happy-the butterflies of the earth rejoicing in their summer garments, and looking as though winter was banished for ever from the outer and the inner world. I had appointed this place as a rendezvous for my friend, and I could not leave it; but I cursed my folly in exposing myself to so much needless pain, for nothing could be less in unison than my thoughts with the genius of the place. I was in the prime of life-I had health and competence-I was not tortured with ambition, but neither was I subject to ennui. My avocations were agreeable to my taste, and not laborious; and my home was blest with an affectionate wife and two dear little ones. These are not the things which make it pleasant to be shot at. My friend was the best creature in the world, and I knew by his gait, long before I could read his face, that he was the bearer of ill news. He put his arm within mine, and we walked together in silence for some time, and our communication, when it took place, was one of Spartan brevity. Where and when do we meet? I asked. To which he replied In Greenwich-park, at six to-morrow morning. Very well! Have a post-chaise at your chambers by five, and I will join you. We then shook hands and parted. I went to the Grecian, ordered a private room, and sat down to write. Never will the bitterness of that evening pass away from my mind. I could not bear the thoughts of dying without leaving some memorial, which might justify myself in the eyes of my wife and of my dear children, when they became old enough to judge of my conduct. But to sit and to argue deliberately the propriety of my throwing them into the most cruel distress,—the necessity for my abandoning them for ever,how expedient it was that my fond wife, whom I had left in the morning with no deeper cloud over her happiness than the fear of not seeing me again until night, should to-morrow be a widow and her offspring fatherless! This was very terrible; yet all this I accomplished. Slowly, and even calmly, I traced those characters which, if ever they were read, were to inflict the most exquisite pain on a being for whose happiness no exertion would have been spared, and no sacrifice would have been felt. Man has sometimes been defined the laughing animal, sometimes the cooking animal, and sometimes, alas! the reasoning animal: if I were asked for a definition, I should call him the inconsistent animal. But this is digression. It was late before I had written every paper which, as an honest man, I thought it my duty to leave behind me. But the exertion was of great use to me; I had gained a mastery over my feelings, of which I did not think myself capable. I gradually hardened my heart, until I could fix my eyes on the prospect before me without recoiling. It may appear strange, but the only approach to fluctuation in my mind was when I suffered myself to calculate upon the chances of escape: so true it is that uncertainty is the severest of human ills. But new trials awaited me when I reached home, my wife, always anxious to give me pleasure, ran to meet me with a letter which she had received from my mother, who, at an advanced age, had resolved on the toil of a long journey to see my children; she was to arrive on the morrow. I am astonished how I suėceeded in concealing from my wife the thrill of agony with which I read the letter, which but a few hours earlier would have been the most acceptable present I could have received. To account for my leaving home so early in the morning, I fabricated a lie about an engagement to breakfast with a friend who lived some miles from town. While I was forging another to account for my wishing to sleep in a room by myself, she told me she intended to pass the night with a little niece of mine who was staying with us, and who had gone to bed rather indisposed. This was a great relief to me, for I was not so accustomed to falsehood as to be able to lie extempore. I hurried away from her, glad to have passed in safety through such a fiery ordeal. I had, perhaps, seen my wife for the last time; and yet I had so concealed my feelings that she supposed me as happy as herself. There is, I firmly believe, no situation in which the human mind is unsusceptible of pleasure, and I felt proud of my self-command. With a gloomy satisfaction I paraded all the horrors of my situation before my mind's eye, surprised at the apathy with which Ibore the dreadful procession. Will it be believed? I soon fell asleep; if, indeed, that is to be called sleep in which the mind never seems to lose its tension. I lay in a state of semi-consciousness, which, while it did not preserve me from dreams, gave them an oppressive feeling of reality. In general, my sleep is sound and undisturbed; the moment of losing my recollection at night is simultaneous with my awaking in the morning; but then I felt the slow progress of time, as it were, from minute tỏ minute, and the few hours which elapsed before the dawn were to me a night of ages. Just at day-break, when the objects in my room, which had been changing their form and their position during the darkness, had resumed their usual appearance, I was roused from my stupor by the voice of my little boy, who lay in my dressing-room. He was singing at the very top of his clear shrill voice. Involuntarily and by habit I went to fetch him, and had folded