Personal Recollections
by
Charlotte Elizabeth
Part 1 out of 3
Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Tiffany Vergon, Tonya Allen,
Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS
BY CHARLOTTE ELIZABETH.
ABRIDGED, CHIEFLY IN PARTS PERTAINING TO POLITICAL AND OTHER
CONTROVERSIES PREVALENT AT THE TIME IN GREAT BRITAIN.
CONTENTS.
LETTER I.
CHILDHOOD.--Reasons--Design--Martyrs' prison--Palace garden--Scenery--
Music--Study--Politics--A brother--Protestantism--The Bible--Judicious
plan
LETTER II.
YOUTH.--Private journals--Romance--The drama--Poetical taste--Loss of
hearing--Books--A change--Rural life--Stays--Tight-lacing--Ruinous
custom--The country
LETTER III.
EARLY DAYS.--Idling--Convictions--Anticipating evil--Mischievous errors
--Unreal estimates--Fake views--A parting--Fraternal love
LETTER IV.
YOUTH.--A grandmother--Unfashionable taste--A bereavement--Changes--
Travels--Punctuality--Ocean scenery--False confidence--A storm--Wonders
of the deep--Recklessness--An Arab steed--A fragment--Escapes--
Housewifery--Nova Scotia--Indians--Cosmopolitanism--Home
LETTER V.
IRELAND.--Oxford--Irishmen--The journey--The arrival--An escape--Dublin
--St. John's eve--The dance--Paganism--Trials--Levying distress--
Convictions--Terrors--Awakened conscience--God's teaching--Joy and peace
LETTER VI.
RELIGIOUS PROGRESS.--The church--Socinianism--Temptation--Metaphysics--
Athanasian creed--An epoch--My first tract--A new friend--"Hail Mary"--
Christian communion
LETTER VII.
KILKENNY.--A new residence--Another snare--Compromise--An apostate--"End
of controversy"--The snare broken--Another attack--An argument--
Discussion--The result
LETTER VIII.
The dumb boy.--A pupil--Jack's commencement--Inquiry--A dilemma--Dawning
light--Seasonings--A sunbeam--A soul born--A protester--Idolatry--
Faithfulness--Summons--Superstition--National character--Confession--
Infernal machinery
LETTER IX.
England.--The dumb boy--Jack's adventure--Departure from Ireland--Hannah
More--A carnal politician--Treachery--Afflictions--Jack's progress--
Prayer--Mercies--A soldier--A home--False judgment--Tranquillity
LETTER X.
Sandhurst.--A proposal--A snare--An incident--Papal fulmination--Jack's
petition--Happy caution--Perseverance--Zeal--Testimonies--A contrast
LETTER XI.
Separation.--Prejudices--Home--Forebodings--Danger--Trying scenes--
Queries--Awful contrast--Cadets--Retrospections--A visitation--Sympathy
--True feeling
LETTER XII.
Employment.--Sabbath meetings--Boys--An event--Forgiveness--Prejudices--
The Irish language--St. Giles's--A project--The Irish church
LETTER XIII.
A sunset.--A termination--A sunset--Resignation--The red hand--Joy and
peace--True wisdom--Sympathy--Earnestness--A dying protest--Sleeping in
Jesus
LETTER XIV.
A removal.--An appeal--Irish schools--Literary labors--Antinomianism--
Conclusion
SUBSEQUENT LIFE AND DEATH OF THE AUTHOR
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS
LETTER I.
CHILDHOOD.
I have given my best consideration to the arguments by which you support
the demand for a few notices of events connected with my personal
recollections of the past. That which has chiefly influenced me is the
consideration, urged on what I know to be just and reasonable grounds,
that when it has pleased God to bring any one before the public in the
capacity of an author, that person becomes in some sense public
property; having abandoned the privacy from which no one ought to be
forced, but which any body may relinquish; and courted the observation
of the world at large. Such individuals are talked of during life, and
after death become the subject, I may say the prey, of that spirit which
reigned in Athens of old, and from which no child of Adam is wholly
free--the desire to hear and to tell some new thing. No sooner has the
person withdrawn from this mortal stage, than the pen of biography is
prepared to record, and a host of curious expectants are marshalled to
receive, some fragments at least of private history. I wish I could
dissent from your remark, that even godliness itself is too often sought
to be made a gain of in such cases. Writers who are themselves wholly
unenlightened by spiritual knowledge, and uninfluenced by spiritual
feeling, will take up as a good speculation what must to them be a
mystery, and wrong the subject of their memorial while they injure the
cause in which he labored. Even among those of better understanding in
the ways of truth, we do not often meet sound judgment, calm discretion,
and refined delicacy, combined with affection for the departed and zeal
for the gospel. Private journals are sought out, confidential letters
raked together, and a most unseemly exposure made alike of the dead and
the living.
This I have always seen and lamented; and being aware that my turn would
probably come to be thus exhibited, I have abstained from preserving
even the slightest memoranda of events, thoughts, or feelings, that
could be laid hold on as a private journal: and I have most distinctly
intimated to all those friends who possess any letters of mine, that I
shall regard it as a gross breach of confidence, a dishonorable, base,
and mercenary proceeding on their part, if ever they permit a sentence
addressed by me to them to pass into other hands. Indeed, to such an
extent have I felt this, that for many years past I have kept some
friends under a solemn pledge, that immediately after my death, they
will proclaim my having so guarded my correspondence, in order, if
possible, to shame the individuals from a course with regard to me which
I have never been inveigled into with regard to others. Looking on
epistolary communications as a trust not to be betrayed, I have
invariably refused to deliver to the biographers of my departed friends
any letters of theirs that I might possess: the first application for
them has always been the signal for committing the whole budget to the
flames.
This you know; and you say that the very precautions I have used will
leave my memory more completely at the mercy of ill-judging or ill-
informed survivors, who, in the absence of more authentic information,
may draw on their own invention, and do me injustice. This is the plea
that has prevailed with me now: the uncertainty of mortal life, with the
apprehension that if suddenly removed I shall become the heroine of some
strange romance, founded probably on the facts of a life by no means
deficient in remarkable incidents, but mixed up with a great deal of
fiction; and the consciousness that others may be thereby wounded, whom
I would not wish to wound--have decided me to act upon your suggestion,
and to draw out a little sketch of such matters as can alone concern the
public in any way. Into private domestic History no person possessed of
a particle of delicacy can wish to intrude. It is melancholy to witness
the prying spirit that some are but too ready to cater to, for filthy
lucre's sake: and grievous to reflect that the boasted immunity which
makes the cottage of the English peasant, no less than the palace of the
English noble, a castle--which so fences his domestic hearth that no man
may set foot within his door without his consent, or proclaim an untruth
concerning him without being legally compelled to render compensation,
should be withdrawn from his grave. I cannot tell you how I have blushed
for the living, and kindled with resentment on behalf of the dead, when
contemplating the merciless desecration of what may truly be called the
sacredness of home, in some biographical notices.
You may therefore expect to find in these sheets a record of that mental
and spiritual discipline by which it has pleased the Lord to prepare me
for the very humble, yet not very narrow, sphere of literary usefulness
in which it was his good purpose to bid me move; with whatever of
outward things, passing events, and individual personal adventure, as it
is called, may be needful to illustrate the progress. Of living
contemporaries I shall of course not speak: of the dead no further than
as I would myself be spoken of by them, had I gone first. Public events
I shall freely discuss, and hold back nothing that bears on spiritual
subjects. Nobody shall ever need to be at the trouble of posthumously
searching out and proclaiming my opinions on any topic whatever, apart
from personalities. I will not withhold, nor disguise, nor soften them
down; and if the charge of egotism be brought, let the accusers lay
their hands upon their hearts, and declare that they would not have
sanctioned another in performing for me, as a defunct writer, the office
which nobody can fulfil half so well, because nobody can do it half so
correctly, as myself.
To commence the task, in which I earnestly implore the Father of all
mercies and Teacher of all truth to guide me, to guard me from
misstatement, to preserve me from self-seeking, and to overrule it to
the glory of his great name, I must remind you that my birthplace was
Norwich; a fine old town, distinguished for its many antiquities, the
beauty of its situation on a rising ground, interspersed with a
profusion of rich gardens, and studded with churches to the number of
thirty-five, including a majestic cathedral. Many years have elapsed
since I last beheld it, and perhaps the march of modern improvement has
so changed its features, that were I now to dwell upon my recollections
of that cherished home, they would not be recognized. But I cannot
forget the early impressions produced on my mind by the peculiarities of
the place; nor must they be omitted here. The sphere in which it is my
dearest privilege to labor, is the cause of Protestantism; and sometimes
when God has blessed my poor efforts to the deliverance of some captive
out of the chains of Popish delusion, I have recalled the fact of being
born just opposite the dark old gateway of that strong building where
the noble martyrs of Mary's day were imprisoned. I have recollected that
the house wherein I drew my first breath was visible through the grated
window of their prison, and a conspicuous object when its gates unfolded
to deliver them to unjust judgment and a cruel death. Are any of the
prayers of those glorified saints fulfilled in the poor child who was
brought into the world on that particular spot, though at the distance
of some ages? The query could not be answered, but the thought has
frequently cheered me on. The stern-looking gateway opening on St.
Martin's plain, was probably one of the very first objects traced on the
retina of my infant eye, when it ranged beyond the inner walls of the
nursery; and often, with tottering step, I passed beneath that arch into
the splendid garden of our noble episcopal palace; and certainly, if my
Protestantism may not be traced to that locality, my taste may; for from
all the elaborate display of modern architecture, all the profuse
luxuriance and endless variety of modern horticulture, I now turn away,
to feast in thought on the recollection of that venerable scene. The
palace itself is a fine specimen of the chaste old English style; but
the most conspicuous, the most unfading feature, was the cathedral
itself, which formed the boundary of one-half of the garden; a mass of
sober magnificence, rising in calm repose against the sky, which, to my
awe-struck gaze and childish imagination, seemed to rest upon its
exquisitely formed spire. Seated on the grass, busying my fingers with
the daisies that were permitted to spring around, I have been lost in
such imaginings as I suppose not many little children indulge in, while
permitting my eyes to rove over the seemingly interminable mass of old
grey stone, and then to fall upon the pleasant flowers around me. I
loved silence, for nothing that fell on the ear seemed in accordance
with what so charmed the eye; and thus a positive evil found entrance in
the midst of much enjoyment. I acquired that habit of dreamy
excursiveness into imaginary scenes, and among unreal personages, which
is alike inimical to rational pursuits and opposed to spiritual-
mindedness. To a period so early as the middle of my fourth year I can
revert with the most perfect, most vivid recollection of my habitual
thoughts and feelings; and at that age, I can unhesitatingly declare, my
mind was deeply tinctured with a romance not derived from books, nor
from conversation, but arising, as I verily believe, out of the singular
adaptation to each other of my natural taste and the scenery amidst
which it began to develop itself. Our abode was changed to another part
of the city before this period arrived; but the bishop's garden was
still our haunt, and my supreme delight.
An immense orchard, shrubbery, and flower-garden were attached to my
father's new residence, to which he had removed on account of its
proximity to the church of which he was rector. This, too, was an old-
fashioned house, mantled with a vine, and straggling out, in irregular
buildings, along the slope of the garden. The centre of an immense
grass-plot, studded with apple, pear, and plum trees, was occupied by
the most gigantic mulberry I ever beheld, the thick trunk of which
resembled that of a knotted oak, while in its forest of dark branches
nestled a number of owls and hats. Oh, how I loved to lurk beneath its
shadow on a summer evening, and await the twilight gloom, that the large
owl might come forth and wheel around the tree, and call out his
companions with a melancholy hoot; while the smaller bat, dipping lower
in his flight, brushed by me, accustomed to my presence. I had entered
betimes upon the pernicious study of nursery tales, as they then were,
and without having the smallest actual belief in the existence of
fairies, goblins, or any such things, I took unutterable delight in
surrounding myself with hosts of them, decked out in colors of my own
supplying, gorgeous or terrible beyond the conception of my classic
authorities. The faculty of realizing whatever I pictured to myself was
astonishingly great; and you must admit that the localities in which I
was placed were but too favorable to the formation of a character which
I have no doubt the enemy was secretly constructing within me, to
mislead, by wild, unholy fiction, such as should come within the range
of its, influence. To God be all the glory that I am not now pandering
with this pen to the most grovelling or the most impious of man's
perverted feelings.
