Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine – Volume 53, No. 332, June, 1843

One query answered them all. "My lord, is it not true that I am entitled to five thousand pounds?"

"Five thousand –?" what word was to fill up the interval I can only guess. But the first lesson which a man learns at the clubs is, to control his temper when its display is not likely to be attended with effect. He saw that I stood his gaze with but few symptoms of giving way, and he changed his tactics with an adroitness that did honour to his training. Approaching me, he held out his hand. "Charles, why should we quarrel about trifles? I was really not acquainted with the circumstance to which you allude, but I shall look into it without delay. Pray, can you tell me the when, the where, the how?"

"Your questions may be easily answered. The when was at the death of our uncle, the where was in his will, and the how—in any way your lordship pleases." The truce was now made; he begged of me, "as I valued his feelings," to drop the formality of his title, to regard him simply as a brother, and to rely on his wish to forward every object that might gratify my inclination.

Our conference broke up. He galloped to a neighbouring horse-race. I went to take a solitary ramble through the Park.

The hour and the scene were what the poet pronounces "fit to cure all sadness but despair." Noble old trees, the "roof star-proof" overhead, the cool velvet grass under the feet—glimpses of sunlight striking through the trunks—the freshened air coming in gusts across the lake, like new life, bathing my burning forehead and feverish hands—the whole unrivalled sweetness of the English landscape softened and subdued me. Those effects are so common, that I can claim no credit for their operation on my mind; and, before I had gone far, I was on the point of returning, if not to recant, at least to palliate the harshness of my appeal to fraternal justice.

But, by this time I had reached a rising ground which commanded a large extent of the surrounding country. The evening was one of those magnificent closes of the year, which, like a final scene in a theatre, seems intended to comprehend all the beauties and brilliancies of the past. The western sky was a blaze of all colours, and all pouring over the succession of forest, cultured field, and mountain top, which make the English view, if not the most sublime, the most touching of the earth!

But as I stood on the hill, gazing round to enjoy every shape and shade at leisure, my eye turned on the Castle. It spoiled all my serenity at once. I felt that it was a spot from which I was excluded by nature; that it belonged to others so wholly, that scarcely by any conceivable chance could it ever be mine; and that I could remain within its walls no longer, but with a sense of uselessness and shame.

If I could have taken staff in hand and pack on shoulder, I would have started at that moment on a pilgrimage that might have circled the globe. But the most fiery resolution must submit to circumstances. One night more, at least, I must sleep under the paternal roof, and I was hastening home, brooding over bitter thoughts, when I suddenly rushed against some one whom I nearly overthrew.—"Bless me, Mr Marston, is it you?"—told me that I had run down my old tutor, Mr Vincent, the parson of the parish. He had been returning from visiting some of his flock, and in the exercise of the vocation which he had just been fulfilling, he saw that something went ill with me, and taking my arm, forced me to go home with him, for such comfort as he could give.

Parsons, above all men, are the better for wives and families; for, without them, they are wonderfully apt to grow saturnine or stupid. Of course there are exceptions. Vincent had a wife not much younger than himself, to whom he always spoke with the courtiership of a preux chevalier. A portrait of her in her bridal dress, showed that she had been a pretty brunette in her youth; and her husband still evidently gave her credit for all that she had been. They had, as is generally the fate of the clergy, a superfluity of daughters, four or five I think, creatures as thoughtless and innocent as their own poultry, or their own pet-sheep. But all round their little vicarage was so pure, so quiet, and so neat—there was such an aspect of order and even of elegance, however inexpensive, that its contrast with the glaring and restless tumult of the "great house" was irresistible. I never had so full a practical understanding of the world's "pomps and vanities," as while looking at the trimmings and trelisses of the parson's dwelling.

I acknowledge myself a worldling, but I suppose that all is not lead or iron within me, from my sense of scenes like this. In my wildest hour, the sight of fields and gardens has been a kind of febrifuge to me—has conveyed a feeling of tranquillity to my mind; as if it drank the silence and the freshness, as the flowers drink the dew. I have often thus experienced a sudden soothing, which checked the hot current of my follies or frenzies, and made me think that there were better things than the baubles of cabinets. But it did not last long.

