Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No.307

I nodded comprehension, and on we journeyed. We were met at the door by Owen Lloyd himself – a man in whose countenance guilelessness, even to simplicity, seemed stamped by nature's own true hand. So much, thought I, for the reliance to be placed on physiognomy! 'I have brought you a customer,' said Mr Jones; 'but he is as deaf as a stone.' I was courteously invited in by signs; and with much hallooing and shouting, it was finally settled that, after dinner, I should look over Mr Lloyd's stock of wood. Dinner had just been placed on the table by Mrs Lloyd and her daughter. A still very comely, interesting woman was Mrs Lloyd, though time and sorrow had long since set their unmistakeable seals upon her. Her daughter was, I thought, one of the most charming, graceful young women I had ever seen, spite of the tinge of sadness which dwelt upon her sweet face, deepening its interest if it somewhat diminished its beauty. My heart ached to think of the misery the announcement of my errand must presently bring on such gentle beings – innocent, I felt confident, even of the knowledge of the crime that had been committed. I dreaded to begin – not, Heaven knows, from any fear of the men, who, compared with me, were poor, feeble creatures, and I could easily have mastered half-a-dozen such; but the females – that young girl especially – how encounter their despair? I mutely declined dinner, but accepted a glass of ale, and sat down till I could muster sufficient resolution for the performance of my task; for I felt this was an opportunity of quietly effecting the capture of both the suspected criminals which must not be neglected.

Dinner was just over when Mrs Lloyd said, 'Oh, Mr Jones, have you seen anything of my husband's pocket-book? It was on a shelf in the room where you slept – not the last time, but when you were here about three weeks ago. We can find it nowhere; and I thought you might possibly have taken it by mistake.'

'A black, common-looking thing?' said Jones.

'Yes.'

'I did take it by mistake. I found it in one of my parcels, and put it in my pocket, intending of course to return it when I came back; but I remember, when wanting to open a lock of which I had lost the key, taking it out to see if it contained a pencil-case which I thought might answer the purpose; and finding none, tossing it away in a pet, I could not afterwards find it.'

'Then it is lost?'

'Yes; but what of that? There was nothing in it.'

'You are mistaken,' rejoined Owen; 'there was a five-pound country note in it, and the loss will – What is the matter, friend?'

I had sprung upon my feet with uncontrollable emotion: Mr Lloyd's observation recalled me to myself, and I sat down again, muttering something about a sudden pain in the side.

'Oh, if that's the case,' said Jones, 'I'll make it up willingly. I am pretty rich, you know, just now.'

'We shall be much obliged to you,' said Mrs Lloyd; 'its loss would be a sad blow to us.'

'How came you to send those heavy boxes here, Jones?' said Owen Lloyd. 'Would it not have been better to have sent them direct to Portsmouth, where the vessel calls?'

'I had not quite made up my mind to return to America then; and I knew they would be safer here than anywhere else.'

'When do you mean to take them away? We are so badly off for room, that they terribly hamper us.'

'This evening, about nine o'clock. I have hired a smack at Hythe to take us, bag and baggage, down the river to meet the liner which calls off Portsmouth to-morrow. I wish we could persuade you to go with us.'

'Thank you, Jones,' replied Owen in a dejected tone. 'I have very little to hope for here; still my heart clings to the old country.'

I had heard enough; and hastily rising, intimated a wish to look at the timber at once. Mr Lloyd immediately rose, and Jones and his wife left the cottage to return to Hythe at the same time that we did. I marked a few pieces of timber, and promising to send for them in the morning, hastened away.

A mountain seemed removed from off my breast: I felt as if I had achieved a great personal deliverance. Truly a wonderful interposition of Providence, I thought, that has so signally averted the fatal consequences likely to have resulted from the thoughtless imprudence of Owen Lloyd, in allowing his house to be made, however innocently, a receptacle for stolen goods, at the solicitations, too, of a man whose character he knew to be none of the purest. He had had a narrow escape, and might with perfect truth exclaim —

'There's a Divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough-hew them how we will.'

The warrants of which I was the bearer the London police authorities had taken care to get indorsed by a magistrate of the county of Hampshire, who happened to be in London, so that I found no difficulty in arranging effectually for the capture and safe custody of Jones and his assistants when he came to fetch his booty.

