The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866

"What d'ye mean?"

"I mean that you are to think no more of Mercy Vint."

"Then it is true, ye jade; ye've gotten a fresh lover already."

"Say no more than you know. If you were the only man on earth, I would not wed you, Paul Carrick."

Paul Carrick retired home, and blew up his sister, and told her that she had "gotten him the sack again."

The next day Sir George came back from Lancaster, and Mercy lowered her lashes for once at sight of him.

"Well," said he, "has this Carrick shown a sense of your goodness?"

"He has come,—and gone."

She then, with her usual frankness, told him what had passed. "And," said she, with a smile, "you are partly to blame; for how could I help comparing your behavior to me with his? You came to my side when I was in trouble, and showed me respect when I expected scorn from all the world. A friend in need is a friend indeed."

"Reward me, reward me," said Sir George, gayly; "you know the way."

"Nay, but I am too much your friend," said Mercy.

"Be less my friend then, and more my darling."

He pressed her, he urged her, he stuck to her, he pestered her.

She snubbed, and evaded, and parried, and liked him all the better for his pestering her.

At last, one day, she said: "If Mrs. Gaunt thinks it will be for your happiness, I will—in six months' time; but you shall not marry in haste to repent at leisure. And I must have time to learn two things,—whether you can be constant to a simple woman like me, and whether I can love again, as tenderly as you deserve to be loved."

All his endeavors to shake this determination were vain. Mercy Vint had a terrible deal of quiet resolution.

He retired to Cumberland, and, in a long letter, asked Mrs. Gaunt's advice.

She replied characteristically. She began very soberly to say that she should be the last to advise a marriage between persons of different conditions in life. "But then," said she, "this Mercy is altogether an exception. If a flower grows on a dunghill, 't is still a flower, and not a part of the dunghill. She has the essence of gentility, and indeed her manners are better bred than most of our ladies. There is too much affectation abroad, and that is your true vulgarity. Tack 'my lady' on to 'Mercy Vint,' and that dignified and quiet simplicity of hers will carry her with credit through every court in Europe. Then think of her virtues,"—(here the writer began to lose her temper,)—"where can you hope to find such another? She is a moral genius, and acts well, no matter under what temptation, as surely as Claude and Raphael paint well. Why, sir, what do you seek in a wife? Wealth? title? family? But you possess them already; you want something in addition that will make you happy. Well, take that angelic goodness into your house, and you will find, by your own absolute happiness, how ill your neighbors have wived. For my part, I see but one objection: the child. Well, if you are man enough to take the mother, I am woman enough to take the babe. In one word, he who has the sense to fall in love with such an angel, and has not the sense to marry it, if he can, is a fool.

"Postscript.—My poor friend, to what end think you I sent you down in the coach with her?"

Sir George, thus advised, acted as he would have done had the advice been just the opposite.

He sent Mercy a love-letter by every post, and he often received one in return; only his were passionate, and hers gentle and affectionate.

But one day came a letter that was a mere cry of distress.

"George, my child is dying. What shall I do?"

He mounted his horse, and rode to her.

He came too late. The little boy had died suddenly of croup, and was to be buried next morning.

The poor mother received him up stairs, and her grief was terrible. She clung sobbing to him, and could not be comforted. Yet she felt his coming. But a mother's anguish overpowered all.

Crushed by this fearful blow, her strength gave way for a time, and she clung to George Neville, and told him she had nothing left but him, and one day implored him not to die and leave her.

Sir George said all he could think of to comfort her; and at the end of a fortnight persuaded her to leave the "Packhorse," and England, as his wife.

She had little power to resist now, and indeed little inclination.

They were married by special license, and spent a twelvemonth abroad.

At the end of that time they returned to Neville's Court, and Mercy took her place there with the same dignified simplicity that had adorned her in a humbler station.

Sir George had given her no lessons; but she had observed closely, for his sake; and being already well educated, and very quick and docile, she seldom made him blush except with pride.

They were the happiest pair in Cumberland. Her merciful nature now found a larger field for its exercise, and, backed by her husband's purse, she became the Lady Bountiful of the parish and the county.

The day after she reached Neville's Court came an exquisite letter to her from Mrs. Gaunt. She sent an affectionate reply.

But the Gaunts and the Nevilles did not meet in society.

Sir George Neville and Mrs. Gaunt, being both singularly brave and haughty people, rather despised this arrangement.

But it seems that, one day, when, they were all four in the Town Hall, folk whispered and looked; and both Griffith Gaunt and Lady Neville surprised these glances, and determined, by one impulse, it should never happen again. Hence it was quite understood that the Nevilles and the Gaunts were not to be asked to the same party or ball.

The wives, however, corresponded, and Lady Neville easily induced Mrs. Gaunt to co-operate with her in her benevolent acts, especially in saving young women, who had been betrayed, from sinking deeper.

Living a good many miles apart, Lady Neville could send her stray sheep to service near Mrs. Gaunt; and vice versâ; and so, merciful, but discriminating, they saved many a poor girl who had been weak, not wicked.

So then, though they could not eat nor dance together in earthly mansions, they could do good together; and methinks, in the eternal world, where years of social intercourse will prove less than cobwebs, these their joint acts of mercy will be links of a bright, strong chain, to bind their souls in everlasting amity.

