As his thoughts were divided, so were Morgana's. If Mr. Falconer should propose to her, she felt she could accept him without hesitation. She saw clearly the tendency of his feelings towards her. She saw, at the same time, that he strove to the utmost against them in behalf of his old associations, though, with all his endeavours, he could not suppress them in her presence. So there was the lover who did not propose, and who would have been preferred; and there was the lover who had proposed, and who, if it had been clear that the former chance was hopeless, would not have been lightly given up.

If her heart had been as much interested in Lord Curryfin. as it was in Mr. Falconer, she would quickly have detected a diminution in the ardour of his pursuit; but so for as she might have noticed any difference in his conduct, she ascribed it only to deference to her recommendation to 'wait till they were better acquainted.' The longer and the more quietly he waited, the better it seemed to please her. It was not on him, but on Mr. Falconer, that the eyes of her observance were fixed. She would have given Lord Curryfin his liberty instantly if she had thought he wished it.

Mr. Falconer also had his own dilemma, between his new love and his old affections. Whenever the first seemed likely to gain the ascendency, the latter rose in their turn, like Antaeus from earth, with renovated strength. And he kept up their force by always revisiting the Tower, when the contest seemed doubtful.

Thus, Lord Curryfin and Mr. Falconer were rivals, with a new phase of rivalry. In some of their variations of feeling, each wished the other success; the latter, because he struggled against a spell that grew more and more difficult to be resisted; the former, because he had been suddenly overpowered by the same kind of light that had shone from the statue of Pygmalion. Thus their rivalry, such as it was, was entirely without animosity, and in no way disturbed the harmony of the Aristophanic party.

The only person concerned in these complications whose thoughts and feelings were undivided, was Miss Niphet. She had begun by laughing at Lord Curryfin, and had ended by forming a decided partiality lor him. She contended against the feeling; she was aware of his intentions towards Miss Gryll; and she would perhaps have achieved a conquest over herself, if her sympathies had not been kept in a continual fever by the rashness with which he exposed himself to accidents by flood and field. At the same time, as she was more interested in observing Morgana than Morgana was in observing her, she readily perceived the latter's predilection for Mr. Falconer, and the gradual folding around him of the enchanted net. These observations, and the manifest progressive concentration of Lord Curryfin's affections on herself, showed her that she was not in the way of inflicting any very severe wound on her young friend's feelings, or encouraging a tendency to absolute hopelessness in her own.

Lord Curryfin was pursuing his meditations in the pavilion, when the young lady, whom he had sought there in vain, presented herself before him in great agitation. He started up to meet her, and held out both his hands. She took them both, held them a moment, disengaged them, and sat down at a little distance, which he immediately reduced to nothing. He then expressed his disappointment at not having previously found her in the pavilion, and his delight at seeing her now. After a pause, she said: 'I felt so much disturbed in the morning, that I should have devoted the whole day to recovering calmness of thought, but for something I have just heard. My maid tells me that you are going to try that horrid horse in harness, and in a newly-invented high phaeton of your own, and that the grooms say they would not drive that horse in any carriage, nor any horse in that carriage, and that you have a double chance of breaking your neck. I have disregarded all other feelings to entreat you to give up your intention.'

Lord Curryfin assured her that he felt too confident in his power over horses, and in the safety of his new invention, to admit the possibility of danger: but that it was a very small sacrifice to her to restrict himself to tame horses and low carriages, or to abstinence from all horses and carriages, if she desired it.

'And from sailing-boats,' she added.

'And from sailing-boats,' he answered.

'And from balloons,' she said.

'And from balloons,' he answered. 'But what made you think of balloons?'

'Because,' she said, 'they are dangerous, and you are inquiring and adventurous.'



'To tell you the truth,' he said, 'I have been up in a balloon. I thought it the most disarming excursion I ever made. I have thought of going up again. I have invented a valve———'

'O heavens!' she exclaimed. 'But I have your promise touching horses, and carriages, and sails, and balloons.'

'You have,' he said. 'It shall be strictly adhered to.'

She rose to return to the house. But this time he would not part with her, and they returned together.

Thus prohibited by an authority to which he yielded implicit obedience from trying further experiments at the risk of his neck, he restricted his inventive faculty to safer channels, and determined that the structure he was superintending should reproduce, as far as possible, all the peculiarities of the Athenian Theatre. Amongst other things, he studied attentively the subject of the echeia, or sonorous vases, which, in that vast theatre, propagated and clarified sound; and though in its smaller representative they were not needed, he thought it still possible that they might produce an agreeable effect But with all the assistance of the Reverend Doctor Opimian, he found it difficult to arrive at a clear idea of their construction, or even of their principle; for the statement of Vitruvius, that they gave an accordant resonance in the fourth, the fifth, and the octave, seemed incompatible with the idea of changes of key, and not easily reconcilable with the doctrine of Harmonics. At last he made up his mind that they had no reference to key, but solely to pitch, modified by duly-proportioned magnitude and distance; he therefore set to work assiduously, got a number of vases made, ascertained that they would give a resonance of some kind, and had them disposed at proper intervals round the audience part of the building. This being done, the party assembled, some as audience, some as performers, to judge of the effect. The first burst of choral music produced a resonance, like the sound produced by sea-shells when placed against the ear, only many times multiplied, and growing like the sound of a gong: it was the exaggerated concentration of the symphony of a lime-grove full of cockchafers,{1} on a fine evening in the early summer. The experiment was then tried with single voices: the hum was less in itself, but greater in proportion. It was then tried with speaking: the result was the same: a powerful and perpetual hum, not resonant peculiarly to the diatessaron, the diapente, or the diapason, but making a new variety of continuous fundamental bass.

1 The drone of the cockchafer, as he wheels by you in drowsy hum, sounds his corno di bassetto on F below the line.— Gardiner's Music of Nature.

'I am satisfied,' said Lord Curryfin, 'the art of making these vases is as hopelessly lost as that of making mummies.' Miss Niphet encouraged him to persevere. She said:

'You have produced a decided resonance: the only thing is to subdue it, which you may perhaps effect by diminishing the number and enlarging the intervals of the vases.'

He determined to act on the suggestion, and she felt that, for some little time at least, she had kept him out of mischief. But whenever anything was said or sung in the theatre, it was necessary, for the time, to remove the echeia.



CHAPTER XVIII

LECTURES—THE POWER OF PUBLIC OPINION—A NEW ORDER OF CHIVALRY

si, Mimnermus uti censet, sine amore jocisque nil est jucundum, vivas in amore jorisqne. HOR. Epist. I. vi 65, 66.

If, as Mimnennus held, nought else can move Your soul to pleasure, live in sports and love.

The theatre was completed, and was found to be, without the echeia, a fine vehicle of sound. It was tried, not only in the morning rehearsals, but occasionally, and chiefly on afternoons of bad weather, by recitations, and even lectures; for though some of the party attached no value to that mode of dogmatic instruction, yet with the majority, and especially with the young ladies, it was decidedly in favour.

One rainy afternoon Lord Curryfin was entreated to deliver in the theatre his lecture on Fish; he readily complied, and succeeded in amusing his audience more, and instructing them as much, as any of his more pretentious brother lecturers could have done. We shall not report the lecture, but we refer those who may be curious on the subject to the next meeting of the Pantopragmatic Society, under the presidency of Lord Facing-both-ways, and the vice-presidency of Lord Michin Malicho.

At intervals in similar afternoons of bad weather some others of the party were requested to favour the company with lectures or recitations in the theatre. Mr. Minim delivered a lecture on music, Mr. Pallet on painting; Mr. Falconer, though not used to lecturing, got up one on domestic life in the Homeric age. Even Mr. Gryll took his turn, and expounded the Epicurean philosophy. Mr. MacBorrowdale, who had no objection to lectures before dinner, delivered one on all the affairs of the world—foreign and domestic, moral, political, and literary. In the course of it he touched on Reform. 'The stone which Lord Michin Malicho—who was the Gracchus of the last Reform, and is the Sisyphus of the present—has been so laboriously pushing up hill, is for the present deposited at the bottom in the Limbo of Vanity. If it should ever surmount the summit and run down on the other side, it will infallibly roll over and annihilate the franchise of the educated classes; for it would not be worth their while to cross the road to exercise it against the rabble preponderance which would then have been created. Thirty years ago, Lord Michin Malicho had several cogent arguments in favour of Reform. One was, that the people were roaring for it, and that therefore they must have it. He has now in its favour the no less cogent argument, that the people do not care about it, and that the less it is asked for the greater will be the grace of the boon. On the former occasion the out-of-door logic was irresistible. Burning houses, throwing dead cats and cabbage-stumps into carriages, and other varieties of the same system of didactics, demonstrated the fitness of those who practised them to have representatives in Parliament. So they got their representatives, and many think Parliament would have been better without them. My father was a staunch Reformer. In his neighbourhood in London was the place of assembly of a Knowledge-is-Power Club. The members at the close of their meetings collected mending-stones from the road, and broke the windows to the right and left of their line of march. They had a flag on which was inscribed, "The power of public opinion." Whenever the enlightened assembly met, my father closed his shutters, but, closing within, they did not protect the glass. One morning he picked up, from where it had fallen between the window and the shutter, a very large, and consequently very demonstrative, specimen of dialectical granite. He preserved it carefully, and mounted it on a handsome pedestal, inscribed with "The power of public opinion." He placed it on the middle of his library mantelpiece, and the daily contemplation of it cured him of his passion for Reform. During the rest of his life he never talked, as he had used to do, of "the people": he always said "the rabble," and delighted in quoting every passage of Hudibras in which the rabble-rout is treated as he had come to conclude it ought to be. He made this piece of granite the nucleus of many political disquisitions. It is still in my possession, and I look on it with veneration as my principal tutor, for it had certainly a large share in the elements of my education. If, which does not seem likely, another reform lunacy should arise in my time, I shall take care to close my shutters against "The power of public opinion.1"

The Reverend Doctor Opimian being called on to contribute his share to these diversions of rainy afternoons, said—

'The sort of prose lecture which I am accustomed to deliver would not be exactly appropriate to the present time and place. I will therefore recite to you some verses, which I made some time since, on what appeared to me a striking specimen of absurdity on the part of the advisers of royalty here—the bestowing the honours of knighthood, which is a purely Christian institution, on Jews and Paynim; very worthy persons in themselves, and entitled to any mark of respect befitting their class, but not to one strictly and exclusively Christian; money-lenders, too, of all callings the most anti-pathetic to that of a true knight. The contrast impressed itself on me as I was reading a poem of the twelfth century, by Hues de Tabaret—L'Ordene de Chevalerie—and I endeavoured to express the contrast in the manner and form following:—

A NEW ORDER OF CHIVALRY

Sir Moses, Sir Aaron, Sir Jamramajee, Two stock-jobbing Jews, and a shroffing Parsee, Have girt on the armour of old Chivalrie, And, instead of the Red Cross, have hoisted Balls Three.

