The Rev. Dr. Opimian. Most of this is new to me. Yet I am not unfamiliar with pictures of the marriage of Saint Catharine, which was a favourite subject with the great Italian masters. But here is a picture which the legend, as you have related it, does not illustrate. What is this tomb, with flames bursting from it, and monks and others recoiling in dismay?

Mr. Falconer. It represents a remarkable incident at the tomb of the saint. The Empress Catharine II. was a great benefactress to the Convent of Mount Sinai, and desired to possess Saint Catharine's ring. She sent a mitred abbot as an envoy to request it from the brotherhood.

The monks, unwilling to displease the empress, replied that they did not dare to remove it themselves, but that they would open the tomb, and the envoy might take it. They opened the tomb accordingly, and the envoy looked on the hand and the ring. He approached to draw it off; but flames burst forth: he recoiled, and the tomb closed. Under such a manifestation of the saint's displeasure, the fathers could not again attempt to open it.{1}

1 Illustrations of Jerusalem and Mount Sinai (1837), p. 27.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. I should like to have seen the empress receiving the envoy's report.

Mr. Falconer. Her reception of it would depend on the degree of faith which she either actually felt, or might have thought it politic to assume. At any rate, the fathers had shown their devotion, and afforded her a good opportunity for exhibiting hers. She did not again seek to obtain the ring.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. Now, what are these three pictures in one frame, of chapels on hills?

Mr. Falconer. These chapels are here represented as they may be supposed to have been in the Catholic days of England. Three sisters, named Catharine, Martha, and Anne, built them to their namesake saints, on the summits of three hills, which took from these dedications the names they still bear. From the summit of each of these chapels the other two were visible. The sisters thought the chapels would long remain memorials of Catholic piety and sisterly love. The Reformation laid them in ruins. Nothing remains of the chapel of St. Anne but a few gray stones, built into an earthen wall, which, some half-century ago, enclosed a plantation. The hill is now better known by the memory of Charles Fox than by that of its ancient saint. The chapel of Saint Martha has been restored and applied to Protestant worship. The chapel of Saint Catharine remains a picturesque ruin, on the banks of the Wey, near Guildford.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. And that old church?

Mr. Falconer. That was the church of Saint Catharine, which was pulled down to make way for the dock by which her name is now profaned; an act of desecration which has been followed by others, and will be followed by many more, whenever it may suit the interests of commerce to commit sacrilege on consecrated ground, and dissipate the ashes of the dead; an act which, even when that of a barbarian invader, Horace thought it would be profanation even to look on.{1} Whatever may be in other respects the superiority of modern piety, we are far inferior to the ancients in reverence for temples and tombs.

1 The saint whom I have chosen frequently to my mind the most perfect ideality of physical, moral, and intellectual beauty.'

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. I am afraid I cannot gainsay that observation. But what is that stained glass window?

Mr. Falconer. It is copied on a smaller scale, and with more of Italian artistic beauty in the principal figure, from the window in West Wickham church. She is trampling on the Emperor Maxentius. You see all her emblems: the palm, which belongs to all sainted martyrs; the crown, the wheel, the fire, the sword, which belong especially to her; and the book, with which she is always represented, as herself a miracle of learning, and its chosen universal patroness in the schools of the Middle Ages.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. Unquestionably the legend is interesting. At present, your faith is simply poetical. But take care, my young friend, that you do not finish by becoming the dupe of your own mystification.

Mr. Falconer. I have no fear of that I think I can clearly distinguish devotion to ideal beauty from superstitious belief. I feel the necessity of some such devotion to fill up the void which the world, as it is, leaves in my mind. I wish to believe in the presence of some local spiritual influence; genius or nymph; linking us by a medium of something like human feeling, but more pure and more exalted, to the all-pervading, creative, and preservative spirit of the universe; but 1 cannot realise it from things as they are. Everything is too deeply tinged with sordid vulgarity. There can be no intellectual power resident in a wood, where the only inscription is not 'Genio loci,' but 'Trespassers will be prosecuted'; no Naiad in a stream that turns a cotton-mill; no Oread in a mountain dell, where a railway train deposits a cargo of vandals; no Nereids or Oceanitides along the seashore, where a coastguard is watching for smugglers. No; the intellectual life of the material world is dead. Imagination cannot replace it. But the intercession of saints still forms a link between the visible and invisible. In their symbols I can imagine their presence. Each in the recess of our own thought we may preserve their symbols from the intrusion of the world. And the saint whom I have chosen presents to my mind the most perfect ideality of physical, moral, and intellectual beauty.

1 Epod. 16, 13.



The Rev. Dr. Opimian. I cannot object to your taste. But I hope you will not be led into investing the ideality with too much of the semblance of reality. I should be sorry to find you far gone in hagiolatry. I hope you will acquiesce in Martin, keeping equally clear of Peter and Jack.

Mr. Falconer. Nothing will more effectually induce me so to acquiesce than your company, dear doctor. A tolerant liberality like yours has a very persuasive influence.

From this digression the two friends proceeded to the arrangement of their Aristophanic comedy, and divided their respective shares after the manner of Beaumont and Fletcher.



CHAPTER X

THE THUNDERSTORM

Si bene calculum ponas, ubique naufragium est. —Petronius Arbiter.

If you consider well the events of life, shipwreck is everywhere.

After luncheon the doctor thought of returning home, when a rumbling of distant thunder made him pause. They reascended the Tower, to reconnoitre the elements from the library. The windows were so arranged as to afford a panoramic view.

The thunder muttered far off, but there was neither rain nor visible lightning.

'The storm is at a great distance,' said the doctor, 'and it seems to be passing away on the verge of the sky.'

But on the opposite horizon appeared a mass of dark-blue cloud, which rose rapidly, and advanced in the direct line of the Tower. Before it rolled a lighter but still lurid volume of vapour, which curled and wreathed like eddying smoke before the denser blackness of the unbroken cloud.

Simultaneously followed the flashing of lightning, the rolling of thunder, and a deluge of rain like the bursting of a waterspout.

They sate some time in silence, watching the storm as it swept along, with wind, and driving rain, and whirling hail, bringing for a time almost the darkness of night, through which the forked lightning poured a scarcely interrupted blaze.

Suddenly came a long dazzling flash, that seemed to irradiate the entire circumference of the sky, followed instantaneously by one of those crashing peals of thunder which always indicate that something very near has been struck by the lightning.

The doctor turned round to make a remark on the awful grandeur of the effect, when he observed that his young friend had disappeared. On his return, he said he had been looking for what had been struck.

'And what was?' said the doctor.

'Nothing in the house,' said his host.

'The Vestals,' thought the doctor; 'these were all his solicitude.'

But though Mr. Falconer had looked no farther than to the safety of the seven sisters, his attention was soon drawn to a tumult below, which seemed to indicate that some serious mischief had resulted from the lightning; and the youngest of the sisters, appearing in great trepidation, informed him that one of two horses in a gentleman's carriage had been struck dead, and that a young lady in the carriage had been stunned by the passing flash, though how far she was injured by it could not be immediately known. The other horse, it appeared, had been prancing in terror, and had nearly overthrown the carriage; but he had been restrained by the vigorous arm of a young farmer, who had subsequently carried the young lady into the house, where she was now resting on a couch in the female apartments, and carefully attended by the sisters.



Mr. Falconer and the doctor descended into the hall, and were assured that the young lady was doing well, but that she would be much better for being left some time longer undisturbed. An elderly gentleman issued from the female apartments, and the doctor with some amazement recognised his friend Mr. Gryll, to whom and his niece this disaster had occurred.

The beauty of the morning had tempted them to a long drive; and they thought it would be a good opportunity to gratify at least a portion of the curiosity which the doctor's description of the Folly and its inhabitants had excited in them. They had therefore determined on taking a circuit, in which they would pass under the walls of the Tower. They were almost at the extremity of their longest radius, when the storm burst over them, and were just under the Tower when the lightning struck one of their horses. Harry Hedgerow was on his way with some farm produce when the accident occurred, and was the young farmer who had subdued the surviving horse, and carried the young lady into the house. Mr. Gryll was very panegyrical of this young man's behaviour, and the doctor, when he recognised him, shook him heartily by the hand, and told him he felt sure that he was a lad who would make his way: a remark which Harry received as a good omen: for Dorothy heard it, and looked at him with a concurrent, though silent, approbation.

The drawing-room and the chambers for visitors were between the Tower and the gynoceum, or female apartments, which were as completely separated from the rest of the house as they could have been in Athens.

After some anxious inquiries, it was reported that the young lady was sleeping, and that one or other of the sisters would keep constant watch by her. It was therefore arranged that Mr. Gryll should dine and pass the night where he was. Before dinner he had the satisfaction of hearing from medical authority that all would be well after a little time.

Harry Hedgerow had bethought him of a retired physician, who lived with a maiden sister in a cottage at no great distance from the Tower, and who often gave gratuitous advice to his poorer neighbours. If he prescribed anything beyond their means, himself or his sister was always ready to supply it. Though their own means were limited, they were the good angels of a small circumference.

The old physician confirmed the opinion already given by the sisters, that the young lady for the present only required repose; but he accepted the invitation to remain till the morning, in the event of his advice being needed.

So Miss Gryll remained with the elder sisters. Mr. Gryll and the two doctors, spiritual and temporal, sat down to dinner with Mr. Falconer, and were waited on, as usual, by the younger handmaids.



CHAPTER XI

ELECTRICAL SCIENCE—THE DEATH OF PHILEMON

Where wine is not, no mirth the banquet knows: Where wine is not, the dance all joyless goes. The man, oppressed with cares, who tastes the bowl, Shall shake the weight of sorrow from his soul.

Bacchus, on the birth of the vine, predicting its benefits: in the twelfth book of the Dionysiaca of Nonnus.

