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Rh round again, and seeing that the music, which Mrs. Tartan, under the pretence of putting in order, had been adjusting upon the piano; seeing that this music was now in a vertical pile against the wall, with—Love was once a little boy, for the outermost and only visible sheet; and thinking this to be a remarkable coincidence under the circumstances; Pierre could not refrain from a humorous smile, though it was a very gentle one, and immediately repented of, especially as Lucy seeing and interpreting it, immediately arose, with an unaccountable, indignant, angelical, adorable, and all-persuasive 'Mr. Glendinning?' utterly confounded in him the slightest germ of suspicion as to Lucy's collusion in her mother's imagined artifices.

Indeed, Mrs. Tartan's having anything whatever to do, or hint, or finesse in this matter of the loves of Pierre and Lucy, was nothing less than immensely gratuitous and sacrilegious. Would Mrs. Tartan doctor lilies when they blow? Would Mrs. Tartan set about match-making between the steel and magnet? Preposterous Mrs. Tartan! But this whole world is a preposterous one, with many preposterous people in it; chief among whom was Mrs. Tartan, match-maker to the nation.

This conduct of Mrs. Tartan, was the more absurd, seeing that she could not but know that Mrs. Glendinning desired the thing. And was not Lucy wealthy?—going to be, that is, very wealthy when her mother died;—(sad thought that for Mrs. Tartan)—and was not her husband's family of the best; and had not Lucy's father been a bosom friend of Pierre's father? And though Lucy might be matched to some one man, where among women was the match for Lucy? Exceedingly preposterous Mrs. Tartan! But when a lady like Mrs. Tartan has nothing positive and useful to do, then she will do just such preposterous things as Mrs. Tartan did.

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38 Well, time went on; and Pierre loved Lucy, and Lucy, Pierre; till at last the two young naval gentlemen, her brothers, happened to arrive in Mrs. Tartan's drawing-room from their first cruise—a three years' one up the Mediterranean. They rather stared at Pierre, finding him on the sofa, and Lucy not very remote.

'Pray, be seated, gentlemen,' said Pierre. 'Plenty of room.'

'My darling brothers!' cried Lucy, embracing them.

'My darling brothers and sister!' cried Pierre, folding them together.

'Pray, hold off, sir,' said the elder brother, who had served as a passed midshipman for the last two weeks. The younger brother retreated a little, and clapped his hand upon his dirk, saying, 'Sir, we are from the Mediterranean. Sir, permit me to say, this is decidedly improper! Who may you be, sir?'

'I can't explain for joy,' cried Pierre, hilariously embracing them all again.

'Most extraordinary!' cried the elder brother, extricating his shirt-collar from the embrace, and pulling it up vehemently.

'Draw!' cried the younger, intrepidly.

'Peace, foolish fellows,' cried Lucy—'this is your old playfellow, Pierre Glendinning.'

'Pierre? why, Pierre?' cried the lads—'a hug all round again! You've grown a fathom!—who would have known you? But, then—Lucy? I say, Lucy?—what business have you here in this—eh? eh?—hugging-match, I should call it?'

'Oh! Lucy don't mean anything,' cried Pierre—'come, one more all round.'

So they all embraced again; and that evening it was publicly known that Pierre was to wed with Lucy.

Whereupon, the young officers took it upon themselves

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Rh to think—though they by no means presumed to breathe it—that they had authoritatively, though indirectly, accelerated a before ambiguous and highly incommendable state of affairs between the now affianced lovers.

III

In the fine old robust times of Pierre's grandfather, an American gentleman of substantial person and fortune spent his time in a somewhat different style from the green-house gentlemen of the present day. The grandfather of Pierre measured six feet four inches in height; during a fire in the old manorial mansion, with one dash of his foot, he had smitten down an oaken door, to admit the buckets of his negro slaves; Pierre had often tried on his military vest, which still remained an heirloom at Saddle Meadows, and found the pockets below his knees, and plenty additional room for a fair-sized quarter-cask within its buttoned girth; in a night-scuffle in the wilderness before the Revolutionary War, he had annihilated two Indian savages by making reciprocal bludgeons of their heads. And all this was done by the mildest hearted, and most blue-eyed gentleman in the world, who, according to the patriarchal fashion of those days, was a gentle, white-haired worshipper of all the household gods; the gentlest husband, and the gentlest father; the kindest of masters to his slaves; of the most wonderful unruffledness of temper; a serene smoker of his after-dinner pipe; a forgiver of many injuries; a sweet-hearted, charitable Christian; in fine, a pure, cheerful, childlike, blue-eyed, divine old man; in whose meek, majestic soul, the lion and the lamb embraced—fit image of his God.

