CHAPTER XIII. KILLARNEY.
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THERE are words which, although unnoticed in the delightful treatises of the Dean of Westminster 1 (may his fame increase!) have a strange power upon the heart,—words which can ring for us, listening by the brookside, and in arbours and meadow-haunts once more, the joy-bells of a former mirth, or toll above past sorrows and buried hopes their muffled and mournful peal. Breathes there, for instance, a man with soul so dead, who can hear of a primrose bank, or a cowslip-ball, or a roly-poly pudding, or a sillabub, or a soap bubble, or a pantomime, or of Robinson Crusoe, and not feel himself, though it be but for a moment, a happy child again? And do we not realise, on the other hand, in all their brief intensity, our earliest sorrows, when memory suggests to us those solemn sounds of woe, measles, big-brother, ghosts, dentists, castor-oil?
1 Dr. Trench, afterwards Archbishop of Dublin.
And who (to pass on to boyhood) can ever hear of foot-ball, especially if Tom Brown speak, without longing for a kick to goal? Who can be reminded of the river, and not remember those summer days, when, nude and jubilant, we took first a preliminary canter among the haycocks, and then “a header” into the deep, cold stream? or, again, those merry days of winter, when, from our slippery skates we took—well, anything but “a header” upon its glibly frozen surface? On the other hand, who does not felicitate himself that he has arrived at man's estate, when he recalls those awful impositions which he still believes have softened his brain, or when his memory (not to particularise) is tingling at the idea of birch, and contemplating a “Visitation of Arms and Seats” long anterior to Mr. Bernard Burke's?
Chiefly, perhaps, when we come to shave, or, more wisely, to cherish instead of destroying (with many a grimace and groan), those healthful adjuncts to manly beauty, “quas Natura sud sponte suggerit” is felt this great influence of words. I have seen the cheek of a pallid friend suddenly to assume the hues of a peony, the rich crimson tint of dining-room curtains, at mention of the name of “Rose;” and I remember how a Brasenose man, whose fresh ruddy countenance was much more suggestive of Burton-upon-Trent than it was of Burton upon Melancholy, and whom we called Chief Mourner, because he was always first after the bier, would become colourless, and “pale his ineffectual fire,” at the very sound of Blanche. Nor do I see any discredit in confessing my own inability to hear certain sweet Christian-Names (sixteen in all, but nine in particular), without emotions of a troublous, but delightful, character.