistress be capricious, be cruel, be every thing; but let her at length be kind. We claim but the reward of industry, a holiday in the toiling year of slavery
"If we listen to Nature, can we err? "To enjoy is to obey," declares your own poet of reason. And what is the arid uniformity of life, but a dull and unmeaning passage, unless some transient roses are scattered at our feet? Our existence is derived from our senses; corporeal sensibility is the source of our passions, the motive of our thought, the magnet of our sociability; and, in one word, it is our misery or our enjoyment. Nature never relinquishes our heart; it's emotions custom may pervert, and reason may condemn. But to the tremblingly alive how tedious is custom! how dismal is reason! Ah! reason, Miss Emily, what is reason? nothing but a prevailing system of opinions, which in time are mutilated and reversed, and which, directed merely by accidental customs, is various in every people. Reason is compelled to elaborate with terrible pangs, system upon system, and destroys itself, in it's attempts of self-preservation; and when a man is devoid of sensibility, he is considered to be the ablest dialectician. Now, if sensibility is but the soft workings of nature, mark how unnatural is reason! But pleasure, that is, sensibility gratified, is the spontaneous effusion of nature; it's language is universal, it's actions are uniform; the same at the burning line as on the icy Alps. Our senses are the porches of nature, ever open to all our pleasures; reason magisterially would close them; but these veins are the canals of delight, and would you freeze them? Reason may make a conquest, but Pleasure alone can be loved, for she is the enchanting and the native sovereign of the heart."
To this subtile and tedious philosophy Emily patiently listened, and then replied. "Alas! Sir, why do you employ your talents in a cause so feeble, and yet so dangerous? All that you have beautifully said cannot conceal the disgusting reality; it is only spreading the variegated hues of the rainbow on the filthy webs of spiders. I answer you, however, that reason, melancholy as you term it, is my pleasure. I therefore agree with you, that I should loath existence, did not indulge my pleasure. Reason is immutable, for it is truth. I acknowledge that there exists a false, as well as a true reason; as there is a pleasure that is true, and another which is false. It is therefore not difficult to describe the one, while we are only alluding to the other; and, perhaps, had I not been rather singular in my habits of life, and my taste for reading, I might have been deluded in listening to you; I might have mistaken a false and spurious pleasure, for that which alone is true and durable. Consider, therefore, the wickedness of propagating maxims which all may listen to with pleasure, while few can discriminate with judgment."
"Dear Miss Emily, it is you who form sophisms. Why will you call reason pleasure, and it's variance, immutability? Is that pleasure, that commands an abstinence from enjoyment, and which is frequently known to communicate an antipathy of existence? No, not all the propositions of Locke can change one organ that inebriates the heart. And is this reason immutable, which is variable as the heavens, and as changeable in a people as in an individual? When reason flies to the cloister, does pleasure follow? When the anchorite shuts up the human heart, what remains but the waning spectre of man? Pure and traceless is the pliability of pleasure, pure and traceless as this kiss!" He took her hand, and raised it to his inclining lips. It was done with such modesty and gentleness, that Emily could not be angry; she was only confused.
"Mr. Sedley," she said, "I know these freedoms are considered rather as favours done to us; but allow me to indulge my own sensations. I have lived in retirement; I cannot grant such insidious liberties. You would not, I am sure, be satisfied with that poor gratification of seizing from an unprotected female that which she must not refuse, and will not grant."
"Heaven forbid, my charming Miss Emily, angel as you are, in mind as in form! Pleasure is no solitary gratification, it is a dividual enjoyment; if you are miserable, I therefore cannot be happy. Alas! you persist in refusing the supreme felicity of a chaste voluptuousness; in preferring the spiritless repose of life, to that enchantment which gives to one day the existence of an age, the deliciousness of mutual possession. But recollect, that with the indulgence of this chaste voluptuousness, no virtue refuses to be united; and such amiable women have adorned society, and cherished the duties of humanity. I must not quit you without repeating Saint Evremond's charming and philosophical inscription for Ninon de L'Enclos; I can give it you almost literally:—
Nature with sage indulgence formed
NINON'S enchanting soul, and gazed!
With EPICURUS' softness warmed,
And with a CATO'S virtue raised
The original is thus:—
L'indulgente et sage Nature,
A formé l'ame de NINON,
De la volupté d'EPICURE,
Et de la vertu de CATON.
.
When the philosophic voluptuary quitted Emily, he placed his poem in a book she had been reading, unperceived by her, and she now retired to dress. Mrs. Bully soon afterwards entered, and her curious and inquisitorial eye, always exercised on the appearance of a volume, unfortunately discovered in Emily's this "Art of Love." "A pretty title indeed," she exclaimed, "for a modest young lady! Yet Miss Emily can't read the Bible because of some amorous histories, which "she began, but would never finish." A curse on such Socinianism!" Here she turned over the leaves, and then cried out, "Lord save us! here's a description of two newly-married lovers on the morning couch of Hymen, which I suppose only means a bed. What's this?—
Thou sleep'st, Zelida, I enjoy alone!
Soft o'er thy form one living blush is thrown.
Awake to pleasure with the morning beam!
Ah! while I view thee, thou but view'st some dream!
He sighed—Zelida hears! her eyes expand!
Tremulous she sighs, and lifts her timid hand;
Nor dares withdraw it! Hylas gently guides,
In each warm vein the tenderest tremor glides.
They joined their lips of flame with fainting bliss;
Their souls divided in the ethereal kiss!
"Abominable! 'tis n't fit to be read by a Christian! Very well, Miss Emily! Not fit to be read!" So saying, she snatched the poem, hurried to her chamber, sat down, and having quite read it through, locked it up in one of her secret drawers.
CHAPTER XXI.
Of Loving by Anticipation. A Year of Patronage.
LOVE, in it's earliest stage, has a variety of ways of exhibiting itself. There is love at first sight, which we observe to be a very fashionable and expeditious manner with some of our living novelists; yet I cannot applaud them for any invention in this respect. To detect the finest foldings of the human heart, is the pleasing skill of us domestic biographers. Then, there is love without love, by which we understand the Platonic affection; but what a ridiculous figure would the amiable boy make, if he were to hold in his hand an useless torch without a flame, which, we are inclined to think, is the chimerical flambeau which every Platonist waves. But the most remarkable, and, we conceive, the most ingenious kind of love, is when we are perfectly enamoured of a person, whom we have never seen, and of whom we have never heard. It is a kind of love to which we are extremely partial, having ourselves formed a hundred delightful miseries of such deliciousness; pleasures of which, assuredly, only exquisite genius, or exquisite madness, has ever felt the inebriation. A Spanish hero, in one of the plays of Calderon, to apologize for his most fervent, but most sudden passion, observes, that he loved his mistress before he knew her, because he was fated to love her. Others, the very Caesars of love, may exclaim, I saw, I loved, I conquered! but then such a happy victory will more depend on the heroine than the hero; unless the latter should possess a brilliant enquipage, a noble mansion, and a noble income; and in that predicament, the hero may justly attribute his triumph entirely to himself. But of the kind of love which we form for a person quite unknown to us, the most pleasing instance is that of the once famous Zayde, who by the means of an unknown portrait, hung in her father's gallery, felt a most vehement passion for her lover, about twenty years before ever she saw him; so that, without any violation of decency, she might have thrown herself into his arms at the very first moment they met; but, unfortunately, when she met the man she so ardently loved, she passed several years in his society, which a resolution not to love him, because she loved his picture, which it is evident was not necessary for her to know was his picture, till the last page of that romance.
Among this class of lovers by anticipation, we must place our good Charles; for he was fond of Emily, and his heart palpitated warmly at the sound of her name, long before their first accidental interview at Mrs. Wilson's; he loved without having seen her; for he loved her most affectionately for her filial piety, and her patient sufferings; but when he saw her, to love is but a poverty of conception, to designate with precision the tumult that rushed on his heart, that made him inactive in the day, and restless in the night. With Emily, the grand affair of love was far different; as she had not any equal impulses to love Charles before she saw him, when she did see him the passion grew by slow gradations; she was averse to indulge the susceptibility of her heart; she had a latent propensity to a dangerous infection, rather than that she felt the immedicable disorder. To gain the full possession of her virtuous heart, it was necessary to merit it; and as such opportunities do not easily occur, (at least in true histories like the present) it was long before she perceived the just claim of Charles to that valued gift. And when she began to love, most unfortunately it occurred, that she was obliged to dread, and to hate, as we purpose shortly to detail.
Emily entered the parlour one day, followed by the Reverend Ephraim Dandelion. She flung open the door with a hasty violence, unusual with her mild manners; her face was one blush; her whole frame one disorder. "Heavens! what is the matter, child?" enquired Miss Million. "Nothing, Madam;" replied the confused Emily, "but Mr. Dandelion, I presume, will be taught to respect himself, or me, for the future. As it assuredly will not be repeated, it would be giving it too much importance to remember it."
"Well, but what was it Emily? I dare say some country joke of our young bishop."
Dandelion replied: "Miss Emily is so touchy, that she takes fire as easily as the wadding of my gun, or as a little field of furze. What the deuce can a man do with his hands more inoffensively, than to arrange the tucker of a charming girl? True, my hand slipped; and Miss Emily was in such an agitation, that, d
e, she frightened me."
The eyes of Charles darted fire; they were fixed on Dandelion. The Reverend Ephraim most probably caught them, for he bent his head, and employed himself in pulling the straps of his boots. Emily marked the full direction of Charles's fervid eyes; she felt an emotion of gratitude and alarm.
"Indeed, is that all?" said Miss Million, bridling, with a look which she divided between the plaintiff and the defendant, but which might be discriminated, by an analyzer of a look, into an insulting sneer for Emily, and a jealous reproach for Ephraim. "I advise you, child, that if such harmless freedoms are to occasion such violent resentments, to hide yourself from the figure of a man. But you have seen so little of the great world, that such
gaucheté
of manners must be the consequence. But I do not see, Mr. Dandelion, what you have to do with Miss Emily!"
"Mr. Dandelion," observed Vaurien, "would do well, when he thrusts his hands into a rose-bush, to take care of not scratching himself with the briers. I wish, my good friend, the tucker had been well armed at all points. You have had but a bloodless victory, and have taken the outworks without even the apology of a siege."
"You country gentlemen," said Sedley, "are most robust in your refinements; you crush in your embrace, and your raptures annihilate delicate nerves. 'Tis all bussing at a gossip's christening. I think you are the only respectable part of the community who perpetuate the venerable kissing of Queen Besse's days, or her good father, whose kisses, I think, generally concluded with blows. I believe a woman conceives a kiss from a country gentleman full as dreadful as a tug or a shake. You are all for overflowing bumpers; no matter what wine! You have done, in the turning of a lock, what a sensitive man would have taken three years about."
"D
e," said Dandelion, "you all set me, like a pack in full cry. I am sure I am sorry to have offended Miss Emily; but I never yet offended by a little play."
"Play, Sir," continued Sedley, "why it is coming to blows! I fear Miss Emily has received some marks from your cudgelling arms. I know a friend, Mr. Dandelion, who is a man of sensibility and refinement, and who has now paid his devoirs, to an amiable woman, these twelve years; he never passed an evening with her but in the company of a third person; he admires her musick, she admires his verses. He was seven years before he kissed her hand; but to have touched her tucker—Sir, as soon would he;—but I'll say no more."
When the company broke up, Charles took Dandelion aside, and said: "Miss Emily Balfour I am sorry to see in this house, without a protector. Such, I imagine, she cannot want long; but, till she has a protector, we should all of us consider it as our indispensable duty to perform that office. You, however, do not.
If you would consult your own ease, I must insist that you never offer to give pain to that Lady, by a single word, or a single action."
"So ho, young squire!" whistled Dandelion, "
you
are the protector of Miss Emily! Who gave you this right?"
"My humanity. I do not mean to interchange any conversation. To a person of your character conviction must be brought by other means. Mr. Dandelion, my father was a clergyman; it is an awful profession; and he who seems ashamed of it, has attained a degree of depravity which I think is quite of a recent date." So saying, he gave a violent shake to his cropt hair and braided tail; for when our young parson was in town, his clerical encircling curl was twisted into an elegant tail, sustained by a tortoiseshell comb.
"And pray, Sir," calmly demanded Dandelion, "what can you mean by this?"
"Perhaps you may understand me better now," said Charles, repeating the action, to the utter discomfiture of his fashionable crop, while the braided tail hung dishevelled on his back.
"I believe you mean to insult me!"
"Precisely so. I have now only insulted you; but, mean as you are, the next time you do not escape correction."
While this short dialogue was passing between Charles and Ephraim, the door had been left a-jar, and the maid of Emily, in passing, had been attracted by the firm tones of Charles. The whole scene was revealed. Through the magnifying glass of her eye she examined every motion, and, in a very poetical amplification of our hero's concise prose, she detailed the whole to Emily; who, when the terrible description was closed, rejoiced to find that the duel was a bloodless encounter. Charmed by the modest, the sensible, and concealed manner, which Charles had chosen to protect her, this action was repaid, by her little heart, with more than gratitude.
In this manner Emily passed six months in the house of Miss Million, much to her dissatisfaction. The refinement of Sedley was insidious; the brutality of Dandelion disgusted; the interest she took in Vaurien was censurable; and the growing affection she felt for Charles was imprudent. Miss Million had now heard her so frequently applauded by every one, and particularly since the attack of the Reverend Ephraim on the fair bosom of our heroine, that she began to feel weary of a girl who carried the whole weight of attention to her side. Her displeasure gleamed through several obscure hints dropped to Mrs. Betty her waiting-maid, who blew the gleams into a kitchen flame. They met a most terrible bellows in the mouth of Mrs. Bully, who, besides accusations of Socinianism, whispered in close secrets, and talked in imperfect surmises, that she had made a most important detection of the loose morals of Miss Emily. This part of her accusation agitated the curiosity of the lower part of the house; and a most unfortunate circumstance, which then happened, confirmed all the foul accusations of the orthodox and benevolent Mrs. Bully.
Emily now viewed the altered features of patronage; she saw herself the dependant of a mean, an unfeeling, and an uneducated woman of fashion. To her sensations every look was reproach, every expression contempt, and every civility insult. Not that Miss Million uttered her vulgar sentiments in their clear and appropriate language; but, to the luminous sensibility of Emily, the sordid heart of Miss Million lay open; and her sensitive soul now shivered, in all the varying seasons of a year of patronage. It was now she perceived that she had not regarded the counsel of her father, in seeking her independence from herself; she saw her existence in sorrow or in pleasure, as the face of her patroness chose. Completely miserable, and humiliated in her own mind, she felt herself unprotected, and knew not wher to find a refuge.
CHAPTER XXII.
Vaurien's Friendships.
THE friendship of Charles for Vaurien had become indissoluble. Some opinions, which the Gaul had at first thrown out, alarmed him; but he considered them only as those dangerous paradoxes, peculiar to the intemperate philosophers of his country; nor was Charles a little delighted, by perceiving the energy of his own eloquence, operating on the superior intellect of Vaurien, who had gradually relinquished his own notions, one by one, and, at present, seemed only a mere reflection of the pure and honest Charles. He reposed on the bosom of this cherished friend; his virtues daily excited admiration; and none so much as his extraordinary liberalities, since his late remittances from France, which, as he informed his friends, he had been so fortunate as to receive. To Vaurien, Charles poured his secret sorrows; he touched mournfully on the dissipations of Lady Belfield, and lamented the contempt he hourly received from his former gentle patroness. "As for my Lord, you acknowledge," said he, "that he is obstinately lost to reason, and an enemy to that constitution which protects his person and his property; which must be slowly reformed, not rapidly destroyed; united closer, not disorganised. In vain I willingly yield some principles, which I deem political superstitions; but, in return, he yields me not one opinion, however fantastic, however destructive. He and his party would innovate all things; but my Lord does not agree with Mr. Subtile, Mr. Subtile with Mr. Dragon, nor Mr. Sympathy with Dr. Bounce. Philosophy has it's prejudices, not less pernicious, not less inhuman, than the popular prejudices of the most intolerant people. And at what aims this philosophy? In forming a man without a heart! It is of no consequence to me, whether a persecuting religion burns me in an auto-da-fe, or whether a persecuting philosophy conducts me to the guillotine; it is always the same thing for my neck."
To similar conversations Vaurien had not only given his approbation, but expressed his surprise that a free Briton, like Charles, should violate his dignity by the dependence of patronage. "Gratitude," said he, "for the reception accorded to a foreign wanderer, still kept him in the house of Belfield, but his day of enfranchisement should not be far; and he should rejoice to observe Charles spurn his splendid, but ignoble chains;" and for this purpose offered a liberal supply of money. Charles felt grateful, and only refused the offer through delicacy, observing, "that whenever his patrons should hint at a dismission, he would rejoice to accept it." "Tres bien," said Vaurien, musing.
Lady Belfield was exasperated by the insensibility of Charles; she had exhausted her whole artillery, and she in vain essayed to soften the human statue into animation. She now suspected that his heart was occupied by some rival. To her confidential Vaurien she opened her surmises; their mutual passion had greatly subsided, and, it it's height, it was a love that knows no jealousy. Her Ladyship and Vaurien would have mutually assisted each other in procuring themselves new lovers.
"Indeed," replied Vaurien to the enquiry, "it is an insult to your Ladyship. Shall I dare to say, you have a rival, in an abject being?"
"I desire, Vaurien," said her Ladyship, reddening, "that you will inform me."
"I cannot; my indignation would preserve silence."
"Sensitive Vaurien! You anticipate my feelings. I insist on knowing."
"He is my friend; you must grant me the most inviolable secresy. Charles is unworthy of your regard. Your rival," added Vaurien, with a sneer halfsuppressed, "is a low woman, picked from the streets, and whom he has placed in a petty shop." He gave the address of Mrs. Wilson.
The face of Lady Belfield burned; her eyes caught fire; and she said, scarce audibly: "Is the wretch so low? How humiliating the villain! His presence is a reproach. Vaurien, he shall not remain here."
"At this house," continued Vaurien, "Miss Balfour accidentally hired lodgings. He has taken me frequently to this woman's; but the sweet Emily, for whom you know I feel a passion, a passion as yet ungratified, knows nothing of her character."
"I have told you, Vaurien," replied her Ladyship, "that I have already secured that dear girl to reside with us some time. Receive that innocence with gentleness; smile at least on the victim of my friendship and your love. When she bleeds, let me not hear her cries."
From this conversation Vaurien hastened to his Lordship. With Belfield he had for some time past engaged in complicate conspiracies. "This morning, my Lord," he said, "a trusty courier has brought me letters from Brest. Rowan O'Connor has secured Connaught. We have a garrison of Defenders in all the remote towns of Ireland. Surely potatoes are inflammable, the Irish are so hot. Our party gains at Paris; the Jacobins are playing gently now with the Moderés, but, rely on it, 'tis the young tyger with his keeper, who attempted to domesticate the animal, but when the tyger knew his strength, he tossed about the head of his keeper for his amusement. An embarkation for England is preparing, the coasts are lined with men; the invasion is at no great distance; but your Lordship wants patriotism, and this is the only moment when all the Thames should roll, like another Pactolus, on sands of gold. Money is wanted in Ireland. Dragon holds a correspondence with almost every town in England; we have all the idle, the discontented, the bankrupts, and the hot-brained youth of every town; you see our party is formidable. Rant has become an itinerant orator, and his sixpenny eloquence scatters more sedition among the lower classes than all the money of your Lordship; he is quite intelligible to them; ranting, roaring, raving; he draws his metaphors from the very gutters of the people; and so far, like Virgil, as your Addison says, the fellow tosses his dung about him with some effect."
His Lordship listened with intense delight to this rapid sketch of the Gaul. What he barely touched on, his fertile imagination expanded by anticipation. Already, on the ruins of London, a committee of public safety seemed to arise. "Take all, my dear Vaurien, all I have to give; but the dilatoriness of all those projects, which you describe so rapidly, has left me a ruined man. Mortgage I cannot more, and for swindling I have not sufficient credit. If this invasion of England fails, where shall I fly?"
"France," replied Vaurien, "will be proud to enrol the name of Belfield among it's English citizens; we have already some British worthies of a kindred merit. But I can proceed no further if Charles remains in your house. I suspect he is a ministerial spy."
"He shall have his dismission," said his Lordship.