But above all other tastes, all other cravings, one passion reigned
supreme, and that acme of enjoyment to me was music. This also was met
by indulgence as unlimited as its cravings; for not only did my father
possess one of the finest voices in the world, and the very highest
degree of scientific knowledge, taste, and skill in the management of
it, but our house was seldom without an inmate in the person of his most
intimate friend and brother clergyman, a son of the celebrated composer
Mr. Linley, who was as highly gifted in instrumental as my father was in
vocal music. The rich tones of his old harpsichord seem at this moment
to fill my ear and swell my heart; while my father's deep, clear, mellow
voice breaks in, with some noble recitative or elaborate air of Handel,
Haydn, and the rest of a school that may be superseded, but never, never
can be equalled by modern composers. Or the harpsichord was
relinquished to another hand, and the breath of our friend came forth
through the reed of his hautboy in strains of such overpowering melody,
that I have hid my face on my mother's lap to weep the feelings that
absolutely wrung my little heart with excess of enjoyment. This was not
a snare; or, if it might have been made one, the Lord broke it in time,
by taking away my hearing. I would not that it had been otherwise, for
while a vain imagination was fostered by the habit I have before
adverted to, this taste for music and its high gratification most
certainly elevated the mind. I do firmly believe that it is a gift from
God to man, to be prized, cherished, cultivated. I believe that the man
whose bosom yields no response to the concord of sweet sounds, falls
short of the standard to which man should aspire as an intellectual
being; and though Satan does fearfully pervert this solace of the mind
to most vile purposes, still I heartily agree with Martin Luther, that,
in the abstract, "the devil hates music."
Before I had completed my sixth year, I came under the rod of discipline
which was to fall so long and so perseveringly upon me ere I should
"hear the rod and who had appointed it." Enthusiastic in every thing,
and already passionately fond of reading, I had eagerly accepted the
offer of a dear uncle, a young physician, to teach me French. I loved
him, for he was gentle and kind, and very fond of me; and it was a great
happiness to trip through the long winding street that separated us, to
turn down by the old Bridewell, so celebrated as an architectural
curiosity, being built of dark flint stones, exquisitely chiselled into
the form of bricks, and which even then I could greatly admire, and to
take my seat on my young uncle's knee, in the large hall of his house,
where stood a very large and deep-toned organ, some sublime strain from
which was to reward my diligence, if I repeated accurately the lesson he
had appointed. Thus between love for my uncle, delight in his organ, and
a natural inclination to acquire learning, I was stimulated to
extraordinary efforts, and met the demand on my energies in a very
unsafe way. I placed my French book under my pillow every night, and
starting from repose at the earliest break of dawn, strained my sleepy
eyes over the page, until, very suddenly, I became totally blind.
This was a grievous blow to my tender parents: the eclipse was so
complete that I could not tell whether it was midnight or midnoon, so
far as perception of light was concerned, and the case seemed hopeless.
It was, however, among the "all things" that God causes to work together
for good, while Satan eagerly seeks to use them for evil. It checked my
inordinate desire for mere acquirements, which I believe to be a bad
tendency, particularly in a female, while it threw me more upon my own
resources, such as they were, and gave me a keen relish for the highly
intellectual conversation that always prevailed in our home. My father
delighted in the society of literary men; and he was himself of a turn
so argumentative, so overflowing with rich conversation, so decided in
his political views, so alive to passing events, so devotedly and so
proudly the Englishman, that with such associates as he gathered about
him at his own fireside, I don't see how the little blind girl, whose
face was ever turned up towards the unseen speaker, and whose mind
opened to every passing remark, could avoid becoming a thinker, a
reasoner, a tory, and a patriot. Sometimes a tough disputant crossed our
threshold; one of these was Dr. Parr, and brilliant were the flashes
resulting from such occasional collision with antagonists of that
calibre. I am often charged with the offence of being too political in
my writings: the fact is, I write as I think and feel; and what else can
you expect from a child reared in such a nursery?
But another consequence of this temporary visitation was an increased
passion for music. The severe remedies used for my blindness frequently
laid me on the sofa for days together, and then my fond father would
bring home with him, after the afternoon service of the cathedral, of
which he was also a canon, a party of the young choristers. My godfather
would seat himself at the harpsichord; the boys, led by my father,
performed the vocal parts; and such feasts of sacred music were served
up to me, that I have breathed to my brother in an ecstatic whisper the
confession, "I don't want to see; I like music better than seeing."
That brother I have not before named; but that only brother was a second
self. Not that he resembled me in any respect, for he was beautiful to a
prodigy, and I an ordinary child; he was wholly free from any
predilection for learning, being mirthful and volatile in the highest
degree; and though he listened when I read to him the mysterious marvels
of my favorite nursery books, I doubt whether he ever bestowed an after-
thought on any thing therein contained. The brightest, the sweetest, the
most sparkling creature that ever lived, he was all joy, all love. I do
not remember to have seen him for one moment out of temper or out of
spirits for the first sixteen years of his life; and he was to me what
the natural sun is to the system. We were never separated; our studies,
our plays, our walks, our plans, our hearts were always one. That holy
band which the Lord has woven, that inestimable blessing of fraternal
love and confidence, was never broken, never loosened between us, from
the cradle to his grave; and God forbid that I should say or think that
the grave has broken it. If I have not from the outset included that
precious brother in my sketch, it was because I should almost as soon
have deemed it necessary to include by name my own head or my own heart.
He too was musical, and sang sweetly, and I cannot look back on my
childhood without confessing that its cup ran over with the profusion of
delights that my God poured into it.
About this time, when my sight, after a few months' privation, was fully
restored, I first imbibed the strength of Protestantism as deeply as it
can be imbibed apart from spiritual understanding, Norwich was
infamously conspicuous in persecuting unto death the saints of the Most
High, under the sanguinary despotism of popish Mary; and the spot where
they suffered, called the Lollard's pit, lies just outside the town,
over Bishop's bridge, having a circular excavation against the side of
Moushold-hill. This, at least to within a year or two ago, was kept
distinct, an opening by the road-side. My father often took us to walk
in that direction, and pointed out the pit, and told us that there Mary
burnt good people alive for refusing to worship wooden images. I was
horror-stricken, and asked many questions, to which he did not always
reply so fully as I wished; and one day, having to go out while I was
inquiring, he said, "I don't think you can read a word of this book, but
you may look at the pictures: it is all about the martyrs." So saying,
he placed on a chair the old folio of Foxe's Acts and Monuments, in
venerable black-letter, and left me to examine it.
Hours passed and still found me bending over, or rather leaning against
that magic book. I could not, it is true, decipher the black-letter, but
I found some explanations in Roman type, and devoured them; while every
wood-cut was examined with aching eyes and a palpitating heart.
Assuredly I took in more of the spirit of John Foxe, even by that
imperfect mode of acquaintance, than many do by reading his book
through; and when my father next found me at what became my darling
study, I looked up at him with burning cheeks and asked, "Papa, may I be
a martyr?"
"What do you mean, child?"
"I mean, papa, may I be burned to death for my religion, as these were?
I want to be a martyr."
He smiled, and made me this answer, which I have never forgotten: "Why,
Charlotte, if the government ever gives power to the Papists again, as
they talk of doing, you may probably live to be a martyr."
I remember the stern pleasure that this reply afforded me; of spiritual
knowledge not the least glimmer had ever reached me in any form, yet I
knew the Bible most intimately, and loved it with all my heart as the
most sacred, the most beautiful of earthly things. Already had its
sublimity caught my adoration; and when listening to the lofty language
of Isaiah, as read from his stall in the cathedral by my father in
Advent, and the early Sundays of the year, while his magnificent voice
sent the prophetic denunciations pealing through those vaulted aisles, I
had received into my mind, and I think into my heart, that scorn of
idolatry which breathes so thrillingly in his inspired page. This I
know, that at six years old the foundation of a truly scriptural protest
was laid in my character; and to this hour it is my prayer that whenever
the Lord calls me hence, he may find his servant not only watching but
working against the diabolical iniquity that filled the Lollard's pit
with the ashes of his saints.
And now upon that all-important topic the Bible I would remark, that
among the most invaluable blessings of my life I remember the judicious
conduct of my parents in regard to it. We generally find that precious
volume made a book of tasks; sometimes even a book of penalties: the
consequence of so doing cannot but be evil. With us it was emphatically
a reward book. That identical book is now before me, in its rich red
cover, elegantly emblazoned with the royal arms; for it is the very
Bible that was placed before queen Charlotte at her coronation in 1761;
and which, becoming the perquisite of a prebendary of Westminster, was
by his wife presented to my mother, to whom she stood sponser. This
royal Bible was highly prized; and it was with special favor that it was
opened for us when we had been good, and were deemed worthy of some mark
of approval. My father, then, whose voice made music of every thing,
would read to us the history of Abel, of Noah, of Moses, of Gideon, or
some other of the exquisite narratives of the Old Testament. I do not
say that they were made the medium of conveying spiritual instruction;
they were unaccompanied by note or comment, written or oral, and merely
read as histories, the fact being carefully impressed on our minds that
God was the author, and that it would be highly criminal to doubt the
truth of any word in that book. * * * The consequences of this early
instruction, imparted as an indulgence, I have reason daily to rejoice
in: it led me to search for myself the inspired pages; it taught me to
expect beauties, and excellences, and high intellectual gratification
where God has indeed caused them to abound. As in the natural world we
find the nutritious fruit not lying like pebbles on the ground, but hung
on graceful trees and shrubs, heralded by fair and fragrant blossoms,
embowered in verdant foliage, and itself beautifully shaped and tinted;
so has the Lord arranged that the garden where grows the fruit of the
tree of life, should abound in all that is most lovely to man's natural
perception; and do we not slight this bounteous care for our mind's
enjoyment while he makes provision for our soul's sustenance, when we
neglect to point these things out to the notice of our children? The
word was my delight many a year before it became my counsellor; and when
at last the veil was withdrawn from my heart, and Jesus stood revealed
as the Alpha and Omega of that blessed book, it was not like gradually
furnishing a vacant place with valuable goods, but like letting a flood
of day into one already most-richly stored with all that was precious;
though, for lack of light whereby to discern their real nature, the gems
had been regarded but as common things. My memory was plentifully stored
with what it had been, my free choice to study; and when in the progress
of this little narrative you learn how mercifully I have been preserved
from doctrinal error in its various forms, through that full
acquaintance with God's word, you will trace his marvellous workings in
thus furnishing my mind, as it were, with an armory of ready weapons,
and will be ready to echo with increased earnestness that emphatic
declaration, "The Bible, the Bible alone, is the religion of
Protestants;" and not only to echo, but also to act upon it.
Religion, however, did at this early period of my life become a very
important concern in my eyes; our mother had taken infinite pains to
assure us of one great truth--the omniscience of an omnipresent God--and
this I never could for a moment shake off. It influenced us both in a
powerful manner, so that if either committed a fault, we never rested
until, through mutual exhortation on the ground that God certainly knew
it, and would be angry if we added deceit to another error, we had
encouraged each other to confession. We then went, hand in hand, to our
mother, and the one who stood clear of the offence acknowledged it in
the name of the transgressor, while both asked pardon. Never did
children more abhor a lie: we spurned its meanness, while trembling at
its guilt; and nothing bound us more closely and exclusively together
than, the discoveries we were always making of a laxity among other
children in this respect. On such occasions we would shrink into a
corner by ourselves and whisper, "Do they think God does not hear that?"
