RANDAL (who had been turning over the pages).—“This sketch of Night in London comes from a man who has lived the life of cities and looked at wealth with the eyes of poverty. Not bad! I will read the book.”
“Strange,” said the parson, smiling, “that this little work should so have entered into our minds, suggested to all of us different ideas, yet equally charmed all,—given a new and fresh current to our dull country life, animated us as with the sight of a world in our breasts we had never seen before save in dreams: a little work like this by a man we don’t know and never may! Well, that knowledge is power, and a noble one!”
“A sort of power, certainly, sir,” said Randal, candidly; and that night, when Randal retired to his own room, he suspended his schemes and projects, and read, as he rarely did, without an object to gain by the reading.
The work surprised him by the pleasure it gave. Its charm lay in the writer’s calm enjoyment of the beautiful. It seemed like some happy soul sunning itself in the light of its own thoughts. Its power was so tranquil and even, that it was only a critic who could perceive how much force and vigour were necessary to sustain the wing that floated aloft with so imperceptible an effort. There was no one faculty predominating tyrannically over the others; all seemed proportioned in the felicitous symmetry of a nature rounded, integral, and complete. And when the work was closed, it left behind it a tender warmth that played round the heart of the reader and vivified feelings which seemed unknown before. Randal laid down the book softly; and for five minutes the ignoble and base purposes to which his own knowledge was applied stood before him, naked and unmasked.
“Tut!” said he, wrenching himself violently away from the benign influence, “it was not to sympathize with Hector, but to conquer with Achilles, that Alexander of Macedon kept Homer under his pillow. Such should be the true use of books to him who has the practical world to subdue; let parsons and women construe it otherwise, as they may!”
And the Principle of Evil descended again upon the intellect from which the guide of Beneficence was gone.
CHAPTER X.
Randal rose at the sound of the first breakfast-bell, and on the staircase met Mrs. Haaeldean. He gave her back the book; and as he was about to speak, she beckoned to him to follow her into a little morning-room appropriated to herself,—no boudoir of white and gold, with pictures by Watteau, but lined with large walnut-tree presses, that held the old heirloom linen, strewed with lavender, stores for the housekeeper, and medicines for the poor.
Seating herself on a large chair in this sanctum, Mrs. Hazeldean looked formidably at home.