Such were the friendships of Vaurien; yet at the very instant he evinced a sudden ebullition of sympathy, which virtue would have been proud to own. Passing the hall, he observed a servant lad, who had retired into a dark corner, and seated on a bench, was weeping and sobbing. "What has happened, William?" enquired Vaurien.—"I have just received a letter, Sir, from my poor mother, who tells me my father is dead. He has been bed-ridden these ten years. His death might have been borne, for my poor mother could hardly support herself and a helpless old man. But we are both now in such despair, I cannot sleep at the thoughts; my father will not have Christian burial; the creditors insist first on being paid; the body is detained, and heaven only knows where my father's soul rests; it can never rest surely if not buried in Christian ground. Ah! Sir, I remember, that when the great Methodist Surgeon of our village anatomized the strong man that was hanged for continually breaking out of prison, he felt a qualm of conscience, and employed me in the night to dig a grave in the church-yard, that the bones might be buried in holy ground; for he, no doubt, could not answer to his conscience if they had remained unburied. If people are not buried in church ground, what will become of their souls? My mother is distracted, and I am afraid to walk in the night." Vaurien smiled at the artless tremors of the lad and his mother, and quieted their holy horror by his liberal assistance.
CHAPTER XXIII.
A Declaration of Love, not known to the Lover.
SINCE Emily's residence in Portmansquare, although so long a time had elapsed, Mrs. Wilson had not yet paid her a visit. This separation had been occasioned by misfortune, and not by neglect. There are some beings who seem selected by "outrageous Fortune," not only to receive the full weight of her fatal "sling," but to be stuck round by her harassing and petty "arrows." Mrs. Wilson, in issuing one day for this very purpose, either that really she had been so closely confined at her industrious counter, that she was quite a novice in the art of walking the crouded streets, or that, accustomed to indulge many profound reveries of sorrow, she was rather seen, than that she herself saw, she had hardly cleared the view of her house, when she encountered a porter, who▪ with the full weight and the broad expansion of a chest of tea, was equally oppressed as blinded, yet unfortunately determined, at the same time, to be rapid in his motions; so that the exertion of sight entirely rested on the passengers, and not on the porter. The latter indeed proceeded rapidly, but securely, for he was in no danger of being reversed; but rushing round the corner of a street where Mrs. Wilson had arrived, at that very nicety of point of turning when the two future contenders are perfectly unperceived by each other—in not half a second of time—the porter rounded, and Mrs. Wilson fell! It proved no trifling fracture, and she had hitherto been confined to her house. Emily had more than once called on her, had sympathized, and found her more estimable at every interview; yet her father's suspicions had made in indelible impression on her mind; and prompt as she was at the tender call of friendship, suspicion made her rather tremble than enjoy.
When this poor woman found herself in a state of convalescence, she came immediately to her young friend. "I hope, Miss Emily," she said, "your situation is agreeable."
"Alas! Mrs. Wilson," Emily replied, "if it is not, I must attribute it to my present state of feeling. Every scene takes much, and sometimes all it's effect, from our existing ideas. I feel, that if I were in an Elysium it would appear gloomy. In the image of my father, there is yet too much life for me quietly to remember that it has ceased to exist, his minutest habits, and his accustomed phrases, still engage my affections; and I gaze, on what I cannot view, and I listen, to what I cannot hear. To me he is not dead! and I seem to live in the cruel torments of an absence I never yet knew, and cannot teach myself to suffer. Consider, then, my present situation; here is nothing but mirth and splendour, and my heart is agitated by a perpetual conflict of interiour misery, and exterior gaiety. But with me the heart will ever prevail over all it's constraints; it will colour the scene I view, will prompt in my sorrows the languor of my conversation, and must ill fit me to be the companion of Miss Million. Every day I feel I am an intruder in this great house; and yet I consider myself as it's humblest servant. I sold my freedom when I united myself to it's generous owner. Gratitude takes from me the power of choice; otherwise, much could I wish, my dear Mrs. Wilson, that I still occupied the small room of your small house; there I think I could feel quietness, and to me quietness seems an enjoyment; I almost think it felicity. My independence would then arise from myself; temperance would be my gratification; useful, yet not unpleasing occupations all my wealth, and your conversation would constitute all that I wish to hear of the world. When I entered this superb mansion, I unthinkingly violated the solemn injunction of my dear father, who, as if he had been aware of this splendid slavery, this silken chain, told me only to derive my subsistence from myself. Ah! if I were but once more in your little room!—but what do I say? There my father would sit before me; every thing in your house would remind me of his presence. The arm chair would tell me where he twice swooned, and the bed would for ever revive his last, his affectionate, yet dignified hour! But these are foolish tears; the unavailing tears of memory; yet is their sweet sadness endeared to the living; they ever relieve me; and when I have wiped my eyes, my heart feels the energy of fortitude, and I then say, I live as Heaven chuses."
"If you would live with me," replied Mrs. Wilson, "I will change my house. On industry alone depends all my business, and industry will make business in one street as well as in another. I have heard some of my neighbours, who have quitted their first shops to get into larger ones, complain, that their present street is not half so
lucky
as their former one. I have attempted, out of mere benevolence, and not of mere pride, to play the philosopher. I have shewn them, that in their first shops, with much less business, they were much more industrious; and that when some people get rich, it is a chance, that they become again poor; and really, without suspecting it, I have pursued a certain notion of Aristotle's, which I met the other evening, that there is no good or ill fortune, but what arises from our own ill or good conduct; and that to say a man is very unfortunate, is to say, that he wants capacity, or wants industry. However, I have made no converts of my good neighbours; and one particularly, who, I fear, by his expensive mode of living, and by the affected education of his daughters, who, when their father's man is weighing cheese, are employed at delighting his ears by jarring with a concerto of Haydn, and who have hung round their shop, among Cheshire and Wiltshire cheeses, some select views of ancient Greece, I say this poor man, who made a respectable fortune in his first shop by his own industry, is now convinced, that Great Russel-street is one of the unluckiest streets in town. But I am flying off in a tangent when I have something to communicate, of a serious and interesting nature.
"What I now impart must, my dear Miss Emily, be confided to your secret ear. It is not only your delicacy which I fear to irritate, but the kindness of the humanest man, which I tremble to offend. A devoted friendship for two persons, whose happiness is dear to me as the existence of my children, will, if it is returned but in the smallest portion, receive with affection, or pardon with facility, what my heart has prompted me to disclose."
"Why this embarrassment, Mrs. Wilson? What secret can you have to preface thus solemnly? Can you fear to unfold, or I to hear, what you say interests me? The innocent have no secrets. I assure you I never had a secret in my life. I have indeed been made acquainted with that kind of intelligence, but I generally found that a secret was only malice in disguise. I must freely say, that extorted silence I can violate without any conscientious yearnings. Have you a secret which you would not tell me as frankly as any other friend?"
"Indeed I cannot agree. Yes, I must say that innocence may have it's secrets, which it would expire before it would reveal. Ah! there are some delicate situations, which, if not fearfully and cautiously concealed, might wear the most criminal aspect." Mrs. Wilson here gave a sigh much more profound than audible.
"Well, my dear Mrs. Wilson," replied Emily, "you must know more of human nature than myself. I never could enter into any man's character but my father's. All men assuredly are not pursued by the same ill fortune; and all, therefore, may not be as self-severe. Often has he told me, that he never conceived a thought that he was not prompt to express. Excellent man! There was a holiness in his mind. And respecting those critical situations to which you allude, where innocence takes a criminal aspect, he used to say, sincerity is wisdom. What to-day we conceal may appear to-morrow; and the explanation we avoided will then come too late. We have got into our usual moralizing strain, my dear Mrs. Wilson; but I am now quite prepared for your secret."
While Emily was pronouncing her father's apophthegm on sincerity, Mrs. Wilson reddened, changed her posture, and drew out her handkerchief to place before her eyes. Emily was intent on her netting. The pointed address she had made, her innocent heart never suspected. When Mrs. Wilson recovered from certain uncomfortable sensations, she proceeded thus: "You know, Miss Emily, that to the singular benevolence of Mr. Charles Hamilton I and my children are indebted for our daily bread. We should now be worse than mendicants; for mendicity has it's friendships; alone in this metropolis, God denied me one. I considered myself as an outcast; no relative to aid me with an assuasive word of consolation; poverty was combined with despair. My soul sickened, my existence was poignant; more than once my armed hand was raised to my breast; but when my eye has sought to take a final farewell of my children, the weapon fell, and the mother lived!" Here Mrs. Wilson burst into tears, and her thick sobbings impeded her voice.
"Dear Mrs. Wilson," said Emily in emotion, "I believe your situation was as singular as the benevolence of Mr. Charles. His modesty studiously conceals his merits; but no man who is uniformly benevolent can so far indulge his natural dispositions; the voice of gratitude will utter the secrets of modest philanthropy. He has felt for me here; I too am his debtor, but it is unknown to him; he has seen me embarrassed, and has delicately extricated; he has seen me insulted, and has silently protected. It would have been generous to have protected a female, but to have done this unknown to all but to her offender has in it something of the delicacy of those sensitive beings who, in an age of romantic generosity, were only alive to the impulse of heroism."
Mrs. Wilson was now more composed; and this voluntary applause bestowed on her friend cheered and animated; a soft smile brightened her tears, like a sunbeam gilding a watery cloud. She said, "perhaps, Miss Emily, you have observed Mr. Charles of late. How exanimate, how pallid, how melancholy!"
"He has told me," said Emily, "he is unwell."
"Alas!" replied Mrs. Wilson, "he thinks he never can be well. Sleepless nights and feverish days, if they cannot rapidly annihilate the source of life, press down it's elasticity, and wear away slowly but surely it's springs. Never expect more to see him other than he is; his malady is in his silence, and he will prefer that silence to his health; he perishes without the little consolation of saying, I perish; enamoured of his malady, he smiles in his sufferings."
"Explain yourself," exclaimed Emily, earnestly and tremblingly.
"I must first," continued Mrs. Wilson, "assure you, that Mr. Charles sometimes, in the native simplicity of his heart, confides circumstances which he would not expressly mention. If my gratitude had not taught me to study him minutely, to catch every variation of his tones, every expression of his gestures, every distant combination of a casual word, I had to this moment, like others, only perceived that his health decayed, while the cause would have been mantled over in the most resolute concealment. Like you, Miss Emily, in his residence he is unfortunate. You alike feel the tortures of a splendid dependence. Similar in your sentiments, you are similar in your sufferings. If you mutually look into your own hearts, you will see that of the other."
A quick blush covered the face of Emily, warm as the first suffusion of an early passion.
"And now, Miss Balfour, when I venture to say, that with diffidence, but with ardour, he loves you, must I be censured for unburthening a truth that has long oppressed my heart? Who in this world are dear to me but my children, and yourself, and Mr. Charles? Rest only assured, that he knows not of my coming here, and suspects not that I have discovered the concealed source of his infelicity. Did I not know him the noblest of men, I should not have addressed myself now to the most amiable of women. Gratitude would not have exacted my disturbance of your repose. Pardon me then, if I have acted erroneously; it is the error of respectful affection."
Emily paused, was distressed, and raveled her net-work. "I know not how to reply," she said, "my dear Mrs. Wilson. I have the highest regard for Mr. Charles. Not to value him would shew myself worthless. I owe him much. He is the only friend I have of his sex. But when I assure you, that I never felt more than respect for the masculine character, I speak with my wonted sincerity. The passion of love has never molested my quiet; I never could love any man but my father. I loved him because he was great and unfortunate. But the friendships of my own sex form the only social pleasures I can receive from another. There is no delicacy, none of the tender and melting features of nature in man. If my father had not been my father, even him I should have thought severe. As for myself, I have found some relief; Lady Belfield has given me an invitation to reside with her during an absence of Miss Million's from town. Believe me when I say, that the friendship of her Ladyship, an amiable and accomplished woman, yields a careless, untempered joy, a fearless happiness, which the severity of man can never communicate."
"Name not Lady Belfield!" cried Mrs. Wilson with energy and emotion. "I must not further prolong my visit; but, dear Miss Emily, remember that Charles Hamilton will be silent but must love. I conjure you not to notice to him, that I have mentioned his name to you on this delicate discovery. Never, perhaps, would he pardon, and his displeasure would render the life I owe him loathsome."
She quitted the fair Emily, and left her absorbed in those tender trepidations of the mind, when with half-reluctant half-assenting emotions the earliest flame of passion breaks from the heart, where it lay concealed and unfelt, to diffuse itself over the form, to sparkle in the eye, to bloom in the feature, to melodize the voice, and to polish the air; while nature, seconding the innocent embarrassment, bewitches the lover by calling forth those new-born charms, more fatal to his repose than those he traced ere his mistress knew her first amorous thought.
But the severe fortune of Charles doomed that this first amorous thought was never known to him, and, instead of charming, it terrified. The cradle of Love is wreathed by the Graces, and the music of Hope pours its fascinating sound; but to our hero, Love was nursed by the Furies, and the melodies of Hope were exchanged for the mysterious reproaches and the averted face of his Emily.
CHAPTER XXIV.
The Punishment continued when the Crime has ceased.
WHEN Mrs. Wilson had quitted the faire Emily, and was passing through the hall, one of the footmen familiarly addressed her, and was on the point of forcing her to an embrace, when violently bursting from his arms, in an agony of horror she exclaimed: "And has it come to this?"—She rushed from the door.
"Body o'me!" cried the footman, "why the old dame thinks I don't know her again. She has gone off for all the world like a modest woman! So the Holborn-hill madam is Miss Emily's good friend! Birds of a feather, I warrant;
are intelligence for Mrs. Bully!"
Let us follow the miserable and humiliated Wilson! She reached home without a perception of having issued from the house of Miss Million. The hall and the footman were fixed in her imagination; a repeated gesture seemed as if she was continually shrinking from his touch; she writhed in tortures; her face was now reddened by the deepest shame, and soon succeeded an ashy horror over every feature. As soon as she had reached her house she hurried to her chamber, threw herself on the bed, and spoke incoherently in an agony of spirits: "Father of Mercies, is mercy alone denied to me? Is not an error washed away by tears like mine? No! I had not endured thy final punishment; I see there was a degree of misery yet reserved for me, sharper than the secret sting that lay in my heart. When I was a prostitute, my shame was reserved for myself; there was no friend to reproach; no perdition to the cherished feelings of social affection; no one marked me; I sinned, no, I only erred, in peace. Children, children! what have ye not cost me! what now will ye cost me! Shall I curse ye? shall I abandon ye? Have ye not extended your mother on the slowest rack of agony?—Poor children, ye are innocent, I alone am guilty. Heaven decrees that the punishment shall endure when the crime has past. Shall I murmur to taste the bitterness my own hands have prepared? Now, wherever I wander, wherever I fix, 'the finger of scorn' will point at me, a low, a miserable prostitute! A fever shakes my frame. Cruel retrospection! I thought myself reinstated in virtue and comfort—one stroke of accident destroys my eternal peace! This footman—The idea is insupportable!—my shame is promulgated—Miss Emily must at length know me the wretch I am Wise was her father's counsel, that sincerity is wisdom; what we conceal to-day may appear to-morrow. Explanation has come too late! For the blush it would have cost me, I now must give the pang that shall endure with life. She surely addressed herself to me, to claim the elucidation of my mysterious history. O torture! I will fly into the country; I will seek some chance servitude; I will perish, and no one shall know where the wretched Wilson dies.—This then is the suspended punishment of heaven! I tasted bitterness; I feed on gall. My children, my children, if ye perish, ye cannot reproach your delirious mother—it is your country, your God decrees it."
Leaving this victim of her own error and of public prejudice we return to the house of Million. As soon as the footman, who had more than once known her in her degrading character, entered the servants' hall, he informed the coachman, that the dame of Holborn-hill had just passed from the apartment of Emily, and that she flung out as proud as if she had been a modest woman. The coachman related the circumstance to his very good friend the cook, without "extenuating or setting down aught in malice." In these cases the imaginations of men are not apt to prove so fertile as those of the women, for reasons known assuredly to an observer of human nature. The cook embellished it, the chamber-maid refined it, while Mrs. Bully gave it the beginning, the middle, and the end, so severely exacted by the great Aristotle in the composition of an epic. And here we must observe, that
lying
is the
eloquence
of the vulgar. To affect and persuade the human passions requires a forcible emotion of the soul; for a gentle emotion, like the flat uniformity of a sleeping sea, cannot please long. We must storm the mind. Poets and orators will therefore best succeed in taking possession of the attention of their readers and auditors, because they alike are skilful in
amplification,
which, in truth, is nothing but
lying.
An
exact
representation would not affect; we should not long read a poem, or listen to an oration, which had nothing but the simplicity of truth. Of this the vulgar are sensible, although the cause is concealed. There are no greater liars than the vulgar, for experience has taught them the utility of lying; they employ augmentatives or diminutives, as they desire to excite a correspondent feeling; and the vulgar are, without knowing it, great poets and orators.
The cook mentioned, that a vile strumpet, known to John and Miss Emily, had just gone out; the chamber-maid, that Miss Emily and John were acquainted with all the strumpets in town; and Mrs. Bully hurried to Mr. Million, to assure him, that it was now high time to speak out; that Miss Emily was only fit company for women of the town, and was concerned with John; that she herself had seen in her possession an abominable book, and was besides a professed Arian.
"Well, well, 'tis just what I thought!" exclaimed Mr. Million. "Taking the Lord knows who into the house of a bank director, because she was an old blind lieutenant's daughter. I shall have all the daughters of the old knights of Windsor. Curse her harp, twanging in my ears, that makes me as melancholy sometimes as a fall of stocks." He hastened to Miss Million, who certainly was singularly shocked with the intelligence, considering that she already had heard it from Betty two hours before, and was then quietly dosing over the last new novel.
"My dear father," cried Miss Million, "I am all of a tremor; my poor nerves! 'tis shameful! not fit to be told! Pray call in John, accuse him before me, let me hear all that has past. It will be in the papers to-morrow; if Mr. Libel should hear it, Million-house will be scandalized. A footman!"
John being summoned, related his simple story; and reduced the epical lye of Mrs. Bully to a mere assurance, that the person who had issued from Miss Emily's apartment was a common prostitute.
Miss Million being now alone, sent in for Emily, and began thus: "Miss, when I suffered you to make Portman-square your asylum, it was from my benevolence." Emily trembled. "But you have abused my goodness, and instead of the girl you was at Exmouth, I find you are the associate of a low prostitute."
Emily, pale and alarmed, cried, "Heavens! what do you mean? Tell me, I beseech you, quickly!"
"Your alarm and your tremor are extremely adroit. Performed to admiration! Why, one would think, to look at you, you really trembled! But 'tis the profession of your friend. One might imagine that you did not know who was the person who called on you this morning."
"Her name is Wilson; she let lodgings to my father."
"I dare say she lets lodgings. She is well known in this family; a very
chere amie
of John's. You will have the kindness to quit Million-house as early as you can. I need not recommend you a lodging." So saying, she hummed a tender opera air, and left Emily in the parlour, motionless and silent.
At length sensation revived to consciousness. She now relieved her oppressed heart in one of those little monologues her innocence had rendered habitual.
"Then are my father's suspicions verified! All that he said, how severe! how true! What confidence can we bestow on our associates! Friendship, how thy name is abused! Simplicity, how thy air is mimicked! This wicked woman—Charles too—They must be united! She is employed by him for the purpose of seducing me! Every mystery is now revealed. He was frequently quoting Thomson's "boundless confidence of soul;"—so too did the licentious Sedley! She was unwilling to part with me at first; she now offers me a refuge in her house; she would even change her residence to receive me! This day she told me that Charles loved me!—Hypocrite, how have I escaped your toils? And Charles too, refined dissembler! Does he deceive me, whose image my fancy cherished next to my father's? He protected me from Dandelion—I thought it generous; I find it mean—He would reserve me for his prey! Oh Emily, poor deserted girl! I feel now as if the whole earth had conspired against me. Where shall I fly?"
"To these arms!" exclaimed Vaurien, as he entered the parlour, throwing himself at her feet. "Your face, Miss Emily, is covered with tears. Refuse me not the consolation of uniting mine. Not a tear on your face but melts on my heart. Tell me your distresses, accept my little aid. I have heard some abrupt effusions of sorrow; I cannot live and forget them."
Emily, confused, hesitating, and deeply sobbing, had lost her voice. Her fine auburn tresses fell in disorder on her face and her neck; she raised two dewy eyes to heaven; the tears fell, and glittered on her hair; she looked a Magdalen of Guido. Vaurien, with gentleness placed her in a chair; he knelt, took her hand, imprinted a fervid kiss; she had not even the presence of mind to resist, or to perceive his improper attitude. The image of her father was before her; she gazed in a silent agony of imagination; her tears were renewed; Vaurien was emboldened by her insensibility.—At this instant Charles slung open the door—He uttered an audible ejaculation. Emily started. "Where am I?" she cried. "Is it you, Sir?" and she darted a glance of anger and horror.
"Think 'tis no one!" replied Charles quickly, and hurried from the room.
"Deceiver!" murmured Emily. She covered her face with her hands, and sat absorbed in grief. Vaurien composed his attitude, and stood near her chair. Such was the confusion of Emily's mind, that few traces of what had occurred left their impressions on her recollection. The entrance of Charles had revived her anger and her fear. When she turned her eyes on Vaurien, she looked with kindness; she considered that his presence had proved her protection.