Now fancy our Sovereign, so gracious and bland, With the sword of Saint George in her royal right hand, Instructing this trio of marvellous Knights In the mystical meanings of Chivalry's rites.

'You have come from the bath, all in milk-white array, To show you have washed worldly feelings away, And, pure as your vestments from secular stain, Renounce sordid passions and seekings for gain.

'This scarf of deep red o'er your vestments I throw, In token, that down them your life-blood shall flow, Ere Chivalry's honour, or Christendom's faith, Shall meet, through your failure, or peril or scaith.

'These slippers of silk, of the colour of earth, Are in sign of remembrance of whence you had birth; That from earth you have sprung, and to earth you return, But stand for the faith, life immortal to earn.

'This blow of the sword on your shoulder-blades true Is the mandate of homage, where homage is due, And the sign that your swords from the scabbard shall fly When "St George and the Right" is the rallying cry.

'This belt of white silk, which no speck has defaced, Is the sign of a bosom with purity graced, And binds you to prove, whatsoever betides, Of damsels distressed the friends, champions, and guides.

'These spurs of pure gold are the symbols which say, As your steeds obey them, you the Church shall obey, And speed at her bidding, through country and town, To strike, with your falchions, her enemies down.'

II

Now fancy these Knights, when the speech they have heard, As they stand, scarfed, shoed, shoulder-dubbed, belted and spurred, With the cross-handled sword duly sheathed on the thigh, Thus simply and candidly making reply:

'By your Majesty's grace we have risen up Knights, But we feel little relish for frays and for fights: There are heroes enough, full of spirit and fire, Always ready to shoot and be shot at for hire.

'True, with bulls and with bears we have battled our cause; And the bulls have no horns, and the bears have no paws; And the mightiest blow which we ever have struck Has achieved but the glory of laming a duck.{1}

1 In Stock Exchange slang, Bulls are speculators for a rise, Bears for a fall. A lame duck is a man who cannot pay his dififerences, and is said to waddle off. The patriotism of the money-market is well touched by Ponsard, in his comedy La Bourse: Acte iv. Scene 3—

'With two nations in arms, friends impartial to both, To raise each a loan we shall be nothing loth; We will lend them the pay, to fit men for the fray; But shall keep ourselves carefully out of the way.

'We have small taste for championing maids in distress: For State we care little: for Church we care less: To Premium and Bonus our homage we plight: "Percentage!" we cry: and "A fig for the right!"

''Twixt Saint George and the Dragon we settle it thus: Which has scrip above par is the Hero for us: For a turn in the market, the Dragon's red gorge Shall have our free welcome to swallow Saint George.'

Now, God save our Queen, and if aught should occur To peril the crown or the safety of her, God send that the leader, who faces the foe, May have more of King Richard than Moses and Co.

ALFRED Quand nous sommes vainqueurs, dire qu'on a baisse! Si nous etions battus, on aurait donc-hausse?

DELATOUR On a craint qu'un succes, si brillant pour la France, De la paix qu'on revait n'eloignat l'esperance.

ALFRED Cette Bourse, morbleu! n'a donc rien dans le cour! Ventre affame n'a point d'oreilles ... pour l'honneur! Aussi je ne veux plus jouer—qu'apres ma noce— Et j'attends Waterloo pour me mettre a la hausse.



CHAPTER XIX

A SYMPOSIUM—TRANSATLANTIC TENDENCIES—AFTER-DINNER LECTURES—EDUCATION

Trincq est ung mot panomphee, celebre et entendu de toutes nations, et nous signifie, beuuez. Et ici maintenons que non rire, ains boyre est le propre de l'homme. Je ne dy boyre simplement et absolument, car aussy bien boyvent les bestes; je dy boyre vin bon et fraiz.—Rabelais: 1. v. c. 45.

Some guests remained. Some departed and returned. Among these was Mr. MacBorrowdale. One day after dinner, on one of his reappearances, Lord Curryfin said to him—

'Well, Mr. MacBorrowdale, in your recent observations, have you found anything likely to satisfy Jack of Dover, if he were prosecuting his inquiry among us?'

Mr. MacBorrowdale. Troth, no, my lord. I think, if he were among us, he would give up the search as hopeless. He found it so in his own day, and he would find it still more so now. Jack was both merry and wise. We have less mirth in practice; and we have more wisdom in pretension, which Jack would not have admitted.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. He would have found it like Juvenal's search for patriotic virtue, when Catiline was everywhere, and Brutus and Cato were nowhere.{1}

1 Et Catilinam quocumque in populo videas, quocumque sub axe: sed nee Brutus erit, Bruti nec avunculus usquam. —Juv. Sat. xiv. 41-43.

Lord Curryfin. Well, among us, if Jack did not find his superior, or even his equal, he would not have been at a loss for company to his mind. There is enough mirth for those who choose to enjoy it, and wisdom too, perhaps as much as he would have cared for. We ought to have more wisdom, as we have clearly more science.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. Science is one thing, and wisdom is another. Science is an edged tool, with which men play like children, and cut their own fingers. If you look at the results which science has brought in its train, you will find them to consist almost wholly in elements of mischief. See how much belongs to the word Explosion alone, of which the ancients knew nothing. Explosions of powder-mills and powder-magazines; of coal-gas in mines and in houses; of high-pressure engines in ships and boats and factories. See the complications and refinements of modes of destruction, in revolvers and rifles and shells and rockets and cannon. See collisions and wrecks and every mode of disaster by land and by sea, resulting chiefly from the insanity for speed, in those who for the most part have nothing to do at the end of the race, which they run as if they were so many Mercuries speeding with messages from Jupiter. Look at our scientific drainage, which turns refuse into poison. Look at the subsoil of London, whenever it is turned up to the air, converted by gas leakage into one mass of pestilent blackness, in which no vegetation can flourish, and above which, with the rapid growth of the ever-growing nuisance, no living thing will breathe with impunity. Look at our scientific machinery, which has destroyed domestic manufacture, which has substituted rottenness for strength in the thing made, and physical degradation in crowded towns for healthy and comfortable country life in the makers. The day would fail, if I should attempt to enumerate the evils which science has inflicted on mankind. I almost think it is the ultimate destiny of science to exterminate the human race.

Lord Curryfin. You have gone over a wide field, which we might exhaust a good bin of claret in fully discussing. But surely the facility of motion over the face of the earth and sea is both pleasant and profitable. We may now see the world with little expenditure of labour or time.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. You may be whisked over it, but you do not see it. You go from one great town to another, where manners and customs are not even now essentially different, and with this facility of intercourse become progressively less and less so. The intermediate country—which you never see, unless there is a show mountain, or waterfall, or ruin, for which there is a station, and to which you go as you would to any other exhibition—the intermediate country contains all that is really worth seeing, to enable you to judge of the various characteristics of men and the diversified objects of Nature.

Lord Curryfin. You can suspend your journey if you please, and see the intermediate country, if you prefer it.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. But who does prefer it? You travel round the world by a hand-book, as you do round an exhibition-room by a catalogue.

Mr. MacBorrowdale. Not to say that in the intermediate country you are punished by bad inns and bad wine; of which I confess myself intolerant. I knew an unfortunate French tourist, who had made the round of Switzerland, and had but one expression for every stage of his journey: Mauvaise auberge!

Lord Curryfin. Well, then, what say you to the electric telegraph, by which you converse at the distance of thousands of miles? Even across the Atlantic, as no doubt we shall yet do.

Mr. Gryll. Some of us have already heard the doctor's opinion on that subject.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. I have no wish to expedite communication with the Americans. If we could apply the power of electrical repulsion to preserve us from ever hearing anything more of them, I should think that we had for once derived a benefit from science.

Mr. Gryll. Your love for the Americans, doctor, seems something like that of Cicero's friend Marius for the Greeks. He would not take the nearest road to his villa, because it was called the Greek Road.{1} Perhaps if your nearest way home were called the American Road, you would make a circuit to avoid it.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. I am happy to say I am not put to the test. Magnetism, galvanism, electricity, are 'one form of many names.'{2} Without magnetism we should never have discovered America; to which we are indebted for nothing but evil; diseases in the worst forms that can afflict humanity, and slavery in the worst form in which slavery can cast. The Old World had the sugar-cane and the cotton-plant, though it did not so misuse them. Then, what good have we got from America? What good of any kind, from the whole continent and its islands, from the Esquimaux to Patagonia?

1 Non enim te puto Graecos ludos desiderare: praesertim quum Graecos ita non ames, ut ne ad villain quidem tuam via Grasca ire soleas.—Cicero: Ep. ad Div, vii. i.

2 (Greek phrase)—AEschylus: Prometheus.

Mr. Gryll. Newfoundland salt-fish, doctor.

The Rev. Dr. Opindan. That is something, but it does not turn the scale.

Mr. Gryll. If they have given us no good, we have given them none.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. We have given them wine and classical literature; but I am afraid Bacchus and Minerva have equally "Scattered their bounty upon barren ground."

