Auld Lang Syne: Selections from the Papers of the "Pen and Pencil Club"

by Various

III.

Yes; but the soul that meditates and grieves,
And guards a precious past,
And feels that neither joy nor loveliness can last—
To her, the fervid flutter of our Spring
Is like the warmth of that barbarian hall
To the scared bird, whose wet and wearied wing
Shot through it once, and came not back at all.
Poor shrunken soul! she knows her fate too well;
Too surely she can tell
That each most delicate toy her fancy made,
And she herself, and what she prized and knew,
And all her loved ones too,
Shall soon lie low, forgotten and decay’d,
Like autumn leaves.

SILENCE.
(OF A DEAF PERSON.)

I SEE the small birds fluttering on the trees,
And know the sweet notes they are softly singing;
I see the green leaves trembling in the breeze,
And know the rustling that such breeze is bringing;
I see the waters rippling as they flow,
And know the soothing murmur of their noise;
I see the children in the fire-light’s glow,
Laughing and playing with their varied toys;
I see the signs of merriment and mirth;
I see the music of God’s lovely earth;
I see the earnest talk of friend with friend,
And wish my earnest thoughts with theirs could blend;
But oh! to my deaf ears there comes no sound,
I live a life of silence most profound.

LIGHTS AND SHADOWS.

Dear heart! what a little time it is, since Francis and I used to walk
From church in the still June evenings together, busy with loving talk;
And now he is gone far away over seas, to some strange foreign country,—and I
Shall never rise from my bed any more, till the day when I come to die.

I tried not to think of him during the prayers; but when his dear voice I heard
I fail’d to take part in the hymns, for my heart flutter’d up to my throat like a bird;
And scarcely a word of the sermon I caught. I doubt ’twas a grievous sin;
But ’twas only one poor little hour in the week that I had to be happy in.

When the blessing was given, and we left the dim aisles for the light of the evening star,
Though I durst not lift up my eyes from the ground, yet I knew that he was not far;
And I hurried on, though I fain would have stayed, till I heard his footstep draw near,
And love rising up in my breast like a flame, cast out every shadow of fear.

Ah me! ’twas a pleasant pathway home, a pleasant pathway and sweet,
Ankle deep through the purple clover, breast high ’mid the blossoming wheat:
I can hear the landrails call through the dew, and the night-jars’ tremulous thrill,
And the nightingale pouring her passionate song from the hawthorn under the hill.

One day, when we came to the wicket gate, ’neath the elms, where we used to part,
His voice began to falter and break as he told me I had his heart;
And I whisper’d that mine was his; we knew what we felt long ago:
Six weeks are as long as a lifetime almost when you love each other so.

So we put up the banns, and were man and wife in the sweet fading time of the year,
And till Christmas was over and past I knew neither sorrow nor fear.
It seems like a dream already, a sweet dream vanished and gone;
So hurried and brief while passing away, so long to look back upon.

I had only had him three months, and the world lay frozen and dead,
When the summons came which we feared and hoped, and he sail’d over sea for our bread.
Ah well! it is fine to be wealthy and grand, and never to need to part;
But ’tis better to love and be poor, than be rich with an empty heart.

Though I thought ’twould have kill’d me to lose him at first, yet was he not going for me?
So I hid all the grief in my breast which I knew it would pain him to see.
He’d be back by the autumn, he said; and since his last passionate kiss
He has scarcely been out of my thoughts, day or night, for a moment, from that day to this.

When I wrote to him how I thought it would be, and he answered so full of love;
Ah! there was no angel happier than I, in all the bright chorus above;
And I seem’d to be lonely no longer, the days slipp’d so swiftly away;
And the March winds died, and the sweet April showers gave place to the blossoms of May.

And then came the sad summer eve, when I sat with the little frock in the sun,
And Annie ran in with the news of the ship. Ah, well! may His will be done!
They said that all hands were lost, and I swoon’d away like a stone,
And another life came ere I knew he was safe, and that mine was over and gone.

So now I lie helpless here, and shall never rise up again,
I grow weaker and weaker, day by day, till my weakness itself is a pain.
Every morning the creeping dawn, every evening I see from my bed
The orange-gold fade into lifeless grey, and the old evening star overhead.

Sometimes in the twilight dim, or the awful birth of the day,
As I lie, not asleep nor awake, my soul seems to flutter away,
And I seem to be floating beyond the stars, till I thrill with an exquisite pain,
And the feeble touch of a tiny hand recalls me to life again.

And the doctor says she will live. Ah! ’tis hard to leave her alone,
And to think she will never know in the world the love of the mother who’s gone!
He will tell her of me, by and by,—she will shed me a childish tear;
But if I should stoop to her bed in the night, she would start with a horrible fear.

She will grow into girlhood, I trust, and will bask in the light of love,
And I, if I see her at all, shall only look on from above—
I shall see her, and cannot help, though she fall into evil and woe.
Ah! how can the angels find heart to rejoice when they think of their loved ones below?

And Francis, he too, will forget me, and will go on the journey of life,
And I hope, though I dare not think of it yet, will take him another wife.
It will scarcely be Annie, I think, though she liked him in days gone by;
Was that why she came?—but what thoughts are these for one who is going to die?

I hope he will come ere I go, though I feel no longer the thirst
For the sound of his voice, and the light of his eye, that I used to feel at first:
’Tis not that I love him less, but death dries, like a whirlwind of fire,
The tender springs of innocent love, and the torrents of strong desire.

And I know we shall meet again. I have done many things that are wrong,
But, surely, the Lord of Life and of Love, cannot bear to be angry long.
I am only a girl of eighteen, and have had no teacher but love;
And, it may be, the sorrow and pain I have known will be counted for me, above;

For I doubt if the minister knows all the depths of the goodness of God,
When he says He is jealous of earthly love, and bids me bow down ’neath the rod.
He is learnèd and wise, I know, but, somehow, to dying eyes
God opens the secret doors of the shrine that are closed to the learnèd and wise.

So now I am ready to go, for I know He will do what is best,
Though he call me away while the sun is on high, like a child sent early to rest.
I should like to see Francis look on our child, though the longing is over and past—
But what is that footstep upon the stair? Oh! my darling—at last! at last!

ECHOES.