Vaurien caught the instant change. "Do me the honour, Miss Balfour, of suffering my assistance. What occasions this great distress?"
"You see before you the most miserable of her sex. A woman without a friend."
"Say not so, adorable Miss Emily; whoever knows you must be your friend; and if a softer name would not offend, there is who would only live to preserve it."
"Alas! Sir, you mean not to irritate a spirit already wounded. I have hung ever the verge of destruction, blindly, feebly, yet boldly. O were my father living! Angel in heaven! art thou insensible to the voice of thy daughter? On earth thou didst open to her the volume of her fate; and now can thy paternal tenderness not reach thy miserable wanderer?"
"Dear Miss Emily, your imagination is disturbed. Calm the vehemence of feeling; inform, but do not agitate me."
"Mr. Vaurien, you perhaps can inform me. You know where I lodged with my father. The woman says, it is to you and Mr. Charles she owes her existence."
"Ah! Miss Emily," replied Vaurien, turning aside his head, "'tis a delicate subject; let your silence spare my feelings."
"Nay, dear Sir, I must say more, much more. You must tell me all if you would be my friend. Miss Million has this moment told me, that that woman—"
"Is a low prostitute."—Vaurien spared her the words.
"And you, Sir, have protected her?" said Emily, quickly.
"She is the friend of Charles," continued Vaurien; "I knew nothing of her. Common charity makes no distinctions among it's first claimants; I prefer assisting the worthless, rather than to chill the warmth of my heart by enquiries, which may delay too late the succour due to the worthy."
"Generous man! And is it then true? I know nothing of human nature. I thought her a suffering angel."
"Native goodness! I repeat, she is an infamous woman. Charles is her friend. I will never more enter that house: but surely they have not molested your tranquillity?"
"O much, much!" cried Emily. "O delusion of the heart! Heaven and my father surely protected me. This woman had such facile tears on her face, such unobtrusive goodness, such concealed merits. There is a refinement in depravity. I thought, till now, that the wicked affected an ostentatious virtue."
"Trust me!"said Vaurien, "Lady Belfield has a just esteem for your character; her house is open to you."
CHAPTER XXV.
The Misery of Shame without Guilt. A novel Species of Authorship.
VAURIEN, when he met Charles on his return, rallied him for his abrupt departure from Emily. "She is a finished coquette," said he, "when you are present, but alone she is one of those dangerous girls, with overflowing hearts, who are apt to throw us off our guard. You witnessed her charming disorder. 'Twas lucky you entered! A glance invites her, a word possesses her. She is now coming to Lady Belfield; a chaste pair of doves to be yoked to the car of Venus! Could you imagine that the female character is so deceptive? But deception is their occupation and their amusement, their
utile
and their
dulce.
"
Charles listened with horror, and shuddered with reflection. Vaurien dropt several obscure hints of former interviews with Emily, and exhibited such confirmed familiarity, and offered to share her favours with such friendly confidence, that Charles, recollecting the visible delight which Emily took in all the conversations of Vaurien, and that disdainful glance with which she harrowed his soul when he broke in while Vaurien was at her feet, blamed his precipitation of passion and contracted discernment, concluded the Gaul to be the favoured lover, and suspected the purity of Emily.
"Ah! my friend," he cried, "would I were but banished from this house! Patiently I cannot suffer one whom I revered as an angel to become before my eyes an associate for Lady Belfield. To view her will be hourly to revive regrets, which, suppressed by absence, may slowly die away. Existence becomes a torture in her presence."
"
Tres bien!
" said Vaurien, musing.
In the mean while Lady Belfield had made exact enquiries relative to Mrs. Wilson; nor did Johnson, the old friend of Charles, hesitate to give into her Ladyship's idea of the entire transaction, so prone are the best men to decide by appearances. His Lordship had been already prepared to unite with Lady Belfield's measures; and a few days after the above conversation with Vaurien, Charles found on his table a note from her Ladyship, in her own hand-writing, containing a final dismission. Her Ladyship laid considerable stress on his offensive and degrading connections.—"Mrs. Wilson," cried Charles, "will herself vindicate this undeserved obloquy."—At this moment the following letter was brought from this unfortunate woman:—
My dear Sir,
Scarcely can my scattered thoughts collect to address you. I have settled my affairs. The sum you so benevolently assisted me with will accompany this. I have taken my departure. I fly I know not whither.
I forget to acquaint you with the distressing circumstance that involves my ruin. The hateful character in which once I rather erred than sinned, carries it's punishment when the crime has long ceased. No human benevolence can now efface from my heart the indelible degradation. I have mentioned to you, that to Miss Emily I revealed all my history, excepting that humiliating period when your hand, prompted alone by charity, snatched me from so many nightly horrors. Yes, I concealed this hideous feature of my life. Could Miss Emily have embraced a prostitute? And yet from this small failure of sincerity I derive this agony of mind, which attaches the misery of turpitude and shame while I can think.
I waited on her (will you forgive me?) to reveal your state of mind, which you do not even suspect I know; but could I see you perish in silence? Yes, Sir, the eye of gratitude secretly studied your every gesture, your every interrupted idea, your every evanescent aspiration; gratitude watched and divined your heart. Emily has traced you in some concealed offices of kindness; her voice told her gratitude, her blushes her love.
* * * * * * * * *
It is at intervals I write—I was recognized by a servant—My face glows, my hand trembles, my tongue is parched, a fever preys on my vitals. Others will tell you of my shame. Heaven has set it's mark on my face, and I wander a female Cain. A terrible thought flies and returns to my imagination—Shall a mother be a murderer? An instant would make my children angels. Yes, fearlessly could I raise to the Father of all Mercies an arm of blood; the blood of my children would to my God tell not of the cruelty, but of the chastisement and the contrition of their mother!
* * * * * * * * *
It was but phrensy! the agony of thought which o'erleaps all bounds. When the heart is exhausted, the feelings are quiet. I have just pressed the dear children to my bosom; heaven surely directed every intendering look, every winding embrace. The eye of infancy, the kiss of childhood, can compose the perturbed heart of maternal despair. How wondrous and how secret are the impulses of nature! In the existence I loath, I feel an enjoyment in when I seem to live for them. My heart, worn with age and sorrow, beats then warm with youth and pleasure.—I fly from London—Ah! should I be found perishing, think of the survivors! With their mother's crimes they stand unconnected; they are the children of virtuous parents; for I was a virtuous wife, although a criminal mother. Farewell, generous youth! Ever shall I be as grateful as I must be miserable,
ELIZABETH WILSON.
"Most unfortunate of her sex!" cried Charles, "her life points a moral. It is a lesson for the times. A dereliction from chastity is punished with excessive severity, and unjust punishments produce real crimes. Woman must resist the combined attacks of love; that passion, which our modes of education and our manners have taught her to think is the important occupation of life; but the negligence of a parent, an accidental occurrence, an unsuspicious moment, a wandering of sensibility, a refined intrigue, the certitude of confidence, and the fondness of affection, overpower or inveigle that moral sentiment, which otherwise would have persevered in it's habitual duties. Woman requires, therefore, a more energetic fortitude than even man; but fortitude is masculine; and a female stands unprotected amidst the illusions of her heart. But when the hateful life of prostitution is derived merely from the indigence and despair of virtue, it is still chastised with the same torture; the domestic porch of Peace is for ever closed. Such unhappy wanderers are inured to viciousness by our barbarous and unrelenting accusations. A wise and philosophical regulation of the illustrious Frederick prohibited, under severe penalties, the aspersion of that female who had returned to the arms of her friends, and to the renewal of those domestic virtues which she had suspended rather than deserted. How long will philanthropy tranquilly gaze on a vast multitude of females perishing in youth!
"Poor Wilson, thou art no criminal!—and yet thou wert a prostitute. Child of sensibility! thy heart would burst at the accusation; thou didst rush in the darkness of the night to feed thy perishing children—Thou could'st not have been a prostitute in the blaze of day! And I, who would not suffer a widow and her children to perish in the streets, am now involved in her apparent criminality. Johnson censured me for having formed disgraceful connections; and to her Ladyship I can now no more refer this unhappy fugitive. He who aids unfortunate virtue (for this woman is most virtuous) popular prejudice decrees as a participator in a libertinism he abhors!
"And Emily then knows my passion; and has so long deceived Mrs. Wilson?—The flower that is covered with the virgin dews of innocence can then conceal a young and foul serpent! Yes, her I have seen; Vaurien, I have heard; her infuriate glance shivered my frame. Yet can I never forget her. I loved her when I thought her virtuous; and I now must mourn her, as if a sudden death had deprived me of her whom I loved. The pleasures of life are not for me; I will sit by the side of their tomb, and think of the departed happiness it holds."
He now framed a respectful reply to Lady Belfield, related the nature of his connection with Mrs. Wilson, and lamented that her abrupt flight must render his conduct mysterious. When he quitted the house, Vaurien conversed with him in a tenderness of tone, that seemed as if he were shedding tears, and he insisted on his accepting a liberal loan to assist him in his pursuits.
Old friendships, that have been interrupted rather through inattention than pride, are in adversity viewed by an eye that, clouded with a tear, gives a peculiar tenderness to the object on which it reverts. Charles flew to Johnson, and poured in his honest ear the change of his fortunes. Johnson repeated his old observation on the danger of bad connections: "However," he continued, "trust me, that Lady Belfield has some concealed reason for this dismission; she cannot conscientiously object to any form of intrigue. I respect your silence; but it instructs me. And what now think you of your friend Vaurien?"
Charles replied, "He is the most engaging of men, and the most tender of friends. My honourable connections would have set me afloat on the wide sea of life without mast or rudder. The prompt kindness of Vaurien supplies the ungentleness of Fortune; he has voluntarily lent me a considerable sum of money, which I refused but for his acceptance of my bond."
"So then," observed Johnson, "after instilling in you an abhorrence for your dependance on Lord Belfield, the adroit Gaul has induced you to depend solely on his generosity."
Charles with warmth replied: "You ever condemn in Vaurien those actions which you would praise in another."
"Yes, I have learnt, young friend, that virtue is not always implied by actions of virtue. Does that sound paradoxical? I must even say, that the criminal is often virtuous; for as a vicious character may think proper to perform the duties of virtue, so may the virtuous character be pressed into the commission of crimes it abhors, but it cannot shun."
"And there," exclaimed Charles, "you have described Mrs. Wilson."
Charles now communicated his dispositions to adopt some literary avocation; and soliciting Johnson's opinion, he replied as follows:
"If you desire to be distinguished as a genius of the first class, in some honourable province of literature, whatever may be your parts and abilities, you are too poor, at least by several hundreds a year. A finished genius, in this age, is the labour of half a century; a writer now blooms at forty, and flowers at sixty. We require, in this age of taste, such hewings, and such polishings, so much of the axe, and so much of the file, and so much fillagree work, that I consider no writer out of leading strings before thirty, supposing that then he has been carefully swaddled, nurtured with the most delicate pap, and eternally humoured in what relates to place, connections, domestic habits, coincidences, accidents, and a crowd of ceteras, which you will find numbered, one by one, in Helvetius. I see clearly now, that we shall have no more any men of genius; for after all these pains, in which I am sure no mortal must expect to be successful, the most inconsiderable accident or omission may spoil the whole man of genius, as poor Tristram was ruined by the want only of a window-pulley.
"Our great authors write little, and write rarely, and exhibit nothing of genius but in their compositions. I have been in company with two of our finest poets, four of our great historians, a dozen of our fanciful novelists, and they were as solemn and as dull as a court of aldermen when there is no business to transact. The fire of genius has become quite of a culinary nature; an immense fire, raised for the moment, for the preparation of some delicious repast, but when that is performed, the saving housewife screws up the sides, takes out the coals, and leaves it in an ordinary dimension.
"You may acquire, however, a subsistence in literature if you are tolerably ingenious. I confide a secret; the man you see before you has obtained money by his literary performances, as if he were the first genius of the age."
"You surprise. I only knew the name of one Johnson on the roll of modern same."
"It shall not be my fault," replied Johnson, "if you ever see another. Several literary men of the day have sold their works by a mistake of the public concerning
names.
But I have some honesty, and more delicacy. I am a nameless writer, but my productions have names. My occupation is to adjust, to arrange, to rescind, and to ramify. Somebody brings me a solid glutinous drop, and my pen becomes diluent. I am furnished with the raw materials, and then I weave silk, cotton, or worsted, at the order of my employer. I lardoon meagerness. Sir, I am the writer (which you see is no synonime of author) of a library. I have written Travels into Russia, Tours into Scotland, Embassies to China, an Earl's Philosophical Essays, a Baronet's Economical Researches, a Doctor's History, and a Counsellor's Reports. I am the venerable parent of a dozen as chopping literary boys as walk this town. You know this is an age of authors, and you perceive one of the reasons. 'Tis just my employers, whose heads may be as bald as Caesar's, should wear their laurels or their literary false hair; for as the epigram says, 'they swear it is their own hair';—and so it is, for I know where they bought it. You were surprised the other evening, that Sir Alexander appeared to forget in conversation the principles of his own book; but I assure you, Sir Alexander never read his own book. The origin of this occupation (not so singular as it seems) was owing to this circumstance; I was a writer in a Review, and whenever I examined a work, composed by a
gentleman,
I made most alarming strictures on the necessity of a knowledge of philosophical grammar, which no
gentleman
can be supposed to know, and I recommended an application to some man of letters, who might be no gentleman, yet a philosophical grammarian. No one comprehended what I meant by the words philosophical grammar; but they were formidable, confusing, and alarming. Every month I repeated the urgent necessity of philosophical grammar; gentlemen were frightened, applied to the printer, who gave my address, and since that time I have been a philosophical grammarian, and having sufficient employment, not a word now appears concerning the necessity of philosophical grammar."
Charles now placed himself under the eye of this secret artisan of literary works, and perceived, that where invention and imagination are not required, an author writes on in sunshine and in rain, in gaiety and in sadness, and with a mechanical pen forms a mechanical book.
CHAPTER XXVI.
The Platonist.
AMONG the characters selected by Vaurien, as persons whose talents and dispositions seemed adapted to coalesce with his general views, by some peculiar bias of their own, was an original enthusiast, who in this history we shall denominate the Platonist.
He resided in a romantic part of Scotland, and had now arrived in town to attend the progress of a great work on polytheism. He accounted it as a favour of the gods to have been enabled to subsist in that cheap country. There he found a picturesque landscape, surrounding a cottage retaining an antique aspect. It was indeed formed from the small remains of an abbey; and what is supposed to have been a watch-tower, still stands at the extremity of his garden, and there he placed his library. There, abstracted from all things and all men, he reads Plato and Homer, and views nothing but the skies.
His cottage is at the entrance of a deep forest, and the windows command a view of the high road, a circumstance that occasions him much anxiety; and he wishes that the cottage could only have been viewed by the gods. His life is solitary, but most poetical; yet we can hardly deem that a solitude which is graced by the society of a beauty, romantic, sensitive, and happy. He has a set of very singular companions; a great variety of animals and birds. His mornings are consecrated in the watch-tower to Homer and Plato; the afternoons he gives to what he calls a conversation with his mute friends; in the evening he wanders in the forest, explaining Plato to his lovely companion, and concludes the night with a hearty supper, and with the undisturbed rapture that flows from a heart that beats in unison with his own.
At school he formed this devotion for Homer, and a pedant inspired a poet. It was owing to the accidental literary bigotry of his master, and his incessant reverence of that poet, which was not prompted by the ardour of taste, but by the frenzy of verbal criticism. The bust of Homer was placed over his chimney-piece, the head of Homer was engraven on his seal, and in his hours of sadness he consoled himself with an Homerical verse, and in his hours of merriment he toasted the old Meonian, by pouring a generous libation to his memory. The infatuation of the master was communicated to the scholar; but the impressions were of a more delicate and sublime nature. In one it was the impotent extravagance of a frigid verbalist; but in the other it became a debauchery of sensibility, breaking from a most inflammable and abstruse imagination. He had unfortunately plunged deeply into the commentaries of certain Platonists, who explain Homer into allegories, discover celestial systems, and convert the Iliad into a Greek Bible of the arcana of nature.
When he quitted the school, his mind was deeply tinctured by all the colorifications of the Platonic prism. He mused on the bewitching notion of universal beauty, which pervades that enthusiastic philosophy; but when at length he obtained a complete copy of Plato's works, the intellectual malady diffused itself in every nerve of his mind; and such was the conflict of his animal spirits, that he could never read Plato without violent palpitations of the heart, and more than once such has been the agony of his sensibility, that he fainted over the volume as he held it with a kind of religious tremor. These indeed are the peculiar features of enthusiasm, that abstraction of the imagination which roves amidst unknown scenes, and gazes on poetical chimeras. It is felt by poets in the fury of their orgasm, by philosophers in the ideal fabrication of their systems, and by mystics in their attempts to abstract themselves from earth to heaven.
When we read the discoveries of another, we acquire a spirit of discovery. The imitative genius of man becomes every thing to which it is accustomed. He read of a thousand fine meanings in Plato and Homer, which he could never have imagined, but having once imagined them, he added a thousand more of his own. A mind like his only requires the scattering of a small handful of seed to cover it's extensive and fertile soil with a vast efflorescence; and like that happy climate that feels not the rigour of a changing season, his mind was a year of one continued summer. Every day brought it's new discovery, and every day was a day of triumph.
Like other inspired persons (for he considered his delight as inspiration) he now conceived it a duty to enlighten a dark and erring world. "All Europe," he cried "is surrounded by a dismal night; hence men are continually molesting each other, and one man only impedes another while he himself is impeded." He observed old religions decaying, while modern sects were filthily spawned forth, and lamely crawled from each antiquated and expiring monster. He first communicated his notions to a private circle; some considered them as the curiosities of a student of great learning, some as the philosophical amusements and paradoxical vanities of a man of genius, but few discerned that they were the delusions of a literary lunacy. Their doubts soon ceased, when, to the astonishment even of the learned world in this close of the eighteenth century, were published two quarto volumes, in which he avowed himself a Platonist in it's most religious sense, and in which he affected to prove, that the Christian religion was merely a bastardized and barbarized Platonism. The divinities of Plato were the divinities to be adored; and he affirmed, that no people could be virtuous and happy if they were not taught to call God, Jupiter; the Virgin, Venus; and Christ, Cupid.
It was now in vain to dissemble. His friends attempted to reason; but logic reforms no enthusiast. An enthusiast cannot fail to gain his cause, because he alone can be his own judge. In vain the world opposed, and worse than opposed, neglected. He was an Atals for himself; the solitary supporter of a system even too unreasonable to be adopted by philosophical reasoners, and even too delusive to delight philosophical fanciers. He knew, he said, he was the Gemistus Pletho of the age, and he was content. To the opposing world he therefore opposed Plato and Homer; and he looked not in this barbarous age to be rewarded with a garland in the school of philosophy.
He saw himself deserted, but forgave the unkindness of men, because he found himself consoled, and indeed fully occupied, by the humanity which he had discovered in other animals. Even this was mysterious, for he darkly hinted that he was not a little versed in the language of beasts. He lodged in his house a most numerous society; on the stairs, in his study, from the garrets to the cellars, and even to the very roofs, were assembled a numerous retinue of the mute citizens of the world, and he was observed to pass entire days in a very large aviary of birds.
The Platonic system had obtained him some admirers among the fair sex. It was not ill adapted to their capacity; for being incomprehensible, it's mysteriousness irritated female curiosity, and it was at least more sublime than disclosing an enigma, or unfolding a charade. It was pregnant with the dissolving energies of a delicious sentiment; for what the Platonist terms "the science of universals," is made to consist in "UNIVERSAL BEAUTY." It was a homage to the sex. He used sometimes to break out in expressions like these: "Beauty walks silently on the extremities of it's feet, alluring, ravishing, and raising all things by it's power; it swims above the light of forms; it covers the occult union of the gods!" The entire system was elegant and brilliant; it exhibited only forms of symmetry and grace; and the female attention, that was once allured by the ideal perfection of an eternal beauty (the image existing in the mind of the divine architect) and became initiated into the Platonic doctrine of ideas, was soon entangled in a tissued net of silk and silver, that adorned rather than perplexed the lovely captive. Where she sought a master, she found a lover; and, entranced, listened to the eloquence of diction, the dazzling of metaphors, the inexhaustible poetry, and the infectious enthusiasm of a man who came recommended by many accomplishments of personal figure, and by many graceful acquirements. The Platonist is a masterly musician, a sublime poet, and, when warmed, his voice is melodious, his eye is illuminated by quick intelligence, his face takes all the changes of his soul, every gesture is adapted to every sentiment, and, like the Cumean Sybil, he looks the image of inspiration. His usual style on these subjects shews all the art of poetry without it's labour; he pours forth an opulence of diction, and his copious periods roll with magnificence, as if he were reading an English imitation of Cicero's manner; with felicitous expression he intenders by pathetic sentiment, and charms by the gaiety of exuberant imagery. Even his mystic unintelligibility becomes a grace; it serves as a resting-place to repose the mind that has followed him in his elevations; and they who are not void of imagination lament when the Platonist closes his voluble and enchanting elocution.