On the other hand, we have given the red men rum, which has been the chief instrument of their perdition. On the whole, our intercourse with America has been little else than an interchange of vices and diseases.

Lord Curryfin. Do you count it nothing to have substituted civilised for savage men?

The Rev, Dr. Opimian. Civilised. The word requires definition. But looking into futurity, it seems to me that the ultimate tendency of the change is to substitute the worse for the better race; the Negro for the Red Indian. The Red Indian will not work for a master. No ill-usage will make him. Herein he is the noblest specimen of humanity that ever walked the earth. Therefore, the white man exterminates his race. But the time will come when by mere force of numbers the black race will predominate, and exterminate the white. And thus the worse race will be substituted for the better, even as it is in St. Domingo, where the Negro has taken the place of the Caraib. The change is clearly for the worse.

Lord Curryfin. You imply that in the meantime the white race is better than the red.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. I leave that as an open question. But I hold, as some have done before me, that the human mind degenerates in America, and that the superiority, such as it is, of the white race, is only kept up by intercourse with Europe. Look at the atrocities in their ships. Look at their Congress and their Courts of Justice; debaters in the first; suitors, even advocates, sometimes judges, in the second, settling their arguments with pistol and dagger. Look at their extensions of slavery, and their revivals of the slave-trade, now covertly, soon to be openly. If it were possible that the two worlds could be absolutely dissevered for a century, I think a new Columbus would find nothing in America but savages.

Lord Curryfin. You look at America, doctor, through your hatred of slavery. You must remember that we introduced it when they were our colonists. It is not so easily got rid of. Its abolition by France exterminated the white race in St. Domingo, as the white race had exterminated the red. Its abolition by England ruined our West Indian colonies.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. Yes, in conjunction with the direct encouragement of foreign slave labour, given by our friends of liberty under the pretext of free trade. It is a mockery to keep up a squadron for suppressing the slave-trade on the one hand, while, on the other hand, we encourage it to an extent that counteracts in a tenfold degree the apparent power of suppression. It is a clear case of false pretension.

Mr. Gryll. You know, doctor, the Old World had slavery throughout its entire extent; under the Patriarchs, the Greeks, the Romans; everywhere in short. Cicero thought our island not likely to produce anything worth having, excepting slaves;{1} and of those none skilled, as some slaves were, in letters and music, but all utterly destitute of both. And in the Old World the slaves were of the same race with the masters. The Negroes are an inferior race, not fit, I am afraid, for anything else.

1 Etiam illud jam cognitum est, neque argenti scripulum esse ullum in ilia insula, neque ullam spem praedae, nisi ex mancipiis: ex quibus nullos puto te literis aut musicis eruditos expectare.—Cicero: ad Atticum, iv. 16.

A hope is expressed by Pomponius Mela, 1. iii, c. 6 (he wrote under Claudius), that, by the success of the Roman arms, the island and its savage inhabitants would soon be better known. It is amusing enough to peruse such passages in the midst of London.—Gibbon: c. i.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. Not fit, perhaps, for anything else belonging to what we call civilised life. Very fit to live on little, and wear nothing, in Africa; where it would have been a blessing to themselves and the rest of the world if they had been left unmolested; if they had had a Friar Bacon to surround their entire continent with a wall of brass.

Mr. Falconer. I am not sure, doctor, that in many instances, even yet, the white slavery of our factories is not worse than the black slavery of America. We have done much to amend it, and shall do more. Still, much remains to be done.

The Rev. Dr. Opimiun. And will be done, I hope and believe. The Americans do nothing to amend their system. On the contrary, they do all they can to make bad worse. Whatever excuse there may be for maintaining slavery where it exists, there can be none for extending it into new territories; none for reviving the African slave-trade. These are the crying sins of America. Our white slavery, so far as it goes, is so far worse, that it is the degradation of a better race. But if it be not redressed, as I trust it will be, it will work out its own retribution. And so it is of all the oppressions that are done under the sun. Though all men but the red men will work for a master, they will not fight for an oppressor in the day of his need. Thus gigantic empires have crumbled into dust at the first touch of an invader's footstep. For petty, as for great oppressions, there is a day of retribution growing out of themselves. It is often long in coming. Ut sit magna, tamen eerie lenla ira Deoruni est.{1} But it comes.

Raro anteccdentem scelestum Deseruit pede poena claudo.{2}

1 The anger of the Gods, though great, is slow.

2 The foot of Punishment, though lame, O'ertakes at last preceding Wrong.

Lord Curryfin. I will not say, doctor, 'I've seen, and sure I ought to know.' But I have been in America, and I have found there, what many others will testify, a very numerous class of persons who hold opinions very like your own: persons who altogether keep aloof from public life, because they consider it abandoned to the rabble; but who are as refined, as enlightened, as full of sympathy for all that tends to justice and liberty, as any whom you may most approve amongst ourselves.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. Of that I have no doubt But I look to public acts and public men.

Lord Curryfin. I should much like to know what Mr. MacBorrowdale thinks of all this.

Mr. MacBorrowdale. Troth, my lord, I think we have strayed far away from the good company we began with. We have lost sight of Jack of Dover. But the discussion had one bright feature. It did not interfere with, it rather promoted, the circulation of the bottle: for every man who spoke pushed it on with as much energy as he spoke with, and those who were silent swallowed the wine and the opinion together, as if they relished them both.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. So far, discussion may find favour. In my own experience I have found it very absorbent of claret. But I do not think it otherwise an incongruity after dinner, provided it be carried on, as our disquisitions have always been, with frankness and good humour. Consider how much instruction has been conveyed to us in the form of conversations at banquet, by Plato and Xenophon and Plutarch. I read nothing with more pleasure than their Symposia: to say nothing of Athenaeus, whose work is one long banquet.

Mr. MacBorrowdale. Nay, I do not object to conversation on any subject. I object to after-dinner lectures. I have had some unfortunate experiences. I have found what began in conversation end in a lecture. I have, on different occasions, met several men, who were in that respect all alike. Once started they never stopped. The rest of the good company, or rather the rest which without them would have been good company, was no company. No one could get in a word. They went on with one unvarying stream of monotonous desolating sound. This makes me tremble when a discussion begins. I sit in fear of a lecture.

Lord Curryfin. Well, you and I have lectured, but never after dinner. We do it when we have promised it, and when those who are present expect it. After dinner, I agree with you, it is the most doleful blight that can fall on human enjoyment.

Mr. MacBorrowdale. I will give you one or two examples of these postprandial inflictions. One was a great Indian reformer. He did not open his mouth till he had had about a bottle and a half of wine. Then he burst on us with a declamation on all that was wrong in India, and its remedy. He began in the Punjab, travelled to Calcutta, went southward, got into the Temple of Juggernaut, went southward again, and after holding forth for more than an hour, paused for a moment. The man who sate next him attempted to speak: but the orator clapped him on the arm, and said: 'Excuse me: now I come to Madras.' On which his neighbour jumped up and vanished. Another went on in the same way about currency. His first hour's talking carried him just through the Restriction Act of ninety-seven. As we had then more than half-a-century before us, I took my departure. But these were two whom topography and chronology would have brought to a close. The bore of all bores was the third. His subject had no beginning, middle, nor end. It was education. Never was such a journey through the desert of mind: the Great Sahara of intellect. The very recollection makes me thirsty.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. If all the nonsense which, in the last quarter of a century, has been talked on all other subjects were thrown into one scale, and all that has been talked on the subject of education alone were thrown into the other, I think the latter would preponderate.

Lord Curryfin. We have had through the whole period some fine specimens of nonsense on other subjects: for instance, with a single exception, political economy.

Mr. MacBorrowdale. I understand your lordship's politeness as excepting the present company. You need not except me. I am 'free to confess,' as they say 'in another place,' that I have talked a great deal of nonsense on that subject myself.

Lord Curryfin. Then, we have had latterly a mighty mass on the purification of the Thames.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. Allowing full weight to the two last-named ingredients, they are not more than a counterpoise to Competitive Examination, which is also a recent exotic belonging to education.

Lord Curryfin. Patronage, it used to be alleged, considered only the fitness of the place for the man, not the fitness of the man for the place. It was desirable to reverse this.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. True: but—

'dum vitant stulli vitium, in contraria currunl.' {1}

1 When fools would from one vice take flight. They rush into its opposite.—Hor. Sal. i. 2, 24.

Questions which can only be answered by the parrotings of a memory crammed to disease with all sorts of heterogeneous diet can form no test of genius, taste, judgment, or natural capacity. Competitive Examination takes for its norma: 'It is better to learn many things ill than one thing well'; or rather: 'It is better to learn to gabble about everything than to understand anything.' This is not the way to discover the wood of which Mercuries are made. I have been told that this precious scheme has been borrowed from China: a pretty fountain-head for moral and political improvement: and if so, I may say, after Petronius: 'This windy and monstrous loquacity has lately found its way to us from Asia, and like a pestilential star has blighted the minds of youth otherwise rising to greatness.'{1}

1 Nuper ventosa isthaec et enormis loquacitas Athenas ex Asia commigravit, animosque juvenum, ad magna surgentes, veluti pestilenti quodam sidere afflavit.

Lord Curryfin. There is something to be said on behalf of applying the same tests, addressing the same questions, to everybody.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. I shall be glad to hear what can be said on that behalf.

Lord Curryfin (after a pause). 'Mass,' as the second grave-digger says in Hamlet, 'I cannot tell.'

A chorus of laughter dissolved the sitting.



CHAPTER XX

ALGERNON AND MORGANA—OPPORTUNITY AND REPENTANCE—THE FOREST IN WINTER

Les violences qu'on se fait pour s'empecher d'aimer sont souvent plus cruelles que les rigueurs de ce qu'on aime. —La Rochefoucauld.

The winter set in early. December began with intense frost. Mr. Falconer, one afternoon, entering the inner drawing-room, found Miss Gryll alone. She was reading, and on the entrance of her visitor, laid down her book. He hoped he had not interrupted her in an agreeable occupation. 'To observe romantic method,' we shall give what passed between them with the Christian names of the speakers.