Self-righteousness, no doubt, existed in a high degree; we were baby
Pharisees, rejoicing in the external cleanliness of cup and platter; but
I look back with great thankfulness on the mercy that so far restrained
us: an habitual regard to truth has carried me safely through many a
trial, and, as a means, guarded me from many a snare. It cannot be too
early or too strongly inculcated; nor should any effort be considered
too great, any difficulty too discouraging, any reprobation too strong,
or, I will add, any punishment too severe, when the object in view is to
overcome this infamous vice in a child. Once I remember having been led
into a lie at the instigation, and through the contrivance of a servant-
girl, for whose benefit it was told. Suspicion instantly arose, from my
dreadful embarrassment of manner; a strict investigation commenced; the
girl told me to face it out, for that nobody else knew of it, and she
would not flinch. But my terrors of conscience were insupportable; I
could ill bear my father's steady eye fixed on mine, still less the
anxious, wondering, incredulous expression of my brother's innocent
face, who could not for a moment fancy me guilty. I confessed at once;
and with a heavy sigh my father sent to borrow from a neighbor an
instrument of chastisement never before needed in his own house. He took
me to another room, and said, "Child, it will pain me more to punish you
thus, than any blows I can inflict will pain you; but I must do it; you
have told a lie--a dreadful sin, and a base, mean, cowardly action. If I
let you grow up a liar, you will reproach me for it one day; if I now
spared the rod, I should hate the child." I took the punishment in a
most extraordinary spirit: I wished every stroke had been a stab; I wept
because the pain was not great enough; and I loved my father at that
moment better than even I, who almost idolized him, had ever loved him
before. I thanked him, and I thank him still; for I never transgressed
in that way again. The servant was called, received her wages and a most
awful lecture, and was discharged the same hour. Yet, of all these
things what sunk deepest into my very soul were the sobs and cries of my
fond little brother, and the lamentable tones of his soft voice,
pleading through the closed door, "O, papa, don't whip Charlotte. O
forgive poor Charlotte."
It is sweet to know we have a Brother indeed who always pleads, and
never pleads in vain for the offending child; a Father whose
chastisements are not withheld, but administered in tender love;
judgment being his strange work, and mercy that wherein he delights, and
the peaceable fruits of righteousness the end of his corrections. The
event to which I have referred may appear too trivial a thing to record;
but it is by neglecting trivial things that we ruin ourselves and our
children. The usual mode of training these immortal beings, the plan of
leaving them to servants and to themselves, the blind indulgence that
passes by, with a slight reprimand only, a wilful offence, and the
mischievous misapplication of doctrine that induces some to let nature
do her worst, because nothing but grace can effectually suppress her
evil workings; all these are faulty in the extreme, and no less
presumptuous than foolish: this has produced that "spirit of the age"
which, operating in a "pressure from without," is daily forcing us
further from the good old paths in which we ought to walk, and in which
our forefathers did walk, when they gave better heed than we do to the
inspired word, which tells us, "Foolishness is bound up in the heart of
a child; but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him."
Affectionately yours,
C. E.
LETTER II.
YOUTH.
I have long been persuaded that there is no such thing as an honest
private journal, even where the entries are punctually made under
present impressions. There is so much of positive, active evil always at
work in the mind, that to give a fair transcript of idle unprofitable
thoughts and corrupt imaginings, is out of the question: evil is dealt
with in generals, good in particulars, and the balance cannot be fairly
struck. Those confessions of indwelling sin that remorse will wring from
us, and which perhaps are penned at the moment in perfect sincerity,
being unaccompanied with, the specifications that would invest them in
their naturally hideous colors, beneath the searching light of God's
holy and spiritual law, wear the lovely garb of unfeigned humility. The
reader, coming to such self-condemnatory clauses, is struck with
admiration at the saintly writer's marvellous self-abasement, only
lamenting that he should, in the excess of his lowly-mindedness, have
written such, bitter things against himself, at a time when he was
grieving, resisting, almost quenching the Holy Spirit within by
obstinate transgression.
And if the present, how much more is the past liable to be glossed over?
To be faithful here is next to impossible, for Satan helps us to deceive
ourselves and instructs us to carry out the deception to others. This
consideration might well cause the pen of autobiography to drop from a
Christian's hand, did not an earnest desire to glorify God in his
merciful dealings, together with the consciousness that to no other
could the task he safely delegated, act as a counterpoise to the
discouragement. I do desire to magnify the exceeding riches of God's
grace to me, if I may do so without increasing the charge of arrogant
assumption. I know that among the diversity of gifts which he bestows on
his creatures, he granted me a portion of mental energy, a quickness of
perception, a liveliness of imagination, an aptitude for expressing the
thoughts that were perpetually revolving in my mind, such as to fit me
for literary occupation. I know that Satan, to whom such instruments are
exceedingly valuable, marked me as one who would, if properly trained to
it, do his work effectually within his own sphere; and I am not more
sure of my present existence than I am of the fact that he strove to
secure me for that purpose, from the first expanding of those faculties
which evidently lie exposed to his observation and open to his attacks,
as far as God permits him to work. Can I feel all this, and not bless
the Lord, who so far baffled these designs, and deigned to appoint my
field of labor within the sacred confines of his own vineyard?
The visitation of which I have spoken had a powerful influence on my
after-life; it rendered the preservation of my newly-restored sight an
object of paramount importance, to which the regular routine of
education must needs be sacrificed. A boarding-school had never been
thought of for me. My parents loved their children too well to meditate
their expulsion from the paternal roof; and the children so well loved
their parents and each other that such a separation would have been
insupportable to them. Masters we had in the necessary branches of
education, and we studied together so far as I was permitted to study;
but before it was deemed safe to exercise my eyes with writing
apparatus, I had stealthily possessed myself of a patent copy-book, by
means of which, tracing the characters as they shone through the paper,
I was able to write with tolerable freedom before any one knew that I
could join two letters; and I well remember my father's surprise, not
unmixed with annoyance, when he accidentally took up a letter which I
had been writing to a distant relation, giving a circumstantial account
of some domestic calamity which had no existence but in my brain;
related with so much pathos too, that my tears had fallen over the slate
whereon this my first literary attempt was very neatly traced. He could
not forbear laughing; but ended with a grave shake of the head, and a
remark to the effect that I was making more haste than good speed.
At this time, seven years of age, I became entangled in a net of
dangerous fascination. One evening my brother was taken to the theatre,
while I, on account of a cold, had to stay at home. To compensate for
this, I was permitted to read the play to him; and that play was, "The
Merchant of Venice." I will not dwell upon the effect. I had already
become fond of such theatrical spectacles as were considered suitable
for children--pantomime and broad farce--and like a child I gazed upon the
glitter, and enjoyed the bustle; but now, seated in a corner, all quiet
about me, and nothing to interfere with the mental world, I drank a cup
of intoxication under which my brain reeled for many a year. The
character of Shylock burst upon me, even as Shakspeare had conceived it.
I revelled in the terrible excitement that it gave rise to; page after
page was stereotyped upon a most retentive memory without an effort, and
during a sleepless night I feasted on the pernicious sweets thus hoarded
in my brain.
Pernicious indeed they were; for from that hour my diligence in study,
my docility of conduct, every thing that is usually regarded as
praiseworthy in a child, sprung from a new motive. I wanted to earn a
reward, and that was no longer a sweet story from the Bible, but
permission to carry into my retreat a volume of Shakspeare. A taste so
unusual at my age was hailed with applause; visitors questioned me on
the different plays, to ascertain my intimate acquaintance with the
characters; but no one, not even my father, could persuade me to recite
a line, or to listen when another attempted it, or to witness the
representation of any play of Shakspeare. This I mention to prove what a
powerful hold the enemy of all godliness must have expected to take on a
spirit so attuned to romance. Reality became insipid, almost hateful to
me; conversation, except that of the literary men to whom I have
alluded, a burden. I imbibed a thorough contempt for women, children,
and household affairs, intrenching myself behind invisible barriers that
few, very few, could pass. Oh how many wasted hours, how much of
unprofitable labor, what wrong to my fellow-creatures, what robbery of
God, must I refer to this ensnaring book. My mind became unnerved, my
judgment perverted, my estimate of people and things wholly falsified,
and my soul wrapped in the vain solace of unsubstantial enjoyments
during years of after sorrow, when but for this I might have early
sought the consolations of the gospel. Parents know not what they do,
when from vanity, thoughtlessness, or overindulgence, they foster in a
young girl what is called a poetical taste. Those things highly esteemed
among men are held in abomination with God; they thrust him from his
creatures' thoughts, and enshrine a host of polluting idols in his
place.
My father, I am sure, wished to check the evil which, as a sensible man,
he could not but foresee; my state of health, however, won a larger
portion of indulgence than was good for me. The doctors into whose hands
I had fallen, were of the school now happily very much exploded: they
had one panacea for almost every ill, and that was the perilous drug
mercury. With it, they rather fed than physicked me; and its deleterious
effects on the nervous system were doubly injurious to me, as increasing
tenfold the excitability that required every curb. Among all the marvels
of my life, the greatest is that of my having grown up to be one of the
healthiest of human beings, and with an inexhaustible flow of even
mirthful spirits; for certainly I was long kept hovering on the verge of
the grave by the barbarous excess to which medical experiments were
carried; and I never entertained a doubt that the total loss of my
hearing before I was ten years old, was owing to a paralysis induced by
such severe treatment. God, however, had his own purposes to work out,
which neither Satan nor man could hinder. He overruled all for the
furtherance of his own gracious designs.
Shut out by this last dispensation from my two delightful resources,
music and conversation, I took refuge in books with tenfold avidity. By
this time I had added the British poets generally to my original stock,
together with such reading as is usually prescribed for young ladies;
and I underwent the infliction of reading aloud to my mother the seven
mortal volumes of Sir Charles Grandison. It was in the fulfilment of
this awful task that I acquired a habit particularly mischievous and
ensnaring--that of reading mechanically, with a total abstraction of
mind from what I was about. This became the easier to me from the
absence of all external sound; and its consequences are exceedingly
distressing to this day, as experienced in a long-indulged, and
afterwards most bitterly lamented wandering of the mind in prayer and in
reading the Scriptures. In fact, through the prevalence of this habit,
my devotions, always very punctually performed, became such an utter
lip-service, as frequently to startle and terrify my conscience, when I
found myself saying prayers and thinking idle songs or scraps of plays;
but I regarded such transient pangs of remorse as a satisfaction for the
sin, and never dreamed of resisting the general habit.
Thus far I had led a town life, residing in the heart of a populous
city, enjoying indeed that noble garden, but daily more and more
absorbed in books of fancy. Happily, my health became so affected that a
removal into the country was judged necessary, and I forgave the doctors
all their past persecution of me, in consideration of their parting
injunctions, which were, that I was to have unbounded liberty; to live
entirely in the open air, save when the weather forbade; to be amused
with all rural occupations; and especially to frequent farm-yards, for
the purpose of inhaling the breath of cows. My father exchanged
parochial duty with a friend, taking his village congregation, and
engaging a house very near the church.
That tall white house, what a place it holds in my fond recollection. It
was perfectly an old parsonage, and behind it lay a garden larger than
our city orchard, sloping gently down, with a profusion of fruit and
flowers, bounded by high walls, and the central walk terminating in a
door, beyond which lay the scene of our greatest enjoyment. A narrow
slip of grass, fringed with osiers and alders and willows, alone
separated the wall from a very clear, lovely stream, which winding half
round an extensive common, turned a mill. This small river abounded with
fish, and we soon became expert anglers; besides which, on creeping to
some distance by a path of our own discovery, we could cross the stream
on a movable plank, and take a wide range through, the country. This
removal was a double resource: it invigorated my bodily frame, until I
outgrew and out-bloomed every girl of my age in the neighborhood, while
really laying a foundation for many years of uninterrupted health, and a
constitution to defy the change of climate for which I was destined;
while it won me from the sickening, enervating habit of sedentary
enjoyment over the pages of a book, which, added to the necessary
studies and occupations, was relaxing alike the tone of the bodily and
mental frame. From the polluted works of man, I was drawn to the
glorious works of God; and never did bird of the air or beast of the
field more luxuriate in the pure bright elements of nature than I did.
All the poetical visions of liberty that had floated in my brain seemed
now realized; all pastoral descriptions faded before the actual
enjoyment of rural life. Sometimes wreathing garlands of, wild flowers,
reclined on a sunny bank, while a flock of sheep strolled around, and
the bold little lambs came to peep in our faces, and then gallop away in
pretended alarm; sometimes tearing our clothes to tatters in an ardent
hunt for the sweet filberts that hung high above our heads, on trees
well fortified behind breastworks of bramble and thorn; sometimes
cultivating the friendship while we quaffed the milk of the good-natured
cows under the dairymaid's operation: all was freedom, mirth, and peace.
Often would my father take his noble pointers preparatory to the
shooting season, at once to try their powers and to ascertain what
promise of future sport the fields presented. These were destructive
expeditions in one sense. I remember the following dialogue, repeated to
me by my brother, when we made our appearance at home after a day's
demolition of wearing apparel.
