[From Howitt’s Country Year-Book.]
THE MYSTERIOUS PREACHER.
In one of those strolls which I have always loved to take into different and little frequented parts of these kingdoms, I fell in with a venerable old man, dressed in black, with very white hair, and of a mild, somewhat melancholy and intelligent look. It was a beautiful scene where I first encountered him—in a wood, on the banks of a noble river. I accosted the old man with a remark on the delightfulness of the time and place; and he replied to my observations with a warmth, and in a tone, which strongly affected me. I soon found that he was as enthusiastic a lover of nature as myself—that he had seen many of the finest portions of the kingdom, and had wandered through them with Milton or Shakspeare, Herbert or Quarles, in his hand. He was one of those who, reading with his own eyes and heart, and not through the spectacles of critics, had not been taught to despise the last old poet, nor to treat his rich and quaint versification, and his many manly and noble thoughts, as the conceits and rhymes of a poetaster. His reverence for the great names of our literature, and his just appreciation of their works, won upon me greatly. I invited him to continue his walk; and—so well was I pleased with him—to visit me at my rustic lodgment.
From that day, for some weeks, we daily walked together. I more and more contemplated with admiration and esteem the knowledge, the fine taste, the generous sentiments, the profound love of nature which seemed to fill the whole being of the old man. But who and whence was he? He said not a word on that subject, and I did not, therefore, feel freedom to inquire. He might have secret griefs, which such a query might awaken. I respect too much the wounded heart of humanity carelessly to probe it, and especially the heart of a solitary being who, in the downward stage of life, may, perchance, be the stripped and scathed remnant of a once-endeared family. He stood before me alone. He entered into reminiscences, but they were reminiscences connected with no near ties; but had such ties now existed, he would in some hour of frank enthusiasm have said so. He did not say it, and it was, therefore, sufficiently obvious, that he had a history which he left down in the depths of his heart, beyond the vision of all but that heart itself. And yet, whatever were the inward memories of this venerable man, there was a buoyancy and youthfulness of feeling about him which amply manifested that they had not quenched the love and enjoyment of life in him.
On different days we took, during the most beautiful spring, strolls of many miles into distant dales and villages, and on the wild brown moors. Now we sate by a moorland stream, talking of many absorbing things in the history of the poetry and the religion of our country, and I could plainly see that my ancient friend had in him the spirit of an old Covenanter, and that, had he lived in the days of contest between the church of kings and the church of God, he would have gone to the field or the stake for his faith as triumphantly as any martyr of those times. It was under the influence of one of these conversations that I could not avoid addressing to the old man the following youthful stanzas, which, though they may exhibit little poetry, testify to the patriotism which his language inspired:
My friend! there have been men
To whom we turn again
After contemplating the present age,
And long, with vain regret,
That they were living yet,
Virtue’s high war triumphantly to wage.
Men whose renown was built
Not on resplendent guilt—
Not through life’s waste, or the abuse of power,
But by the dauntless zeal
With which at truth’s appeal,
They stood unto the death in some eventful hour.
But he who now shall deem,
Because among us seem
No dubious symptoms of a realm’s decline—
Wealth blind with its excess
’Mid far-diffused distress,
And pride that kills, professing to refine—
He who deems hence shall flow
The utter overthrow
Of this most honored and long happy land,
Little knows what there lies
Even beneath his eyes,
Slumbering in forms that round about him stand.