Morgana. I am only reading what I have often read before, Orlando Innamorato; and I was at the moment occupied with a passage about the enchantress from whom my name was borrowed. You are aware that enchantresses are in great favour here.

Algernon. Circe and Gryllus, and your name, sufficiently show that And not your name only, but——I should like to see the passage, and should be still better pleased if you would read it to me.

Morgana. It is where Orlando, who had left Morgana sleeping by the fountain, returns to seek the enchanted key, by which alone he can liberate his friends.

Il Conte, che d' intrare havea gran voglia, Subitamente al fonte ritornava: Quivi trovo Morgana, che con gioglia Danzava intorno, e danzando cantava. Ne pui leggier si move al vento foglia Come ella sanza sosta si voltava, Mirando hora a la terra ed hora al sole; Ed al suo canto usa va tal parole:

'Qualonque cerca al mondo haver thesoro, Over diletto, o segue onore e stato, Ponga la mano a questa chioma d' oro, Ch' io porto in fronte, e quel fara beato. Ma quando ha il destro a far cotal lavoro, Non prenda indugio, che 'l tempo passato Piu non ritorna, e non si trova mai; Ed io mi volto, e lui lascio con guai.'

Cosi cantava d' intorno girando La bella Fata a quella fresca fonte; Ma come gionto vide il Conte Orlando, Subitamente rivolto la fronte: Il prato e la fontana abbandonando, Prese il viaggio suo verso d* un monte, Quai chiudea la Valletta picciolina: Quivi fuggendo Morgana cammina.{1}

1 Bojardo: 1. ii. c. 8. Ed. Vinegia; 1544.

With earnest wish to pass the enchanted gate, Orlando to the fount again advanced, And found Morgana, all with joy elate, Dancing around, and singing as she danced. As lightly moved and twirled the lovely Fate As to the breeze the lightest foliage glanced, With looks alternate to the earth and sky, She thus gave out her words of witchery:

'Let him, who seeks unbounded wealth to hold, Or joy, or honour, or terrestrial state, Seize with his hand this lock of purest gold, That crowns my brow, and blest shall be his fate. But when time serves, behoves him to be bold, Nor even a moment's pause interpolate: The chance, once lost, he never finds again: I turn, and leave him to lament in vain.'

Thus sang the lovely Fate in bowery shade Circling in joy around the crystal fount; But when within the solitary glade Glittered the armour of the approaching Count, She sprang upon her feet, as one dismayed, And took her way towards a lofty mount That rose the valley's narrow length to bound: Thither Morgana sped along the ground.

I have translated Fata, Fate. It is usually translated Fairy. But the idea differs essentially from ours of a fairy. Amongst other things there is no Fato, no Oberon to the Titania. It does not, indeed, correspond with our usual idea of Fate, but it is more easily distinguished as a class; for our old acquaintances the Fates are an inseparable three. The Italian Fata is independent of her sisters. They are enchantresses; but they differ from other enchantresses in being immortal. They are beautiful, loo, and their beauty is immortal: always in Bojardo. He would not huvu turned Alcina into an old woman, as Arioslo did; which I must always consider a dreadful blemish on the many charms of the Orlando Furioso.

Algernon. I remember the passage well. The beautiful Fata, dancing and singing by the fountain, presents a delightful picture.

Morgana. Then, you know, Orlando, who had missed his opportunity of seizing the golden forelock while she was sleeping, pursues her a long while in vain through rocky deserts, La Penitenza following him with a scourge. The same idea was afterwards happily worked out by Machiavelli in his Capitolo del Occasion.

Algernon. You are fond of Italian literature? You read the language beautifully. I observe you have read from the original poem, and not from Bemi's rifacciamento.

Morgana. I prefer the original. It is more simple, and more in earnest. Bemi's playfulness is very pleasant, and his exordiums are charming; and in many instances he has improved the poetry. Still, I think he has less than the original of what are to me the great charms of poetry, truth and simplicity. Even the greater antiquity of style has its peculiar appropriateness to the subject. And Bojardo seems to have more faith in his narrative than Berni. I go on with him with ready credulity, where Berni's pleasantry interposes a doubt.

Algernon. You think that in narratives, however wild and romantic, the poet should write as if he fully believed in the truth of his own story.

Morgana. I do; and I think so in reference to all narratives, not to poetry only. What a dry skeleton is the history of the early ages of Rome, told by one who believes nothing that the Romans believed! Religion pervades every step of the early Roman history; and in a great degree down at least to the Empire; but, because their religion is not our religion, we pass over the supernatural part of the matter in silence, or advert to it in a spirit of contemptuous incredulity. We do not give it its proper place, nor present it in its proper colours, as a cause in the production of great effects. Therefore, I like to read Livy, and I do not like to read Niebuhr.

Algernon. May I ask if you read Latin?

Morgana. I do; sufficiently to derive great pleasure from it. Perhaps, after this confession, you will not wonder that I am a spinster.

Algernon. So far, that I think it would tend to make you fastidious in your choice. Not that you would be less sought by any who would be worthy your attention. For I am told you have had many suitors, and have rejected them all in succession. And have you not still many, and among them one very devoted lover, who would bring you title as well as fortune? A very amiable person, too, though not without a comic side to his character.

Morgana. I do not well know. He so far differs from all my preceding suitors that in every one of them I found the presence of some quality that displeased me, or the absence of some which would have pleased me: the want, in the one way or the other, of that entire congeniality in taste and feeling which I think essential to happiness in marriage. He has so strong a desire of pleasing, and such power of acquisition and assimilation, that I think a woman truly attached to him might mould him to her mind. Still, I can scarcely tell why, he does not complete my idealities. They say, Love is his own avenger: and perhaps I shall be punished by finding my idealities realised in one who will not care for me.

Algernon. I take that to be impossible.

Morgana blushed, held down her head, and made no reply. Algernon looked at her in silent admiration. A new light seemed to break in on him. Though he had had so many opportunities of forming a judgment on the point, it seemed to strike him for the first time with irresistible conviction that he had never before heard such a sweet voice, nor seen such an expressive and intelligent countenance. And in this way they continued like two figures in a tableau vivant, till the entrance of other parties broke the spell which thus had fixed them in their positions.

A few minutes more, and their destinies might have been irrevocably fixed. But the interruption gave Mr. Falconer the opportunity of returning again to his Tower, to consider, in the presence of the seven sisters, whether he should not be in the position of a Roman, who was reduced to the dilemma of migrating without his household deities, or of suffering his local deities to migrate without him; and whether he could sit comfortably on either of the horns of this dilemma. He felt that he could not. On the other hand, could he bear to see the fascinating Morgana metamorphosed into Lady Curryfin? The time had been when he had half wished it, as the means of restoring him to liberty. He felt now that when in her society he could not bear the idea; but he still thought that in the midst of his domestic deities he might become reconciled to it.

He did not care for horses, nor keep any for his own use. But as time and weather were not always favourable to walking, he had provided for himself a comfortable travelling-chariot, without a box to intercept the view, in which, with post-horses after the fashion of the olden time, he performed occasional migrations. He found this vehicle of great use in moving to and fro between the Grange and the Tower; for then, with all his philosophy, Impatience was always his companion: Impatience on his way to the Grange, to pass into the full attraction of the powerful spell by which he was drawn like the fated ship to the magnetic rock in the Arabian Nights: Impatience on his way to the Tower, to find himself again in the 'Regions mild of pure and serene air,' in which the seven sisters seemed to dwell, like Milton's ethereal spirits 'Before the starry threshold of Jove's court.' Here was everything to soothe, nothing to irritate or disturb him: nothing on the spot: but it was with him, as it is with many, perhaps with all: the two great enemies of tranquillity, Hope and Remembrance, would still intrude: not like a bubble and a spectre, as in the beautiful lines of Coleridge:{1}

Who late and lingering seeks thy shrine, On him but seldom, Power divine, Thy spirit rests. Satiety, And sloth, poor counterfeits of thee, Mock the tired worldling. Idle Hope, And dire Remembrance, interlope, And vex the feverish slumbers of the mind: The bubble floats before: the spectre stalks behind. —Coleridge's Ode to Tranquillity.

for the remembrance of Morgana was not a spectre, and the hope of her love, which he cherished in spite of himself, was not a bubble: but their forces were not less disturbing, even in the presence of his earliest and most long and deeply cherished associations.

He did not allow his impatience to require that the horses should be put to extraordinary speed. He found something tranquillising in the movement of a postilion in a smart jacket, vibrating on one horse upwards and downwards, with one invariable regulated motion like the cross-head of a side-lever steam-engine, and holding the whip quietly arched over the neck of the other. The mechanical monotony of the movement seemed less in contrast than in harmony with the profound stillness of the wintry forest: the leafless branches heavy with rime frost and glittering in the sun: the deep repose of nature, broken now and then by the traversing of deer, or the flight of wild birds: highest and loudest among them the long lines of rooks: but for the greater part of the way one long deep silence, undisturbed but by the rolling of the wheels and the iron tinkling of the hoofs on the frozen ground. By degrees he fell into a reverie, and meditated on his last dialogue with Morgana.

'It is a curious coincidence,' he thought, 'that she should have been dwelling in a passage, in which her namesake enchantress inflicted punishment on Orlando for having lost his opportunity. Did she associate Morgana with herself and Orlando with me? Did she intend a graceful hint to me not to lose my opportunity? I seemed in a fair way to seize the golden forelock, if we had not been interrupted. Do I regret that I did not? That is just what I cannot determine. Yet it would be more fitting, that whatever I may do should be done calmly, deliberately, philosophically, than suddenly, passionately, impulsively. One thing is clear to me. It is now or never: this or none. The world does not contain a second Morgana, at least not of mortal race. Well: the opportunity will return. So far, I am not in the predicament in which we left Orlando. I may yet ward off the scourge of La Penitenza?

