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+The Project Gutenberg EBook The Caxtons, by Bulwer-Lytton, Part 7
+#21 in our series by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
+
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+
+Title: The Caxtons, Part 7
+
+Author: Edward Bulwer-Lytton
+
+Release Date: February 2005  [EBook #7592]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on January 1, 2003]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
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+Character set encoding: ASCII
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+
+
+
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CAXTONS, BY LYTTON, PART 7 ***
+
+
+
+This eBook was produced by Pat Castevens
+and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+PART VII.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+Saith Dr. Luther, "When I saw Dr. Gode begin to tell his puddings
+hanging in the chimney, I told him he would not live long!"
+
+I wish I had copied that passage from "The Table Talk" in large round
+hand, and set it before my father at breakfast, the morn preceding that
+fatal eve in which Uncle Jack persuaded him to tell his puddings.
+
+Yet, now I think of it, Uncle Jack hung the puddings in the chimney, but
+he did not persuade my father to tell them.
+
+Beyond a vague surmise that half the suspended "tomacula" would furnish
+a breakfast to Uncle Jack, and that the youthful appetite of Pisistratus
+would despatch the rest, my father did not give a thought to the
+nutritious properties of the puddings,--in other words, to the two
+thousand pounds which, thanks to Mr. Tibbets, dangled down the chimney.
+So far as the Great Work was concerned, my father only cared for its
+publication, not its profits.  I will not say that he might not hunger
+for praise, but I am quite sure that he did not care a button for
+pudding.  Nevertheless, it was an infaust and sinister augury for Austin
+Caxton, the very appearance, the very suspension and danglement of any
+puddings whatsoever, right over his ingle-nook, when those puddings were
+made by the sleek hands of Uncle Jack!  None of the puddings which he,
+poor man, had all his life been stringing, whether from his own chimneys
+or the chimneys of other people, had turned out to be real puddings,--
+they had always been the eidola, the erscheinungen, the phantoms and
+semblances of puddings.
+
+I question if Uncle Jack knew much about Democritus of Abdera.  But he
+was certainly tainted with the philosophy of that fanciful sage.  He
+peopled the air with images of colossal stature which impressed all his
+dreams and divinations, and from whose influences came his very
+sensations and thoughts.  His whole being, asleep or waking, was thus
+but the reflection of great phantom puddings!
+
+As soon as Mr. Tibbets had possessed himself of the two volumes of the
+"History of Human Error," he had necessarily established that hold upon
+my father which hitherto those lubricate hands of his had failed to
+effect.  He had found what he had so long sighed for in vain,--his point
+d'appui, wherein to fix the Archimedean screw.  He fixed it tight in the
+"History of Human Error," and moved the Caxtonian world.
+
+A day or two after the conversation recorded in my last chapter, I saw
+Uncle Jack coming out of the mahogany doors of my father's banker; and
+from that time there seemed no reason why Mr. Tibbets should not visit
+his relations on weekdays as well as Sundays.  Not a day, indeed, passed
+but what he held long conversations with my father.  He had much to
+report of his interviews with the publishers.  In these conversations he
+naturally recurred to that grand idea of the "Literary Times," which had
+so dazzled my poor father's imagination; and, having heated the iron,
+Uncle Jack was too knowing a man not to strike while it was hot.
+
+When I think of the simplicity my wise father exhibited in this crisis
+of his life, I must own that I am less moved by pity than admiration for
+that poor great-hearted student.  We have seen that out of the learned
+indolence of twenty years, the ambition which is the instinct of a man
+of genius had emerged; the serious preparation of the Great Book for the
+perusal of the world had insensibly restored the claims of that noisy
+world on the silent individual.  And therewith came a noble remorse that
+he had hitherto done so little for his species.  Was it enough to write
+quartos upon the past history of Human Error?  Was it not his duty, when
+the occasion was fairly presented, to enter upon that present, daily,
+hourly war with Error, which is the sworn chivalry of Knowledge?  Saint
+George did not dissect dead dragons, he fought the live one.  And
+London, with that magnetic atmosphere which in great capitals fills the
+breath of life with stimulating particles, had its share in quickening
+the slow pulse of the student.  In the country he read but his old
+authors, and lived with them through the gone ages.  In the city, my
+father, during the intervals of repose from the Great Book, and still
+more now that the Great Book had come to a pause, inspected the
+literature of his own time.  It had a prodigious effect upon him.  He
+was unlike the ordinary run of scholars, and, indeed, of readers, for
+that matter, who, in their superstitious homage to the dead, are always
+willing enough to sacrifice the living.  He did justice to the
+marvellous fertility of intellect which characterizes the authorship of
+the present age.  By the present age, I do not only mean the present
+day, I commence with the century.  "What," said my father one day in
+dispute with Trevanion, "what characterizes the literature of our time
+is its human interest.  It is true that we do not see scholars
+addressing scholars, but men addressing men,--not that scholars are
+fewer, but that the reading public is more large.  Authors in all ages
+address themselves to what interests their readers; the same things do
+not interest a vast community which interested half a score of monks or
+book-worms.  The literary polls was once an oligarchy, it is now a
+republic.  It is the general brilliancy of the atmosphere which prevents
+your noticing the size of any particular star.  Do you not see that with
+the cultivation of the masses has awakened the Literature of the
+affections?  Every sentiment finds an expositor, every feeling an
+oracle.  Like Epimenides, I have been sleeping in a cave; and, waking, I
+see those whom I left children are bearded men, and towns have sprung up
+in the landscapes which I left as solitary wastes."
+
+Thence the reader may perceive the causes of the change which had come
+over my father.  As Robert Hall says, I think of Dr. Kippis.  "He had
+laid so many books at the top of his head that the brains could not
+move."  But the electricity had now penetrated the heart, and the
+quickened vigor of that noble organ enabled the brain to stir.
+Meanwhile, I leave my father to these influences, and to the continuous
+conversations of Uncle Jack, and proceed with the thread of my own
+egotism.
+
+Thanks to Mr. Trevanion, my habits were not those which favor
+friendships with the idle, but I formed some acquaintances amongst young
+men a few years older than myself, who held subordinate situations in
+the public offices, or were keeping their terms for the Bar.  There was
+no want of ability amongst these gentlemen, but they had not yet settled
+into the stern prose of life.  Their busy hours only made them more
+disposed to enjoy the hours of relaxation.  And when we got together, a
+very gay, light-hearted set we were!  We had neither money enough to be
+very extravagant, nor leisure enough to be very dissipated; but we
+amused ourselves notwithstanding.  My new friends were wonderfully
+erudite in all matters connected with the theatres.  From an opera to a
+ballet, from "Hamlet" to the last farce from the French, they had the
+literature of the stage at the finger-ends of their straw-colored
+gloves.  They had a pretty large acquaintance with actors and actresses,
+and were perfect Walpoladi in the minor scandals of the day.  To do them
+justice, however, they were not indifferent to the more masculine
+knowledge necessary in "this wrong world."  They talked as familiarly of
+the real actors of life as of the sham ones.  They could adjust to a
+hair the rival pretensions of contending statesmen.  They did not
+profess to be deep in the mysteries of foreign cabinets (with the
+exception of one young gentleman connected with the Foreign Office, who
+prided himself on knowing exactly what the Russians meant to do with
+India--when they got it); but, to make amends, the majority of them had
+penetrated the closest secrets of our own.  It is true that, according
+to a proper subdivision of labor, each took some particular member of
+the government for his special observation; just as the most skilful
+surgeons, however profoundly versed in the general structure of our
+frame, rest their anatomical fame on the light they throw on particular
+parts of it,--one man taking the brain, another the duodenum, a third
+the spinal cord, while a fourth, perhaps, is a master of all the
+symptoms indicated by a pensile finger.  Accordingly, one of my friends
+appropriated to himself the Home Department; another the Colonies; and a
+third, whom we all regarded as a future Talleyrand (or a De Retz at
+least), had devoted himself to the special study of Sir Robert Peel, and
+knew, by the way in which that profound and inscrutable statesman threw
+open his coat, every thought that was passing in his breast!  Whether
+lawyers or officials, they all had a great idea of themselves,--high
+notions of what they were to be, rather than what they were to do, some
+day.  As the king of modern fine gentlemen said to himself, in
+paraphrase of Voltaire, "They had letters in their pockets addressed to
+Posterity,--which the chances were, however, that they might forget to
+deliver."  Somewhat "priggish" most of them might be; but, on the whole,
+they were far more interesting than mere idle men of pleasure.  There
+was about them, as features of a general family likeness, a redundant
+activity of life, a gay exuberance of ambition, a light-hearted
+earnestness when at work, a schoolboy's enjoyment of the hours of play.