On Thursday I sat in the choir of Canterbury Cathedral and watched the Bishops, Deans, Canons, and other clergy as they walked up in procession, leading the new Archbishop. The Archbishop seemed, I thought, to look with sheepish glances at two young men in full ball-room dress, who walked behind, holding up his long train; and I am satisfied that nothing but the proprieties of the place prevented his Grace from kicking them both, and carrying his tail in his own hands. The clergy, in their white gowns, with their various University colours, presented a rather pleasant appearance in the aggregate, and, with the environment of the old Cathedral arches, I thought they must have appeared to the best advantage. But while I gazed upon the old Archbishop and those who were doing him homage, the first notes of a distant chant broke faintly through the air. The choristers had just entered the western door far away, and as they slowly moved at the end of the long procession, they uttered a sweet old Gregorian chant. At first, as I listened, I thought how very sweet it was; then I thought it was in danger of becoming monotonous; nevertheless, the little cherubs had not consulted me about the length of it, and so continued their chant. But then the old music began to strike me with subtle effects, like the strain of some long sound-seasoned Cremona violin. And at length it began to work some strange spell upon me, and weave for my ear echoes caught up as it were from the dead past which before had seemed sleeping in its many tombs around. The echoes of wild pagan song, uttered with the tramp of mystic dances, gathering at last to the dying groan of some poor wretch perishing on a rude altar that a complacent smile may be won to the face of his god. The echo of the voice of a monk who finds that altar, and raises the crucifix above it. His voice blends with the outcry of the people for their old gods, and the loud command of the baptized King. What wild echoes are these hiding under that outburst of young voices? The echoes of a thousand savage martyrs who will not bow down to the Pope. Their protest is stifled with their blood; they pass to Valhalla for whose All-Father they have died; and the howling tempest marks his passage over the scene. Echoes again; the sounds of war. Hark! a tumult—words of anger—a hoarse cry—an Archbishop’s last sigh as his life ebbs away on the floor—there on the spot near the choir’s gate, where Archbishop Tait now gazes as if he could see the stark form of à-Becket lying there. Yes, plainly I heard that groan in the Gregorian chant. Then there were the echoes of stripes. A King in the dark crypt, beneath the shrine of the murdered Archbishop, now canonized, is being scourged in penance for his sins. Blended with these, the echoes of the voices of the great prelates and princes of many kingdoms, who have come to build a shrine for the martyr: their exclamations before the shrine decked with all the gleaming gems owned by the monarchs of Europe. One of them, Louis of France, has refused to offer a diamond, the finest in the world, but when the shrine is uncovered, the stone leaps from his ring and sets itself in the centre of the brilliants. The people shout, nay, weep with excitement at this miracle. All these I heard again in the chant. Then came pathetic echoes out of many ages: the tones of mourners as they followed here their honoured dead; the prayers of souls here aspiring towards the mysteries of existence; voices of hearts that found peace; the sobs of those who found it not; the low-toned benediction or exhortation of confessors. The voices of priests from pulpits, and of those who responded. All are hushed in death; but I heard their awakened echoes. The echoes of tolling bells, of marriage chimes. The tones of marriage vows. The startled cry of the infant wondering at the holy water sprinkled upon it. The echoes of Chaucer’s merry or sad pilgrims with their gracious or wanton stories, beguiling their way to the old inn near Christ Church Gate, which one seeks now only to find it has been burnt down. The echoes of their prayers for health at St. Dunstan’s or St. Thomas’s Shrine, and that other shrine where the stones are worn deepest with the knees of pilgrims, but whose saint is unknown. All these echoes were awakened for my ear by the sweet chant of the boys in Canterbury Cathedral; and unreal as they were, I confess they still seem to me more real than the actual prayers for the confusion of Dr. Tait’s imaginary enemies, or the ceremony of his enthronement. To sit upon fourteen centuries and see a London gentleman in a coat so much too large for him that his friends have to hold up its skirts for him, and to see plethoric Englishmen, suggestive of sirloins, on their knees praying that the snares set for their feet shall be broken,—produced in me feelings, to say the least, of a mixed character; such as those which may have been experienced by the landlady in the Strand, when she found that her lodger Mr. Taylor (the Platonist) had sacrificed a bull to Jupiter in her back parlour. There is something not undignified in an old Greek sacrificing a heifer, laurel-crowned, to Zeus; and there is something not unimpressive in old missionaries of the Cross struggling with pagan foes, and symbolizing their faith in their vesture and in their candles which lit up the caves to which they often had to fly. But to the crowd that went down between business and business, to see so long as a return-ticket permitted this effigy of a real past, there must have been more absurdity than impressiveness in it. From the whole pageant I recall with pleasure only the long sweet chant,—a theme ensouled by genius and piety,—which, between the doorway and the altar, filled the old Cathedral and made it a vast organ, with historic tones breathing the echoes of millions of heaven-seeking pilgrims whose prayers and hymns began at that spot before the advent of Christianity, and may perhaps remain there after it has passed away.

EXPEDIENCY.

Thus to his scholars once Confucius said:
Better to die than not be rich: get wealth.
He who has nothing, trust me, nothing is;
Nay, tenfold worse than nothing. Not to be
Is neither good nor bad; but to be poor!—
’Tis to be nothing with an envious wish,
A zero conscious of nonentity.
To get wealth, and to keep it—this is all,
And the one rule of life, expediency.
This was the lesson that the master taught,
And then he gave some rules for getting wealth:
Happy, who once can say, I have a thing.
All things are given us, all things to be had,
Except, alas! the faculty of having.
If you are sated with one dish of fruit,
Why, no more fruit have you, to call it having,
Though a whole Autumn lay in heaps about you.
How to have, this, my scholars, would I teach.
Yet who can teach it? it is great and hard.
This one thing dare I say. Be not deceived,
Nor dream that those called rich have anything;
Who think that what the pocket treasures up,
And jealous foldings of the robe, is theirs;
Theirs all the plate the burglar cannot reach,
Theirs all the land they warn the traveller off:
Fools! Because we are poorer, are they rich?
What is none other’s, is it therefore theirs?
Endeavour, O my scholars, to be rich,
Scheme to get riches when you wake from sleep,
All day pursue them, pray for them at night.
As when one leans long time upon his hand,
Then, moving it, finds all its strength is gone
And it can now grasp nothing, so the soul
Loses in listlessness the grasping power,
And in the midst of wealth, has nothing still.
I know not, O my scholars, how to bring
The tingling blood through the soul’s palsied limbs,
But when ’tis done how rich the soul may be
How royal in possessions, I can tell,—
One half of wisdom—seek elsewhere the other.
The gods divorce knowledge of good from good.
He who is happy and rich does seldom know it,
And he who knows the true wealth seldom has it.
Not only all this world of eye and ear
Becomes his house and palace of delights
Whose soul has grasping power; so that each form
To him becomes a picture that is his,
The light-stream as a fountain in his court,
The murmur of all movement music to him,
And time’s mere lapse rhythmical in his heart.
Not only so; a greater treasure still,
The lives of other men, by sympathy
Incorporated with his own, are his.
Get wealth, my scholars, this wealth first of all.
One life is beggary; live a thousand lives.
In those about you live and those remote;
Live many lives at once and call it country,
And call it kind; in the great future live
And make it in your life rehearse its life,
And make the pallid past repeat its life.
Be public-hearted and be myriad-soul’d,
So shall you noble be as well as rich,
And as a king watch for the general good.
Raised to a higher level, you shall find
With large enjoyments vast constraints, vast cares.
Be swayed by wider interests, be touched
By wiser instincts of the experienced heart,
And, since all greatness is a ponderous weight,
Be capable of vaster sufferance.
Your joys shall be as heaven, your griefs as hell.
Rise early, O my scholars, to be rich,
And make Expediency your rule of life.
Then, when the utmost scale of wealth is gain’d,
And other lives are to your own annex’d
By the soul’s grasping power, this guide of life,
This sure Expediency, shall suffer change.
When appetites shall tame to prudences
And Prudence purge herself to Sacred Law,
When lusts shall sweeten into sympathies,
And royal Justice out of Anger spring,
When the expanding Self grows infinite,
Then shall Expediency, the guide of life,
In Virtue die, in Virtue rise again.

REST. [43]

Dearest Friend,

The subject of your meeting of to-morrow is so suggestive that I would gladly join you all, and write an essay on it, if I had health and time. I have neither, and, perhaps, better so. My essay, I candidly avow, would tend to prove that no essay ought to be written on the subject. It has no reality. A sort of intuitive instinct led you to couple “Ghosts and Rest” together.

There is, here down, and there ought to be, no Rest. Life is an aim; an aim which can be approached, not reached, here down. There is, therefore, no rest. Rest is immoral.

It is not mine now to give a definition of the aim; whatever it is, there is one, there must be one. Without it, Life has no sense. It is atheistical; and, moreover, an irony and a deception.

I entertain all possible respect for the members of your Club; but I venture to say that any contribution on Rest which will not exhibit at the top a definition of Life will wander sadly between wild arbitrary intellectual display and commonplaces.

Life is no sinecure, no “recherche du bonheur” to be secured, as the promulgators of the theory had it, by guillotine, or, as their less energetic followers have it, by railway shares, selfishness, or contemplation. Life is, as Schiller said, “a battle and a march;” a battle for Good against Evil, for Justice against arbitrary privileges, for Liberty against Oppression, for associated Love against Individualism; a march onwards to Self, through collective Perfecting, to the progressive realization of an Ideal, which is only dawning to our mind and soul. Shall the battle be finally won during life-time? Shall it on Earth? are we believing in a Millennium? Don’t we feel that the spiral curve through which we ascend had its beginning elsewhere, and has its end, if any, beyond this terrestrial world of ours? Where is then a possible foundation for your essays and sketches?