I mention this evening, because it decided my future life; or at least the boldest, and perhaps the best portion of it. We had an hour or two of the little variations of placid amusement which belong to all parsonages in romances, but which here were reality; easy conversation on the events of the county; a little political talking with the vicar; a few details of persons and fashions at the castle, to which the ladies listened as Desdemona might have listened to Othello's history—for the Castle was so seldom visited by them, that it had almost the air of a Castle of Otranto, and they evidently thought that its frowning towers and gilded halls belonged to another race, if not to another region of existence; we had, too, some of the last new songs, (at least half a century old, but which were not the less touching,) and a duet of Geminiani, performed by the two elder proficients on a spinet which might have been among the "chamber music" of the Virgin Queen; all slight matters to speak of, and yet which contributed to the quietude of a mind longing for rest—sights of innocence and sounds of peace, which, like the poet's music—

"Might take the prison'd soul
And wrap it in Elysium."

The moon shining in through panes covered with honeysuckle and fragrance of all kinds, at length warned me that I was intruding on a household primitive in their hours, as in every thing else, and I rose to take my leave. But I could not be altogether parted with yet. It seems that they had found me a most amusing guest; while, to my own conception, I had been singularly spiritless; but the little anecdotes which were trite to me had been novelties to them. Fashion has a charm even for philosophers; and the freaks and follies of the high-toned sons and daughters of fashion—who wore down my gentle mother's frame, drained my showy father's rental, and made even myself loathe the sight of loaded barouches coming to discharge their cargoes of beaux and belles on us for weeks together—were nectar and ambrosia to my sportive and rosy-cheeked audience. The five girls put on their bonnets, and looking like a group of Titania and her nymphs, as they bounded along in the moonlight, escorted us to the boundary of the vicar's territory.

We were about to separate, with all the pretty formalities of village leave-taking; when their father, in the act of shaking hands with me, fixed his eye on mine, and insisted on seeing me home. Whether the thought occurred to him that I had still something on my mind, which was not to be trusted within sight of a brook that formed the boundary to the Castle grounds, I know not, but I complied; the girls were sent homewards, and I heard their gay voices mingling, at a distance, and not unsuitably, with the songs of the nightingale.

I took his arm, and we walked on for a while in silence. At length, slackening his pace, and speaking in a tone whose earnestness struck me, "Charles," said he, "has any thing peculiarly painful lately happened to you?—if so, speak out. I know your nature to be above disguise; and with whom can you repose your vexations, if such there be, more safely than with your old tutor?"

I was taken unawares; and not having yet formed a distinct conception of my own grievances, promptly denied that I had any.

"It may be so," said my friend; "and yet once or twice this evening I saw your cheek alternately flush and grow pale, with a suddenness that alarmed me for your health. In one of your pleasantest stories, while you were acting the narrative with a liveliness evidently unconscious, and giving me and mine a treat which we have not had for a long time, I observed your voice falter, as if some spasm of soul had shot across you; and I unquestionably saw, that rare sight in the eyes of man, a tear."

I denied this instance of weakness stoutly; but the old man's importunities prevailed, and, by degrees, I told him, or rather his good-natured cross-examination moulded for me, a statement of my anxieties at home.

The Vicar, with all his simplicity of manner, was a man of powerful and practical understanding. He had been an eminent scholar at his university, and was in a fair way for all its distinctions, when he thought proper to fall desperately in love. This, of course, demolished his prospects at once. I never heard his subsequent history in detail; but he had left England, and undergone a long period of disheartening and distress. Whether he had not, in those times of desolation, taken service in the Austrian army, and even shared some of its Turkish campaigns, was a question which I heard once or twice started at the Castle; and a slight contraction of the arm, and a rather significant scar which crossed his bold forehead, had been set down to the account of the Osmanli cimeter.

Vincent had never told the story of either, but a rumour reached his college of his having been seen in the Austrian uniform on the Transylvanian frontier, during the campaigns of the Prince of Coburg and Laudohn against the Turks. It was singular enough, that on this very evening, in arguing against some of my whims touching destinies and omens, he illustrated the facility of imposture on such points by an incident from one of those campaigns.