The conversation at dinner turned on the occurrences of the morning and the phenomena of electricity. The physician, who had been a traveller, related many anecdotes from his own observation: especially such as tended to show by similarity that the injury to Miss Gryll would not be of long duration. He had known, in similar cases, instances of apparent total paralysis; but he had always found it temporary. Perhaps in a day or two, but at most in a very few days, it would certainly pass away. In the meantime, he recommended absolute repose. Mr. Falconer entreated Mr. Gryll to consider the house as his own. Matters were arranged accordingly; and it was determined that the next morning a messenger should be despatched to Gryll Grange for a supply of apparel. The Rev. Dr. Opimian, who was as fond as the Squire himself of the young lady, had been grievously discomposed by the accident of the morning, and felt that he should not thoroughly recover his serenity till he could again see her in her proper character, the light and life of her society. He quoted Homer, AEschylus, Aristotle, Plutarch, Athenaeus, Horace, Persius, and Pliny, to show that all which is practically worth knowing on the subject of electricity had been known to the ancients. The electric telegraph he held to be a nuisance, as disarranging chronology, and giving only the heads of a chapter, of which the details lost their interest before they arrived, the heads of another chapter having intervened to destroy it. Then, what an amount of misery it inflicted, when, merely saying that there had been a great battle, and that thousands had been wounded or killed, it maintained an agony of suspense in all who had friends on the field, till the ordinary channels of intelligence brought the names of the suflferers. No Sicilian tyrant had invented such an engine of cruelty. This declamation against a supposed triumph of modern science, which was listened to with some surprise by the physician, and with great respect by his other auditors, having somewhat soothed his troubled spirit, in conjunction with the physician's assurance, he propitiated his Genius by copious libations of claret, pronouncing high panegyrics on the specimen before him, and interspersing quotations in praise of wine as the one great panacea for the cares of this world.

A week passed away, and the convalescent had made good progress. Mr. Falconer had not yet seen his fair guest. Six of the sisters, one remaining with Miss Gryll, performed every evening, at the earnest request of Mr. Gryll, a great variety of music, but always ending with the hymn to their master's saint. The old physician came once or twice, and stayed the night. The Reverend Doctor Opimian went home for his Sunday duties, but took too much interest in the fair Morgana not to return as soon as he could to the Tower. Arriving one morning in the first division of the day, and ascending to the library, he found his young friend writing. He asked him if he were working on the Aristophanic comedy. Mr. Falconer said he got on best with that in the doctor's company. 'But I have been writing,' he said, 'on something connected with the Athenian drama. I have been writing a ballad on the death of Philemon, as told by Suidas and Apuleius.' The doctor expressed a wish to hear it, and Mr. Falconer read it to him.

THE DEATH OF PHILEMON{1}

1 Suidas: sub voce (Greek), Apuleius: Florid, 16.

Closed was Philemon's hundredth year: The theatre was thronged to hear His last completed play: In the mid scene, a sudden rain Dispersed the crowd—to meet again On the succeeding day.

He sought his home, and slept, and dreamed. Nine maidens through his door, it seemed, Passed to the public street. He asked them, 'Why they left his home?' They said, 'A guest will hither come We must not stay to meet.'

He called his boy with morning light, Told him the vision of the night, And bade his play be brought. His finished page again he scanned, Resting his head upon his hand, Absorbed in studious thought He knew not what the dream foreshowed: That nought divine may hold abode Where death's dark shade is felt: And therefore were the Muses nine Leaving the old poetic shrine, Where they so long had dwelt.

II

The theatre was thronged once more, More thickly than the day before, To hear the half-heard song. The day wore on. Impatience came. They called upon Philemon's name, With murmurs loud and long.

Some sought at length his studious cell, And to the stage returned, to tell What thousands strove to ask. 'The poet we have been to seek Sate with his hand upon his cheek, As pondering o'er his task.

'We spoke. He made us no reply. We reverentially drew nigh, And twice our errand told. He answered not We drew more near The awful mystery then was clear: We found him stiff and cold.

'Struck by so fair a death, we stood Awhile in sad admiring mood: Then hastened back, to say That he, the praised and loved of all, Is deaf for ever to your call: That on this self-same day, 'When here presented should have been The close of his fictitious scene, His life's true scene was o'er: We seemed, in solemn silence awed, To hear the "Farewell and applaud," Which he may speak no more.

'Of tears the rain gave prophecy: The nuptial dance of comedy Yields to the funeral train. Assemble where his pyre must burn: Honour his ashes in their urn: And on another day return To hear his songs again.'

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. A beautiful fiction.

Mr. Falconer. If it be a fiction. The supernatural is confined to the dream. All the rest is probable; and I am willing to think it true, dream and all.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. You are determined to connect the immaterial with the material world, as far as you can.

Mr. Falconer. I like the immaterial world. I like to live among thoughts and images of the past and the possible, and even of the impossible, now and then.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. Certainly, there is much in the material world to displease sensitive and imaginative minds; but I do not know any one who has less cause to complain of it than you have. You are surrounded with all possible comforts, and with all the elements of beauty, and of intellectual enjoyment.

Mr. Falconer. It is not my own world that I complain of.

It is the world on which I look 'from the loopholes of retreat.' I cannot sit here, like one of the Gods of Epicurus, who, as Cicero says, was satisfied with thinking, through all eternity, 'how comfortable he was.'{1} I look with feelings of intense pain on the mass of poverty and crime; of unhealthy, unavailing, unremunerated toil, blighting childhood in its blossom, and womanhood in its prime; of 'all the oppressions that are done under the sun.'

1 Comprehende igitur animo, et propone ante oculos, deura nihil aliud in omni aeternitate, nisi, Mihi pulchre est, et, Ego beatus sum, cogitant em.—Cicero: De natura deorum, 1. i. c. 41.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. I feel with you on all these points; but there is much good in the world; more good than evil, I have always maintained.

They would have gone off in a discussion on this point, but the French cook warned them to luncheon.

In the evening the young lady was sufficiently recovered to join the little party in the drawing-room, which consisted, as before, of Mr. Falconer, Mr. Gryll, Doctor Anodyne, and the Reverend Doctor Opimian. Miss Gryll was introduced to Mr. Falconer. She was full of grateful encomium for the kind attention of the sisters, and expressed an earnest desire to hear their music. The wish was readily complied with. She heard them with great pleasure, and, though not yet equal to much exertion, she could not yet refrain from joining in with them in their hymn to Saint Catharine.

She accompanied them when they retired.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. I presume those Latin words are genuine old monastic verses: they have all the air of it.

Mr. Falconer. They are so, and they are adapted to old music.

Dr. Anodyne. There is something in this hymn very solemn and impressive. In an age like ours, in which music and pictures are the predominant tastes, I do not wonder that the forms of the old Catholic worship are received with increasing favour. There is a sort of adhesion to the old religion, which results less from faith than from a certain feeling of poetry; it finds its disciples; but it is of modern growth; and has very essential differences from what it outwardly resembles.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. It is, as I have frequently had occasion to remark, and as my young friend here will readily admit, one of the many forms of the love of ideal beauty, which, without being in itself religion, exerts on vivid imaginations an influence that is very often like it.

Mr. Falconer. An orthodox English Churchman was the poet who sang to the Virgin:

'Thy image fells to earth. Yet some, I ween, Not unforgiven the suppliant knee might bend, As to a visible Power, in which did blend All that was mixed and reconciled in thee, Of mother's love with maiden purity, Of high with low, celestial with terrene.'{1}

1 Wordsworth: Ecclesiastical Sonnets, i 21.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian.—Well, my young friend, the love of ideal beauty has exercised none but a benignant influence on you, whatever degree of orthodoxy there may be in your view of it.

The little party separated for the night.



CHAPTER XII

THE FOREST DELL—THE POWER OF LOVE—THE LOTTERY OF MARRIAGE

(Greek passage) Philetaerus: Cynagis.

I pray you, what can mortal man do better Than live his daily life as pleasantly As daily means avail him? Life's frail tenure Warns not to trust to-morrow.

The next day Mr. Falconer was perfectly certain that Miss Gryll was not yet well enough to be removed. No one was anxious to refute the proposition; they were all so well satisfied with,"the place and the company they were in, that they felt, the young lady included, a decided unwillingness to go. That day Miss Gryll came to dinner, and the next day she came to breakfast, and in the evening she joined in the music, and, in short, she was once more altogether herself; but Mr. Falconer continued to insist that the journey home would be too much for her. When this excuse failed, he still entreated his new friends to remain; and so passed several days. At length Mr. Gryll found he must resolve on departing, especially as the time had arrived when he expected some visitors. He urgently invited Mr. Falconer to visit him in return. The invitation was cordially accepted, and in the meantime considerable progress had been made in the Aristophanic comedy. Mr. Falconer, after the departure of his visitors, went up into his library. He took down oner book after another, but they did not fix his attention as they used to do; he turned over the leaves of Homer, and read some passages about Circe; then took down Bojardo, and read of Morgana and Falerina and Dragontina; then took down Tasso and read of Armida. He would not look at Ariosto's Alcina, because her change into an old woman destroyed all the charm of the previous picture. He dwelt on the enchantress who remained in unaltered beauty. But even this he did only by fits and starts, and found himself continually wandering away towards a more enchanting reality.

He descended to his bedroom, and meditated on ideal beauty in the portraits of Saint Catharine. But he could not help thinking that the ideal might be real, at least in one instance, and he wandered down into his drawing-room. There he sat absorbed in thought, till his two young handmaids appeared with his luncheon. He smiled when he saw them, and sat down to the table as if nothing had disturbed him. Then, taking his stick and his dog, he walked out into the forest.

There was within moderate distance a deep dell, in the bottom of which ran a rivulet, very small in dry weather, but in heavy rains becoming a torrent, which had worn itself a high-banked channel, winding in fantastic curves from side to side of its narrow boundaries. Above this channel old forest trees rose to a great height on both sides of the dell The slope every here and there was broken by promontories which during centuries the fall of the softer portions of the soil had formed; and on these promontories were natural platforms, covered, as they were more or less accessible to the sun, with grass and moss and fern and foxglove, and every variety of forest vegetation. These platforms were favourite resorts of deer, which imparted to the wild scene its own peculiar life.

This was a scene in which, but for the deeper and deeper wear of the floods and the bolder falls of the promontories, time had made little change. The eyes of the twelfth century had seen it much as it appeared to those of the nineteenth. The ghosts of departed ages might seem to pass through it in succession, with all their changes of faith and purpose and manners and costume. To a man who loved to dwell in the past, there could not be a more congenial scene. One old oak stood in the centre of one of the green platforms, and a portion of its gnarled roots presented a convenient seat. Mr. Falconer had frequently passed a day here when alone. The deer had become too accustomed to him to fly at his approach, and the dog had been too well disciplined to molest them. There he had sat for hours at a time, reading his favourite poets.