him in my arms before I called to mind my resolution to avoid the sight of him and his sister. I had refrained from my nightly visit to their couches, and I hoped to have escaped from the house without hearing their little tongues. I could not take him back; he clung round my neck so fast that I was obliged to carry him to my own bed. This was a fatal error; in an instant all my philosophy evaporated, but I shall not attempt to describe the tortures of that dreadful hour. I have neither the power nor the will for such a task. There is also frequently a mixture of the ludicrous with real suffering, which renders it unfit for description. It was so in my case: my child had been accustomed to hear me imitate the noises of various animals for his amusement, and when in the excess of my agony I groaned aloud, he clapped his hands, and expressed his delight at what he supposed the lowing of the cow. I pass over the subsequent part of the affair,-I recovered my spirits the moment I had effected my escape from home. Every thing else was cheap compared with what I had endured. I shall only say that when our pistols were elevated for the second fire, I saw, or thought I saw, down my adversary's barrel to the very wadding. I, however, escaped; and Mr., thank God! was but slightly wounded, He was an honourable man: and having now no difficulty in making an apology, he was soon convinced he had been to blame, and retracted his offensive expressions. I suppose I offended against etiquette, for instead of staying to breakfast with Mr. and some friends, I could not resist the impulse of returning instantly to my own house. On my way home I framed another lie to account for my reappearance, which I rather supposed passed muster more from my character and my wife's want of suspicion, than from any intrinsic excellence in its fabrication. To say I was not very happy to go back unscathed to the bosom of my family would be miserable affectation, but my happiness lost half its zest by being unsocial: it was the only pleasure I ever tasted which I could not share with them; I always found it difficult to keep a secret, but never was there one half so oppressive as this. By great care and good fortune, however, I succeeded in keeping my wife ignorant of the danger she had escaped. On her death-bed she told me I had never cost her a single hour of pain. My conscience smote me, but I was silent; I persuaded myself I was not bound to disturb those awful moments with such a discovery. My children followed their mother, and I was left alone. Many years afterwards, I met at the house of a friend two interesting women; they might be seventeen or eighteen, about the age of my girl, had she lived. This was a relationship which I have never been able to withstand. I began instantly to cultivate a place in their regard, and seemed to be successful, until a triangle-faced old lady one of those incarnations of prudence and ill-nature who come to a party lest the guests should unawares forget themselves and be happy-crossed the room with a look full of meaning, and seated herself beside my two favourites; then, gaining by some female signal their attention from me, gave them each a whisper, and retired. They changed colour, and after a few cold monosyllables which the course of the conversation wrung out of them, they one by one left me to myself. The hag! -she had told them I was the person who had shot at their father. He was gone, and I suppose they felt it an insult to his memory to hold friendly converse with the man who had aimed at his life. + THE HOUR OF LOVE. e; 'Tis sweet to walk 'mid twilight grey, H. W. 17 SCENES FROM "ATHENIAN REVELS," A DRAMA. I. SCENE-A Street in Athens. Enter CALLIDEMUS and SPEUSIPPUS. CALLIDEMUS. So, you young reprobate! You must be a man of wit, forsooth, and a man of quality! You must spend as if you were as rich as Nicias, and prate as if you were as wise as Pericles! You must dangle after sophists and pretty women! And I must pay for all! I must sup on thyme and onions, while you are swallowing thrushes and hares! I must drink water, that you may play the cottabus* with Chian wine! I must wander about as ragged as Pauson†, that you may be as fine as Alcibiades! I must lie on the bare boards, with a stone‡ for my pillow, and a rotten mat for my coverlid, by the light of a wretched winking lamp, while you are marching in state, with as many torches as one sees at the feast of Ceres, to thunder with your hatchet§ at the doors of half the Ionian ladies in Peiræus. SPEUSIPPUS. Why, thou unreasonable old man! Thou most shameless of fathers! CALLIDEMUS. Ungrateful wretch: Dare you talk so? Are you not afraid of the thunders of Jupiter? SPEUSIPpus. Jupiter thunder! nonsense! Anaxagoras says, that thunder is only an explosion produced by CALLIDEMUS. He does! Would that it had fallen on his head for his pains! * This game consisted in projecting wine out of cups; it was a diversion extremely fashionable at Athenian entertainments. Pauson was an Athenian painter, whose name was synonymous with beggary. See Aristophanes Plutus, 602. From his poverty, I am inclined to suppose that he painted historical pictures. See Aristophanes Plutus, 542. § See Theocritus Idyll, II. 128. 165. This was the most disreputable part of Athens. See Aristophanes Pax, VOL. II. PART I. C |