Goethe’s “Contemplation” has created a multitude of little sects aiming at Rest, where is no Rest, falsifying art, the element of which is evolution, not re-production, transformation, not contemplation, and enervating the soul in self-abdicating Brahmanic attempts. For God’s sake let not your Club add one little sect to the fatally existing hundreds!

There is nothing to be looked for in life except the uninterrupted fulfilment of Duty, and, not Rest, but consolation and strengthening from Love. There is, not rest, but a promise, a shadowing forth of Rest in Love. Only there must be in Love absolute trust; and it is very seldom that this blessing depends on us. The child goes to sleep, a dreamless sleep, with unbounded trust, on the mother’s bosom; but our sleep is a restless one, agitated by sad dreams and alarms.

You will smile at my lugubrious turn of mind; but if I was one of your Artists, I would sketch a man on the scaffold going to die for a great Idea, for the cause of Truth, with his eye looking trustfully on a loving woman, whose finger would trustfully and smilingly point out to him the unbounded. Under the sketch I would write, not Rest, but “a Promise of Rest.” Addio: tell me one word about the point of view of your contributors.

Ever affectionately yours,
Joseph Mazzini.

REST.

Poor restless heart! still thy lament,
Crave not for rest, refusèd still,
There is some struggle,—discontent,
That stays thy will.

Be brave to meet unrest,
Nor seek from work release,
Clasp struggle close unto thy breast,
Until it brings thee peace.

Seek not in creed a resting-place
From problems that around thee surge,
But look doubt bravely in the face,
Till truth emerge.

Work out the problem of thy life,
To no convention chainèd be,
Against self-love wage ceaseless strife,
And thus be free.

Then, if in harmony thou livest,
With all that’s in thy nature best,
Who “Sleep to his beloved giveth,”
Will give thee rest.

REST.

His Mother was a Prince’s child,
His Father was a King;
There wanted not to that proud lot
What power or wealth could bring;
Great nobles served him, bending low,
Strong captains wrought his will;
Fair fortune!—but it wearied him,
His spirit thirsted still!

For him the glorious music roll’d
Of singers, silent long;
Grave histories told, in scrolls of old,
The strife of right and wrong;
For him Philosophy unveil’d
Athenian Plato’s lore,
Might these not serve to fill a life?
Not this! he sigh’d for more!

He loved!—the truest, newest lip
That ever lover pressed,
The queenliest mouth of all the south
Long love for him confess’d:
Round him his children’s joyousness
Rang silverly and shrill;
Thrice blessed! save that blessedness
Lack’d something—something still!

To battle all his spears he led,
In streams of winding steel;
On breast and head of foeman dead
His war-horse set its heel;
The jewell’d housings of its flank
Swung wet with blood of kings;
Yet the rich victory seem’d rank
With the blood taint it brings!

The splendid passion seized his soul
To heal, by statutes sage,
The ills that bind our hapless kind.
And chafe to crime and rage;
And dear the people’s blessing was,
The praising of the poor;
But evil stronger is than thrones,
And hate no laws can cure!

He laid aside the sword and pen,
And lit the lamp, to wrest
From nature’s range the secrets strange,
The treasures of her breast;
And wisdom deep his guerdon was,
And wondrous things he knew;
Yet from each vanquish’d mystery
Some harder marvel grew!

No pause! no respite! no sure ground,
To stay the spirit’s quest!
In all around not one thing found
So good as to be “best;”
Not even love proved quite divine;
Therefore his search did cease,
Lord of all gifts that life can give
Save the one sweet gift—Peace!

Then came it!—crown, sword, wreath—each lay,
An unregarded thing!
The funeral sheet from head to feet,
Was royal robe to that king!
And strange!—Love, learning, statecraft, sway,
Look’d always on before,
But those pale, happy, lips of clay,
Lack’d nothing!—nothing more!

GOSSIP.

I FEEL impelled to say a word, and it shall be but a word—and so more patiently endured—in defence of that much abused, much maligned thing—gossipry. Johnson, among many other designations, gives for “gossipred,” “spiritual affinity;” a very good definition, and the one I shall adopt; that is, sympathy, the need to give and to receive it; and I must say I know few things more charming than this sympathy in small things, this gossipry between kindly hearts and well filled heads. That light pouring out the thoughts and feelings and observations of the passing hour, which, while it commences with the external, is sure to touch, ever and anon, those deeper springs of thought, and feeling, and action, from which well up pleasant memories, apt thoughts, and pertinent reflections.

Poring over old letters and papers which chanced recently to come into my hands, I came upon an old leaf of yellow paper and faded ink, which caught my attention; it appeared to be either a scrap of an old diary, or of a letter; it seemed to me somewhat germane to our present subject, and being venerable from its antiquity, I venture to quote it. Its date is too indistinct to be sure of, but it seems to be 1700 and something. Thus it runs:—“My husband was bidden to dinner yesterday to our Rector’s, I with him; my husband was pleased thereat, because there was, he said, to be there a man of parts, from London; so I laid out my husband’s best coat and long flowered waistcoat, and his kerseys and silk stockings, which he did not often wear, for I desired him to be seemly in his attire, that he might do fitting honour to our Rector; I was a little flustered at first with the notion of this great man; but I noted that my husband bore himself towards him exactly as if he had been an ordinary man. At table I found myself set next to him. The gardens at the great house are very fine, and kept excellently well, as indeed is not wonderful, as there are two whole gardeners and a boy to do the work. Looking out of the large bay-window which looked upon the flower garden, and stood open, for it was mighty warm, I could not keep my eyes off the flowers, they were so exceeding gay; the sun shone out surprisingly; one spot in particular took my attention: a large clump of daffodils had been allowed on the lawn, the grass was high round them, and on the top of every blade there was a drop that sparkled like a diamond—for there had been a slight shower—and as I looked upon them, I thought of the description in holy writ of the gates of the temple of Jerusalem, all studded with sapphires and emeralds and diamonds; and I was so taken up that I forgot it was the great man that was sitting by me, and I asked him if it was not beautiful? ‘It is vastly fine indeed, ma’am,’ he said; but he looked at me with wonderment, I thought, and from the look in his eyes, I am sure he did not know a daffodil from a daisy, poor man. So I felt very much abashed, and sat still and said no more; and there was not much discourse, but everybody looked wise and silent; and I remembered that somewhere it is said, it is a grand thing to know how to be silent; but I thought a little talking would have been more agreeable, only perhaps not so wise-like, only of course I knew I was quite a common person, and had no parts at all; so when it was about three of the clock—the hour fixed for the dinner was rather late, as it was a bye common occasion—and we ladies left the gentlemen to settle down to their wine, I thought I would go home to my children, for I thought our lady Rector looked somewhat puffed up and stately with the great honour she had had, and done to us; and to say the very truth, I felt longing to speak and to hear in the ordinary way. So I took my leave in a beseeming and courteous manner, and stepped across to my own place; and my eldest daughter came running to me and said she had got so many things to tell me; and then out of her little heart she poured out all her little troubles and pleasures; and oh! she said, little brother had been so naughty, and had cried dreadfully for the pretty cup from China, and stamped and fought her when she would not let him have it, because dear mamma liked it so much, and would be sorry to have it broken. ‘But then, mamma,’ she said, ‘when he got a little quieter, I talked to him, and hushed him and kissed him, and so he was soon good, and we had a great game at horses.’ Then I kissed the little maid, and called her a ‘dear little mother,’ but she was greatly puzzled, and said, ‘Oh, mamma, I am only a little girl.’ Then she said I must tell her all about the gentleman that she had heard papa say had a great many parts—‘more, I suppose, mamma, than any of us.’ I only kissed her at this, and told her of the golden daffodils and many other flowers I had noticed; and of two great blackbirds I had seen hopping very lovingly together upon the lawn. She said she liked to hear of these extremely; and I told of the roast sucking-pig with an orange in its mouth, which was at the top of the table; but she did not like this; she said it would remind her of the little piggy running about, which that little pig would never do any more. Then she said she would tell me of one of her little misfortunes, which she thought was almost a big one: ‘the poor brown hen with ten little chicks had been shut up by themselves, because the little chicks would run about too far; and the boy had forgotten them, and they had been shut up without anything to eat for ever so many hours; and when we put some barley in, dear old browney clucked and clucked, and showed the grains to the chicks, but never touched one herself, mamma, and when the little chicks had eaten till they were quite full, she called them all under her wings, and they went fast asleep; but then, mamma, there was not one single barley left near the poor mother; and so I do believe mamma, she would have been quite starved to death, only we put some barley and some nice crumbs quite close to her; so she got them without moving a bit, or waking the chicks, and oh, mamma, she did gobble it up so fast; I know she was so hungry, for she did not eat one single barley-corn before, for I watched her all the time; wasn’t it sweet and good of her, mamma? I shall love that dear old browney for always.’ And so my little daughter and I chatted away and enjoyed ourselves hugely, till my dear good man, who I had thought was sitting over his wine, and perhaps his pipe—but I don’t know about that because of the company—came suddenly behind us. He kissed us both, saying, ‘My two sweet gossips, it does my heart good to hear you. It seems to me, my Margery,’ he said, ‘that our little one here hath both a sound heart and a wise head.’”