+
+A great contrast to these young men was Sir Sedley Beaudesert, who was
+pointedly kind to me, and whose bachelor's house was always open to me
+after noon: Sir Sedley was visible to no one but his valet before that
+hour.  A perfect bachelor's house it was, too, with its windows opening
+on the Park, and sofas nicked into the windows, on which you might loll
+at your ease, like the philosopher in Lucretius,--
+
+     "Despicere unde queas alios, passimque videre Errare,"--
+
+and see the gay crowds ride to and fro Rotten Row, without the fatigue
+of joining them, especially if the wind was in the east.
+
+There was no affectation of costliness about the rooms, but a wonderful
+accumulation of comfort.  Every patent chair that proffered a variety in
+the art of lounging found its place there; and near every chair a little
+table, on which you might deposit your book or your coffee-cup, without
+the trouble of moving more than your hand.  In winter, nothing warmer
+than the quilted curtains and Axminster carpets can be conceived; in
+summer, nothing airier and cooler than the muslin draperies and the
+Indian mattings.  And I defy a man to know to what perfection dinner may
+be brought, unless he had dined with Sir Sedley Beaudesert.  Certainly,
+if that distinguished personage had but been an egotist, he had been the
+happiest of men.  But, unfortunately for him, he was singularly amiable
+and kind-hearted.  He had the bonne digestion, but not the other
+requisite for worldly felicity,--the mauvais cceur.  He felt a sincere
+pity for every one else who lived in rooms without patent chairs and
+little coffee-tables, whose windows did not look on the Park, with sofas
+niched into their recesses.  As Henry IV. wished every man to have his
+pot au feu, so Sir Sedley Beaudesert, if he could have had his way,
+would have every man served with an early cucumber for his fish, and a
+caraffe of iced water by the side of his bread and cheese.  He thus
+evinced on politics a naive simplicity which delightfully contrasted his
+acuteness on matters of taste.  I remember his saying, in a discussion
+on the Beer Bill, "The poor ought not to be allowed to drink beer, it is
+so particularly rheumatic!  The best drink in hard work is dry
+champagne,--not vtousseux; I found that out when I used to shoot on the
+moors."
+
+Indolent as Sir Sedley was, he had contrived to open an extraordinary
+number of drains on his wealth.
+
+First, as a landed proprietor there was no end to applications from
+distressed farmers, aged poor, benefit societies, and poachers he had
+thrown out of employment by giving up his preserves to please his
+tenants.
+
+Next, as a man of pleasure the whole race of womankind had legitimate
+demands on him.  From a distressed duchess whose picture lay perdu under
+a secret spring of his snuff-box, to a decayed laundress to whom he
+might have paid a compliment on the perfect involutions of a frill, it
+was quite sufficient to be a daughter of Eve to establish a just claim
+on Sir Sedley's inheritance from Adam.
+
+Again, as an amateur of art and a respectful servant of every muse, all
+whom the public had failed to patronize,--painter, actor, poet,
+musician,--turned, like dying sunflowers to the sun, towards the pitying
+smile of Sir Sedley Beaudesert.  Add to these the general miscellaneous
+multitude who "had heard of Sir Sedley's high character for
+benevolence," and one may well suppose what a very costly reputation he
+had set up.  In fact, though Sir Sedley could not spend on what might
+fairly be called "himself" a fifth part of his very handsome income, I
+have no doubt that he found it difficult to make both ends meet at the
+close of the year.  That he did so, he owed perhaps to two rules which
+his philosophy had peremptorily adopted.  He never made debts, and he
+never gambled.  For both these admirable aberrations from the ordinary
+routine of fine gentlemen I believe he was indebted to the softness of
+his disposition.  He had a great compassion for a wretch who was dunned.
+"Poor fellow!" he would say, "it must be so painful to him to pass his
+life in saying 'No.'"  So little did he know about that class of
+promisers,--as if a man dunned ever said 'No'!  As Beau Brummell, when
+asked if he was fond of vegetables, owned that he had once eat a pea, so
+Sir Sedley Beaudesert owned that he had once played high at piquet.  "I
+was so unlucky as to win," said he, referring to that indiscretion, "and
+I shall never forget the anguish on the face of the man who paid me.
+Unless I could always lose, it would be a perfect purgatory to play."
+
+Now nothing could be more different in their kinds of benevolence than
+Sir Sedley and Mr. Trevanion.  Mr. Trevanion had a great contempt for
+individual charity.  He rarely put his hand into his purse,--he drew a
+great check on his bankers.  Was a congregation without a church, or a
+village without a school, or a river without a bridge, Mr. Trevanion set
+to work on calculations, found out the exact sum required by an
+algebraic x--y, and paid it as he would have paid his butcher.  It must
+be owned that the distress of a man whom he allowed to be deserving, did
+not appeal to him in vain.  But it is astonishing how little he spent in
+that way; for it was hard indeed to convince Mr. Trevanion that a
+deserving man ever was in such distress as to want charity.
+
+That Trevanion, nevertheless, did infinitely more real good than Sir
+Sedley, I believe; but he did it as a mental operation,--by no means as
+an impulse from the heart.  I am sorry to say that the main difference
+was this,--distress always seemed to accumulate round Sir Sedley, and
+vanish from the presence of Trevanion.  Where the last came, with his
+busy, active, searching mind, energy woke, improvement sprang up.  Where
+the first came, with his warm, kind heart, a kind of torpor spread under
+its rays; people lay down and basked in the liberal sunshine.  Nature in
+one broke forth like a brisk, sturdy winter; in the other like a lazy
+Italian summer.  Winter is an excellent invigorator, no doubt, but we
+all love summer better.
+
+Now, it is a proof how lovable Sir Sedley was, that I loved him, and yet
+was jealous of him.  Of all the satellites round my fair Cynthia, Fanny
+Trevanion, I dreaded most this amiable luminary.  It was in vain for me
+to say, with the insolence of youth, that Sir Sedley Beaudesert was of
+the same age as Fanny's father; to see them together, he might have
+passed for Trevanion's son.  No one amongst the younger generation was
+half so handsome as Sedley Beaudesert.  He might be eclipsed at first
+sight by the showy effect of more redundant locks and more brilliant
+bloom; but he had but to speak, to smile, in order to throw a whole
+cohort of dandies into the shade.  It was the expression of his
+countenance that was so bewitching; there was something so kindly in its
+easy candor, its benign good-nature.  And he understood women so well!
+He flattered their foibles so insensibly; he commanded their affection
+with so gracious a dignity.  Above all, what with his accomplishments,
+his peculiar reputation, his long celibacy, and the soft melancholy of
+his sentiments, he always contrived to interest them.  There was not a
+charming woman by whom this charming man did not seem just on the point
+of being caught!  It was like the sight of a splendid trout in a
+transparent stream, sailing pensively to and fro your fly, in a willand-
+a-won't sort of a way.  Such a trout! it would be a thousand pities to
+leave him, when evidently so well disposed!  That trout, fair maid or
+gentle widow, would have kept youwhipping the stream and dragging the
+fly--from morning to dewy eve.  Certainly I don't wish worse to my
+bitterest foe of five and twenty than such a rival as Sedley Beaudesert
+at seven and forty.
+
+Fanny, indeed, perplexed me horribly.  Sometimes I fancied she liked me;
+but the fancy scarce thrilled me with delight before it vanished in the
+frost of a careless look or the cold beam of a sarcastic laugh.  Spoiled
+darling of the world as she was, she seemed so innocent in her exuberant
+happiness that one forgot all her faults in that atmosphere of joy which
+she diffused around her.  And despite her pretty insolence, she had so
+kind a woman's heart below the surface!  When she once saw that she had
+pained you, she was so soft, so winning, so humble, till she had healed
+the wound.  But then, if she saw she had pleased you too much, the
+little witch was never easy till she had plagued you again.  As heiress
+to so rich a father, or rather perhaps mother (for the fortune came from
+Lady Ellinor), she was naturally surrounded with admirers not wholly
+disinterested.  She did right to plague them; but Me!  Poor boy that I
+was, why should I seem more disinterested than others; how should she
+perceive all that lay hid in my young deep heart?  Was I not in all--
+worldly pretensions the least worthy of her admirers, and might I not
+seem, therefore, the most mercenary,--I, who never thought of her
+fortune, or if that thought did come across me, it was to make me start
+and turn pale?  And then it vanished at her first glance, as a ghost
+from the dawn.  How hard it is to convince youth, that sees all the
+world of the future before it, and covers that future with golden
+palaces, of the inequalities of life!  In my fantastic and sublime
+romance I looked out into that Great Beyond, saw myself orator,
+statesman, minister, ambassador,--Heaven knows what,--laying laurels,
+which I mistook for rent-rolls, at Fanny's feet.
