"This, O nations! is the end that a great people, freed from their fetters and prejudices, have proposed to themselves; this is the work in which, by their command, and under their immediate auspices, we were engaged, when your kings and your priests came to interrupt our labors.... Kings and priests! you may yet for awhile suspend the solemn publication of the laws of nature; but it is no longer in your power to annihilate or to subvert them."
We conclude with the following:—"Investigate the laws which nature, for our direction, has implanted in our breasts, and form from thence an authentic and immutable code. Nor let this code be calculated for one family, or one nation only, but for the whole with-out exception. Be the legislators of the human race, as ye are the interpreters of their common nature. Show us the line that separates the world of chimeras from that of realities: and teach us, after so many religions of error and delusion, the religion of evidence and truth."
Our space prohibits further quotation in this number; but when we return to the subject, we shall notice chapter xxi., "Problem of Religious Contradictions," and also "The Law of Nature; or Principles of Morality." Few men wrote more on various topics than Volney; and few have been more respected while living, and esteemed when dead, by those whose respect and esteem it is always an honor to possess. At the age of fifty-three, after much travel and great study, Volney consoled his latter days by marrying his cousin—the hope of his youth—Mdlle. de Chassebouf. A disorder of the bladder, contracted when traversing the Arabian deserts, caused his death at the age of sixty-three. He was buried in the cemetery of Pere Lachaise, when Laya, Director of the French Academy, pronounced a noble panegyric over his grave; and months after his death he was spoken highly of by some of the most illustrious men of France. Thus ended the days of one of the Freethinkers of the past whose works, despite all suppression, will never die.
J. W. [ [!-- H2 anchor --] ]
CHARLES BLOUNT.
Look with me through the dark vista of 150 years of clouded history. Throw your mind across the bridge of time, for we are about to visit a tragic scene—a scene which might be depicted by a poet—so much of beauty, of truth, and of goodness, all blasted by the perjuries of the priest. Yonder, in the dim library of an ancestral mansion, embowered amid the woods of the south, close by the gurgling waters which beat an echo to the stormy breezes—those breezes which will never more fan his cheek—that water where he has often bathed his limbs will be his rippling monument. The shady moonlight of an August evening is gilding the rich pastures of Hertfordshire; the gorse bushes have not yet lost their beauty, the pheasants are playing in the woods—woods that so lately resounded with laughter—laughter ringing like a bell—the music of a merry heart. Withdraw those curtains which hide the heart-struck and the dead. Above you is the exquisite picture of Eleanora, gazing into the very bed at that form which lay shrouded in nothingness. You see the broad manly brow—even now the brown hair rises in graceful curls over that damp forehead. The lips are locked in an eternal smile, as if to mock the closed eyes and the recumbent form. Is it true that pictures of those we love are endowed with a clairvoyant power of gazing at those who have caressed them in life? If it is, then on that August night the wife of Charles Blount was watching over his bier.
But who is that pale form, with dishevelled hair and weeping eyes, with an alabaster skin stained with the blue spots of grief? The rapid upheaving swells of that fair bosom tell of affection withered, not by remorse, but by superstition? See her how she nervously grasps that dead man's hand, how she imprints kisses on his lips! Her hair, which yesterday was glossy as the raven's, is now as bleached as the driven snow; to-day she utters her plaintive cries, to-morrow she hastens to join her lover in the tomb. This is a sad history. It should be written with the juice of hemlock, as a warning to Genius of impatient love.
While the fair girl watches by the couch of the suicide, while from the painted canvass Eleanora gleams on the living and the dead, while the clouds of night gather silently over that ancestral hall, around the drooping corn on the bold sloping park, and the clear blue river—all so quiet and gentle—let us gather up the events of the past, and learn the cause of a death so tragic, a grief so piercing.
In the year 1672, at the age of nineteen years, a young man (the son of a baronet) led to the altar the lovely daughter of Sir Timothy Tyrrel. Flowers strewed the path of the wedded pair, and for years their life was one scene of bliss. At last, struck down by disease, Charles Blount stood by the side of his dying wife—in his arms his Eleanora yielded her last sigh. He buried her by the willow-tree in the old churchyard. The lily blended with the white rose, and the myrtle overshadowed the grave. It was here where the widower rested in the evening—here where he taught his children the virtues of their dead mother. Sometimes he gazed at the azure skies, and strange fancies beguiled the mind of the mourner. When he saw the sun sink to the west, gilding the world with its glorious rays, he mused on the creeds of many lands. He fancied he saw a heaven and a God, and traced in the lines of light the patriarchal worshippers of the world. He looked at the sun and its worshippers—those who sought the origin of purity by worshipping that which is the origin of all good. He looked at the fables of Greece, and found delight in the thought of Sappho uttering her diapason of joy in lyrics which told of love and beauty; at Egypt, where the priests, in their esoteric cunning, searched in vain for that which gives life, and motion, and joy; and then he glanced at the Christian heaven, but here all was dark—dark as the Plutonian caverns of Homer's hell. He wished to meet his Eleanora—not in Pagan dreams—not in Christian parables—but in the world of realities. He looked with eager eyes upon the world around him, in society, at Court, and, in the homes of his country. But wherever he went, there was but one thought—one feeling. He wished a mother for his children—a mother like the sainted dead. There was but one who answered the ideal—like in features, in passion, and in beauty—to the lost Eleanora. Born of the same parents, loved by the same brother, educated by the same teachers, imbued with the same thoughts, she was the model of her dead sister; with a sisterly love for her brother, she was already both mother and aunt to her sister's children.
With deliberate thoughts, with convulsive passion, the love of Charles Blount passed the bounds of that of a brother; longing to make her his wife, he adored her with the passion he had lavished on the dead. It seemed as if the shade of Eleanora was perpetually prompting him to bestow all his affection on the young and beautiful Eliza. She caressed his children with the pride of an aunt, she traced the image of her sister in the laughing eyes of the merry babes—still she was not happy. How could she be happy? She loved him as a man—as a brother. She was a Christian—he an Infidel. She was bound by creeds—he by conduct. She was doing the duty she owed to the dead. He sought to do it by uniting himself to the living. Eliza was anxious to marry, but there existed something which, to her mind, was greater than human duties, and it often outraged them. God and the Church demanded her first attention, and then her lover and his children. The Church, in cruel mockery of human rights, stepped between her judgment and her affections. It denied the power of a woman to occupy the married home of her deceased sister. She was willing to pledge her love to Charles Blount at the altar, but the priest mocked her prayers and denounced her affections. The occasion was too good to be lost. Episcopalism sought revenge on its opponent, and it triumphed. Eliza felt the force of Blount's arguments. She wandered with him through the green fields, but her sorrow was too great to pluck the wild roses. The luscious fruits of summer were passed untasted. A heart sick and in trouble, a mind wandering from her sister's grave to her children, and then at the anathema of the Church, made her a widowed maid. To overcome her scruples, her lover wrote a book (inviting the clergy to refute it,) defending the marriage with a deceased wife's sister. But ever as he spoke there was a film before her eyes. There was a gaunt priest, with canonical robes, stood before the gates of heaven. Before him and through him was the way to an eternal happiness, below him was a fiery hell; and he shouted with hoarse voice, Incest, incest, incest!—And ever as he shouted, he pointed with his finger of scorn at this Christian hell, and she conjured up in her mind the old stories of this priest, until she saw the livid flames rising up higher till they encircled her form, and then the priest screamed with fury, Anathema maranatha, incest, incest! And in terror she stood, with the big drops of sweat dripping from her brow, with her heart beating, with her mind distracted, but her affections unclouded.