Never could Pierre look upon his fine military portrait without an infinite and mournful longing to meet his living aspect in actual life. The majestic sweetness of

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40 this portrait was truly wonderful in its effects upon any sensitive and generous-minded young observer. For such, that portrait possessed the heavenly persuasiveness of angelic speech; a glorious gospel framed and hung upon the wall, and declaring to all people, as from the Mount, that man is a noble, godlike being, full of choicest juices; made up of strength and beauty.

Now, this grand old Pierre Glendinning was a great lover of horses; but not in the modern sense, for he was no jockey;—one of his most intimate friends of the masculine gender was a huge, proud, gray horse, of a surprising reserve of manner, his saddle-beast; he had his horses' mangers carved like old trenchers, out of solid maple logs; the key of the corn-bin hung in his library; and no one grained his steeds, but himself; unless his absence from home promoted Moyar, an incorruptible and most punctual old black, to that honourable office. He said that no man loved his horses, unless his own hands grained them. Every Christmas he gave them brimming measures. 'I keep Christmas with my horses,' said grand old Pierre. This grand old Pierre always rose at sunrise; washed his face and chest in the open air; and then, returning to his closet, and being completely arrayed at last, stepped forth to make a ceremonious call at his stables, to bid his very honourable friends there a very good and joyful morning. Woe to Cranz, Kit, Douw, or any other of his stable slaves, if grand old Pierre found one horse unblanketed, or one weed among the hay that filled their rack. Not that he ever had Cranz, Kit, Douw, or any of them flogged—a thing unknown in that patriarchal time and country—but he would refuse to say his wonted pleasant word to them; and that was very bitter to them, for Cranz, Kit, Douw, and all of them, loved grand old Pierre, as his shepherds loved old Abraham.

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Rh What decorous, lordly, gray-haired steed is this? What old Chaldean rides abroad?—'Tis grand old Pierre; who, every morning before he eats, goes out promenading with his saddle-beast; nor mounts him, without first asking leave. But time glides on, and grand old Pierre grows old: his life's glorious grape now swells with fatness; he has not the conscience to saddle his majestic beast with such a mighty load of manliness. Besides, the noble beast himself is growing old, and has a touching look of meditativeness in his large attentive eyes. Leg of man, swears grand old Pierre, shall never more bestride my steed; no more shall harness touch him! Then every spring he sowed a field with clover for his steed; and at midsummer sorted all his meadow grasses, for the choicest hay to winter him; and had his destined grain threshed out with a flail, whose handle had once borne a flag in a brisk battle, into which this same old steed had pranced with grand old Pierre; one waving mane, one waving sword!

Now needs must grand old Pierre take a morning drive; he rides no more with the old gray steed. He has a phaeton built, fit for a vast General, in whose sash three common men might hide. Doubled, trebled are the huge S-shaped leather springs; the wheels seem stolen from some mill; the canopied seat is like a testered bed. From beneath the old archway, not one horse, but two, every morning now draw forth old Pierre as the Chinese draw their fat god Josh, once every year from out his.

But time glides on, and a morning comes, when the phaeton emerges not; but all the yards and courts are full; helmets line the ways; sword-points strike the stone steps of the porch; muskets ring upon the stairs; and mournful martial melodies are heard in all the halls. Grand old Pierre is dead; and like a hero of old battles,

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AMES I. loved show and magnificence quite as much as his predecessors, Henry VIII. and Elizabeth, so that we find the dress of the last period yet more exaggerated, extravagant sums of money spent on luxuries, banquets, masques, and other entertainments, and a general light worldliness pervading society during the early part of the seventeenth century. The Court itself was a "nursery of intemperance"; we hear rumours of the King being carried away from the dinner-table in his chair, unable to stand, ladies rolling about in intoxication. Thus the honour,


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42 he dies on the eve of another war; ere wheeling to fire on the foe, his platoons fire over their old commander's grave; in A.D. 1812, died grand old Pierre. The drum that beat in brass his funeral march, was a British kettle-drum, that had once helped beat the vain-glorious march, for the thirty thousand predestined prisoners, led into sure captivity by that bragging boy, Burgoyne.

