“Why are you here all alone, cousin? How cold and still it is amongst the graves!”

“Sit down beside me, Blanche: it is not colder in the churchyard than on the village green.”

And Blanche sat down beside me, nestled close to me, and leaned her head upon my shoulder. We were both long silent. It was an evening in the early spring, clear and serene; the roseate streaks were fading gradually from the dark gray of long, narrow, fantastic clouds. Tall, leafless poplars, that stood in orderly level line on the lowland between the churchyard and the hill, with its crown of ruins, left their sharp summits distinct against the sky. But the shadows coiled dull and heavy round the evergreens that skirted the churchyard, so that their outline was vague and confused; and there was a depth in that lonely stillness, broken only when the thrush flew out from the lower bushes, and the thick laurel-leaves stirred reluctantly, and again were rigid in repose. There is a certain melancholy in the evenings of early spring which is among those influences of Nature the most universally recognized, the most difficult to explain. The silent stir of reviving life, which does not yet betray signs in the bud and blossom, only in a softer clearness in the air, a more lingering pause in the slowly lengthening day; a more delicate freshness and balm in the twilight atmosphere; a more lively, yet still unquiet, note from the birds, settling down into their Coverts; the vague sense under all that hush, which still outwardly wears the bleak sterility of winter, of the busy change, hourly, modestly, at work, renewing the youth of the world, re-clothing with vigorous bloom the skeletons of things,—all these messages from the heart of Nature to the heart of Man may well affect and move us. But why with melancholy? No thought on our part connects and construes the low, gentle voices. It is not thought that replies and reasons, it is feeling that hears and dreams. Examine not, O child of man!—examine not that mysterious melancholy with the hard eyes of thy reason; thou canst not impale it on the spikes of thy thorny logic, nor describe its enchanted circle by problems conned from thy schools. Borderer thyself of two worlds,—the Dead and the Living,—give thine ear to the tones, bow thy soul to the shadows, that steal, in the Season of Change, from the dim Border Land.

Blanche (in a whisper).—“What are you thinking of? Speak, pray!”

Pisistratus.—“I was not thinking, Blanche,—or, if I were, the thought is gone at the mere effort to seize or detain it.”

Blanche (after a pause).—“I know what you mean. It is the same with me often,—so often when I am sitting by myself, quite still. It is just like the story Primmins was telling us the other evening, ‘how there was a woman in her village who saw things and people in a piece of crystal not bigger than my hand;(1) they passed along as large as life, but they were only pictures in the crystal.’ Since I heard the story, when aunt asks me what I am thinking of, I long to say, ‘I’m not thinking, I’m seeing pictures in the crystal!’”

Pisistratus.—“Tell my father that,—it will please him; there is more philosophy in it than you are aware of, Blanche. There are wise men who have thought the whole world, its ‘pride, pomp, and circumstance,’ only a phantom image,—a picture in the crystal.”

Blanche.—“And I shall see you,—see us both, as we are sitting here; and that star which has just risen yonder,—see it all in my crystal, when you are gone!—gone, cousin!” (And Blanche’s head drooped.)

There was something so quiet and deep in the tenderness of this poor motherless child that it did not affect one superficially, like a child’s loud momentary affection, in which we know that the first toy will replace us. I kissed my little cousin’s pale face and said, “And I too, Blanche, have my crystal; and when I consult it, I shall be very angry if I see you sad and fretting, or seated alone. For you must know, Blanche, that that is all selfishness. God made us, not to indulge only in crystal pictures, weave idle fancies, pine alone, and mourn over what we cannot help, but to be alert and active,—givers of happiness. Now, Blanche, see what a trust I am going to bequeath you. You are to supply my place to all whom I leave; you are to bring sunshine wherever you glide with that shy, soft step,—whether to your father when you see his brows knit and his arms crossed (that, indeed, you always do), or to mine; when the volume drops from his hand, when he walks to and fro the room, restless, and murmuring to himself, then you are to steal up to him, put your hand in his, lead him back to his books, and whisper, ‘What will Sisty say if his younger brother, the Great Book, is not grown up when he comes back?’ And my poor mother, Blanche! Ah, how can I counsel you there,—how tell you where to find comfort for her? Only, Blanche, steal into her heart and be her daughter. And to fulfil this threefold trust, you must not content yourself with seeing pictures in the crystal,—do you understand me?

“Oh, yes!” said Blanche, raising her eyes, while the tears rolled from them, and folding her arms resolutely on her breast.

“And so,” said I, “as we two, sitting in this quiet burial-ground, take new heart for the duties and cares of life, so see, Blanche, how the stars come out, one by one, to smile upon us; for they, too, glorious orbs as they are, perform their appointed tasks. Things seem to approximate to God in proportion to their vitality and movement. Of all things, least inert and sullen should be the soul of man. How the grass grows up over the very graves,—quickly it grows and greenly; but neither so quick nor so green, my Blanche, as hope and comfort from human sorrows.”

(1) In primitive villages in the West of England the belief that the absent may be seen in a piece of crystal is, or was not many years ago, by no means an uncommon superstition. I have seen more than one of these magic mirrors, which Spenser, by the way, has beautifully described. They are about the size and shape of a swan’s egg. It is not every one, however, who can be a crystal-seer; like second-sight, it is a special gift. N. B.—Since the above note (appended to the first edition of this work) was written, crystals and crystal-seers have become very familiar to those who interest themselves in speculations upon the disputed phenomena ascribed to Mesmerical Clairvoyance.