Dies Boreales. No. IV. CHRISTOPHER UNDER CANVASS. Scene -- The Pavilion . Time -- One P.M. Buller -- Seward -- Talboys -- North.

TALBOYS.

Here he is—here he is! I traced him by Crutch-print to the Van—like an old Stag of Ten to his lair by the Slot.

SEWARD.

Thank heaven! But was this right, my dear sir?

BULLER.

Your Majesty ought not thus to have secreted yourself from your subjects.

SEWARD.

We feared you had absconded—abdicated—and retired into a Monastery.

BULLER.

We have all been miserable about you since an early hour in the morning—invisible to mortal eye since yester bed-going gong—regal couch manifestly unslept in—tent after tent scrutinised as narrowly as if for a mouse—Swiss Giantess searched as if by custom-house officers—no Christopher in the Encampment—what can I compare it to—but a Bee-hive that had lost its Queen. The very Drones were in a ferment—the workers demented—dismal the hum of grief and rage—of national lamentation and civil war.

NORTH.

Billy could have told you of my retreat.

SEWARD.

Billy was in a state of distraction—rushed to the Van—and, finding it empty, fainted.

NORTH.

Billy saw me in the Van—and I told him to shut the spring smartly—and be mum.

BULLER.

Villain!

NORTH.

Obedience to orders is the sum-total of Duty. Most of the men seem tolerably sober—those whom despair had driven to drink have been sent to sleeping-quarters—the Camp has recovered from its alarm—and is fit for Inspection by the General Commanding the Forces.

SEWARD.

But have you breakfasted, my dear sir?

NORTH.

Leave me alone for that. What have you all been about?

TALBOYS.

We three started at Five for Luib, in high glee.

NORTH.

What! in face of my prediction? Did I not tell you that in that dull, dingy, dirty, ochre sunset—in that wan moon and those tallow-candle stars—I saw the morning's Deluge.

BULLER.

But did you not also quote Sir David Brewster? "In the atmosphere in which he lives and breathes, and the phenomena of which he daily sees, and feels, and describes, and measures, the philosopher stands in acknowledged ignorance of the laws which govern it. He has ascertained, indeed, its extent, its weight, and its composition; but though he has mastered the law of heat and moisture, and studied the electric agencies which influence its condition, he cannot predict, or even approximate to a prediction, whether on the morrow the sun shall shine, or the rain fall, or the wind blow, or the lightning descend."

NORTH.

And all that is perfectly true. Nevertheless, we weather-wise and weather-foolish people—not Philosophers but Empirics—sailors and shepherds—with all our eyes on the lower and the higher heavens—gather up prognostications of the character of the coming time—an hour or a day—take in our canvass and set our storm-jib—or run for some bay where the prudent ship shall ride at anchor, as safe and almost as motionless as if she were in a dry-dock; or off to the far hill-side to look after the silly sheep—yet not so silly either—for there they are, instinctive of a change, lying secured by that black belt of Scotch-Firs against the tempest brewing over Lockerby or Lochmaben—far from the loun Bilholm Braes!—You Three, started at Five o'clock for Luib?

TALBOYS.

I rejoice we did. A close carriage is in all weathers detestable—your vehicle should be open to all skyey influences—with nothing about it that can be set up or let down—otherwise some one or other of the party—on some pretence or other—will be for shutting you all in. And then—Farewell, Thou green Earth—Thou fair Day—and ye Skies! It had apparently been raining for some little time——

NORTH.

For six hours, and more heavily, I do think, than I ever heard it rain before in this watery world. Having detected a few drops in the ceiling of my cubiculum, I had slipt away to the Van on the first blash of the business—and from that hour to this have been under the Waterfall—as snug as a Kelpie.

TALBOYS.

In we got—well jammed together—a single gentleman, or even two, would have been blown out—and after some remonstrances with the old Greys, we were off to Luib. Long before we were nearly half-way up the brae behind the Camp, Seward complained that the water was running down his back—but ere we reached the top, that inconvenience and every other was merged. The carriage seemed to be in a sinking state, somewhere about Achlian; and rolling before the rain-storm—horses we saw none—it needed no great power of imagination to fear we were in the Loch. At this juncture we came all at once close upon—and into—an appalling crash, and squash, and splash—a plunging, rushing, groaning, and moaning, and roaring—which for half-a-minute baffled conjecture. The Bridge—you know it, sir—the old Bridge, that Seward was never tired of sketching—going—going—gone; down it went—men, horses, all, at the very parapet, And sent us with a jaup in among the Woods.

NORTH.

Do you mean to say you were on the Bridge as it sunk?

TALBOYS.

I know nothing about it. How should I? We were in the heart of the Noise—we were in the heart of the Water—we were in the heart of the Wood—we, the vehicle, the horses—the same horses, I believe, that were standing behind the Camp when we mounted—though I had not seen them distinctly since, till I recognised them madly galloping in their traces up and down the foaming banks.

NORTH.

Were you all on this side of the River?

TALBOYS.

Ultimately we were—else how could we have got here? You seem incredulous, sir. Mind me—I don't say we were on the Bridge—and went down with it. It is an open question—and in the absence of dispassionate witnesses must be settled by probabilities. Sorry that, though the Driver saved himself, the Vehicle in the mean time should be lost—with all the Rods.

NORTH.

They will be recovered on a change of weather. How and when got ye back?

TALBOYS.

On horseback. Buller behind Seward—myself before a man who occasionally wore a look of the Driver. I hope it was he—if it was not—the Driver must have been drowned. We had now the wind—that is, the storm—that is, the hurricane in our faces—and the animals every other minute wheeled about and stood rooted for many minutes to the road, with their tails towards Cladich. My body had fortunately lost all sensation hours before we regained the Camp.

NORTH.

Hours! How long did it take you to accomplish the two miles?

TALBOYS.

I did not time it; but we entered the Great Gate of the Camp to the sound of the Breakfast Bagpipes.

SEWARD.

As soon as we had changed ourselves—as you say in Scotland——

TALBOYS.

Let's bother Mr North no more about it. With exception of the Bridge, 'tis not worth talking of—and we ought to be thankful it was not Night. Then what a delightful feeling of security now, sir, from all intrusion of vagrant visitors from the Dalmally side! By this time communication must be cut off with Edinburgh and Glasgow—via Inverary—so the Camp is virtually insulated. In ordinary weather, there is no calling the Camp our own. So far back as yesterday only, 8 English—4 German—3 French—29 Italian—1 Irish, all Male, many mustached—and from those and other countries, nearly an equal number of Female—some mustached too—"but that not much."

NORTH.

Impossible indeed it is to enjoy one hour's consciousness of secure solitude, in this most unsedentary age of the world.—Look there. Who the deuce are you, sir? Do you belong to Cloud-land—and have you made an involuntary descent in the deluge? Or are you of the earth earthy? Off, sir—off to the back premises. Enter the Pavilion at your peril, you Phenomenon. Turn him out, Talboys.

TALBOYS.

Then I must turn out myself. I stepped forth for a moment to the Front——

NORTH.

And have in that moment been transmogrified into the Man of the Moon. A false alarm. But methinks you might have been satisfied with the Bridge.

TALBOYS.

It is clearing up, sir—it is clearing up—pails and buckets, barrels and hogsheads, fountains and tanks, are no longer the order of the day. Jupiter Pluvius is descending on Juno with moderated impetuosity—is restricting himself to watering pans and garden engines—there is reason to suspect, from the look of the atmosphere, that the supplies are running short—that in a few hours the glass will be up to Stormy—and hurra, then, for a week of fine, sunshiny, shadowy, breezy, balmy, angling Weather! Why, it is almost fair now. I do trust that we shall have no more of those dry, dusty, sandy, gravelly days, so unlike Lochawe-side, and natural only in Modern Athens or the Great Desert. Hark! it is clearing up. That is always the way with thorough-bred rain—desperate spurt or rush at the end—a burst when blown—dead-beat——

SEWARD.

Mr North, matters are looking serious, sir.

NORTH.

I believe there is no real danger.

SEWARD.

The Pole is cracking——

TALBOYS.

Creacking. All the difference in the world between these two words. The insertion of the letter E converts danger into safety—trepidation into confidence—a Tent into a Rock.

BULLER.

I have always forgot to ask if the Camp is insured?

NORTH.

An insurance was effected, on favourable terms, on the Swiss Giantess before she came into my possession—the Trustees are answerable for the Van—the texture of the Tents is tough to resist the Winds—and the stuff itself was re-steeped during winter in pyroligneous acid of my own invention, which has been found as successful with canvass as with timber. Deeside, the Pavilion and her fair Sisterhood are impervious alike to Wet and Dry Rot—Fire and Water.

TALBOYS.

You can have no idea, sir, of the beautiful running of our Drains. When were they dug?

NORTH.

Yestreen—at dusk. Not a field in Scotland the worse of being drained—my lease from Monzie allows it—a good landlord deserves a good tenant; and though it is rather late in the year for such operations, I ventured on the experiment—partly for sake of the field itself, and partly for sake of self-preservation. Not pioneers, and miners, and sappers alone—the whole Force were employed under the Knave of Spades—open drains meanwhile—to be all covered in—with tiles—ere we shift quarters.

TALBOYS.

A continuance of this weather for a day or two will bring them up in shoals from the Loch—Undoubtedly we shall have Eels. I delight in drain-angling. Silver Eels! Gold Fish! You shall be wheeled out, my dear sir, in Swing, and the hand of your own Talboys shall disengage the first "Fish, without fins" from the Wizard's Hook.