"Mr. B. this will never do; that girl cannot wear a frock twice without
soiling it; nor keep it whole for a week: the expense will ruin us."
"Well, my dear, if I am to be ruined by expense, let it come in the
shape of the washerwoman's and linen-draper's bills, not in those of the
apothecary and undertaker."
My dear father was right; and it would be a happy thing for girls in
general, if somewhat of appearance, and of acquirement too, was
sacrificed to what God has so liberally provided, and to the enjoyment
of which a blessing is undoubtedly annexed. Where, among females, do we
find the stamina of constitution and the elasticity of spirit which
exist in those of our rural population who follow outdoor employment? It
positively pains me to see a party of girls, a bonneted and tippeted
double-file of humanity,
"That like a wounded snake drags its slow length along,"
under the keen surveillance of a governess, whose nerves would never be
able to endure the shock of seeing them bound over a stream and scramble
through a fence, or even toss their heads and throw out their limbs as
all young animals, except that oppressed class called young ladies, are
privileged to do. Having ventured, in a fit of my country daring, to
break the ice of this very rigid and frigid subject, I will recount
another instance of the paternal good sense to which I owe, under God,
the physical powers without which my little talent might have been laid
by in a napkin all my days.
One morning, when his daughter was about eight years old, my father came
in, and found sundry preparations going on, the chief materials for
which were buckram, whalebone, and other stiff articles, while the young
lady was under measurement by the hands of a female friend.
"Pray, what are you going to do to the child?"
"Going to fit her with a pair of stays."
"For what purpose?"
"To improve her figure; no young lady can grow up properly without
them."
"I beg your pardon; young gentlemen grow up very well without them, and
so may young ladies."
"O, you are mistaken. See what a stoop she has already; depend on it
this girl will be both a dwarf and a cripple if we don't put her into
stays."
"My child may be a cripple, ma'am, if such is God's will; but she shall
be one of his making, not ours."
All remonstrance was vain; stays and every species of tight dress were
strictly prohibited by the authority of one whose will was, as every
man's ought to be, absolute in his own household. He also carefully
watched against any evasion of the rule: a ribbon drawn tightly round my
waist would have been cut without hesitation by his determined hand;
while the little girl of the anxious friend whose operations he had
interrupted, enjoyed all the advantages of that system from which I was
preserved. She grew up a wandlike figure, graceful and interesting, and
died of decline at nineteen; while I, though not able to compare shapes
with a wasp or an hour-glass, yet passed muster very fairly among mere
human forms of God's moulding; and I have enjoyed to this hour a rare
exemption from headaches, and other ladylike maladies, that appear the
almost exclusive privilege of women in the higher classes.
This is no trivial matter, believe me; it has frequently been the
subject of conversation with professional men of high attainment, and I
never met with one among them who did not, on hearing that I never but
once, and then only for a few hours, submitted to the restraint of these
unnatural machines, refer to that exemption, as a means, the free
respiration, circulation, and powers both of exertion and endurance with
which the Lord has most mercifully gifted me. There can be no doubt that
the hand which first encloses the waist of a girl in these cruel
contrivances, supplying her with a fictitious support, where the hand of
God has placed bones and muscles that ought to be brought into vigorous
action, that hand lays the foundation of bitter sufferings; at the price
of which, and probably of a premature death, the advantage must be
purchased of rendering her figure as unlike as possible to all the
models of female beauty, universally admitted to be such, because they
are chiselled after nature itself. I have seen pictures, and I have read
harrowing descriptions, of the murderous consequences of thus flying in
the face of the Creator's skill, and presuming to mend, to improve, his
perfect work; but my own experience is worth a thousand treatises and
ten thousand illustrations, in bringing conviction to my mind. Once,
when introduced, as it is called, to the public, through the medium of a
ballroom, I did join in persuading my father to allow of a fashionable
lacing-up, though by no means a tight one. I felt much as, I suppose, a
frolicksome young colt feels when first subjected to the goading
apparatus that fetters his wild freedom. I danced, but it was with a
heavy heart and laboring breath; I talked, under the influence of a
stupefying headache, and on my return home flew to my apartment and cut
the goodly fabric in pieces; nor was I ever afterwards tempted so to
tempt my all-wise Maker by saying to the frame that he had fashioned and
supplied with means of healthful growth, "Hitherto shalt thou go and no
further."
Compressure of the feet was with equal strictness forbidden by my
judicious father. This vain custom is perhaps not so fatal as the other,
but it produces many evils. Coldness of the extremities may certainly
exist where nothing of the kind has been practised; but while rejoicing
that I, experimentally, know nothing of it, I cannot help recollecting
that the bounding pulse which plays so joyously through my veins was
never impeded in any part; and feeling this, I would no more expose a
girl to one infliction than I would to the other. Do Christian mothers
take a sufficiently serious and prayerful view of this subject, as
regards their children? Do they weigh, in a balance of God's providing,
this necessary provision of clothing, to separate not only what is
unseemly for the woman professing godly simplicity, but what is
enervating to those physical powers which she is bound to devote to the
Lord, and the weakening of which is actual robbery of him? I fear we
females are more ready to ask counsel one of another in this matter than
of the Lord; or even of our husbands, who, in nine cases out of ten, no
doubt would decide against the foolish and pernicious custom. At least,
in all my arguments with my own sex, I have found the men invariably
siding with me upon this topic.
You will be tired of these digressions, my dear friend, but I set out by
forewarning you that my opinions would be freely stated; and while
touching on a period of mortal life, where the body no less than the
mind usually takes its direction for the rest of our pilgrimage, I
cannot pass by any thing that appears to me of real importance to
either. We will now return to what poets have sung and citizens sighed
for, time out of mind--the delights of rural life.
All cramping is decidedly bad: wholesome restraints there are, which
parents are bound to lay upon their children, and the latter to submit
to; and among other things, I am sure a defined method and regular
habits in education, work, and play, together, with a most strict
attention to scrupulous punctuality, are not only valuable but
indispensable to a right government of the mind and conduct in after-
life. I have daily cause to lament the unavoidable neglect of such a
system in my own case, during three important years; but unavoidable it
was, unless my life had been sacrificed to the maintenance of such
order. Accordingly, mine was the life of a butterfly; and whatever of
the busy bee has since appeared in my proceedings must be ascribed to
divine grace alone. I often recall those days of summer sunshine to
which I have alluded; and the scarcely less joyous winter season, when,
ploughing the light snow, we raced with our inseparable companion, the
favorite pointer, or built up a brittle giant for the glory of
demolishing him with balls of his own substance, or directed the soft
missiles against each other. Accompanied by our father, but never alone,
we made excursions upon our frozen stream; and very sweet it was to the
fond hearts of my tender parents to watch the mantling glow of health,
the elastic vigor of increasing stature, and the unbounded play of most
exuberant spirits, in the poor child whom they had expected to enclose
in an early grave. How often, seated on the low wide brick-work corner
of the immense fireplace in a neighboring farm-house, have I been smoked
among hams and tongues, while watching the progress of baking a homely
cake upon those glowing wood-embers, or keeping guard over a treasury of
apples, nuts, and elderberry wine, all streaming together in the
lusciousness of a promised feast? Patriotism is with me no inert
principle; it verily lives and acts and pervades my whole spirit; and I
believe its energetic character, except as God deigns to work by his
especial influence, is traceable to that early acquaintance with what is
most purely English among us--the homes and the habits of our own bold
yeomanry.
Cities may resemble one another, and the aping propensities of their
inhabitants produce among them a rapid approximation of appearance and
manners; but where shall we look for the counterpart of a rural English
HOME? The thing is as untransferable as the word is untranslatable. The
antique village church, with its broad square tower or low spire, its
stone porch and oak seats, its narrow casements and the many vestiges of
those abominations which the besom of the blessed Reformation swept from
our services, though it could not, without demolishing the building,
efface their relics from its walls; the churchyard surrounding its base,
with undulating hillocks of mortality clad in long, rich grass, where
lie, half hidden, the old grey monumental stones that can no longer tell
the tale of bygone generations; the more modern sculpture, and the
homely grave-rail standing sentry over the last resting-place of the
poor, while some venerable tree overshadows the ground, where it has
probably stood since the first stone of that modest temple was laid by
our forefathers--all these are so endearingly English. The broad, rich
fields, the hedgerow boundaries and stately lines of vigorous trees
guarding their native soil; and above all, the manly bearing of a bold,
an independent, and a peaceful peasantry, the humblest of whom knows
that his cottage is a chartered sanctuary, protected alike from the
aggressions of civil and of ecclesiastical tyranny--these, too, are
English, sacredly English; and they leave upon the heart that has once
expanded among them, an impress never to be effaced. Among national
reformers, what a noble position would he occupy who should prevail upon
our monied countrymen to exchange their habits of periodical vagrancy
into popish lands, for a sojourn in the moral districts of their own
Protestant England, in the confidence that the climate which agreed with
their fathers from generation to generation--as the dates and ages
decipherable on our monuments will testify--would not annihilate them;
and that the sphere in which God had seen good to place them was that
wherein he purposed them to move, to exert their influence, and to
occupy for his glory, with the talents committed to their charge.
I have told you how books of imagination had supplanted the Bible in my
esteem; those books now, in a measure, yielded to the irresistible
attraction of outdoor amusement; but my mind was so abundantly stored
with the glittering tinsel of unsanctified genius, as it shone forth in
the pages of my beloved poets, that no room was left for a craving after
better studies. Yet the turn of my mind was devotional in the extreme;
so much so, that had the Lord permitted me at that time to come in
contact with the wily fascinations of popery, I am sure I should have
fallen, for a season at least, into the snare. God was really in all my
thoughts; not as the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ--not as a
being of purer eyes than to behold iniquity--not as He whom I was
required to glorify in my body and in my spirit, being bought with a
price, to be no longer my own but his; no, my religion was a very
attractive sort of Deism, which recognized the Creator of all those
things wherein I delighted, and thought to render him great honor by
such recognition. Thomson's "Hymn on the Seasons" was my body of
divinity; and Pope's atrocious "Universal Prayer" would have become my
manual of devotion, had not my father denounced it as a most blasphemous
outrage upon revelation, and charged me never to repeat what he deeply
regretted that I had committed to memory. I hated profanity, and would
not have omitted the private repetition of a form of prayer, morning or
evening, on any account, nor absented myself from public worship. A
slighting expression applied to the Bible would kindle me into glowing
resentment, expressed with no less sincerity than earnestness, and as a
matter of duty I devoted some time every Sabbath-day to the perusal of
God's word, with which I had become more extensively acquainted by
reading it during sermon-time at church. I well know that even then, and
at a much earlier period too, conviction of my own sinfulness was
working very deeply, though not permanently, in my mind: it was not an
abiding impression, but a thing of fits and starts, overwhelming me
while it lasted, but soon shaken off by diverting my thoughts to
something else. These convictions were unquestionably the result of my
occasional readings in God's book: they always occurred during or
immediately after such perusal, or when some passage was suddenly
brought to my recollection.
LETTER III.
EARLY DAYS.
I grew up a healthy, active, light-hearted girl, wholly devoted to
reading and to rural occupations. The latter, particularly gardening,
served as a counterpoise to the sedentary temptation that would have
proved physically injurious; but laying in, as I daily did, a plentiful
store of romantic adventure or fascinating poetry for rumination when
abroad, my mind was unprofitably occupied at all times, to the exclusion
of better things. On Sundays, indeed, I made it a point of conscience to
abstain from light reading; and, as far as I could, to banish from my
thoughts the week's acquisition of folly. I went to church, and read the
Bible at home with a sermon of Blair's, or some similar writer wholly
destitute of gospel light; and I generally had a short fit of
compunction, on that day, for having been so wholly absorbed in worldly
things during the preceding six; for even then God was striving with me
to bring me unto himself, and many a strong conviction did I forcibly
stifle. The warmth of my natural feelings, the ardor with which I
entered into every thing that interested them, and a sort of energy that
always longed to be doing where any cause that I considered good was to
be promoted--all these would have rendered me a working character, had I
obeyed the gracious call to go into the Lord's vineyard. I say a call,
because though as yet I know nothing whatever of the gospel, I could not
overlook or misunderstand the reiterated injunctions of Scripture to
seek spiritual wisdom, to ask for guidance, and to occupy with the
talent committed to my charge. I knew the promise, "They that seek me
early shall find me," and more than once I trembled under such
scriptures as the latter part of Proverbs 1; but my Sunday resolutions
vanished before the Monday's dawning light, and I rushed again with a
redoubled zest into the seductive regions of my imaginary world. Oh, how
greatly do they err who think that such studies may be safely engaged in
by the young and excitable mind. Some indeed there are so phlegmatic as
to be proof against all the charms of poesy, insensible to the highest
illusions of romance; but their number is small, and the individuals
hard to identify, because a very cold exterior is often like the snow-
capped heights of Etna, overspreading a hoard of volcanic elements of
which the burst and blaze will some day be terrific. Such seem imbued
with the spirit of indifference, because they are abstracted and silent
when the laugh and merry jest go round among their companions; whereas
this abstraction, from outward things results not from deadness of
feeling, but from the intensity with which the mind is brooding over
some phantom known only to itself. Nor do this class of dreamers always
appear devoted to Books: a little reading goes far with them; and the
quality rather than the quantity of their selections is to be looked to.