There was no great poet with some of whose scenes this scenery did not harmonise. The deep woods that surrounded the dwelling of Circe, the obscure sylvan valley in which Dante met Virgil, the forest depths through which Angelica fled, the enchanted wood in which Rinaldo met the semblance of Armida, the forest-brook by which Jaques moralised over the wounded deer, were all reproduced in this single spot, and fancy peopled it at pleasure with nymphs and genii, fauns and satyrs, knights and ladies, friars, foresters, hunters, and huntress maids, till the whole diurnal world seemed to pass away like a vision. There, for him, Matilda had gathered flowers on the opposite bank;{1} Laura had risen from one of the little pools—resting-places of the stream—to seat herself in the shade;{2} Rosalind and Maid Marian had peeped forth from their alleys green; all different in form, in feature, and in apparel; but now they were all one; each, as she rose in imagination, presented herself under the aspect of the newly-known Morgana.

1 Dante: Purgatorio, c. 28.

2 Or in forma di Ninfa o d' altra Diva, Che del piu chiaro fondo di Sorga esca, E pongasi a seder in sulla riva. PETRARCA: Sonetto 240.

Finding his old imaginations thus disturbed, he arose and walked home. He dined alone, drank a bottle of Madeira, as if it had been so much water, summoned the seven sisters to the drawing-room earlier and detained them later than usual, till their music and its old associations had restored him to something like tranquillity. He had always placed the summum bonum of life in tranquillity, and not in excitement. He felt that his path was now crossed by a disturbing force, and determined to use his utmost exertions to avoid exposing himself again to its influence.

In this mood the Reverend Doctor Opimian found him one morning in the library reading. He sprang up to meet the Divine, exclaiming, 'Ah, dear doctor, I am very glad to see you. Have you any special favourite among the Odes of Pindar?'

The doctor thought this an odd question for the first salutation. He had expected that the first inquiry would have been for the fair convalescent. He divined that the evasion of this subject was the result of an inward struggle. He thought it would be best to fall in with the mood of the questioner, and said, 'Charles Fox's favourite is said to have been the second Olympic; I am not sure that there is, or can be, anything better. What say you?'

Mr. Falconer. It may be that something in it touches a peculiar tone of feeling; but to me there is nothing like the ninth Pythian.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. I can understand your fancy for that ode. You see an image of ideal beauty in the nymph Cyrene.

Mr. Falconer. 'Hidden are the keys of wise persuasion of sacred endearments,'{1} seems a strange phrase in English; but in Greek the words invest a charming sentiment with singular grace. Fit words to words as closely as we may, the difference of the mind which utters them fails to reproduce the true semblance of the thought. The difference of the effect produced, as in this instance, by exactly corresponding words, can only be traced to the essential difference of the Greek and the English mind.

1 (Greek passage)—Pindar?

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. And indeed, as with the words, so with the image. We are charmed by Cyrene wrestling with the lion; but we should scarcely choose an English girl so doing as the type of ideal beauty.

Mr. Falconer. We must draw the image of Cyrene, not from an English girl but from a Greek statue.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. Unless a man is in love, and then to him all images of beauty take something of the form and features of his mistress.

Mr. Falconer. That is to say, a man in love sees everything through a false medium. It must be a dreadful calamity to be in love.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. Surely not when all goes well with it.

Mr. Falconer. To me it would be the worst of all mischances.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. Every man must be subject to Love once in his life. It is useless to contend with him. 'Love,' says Sophocles, 'is unconquered in battle, and keeps his watch in the soft cheeks of beauty.'{1}

Mr. Falconer. I am afraid, doctor, the Morgana to whom you have introduced me is a veritable enchantress. You find me here, determined to avoid the spell.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. Pardon me. You were introduced, as Jupiter was to Semele, by thunder and lightning, which was, happily, not quite as fatal.

Mr. Falconer. I must guard against its being as fatal in a different sense; otherwise I may be myself the triste bidental.{2} I have aimed at living, like an ancient Epicurean, a life of tranquillity. I had thought myself armed with triple brass against the folds of a three-formed Chimaera. What with classical studies, and rural walks, and a domestic society peculiarly my own, I led what I considered the perfection of life: 'days so like each other they could not be remembered.' {3}

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. It is vain to make schemes of life. The world will have its slaves, and so will Love.

Say, if you can, in what you cannot change. For such the mind of man, as is the day The Sire of Gods and men brings over him.{4}

1 (Greek passage)—Antigone.

2 Bidental is usually a place struck by lightning: thence enclosed, and the soil forbidden to be moved. Persius uses it for a person so killed.

3 Wordsworth: The Brothers.

4 Quid placet aut odio est, quod non mutabile credas?

(Greek phrase) These two quotations form the motto of Knight's Principles of Taste.

Mr. Falconer. I presume, doctor, from the complacency with which you speak of Love, you have had no cause to complain of him.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. Quite the contrary. I have been an exception to the rule that 'The course of true love never did run smooth.' Nothing could run more smooth than mine. I was in love. I proposed. I was accepted. No crossings before. No bickerings after. I drew a prize in the lottery of marriage.

Mr. Falconer. It strikes me, doctor, that the lady may say as much.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. I have made it my study to give her cause to say so. And I have found my reward.

Mr. Falconer. Still, yours is an exceptional case. For, as far as my reading and limited observation have shown me, there are few happy marriages. It has been said by an old comic poet that 'a man who brings a wife into his house, brings into it with her either a good or an evil genius.'{1} And I may add from Juvenal: 'The Gods only know which it will be.'{2}

1 (Greek passage)

Theodectes: apud Stobaeum. 2 Conjugium petimus partumque uxoris, at illis Notum, qui pueri, qualisque futura sit uxor. JUV. Sat. x. 352-3.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. Well, the time advances for the rehearsals of our Aristophanic comedy, and, independently of your promise to visit the Grange, and their earnest desire to see you, you ought to be there to assist in the preliminary arrangements.

Mr. Falconer. Before you came, I had determined not to go; for, to tell you the truth, I am afraid of falling in love.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. It is not such a fearful matter. Many have been the better for it. Many have been cured of it. It is one of those disorders which every one must have once.

Mr. Falconer. The later the better.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. No; the later the worse, if it falls into a season when it cannot be reciprocated.

Mr. Falconer. That is just the season for it. If I were sure that it would not be reciprocated, I think I should be content to have gone through it.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. Do you think it would be reciprocated?

Mr. Falconer. Oh no. I only think it possible that it might be.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. Well, there is a gentleman doing his best to bring about your wish.

Mr. Falconer. Indeed! Who?

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. A visitor at the Grange, who seems in great favour with both uncle and niece—Lord Curryfin.

Mr. Falconer. Lord Curryfin! I never heard you speak of him, but as a person to be laughed at.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. That was my impression of him before I knew him. Barring his absurdities, in the way of lecturing on fish, and of shining in absurd company in the science of pantopragmatics, he has very much to recommend him: and I discover in him one quality which is invaluable. He does all he can to make himself agreeable to all about him, and he has great tact in seeing how to do it. In any intimate relation of life—with a reasonable wife, for instance—he would be the pink of a good husband.

The doctor was playing, not altogether unconsciously, the part of an innocent Iago. He only said what was true, and he said it with a good purpose; for, with all his repeated resolutions against match-making, he could not dismiss from his mind the wish to see his young friends come together; and he would not have liked to see Lord Curryfin carry off the prize through Mr. Falconer's neglect of his opportunity. Jealousy being the test of love, he thought a spice of it might be not unseasonably thrown in.

Mr. Falconer. Notwithstanding your example, doctor, love is to be avoided, because marriage is at best a dangerous experiment. The experience of all time demonstrates that it is seldom a happy condition. Jupiter and Juno to begin with; Venus and Vulcan. Fictions, to be sure, but they show Homer's view of the conjugal state. Agamemnon in the shades, though he congratulates Ulysses on his good fortune in having an excellent wife, advises him not to trust even her too far. Come down to realities, even to the masters of the wise: Socrates with Xantippe; Euripides with his two wives, who made him a woman-hater; Cicero, who was divorced; Marcus Aurelius.—Travel downwards: Dante, who, when he left Florence, left his wife behind him; Milton, whose first wife ran away from him; Shakespeare, who scarcely shines in the light of a happy husband. And if such be the lot of the lights of the world, what can humbler men expect?

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. You have given two or three heads of a catalogue which, I admit, might be largely extended. You can never read a history, you can never open a newspaper, without seeing some example of unhappy marriage. But the conspicuous are not the frequent. In the quiet path of every-day life—the secretum iter et fallentis semita vita—I could show you many couples who are really comforts and helpmates to each other. Then, above all things, children. The great blessing of old age, the one that never fails, if all else fail, is a daughter.

Mr. Falconer. All daughters are not good.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. Most are. Of all relations in life, it is the least disappointing: where parents do not so treat their daughters as to alienate their affections, which unhappily many do.

Mr. Falconer. You do not say so much for sons.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. Young men are ambitious, self-willed, self-indulgent, easily corrupted by bad example, of which there is always too much. I cannot say much for those of the present day, though it is not absolutely destitute of good specimens.

Mr. Falconer. You know what Paterculus says of those of his own day.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. 'The faith of wives towards the proscribed was great; of freed-men, middling; of slaves, some; of sons, none.'{1} So he says; but there were some: for example, of the sons of Marcus Oppius and Quintus Cicero.{2} You may observe, by the way, he gives the first place to the wives.

1 Id tamen nolandum est, fuisse in proscriptos uxorum fidem summam, libcriorum niediam, servorum ahquam, filiorum nullam.—Paterculus, 1. ii. c. 67.

2 A compendious and comprehensive account of these and other instances of filial piety, in the proscription of the second triumvirate, will be found in Freinihemius; Suppununta Liviania, cxx. 77-80.

Mr. Falconer. Well, that is a lottery in which every man must take his chance. But my scheme of life was perfect.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. Perhaps there is something to be said against condemning seven young women to celibacy.