"A friend of mine," said he, "a captain in the Lichtenstein hussars, happened to be on the outpost service of the army. As the enemy were in great force, and commanded by the Vizier in person, an action was daily expected, and the pickets and videttes were ordered to be peculiarly on the alert. But, on a sudden, every night produced some casualty. They either lost videttes, or their patrol was surprised, or their baggage plundered—in short, they began to be the talk of the army. The regiment had been always one of the most distinguished in the service, and all those misfortunes were wholly unaccountable. At length a stronger picket than usual was ordered for the night—not a man of them was to be found in the morning. As no firing had been heard, the natural conjecture was, that they must all have deserted. As this was a still more disgraceful result than actual defeat, the colonel called his officers together, to give what information they could. The camp, as usual, swarmed with Bohemians, fortune-tellers, and gipsies, a race who carry intelligence on both sides; and whose performances fully accounted for the knowledge which the enemy evidently had of our outposts. The first order was, to clear the quarters of the regiment of those encumbrances, and the next to direct the videttes to fire without challenging. At midnight a shot was heard; all turned out, and on reaching the spot where the alarm had been given, the vidette was found lying on the ground and senseless, though without a wound. On his recovery, he said that he had seen a ghost; but that having fired at it, according to orders, it looked so horribly grim at him, that he fell from his horse and saw no more. The Austrians are brave, but they are remarkably afraid of supernatural visitants, and a ghost would be a much more formidable thing to them than a discharge of grape-shot.

"The captain in question was an Englishman, and as John Bull is supposed, among foreigners, to carry an unusual portion of brains about him, the colonel took him into his special council in the emergency. Having settled their measures, the captain prepared to take charge of the pickets for the night, making no secret of his dispositions. At dark, the videttes and sentries were posted as usual, and the officer took his post in the old field redoubt, which had been the headquarters of the pickets for the last fortnight.

"All went on quietly until about midnight; the men off duty fast asleep in their cloaks, and the captain reading an English novel. He, too, had grown weary of the night, and was thinking of stretching himself on the floor of his hut, when he saw, and not without some perturbation, a tall spectral figure, in armour, enter the works, stride over the sleeping men without exciting the smallest movement amongst them, and advance towards him. He drew his breath hard, and attempted to call out, but his voice was choked, and he began to think himself under the dominion of nightmare. The figure came nearer still, looking more menacing, and drew its sword. My friend, with an effort which he afterwards acknowledged to be desperate, put his hand to his side to draw his own. What was his alarm when he found that it had vanished? At this moment his poodle, which, against all precautions, had followed him, began barking fiercely, and rushing alternately towards him and a corner of the redoubt. Though his sabre was gone, a brace of English pistols lay on the table beside him, and he fired one of them in the direction. The shot was followed by a groan and the disappearance of the spectre. The men started to their feet, and all rushed out in pursuit. The captain's first step struck upon a dead body, evidently that of the spy who had fallen by his fire. The pursuit was now joined in by the whole regiment, who had been posted in the rear unseen, to take advantage of circumstances. They pushed on, swept all before them, and bore down patrol and picket until they reached the enemy's camp. The question then was, what to do next? whether to make the best of their way back, or try their chance onward? The Englishman's voice was for taking fortune at the flow; and the accidental burning of a tent or two by the fugitives showed him the Turks already in confusion. The trampling of battalions in the rear told him at the same time that he had powerful help at hand, and he dashed among the lines at once. The hussars, determined to retrieve their reputation, did wonders—the enemy were completely surprised. No troops but those in the highest state of discipline are good for any thing when attacked at night. The gallantry of the Turk by day, deserts him in the dark; and a night surprise, if well followed up, is sure to end in a victory. From the random firing and shouting on every side, it was clear that they were totally taken unawares; and the rapid and general advance of the Austrian brigades, showed that Laudohn was in the mind to make a handsome imperial bulletin. Day dawned on a rout as entire as ever was witnessed in a barbarian campaign. The enemy were flying in all directions like a horde of Tartars, and camp, cannon, baggage, standards, every thing was left at the mercy of the pursuers."

"But the captain, the Englishman, what became of him?" I asked, slightly glancing at the countenance of the narrator.