He had long sighed to unite himself to a beautiful female, on whose bosom he might meditate in rapture and reverie. Solitude, deprived of such a companion, presented nothing to his sensitive soul but a desolation of the passions. The beasts and birds, with all his vaunted knowledge of their language, he confessed were not equivalent to the absence of this inestimable associate. Among men he could find no companions; for such was the extreme irritation of his sensations, that his mind had refined itself to a feminine delicacy; it was appalled by serious expostulation, and shrunk in horror from coarse merriment. In explaining the principle of beauty he found consolers and admirers among the women; but he discovered no female whom he could select from all the world; for to a congenial disposition and a singular beauty of person he required what is still more rare, an intimate knowledge of Greek.
Except a total ignorance of Greek, Charlotte Fenton was the nymph of his soul. Nature had cast them in the same mould; but a diversity of education had provided different materials to store their imagination. From childhood she had lived in a rural solitude, studious of works of the most extravagant fancy; and all the day and part of the night were consumed in a little circle of magic, from which she never issued. She walked fearless on the utmost verge of romantic fiction. With all works of reasoning she was disgusted; her logic consisted in sentiment, and from the impoverished narratives of history, where all men to her eye seemed dwarfs, she roved to the gigantic heaven of Homer, who, though somewhat disguised in the versions of Pope, were to her still heroes. She read with avidity the ancient romances of "Amadis de Gaul," and feasted on the six folios of "Perce Forest;" the Arabian Tales were not disapproved; and Spenser was the most modern poet she read; but when our Platonist opened the vast scene of his philosophical fancy, her curiosity flew with a hundred wings; she gazed in mute astonishment, and sat hours in silent meditation.
But the divine Greek was the only language by which he could communicate his sensations. She entreated his instruction, and they had scarcely advanced to the third book of the Iliad, when the delighted Platonist thus proposed a new system of life:—
"The ancient philosophers," he said, "when they felt the impulse of divine energies, quitted the tumultuous habitations of men. We must frustrate the magic of Circe, and bid adieu to the detaining arms of Calypso. For many years must we be exercised in the cathartic virtues, for the purpose of separating as much as possible the soul from the dark folds of the body, and then at length, when we have destroyed the tyranny of the passions, those baneful suitors which had so basely revelled in the palace of the soul, we shall enjoy the delightful beams of science and wisdom, till becoming established, like Ulysses, in our paternal port, like him we shall be united with our father, from whose embraces we have been so long unhappily torn away. We shall find the lyre of true philosophy on the banks of Lethe; there let us pass away our lives in blissful contemplations, and in listening to divine harmony, secluded from the base multitude of mankind."
"And this, my lovely Charlotte, has been the only resource of the enlightened and pious ancients. Either we must travel or retreat; for the delusions of modern religions are an impiety to the gods. Pythagoras and Plato, the interpreters of nature, considered it as necessary, for the acquirement of knowledge, to traverse many seas, and inhabit many countries; but for travelling we have no money. Euripides composed his tragedies in a cave, Democritus his philosophy in a sequestered spot, Demosthenes became an orator by the shores of the sea, and Numa consulted the nymph Egeria in silence and in solitude. Even the imitators of these great men, Moses, Jesus, and Mahomet, alike retired at stated intervals to arrange their systems, atheistical as they are! The presence of the gods is only visible in solitude. Archimedes heard not the falling walls of his city; Carneades, at his meals, forgot to eat, so that he had nearly been famished in his own house; and what think you of that philosopher who deprived himself of his sight, that he might not be disturbed in his sublime contemplations by intervening objects; and that other, who, lest he might be tempted to issue from his studious retreat, shaved half of his head, that it might hinder him from appearing in the world; for in that Platonic age no wigs were worn.
"I languish for retirement, that I may compose a life of Homer, of whom nothing is known, and finish my Platonic commentary on our divine poet. I have calculated the verses, arranged the materials, and the daily labour of three years will establish a system which shall endure with the elements it describes. Does Venus inspire my Charlotte to relinquish the atheists of an unplatonic world, and to soar to the mysteries of the divine geometrician?"
Such was the conversation of the Platonist, who discovered that Venus had inspired. They sought the romantic spot we have described, and the time now arrived, when they were sent back to the world, enriched by the life of Homer, and the copious discoveries of our Platonist, to renovate the age of Astraea, when polytheism was to form an universal religion.
CHAPTER XXVII.
Vaurien visits the Platonist. The Language and Manners of Animals. The silent Voice of Gesture.
HOWEVER visionary to some may appear the reveries of the Platonist, so unsettled are the opinions of most philosophical men on the interesting topic of religion, for every popular creed has been examined with severity or ridicule, that, sensible of the beneficial influence of some prevalent system, they have long sought, and are still seeking, for some new religion, which, founded on the invariable principles of nature, shall offer to all people an universal opinion; thus that even the most rigid philosopher may appear amidst the popular worship with a hand of reverence and a heart of piety, while the sacerdotal robe shall no more disguise the most eminent religious hypocrite.
Polytheism, as explained by the researches of the learned, and by the fancies of the visionary, is allegorised till it becomes a system of natural philosophy. The gods are but the elements, and they therefore still exist visible and palpable. Campanella was of opinion, that the world and the elements had sensation, because that which is composed of them has sensation, and nothing can be in the effect which is not in the cause
See Bayle, article Campanella.
. It is also
now
considered by some, that a revival of the notion of the demi-gods or hero-worship, would serve as a noble engine of that immortality which forms the passionate devotion of elevated minds. The erection of a PANTHEON
The following extracts from the Monthly Reviews, on this novel extravagance of Platonism, I transcribe, being doubtful whether, otherwise, the greater part of what is here written on the subject will not appear incredible.—"There are some who aim to place the heathenism of Greece, as interpreted by the Platonists, among the religions publicly taught in temples, and professed in society. We fear it is not to be ranked among the harmless dreams of literary caprice. We have heard reports of some persons being willing to incur expence for opening a pantheon, in honour of the benefactors and instructors of society." M. R. vol. xvii. 149. new series.—"This is the right age for making such Platonical impressions. There is a debility of intellect, which succeeds to excessive inquiry, whose morbid craving the Platonic opinions are admirably calculated to gratify. After the age of reason was past, they found savour with the mind-sick inhabitants of Athens and Alexandria, of Rome and Constantinople, and are
likely
once more to accompany the progress of European declension." vol. xiv. 248.—"In modern Italy, many persons have given into these chimaeras, and the theurgists have been excited the jealousy of ecclesiastical authority." vol. xvii. 154.
in this metropolis is, in some circles, a favourite object. The Platonist terms this edifice "a place for commemorating the ascent of excellent daemons." To worship such men would be only adoring some particular virtue, and perpetuating by our piety the virtue we adore. Every human virtue forms an attribute of the divinity, and the Creator would be reverenced, while we felt and confessed his attribute in his creature.
The age seems propitious to every species of fanaticism. Scepticism spreads rapidly, and superstition gathers new energy to oppose scepticism. Established opinions are too moderate for either; hence religion breaks into sectarism, and philosophy divides into systems. Extravagance wrestles with extravagance; the imagination wanders astonished and half-delighted, but calm sense looks around, and retires in horror. Religion and philosophy have become two gladiators; one departs not without destroying the other; yet who shall be certain that one alone will triumph? Two gladiators have sometimes perished together by their mutual aim.
One of the favourite projects of Vaurien was an antichristian hope to overthrow the religion of Jesus. He therefore associated with all those, whose talents or power would co-operate with this intention. He desired to overturn Christianity, not because it was a system of religion, but a system of opulence; he was no enemy to the New Testament, but to the bench of Bishops
Vaurien had also another reason for his hatred of Christianity; it's principles were too peaceful, too self-mortifying, and too enervating. But the present times are as sanguinary as those of any former period; and we do not see why some should so much dislike Christianity for these causes, since
Christians
are now as ferocious
cut-throats
as those of ancient times. Be it as it may, Vaurien's idea of Christianity appears in the following
pensée
of Beaumelle, p. 177: "Paganism, accustoming men to ferocity by sanguinary sacrifices, in deifying great generals and courageous citizens, their wise legislators inspired a love of liberty. Christianity, in only shewing sacrifices without blood, in putting softness in the human character, canonising obscure persons detached from worldly interests, gives them a spirit of obedience. Christianity talks too much of heaven, to induce much attachment to the objects of the earth, and by inculcating submission to monarchy, is an enemy to all reasoning."
. He had formed a strict intimacy with the Platonist, and now visited him, to stimulate his industry in the promulgation of polytheistical publications,
When he arrived at his house, the lovely Charlotte informed him, that the Platonist was then occupied at his prayers, in chaunting a noon-day hymn to Apollo. "You then," said Vaurien, "do not unite in his prayers?" Charlotte replied, "I hold Apollo in no esteem, because of his ill usage of Daphne. We women are willing to be won, but not to be forced. It is cruel to persecute what we cannot subdue. Venus is my protector."—Vaurien looked languishingly on Charlotte, and exclaimed, "Venus likewise is the goddess of young men; I worshipped her in the remains of her temple in Greece." "Good Gods!" cried the romantic Charlotte, "thou then art my amiable brother; the first I have met who has paid due reverence to my divinity. The Platonist is mindless of her daily orisons. Were we but in her temple to perform her rites, as Herodotus describes!"—"All heaven, all earth, is her temple!" exclaimed Vaurien; "and sure the blushes that breathe like roses on that cheek, the liquid brilliancy of those eyes, the soft heavings of that bosom, proclaim the presence of the divinity."—"Ah!" said Charlotte, "you are the first man who ever joined me in a votive testimony to Venus."
By this time the Platonist had concluded his long hymn to Apollo. Vaurien now ascended with difficulty. At the bottom of the stairs was a large kennel of dogs of various nations, who lived in a good understanding with each other, excepting when a bone was thrown among them, for then the dogs behaved like men, that is, they mangled and tore each other to pieces with sagacity and without remorse. Monkeys and apes were chained on the banisters. A little republic of cats was peaceably established on the first landing place. He passed through one room which was an aviary, and another which was an apiary.
From the cieling of the study of the Platonist depended a polished globe of plated glass, which strongly reflected the beams of the sun. Amidst this aching splendor sat the Platonist, changing his seat with the motions of his god, so that in the course of the day he and the sun went regularly round the apartment. He was occupied in constructing a magic lanthorn, which puerile amusement excited the surprise of Vaurien.
The Platonist accounted for it. "My dissertation on the Eleusinian mysteries is not all understood. The whole machinery, reflected on a white sheet, will be more intelligible than any I could give on a sheet of paper. In the presence of the gods, in the most holy of the mysteries, daemons appeared with the heads of dogs; Pletho says this, who lived a thousand years after the mysteries. Then I have 'omniform and terrific monsters;' then the demiurgus, the progress of purgation, inspection, crowning, torch-bearing, and, finally, friendship with the gods. But here is the great difficulty. How shall I represent 'the intolerable effulgence of the divine light?' Much it grieves me, that for this sublime purpose a candle and a piece of coloured tin are all I can get into the lanthorn. The gods are not always favourable to my attempts. After long experiments, I conceived I had discovered the perpetual sepulchral lamp of the ancients. Last week I invited my friends to a philosophical lecture on my perpetual lamp; I triumphed in my discovery; but ere my lecture closed my lamp was suddenly extinguished. Good Gods!"
Vaurien condoling with him on the imperfection of all human representations of the divinity, and the extinction of a perpetual lamp, enquired the reason for his singular attachment to the mute creation? Here the Platonist assumed a dignified air, threw himself back in his chair, to receive the full beams of the sun, then musing, raised his kindled eyes on Vaurien, and addressed him:—"To you, whom I respect as the great reformer of the age, who feel a piety for the gods, and aid their solitary adorer, I will unfold the inspirations of wisdom."
"Know then, that all men are brutes, and all brutes are men. At first their figuration appears materially different, but it is not so in reality. Many brutes approach closely to the human form; and among men, many approach closely to the brutal form. We have monkey faces, bull heads, asinine countenances, spider legs, and porpoise obesity; and among females we have the face of a tygress, cat-like claws, owl-like screechings, and serpentine involutions. That they are not more minutely exact, has absolutely arisen from the chance organization of nature; but their passions, their gestures, and their propensities are the same.
"You will object, that the brute creation has not made an equal progress in art and science with the human species: but this I deny; the brute creation are wiser than we; they only cultivate those science which are of real utility to them: take for instance the ape, he is a perfect similitude of man; the paws of an ape are much like our own; why then, you would say, have apes not made an equal progress with man? Because (and I speak from having lived among apes more than twenty years) apes are not so susceptible of listlessness or ennui as ourselves
Les singes ne sont pas susceptibles de L'ENNUI, qu'ôn doit regarder aninsi que je le prouverai dans le troisieme discours, comme un des principes de la perfectibilité de l'esprit humain.—Helvetius L'Esprit, vol. I. IV.—Gentile reader, we do beseech thee to observe, that "the perfectibility of the human mind," this fashionable phrase of our
London
philosophers, is merely an obsolete fancy imported from France.
; an ape is never idle and always happy. And justly has Helvetius observed on this very topic, that it is to this desire of activity we owe all the great actions of great men. Most men are despicable animals when by themselves; a brute never. All generals, all poets, all historians, have become so through rank idleness; a listless existence tortures; so, having nothing better to do, the general sacks or massacres a town, the poet writes his commemorating ode, and the historian shall a thousand years afterwards write you every particular, and very often in the present tense!
"And this I affirm, that in those arts and sciences which are of real utility to animals and birds, they excel all mankind. Can the weaver's loom spread the fineness of the spider's web? Can the architect build like the beaver? Sails the mariner like the nautilus? And in domestic life, can we skin fish like the cat? Clamber like the monkey? and scent like the dog? Ask the Swiss peasant, Who climbs and hangs securer on the sharp points of precipices, himself or his chamois? They have, therefore, in far greater perfection than ourselves, that peculiar art or science they desire. To excel in any, we advise a man of genius to apply only to a single pursuit. 'Tis precisely what does every brute, and therefore I aver, that every brute is a man of genius."
Here the Platonist paused, and desired to exchange seats with Vaurien, as the sun had got round to him; then, with a collected air, he resumed his discourse.
"To you, the confident of my heart, I reveal it's wondrous secret. Know then, I have obtained the various languages of brutes, with whom I converse by the hour. I can convert my person into all forms, my voice into all intonations."
"Their language is precisely the same which men would employ in a similar predicament. Imagine to yourself a company of dumb men; how would they converse? evidently by gestures. Such is the language of animals. Gesture is a vocal silence, an incorporated voice. They too have their tones, but their gestures are exercised with inconceivable perfection; and by these they preserve a communication with their brother brutes; I mean men. They have few ideas, but many sentiments; are not logicians, but passionate beings; they feel exquisitely, and yet they express all they feel.
"The emotions of GESTURE constitute a language far superior to that of vocal enunciation. It is the spontaneous and universal language of nature. Our method of communicating our ideas is tedious, imperfect, and deceptive. By gesture alone we can discover the involuntary feelings of the heart. Say, do not the quick and flashing eye; the cheek, whose tints are fugitive; the halfaverted mien; the frown, that breaks, that passes, but is not forgotten; the look that refuses while the hand presents, exhibit the personal dispositions? The perturbed eye, the walk now quick now slow of Cataline, shewed in his distracted form the soul of conspiracy. The unaltered mien, the changeless peace of every motion of Socrates, who, at home or abroad, Xantippe confessed, never shewed one ruffled feature; did these not testify the regular current of his constant mind? And the wretch with pliant features, whom Titus observed to turn aside the half-stifled laugh at the misfortunes of innocence, while he gave abundantly causeless sighs and tears, these indicated to Titus the concealed villain. In that young man, said Sylla, speaking of Caesar, who walks so unmannerly along the streets, I see several Mariuses. Cicero relates of Anthony, that he frequently struck the ground with his knees, by the vehemence with which he pleaded. Yes, my friend, as the bent bow is compressed with a double force, the arrow is more impetuously darted; 'tis an arrow driven by the storm of heaven, that pierces where it touches. Who knew better of nature than Cicero, when he advised his brother, that to be affable in his government, he must do something more than invite to feasts.
Nil interest habere otium apertum,
vultum clausum
; little it signifies to set your doors open if your face is closed. We Platonists have long known that gesture is the only language of the passions; and that brutes possessing this in greater perfection than men, employ a purer and more energetic language.
"And indeed the great Campanella affirmed, that beasts spoke to each other, because they certainly understand each other; for which simple observation the Inquisition singed his beard and threatened to burn his body. Such was his divine knowledge of gesture, that during his imprisonment of many years, he tells us, that he knew all the sentiments of his absent friends or enemies by mimicking all their gestures, and taking all their postures. Some have had the temerity to affirm, that he was a melancholy hypochondriac: but Burke tells you he has tried the experiment
"I have often observed, that in mimicking the looks and gestures of angry or placid, or frighted, or daring men, I have involuntarily found my mind turned to that passion whose appearance I endeavoured to imitate. Our minds and bodies are so closely and intimately connected, that one is incapable of pain or pleasure without the other." Burke on the Sublime and Beautiful, p. 250.
, and Lavater cites it as an indubitable fact; and are Burke and Lavater lunatics?
"And therefore on this curious topic, how admirable is an observation of Rousseau, who seems to me to have been a true Platonist. "In neglecting," says he, "the language of signs, which speak to the imagination, we have lost the most energetic of languages. The impression of words is always feeble, and we speak to the heart much more forcibly by the eye than by the ear
Emile, lib. IV. p. 179.
."
"I am charmed," said Vaurien, "by this account of the language of beasts; and assuredly you have made many curious observations on their national character and domestic manners."
"I have indeed long been a citizen of the vast republic of brutes, and they have consoled me for the ingratitude of my own species. How I lose my patience, when I hear your great philosopher acknowledge the feelings of brutes to be more exquisite than those of men; and then pronounce, that their principle of motion, though it seems determined by motives, is merely mechanical, and depends absolutely on their organization
Buffon's Natural History, vol. III. p. 224. Smellie's translation.
: but Buffon, I am told, only
wrote
on animals, which is quite a different thing from conversing with them. His sublime narrative of the camel's journey through the desarts, is unrivalled by modern eloquence; but he himself never travelled through a desart, and he is therefore a greater poet than a natural historian.
"Ah, my friend, how enchanting is the simplicity of the domestic habits of brutes! When I become a match-maker between a dog and his female, how I envy the short term of their courtship! He is no coxcomb, and she is no coquette. He lingers not with cold compliments on the beauty of her colours, her birth, or her age. He feels but one desire; the multiplication of his species. But then what sincerity in every gesture, what vivacity in his eyes, and with what tenderness his tongue caresses his beloved. Men are such eternal bablers in love or in rage; but an animal simply evinces his passion by a single act. Is he revengeful? he honestly bites. Is he affectionate? he fervently licks. He is never an assassin, or an adulator.
"How have I admired the cool sagacity and magisterial air of a venerable furred long-whiskered Tom, sitting stately, stretched voluptuously, or quietly dosing by my winter fire. Sometimes he goes a hunting, for a little recreation; but his velvet sides are stuffed with that equability of humour, which shews, that his existence is his enjoyment. Nothing but a female cat can discompose his serene philosophy.
"Mules, because they will not submit to be tutored by us, who are not equal to them in point of their ability, after having carried the traveller on the slippery edge of precipices, picking their way, step by step, and stopping when near danger, when they arrive at home are beat and abused for, their stubborness. What wisdom in the mules! what idiocy in the men! Some mules, having been chased from a paddock, never offered to return; yet it was perceived that the grass had been eaten. They watched, and observed, every night, that they leapt over the fences, and, after their stolen feast, returned to their adjoining field before the morning. Erasmus tells us, he saw a dog that had been taught to convey meat, in a basket, from the shambles: attacked by other dogs, he would defend his master's property; but when he saw his assailants too numerous, he would then snatch a piece of the meat, lest he should get nothing but blows and honour in the ruinous war.