SEWARD.

And he shall be sketched by his own Seward, in a moment of triumph, and lithographed by Schenck for the forthcoming Edition of Tom Stoddart.

BULLER.

And his own Buller shall make the chips fly like Michael Angelo—and from the marble block evolve a Christopher Piscator not unworthy a Steele—or a Macdonald.

NORTH.

Lay aside your tackle, Talboys, and let us talk.

TALBOYS.

I am never so talkative as over my tackle.

BULLER.

Lay it aside then, Talboys, at Mr North's request.

TALBOYS.

Would, my dear sir, you had been with me on Thursday, to witness the exploits of this Griesly Palmer. Miles up Glensrae, you come—suddenly on the left—in a little glen of its own—on such a jewel of a Waterfall. Not ten feet tall—in the pleasure-grounds of a lowland mansion 'twould be called a Cascade. But soft as its voice is, there is something in it that speaks the Cataract. You discern the Gaelic gurgle—and feel that the Fountain is high up in some spot of greensward among heather-hills. Snow-white it is not—almost as translucent as the pool into which it glides. You see through it the green ledge it slides over with a gentle touch—and seeking its own way, for a few moments, among some mossy cones, it slips, without being wearied, into its place of rest, which it disturbs not beyond a dimple that beautifies the quivering reflection of the sky. A few birch-trees—one much taller than the rest—are all the trees that are there—but that sweetest of all scents assures you of the hawthorn—and old as the hills—stunted in size—but full-leaved and budded as if in their prime—a few hawthorns close by among the clefts. But why prattle thus to you, my dear sir?—no doubt you know it well—for what beautiful secret in the Highlands is unknown to Christopher North?

NORTH.

I do know it well; and your description—so much better than I could have drawn—has brought it from the dimmer regions of memory, "into the study of imagination."

TALBOYS.

After a few circling sweeps to show myself my command of my gear, and to give the Naiad warning to take care of her nose, I let drop this Griesly Palmer, who alighted as if he had wings. A Grilse! I cried—a Grilse! No, a Sea-trout—an Amber Witch—a White Lady—a Daughter of Pearl—whom with gentle violence and quick despatch I solicited to the yellow sands—and folding not my arms, as is usual in works of fiction, slightly round her waist—but both hands, with all their ten fingers, grasping her neck and shoulders to put the fair creature out of pain—in with her—in with her into my Creel—and again to business. It is on the First Victim of the Day, especially if, as in this case, a Bouncer, an angler fondly dwells in reminiscence—each successive captive—however engrossing the capture—loses its distinct individuality in the fast accumulating crowd; and when, at close of day, sitting down among the broom, to empty and to count, it is on the First Victim that the angler's eye reposes—in refilling, it is the First Victim you lay aside to crown the treasure—in wending homewards it is on the First Victim's biography you muse; and at home—in the Pavillon—it is the First Victim you submit to the critical ken of Christopher—

BULLER.

Especially if, as in this case, she be a Bouncer.

NORTH.

You pride yourself on your recitation of poetry, Talboys. Charm us with the finest descriptive passage you can remember from the British Poets. Not too loud—not too loud—this is not Exeter Hall—nor are you about to address the Water-witch from the top of Ben-Lomond.

TALBOYS.

NORTH.

Admirably said and sung. Your low tones, Talboys, are earnest and impressive; and you recite, like all true lovers of song, in the spirit of soliloquy, as if you were yourself the sole listener. How I hate Spouting. Your elocutionist makes his mouth a jet d'eau—and by his gestures calls on all the auditors to behold the performance. From the lips of the man who has music in his soul, the words of inspiration flow as from a natural fountain, for his soul has made them its own—and delights to feel in their beauty an adequate expression of its own emotions.

TALBOYS.

I spoke them, to myself—but I was still aware of your presence, my dear sir.

NORTH.

The Stanzas are fine—but are they the finest in Descriptive Poetry?

TALBOYS.

I do not say so, sir. Any request of yours I interpret liberally, and accede to at once. Finer stanzas there may be—many; but I took them because they first came to heart. "Beautiful exceedingly" they are—they may not be faultless.

NORTH.

Sir Walter has said—"Perhaps there are no verses in our language of happier descriptive power than the two stanzas which characterise the Clitumnus."

TALBOYS.

Then I am right.

NORTH.

Perhaps you are. Scott loved Byron—and it is ennobling to hear one great Poet praising another: yet the stanzas which so delighted our Minstrel may not be so felicitous as they seemed to be to his moved imagination.

TALBOYS.

Possibly not.

NORTH.

In the First Stanza what do we find?, An apostrophe—"Thou Clitumnus," not yet quite an Impersonation—a few lines on, an Impersonation of the Stream—

What is gained by this Impersonation? Nothing. For the qualities here attributed to the River-God are the very same that had already been attributed to the water—purity—serenity—clearness. "Sweetest wave of the most living crystal"—affects us just as much—here I think more than the two lines about the God. And observe, that no sooner is the God introduced than he disappears. His coming and his going are alike unsatisfactory—for his coming gives us no new emotion, and his going is instantly followed by lines that have no relation to his Godship at all.

TALBOYS.

Why—why—I really don't know.

NORTH.

I have mildly—and inoffensively to all the world—that is, to all us Four—shown one imperfection; and I think—I feel there is another—in this Stanza. "The sweetest wave of the most living crystal" is visioned to us in the opening lines as the haunt "of river nymph, to gaze and lave her limbs where nothing hid them,"—and we are pleased; it is visioned to us, in the concluding line, as "the mirror and the bath for Beauty's youngest daughters "—and we are not pleased; or if we are, but for a moment—for it is, as nearly as may be, the same vision over again—a mirror and a bath!

TALBOYS.

But then, sir—

NORTH.

Well?

TALBOYS.

Go on, sir.

NORTH.

I am not sure that I understand "Beauty's youngest daughters."

TALBOYS.

Why, small maidens from ten to twelve years old, who in their innocent beauty may bathe without danger, and in their innocent self-admiration may gaze without fear.

NORTH.

Then is the expression at once commonplace and obscure.

TALBOYS.

Don't say so, sir.

NORTH.

Think you Byron means the Graces?

TALBOYS.

He does—he does—the Graces sure enough—the Graces.

NORTH.

Whatever it means—it means no more than we had before. A descriptive Stanza should ever be progressive, and at the close complete. To my feeling, "slaughters" had better been kept far away from the imagination as from the eyes. I know Byron alludes here to the Sanguinetto of the preceding Stanza. But he ought not to have alluded to it—the contrast is complete without such reference—between the river we are delighting in and the blood-named torrent that has passed away. Why, then, force such an image back, upon us—when of ourselves we should never have thought of it, and it is the last image we should desire to see?

TALBOYS.

Allow me a few minutes to consider——

NORTH.

A day. Will you be so good, Talboys, as tell me in ten words the meaning of—in the next Stanza—"keeps its memory of Thee"?

TALBOYS.

I will immediately.

NORTH.

To my mind—angler as I am—

TALBOYS.

The Prince of Anglers.

NORTH.

To my mind, two lines and a half about Fishes are here too much—"finny darter" seems conceited—and "dwells and revels" needlessly strong—and the frequent rising of "finny darters with the glittering scales" to me seems hardly consistent with the solemn serenity inspired by the Temple, "of small and delicate proportion" "keeping its memory of Thee,"—whatever that may mean;—nor do I think that a poetical mind like Byron's, if fully possessed in ideal contemplation with the beauty of the whole, would have thought so much of such an occurrence, or dwelt upon it with so many words.

TALBOYS.

I wish that finny darters with the glittering scales had oft leaped from out thy current's calmness, Thou Glenorchy, yesterday—but not a fin could I stir with finest tackle and Double-Nothings.

NORTH.

That is no answer, either one way or another, to my gentle demur to the perfection of the stanzas. The "scattered water-lily" may be well enough—so let it pass—with this ob, that the flower of the water-lily is not easily separated from its stalk—and is not, in that state, eligible as an image of peace.

TALBOYS.

It is of beauty.

NORTH.

Be it so. But, is "scattered" the right word? No. A water-lily to be scattered must be torn—for you scatter many, not one—a fleet, not a ship—a flock of sheep, not one lamb. A solitary water-lily—broken off and drifting by, has, as you said, its own beauty—and Byron doubtlessly intended that—but he has not said it—he has said the reverse—for a "scattered" water-lily is a dishevelled water-lily—a water-lily no more—a dispersed or dispersing multitude of leaves—of what had been a moment before—a Flower.

TALBOYS.

The image pleases everybody—take it as you find it, and be content.

NORTH.

I take it as I find it, and am not content; I take it as I don't find it, and am. Then I gently demur to "still tells its bubbling tales." In Gray's line—

the word "babbles" is the right one—a mitigated "brawling"—a continuous murmur without meaning, till you give it one or many—like that of some ceaseless female human being, pleasantly accompanying your reveries that have no relation to what you hear. Her blameless babble has that effect—and were it to stop, you would awake. But Byron's "shallower wave still tells its bubbling tales"—a tale is still about something—however small—and pray what is that something? Nothing. "Tales," then, is not the very word here—nor will "bubbling" make it so—at best it is a prettyism rather than Poetry. The Poet is becoming a Poetaster.

TALBOYS.

I shall never recite another finest descriptive passage from the whole range of our British Poets—during the course of my life—in this Pavilion.

NORTH.

Let us look at the Temple.

TALBOYS.