I had just returned to the Beaulieu inn, after completing my arrangements, when a carriage drove furiously up to the door, and who should, to my utter astonishment, alight, but Mr William Lloyd, and Messrs Smith, father and son. I hastened out, and briefly enjoining caution and silence, begged them to step with me into a private room. The agitation of Mr Lloyd and of Mr Arthur Smith was extreme, but Mr Smith appeared cold and impassive as ever. I soon ascertained that Arthur Smith, by his mother's assistance, I suspect, had early penetrated his father's schemes and secrets, and had, in consequence, caused Mr William Lloyd to be watched home, with whom, immediately after I had left, he had a long conference. Later in the evening an éclaircissement with the father took place; and after a long and stormy discussion, it was resolved that all three should the next morning post down to Beaulieu, and act as circumstances might suggest. My story was soon told. It was received of course with unbounded joy by the brother and the lover; and even through the father's apparent indifference I could perceive that his refusal to participate in the general joy would not be of long duration. The large fortune which Mr William Lloyd intimated his intention to bestow upon his niece was a new and softening element in the affair.

Mr Smith, senior, ordered his dinner; and Mr Lloyd and Arthur Smith – but why need I attempt to relate what they did? I only know that when, a long time afterwards, I ventured to look in at Mr Owen Lloyd's cottage, all the five inmates – brother, uncle, lover, niece, and wife – were talking, laughing, weeping, smiling, like distracted creatures, and seemed utterly incapable of reasonable discourse. An hour after that, as I stood screened by a belt of forest-trees in wait for Mr Jones and company, I noticed, as they all strolled past me in the clear moonlight, that the tears, the agitation had passed away, leaving only smiles and grateful joy on the glad faces so lately clouded by anxiety and sorrow. A mighty change in so brief a space!

Mr Jones arrived with his cart and helpers in due time. A man who sometimes assisted in the timber-yard was deputed, with an apology for the absence of Mr Lloyd, to deliver the goods. The boxes, full of plate and other valuables, were soon hoisted in, and the cart moved off. I let it proceed about a mile, and then, with the help I had placed in readiness, easily secured the astounded burglar and his assistants; and early the next morning Jones was on his road to London. He was tried at the ensuing Old-Bailey sessions, convicted, and transported for life; and the discretion I had exercised in not executing the warrant against Owen Lloyd was decidedly approved of by the authorities.

It was about two months after my first interview with Mr Smith that, on returning home one evening, my wife placed before me a piece of bride-cake, and two beautifully-engraved cards united with white satin ribbon, bearing the names of Sir and Mrs Arthur Smith. I was more gratified by this little act of courtesy for Emily's sake, as those who have temporarily fallen from a certain position in society will easily understand, than I should have been by the costliest present. The service I had rendered was purely accidental: it has nevertheless been always kindly remembered by all parties whom it so critically served.

RUINS

Everything is mutable, everything is perishable around us. The forms of nature and the works of art alike crumble away; and amid the gigantic forms that surround it, the soul of man is alone immortal. Knowledge itself ebbs and flows like the changing sea, and art has become extinct in regions where it earliest flourished. Kingdoms that once gave law to the nations, figure no more in the world's history, leaving nothing but a name, and Ruins.

Most of the ruins of the ancient world are remarkable as monuments of a political element now happily extinct. They are emblems of that despotic rule which, in the early history of mankind, was well-nigh universal; which delighted in rearing immense structures, like the Pyramids, of little utility, but requiring an enormous expenditure of labour; and contrasted with the capriciousness and violence of which, the most arbitrary of modern governments is liberty itself. But such ruins not only teach us to be grateful to Heaven for the blessings of political freedom, but reveal to us glimpses of a past which, but for them, would remain veiled in obscurity. By a right use of them we discover, more or less perfectly, the history and the customs of races long dead. Buried Herculaneum, once more given back to the sunbeams, reveals to us the domestic life of ancient Rome; the hieroglyphics of Egypt, the paintings and sculptures of Nineveh, tell us stories of their kings, and show us symbols of their splendour. What geology is to us in relation to the early earth, such are ruins in regard to its human habitants: they are their history in stone.