There the paper is torn, and I could see no other word. It appears to me that this, and many other gossipries, are, in their small way, good, and that when they are not good, it is because the heart is cankered, and the head empty; and so we come round to the conclusion on all subjects and on all difficulties, especially social difficulties—educate, educate, educate; teach the mind to find subjects for thought in all things, and purify the heart by enabling it to find “sermons in stones, and good in everything;” then will Gossip be the graceful unbending of the loving heart and well-filled head.

CHIPS.

Chips! chips!
We had climb’d to the top of the cliff that day,
Just where the brow look’d over the bay;
And you stood, and you watch’d the shifting ships
Till I found you a seat in the heather.
As we reach’d the top you had touch’d me thrice;
I had felt your hand on my shoulder twice,
And once I had brush’d your feather.
And I turn’d at last, and saw you stand,
Looking down seaward hat in hand,
At the shelving sweep of the scoop’d-out sand,
And the great blue gem within it.
The bright, sweet sky was over your head,
Your cheek was aflame with the climber’s red,
And a something leapt in my heart that said,—
Happy or sorry, living or dead,—
My fate had begun that minute.
And we sat, and we watch’d the clouds go by
(There were none but the clouds and you and I
As we sat on the hill together);
As you sketch’d the rack as it drifted by,
Fleece upon fleece through the pathless sky,
Did you wonder, Florence, whether,
When you held me up your point to cut,
I had kept the chips, when the knife was shut,—
For none of them fell in the heather.

Chips! chips!—
Yet what was I but the cousin, you know?—
Only the boy that you favour’d so—
And the word that stirr’d my lips
I must hide away in my heart, and keep,
For the road to you was dizzy and steep
As the cliff we had climb’d together.
There was many an older lover nigh,
With the will and the right to seek your eye;
And for me, I know not whether,
If I chose to live, or I chose to die,
It would matter to you a feather.
But this I know, as the feather’s weight
Will keep the poise of the balance straight,
In the doubtful climb—in the day’s eclipse,
In the stumbling steps, in the faults and trips,
I have gain’d a strength from the tiniest scraps
That ever were help to a man, perhaps,—
Chips! chips!

Look, these are “the tiniest scraps,” you see,
And this is their casket of filigree,
That I bought that year “far over the sea,”
With a volley of chaff, and a half-rupee,
From a huckstering, fox-faced Bengalee,
That set himself up for a dealer.
They have slept with me by the jungle fires,
They have watch’d with me under Indian spires,
I have kept them safe in their gilded wires
From the clutch of the coolie stealer;
And when at last they relieved “the Nest,”—
Alick, and Ellis, and all the rest,—
March’d into Lucknow four abreast,
That I had the chips still under my vest,
That they pray’d with me, must be confess’d,
Who never was much of a kneeler.
And now that I come, and I find you free,
You, that have waken’d this thing in me,
Will you tell me, Florence, whether,
When I kept your pencil’s chips that day,
Was it better perhaps to have let them stay
To be lost in the mountain heather!

CHIPS.

Chips! It may be well disputed
If a word exists, less suited,
Or more odd and uninviting
As a theme for rhyme or writing;
Coinage of that dull Max Müller,
Title of a book still duller.
Fill’d with words so cabalistic,
That methought the German mystic
Must have found the dialect
Spoken ere man walk’d erect.

Never mind! what must be, must;
Men must eat both crumb and crust.
And the dodge of many a poet
(Half the verses publish’d show it),
When his Pegasus rides restive,
Is to make his rhymes suggestive.
If in what you chance to seize on
Rhyme and reason will not chime,
Better rhyme without the reason
Than the reason and no rhyme;
Better anything than prose,
So, as Milton says, “here goes.”

“When the Grecian chiefs in ships
Sail’d on Argonautic trips!”

“When the Furies with their whips
Flogg’d Orestes all to strips!

“When the sun in dim eclipse
In the darken’d ocean dips!”

Still I see no clue to chips!

“Meadows where the lambkin skips,
Where the dew from roses drips
And the bee the honey sips . . . .”

Odd, that nothing leads to chips!

Then I thought of “cranks and quips,”
Wanton wiles and laughing lips,
Luring us to fatal slips,
And leaving us in Satan’s grips.

Then I made a desperate trial,
With the sixth and seventh vial—
Thinking I could steal some Chips
From St. John’s Apocalypse.

Then there came a long hiatus,
While I kept repeating Chips,
Feeling the divine afflatus
Oozing through my finger-tips.

Gone and going hopelessly,
So, in my accustom’d manner,
Underneath my favourite tree,
I began a mild havannah—
’Twas indeed my favourite station,
For recruiting mind and body;
Drinking draughts of inspiration,
Alternate with whisky toddy.
’Twas an oak tree old and hoary.
And my garden’s pride and glory;
Hallow’d trunk and boughs in splinters,
Mossy with a thousand winters.

Here I found the Muses’ fountain,
And perceived my spirits mounting,
And exclaim’d in accents burning,
To the tree my eyes upturning,
“Venerable tree and vast,
Speak to me of ages past!
Sylvan monarch of the wold,
Tell me of the days of old!
Did thy giant boughs o’er-arching
View the Roman legions marching?
Has the painted Briton stray’d
Underneath thy hoary shade?
Did some heathen oracle
In thy knotty bosom dwell,
As in groves of old Dodona,
Or the Druid oaks of Mona?
Dwelt the outlaw’d foresters
Here in ‘otium cum dig.’
While the feather’d choristers
In thy branches ‘hopp’d the twig?’
Help me, Nymph! Fawn! Hamadryad!
One at once, or all the Triad.”

Lo! a voice to my invoking!
’Twas my stupid gardener croaking,
“Please, Sir, mayn’t I fall this tree,
’Cos it spoils the crops, you see:
And the grass it shades and lumbers,
And we shan’t have no cowcumbers.
Some time it will fall for good,
And the Missis wants the wood.”

Shock’d at such a scheme audacious,
Faint, I gasp’d out, “Goodness gracious!”
“Yes,” I said, “the tree must fall,
’Tis, alas! the lot of all;
But no mortal shall presume
To accelerate its doom.
Rescued from thy low desires,
It shall warm my poet fires.
Let the strokes of fate subdue it,
Let the axe of Time cut through it;
When it must fall, let it fall,
But, oh! never let me view it.”

Seeing that my phrase exalted
Fell upon his senses vainly,
In my full career I halted,
And I spoke my orders plainly.
“Never seek to trim or lop it,
Once for all I charge thee, drop it.”
And I added, to my sorrow,
“You shall ‘cut your stick’ to-morrow
Know what that means, I suppose?”
“Yes,” he said, “I thinks I does.”
So I left him at this crisis,
Left him to his own devices,
Left him like the royal Vandal,
Leaning on his old spade handle.
Oh! those vulgar slang expressions,—
How I smart for my transgressions!
Judge my wrath, surprise, and horror,
When I rose upon the morrow,
To behold my tree in ruin,
And be told ’twas all my doing,
While the villain grinn’d in glee!
“Wretch!” I thunder’d, “Where’s my tree?”
And these words came from his lips,
“There’s the tree, and them’s the Chips.”