Be done, I beseech you, sir.

NORTH.

Talboys, you have as logical—as legal a head as any man I know.

TALBOYS.

What has a logical or legal head to do with Byron's description of the Clitumnus?

NORTH.

As much as with any other "Process." And you know it. But you are in a most contradictory—I had almost said captious mood, this forenoon—and will not imbibe genially——

TALBOYS.

Imbibe genially—acids—after having imbibed in the body immeasurable rain.

NORTH.

Let us look at the Temple. "A Temple still" might mean a still temple.

TALBOYS.

But it doesn't.

NORTH.

A Poet's meaning should never, through awkwardness, be ambiguous. But no more of that. "Keeps its Memory of Thee" suggests to my mind that the Temple, dedicated of old to the River-God, retains, under the new religion of the land, evidence of the old Deification and Worship. The Temple survives to express to us of another day and faith, a Deification and worship of Thee—Clitumnus—dictated by the same apprehension of thy characteristic Beauty in the hearts of those old worshippers that now possesses ours looking on Thee. Thou art unchanged—the sensitive and imaginative intelligence of Thee in man is unchanged—although times have changed—states, nations—and, to the eyes of man, the heavens themselves! If all this be meant—all this is not said—in the words you admire.

TALBOYS.

I cannot say, as an honest man, that I distinctly understand you, my dear sir.

NORTH.

You understand me better than you understand Byron.

TALBOYS.

I understand neither of you.

NORTH.

The poetical thought seems to be here—that the Temple rises up spontaneously on the bank—under the power of the Beautiful in the river—a permanent self-sprung reflexion of that Beautiful—as indeed, to imagination, all things appear to create themselves!

TALBOYS.

You speak like yourself now, sir.

NORTH.

But look here, my good Talboys. The statue of Achilles may "keep its memory"—granting the locution to be good, which it is not—of Achilles—for Achilles is no more. Sink—in a rapture of thought—the hand of the artist—think that the statues of Achilles came of themselves—as unsown flowers come—for poets to express to all ages the departed Achilles. They keep—as long as they remain unperished—"their memory of Achilles"—they were from the beginning voluntary and intentional conservators of the Memory of the Hero. But Clitumnus is here—alive to this hour, and with every prospect of outliving his own Temple. What do you say to that?

TALBOYS.

To what?

NORTH.

Finally—if that reminiscence of the Heathen deification, which I first proposed, was in Byron's mind—and he means by "still keeps its memory of Thee" memory of the River-God—and of the Worship of the River-God—then all he says about the mere natural river—its leaping fishes, and so forth, is wide of his own purpose—and what is worse—implies an absurdity—a reminiscence—not of the past—but of the present.

TALBOYS.

If all that were submitted to me for the Pursuer, in Printed Papers—I should appoint answers to be given in by the Defender—within seven days—and within seven days after that—give judgment.

NORTH.

Keep your temper, Mr Testy. As I have no wish to sour you for the rest of the day, I shall say little about the Third Stanza. "Pass not unblest the Genius of the Place," would to me be a more impressive prayer, if there were more spirituality in the preceding stanzas—and in the lines which follow it; for the Genius of the Place has been acting, and continues to act, almost solely on the Senses. And who is the Genius of the Place? The River-God—he to whom the Gentile worship built that Temple. But Byron says, most unpoetically, "along his margin"—along the margin of the Genius of the Place! Then, how flat—how poor—after "the Genius of the Place"—"the freshness of the Scene"—for the freshness of the Scene bless the genius of the Place! Is that language flowing, from the emotion of a Poet's heart? And the last line spoils all; for he, whom we are to bless—the River-God—or the Genius of the Place—has given the heart but a "moment's" cleanness from dry dust—but a moment's, and no more! And never did hard, coarse Misanthropy so mar a Poet's purpose as by the shocking prose that is left grating on our souls—"suspension of disgust!" So, after all this beauty—and all this enjoyment of beauty—well or ill painted by the Poet—you must pay orisons to the River-God or the Genius—whom you had been called onto bless—for a mere momentary suspension of disgust to all our fellow-creatures—a disgust that would return as strong—or stronger than ever—as soon as you got to Rome.

TALBOYS.

I confess I don't like it.

NORTH.

"Must!" There are Needs of all sorts, shapes, and sizes. There is terrible necessity—there is bitter necessity—there is grinding necessity—there is fine—delicate—loving—playful necessity.

TALBOYS.

Sir?

NORTH.

There are Musts that fly upon the wings of devils—Musts that fly upon the wings of angels—Musts that walk upon the feet of men—Musts that flutter upon the wings of Fairies.—But I am dreaming!—Say on.

TALBOYS.

I think the day's clearing—let us launch Gutta Percha, Buller, and troll for a Ferox.

NORTH.

Then fling that Tarpaulin over your Feather-Jacket, on which you plume yourself, and don't forget your Gig-Parasol, Longfellow—for the rain-gauge is running over, so are the water-butts, and I hear the Loch surging its way up to the Camp. The Cladich Cataract is a stunner. Sit down, my dear Talboys. Recite away.

TALBOYS.

No.

NORTH.

Gentlemen, I call on Mister Buller.

BULLER.

NORTH.

In the First Stanza there is a very peculiar and a very striking form—or construction—The Roar of Waters—The Fall of Waters—The Hell of Waters.

BULLER.

You admire it.

NORTH.

I do.

TALBOYS.

Don't believe him, Buller. Let's be off—there is no rain worth mentioning—see—there's a Fly. Oh! 'tis but a Red Professor dangling from my bonnet—a Red Professor with tinsy and a tail. Come, Seward, here's the Chess-Board. Let us make out the Main.

NORTH.

The four lines about the Roar and the Fall are good——

TALBOYS.

Indeed, sir.

NORTH.

Mind your game, sir. Seward, you may give him a Pawn. The next four—about Hell—are bad.

TALBOYS.

Indeed, sir.

NORTH.

Seward, you may likewise give him a Knight. As bad as can be. For there is an incredible confusion of tormented and tormentor. They howl, and hiss, and boil in endless torture—they are suffering the Pains of Hell—they are in Hell. "But the sweat of their great agony is wrung out from this their Phlegethon." Where is this their Phlegethon? Why, this their Phlegethon is—themselves! Look down—there is no other river—but the Velino.

BULLER.

Hear Virgil—

No Phlegethon with torrents of fire surrounding and shaking Byron's Hell. I do not understand it—an unaccountable blunder.

NORTH.

In next stanza, what is gained by

Nothing. In the First Stanza, we had the "abyss," "the gulf," and the agony—all and more than we have here.

SEWARD.

Check-mate.

TALBOYS.

Confound the board!—no, not the board—but Hurwitz himself could not play in such an infernal clatter.

NORTH.

Buller has not got to the word "infernal" yet, Phillidor—but he will by-and-by. "Crushing the Cliffs"-crushing is not the right word—it is the wrong one—for not such is the process—visible or invisible. "Downward worn" is silly. "Fierce footsteps," to my imagination, is tame and out of place—though it may not be to yours;—and I thunder in the ears of the Chess-players that the first half of the next stanza—the third—is as bad writing as is to be found in Byron.

TALBOYS.

Or in North.

NORTH.

Seward—you may give him likewise a Bishop—

I do not say that is not sublime. If it is an image of Eternity—sublime it must be—but the Poet has chosen his time badly for inspiring us with that thought—for we look back on what he had pictured to us as falling into hell—and then flowing diffused "only thus to be parents of rivers that flow gushingly with many windings through the vale"—images of Time.

is well enough for an ordinary cataract, but not for a cataract that comes "like an Eternity."

TALBOYS.

SEWARD.

One game each.

TALBOYS.

Let us go to the Swiss Giantess to play out the Main.

NORTH.

In Stanza Fourth—"But on the verge," is very like nonsense—

TALBOYS.

Not at all.

NORTH.

The Swiss Giantess is expecting you—good-bye, my dear Talboys. Now, Buller, I wish you, seriously and calmly, to think on this image—

Did Hope—could Hope ever sit by such a death-bed! The infernal surge—the hell of waters—the howling—the hissing—the boiling in endless torture—the sweat of the great agony wrung out—and more of the same sort—these image the death-bed. Hope has sat beside many a sad—many a miserable death-bed—but not by such as this; and yet, here, such a death-bed is hinted at as not uncommon—in a few words—"like Hope upon a death-bed." The simile came not of itself—it was sought for—and had far better have been away. There is much bad writing here, too—"unworn"—"unshorn" —"torn"—"dyes"—"hues"—"beams"—"torture of the scene"—epithet heaped on epithet, without any clear perception, or sincere emotion—the Iris changing from Hope upon a death-bed to Love watching Madness—both of which I pronounce, before that portion of mankind assembled in this Tent, to be on the FALSETTO—and wide from the thoughts that visit the suffering souls of the children of men remembering this life's greatest calamities.

SEWARD.

Yet throughout, sir, there is Power.

NORTH.

Power! My dear Seward, who denies it? But great Power—true poetical Power—is self-collected—not turbulent though dealing with turbulence—in its own stately passion dominating physical nature in its utmost distraction—and in her blind forces seeing a grandeur—a sublimity that only becomes visible or audible to the senses, through the action of imagination creating its own consistent ideal world out of that turmoil—making the fury of falling waters appeal to our Moral Being, from whose depths and heights rise emotions echoing all the tones of the thundering cataract. In these stanzas of Byron, the main Power is in the Cataract—not in the Poetry—loud to the ear—to the eye flashing and foaming—full of noise and fury, signifying not much to the soul, as it stuns and confounds the senses—while its more spiritual significations are uncertain, or unintelligible, accepted with doubt, or rejected without hesitation, because felt to be false and deceitful, and but brilliant mockeries of the Truth.