There is a peculiar grandeur and impressiveness in the ruins which date from the era of the old universal monarchies. So many centuries have rolled away since then, conquest and desolation have so often swept over their territories, and tyranny so decimated their inhabitants, that among them Decay assumes a grander form than elsewhere in the world. It is not single edifices dilapidated that meet our view, but whole cities desolate – whole cities so crumbled into dust, that the very sites of some of the greatest of ancient capitals have slipped from the world's memory. Egypt, Greece, Persia, the Assyrian realm, are great names, once filling earth with their glory, now all but obliterated from the roll of nations. We enter the regions where once sat those old Queens of the East, and look for some reflection of former greatness still lingering on the brows of the inhabitants. We look in vain. Cities are mean; poverty is everywhere; man is degraded, nature half desolate, and the testimony of our senses makes us sceptical as to the truth of history. But search yet further, and lo! silent and inanimate witnesses for the dead rise around. Amid the solitude and the desert, pillar and obelisk, palace and temple, cities immense even in their ruins, mark how the barren sands were once a garden, and the solitude was peopled by busy myriads. Those shattered colonnades, those fallen capitals and mutilated statues, once rose above the dwellings of Hundred-gated Thebes; those mounds of rubbish, now shunned even by the wild Bedouin, cover the wondrous relics of Nineveh; those silent mountains that look down on the lone, ruin-covered plain of Merdusht, once echoed back the shouts of royal Persepolis. Ruins are the voice of past ages chiding the present for its degeneracy. They are like sea-ware on the shore at low water, marking how high the tide of civilisation once rose.

When we consider the remote period at which such edifices were constructed, we are at first surprised by two qualities which they exhibit, sometimes united, sometimes apart – magnitude and beauty. Magnitude always exerts a great influence on the senses; and without seeking to explain how such an effect is produced, it is evident from history that an admiration of the colossal is especially characteristic of the human mind in the early stages of its development. Accordingly, and perhaps also from a recollection of gigantic works before the Flood, the first undertaking of the united race of Postdiluvians was the vastly-imagined Tower of Babel. The first family of man in Europe – the Pelasgi – mute and inglorious in everything else, have left samples of an enormous architecture, whose ruins to this day exist under the title of Cyclopean. This peculiarity is not confined to the shores of the Mediterranean. In the remote East, and in the long undiscovered regions of the West, in Ceylon and in Mexico, the aboriginal races have left their sole memorials in similar masses of masonry. With them size seems to have been everything; it was magnitude which then fascinated the imagination. Even when men are well advanced in civilisation, the same spirit is perceptible among them, and a love of exaggeration, the frequent use of hyperbole, characterises the early literature of all nations.

From the exquisite beauty of much of the architecture, poetry, and sculpture that have come down to us from antiquity, the singular fact is apparent, that the fine arts reached perfection at a time when those conducive to the material comforts were still in infancy. In those days the race of man was yet young; and youth in the species, as in the individual, is the season of the Beautiful. It was a lively love and susceptibility to the charms of nature that peopled the woods and waters, the sunny skies and the sparkling sea, with deities in sympathy with man – that saw in the rainbow a messenger from heaven to earth, and in the thunder of the tempest the wrath of the Most High. The vague ever excites interest; and the mysterious phenomena of nature contributed to fix their attention on her aspects, and consequently on her beauties. Cœlum and Terra, heaven and earth – in one word, Nature was the great goddess of paganism. She was the great parent of their Pantheon – from her all other gods drew birth; they were personifications of her powers, and, till the days of the Greeks, it was under forms of her that they were worshipped. This susceptibility to beauty in nature was the parent of the beautiful in art. In stone, in bronze, on the canvas, they strove to reproduce the perfection of form that they beheld in select nature – to attain the same harmony of parts – and thus to awaken in the beholder corresponding emotions of pleasure. Thus art, in different countries, varied with the aspects of nature. The monotonous vastness and horizontal lines of the scenery of Egypt, find a counterpart in the heavy and monotonous grandeur of its temples; and the unhandsome features of its inhabitants, in the half-Negro faces of its gods. In Greece, on the other hand, the variety in its architecture corresponds with the varied aspects of the country; and its exquisite sculpture is but a reflection of the noble lineaments of the people. The showy prettiness of Chinese decoration is typical of the Flowery Realm; and from the exuberance of animal life in Central Asia, springs the profusion of animal forms in the sculpture and architecture of India, Persia, and Assyria.

External circumstances also then fostered genius in architecture. Splendour was the glory of the kings of those days – partly from taste, but not less so from necessity. The moral faculties of their subjects were too weak to be alone regarded: their senses had to be appealed to. As, during the Heroic Age, the king distinguished himself from his army by his valour in the field, so, during peace, he had to distinguish himself from his subjects by his magnificence. The royal mansion, constructed of enduring granite or shining marble, represented the visibility of power; and the people felt that they could as soon shake the globe as overturn the lord of so much might: hence the palaces of Persia. Religion, too, availed herself of like means of impressing the unspiritual mind of the people; while superstition imagined that the gods were pleased by the splendour of the temples reared for their worship. Hence the stupendous temples of Luxor and Carnac, with their huge ornamented propylæ, and far-stretching avenues of pillars and sphinxes – and the countless other sacred structures of Egypt, whose very ruins have all but perished: hence, too, the rock-temples of Ellora and Elephanta, where the labour of the worshippers has hollowed out of the mountain rock a mansion for their deity, and has sculptured its sides with groups from Hindoo mythology. Even in the New World traces of a similar spirit are to be found; and doubtless the vast ruins recently discovered in Yucatan were designed to magnify the worship of the great sun-god of the ancient Indians.

