“I wonder if Madeline thinks so?” said Ellinor, enviously glancing at her sister’s absorption, as, lingering a little behind, she devoured the contents of her letter.
“He is coming home immediately, dear father; perhaps he may be here to-morrow,” cried Madeline abruptly; “think of that, Ellinor! Ah! and he writes in spirits!”—and the poor girl clapped her hands delightedly, as the colour danced joyously over her cheek and neck.
“I am glad to hear it,” quoth Lester; “we shall have him at last beat even Ellinor in gaiety!”
“That may easily be,” sighed Ellinor to herself, as she glided past them into the house, and sought her own chamber.
CHAPTER V.
A REFLECTION NEW AND STRANGE.—THE STREETS OF LONDON.—A GREAT
MAN’S LIBRARY.—A CONVERSATION BETWEEN THE STUDENT AND AN
ACQUAINTANCE OF THE READER’S.—ITS RESULT.
Rollo. Ask for thyself.
Lat. What more can concern me than this?
—The Tragedy of Rollo.
It was an evening in the declining autumn of 1758; some public ceremony had occurred during the day, and the crowd, which it had assembled was only now gradually lessening, as the shadows darkened along the streets. Through this crowd, self-absorbed as usual—with them—not one of them—Eugene Aram slowly wound his uncompanioned way. What an incalculable field of dread and sombre contemplation is opened to every man who, with his heart disengaged from himself, and his eyes accustomed to the sharp observance of his tribe, walks through the streets of a great city! What a world of dark and troublous secrets in the breast of every one who hurries by you! Goethe has said somewhere, that each of us, the best as the worst, hides within him something—some feeling, some remembrance that, if known, would make you hate him. No doubt the saying is exaggerated; but still, what a gloomy and profound sublimity in the idea!—what a new insight it gives into the hearts of the common herd!—with what a strange interest it may inspire us for the humblest, the tritest passenger that shoulders us in the great thoroughfare of life! One of the greatest pleasures in the world is to walk alone, and at night, (while they are yet crowded,) through the long lamplit streets of this huge metropolis. There, even more than in the silence of woods and fields, seems to me the source of endless, various meditation.
There was that in Aram’s person which irresistibly commanded attention. The earnest composure of his countenance, its thoughtful paleness, the long hair falling back, the peculiar and estranged air of his whole figure, accompanied as it was, by a mildness of expression, and that lofty abstraction which characterises one who is a brooder over his own heart—a ponderer and a soothsayer to his own dreams;—all these arrested from time to time the second gaze of the passenger, and forced on him the impression, simple as was the dress, and unpretending as was the gait of the stranger, that in indulging that second gaze, he was in all probability satisfying the curiosity which makes us love to fix our regard upon any remarkable man.
At length Aram turned from the more crowded streets, and in a short time paused before one of the most princely houses in London. It was surrounded by a spacious court-yard, and over the porch, the arms of the owner, with the coronet and supporters, were raised in stone.