Mr. Falconer. But if such were their choice—

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. No doubt there are many reasons why they should prefer the condition they are placed in to the ordinary chances of marriage: but, after all, to be married is the natural aspiration of a young woman, and if favourable conditions presented themselves—

Mr. Falconer. Conditions suitable to their education are scarcely compatible with their social position.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. They have been educated to be both useful and ornamental. The ornamental need not, and in their case certainly does not, damage the useful, which in itself would procure them suitable matches.

Mr. Falconer shook his head, and, after a brief pause, poured out a volume of quotations, demonstrating the general unhappiness of marriage. The doctor responded by as many, demonstrating the contrary. He paused to take breath. Both laughed heartily. But the result of the discussion and the laughter was, that Mr. Falconer was curious to see Lord Curryfin, and would therefore go to Gryll Grange.



CHAPTER XIII

LORD CURRYFIN—SIBERIAN DINNERS—SOCIAL MONOTONY

Ille potens sui laetusque deget, cui licet in diem dixisse, Vixi: eras vel atra nube polum pater occupato, vel sole puro: non tamen irritum quodcumque retro est, efficiet; neque diffinget infectumque reddet, quod fugiens semel hora vexit. —Hor. Carm. iii. 29.

Happy the man, and happy he alone, He who can call to-day his own: He who, secure within, can say, To-morrow do thy worst, for I have lived to-day. Be storm, or calm, or rain, or shine, The joys I have possessed in spite of fate are mine. Not heaven itself upon the past has power, But what has been has been, and I have had my hour. —Dryden.

A large party was assembled at the Grange. Among them were some of the young ladies who were to form the chorus; one elderly spinster, Miss Ilex, who passed more than half her life in visits, and was everywhere welcome, being always good-humoured, agreeable in conversation, having much knowledge of society, good sense in matters of conduct, good taste and knowledge in music; sound judgment in dress, which alone sufficed to make her valuable to young ladies; a fair amount of reading, old and new; and on most subjects an opinion of her own, for which she had always something to say; Mr. MacBorrowdale, an old friend of Mr. Gryll, a gentleman who comprised in himself all that Scotland had ever been supposed to possess of mental, moral, and political philosophy; 'And yet he bore it not about'; not 'as being loth to wear it out,'{1} but because he held that there was a time for all things, and that dinner was the time for joviality, and not for argument; Mr. Minim, the amateur composer of the music for the comedy; Mr. Pallet, the amateur painter of the scenery; and last, not least, the newly-made acquaintance, Lord Curryfin.

1 We grant, although he had much wit, H. was very shy of using it, As being loth to wear it out; And therefore bore it not about, Except on holidays or so, As men their best apparel do. Hudibras.

Lord Curryfin was a man on the younger side of thirty, with a good person, handsome features, a powerful voice, and an agreeable delivery. He had a strong memory, much power of application, and a facility of learning rapidly whatever he turned his mind to. But with all this, he valued what he learned less for the pleasure which he derived from the acquisition, than from the effect which it enabled him to produce on others. He liked to shine in conversation, and there was scarcely a subject which could be mooted in any society, on which his multifarious attainments did not qualify him to say something. He was readily taken by novelty in doctrine, and followed a new lead with great pertinacity; and in this way he had been caught by the science of pantopragmatics, and firmly believed for a time that a scientific organisation for teaching everybody everything would cure all the evils of society. But being one of those 'over sharp wits whose edges are very soon turned,' he did not adhere to any opinion with sufficient earnestness to be on any occasion betrayed into intemperance in maintaining it. So far from this, if he found any unfortunate opinion in a hopeless minority of the company he happened to be in, he was often chivalrous enough to come to its aid, and see what could be said for it. When lecturing became a mania, he had taken to lecturing; and looking about for an unoccupied subject, he had lighted on the natural history of fish, in which he soon became sufficiently proficient to amuse the ladies, and astonish the fishermen in any seaside place of fashionable resort. Here he always arranged his lecture-room, so that the gentility of his audience could sit on a platform, and the natives in a gallery above, and that thus the fishy and tarry odours which the latter were most likely to bring with them might ascend into the upper air, and not mingle with the more delicate fragrances that surrounded the select company below. He took a summer tour to several watering-places, and was thoroughly satisfied with his success. The fishermen at first did not take cordially to him; but their wives attended from curiosity, and brought their husbands with them on nights not favourable to fishing; and by degrees he won on their attention, and they took pleasure in hearing him, though they learned nothing from him that was of any use in their trade. But he seemed to exalt their art in the eyes of themselves and others, and he told them some pleasant anecdotes of strange fish, and of perilous adventures of some of their own craft, which led in due time to the crowding of his gallery. The ladies went, as they always will go, to lectures, where they fancy they learn something, whether they learn anything or not; and on these occasions, not merely to hear the lecturer, but to be seen by him. To them, however attractive the lecture might have been, the lecturer was more so. He was an irresistible temptation to matrons with marriageable daughters, and wherever he sojourned he was overwhelmed with invitations. It was a contest who should have him to dinner, and in the simplicity of his heart, he ascribed to admiration of his science and eloquence all the courtesies and compliments with which he was everywhere received. He did not like to receive unreturned favours, and never left a place in which he had accepted many invitations, without giving in return a ball and supper on a scale of great munificence; which filled up the measure of his popularity, and left on all his guests a very enduring impression of a desire to see him again.

So his time passed pleasantly, with a heart untouched by either love or care, till he fell in at a dinner party with the Reverend Doctor Opimian. The doctor spoke of Gryll Grange and the Aristophanic comedy which was to be produced at Christmas, and Lord Curryfin, with his usual desire to have a finger in every pie, expressed an earnest wish to be introduced to the squire. This was no difficult matter. The doctor had quickly brought it about, and Lord Curryfin had gone over in the doctor's company to pass a few days at the Grange. Here, in a very short time, he had made himself completely at home; and had taken on himself the office of architect, to superintend the construction of the theatre, receiving with due deference instructions on the subject from the Reverend Doctor Opimian.

Sufficient progress had been made in the comedy for the painter and musician to begin work on their respective portions; and Lord Curryfin, whose heart was in his work, passed whole mornings in indefatigable attention to the progress of the building. It was near the house, and was to be approached by a covered way. It was a miniature of the Athenian theatre, from which it differed in having a roof, but it resembled it in the arrangements of the stage and orchestra, and in the graduated series of semicircular seats for the audience.

When dinner was announced, Mr. Gryll took in Miss Ilex. Miss Gryll, of course, took the arm of Lord Curryfin. Mr. Falconer took in one of the young ladies, and placed her on the left hand of the host. The Reverend Dr. Opimian took in another, and was consequently seated between her and Miss Ilex. Mr. Falconer was thus as far removed as possible from the young lady of the house, and was consequently, though he struggled as much as possible against it, frequently distrait, unconsciously and unwillingly observing Miss Gryll and Lord Curryfin, and making occasional observations very wide of the mark to the fair damsels on his right and left, who set him down in their minds for a very odd young man. The soup and fish were discussed in comparative silence; the entrees not much otherwise; but suddenly a jubilant expression from Mr. MacBorrowdale hailed the disclosure of a large sirloin of beef which figured before Mr. Gryll.

Mr. MacBorrowdale. You are a man of taste, Mr. Gryll. That is a handsomer ornament of a dinner-table than clusters of nosegays, and all sorts of uneatable decorations. I detest and abominate the idea of a Siberian dinner, where you just look on fiddle-faddles, while your dinner is behind a screen, and you are served with rations like a pauper.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. I quite agree with Mr. MacBorrowdale. I like to see my dinner. And herein I rejoice to have Addison on my side; for I remember a paper, in which he objects to having roast beef placed on a sideboard. Even in his day it had been displaced to make way for some incomprehensible French dishes, among which he could find nothing to eat.{1} I do not know what he would have said to its being placed altogether out of sight. Still there is something to be said on the other side. There is hardly one gentleman in twenty who knows how to carve; and as to ladies, though they did know once on a time, they do not now. What can be more pitiable than the right-hand man of the lady of the house, awkward enough in himself, with the dish twisted round to him in the most awkward possible position, digging in unutterable mortification for a joint which he cannot find, and wishing the unanatomisable volaille behind a Russian screen with the footmen?

1 I was now in great hunger and confusion, when I thought I smelled the agreeable savour of roast beef; but could not tell from which dish it arose, though I did not question but it lay disguised in one of them. Upon turning my head I saw a noble sirloin on the side-table, smoking in the most delicious manner. I bad recourse to it more than once, and could not see without some indignation that substantial English dish banished in so ignominious a manner, to make way for French kickshaws.—Taller. No. 148.

Mr. MacBorrowdale. I still like to see the volaille. It might be put on table with its joints divided.

Mr. Gryll. As that turkey-poult is, Mr. MacBorrowdale; which gives my niece no trouble; but the precaution is not necessary with such a right-hand man as Lord Curryfin, who carves to perfection.

Mr. MacBorrowdale. Your arrangements are perfect. At the last of these Siberian dinners at which I had the misfortune to be present, I had offered me, for two of my rations, the tail of a mullet and the drumstick of a fowl. Men who carve behind screens ought to pass a competitive examination before a jury of gastronomers. Men who carve at a table are drilled by degrees into something like tolerable operators by the mere shame of the public process.

Mr. Gryll. I will guarantee you against a Siberian dinner, whenever you dine with me.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. Mr. Gryll is a true conservative in dining.

Mr. Gryll. A true conservative, I hope. Not what a soi-disant conservative is practically: a man who sails under national colours, hauls them down, and hoists the enemy's, like old customs. I like a glass of wine with a friend. What say you, doctor? Mr. MacBorrowdale will join us?

Mr. MacBorrowdale. Most willingly.

Miss Gryll. My uncle and the doctor have got as usual into a discussion, to the great amusement of the old lady who sits between them and says nothing.

Lord Curryfin, Perhaps their discussion is too recondite for her.