+
+Whatever Fanny might have discovered as to the state of my heart, it
+seemed an abyss not worth prying into by either Trevanion or Lady
+Ellinor.  The first, indeed, as may be supposed, was too busy to think
+of such trifles.  And Lady Ellinor treated me as a mere boy,--almost
+like a boy of her own, she was so kind to me.  But she did not notice
+much the things that lay immediately around her.  In brilliant
+conversation with poets, wits, and statesmen, in sympathy with the toils
+of her husband or proud schemes for his aggrandizement, Lady Ellinor
+lived a life of excitement.  Those large, eager, shining eyes of hers,
+bright with some feverish discontent, looked far abroad, as if for new
+worlds to conquer; the world at her feet escaped from her vision.  She
+loved her daughter, she was proud of her, trusted in her with a superb
+repose; she did not watch over her.  Lady Ellinor stood alone on a
+mountain and amidst a cloud.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+One day the Trevanions had all gone into the country on a visit to a
+retired minister distantly related to Lady Ellinor, and who was one of
+the few persons Trevanion himself condescended to consult.  I had almost
+a holiday.  I went to call on Sir Sedley Beaudesert.  I had always
+longed to sound him on one subject, and had never dared.  This time I
+resolved to pluck up courage.
+
+"Ah, my young friend!" said he, rising from the contemplation of a
+villanous picture by a young artist, which he had just benevolently
+purchased, "I was thinking of you this morning.--Wait a moment, Summers
+[this to the valet].  Be so good as to take this picture; let it be
+packed up and go down into the country.  It is a sort of picture," he
+added, turning to me, "that requires a large house.  I have an old
+gallery with little casements that let in no light.  It is astonishing
+how convenient I have found it!"  As soon as the picture was gone, Sir
+Sedley drew a long breath, as if relieved, and resumed more gayly,--
+
+"Yes, I was thinking of you; and if you will forgive any interference in
+your affairs,--from your father's old friend,--I should be greatly
+honored by your permission to ask Trevanion what he supposes is to be
+the ultimate benefit of the horrible labor he inflicts upon you."
+
+"But, my dear Sir Sedley, I like the labors; I am perfectly contented."
+
+"Not to remain always secretary to one who, if there were no business to
+be done among men, would set about teaching the ants to build hills upon
+better architectural principles!  My dear sir, Trevanion is an awful
+man, a stupendous man, one catches fatigue if one is in the same room
+with him three minutes!  At your age,--an age that ought to be so
+happy,"--continued Sir Sedley, with a compassion perfectly angelically
+"it is sad to see so little enjoyment!"
+
+"But, Sir Sedley, I assure you that you are mistaken, I thoroughly enjoy
+myself; and have I not heard even you confess that one may be idle and
+not happy?"
+
+"I did not confess that till I was on the wrong side of forty!" said Sir
+Sedley, with a slight shade on his brow.  "Nobody would ever think you
+were on the wrong side of forty!" said I, with artful flattery, winding
+into my subject.  "Miss Trevanion, for instance?"
+
+I paused.  Sir Sedley looked hard at me, from his bright dark-blue eyes.
+"Well, Miss Trevanion for instance?"
+
+"Miss Trevanion, who has all the best-looking fellows in London round
+her, evidently prefers you to any of them."
+
+I said this with a great gulp.  I was obstinately bent on plumbing the
+depth of my own fears.
+
+Sir Sedley rose; he laid his hand kindly on mine, and said, "Do not let
+Fanny Trevanion torment you even more than her father does!"
+
+"I don't understand you, Sir Sedley."
+
+"But if I understand you, that is more to the purpose.  A girl like Miss
+Trevanion is cruel till she discovers she has a heart.  It is not safe
+to risk one's own with any woman till she has ceased to be a coquette.
+My dear young friend, if you took life less in earnest, I should spare
+you the pain of these hints.  Some men sow flowers, some plant trees:
+you are planting a tree under which you will soon find that no flower
+will grow.  Well and good, if the tree could last to bear fruit and give
+shade; but beware lest you have to tear it up one day or other; for
+then--What then?  Why, you will find your whole life plucked away with
+its roots!"
+
+Sir Sedley said these last words with so serious an emphasis that I was
+startled from the confusion I had felt at the former part of his
+address.  He paused long, tapped his snuff-box, inhaled a pinch slowly,
+and continued, with his more accustomed sprightliness,--
+
+"Go as much as you can into the world.  Again I say, 'Enjoy yourself.'
+And again I ask, what is all this labor to do for you?  On some men, far
+less eminent than Trevanion, it would impose a duty to aid you in a
+practical career, to secure you a public employment; not so on him.  He
+would not mortgage an inch of his independence by asking a favor from a
+minister.  He so thinks occupation the delight of life that he occupies
+you out of pure affection.  He does not trouble his head about your
+future.  He supposes your father will provide for that, and does not
+consider that meanwhile your work leads to nothing!  Think over all
+this.  I have now bored you enough."
+
+I was bewildered; I was dumb.  These practical men of the world, how
+they take us by surprise!  Here had I come to sound Sir Sedley, and here
+was I plumbed, gauged, measured, turned inside out, without having got
+an inch beyond the sur face of that smiling, debonnaire, unruffled ease.
+Yet, with his invariable delicacy, in spite of all this horrible
+frankness, Sir Sedley had not said a word to wound what he might think
+the more sensitive part of my amour propre,--not a word as to the
+inadequacy of my pretensions to think seriously of Fanny Trevanion.  Had
+we been the Celadon and Chloe of a country village, he could not have
+regarded us as more equal, so far as the world went.  And for the rest,
+he rather insinuated that poor Fanny, the great heiress, was not worthy
+of me, than that I was not worthy of Fanny.
+
+I felt that there was no wisdom in stammering and blushing out denials
+and equivocations; so I stretched my hand to Sir Sedley, took up my hat,
+and went.  Instinctively I bent my way to my father's house.  I had not
+been there for many days.  Not only had I had a great deal to do in the
+way of business, but I am ashamed to say that pleasure itself had so
+entangled my leisure hours, and Miss Trevanion especially so absorbed
+them, that, without even uneasy foreboding, I had left my father
+fluttering his wings more feebly and feebly in the web of Uncle Jack.
+When I arrived in Russell Street I found the fly and the spider cheek-
+by-jowl together.  Uncle Jack sprang up at my entrance and cried,
+"Congratulate your father.  Congratulate him!---no; congratulate the
+world!"
+
+"What, uncle!" said I, with a dismal effort at sympathizing liveliness,
+"is the 'Literary Times' launched at last?"
+
+"Oh! that is all settled,--settled long since.  Here's a specimen of the
+type we have chosen for the leaders."  And Uncle Jack, whose pocket was
+never without a wet sheet of some kind or other, drew forth a steaming
+papyral monster, which in point of size was to the political "Times" as
+a mammoth may be to an elephant.  "That is all settled.  We are only
+preparing our contributors, and shall put out our programme next week or
+the week after.  No, Pisistratus, I mean the Great Work."
+
+"My dear father, I am so glad.  What! it is really sold, then?"
+
+"Hum!" said my father.
+
+"Sold!" burst forth Uncle Jack.  "Sold,--no, sir, we would not sell it!
+No; if all the booksellers fell down on their knees to us, as they will
+some day, that book should not be sold!  Sir, that book is a revolution;
+it is an era; it is the emancipator of genius from mercenary thraldom,--
+That Book!"
+
+I looked inquiringly from uncle to father, and mentally retracted my
+congratulations.  Then Mr. Caxton, slightly blushing, and shyly rubbing
+his spectacles, said, "You see, Pisistratus, that though poor Jack has
+devoted uncommon pains to induce the publishers to recognize the merit
+he has discovered in the 'History of Human Error,' he has failed to do
+so."
+
+"Not a bit of it; they all acknowledge its miraculous learning, its--"
+
+"Very true; but they don't think it will sell, and therefore most
+selfishly refuse to buy it.  One bookseller, indeed, offered to treat
+for it if I would leave out all about the Hottentots and Caffres, the
+Greek philosophers and Egyptian priests, and confining myself solely to
+polite society, entitle the work 'Anecdotes of the Courts of Europe,
+Ancient and Modern.'"
+
+"The--wretch!" groaned Uncle Jack.
+
+"Another thought it might be cut up into little essays, leaving out the
+quotations, entitled 'Men and Manners.'  A third was kind enough to
+observe that though this kind of work was quite unsalable, yet, as I
+appeared to have some historical information, he should be happy to
+undertake an historical romance from  my graphic pen,'--that was the
+phrase, was it not, Jack?"
+
+Jack was too full to speak.
+
+"Provided I would introduce a proper love-plot, and make it into three
+volumes post octavo, twenty-three lines in a page, neither more nor
+less.  One honest fellow at last was found who seemed to me a very
+respectable and indeed enterprising person.  And after going through a
+list of calculations, which showed that no possible profit could arise,
+he generously offered to give me half of those no-profits, provided I
+would guarantee half the very visible expenses.  I was just meditating
+the prudence of accepting this proposal, when your uncle was seized with
+a sublime idea, which has whisked up my book in a whirlwind of
+expectation."
+
+"And that idea?" said I, despondently.
