I felt how insufficient my own thoughts were to supply the hiatus caused by their absence, and mentally ejaculated, as I occupied my lonely cabin at night, with poor Alexander Selkirk,
“Oh, solitude, where are the charms
That sages have seen in thy face?”
I cannot quit the subject of my two friends without saying a few more words regarding them. I have already stated briefly that Captain Belfield and his sister afforded a fine example of that tender attachment—that perfect love and affection which should ever subsist between persons so nearly connected. They truly lived for each other, and the imparting of mutual pleasure seemed to constitute one of the highest gratifications of their lives. It was quite refreshing to observe the warmth and cordiality with which they met in the morning, as she, the picture of neatness and refined simplicity—the very beau ideal of the real English gentlewoman—stepped from the sleeping apartment of the budgerow, whilst he, closing his ponderous Sanscrit or Persian folio, and laying it on the breakfast-table, would rise with extended hand and a cheerful smile to greet her. Then at night, too, after the short but fervent prayer to the Father of all, which the captain himself would offer up extempore, how attentively would he light her taper, and then with a tender salute commend her to her chamber and repose.
If two or three can love in this way, I have since sometimes thought, why not all the world? but all the world, my good griffin, are not brothers and sisters. True, true; I had forgotten that. The more, alas! the pity.
Though, however, the hearts of the pair were thus united, there was not an equal accordance in all their sentiments and opinions. This, however, though productive of numerous discussions, never led to acrimonious disputes. They agreed to disagree. Nature had cast the brother and sister in the same mental mould, to borrow a phrenological term (which I do with respect); the organization was equal. The same fine sense and kindliness of disposition in both; but circumstances had favoured in different degrees the development of their respective qualities. Benevolence, veneration, and ideality must have been large in both, though the captain had evidently been at pains to curb the vagaries of the latter. He had left his home a mere boy, with his mind almost a blank sheet, on which anything might have been inscribed. Whilst others his contemporaries plunged into idleness and dissipation, he, by some chance, flew to the solace of books. In them he studied that mystery of mysteries—man, comparing, as life advanced, the living manifestations of his character with all that he found recorded of his acts; he perused the works of historians, theologians, and metaphysicians, on all sides of all questions; and arrived at one grand conclusion, which is, that truth is a very hard thing to get at, and, like the ideal good of Goldsmith’s Traveller, “allures from far, and as we follow, flies.” He certainly sought it ardently, though he could not felicitate himself, he said, exactly in having yet found the “true truth.” A self-taught genius, who thought vigorously, and expressed himself strongly, he was, no doubt, somewhat of an Utopian; at least such I know Captain Marpeet thought him.
Miss Belfield had been reared in the elegant seclusion, but subject to the somewhat contracting influences of an English country life (nature, if I may so express it, seems to have intended nations as well as individuals to be gregarious), enjoying in her father’s pretty vicarage her pets, her flowers, and the agreeable and polished society of the superior gentry of the vicinity. In the neighbouring village she dispensed her little charities, assuaged the sorrows of the poor and needy, and did all the good she could in her limited sphere; but of the sufferings of the world on a grand scale she knew not much, and as little understood, perhaps, their real causes and remedies. High as were her qualities of heart and intellect—and admirably would she write and speak on all matters on which she allowed them free scope—she was not (and who is?) without a defect; hers was one frequently to be met with amongst the most amiable and estimable of our countrywomen, a gentle intolerance and quiet assumption of infallibility on those subjects on which a very little reading and reflection ought, perhaps, to convince us that we should hold our opinions with the most trembling diffidence—I mean religion, and other kindred subjects relating to the powers and duties of mind, and the great interests of society, but particularly the former. This would evince itself in the expression of extreme pity and commiseration for the obstinacy or delusion of those who conscientiously differed from her in such matters, she, by her manner, never seeming to entertain the smallest shade of suspicion that she herself might be in error. This spirit, partially veiled by the graces of her manner, the kindness of her heart, and the evident rectitude of her intentions, did not look so ill as the ugly monster intolerance generally does; still it was her dark side, and but ill accorded with the general good sense by which she was characterized; her reading on these points had been as exclusive as her brother’s had been general.
Equally holding to certain fundamental points, they were both anxious to regenerate mankind, but were widely opposed in respect to the means to be employed for that purpose. The captain looked primarily to schools, lectures, locomotion, and the wide diffusion of commerce and intelligence, and thought if man fell by eating of the tree of knowledge, he figuratively was destined to rise by a repetition of the act. Miss Belfield principally relied on the multiplication of churches and Sunday-schools, the extension of missionary labours, the early conversion of the Jews, and the like. He thought that religion was the first subject to which an instructed mind would direct its attention. Miss Belfield, on the contrary, considered it the very last on which, if not forced upon him, he would seek to be informed. She considered man as radically vicious, that suffering was necessary to try him, and that it was perhaps better to preach resignation to evils, than to waste time in vain attempts to diminish them materially. Her brother differed, too, in this, and thought that happiness was quite as well calculated to fit us for heaven as misery; and that it was almost a libel on the Deity to suppose that the thanks and praises of a rejoicing heart would not be as acceptable as those emanating from one bowed down by sorrow and suffering. He thought that the evils inseparably annexed to our condition, such as death, sickness, and the loss of those tenderly beloved, were trials sufficient, without our unnecessarily increasing the load by fictitious ones—clearly the result of our follies, contentions, and prejudices.
He used to compare society, as at present constituted, to a body of undisciplined troops, composed of jarring detachments, under incompetent leaders, and amongst whom the finest military qualities and powers are neutralized or impaired by want of concert and organization.
“Educate your masses,” he would say, “for without you do that no conceivable form of government will produce happiness to the governed. Construct the finest piece of mechanism you may, on the strictest principles of art, if the material is rotten and unsound, it must give at some point—the due antagonism of its springs will be destroyed, and it will not work.”