TALBOYS.

Spare Byron, who is a Poet—and castigate some popular Versifier.

NORTH.

I will not spare Byron—and just because he is a Poet. For popular Versifiers, they may pipe at their pleasure, but aloof from our Tents—chirp anywhere but in this Encampment; and if there be a Gowdspink or Yellow-hammer among them, let us incline our ear kindly to his chattering or his yammering, "low doun in the broom," or high up on his apple-tree, in outfield or orchard, and pray that never naughty schoolboy may harry his nest.

SEWARD.

Would Sir Walter's Poetry stand such critical examination?

NORTH.

All—or nearly so—directly dealing with War—Fighting in all its branches. Indeed, with any kind of Action he seldom fails—in Reflection, often—and, strange to say, almost as often in description of Nature, though there in his happier hours he excels.

SEWARD.

I was always expecting, during that discussion about the Clitumnus, that you would have brought in Virgil.

NORTH.

Ay, Maro—in description—is superior to them all—in the Æneid as well as in the Georgics. But we have no time to speak of his Pictures now—only just let me ask you—Do you remember what Payne Knight says of Æneas?

SEWARD.

No, for I never read it.

NORTH.

Payne Knight, in his Analytical Inquiry into the Principles of Taste—a work of high authority in his own day, and containing many truths vigorously expounded, though characterised throughout by arrogance and presumption—speaks of that "selfish coldness with which the Æneas of Virgil treats the unfortunate princess, whose affections he had seduced," and adds, that "Every modern reader of the Æneid finds that the Episode of Dido, though in itself the most exquisite piece of composition existing, weakens extremely the subsequent interest of the Poem, it being impossible to sympathise either cordially or kindly with the fortunes or exertions of a hero who sneaks away from his high-minded and much-injured benefactress in a manner so base and unmanly. When, too, we find him soon after imitating all the atrocities, and surpassing the utmost arrogance, of the furious and vindictive Achilles, without displaying any of his generosity, pride, or energy, he becomes at once mean and odious, and only excites scorn and indignation; especially when, at the conclusion, he presents to Lavinia a hand stained with the blood of her favoured lover, whom he had stabbed while begging for quarter, and after being rendered incapable of resistance." Is not this, Seward, much too strong?

SEWARD.

I think, sir, it is not only much too strong, but outrageous; and that we are bound, in justice to Virgil, to have clearly before our mind his own Idea of his Hero.

TALBOYS.

To try that Æneas by the rules of poetry and of morality; and if we find his character such as neither our imagination nor our moral sense will suffer us to regard with favour—to admire either in Hero or Man—then to throw the Æneid aside.

BULLER.

And take up his Georgics.

TALBOYS.

To love Virgil we need not forget Homer—but to sympathise with Æneas, our imagination must not be filled with Achilles.

SEWARD

Troy is dust—the Son of Thetis dead. Let us go with the Fugitives and their Leader.

TALBOYS.

Let us believe from the first that they seek a Destined Seat—under One Man, who knows his mission, and is worthy to fulfil it. Has Virgil so sustained the character of that Man—of that Hero? Or has he, from ineptitude, and unequal to so great a subject—let him sink below our nobler sympathies—nay, unconscious of failure of his purpose, as Payne Knight says, accommodated him to our contempt?

SEWARD.

For seven years he has been that Man—that Hero. One Night's Tale has shown him—as he is—for I presume that Virgil—and not Payne Knight—was his Maker. If that Speech was all a lie—and the Son of Anchises, not a gallant and pious Prince, but a hypocrite and a coward—shut the Book or burn it.

TALBOYS.

Much gossip—of which any honest old woman, had she uttered the half of it, would have been ashamed before she had finished her tea—has been scribbled by divers male pens—stupid or spritely—on that magnificent Recital. Æneas, it has been said, by his own account, skulked during the Town Sack—and funked during the Sea Storm. And how, it has been asked, came he to lose Creusa? Pious indeed! A truly pious man, say they, does not speak of his piety—he takes care of his household gods without talking about Lares and Penates. Many critics—some not without name—have been such—unrepentant—old women. Come we to Dido.

NORTH.

Be cautious—for I fear I have been in fault myself towards Æneas for his part in that transaction.

TALBOYS.

I take the account of it from Virgil. Indeed I do not know of any scandalous chronicle of Carthage or Tyre. A Trojan Prince and a Tyrian Queen—say at once a Man and a Woman—on sudden temptation and unforeseen opportunity—Sin—and they continue to sin. As pious men as Æneas—and as kingly and heroic too, have so sinned far worse than that—yet have not been excommunicated from the fellowship of saints, kings, or heroes.

SEWARD.

To say that Æneas "seduces Dido," in the sense that Payne Knight uses the word, is a calumnious vulgarism.

TALBOYS.

And shows a sulky resolution to shut his eyes—and keep them shut.

SEWARD.

Had he said that in the Schools at Oxford, he would have been plucked at his Little-go. But I forget—there was no plucking in those days—and indeed I rather think he was not an University Man.

NORTH.

Nevertheless he was a Scholar.

SEWARD.

Not nevertheless, sir—notwithstanding, sir.

NORTH.

I sit corrected.

SEWARD.

Neither did Infelix Elissa seduce him—desperately in love as she was—'twas not the storm of her own will that drove her into that fatal cave.

TALBOYS.

Against Venus and Juno combined, alas! for poor Dido at last!

SEWARD.

Æneas was in her eyes what Othello was in Desdemona's. No Desdemona she—no "gentle Lady"—nor was Virgil a Shakspeare. Yet those remonstrances—and that raving—and that suicide!

TALBOYS.

Ay, Dan Virgil feared not to put the condemnation of his Hero into those lips of fire—to let her winged curses pursue the Pious Perfidious as he puts to sea. But what is truth—passion—nature from the reproachful and raving—the tender and the truculent—the repentant and the revengeful—the true and the false Dido—for she had forgot and she remembers SychÆus—when cut up into bits of bad law, and framed into an Indictment through which the Junior Jehu at the Scottish Bar might drive a Coach and Six!

SEWARD.

But he forsook her! He did—and in obedience to the will of heaven. Throughout the whole of his Tale of Troy, at that fatal banquet, he tells her whither, and to what fated region, the fleet is bound—he is not sailing under scaled orders—Dido hears the Hero's destiny from the lips of Moestissimus Hector, from the lips of Creusa's Shade. But Dido is deaf to all those solemn enunciations—none so deaf as those who will not hear; the Likeness of Ascanius lying-by her on her Royal Couch fired her vital blood—and she already is so insane as to dream of lying ere long on that God-like breast. He had forgot—and he remembers his duty—yes—his duty; according to the Creed of his country—of the whole heathen world—in deserting Dido, he obeyed the Gods.

TALBOYS.

He sneaked away! says Knight. Go he must—would it have been more heroic to set fire to the Town, and embark in the General Illumination?

SEWARD.

Would Payne Knight have seriously advised Virgil to marry Æneas, in good earnest, to Dido, and make him King of Carthage?

BULLER.

Would they have been a happy Couple?

SEWARD.

Does not our sympathy go with Æneas to the Shades? Is he unworthy to look on the Campos Lugentes? On the Elysian Fields? To be shown by Anchises the Shades of the predestined Heroes of unexisting Rome?

TALBOYS.

Do we—because of Dido—despise him when first he kens, on a calm bright morning, that great Grove on the Latian shore near the mouth of the Tiber?

SEWARD.

But he was a robber—a pirate—an invader—an usurper—so say the Payne Knights. Virgil sanctifies the Landing with the spirit of peace—and a hundred olive-crowned Envoys are sent to Laurentum with such peace-offerings as had never been laid at the feet of an Ausonian King.

TALBOYS.

Nothing can exceed in simple grandeur the advent of Æneas—the reception of the Envoys by old Latinus. The right of the Prince to the region he has reached is established by grant human and divine. Surely a father, who is a king, may dispose of his daughter in marriage—and here he must; he knew, from omen and oracle, the Hour and the Man. Lavinia belonged to Æneas—not to Turnus—though we must not severely blame the fiery Rutulian because he would not give her up. Amata, in and out of her wits, was on his side; but their betrothment—if betrothed they were—was unhallowed—and might not bind in face of Fate.

BULLER.

Turnus was in the wrong from beginning to end. Virgil, however, has made him a hero—and idiots have said that he eclipses Æneas—the same idiots, who, at the same time, have told us that Virgil could not paint a hero at all.

TALBOYS.

That his genius has no martial fervour. Had the blockheads read the Rising—the Gathering—in the Seventh Æneid?

NORTH.

Sir Walter himself had much of it by heart—and I have seen the "repeated air" kindle the aspect, and uplift the Lion-Port of the greatest War-Poet that ever blew the trumpet.

SEWARD.

Æneas at the Court of Evander—that fine old Grecian! There he is a Hero to be loved—and Pallas loved him—and he loved Pallas—and all men with hearts love Virgil for their sakes.

TALBOYS.

And is he not a Hero, when relanding from sea at the mouth of his own Tiber, with his Etrurian Allies—some thousands strong? And does he not then act the Hero? Virgil was no War-Poet! Second only to Homer, I hold—

SEWARD.