"Does not history present us with more numerous instances of the fidelity of dogs than of men? Like men of strong sensations, their resentment is proportioned to their gratitude. When I was at Mount-Edgecumbe I saw a monument, on which I gazed with awe: it is raised to the memory of a huntsman, who neglecting to feed his dogs for three days, as soon as he entered was torn to pieces; a dreadful howling spread through the whole society; and feeling more sensibly the passion of vengeance than that of hunger, they long left their victuals untouched. When a dog-butcher at Canton enters a street, all the dogs pursue him in full cry. When a Kamtscadale loses his stick, by which he drives the dogs of his sledge, they instantly perceive it, and run off as fast as possible, to overturn him in the snow. Ill treat a dog, he will long remember it; and, when you seek his reconciliation, will preserve his dignity, and make no advances while he knows the hand that now caresses once struck. And shall we now say with Buffon, that these are only pieces of mechanism, who merely derive their motion from their organization? I confess it requires a patience, which looks like sublimity, to acquire a knowledge of their habits and language. Swammerdam passed ten long years, extended on his belly, to characterise the national genius of ants. Reaumur must have devoted as many, to discover the various nidifications of birds; and he indeed cleanly traced the manner in which they digested their food. I myself have patiently watched, through forty days and forty nights, the nuptials of a frog.
"To touch but rapidly (for I see the sun is declining) on birds. Thomson has described 'The Passion of the Groves' in mellifluous numbers, worthy of Plato, and with a knowledge of their language as marvellous as his numbers.
"The language of birds is elliptical, resembling the periods of Tacitus; little said, much understood. Every species has a different intonation, as every native of a large kingdom has his provincial dialect. The voice of the raven is solemn; of the dove mournful; of the rook gay, but aukward; while the merry woodpecker loudly laughs; and the fern-owl serenades his mate at the moonlight oak.
"I could give you instances of a sublime maternal affection, a rapid yet intricate invention, a vigilant artifice in concealing some cherished abode, heroic acts of sexual attachment, and a spirit of sociality, that, if interrupted, has an influence on the health, the passions, and the enjoyments of the friendly brute.
"Delicate birds have their vanities as well as delicate people. A goldfinch before a mirror is a perfect coquette; she smooths her plumes as she sits on her perch, and gazes with delight; and if she is provided with a little bucket and chain, she will draw it up, and then look around that her ingenuity may not pass unobserved. Delicate birds have also an exquisite delicacy of passion. The wild canary sooths with his song the dear connubial nest. In the annals of my aviary shall it be recorded, that one, as he was singing, suddenly dropt. The unfinished song alarmed the female; she slew from her breeding nest, and sought her silent consort. She pecked at her friend; he was no more! She stood beside him, refused nourishment, and gazed in silence till she died
This curious fact is noticed by Kaimes, and is by no means improbable. These exquisitely sensible birds appear to die frequently of sudden frights. Of three canaries, I have known two found dead in their cage, although apparently left well.
."
"Such are the domestic manners, and such the various conversations of these citizens of the world! Join to this the Pythagorean system of Metempsichosis, established among the wise ancients, and then judge of the awe and veneration I feel for this neglected portion of our fellows. Much it afflicts me, when I hear the experimental philosophers consider themselves scientific, when their ingenuity has invented the most exquisite tortures. Here one famishes a vulture, to see how long it can exist without food; a locust has it's intestines pulled out and filled with cotton, then transfixed with a pin, remains five months moving it's legs and it's antennae, to the great satisfaction of the philosopher; canine mothers, big with their infants, are anatomised alive, to rip out the young, who are born like so many Macduffs; aqua-fortis is dropt on a living animal, to trace the entire progress of singeing, blackening, and burning the living flesh; and two sparrows are starved to death, to verify whether bruised seed, or minced meat, is best adapted to recover their almost extinct life. Good Gods!"
Vaurien having felicitated the Platonist on the new world he had opened to himself, said, "propose to overturn Christianity by the publications of the Platonists, and to erect a Pantheon, that the Gods may be honourably reverenced."
"That is my important pursuit; I have already prepared the soaring and ecstatic Olympiodorus, the noble and obscure Heraclius; I join the Asiatic luxuriancy of Proclus, divinely explained by Jamblichus, and profoundly delivered by Plotinus. Plotinus, who was surnamed 'Intellect' by his contemporaries, such was the fervour of his mind, that he was accustomed to write without attending to the orthography or the revision of his works, which perhaps occasions their divine unintelligibility; for the celestial vigour rendered him incapable of trifling concerns, and he therefore committed them, as fast as he wrote, to Porphyry, who, perhaps, labouring under the same divine influence, was equally incapable of orthography or sense."—The Platonist concluded this conversation with an invective, of which the style appears to us so curious, that we shall give the exact expressions, as a specimen of the Platonic effervescence, in a Ciceronian period.
—"I have long perceived the ignorance and malevolence of Christian priests, from the most early fathers to the most modern retailers of hypocrisy and cant; every intelligent reader must be alternately excited to grief and indignation, to pity and contempt, at the barbarous mythological systems of the moderns; for in these we meet with nothing but folly and delusion; opinions founded either on fanaticism or atheism, inconceivably absurd, and inextricably obscure, ridiculously vain, and monstrously deformed, stupidly dull, and contemptibly zealous, Apostolically delirious, or historically dry, and, in one word, such only as arrogance and ignorance could conceive, impiety propagate, and the vapid spirit of the moderns be induced to admit
A Dissertation on the Eleusinian Mysteries, p. 167.
."
"My dear Platonist," exclaimed Vaurien, "if you can roll periods like these, your genius will be rewarded, by yourself being chosen by the nation to lay the first stone of a Pantheon in London, for 'the ascent of excellent daemons.'
CHAPTER XXVIII.
A Jewish Philosopher. A Dissertation on the Jews, tending to prove that they should not be burnt.
ANOTHER favourite project of Vaurien, was that of assembling the dispersed Hebrews. This impious project (as a good Catholic terms it) was not peculiar to the political imagination of this Gaul; since, among others, two of his compatriots meditated the same design. The Marquis of Langalerie, at the commencement of this century, disappointed at every court to which he resorted, prepared to collect these fugitive Asiatics in the isles of the Archipelago. A genius of a sublimer character, the famous Marechal Saxe, having merely missed possessing the empire of Russia by his inconstancy in love, solaced his ambition by a fanciful sovereignty over the wanderers of Israel. This project is of that inviting and plausible kind, that it will never be extinct in the romantic and chimerical heads of some fervid adventurers; but there exist opposing reasons in the character of this people, which, depending on principles in nature, are irreversible. The children of Jacob are composed of all nations, and cannot blend alike with the people among whom they reside; as there are metals in nature, which no chymical process can amalgamate with others.
Vaurien had made acquaintance with a Jewish philosopher, and called on him for the same purpose he had visited the Platonist. He found the Jew at dinner, eating pork-chops; and at the side of his plate lie open the Jewish Mendelsohn's Phaedon, a sublime imitation of Plato on the immortality of the soul. The Jew desired to conclude his meal quietly, and proceeded in employing at once his teeth and his eyes; but the head digests not like the mouth; and the Jew had now so violently abstracted his imagination, that Vaurien rose with impatience. The philosopher then started from his reverie, and lamenting that the sublimest conceptions were the obscurest, closed his Plato, and listened to the Gallic Christian.
"How long shall philosophy," exclaimed Vaurien, "mourn over the degradation of the human species? Our great revolution ferments the spirits of all our European youth, and of every friend to the rights of man. France has emancipated the negroes, France would emancipate the Jews. Whenever the legislator violates the equality of nature, the state appears to retain slaves; but, in reality, it loses so many patriots. I was present at one of the late earthquakes in Italy. The multitude were gazing on the ruins of a town; the nobles sighed at the vestiges of their grandeur; the opulent citizens mourned their buried fortunes. A voice from the multitude broke the melancholy silence, exclaiming, 'Now WE ARE ALL EQUAL.' A sublime and terrible truth! Unhappy is that country, whatever be it's grandeur, in which a great portion of it's citizens would consider exile as no punishment, and an earthquake would communicate the sensation of delighted vengeance. And this must be the feeling of every Indian Negro and every European Jew. Every where found, and no where respected, wherever ye wander ye drag along the same ignominious chain."
"You deliver yourself," replied the Jew, "with the voluble eloquence of your nation. In this temperate climate we fear no earthquakes, and we are no friends to such frantic revolutions. As a philosopher, I conceive it my duty, as it is my pleasure, to correct popular errors by simple truths. A philosophical history of the Jews would be a history of human nature; no nation has assumed such a variety of aspects; their government was theocratical, aristocratical, republican, and monarchical; now tributary, and now exacting tributes; fugitive and stationary, impoverished and opulent, superstitious and enlightened; a people, now the most ignorant in Europe, introduced those sciences which are cultivated by all men but themselves.
"But a conversation must not be a dissertion. It is difficult to say little on what we could say much. I shall confine myself to some of the most prominent popular prejudices.
"What has been the origin, between the Christian and the Jew, of this implacable hatred? Rivality. The principles of Christianity are inimical to the principles of Judaism. Christianity, in it's earliest stage, was the rebellious child of an aged and imbecile
Christianity is nothing but improved Judaism. I will give one instance, which I have never observed remarked. The
sacrament,
for which so many have suffered, is a simple rite,
now
performed, every sabbath night, by the religious Jew. Wine and bread are placed before the master of the house; after a benediction, he hands the cup round, and, breaking the bread, gives to each a portion. Jesus, amidst his disciples, was performing this rite, called
Keed
sh
; and, in the allegorical style of a young rabbin, said of the bread and wine, 'this is my blood, and this is my body;' which they certainly were, when assimilated in his person. To this simple circumstance we owe all the idiocy and cruelty of
transubstantiation!
parent; at first the Jews attempted to punish Christianity, afterwards Christianity was enabled to massacre the Jews. Every thing is simple in it's connections; the principles of nature, however involved by the artifices of men, are few and invariable.
"Not among the least of Hebrew grievances has been that of the Christians having written their history. The Jews are chiefly known by accounts drawn up by their enemies, who have vilified with monkish rancour, and perpetuated the calumny of the day. Reflect on the ignorance of the Christian ages; not that Christianity necessarily includes ignorance, but ignorance may include Christianity. The papal power was an universal monarchy. No solitary voice opposed the vulgar arm; yet sometimes we catch in history a feeble voice, that, with a cautious generosity, seems to whisper something for the sufferers of Israel. Silent tears were shed from the eye of philosophy. We now live in an age when a man may tell his fellow citizens, firmly and audibly, the cause of his tears. Yet even in this age, when this people attracted their attention, have philosophers ceased to be philosophers
Voltaire, but neither Rousseau nor Mirabeau, was their enemy. Lately, when the learned Dohm, of Berlin, published his treatise, 'Sur la Reforme Politique des Juiss,' Mr. Hartmann opposed that work of humanity. Sheridan has pourtrayed them in the old style. Voltaire, Hartmann, and Sheridan, Christian libertines, had been duped by some Jewish usurers. Mr. Hourwitz, a literary Jew of Poland, has composed the Apology of his nation with the energy of an Israelite roused into action, who, feeling deeply, writes forcibly. He tells us, that he knows many young men have conceived a hatred against Jews, because several have supplied them with money, by which means they lost their health and their fortune. He knew a German magistrate, who persecuted all Jews, because, when young, by their money he had contracted a shameful disorder.—Such cases only shew that the prudent Jew knows the value of money, and the imprudent Christian is an abject slave of his unsubdued passions.
In our country I have seen with indignation Mr. Burke compose a
diatribe
against all Israelites, as money-lenders, clippers, and coiners, and whatever crimes his black imagination could create. His style is too beautiful to lose itself on such offensive subjects; it is a gilding sunshine that exhaust, it's splendour on a dunghill. Dr. Moore, in his Travels, benevolently abuses them. The pleasant Doctor, perhaps, envies some rich Jews he may happen to have met in the course of his peregrinations. Philosophers write sometimes more than they think, and are therefore very liable to take
effects
for
causes.
The Jews may be all what they tell us they are; we enquire in our turn
why
they are so? are men born money-lenders? And
why
are those Christians, who are in the same predicament as the Jews, Jews in every thing but in the exterior?
To Mr. Cumberland the Israelites ought to be grateful: but they are too ignorant to be grateful. His comedy, performed in provincial towns, has loosned a little some cruel prejudices; but this writer's humanity is eccentric:
A flattering painter, who made it his care
To draw men as they ought to be, not as they are.
"It is imagined that the Jews are distinguished by a national countenance, and it is piously conceived as a mark inflicted by the divinity, similar to that of Cain. Their complections are dark and adust, their nose aquiline, and their eyes full and black; their cast of features is frequently noble and expressive. The more polished Jews, residing in England, are the descendants of those emigrants who escaped from the human bonfires of Spain and Portugal. They have, therefore, naturally preserved in their families the physiognomy as well as the customs, the habits, and the language of their ancestors. The Jews, who have found a refuge here from their national degradation in Germany and Poland, are distinguished by the fair complections, the grey eyes, and the red hair of those nations. Had Lutheranism found sectarists in Spain and Portugal, and flown to England from the ordeal of the Inquisition, many members of our established church had been distinguished by what we term Jewish faces. The Judaic visage we sometimes ridicule is frequently the countenance of his Spanish Majesty
La Croze ridicules the prejudices of the Spaniards against the Jewish blood, which secretly defiles their church and state.
Gibbons, vol. iv. 4to. p. 604. note.
I formerly read a Spanish novel, in which the following interesting incident occurred.—The inquisitor at Goa, as he was examining a Jewish heretic, discovered that he was his grandson.
.
The Hebrews, who have no spot on earth their own, include all the varieties of the human species, and by differing from the natives, among whom they resides, only shew that they are men.
"Their universal dispersion and isolated existence have excited the curiosity of the philosopher and the triumph of the theologian. It has been repeatedly affirmed, it is repeated, and will be repeated, that it is a punishment for their denial of the divinity of Jesus. But the Jewish nation had ceased to be a nation, and were dispersed, long before the appearance of Jesus. Why has this fallible proof so long existed? Christians are willing to accept this as an existing miracle; and Jews are willing to be considered as a nation selected by the divinity. A philosopher, feeling none of these interests, modestly pursues truth, and boldly espouses her. All national effects are to be traced to natural causes; every other cause is that of fanaticism and cruelty; and the discovery, which exceeds reason, made only by reasonable beings, is the feverish dream of a sick man.
"Two causes have conspired to produce this dispersion, and to give a distinct existence among other nations.
"The political situation of the Jews is indeed a phenomenon in national manners. An artifice, for such it was, if not inspired by the divinity, at once singular and sublime, of their legislator, has generated a power durable as the universe. Longinus termed Moses a genius of no common magnitude.
Voltaire, Bolingbroke, and their school of philosophy, have laboured diligently to persuade their readers, that Moses had never any other existence than that of some ancient heroes of romance; a Prince Arthur, whose
name
was a subject for romantic biographers. M. Pastoret, in his 'Moise consideré comme Legislateur et Moraliste,' p. 7. has proved that Moses is mentioned by a pagan writers; by Strabo, Justin, Menethon, Diodorus Siculus, Pliny, and Apuleius; but their notices are equally romantic and uncertain.—In this work the reader will find a good analysis of the Mosaic legislation. It is learned, pious, and heavy. That philosophy is very narrow that gives, for the cause of the Jewish isolation, the strict inhibition of Moses against idolatrous practises. Idolatry has ceased, but they are still isolated.
. Extending his views with a vastness that ennobles but not exceeds human sagacity, by rigid and numerous customs which he consecrated by their holiness, he has produced, from generation to generation, an inheritance of manners; has rendered the domestic life of a modern European the same as an ancient Asiatic; and by his genius, through this awful interval of time, still influences the fugitives he headed, and isolates them among the most populous nations. What at first in his code seems minute, frivolous, and absurd, is sublimely political. The simple rite of circucision he so sagaciously adopted as an indispensable duty, still further explains the magnificent conception of Moses; perceiving that, mingled with other nations, they might assimilate to their customs, like small streams mingling with rivers, he commanded an operation, which, performed in the infant state, compelled every man to bear in his body the Judaism his heart had renounced.
"Another cause produced an universal dispersion of Jews. Their commercial character. Wherever a ship sailed, a Jew voyaged; wherever a great town was established, a Jew was it's inhabitant. It was necessary for them to separate that they might flourish. We trace this fact in what relates to their English history; they were numerous, but not congregated. He who could find no employment at York succeeded at Norwich, or was enriched at Lincoln
Thus we find them distinguished by their residence: Jocenus, the Jew of York; Jacob, of Norwich; Sarah, the Jewess of Malmesbury, &c.
. Their law not admitting of the military profession, and animating them to conjugal embraces, by considering sterility as a malediction, their populousness became remarkable; they lost not by the casualties of other nations, and accumulated men as they did money, by regular arithmetic. If they had not suffered such effectual massacres, Europe might have exhibited the New Jerusalem.
"The origin of their proverbial wealth is equally simple as the causes already assigned. When Christianity was established, it degraded beneath the rank of men the children of Jacob. Not merely vassals, they were frequently bond-men. With the other cattle the circumcised slaves were transferred from proprietor to proprietor. Earl Richard purchased of his brother Henry III. his Jews, for a lease, that (to employ the forcible expression of Prynne) "those whom the king had
excoriated,
he might
eviscerate.
" A more remarkable instance is that of this king, who, when he suspected the disaffection of prince Edward, to confirm his loyalty, made over the Jews to him; and the following year prince Edward, being as deeply indebted as his father, transferred them, by a new assignment, for two years, to the Caturcensian merchants
Tovey's Anglia Judaica, a learned, humane, and jocular history.
. One blushes to find such facts in the history of men.
"In this singular state industry was a source of prosperity. Christians were then most religious, little wise, and less industrious. Jewish wealth increased, and wealth produces privileges; they were proud in a mock parliament, in a chief justice, and an exchequer of their own. Opulent, they still preserved the closest frugality; abjectly penurious and grossly sordid
A sketch of their domestic life is given by the quaint and witty Fuller, in his Church History, b. III. par. 37. "For first of their fare; it was coarse in the quality, and yet slender in the quantity thereof; insomuch that they would in a manner make pottage of a flint. Swiue's flesh, indeed, they would not eat, but dog's meat they would; I mean beef and mutton, so poor and lean that the refuse of all Christians was the Jews portion in the shambles. Their cloaths were so poor and patched, beggars would not take them up to have them. Attendants they kept none, every one waiting on himself. No wonder then if easily they did
overgrow
others in wealth, who basely did
underlive
themselves in all convenient accommodations." And at par. 40. "Endless it were to reckon up the indignities offered unto these Jews. Apprentices now-a-days do not throw sticks at cocks on Shrove Tuesday so commonly as on that day they used clubs on the Jews, when they appeared out of their houses; a people equally unhappy at feasts or frays; for whenever the Christians at any revels made great entertainments, the Jews were made to pay the reckoning; and wheresoever any brawl began in London, it ended always in the Old Jewry, with the pillaging of the people therein."
Such is the jocular humanity of this honest Ecclesiastic! A similar character distinguishes the labours of the antiquary Tovey. Both these English writers of Jewish history felt as men, but sometimes reasoned as Christians.
. Even to apologize for these offensive manners, causes are not difficult to be assigned. Their domestic virtues, however, flourished, luxuriant and beautiful, like their own plam and almond tree on their natal soil. Time has accidentally preserved some interesting narratives of their patient sufferings, their fervid affections, and their heroic resistance.
"Where wealth is concentered among the few, it finds persecutors among the many. Their borrowers were great expenders and miserable calculators. The estates of the idle Christian were ingulphed by the mortgages of the industrious Jew, The sovereign with their opulence filled his exhausted treasury, and the baron securely committed his rapine. Christian injustice produced Jewish usury. The price of money ever becomes proportioned to the risk. Objects of national pillage, they became objects of national rage; half the nation was their debtors; a massacre was a receipt in full. Sometimes they were expelled the kingdom for their usury
To the Jews are justly ascribed many useful inventions of commerce; and this debasing spirit of commerce, which has diminished throughout Europe the more elevated faculties of man, may be considered by reflectors as a kind of punishment redounding on those Christians who compelled the suffering Israelites to be nothing but merchants. A horde of Asia has converted enlightened nations into companies of traffickers and public depredators, and lowering to one level the great with the worthless, has annihilated that spirit of honour which could give more value to a wreath of oak bestowed by a nation, than to the enormous pension now accorded to a political minion. Despair with the Jews was the parent of invention, and bills of exchange were imagined by them. At the moment, there was something sublime in the conception, to transfer, by a species of magic, to the most distant parts of the world, estates that could only have a local value, and wealth, enormous to the eye, readered invisible, yet real.
, and then it was apparent that usury was practised by Christians; and while the Jews were universally execrated for usurious practices, his Holiness of Rome, by the means of his bankers, the Caursini, compared with a Jew, bore the same affinity as a skinner has to a sleecer
I quote Tovey, p. 252. "The several statutes made to prevent usury,
after
the Jews had left the kingdom, prove it to be a crime not peculiar to them."