It was a remarkable circumstance, that the one child of Lady Neville's unhappy marriage died, but her nine children by Sir George all grew to goodly men and women. That branch of the Nevilles became remarkable for high principle and good sense; and this they owe to Mercy Vint, and to Sir George's courage in marrying her. This Mercy was granddaughter to one of Cromwell's ironsides, and brought her rare personal merit into their house, and also the best blood of the old Puritans, than which there is no blood in Europe more rich in male courage, female chastity, and all the virtues.

GUROWSKI

The late Count Gurowski came to this country from France in November, 1849, and resided at first in New York. He made his appearance at Boston, I think, in the latter part of 1850, and, being well introduced by letters from men of note in Paris, was received with attention in the highest circles of society. Among his friends at this period were Prescott, Ticknor, Longfellow, Lowell, Parker, Sumner, Felton, and Everett,—the last named of whom was then President of Harvard University. The eccentric appearance and character of the Count, of course, excited curiosity and gave rise to many idle rumors, the most popular of which declared him to be a Russian spy, though what there was to spy in this country, where everything is published in the newspapers, or what the Czar expected to learn from such an agent, nobody undertook to explain. The phrase was a convenient one, and, like many others equally senseless, was currently adopted because it seemed to explain the incomprehensible; and certainly, to the multitude, no man was ever less intelligible than Gurowski.

To those, however, who cared for precise information, the French and German periodicals of the day, in which his name frequently figured, furnished sufficient to determine his social and historical status. From authentic sources it was soon learned that he was the head of a distinguished noble family of Poland; that he was born in 1805, and had taken part in the great insurrection of 1831 against the Russians, for which he had been condemned to death, while his estates were confiscated and assigned to a younger brother, who had remained loyal to the Czar. It was known also that at Paris, where he had found refuge, he had been a special favorite of Lafayette and of the leading republicans, and an active member of the Polish Revolutionary Committee, till, in 1835, he published La Vérité sur la Russie, in which work he maintained that the interests of Poland and of all the other Slavic countries would be promoted by absorption into the Russian Empire and union under the Russian Czar. This book drew upon him the indignant denunciation of his countrymen, who regarded it as a betrayal of their cause, and led to the revocation of his sentence of death, and to an invitation to enter the service of Nicholas. He accordingly went to St. Petersburg in 1836, where his sister had long resided, personally attached to the Empress and in high favor at the imperial court. He was employed at first in the private chancery of the Emperor, and afterwards in the Department of Public Instruction, in which he suggested and introduced various measures tending to Russianize Poland by means of schools and other public institutions. He seems for some years to have been in favor, and on the high road to power and distinction. In 1844, however, he fled from St. Petersburg secretly, and took refuge at the court of Berlin. He was pursued, and his extradition demanded of the Prussian government. What his offence was I have never learned, but can readily suppose that it was only a too free use of his tongue, which was at all times uncontrollable, and was always involving him in difficulties wherever he resided. He was quite as likely to contradict and snub the Czar as readily as he would the meanest peasant, and, for that matter, even more readily. His flight from Russia caused a good deal of discussion in the Continental newspapers, and it is certain that for some reason or other strong and pertinacious efforts were made by the Russian government to have him delivered up. The Czar had at that time great influence over the court of Berlin; and Gurowski was at length privately requested by the Prussian government, in a friendly way, to relieve them of embarrassment by withdrawing from the kingdom. He accordingly went to Heidelberg and afterwards to Munich, and for two years subsequently was a Lecturer on Political Economy at the University of Berne, in Switzerland. At a later period he visited Italy, and for a year previous to his arrival in this country had resided in Paris. Besides his first work on Panslavism, already mentioned, he had published several others in French and German, which had attracted considerable attention by the force and boldness of their ideas, and the wide range of erudition displayed in them. Finally, it became known to those who cared to inquire, that one of his brothers, Ignatius Gurowski, was married to an infanta of Spain, whom I believe he had persuaded to elope with him; that Gurowski himself was a widower, with a son in the Russian navy and a daughter married in Switzerland; and that some compromise had been made about his confiscated estates by which his "loyal" brother had agreed to pay him a slender annual allowance, which was not always punctually remitted.

Such was the substance of what was known, or at least of what I knew and can now recall, of Gurowski, soon after his arrival in Boston, sixteen years ago. He came to Massachusetts, I think, with some expectation of becoming connected with Harvard University as a lecturer or professor, and took up his residence in Cambridge in lodgings in a house on Main Street, nearly opposite the College Library. In January, 1851, he gave, at President Everett's house, a course of lectures upon Roman jurisprudence, of which I have preserved the following syllabus, printed by him in explanation of his purpose.

"Count de Gurowski proposes to give Six Lectures upon the Roman Jurisprudence, or the Civil Law according to the following syllabus:—

"As the history of the Roman Law is likewise the history of the principle of the Right (das Recht) as it exists in the consciousness of men, and of its outward manifestation as a law in an organized society; a philosophical outline of this principle and of its manifestations will precede.

"The philosophical and historical progress of the notion or conception of the Right, through the various moments or data of jurisprudential formation by the Romans. Explanation of the principal elements and facts, out of which was framed successively the Roman law.

"Such are, for instance, the Ramnian, the Sabinian, or Quiritian; their influence on the character of the legislation and jurisprudence.

"The peculiarity and the legal meaning of the jus quiritium. Explanation of some of its legal rites, as those concerning matrimony, jus mancipi, in jure cessio, etc.