+
+"That idea," quoth Uncle Jack, recovering himself, "is simply and
+shortly this.  From time immemorial, authors have been the prey of the
+publishers.  Sir, authors have lived in garrets, nay, have been choked
+in the street by an unexpected crumb of bread, like the man who wrote
+the play, poor fellow!"
+
+"Otway," said my father.  "The story is not true,--no matter."
+
+"Milton, sir, as everybody knows, sold 'Paradise Lost' for ten pounds,--
+ten pounds, Sir!  In short, instances of a like nature are too numerous
+to quote.--But the booksellers, sir, they are leviathans; they roll in
+seas of gold; they subsist upon authors as vampires upon little
+children.  But at last endurance has reached its limit; the fiat has
+gone forth; the tocsin of liberty has resounded: authors have burst
+their fetters.  And we have just inaugurated the institution of 'The
+Grand Anti-Publisher Confederate Authors' Society,' by which,
+Pisistratus, by which, mark you, every author is to be his own
+publisher; that is, every author who joins the society.  No more
+submission of immortal works to mercenary calculators, to sordid tastes;
+no more hard bargains and broken hearts; no more crumbs of bread choking
+great tragic poets in the streets; no more Paradises Lost sold at L10 a-
+piece!  The author brings his book to a select committee appointed for
+the purpose,--men of delicacy, education, and refinement, authors
+themselves; they read it, the society publish; and after a modest
+deduction, which goes towards the funds of the society, the treasurer
+hands over the profits to the author."
+
+"So that, in fact, uncle, every author who can't find a publisher
+anywhere else will of course come to the society.  The fraternity will
+be numerous."
+
+"It will indeed."
+
+"And the speculation--ruinous."
+
+"Ruinous, why?"
+
+"Because in all mercantile negotiations it is ruinous to invest capital
+in supplies which fail of demand.  You undertake to publish books that
+booksellers will not publish: why?  Because booksellers can't sell them.
+It's just probable that you'll not sell them any better than the
+booksellers.  Ergo, the more your business, the larger your deficit; and
+the more numerous your society, the more disastrous your condition. Q.
+E. D."
+
+"Pooh!  The select committee will decide what books are to be
+published."
+
+"Then where the deuce is the advantage to the authors?  I would as lief
+submit; my work to a publisher as I would to a select committee of
+authors.  At all events, the publisher is not my rival; and I suspect he
+is the best judge, after all, of a book,--as an accoucheur ought to be
+of a baby."
+
+"Upon my word, nephew, you pay a bad compliment to your father's Great
+Work, which the booksellers will have nothing to do with."
+
+That was artfully said, and I was posed; when Mr. Caxton observed, with
+an apologetic smile,--
+
+"The fact is, my dear Pisistratus, that I want my book published without
+diminishing the little fortune I keep for you some day.  Uncle Jack
+starts a society so to publish it.  Health and long life to Uncle Jack's
+society!  One can't look a gift horse in the mouth."
+
+Here my mother entered, rosy from a shopping expedition with Mrs.
+Primmins; and in her joy at hearing that I could stay to dinner, all
+else was forgotten.  By a wonder, which I did not regret, Uncle Jack
+really was engaged to dine out.  He had other irons in the fire besides
+the "Literary Times" and the "Confederate Authors' Society;" he was deep
+in a scheme for making house-tops of felt (which, under other hands,
+has, I believe, since succeeded); and he had found a rich man (I suppose
+a hatter) who seemed well inclined to the project, and had actually
+asked him to dine and expound his views.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+Here we three are seated round the open window--after dinner--familiar
+as in the old happy time--and my mother is talking low, that she may not
+disturb my father, who seems in thought--
+
+Cr-cr-crrr-cr-cr!  I feel it--I have it.  Where!  What!  Where!  Knock
+it down; brush it off!  For Heaven's sake, see to it!  Crrrr-crrrrr--
+there--here--in my hair--in my sleeve--in my ear--cr-cr.
+
+I say solemnly, and on the word of a Christian, that as I sat down to
+begin this chapter, being somewhat in a brown study, the pen insensibly
+slipped from my hand, and leaning back in my chair, I fell to gazing in
+the fire.  It is the end of June, and a remarkably cold evening, even
+for that time of year.  And while I was so gazing I felt something
+crawling just by the nape of the neck, ma'am.  Instinctively and
+mechanically, and still musing, I put my hand there, and drew forth
+What?  That what it is which perplexes me.  It was a thing--a dark
+thing--a much bigger thing than I had expected.  And the sight took me
+so by surprise that I gave my hand a violent shake, and the thing went--
+where I know not.  The what and the where are the knotty points in the
+whole question!  No sooner had it gone than I was seized with repentance
+not to have examined it more closely; not to have ascertained what the
+creature was.  It might have been an earwig,--a very large, motherly
+earwig; an earwig far gone in that way in which earwigs wish to be who
+love their lords.  I have a profound horror of earwigs; I firmly believe
+that they do get into the ear.  That is a subject on which it is useless
+to argue with me upon philosophical grounds.  I have a vivid
+recollection of a story told me by Mrs. Primmins,--how a lady for many
+years suffered under the most excruciating headaches; how, as the
+tombstones say, "physicians were in vain;" how she died; and how her
+head was opened, and how such a nest of earwigs, ma'am, such a nest!
+Earwigs are the prolifickest things, and so fond of their offspring!
+They sit on their eggs like hens, and the young, as soon as they are
+born, creep under them for protection,--quite touchingly!  Imagine such
+an establishment domesticated at one's tympanum!
+
+But the creature was certainly larger than an earwig.  It might have
+been one of that genus in the family of Forficulidce called Labidoura,--
+monsters whose antennae have thirty joints!  There is a species of this
+creature in England--but to the great grief of naturalists, and to the
+great honor of Providence, very rarely found--infinitely larger than the
+common earwig, or Forfaculida auriculana.  Could it have been an early
+hornet?  It had certainly a black head and great feelers.  I have a
+greater horror of hornets, if possible, than I have of earwigs.  Two
+hornets will kill a man, and three a carriage-horse sixteen hands high.
+However, the creature was gone.  Yes, but where?  Where had I so rashly
+thrown it?  It might have got into a fold of my dressing-gown or into my
+slippers, or, in short, anywhere, in the various recesses for earwigs
+and hornets which a gentleman's habiliments afford.  I satisfy myself at
+last as far as I can, seeing that I am not alone in the room, that it is
+not upon me.  I look upon the carpet, the rug, the chair under the
+fender.  It is non inventus.  I barbarously hope it is frizzing behind
+that great black coal in the grate.  I pluck up courage; I prudently
+remove to the other end of the room.  I take up my pen, I begin my
+chapter,--very nicely, too, I think upon the whole.  I am just getting
+into my subject, when--cr-cr-er-cr-er--crawl--crawl--crawl--creep--
+creep--creep.  Exactly, my dear ma'am, in the same place it was before!
+Oh, by the Powers!  I forgot all my scientific regrets at not having
+scrutinized its genus before, whether Forfaculida or Labidoura.  I made
+a desperate lunge with both hands,--something between thrust and cut,
+ma'am.  The beast is gone.  Yes, but, again, where?  I say that where is
+a very horrible question.  Having come twice, in spite of all my
+precautions--and exactly on the same spot, too--it shows a confirmed
+disposition to habituate itself to its quarters, to effect a parochial
+settlement upon me; there is something awful and preternatural in it.  I
+assure you that there is not a part of me that has not gone cr-cr-cr!--
+that has not crept, crawled, and forficulated ever since; and I put it
+to you what sort of a chapter I can make after such a--My good little
+girl, will you just take the candle and look carefully under the table?
+that's a dear!  Yes, my love, very black indeed, with two horns, and
+inclined to be corpulent.  Gentlemen and ladies who have cultivated an
+acquaintance with the Phcenician language are aware that Beelzebub,
+examined etymologically and entomologically, is nothing more nor less
+than Baalzebub, "the Jupiter-fly," an emblem of the Destroying Attribute,
+which attribute, indeed, is found in all the insect tribes more or less.
+Wherefore, as--Mr. Payne Knight, in his "Inquiry into Symbolical
+Languages," hath observed, the Egyptian priests shaved their whole
+bodies, even to their eyebrows, lest unaware they should harbor any of
+the minor Zebubs of the great Baal.  If I were the least bit more
+persuaded that that black cr-cr were about me still, and that the
+sacrifice of my eyebrows would deprive him of shelter, by the souls of
+the Ptolemies I would,--and I will too!  Icing the bell, my little dear!
+John, my--my cigar-box!  There is not a cr in the world that can abide
+the fumes of the havana!  Pshaw! sir, I am not the only man who lets his
+first thoughts upon cold steel end, like this chapter, in--Pff--pff--
+pff!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+Everything in this world is of use, even a black thing crawling over the
+nape of one's neck!  Grim unknown, I shall make of thee--a simile!