Miss Gryll. No; they never talk before ladies of any subject in which ladies cannot join. And she has plenty to say for herself when she pleases. But when conversation pleases her, she likes to listen and be silent. It strikes me, by a few words that float this way, that they are discussing the Art of Dining. She ought to be a proficient in it, for she lives much in the world, and has met as many persons whom she is equally willing either to meet to-morrow, or never to meet again, as any regular dineur en ville. And indeed that is the price that must be paid for society. Whatever difference of character may lie under the surface, the persons you meet in its circles are externally others yet the same: the same dress, the same manners, the same tastes and opinions, real or assumed. Strongly defined characteristic differences are so few, and artificial general resemblances so many, that in every party you may always make out the same theatrical company. It is like the flowing of a river: it is always different water, but you do not see the difference.

Lord Curryfin. For my part I do not like these monotonous exteriors. I like visible character. Your uncle and Mr. MacBorrowdale are characters. Then the Reverend Dr. Opimian. He is not a man made to pattern. He is simple-minded, learned, tolerant, and the quintessence of bonhomie. The young gentleman who arrived to-day, the Hermit of the Folly, is evidently a character. I flatter myself, I am a character (laughing).

Miss Gryll (laughing). Indeed you are, or rather many characters in one. I never knew a man of such infinite variety. You seem always to present yourself in the aspect in which those you are with would best wish to see you.

There was some ambiguity in the compliment; but Lord Curryfin took it as implying that his aspect in all its variety was agreeable to the young lady. He did not then dream of a rival in the Hermit of the Folly.



CHAPTER XIV

MUSIC AND PAINTING—JACK OF DOVER

(Greek passage) Anacreon.

I love not him, who o'er the wine-cup's flow Talks but of war, and strife, and scenes of woe: But him who can the Muses' gifts employ, To mingle love and song with festal joy.

The dinner and dessert passed away. The ladies retired to the drawing-room: the gentlemen discoursed over their wine. Mr. MacBorrowdale pronounced a eulogium on the port, which was cordially echoed by the divine in regard to the claret.

Mr. Falconer. Doctor, your tastes and sympathies are very much with the Greeks; but I doubt if you would have liked their wine. Condiments of sea-water and turpentine must have given it an odd flavour; and mixing water with it, in the proportion of three to one, must have reduced the strength of merely fermented liquor to something like the smallest ale of Christophero Sly.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. I must say I should not like to put either salt water or turpentine into this claret: they would not improve its bouquet; nor to dilute it with any portion of water: it has to my mind, as it is, just the strength it ought to have, and no more. But the Greek taste was so exquisite in all matters in which we can bring it to the test, as to justify a strong presumption that in matters in which we cannot test it, it was equally correct. Salt water and turpentine do not suit our wine: it does not follow that theirs had not in it some basis of contrast, which may have made them pleasant in combination. And it was only a few of their wines that were so treated.

Lord Curryfin. Then it could not have been much like their drink of the present day. 'My master cannot be right in his mind,' said Lord Byron's man Fletcher, 'or he would not have left Italy, where we had everything, to go to a country of savages; there is nothing to eat in Greece but tough billy-goats, or to drink but spirits of turpentine.'{1}

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. There is an ambiguous present, which somewhat perplexes me, in an epigram of Rhianus, 'Here is a vessel of half-wine, half-turpentine, and a singularly lean specimen of kid: the sender, Hippocrates, is worthy of all praise.'{2} Perhaps this was a doctor's present to a patient. Alcaeus, Anacreon, and Nonnus could not have sung as they did under the inspiration of spirit of turpentine. We learn from Athenseus, and Pliny, and the old comedians, that the Greeks had a vast variety of wine, enough to suit every variety of taste. I infer the unknown from the known. We know little of their music. I have no doubt it was as excellent in its kind as their sculpture.

1 Trelawny's Recollections.

2 (Greek passage) Anthologia Palatina: Appendix: 72.

Mr. Minim. I can scarcely think that, sir. They seem to have had only the minor key, and to have known no more of counterpoint than they did of perspective.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. Their system of painting did not require perspective. Their main subject was on one foreground. Buildings, rocks, trees, served simply to indicate, not to delineate, the scene.

Mr. Falconer. I must demur to their having only the minor key. The natural ascent of the voice is in the major key, and with their exquisite sensibility to sound they could not have missed the obvious expression of cheerfulness. With their three scales, diatonic, chromatic, and enharmonic, they must have exhausted every possible expression of feeling. Their scales were in true intervals; they had really major and minor tones; we have neither, but a confusion of both. They had both sharps and flats: we have neither, but a mere set of semitones, which serve for both. In their enharmonic scale the fineness of their ear perceived distinctions which are lost on the coarseness of ours.

Mr. Minim. With all that they never got beyond melody. They had no harmony, in our sense. They sang only in unisons and octaves.

Mr. Falconer. It is not clear that they did not sing in fifths. As to harmony in one sense, I will not go so far as to say with Ritson that the only use of the harmony is to spoil the melody; but I will say, that to my taste a simple accompaniment, in strict subordination to the melody, is far more agreeable than that Niagara of sound under which it is now the fashion to bury it.

Mr. Minim. In that case, you would prefer a song with a simple pianoforte accompaniment to the same song on the Italian stage.

Mr. Falconer. A song sung with feeling and expression is good, however accompanied. Otherwise, the pianoforte is not much to my mind. All its intervals are false, and temperament is a poor substitute for natural intonation. Then its incapability of sustaining a note has led, as the only means of producing effect, to those infinitesimal subdivisions of sound, in which all sentiment and expression are twittered and frittered into nothingness.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. I quite agree with you. The other day a band passed my gate playing 'The Campbells are coming'; but instead of the fine old Scotch lilt, and the emphasis on 'Oho! oho!' what they actually played was, 'The Ca-a-a-a-ampbells are co-o-o-o-ming, Oh-o-ho-o-o! Oh-o-ho-o-o'; I thought to myself, There is the essence and quintessence of modern music. I like the old organ-music such as it was, when there were no keys but C and F, and every note responded to a syllable. The effect of the prolonged and sustained sound must have been truly magnificent:

'Where, through the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault, The pealing anthem swelled the note of praise.'

Who cares to hear sacred music on a piano?

Mr. Minim. Yet I must say that there is a great charm in that brilliancy of execution which is an exclusively modern and very modern accomplishment

Mr. Falconer. To those who perceive it. All things are as they are perceived. To me music has no charm without expression.

Lord Curryfin. (who, having observed Mr. MacBorrowdale's determination not to be drawn into an argument, amused himself with asking his opinion on all subjects). What is your opinion, Mr. MacBorrowdale?

Mr. MacBorrowdale. I hold to the opinion I have already expressed, that this is as good a glass of port as ever I tasted.

Lord Curryfin. I mean your opinion of modern music and musical instruments.

Mr. MacBorrowdale. The organ is very good for psalms, which I never sing, and the pianoforte for jigs, which I never dance. And if I were not to hear either of them from January to December, I should not complain of the privation.

Lord Curryfin. You are an utilitarian, Mr. MacBorrowdale. You are all for utility—public utility—and you see none in music.

Mr. MacBorrowdale. Nay, not exactly so. If devotion is good, if cheerfulness is good, and if music promotes each of them in proper time and place, music is useful. If I am as devout without the organ, and as cheerful without the piano, as I ever should be with them, that may be the defect of my head or my ear. I am not for forcing my tastes or no-tastes on other people. Let every man enjoy himself in his own way, while he does not annoy others. I would not deprive you of your enjoyment of a brilliant symphony, and I hope you would not deprive me of my enjoyment of a glass of old wine.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian:

'Tres mihi convivae prope dissentire videntur, Poscentes vario multum diversa palate'{1}

1 Three guests dissent most widely in their wishes: With different taste they call for different dishes.

Mr. Falconer. Nor our reverend friend of the pleasure of a classical quotation.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. And the utility, too, sir: for I think I am indebted to one for the pleasure of your acquaintance.

Mr. Falconer. When you did me the honour to compare my house to the Palace of Circe. The gain was mine.

Mr. Pallet. You admit, sir, that the Greeks had no knowledge of perspective.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. Observing that they had no need of it. Their subject was a foreground like a relievo. Their background was a symbol, not a representation. 'No knowledge* is perhaps too strong. They had it where it was essential. They drew a peristyle, as it appeared to the eye, as accurately as we can do. In short, they gave to each distinct object its own proper perspective, but to separate objects they did not give their relative perspective, for the reason I have given, that they did not need it.

Mr. Falconer. There is to me one great charm in their painting, as we may judge from the specimens in Pompeii, which, though not their greatest works, indicate their school. They never crowded their canvas with figures. They presented one, two, three, four, or at most five persons, preferring one and rarely exceeding three. These persons were never lost in the profusion of scenery, dress, and decoration. They had clearly-defined outlines, and were agreeable objects from any part of the room in which they were placed.

Mr. Pallet. They must have lost much in beauty of detail.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. Therein is the essential difference of ancient and modern taste. Simple beauty—of idea in poetry, of sound in music, of figure in painting—was their great characteristic. Ours is detail in all these matters, overwhelming detail. We have not grand outlines for the imagination of the spectator or hearer to fill up: his imagination has no play of its own: it is overloaded with minutio and kaleidoscopical colours.

Lord Curryfin. Detail has its own beauty. I have admired a Dutch picture of a butcher's shop, where all the charm was in detail.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. I cannot admire anything of the kind. I must take pleasure in the thing represented before I can derive any from the representation.

Mr. Pallet. I am afraid, sir, as our favourite studies all lead us to extreme opinions, you think the Greek painting was the better for not having perspective, and the Greek music for not having harmony.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. I think they had as much perspective and as much harmony as was consistent with that simplicity which characterised their painting and music as much as their poetry.

Lord Curryfin. What is your opinion, Mr. MacBorrowdale?

Mr. MacBorrowdale. I think you may just buz that bottle before you.

Lord Curryfin. I mean your opinion of Greek perspective?

Mr. MacBorrowdale. Troth, I am of opinion that a bottle looks smaller at a distance than when it is close by, and I prefer it as a full-sized object in the foreground.

Lord Curryfin. I have often wondered that a gentleman so well qualified as you are to discuss all subjects should so carefully avoid discussing any.

Mr. MacBorrowdale. After dinner, my lord, after dinner. I work hard all the morning at serious things, sometimes till I get a headache, which, however, does not often trouble me. After dinner I like to crack my bottle and chirp and talk nonsense, and fit myself for the company of Jack of Dover.