TRANSFORMATION.

THE LAST SPEECH AND CONFESSION OF A MAHOGANY-TREE NYMPH.

You’ve heard in Greek mythology
Of nymph and hamadryad
Who had their being in a tree;
Perchance, the tale admired.
Yet live we, in oblivion sunk;
Though strange, my tale’s as sure as
That I was once a stately trunk
In the forests of Honduras.

My home was in a jungle low,
And tall tree ferns grew round me;
The humming-birds flew to and fro,
And wild lianas bound me;
The panther, jaguar, and ounce,
Lurk’d ever in my branches
On weary travellers to pounce
While journeying to their ranches.
Me, merchants from Honduras found
Who had not got a log any;
They cut me prostrate on the ground
To make first-rate mahogany.

They pack’d me in a darksome hold;
We cross’d the ocean quivering;
They took me to a region cold
That set my timbers shivering;
Above, an atmosphere of fog;
Around me, masts upstanding—
When they had piled me log by log,
Upon the dockyard landing.

And then they came with rule and chalk
Numb’ring my feet and inches,
And pack’d us high beside that walk
With pullies, cranks, and winches;
And one by one my logs were sold,
And one by one were taken,
Till I, the spirit of the whole,
Was left of form forsaken.

And when the auction sale was past,
Mourning each separate splinter
I flitted formless round the masts,
Through all that ice-bound winter,
Still with benumb’d and torpid sense
All plan or hope deferring,
Till, when the spring sun shone intense,
My spirit’s sap was stirring,

I heard a wordless, whisper’d sound,
(Such as we tree-nymphs utter,)
Of swelling twigs, and buds unbound,
And tremulous leaflets’ flutter,—
And saw a dim, green, glossy face
With eyes like pearly flowers,—
And knew the spirit of our race,
Fresh from Honduras’ bowers.

“Poor disembodied nymph,” I thought
It said; “Go, seek thy children,
A true statistical report
To bring us, though bewild’ring,
Of what with every inch they’ve done,
Each splintering and chipling;
Then, backwards to Honduras flown,
Thou’lt have another sapling.”

I wing’d my way elate with hopes,
To seek each cabinet maker—
To Druse and Heal’s well furnish’d shops,
And the Bazaar of Baker—
Each piano manufactory,
To Broadwood and to Collard—
Where’er a portion of my tree,
Was carried, there I follow’d:

And where’er a sofa or chair I saw,
Or bedstead or wardrobe furnish’d,
Or centre-table with spreading claw,
With my wood all brightly burnish’d,
Each knot, and knob, and scar, and split,
And delicate grain appearing.
Long was my search, made longer yet
By the general use of veneering.

I’ve flitted through a mansion proud
To watch a grand piano,
The centre of a list’ning crowd
High-bred in tone and manner:
I’ve stood by many a shining board,
Were dinners were demolish’d,
And view’d the silver and glass encored—
Seen double in the polish.

And beside a stately bed I’ve stood,
Where curtains of silken splendour
O’er damask hangings and polish’d wood,
Threw a lustre subdued and tender.
A dainty cradle stood near its head,
But no form was in it sleeping,
For the couch of state held the baby dead,
And the mother knelt near it weeping:

I came beneath a gorgeous dome,
With fretted arch and column,
And stained glass windows through the gloom
That made it very solemn.
And by the pulpit stairs I stood
The preacher’s words to follow—
The sounding-board was my own wood—
(That, and the words were hollow):

And I’ve wandered to the library—
The bookshelves there were mine—
Belonging to one of the Ministry;
The whole was wondrous fine.
(I thought the pay seem’d very high,
The work of an easy nature,
And wondered if that was the reason why
They would not suffer women to try
To sit in the Legislature):

And I’ve been up a dismal attic flight,
Not knowing why there I hasten’d,
And I found ’twas the sewing-table bright
To which a machine was fasten’d;
And a girl was working, so pale and drear,
And in such a forlorn condition,
That, ghost as I was, I had shed a tear,
But I knew that that garret was woman’s sphere,
And dressmaking her mission.

Last month I came to a table round
Which cover’d, to my surprise, is,
(Whilst a critical crowd collects around,)
With chips of all lengths and sizes:
And I knew I’d found the last piece of wood;
And back, to my former station,
My spirit crossed the Atlantic flood
To begin a new transformation.
So I laid the glimpses that I had had
Of the motley life of this nation
Upon this table—or good or bad—
For the general delectation.

TRANSFORMATION.
LITTLE SEAL-SKIN.

The fisherman walked up the hill,
His boat lay on the sand,
His net was on his shoulder still,
His home a mile inland.
And as he walk’d among the whin
He saw a little white seal-skin,
Which he took up in his hand.
Then “How,” said he, “can this thing be?
A seal-skin, and no seal within?”
Thus pondered he,
Partly in fear,
Till he remember’d what he’d heard
Of creatures in the sea,—
Sea-men and women, who are stirred
One day in every year
To drop their seal-skins on the sand,
To leave the sea, and seek the land
For twelve long hours,
Playing about in sweet sunshine,
Among the corn-fields, with corn-flowers,
Wild roses, and woodbine:
Till night comes on, and then they flit
Adown the fields, and sit
Upon the shore and put their seal-skins on,
And slip into the sea, and they are gone.
The fisherman strok’d the fur
Of the little white seal-skin,
Soft as silk, and white as snow;
And he said to himself, “I know
That some little sea-woman lived in
This seal-skin, perhaps not long ago.
I wonder what has become of her!
And why she left this on the whin,
Instead of slipping it on again
When all the little sea-women and men
Went hurrying down to the sea!
Ah! well, she never meant
It for me,
That I should take it, but I will,
Home to my house on the hill,”
Said the fisherman; and home he went.

The Fisher dozed before his fire,
The night was cold outside,
The bright full moon was rising higher
Above the swelling tide,
And the wind brought the sound of breakers nigher,
Even to the hill side;
When suddenly
Something broke at the cottage door,
Like the plash
Of a little wave on a pebbly shore;
And as water frets in the backward drain
Of the wave, seeming to fall in pain,
There came a wailing after the plash.—
The fisherman woke, and said, “Is it rain?”
Then he rose from his seat
And open’d his door a little way,
But soon shut it again
With a kind of awe;
For the prettiest little sea-woman lay
On the grass at his feet
That you ever saw;
She began to sob and to say,
“Who has stolen my skin from me?
And who is there will take me in?
For I have lost my little seal-skin,
And I can’t get back to the sea.”

The Fisherman stroked the fur
Of the downy white seal-skin,
And he said, “Shall I give it her?—
But then she would get in,
And hurry away to the sea,
And not come back to me,
And I should be sorry all my life,
I want her so for my little wife.”
The Fisherman thought for a minute,
Then he carried the seal-skin to
A secret hole in the thatch,
Where he hid it cleverly, so
That a sharp-sighted person might go,
In front of the hole and not catch
A glimpse of the seal-skin within it.
After this he lifted the latch
Of his door once more,
But the night was darker, for
The moon was swimming under a cloud,
So the Fisherman couldn’t see
The little sea-woman plainly,
Seeing a fleck of white foam only,
That was sobbing aloud
As before.