An imitator of Homer! With fights of the Homeric age—how could he help it? But he is, in much, original on the battle-field—and is there in all the Iliad a Lausus, or a Pallas?—

BULLER.

Or a Camilla?

SEWARD.

Fighting is at the best a sad business—but Payne Knight is offensive on the cruelty—the ferocity of Æneas. I wish Virgil had not made him seize and sacrifice the Eight Young Men to appease the Manes of Pallas. Such sacrifice Virgil believed to be agreeable to the manners of the time—and, if usual to the most worthy, here assuredly due. In the final Great Battle,

BULLER.

Knight is a ninny on the Single Combat. In all the previous circumstances regarding it, Turnus behaved ill—now that he must fight, he fights well: 'tis as fair a fight as ever was fought in the field of old Epic Poetry: tutelary interposition alternates in favour of either Prince: the bare notion of either outliving defeat never entered any mind but Payne Knight's: nor did any other fingers ever fumble such a charge against the hero of an Epic as "Stabbing while begging for quarter"—but a momentary weakness in Turnus which was not without its effect on Æneas, till at sight of that Belt, he sheathed the steel.

TALBOYS.

Payne works himself up, in the conclusion of the passage, into an absolute maniac.

NORTH.

Good manners, Talboys—no insult—remember Mr Knight has been long dead.

TALBOYS.

So has Æneas—so has Virgil.

NORTH.

True. Young gentlemen, I have listened with much pleasure to your animated and judicious dialogue. Shall I now give Judgment?

BULLER.

Lengthy?

NORTH.

Not more than an hour.

BULLER.

Then, if you please, my Lord, to-morrow.

NORTH.

You must all three be somewhat fatigued by the exercise of so much critical acumen. So do you, Talboys and Seward, unbend the bow at another game of Chess; and you, Buller, reanimate the jaded Moral Sentiments by a sharp letter to Marmaduke, insinuating that if he don't return to the Tents within a week, or at least write to say that he and Hal, Volusene and Woodburn, are not going to return at all, but to join the Rajah of Sarawak, the Grand Lama, or Prester John—which I fear is but too probable from the general tone and tenor of their life and conversation for some days before their Secession from the Established Camp—there will be a general breaking of Mothers' hearts, and in his own particular case, a cutting off with a shilling, or disinheriting of the heir apparent of one of the finest Estates in Cornwall. But I forget—these Entails will be the ruin of England. What! Billy, is that you?

BILLY.

Measter, here's a Fish and a Ferocious.

TALBOYS.

Ha! what Whappers!

BULLER.

More like Fish before the Flood than after it.

SEWARD.

After it indeed! During it. What is Billy saying, Mr North? That Coomerlan' dialect's Hottentot to my Devonshire ears.

NORTH.

They have been spoiled by the Doric delicacies of the "Exmoor Courtship." He tells me that Archy M'Callum, the Cornwall Clipper, and himself, each in a cow-hide, having ventured down to the River Mouth to look after and bale Gutta Percha, foregathered with an involuntary invasion of divers gigantic Fishes, who had made bad their landing on our shores, and that after a desperate resistance they succeeded in securing the Two Leaders—a Salmo Salar and a Salmo Ferox—see on snout and shoulder tokens of the Oar. Thirty—and Twenty Pounders—Billy says; I should have thought they were respectively a third more. No mean Windfall. They will tell on the Spread. I retire to my Sanctum for my Siesta.

TALBOYS.

Let me invest you, my dear sir, with my Feathers.

BULLER.

Do—do take my Tarpaulin.

SEWARD.

Billy, your Cow-hide.

NORTH.

I need none of your gimcracks—for I seek the Sanctum by a subterranean—beg your pardon—a Subter-Awning Passage.

Scene II.
Scene—Deeside.
Time-Seven P.C.
North—Buller—Seward—Talboys.

NORTH.

How little time or disposition for anything like serious Thinking, or Reading, out of people's own profession or trade, in this Railway World! The busy-bodies of these rattling times, even in their leisure hours, do not affect an interest in studies their fathers and their grandfathers, in the same rank of life, pursued, even systematically, on many an Evening sacred from the distraction that ceased with the day.

TALBOYS.

Not all busy-bodies, my good Sir—think of——

NORTH.

I have thought of them—and I know their worth—their liberality and their enlightenment. In all our cities and towns—and villages—and in all orders of the people—there is Mind—Intelligence, and Knowledge; and the more's the shame in that too general appetence for mere amusement in literature, perpetually craving for a change of diet—for something new in the light way—while anything of any substance, is, "with sputtering noise rejected" as tough to the teeth, and hard of digestion—however sweet and nutritious; would they but taste and try.

SEWARD.

I hope you don't mean to allude to Charles Dickens?

NORTH.

Assuredly not. Charles Dickens is a man of original and genial genius—his popularity is a proof of the goodness of the heart of the people;—and the love of him and his writings—though not so thoughtful as it might be—does honour to that strength in the English character which is indestructible by any influences, and survives in the midst of frivolity, and folly, and of mental depravations, worse than both.

SEWARD.

Don't look so savage, sir.

NORTH.

I am not savage—I am serene. Set the Literature of the day aside altogether—and tell me if you think our conversation since dinner would not have been thought dull by many not altogether uneducated persons, who pride themselves not a little on their intellectuality and on their full participation in the Spirit of the Age?

TALBOYS.

Our conversation since dinner DULL!! No—no—no. Many poor creatures, indeed, there are among them—even among those of them who work the Press—pigmies with pap feeding a Giant who sneezes them away when sick of them into small offices in the Customs or Excise;—but not one of our privileged brethren of the Guild—with a true ticket to show—but would have been delighted with such dialogue—but would be delighted with its continuation—and thankful to know that he, "a wiser and a better man, will rise to-morrow morn."

SEWARD.

Do, my dear sir—resume your discoursing about those Greeks.

NORTH.

I was about to say, Seward, that those shrewd and just observers, and at the same time delicate thinkers, the ancient Greeks, did, as you well know, snatch from amongst the ordinary processes which Nature pursues, in respect of inferior animal life, a singularly beautiful Type or Emblem, expressively imaging to Fancy that bursting disclosure of Life from the bosom of Death, which is implied in the extrication of the soul from its corporeal prison, when this astonishing change is highly, ardently, and joyfully contemplated. Those old festal religionists—who carried into the solemnities of their worship the buoyant gladsomeness of their own sprightly and fervid secular life, and contrived to invest even the artful splendour and passionate human interest of their dramatic representations with the name and character of a sacred ceremony—found for that soaring and refulgent escape of a spirit from the dungeon and chains of the flesh, into its native celestial day, a fine and touching similitude in the liberation of a beautiful Insect, the gorgeously-winged, aÉrial Butterfly, from the living tomb in which Nature has, during a season, eased and urned its torpid and death-like repose.

SEWARD.

Nor, my dear sir, was this life-conscious penetration or intuition of a keen and kindling intelligence into the dreadful, the desolate, the cloud-covered Future, the casual thought of adventuring Genius, transmitted in some happier verse only, or in some gracious and visible poesy of a fine chisel; but the Symbol and the Thing symbolised were so bound together in the understanding of the nation, that in the Greek language the name borne by the Insect and the name designating the Soul is one and the same—????.

NORTH.

Insects! They have come out, by their original egg-birth, into an active life. They have crept and eaten—and slept and eaten—creeping, and sleeping, and eating—still waxing in size, and travelling on from fitted pasture to pasture, they have in not many suns reached the utmost of the minute dimensions allotted them—the goal of their slow-footed wanderings, and the term, shall we say—of their life.

SEWARD.

No! But of that first period, through which they have made some display of themselves as living agents. They have reached this term. And look at them—now.

NORTH.

Ay—look at them—now. Wonder on wonder! For now a miraculous instinct guides and compels the creature—who has, as it were, completed one life—who has accomplished one stage of his existence—to entomb himself. And he accordingly builds or spins himself a tomb—or he buries himself in his grave. Shall I say, that she herself, his guardian, his directress, Great Nature, coffins him? Enclosed in a firm shell—hidden from all eyes—torpid—in a death-like sleep—not dead—he waits the appointed hour, which the days and nights bring, and which having come—his renovation, his resuscitation is come. And now the sepulture no longer holds him! Now the prisoner of the tomb has right again to converse with embalmed air and with glittering sunbeams—now, the reptile that was—unrecognisably transformed from himself—a glad, bright, mounting creature, unfurls on either side the translucent or the richly-hued pinions that shall waft him at his liking from blossom to blossom, or lift him in a rapture of aimless joyancy to disport and rock himself on the soft-flowing undulating breeze.

SEWARD.

My dearest sir, the Greek in his darkness, or uncertain twilight of belief, has culled and perpetuated his beautiful emblem. Will the Christian look unmoved upon the singular imaging, which, amidst the manifold strangely-charactered secrets of nature, he finds of his own sealed and sure faith?

NORTH.

No, Seward. The philosophical Theologian claims in this likeness more than an apt simile, pleasing to the stirred fancy. He sees here an Analogy—and this Analogy he proposes as one link in a chain of argumentation, by which he would show that Reason might dare to win from Nature, as a Hope, the truth which it holds from God as revealed knowledge.

SEWARD.

I presume, sir, you allude to Butler's Analogy. I have studied it.

NORTH.