I have known many parents and teachers argue that it is better to bring
the young acquainted with our standard poets and prose authors of a
worldly cast, while they are yet under careful superintendence, so as to
neutralize what may be unprofitable by judicious remark, and to avert
the dangers attendant on such fascinating introductions at a riper age,
when the restraints of authority are removed. Against this, two reasons
have prevailed with me to exclude from my book-shelves all the furniture
of a worldly library, and to watch against its introduction from other
quarters. One is; the consideration that we are not authorized to
calculate on the continuance of any creature's mortal existence; nor can
we ever know that the being whom we are training for eternity will not
be called into it before such period of life as is here anticipated. In
such a case, how sad to feel that we have needlessly forestalled an evil
day, and even momentarily diverted the young spirit from a sacred path.
The other consideration is this: that as the flesh and the devil will
assuredly do their parts without help from me, and the children of this
world, who are wiser in their generation than the children of light,
will certainly do the same; I may take a lesson of policy from them,
using my best endeavors to preoccupy the field with what is decidedly
good, and humbly hoping that the seed so sown may, through the operation
of the Holy Spirit, take root before the tares are introduced, leaving
little room for them to grow.
Of all the errors into which the world has fallen, none is more fatally
mischievous than the habit of overlooking the personality, the energy,
the power, the watchfulness, the deep cunning of the devil. By a
conventional system, no doubt of his own suggesting, he is never to be
named but in the act of worshipping God, or that of spiritual
instruction. Any other robber and murderer, who was known to be on the
watch to attack our houses, would be the subject of free discourse: his
habits, his haunts, his usual plans, his successful and his baffled
assaults in former cases, would be talked over, and thus a salutary fear
would be kept alive, influencing us to bolt and bar, and watch and ward
with unfailing vigilance, to avert a surprise. But Satan seems to be a
privileged person: we learn, in the nursery, to fancy him a hideous
caricature of human nature, with horns, hoof, and a tail, inspiring
disgust, and a childish fear that wears off as we advance into youth,
leaving an impression rather ludicrous than alarming of the ugly phantom
that, nevertheless, continues identified with him of whom we read in the
Bible. We then perhaps take up Milton, engrafting his poetical
conception upon the original nursery stock, and make a devil half
monster, half archangel, invested with the ugliness of the first and the
sublimity of the second, but still far removed from the scripture
character of that roaring lion who "goeth about seeking whom he may
devour." We do not realize his existence, his presence, his devices;
and so we often do his work from sheer ignorance or inexcusable
thoughtlessness about it.
With me, as I have told you, the Bible did its work and conscience did
hers; but a passion for the unreal proved too strong for both.
Undoubtedly God could have wrought, as afterwards he did, to the casting
down of imaginations and every thing that exalteth itself against
Christ. But how many years of sorrow might have been averted, or how
greatly at least might those sorrows have been mitigated, had not the
inveteracy of a long-cherished disease required such sharp discipline to
bring it under. Pride was the master-sin of my corrupt nature, a pride
that every child of Adam inherits, but which peculiarly beset me. It was
not what usually goes by that name: no one ever accused me of an
approach to haughtiness, neither was I boastful or forward, as far as I
know; but I delighted to model my own character according to the
standard set forth in my foolish books, and by the contemplation of them
I hoped to succeed. I loved to mark in others a mean, ungenerous,
selfish, or malicious trait, and to contrast with it my own high-flown
notions of the opposite qualities. My memory was well stored with fine
sentiments concerning human dignity, honor, virtue, and so forth; and
while secretly applying them--for I was not inclined to make ill-natured
remarks--in contrast to the failings of those around me, I naturally
learned to identify myself with the aforesaid sentiments, and to take it
for granted it was I who shone so brightly at other people's expense.
This is the inevitable consequence of measuring ourselves by ourselves,
as all will do who are not led betimes to the standard appointed of God.
And now, the chambers of imagery being well furnished, I became in
thought the heroine of all the foolish, improbable adventures I met
with. Shakspeare and others having furnished me with dresses and
decorations, every day of my life had its drama. Adventures the most
improbable, situations the most trying, and conversation the most
nonsensical among a visionary acquaintance of my own creating, became
the constant amusement of my mind; or if I took a fancy to any new
companion, that individual was metamorphosed into something equally
unreal, and was soon looked upon in the light, not of sober reality, but
of fanciful extravagance. Of course my estimate alike of persons and of
things was egregiously false; and with a fair portion of common-sense
naturally belonging to me, I became most emphatically a fool. Even when
employed at the pencil, which I dearly loved, I could not trace a figure
on the paper or a landscape on the canvas, that did not presently become
the subject of a separate romance; and it never occurred to me that
there was danger, much less sin, in this. I loved dancing to excess, and
took much delight in all that was brilliant and beautiful; but upon the
whole I preferred the uninterrupted course of my own vain thoughts, and
then admired myself for being of a less dissipated turn than my young
friends. Of course, I am now speaking of the time when, according to the
world's usage, and rather earlier than usual, that is to say, at
sixteen, I was introduced into society, by making my appearance at a
grand election ball; and moreover, publicly receiving the compliments of
the most polished and distinguished of our successful candidates, for
sundry political squibs, said to be full of drollery and point, which
had been traced home to me. Alas for the girl who makes such a debut! We
were now again resident in the town, or rather within the precincts, as
they are called, surrounding that venerable cathedral which had been the
object of my babyish contemplations, and which is endeared to me beyond
any other spot in my native place.
My beloved companion, my brother, had always manifested the most decided
predilection for a military life. Often had he, in earliest childhood,
toddled away from the gate after the fife and drum of a recruiting
party; and often did he march and countermarch me, till I could not
stand for fatigue, with a grenadier's cap, alias a muff, on my head, and
my father's large cane shouldered by way of a firelock. The menaced
invasion had added fuel to his martial fire, and when any other line of
life was pointed out to him, his high spirits would droop, and the
desire of his heart show itself with increasing decision. Our parents
were very anxious to settle him at home for my sake, who seemed unable
to live without him; and I am sure that my influence would have
prevailed even over his long-cherished inclination, so dearly did he
love me, but here the effect of that pernicious reading showed itself
and forged the first link in a long chain of sorrows. I viewed the
matter through the lying medium of romance: glory, fame, a conqueror's
wreath or a hero's grave, with all the vain merit of such a sacrifice as
I must myself make in sending him to the field--these wrought on me to
stifle in my aching bosom the cry of natural affection, and I encouraged
the boy in his choice, and helped him to urge on our parents this
offering up of their only son, the darling of all our hearts, to the
Moloch of war.
Finding that he could not be dissuaded, my father gave a reluctant
consent; and let me here record an instance of generous kindness on the
part of the bishop. He went to London, and by dint of personal,
persevering importunity, obtained in a few days a commission in the
army, at a time when seven hundred applicants, many of them backed by
strong interest, were waiting for the same boon. The suddenness of the
thing was quite stunning; we calculated on a delay of this sore trial;
but it was done, and he was ordered to repair immediately, not to the
depot, but to his regiment, then hotly engaged in the Peninsula. The
bishop's kindness did not end here; he carried his generosity further in
other ways, and likewise gave him introductions of great value. I love
to record it of one whose public conduct as a Protestant prelate I am
compelled to lament, but whose private character was most lovely.
Upheld by the intoxicating power of senseless romance, not by confidence
in God, nor even by the reality of the patriotism that I persuaded
myself was at the root of it all, I bore to see that beloved companion
of my life depart for the scene of most bloody conflict. He was not
nearly full grown; a blooming beautiful boy, reared, and up to that time
tenderly guarded under the parental roof, in almost exclusive
companionship with me. There was indeed but one heart between us, and
neither could fancy what it would be to rejoice or to suffer alone. Of
this I had given a proof in the preceding year. He took the measles and
was exceedingly ill, and great precautions were used to preserve me from
the infection; but, unable to brook a separation from him, I baffled
their vigilance, burst into his apartment, and laying my cheek to his,
resisted for a while all efforts to remove me. To my infinite delight I
sickened immediately, and considered it an ample compensation for all
attendant suffering, that I was allowed to sit constantly in the same
room with him.
How strong, how sweet, how sacred is the tie that binds an only sister
to an only brother, when they have been permitted to grow up together
untrammelled by the heartless forms of fashion; unrivalled by alien
claimants in their confiding affection; undivided in study, in sport,
and in interest. Some object, that such union renders the boy too
effeminate and the girl too masculine. In our case it did neither. He
was the manliest, the hardiest, most decided, most intrepid character
imaginable; but in manners sweet, gentle, and courteous, as they will be
who are accustomed to look with protecting tenderness on an associate
weaker than themselves. And as for me, though I must plead guilty to the
charge of being more healthy, more active, and perhaps more energetic,
than young ladies are usually expected to be, still I never was
considered unfeminine; and the only peculiarity resulting from this
constant companionship with one of the superior sex, was to give me a
high sense of that superiority, with a habit of deference to man's
judgment and submission to man's authority, which I am quite sure God
intended the woman to yield. Every way has this fraternal tie been a
rich blessing to me. The love that grew with us from our cradles never
knew diminution from time or distance. Other ties were formed, but they
did not supersede or weaken this. Death tore away all that was mortal
and perishable, but this tie he could not sunder. As I loved him while
he was on earth, so do I love him now that he is in heaven; and while I
cherish in his sons the living likeness of what he was, my heart
evermore yearns towards him where he is.
Parents are wrong to check as they do the outgoings of fraternal
affection, by separating those whom God has especially joined as the
offspring of one father and one mother. God has beautifully mingled
them, by sending now a babe of one sex, now of the other, and suiting,
as any careful observer may discern, their various characters to form a
domestic whole. The parents interpose, packing off the boys to some
school where no softer influence exists to round off, as it were, the
rugged points of the masculine disposition, and where they soon lose all
the delicacy of feeling peculiar to a brother's regard, and learn to
look on the female character in a light wholly subversive of the
frankness, the purity, the generous care for which earth can yield no
substitute, and the loss of which only transforms him who ought to be
the tender preserver of woman into her heartless destroyer. The girls
are either grouped at home, with the blessed privilege of a father's eye
still upon them, or sent away in a different direction from their
brothers, exposed through unnatural and unpalatable restraints, to evils
not perhaps so great, but every whit as wantonly incurred as the others.
The shyness, miscalled retiring modesty, with which one young lady
shrinks from the notice of a gentleman as though there were danger in
his approach, and the conscious coquettish air, miscalled ease, with
which another invites his notice, are alike removed from the reality of
either modesty or ease. Both result from a fictitious mode of education
--both are the consequences of nipping in the bud those sisterly feelings
that lay a fair foundation for the right use of those privileges to
which she looks forward as a member of society; and if the subject be
viewed through the clear medium of Christian principle, its lights will
become more brilliant, its shadows more dark, the longer and the closer
we contemplate it.
LETTER IV.
YOUTH.
Hitherto you have not heard of any spiritually minded person connected
with my early life; yet there was one, I feel sure, though my
recollections are confused and imperfect on that point; and one to whose
prayers, if not to her teaching, I surely owe something.