+
+I think, ma'am, you will allow that if an incident such as I have
+described had befallen yourself, and you had a proper and lady-like
+horror of earwigs (however motherly and fond of their offspring), and
+also of early hornets,--and indeed of all unknown things of the insect
+tribe with black heads and two great horns, or feelers, or forceps, just
+by your ear,--I think, ma'am, you will allow that you would find it
+difficult to settle back to your former placidity of mood and innocent
+stitch-work.  You would feel a something that grated on your nerves and
+cr'd-cr'd "all over you like," as the children say.  And the worst is,
+that you would be ashamed to say it.  You would feel obliged to look
+pleased and join in the conversation, and not fidget too much, nor
+always be shaking your flounces and looking into a dark corner of your
+apron.  Thus it is with many other things in life besides black insects.
+One has a secret care, an abstraction, a something between the memory
+and the feeling, of a dark crawling cr which one has never dared to
+analyze.  So I sat by my another, trying to smile and talk as in the old
+time, but longing to move about, and look around, and escape to my own
+solitude, and take the clothes off my mind, and see what it was that had
+so troubled and terrified me; for trouble and terror were upon me.  And
+my mother, who was always (Heaven bless her!) inquisitive enough in all
+that concerned her darling Anachronism, was especially inquisitive that
+evening.  She made me say where I had been, and what I had done, and how
+I had spent my time; and Fanny Trevanion (whom she had seen, by the way,
+three or four times, and whom she thought the prettiest person in the
+world), oh, she must know exactly what I thought of Fanny Trevanion!
+
+And all this while my father seemed in thought; and so, with my arm over
+my mother's chair, and my hand in hers, I answered my mother's
+questions, sometimes by a stammer, sometimes by a violent effort at
+volubility; when at some interrogatory that went tingling right to my
+heart I turned uneasily, and there were my father's eyes fixed on mine,
+fixed as they had been when, and none knew why, I pined and languished,
+and my father said, "He must go to school;" fixed with quiet, watchful
+tenderness.  Ah, no! his thoughts had not been on the Great Work; he had
+been deep in the pages of that less worthy one for which he had yet more
+an author's paternal care.  I met those eyes and yearned to throw myself
+on his heart and tell him all.  Tell him what?  Ma'am, I no more knew
+what to tell him than I know what that black thing was which has so
+worried me all this blessed evening!
+
+"Pisistratus," said my father, softly, "I fear you have forgotten the
+saffron bag."
+
+"No, indeed, sir," said I, smiling.
+
+"He," resumed my father, "he who wears the saffron bag has more
+cheerful, settled spirits than you seem to have, my poor boy."
+
+"My dear Austin, his spirits are very good, I think," said my mother,
+anxiously.
+
+My father shook his head; then he took two or three turns about the
+room.
+
+"Shall I ring for candles, sir?  It is getting dark; you will wish to
+read."
+
+"No, Pisistratus, it is you who shall read; and this hour of twilight
+best suits the book I am about to open to you."
+
+So saying, he drew a chair between me and my mother and seated himself
+gravely, looking down a long time in silence, then turning his eyes to
+each of us alternately.
+
+"My dear wife," said he, at length, almost solemnly, "I am going to
+speak of myself as I was before I knew you."
+
+Even in the twilight I saw that my mother's countenance changed.
+
+"You have respected my secrets, Katherine, tenderly, honestly.  Now the
+time is come when I can tell them to you and to our son."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+MY FATHER'S FIRST LOVE.
+
+"I lost my mother early; my father--a good man, but who was so indolent
+that he rarely stirred from his chair, and who often passed whole days
+without speaking, like an Indian dervish--left Roland and myself to
+educate ourselves much according to our own tastes.  Roland shot and
+hunted and fished, read all the poetry and books of chivalry to be found
+in my father's collection, which was rich in such matters, and made a
+great many copies of the old pedigree,--the only thing in which my
+father ever evinced much vital interest.  Early in life I conceived a
+passion for graver studios, and by good luck I found a tutor in Mr.
+Tibbets, who, but for his modesty, Kitty, would have rivalled Porson.
+He was a second Budaeus for industry,--and, by the way, he said exactly
+the same thing that Budmus did, namely, 'That the only lost day in his
+life was that in which he was married; for on that day he had only had
+six hours for reading'!  Under such a master I could not fail to be a
+scholar.  I came from the university with such distinction as led me to
+look sanguinely on my career in the world.
+
+"I returned to my father's quiet rectory to pause and consider what path
+I should take to faire.  The rectory was just at the foot of the hill,
+on the brow of which were the ruins of the castle Roland has since
+purchased.  And though I did not feel for the ruins the same romantic
+veneration as my dear brother (for my day-dreams were more colored by
+classic than feudal recollections), I yet loved to climb the hill, book
+in hand, and built my castles in the air midst the wrecks of that which
+time had shattered on the earth.
+
+"One day, entering the old weed-grown court, I saw a lady seated on my
+favorite spot, sketching the ruins.  The lady was young, more beautiful
+than any woman I had yet seen,--at least to my eyes.  In a word, I was
+fascinated, and as the trite phrase goes, 'spell-bound.'  I seated
+myself at a little distance, and contemplated her without desiring to
+speak.  By and by, from another part of the ruins, which were then
+uninhabited, came a tall, imposing elderly gentleman with a benignant
+aspect, and a little dog.  The dog ran up to me barking.  This drew the
+attention of both lady and gentleman to me.  The gentleman approached,
+called off the dog, and apologized with much politeness.  Surveying me
+somewhat curiously, he then began to ask questions about the old place
+and the family it had belonged to, with the name and antecedents of
+which he was well acquainted.  By degrees it came out that I was the
+descendant of that family, and the younger son of the humble rector who
+was now its representative.  The gentleman then introduced himself to me
+as the Earl of Rainsforth, the principal proprietor in the neighborhood,
+but who had so rarely visited the country during my childhood and
+earlier youth that I had never before seen him.  His only son, however,
+a young man of great promise, had been at the same college with me in my
+first year at the University.  The young lord was a reading man and a
+scholar, and we had become slightly acquainted when he left for his
+travels.
+
+"Now, on hearing my name Lord Rainsforth took my hand cordially, and
+leading me to his daughter, said, 'Think, Ellinor, how fortunate!--this
+is the Mr. Caxton whom your brother so often spoke of.'
+
+"In short, my dear Pisistratus, the ice was broken, the acquaintance
+made; and Lord Rainsforth, saying he was come to atone for his long
+absence from the county, and to reside at Compton the greater part of
+the year, pressed me to visit him.  I did so.  Lord Raipsforth's liking
+to me increased; I went there often."
+
+My father paused, and seeing my mother had fixed her eyes upon him with
+a sort of mournful earnestness, and had pressed her hands very tightly
+together, he bent down and kissed her forehead.
+
+"There is no cause, my child!" said he.  It was the only time I ever
+heard him address my mother so parentally.  But then I never heard him
+before so grave and solemn,--not a quotation, too; it was incredible: it
+was not my father speaking, it was another man.  "Yes, I went there
+often.  Lord Rainsforth was a remarkable person.  Shyness that was
+wholly without pride (which is rare), and a love for quiet literary
+pursuits, had prevented his taking that personal part in public life for
+which he was richly qualified; but his reputation for sense and honor,
+and his personal popularity, had given him no inconsiderable influence
+even, I believe, in the formation of cabinets, and he had once been
+prevailed upon to fill a high diplomatic situation abroad, in which I
+have no doubt that he was as miserable as a good man can be under any
+infliction.  He was now pleased to retire from the world, and look at it
+through the loopholes of retreat.  Lord Rainsforth had a great respect
+for talent, and a warm interest in such of the young as seemed to him to
+possess it.  By talent, indeed, his family had risen, and were
+strikingly characterized.  His ancestor, the first peer, had been a
+distinguished lawyer; his father had been celebrated for scientific
+attainments; his children, Ellinor and Lord Pendarvis, were highly
+accomplished.  Thus the family identified themselves with the
+aristocracy of intellect, and seemed unconscious of their claims to the
+lower aristocracy of rank.  You must bear this in mind throughout my
+story.
+
+"Lady Ellinor shared her father's tastes and habits of thought (she was
+not then an heiress).  Lord Rainsforth talked to me of my career.  It
+was a time when the French Revolution had made statesmen look round with
+some anxiety to strengthen the existing order of things, by alliance
+with all in the rising generation who evinced such ability as might
+influence their contemporaries.