Next day the old gray steed turned from his grain; turned round, and vainly whinnied in his stall. By gracious Moyar's hand, he refuses to be patted now; plain as horse can speak, the old gray steed says—'I smell not the wonted hand; where is grand old Pierre? Grain me not, and groom me not;—where is grand old Pierre?'

He sleeps not far from his master now; beneath the field he cropt, he has softly lain him down; and long ere this, grand old Pierre and steed have passed through that grass to glory.

But his phaeton, like his plumed hearse, outlives the noble load it bore. And the dark bay steeds that drew grand old Pierre alive, and by his testament drew him dead, and followed the lordly lead of the led gray horse; those dark bay steeds are still extant; not in themselves or in their issue; but in the two descendants of stallions of their own breed. For on the lands of Saddle Meadows, man and horse are both hereditary; and this bright morning Pierre Glendinning, grandson of grand old Pierre, now drives forth with Lucy Tartan, seated where his own ancestor had sat, and reining steeds, whose great-great-great-grandfathers grand old Pierre had reined before.

How proud felt Pierre: in fancy's eye, he saw the horse-ghosts a-tandem in the van; 'These are but wheelers,' cried young Pierre—'the leaders are the generations.'

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192 glory, and prestige of the nation bequeathed by Elizabeth soon vanished under her thriftless heir. The manners and customs of the Court became the manners and customs of the nation, until we are told "every great house in the country became a sty of uncleanness." Masques, coarse plays, and bear-baiting deteriorated public taste and mocked the past glory of the drama. Dress, too, had grown so exaggerated that in a rush of ladies to see a masque at Whitehall four or five got wedged together by reason of their huge farthingales, unable to move themselves, and effectually blocking the entrance to others till half through the play. For a time these "impertinent garments" were forbidden by the King, but neither this incident nor the Royal proclamation made any difference, and the size of the farthingale grew ever larger and larger. Indeed, the Queen, Anne of Denmark, even rode in a huge "wheel farthingale," with a ruff standing up round the back of her neck, stiff as pasteboard, starched with the fashionable yellow starch. The King himself figured daily in a new suit. But matters reached a climax when the Duke of Buckingham went to the French Court to fetch Henrietta Maria to England as a bride for the


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Rh IV

But Love has more to do with his own possible and probable posterities, than with the once living but now impossible ancestries in the past. So Pierre's glow of family pride quickly gave place to a deeper hue, when Lucy bade Love's banner blush out from his cheek.

That morning was the choicest drop that Time has in his vase. Ineffable distillations of a soft delight were wafted from the fields and hills. Fatal morning that, to all lovers unbetrothed; 'Come to your confessional,' it cried. 'Behold our airy loves,' the birds chirped from the trees; far out at sea, no more the sailors tied their bowline-knots; their hands had lost their cunning; will they, nill they, Love tied love-knots on every spangled spar.

Oh, praised be the beauty of this earth; the beauty, and the bloom, and the mirthfulness thereof! The first worlds made were winter worlds; the second made, were vernal worlds; the third, and last, and perfectest, was this summer world of ours. In the cold and nether spheres preachers preach of earth, as we of Paradise above. Oh, there, my friends, they say, they have a season, in their language known as summer. Then their fields spin themselves green carpets; snow and ice are not in all the land; then a million, strange, bright, fragrant things powder that sward with perfumes; and high, majestic beings, dumb and grand, stand up with outstretched arms, and hold their green canopies over merry angels—men and women—who love and wed, and sleep and dream, beneath the approving glances of their visible god and goddess, glad-hearted sun, and pensive moon!