.
"At these periods calumnies were propagated, sometimes absurd and sometimes terrible, and indeed have been continued to this enlightened period of time. I could shew volumes of compiled calumnies; I will confine myself to two. They have been frequently accused of crucifying children, and the chief narrative of this kind is even supported by ten historians. This fact is instructive. The agreement of several authors concerning some extraordinary circumstance does not amount to it's proof; so many say a thing because others have said it. To such writers we may apply the simile of Dante:—
Come le pecorelle escon dal chiuso,
* * * * * * * * * *
E cio che fa la prima l'altre fanno,
Addossandosi a lei s'ella s'arresta,
Semplici e chete, e lo imperché non sanno.
"It is thus all history is composed: nine of these historians copied from their predecessors; and the original narrator gives it as a rumour, and describes it as a romance. I know not of any Jew who was hanged for crucifying a child; but I know, that when these accusations were formed the king was very poor, and the fines were very heavy. The Jews have never used and
wood
for the purpose of
crucifying
Christians, but the Christians have employed a great deal for
burning
Jews
This circumstance of the crucified child is even revived in the "Adventures of a Guinea," and solemnly given as an example of Jewish hatred. Another novel, "The Adventures of John Buncle," says, that "even the gay Jews have in contempt and abhorrence a country dance called, The little Jesus;" and the author adds, "They hate our holy religion beyond every thing." Such are the thoughtless men who strengthen, and not loosen, popular prejudices.
.
"It was long supposed, and I am told is yet, that the Jew is distinguished by a peculiar and offensive smell. To stink like a Jew is an adage which Furetiere has preserved in his dictionary; but this smell, it seems, always disappeared when a Jew was converted to christianity
The author of "Roma Santa" says, "
Cosa maravigliosa, che ricevuto il santo battesimo, non puzzano piu.
" A French bishop, touching on the wonderful effects of baptism, writes—
Abluitur
Judaeus
odor baptismato divo,
Et nova progenies reddita surgit aquis,
Vincens ambrosios suavi spiranime rores.
The learned Ramazzini has no doubt but that the Jews, in their most flourishing periods, exhaled a fetid smell. Solomon, encircled by his voluptuous and aromatic court, in his private interviews with the Queen of Sheba, when they met to amuse themselves with enigmas and charades, must have been more repulsive to that queen than is generally imagined. Our philosophic Sir Thomas Brown, in his "Vulgar Errors," has given the tenth chapter of his fourth book to a most learned discussion of the following question—"Why Jews stink?" After a splendid exhibition of numerous facts, he is not willing to credit the imputation, but cautiously leaves the question undecided.
. The truth is, no rich Jew would become a convert to christianity; the converts were therefore picked out of the filth of the streets; sordid in their manners as in their occupations; but when baptized, they passed through proper ablutions, were perfumed, and dressed; the virtue of the holy water had therefore nothing extraordinary.
"Their lower classes are accused of being tutored and practised in dishonourable traffics: no traffic is dishonourable where bread is wanted. They are industrious, cunning, and fraudulent. Observe the poor Christian occupied in the same situation. Is it not difficult to ascertain between a Jewish and a Christian pedlar who is the honestest man?
"Such has been the ancient state of these men. A chronologer tells us, when he arrives at a particular date, on this day six hundred Jews were massacred at York; and in the succeeding article, that the king was crowned with great splendor and rejoicing. I confess I cannot so calmly pass over from massacre to revelry, nor account murder, less murder, because it is given in a collective manner. Some, I believe, do not feel their heart more agitated by a recital of six hundred than six; others blush for their country and christianity; yet christianity is not connected with persecution.
"The state of the modern Jews is not less severe than that of the ancient. They groaned in ages of persecution, and in ages of toleration they are degraded. In England it is doubtful whether the Jews be citizens; they are merely tolerated inhabitants; even this expression is too gentle. Since their last banishment, they attempted to return under Oliver; but the fanatics could not agree. Charles, gained by bribes, and indifferent on religious professions, connived at their admission; but the parliament of England has never abrogated their decree of expulsion
See Blackstone, vol. iv. p. 374. edition 1793. It seems there to be said, that Jews born in this kingdom are entitled to certain priviledges? What these are I never could discover. Can banished men have privileges? Blackstone says, "What these privileges are with respect to Jews was the subject of very high debates about the time of the famous Jew bill. It is not my intention to revive this controversy again; for the act lived only a few months, and was then repealed; therefore peace be now to it's manes." This
dark
passage seems
clearly
to shew, that Jewish privileges are a
nullity.
Lord Chesterfield on this subject says, that "the noise against the Jew bill proceeds from that narrow
spirit
of
intoleration
in
religious,
and
inhospitality
in
civil
matters, both of which all wise governments should oppose." Vol. iv. p. 34.
. This British land, which when the slave touches he becomes free, retains the child of Jacob in abject degradation. The Jew cannot purchase the house which he inhabits, and is not permitted to elevate himself among his horde by professions which might ennoble his genius and dignify his people.
"Russia has chased them from her inclement region, Denmark will not tolerate them, and in Norway and Sweden not an Israelite wanders
See M. Dohm's treatise "Sur la Reforme politique des Juifs."
. Italy cantons them into obscure quarters of her cities; now closes her gates to their entrance, and now places on them an humiliating badge. With them the holy father has not scrulped at an infamous breach of faith
This badge now consists of a yellow mark worn in their hars, a custom to which, perhaps, Shakespeare alludes when Shylock says—
For sufferance is
the badge of all our tribe.
No Jew is permitted to reside in the voluptuous city of Naples. So late as in the year 1740, the Jews having obtained distinguished privileges from the King of the Two Sicilies, a monastic prophet having predicted that his Majesty would have no male heirs unless he expelled the Jews, lo! they were expelled! If any now by courtesy can glide in, he is still at the discretion of some new prophet, or some secret enemy. An Italian Jew has shewn me some privileges purchased by his family from the Pope, given under the binding terms of "vita mortale durante," and "ab eterno," which, since the French revolution, his Holiness has cancelled, but retained the money. In Italy they probably imagine that the
children of Jacob
are really
Jacobins,
which, if they were, would not be surprising.
. Germany sometimes affords them but the protection of a single night; every Jewish child but increases the taxes of his parent, and a marriage is as lamentable as a death. The Hebrew, father of many children, is severed even from domestic innocence; the sons are dispersed from their natal earth
Dohm.
. Men, who may be said to be born exiles, are children of affliction, who cannot but raise their disinherited hand against their mother country. All men are not Jews; but how long will it be necessary to remind us, that all Jews are men?
"The Jews, therefore, who have pleaded their own cause, have dipped their pen in tears and in gall. Mr. Bryant has said, 'They are every where distinct and unconverted, and consequently enemies to the Gospel. They are like the waters of Styx, which remain unmixed wherever they flow, and retain their bitterness to the last.'
Bryant on the Truth of the Christian Religion, p. 39.
Here is imagination and orthodoxy, but no humanity. This bitterness is an effect, and not a cause. Mr. Bryant and others are surprized, why the Jews persist in refusing baptism; and the Jews are surprised why Mr. Bryant and others refuse circumcision. When two parties are equally insane, they feel the same degree of conviction, and can therefore never change their opinions. I can assure this learned, pious, and fanciful writer, that there are Jews who cherish their
Sephar Torah
with the same zeal as Mr. Bryant does his New Testament; admire it as miraculously; would die for it as devotedly. All nations are alike characterized by a veneration for the religion of their forefathers. The Divinity has implanted the sentiment in human nature. God would view all men in peace, and men rebel against the Divinity in their mutual persecutions
Jesus has commanded us all to consider every man as a brother, and to love him like ourselves. The authority, and not the sentiment, is extraordinary. The New Testament is a code of benevolence, and yet it has produced crusades: but men pervert all things.
.
"It remains now to add, that there is a mortifying inferiority in the mind of a Jew when compared with that of other Europeans. The entire system of Hebrew education is inimical to the progress of the human mind; dark and stationary in ignorance, or bewildered amidst intricate superstition, their modes of life are little favourable to form a taste for the productions of nature and art; and the sole occupations permitted them, the arts of wealth, extinguish the bolder and prominent passions.
"The national character of this people is therefore monotonous; never illumed by a glimmering, though a departing beam of reason, and never venturing on amelioration; as the blind can only walk with confidence in their narrow but accustomed precinct. Sensible they do not here bear chains under tyrants, they feel grateful that they exist under men; but the energies of glory die in inertion, and honour is strangled by the silken cord of commerce.
"Every where the Jew degenerates: this degeneracy has passed from their mind to their form; diminutive and timorous, they verify this verse of Virgil:—
Degeneres animos timor arguit.
Eneid, lib. iv. ver. 13.
Closely translated by Dryden;
Fear ever argues a degenerate mind.
The Jewish veins, impoverished and exhausted, want a mixture of Christian blood. Their arms bear now the rust of fifteen hundred years. To athletic exercises their sedentary occupations are averse. From youth to age they breathe a sickly existence under the domestic roof; and
Homekeeping youth have ever homely wits.
SHAKESPEARE.
"The reform you propose to effect among this people is not desirable, for at present they are unworthy of it. Their superstitions are perhaps never to be extirpated. They believe that their
written law
contains all that men should know
A Spanish rabbin speaks the sentiments of his brotherhood. "
En nuestra ley se comprehende todo lo subtil y profundo de las sciencias; lo que no es ansy en las otras.
" In our law are contained all the subtilty and profundity of the sciences, which is not so in any other. No doubt this learned rabbin, who knew his "law" perfectly, must have been a tolerably illiterate person, and conceived his "law" resembled Peter's brown loas, being veal, mutton, and wine. "The
oral law,
" says David Levi, (who believes in every thing but in Jesus Christ) "is the explanation of the written law, delivered by Moses
in the same order
he received it from
God!!!
" And this
oral law
consists of six voluminous classes, and exhibits in detail such minute indecency and miserable puerilities, that the Jesuit Sanchez's famous treatise
De Matrimonio
becomes chaste in the comparison. The bigots commit impieties more frequently than the philosophers. Every Jew gives his assent to the belief of this Galimathias. A small sect in Turkey attempted only to believe in the Pentateuch; they were called Caraites: but these reasonable beings have ceased to exist, and have been annihilated by the persecutions of the genuine Jews.
. Omars, they would burn every book but their Alcoran. They believe that their
oral law
was really delivered by God to Moses, paragraph by paragraph, as it now exists, consisting of twelve folios of absurdities; a very Cyclopedia of ignorance. Men must be trained gradually to support the glorious weight of a rational freedom. We must never hurry to feasts the famished; their enjoyment might be death. Your nation was not more prepared to enjoy liberty than the Negroes and the Jews, whom you now excite to snatch at the perilous gift. Let men deserve liberty before they obtain it; permit them to reform themselves; but to command reformation is, on your side, to give the name of freedom to despotism, and on their's, of glory to sedition.
"Let us labour gently to loosen the bonds of prejudices, to extirpate unnatural hatreds, and to convince the Christian and the Jew, at the close of the eighteenth century, that 'modes of faith' were never modes of humanity, and that the hour should have already passed, when the Christian should be generous and the Jew grateful. To oppose this principle is to cherish an absurdity in politics, and a dereliction in morals."
This sketch must not be closed without informing the reader, that in literary Berlin the Jews are now enjoying singular honours as men of genius and study. The late Moses Mendelsohn, by the force of his reasoning, has been surnamed the Jewish Socrates, and by the amenity of his diction, the Jewish Plato. Denina, in his "Prusse Litteraire," says, that to this Jew is the German language indebted for many graces and ameliorations. Bloch, a Jewish physician, was the first naturalist of the age; Herz is a professor with four hundred auditors; Mainon, a profound metaphysician. There are Jewish poets and Jewish artists of eminence; and which, perhaps, exist no where but in Berlin, a Jewish academy of sciences, and a Jewish literary journal, composed in Hebrew. All these great men, during their youth, had to struggle with their poverty and their Talmud; but the example of Moses Mendelsohn animated his people and his associates; his fellow citizen he instructed as a father, and his rival he cherished as a brother. Literary Jews must always be rare; no students are liable to such numerous obstacles; their most malignant and powerful enemies will be found among their domestic associates. If a literary Christian is matured at thirty, a literary Jew can scarcely be matured at forty. They have therefore addicted themselves to those studies which are pursued without much connection with the manners of men. They have had severe metaphysicians and industrious naturalists, and have excelled in the profession and the science of medicine. Voltaire has addressed to Isaac Silva a poetical epistle, which gives immortality to the Jewish physician. In polite letters they have had no literary character of eminence; nor now does their stony soil put forth a solitary bloom of future genius.
Here the Jewish philosopher at length ceased, and Vaurien departed, considering that the Jew was by no means so agreeable as the Platonist; that he shewed more erudition than he wished to hear, and was as little adapted for his politics as for his amusement.
CHAPTER XXIX.
A Committee of Public Safety: A Massacre. An universal Peace. Grammar and Reason.
BESIDES the revolutionary assembly at Lord Belfield's, unknown to his Lordship a secret committee met at the house of Mr. Reverberator. They now joined, and Vaurien addressed them:—
"In England you have adopted two modes of getting rid of your kings; the reigns of Charles I. and James II. have produced to your nation more real utility than if they had been the most exemplary princes. They have taught all sovereigns, that there are different manners of regal punishment; by death or expulsion. Let every citizen give his opinion respecting the present monarch, whom we have agreed to dethrone."
"Expel with a pension," said Subtile.
"Expel with a pension," echoed Reverberator.
"Expel without a pension," cried Dr. Bounce. "He never gave me a living."
"Behead him," said Rant.
"Assassinate him," exclaimed Dragon.
"This last mode," observed Vaurien, "combines expedition, safety, and tranquillity. But this king, through a long reign, has not
rebelled
against his people, nor will his people easily rebel against a sovereign, who, without imbecillity is affectionate, without effeminacy is domestic, without tyranny is firm; a monarch, who, like another Augustus, suffered without a murmur, although it cost a tear, the horrid calumnies of an eternal Aretine; yes, the father of his country suffered himself what he could not permit the obscurest individual to suffer; he trusted to the purity of his life, and to the voice of his subjects; a sovereign, whose confidence in their affections
was
such, that he would have reclined his head and slept on the bosom of his meanest subject: but kings must fall if we would rise."
"There is a vile rheumatic wind from that door," exclaimed Subtile; "close it, Reverberator."
Reverberator, after some ineffectual attempts, cried, "Curse the door, it will neither open nor shut; the hinges are dropt."
Vaurien smiled, observing, "the monarchy of that state then is dissolved. A door must have it's hinges."
"But it does not follow," cried Dragon, with a frown, "that a state must have it's king. You Gauls catch at every remote allusion, burlesque the solemnity of your councils, and ruin your cause by your eloquence. Speak less, think more, and let your arm be your voice."
"A simile is harmless," replied Vaurien; "but to proceed: May not the assassin be assassinated? The king is loved."
"A poisoned arrow blown through a tube; it strikes like the lightning; the invisible is alone traced in it's effect," cried Dragon.
"Well thought," observed Vaurien; "kings to respect the people must fear them; therefore they must be beheaded or expelled."
"You observe," said Subtile, turning to Reverberator, "how exact are my computations! This morning I calculated all our opinions, and casting up all the probabilities and the possibilities, I computed a certitude, that this evening we should determine on assassination. But I have prepared another calculation. You propose, Dragon, that it should take place when the King goes to Parliament. The chances are against you; for the wind may blow against the arrow, or the arrow may, for aught I know, be inhaled into your own throat. Then, there are the horses, who, added together with his Majesty, make so many to one you miss. We should never stir a foot without calculation. When Johnson entered a room he used to number and to measure his steps; it is thought to have been superstition; I believe it was done metaphysically; for it astonishes me, that not more legs are broken daily, since few calculate their steps, and a single one, too long, or too short, may overset a man."
"Nature," said Vaurien, "effects her facile operations without the intervention of metaphysics. We calculate nature, but are only amused by our figures. A new fact overturns an old system. Reflect, my friends, on the necessity of dispatch. What has been done at the Tower?"
Dragon replied, "This morning, for two hours, the tri-coloured flag was hung out, to the amazement and terror of the town. I got a boy to do this, merely by half an hour's conversation on liberty. Boys form the best citizens; every argument to them is new and incontrovertible. I dare say, Citizen Rant, you find this at your lectures."
To which Rant answered: "Citizens, my lungs, my arms, my feet, this cadaverous face, and these ferocious locks, flying like the serpent hair of furies, perform miracles among apprentices. I have learnt the French language since the revolution. I talk of Constantinople, while every one knows I mean London; of Mahomet, when I strike at Jesus; and of a conspiracy of the seven kings against the liberties of infant Rome, when I clearly describe the allied powers. It is thus I defy all law. Helvetius did the same. Is not this genius in
me?
All comes from Helvetius; he is the
ova
of human nature. The learned London Corresponding Society, our respectable booksellers of 'Pig's-meat,' and our political missionaries, deserve well of the republic; but they persist all in
printing
what they have to say. I have
printed
in every class of literature; but whatever is most energetic from my tribune makes no impression in
print.
My works are like the acidity of lemon squeezed on salts of wormwood; if the instant froth is not caught 'tis vapidness! My satire is termed outrageous ribaldry; my eloquence, inflated gaudiness; my thoughts, tedious common place; 'tis said, I have neither simplicity nor dignity, neither nature nor rhetoric. But approach my tribune, hear my screams of indignation, my whispers of discovery, the foaming vengeance of my mouth, the thundering resolution of my arm, and the audible contempt of my foot. I assure you, citizens, a living line of animation runs along the room; I have seen the very benches tremble with rapture, while the opposite echo of my voice seems like that of some divinity, heard, but not seen. My butchers are resolute as the gladiators of Rome; my tailors are heroes to a man; and my shoemakers are so many Solons. The canaille are the nobility of human nature."
"True," replied Vaurien; "and I have always been surprised at your English aristocratic custom of decanting Port; you carefully reject the dregs; but the dregs are at once victual and drink, and contain more true spirit than the thin upper liquor. Our French wine has no dregs, for it has no body; it is all alike, lively and sparkling, but it will not keep; so we drink it off all at once. Time only slattens and sours. Let us now understand from citizen Dragon the conduct of his proposed massacre."
Dragon now pushed on to the edge of his chair, raised two blood-shot eyes and a haggard countenance, then drawing up part of his coat-sleeve till half his arm was bared, addressed the committee:
"Exactly a month from this night, or about one in the morning, I have prepared my friends. We divide in three bodies. The first assemble at Charing-cross under the statue of the tyrant; the second collect at the Tower; the third penetrate the Bank. The Charing-cross party will decapitate by torch-light; the Tower will provde us with arms; but I fear we may be disappointed at the Bank for money. However an active night does much; when the sun rises we shall give up the city to pillage; that will be a kind of current coin for the people.
"When I was at Paris, I studied 'the magnificent virtues of Robespierre, and the energetic heroism of Danton
These are the
express words
to be found in Thelwall's
sober
reflections. And God forgive his
sobriety!
To some English readers Robespierre appeared a Cicero; but the genius of his oratory consisted in having retained some of the declamatory
verbiage
of the French writers. He was not known for any work, or other evidence of genius, before the vast concussion that threw such unworthy beings uppermost. Danton was singularly illiterate, in disposition a ruffian, in heart a coward, but in person a giant. Barrere was, or is,
un poete de province assez mince,
a magazine contributor; Collot d'Herbois, an opera garetteer,
un faiseur de petits vers.
Such are the men, who had never been inscribed on the list of fame in France, and whose names had perished, had not something more monstrous than villainy urged them to become the Dracos of a great people.
Great and virtuous republicans
have bled on the guillotine; the names of Lavoisier, Bailly, and others, were known; but these obscure and vulgar villains, like so many Phaetons, incapable of conducting the singular power to which they aspired, have themselves perished, after spreading a conflagration throughout the world.
.' I consulted with the animated Barrere and the calm and persevering Collot d'Herbois. They conducted their massacres on a new plan. They first set fire to part of Lyons, without permitting a single massacre to be performed in the burning quarter, trusting to the justice of gunpowder. In the opposite quarters the patriots were marshalled, and while they performed their duties quietly on the inhabitants, the fugitives who escaped from the flames were compelled to throw themselves on their swords. This ingenious contrivance succeeded tolerably; not so much as they desired; and they afterwards very patriotically voted, when they perceived that they had only effected half a massacre, to raze the magnificent city of Lyons. Here you have 'hearts no bigger than pins heads;' you would have hesitated at this sublime massacre."
"And do you mean," enquired Dr. Bounce, "to destroy London in your fury? Do you mean to burn my meeting in the Old Jewry?"