I do—to the First Chapter of that Great Work. This parallelism, or apprehended resemblance between an event continually occurring and seen in nature, and one unseen but continually conceived as occurring upon the uttermost brink and edge of nature—this correspondency, which took such fast hold of the Imagination of the Greeks, has, as you know, my dear friends, in these latter days been acknowledged by calm and profound Reason, looking around on every side for evidences or intimations of the Immortality of the Soul.

BULLER.

Will you be so good, sir, as let me have the volume to study of an evening in my own Tent?

NORTH.

Certainly. And for many other evenings—in your own Library at home.

TALBOYS.

Please, sir, to state Butler's argument in your own words and way.

NORTH.

For Butler's style is hard and dry. A living Being undergoes a vicissitude by which on a sudden he passes from a state in which he has long, continued into a new state, and with it into a new scene of existence. The transition is from a narrow confinement into an ample liberty—and this change of circumstances is accompanied in the subject with a large and congruous increment of powers. They believe this who believe the Immortality of the Soul. But the fact is, that changes bearing this description do indeed happen in Nature, under our very eyes, at every moment; this method of progress being universal in her living kingdoms. Such a marvellous change is literally undergone by innumerable kinds, the human animal included, in the instant in which they pass out from the darkness and imprisonment of the womb into the light and open liberty of this breathing world. Birth has been the image of a death, which is itself nothing else than a birth from one straightened life into another ampler and freer. The ordering of Nature, then, is an ordering of Progression, whereby new and enlarged states are attained, and, simultaneously therewith, new and enlarged powers; and all this not slowly, gradually, and insensibly, but suddenly and per saltum.

TALBOYS.

This analogy, then, sir, or whatever there is that is in common to birth as we know it, and to death as we conceive it, is to be understood as an evidence set in the ordering of Nature, and justifying or tending to justify such our conception of Death?

NORTH.

Exactly so. And you say well, my good Talboys, "justifying or tending to justify." For we are all along fully sensible that a vast difference—a difference prodigious and utterly confounding to the imagination—holds, betwixt the case from which we reason, birth—or that further expansion of life in some breathing kinds which might be held as a second birth—betwixt these cases, I say, and the case to, which we reason, Death!

TALBOYS.

Prodigious and utterly confounding to the imagination indeed! For in these physiological instances, either the same body, or a body changing by such slow and insensible degrees that it seems to us to be the same body, accompanies, encloses, and contains the same life—from the first moment in which that life comes under our observation to that in which it vanishes from our cognisance; whereas, sir, in the case to which we apply the Analogy—our own Death—the life is supposed to survive in complete separation from the body, in and by its union with which we have known it and seen it manifested.

NORTH.

Excellently well put, my friend. I see you have studied Butler.

TALBOYS.

I have—but not for some years. The Analogy is not a Book to be forgotten.

NORTH.

This difference between the case from which we reason, and the case to which we reason, there is no attempt whatever at concealing—quite the contrary—it stands written, you know, my friend, upon the very Front of the Argument. This difference itself is the very motive and occasion of the Whole Argument! Were there not this difference between the cases which furnish the Analogy, and the case to which the Analogy is applied—had we certainly known and seen a Life continued, although suddenly passing out from the body where it had hitherto resided—or were Death not the formidable disruption which it is of a hitherto subsisting union—the cases would be identical, and there would be nothing to reason about or to inquire. There is this startling difference—and accordingly the Analogy described has been proposed by Butler merely as a first step in the Argument.

TALBOYS.

It remains to be seen, then, whether any further considerations can be proposed which will bring the cases nearer together, and diminish to our minds the difficulty presented by the sudden separation.

NORTH.

Just so. What ground, then, my dear young friends—for you seem and are young to me—what ground, my friends, is there for believing that the Death which we see, can affect the living agent which we do not see? Butler makes his approaches cautiously, and his attack manfully—and this is the course of his Argument. I begin with examining my present condition of existence, and find myself to be a Being endowed with certain Powers and Capacities—for I act, I enjoy, I suffer.

TALBOYS.

Of this much there can be no doubt; for of all this an unerring consciousness assures me. Therefore, at the outset, I hold this one secure position—that I exist, the possessor of certain powers and capacities.

NORTH.

But that I do now before Death exist, endued with certain powers and capacities, affords a presumptive or prim facie probability that I shall after death continue to exist, possessing these powers and capacities—

BULLER.

How is that, sir?

NORTH.

You do well to put that question, my dear Buller—a prim facie probability, unless there be some positive reason to think that death is the "destruction" of Me, the living Being, and of these my living Faculties.

BULLER.

A presumptive or prim facie probability, sir? Why does Butler say so?

NORTH.

"Because there is in every case a probability that all things will continue as we experience they are, in all respects, except those in which we have some reason to think they will be altered."

BULLER.

You will pardon me, sir, I am sure, for having asked the question.

NORTH.

It was not only a proper question, but a necessary one. Butler wisely says—"This is that kind of Presumption or Probability from Analogy, expressed in the very word Continuance, which seems our only natural reason for believing the course of the world will continue to-morrow, as it has done so far as our experience or knowledge of history can carry us back." I give you, here, the Bishop's very words—and I believe that in them is affirmed a truth that no scepticism can shake.

TALBOYS.

If I mistake not, sir, the Bishop here frankly admits, that were we not fortified against a natural impression, with some better instruction than unreflecting Nature's, the spontaneous disposition of our Mind would undoubtedly be to an expectation that in this great catastrophe of our mortal estate, We Ourselves must perish; but he contends—does he not, sir?—that it would be a blind fear, and without rational ground.

NORTH.

Yes—that it is an impression of the illusory faculty, Imagination, and not an inference of Reason. There would arise, he says, "a general confused suspicion, that in the great shock and alteration which we shall undergo by death, We, i.e. our living Powers, might be wholly destroyed;"—but he adds solemnly, "there is no particular distinct ground or reason for this apprehension, so far as I can find."

TALBOYS.

Such "general confused suspicion," then, is not justified?

NORTH.

Butler holds that any justifying ground of the apprehension that, in the shock of death, I, the living Being, or, which is the same thing, These my powers of acting, enjoying, and suffering, shall be extinguished and cease, must be found either in "the reason of the Thing" itself, or in "the Analogy of Nature." To say that a legitimate ground of attributing to the sensible mortal change a power of extinguishing the inward life is to be found in the Reason of the Thing, is as much as to say, that when considering the essential nature of this great and tremendous, or at least dreaded change, Death, and upon also considering what these powers of acting, of enjoying, of suffering, truly are, and in what manner, absolutely, they subsist in us—there does appear to lie therein demonstration, or evidence, or likelihood, that the change, Death, will swallow up such living Powers—and that We shall no longer be.

TALBOYS.

In short, sir, that from considering what Death is, and upon what these Powers and their exercise depend, there is reason to think, that the Powers or their exercise will or must cease with Death.

NORTH.

The very point. And the Bishop's answer is bold, short, and decisive. We cannot from considering what Death is, draw this or any other conclusion, for we do not know what Death is! We know only certain effects of Death—the stopping of certain sensible actions—the dissolution of certain sensible parts. We can draw no conclusion, for we do not possess the premises.

SEWARD.

From your Exposition, sir, I feel that the meaning of the First Chapter of the Analogy is dawning into clearer and clearer light.

NORTH.

Inconsiderately, my dear sir, we seem indeed to ourselves to know what Death is; but this is from confounding the Thing and its Effects. For we see effects: at first, the stoppage of certain sensible actions—afterwards, the dissolution of certain sensible parts. But what it is that has happened—wherefore the blood no longer flows—the limbs no longer move—that we do not see. We do not see it with our eyes—we do not discern it by any inference of our understanding. It is a fact that seems to lie shrouded for ever from our faculties in awful and impenetrable mystery. That fact—the produce of an instant—which has happened within, and in the dark—that fact come to pass, in an indivisible point of time—that stern fact—ere the happening of which the Man was alive—an inhabitant of this breathing world—united to ourselves—our Father, Brother, Friend—at least our Fellow-Creature—by the happening, he is gone—is for ever irrecoverably sundered from this world, and from us its inhabitants—is Dead—and that which lies outstretched before our saddened eyes is only his mortal remains—a breathless corpse—an inanimate, insensible clod of clay:—Upon that interior sudden fact—sudden, at last, how slowly and gradually soever prepared—since the utmost attenuation of a thread is a thing totally distinct from its ending, from its becoming no thread at all, and since, up to that moment, there was a possibility that some extraordinary, perhaps physical application might for an hour or a few minutes have rallied life, or might have reawakened consciousness, and eye, and voice—upon that elusive Essence and self of Death no curious searching of ours has laid, or, it may be well assumed, will ever lay hold. When the organs of sense no longer minister to Perception, or the organs of motion to any change of posture—when the blood stopped in its flow thickens and grows cold—and the fair and stately form, the glory of the Almighty's Hand, the burning shrine of a Spirit that lately rejoiced in feeling, in thought, and in power, lies like a garment done with and thrown away—"a kneaded clod"—ready to lose feature and substance—and to yield back its atoms to the dominion of the blind elements from which they were gathered and compacted—What is Death? And what grounds have we for inferring that an event manifested to us as a phenomenon of the Body, which alone we touch, and hear, and see, has or has not reached into the Mind, which is for us Now just as it always was, a Thing utterly removed and exempt from the cognisance and apprehension of our bodily senses? The Mind, or Spirit, the unknown Substance, in which Feeling, and Thought, and Will, and the Spring of Life were—was united to this corporeal frame; and, being united to it, animated it, poured through it sensibility and motion, glowing and creative life—crimsoned the lips and cheeks—flashed in the eye—and murmured music from the tongue;—now, the two—Body and Soul—are disunited—and we behold one-half the consequence—the Thing of dust relapses to the dust;—we dare to divine the other half of the consequence—the quickening Spark, the sentient Intelligence, the Being gifted with Life, the Image of the Maker, in Man, has, reascended, has returned thither whence it came, into the Hand of God.