The noblest source from which architecture can proceed was pre-eminently exhibited in the republics of Greece. The exalted race that peopled that favoured land had passed the stage of intellectual development in which magnitude is the chief object of admiration; and among them the great object of desire was beauty, and their chief characteristic was the love of the beautiful. Among them Despotism was not seen building palaces to exhibit its own glory; it was a people gratifying an elevating passion, and, while doing so, voluntarily adding majesty to the state. Simple and unostentatious in their private dwellings, they lavished genius and splendour in the construction of their public buildings; for the state was but a concentration of themselves, and in its glory they felt they were all partakers. Nevertheless they desired beauty more for itself than for its concomitant splendour; and even in religion they were less worshippers of heaven than adorers of the beautiful. It is the loftiest of delights to say to the beautiful – 'I am thy Maker!' and when kneeling before the matchless statues of their gods, the Greeks rather gloried in them as divine creations of their genius, than humbled themselves before them as emblems of their deities. Favoured by blood and climate, by the character of their country, and the advent to its shores of all the knowledge of the old East – the Greeks had a noble career before them; and well did they fulfil their destiny. Genius and power have long departed from the descendants of that lordly race; but mankind still flock to the Hellenic strand to gaze on the divine relics of the past. The sun of Greece has long set – but the land is still radiant with her ruins.

Egypt – that land of silence and mystery – as if to compensate for its total deficiency of written records, has left the greatest number of ruins. From the mouth of the Nile to above the Cataracts, relics of former magnificence stretch away to the borders of the Desert; and even amid the now sandy wastes we stumble at times upon a ruin lordly even in its decay. It tells us the oft-told tale of the triumph of Time. We gaze on the ruin, and see in it a broken purpose – and the strain of our meditations is sad. We think of the mighty monarch its founder – proud of his power, and eager to use it; yet conscious of his evanescence, and resolved to triumph over decay ere it triumphed over him – dreading the forgetfulness of human hearts, and resolving to commit his glory to things less noble, but less perishable than they, and to make the silent marble eloquent with his praise. Those porphyry blocks have come from the far-off Nubian mountains, and earth must have groaned for leagues beneath their weight; the carving of those friezes, and the sculpture of those statues, must have been the labour of years. Alas for the captive and the slave! Hundreds have toiled and sunk on the plain around us – till the royal pile became a cenotaph to slaves. That vase-shaped capital, half imbedded in the sand, has been soiled with the sweat, perhaps dabbled with the blood, of poor goaded beings; and the sound of the lash and the groan of the victim have echoed in halls where splendour and gaiety were thenceforth to dwell. But long centuries have passed since then; and now indignation does not break the calm of melancholy with which we gaze on the broken emblems of departed power. The structure which was to exhibit the glory and resources of a monarch lies shattered and crumbling in fragments; and the lotos-leaf, which everywhere appears on the ruins, is an emblem of the oblivion that shrouds the name of the founder.

But many a ruin that still 'enchants the world' awakens other reflections than on the fall of power. It may be a concentrated history of its architect – it may be the embodiment of the long dream that made up his life. From the inspired moment when first its ideal form filled his mental eye, in fancy we see it haunting his reveries like the memory of a beautiful dream. In sorrow it has come like an angel to gladden his lonely hours; and though adversity crush his spirit, he still clings like a lover to the dream of the soul. At length the object of his life is accomplished; and the edifice, awful in its vastness, yet enchanting in its beauty, stands in the light of day complete. To behold beauty in mental vision is a joy – but to place it before the eyes of men, and see them bow in admiration and love, and to know that it will live in their memories and hearts, elevating and gladdening, and begetting fair shapes kindred to its own – this is joy and triumph. The object which thousands are praising, and which will be the delight and glory of future ages, is his child – it is a part of himself. And yet now it has perished: the hand of man or of Time has struck it to earth. It is a broken idol – and we half feel the anguish at its fall which death has long ago spared its worshipper. The joy, the inspiration of a lifetime – the creature and yet the idol of genius – lies shattered on the sand; and the wild palm-tree rises green and graceful above its remains. In this we behold the moral of ruins – it is Nature triumphing over Art.

