And hindes running into the fields,
And he saw neither rich nor poor,
But moss and ling and bare wild moor."
Sir Eger, Sir Greysted, and Sir Gryme.
In this life there was much of that peculiar charm which seems to pervade all mankind, of whatever class or country, and in whatever hemisphere; which irresistibly impels him to return to his, perhaps, original and primitive state, as a nomadic being, a rover of the forest and the plain; which, while it often seduces the refined and civilized man of cities to reject all the conveniences and luxuries of polite life, for the excitement and freshness, the inartificial liberty and self-confiding independence of semi-barbarism, has never been known to allow the native savage to renounce his freeborn instincts, or to abandon his natural and truant disposition, for all the advantage, all the powers, conferred by civilization.
And if, even to the freeborn and lofty-minded noble, the careless, unconventional, equalizing life of the forest was felt as giving a stronger pulsation to the free heart, a wider expansion to the lungs, a deeper sense of freedom and power, how must not the same influences have been enjoyed by those, who now, for the first time since they were born, tasted that mysterious thing, liberty—of which they had so often dreamed, for which they had longed so wistfully, and of which they had formed, indeed, so indefinite an idea—for it is one of the particulars in the very essence of liberty, as it is, perhaps, of that kindred gift of God, health, that although all men talk of it as a thing well understood and perfectly appreciated, not one man in ten understands or appreciates it in the least, unless he has once enjoyed it, and then been deprived of its possession.
It is true that, personally, neither Kenric nor Edith had ever known what it is to be free; but they came of a free, nay! even of an educated stock, and, being children of that Northern blood, which never has long brooked even the suspicion of slavery, and, in some sort, of the same race with their conquerors and masters, they had never ceased to feel the consciousness of inalienable rights; the galling sense of injustice done them, of humiliating degradation inflicted on them, by their unnatural position among, but not of, their fellows; had never ceased to hope, to pray, and to labor for a restitution to those self-existing and immutable rights—the rights, I mean, of living for himself, laboring for himself, acquiring for himself, holding for himself, thinking, judging, acting for himself, pleasing and governing himself, so long as he trench not on the self-same right of others—to which the meanest man that is born of a woman is entitled, from the instant when he is born into the world, as the heir of God and nature.
The Saxon serf was, it is true, a being fallen, debased, partially brutalized, deprived of half the natural qualities of manhood, by the state of slavery, ignorance, and imbecility, into which he had been deforced, and in which he was willfully detained by his masters; but he had not yet become so utterly degraded, so far depressed below the lowest attributes of humanity, as to acquiesce in his own debasement, much less to rejoice in his bondage for the sake of the flesh-pots of Egypt, or to glory in his chains, and honor the name of master.
From this misery, from this last perversion and profanation of the human intellect divine—the being content to be a slave—the Saxon serf had escaped thus far; and, thanks to the great God of nature, of revelation, that last curse, that last profanation, he escaped forever. His body the task-master had enslaved; his intellect he had emasculated, debased, shaken, but he had not killed it; for there, there, amid the dust and ashes of the all-but-extinguished fire, there lurked alive, ready to be enkindled by a passing breath into a devouring flame, the sacred spark of liberty.
Ever hoping, ever struggling to be free, when the day dawned of freedom, the Saxon slave was fit to be free, and became free, with no fierce outbreak of servile rage and vengeance, consequent on servile emancipation, but with the calm although enthusiastical gladness which fitted him to become a freeman, a citizen, and, as he is, the master of one half of the round world. It is not, ah! it is not the chain, it is not the lash, it is not the daily toil, it is not the disruption of domestic ties and affections, that prove, that constitute the sin, the sorrow, and the shameful reproach of slavery.