SEWARD.

If, sir, we were without light from the revealed Word of God, if we were left, by the help of reason, standing upon the brink of Time, dimly guessing, and inquiringly exploring, to find for ourselves the grounds of Hope and Fear, would your description, my dear Master, of that which has happened, seem to our Natural Faculties impossible? Surely not.

NORTH.

My dear Seward, we have the means of rendering some answer to that question. The nations of the world have been, more or less, in the condition, supposed. Self-left, they have borne the burden of the dread secret, which for them only the grave could resolve; but they never were able to sit at rest in the darkness. Importunate and insuppressible desire, in their bosoms, knocked at the gate of the invisible world, and seemed to hear an answer from beyond. The belief in a long life of ages to follow this fleet dream—imaginary revelations of regions bright or dark—the mansions of bliss or of sorrow—an existence to come, and often of retribution to come—has been the religion of Mankind—here in the rudest elementary shape—here in elaborated systems.

SEWARD.

Ay, sir; methinks the Hell of Virgil—and his Elysian Fields are examples of a high, solemn, and beautiful Poetry. But they have a much deeper interest for a man studious, in earnest, of his fellow-men. Since they really express the notions under which men have with serious belief shadowed out for themselves the worlds to which the grave is a portal. The true moral spirit that breathes in his enumeration of the Crimes that are punished, of the Virtues that have earned and found their reward, and some scattered awful warnings—are impressive even to us Christians.

NORTH.

Yes, Seward, they are. Hearken to the attestation of the civilised and the barbarous. Universally there is a cry from the human heart, beseeching, as it were, of the Unknown Power which reigns in the Order and in the Mutations of Things, the prolongation of this vanishing breath—the renovation, in undiscovered spheres, of this too brief existence—an appeal from the tyranny of the tomb—a prayer against annihilation. Only at the top of Civilisation, sometimes a cold and barren philosophy, degenerate from nature, and bastard to reason, has limited its sullen view to the horizon of this Earth—has shut out and refused all ulterior, happy, or dreary anticipation.

SEWARD.

You may now, assured of our profound attention—return to Butler—if indeed you have left him——

NORTH.

I have, and I have not. A few minutes ago I was expounding—in my own words—and for the reason assigned, will continue to do so—his argument. If, not knowing what death is, we are not entitled to argue, from the nature of death, that this change must put an end to Ourselves, and those essential powers in our mind which we are conscious of exerting—just as little can we argue from the nature of these powers, and from their manner of subsisting in us, that they are liable to be affected and impaired, or destroyed by death. For what do we know of these powers, and of the conditions on which we hold them, and of the mind in which they dwell? Just as much as we do of the great change, Death itself—that is to say—Nothing.

TALBOYS.

We know the powers of our mind solely by their manifestations.

NORTH.

But people in general do not think so—and many metaphysicians have written as if they had forgot that it is only from the manifestation that we give name to the Power. We know the fact of Seeing, Hearing, Remembering, Reasoning—the feeling of Beauty—the actual pleasure of Moral Approbation, the pain of Moral Disapprobation—the state—pleasure or pain of loving—the state—pleasure or pain of hating—the fire of anger—the frost of fear—the curiosity to know—the thirst for distinction—the exultation of conscious Power—all these, and a thousand more, we know abundantly: our conscious Life is nothing else but such knowledge endlessly diversified. But the Powers themselves, which are thus exerted—what they are—how they subsist in us ready for exertion—of this we know—Nothing.

TALBOYS.

We know something of the Conditions upon which the exercise of these Powers depends—or by which it is influenced. Thus we know, that for seeing, we must possess that wondrous piece of living mechanism, the eye, in its healthy condition. We know further, that a delicate and complicated system of nerves, which convey the visual impressions from the eye itself to the seeing power, must be healthy and unobstructed. We know that a sound and healthy state of the brain is necessary to these manifestations—that accidents befalling the Brain totally disorder the manifestations of these powers—turning the clear self-possessed mind into a wild anarchy—a Chaos—that other accidents befalling the same organ suspend all manifestations. We know that sleep stops the use of many powers—and that deep sleep—at least as far as any intimations that reach our waking state go—stops them all. We know that a nerve tied or cut stops the sensation—stops the motory volition which usually travels along it. We know how bodily lassitude—how abstinence—how excess—affects the ability of the mind to exert its powers. In short, the most untutored experience of every one amongst us all shows bodily conditions, upon which the activity of the faculties which are seated in the mind, depends. And within the mind itself we know how one manifestation aids or counteracts another—how Hope invigorates—how Fear disables—how Intrepidity keeps the understanding clear—

NORTH.

You are well illustrating Butler, Talboys. Then, again, we know that for Seeing, we must have that wonderful piece of living mechanism perfectly constructed, and in good order—that a certain delicate and complicated system of nerves extending from the eye inwards, is appointed to transmit the immediate impressions of light from this exterior organ of sight to the percipient Mind—that these nerves allotted to the function of seeing, must be free from any accidental pressure; knowledge admirable, curious, useful; but when all is done, all investigated, that our eyes, and fingers, and instruments, and thoughts, can reach—What, beyond all this marvellous Apparatus of seeing, is That which sees—what the percipient Mind is—that is a mystery into which no created Being ever had a glimpse. Or what is that immediate connexion between the Mind itself, and those delicate corporeal adjustments—whereby certain tremblings, or other momentary changes of state in a set of nerves, upon the sudden, turn into Colours—into Sight—into the Vision of a Universe.

SEWARD.

Does Butler say all that, sir?

NORTH.

In his own dry way perhaps he may. These, my friends, are Wonders into which Reason looks, astonished; or, more properly speaking, into which she looks not, nor, self-knowing, attempts to look. But, reverent and afraid, she repeats that attitude which the Great Poet has ascribed to "brightest cherubim" before the footstool of the Omnipotent Throne, who

TALBOYS.

For indeed at the next step beyond lies only the mystery of Omnipotence—that mystery which connects the world, open and known to us, to the world withheld and unknown.

NORTH.

The same with regard to Pleasure and Pain. What enjoys Pleasure or suffers Pain?—all that is, to our clearest, sharpest-sighted science, nothing else but darkness—but black unfathomable night. Therefore, since we know not what Death itself is—and since we know not what this Living Mind is, nor what any of its powers and capacities are—what conclusion, taken in the nature of these unknown subjects, can we possibly be warranted in drawing as to the influence which this unknown change, Death, will exert upon this unknown Being—Mind—and upon its unknown faculties and sensibilities?—None.

SEWARD.

Shall unknown Death destroy this unknown Mind and its unknown capacities? It is just as likely, for anything that Reason can see, that it will set them free to a larger and more powerful existence. And if we have any reason upon other grounds to expect this—then by so much the more likely.

NORTH.

We know that this Eye and its apparatus of nerves no longer shall serve for seeing—we know that these muscles and their nerves shall no longer serve for moving—we know that this marvellous Brain itself no longer shall serve, as we are led to believe that it now serves, for thinking—we know that this bounding heart never again shall throb and quicken, with all its leaping pulses, with joy—that pain of this body shall never again tire the mind, and that pain of this mind shall never again tire this body, once pillowed and covered up in its bed of imperturbable slumber. And there ends our knowledge. But that this Mind, which, united to these muscles and their nerves, sent out vigorous and swift motions through them—which, united to this Brain, compelled this Brain to serve it as the minister of its thinkings upon this Earth and in this mode of its Being—which, united to this Frame, in it, and through it, and from it, felt for Happiness and for Misery—that this Mind, once disunited from all these, its instruments and servants, shall therefore perish, or shall therefore forego the endowment of its powers, which it manifested by these its instruments—of that we have no warranty—of that there is no probability.

TALBOYS.

Much rather, sir, might a probability lie quite the other way. For if the structure of this corporeal frame places at the service of the Mind some five or six senses, enabling it, by so many avenues, to communicate with this external world, this very structure shuts up the Mind in these few senses, ties it down to the capacities of exactness and sensibility for which they are framed. But we have no reason at all to think that these few modes of sensibility, which we call our external senses, are all the modes of sensibility of which our spirits are capable. Much rather we must believe that, if it pleased, or shall ever please, the Creator to open in this Mind, in a new world, new modes of sensation, the susceptibility for these modes is already there for another set of senses. Now we are confined to an eye that sees distinctly at a few paces of distance. We have no reason for thinking that, united with a finer organ of sight, we should not see far more exquisitely; and thus, sir, our notices of the dependence in which the Mind now subsists upon the body do of themselves lead us to infer its own self-subsistency.

NORTH.

What we are called upon to do, my friends, is to set Reason against Imagination and against Habit. We have to lift ourselves up above the limited sphere of sensible experience. We have to believe that something more is than that which we see—than that which we know.

TALBOYS.

Yet, sir, even the facts of Mind, revealed to us living in these bodies, are enough to show us that more is than these bodies—since we feel that We are, and that it is impossible for us to regard these bodies otherwise than as possessions of ours—utterly impossible to regard them as Ourselves.

NORTH.