+
+"University distinction is, or was formerly, among the popular passports
+to public life.  By degrees, Lord Rainsforth liked me so well as to
+suggest to me a seat in the House of Commons.  A member of Parliament
+might rise to anything, and Lord Rainsforth had sufficient influence to
+effect my return.  Dazzling prospect this to a young scholar fresh from
+Thucydides, and with Demosthenes fresh at his tongue's end!  My dear
+boy, I was not then, you see, quite what I am now: in a word, I loved
+Ellinor Compton, and therefore I was ambitious.  You know how ambitious
+she is still.  But I could not mould my ambition to hers.  I could not
+contemplate entering the senate of my country as a dependent on a party
+or a patron,--as a man who must make his fortune there; as a man who, in
+every vote, must consider how much nearer he advanced himself to
+emolument.  I was not even certain that Lord Rainsforth's views on
+politics were the same as mine would be.  How could the politics of an
+experienced man of the world be those of an ardent young student?  But
+had they been identical, I felt that I could not so creep into equality
+with a patron's daughter.  No! I was ready to abandon my own more
+scholastic predilections, to strain every energy at the Bar, to carve or
+force my own way to fortune; and if I arrived at independence, then,--
+what then?  Why, the right to speak of love and aim at power.  This was
+not the view of Ellinor Compton.  The law seemed to her a tedious,
+needless drudgery; there was nothing in it to captivate her imagination.
+She listened to me with that charm which she yet retains, and by which
+she seems to identify herself with those who speak to her.  She would
+turn to me with a pleading look when her father 'dilated on the
+brilliant prospects of a parliamentary success; for he (not having
+gained it, yet having lived with those who had) overvalued it, and
+seemed ever to wish to enjoy it through some other.  But when I, in
+turn, spoke of independence, of the Bar, Ellinor's face grew overcast.
+The world,--the world was with her, and the ambition of the world, which
+is always for power or effect!  A part of the house lay exposed to the
+east wind.  'Plant half-way down the hill,' said I one day.  'Plant!'
+cried Lady Ellinor,--`it will be twenty years before the trees grow up.
+No, my dear father, build a wall and cover it with creepers!'  That was
+an illustration of her whole character.  She could not wait till trees
+had time to grow; a dead wall would be so much more quickly thrown up,
+and parasite creepers would give it a prettier effect.  Nevertheless,
+she was a grand and noble creature.  And I--in love!  Not so discouraged
+as you may suppose; for Lord Rainsforth often hinted encouragement which
+even I could scarcely misconstrue.  Not caring for rank, and not wishing
+for fortune beyond competence for his daughter, he saw in me all he
+required,--a gentleman of ancient birth, and one in whom his own active
+mind could prosecute that kind of mental ambition which overflowed in
+him, and yet had never had its vent.  And Ellinor!---Heaven forbid I
+should say she loved me, but something made me think she could do so.
+Under these notions, suppressing all my hopes, I made a bold effort to
+master the influences round me and to adopt that career I thought
+worthiest of us all.  I went to London to read for the Bar."
+
+"The Bar! is it possible?" cried I.  My father smiled sadly.
+
+"Everything seemed possible to me then.  I read some months.  I began to
+see my way even in that short time,--began to comprehend what would be
+the difficulties before me, and to feel there was that within me which
+could master them.  I took a holiday and returned to Cumberland.  I
+found Roland there on my return.  Always of a roving, adventurous
+temper, though he had not then entered the army, he had, for more than
+two years, been wandering over Great Britain and Ireland on foot.  It
+was a young knight-errant whom I embraced, and who overwhelmed me with
+reproaches that I should be reading for the law.  There had never been a
+lawyer in the family!  It was about that time, I think, that I petrified
+him with the discovery of the printer!  I knew not exactly wherefore,
+whether from jealousy, fear, foreboding, but it certainly was a pain
+that seized me when I learned from Roland that he had become intimate at
+Compton Hall.  Roland and Lord Rainsforth had met at the house of a
+neighboring gentleman, and Lord Rainsforth had welcomed his
+acquaintance, at first, perhaps, for my sake, afterwards for his own.
+
+"I could not for the life of me," continued my father, "ask Roland if he
+admired Ellinor; but when I found that he did not put that question to
+me, I trembled!
+
+"We went to Compton together, speaking little by the way.  We stayed
+there some days."
+
+My father here thrust his hand into his waistcoat.  All men have their
+little ways, which denote much; and when my father thrust his hand into
+his waistcoat, it was always a sign of some mental effort,--he was going
+to prove or to argue, to moralize or to preach.  Therefore, though I was
+listening before with all my ears, I believe I had, speaking
+magnetically and mesmerically, an extra pair of ears, a new sense
+supplied to me, when my father put his hand into his waistcoat.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+"There is not a mystical creation, type, symbol, or poetical invention
+for meanings abtruse, recondite, and incomprehensible which is not
+represented by the female gender," said my father, having his hand quite
+buried in his waistcoat.  "For instance, the Sphinx and Isis, whose veil
+no man had ever lifted, were both ladies, Kitty!  And so was Persephone,
+who must be always either in heaven or hell; and Hecate, who was one
+thing by night and another by day.  The Sibyls were females, and so were
+the Gorgons, the Harpies, the Furies, the Fates, and the Teutonic
+Valkyrs, Nornies, and Hela herself; in short, all representations of
+ideas obscure, inscrutable, and portentous, are nouns feminine."
+
+Heaven bless my father!  Augustine Caxton was himself again!  I began to
+fear that the story had slipped away from him, lost in that labyrinth of
+learning.  But luckily, as he paused for breath, his look fell on those
+limpid blue eyes of my mother, and that honest open brow of hers, which
+had certainly nothing in common with Sphinxes, Fates, Furies, or
+Valkyrs; and whether his heart smote him, or his reason made him own
+that he had fallen into a very disingenuous and unsound train of
+assertion, I know not, but his front relaxed, and with a smile he
+resumed: "Ellinor was the last person in the world to deceive any one
+willingly.  Did she deceive me and Roland, that we both, though not
+conceited men, fancied that, if we had dared to speak openly of love, we
+had not so dared in vain; or do you think, Kitty, that a woman really
+can love (not much, perhaps, but somewhat) two or three, or half a
+dozen, at a time?"
+
+"Impossible!" cried my mother.  "And as for this Lady Ellinor, I am
+shocked at her--I don't know what to call it!"
+
+"Nor I either, my dear," said my father, slowly taking his hand from his
+waistcoat, as if the effort were too much for him, and the problem were
+insoluble.  "But this, begging your pardon, I do think, that before a
+young woman does really, truly, and cordially centre her affections on
+one object, she suffers fancy, imagination, the desire of power,
+curiosity, or Heaven knows what, to stimulate, even to her own mind,
+pale reflections of the luminary not yet risen,--parhelia that precede
+the sun.  Don't judge of Roland as you see him now, Pisistratus,--grim,
+and gray, and formal: imagine a nature soaring high amongst daring
+thoughts, or exuberant with the nameless poetry of youthful life, with a
+frame matchless for bounding elasticity, an eye bright with haughty
+fire, a heart from which noble sentiments sprang like sparks from an
+anvil.  Lady Ellinor had an ardent, inquisitive imagination.  This bold,
+fiery nature must have moved her interest.  On the other hand, she had
+an instructed, full, and eager mind.  Am I vain if I say, now after the
+lapse of so many years, that in my mind her intellect felt
+companionship?  When a woman loves and marries and settles, why then she
+becomes a one whole, a completed being.  But a girl like Ellinor has in
+her many women.  Various herself, all varieties please her.  I do
+believe that if either of us had spoken the word boldly, Lady Ellinor
+would have shrunk back to her own heart, examined it, tasked it, and
+given a frank and generous answer; and he who had spoken first might
+have had the better chance not to receive a 'No.'  But neither of us
+spoke.  And perhaps she was rather curious to know if she had made an
+impression, than anxious to create it.  It was not that she willingly
+deceived us, but her whole atmosphere was delusion.  Mists come before
+the sunrise.  However this be, Roland and I were not long in detecting
+each other.  And hence arose, first coldness, then jealousy, then
+quarrel."
+
+"Oh, my father, your love must have been indeed powerful to have made a
+breach between the hearts of two such brothers!"
+
+"Yes," said my father, "it was amidst the old ruins of the castle, there
+where I had first seen Ellinor, that, winding my arm round Roland's neck
+as I found--him seated amongst the weeds and stones, his face buried in
+his hands,--it was there that I said, "Brother, we both love this woman!
+My nature is the calmer of the two, I shall feel the loss less.
+Brother, shake hands!  and God speed you, for I go!"
+
+"Austin!" murmured my mother, sinking her head on my father's breast.
+
+"And therewith we quarrelled.  For it was Roland who insisted, while the
+tears rolled down his eyes and he stamped his foot on the ground, that
+he was the intruder, the interloper; that he had no hope; that he had
+been a fool and a madman; and that it was for him to go!  Now, while we
+were disputing, and words began to run high, my father's old servant
+entered the desolate place with a note from Lady Ellinor to me, asking
+for the loan of some book I had praised.  Roland saw the handwriting,
+and while I turned the note over and over irresolutely, before I broke
+the seal, he vanished.
+
+"He did not return to my father's house.  We did not know what had
+become of him.  But I, thinking over that impulsive, volcanic nature,
+took quick alarm.  And I went in search of him; came on his track at
+last; and after many days found him in a miserable cottage amongst the
+most dreary of the dreary wastes which form so large a part of
+Cumberland.  He was so altered I scarcely knew him.  To be brief, we
+came at last to a compromise.  We would go back to Compton.  This
+suspense was intolerable.  One of us at least should take courage and
+learn his fate.  But who should speak first?  We drew lots, and the lot
+fell on me.