My father's mother was a fine, sprightly, robust old lady, rather small
in stature, and already bending a little under the burden of years at
the time when I first recollect her as mingling in the visions of my
childhood, though I know that even from infancy I was the delight of her
warm honest heart. She was simplicity itself in manners, her blunt
speeches sometimes clashing a little with her son's notions of polish
and refinement, as also did her inveterate antipathy to the reigning
fashion, whatever that might be. I remember her reading me a lecture
upon something novel in the cut of a sleeve, ending by this remark: "I
never wore a gown but of one shape; and because I don't follow the
fashion, the fashion is forced to come to me sometimes by way of a
change. I can't help that, you know, my dear; but I never was
fashionable on purpose." She added some pious remarks on vanity and
folly, which I soon forgot; but the other dwelt on my mind because it
chimed in with my own love of independence--a prominent characteristic
with me; too often carried to the excess of self-willed obstinacy.
However, I dearly loved and exceedingly respected my grand mother, and
used in my heart to glory in her smooth clean locks, half brown, half
grey, combed down from under a snowy cap of homely make, when she had
successfully resisted alike the entreaties and examples of contemporary
dames, who submitted their heads to the curling-irons and powder-puff of
a _frizeur_, preparatory to an evening party. I used to stand
proudly at her knee, admiring the high color of her cheek, and uncommon
brilliancy of her fine dark hazle eye, while her voice, remarkably rich
and clear, involuntarily swelled the chorus parts of our magnificent
music.
She was a Percy, not by name, for that had been lost in the female line
some generations before, but the pedigree in my possession shows how
just was her vaunt in that respect. For vaunt it she did, to us at
least, often bringing it forward to check any tendency to behavior
unbefitting those who claimed descent from
"The stout earl of Northumberland,"
with whom I ought to be well acquainted, for the singing of Chevy Chace
in proper time and tune with her, was the only secular accomplishment in
which my dear grandmother personally labored to perfect me, except
knitting and curious old-fashioned needlework. The pride of ancestry
took strong hold of my mind, and such an ancestry accorded but too well
with my romance, innate and acquired. It stood me, many a time, in the
stead of better things, when nerving myself to endure affliction and
wrong; and therefore I notice it, to warn you against exposing your own
children to the same snare.
Next to the fashion, if not in an equal or superior degree, I think my
grandmother most abhorred the French. Indeed her strongest denunciations
against the reigning modes were usually clinched with the triumphant
assertion that they were "French fashions." No marvel if her spirit was
stirred within her by the horrors of revolutionary France, and her
Protestantism strengthened by the butcheries of "Ninety-eight." I knew
that she was a protester and a tory of no common stamp; and I knew that
she brought her Bible forward in support of every opinion that she
uttered. Rarely did I visit her without finding her buried in the study
of that blessed book; and I know that she strove to teach me much of its
meaning; but our change of residence proved a great bar to personal
intercourse, and she never wrote letters. I sometimes trace impressions
on my mind, made in early life, which I am sure must have been through
her means, and though the good seed died on the ground, while the weeds
took root and flourished, still, here and there a grain might sink below
the surface, to spring up after many days.
And now I must record my first sorrow, although I cannot dwell upon it
as on some other things. My brother had been nearly two years absent, on
service in the Peninsula, when an apoplectic attack arrested my lather
in the midst of life and health and vigor, and every promise of
lengthened years. The premonitory visitations of repeated strokes were
disregarded, for we could not, would not, realize the approach of such
an event, and persisted in believing them nervous; but just when all
cause for alarm seemed at an end, and I was rejoicing in the assurance
of its being so, I was called from my pillow at midnight to see that
tender and beloved parent die. The bereavement was terrible to me: I had
always been his principal companion, because no one else in the family
had a taste for those things in which he delighted--literature and
politics especially--and since my brother's departure, instead of
seeking to replace him by friends of my own age, I had turned wholly to
my father, never desiring to pass an hour out of his society, and
striving to be to him both daughter and son. My mother was a perfect
devotee to household affairs, every thought occupied in seeking to
promote the domestic comforts of her family; while I, indulging a
natural antipathy to all that did not engage the intellectual powers,
gave her no help there, I was truly cumbering the ground, seeking only
my own gratification, and dignifying my selfishness with many fine
names, only because it was best indulged in my own dear home. From the
period of my loss of hearing, music had been wholly banished; my father
seemed to lose all relish for what could no longer minister enjoyment to
me, and deeply I felt the force of that affection which could so
instantly and wholly overcome the ruling passion of his mind,
accompanied as it was with such exquisite skill in that delightful
science as rendered him the admiration of all who came within its
influence. It redoubled my devotion to him, and most bitter was the
anguish of my heart when I beheld him taken away at a stroke.
Was this affliction sanctified to me? Not in the least. I found a luxury
in grieving alone, brooding on the past, and painting the probable
future in any colors but those of reality. My father had enjoyed two
livings with a minor canonry in the cathedral, but the emolument was
very small, and his income had not allowed him, as yet, to make any
provision for us. A small annuity was all that my mother could depend
on, and I resolved to become a novel-writer, for which I was just
qualified, both by nature and habits of thinking, and in which I should
probably have succeeded very well, but it pleased God to save me from
this snare. My brother's unexpected return on leave, with our subsequent
changes of abode, paying visits among friends, and keeping my thoughts
constantly unsettled, hindered the execution of the project; and when my
brother returned to Portugal, we repaired to London, to make a long stay
with some near relations. It was there that I met with the gentleman, an
officer on leave of absence, whose wife, at the end of six months, I
became.
I am longing to arrive at that period when the light of the glorious
gospel of Christ first shone upon me through the darkness of many trying
dispensations; therefore I pass by much that intervened, including my
dear brother's marriage, who returned again to London with his bride and
his mother, to resume his staff situation there; and shall only take you
with me across the Atlantic, for a few Nova Scotian reminiscences,
before proceeding to the scene of my most precious recollections, dear
Ireland. My husband had joined his regiment in Halifax, and sent me a
summons to follow him out without delay; in order to which I was obliged
to embark in a large vessel taken up partially by government for the
conveyance of troops, but in which there was a select party, occupying
the state cabin, and making their own terms with the captain for the
best possible accommodation and provision on the passage. Of this number
was I; and certainly a more select, polished and agreeable party of
highly bred gentlemen could not have been found. I went under the kind
care of one of these, with his wife, who had invited me to travel with
them.
Have you ever been at sea? It is a question the answer to which will
throw very little light on the matter, unless you also state how it
agreed with you: no two races on the earth can be more distinct than
those two are upon the water--the people who are sea-sick and the people
who are not. It was my happy privilege to belong to the latter class; I
never for a moment experienced even an unpleasant sensation from any
marine cause, but on the contrary enjoyed exemption from all physical
annoyances during a five weeks' voyage, excepting that of hunger. An
abundant supply of every thing that was nourishing, in the most
palatable form, left no excuse for remaining hungry; nevertheless the
demand was incessantly kept up; and I appeal to all who have been
similarly affected, whether the munching of hard sea-bread from morning
to night under the pressure of a real sea appetite, is not a greater
luxury than the choicest viands on shore. To me it certainly was; and
surely I had reason to be deeply thankful to the Lord, who, by means of
that delicious voyage, and its bracing exhilarating effects, prepared me
for a trying winter in the singular climate for which I was bound.
Every day, and all day long, be the weather what it might, I was
stationed on deck, generally seated on the highest point of the ship's
stern, directly over the rudder, to enjoy a full view of that most
graceful and exquisite spectacle, a large vessel's course through the
mighty deep. Ours was a splendid one, a West Indiaman, almost rivalling
the sea-palaces of the East India Company, and manned in the first
style. The troops on board, under the command of a field officer,
greatly added to the effect and comfort of the thing, for nothing is so
conducive to the latter as military discipline, well and mildly
maintained. Although our party was perfectly distinct from those who
went out entirely at the charge of government, consisting of several
officers and their wives, yet we too were nearly all military, including
the commandant, and were strictly amenable to martial law. Of course
that soul of domestic and social comfort, punctuality, reigned
paramount; every meal was regulated by beat of drum, subordination
carefully preserved, and decorum, to the most minute particular,
insisted on. No dishabille could appear, in the cabin or on deck; no
litter, not an article of luggage visible. All the sick people, all the
cross people, and all the whimsical people were stowed away in their
respective berths, and such drawing-room elegance, combined with the
utmost freedom of good-humor and the unrestrained frankness that results
from a consciousness of proper restraint, pervaded our little select
coterie, amounting to seventeen gentlemen and two ladies, that it did
not need the miserable contrast which I afterwards experienced on the
homeward passage, to assure me we were among the most favored of ocean
travellers.
How very much do they err who consider the absence of order and method
as supplying greater liberty or removing a sense of restraint. Such
freedom is galling to me; and in my eyes, the want of punctuality is a
want of honest principle; for however people may think themselves
authorized to rob God and themselves of their own time, they can plead
no right to lay a violent hand on the time and duties of their neighbor.
I say it deliberately, that I have been defrauded of hundreds of pounds,
and cruelly deprived of my necessary refreshment in exercise, in sleep,
and even in seasonable food, through this disgraceful want of
punctuality in others, more than through any cause whatsoever besides.
It is also very irritating; for a person who would cheerfully bestow a
piece of gold, does not like to be swindled out of a piece of copper;
and of many an hour have I been ungenerously wronged, to the excitement
of feelings in themselves far from right, when I would gladly have so
arranged my work as to bestow upon the robbers thrice the time they made
me wantonly sacrifice. To say, "I will come to you on such a day,"
leaving the person to expect you early, and then, after wasting her day
in that uncomfortable, unsettled state of looking out for a guest, which
precludes all application to present duties, to come late in the
evening--or to accept an invitation to dinner, and either break the
engagement or throw the household into confusion by making it wait--to
appoint a meeting, and fail of keeping your time--all these, and many
other effects of this vile habit are exceedingly disgraceful, and wholly
opposed to the scriptural rules laid down for the governance of our
conduct one to another. I say nothing of the insult put upon the Most
High, the daring presumption of breaking in upon the devotions of his
worshippers, and involving them in the sin of abstractedness from the
solemn work before them, by entering late into the house of prayer. Such
persons may one day find they have a more serious account to render on
the score of their contempt of punctuality, than they seem willing to
believe.
But I have run away from my ship--yet not so; for as every thing shines
out most by contrast, it was natural to think on the ugly reverse when
recalling the beautiful harmony and order of our regulations on board.
We were favored with most delightful weather, fresh and dry and warm;
with only one day's hard rain, during which the sea "ran mountains," as
the sailors said. I was conducted on deck, "just for one minute, that
you may be able to say you have seen such a sea," remarked the gentleman
who put a military cloak over me, and led me up the stairs. But who
could be satisfied with a momentary sight of any thing so stupendously
grand? I resisted all efforts to persuade me into retreating again, and
it ended in my being lashed to the mizenmast by my friendly conductor,
who declared that his head, the best landsman's head on board, would not
stand the giddy scene; in short, that he should be obliged to report
himself sick, and exchange our agreeable society below for the solitude
of his berth. Of course I dismissed him, and was left among the
mountains, alone, save when a sailor passed me on his duties among the
rigging, and gave me a smile of approval, while the man at the wheel
seemed to regard me as being under his especial patronage. The tars love
one who does not flinch from their own element.
Truly, I saw that day the works of the Lord and his wonders in the great
deep. Imagine yourself in a ship, large among vessels, but a mere cork
upon the waters of that mighty main. On every side, turn where you
would, a huge mountain of irregular form was rising-dark, smooth, of
unbroken surface, but seeming about to burst from over-extension. How
did you come into that strange valley? how should you get out of it? how
avoid the rush of that giant billow that even now overhangs your bark?
These questions would inevitably rush through the mind; but in a second
of time the huge body beside you sunk, you were on its summit, and
another came rolling on. Meanwhile the ship would reel, with a slow
slanting movement that gradually lowered the tall masts till the yards
almost dipped in the brine, and you were either laid back on the frame-
work behind you, or well-nigh suspended, looking down upon the water
over the ship's bulwarks. I soon discovered why my companion had so
carefully buckled the leather strap that held me to the mast; certainly
I cannot recall the scene with such steadiness of nerve as I beheld it
with. Every now and then a small billow would burst upon the vessel's
side, sending its liquid treasure across the deck, and more than one
ablution of the kind was added to the fresh-water drenching bestowed by
the clouds. Can you fancy the discomfort of such a situation? Then you
were never at sea, or at least you left your imagination ashore; for I
defy any person not well inured to it, to look on such a scene with so
negative a feeling as discomfort; it will excite either terror or
delight sufficient to engross the whole mind.