But his arrival at home, and the sight of the seven sisters, who had all come to the hall-door to greet him, turned his thoughts for awhile into another channel.

He dined at his usual hour, and his two Hebes alternately filled his glass with Madeira. After which the sisters played and sang to him in the drawing-room; and when he had retired to his chamber, had looked on the many portraitures of his Virgin Saint, and had thought by how many charms of life he was surrounded, he composed himself to rest with the reflection: 'I am here like Rasselas in the Happy Valley: and I can now fully appreciate the force of that beautiful chapter: The wants of him who wants nothing?'



CHAPTER XXI

SKATING—PAS DE DEUX ON THE ICE—CONGENIALITY—FLINTS AMONG BONES

Ubi lepos, joci, risus, ebrietas decent, Gratias, decor, hilaritas, atque delectatio, Qui quaerit alia his, malum videtur quaerere. —Plautus: In Pseudolo.

Where sport, mirth, wine, joy, grace, conspire to please, He seeks but ill who seeks aught else than these.

The frost continued. The lake was covered over with solid ice. This became the chief scene of afternoon amusement, and Lord Curryfin carried off the honours of the skating. In the dead of the night there came across his memory a ridiculous stave:

There's Mr. Tait, he cuts an eight, He cannot cut a nine:

and he determined on trying if he could not out-do Mr. Tait.



He thought it would be best to try his experiment without witnesses: and having more than an hour's daylight before breakfast, he devoted that portion of the morning to his purpose. But cutting a nine by itself baffled his skill, and treated him to two or three tumbles, which, however, did not abate his ardour. At length he bethought him of cutting a nine between two eights, and by shifting his feet rapidly at the points of difficulty, striking in and out of the nine to and from the eights on each side. In this he succeeded, and exhibiting his achievement in the afternoon, adorned the surface of the ice with successions of 898, till they amounted to as many sextillions, with their homogeneous sequences. He then enclosed the line with an oval, and returned to the bank through an admiring circle, who, if they had been as numerous as the spectators to the Olympic games, would have greeted him with as loud shouts of triumph as saluted Epharmostus of Opus.{1}

Among the spectators on the bank were Miss Niphet and Mr. MacBorrowdale, standing side by side. While Lord Curryfin was cutting his sextillions, Mr. MacBorrowdale said: 'There is a young gentleman who is capable of anything, and who would shine in any pursuit, if he would keep to it. He shines as it is, in almost everything he takes in hand in private society: there is genius even in his failures, as in the case of the theatrical vases; but the world is a field of strong competition, and affords eminence to few in any sphere of exertion, and to those few rarely but in one.'

Miss Niphet. Before I knew him, I never heard of him but as a lecturer on Fish; and to that he seems to limit his public ambition. In private life, his chief aim seems to be that of pleasing his company. Of course, you do not attach much value to his present pursuit. You see no utility in it.

Mr. MacBorrowdale. On the contrary, I see great utility in it. I am for a healthy mind in a healthy body: the first can scarcely be without the last, and the last can scarcely be without good exercise in pure air. In this way, there is nothing better than skating. I should be very glad to cut eights and nines with his lordship: but the only figure I should tut would be that of as many feet as would measure my own length on the ice.

Lord Curryfin, on his return to land, thought it his duty first to accost Miss Gryll, who was looking on by the side of Miss Ilex.

He asked her if she ever skated. She answered in the negative. 'I have tried it,' she said, 'but unsuccessfully. I admire it extremely, and regret my inability to participate in it.' He then went up to Miss Niphet, and asked her the same question. She answered: 'I have skated often in our grounds at home.' 'Then why not now?' he asked. She answered: 'I have never done it before so many witnesses.' 'But what is the objection?' he asked. 'None that I know of,' she answered. 'Then,' he said, 'as I have done or left undone some things to please you, will you do this one thing to please me?'

1 (Greek phrase)—PIND. Olymp. ix. With what a clamour he passed through the circle.

'Certainly,' she replied: adding to herself: 'I will do anything in my power to please you.'



She equipped herself expeditiously, and started before he was well aware. She was half round the lake before he came up with her. She then took a second start, and completed the circle before he came up with her again. He saw that she was an Atalanta on ice as on turf. He placed himself by her side, slipped her arm through his, and they started together on a second round, which they completed arm-in-arm. By this time the blush-rose bloom which had so charmed him on a former occasion again mantled on her cheeks, though from a different cause, for it was now only the glow of healthful exercise; but he could not help exclaiming, 'I now see why and with what tints the Athenians coloured their statues.'

'Is it clear,' she asked, 'that they did so?'

'I have doubted it before,' he answered, 'but I am now certain that they did.'

In the meantime, Miss Gryll, Miss Ilex, and the Reverend Doctor Opimian had been watching their movements from the bank.

Miss Ilex. I have seen much graceful motion in dancing, in private society and on the Italian stage; and some in skating before to-day; but anything so graceful as that double-gliding over the ice by those two remarkably handsome young persons, I certainly never saw before.

Miss Gryll. Lord Curryfin is unquestionably handsome, and Miss Niphet, especially with that glow on her cheeks, is as beautiful a young woman as imagination can paint. They move as if impelled by a single will. It is impossible not to admire them both.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. They remind me of the mythological fiction, that Jupiter made men and women in pairs, like the Siamese twins; but in this way they grew so powerful and presumptuous, that he cut them in two; and now the main business of each half is to look for the other; which is very rarely found, and hence so few marriages are happy. Here the two true halves seem to have met.

The doctor looked at Miss Gryll, to see what impression this remark might make on her. He concluded that, if she thought seriously of Lord Curryfin, she would show some symptom of jealousy of Miss Niphet; but she did not. She merely said—

'I quite agree with you, doctor. There is evidently great congeniality between them, even in their respective touches of eccentricity.'

But the doctor's remark had suggested to her what she herself had failed to observe; Lord Curryfin's subsidence from ardour into deference, in his pursuit of herself. She had been so undividedly 'the cynosure of neighbouring eyes,' that she could scarcely believe in the possibility of even temporary eclipse. Her first impulse was to resign him to her young friend. But then appearances might be deceitful. Her own indifference might have turned his attentions into another channel, without his heart being turned with them. She had seen nothing to show that Miss Niphet's feelings were deeply engaged in the question. She was not a coquette; but she would still feel it as a mortification that her hitherto unquestioned supremacy should be passing from her. She had felt all along that there was one cause which would lead her to a decided rejection of Lord Curryfin. But her Orlando had not seized the golden forelock; perhaps he never would. After having seemed on the point of doing so, he had disappeared, and not returned. He was now again within the links of the sevenfold chain, which had bound him from his earliest days. She herself, too, had had, perhaps had still, the chance of the golden forelock in another quarter. Might she not subject her after-life to repentance, if her first hope should fail her when the second had been irrevocably thrown away? The more she contemplated the sacrifice, the greater it appeared. Possibly doubt had given preponderance to her thoughts of Mr. Falconer; and certainly had caused them to repose in the case of Lord Curryfin; but when doubt was thrown into the latter scale also, the balance became more even. She would still give him his liberty, if she believed that he wished it; for then her pride would settle the question; but she must have more conclusive evidence on the point than the Reverend Doctor's metaphorical deduction from a mythological fiction.

In the evening, while the party in the drawing-room were amusing themselves in various ways, Mr. MacBorrowdale laid a drawing on the table, and said, 'Doctor, what should you take that to represent?'

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. An unformed lump of I know not what.

Mr. MacBorrowdale. Not unformed. It is a flint formation of a very peculiar kind.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. Very peculiar, certainly. Who on earth can have amused himself with drawing a misshapen flint? There must be some riddle in it; some aenigma, as insoluble to me as Aelia Laelia Crispis.{1}

1 This aenigma has been the subject of many learned disquisitions. The reader who is unacquainted with it may find it under the article 'aenigma' in the Encyclopedia Britannica; and probably in every other encyclopaedia.

Lord Curryfin, and others of the party, were successively asked their opinions. One of the young ladies guessed it to be the petrifaction of an antediluvian mussel. Lord Curryfin said petrifactions were often siliceous, but never pure silex; which this purported to be. It gave him the idea of an ass's head; which, however, could not by any process have been turned into flint.

Conjecture being exhausted, Mr. MacBorrowdale said, 'It is a thing they call a Celt. The ass's head is somewhat germane to the matter. The Artium Societatis Syndicus Et Socii have determined that it is a weapon of war, evidently of human manufacture. It has been found, with many others like it, among bones of mammoths and other extinct animals, and is therefore held to prove that men and mammoths were contemporaries.'

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. A weapon of war? Had it a handle? Is there a hole for a handle?

Mr. MacBorrowdale. That does not appear.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. These flints, and no other traces of men, among the bones of mammoths?

Mr. MacBorrowdale. None whatever.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. What do the Artium Societatis Syndicus Et Socii suppose to have become of the men who produced these demonstrations of high aboriginal art?

Mr. MacBorrowdale. They think these finished specimens of skill in the art of chipping prove that the human race is of greater antiquity than has been previously supposed; and the fact that there is no other relic to prove the position they consider of no moment whatever.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. Ha! ha! ha! This beats the Elephant in the Moon,{1} which turned out to be a mouse in a telescope. But I can help them to an explanation of what became of these primaeval men-of-arms. They were an ethereal race, and evaporated.

1 See Butler's poem, with that title, in his Miscellaneous Works.



CHAPTER XXII

THE SEVEN AGAINST THEBES—A SOLILOQUY ON CHRISTMAS

Over the mountains, And over the waves; Under the fountains, And under the graves; Under floods that are deepest, Which Neptune obey; Over rocks that are steepest, Love will find out the way. —Old Song in Percy's Reliques.

Harry Hedgerow had volunteered to be Mr. Falconer's Mercury during his absences from the Tower, and to convey to him letters and any communications which the sisters might have to make. Riding at a good trot, on a horse more distinguished for strength than grace, he found the shortest days long enough for the purpose of going and returning, with an ample interval for the refreshment of himself and his horse.