Lord Curryfin. Jack of Dover! Who was he?

Mr. MacBorrowdale. He was a man who travelled in search of a greater fool than himself, and did not find him.{1}

1 Jacke of Dover His Quest of Inquirie, or His Privy Search for the Veriest Foote in England. London, 1604. Reprinted for the Percy Society, 1842.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. He must have lived in odd times. In our days he would not have gone far without falling in with a teetotaller, or a decimal coinage man, or a school-for-all man, or a competitive examination man, who would not allow a drayman to lower a barrel into a cellar unless he could expound the mathematical principles by which he performed the operation.

Mr. MacBorrowdale. Nay, that is all pragmatical fooling. The fooling Jack looked for was jovial fooling, fooling to the top of his bent, excellent fooling, which, under the semblance of folly, was both merry and wise. He did not look for mere unmixed folly, of which there never was a deficiency. The fool he looked for was one which it takes a wise man to make—a Shakespearian fool.{1}

1 OEuvre, ma foi, ou n'est facile atteindre: Pourtant qu'il faut parfaitement sage etre, Pour le vrai fol bien naivement feindre. EUTRAPEL, p. 28.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. In that sense he might travel far, and return, as he did in his own day, without having found the fool he looked for.

Mr. MacBorrowdale. A teetotaller! Well! He is the true Heautontimorumenos, the self-punisher, with a jug of toast-and-water for his Christmas wassail. So far his folly is merely pitiable, but his intolerance makes it offensive. He cannot enjoy his own tipple unless he can deprive me of mine. A fox that has lost his tail. There is no tyrant like a thoroughpaced reformer. I drink to his own reformation.

Mr. Gryll. He is like Bababec's faquir, who sat in a chair full of nails, pour avoir de la consideration. But the faquir did not want others to do the same. He wanted all the consideration for himself, and kept all the nails for himself. If these meddlers would do the like by their toast-and-water, nobody would begrudge it them.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. Now, sir, if the man who has fooled the greatest number of persons to the top of their bent were to be adjudged the fittest companion for Jack of Dover, you would find him in a distinguished meddler with everything who has been for half-a-century the merry-andrew of a vast arena, which he calls moral and political science, but which has in it a dash of everything that has ever occupied human thought.

Lord Curryfin. I know whom you mean; but he is a great man in his way, and has done much good.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. He has helped to introduce much change; whether for good or for ill remains to be seen. I forgot he was your lordship's friend. I apologise, and drink to his health.

Lord Curryfin. Oh! pray, do not apologise to me. I would not have my friendships, tastes, pursuits, and predilections interfere in the slightest degree with the fullest liberty of speech on all persons and things. There are many who think with you that he is a moral and political Jack of Dover. So be it. Time will bring him to his level.

Mr. MacBorrowdale. I will only say of the distinguished personage, that Jack of Dover would not pair off with him. This is the true universal science, the oracle of La Dive Bouteille.

Mr. Gryll. It is not exactly Greek music, Mr. Minim, that you are giving us for our Aristophanic choruses.

Mr. Minim. No, sir; I have endeavoured to give you a good selection, as appropriate as I can make it.

Mr. Pallet. Neither am I giving you Greek painting for the scenery. I have taken the liberty to introduce perspective.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. Very rightly both, for Aristophanes in London.

Mr. Minim. Besides, sir, we must have such music as your young ladies can sing.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. Assuredly; and so far as we have yet heard them rehearse, they sing it delightfully.

After a little more desultory conversation, they adjourned to the drawing-rooms.



CHAPTER XV

EXPRESSION IN MUSIC—THE DAPPLED PALFREY—LOVE AND AGE—COMPETITIVE EXAMINATION

(Greek passage) Anthologia Palatina: v. 72.

This, this is life, when pleasure drives out care. Short is the span of time we each may share. To-day, while love, wine, song, the hours adorn, To-day we live: none know the coming morn.

Lord Curryfin's assiduities to Miss Gryll had discomposed Mr. Falconer more than he chose to confess to himself. Lord Curryfin, on entering the drawing-rooms, went up immediately to the young lady of the house; and Mr. Falconer, to the amazement of the reverend doctor, sat down in the outer drawing-room on a sofa by the side of Miss Ilex, with whom he entered into conversation.

In the inner drawing-room some of the young ladies were engaged with music, and were entreated to continue their performance. Some of them were conversing, or looking over new publications.

After a brilliant symphony, performed by one of the young visitors, in which runs and crossings of demisemiquavers in tempo prestissimo occupied the principal share, Mr. Falconer asked Miss Ilex how she liked it.

Miss Ilex. I admire it as a splendid piece of legerdemain; but it expresses nothing.

Mr. Falconer. It is well to know that such things can be done; and when we have reached the extreme complications of art, we may hope to return to Nature and simplicity.

Miss Ilex. Not that it is impossible to reconcile execution and expression. Rubini identified the redundancies of ornament with the overflowings of feeling, and the music of Donizetti furnished him most happily with the means of developing this power. I never felt so transported out of myself as when I heard him sing Tu che al ciel spiegasti l' ali.

Mr. Falconer. Do you place Donizetti above Mozart?

Miss Ilex. Oh, surely not. But for supplying expressive music to a singer like Rubini, I think Donizetti has no equal; at any rate no superior. For music that does not require, and does not even suit, such a singer, but which requires only to be correctly interpreted to be universally recognised as the absolute perfection of melody, harmony, and expression, I think Mozart has none. Beethoven perhaps: he composed only one opera, Fidelio; but what an opera that is! What an effect in the sudden change of the key, when Leonora throws herself between her husband and Pizarro: and again, in the change of the key with the change of the scene, when we pass from the prison to the hall of the palace! What pathos in the songs of affection, what grandeur in the songs of triumph, what wonderful combinations in the accompaniments, where a perpetual stream of counter-melody creeps along in the bass, yet in perfect harmony with the melody above!

Mr. Falconer. What say you to Haydn?

Miss Ilex. Haydn has not written operas, and my principal experience is derived from the Italian theatre. But his music is essentially dramatic. It is a full stream of perfect harmony in subjection to exquisite melody; and in simple ballad-strains, that go direct to the heart, he is almost supreme and alone. Think of that air with which every one is familiar, 'My mother bids me bind my hair': the graceful flow of the first part, the touching effect of the semitones in the second: with true intonation and true expression, the less such an air is accompanied the better.

Mr. Falconer. There is a beauty and an appeal to the heart in ballads which will never lose its effect except on those with whom the pretence of fashion overpowers the feeling of Nature.{1}

1 Braham said something like this to a Parliamentary Committee on Theatres, in 1832.

Miss Ilex. It is strange, however, what influence that pretence has, in overpowering all natural feelings, not in music alone.

'Is it not curious,' thought the doctor, 'that there is only one old woman in the room, and that my young friend should have selected her for the object of his especial attention?'

But a few simple notes struck on the ear of his young friend, who rose from the sofa and approached the singer. The doctor took his place to cut off his retreat.

Miss Gryll, who, though a proficient in all music, was particularly partial to ballads, had just begun to sing one.



THE DAPPLED PALFREY{1}

1 Founded on Le Vair Palefroi: among the Fabliaux published by Barbazan.

'My traitorous uncle has wooed for himself: Her father has sold her for land and for pelf: My steed, for whose equal the world they might search, In mockery they borrow to bear her to church.

'Oh! there is one path through the forest so green, Where thou and I only, my palfrey, have been: We traversed it oft, when I rode to her bower To tell my love tale through the rift of the tower.

'Thou know'st not my words, but thy instinct is good: By the road to the church lies the path through the wood: Thy instinct is good, and her love is as true: Thou wilt see thy way homeward: dear palfrey, adieu.'

They feasted full late and full early they rose, And church-ward they rode more than half in a doze: The steed in an instant broke off from the throng, And pierced the green path, which he bounded along.

In vain was pursuit, though some followed pell-mell: Through bramble and thicket they floundered and fell. On the backs of their coursers some dozed as before, And missed not the bride till they reached the church door.

The knight from his keep on the forest-bound gazed: The drawbridge was down, the portcullis was raised: And true to his hope came the palfrey amain, With his only loved lady, who checked not the rein.

The drawbridge went up: the portcullis went down; The chaplain was ready with bell, book, and gown: The wreck of the bride-train arrived at the gate, The bride showed the ring, and they muttered 'Too late!'

'Not too late for a feast, though too late for a fray; What's done can't be undone: make peace while you may': So spake the young knight, and the old ones complied; And quaffed a deep health to the bridegroom and bride.

Mr. Falconer had listened to the ballad with evident pleasure. He turned to resume his place on the sofa, but finding it preoccupied by the doctor, he put on a look of disappointment, which seemed to the doctor exceedingly comic.

'Surely,' thought the doctor, 'he is not in love with the old maid.'

Miss Gryll gave up her place to a young lady, who in her turn sang a ballad of a different character.

LOVE AND AGE

I played with you 'mid cowslips blowing, When I was six and you were four; When garlands weaving, flower-balls throwing, Were pleasures soon to please no more. Through groves and meads, o'er grass and heather, With little playmates, to and fro, We wandered hand in hand together; But that was sixty years ago.

You grew a lovely roseate maiden, And still our early love was strong; Still with no care our days were laden, They glided joyously along; And I did love you very dearly, How dearly words want power to show; I thought your heart was touched as nearly; But that was fifty years ago.

Then other lovers came around you, Your beauty grew from year to year. And many a splendid circle, found you The centre of its glittering sphere.

I saw you then, first vows forsaking, On rank and wealth your hand bestow; Oh, then I thought my heart was breaking,— But that was forty years ago.

And I lived on, to wed another; No cause she gave me to repine; And when I heard you were a mother, I did not wish the children mine. My own young flock, in fair progression Made up a pleasant Christmas row: My joy in them was past expression,— But that was thirty years ago.

You grew a matron plump and comely, You dwelt in fashion's brightest blaze; My earthly lot was far more homely; But I too had my festal days. No merrier eyes have ever glistened Around the hearthstone's wintry glow, Than when my youngest child was christened,— But that was twenty years ago.