I well remember that, when deeply affected by the grandeur of this and
other aspects assumed by the majestic main, I found the highest flights
of man's sublimity too low. They would not express, would not chime in
with my conceptions; and I was driven to the inspired pages for a
commentary on the glorious scene. It was then that the language of Job,
of Isaiah, of Habakkuk, supplied me with a strain suited to the sublime
accompaniment of God's magnificent work. Sunrise I could not witness,
because at that hour no lady might appear on deck, and my cabin had not
a side-window; but sunset, moonlight, starlight, with the various
phenomena of ocean's ever-varying appearance, these furnished an endless
contemplation with which nothing could accord but the language of Holy
writ. I did not bring forth my Bible, well knowing the bantering remarks
to which it would have exposed me on the score of affectation, but my
memory served me equally well in that as in profane poetry; and many a
precious word of warning, exhortation, and promise did I recite,
enchanted by the sublimity of what, as to its spiritual meaning, was
still an unknown tongue to me. Among these, the thirty-second of
Deuteronomy, the fortieth of Isaiah, and other passages full of the
gospel, were repeatedly called to mind; and above all, in blowing
weather, the forty-sixth Psalm delighted me.
You may suppose that I could not wholly forget the fact of being where,
in the strictest sense, there was but a step between me and death. The
first day of our voyage some one had quoted the expression, "There is
but a plank between us and eternity," not with any serious application,
but as a fine thought. I do not think that I was ever for a moment
unmindful of this; the presence of actual danger was always felt by me:
but concerning eternity I had no fears whatever. A general reliance on
the boundless mercy of God, a recognition of Christ as having suffered
for our sins, and a degree of self-righteousness that easily threw my
sins into the shade, while magnifying my supposed merits, these formed
the staff whereon I leaned; and when the most imminent and appalling
peril overhung us, so that we expected to be ingulfed in the waves
without hope of succor, I looked it boldly in the face, confident in my
false hope. Although just then revelling in enjoyments best suited to my
natural taste, life had in reality no charms for me. From all that had
gilded the sonny hours of youth I was completely severed, and the world
on which I had launched was a wilderness indeed in comparison with the
Eden I had left. I would not have made the slightest effort to escape
from death in any form; and though I was not senseless enough to prefer
an eternity of untried wretchedness to the fleeting sorrows of mortal
life, yet as my conscience was lulled to rest by the self-delusion that
I suffered more than I deserved, and had therefore a claim on divine
justice, and as I was willing to receive the supposed balance of such
debtor and creditor account in the world to come, I was perfectly
content to be summoned to my reward. Blessed be God that I was not taken
away in that hour of blind willingness.
The extreme peril to which I have alluded overtook us when within a
short distance of our destination; we were suddenly caught by a
tremendous wind from the south, which blew us right in the direction of
Cape Sable, one of the most fatal headlands in those seas. Night closed
upon us and the gale increased; sails were spread, in a desperate hope
of shifting the vessel's course, but were instantly torn into ribbons.
At one time, for a moment, the rudder broke loose, the tiller-rope
giving way under the violent strain upon it; and the next minute the
spanker-boom, an immense piece of timber, snapped like a reed. It was an
awful scene: on the leeside the ship lay so low in the water that every
thing was afloat in the sleeping cabins; and the poor ladies were
screaming over their terrified children, unheeded by the gentlemen,
every one of whom was on deck. The captain openly declared we were bound
for the bottom, if a very sudden and unlikely change of wind did not
take place. In the midst of all this, I was reported missing, and as I
had the privilege of being every body's care, because, for the time
being, I belonged to nobody, a search was commenced. A young officer
found me, at last, so singularly situated, that he went and reported me
to the captain. I had climbed three tiers of lockers in the state cabin,
opened one of the large stern windows, and was leaning out, as far as I
could reach, enraptured beyond expression with the terrific grandeur of
the scene. The sky above was black as midnight and the storm could make
it, overhanging us like a large pall, and rendered awfully visible by
the brilliancy of the waters beneath. I had heard of that phosphorescent
appearance in the sea, but never could have imagined its grandeur, nor
can I essay to describe it. Even in perfect stillness the illuminated
element would have looked magnificent; what, then must it have been in a
state of excessive, tumultuous agitation, the waves swelling up to a
fearful height and then bursting into sheets of foam; every drop
containing some luminous animalcula sparkling with vivid, yet delicate
lustre? We were going with headlong speed before the wind, and I hung
right over the track of the rudder, a wild, mad eddy of silver foam,
intermingled with fire. There was something in the scene that far
overpassed all my extravagant imaginings of the terribly sublime. The
hurry, the fierceness, the riot of those unfettered waters, the wild
flash of their wondrous lights, the funereal blackness of the
overhanging clouds, and the deep, desperate plunge of our gallant ship,
as she seemed to rend her way through an opposing chaos--it was perfect
delirium; and no doubt I should have appeared in keeping with the rest
to any external observer, for I was stretching out at the window, the
combs had fallen from my hair, which streamed as wildly as the rent
sails; and I was frequently deluged by some bursting wave, as the dip of
the vessel brought me down almost to the surface. The peril of an open
window was startling to those on deck, and the captain, hearing that I
refused to relinquish my post, sent the mate to put up the dead-lights;
so I sat down on the floor, buried my face in my hands, and strove to
realize the magnificence thus rent from my sight.
Yes, God's works in the great deep are indeed wonders. Nothing landward
can possibly approach them: in the rudest tempest the ground remains
firm, and you feel that you are a spectator; but at sea you are a part
of the storm. The plank whereon you stand refuses to support you, ever
shifting its inclination; while the whole of your frail tenement is now
borne aloft, now dashed into the liquid furrow beneath, now struck back
by a head-sea with a shock that makes every timber quiver, now flung on
one side as if about to reverse itself in the bosom of the deep. No
doubt the sense of personal danger, the death-pang already anticipated,
the dark abyss that yawns before the sinner, and the heaven opening on a
believer's soul, must each and any of them deaden the sense to what I
have vainly sought to describe; and I suppose this accounts for the
astonishment expressed by the whole party at my singular conduct, when
the youth who was sent to warn me of the peril, described my half-angry,
half-reproachful pettishness at the interruption: "Can't you let me
enjoy it in peace, Mr. J----? Shall I ever see any thing like it again?
Do go away." "But the captain says the window _must_ be shut."
"Then take me on deck, and you may shut it." "That is utterly
impossible; no lady could stand for an instant on deck, your drapery
would bear you over the ship's side." "Then I wont shut the window: so
go and tell Captain L---- not to tease me with messages."
This was downright recklessness. I wonder when recalling it to mind, and
feel that I could not have thus sported with death after I acquired a
good and solid hope of everlasting life. The act of dying had always
great terrors for me, until, through adverse circumstances, I seemed to
have nothing worth living for, and then I could laugh at it in my own
heart. Strange to say, that fearfulness of the passage through the dark
valley returned with double force when I had realized a personal claim
to the guiding rod and the supporting staff, and the bright inheritance
beyond. But before this period of blessedness, of joy and peace in
believing arrived, I had to pass through many waters of affliction, and
to experience remarkable interpositions at His hand who was leading me
by a path which I knew not.
Two of them I will mention. While at Annapolis and at Windsor, I had a
horse provided for me of rare beauty and grace, but a perfect Bucephalus
in her way. This creature was not three years old, and, to all
appearance, unbroken. Her manners were those of a kid rather than of a
horse; she was of a lovely dappled grey, with mane and tail of silver,
the latter almost sweeping the ground; and in her frolicsome gambols she
turned it over her back like a Newfoundland dog. Her slow step was a
bound; her swift motion unlike that of any other animal I ever rode, so
fleet, so smooth, so unruffled--I know nothing to which I can compare
it. Well, I made this lovely creature so fond of me by constant petting,
to which I suppose her Arab character made her peculiarly sensitive,
that my voice had equal power over her as over my docile, faithful dog.
No other person could in the slightest degree control her. Our corps,
the seventh battalion of the sixtieth Rifles, was composed wholly of the
elite of Napoleon's soldiers, taken in the Peninsula, and preferring the
British service to a prison. They were principally conscripts, and many
were evidently of a higher class in society than is usually found in the
ranks. Among them were several Chasseurs and Polish Lancers, very fine
equestrians, and as my husband had a field officer's command--on
detachments--and allowances, our horses were well looked after. His
groom was a Chasseur, mine a Pole; but neither could ride Fairy, unless
she happened to be in a very gracious mood. Lord Dalhousie's English
coachman afterwards tried his hand at taming her, but all in vain. In an
easy quiet way, she either sent her rider over her head, or by a
laughable manoeuvre sitting down like a dog on her haunches, slipped him
off the other way. Her drollery made the poor men so fond of her that
she was rarely chastised; and such a wilful, intractable wild Arab it
would be hard to find. Upon her I was daily mounted; and surely the Lord
watched over me then indeed. Inexperienced in riding, untaught,
unassisted, and wholly unable to lay any check upon so powerful an
animal, with an awkward country saddle, which by some fatality was never
well fixed, bit and bridle to match, and the mare's natural fire
increased by high feed, behold me bound for the wildest paths in the
wildest regions of that wild country. But you must explore the roads
about Annapolis, and the romantic spot called "The General's Bridge," to
imagine either the enjoyment or the perils of that my happiest hour.
Reckless to the last degree of desperation, I threw myself entirely on.
the fond attachment of the noble creature; and when I saw her measuring
with her eye some rugged fence or wild chasm, such as it was her common
sport to leap over in her play, the soft word of remonstrance that
checked her was uttered more from regard to her safety than my own. The
least whisper, a pat on the neck, or a stroke down the beautiful face
that she used to throw up towards mine, would control her: and never for
a moment did she endanger me. This was little short of a daily miracle,
when we consider the nature of the country, her character, and my
unskilfulness. It can only be accounted for on the ground of that
wondrous power which having willed me to work for a time in the vineyard
of the Lord, rendered me immortal until the work should be done. Oh that
my soul, and all that is within me could sufficiently bless the Lord,
and remember all his benefits.
I was then unmindful of, and unthankful for his protection; I revelled
in the delights of a freedom that none could share but my dog, who never
left the side of his associate. Shall I give you a sketch of the group,
in some lines composed during one of those excursions? They may partly
describe it. I found, them among some old papers.
"I know by the ardor thou canst not restrain,
By the curve of thy neck and the toss of thy mane,
By the foam of thy snorting which spangles my brow,
The fire of the Arab is hot in thee now.
'Twere harsh to control thee, my frolicsome steed;
I give thee the rein--so away at thy speed;
Thy rider will dare to be wilful as thee,
Laugh the future to scorn, and partake in thy glee.
Away to the mountain--what need we to fear?
Pursuit cannot press on my Fairy's career;
Full light were the heel and well-balanced the head
That ventured to follow the track of thy tread,
Where roars the loud torrent and starts the rude plank,
And thunders the rook-severed mass down the bank,
While mirrored in crystal the far-shooting glow,
With dazzling effulgence is sparkling below.
One start, and I die; yet in peace I recline,
My bosom can rest on the fealty of thine:
Thou lov'st me, my sweet one, and would'st not be free,
From a yoke that has never borne rudely on thee.
Ah, pleasant the empire of those to confess,
Whose wrath is a whisper, their rule a caress.
"Behold how thy playmate is stretching beside,
As loath to be vanquished in love or in pride,
While upward he glances his eyeball of jet,
Half dreading thy fleetness may distance him yet.
Ah, Marco, poor Marco--our pastime to-day
Were reft of one pleasure if he were away.
"How precious these moments: fair freedom expands
Her pinions of light o'er the desolate lands;
The waters are flashing as bright as thine eye,
Unchained as thy motion the breezes sweep by,
Delicious they come, o'er the flower-scented earth,
Like whispers of love from the isle of my birth;
While the white-bosomed Cistus her perfume exhales,
And sighs out a spicy farewell to the gales.