"Do not disturb my reverie," continued Dragon, darting a fiery glance on Bounce. "That night the two Houses shall be the lamps of liberty to illuminate the metropolis. Those haughty phantoms of state shall vanish. We shall walk in blood; we shall see by flames. At noon London will be half in ruins, and half it's citizens be piled on each other. Happy and fraternised people! Liberty shall be the benign sunshine to gild these horrors, and you shall be free when you exult over your ruins."
"How many can you assemble?" demanded Vaurien.
"Three hundred," replied Dragon, nodding earnestly.
"Calculate, calculate!" cried Subtile, exultingly. "Not a probability; not a possibility!"
"You have deceived us," cried Vaurien; "I considered half of London was at your devotion."
"Why, shall we not all unite?" continued Dragon. "Rant has his apprentices. Do you account liberated Newgate as nothing? Is the King's Bench unfurnished with true republicans? Is Bridewell destitute of patriots? Will not half the young men of the day assemble when we once begin?"
"Calculate, calculate!" repeated Subtile.
"The Old Jewry is safe," said Dr. Bounce, rubbing his hands.
"
C'est un jeu perdu,
" said Vaurien "We must give up the massacre."
"Give up the massacre!" cried Dragon, starting from his chair, and extending his bared arm; "I will first massacre myself. Rant, you are silent."
"I never open my mouth," replied the Lecturer, "unless I can collect an audience of more than three hundred."
"None of you," cried Dragon, "have made any progress in the philosophy of politics. How few assassinated Caesar! How instantly did Massaniello effect his revolution! One night completed the conspiracy of Fiesco; and Marius and Sylla are immortal. Let us imitate the vast designs and splendid deeds of great men. In a cause like this the coward only is avaricious of blood, and the fool only is prodigal of words. A massacre in politics is an electric shock; it calls forth a flame from the coldest bodies. I have joined in glorious massacres. You must want a feeble conception of the scene:—In the silence and shade of night, when the still air is almost heard, then like a summer thunder suddenly bursting from all parts, shouts and groans, the shrieks of women, the clash of swords, the firing of pistols, the lurid skies now dark with smoke now red with flame, some fugitive and others pursuing, the people now precipitating and now precipitated, the streets kennelled with blood, the passage obstructed by corses, and the exulting eye of a true patriot glutted and tranquil amid boundless carnage: at such a moment, my friends, every conspirator is ardent with triumph, while every citizen is frozen with terror. I entered a church at Paris with but a few friends; above five hundred priests had sought an asylum; they were chaunting Te Deum; when we entered all their voices were united, but not one resisted our daggers; we gradually heard voice by voice decline, till only a solitary accent sounded in the hollow arches of the church; we left him to his fate, protected by the corses of five hundred of his slaughtered companions. Believe me, the arm of an active patriot does not tire. Let men be assembled, and I ask not a minute to a man. You have heard of the assassin of the Princess of Lamballe; I had him over, but he has been shipped off; he was a master. The rich cannot fight, and the poor will. Place a well-fed spider with one who has been fasting for ten months; the meagre one attacks, massacres, and gorges
This curious fact (verifying the singular abstinence of spiders) has been lately given by Mr. Vaillant, in his travels. He confined a spider in a glass bottle during the space of ten months; it lived, but it's belly was diminished to a point: he then introduced a spider in vigour and condition. The spider, which had undergone such a Turkish ramazan, gazed on the stranger some time, and at length, alarm ceasing with familiarity, he fraternized with him with all his claws, and the rich and corpulent spider was soon pulled to pieces by the meagre and famished fellow citizen.
. Men are spiders in this respect. Not a town in England but will rise. Will not the French fleets be safe in our ports?"
"Consider the winds, the winds," cried Vaurien. "You are as sanguine as you are sanguinary. You surely are diseased with a calenture, and imagine the seas to be green fields."
"Damn the winds!" retorted Dragon. "Did not Monsieur Volney tell us, he would manage them by this time? Are we then to postpone a salutary massacre for a N.W. or a N.E.? You then have deceived me. I depended on the winds!"
"We cannot calculate the winds yet," observed Subtile; "but there is an existing possibility of this next year."
"Assuredly, or in ten thousand years hence," said Reverberator.
"Damn your gigantic system!" exclaimed Dragon; "you talk of ten thousand years, and suffer the existing hour to pass away unnoticed, unknown, and unused. Your whole life is reduced to childhood."
"Nothing can be done with the Quakers," said Vaurien. "My project of an universal peace charmed, but my mode terrified. My system is, however, well calculated. France, by it's extent and it's populousness, can hold out a war longer than any neighbouring country; so that when other nations are half destroyed, it will retain a respectable and select number of republicans. In our calculations we look rather at the expence of powder and ball than of men; we have too many men, but are often in want of ammunition. The genius of our new tactics is to fight incessantly by land, and at sea to board the enemy, that we may relieve ourselves from the superfluity of our men. To destroy or be destroyed is the only secret of our art. A diurnal war of twenty years is therefore desirable. I flatter myself two millions of our enemies might be annually got rid of. At the close of the twenty years we should be able to establish, what hitherto has been the closet dream of the philosopher,—an universal peace."
"Your calculation is commendable," replied Subtile; "but this general peace greatly resembles the peace of a churchyard. It is a kind of peace which may be already enjoyed in a desert. My project is evidently superior. I would not slaughter, but
reason
with men. What are the causes or motives of war? Many indeed have been assigned, yet they are all resolvable into one; the proposed advantage obtainable by a war. Now, of advantages or disadvantages, no criterion exists but our conviction; it is, therefore, a matter for argument. Nations at present make war before they negotiate; they should negotiate before they make war. A war rarely produces any real benefit to either party, but is attended with inevitable evil to both. At a peace the contending nations rejoice; rather should they mourn; then only they perceive themselves placed amidst ruins and desolations. A war has been often kindled by a misterm in a treaty
This observation is verified by a recent fact. Thomas Paine complains of a verbal inaccuracy of the American treaty with England, which might serve for a substantial cause of a war. The treaty makes a concession to England to seize provisions and
other articles
in American ships. The term
other articles,
Thomas Paine affirms, includes
all other articles whatever.
He conceives the detection of as much importance as our philosopher Subtile.
: and thus also in law, which is another kind of war. I was saved at the Old Bailey, because the Attorney-general had mispelt my name
Subtile,
by
Subtle.
A letter more or less, a comma or a full stop, have frequently disturbed the peace of Europe. I am of opinion that it is necessary to convince the world, that instead of armies composed of soldiers, it should only form them of correct grammarians and expert logicians. Nations quarrel because they do not understand each other. Reason is immutable; every obstacle is removed by a lucid explanation. A treaty of war would be more desirable than a battle of war. Who could resist arguments strongly deduced, and grammar nicely correct? There would be no misunderstandings, for there would be no misterms."
"Grammer and reason!" exclaimed Rant. "I give my vote of dissent in toto! What would become of me and my works if grammer or reason were to be their criterions? Cannon and gunpowder are as necessary as pen and ink."
"I am no great admirer, I confess, of grammer and reason," said Reverberator. "I have a natural antipathy to them; for when I was an ostler at Newmarket, I ever observed that certain anomalies in the English language had the greatest effect on my horses and my associates. Some of our most energetic expressions are both unreasonable and ungrammatical."
"Mr. Subtile is, however, just in what he says respecting grammar and reason," said Dr. Bounce; "for had the writer of the first chapter of Genesis but known either, he would not have used the word
Elohim,
which plural word, Gods, has given to some a strong proof of the existence of the Trinity, by which so many honest men like myself are kept out of the hierarchy."
"I should fear," said Vaurien, turning to Subtile, "that your treaties of war, to be conducted by logic, would be as deceptive as our present treaties of peace; for it seems you can reason with equal force on both sides. You can, Mr. Reverberator informs me, prove that man is a stone, and then, that a stone is not a man."
"I can," replied Subtile, with an exulting tone. "It is the easiest operation of my logic; for it is performed by the mode of the ancient syllogism. In my great work you will find many propositions more curious and extraordinary. To our present business. I do it thus: A stone is a body; an animal is a body; man is an animal; ergo, man is a stone. Again: No stone is an animal; man is an animal; ergo, man is not a stone. Let beings, I repeat, rational and intelligent, act with rationality and intelligence, and I confidently affirm, that a sound logic would conduct the affairs of the world more forcibly than an iron world of soldiers."
"Most powerfully put!" replied Vaurien, with a smile. "I am glad, however, that you have extricated me from the horror of petrifaction. Yet if I read your great work, I become a petrifaction again. Subtile, you merit the praise of our comic poet:
Raisonner est I'emploi de toute ma maison;
Et le raisonnement en bannit la raison.
"But when shall we meet to agree?"—So saying he dissolved the committee of public safety.
CHAPTER XXX.
A final Project of the Gaul. A Character of the French Nation.
WHEN Vaurien reflected on the indeterminations of his secret committees, the imbecillity of his coadjutors, and the evident smallness of the number of true republicans in this country, he perceived that it was necessary to congregate men by other means than the projects hitherto pursued. After profound meditation, he sketched several plans equally ingenious, and at length selected one which appeared to promise an universal confusion; to delight the young enthusiast in his closet, the enlightened by honours rendered to science, the populace by the astonishment of a new and universal sensation, and the true republican by enabling such to meet for mutual support, and, like David, to "number his people."
He now sat down to compose this great work. He entitled it, "A Proclamation, in the name and authority of all Nations," and he called himself, "Agent General of all the Arts and Sciences."
It's design was an exhortation addressed to all the English, the Scotch, and the Irish, to commemorate the birth, the works, and the name of Newton. He proposed that an act of parliament should immediately decree a national edition of his works; that his majesty should annually go in state to Newton's printing press, and pay due homage to the art of printing, as the emperor of China, to reverence the art of agriculture, annually conducts the plough. That columns sacred to Newton be erected in every great town throughout the three sister kingdoms; that the name of Newton be inscribed among the princes of the royal blood; that a new order of knighthood be formed, called the Newtonian; that his majesty should bestow on "the agent for all the arts and sciences," the title of "Sir Newton Vaurien;" that a Newtonian fleet be prepared for new discoveries in every quarter of the world; and finally, that the house of the arch-philosopher, which, we do not blush to relate, is at present converted into an eating-house, and eating is full as useful as philosophy, should be raised into a magnificent temple, his discoveries to be set to Handel's music, and philosophical hymns to be daily chanted to his memory throughout these three kingdoms!
To defray the charges of this sublime project, he proposed that two guinea subscriptions be deposited at his banker's, and that any surplus of money, after the chop-house had been raised into a temple, be applied to the relief of the poor, in the manner so humanely recommended by Dean Swift
It may be necessary to inform most of my readers, that this entire project has been published in London, last year. See "De par toutes les Nations," a book to be purchased at Elmsley's. The author is Monsieur De la Blancherie, who Madame Roland mentions among her numerous train of lovers; this circumstance is creditable to his taste; whether it is to his politics I determine not. Monsieur De la Blancherie's intentions may be very innocent; all that I am informed is, that his zeal for the present project occasioned him to be threatened with the
Alien Bill
; but if he now resides in this country, it is an evidence of the justice of our government, and the simplicity of his heart. I will venture to assure this gentleman, that Newton is reverenced by Englishmen, not like
true republicans,
but
honest men
; not like
boys,
but
students:
they read his works with the same calm and slow sagacity by which the Briton formed them. A great man requires no other monument than his works; their energy reproduces itself in a few kindred minds, and he is immortal because he lives in others.
.
Such is the literal analysis of this eccentric project! a cool and rational Briton will instantly pronounce it the conception of infanity, and that no political mischief could attend any similar publication; as if great madmen were not to the full as dangerous as great villains. If Vaurien were mad, there was certainly "a method in his madness;" but Vaurien was in good health, although not in high spirits, when he composed this great work. It was a final project. Every exertion of despair, if unsuccessful, is considered as an act of lunacy, but attended with success, we then acknowledge it the sublime invention of no ordinary genius. This project ceases to be an absurdity when confronted with some of a kindred character realised in France. The removal of the bones of Voltaire and Rousseau, carried with an idolatrous pomp to the deification of a Pantheon, the national commemoration of a ferocious liberty by the exhibition of an allegorical pantomime, and the national dresses, motley and fantastical, in all forms and all colours, were assuredly not extravagancies of lunatics, but puerilites of designing men; puerile only in their appearance, invented to captivate the eye; to please the fancies of women, to awe youth into respect, and to divert the passions of the multitude into any channel of observation and converse, rather than suffer them to roll their turbid waves amidst the secreted fountain of power. The
infantes barbati,
bearded infants, are to be used as other boys, and they give them harmless mockeries, that they may not entertain themselves by seising on the dangerous instruments of men; but they will not permit the children of nature to amuse themselves with any other toys than those manufactured
à la mode Parisienne.
There was sagacity in this last attempt of Vaurien. He had hitherto promised to his patron rapid wonders, which should be followed by each other with undeviating and miraculous power. The Cardinal De Rohan did not more revere the bust of Cagliostro, whom he considered as the great
illuminé
of the age, than Lord Belfield confided in the head of Vaurien; but the Gaul in every event had proved the dupe of his own impetuous imagination. The fleets of France were dispersed, were taken, and were burnt. The Irish were loyal, and felt a British indignation at a Gallic gasconade. The true republicans in London were too few to enumerate, and too contemptible to listen to. Bold, firm, and discontented men he found, but their audible discontent proved the freedom of our country. He saw that our government felt all the infirmities of long administrations; no government can reach a stationary perfection; all were formed by human passions, and all are carried on by contending interests; every government is good which is supportable. Vaurien saw that ours could not be as pure and vigorous as in it's youth of 1688; it's sound constitution is rather debilitated by luxurious ease, than imbecile by a pithless and frigid age. He saw our press was free, our juries were holy, our judges honest; a minister may be censured and impeached, and the voice of the people can reach the throne; and the purity of our constitution had been tried in it's fountain head. Vaurien had seen with surprise, that a member, who professed himself independent, could expel, when he elevated his voice, a member who had been spawned forth from the filth of commercial corruption.
He perceived the imbecility of the chiefs of his party, who assumed the sovereignty of human opinion, and one of whom only had a just claim to genius. In vain the unfeeling, the sophistical, and the metaphysical Subtile had chosen to characterise free men, like herds of Yahoos; in vain he had, with minute malice, and hyperbolical calumny, artistly painted a sombrous and terrific picture, which he chose to term the English constitution; in vain he had created a being with a petrifaction for it's heart, ice-water for it's blood, and clock-work for it's motion, which he chose to term a man. Still more in vain was Reverberator, the noon-tide shadow of this metaphysical giant; his ten thousand years could only occasion the laugh, forgotten with the moment. When Vaurien heard him affirm the wonderful influence of mind over the exterior organization, and that life might be prolonged at will, and looked on this philosopher of eternity, he smiled to view a diminutive frame, a shrunken countenance, a man broken down in the maturity of life, whose volubility was interrupted by an asthma, whose vigour marched with tottering legs, and whose boldness trembled with shattered nerves. This Reverberator, who, conceiving that all things were acquirable by the perserverance of habit, attempted in his walk to take large strides, that he might gradually make a gigantic step; to diminish his food by slow gradations, that in time he might exist with the least, or possibly without any food; and on the same principle, straining and emaciating his mind with his body, attempted to become a man of genius, by writing comedies without taste, poetry without imagination, and politics in a rage. From Sympathy he could expect little, since although he was willing to overturn all religion, he still retained so much of the priest as to insist on becoming an archbishop of Canterbury. For the rest of the society, peace be to their manes!
Situated thus, desolate in hope, and active in despair, he published this eccentric proclamation, and resigned it to the influence of chance; chance, to which so many great characters have had recourse, and which he knew, in the most complicated and ruinous game, sometimes turns up the dice which decides our fortune.
Vaurien had ill calculated the genius of our nation. He had committed the error of his Parisian friends; they think we resemble them; that is, they consider us as men much worse than we are. They have examined some loose rotten bricks which have fallen from the British edifice, and decide on the wondrous piles by some natural casualties. In vain we are told, that all men are the same men. National characters are opposite. To moral, and not to physical causes, can be ascribed that hostility of opinions, which has, from age to age, removed, at so vast an interval, the genius of these neighbouring nations. The same winter and summer refrigerate and heat Paris and London, but not the same well-poised government and the same domestic virtues. Taste, is a criterion of national character. Voltaire never comprehended the genius of Shakespeare; Johnson never tasted the ingenuity of Voltaire. An English and French student peruse the same authors, but do not write the same sentiments. Even the severity of metaphysics in France has been rendered a vehicle of entertainment for women
Helvetius, the fashionable French metaphysician, is tolerably characterised by Whitehead, who wrote this at the time his works first appeared.
Is't not enough Helvetius
schentes
Elucidate your
waking dreams?
Tho' each who on the doctrine doats
Skips o'er the
text
to skim the
notes.
GOAT'S BEARD.
; but when Subtile followed with measured steps the paths of these airy Gauls, he could not soften his austerity with their superficial gaiety. We cannot acquire the volatilised delicacy, the lighter graces, and the susceptible and feminine imagination of the French.
Redoubtable they are in politics, for they execute rapidly what they project incessantly; insidious in their professions, subtile in their hypocrisy, and sanguinary in their power. In France they feel to inexpressible delicacy, or to inconceivable horror; their individual murders have ever been characterised by peculiar and complex barbarity
Long ere their national genius broke out in recent massacres, it was to be traced in their
private murders,
which were conducted by singular intricacy, and perpetrated with singular horror. A lady of rank, to revenge her lover confined in the Bastile, poisoned her father, her brother, and others of the family. A female rival visiting her friend when she lay-in, put arsenick in the broth. A Frenchman invited a country family, consisting of four persons, to his house, and by a most inventive plan separated them, murdered every individual, and took possession of their estate; another in England, after having murdered his landlady, during a whole week was employed in calmly dividing the corse in small portions. A number of similar authentic facts might be given. They have ever exhibited a most inventive method in their cruelties, and the revolution has only shewn the world that national character which has long been known to the philosopher.
; impetuous feelings are fugitive, and take an opposite direction; they commit murders, and then inscribe "ICI L'ON DANSE." Women in all things, they are women in vengeance. Impatient of restraint, in war, a siege discourages and repels them; in peace, an orderly constitution could neither excite their love nor their reverence. Terrible in assault, contemptible in slight; vast in their projects, imbecile in their pursuits; capable of imagining all things, incapable of performing any. They triumph for a moment, and despair through a century. Of all nations, they alone have felt that calenture of political imagination, which has aspired to an universal monarchy or an universal republic; but they have never known that British vigour of judgment, which could form for Englishmen the most perfect constitution humanity can suffer. When the French were
slaves,
us they reverenced; when
free,
us they imitated; now
licentious,
they envy and they hate. Europe they may afflict with continued revolutions; yet may their designs be frustrated; ONE revolution was sufficient for the English. Dangerous rivals, for they address themselves to the imagination; they seduce the eye and inflame the heart; they mingle prominent virtues, which conceal their radical viciousness; incapable of perseverance, but they will perish in their cause if destruction comes rapidly; they will declaim on freedom, when they exercise tyranny; revere the humanity of peace, while their hand is armed with death; they will reform prejudices, while they introduce prejudices still more calamitous; they term themselves citizens of the world, while they sly from place to place, and only leave in their career the memory of their desolations. They come to destroy or be destroyed; to fraternize with them were to embrace and to perish.
The French resemble water-melons, of which, proverbially, not one in a thousand tastes with perfection; their liquor is aqueous, and rarely delicious; while the English, like the cocoa-nut, bear a rough and hard incrustation, which protects the milk of human kindness
As this work has assumed in it's progress a deeper political cast than the author at first proposed, he conceives it necessary here to add, that he loves the cause of freedom above all other human interests. He rejoiced at the French revolution, and exulted to view that to
English principles
was that great nation indebted for it's liberation. It's fatal progress has only shewn, what some suspected, that
slaves
are not immediately prepared to become
freemen.
It is now fashionable to lay the disastrous events of this barbarous war entirely to the misconduct of ministers. The writer professes neither admiration nor esteem for a financial administration, disgraceful to England, and the avowed enemies of letters and philosophy: but thus much he will urge for any minister, that when some part must be adopted, if this part prove unfortunate, there immediately arises an opposite faction, who, with affected fagacity, trace the beneficial effects of a
contre
operation. It is evident that this sagacity is very easily acquired; and when it is noisy or cloquent, influences the unthinking mob.
.
CHAPTER XXXI.
More of Vaurien's Loves and Friendships.