A GOVERNESS'S RECOLLECTIONS OF IRELAND

A number of years ago, when I was somewhat less fastidious in entering into an engagement than I have latterly become, I was induced to go to Ireland, to take charge of four young ladies in a gentleman's family. It was going a terribly long way from home, and that was an unpleasant circumstance to contemplate; but everybody told me that I should be so very kindly treated, that I did not long hesitate; and so accordingly behold me, in the first place, crossing the sea in a steamer to Dublin, and afterwards driving southwards inside the mail-coach, my spirits wonderfully up with the novelty of the scenery, and the beautiful weather, which seemed to welcome me to 'the first gem of the ocean.'

I do not wish to tell the name of the town to which I was bound, and need only say that it was a seaport, with some pretty environs, embellished with gentlemen's seats and pleasure-grounds. In one of these seats, a large and handsome mansion, surrounded by a park, and approached by an 'elegant' avenue, I was to take up my residence. 'A very pleasant affair I expect this is going to be,' said I to myself, as I was driven up to the door of the hall in a jaunting-car, which had been in attendance for me at the coach-office. 'Nice, kind people, for having been so considerate – and what a good-looking establishment – as aristocratic as anybody could wish!'

The Tolmies, as I shall call the family – of course using a fictitious appellation – were really a most agreeable set of people. The head of the house was much superior in station and character to a squireen. He possessed considerable property, had been in parliament, and was a man of respectable acquirements, with exceedingly accomplished manners. His lady had been a reigning beauty in her youth, and was still a person of fine appearance, though she seemed to have retired in a great measure from the world of fashion. She dressed highly, and occupied herself a good deal in doing nothing. With regard to her daughters, who were to be my pupils, they were obliging, light-hearted, and pretty. I liked them at first sight; nor did subsequent experience make any sensible alteration on this feeling.

The range of my duties was soon arranged. French, music, and drawing were to be the principal lessons; and to work we set in the best possible spirits. I must say, however, that a chill began to creep over me when I had time to look about me. Inside and outside the mansion there was a curious mixture of the genteel with the shabby. There seemed to be no exact perception of what was due to comfort, not to speak of respectability. Several panes of glass were broken, and not one of them was restored during my stay. Sometimes they were open, the holes admitting rain and wind, and sometimes they were stopped with anything that could be readily laid hold of. The glazier was always to be sent for; but this proved only a figure of speech.

My own room contrasted unpleasantly with, what till this time, I had been in the custom of thinking indispensable. On the night after my arrival I wished to fasten the door of my room, but found that it had no lock, and I was obliged to keep it shut by means of a piece of furniture. This did not more disconcert me than the discovery next morning that the room had no bell. I wanted a little hot water; but how was I to make myself heard? In vain I called from the top of the staircase; nobody came. At length I recollected that there was a bell at the hall door; so, throwing on a cloak, I descended to the lower regions, and tolled the entrance-bell. Great was the commotion at so unusual a sound at this early hour, and servants were soon on the spot wondering at the summons. The required hot water was brought to me in a broken china jug.

A day or two afterwards, on going into my apartment, I was not a little astonished at observing that the house-maid had been using my toilet-apparatus, and was, at the very moment of my entrance, wiping her face with my only towel.

'Judy,' said I, 'that is taking too much liberty, I must say. Go fetch to me a clean towel at anyrate.'

'A clane towel, did you say, miss? Why, this one is not a bit the worse o' me; for, you see, I washed my face afore I touched it.'

'I don't care,' I replied; 'I must have a fresh one, so be so good as to bring it.'

'Sure!' exclaimed Judy, 'how can I do that, when there is only one for each of us?'

'Do you mean to tell me that there is only one towel for each room in the house?'

'Indeed I do, miss, and plenty; for we always washes them on Saturday night, and dries them too; and in that way everybody has a clane one on Sunday.'

Finding from one of the young ladies that this was really the case, I could say no more on the subject. The next three days I dried my face with one of my cambric handkerchiefs.

If the stock of linen was rather scanty, it was not more so than the bed furniture and some other articles usually considered to be essential to comfort. For each bed in the house but one blanket could be produced, no matter how cold was the weather; and I certainly should have perished, if I had not taken the precaution of heaping my cloak and other articles on my bed every night on retiring to rest. How my young ladies managed I could not tell. Though well provided with frocks and other outside attire, they were desperately ill off for those articles which form the understratum of female apparel. Yet they were unconscious of their deficiencies, and as happy and gay as if they had possessed a draper's whole establishment.