Unfeared and unfearing we'll traverse the wood,
Where pours the rude torrent its turbulent flood:
The forest's red children will smile as we scour
By the log-fashioned hut and the pine-woven bower;
Thy feathery footsteps scarce bending the grass,
Or denting the dew-spangled moss where we pass
"What startles thee? 'Twas but the sentinel gun
Flashed a vesper salute to thy rival the sun;
He has closed his swift progress before thee, and sweeps
With fetlock of gold the last verge of the steeps.
The fire-fly anon from his covert shall glide,
And dark fall the shadows of eve on the tide.
Tread softly--my spirit is joyous no more.
A northern aurora, it shone and is o'er;
The tears will fall fast as I gather the rein,
And a long look reverts to yon shadowy plain."
* * * * *
There is more of it, but nothing to the purpose of the present history.
It cost me something to transcribe this, so vividly is the past recalled
by it. Would to God I might more fully devote to his service every day
of the life so wonderfully preserved by him.
In addition to this continuous preservation on horseback, I experienced
the same interposing providence when violently upset in a gig. The road
where it occurred was strewn with broken rocks on either side, for
miles; and scarcely one clear spot appeared, save that on which I was
thrown, where a carpet of the softest grass overspread a perfect level
of about twelve feet in length, and nearly the same in width. Here I
fell, with no other injury than a contusion on the hip. The gig was
completely reversed, the horse dashed on till he ran one of the shafts
into a bank, and set himself fast.
My sojourn in this interesting country was of two years' duration,
marked with many mercies, among the greatest of which was the
uninterrupted enjoyment of perfect health, although my first winter
there was the most severe that had been known for thirty years, and the
following summer one of the most oppressively hot they had ever
experienced. The gradations of spring, autumn, and twilight, are there
scarcely known, and the sudden transition from summer to winter is as
trying to the health of an European as that from day to night is
uncongenial to the taste. Here, too, I repented at leisure, and amended
with no small difficulty and labor, my neglect of those accomplishments
to which my dear mother had so often vainly solicited my attention. The
pencil was profitless; I had long thrown it by: books were no longer an
adequate set-off against realities, even could I have conjured up a
library in the wilderness of Nova Scotia's inland settlement; but the
culinary and confectionary branches were there invaluable, and in them I
was wofully deficient. Had I not coaxed the old French soldier who
officiated as mess-cook to give me a few lessons, we must have lived on
raw meal and salt rations during weeks when the roads were completely
snowed up, and no provisions could he brought in. However, I proved an
apt scholar to poor Sebastian, and to the kind neighbors who initiated
me into the mysteries of preserves and pastry. Young ladies cannot tell
into what situations events may throw them; and I would strongly
recommend the revival of that obsolete study called good housewifery.
The woman who cannot dispense with female servants, must not travel. I
had none for six months, keen winter months, in Annapolis; the only
persons who could be found disengaged being of characters wholly
inadmissible. The straits to which I was put were any thing but
laughable at the time, though the recollection now often excites a
smile. Indeed no perfection in European housekeeping would avail to
guard against the devastations that a Nova Scotian frost will make, if
not met by tactics peculiar to that climate. How could I anticipate that
a fine piece of beef, fresh-killed, brought in at noon still warm, would
by two o'clock require smart blows with a hatchet to slice off a steak;
or that half-a-dozen plates, perfectly dry, placed at a moderate
distance from the fire preparatory to dinner, would presently separate
into half a hundred fragments, through the action of heat on their
frosted pores; or that milk drawn from a cow within sight of my
breakfast-table would be sheeted with ice on its passage thither; or
that a momentary pause, for the choice of a fitting phrase in writing a
letter, would load the nib of my pen with a black icicle? If I did not
cry over my numerous breakages and other disasters, it was under the
apprehension of tears freezing on my eyelids; and truly they might have
done so, for my fingers were once in that awful condition that must have
ended in mortification, but for the presence of mind of a poor soldier,
who, seeing me running to the fire in that state, drew his bayonet to
bar my approach, and wrapping a coarse cloth round my lifeless hands,
muff-fashion, compelled me to walk up and down the spacious hall until
the circulation returned, which it did with a sensation of agony that
well-nigh took away my senses. This was a most signal escape, for I was
wholly ignorant of my danger, and not a little perplexed and annoyed at
the insubordinate conduct of the veteran, who was a model of respectful
humility. Had he, poor fellow, known how busy those fingers would one
day be against his religion--for he was a French Romanist--he might have
been tempted to sheath his bayonet and give me free access to the
tempting fire, the immense faggots of which would have sufficed to roast
a heretic.
Nova Scotia is, I firmly believe, the most generally and devotedly loyal
of all our colonies: the attachment of its people to the mother-country
is beautiful, and their partisanship in all questions between us and the
States most zealous. The only fault I had to find with them was their
indifference towards the poor relics of the Indian race still dwelling
in the woods, who were to me objects of the liveliest interest even
before I had any feeling of Christian duty towards the heathen--or
towards such as those who are worse than heathen, being numbered among
the members of the Romish church, and utterly, wretchedly ignorant even
of such little truth as remains buried under the mass of antichristian
error, to make its darkness more visible. The Indians are wholly
despised; scarcely looked on as beings of the same race, by the
generality of the colonists. Where Christian principle prevails, they
become of course important in the highest degree; but I speak of what I
saw, when vital godliness was little known among them, and I can aver
that even Lord Dalhousie scarcely could succeed in stirring up a
momentary interest for the dispersed aborigines. That excellent nobleman
devoted himself very warmly to the work of attempting their
civilization; and told me that if a few would join him heartily and
zealously in the effort, he should succeed; but that, between,
lukewarmness on the one side and suspicion on the other, he found
himself completely baffled. It was not to be wondered at that the
Indians had a lurking dread of experiencing again the hardships, not to
say the treachery and cruelty, inflicted on their fathers. I enjoyed a
high place in the affection and confidence of those interesting people,
the origin of which may help to prove at how light an estimate the poor
creatures were generally rated by their white brethren. My claim on
their attachment consisted in nothing more than the performance of a
bounden duty in sheltering for a few weeks one of their number who had,
in a most unprovoked and cruel manner, been wounded by a party of our
soldiers and left to perish in the woods.
How beautiful do the white cliffs of Albion appear in the eyes of the
returning wanderer who has learned by a foreign sojourn to estimate the
comforts, the privileges, the blessings of this island home. No place
could be more thoroughly English in feeling, habits, and principles,
than Nova Scotia; but it was not England. The violent transition of
seasons, so different from the soft gradations by which, with us, winter
brightens into summer, and summer fades into winter, marked a contrast
far from pleasing; and the intensity of cold, the fierceness of heat,
alike unknown in our temperate climate, forced comparisons far from
agreeable. Thus, on the lowest ground of a wholly selfish feeling, the
approach to nay native shore could not be otherwise than delightful; but
viewed as the mother-land, as the great emporium of commerce, the chief
temple of liberty, the nurse of military prowess, the unconquered
champion of all that is nationally great throughout the world, the sight
of our free and happy isle is indeed an inspiring one to those who can
appreciate moral grandeur. How much more, in the eyes of the Christian,
is she to be esteemed as the glory of all lands, as possessing the true
knowledge of God, and laboring to spread that knowledge throughout the
world; the land of Protestantism, the land of the Bible.
I really cannot understand the meaning, nor fancy what may be the
feeling, of those who profess to have merged their patriotism in
something of universal good-will to the household of faith all over the
world. It seems to me every whit as unnatural as that the member of a
Christian family should forego all the sweets of conjugal, parental,
filial, fraternal love, in the determination to feel an equal regard for
his neighbor's wife, husband, etc., as for his own; and, moreover, to
take an equal concern in the affairs of his neighbor's kitchen as in his
own household matters. This sort of generalizing regard would throw our
respective establishments into singular confusion, and might betray
ourselves into sundry false positions, and very awkward predicaments.
However, the comparative extinction of natural affection would form the
most prominently reprehensible feature in the case; and I cannot but
think that the boasted cosmopolitanism of some good people would wear an
aspect not very dissimilar, if rightly and soberly viewed. Certainly I
could no more tear the love of country from my heart, than I could the
love of kindred; and when my step again pressed the English strand, it
was with a sensation almost resembling the fabled invigoration of the
Titans, who derived new life, new strength, new enterprise, from coming
in contact with their mother earth.
England, indeed, contained little that was personally endearing to me,
except my beloved surviving parent; but it was a joyous thing to embrace
her once more, after the deep roll of the ocean had separated us for
nearly three years; during a portion of which she had been learning to
prize her native land, in a disgusting region of all that is most
directly opposed to liberty, civil or religious--to honorable feeling,
just conduct, honest principle, or practical decency. In short, she had
been in Portugal.
LETTER V.
IRELAND.
I now arrive at an epoch from which I may date the commencement of all
that deserves to be called life, inasmuch as I had hitherto been living
without God in the world. My existence was a feverish dream of vain
pleasure first, and then of agitations and horrors. My mind was a chaos
of useless information, my character a mass of unapplied energies, my
heart a waste of unclaimed affections, and my hope an enigma of confused
speculations. I had plenty to do, yet felt that I was doing nothing; and
there was a growing want within my bosom, a craving after I know not
what--a restless, unsatisfied, unhappy feeling, that seemed in quest of
some unknown good. How this was awakened, I know not; it was
unaccompanied with any conviction of my own sinfulness, or any doubt of
my perfect safety as a child of God. I did not anticipate any
satisfaction from change of place; but readily prepared to obey a
summons from my husband to follow him to Ireland, whither he had gone to
engage in a law-suit. To be sure I hated Ireland most cordially; I had
never seen it, and as a matter of choice would have preferred New South
Wales, so completely was I influenced by the prevailing prejudice
against that land of barbarism. Many people despise Ireland, who, if you
demand a reason, will tell you it is a horrid place, and the people all
savages; but if you press for proofs and illustrations, furthermore such
deponents say not.
On a dull day in April I took my place, a solitary traveller, in the
Shrewsbury coach, quite ignorant as to the road I was to travel, and far
less at home than I should have been in the wildest part of North
America, or on the deck of a ship bound to circumnavigate the globe. We
rattled out of London, and the first thing that at all roused my
attention was a moonlight view of Oxford, where we stopped at midnight
to change horses. Those old grey towers, and mighty masses of ancient
building, on which the silvery ray fell with fine effect, awoke in my
bosom two melancholy trains of thought; one was the recollection of my
father, whose enthusiastic attachment to his own university had often
provoked warm discussion with the no less attached Cantabs of our old
social parties, and who often held out to me, as the greatest of earthly
gratifications, a visit with him to that seat of learning which he would
describe in glowing colors. But where was my father now? His poor girl,
the delight of his eyes and treasure of his heart, was in Oxford, with
none to guide, none to guard, none to speak a cheering word to her. I
shrunk back in the coach, and grieved over this till a sudden turning
once more threw before me the outline of some magnificent old fabric
bathed in moonlight, and that called up a fit of patriotism, calculated
to darken, yet more the prospect before me. This was England, my own
proud England; and these "the cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous
palaces," that distinguished her seats of learning above all others, I
was bound for Ireland. What English young lady had ever studied the
history of that remote, half-civilized settlement, called Ireland? Not
I, certainly, nor any of my acquaintance; but I took it for granted that
Ireland had no antiquities, nothing to distinguish her from other
barbarous lands, except that her people ate potatoes, made blunders, and
went to mass. I felt it a sort of degradation to have an Irish name, and
to go there as a resident; but comforted myself by resolving never in
one particular to give in to any Irish mode of living, speaking, or
thinking, and to associate only with such as had been at least educated
in England.
The next day's rising sun shone upon Stratford-on-Avon; and here revived
in some degree my Shakspearian mania, to the still higher exaltation of
my English stilts, and the deeper debasement of all "rough Irish
kernes." At Shrewsbury we parted with a kind old lady, who had shown me
some good-natured attentions, and I was left with only an elderly
gentleman, bound also for Dublin, who told me we must start at three
o'clock the following morning for Holyhead. I was dreadfully dejected,
and told him I hoped he would not think the worse of me for being so
utterly alone, and that he would excuse my retiring to my own apartment
the instant we had dined. He took pencil and paper, and with a glow of
benevolent feeling expressed his anxious desire to take the same care of
me that he would of his own daughter, and to look on me as his especial
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