“Little sea-woman,” said the Fisherman,
“Will you come home to me,
Will you help me to work, and help me to save,
Care for my house and me,
And the little children that we shall have?”
“Yes, Fisherman,” said she.
So the Fisherman had his way,
And seven years of life
Pass’d by him like one happy day;
But, as for his sea-wife,
She sorrowed for the sea alway
And loved not her land life.
Morning and evening, and all day
She would say
To herself—“The sea! the sea!”
And at night, when dreaming,
She stretch’d her arms about her, seeming
To seek little Willie,
It was the sea
She would have clasp’d, not he—
The great sea’s purple water,
Dearer to her than little son or daughter.
Yet she was kind
To her children three,
Harry, fair Alice, and baby Willie;
And set her mind
To keep things orderly.
“Only,” thought she,
“If I could but find
That little seal-skin I lost one day.”
She didn’t know
That her husband had it hidden away;
Nor he
That she long’d for it so.
Until
One evening as he climb’d the hill,
The Fisherman found her amongst the whin,
Sobbing, saying, “My little seal-skin—
Who has stolen my skin from me?
How shall I find it, and get in,
And hurry away to the sea?”
“Then she shall have her will,”
Said he.

So
Next morning, when he rose to go
A-fishing, and his wife still slept,
He stole
The seal-skin from that secret hole
Where he had kept
It, and flung it on a chair,
Saying, “She will be glad to find it there
To-day
When I am gone,
And yet
Perhaps she will not put it on,”
He said, “Nor go away.”
In sleeping his wife wept;
Then the Fisherman took his net
And crept
Into the chill air.

The night drew on—the air was still,
Homeward the fisher climbed the hill.
All day he’d thought, “She will not go;”
And now, “She has not,” pondered he.
“She is not gone,” he said, “I know,
There is a lamp in our window,
Put ready on the sill
To guide me home, and I shall see
The dear light glimmering presently,
Just as I round the hill.”
But when he turn’d, there was no light
To guide him homeward through the night.
Then, “I am late,” he said,
“And maybe she was weary
Looking so long for me.
She lays the little ones in bed
Well content,
In the inner room where I shall find her,
And where she went,
Forgetting to leave the light behind her.”

So he came to his cottage door,
And threw it open wide;
But stood a breathing space, before
He dared to look inside.
No fire was in the fireplace, nor
A light on any side;
But a little heap lay on the floor,
And the voice of a baby cried.
Rocking and moaning on the floor,
That little heap
Was the children, tired with crying,
Trying to sleep,
Moaning and rocking to and fro;
But Baby Willie hindered the trying
By wailing so.

Then “Wife! wife!” said the Fisherman,
“Come from the inner room.”
There was no answer, and he ran
Searching into the gloom.

“Wife! wife! why don’t you come?
The children want you, and I’ve come home.”
“Mammy’s gone, Daddy,” said Harry—
“Gone into the sea;
She’ll never come back to carry
Tired Baby Willie.
It’s no use now, Daddy, looking about;
I can tell you just how it all fell out.

“There was a seal-skin
In the kitchen—
A little crumpled thing;
I can’t think how it came there;
But this morning
Mammy found it on a chair,
And when she began
To feel it, she dropped
It on the floor—
But snatch’d it up again and ran
Straight out at the door,
And never stopped
Till she-reach’d the shore.

“Then we three, Daddy,
Ran after, crying, ‘Take us to the sea!
Wait for us, Mammy, we are coming too!
Here’s Alice, Willie can’t keep up with you!
Mammy, stop—just for a minute or two!’
But Alice said, ‘Maybe
She’s making us a boat
Out of the seal-skin cleverly,
And by-and-by she’ll float
It on the water from the sands
For us.’ Then Willie clapt his hands
And shouted, ‘Run on, Mammy, to the sea,
And we are coming, Willie understands.’

“At last we came to where the hill
Slopes straight down to the beach,
And there we stood all breathless, still,
Fast clinging each to each.
We saw her sitting upon a stone,
Putting the little seal-skin on.
Oh! Mammy! Mammy!
She never said good-bye, Daddy,
She didn’t kiss us three;
She just put the little seal-skin on,
And slipped into the sea!
Oh! Mammy’s gone, Daddy; Mammy’s gone!
She slipp’d into the sea!”

A SURPRISE.

“She is dead!” they said to him. “Come away;
Kiss her! and leave her!—thy love is clay!”

They smoothed her tresses of dark brown hair;
On her forehead of stone they laid it fair:

Over her eyes, which gazed too much,
They drew the lids with a gentle touch;

With a tender touch they closed up well
The sweet thin lips that had secrets to tell;

About her brows, and her dear, pale face
They tied her veil and her marriage-lace;

And drew on her white feet her white silk shoes;—
Which were the whiter no eye could choose!

And over her bosom they crossed her hands;
“Come away,” they said,—“God understands!”

And then there was Silence;—and nothing there
But the Silence—and scents of eglantere,

And jasmine, and roses, and rosemary;
For they said, “As a lady should lie, lies she!”

And they held their breath as they left the room,
With a shudder to glance at its stillness and gloom.

But he—who loved her too well to dread
The sweet, the stately, the beautiful dead,—

He lit his lamp, and took the key,
And turn’d it!—Alone again—he and she!

He and she; but she would not speak,
Though he kiss’d, in the old place, the quiet cheek;

He and she; yet she would not smile,
Though he call’d her the name that was fondest erewhile.

He and she; and she did not move
To any one passionate whisper of love.

Then he said, “Cold lips! and breast without breath!
Is there no voice?—no language of death

“Dumb to the ear and still to the sense,
But to heart and to soul distinct,—intense?

“See, now,—I listen with soul, not ear—
What was the secret of dying, Dear?

“Was it the infinite wonder of all,
That you ever could let life’s flower fall?

“Or was it a greater marvel to feel
The perfect calm o’er the agony steal?

“Was the miracle greatest to find how deep,
Beyond all dreams, sank downward that sleep?

“Did life roll backward its record, Dear,
And show, as they say it does, past things clear?

“And was it the innermost heart of the bliss
To find out so what a wisdom love is?

“Oh, perfect Dead! oh, Dead most dear,
I hold the breath of my soul to hear;

“I listen—as deep as to horrible hell,
As high as to heaven!—and you do not tell!

“There must be pleasures in dying, Sweet,
To make you so placid from head to feet!

“I would tell you, Darling, if I were dead,
And ’twere your hot tears upon my brow shed.

“I would say, though the angel of death had laid
His sword on my lips to keep it unsaid.

“You should not ask, vainly, with streaming eyes,
Which in Death’s touch was the chiefest surprise;

“The very strangest and suddenest thing
Of all the surprises that dying must bring.”

* * * *

Ah! foolish world! Oh! most kind Dead!
Though he told me, who will believe it was said?

Who will believe that he heard her say,
With the soft rich voice, in the dear old way:—

“The utmost wonder is this,—I hear,
And see you, and love you, and kiss you, Dear;

“I can speak now you listen with soul, not ear;
If your soul could see, it would all be clear

“What a strange delicious amazement is Death,
To be without body and breathe without breath.

“I should laugh for joy if you did not cry;
Oh, listen! Love lasts!—Love never will die.

“I am only your Angel who was your Bride;
And I see, that though dead, I have never died.”

THE GLOAMING.

The gloaming! the gloaming! “What is the gloaming?” was asked by some honourable member of this honourable Society, when the word was chosen a month ago. “Twilight,” was promptly answered by another honourable member! And although the gloaming is undoubtedly twilight, is twilight as undoubtedly the gloaming?—the gloaming of Burns, of Scott, the gloaming so often referred to in our old Northern minstrelsy? The City clerk on the knife-board of his familiar “bus,” soothing himself with a fragrant Pickwick, after his ten hours’ labour in that turmoil and eddy of restless humanity—the City—may see, as he rolls westward, the sun slowly sinking and setting in its fiery grandeur behind the Marble Arch. He may see the shades of evening stealing over the Park and the Bayswater Road, and darkness settling softly over gentle Notting Hill; and he may see, if there be no fog, or not too much smoke in the atmosphere to prevent astronomical observations, the stars stealing out one by one in the Heavens above him, as the gas-lamps are being lit in the streets around him; but would that observant youth on his knife-board, with his Pickwick, amidst the lamp-lights, in the roar of London, be justified in describing what he had seen as “the gloaming?” I think not. Is not the gloaming twilight only in certain localities, and under certain conditions? Is not the gloaming chiefly confined to the North country, or to mountainous districts? It is difficult to say where the gloaming shall be called gloaming no more, and where twilight is just simple twilight, and no gloaming; but surely there lives not the man who will assert that he has seen a real gloaming effect in the Tottenham Court Road, for instance!

Can it be applied to eventide in the flat fens of Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire? Does the gloaming ever fall on the manufacturing districts of Yorkshire—Leeds, Sheffield, Huddersfield? Twilight in the Potteries is surely twilight and no gloaming. May not, are not the limits within which the latter word may be used as aptly describing eventide, be the limits within which our old balladry sprung and flourished? May not, are not the limits within which the word is wholly inapplicable to describe the close of day, be the limits within which the love of song was not so strongly developed—where external nature did not, and does not suggest song, or poetry to the mind? Well, that definition is quite enough for the present day, in which “hard and fast lines” are at a discount! But there is still that awkward question, “What is the gloaming?” And what is there in the gloaming that distinguishes it from that which is twilight merely? To answer that with any hope of conveying any sense of the difference which undoubtedly does exist, is a matter which is beyond the capacity of any one not being a Ruskin. As to define the gloaming is beyond the powers of ordinary mortals, and as ostracism is threatened if I do not do something—as I am writing in terrorem, and to save my pen-and-pencil existence, which is hanging on this slender thread—I will, in default of being able to do better, give my own experiences of a real “GLOAMING.”

Time of year—the end of August. Locality, not the Tottenham Court Road, but one of the northernmost points of the Northumberland border—a wild, rough, hard land—the fighting ground, for centuries upon centuries, first of the old Romans, and then of our own border laddies, who held it against the “rieving Scots”—a land over which the famous Sixth Legion has marched—a land which has seen Hotspur fight and Douglas fall—a land where almost every hillside and burn has its legend and ballad—a land on which one would reasonably expect to see the gloaming, as distinguished from twilight, fall! I had had ten days walking after wild grouse—tramping through the heather, generally dripping wet, for the Scotch mist did not observe or keep the border line, worse luck to it. At last a fine day, and a long tramp on the moors. At the close of it, having first walked enough over the soft moss and young heather to make me exult in the grand condition for exercise which ten days’ hill air will give, I separated from my party to try for a snipe down by a little tarn, lying in the midst of a “faded bent” in the moor, intending to tramp home afterwards in my own company—and in my own company it was that I had full opportunity of studying the effect of the gloaming.

The sun was getting low as I separated from my party and walked up the side of a long hill covered with old heather, moss, patches of grass, patches of reeds, and bogs. It was a glorious scene! A sea of moorland—wave over wave of undulating hill—rolled from me northward to the foot of old Cheviot, whose long back, some twenty miles away, was lit up by the brilliant sinking sun so clearly that I could distinguish the gullies and inequalities in its time-honoured old sides. Wave over wave, southward and westward, rolled those same moorland hills from my feet, seemingly into the still more distant hills of Cumberland, and from north to south, east to west, was a sea of purple heather in its fullest bloom, lit up by the golden floods of light of the setting sun. In another five minutes the sun had disappeared, and I was down by the side of the little Tarn. Already the air, always fresh on the hills, became fresher; the golden light was dying out of the sky; the blue of the Heaven above me was darkening, the hills, a mass of purple sheen so few minutes ago, stood out sharp and black against the sky; and so I started on my long tramp home, watching the growth of the “gloaming.” There was still the heather. I was still tramping through it, but its colour was gone. It was now an expanse of purple blackness. More intensely dark became the blue of the sky above me as the red streaks, still hovering over the place where the sun had dipped, faded. Gradually, imperceptibly was darkness spreading over everything; and as the darkness spread, the stillness and sweetness of the “gloaming” made itself felt. The stillness and freshness of the air, the mysterious blackness of the hills; the startling white flashes of the little pools, in the moors, looking as though they had absorbed light from somewhere, and were loth to part with it; the faintly reflected colours of the fading sky given back by the burns and streamlets which crossed my path, the whispering of the reeds and long grass; the great grey boulders looming here and there through the dark heather and bracken—boulders behind which at that hour one could not help believing that Kelpies and Pixies were hiding, and might dart out at any moment for some Tam-o’-Shanter frolic over the moor—and the soft springy moss, grass, and heather, still under my feet deadening all the sound of my tread. Light dying, fading, and darkness, a rich purple darkness, spreading; and everywhere the scent of heather bloom and stillness and freshness—freshness indescribable, a stillness only broken by the call here and there of the scattered grouse; or the soft rush of wings and whistling of golden plover far away over head; or the cry of the lapwing—or the bark miles away of a collie dog; or the dripping and murmuring and bubbling of the little burns in the gullies!

Light still dying away! What was left only “dealt a doubtful sense of things not so much seen as felt.” And then it was that I realized what Robert Burns had sung:—

“Gie me the hour o’ gloamin grey,
For it mak’s my heart sae cheery O.”

SKETCHES.

Sketches of life upon the slabs of death
Our loving hand on living stone indites:
Sketches of death upon the screens of life
Time, the great limner, for a warning writes.

Sketches of joy upon the face of sorrow,
Still credulous, our aching fingers trace:
Time steals the pencil, and with bitter scorn,
Sketches old sorrow on our young joy’s face.

E’en so our sketch of life is framed and fashion’d;
In vain with glowing touches we begin—
By day we work upon the light and colour,
Time comes by night and puts the shadows in.

SKETCHES.
A CONVERSATION.
KATEY.

“There! I have finished my sketch of the sloping field, and the misty strip of woodland above, in its autumn dress, by putting you in in the foreground, the only living thing in my misty-autumn picture; though, after all, you don’t look much more than a brown spot on the green, with your brown hat and skirt and your old brown book. I am much obliged to it for keeping you still so long this misty morning. What is there in it?”

“Sketches,” I answered. “Misty sketches like this of yours.” And I stretched out my hand for my cousin’s drawing, while she looked over my shoulder down on to the volume on my knee and uttered an exclamation of surprise when her eye fell on nothing but black letters on a damp spotted yellow page. “‘Treating of the four complexions, into which men are bound during their sojourn in their earthly houses,’” she read aloud; “what does it mean? Let me look on. ‘Of those that draw their complexion from the dark and melancholy earth. Of those who take their complexion from the friendly air. Of those who are complexioned after the manner of fire. Of those who partake of the nature of the subtle and yielding water;’ who writes this queer stuff; is it sense or nonsense?” I held up the book that she might read the faded gilt letters on its wormeaten leather back. “Letters of Jacob Böhme to John Schauffman and others,” she read. “Oh!”—rather a doubtful “oh!” it was, as if the name did not settle the question about sense or nonsense as completely as she had expected it would.

“This is rather a rare book I flatter myself,” I went on. “I bought it at a book-stall because it looked so odd and old, and found to my great joy that it was a miscellaneous collection of Jacob Böhme’s letters, on all sorts of subjects; the four that I have been reading this morning about the four different temperaments, or, as he calls it, complexions into which men may be divided, come in oddly enough among much more mystical and transcendental matter. They are, as I said, misty sketches of character, but I think they show that the dreamy old cobbler knew something about his fellow-men.”

K. “What are Jacob Böhme’s writings like?”

“Oh, I can’t tell you that, I can only tell you what it makes one feel like to read them. Something, as we should feel, you and I, if we climbed up to that peak above the wood there, and looked down on the mist in the valley now the sun is gilding it. We should have a vague feeling of having got up on to a height, and perceived something glorious; but we should not be able to give much account of what we had seen when we came down.”

K. “But I hope you will be able to give me an account of what you have been reading to-day. I want you to explain to me about the four complexions as we walk home.”

“Well, I will try; these four letters have something in them that one can get hold of and venture to put into fresh words. You must remember, to begin with, that Böhme still held to there being only four elements—earth, air, fire, and water—and thought that everything, our bodies included, was made up of various proportions of these elemental substances—the soul, a pure indivisible essence, he thinks of as living imprisoned in these compound bodies. Shadowed and clouded and hindered in its work by the material form that shuts it in from the true fount of being; individualizing it and debasing it at the same time. Character, according to him, depends upon the element that preponderates in the composition of our bodies; our souls work through it and are more or less free. His theory of the causes of differences of character may be ever so foolish, yet I think the classification he draws from it is interesting, and does somehow or other help us to understand ourselves and our fellow-creatures a little better.”

K. “Let me see, he divides people into earth, air, fire, and water people. What sort of character does he suppose the earth element colours the soul with?”

“You are quite right to use the word colour, Böhme thinks of the complexion, or, as we should say, the humour of a person, as of an independent atmosphere through which the soul works, but which is no part of it. He speaks of souls shut up in the dark and melancholy earth element; these are the silent, sensitive, brooding people, who find it very difficult either to give out or receive impressions to or from their fellow-creatures. They are shut up, and as the earth (so at least Böhme says) draws a great deal more heat and light from the sun than it ever gives back, and darkly absorbs and stores up heat within itself, so these earth men and women, separated from their fellows, have the power of drawing great enlightenment and deep warmth of love direct from the spiritual source of light and love. Religious enthusiasts are all of this class; Böhme was an earth person himself, he says so; so was Dante and John Bunyan, and all the other people one reads of who have had terrible experiences in the depths of their own souls and ecstatic visions to comfort them. Böhme says that the very best and the very worst people are those shut in by the earth. They are the most individual, the most thoroughly separated; if conquering this hindrance, they re-absorb the Divine into themselves by direct vision; they rise to heights of wisdom, love, and self-sacrifice that no other souls can reach; but if by pride and self-will they cut themselves from spiritual influences, they remain solitary, dark, hungry, always striving vainly to extract the light and warmth they want from some one or two of their fellow-creatures, and being constantly disappointed, because, not having the power of ray-ing out love, they can rarely attract it. They are eaten up by a sad dark egotism. If they have a great deal of intellect they throw themselves vehemently into some one pursuit or study, and become great but never happy.”

K. “I am thankful to say I don’t know any earth people.”

“Nor do I, pure earth, but I think I have come across one or two with a touch of earth in their temperaments. The air folk are much more common. They are the eager inquisitive people, who want to get into everything and understand everything, just as the air pervades and permeates all creation. Great lovers of knowledge and scientific observers must always be air people. Böhme thinks that in spite of their not being generally very spiritual, they have the best chance of getting to heaven, because of all classes they have most sympathy and are least shut up in themselves, getting everywhere, like their element the air: they get into the souls of others and understand them and live in them. Their influence is of a very peculiar kind; not being very individual, they don’t impress the people round them with a strong sense of their personality; they are not loved passionately, and they don’t love passionately, but people turn to them to be understood and helped, and they are always benevolently ready to understand and help. They are satisfied that their influence should be breathed like the air, without being more recognized than the air: Shakespeare was, I expect, a typical air man. He had been everywhere, into all sorts of souls, peering about, and understanding them all, and how little any one seems to have known about himself! He was separated as little as possible from the universal fount of Being.”

K. “Socrates was an air man too I suppose? Your air people would be all philosophers.”

“More or less lovers of knowledge they must be; but remember that temperament does not affect the quality of the soul itself, it is only more or less of a hindrance. The peculiar faults of air people are, as you will imagine, fickleness and coldness; their sympathy partakes of the nature of curiosity, and they easily adapt themselves to changes of circumstance; they can as easily live in one person as in another, and the love of knowledge in little souls would degenerate into restless curiosity and fussiness.”

K. “Would not Goethe be as good a type of the air temperament as Shakespeare? He certainly had the besetting faults of the complexion, fickleness and coldness.”

“Yes, but the great influence he exercised over his contemporaries, points to his drawing something too from the fire nature.”

K. “Those complexioned after the manner of the fire are, I suppose, the warm-hearted, affectionate souls?”

“Not at all; Böhme would not have consented to lay hold of such an obvious analogy. He dives deeper into fire characteristics than to think chiefly of its warmth. It is above all a consuming element; it takes substances of all kinds and transmutes them into itself, a greedy devourer, reckless of the value of what it takes, intent only on increasing and maintaining itself. The fire people are the ambitious conquerors and rulers of the world, who by the strength and attractive warmth of their own natures force others to bend to them and become absorbed in their projects. They are in reality as great egotists as the earth people, only they don’t keep their egotism at smouldering fever heat in their own hearts; they let it blaze forth into a living flame, which draws weaker natures to be consumed in it, or at least forces them to live only in its heat and light. Napoleon Bonaparte, I think, might stand for a typical fire man. In women the fire nature shows rather differently: pure fire women have acted very conspicuous parts in the world’s history, and generally very disastrous ones, they are the women who inspire great passions and feel very little themselves. They draw others to them for the sake of homage to add to their own light. Madame de Chevreuse and Madame de Longueville must have been pure fire women, I should say. Don’t suppose, however, that the fire, more than any other temperament, secures greatness or real superiority; it enables those who follow its complexion to impress themselves more on other people than the air spirits can, but their influence may be only temporary, and it may be very disagreeable, and in the end repelling. Don’t you know people, both men and women, who have a mysterious way of making their will felt, and who always count for something in whatever society they are in as long as they are present, but who leave no permanent impression? Those I suppose would be, according to Böhme, stupid souls acting through the fire temperament. The influence of the air souls, inconspicuous as it is, is more permanent. Like the air it nourishes and changes without destroying; air people give more than they take. Fire people take more than they give.”

K. “And now what are the water followers? I hope we are coming to some amiable, pleasant people at last, for you have not described anything very attractive yet.”

“I am afraid you will like the water complexion least of all, and be obliged to acknowledge too that ‘the subtle and yielding water’ has more followers than any of the other elements. The water element has a sort of resemblance to the air element; it mimics it without having its power. Water people are that large majority of mankind who have too weak a hold on life to be anything very distinctive of themselves. They simulate living and thinking, rather than really think and live. Just as water receives impressions in itself that it cannot clasp and hold, that seem to be part of it and are not. They are easily influenced by others—by air people for example; but they only image their thoughts in themselves. They look like them when they are with them, and when the influence is removed they are empty like a lake when a veil of clouds is drawn over the sky. The distinctive mark of water people is that they are self-conscious, they are always thinking of themselves, because they live a sort of double life—occupied not only with what they are doing but with the thought that they actually are doing it. Unconsciously they are continually acting a part. They have notions about themselves and act up to them. They see themselves in different lights, and everything else as it concerns themselves. Seeing not the real thing, but the thing reflected in themselves. You must know such people, though they are difficult to describe, and I cannot just now think of any historical typical water person to help out my description. Perhaps Napoleon the Third would do. I think he must be what Böhme meant by ‘those who partake of the nature of the subtle and yielding nature;’ and, by the way, Böhme does not describe the water people as really yielding; on the contrary, he says they are very persistent. In a slow, obstinate way, by seeming to yield and always returning to the point from which they had been diverging (always finding their own level) they have more power than the followers of any of the other elements.”

K. “Is there nothing good about these poor water creatures? Have they no redeeming qualities?”

“Oh yes! The water temperament conduces to industry and perseverance. Water men and women are very good imitators, not actors, and do most of the second-rate work in the world. They are not un-sympathizing. Like air people, they take in easily the thoughts and lives of others, only they are always conscious of taking them in; they don’t lose themselves in others, as it is possible for the air followers to do. While they sympathize, they think how nice it is to be sympathetic; or, if they are women, perhaps the thought is how interesting I look while I am listening to this sad story.”

K. “Come now, I believe you have some particular water person in your mind, for you are getting satirical. It is well we are nearly home. What I can’t understand is, why all the four complexions have so much that is disagreeable in them. In which class would Böhme put really good and noble people?”

“They might come into any one of the four classes. You must remember that according to Böhme the temperament is an outer material atmosphere surrounding the soul, and of necessity partly evil, because it is material; the pure soul has to work through it, and conquer it, according to Böhme.”

SKETCHES.

(In a Garden.)

A LADY.—A POET.

The Lady.