+
+"And now that I was really to pass the Rubicon, now that I was to impart
+that secret hope which had animated me so long, been to me a new life,
+what were my sensations?  My dear boy, depend on it that that age is the
+happiest when such feelings as I felt then can agitate us no more; they
+are mistakes in the serene order of that majestic life which Heaven
+meant for thoughtful man.  Our souls should be as stars on earth, not as
+meteors and tortured comets.  What could I offer to Ellinor, to her
+father?  What but a future of patient labor?  And in either answer what
+alternative of misery,--my own existence shattered, or Roland's noble
+heart!
+
+"Well, we went to Compton.  In our former visits we had been almost the
+only guests.  Lord Rainsforth did not much affect the intercourse of
+country squires, less educated then than now; and in excuse for Ellinor
+and for us, we were almost the only men of our own age she had seen in
+that large dull house.  But now the London season had broken up, the
+house was filled; there was no longer that familiar and constant
+approach to the mistress of the Hall which had made us like one family.
+Great ladies, fine people were round her; a look, a smile, a passing
+word were as much as I had a right to expect.  And the talk, too, how
+different!  Before I could speak on books,--I was at home there!  Roland
+could pour forth his dreams, his chivalrous love for the past, his bold
+defiance of the unknown future.  And Ellinor, cultivated and fanciful,
+could sympathize with both.  And her father, scholar and gentleman,
+could sympathize too.  But now--"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+"It is no use in the world," said my father, "to know all the languages
+expounded in grammars and splintered up into lexicons, if we don't learn
+the language of the world.  It is a talk apart, Kitty," cried my father,
+warming up.  "It is an Anaglyph,--a spoken anaglyph, my dear!  If all
+the hieroglyphs of the Egyptians had been A B C to you, still, if you
+did not know the anaglyph, you would know nothing of the true mysteries
+of the priests. (1)
+
+"Neither Roland nor I knew one symbol letter of the anaglyph.  Talk,
+talk, talk on persons we never heard of, things we never cared for.  All
+we thought of importance, puerile or pedantic trifles; all we thought so
+trite and childish, the grand momentous business of life!  If you found
+a little schoolboy on his half-holiday fishing for minnows with a
+crooked pin, and you began to tell him of all the wonders of the deep,
+the laws of the tides, and the antediluvian relies of iguanodon and
+ichthyosaurus; nay, if you spoke but of pearl fisheries and coral-banks,
+or water-kelpies and  naiads,--would not the little boy cry out
+peevishly, 'Don't tease me with all that nonsense; let me fish in peace
+for my minnows!'  I think the little boy is right after his own way: it
+was to fish for minnows that he came out, poor child, not to hear about
+iguanodons and water-kelpies.
+
+"So the company fished for minnows, and not a word could we say about
+our pearl-fisheries and coral-banks!  And as for fishing for minnows
+ourselves, my dear boy, we should have been less bewildered if you had
+asked us to fish for a mermaid!  Do you see, now, one reason why I have
+let you go thus early into the world?  Well, but amongst these minnow-
+fishers there was one who fished with an air that made the minnows look
+larger than salmons.
+
+"Trevanion had been at Cambridge with me.  We were even intimate.  He
+was a young man like myself, with his way to make in the world.  Poor as
+I, of a family upon a par with mine, old enough, but decayed.  There
+was, however, this difference between us: he had connections in the
+great world; I had none.  Like me, his chief pecuniary resource was a
+college fellowship.  Now, Trevanion had established a high reputation at
+the University; but less as a scholar, though a pretty fair one, than as
+a man to rise in life.  Every faculty he had was an energy.  He aimed at
+everything: lost some things, gained others.  He was a great speaker in
+a debating society, a member of some politico-economical club.  He was
+an eternal talker,--brilliant, various, paradoxical, florid; different
+from what he is now, for, dreading fancy, his career since has been one
+effort to curb it.  But all his mind attached itself to something that
+we Englishmen call solid; it was a large mind,--not, my dear Kitty, like
+a fine whale sailing through knowledge from the pleasure of sailing, but
+like a polypus, that puts forth all its feelers for the purpose of
+catching hold of something.  Trevanion had gone at once to London from
+the University; his reputation and his talk dazzled his connections, not
+unjustly.  They made an effort, they got him into Parliament; he had
+spoken, he had succeeded.  He came to Compton in the flush of his virgin
+fame.  I cannot convey to you who know him now--with his careworn face
+and abrupt, dry manner, reduced by perpetual gladiatorship to the skin
+and bone of his former self--what that man was when he first stepped
+into the arena of life.
+
+"You see, my listeners, that you have to recollect that we middle-aged
+folks were young then; that is to say, we were as different from what we
+are now as the green bough of summer is from the dry wood out of which
+we make a ship or a gatepost.  Neither man nor wood comes to the uses of
+life till the green leaves are stripped and the sap gone.  And then the
+uses of life transform us into strange things with other names: the tree
+is a tree no more, it is a gate or a ship; the youth is a youth no more,
+but a one-legged soldier, a hollow-eyed statesman, a scholar spectacled
+and slippered!  When Micyllus"--here the hand slides into the waistcoat
+again--"when Micyllus," said my father, "asked the cock that had once
+been Pythagoras(2) if the affair of Troy was really as Homer told it,
+the cock replied scornfully, 'How could Homer know anything about it?
+At that time he was a camel in Bactria.'  Pisistratus, according to the
+doctrine of metempsychosis you might have been a Bactrian camel when
+that which to my life was the siege of Troy saw Roland and Trevanion
+before the walls.
+
+"Handsome you can see that Trevanion has been: but the beauty of his
+countenance then was in its perpetual play, its intellectual eagerness;
+and his conversation was so discursive, so various, so animated, and
+above all so full of the things of the day!  If he had been a priest of
+Serapis for fifty years he could not have known the anaglyph better.
+Therefore he filled up every crevice and pore of that hollow society
+with his broken, inquisitive, petulant light; therefore he was admired,
+talked of, listened to, and everybody said, 'Trevanion is a rising man.'
+
+"Yet I did not do him then the justice I have done since; for we
+students and abstract thinkers are apt too much, in our first youth, to
+look to the depth, of a man's mind or knowledge, and not enough to the
+surface it may cover.  There may be more water in a flowing stream only
+four feet deep, and certainly more force and more health, than in a
+sullen pool thirty yards to the bottom.  I did not do Trevanion justice;
+I did not see how naturally he realized Lady Ellinor's ideal.  I have
+said that she was like many women in one.  Trevanion was a thousand men
+in one.  He had learning to please her mind, eloquence to dazzle her
+fancy, beauty to please her eye, reputation precisely of the kind to
+allure her vanity, honor and conscientious purpose to satisfy her
+judgment; and, above all, he was ambitious,--ambitious not as I, not as
+Roland was, but ambitious as Ellinor was; ambitious, not to realize some
+grand ideal in the silent heart, but to grasp the practical, positive
+substances that lay without.
+
+"Ellinor was a child of the great world, and so was he.
+
+"I saw not all this, nor did Roland; and Trevanion seemed to pay no
+particular court to Ellinor.
+
+"But the time approached when I ought to speak.  The house began to
+thin.  Lord Rainsforth had leisure to resume his easy conferences with
+me; and one day, walking in his garden, he gave me the opportunity,--for
+I need not say, Pisistratus," said my father, looking at me earnestly,
+"that before any man of honor, if of inferior worldly pretensions, will
+open his heart seriously to the daughter, it is his duty to speak first
+to the parent, whose confidence has imposed that trust."  I bowed my
+head and colored.
+
+"I know not how it was," continued my father, "but Lord Rainsforth
+turned the conversation on Ellinor.  After speaking of his expectations
+in his son, who was returning home, he said, 'But he will of course
+enter public life,--will, I trust, soon marry, have a separate
+establishment, and I shall see but little of him.  My Ellinor!  I cannot
+bear the thought of parting wholly with her.  And that, to say the
+selfish truth, is one reason why I have never wished her to marry a rich
+man, and so leave me forever.  I could hope that she will give herself
+to one who may be contented to reside at least great part of the year
+with me, who may bless me with another son, not steal from me a
+daughter.  I do not mean that he should waste his life in the country;
+his occupations would probably lead him to London.  I care not where my
+house is,--all I want is to keep my home.  You know,' he added, with a
+smile that I thought meaning, 'how often I have implied to you that I
+have no vulgar ambition for Ellinor.  Her portion must be very small,
+for my estate is strictly entailed, and I have lived too much up to my
+income all my life to hope to save much now.  But her tastes do not
+require expense, and while I live, at least, there need be no change.