"Oh, very well off indeed! Foreign Governments are showy to the soldier, and Joseph the Second, though an economist in civil matters, was liberal to his successful officers. The captain received a pension; a couple of orders; was made a colonel on the first opportunity; and, besides, had his share of the plunder—no slight addition to his finances, for the military chest had been taken in the baggage of the Seraskier."

"And by this time," said I, with an unenquiring air, "he is doubtless a field-marshal?"

"Nothing of the kind," replied my reverend friend, "for his victory cured him of soldiership. He was wounded in the engagement, and if he had been ever fool enough to think of fame, the solitary hours of his invalidism put an end to the folly. Other and dearer thoughts recurred to his mind. He had now obtained something approaching to a competence, if rightly managed; he asked permission to retire, returned to England, married the woman he loved; and never for a moment regretted that he was listening to larks and linnets instead of trumpets and cannon, and settling the concerns of rustics instead of manœuvring squadrons and battalions."

"But what was the ghost, after all?"

"Oh, the mere trick of a juggler! a figure projected on the wall by some ingenious contrivance of glasses. The instrument was found on the body of the performer, who turned out to be the colonel's valet—of course in the enemy's pay, and who furnished them with daily intelligence of all our proceedings. As for the loss of the sabre, which actually startled the ghost-seer most, he found it next morning hanging up in the hut, where he himself had placed it, and forgotten that he had done so."

"And the captain, or rather the colonel, brought with him to England, a cimeter-cut on his arm, and another on his forehead?" I asked, fixing my eyes on him. A crimson flush passed over his countenance, he bit his lip and turned away. I feared that I had offended irreparably. But his natural kindliness of heart prevailed, he turned to me gently, laughed, and pressing my hand in his, said, "You have my secret. It has escaped me for the first time these thirty years. Keep it like a man of honour."

I have always held that the life of man's mind, where man has a mind—which is not always the case—is a thing of fits and starts. I even doubt whether any one who will take the trouble to recollect, will not be able to put his finger on the precise periods at which new views of every thing suddenly opened before him, and he emerged at once, if not into new powers, at least into a new use of them. The frame may grow like a tree; the faculties may grow as imperceptibly as the frame; but the mind acquires that knowledge of life which forms its exercise, its use, and perhaps its essence, by bounds and flights. This moonlight walk with my old and honoured Mentor, was the beginning of my mental adolescence. My manhood was still to come, and with a more severe instructor.

As we were passing slowly through the plantations which encircled the Castle with all the noble and profuse shelter and ornament which our ancestors loved, a distant sound of music came on the wind. I then remembered, for the first time, that my brother had, on that evening, given a ball to the county, and a sudden sense of the difference of our lots in life, came painfully over me;—the course of secure wealth and English enjoyment, contrasted with the dependence and wandering which must form the existence of myself, and so many thousands of younger brothers.

I was awakened from my reverie by the voice of my companion. His face was upturned to the cloudless sky, and he was murmuring the fine passage in the Merchant of Venice.

"Look, how the floor of heaven
Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold;
There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st,
But in his motion like an angel sings,
Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins:
Such harmony is in immortal souls."

"Do you know, Charles," said he, "what changed the whole current of my life? what, in fact, brought me back to England?" and there was a slight pause. "What made me a Christian? It was such a night as this. As you now know the chief part of my story, I need have no further concealment on the subject. I had recovered from my wounds, and was preparing to set out for Vienna, when one night a tempest blew down our tents, and left us to trust to the open air for the hours till morning. Tempests in the south are violent, but they are generally brief, and this gale cleared the sky of every cloud. As I lay on the ground, and gazed on the unusual splendour of the stars, the thought occurred to me, Why should doubts of a future state ever come into the mind of man? Why should he hesitate about its reality? Was it not there, before his eyes? Were not the very regions of future existence already within the reach of one of his senses? Why might they not yet be within the reach of all? Of course I do not give you all the vague thoughts which passed through my mind; but the permanence, power, and astonishing multitude of those bright worlds, impressed themselves on me with a new force. I had known all those matters before, but on this night I felt them. My next thoughts were of the power, the wisdom, and the majesty of the mighty Being by whom all this had been formed, moved, and sustained through thousands of years. I need not follow the history of my conversion—for a conversion it was. When I looked round me on the sleeping troops, I saw nothing but clods of the valley—gallant beings, but as insensible to their high inheritance as the chargers they rode. My heart moved me towards them; and perhaps, in some instances, I succeeded in giving them my own ideas. But Austria defies, at least, all human change. I was not a fanatic, and I had no wish to strive with impossibilities. I sent in my resignation; abandoned the 'pride, pomp, and circumstance' of the most tempting of all human pursuits, and returned to England to be, what you see me now."