While discussing beef and ale in the servants' hall, he heard a good deal of the family news, and many comments on the visitors. From these he collected that there were several young gentlemen especially remarkable for their attention to the young lady of the mansion: that among them were two who were more in her good graces than the others: that one of these was the young gentleman who lived in the Duke's Folly, and who was evidently the favourite: and that the other was a young lord, who was the life and soul of the company, but who seemed to be very much taken with another young lady, who had, at the risk of her own life, jumped into the water and picked him out, when he was nearly being drowned.



This story had lost nothing in travelling. Harry, deducing from all this the conclusion most favourable to his own wishes, determined to take some steps for the advancement of his own love-suit, especially as he had obtained some allies, who were willing to march with him to conquest, like the Seven against Thebes.

The Reverend Doctor Opimian had finished his breakfast, and had just sat down in his library, when he was informed that some young men wished to see him. The doctor was always accessible, and the visitors were introduced. He recognised his friend Harry Hedgerow, who was accompanied by six others. After respectful salutations on their part, and benevolent acceptance on his, Harry, as the only one previously known to the doctor, became spokesman for the deputation.

Harry Hedgerow. You see, sir, you gave me some comfort when I was breaking my heart; and now we are told that the young gentleman at the Folly is going to be married.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. Indeed! you are better informed than I am.

Harry Hedgerow. Why, it's in everybody's mouth. He passes half his time at Squire Gryll's, and they say it's all for the sake of the young lady that's there: she that was some days at the Folly; that I carried in, when she was hurt in the great storm. I am sure I hope it be true. For you said, if he married, and suitable parties proposed for her sisters, Miss Dorothy might listen to me. I have lived in the hope of that ever since. And here are six suitable parties to propose for her six sisters. That is the long and the short of it.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. The short of it, at any rate. You speak like a Spartan. You come to the point at once. But why do you come to me? I have no control over the fair damsels.

Harry Hedgerow. Why, no, sir; but you are the greatest friend of the young gentleman. And if you could just say a word for us to him, you see, sir.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. I see seven notes in the key of A minor, proposing to sound in harmony with the seven notes of the octave above; but I really do not see what I can do in the matter.

Harry Hedgerow. Indeed, sir, if you could only ask the young gentleman if he would object to our proposing to the young ladies.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. Why not propose to them yourselves? You seem to be all creditable young men.

Harry Hedgerow. I have proposed to Miss Dorothy, you know, and she would not have me; and the rest are afraid. We are all something to do with the land and the wood; farmers, and foresters, and nurserymen, and all that. And we have all opened our hearts to one another. They don't pretend to look above us; but it seems somehow as if they did, and couldn't help it They are so like young ladies. They daze us, like. Why, if they'd have us, they'd be all in reach of one another. Fancy what a family party there'd be at Christmas. We just want a good friend to put a good foot foremost for us; and if the young gentleman does marry, perhaps they may better themselves by doing likewise.



The Rev. Dr. Opimian. And so you seven young friends have each a different favourite among the seven sisters?

Harry Hedgerow. Why, that's the beauty of it.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. The beauty of it? Perhaps it is. I suppose there is an agistor {1} among you?

1 An agistor was a forest officer who superintended the taking in of strange cattle to board and lodge, and accounted for the profit to the sovereign. I have read the word, but never heard it. I am inclined to think that in modern times the duty was carried on under another name, or merged in the duties of another office.

Harry Hedgerow. (after looking at his companions who all shook their heads). I am afraid not. Ought there to be? We don't know what it means.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. I thought that among so many foresters there might be an agistor. But it is not indispensable. Well, if the young gentleman is going to be married, he will tell me of it. And when he does tell me, I will tell him of you. Have patience. It may all come right.

Harry Hedgerow. Thank ye, sir. Thank ye, sir, kindly.

Which being echoed in chorus by the other six, they took their departure, much marvelling what the reverend doctor could mean by an agistor.

'Upon my word,' said the doctor to himself, 'a very good-looking, respectable set of young men. I do not know what the others may have to say for themselves. They behaved like a Greek chorus. They left their share of the dialogue to the coryphaeus. He acquitted himself well, more like a Spartan than an Athenian, but none the worse for that. Brevity, in this case, is better than rhetoric. I really like that youth. How his imagination dwells on the family party at Christmas. When I first saw him, he was fancying how the presence of Miss Dorothy would gladden his father's heart at that season. Now he enlarges the circle, but it is still the same predominant idea. He has lost his mother. She must have been a good woman, and his early home must have been a happy one. The Christmas hearth would not be so uppermost in his thoughts if it had been otherwise. This speaks well for him and his. I myself think much of Christmas and all its associations. I always dine at home on Christmas Day, and measure the steps of my children's heads on the wall, and see how much higher each of them has risen since the same time last year, in the scale of physical life. There are many poetical charms in the heraldings of Christmas. The halcyon builds its nest on the tranquil sea. "The bird of dawning singeth all night long." I have never verified either of these poetical facts. I am willing to take them for granted. I like the idea of the Yule-log, the enormous block of wood carefully selected long before, and preserved where it would be thoroughly dry, which burned on the old-fashioned hearth. It would not suit the stoves of our modem saloons. We could not burn it in our kitchens, where a small fire in the midst of a mats of black iron, roasts, and bakes, and boils, and steams, and broils, and fries, by a complicated apparatus which, whatever may be its other virtues, leaves no space for a Christmas fire. I like the festoons of holly on the walls and windows; the dance under the mistletoe; the gigantic sausage; the baron of beef; the vast globe of plum-pudding, the true image of the earth, flattened at the poles; the tapping of the old October; the inexhaustible bowl of punch; the life and joy of the old hall, when the squire and his household and his neighbourhood were as one. I like the idea of what has gone, and I can still enjoy the reality of what remains. I have no doubt Harry's father bums the Yule-log, and taps the old October. Perhaps, instead of the beef, he produces a fat pig roasted "hole, like Eumaeus, the divine swineherd in the Odyssey. How Harry will burn the Yule-log if he can realise this day-dream of himself and his six friends with the seven sisters! I shall make myself acquainted with the position and characters of these young suitors. To be sure, it is not my business, and I ought to recollect the words of Cicero: "Est enim difficilis cura rerum alienarum: quamquam Terentianus ille Chremes humani nihil a se alienum putat."{1} I hold with. Chremes too. I am not without hope, from some symptoms I have lately seen, that rumour, in the present case, is in a fair way of being right; and if, with the accordance of the young gentleman as key-note, these two heptachords should harmonise into a double octave, I do not see why I may not take my part as fundamental bass.'

1 It is a hard matter to take active concern in the affairs of others; although the Chremes of Terence thinks nothing human alien to himself.—De Officiis: i. 9.



CHAPTER XXIII

THE TWO QUADRILLES—POPE'S OMBRE—POETICAL TRUTH TO NATURE—CLEOPATRA

(Greek passage) Alexis: Tarantini.

As men who leave their homes for public games, We leave our native element of darkness For life's brief light. And who has most of mirth, And wine, and love, may, like a satisfied guest, Return, contented, to the night he sprang from.

In the meantime Mr. Falconer, after staying somewhat longer than usual at home, had returned to the Grange. He found much the same party as he had left: but he observed, or imagined, that Lord Curryfin was much more than previously in favour with Miss Gryll; that she paid him more marked attention, and watched his conduct to Miss Niphet with something more than curiosity.

Amongst the winter evenings' amusements were two forms of quadrille: the old-fashioned game of cards, and the more recently fashionable dance. On these occasions it was of course a carpet-dance. Now, dancing had never been in Mr. Falconer's line, and though modern dancing, especially in quadrilles, is little more than walking, still in that 'little more' there is ample room for grace and elegance of motion.

Herein Lord Curryfin outshone all the other young men in the circle. He endeavoured to be as indiscriminating as possible in inviting partners: but it was plain to curious observation, especially if a spice of jealousy mingled with the curiosity, that his favourite partner was Miss Niphet. When they occasionally danced a polka, the reverend doctor's mythological theory came out in full force. It seemed as if Nature had preordained that they should be inseparable, and the interior conviction of both, that so it ought to be, gave them an accordance of movement that seemed to emanate from the innermost mind. Sometimes, too, they danced the Minuet de la Cour.



Having once done it, they had been often unanimously requested to repeat it. In this they had no competitors. Miss Gryll confined herself to quadrilles, and Mr. Falconer did not even propose to walk through one with her. When dancing brought into Miss Nipher/s cheeks the blush-rose bloom, which had more than once before so charmed Lord Curryfin, it required little penetration to see, through his external decorum, the passionate admiration with which he regarded her. Mr. Falconer remarked it, and, looking round to Miss Gryll, thought he saw the trace of a tear in her eye. It was a questionable glistening: jealousy construed it into a tear. But why should it be there? Was her mind turning to Lord Curryfin? and the more readily because of a newly-perceived obstacle? Had mortified vanity any share in it? No: this was beneath Morgana. Then why was it there? Was it anything like regret that, in respect of the young lord, she too had lost her opportunity? Was he himself blameless in the matter? He had been on the point of declaration, and she had been apparently on the point of acceptance: and instead of following up his advantage, he had been absent longer than usual. This was ill; but in the midst of the contending forces which severally acted on him, how could he make it well? So he sate still, tormenting himself.

In the meantime, Mr. Gryll had got up at a card-table, in the outer, which was the smaller drawing-room, a quadrille party of his own, consisting of himself, Miss Ilex, the Reverend Dr. Opimian, and Mr. MacBorrowdale.

Mr. Gryll. This is the only game of cards that ever pleased me. Once it was the great evening charm of the whole nation. Now, when cards are played at all, it has given place to whist, which, in my younger days, was considered a dry, solemn, studious game, played in moody silence, only interrupted by an occasional outbreak of dogmatism and ill-humour. Quadrille is not so absorbing but that we may talk and laugh over it, and yet is quite as interesting as anything of the kind has need to be.

