The great apothecary's shop of Human Vanity is filled with "flattering unctions;" and there is not a sore spot upon the heart or mind of man, which cannot there find its unguent--whether the disease proceed from a self-generated canker, or from a blow inflicted by others. The greatest, the wisest, the healthiest, the soundest-minded of mankind have all occasion to apply to this shop; and they do so now and then, under the sores of regret, and failure, and disappointment, or the wounds of superciliousness, forgetfulness, or neglect. Oh,
"The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,"
how often do they drive the iron into the flesh which requires that apothecary's shop to heal it!
Yet, let us not look too curiously into the motives which induced Mr. Prevost, after some hesitation and some reluctance, to accept the appointment offered to him by the government through Lord H----. It was pleasing to him to think that his merits, and the services of which he was conscious--though, be it said, not too conscious--had only been so long overlooked, not from being unapparent or forgotten, but because, in some of his views, he had differed from the ministers lately dismissed. He knew not--or, at least, he did not recollect--how easy it is to forget when one is not willing to remember; how rarely qualities are brought before the public gaze, except by interest, accident, or position--unless by impudence, arrogance, and self-sufficiency. One in ten thousand men of those who rise, rise by merit alone; though there must be some merit in almost all who rise. But the really great are like fixed stars; few of the greatest are ever near the eye; one requires a telescope to see them, and that telescope is Time.
Putting aside military chiefs, who write their names in fire, many of the greatest men of all ages have been overlooked by Fame. The author of Job is unknown; the builders of almost all great buildings of antiquity are nameless: the sculptor of the one Venus, and the one Apollo--doubtful, doubtful--never recorded in history. Then look at the fate of others. Behold Friar Bacon and Galileo, in their dungeons; Dante proscribed and banished; Shakspeare, a mere yeoman at Stratford; Homer and Milton, blind and poor; Virgil, Petrarch, Verulam, the flatterers of a court; Newton, the Master of the Mint! Heaven and earth! what a catalogue of black spots upon the great leopard! To hardly one of them did contemporary fame ascribe a place pre-eminent. Why, it is a salve and a comfort to every fool and every driveller. No spawner of a penny pamphlet--with vanity enough--can be sure that he is not twin brother to the blind beggar of Greece.
But Mr. Prevost forgot all this. He was conscious of having laboured well and diligently in what he believed, the right path: there was in him a sense and an experience of intellectual power: he had felt, and had exercised, the capability of guiding and directing others aright; and, more than all, he had seen many a time the schemes which he had devised, the words which he had written or spoken, adopted--appropriated--filched--by others, and lauded, making the fame and the fortune of a weak, impudent, lucky charlatan, supported by interest, family, or circumstances, while the real author was forgotten, and would have been hooted had he claimed his own. This gave him some confidence in himself, independent of vanity; and be it not for us to assay the metal too closely.
He accepted the office tendered, and at once set about preparing for its duties. There was but one impediment--his anxiety for his son; for, notwithstanding every assurance, he felt that quivering doubt and fear which can only be felt by a parent when a beloved child's fate is in the balance--which all parents worthy of the name have felt, and no child can comprehend.
When Edith rose, on the day following the visit of poor Captain Brooks--somewhat later than was her custom (for the first half of the watches of the night had known no comforter)--Woodchuck was gone. He had waited for no leave-taking, and was on his road towards the mountains before the dawn of day.
It was better for all, indeed, that he should go; and he felt it: not that there was any chance of his resolution being shaken; but, as he had himself said, he wished to forget that resolution as far as possible--to think no more of his coming fate than the dark remembrance of it within his own heart forced him to think; and the presence of Mr. Prevost and his daughter--the very absence of Walter from their fireside--would have reminded him constantly of the rock on which his bark was inevitably steering. With Mr. Prevost and Edith, his presence would have had the effect of keeping up the anxious struggle between affection for Walter and a kindly sense of justice towards him. His every look, his every word, would have been a source of painful interest; and the terrible balancing of very narrowly-divided equities, when life was in the scale, and affection held the beam, would have gone on, in the mind at least, continually.
When he was gone, the agitating feelings gradually subsided. His self-sacrifice presented itself to the mind as a thing decided: the mind was relieved from a greater apprehension by a less; and a quiet melancholy, whenever his coming fate was thought of, took the place of anxious alarm. In some sort, the present and the past seemed to transpose themselves; and they almost looked upon him as already dead.