Oh, praised be the beauty of this earth; the beauty, and the bloom, and the mirthfulness thereof! We lived before, and shall live again; and as we hope for a fairer

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Rh King's son Charles, dressed in a suit of uncut white velvet, a cloak set all over with diamonds valued at eighty thousand pounds, a diamond feather in his hat, sword and girdle all set with precious stones. Feasting and riotous living were as conspicuous as extravagance in dress, until the household expenses of the King amounted to double those of his predecessor. While such were the habits of the Court, one recalls with satisfaction the fact, that there were many of the country gentlemen left who followed the routine of the last generation. There was still in England the family rising at daybreak and assembling at family prayers read by the domestic chaplain. Breakfast consisted of a pint of beer and a pint of wine for each person, a piece of salt fish, some baked herrings, a chine of mutton or "three mutton bones boiled," together with the inevitable manchet, for which this is a seventeenth-century receipt: "Take a bushel of fine wheat flour, 20 eggs, 3 lb. of fresh butter; then take as much salt and barm as usual; temper it together with new milk pretty hot, then let it lie the space of half an hour to rise, so you may work it up into bread and bake it; let not your oven be too hot." After


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44 world than this to come; so we came from one less fine. From each successive world, the demon Principle is more and more dislodged; he is the accursed clog from chaos, and thither, by every new translation, we drive him further and further back again. Hosannahs to this world! so beautiful itself, and the vestibule to more. Out of some past Egypt, we have come to this new Canaan; and from this new Canaan, we press on to some Circassia. Though still the villains, Want and Woe, followed us out of Egypt, and now beg in Canaan's streets: yet Circassia's gates shall not admit them; they, with their sire, the demon Principle, must back to chaos, whence they came.

Love was first begot by Mirth and Peace, in Eden, when the world was young. The man oppressed with cares, he cannot love; the man of gloom finds not the god. So, as youth, for the most part, has no cares, and knows no gloom, therefore, ever since time did begin, youth belongs to love. Love may end in grief and age, and pain and need, and all other modes of human mournfulness; but love begins in joy. Love's first sigh is never breathed, till after Love hath laughed. Love laughs first, and then sighs after. Love has not hands, but cymbals; Love's mouth is chambered like a bugle, and the instinctive breathings of his life breathe jubilee notes of joy!

That morning, two bay horses drew two Laughs along the road that led to the hills from Saddle Meadows. Apt time they kept; Pierre Glendinning's young, manly tenor, to Lucy Tartan's girlish treble.

Wondrous fair of face, blue-eyed, and golden-haired, the bright blonde, Lucy, was arrayed in colours harmonious with the heavens. Light blue be thy perpetual colour, Lucy; light blue becomes thee best—such the repeated azure counsel of Lucy Tartan's mother. On

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194 breakfast, the master of the household and his sons got into the saddle and went off to hunt the deer, followed by scores of attendants, while the lady and her daughters superintended the dairy and buttery, dealt out bread and meat to the poor at their gates, and ordered the day's spinning. Indeed, the spinning of wool and flax was laborious and incessant, and the beautiful linen was handed down from generation to generation, as was also the hand embroidery, which often took some generations to complete. Needlework was a very necessary part of a woman's education in the seventeenth century; not less important was a knowledge of fine cooking, curing, preserving, distilling, candying, the making of syrups and jellies, beautifying washes, vinegar, pickles, and essences. Thus we get a lady excusing herself for not writing her letters, "Being almost melted with the double heat of the weather and my hotter employment because the fruit is suddenly ripe and I am busy preserving." At noon came dinner, proclaimed by a noisy bell—a large and solid meal, after which sack and home-brewed ale, foreign wines, card-playing, love-making, dancing and other


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Rh both sides, from the hedges, came to Pierre the clover bloom of Saddle Meadows, and from Lucy's mouth and cheek came the fresh fragrance of her violet young being.

'Smell I the flowers, or thee?' cried Pierre.

'See I lakes, or eyes?' cried Lucy, her own gazing down into his soul, as two stars gaze down into a.