Miss Ilex. I delight in quadrille. I am old enough to remember when, in mixed society in the country, it was played every evening by some of the party. But Chaque age a ses plaisirs, son esprit, et ses mours.{1} It is one of the evils of growing old that we do not easily habituate ourselves to changes of custom. The old, who sit still while the young dance and sing, may be permitted to regret the once always accessible cards, which, in their own young days, delighted the old of that generation: and not the old only.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. There are many causes for the diminished attraction of cards in evening society. Late dinners leave little evening. The old time for cards was the interval between tea and supper. Now there is no such interval, except here and there in out-of-the-way places, where, perhaps, quadrille and supper may still flourish, as in the days of Queen Anne. Nothing was more common in country towns and villages, half-a-century ago, than parties meeting in succession at each other's houses for tea, supper, and quadrille. How popular this game had been, you may judge from Gay's ballad, which represents all classes as absorbed in quadrille.{2} Then the facility of locomotion dissipates, annihilates neighbourhood.

1 Boileau.

2 For example:

When patients lie in piteous case, In comes the apothecary, And to the doctor cries 'Alas!

Non debes Quadrilare.' The patient dies without a pill: For why? The doctor's at quadrille.

Should France and Spain again grow loud, The Muscovite grow louder, Britain, to curb her neighbours proud,

Would want both ball and powder; Must want both sword and gun to kill; For why? The general's at quadrille.

People are not now the fixtures they used to be in their respective localities, finding their amusements within their own limited circle. Half the inhabitants of a country place are here to-day and gone to-morrow. Even of those who are more what they call settled, the greater portion is less, probably, at home than whisking about the world. Then, again, where cards are played at all, whist is more consentaneous to modern solemnity: there is more wiseacre-ism about it: in the same manner that this other sort of quadrille, in which people walk to and from one another with faces of exemplary gravity, has taken the place of the old-fashioned country-dance. 'The merry dance, I dearly love' would never suggest the idea of a quadrille, any more than 'merry England' would call up any image not drawn from ancient ballads and the old English drama.

Mr. Gryll. Well, doctor, I intend to have a ball at Christmas, in which all modes of dancing shall have fair play, but country-dances shall have their full share.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. I rejoice in the prospect. I shall be glad to see the young dancing as if they were young.

Miss Ilex. The variety of the game called tredrille—the Ombre of Pope's Rape of the Lock—is a pleasant game for three. Pope had many opportunities of seeing it played, yet he has not described it correctly; and I do not know that this has been observed.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. Indeed, I never observed it. I shall be glad to know how it is so.

Miss Ilex. Quadrille is played with forty cards: tredrille usually with thirty: sometimes, as in Pope's Ombre, with twenty-seven. In forty cards, the number of trumps is eleven in the black suits, twelve in the red:{1} in thirty, nine in all suits alike.{2} In twenty-seven, they cannot be more than nine in one suit, and eight in the other three. In Pope's Ombre spades are trumps, and the number is eleven: the number which they would be if the cards were forty. If you follow his description carefully, you will find it to be so.

1 Nine cards in the black, and ten in the red suits, in addition to the aces of spades and clubs, Spadille and Basto, which are trumps in all suits.

2 Seven cards in each of the four suits in addition to Spadille and Basto.

Mr. MacBorrowdale. Why, then, we can only say, as a great philosopher said on another occasion: The description is sufficient 'to impose on the degree of attention with which poetry is read.'

Miss Ilex. It is a pity it should be so. Truth to Nature is essential to poetry. Few may perceive an inaccuracy: but to those who do, it causes a great diminution, if not a total destruction, of pleasure in perusal. Shakespeare never makes a flower blossom out of season. Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey are true to Nature in this and in all other respects: even in their wildest imaginings.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. Yet here is a combination by one of our greatest poets, of flowers that never blossom in the same season—

Bring the rathe primrose, that forsaken dies, The tufted crow-toe and pale jessamine, The white pink, and the pansie freakt with jet, The glowing violet,

The musk-rose, and the well-attired woodbine, With cowslips wan, that hang the pensive head, And every flower that sad embroidery wears: Bid amaranthus all his beauty shed, And daffodillies fill their cups with tears, To deck the laureat hearse where Lycid lies.

And at the same time he plucks the berries of the myrtle and the ivy.

Miss Ilex. Very beautiful, if not true to English seasons: but Milton might have thought himself justified in making this combination in Arcadia. Generally, he is strictly accurate, to a degree that is in itself a beauty. For instance, in his address to the nightingale—

Thee, chauntress, oft the woods among, I woo to hear thy even-song, And missing thee, I walk unseen, On the dry smooth-shaven green.

The song of the nightingale ceases about the time that the grass is mown.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. The old Greek poetry is always true to Nature, and will bear any degree of critical analysis. I must say I take no pleasure in poetry that will not.

Mr. MacBorrowdale. No poet is truer to Nature than Burns, and no one less so than Moore. His imagery is almost always false. Here is a highly-applauded stanza, and very taking at first sight—

The night-dew of heaven, though in silence it weeps, Shall brighten with verdure the sod where he sleeps; And the tear that we shed, though in secret it rolls, Shall long keep his memory green in our souls.

But it will not bear analysis. The dew is the cause of the verdure: but the tear is not the cause of the memory: the memory is the cause of the tear.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. There are inaccuracies more offensive to me than even false imagery. Here is one, in a song which I have often heard with displeasure. A young man goes up a mountain, and as he goes higher and higher, he repeats Excelsior: but excelsior is only taller in the comparison of things on a common basis, not higher, as a detached object in the air. Jack's bean-stalk was excelsior the higher it grew: but Jack himself was no more celsus at the top than he had been at the bottom.

Mr. MacBorrowdale. I am afraid, doctor, if you look for profound knowledge in popular poetry, you will often be disappointed.

The Rev. Dr. Opimian. I do not look for profound knowledge. But I do expect that poets should understand what they talk of. Burns was not a scholar, but he was always master of his subject. All the scholarship of the world would not have produced Tarn o' Shanter: but in the whole of that poem there is not a false image nor a misused word. What do you suppose these lines represent?

I turning saw, throned on a flowery rise, One sitting on a crimson scarf unrolled: A queen, with swarthy cheeks and bold black eyes, Brow-bound with burning gold.

Mr. MacBorrowdale. I should take it to be a description of the Queen of Bambo.

The Rev. Dr, Opimian, Yet thus one of our most popular poets describes Cleopatra: and one of our most popular artists has illustrated the description by a portrait of a hideous grinning AEthiop. Moore led the way to this perversion by demonstrating that the AEgyptian women must have been beautiful, because they were 'the countrywomen of Cleopatra.' {1} 'Here we have a sort of counter-demonstration, that Cleopatra must have been a fright because she was the countrywoman of the AEgyptians. But Cleopatra was a Greek, the daughter of Ptolemy Auletes, and a lady of Pontus. The Ptolemies were Greeks, and whoever will look at their genealogy, their coins, and their medals, will see how carefully they kept their pure Greek blood uncontaminated by African intermixture. Think of this description and this picture applied to one who Dio says —and all antiquity confirms him—was 'the most superlatively beautiful of women, splendid to see, and delightful to hear.'{2} For she was eminently accomplished: she spoke many languages with grace and facility. Her mind was as wonderful as her personal beauty. There is not a shadow of intellectual expression in that horrible portrait.

1 Dc Pauw, the great depreciator of everything AEgyptian, has, on the authority of a passage in Aelian, presumed to affix to the countrywomen of Cleopatra the stigma of complete and unredeemed ugliness.—Moore's Epicurean, fifth note.

2 (Greek phrase)—Dio,.vlii. 34.

The conversation at the quadrille-table was carried on with occasional pauses, and intermingled with the technicalities of the game.

Miss Gryll continued to alternate between joining in the quadrille-dances and resuming her seat by the side of the room, where she was the object of great attention from some young gentlemen, who were glad to find her unattended by either Lord Curryfin or Mr. Falconer. Mr. Falconer continued to sit as if he had been fixed to his seat, like Theseus. The more he reflected on his conduct, in disappearing at that critical point of time and staying away so long, the more he felt that he had been guilty of an unjustifiable, and perhaps unpardonable offence. He noticed with extreme discomposure the swarm of moths, as he called them to himself, who were fluttering in the light of her beauty: he would gladly have put them to flight; and this being out of the question, he would have been contented to take his place among them; but he dared not try the experiment.



Nevertheless, he would have been graciously received. The young lady was not cherishing any feeling of resentment against him. She understood, and made generous allowance for, his divided feelings. But his irresolution, if he were left to himself, was likely to be of long duration: and she meditated within herself the means of forcing him to a conclusion one way or the other.



CHAPTER XXIV

PROGRESS OF SYMPATHY—LOVE'S INJUNCTIONS—ORLANDO INNAMORATO

(Greek passage) Anacreon.

See, youth, the nymph who charms your eyes; Watch, lest you lose the willing prize. As queen of flowers the rose you own, And her of maids the rose alone.

While light, fire, mirth, and music were enlivening the party within the close-drawn curtains, without were moonless night and thickly-falling snow; and the morning opened on one vast expanse of white, mantling alike the lawns and the trees, and weighing down the wide-spreading branches. Lord Curryfin, determined not to be baulked of his skating, sallied forth immediately after breakfast, collected a body of labourers, and swept clear an ample surface of ice, a path to it from the house, and a promenade on the bank. Here he and Miss Niphet amused themselves in the afternoon, in company with a small number of the party, and in the presence of about the usual number of spectators. Mr. Falconer was there, and contented himself with looking on.

