.... To some kind of men
Their graces serve them but as enemies.
.... Your virtues, gentle Master,
Are sanctified and holy traitors to you.
As You like It.
ADAM GRAEME OF MOSSGRAY.
CHAPTER I.
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting,
The soul that rises with us, our Life’s star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar;
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home.—Wordsworth.
The first thing which I can record concerning myself is, that I was born.
That I was born! I who now sit in this remote and solitary study, of whose mysteries my good neighbours speak reverently with doubt and wonder, encompassed with things immortal!—the everlasting elements without, the stream, the hills, the fruitful earth, which has been and shall be until the end of time; within with things of life, instinct and inherent, fated perchance to live longer than this present world, the books of men—the Book of God—that out of darkness and sleep and unconsciousness, I was born!
These are wonderful words. This life, to which neither time nor eternity can bring diminution—this everlasting living soul, began. My mind loses itself in these depths. Strangely significant and solemn are the commonest phrases of our humanity; the words which veil the constant marvels of our miraculous life!
But this of “he was born” is greater in my eyes, than that other of “he died.” Say you, He died? say rather, He has changed his garments, has put off a fading robe, which by and by—perchance a time as short in Heaven’s account as are these fleeting days to us—he shall put on again, to wear for ever. But in yonder anxious house, in yonder dim room, with life’s plaintive music rising on his unconscious ear, in wailing and tears, its natural utterance, this wonderful soul began. Be solemn in your rejoicing, ye new mothers, ye glad attendant friends; for this that hath come into the world shall abide for ever, this new existence is beyond the breath or touch of death, a thing immortal, a presence which shall outlive the world.
I was born sadly, in gloom which none broke by the voice of thanksgiving, for the two greatest things of human life met in my birth-hour. I entered the world, a fit entrance for my long, clouded course; and solemnly, in pain and grief, my mother went forth to the other country. My young, fair, gentle mother, of whom I think now as of some beautiful dream that crossed me in my youth.
My father was a hard man, who loved the world; but I used to hear long ago that this moved him. Most deeply all my life has it moved me, who never knew the girl who was my mother. She has been a vision hovering about me all my days; saintly and mother-like when I was young, but now, in her pale beauty resembling more a dead child of the old man who is her son.