+She can only prefer a man whose talents, congenial to hers, will win
+their own career, and ere I die that career may be made.'  Lord
+Rainsforth paused; and then--how, in what words I know not, but out all
+burst!--my long-suppressed, timid, anxious, doubtful, fearful love.  The
+strange energy it had given to a nature till then so retiring and calm!
+My recent devotion to the law; my confidence that, with such a prize, I
+could succeed,--it was but a transfer of labor from one study to
+another.  Labor could conquer all things, and custom sweeten them in the
+conquest.  The Bar was a less brilliant career than the senate.  But the
+first aim of the poor man should be independence.  In short,
+Pisistratus, wretched egotist that I was, I forgot Roland in that
+moment; and I spoke as one who felt his life was in his words.
+
+"Lord Rainsforth looked at me, when I had done, with a countenance full
+of affection, but it was not cheerful.
+
+"'My dear Caxton,' said he, tremulously, 'I own that I once wished
+this,--wished it from the hour I knew you; but why did you so long--I
+never suspected that--nor, I am sure, did Ellinor.'  He stopped short,
+and added quickly: 'However, go and speak, as you have spoken to me, to
+Ellinor.  Go; it may not yet be too late.  And yet--but go.'
+
+"Too late!'--what meant those words?  Lord Rainsforth had turned hastily
+down another walk, and left me alone, to ponder over an answer which
+concealed a riddle.  Slowly I took my way towards the house and sought
+Lady Ellinor, half hoping, half dreading to find her alone.  There was a
+little room communicating with a conservatory, where she usually sat in
+the morning.  Thither I took my course.  "That room,--I see it still!--
+the walls covered with pictures from her own hand, many were sketches of
+the haunts we had visited together; the simple ornaments, womanly but
+not effeminate; the very books on the table, that had been made familiar
+by dear associations.  Yes, there the Tasso, in which we had read
+together the episode of Clorinda; there the Aeschylus in which I
+translated to her the "Prometheus."  Pedantries these might seem to
+some, pedantries, perhaps, they were; but they were proofs of that
+congeniality which had knit the man of books to the daughter of the
+world.  That room, it was the home of my heart.
+
+"Such, in my vanity of spirit, methought would be the air round a home
+to come.  I looked about me, troubled and confused, and, halting
+timidly, I saw Ellinor before me, leaning her face on her hand, her
+cheek more flushed than usual, and tears in her eyes.  I approached in
+silence, and as I drew my chair to the table, my eye fell on a glove on
+the floor.  It was a man's glove.  Do you know," said my father, "that
+once, when I was very young, I saw a Dutch picture called 'The Glove,'
+and the subject was of murder?  There was a weed-grown, marshy pool, a
+desolate, dismal landscape, that of itself inspired thoughts of ill
+deeds and terror.  And two men, as if walking by chance, came to this
+pool; the finger of one pointed to a blood-stained glove, and the eyes
+of both were fixed on each other, as if there were no need of words.
+That glove told its tale.  The picture had long haunted me in my
+boyhood, but it never gave me so uneasy and fearful a feeling as did
+that real glove upon the floor.  Why?  My dear Pisistratus, the theory
+of forebodings involves one of those questions on which we may ask 'why'
+forever.  More chilled than I had been in speaking to her father, I took
+heart at last, and spoke to Ellinor."
+
+My father stopped short; the moon had risen, and was shining full into
+the room and on his face.  And by that light the face was changed; young
+emotions had brought back youth,--my father looked a young man.  But
+what pain was there!  If the memory alone could raise what, after all,
+was but the ghost of suffering, what had been its living reality!
+Involuntarily I seized his hand; my father pressed it convulsively, and
+said with a deep breath: "It was too late; Trevanion was Lady Ellinor's
+accepted, plighted, happy lover.  My dear Katherine, I do not envy him
+now; look up, sweet wife, look up!"
+
+(1).  The anaglyph was peculiar to the Egyptian priests; the hieroglyph
+generally known to the well educated.
+
+(2).  Lucian, The Dream of Micyllus.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+"Ellinor (let me do her justice) was shocked at my silent emotion.  No
+human lip could utter more tender sympathy, more noble self-reproach;
+but that was no balm to my wound.  So I left the house; so I never
+returned to the law; so all impetus, all motive for exertion, seemed
+taken from my being; so I went back into books.  And so a moping,
+despondent, worthless mourner might I have been to the end of my days,
+but that Heaven, in its mercy, sent thy mother, Pisistratus, across my
+path; and day and night I bless God and her, for I have been, and am--
+oh, indeed, I am a happy man!"
+
+My mother threw herself on my father's breast, sobbing violently, and
+then turned from the room without a word; my father's eye, swimming in
+tears, followed her; and then, after pacing the room for some moments in
+silence, he came up to me, and leaning his arm on my shoulder,
+whispered, "Can you guess why I have now told you all this, my son?"
+
+"Yes, partly: thank you, father," I faltered, and sat down, for I felt
+faint.
+
+"Some sons," said my father, seating himself beside me, "would find in
+their father's follies and errors an excuse for their own; not so will
+you, Pisistratus."
+
+"I see no folly, no error, sir; only nature and sorrow."
+
+"Pause ere you thus think," said my father.  "Great was the folly and
+great the error of indulging imagination that has no basis, of linking
+the whole usefulness of my life to the will of a human creature like
+myself.  Heaven did not design the passion of love to be this tyrant;
+nor is it so with the mass and multitude of human life.  We dreamers,
+solitary students like me, or half-poets like poor Roland, make our own
+disease.  How many years, even after I had regained serenity, as your
+mother gave me a home long not appreciated, have I wasted!  The
+mainstring of my existence was snapped; I took no note of time.  And
+therefore now, you see, late in life, Nemesis wakes.  I look back with
+regret at powers neglected, opportunities gone.  Galvanically I brace up
+energies half-palsied by disuse; and you see me, rather than rest quiet
+and good for nothing, talked into what, I dare say, are sad follies, by
+an Uncle Jack!  And now I behold Ellinor again; and I say in wonder:
+'All this--all this--all this agony, all this torpor, for that, haggard
+face, that worldly spirit!'  So is it ever in life: mortal things fade;
+immortal things spring more freshly with every step to the tomb.
+
+"Ah!" continued my father, with a sigh, "it would not have been so if at
+your age I had found out the secret of the saffron bag!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+
+"And Roland, sir," said I, "how did he take it?"
+
+"With all the indignation of a proud, unreasonable man; more indignant,
+poor fellow, for me than himself.  And so did he wound and gall me by
+what he said of Ellinor, and so did he rage against me because I would
+not share his rage, that again we quarrelled.  We parted, and did not
+meet for many years.  We came into sudden possession of our little
+fortunes.  His he devoted (as you may know) to the purchase of the old
+ruins and the commission in the army, which had always been his dream;
+and so went his way, wrathful.  My share gave me an excuse for
+indolence,--it satisfied all my wants; and when my old tutor died, and
+his young child became my ward, and, somehow or other, from my ward my
+wife, it allowed me to resign my fellowship and live amongst my books,
+still as a book myself.  One comfort, somewhat before my marriage, I had
+conceived; and that, too, Roland has since said was comfort to him,--
+Ellinor became an heiress.  Her poor brother died, and all of the estate
+that did not pass in the male line devolved on her.  That fortune made a
+gulf between us almost as wide as her marriage.  For Ellinor poor and
+portionless, in spite of her rank, I could have worked, striven, slaved;
+but Ellinor Rich! it would have crushed me.  This was a comfort.  But
+still, still the past,--that perpetual aching sense of something that
+had seemed the essential of life withdrawn from life evermore, evermore!
+What was left was not sorrow,--it was a void.  Had I lived more with
+men, and less with dreams and books, I should have made my nature large
+enough to bear the loss of a single passion.  But in solitude we shrink
+up.  No plant so much as man needs the sun and the air.  I comprehend
+now why most of our best and wisest men have lived in capitals; and
+therefore again I say, that one scholar in a family is enough.
+Confiding in your sound heart and strong honor, I turn you thus betimes
+on the world.  Have I done wrong?  Prove that I have not, my child.  Do
+you know what a very good man has said?  Listen and follow my precept,
+not example.
+
+"'The state of the world is such, and so much depends on action, that
+everything seems to say aloud to every man, "Do something--do it--do
+it!"'"
+
+I was profoundly touched, and I rose refreshed and hopeful, when
+suddenly the door opened, and who or what in the world should come in--
+But certainly he, she, it, or they shall not come into this chapter!  On
+that point I am resolved.  No, my dear young lady, I am extremely
+flattered, I feel for your curiosity; but really not a peep,--not one!
+And yet--Well, then, if you will have it, and look so coaxingly--Who or
+what, I say, should come in abrupt, unexpected--taking away one's
+breath, not giving one time to say, "By your leave, or with your leave,"
+but making one's mouth stand open with surprise, and one's eyes fix in a
+big round stupid stare--but--
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CAXTONS, BY LYTTON, PART 7 ***
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