IT is now time to imitate the manner of Rapin in his history, who, when he has finished a certain portion of the affairs of the state, as we have done, returns to wind up those of the church, and then on to the state, and then backwards to the church; a comfortable and unfatiguing regularity we much envy. We novelists are classed beneath our brothers who profess
authentic
history, and yet we have to feed the fire of our imagination with the most costly aromatics; but the fire of an historian is extremely small, and kept up by mere wood and coal. But as the eyes of most people are more perfect than the delicacy of their olfactory nerves, it has happened that historians are considered as sublime personages, and we as nugatory trislers. As for
our
church affairs, they are much easier to narrate than those of the other historians, a church being the very
last
object of a novelist's attention. It is with us as with many other men; to go to church for marriage is an act of despair; and when we discover that we are in an exhausted state, to save our reputation we have recourse to the parson.
Emily with secret pleasure now gazed on Vaurien. She felt the same degree of fascinated affection as Charles experienced. Placed in a similar situation, they mutually loved and hated. When Emily listened to Lady Belfield, she conceived ideas of contempt; and to Vaurien, of confirmed horror relative to Charles. Of the character of Mrs. Wilson she had received indubitable evidence. She and Charles felt alike; for the innocence and purity of both were the marked victims of the disappointed passion of her Ladyship, and the cruel malice of the Gaul. Yet it is worthy of observation, that all these complicated mischiefs were originally derived from a young man's charity for a miserable prostitute!
Emily had scarcely resided a month with Lady Belfield when she found her dependent life even more wretched than with the daughter of the loan-contractor. The beauty and dissipation of Miss Million by no means rivalled those of her Ladyship; and having been born in Pudding-lane, she was not so expert and creative in her derelictions from decency and virtue as her rival, who had been born in Grosvenor-square; and yet we shall not have recourse to
climate
to solve this problem, as many other philosophers would. She had not yet seized on the natural genius of dissipation; for it is by no means a facile labour to become the most abandoned and the most amiable of women; an experienced taste is required even in the selection of impurities.
The domestic manners of her Ladyship were viewed with a sensation of horror. A stranger to her Lord, yet residing under the same roof; when describing the embarrassments of their fortune, her high play she termed a national debt; an avowed and criminal intercourse with her favourites was called a
fleurette,
and with her claimants a stamped receipt. Her private conversations alarmed her hourly; for her Ladyship, to give an evidence of her friendship, threw off her reserve, and, like the Duessa of Spenser, discovered under the gay and brilliant dress by which she enchanted the public eye, a form of demoniac ugliness and vicious distortion.
In Vaurien Emily perceived nothing but humanity and accomplishment. He too wore a beautiful mask; but art had so emulated nature, that if the innocent Emily mistook a mask for a face, others of more experienced sagacity had been alike deceived.
Sometimes when she sat alone her thoughts wandered to Charles; his image had been placed on the altar of her heart, and we do not readily break the idols which we once have worshipped. Yet on Vaurien she looked as on her protector, and facilitated, by the desolation of her hopes and the urgency of her wants, the designs he meditated.
In the mean while Vaurien perceived the growing passion of his rival, who, in the confidence of his friendship, confessed the restless emotions of his bosom. "To love her," said Charles, "who merits not love, is a fascination. It is in vain I combat and I resolve; when her image comes before me, every thought turns to her; eternally I gaze on that intellectual phantom which takes the pure form without the impure mind of this girl." Vaurien was alike convinced of Emily's predilection for Charles; because not only he had caught her abrupt monologue, which we have given, at the moment she had discovered the character of Mrs. Wilson, but also because she made frequent enquiries concerning Charles, and mourned over his character less with the regret of displeasure, than with the grief of passion.
Charles, although he would not enter the house of Belfield, was induced, by his restless anxiety, to enquire concerning Emily of her maid. By her he discovered that she was far from being of congenial dispositions with her Ladyship, with whom she did not appear on the easiest terms; that she was melancholy, and often had been observed in tears. The maid, however, confessed that Emily seemed much delighted by the society of Vaurien, that she often played to him on her harp, that they passed hours in conversation, and that she consulted with him on every pressing occasion. The interrupted connection between her Ladyship and Emily he attributed to the spirit of rivalry, while the latter part of the information amply confirmed her character, according to the descriptions of his friend Vaurien.
His agitated spirits preyed on his frame, and his health visibly declined. In his literary pursuits he gave marks of the distraction of his mind; and some singular blunders he had committed convinced Johnson that he concealed some powerful emotion, too apparent in it's effects. He said to him one day, "My good friend, I did not know you was the absent man; but you will ruin me. You inserted, I find, in Mr. Snowden's Travels to Russia, Mr. Fervid's description of his newly-discovered island under the Line; and you have sent to the printer of the British Critic, the article on the abolishment of episcopacy, which was meant for the Critical Review, while this month the Critical contains that orthodox dissertation to prove the nature of the Trinity on the principles of common sense. The literary world is in confusion. The Rivingtons menace with the pillory; the Robinsons (who
yet
do not command the pillory) threaten to starve me out of employment. You know that all the arts and sciences, all the wit and genius of the age, are absolutely under controul of the Rivingtons and the Robinsons, brothers and booksellers
The former, publishers of the 'British Critic,' and the latter, of the 'Critical Review.' It is supposed that Messrs. Rivingtons occasionally write some of the Greek articles in the 'British Critic,' and that Messrs. Robinsons write what articles they chuse. I have no objection to
their
writing, and return thanks for many kind notices respecting myself, which I will labour to merit; but I consider them as the Anthonies and Octavius's of the republic of letters, and hope they will not treat me in the present instance as the great Cicero was treated, that is, after having been massacred and mutilated, fragments of his corse were hung up in terrorem to the public eye. I desire therefore they would be careful of the
extracts
they make, which form the fragments of an author's dead body.
." Charles desired to relinquish his pursuits, acknowledged himself absorbed in a passion fatal to his repose, that he loved an object who merited not love, and now related the history of Emily, which he had hitherto concealed.
Johnson instantly insinuated an idea, that Vaurien had been deceiving him respecting the character of Emily.
"Impossible!" replied Charles. "Would the man who with one hand has given me the means of subsistence snatch from me with the other it's only enjoyment?"
Johnson having received his promise that he would never more touch another manuscript, assured him that he would soon give him more certain evidence of the artifice of the Gaul.
He seized on the earliest opportunity of conferring with Emily, and delighted her, when she was assured that Charles was virtuous and impassioned.
"And whence," she enquired, "his shameless connection with an abject being?"
"Eccentric humanity! That being is a virtuous woman. We must learn to correct our prejudices if we would not too frequently pierce with an added sting the bleeding bosom of virtuous misfortune. What she related is true; but she could not relate all. Her modesty concealed her incontinence." Johnson related her interesting connection with Charles. When he had finished, Emily raised her eyes to heaven, exclaiming, "My father, once have you erred! Virtue, then, may assume a criminal appearance. Sister of affliction! where does she now wander? Victim of prejudice and delicacy! I could now embrace her with the confidence of virtue. I could press this woman, who was a prostitute, to my artless bosom, as an image of maternal affection. Tell Mr. Charles he is an excellent young man; if I ceased to esteem him, the cause of that cessation will convince him that I now must esteem him but the more."
"If you esteem him," said Johnson, then have I an accusation against you. Charles knows that you are attached to Vaurien, and take a visible delight in his society."
"I am only born," replied Emily, "to be deceived. Yes, Vaurien's accomplishments were eloquent, and his virtues were splendid. His character now becomes unintelligible. Is he then a villain?—Ah, my father! are you again right? My father, Sir, at his death, exhorted me to 'fly the agreeable.'—I should not then have incurred this just imputation."
"Your father," observed Johnson, counselled you wisely; the agreeable ever make an easy conquest of your sex."
When these mysteries were elucidated, Vaurien discovered them in Emily's countenance and conversation. She at length accused him of his ungenerous treatment of Charles.
Vaurien paused some minutes, then raising his hands, exclaimed with energy, —"I appeal to heaven that I am not ungenerous! This man, and no doubt this woman, even at this moment, exist on my bounty! Since he provokes the discovery I have concealed, blame me not for the confidence I have held religiously inviolate. I will shew you his bond. All this can be but a collusion of the wretched parties. As for this Charles he is no where to be found; he has suddenly disappeared."
He now shewed Emily the bond, which was for five hundred pounds; as she looked on it, mingled sensations agitated; the generous concealment of Vaurien waked a beaming pleasure in her eyes; the silence, the connections, and the flight of Charles gave a poignant reproach to her heart; her face burned with indignation; her eye softened with delight; the amiable character of Vaurien rose to her mind;—and when she turned towards Vaurien, she gazed on an animated Adonis, listened to tones that melodised her soul, and was dazzled by eyes that melted with their tenderest fires. He threw himself at her feet, confessed himself her adorer, and moaned in such despair at the treachery and envy of Charles, that Emily, in piteously listening, shed tears with the tears of Vaurien.
This was one of those moments of activity with the Gaul, in which his genius instantaneously performed what the slow conceptions of vulgar villains could not have atchieved by repeated deliberations. When he could force himself to resist the overflowing sympathy of the artless Emily, he had Charles immediately arrested, and by a weighty bribe gained over his keeper to deliver to him any letters he might write. This done, he forged a letter to Johnson, in Charles's hand-writing. Vaurien was expert in counterfeiting hand, and at Naples his ingenuity had once nearly been rewarded by having his hand severed; but he had timely decamped, preserving, with the instrument of his art all it's former skill. In this letter to Johnson Charles was made to inform him, that he was compelled to quit the kingdom in haste and trepidation; that hitherto he had played the hypocrite; that his attachment to Mrs. Wilson had been of a very ancient standing, and had proved ruinous; and finally, he desired Johnson would call on Vaurien, to thank him for the considerable sum he owed him, but which he could never repay.
Johnson read the letter with silent astonishment. He examined and re-examined. Charles did not appear, and every letter was evidently of his writing. He hastened to Vaurien and Emily; each shared in the same astonishment. Johnson, whose suspicion had not entirely deserted him, scrupulously examined the countenance of Vaurien; never man appeared more poignantly afflicted. He expressed little, and scarcely were his words audible; a tear trickled on his cheek; he wrung his hands; he looked sometimes on Emily, and sometimes on Johnson, shook his head, and groaned.
When Johnson was quitting the house, he heard of so many of Vaurien's liberalities to the domestics, that his spontaneous loan to Charles ceased to be extraordinary. William told him, that had it not been for Vaurien he should not have known what had become of his father's soul, since without his generosity it had never rested in church ground. A collection of mendicants was waiting at the door to receive Vaurien's weekly stipend. This man, thought Johnson, must be what he seems, and my national prejudices have injured him.
CHAPTER XXXII.
A vicious and great Man, capable even of Virtue.
THUS were affairs situated at the time Vaurien's Newtonian system was published. Charles in prison was as melancholy as Jeremiah, forming lamentations on modern friendships; and this Pythias conceived himself betrayed by one Damon, and deserted by another. Vaurien perceived that the compass of his fate was closing the circle it described, and that the commemoration of Newton's same seemed to be left entirely to the planetary system he had formed, and that he, who had inscribed his works on the face of heaven must regard with a smile the earthly celebrations of mortality. Some friends of Lord Belfield had informed his Lordship, that he had entertained a dangerous adventurer; that among the privileges of nobility was not accounted that of an exemption from impeachment; and, besides, they assured his Lordship, that his physicians were of opinion that a change of climate was absolutely necessary for his health. His Lordship, indeed, was of the same opinion, not in respect to his health, which he affirmed was vigorous, but to his affairs, which he acknowledged were disordered; and the voice of a creditor is as aweful as that of a physician; they both convince the patient that he can expect no quiet unless he slies from their regular attendance.
Vaurien had now fixed the bias in the sensitive heart of Emily, and he was anticipating the moment of her fall. He had consulted with Lady Belfield, and the boudoir of her ladyship had been selcted as the altar on which the virgin victim was to bleed.
The great events of great men are governed by the same capricious influence which directs the little events of little men. The web of fate is woven by the hand of fortune, and she, industrious yet indiscriminate spinster, takes the casual ball from her basket, and careless works, now with threads of gold, and now with damaged yarn. She weaves on our fate, but makes no distinction of personages. The hero frequently envies the bandit; for often the latter has found his existence to be a triumph over innocence, while the former has perished in the act of his injustice. Every thing in this world seems good or ill fortune, and the events of fortune are suspended on the slightest accidents; a plank immerges the conspirator into seas, stormy and profound as his designs, in the hour of exultation, and a pebble is slung into the head of the giant in the hour of confidence.
Lord Belfield was bitterly reproaching Vaurien for his abortive and vast designs. He had at length discovered that he was a fertile tree, luxuriant in leaves, but void of fruit; and complained much in the style which a ruined lover of alchymy would formerly have employed to some beggarly gold-maker, who had promised to roof and floor his apartments in the Mexican fashion, before the Spaniards arrived; but after the multifarious industry of years, lo! a furnace had burst with a terrible explosion, or at the very crisis, the
aurum potabile
in the crucible was whisked down by a cat's tail. Great or little causes, Vaurien averred, had hitherto frustrated his comprehensive system. While they were computing, like two Subtiles, what is evidence and what is only equivalent to evidence, intelligence was brought, that Messrs. Dragon and Rant were arrested for high-treason; a quarter of an hour afterwards Monsieur Vaurien received a note of epigrammatic conciseness from Mr. Dundas, without a scotticism or a vulgarism. It there appeared, that this hospitable country dismissed the Gaul, and in twenty-four hours were the seas to receive Vaurien. A breathless friend rushed in, to intreat his Lordship to set off instantly on his tour through Europe. "Your government (observed Vaurien) are adopting Subtile's system of punishment; it makes us all travellers. I have long been one. To me the chances and the changes of fortune have by custom an uniformity in their varieties. My chimerical head has considered Europe as the inheritance of every sublime politician in these periods of revolution; but I fear that my shadow will ever be reflected on the earth of my neighbours, and never on my own."
Vaurien was collected and intrepid, and he would have been equally so had the letter of Dundas been his Majesty's order, signed for his execution. Mithridates and Hannibal carried about them an antidote against poison; and had Vaurien been now in modern Italy, he would have continued the precaution which these great men used in ancient Italy; but in these northern climates he knew we only poisoned rats. What communicated this intrepidity to the Gaul, was a persuasion that he was born to suffer a public death. What is inevitable, to a superior mind conveys no terror. Whether the philosopher was to be hanged, guillotined, beheaded, broken on the wheel, or empaled, he knew not, the mode entirely depending on the customs of that country where he was to make his final exit.
"
Eh, bien!
(thought Vaurien, as he was filling his portmanteau) the liberty of these Britons is like a bottle of their Port, locked in a glass beaufet; they see it, and there it is—but only taste it at the option of their master, who keeps the key at his own disposal. Their liberty will not intoxicate their heads. Here the people submit to the laws—damned fools!—the laws must be submitted to the people—there should be NO LAWS at all, as Subtile says, and then, if there were no laws, every thing would be lawful.
"
Diable!
(he exclaimed, as he lifted his portmanteau) I carry nothing away from this opulent country. I play my cards ill. After all my shooting parties with that school-boy of Naples, he would have spoiled my hand-writing for the forgery on the Treasury. Spain I lost by those garlick-digesting grandees, because I desired to curtail their names. I mistook the real number of my confederates when I looked over my papers; as they appeared in writing, I imagined every single man to be at least six. I thought I had an entire family when I discovered I had only a hot-brained boy. The Prussian idiot I had persuaded, for I knew it would win him, that he was an
invisible,
an
illuminé
; I used to tread on his feet, and then entreat his pardon for my not being able to see him. All my party did the same; his Majesty was buffetted about the whole day, which quite flattered his powers of
invisibility.
The court of Berlin had been our's, but for the minister, who, while he received English money, persisted in assuring his Majesty that we were impostors, and that his palpable obesity was not of so spiritual a kind, as ever to escape the eye. Rome had been mine, but for those Cardinals who call themselves
nephews
of the Pope; but I found that they were more accurate in calling him their holy
father.
The Ottoman and the Russian empires are fair and open fields; but they are too distant for the moment. In America I have friends at work, who will burn the place if they do not succeed. There is no room for me. I do not chuse to be a hermit amid a hundred thousand acres. The Dutch are near—sanguinary and unfeeling I knew the boors were; but little imagined that those unwieldly porpoises, sleeping in stagnated water, should ever leap out to frolic with uncouth airiness to the national tune of the Marseillois hymn.
"But, the possession of Emily I have missed for a single day! A kingdom I can always discover, but a child of love and nature kingdoms may not present. Charles remains in prison. From either I derive no further benefit, and I wish no being unhappy who impedes not my political views."—He now took his pen, and addressed the following letter to Emily.
Admirable Emily!
When you receive this letter, Vaurien is on the seas. Here my projects are concluded, and the sole passion that now occupies my thoughts is my benevolence.
You have escaped, sweet bird of love! but in the depths of night the lights were placed, and the net Lady Belfield and myself have long woven was at this moment to have closed on you. Child of nature, and woman of beauty! your unsuspicious innocence was the magic that attracted, and the magic that would have precipitated your ruin. I have already proved seductive to your mind; and the mind of an accomplished woman (a mere creature made up of imagination and sensibility) when once possessed, is securing a party in the fortress, who will soon be too strong for any opposition at the outworks.
Nature has been prodigal to me, but art has even exceeded her liberalities. Had I lived in England, I had rendered you the most miserable of your sex; but since I am banished from it, I will render you the most happy.
All that I have insinuated relative to Charles and Mrs. Wilson is a foul invention of too common a kind to have cost me any difficulty. Domestic treasons are beneath me; it is only national treasons which I feel as my genius, and consider as my glory. My dear girl, in this head of mine revolve all the cabinet secrets of Europe; Monarchs I have deceived, Dukes I have ruined, and Ministers I have embarrassed. You now perceive I claim no merit in having deluded a country lad and lass.
Are you not surprised at my
gaieté de coeur?
What, you conceive me at this moment, immersed in thought, and confounded by disappointment! It is precisely at moments like this, when I am engaged in no particular project, that, free from politics, I feel myself, and act the man. With you I have ever been serious and sentimental; yet, could you have
then
listened to my conversations with her Ladyship, if your eyes had had intelligence, I assure you our faces were too frequently most impolitical; but I trusted in your boundless simplicity, as you confided in my boundless art. You have therefore no conception of my character. You have often said, we feel more than we express; but I express more than I feel. That is all art!
Il faut toujours peindre en beau,
whether in love or in politics. The humane, the sensitive, the sublime Vaurien (with such glorious titles have you proudly decorated my name) if he has any superior talent, it lies towards the sarcastic, the caustic, and the malicious.
You now imagine me to be a villain—I am so; and with my national vanity, I think I am a GREAT villain—I abhor vulgarity, even in villainy.
But do not here tear this letter with indignation. You must know all of Vaurien ere you execrate him—and then I dare you to hate him.
The moment I discovered that Johnson was ruining all my schemes, I resolved to deceive that stern and suspicious Anglican. Some little merit was in that deception, for it required my boldest exertion. When I quitted you I arrested Charles; I had lent him the money that I might command him at all times, well knowing he could never repay me. I forged the letter which Johnson received. All Charles's letters were delivered to me. The simple youth is at this moment moaning over the perfidy of modern friendships, and the coquetry of modern loves.
I am not now rich, yet I can be generous. There are human sharks, or London cannibals, who would give money for any legal instrument. A bond, you may tell Charles, is no trifle; he signed it as carelessly as if it had been a private memorandum; it is a public one. With this you receive it; take it yourself to him in the Fleet. Let him receive his freedom and his fortune from the hand he adores. I wish it had been more, for it was not money of mine. Let him possess his Emily; yet I write the words with a pang in my heart. Shew him this letter, and let it's secrets perish between you. There assure him that his Emily is a precious casket, whose gems have been unrifled, although a robber had already possessed a false key. Hundreds like yourselves I have injured; many an honest Charles I have met, but never in so soft a form, a soul more chaste, and a mind more exquisite.—Adorable Emily! you are something more than woman, and yet are all woman; something that the imagination gazes on with delight, yet awe; taste is silent when it would describe you, and in memory only you are viewed with your singular excellence.
Will either of you forget VAURIEN?
Having sealed this letter, the Gaul took his departure in a neutral vessel for Holland, and ere he reached it's shores already meditated a new government for that ruined people; his speculations received considerable enlargement from several patriots, and two or three philosophers, his
compagnons de voiage,
who with him were taking the benefit of the Alien Bill; patriots and philosophers, whom the o'erpressed stomach of England had disgorged with a violent, but a salutary effort.
FINIS.
ERRATA:
P. 109, line 5 from bottom, for
bankrupts
read
bankrupt.
P. 153, line 7, dele
in.
P. 178, line 5, for
heaven
read
heroes.
P. 191, line 12, after
not,
insert
at.
P. 236, last line, for
spiranime
read
spiramine.