Time passed. My eldest girl was married, And I am now a grandsire gray; One pet of four years old I've carried Among the wild-flowered meads to play. In our old fields of childish pleasure, Where now, as then, the cowslips blow, She fills her basket's ample measure,— And that is not ten years ago.

But though first love's impassioned blindness Has passed away in colder light, I still have thought of you with kindness, And shall do, till our last good-night. The ever-rolling silent hours Will bring a time we shall not know, When our young days of gathering flowers Will be an hundred years ago.

Miss Ilex. That is a melancholy song. But of how many first loves is it the true tale! And how many are far less happy!

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. It is simple, and well sung, with a distinctness of articulation not often heard.

Miss Ilex. That young lady's voice is a perfect contralto. It is singularly beautiful, and I applaud her for keeping within her natural compass, and not destroying her voice by forcing it upwards, as too many do.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. Forcing, forcing seems to be the rule of life. A young lady who forces her voice into altissimo, and a young gentleman who forces his mind into a receptacle for a chaos of crudities, are pretty much on a par. Both do ill, where, if they were contented with attainments within the limits of natural taste and natural capacity, they might both do well. As to the poor young men, many of them become mere crammed fowls, with the same result as Hermogenes, who, after astonishing the world with his attainments at seventeen, came to a sudden end at the age of twenty-five, and spent the rest of a long life in hopeless imbecility.

Miss Ilex. The poor young men can scarcely help themselves. They are not held qualified for a profession unless they have overloaded their understanding with things of no use in it; incongruous things too, which could never be combined into the pursuits of natural taste.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. Very true. Brindley would not have passed as a canal-maker, nor Edward Williams{1} as a bridge-builder. I saw the other day some examination papers which would have infallibly excluded Marlborough from the army and Nelson from the navy. I doubt if Haydn would have passed as a composer before a committee of lords like one of his pupils, who insisted on demonstrating to him that he was continually sinning against the rules of counterpoint; on which Haydn said to him, 'I thought I was to teach you, but it seems you are to teach me, and I do not want a preceptor,' and thereon he wished his lordship a good-morning. Fancy Watt being asked how much Joan of Naples got for Avignon when she sold it to Pope Clement the Sixth, and being held unfit for an engineer because he could not tell.

1 The builder of Pont-y-Pryd.

Miss Ilex. That is an odd question, doctor. But how much did she get for it?

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. Nothing. He promised ninety thousand golden florins, but he did not pay one of them: and that, I suppose, is the profound sense of the question. It is true he paid her after a fashion, in his own peculiar coin. He absolved her of the murder of her first husband, and perhaps he thought that was worth the money. But how many of our legislators could answer the question? Is it not strange that candidates for seats in Parliament should not be subjected to competitive examination? Plato and Persius{1} would furnish good hints for it. I should like to see honourable gentlemen having to answer such questions as are deemed necessary tests for government clerks, before they would be held qualified candidates for seats in the legislature. That would be something like a reform in the Parliament. Oh that it were so, and I were the examiner! Ha, ha, ha, what a comedy!

1 Plato: Alcibiades, i.; Persius: Sat. iv.

The doctor's hearty laugh was contagious, and Miss Ilex joined in it. Mr. MacBorrowdale came up.

Mr. MacBorrowdale. You are as merry as if you had discovered the object of Jack of Dover's quest:

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. Something very like it. We have an honourable gentleman under competitive examination for a degree in legislative wisdom.

Mr. MacBorrowdale. Truly, that is fooling competition to the top of its bent.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. Competitive examination for clerks, and none for legislators, is not this an anomaly? Ask the honourable member for Muckborough on what acquisitions in history and mental and moral philosophy he founds his claim of competence to make laws for the nation. He can only tell you that he has been chosen as the most conspicuous Grub among the Moneygrubs of his borough to be the representative of all that is sordid, selfish, hard-hearted, unintellectual, and antipatriotic, which are the distinguishing qualities of the majority among them. Ask a candidate for a clerkship what are his qualifications? He may answer, 'All that are requisite: reading, writing, and arithmetic.' 'Nonsense,' says the questioner. 'Do you know the number of miles in direct distance from Timbuctoo to the top of Chimborazo?' 'I do not,' says the candidate. 'Then you will not do for a clerk,' says the competitive examiner. Does Moneygrub of Muckborough know? He does not; nor anything else. The clerk may be able to answer some of the questions put to him. Moneygrub could not answer one of them. But he is very fit for a legislator.

Mr. MacBorrowdale. Eh! but he is subjected to a pretty severe competitive examination of his own, by what they call a constituency, who just put him to the test in the art of conjuring, to see if he can shift money from his own pocket into theirs, without any inconvenient third party being aware of the transfer.



CHAPTER XVI

MISS NIPHET—THE THEATRE—THE LAKE—DIVIDED ATTRACTION—INFALLIBLE SAFETY

Amiam: che non ha tregua Con gli anni umana vita, e si dilegua. Amiam: che il sol si muore, e poi rinasce; A noi sua breve luce S'asconde, e il sonno eterna notte adduce. Tasso: Aminta.

Love, while youth knows its prime, For mortal life can make no truce with time. Love: for the sun goes down to rise as bright; To us his transient light Is veiled, and sleep comes on with everlasting night.

Lord Curryfin was too much a man of the world to devote his attentions in society exclusively to one, and make them the subject of special remark. He left the inner drawing-room, and came up to the doctor to ask him if he knew the young lady who had sung the last ballad. The doctor knew her well. She was Miss Niphet, the only daughter of a gentleman of fortune, residing a few miles distant.

Lord Curryfin. As I looked at her while she was singing, I thought of Southey's description of Laila's face in Thadaba:

A broad light floated o'er its marble paleness, As the wind waved the fountain fire.

Marble paleness suits her well. There is something statuesque in her whole appearance. I could not help thinking what an admirable Camilla she would make in Cimarosa's Orazii. Her features are singularly regular. They had not much play, but the expression of her voice was such as if she felt the full force of every sentiment she uttered.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. I consider her to be a person of very deep feeling, which she does not choose should appear on the surface. She is animated in conversation when she is led into it. Otherwise, she is silent and retiring, but obliging in the extreme; always ready to take part in anything that is going forward She never needs, for example, being twice asked to sing. She is free from the vice which Horace ascribes to all singers, of not complying when asked, and never leaving off when they have once begun. If this be a general rule, she is an exception to it.

Lord Curryfin. I rather wonder she does not tinge her cheeks with a slight touch of artificial red, just as much as would give her a sort of blush-rose complexion.

Miss Ilex. You will not wonder when you know her better. The artificial, the false in any degree, however little, is impossible to her. She does not show all she thinks and feels, but what she does show is truth itself.

Lord Curryfin. And what part is she to take in the Aristophanic comedy?

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. She is to be the leader of the chorus.

Lord Curryfin. I have not seen her at the rehearsals.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. So far, her place has been supplied. You will see her at the next.

In the meantime, Mr. Falconer had gone into the inner drawing-room, sat down by Miss Gryll, and entered into conversation with her. The doctor observed them from a distance, but with all the opportunity he had had for observation, he was still undetermined in his opinion of the impression they might have made on each other.

'It is well,' he said to himself, 'that Miss Ilex is an old maid. If she were as young as Morgana, I think she would win our young friend's heart. Her mind is evidently much to his mind. But so would Morgana's be, if she could speak it as freely. She does not; why not? To him at any rate. She seems under no restraint to Lord Curryfin. A good omen, perhaps. I never saw a couple so formed for each other. Heaven help me! I cannot help harping on that string. After all, the Vestals are the obstacle.'

Lord Curryfin, seeing Miss Niphet sitting alone at the side of the room, changed his place, sate down by her, and entered into conversation on the topics of the day, novels, operas, pictures, and various phenomena of London life. She kept up the ball with him very smartly. She was every winter, May, and June, in London, mixed much in society, and saw everything that was to be seen. Lord Curryfin, with all his Protean accomplishments, could not start a subject on which she had not something to say. But she originated nothing. He spoke, and she answered. One thing he remarked as singular, that though she spoke with knowledge of many things, she did not speak as with taste or distaste of any. The world seemed to flow under her observation without even ruffling the surface of her interior thoughts. This perplexed his versatile lordship. He thought the young lady would be a subject worth studying: it was clear that she was a character. So far so well. He felt that he should not rest satisfied till he was able to define it.



The theatre made rapid progress. The walls were completed. The building was roofed in. The stage portion was so far finished as to allow Mr. Pallet to devote every morning to the scenery. The comedy was completed. The music was composed. The rehearsals went on with vigour, but for the present in the drawing-rooms.



Miss Niphet, returning one morning from a walk before breakfast, went into the theatre to see its progress, and found Lord Curryfin swinging over the stage on a seat suspended by long ropes from above the visible scene. He did not see her. He was looking upwards, not as one indulging in an idle pastime, but as one absorbed in serious meditation. All at once the seat was drawn up, and he disappeared in the blue canvas that represented the sky. She was not aware that gymnastics were to form part of the projected entertainment, and went away, associating the idea of his lordship, as many had done before, with something like a feeling of the ludicrous.

Miss Niphet was not much given to laughter, but whenever she looked at Lord Curryfin during breakfast she could not quite suppress a smile which hovered on her lips, and which was even the more forced on her by the contrast between his pantomimic disappearance and his quiet courtesy and remarkably good manners in company. The lines of Dryden—

A man so various, that he seemed to be Not one, but all mankind's epitome,

—passed through her mind as she looked at him.

Lord Curryfin noticed the suppressed smile, but did not apprehend that it had any relation to himself. He thought some graceful facetiousness had presented itself to the mind of the young lady, and that she was amusing herself with her own fancy. It was, however, to him another touch of character, that lighted up her statuesque countenance with a new and peculiar beauty. By degrees her features resumed their accustomed undisturbed serenity. Lord Curryfin felt satisfied that in that aspect he had somewhere seen something like her, and after revolving a series of recollections, he remembered that it was a statue of Melpomene.