We distinguish between the acts of Mind, inwardly exerted—the acts, for instance, of Reason, of Memory, and of Affection—and acts of the Mind communicating through the senses with the external world. But Butler seems to me to go too far when he says, "I confess that in sensation the mind uses the body; but in reflection I have no reason to think that the mind uses the body." But, my dear friends, I, Christopher North, think, on the contrary, that the Mind uses the Brain for a thinking instrument; and that much thought fatigues the Brain, and causes an oppressive flow of the blood to the Brain, and otherwise disorders that organ. And altogether I should be exceedingly sorry to rest the Immortality of the Soul upon so doubtful an assumption as that the Brain is not, in any respect or sort, the Mind's Organ of Thinking. I see no need for so timid a sheltering of the argument. On the contrary, the simple doctrine, to my thought, is this—The Mind, as we know it, is implicated and mixed up with the Body—throughout—in all its ordinary actions. This corporeal frame is a system of organs, or Instruments, which the Mind employs in a thousand ways. They are its instruments—all of them are—and none of them is itself. What does it matter to me that there is one more organ—the Brain—for one more function—thinking? Unless the Mind were in itself a seeing thing—that is, a thing able to see—it could not use the Eye for seeing; and unless the Mind were a thinking thing, it could not use the Brain for thinking. The most intimate implication of itself with its instruments in the functions which constitute our consciousness, proves nothing in the world to me, against its essential distinctness from them, and against the possibility of its living and acting in separation from them, and when they are dissolved. So far from it, when I see that the body chills with fear, and glows with love, I am ready to call fear a cold, and love a warm passion, and to say that the Mind uses its bodily frame in fearing and in loving. All these things have to do with manifestations of my mind to itself, Now, whilst implicated in this body. Let me lift myself above imagination—or let my imagination soar and carry my reason on its wings—I leave the body to moulder, and I go sentient, volent, intelligent, whithersoever I am called.

TALBOYS.

It seems a timidity unworthy of Butler to make the distinction. Such a distinction might be used to invalidate his whole doctrine.

NORTH.

It might—if granted—and legitimately. But the course is plain, and the tenor steadfast. As a child, you think that your finger is a part of yourself, and that you feel with it. Afterwards, you find that it can be cut off without diminishing you: and physiologists tell you, and you believe, that it does not feel, but sends up antecedents of feeling to the brain. Am I to stop anywhere? Not in the body. As my finger is no part of Me, no more is my liver, or my stomach, or my heart—or my brain. When I have overworked myself, I feel a lassitude, distinctly local, in my brain—inside of my head—and therewithal an indolence, inertness, inability of thinking. If reflection—as Butler more than insinuates—hesitatingly says—is independent of my brain and body, whence the lassitude? And how did James Watt get unconquerable headaches with meditating Steam-engines?

TALBOYS.

It is childish, sir, to stagger at degrees, when we have admitted the kind. The Bishop's whole argument is to show, that the thing in us which feels, wills, thinks, is distinct from our body; that I am one thing, and my body another.

NORTH.

Have we Souls? If we have—they can live after the body—cannot perish with it; if we have not—wo betide us all!

SEWARD.

Will you, sir, be pleased to sum up the Argument of the First Chapter of the Analogy?

NORTH.

No. Do you. You have heard it—and you understand it.

SEWARD.

I cannot venture on it.

NORTH.

Do you, my excellent Talboys—for you know the Book as well as I do myself.

TALBOYS.

That the Order of Nature shows us great and wonderful changes, which the living being undergoes-and arising from beginnings inconceivably low, to higher and higher conditions of consciousness and action;—That hence an exaltation of our Powers by the change Death, would be congruous to the progress which we have witnessed in other creatures, and have experienced in ourselves;—That the fact, that before Death we possess Powers of acting, and suffering, and enjoying, affords a prim facie probability that, after Death, we shall continue to possess them; because it is a constant presumption in Nature, and one upon which we constantly reason and rely, speculatively and practically, that all things will continue as they are, unless a cause appear sufficient for changing them;—But that in Death nothing appears which should suffice to destroy the Powers of Action, Enjoyment, and Suffering in a Living Being;—For that in all we know of Death we know the destruction of parts instrumental to the Uses of a Living Being;—But that of any destruction reaching, or that we have reason to suppose to reach the Living Being, we know nothing;—That the Unity of Consciousness persuades us that the Being in which Consciousness essentially resides is one and indivisible—by any accident, Death inclusive, indiscerptible;—That the progress of diseases, growing till they kill the mortal body, but leaving the Faculties of the Soul in full force to the last gasp of living breath, is a particular argument, establishing this independence of the Living Being—the Spirit—which is the Man himself—upon the accidents which may befall the perishable Frame.

NORTH.

Having seen, then, a Natural Probability that the principle within us, which is the seat and source of Thought and Feeling, and of such Life as can be imparted to the Body, will subsist undestroyed by the changes of the Body—and having recognised the undoubted Power of the Creator—if it pleases Him—indefinitely to prolong the life which He has given—how would you and I, my dear Friends, proceed—from the ground thus gained—and on which—with Butler—we take our stand—to speak farther of reasons for believing in the Immortality of the Soul?

SEWARD.

I feel, sir, that I have already taken more than my own part in this conversation. We should have to inquire, sir, whether in His known attributes, and in the known modes of His government, we could ascertain any causes making it probable that He will thus prolong our existence—and we find many such grounds of confidence.

NORTH.

Go on, my dear Seward.

SEWARD.

If you please, sir, be yours the closing words—for the Night.

NORTH.

The implanted longing in every human bosom for such permanent existence—the fixed anticipation of it—and the recoil from annihilation—seem to us intimation vouchsafed by the Creator of His designs towards us;—the horror with which Remorse awakened by sin looks beyond the Grave, partakes of the same prophetical inspiration. We see how precisely the lower animals are fitted to the places which they hold upon the earth, with instincts that exactly supply their needs, with no powers that are not here satisfied—while we, as if out of place, only through much difficult experience can adapt ourselves to the physical circumstances into which we are introduced—and thus, in one respect, furnished below our condition, are, on the other hand, by the aspirations of our higher faculties, raised infinitely above it—as if intimating that whilst those creatures here fulfil the purpose of their creation, here we do not—and, therefore, look onward;—That whilst our other Powers, of which the use is over, decline in the course of nature as Death approaches, our Moral and Intellectual Faculties often go on advancing to the last, as if showing that they were drawing nigh to their proper sphere of action;-That whilst the Laws regulating the Course of Human Affairs visibly proceed from a Ruler who favours Virtue, and who frowns upon Vice, yet that a just retribution does not seem uniformly carried out in the good success of well-doers, and the ill success of evil-doers—so that we are led on by the constitution of our souls to look forward to a world in which that which here looks like Moral Disorder, might be reduced into Order, and the Justice of the Ruler and the consistency of His Laws vindicated;—That in studying the arrangements of this world, we see that in many cases dispositions of Human affairs, which, upon their first aspect, appeared to us evil, being more clearly examined and better known, resulted in good—and thence draw a hope that the stroke which daunts our imagination, as though it were the worst of evils, will prove, when known, a dispensation of bounty—"Death the Gate of Life," opening into a world in which His beneficent hand, if not nearer to us than here, will be more steadily visible—no clouds interposing between the eyes of our soul and their Sun;—That the perplexity which oppresses our Understanding from the sight of this world, in which the Good and Evil seem intermixed and crossing each other, almost vanishes, when we lift up our thoughts to contemplate this mutable scene as a place of Probation and of Discipline, where Sorrows and Sufferings are given to school us to Virtue—as the Arena where Virtue strives in the laborious and perilous contest, of which it shall hereafter receive the well-won and glorious crown;—That we draw confidence in the same conclusions, from observing how closely allied and agreeing to each other are the Two Great Truths of Natural Religion, the Belief in God and the Belief in our own Immortality; so that, when we have received the idea of God, as the Great Governor of the Universe, the belief in our own prolonged existence appears to us as a necessary part of that Government; or if, upon the physical arguments, we have admitted the independent conviction of our Immortality, this doctrine appears to us barren and comfortless, until we understand that this continuance of our Being is to bring us into the more untroubled fruition of that Light, which here shines upon us, often through mist and cloud;—That in all these high doctrines we are instructed to rest more securely, as we find the growing harmony of one solemn conviction with another—as we find that all our better and nobler Faculties co-operate with one another—and these predominating principles carry us to these convictions—so that our Understanding then first begins to possess itself in strength and light when the heart has accepted the Moral Law;—But that our Understanding is only fully at ease, and our Moral Nature itself, with all its affections, only fully supported and expanded, when both together have borne us on to the knowledge of Him who is the sole Source of Law—the highest Object of Thought—the Favourer of Virtue—towards whom Love may eternally grow, and still be infinitely less than His due—till we have reached this knowledge, and with it the steadfast hope that the last act of this Life joins us to Him—does not for ever shut us up in the night of Oblivion;—And we have strengthened ourselves in inferences forced upon us by remembering how humankind has consented in these Beliefs, as if they were a part of our Nature—and by remembering farther, how, by the force of these Beliefs, human Societies have subsisted and been held together—how Laws have been sanctioned, and how Virtues, Wisdom, and all the good and great works of the Human Spirit have, under these influences, been produced;—Surely Great is the Power of all these concurrent considerations brought from every part of our Nature—from the Material and the Immaterial—from the Intellectual and Moral—from the Individual and the Social—from that which respects our existence on this side of the grave, and that which respects our existence beyond it—from that which looks down upon the Earth, and that which looks up towards Heaven.

Printed by William Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh.