Soon after this, Robert returned to his father’s humble dwelling, at Moorhouse, where he continued his poem, but without any definite plan. “One night, sitting alone in an old room, and letting his mind wander backward and forward over things at large, in a moment, as if by an immediate inspiration, the idea of the poem struck him; and the plan of it, as it now stands, stretched out before him, so that at one glance he saw through it from end to end like an avenue. He never felt, he said, as he did then; and he shook from head to foot.”
How soon September has come! The roses are now nearly all over; but the ram’s-head border I had cut in the grass-plat last spring is gay with fuchsias, verbenas, geraniums, and balsams. Miss Burt, who has no garden of her own, comes now and then to expend, as she says, some of her superfluous energies, in raking and hoeing my garden, while I sit near her in a light wicker chair, and watch her proceedings. She became tired of her cockatoo about a month after her return, and made a present of it to Mrs. Grove. The cockatoo thus shared the fate of a certain fine cucumber, which I remember being passed from house to house one autumn, till at length somebody was found who liked it.
Mrs. Pevensey’s gardener’s boy brought me a delicate little griskin this morning, to show me that, though out of sight, I am not out of mind. I am reading a curious little tale Mrs. Pevensey lent me, called “Agathonia,” about the Colossus of Rhodes. The style is inflated rather than grand, which makes the incidents appear less grand than inflated; but yet, I am struck with the story, which, picturesquely enough, opens thus:—
Three weather-worn brigantines, belonging to Ben Shedad the Jew, are anchored in the harbour of Rhodes, to carry off a hundred brazen statues, the masterpieces of Lysippus and Chares, as well as the renowned Colossus, whose remains have for nine centuries encumbered the arsenal. The bastions are crowded with victorious Saracens—not a Rhodian is to be seen among them; the island has been conquered and humiliated, its temples razed, its churches defiled, its vineyards rooted up, its population maltreated, and, to conclude, its works of art sold to the Jews.
As Ben-Shedad and his crew are proceeding to the spot where the prostrate Colossus lies embedded in sand and rushes, one of the Jews attempts to propitiate Velid, son of the emir of Rhodes, by kissing the hem of his garment. The young man shrinks from him in disgust, and, turning to his friend Al Maimoun, asks whether artizans might not have been found on the island who might have removed the statue without its being polluted by the touch of an accursed race. Al Maimoun replies, that certainly the camp of the faithful might have supplied workmen; and Velid rejoins, that were he not compelled to respect the contract, his soldiers should pitch the Hebrews into the harbour.
Meantime, the attention of the Saracen bystanders, who have been deriding and cursing the Jews, is diverted towards another party slowly approaching the Colossus, consisting of an Ascalonian soldier of the emir’s, three Rhodians, and a tall, grizzled Numidian, who bear a closely-curtained litter, which is accompanied by two veiled females. One of the women stoops with age, but the other is slender and graceful as a young roe. The crowd divides before them; and, when they reach the fallen Colossus, the Rhodians pause, and, the litter-curtains being drawn back, disclose the venerable grey head of an old man, spiritual as an apostle, mild as a sage, who gazes long on the Colossus, lit up by the setting sun, and then sinks back and weeps.
All this is very vivid and touching.
A vague, but terrible report has reached me,—I fervently hope it may not be true,—that a dreadful accident has happened to the Pevenseys somewhere abroad. Phillis heard it of the baker. I am on thorns, while waiting for more particulars. This October has set in wet; the rain has fallen fast all the morning, and I cannot send out for the donkey-chair, nor spare Phillis to go out and make inquiries; nor is a creature likely to call.