There was in the park a large lake, encircled with varieties of woodland, and by its side was a pavilion, to which Miss Niphet often resorted to read in an afternoon. And at no great distance from it was the boat-house, to which Lord Curryfin often resorted for a boat, to row or sail on the water. Passing the pavilion in the afternoon, he saw the young lady, and entering into conversation, ascertained what had so amused her in the morning. He told her he had been trying—severally by himself, and collectively with the workmen—the strength of the suspending lines for the descent of the Chorus of Clouds in the Aristophanic comedy. She said she had been very ungrateful to laugh at the result of his solicitude for the safety of herself and her young friends. He said that in having moved her to smile, even at his expense, he considered himself amply repaid.

From this time they often met in the pavilion, that is to say, he often found her reading there on his way to a boat, and stopped awhile to converse with her. They had always plenty to say, and it resulted that he was always sorry to leave her, and she was always sorry to part with him. By degrees the feeling of the ludicrous ceased to be the predominant sentiment which she associated with him. L'amour vient sans qu'on y pense.

The days shortened, and all things were sufficiently advanced to admit of rehearsals in the theatre. The hours from twelve to two—from noon to luncheon—were devoted to this pleasant pastime. At luncheon there was much merriment over the recollections of the morning's work, and after luncheon there was walking in the park, rowing or sailing on the lake, riding or driving in the adjacent country, archery in a spacious field; and in bad weather billiards, reading in the library, music in the drawing-rooms, battledore and shuttlecock in the hall; in short, all the methods of passing time agreeably which are available to good company, when there are ample means and space for their exercise; to say nothing of making love, which Lord Curryfin did with all delicacy and discretion—directly to Miss Gryll, as he had begun, and indirectly to Miss Niphet, for whom he felt an involuntary and almost unconscious admiration. He had begun to apprehend that with the former he had a dangerous rival in the Hermit of the Folly, and he thought the latter had sufficient charms to console even Orlando for the loss of Angelica. In short, Miss Gryll had first made him think of marriage, and whenever he thought his hopes were dim in that quarter, he found an antidote to despair in the contemplation of the statue-like damsel.

Mr. Falconer took more and more pleasure in Miss Gryll's society, but he did not declare himself. He was more than once on the point of doing so, but the images of the Seven Sisters rose before him, and he suspended the intention. On these occasions he always went home for a day or two to fortify his resolution against his heart. Thus he passed his time between the Grange and the Tower, 'letting I dare not wait upon I would.'

Miss Gryll had listened to Lord Curryfin. She had neither encouraged nor discouraged him. She thought him the most amusing person she had ever known. She liked his temper, his acquirements, and his manners. She could not divest herself of that feeling of the ludicrous which everybody seemed to associate with him; but she thought the chances of life presented little hope of a happier marriage than a woman who would fall in with his tastes and pursuits—which, notwithstanding their tincture of absurdity, were entertaining and even amiable—might hope for with him. Therefore she would not say No, though, when she thought of Mr. Falconer, she could not say Yes.

Lord Curryfin invented a new sail of infallible safety, which resulted, like most similar inventions, in capsizing the inventor on the first trial. Miss Niphet, going one afternoon, later than usual, to her accustomed pavilion, found his lordship scrambling up the bank, and his boat, keel upwards, at some little distance in the lake.



For a moment her usual self-command forsook her. She held out both her hands to assist him up the bank, and as soon as he stood on dry land, dripping like a Triton in trousers, she exclaimed in such a tone as he had never before heard, 'Oh! my dear lord!' Then, as if conscious of her momentary aberration, she blushed with a deeper blush than that of the artificial rose which he had once thought might improve her complexion. She attempted to withdraw her hands, but he squeezed them both ardently, and exclaimed in his turn, like a lover in a tragedy—

'Surely, till now I never looked on beauty.'

She was on the point of saying, 'Surely, before now you have looked on Miss Gryll,' but she checked herself. She was content to receive the speech as a sudden ebullition of gratitude for sympathy, and disengaging her hands, she insisted on his returning immediately to the house to change his 'dank and dripping weeds.'

As soon as he was out of sight she went to the boat-house, to summon the men who had charge of it to the scene of the accident. Putting off in another boat, they brought the capsized vessel to land, and hung up the sail to dry. She returned in the evening, and finding the sail dry, she set it on fire. Lord Curryfin, coming down to look after his tackle, found the young lady meditating over the tinder. She said to him—



He was touched by this singular development of solicitude for his preservation, but could not help saying something in praise of his invention, giving a demonstration of the infallibility of the principle, with several scientific causes of error in working out the practice. He had no doubt it would be all right on another experiment. Seeing that her looks expressed unfeigned alarm at this announcement, he assured her that her kind interest in his safety was sufficient to prevent his trying his invention again. They walked back together to the house, and in the course of conversation she said to him—

'The last time I saw the words Infallible Safety, they were painted on the back of a stage-coach which, in one of our summer tours, we saw lying by the side of the road, with its top in a ditch, and its wheels in the air.'

The young lady was still a mystery to Lord Curryfin.

'Sometimes,' he said to himself, 'I could almost fancy Melpomene in love with me. But I have seldom seen her laugh, and when she has done so now and then, it has usually been at me. That is not much like love. Her last remark was anything but a compliment to my inventive genius.'



CHAPTER XVII

HORSE-TAMING—LOVE IN DILEMMA—INJUNCTIONS—SONOROUS VASES

O gran contrasto in giovenil pensiero, Desir di laude, ed impeto d'amore 1 Ariosto: c. 25.

How great a strife in youthful minds can raise Impulse of love, and keen desire of praise.

Lord Curryfin, amongst his multifarious acquirements, had taken lessons from the great horse-tamer, and thought himself as well qualified as his master to subdue any animal of the species, however vicious. It was therefore with great pleasure he heard that there was a singularly refractory specimen in Mr. Gryll's stables.



The next morning after hearing this, he rose early, and took his troublesome charge in hand. After some preliminary management he proceeded to gallop him round and round a large open space in the park, which was visible from the house. Miss Niphet, always an early riser, and having just prepared for a walk, saw him from her chamber window engaged in this perilous exercise, and though she knew nothing of the peculiar character of his recalcitrant disciple, she saw by its shakings, kickings, and plungings, that it was exerting all its energies to get rid of its rider. At last it made a sudden dash into the wood, and disappeared among the trees.

It was to the young lady a matter of implicit certainty that some disaster would ensue. She pictured to herself all the contingencies of accident; being thrown to the ground and kicked by the horse's hoofs, being dashed against a tree, or suspended, like Absalom, by the hair. She hurried down and hastened towards the wood, from which, just as she reached it, the rider and horse emerged at full speed as before. But as soon as Lord Curryfin saw Miss Niphet, he took a graceful wheel round, and brought the horse to a stand by her side; for by this time he had mastered the animal, and brought it to the condition of Sir Walter's hunter in Wordsworth—

Weak as a lamb the hour that it is yeaned And foaming like a mountain cataract{1}

She did not attempt to dissemble that she had come to look for him, but said—

'I expected to find you killed.'



He said, 'You see, all my experiments are not failures. I have been more fortunate with the horse than the sail.'

At this moment one of the keepers appeared at a little distance. Lord Curryfin beckoned to him, and asked him to take the horse to the stables. The keeper looked with some amazement, and exclaimed—

'Why, this is the horse that nobody could manage!'

'You will manage him easily enough now,' said Lord Curryfin.

So it appeared; and the keeper took charge of him, not altogether without misgiving.

Miss Niphefs feelings had been over-excited, the more so from the severity with which she was accustomed to repress them. The energy which had thus far upheld her suddenly gave way. She sat down on a fallen tree, and burst into tears. Lord Curryfin sat down by her, and took her hand. She allowed him to retain it awhile; but all at once snatched it from him and sped towards the house over the grass, with the swiftness and lightness of Virgil's Camilla, leaving his lordship as much astonished at her movements as the Volscian crowd, attonitis inhians animis,{2} had been at those of her prototype. He could not help thinking, 'Few women run gracefully; but she runs like another Atalanta.'

1 Hartleap Well.

2 Gaping with wondering minds.

When the party met at breakfast, Miss Niphet was in her place, looking more like a statue than ever, with, if possible, more of marble paleness. Lord Curryfin's morning exploit, of which the story had soon found its way from the stable to the hall, was the chief subject of conversation. He had received a large share of what he had always so much desired—applause and admiration; but now he thought he would willingly sacrifice all he had ever received in that line, to see even the shadow of a smile, or the expression of a sentiment of any kind, on the impassive face of Melpomene. She left the room when she rose from the breakfast-table, appeared at the rehearsal, and went through her part as usual; sat down at luncheon, and departed as soon as it was over. She answered, as she had always done, everything that was said to her, frankly, and to the purpose; and also, as usual, she originated nothing.

In the afternoon Lord Curryfin went down to the pavilion. She was not there. He wandered about the grounds in all directions, and returned several times to the pavilion, always in vain. At last he sat down in the pavilion, and fell into a meditation. He asked himself how it could be, that having begun by making love to Miss Gryll, having, indeed, gone too far to recede unless the young lady absolved him, he was now evidently in a transition state towards a more absorbing and violent passion, for a person who, with all her frankness, was incomprehensible, and whose snowy exterior seemed to cover a volcanic fire, which she struggled to repress, and was angry with herself when she did not thoroughly succeed in so doing. If he were quite free he would do his part towards the solution of the mystery, by making a direct and formal proposal to her. As a preliminary to this, he might press Miss Gryll for an answer. All he had yet obtained from her was, 'Wait till we are better acquainted.' He was in a dilemma between Morgana and Melpomene. It had not entered into his thoughts that Morgana was in love with him; but he thought it nevertheless very probable that she was in a fair way to become so, and that even as it was she liked him well enough to accept him. On the other hand, he could not divest himself of the idea that Melpomene was in love with him. It was true, all the sympathy she had yet shown might have arisen from the excitement of strong feelings, at the real or supposed peril of a person with whom she was in the habit of daily intercourse. It might be so. Still, the sympathy was very impassioned; though, but for his rashness in self-exposure to danger, he might never have known it. A few days ago, he would not press Miss Gryll for an answer, because he feared it might be a negative. Now he would not, because he was at least not in haste for an affirmative. But supposing it were a negative, what certainty had he that a negative from Morgana would not be followed by a negative from Melpomene? Then his heart would be at sea without rudder or compass. We shall leave him awhile to the contemplation of his perplexities.