CHAPTER XXXIX.
Yet truth is keenly sought for, and the wind
Charged with rich words, poured out in thought's defence;
Whether the Church inspire that eloquence,
Or a Platonic piety, confined
To the sole temple of the inward mind;
And one there is who builds immortal lays,
Though doomed to tread in solitary ways;
Darkness before, and danger's voice behind!
Yet not alone-- WORDSWORTH.
London, thou Niobe, who sittest in stone, amidst thy stricken and
fated children; nurse of the desolate, that hidest in thy bosom the
shame, the sorrows, the sins of many sons; in whose arms the fallen
and the outcast shroud their distresses, and shelter from the proud
man's contumely; Epitome and Focus of the disparities and maddening
contrasts of this wrong world, that assemblest together in one great
heap the woes, the joys, the elevations, the debasements of the
various tribes of man; mightiest of levellers, confounding in thy
whirlpool all ranks, all minds, the graven labours of knowledge, the
straws of the maniac, purple and rags, the regalities and the
loathsomeness of earth,--palace and lazar-house combined! Grave of
the living, where, mingled and massed together, we couch, but rest
not,--"for in that sleep of life what dreams do come,"--each vexed
with a separate vision,--"shadows" which "grieve the heart," unreal in
their substance, but faithful in their warnings, flitting from the
eye, but graving unfleeting memories on the mind, which reproduce new
dreams over and over, until the phantasm ceases, and the pall of a
heavier torpor falls upon the brain, and all is still and dark and
hushed! "From the stir of thy great Babel," and the fixed tinsel
glare in which sits pleasure like a star, "which shines, but warms not
with its powerless rays," we turn to thy deeper and more secret
haunts. Thy wilderness is all before us--where to choose our place of
rest; and, to our eyes, thy hidden recesses are revealed.
The clock of St. Paul's had tolled the second hour of morning. Within
a small and humble apartment in the very heart of the city, there sat
a writer, whose lucubrations, then obscure and unknown, were destined,
years afterwards, to excite the vague admiration of the crowd and the
deeper homage of the wise. They were of that nature which is slow in
winning its way to popular esteem; the result of the hived and hoarded
knowledge of years; the produce of deep thought and sublime
aspirations, influencing, in its bearings, the interests of the many,
yet only capable of analysis by the judgment of the few. But the
stream broke forth at last from the cavern to the daylight, although
the source was never traced; or, to change the image,--albeit none
know the hand which executed and the head which designed, the monument
of a mighty intellect has been at length dug up, as it were, from the
envious earth, the brighter for its past obscurity, and the more
certain of immortality from the temporary neglect it has sustained.
The room was, as we before said, very small, and meanly furnished; yet
were there a few articles of costliness and luxury scattered about,
which told that the tastes of its owner had not been quite humbled to
the level of his fortunes. One side of the narrow chamber was covered
with shelves, which supported books in various languages, and though
chiefly on scientific subjects, not utterly confined to them. Among
the doctrines of the philosopher, and the golden rules of the
moralist, were also seen the pleasant dreams of poets, the legends of
Spenser, the refining moralities of Pope, the lofty errors of
Lucretius, and the sublime relics of our "dead kings of melody."
[Shakspeare and Milton] And over the hearth was a picture, taken in
more prosperous days, of one who had been and was yet to the tenant of
that abode, better than fretted roofs and glittering banquets, the
objects of ambition, or even the immortality of fame. It was the face
of one very young and beautiful, and the deep, tender eyes looked
down, as with a watchful fondness, upon the lucubrator and his
labours. While beneath the window, which was left unclosed, for it
was scarcely June, were simple yet not inelegant vases, filled with
flowers,--
"Those lovely leaves, where we
May read how soon things have
Their end, though ne'er so brave." [Herrick]
The writer was alone, and had just paused from his employment; he was
leaning his face upon one hand, in a thoughtful and earnest mood, and
the air which came chill, but gentle, from the window, slightly
stirred the locks from the broad and marked brow, over which they fell
in thin but graceful waves. Partly owing perhaps to the waning light
of the single lamp and the lateness of the hour, his cheek seemed very
pale, and the complete though contemplative rest of the features
partook greatly of the quiet of habitual sadness, and a little of the
languor of shaken health; yet the expression, despite the proud cast
of the brow and profile, was rather benevolent than stern or dark in
its pensiveness, and the lines spoke more of the wear and harrow of
deep thought than the inroads of ill-regulated passion.
There was a slight tap at the door; the latch was raised, and the
original of the picture I have described entered the apartment.
Time had not been idle with her since that portrait had been taken:
the round elastic figure had lost much of its youth and freshness; the
step, though light, was languid, and in the centre of the fair, smooth
cheek, which was a little sunken, burned one deep bright spot,--fatal
sign to those who have watched the progress of the most deadly and
deceitful of our national maladies; yet still the form and countenance
were eminently interesting and lovely; and though the bloom was gone
forever, the beauty, which not even death could wholly have despoiled,
remained to triumph over debility, misfortune, and disease.
She approached the student, and laid her hand upon his shoulder.
"Dearest!" said he, tenderly yet reproachfully, "yet up, and the hour
so late and yourself so weak? Fie, I must learn to scold you."
"And how," answered the intruder, "how could I sleep or rest while you
are consuming your very life in those thankless labours?"
"By which," interrupted the writer, with a faint smile, "we glean our
scanty subsistence."
"Yes," said the wife (for she held that relation to the student), and
the tears stood in her eyes, "I know well that every morsel of bread,
every drop of water, is wrung from your very heart's blood, and I--I
am the cause of all; but surely you exert yourself too much, more than
can be requisite? These night damps, this sickly and chilling air,
heavy with the rank vapours of the coming morning, are not suited to
thoughts and toils which are alone sufficient to sear your mind and
exhaust your strength. Come, my own love, to bed; and yet first come
and look upon our child, how sound she sleeps! I have leaned over her
for the last hour, and tried to fancy it was you whom I watched, for
she has learned already your smile and has it even when she sleeps."