Lord Curryfin proposed a reel, Miss Niphet acquiesced, but it was long before they found a third. At length one young gentleman, of the plump and rotund order, volunteered to supply the deficiency, and was soon deposited on the ice, where his partners in the ice-dance would have tumbled over him if they had not anticipated the result, and given him a wide berth. One or two others followed, exhibiting several varieties in the art of falling ungracefully. At last the lord and the lady skated away on as large a circuit as the cleared ice permitted, and as they went he said to her—

'If you were the prize of skating, as Atalanta was of running, I should have good hope to carry you off against all competitors but yourself.'

She answered, 'Do not disturb my thoughts, or I shall slip.'

He said no more, but the words left their impression. They gave him as much encouragement as, under their peculiar circumstances, he could dare to wish for, or she could venture to intimate.

Mr. Falconer admired their 'poetry of motion' as much as all the others had done. It suggested a remark which he would have liked to address to Miss Gryll, but he looked round for her in vain. He returned to the house in the hope that he might find her alone, and take the opportunity of making his peace.

He found her alone, but it seemed that he had no peace to make. She received him with a smile, and held out her hand to him, which he grasped fervently. He fancied that it trembled, but her features were composed. He then sat down at the table, on which the old edition of Bojardo was lying open as before. He said, 'You have not been down to the lake to see that wonderful skating.' She answered, 'I have seen it every day but this. The snow deters me to-day. But it is wonderful. Grace and skill can scarcely go beyond it.'

He wanted to apologise for the mode and duration of his departure and absence, but did not know how to begin. She gave him the occasion. She said, 'You have been longer absent than usual—from our rehearsals. But we are all tolerably perfect in our parts. But your absence was remarked—by some of the party. You seemed to be especially missed by Lord Curryfin. He asked the reverend doctor every morning if he thought you would return that day.'

Algernon. And what said the doctor?

Morgana. He usually said, 'I hope so.' But one morning he said something more specific.

Algernon. What was it?

Morgana. I do not know that I ought to tell you.

Algernon. Oh, pray do.

Morgana. He said, 'The chances are against it.' 'What are the odds?' said Lord Curryfin. 'Seven to one,' said the doctor. 'It ought not to be so,' said Lord Curryfin, 'for here is a whole Greek chorus against seven vestals.' The doctor said, 'I do not estimate the chances by the mere balance of numbers.'

Algernon. He might have said more as to the balance of numbers.

Morgana. He might have said more, that the seven outweighed the one.

Algernon. He could not have said that

Morgana. It would be much for the one to say that the balance was even.

Algernon. But how if the absentee himself had been weighed against another in that one's own balance?

Morgana. One to one promises at least more even weight

Algernon. I would not have it so. Pray, forgive me.

Morgana. Forgive you? For what?

Algernon. I wish to say, and I do not well know how, without seeming to assume what I have no right to assume, and then I must have double cause to ask your forgiveness.

Morgana. Shall I imagine what you wish to say, and say it for you?

Algernon. You would relieve me infinitely, if you imagine justly.

Morgana. You may begin by saying with Achilles,

My mind is troubled, like a fountain stirred; And I myself see not the bottom of it.{1}

1 Troilus and Cressida, Act iii. Sc. 3.

Algernon. I think I do see it more clearly.

Morgana. You may next say, I live an enchanted life. I have been in danger of breaking the spell; it has once more bound me with sevenfold force; I was in danger of yielding to another attraction; I went a step too far in all but declaring it; I do not know how to make a decent retreat.

Algernon. Oh! no, no; nothing like that.

Morgana. Then there is a third thing you may say; but before I say that for you, you must promise to make no reply, not even a monosyllable; and not to revert to the subject for four times seven days. You hesitate.

Algernon. It seems as if my fate were trembling in the balance.

Morgana, You must give me the promise I have asked for.

Algernon. I do give it.

Morgana. Repeat it then, word for word.

Algernon. To listen to you in silence; not to say a syllable in reply; not to return to the subject for four times seven days.

Morgana. Then you may say, I have fallen in love; very irrationally—(he was about to exclaim, but she placed her finger on her lips)—very irrationally; but I cannot help it. I fear I must yield to my destiny. I will try to free myself from all obstacles; I will, if I can, offer my hand where I have given my heart. And this I will do, if I ever do, at the end of four times seven days: if not then, never.

She placed her finger on her lips again, and immediately left the room, having first pointed to a passage in the open pages of Orlando Innamorato. She was gone before he was aware that she was going; but he turned to the book, and read the indicated passage. It was a part of the continuation of Orlando's adventure in the enchanted garden, when, himself pursued and scourged by La Penitenza, he was pursuing the Fata Morgana over rugged rocks and through briery thickets.

Cosi diceva. Con molta rovina Sempre seguia Morgana il cavalliero: Fiacca ogni bronco ed ogni mala spina, Lasciando dietro a se largo il sentiero: Ed a la Fata molto s' avicina E gia d' averla presa e il suo pensiero: Ma quel pensiero e ben fallace e vano, Pera che presa anchor scappa di mano.

O quante volte gli dette di piglio, Hora ne' panni ed hor nella persona: Ma il vestimento, ch* e bianco e vermiglio, Ne la speranza presto 1' abbandona: Pur una fiata rivoltando il ciglio, Come Dio volse e la ventura buona, Volgendo il viso quella Fata al Conte El ben la prese al zuffo ne la fronte.

Allor cangiosse il tempo, e l' aria scura Divenne chiara, e il ciel tutto sereno, E aspro monte si fece pianura; E dove prima fa di spine pteno, Se coperse de fiori e de verdura: E Uagedar dell' altra veni La qual, con miglior viio che non mole, Verso del Conte usava tel parole. Attend, cavalliero, a quella ctitama....{1}

1 Bojardo, Orlando Innamarato, L ii. c. 9. Ed. di Vinegia; 1544.

So spake Repentance. With the speed of fire Orlando followed where the enchantress fled, Rending and scattering tree and bush and brier, And leaving wide the vestige of his tread. Nearer he drew, with feet that could not tire, And strong in hope to seise her as she sped. How vain the hope! Her form he seemed to clasp, But soon as seized, she vanished from his grasp.

How many times he laid his eager hand On her bright form, or on her vesture fair; But her white robes, and their vermilion band, Deceived his touch, and passed away like air. But once, as with a half-turned glance she scanned Her foe—Heaven's will and happy chance were there— No breath for pausing might the time allow— He seized the golden forelock of her brow.

Then passed the gloom and tempest from the sky; The air at once grew calm and all serene; And where rude thorns had clothed the mountain high, Was spread a plain, all flowers and vernal green. Repentance ceased her scourge. Still standing nigh, With placid looks, in her but rarely seen, She said: 'Beware how yet the prize you lose; The key of fortune few can wisely use.'

In the last stanza of the preceding translation, the seventh line is the essence of the stanza immediately following; the eighth is from a passage several stanzas forward, after Orlando has obtained the key, which was the object of his search:

Che mal se trova alcun sotto la Luna, Ch' adopri ben la chiave di Fortuna.

The first two books of Bojardo's poem were published in 1486. The first complete edition was published in 1495.

The Venetian edition of 1544, from which I have cited this passage, and the preceding one in chapter xx., is the fifteenth and last complete Italian edition. The original work was superseded by the Rifacciamenti of Berni and Domenichi. Mr. Panizzi has rendered a great service to literature in reprinting the original. He collated all accessible editions. Verum opere in longo fas est obrepere somnum. He took for his standard,... as I think unfortunately, the Milanese edition of 1539. With all the care he bestowed on his task, he overlooked one fearful perversion in the concluding stanza, which in all editions but the Milanese reads thus: Mentre ch' io canto, ahime Dio redentore...

He was recalled to himself by sinking up to his shoulders of a hollow.

'She must have anticipated my coming,' said the young gentleman to himself. 'She had opened the book at this passage, and has left it to say to me for her—Choose between love and repentance. Four times seven days! That is to ensure calm for the Christmas holidays. The term will pass over Twelfth Night. The lovers of old romance were subjected to a probation of seven years:—

Seven long years I served thee, fair one, Seven long years my fee was scorn.

'But here, perhaps, the case is reversed. She may have feared a probation of seven years for herself; and not without reason. And what have I to expect if I let the four times seven days pass by? Why, then, I can read in her looks—and they are interpreted in the verses before me—I am assigned to repentance, without the hope of a third opportunity. She is not without a leaning towards Lord Curryfin.

Veggio 1' Italia tutta a fiamma e a foco, Per questi Galli, che con gran furore Vengon per disertar non so che loco. Pero vi lascio in questo vano amore Di Fiordespina ardente a poco a poco: Un' altra fiata, se mi fia concesso, Racconterovi il tutto per espresso.

Even while I sing, ah me, redeeming Heaven! I see all Italy in fire and flame, Raised by these Gauls, who, by great fury driven, Come with destruction for their end and aim. The maiden's heart, by vainest passion riven, Not now the rudely-broken song may claim; Some future day, if Fate auspicious prove, Shall end the tale of Fiordespina's love.

The Milanese edition of 1539 was a reprint of that of 1513, in which year the French, under Louis XII., had reconquered Milan. The Milanese editions read valore for furore.

It was no doubt in deference to the conquerors that the printer of 1513 made this substitution; but it utterly perverts the whole force of the passage. The French, under Charles VIII., invaded Italy in September 1494, and the horror with which their devastations inspired Bojardo not only stopped the progress of his poem, but brought his life prematurely to a close. He died in December 1494. The alteration of this single word changes almost into a compliment an expression of cordial detestation.

She thinks he is passing from her, and on the twenty-ninth day, or perhaps in the meantime, she will try to regain him. Of course she will succeed. What rivalry could stand against her? If her power over him is lessened, it is that she has not chosen to exert it She has but to will it, and he is again her slave. Twenty-eight days! twenty-eight days of doubt and distraction.' And starting up, he walked out into the park, not choosing the swept path, but wading knee-deep in snow where it lay thickest in the glades. He was recalled to himself by sinking up to his shoulders in a hollow. He emerged with some difficulty, and retraced his steps to the house, thinking that, even in the midst of love's most dire perplexities, dry clothes and a good fire are better than a hole in the snow.