With this man I could have no reserves, and I freely asked his advice on the plunge which I was about to make into that fathomless tide of good and ill, the world. I mentioned the Church as the profession which my mother had suggested, but for which I did not conceive either my temper or my habits suitable.

"You are right, then, in abandoning the idea altogether," was the answer; "and yet I know no profession more capable of fulfilling all the objects of a vigorous mind. I am not now talking of mitres; they can fall to but few. I speak of the prospects which it opens to all; the power of exerting the largest influence for the highest purposes; the possession of fame without its emptiness, and the indulgence of knowledge without its vanity; energy turned to the most practical and lofty uses of man; and the full feast of an ambition superior to the tinsel of the world, and alike pure in its motives, and immeasurable in its rewards."

"And, yet," said I, naming one or two of our clerical slumberers, "the profession seems not to be a very disturbing one."

"Those men, was the answer, would have been slumberers at the bar, in senates, or in the field. I may be prejudiced in favour of the choice which I made so long since, and which I have never found reason to repent. But I have not the slightest wish to prejudice any one in its favour. There is no profession which more requires a peculiar mind; contentment, with whatever consciousness of being overlooked; patience, with whatever hopelessness of success; labour, for its own sake; and learning, with few to share, few to admire, and fewer still to understand."

"If my father had lived," said I, "it was his intention to have tried my chance in diplomacy."

"Probably enough; for he had figured in that line himself. I remember him secretary of embassy at Vienna. Perhaps you will scarcely believe, that I, too, have had my experience on the subject? Accident once made me an attaché to our envoy at Naples. The life is an easy one. Idleness was never more perfectly reduced to a system, than among the half dozen functionaries to whom the interests of the British empire were entrusted in the capital of the Lazzaroni. As the Frenchman said of the Academy, 'We had nothing to do, and we did it.'"

"Italy," said I, "is the land of pleasure, and the Lazzaroni are its philosophers, but one cannot sleep like them in the face of day, and all day long. Let what will come, I have no desire to be a weed on the shore."

"No; we had our occupations; for we had the attendance on the court days—a business of as much formality, as if the fate of mankind depended on it. Then we had the attendance on the opera at night, a matter nearly as tiresome. The post from England reached Naples but once a-week, and scarcely once a month conveyed any intelligence that was worth the postage. But, if politics were out of the question, we had negotiation in abundance; for we carried on the whole diplomacy of the opera-house in London, engaged primo tenores, and settled the rival claims of prima donnas; gave our critical opinions on the merits of dancers worthy of appearing before the British cognoscenti; and dispatched poets, ballet-masters, and scene-painters, to our managers, with an activity worthy of the purest patriotism. What think you of the bar?"

"I have no head for its study; and no heart for its employment."

"It leads more rapidly to rank than any other profession under the sun; profit beyond counting, and a peerage. Those are no bad things."

"Both capital, if one could be secure of them. But they take too much time for me. I never was born to sit on the woolsack. No; if I were to follow my own inclination, I should be a soldier."

I have already said that I have been, throughout life, a kind of believer in omens. I have seen such a multitude of things decided by some curious coincidence, some passing occurrence, some of those odd trifles for which it is impossible to account, but which occur at the instant when the mind is wavering on the balance; that I feel no wonder at the old superstitions of guessing our destiny from the shooting of a star, or the flight of birds. While we were rambling onward, discussing the merits and demerits of the profession of arms, we heard the winding of the mail-guard's horn. I sprang the fence, and waited in the road to enquire the last news from the metropolis. It was momentous—the Revolution had effectually broken out. Paris was in an uproar. The king's guards had taken up arms for the people. The Bastile was stormed!