He believed it. One read it in every word and gesture; in the rapt look of the eyes so long strained with watching for the nearer promise—the dayspring—of His coming; in the calm assurance of mien and tone, the dignity of a seer, whom Heaven was joined with earth to authenticate. He spoke without visible notes; his only gesture a slight lifting of both hands, with a fluttering, outward movement. We listened vainly for some token in his spoken composition of the epigrammatic, often antithetical style, that gives nerve and point to his published writings. The interesting, albeit desultory talk was, he informed us, the first of a series of sermons upon the Apocalypse he designed to deliver in that place from Sabbath to Sabbath. He had been diligently engaged of late in recasting the horoscope of the world. That was not the way he put it. But he did say that he had reviewed the calculations upon which his published “Lectures” were based, and would make known the result of his labors in the projected series.
He preferred, it was said, the obscure corner in which he preached to any other location, and had refused the offer of a lady of rank to build him a better church, in a better neighborhood. I suppose he thought it would outlast him—and into the millennial age.
I read, but yesterday, in an English paper, that he had retired from pulpit duties, in confirmed ill-health, and that after his long life of toil he is very poor. Some of his wealthy friends propose to pension him. And we remember so well when his “Voices of the Night”—“The Day”—“The Dead” were read by more thousands and tens of thousands than now flock to hear Spurgeon; when the “Lectures upon the Apocalypse” were a bugle-call, turning the eyes of the Christian world to the so long rayless East. We recall, too, the title of another of his books, with the vision of the bent figure and eyes grown dim with waiting for the glory to be revealed,—and another text from his beloved Revelation:
“These are they that have come out of Great Tribulation, and have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.”
CHAPTER IV.
The Two Elizabeths.
IF the English autumn be sad, and the English spring be sour, the smiling beauty of the English summer should expel the memory of gloom and acerbity from the mind of the tourist who is not afflicted with bronchitis. In England they make the ch very hard, and pronounce the i in the second syllable as in kite. They ought to know all about bronchitis, for it lurks in every whiff of east wind, and most of the vanes have rusted upon their pivots in their steadfast pointing to that quarter.
The east wind is not necessarily raw. It was bracing, and the sky blue as that of Italy, when we took a Fourth of July drive of nine hours through the fairest portion of the Isle of Wight. The Tally-Ho was a gorgeous pleasure-coach, all red and yellow. The coachman and guard were in blue coats and brass buttons, red waistcoats, and snowy leather breeches, fitting like the skin; high top-boots and cockaded hats. We had four good horses, the best seats upon the top of the coach, a hamper of luncheon, and as many rugs and shawls as we would have taken on a winter voyage across the Atlantic. There were opaline belts of light upon the sea, such as we had seen from Naples and Sorrento, passing into pearl and faintest blue where the sky met and mingled with the water. Hundreds of sails skimmed the waves like so many white gulls. Here and there a steamer left a dusky trail upon the air. Three were stationary about a dark object near the shore. It looked like a projecting pile the rising tide might cover. The Eurydice, a school-ship of the Royal Navy, had foundered there in a gale six weeks and more agone, carrying upwards of three hundred souls down with her. Day by day these government transports were toiling to raise her and recover the bodies of the boys. A week after we left the island they succeeded in dragging up the water-logged hulk. Only eighteen corpses were found. The sea had washed off and hidden the rest.