"She has cause to smile," said the husband, bitterly.
"She has, for she is yours! and even in poetry and humble hopes, that
is an inheritance which may well teach her pride and joy. Come, love,
the air is keen, and the damp rises to your forehead,--yet stay, till
I have kissed it away."
"Mine own love," said the student, as he rose and wound his arm round
the slender waist of his wife, "wrap your shawl closer over your
bosom, and let us look for one instant upon the night. I cannot sleep
till I have slaked the fever of my blood: the air has nothing of
coldness in its breath for me."
And they walked to the window and looked forth. All was hushed and
still in the narrow street; the cold gray clouds were hurrying fast
along the sky; and the stars, weak and waning in their light, gleamed
forth at rare intervals upon the mute city, like expiring watch-lamps
of the dead.
They leaned out and spoke not; but when they looked above upon the
melancholy heavens, they drew nearer to each other, as if it were
their natural instinct to do so whenever the world without seemed
discouraging and sad.
At length the student broke the silence; but his thoughts, which were
wandering and disjointed, were breathed less to her than vaguely and
unconsciously to himself. "Morn breaks,--another and another!--day
upon day!--while we drag on our load like the blind beast which knows
not when the burden shall be cast off and the hour of rest be come."
The woman pressed her hand to her bosom, but made no rejoinder--she
knew his mood--and the student continued,--"And so life frets itself
away! Four years have passed over our seclusion--four years! a great
segment in the little circle of our mortality; and of those years what
day has pleasure won from labour, or what night has sleep snatched
wholly from the lamp? Weaker than the miser, the insatiable and
restless mind traverses from east to west; and from the nooks, and
corners, and crevices of earth collects, fragment by fragment, grain
by grain, atom by atom, the riches which it gathers to its coffers--
for what?--to starve amidst the plenty! The fantasies of the
imagination bring a ready and substantial return: not so the treasures
of thought. Better that I had renounced the soul's labour for that of
its hardier frame--better that I had 'sweated in the eye of Phoebus,'
than 'eat my heart with crosses and with cares,'--seeking truth and
wanting bread--adding to the indigence of poverty its humiliation;
wroth with the arrogance of men, who weigh in the shallow scales of
their meagre knowledge the product of lavish thought, and of the hard
hours for which health, and sleep, and spirit have been exchanged;--
sharing the lot of those who would enchant the old serpent of evil,
which refuses the voice of the charmer!--struggling against the
prejudice and bigoted delusion of the bandaged and fettered herd to
whom, in our fond hopes and aspirations, we trusted to give light and
freedom; seeing the slavish judgments we would have redeemed from
error clashing their chains at us in ire;--made criminal by our very
benevolence;--the martyrs whose zeal is rewarded with persecution,
whose prophecies are crowned with contempt!--Better, oh, better that I
had not listened to the vanity of a heated brain--better that I had
made my home with the lark and the wild bee, among the fields and the
quiet hills, where life, if obscurer, is less debased, and hope, if
less eagerly indulged, is less bitterly disappointed. The frame, it
is true, might have been bowed to a harsher labour, but the heart
would at least have had its rest from anxiety, and the mind its
relaxation from thought."
The wife's tears fell upon the hand she clasped. The student turned,
and his heart smote him for the selfishness of his complaint. He drew
her closer and closer to his bosom; and gazing fondly upon those eyes
which years of indigence and care might have robbed of their young
lustre, but not of their undying tenderness, he kissed away her tears,
and addressed her in a voice which never failed to charm her grief
into forgetfulness.
"Dearest and kindest," he said, "was I not to blame for accusing those
privations or regrets which have only made us love each other the
more? Trust me, mine own treasure, that it is only in the peevishness
of an inconstant and fretful humour that I have murmured against my
fortune. For, in the midst of all, I look upon you, my angel, my
comforter, my young dream of love, which God, in His mercy, breathed
into waking life--I look upon you, and am blessed and grateful. Nor
in my juster moments do I accuse even the nature of these studies,
though they bring us so scanty a reward. Have I not hours of secret
and overflowing delight, the triumphs of gratified research--flashes
of sudden light, which reward the darkness of thought, and light up my
solitude as a revel?--These feelings of rapture, which nought but
Science can afford, amply repay her disciples for worse evils and
severer handships than it has been my destiny to endure. Look along
the sky, how the vapours struggle with the still yet feeble stars:
even so have the mists of error been pierced, though not scattered, by
the dim but holy lights of past wisdom, and now the morning is at
hand, and in that hope we journey on, doubtful, but not utterly in
darkness. Nor is this all my hope; there is a loftier and more steady
comfort than that which mere philosophy can bestow. If the certainty
of future fame bore Milton rejoicing through his blindness, or cheered
Galileo in his dungeon, what stronger and holier support shall not be
given to him who has loved mankind as his brothers, and devoted his
labours to their cause?--who has not sought, but relinquished, his own
renown?---who has braved the present censures of men for their future
benefit, and trampled upon glory in the energy of benevolence? Will
there not be for him something more powerful than fame to comfort his
sufferings and to sustain his hopes? If the wish of mere posthumous
honour be a feeling rather vain than exalted, the love of our race
affords us a more rational and noble desire of remembrance. Come what
will, that love, if it animates our toils and directs our studies,
shall when we are dust make our relics of value, our efforts of avail,
and consecrate the desire of fame, which were else a passion selfish
and impure, by connecting it with the welfare of ages and the eternal
interests of the world and its Creator! Come, we will to bed."
