I would tell how the news of her lover’s pardon proved more potent than all the efforts of the faculty to bring back joy to Bertha’s heart and the roses to her cheek; how Colonel Count de Bellechasse, on being informed of the attachment between his daughter and Oakley, and of the real cause of the duel, at first stormed and was furious, but gradually allowed himself to be mollified, and finally gave his consent to their union; how De Berg exchanged into a regiment serving in Africa, and has since gained laurels and high rank. But I have no time to expatiate upon any of these interesting matters, for I leave town to-morrow morning for Oakley Manor, to pay my annual visit to My English Acquaintance.
THE MURDERER’S LAST NIGHT
BY THOMAS DOUBLEDAY, ESQ.
[MAGA. June 1829.]
“Let him, to whom experience hath been allotted, think it a duty to impart it. We know not of how long a growth goodness is; nor how slow an approach even a protracted culture makes towards perfection. A life of holiness may end in an apostle. As the tree, that hath felt all the winds of heaven, strikes root in that direction whence they oftenest blow, so goodness must have known vicissitude, to know when to resist and when to bend. To know ourselves is to have endured much and long. We must trace and limn out the map of our whole nature to be sure where it is desert, and where it is fruitful—to know the ‘stony ground,’—to discover which needeth the plough, and which doth not. That piety, which is built on ignorance, holds up the shield where the arrow comes not; and sleeps unmailed when the enemy is at the gate. It dismounts to pursue the Parthian; and would dig a deep trench around the tents of the Nomades. It is long ere we root out the weaknesses of our nature, or know the art to preserve the virtue we have attained. For goodness, by over earnestness, may unwittingly be changed from its own essence, as he who knoweth not the vintage shall make vinegar of wine. When we have stubbed up and consumed the first growth of our sinfulness, there ariseth a second crop from the ashes of that which was destroyed. Even as ‘the flax and the barley were smitten; for the barley was in the ear, and the flax was bolled: but the wheat and the rye were not smitten, for they were not grown up;’ so will self-satisfaction arise, after worldly pride and vanity have been withered up. Let him who has found inward peace content himself that he is arrived at the Pillars of Hercules, beyond which there is no safe way. That self-integrity which deems itself immaculate is dangerous. Well hath it been said, ‘Make no suppletories to thyself when thou art disgraced or slighted, by pleasing thyself with the supposition that thou didst deserve praise—neither do thou get thyself a private theatre and flatterers, in whose vain noises and fantastic praises thou mayst keep up thy good opinion of thyself.’ Be the act never so good, yet if it be performed rather with reference to him who does than to that which is done, there is a taint in it for which Eve is hardly answerable. It is but as a fair tower which the builder has set on an unknown quicksand, and which the floods shall damage or carry away. Oh! whosoever thou art that readest this, forget not these words, but grave them as on marble, and in golden letters. ‘While the altar sends up a holy flame, have a care thou dost not suffer the birds to come and carry away the sacrifice—and let not that which began well end in thine own praise or temporal satisfaction, or a sin!’”
Until my twenty-seventh year I resided in the small cathedral town of C——r in which I was born. My parents—especially my mother—were of a serious cast. She had been educated as a Quaker, but following her own notions as to religion, she in the latter part of her life became attached to the tenets of that sect known by the name of Moravians, and last of all to those which, when held in connection with the ritual of the Church of England, are termed “Evangelical;” or, in dissent from it, “Methodistical.”
She was warm and fanciful in her devotional practice; for which the belief as to the palpable and plenary influence of the Holy Spirit upon the human mind, in which she was bred, may help to account. Of these aspirations I, an ardent and sensitive boy, soon learned to partake. My mind was never naturally prone to vice; and my imagination, though forward, was pure. I was brought up by my excellent parents in the practice of virtue; and I loved it. With an outward conduct thus guaranteeing inward persuasions—with professions borne out by an unquestioned and pure, if not altogether unostentatious piety of behaviour, what wonder that I soon became a distinguished votary of the peculiar principles to which I had attached myself. It is difficult for a young man to know himself looked up to—be the cause what it may—without his feelings and his conduct being affected by such homage. Nature had endowed me, if not with eloquence, at least with considerable fluency of speech; and as my natural diffidence—which at first was great—wore away, whether by extempore prayer or seasonable exhortation, the effects I produced exceeded those, the fruits of zeal, of those about me. I became admired as one more than usually gifted, and was gradually exalted into a leader. The occasional tendency to gloom and nervous irritability to which my temperament inclined me, was yet only marked enough to throw no unbecoming seriousness and gravity into the features of so young an apostle. It was strange to see persons of all ages and both sexes admiring at the innate seriousness of so early a preacher, and owning the sometimes really fervid earnestness of my appeals, my warnings, or my denunciations. I began more and more to feel myself in a station above that of my fellows, and that I had now a character to sustain before the eyes of men. Young as I was, could it well have been otherwise? Let me, however, speak the truth. Spiritual pride at last crept upon me. Devotion by insensible degrees became tainted with self, and the image of God was, I fear, sometimes forgotten for that of His frail and unworthy creature. True it was, I still, without slackening, spoke comfort to the ear of suffering or repentant sin—I still exhorted the weak and strengthened the strong. I still warned the besotted in corruption that the fruits of vice, blossom as she will, are but like those of the shores of the Dead Sea, seeming gay, but only emptiness and bitter ashes. But alas! the bearer of the blessed message spoke as if the worm that bore, could add grace to the tidings he conveyed to his fellow-worm. I was got upon a precipice, but knew it not—that of self-worship and conceit—the worst creature-idolatry. It was bitterly revealed to me at last.