"I cannot approve, Edward, of what you have done," said his father; "but God will forgive you!"
They were the last words he spoke; and Raeburn's villany boasted yet another victim.
THE PROFESSOR'S TALES.
THE ENTHUSIAST.
There is a splendid book written, called "The Enthusiast;" but, though it discovers the author's talents, to my apprehension and feelings, it fails, after a few pages, to keep alive the attention—and why? Just because the author, portraying the general character of enthusiasm, steps beyond himself and his own personal observations, and talks about the workings of the principle in a new and untried combination of circumstances. From the law which regulates projectiles in aere, he reasons to what should regulate them in vacuo; he reasons from things seen to things unseen; and then leaves both himself and his reader in the mud and the mist of mere supposition. But, in what I mean to say of enthusiasm, I pledge myself to state nothing but what I have felt or seen; and I shall separate this principle from all others, only marking its influence when it is in a state of intensity, as one marks the electric spark, not in the cloud or the machine, but as it passes from one locality to another. Enthusiasm is, in fact, the electrical element of life. It is more or less everywhere, and often where it is least suspected. It bursts forth, occasionally, in the character of the warrior, the scholar, the poet, the speculator; but it remains as substantially, perhaps, though not so ostensibly, in the bosom of the parent, the husband, the wife, the child, the friend, the kinsman. The tradesman is an enthusiast, if he hopes to succeed; the merchant, the labourer, the mechanic. I have seen a shoemaker as enthusiastic in making his shoes fit neatly without pinching, as the scholar would be in divining the meaning of a difficult passage. Without enthusiasm man had never been what he is. It found him in the world naked, and it clothed him; houseless, and it covered him; defenceless, and it armed him. It run him up through the pastoral, the agricultural, to the commercial state. It composed the "Idylls" of Theocritus, the "Georgics" of Virgil, and the "Fleece" of Dyer. Without this there had been no shepherds to sing, and no poets to sing of their singing; no husbandmen to labour, and no Virgils and Hesiods to speak of their labour and argonautic expeditions; and no sacred bard to celebrate their pursuit of the golden fleece, commerce. But, though all this is true, in the enlarged and diluted sense of the word, it is not so in that sense in which the term is commonly understood. He is quite an enthusiast in the pursuit of knowledge—of a fox—or of hoped-for discovery—or of fame or of fortune—anybody knows to be terms applied to an unusually spirited pursuit of any or all of these. But the enthusiasm of which I speak is more limited still. It is a glow which originates and cools in the same bosom; which has no view beyond itself. It is not a mean to an end, but mean and end in one. Look at that boy: he is never to be found at a leisure hour without a fishing-rod in his hand; at that other youth—his book is his constant companion by the fountain and the hill; at that religious devotee—prayer and Bible-reading are his heaven; at that butcher's boy, who is now killing a lamb—his father has put the knife into his hand to please him—he is an enthusiast in butchery—his passion feeds on itself: it is, like virtue, its own reward—he cares not for cutlets or brown roasts.
Having thus narrowed the field to a class, I shall now select an individual, and that individual shall be one with whom I have had many opportunities of becoming well acquainted. Curious reader, it is not you, nor your brother Robert, nor your uncle Andrew, nor any, so far as I know, of your kindred—it is "myself." And how has enthusiasm wrought in me? That I am just going to tell you. It has made me, in the first place, miserable—most miserable; and I'll tell you how. I took it into my head, when a boy of about eight or nine years of age, that my mother—my only living parent—was mortal; nay, that she was so old and infirm—though she was not more than fifty, and in perfect health—that she would drop down dead, even before my eyes. I followed her wherever she went; held on by her apron-string, roaring aloud most mournfully, and shedding, besides, a world of tears. In vain did my kind mother endeavour to rally me, to reason me, to scold me, and even to chastise me, out of my dream: it had taken such hold of my imagination, that, sleeping or waking, it was there. When my mother travelled anywhere abroad, I was sure to be after her, like a domestic cur. When she went to offer up her private oblations to a throne of mercy, I crept in under her plaid, and heard every audible aspiration. In my sleep she was still before me as I had seen my grandmother—the lips parted, the eyes open, and set in night. It was horrible. I started into real life, and wept aloud. I rushed into my mother's apartment, felt her face all over, and cried bitterly. Reader, have you always been made of pot-mettle? Have you never experienced any such nervous enthusiasm as this? Have you been at all times a child of realities—a very steady, thinking, prudent person; slept like a top, ate like a raven, and talked to the amazement even of the minister himself? You may be a steady, good person now. You may even be married, with a family of thirteen children. You may have succeeded in the world, and feathered your nest. You may have presided well at various public dinners, and
"Never wrote
One line which, dying, you would wish to blot;"
and for this simple and best of all reasons, that you have never written, as far as the public is concerned, any lines at all. You may be a sound-headed lawyer, a calculating merchant, an honest shopkeeper, or, what is still more commendable, because more rare, an honest judge. You may sole shoes or make greatcoats to a nicety—fabricate chairs, or nails, or pins, or periwigs, to a thought; but you are no enthusiast. Do you see that poor maniac, who is just receiving a visit from his mother in his cell, whose eyes are turned up in wild uproar to the roof of his dungeon, and who, in the damp icicles, is apostrophising sun, moon, and stars, Venus, Jupiter, and Aldubaran? That emaciated form of scarcely twenty years of age, which a weeping mother clasps, and whom a frenzied son convulsively strains to his bare and fleshless breast—that is Ferguson, the poet, the prince of enthusiasts—he at whose genius Burns lighted that torch which has filled the world with light. Do you mark that form sitting amongst the sands of Syracuse? The city is taken by the Roman armies. The enemy are within the walls; pillage and murder are the order of the hour. But what is that to him?—he is only an enthusiast. The soldier has challenged him to surrender; his sword is uplifted, and the challenge is repeated. He heeds it not; the sword descends—and the greatest mathematician, the most complete enthusiast, which the world has ever seen, lies before you, a gashed and mangled corpse. The world—its wonders, its atoms, its various formations!—the laws—the eternal laws of its construction and form!—there is one who sung sweetly—oh, how divinely! There is one who sung sublimely—yes, as one overpowered with the spirit of Him who said, "Let there be light, and there was light;" but the cord which was overstrained is snapped, and the bow is unstrung; the pressure upon the delicate fibres of the brain has been too much, and the building of God has given way. Poor Lucretius! the disease of which thou didst expire was "enthusiasm."