Never had she borne the bitter breath of unkindness, nor writhed beneath that customary injustice which punishes in others the sins of our own temper and the varied fretfulness of caprice; and so she had none of the fears and meannesses and acted untruths which so usually pollute and debase the innocence of childhood. But the promise of her ingenuous brow (over which the silken hair flowed, parted into two streams of gold), and of the fearless but tender eyes, and of the quiet smile which sat forever upon the rosy mouth, like Joy watching Love, was kept in its fullest extent by the mind, from which all thoughts, pure, kind, and guileless, flowed like waters from a well which a spirit has made holy for its own dwelling.
On this evening we have said that she sat by her father’s side and listened, though she only in part drank in its sense, to his conversation with his guest.
The room was of great extent and surrounded with books, over which at close intervals the busts of the departed Great and the immortal Wise looked down. There was the sublime beauty of Plato, the harsher and more earthly countenance of Tully, the only Roman (except Lucretius) who might have been a Greek. There the mute marble gave the broad front of Bacon (itself a world), and there the features of Locke showed how the mind wears away the links of flesh with the file of thought. And over other departments of those works which remind us that man is made little lower than the angels, the stern face of the Florentine who sung of hell contrasted with the quiet grandeur enthroned on the fair brow of the English poet,—“blind but bold,”—and there the glorious but genial countenance of him who has found in all humanity a friend, conspicuous among sages and minstrels, claimed brotherhood with all.
The fire burned clear and high, casting a rich twilight (for there was no other light in the room) over that Gothic chamber, and shining cheerily upon the varying countenance of Clarence and the more contemplative features of his host. In the latter you might see that care and thought had been harsh but not unhallowed companions. In the lines which crossed his expanse of brow, time seemed to have buried many hopes; but his mien and air, if loftier, were gentler than in younger days; and though they had gained somewhat in dignity, had lost greatly in reserve.
There was in the old chamber, with its fretted roof and ancient “garniture,” the various books which surrounded it, walls that the learned built to survive themselves, and in the marble likenesses of those for whom thought had won eternity, joined to the hour, the breathing quiet, and the hearth-light, by whose solitary rays we love best in the eves of autumn to discourse on graver or subtler themes,—there was in all this a spell which seemed particularly to invite and to harmonize with that tone of conversation, some portions of which we are now about to relate.
“How loudly,” said Clarence, “that last gust swept by; you remember that beautiful couplet in Tibullus,—
‘Quam juvat immites ventos audire cubantem,
Et dominam tenero detinuisse sinu.’”
[“Sweet on our couch to hear the winds above,
And cling with closer heart to her we love.”]
“Ay,” answered Mordaunt, with a scarcely audible sigh, “that is the feeling of the lover at the immites ventos, but we sages of the lamp make our mistress Wisdom, and when the winds rage without it is to her that we cling. See how, from the same object, different conclusions are drawn! The most common externals of nature, the wind and the wave, the stars and the heavens, the very earth on which we tread, never excite in different bosoms the same ideas; and it is from our own hearts, and not from an outward source, that we draw the hues which colour the web of our existence.”
“It is true,” answered Clarence. “You remember that in two specks of the moon the enamoured maiden perceived two unfortunate lovers, while the ambitious curate conjectured that they were the spires of a cathedral? But it is not only to our feelings, but also to our reasonings, that we give the colours which they wear. The moral, for instance, which to one man seems atrocious, to another is divine. On the tendency of the same work what three people will agree? And how shall the most sanguine moralist hope to benefit mankind when he finds that, by the multitude, his wisest endeavours to instruct are often considered but as instruments to pervert?”
“I believe,” answered Mordaunt, “that it is from our ignorance that our contentions flow: we debate with strife and with wrath, with bickering and with hatred; but of the thing debated upon we remain in the profoundest darkness. Like the labourers of Babel, while we endeavour in vain to express our meaning to each other, the fabric by which, for a common end, we would have ascended to heaven from the ills of earth remains forever unadvanced and incomplete. Let us hope that knowledge is the universal language which shall reunite us. As, in their sublime allegory, the Ancients signified that only through virtue we arrive at honour, so let us believe that only through knowledge can we arrive at virtue!”