No Cornwall miner ever sunk so deep a shaft beneath the sea, as Love will sink beneath the floatings of the eyes. Love sees ten million fathoms down, till dazzled by the floor of pearls. The eye is Love's own magic glass, where all things that are not of earth, glide in supernatural light. There are not so many fishes in the sea, as there are sweet images in lovers' eyes. In those miraculous translucencies swim the strange eye-fish with wings, that sometimes leap out, instinct with joy; moist fish-wings wet the lover's cheek. Love's eyes are holy things; therein the mysteries of life are lodged; looking in each other's eyes, lovers see the ultimate secret of the worlds; and with thrills eternally untranslatable, feel that Love is god of all. Man or woman who has never loved, nor once looked deep down into their own lover's eyes, they know not the sweetest and the loftiest religion of this earth. Love is both Creator's and Saviour's gospel to mankind; a volume bound in rose-leaves, clasped with violets, and by the beaks of humming-birds printed with peach-juice on the leaves of lilies.

Endless is the account of Love. Time and space cannot contain Love's story. All things that are sweet to see, or taste, or feel, or hear, all these things were made by Love; and none other things were made by Love. Love made not the Arctic zones, but Love is ever reclaiming them. Say, are not the fierce things of this earth daily, hourly going out? Where now are your wolves of Britain? Where in Virginia now, find you the panther and the ? Oh, Love is busy everywhere.

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46 Love hath Moravian missionaries. No Propagandist like to Love. The south wind woos the barbarous north; on many a distant shore the gentler west wind persuades the arid east.

All this Earth is Love's affianced; vainly the demon Principle howls to stay the. Why round her middle wears this world so rich a zone of torrid verdure, if she be not dressing for the final rites? And why provides she orange blossoms and lilies of the valley, if she would not that all men and maids should love and marry? For every wedding where true lovers wed, helps on the march of universal Love. Who are brides here shall be Love's bridesmaids in the marriage world to come. So on all sides Love allures; can contain himself what youth who views the wonders of the beauteous woman-world? Where a beautiful woman is, there is all Asia and her Bazaars. Italy hath not a sight before the beauty of a Yankee girl; nor heaven a blessing beyond her earthly love. Did not the angelical Lotharios come down to earth, that they might taste of mortal woman's Love and Beauty? even while her own silly brothers were pining after the self-same Paradise they left? Yes, those envying angels did come down; did emigrate; and who emigrates except to be better off?

Love is this world's great redeemer and reformer; and as all beautiful women are her selectest emissaries, so hath Love gifted them with a magnetical persuasiveness, that no youth can possibly repel. The own heart's choice of every youth seems ever as an inscrutable witch to him; and by ten thousand concentric spells and circling incantations, glides round and round him, as he turns: murmuring meanings of unearthly import; and summoning up to him all the subterranean sprites and gnomes; and unpeopling all the sea for naiads to swim round him; so that mysteries are evoked as in

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Rh passed the time to sunset, when the hour for bed was at hand. For those who could read, there was the library, which usually consisted of some six or eight huge printed volumes. Here was the great family Bible, Fox's "Acts and Monuments," Froissart's Chronicles, "The Seven Champions of Christendom," and others of like description. But even as the century passed, we find a more mercenary spirit creeping over domestic life. Here is an amusing letter from a newly married lady stating her requirements:— ",—I suppose it were best for me to bethink and consider within myself what allowance were meetest for me. I pray and beseech you to grant to me, your most kind and loving wife, the sum of £2,600 quarterly to be paid. Also I would, beside that allowance, have £600 quarterly to be paid for the performance of charitable works and those things I would not, neither will be, accountable for. Also I will have three horses for my own saddle that none shall dare to lend or borrow. Also I would have two gentlewomen, lest one should be sick, also, believe it, it is an undecent thing for a gentlewoman to stand mumping alone, when


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The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Zouave

ZOUAVE, zoo-äv, a soldier in the French army. Zouaves were organized in 1831 and were originally mercenaries belonging to a Kabyle tribe. The Zouaves in the pay of the dey of Algiers were, when Algeria became a French possession, incorporated with the French army there, preserving their Arab dress. Ultimately the native element was eliminatcd, and the Zouaves became French soldiers in the picturesque Arab costume. As such they distinguished themselves in the Crimea, which was their first European service, and the Franco-Italian War of 1859. There were several regiments of Zouaves among the volunteer Federal troops in the American Civil War, so-called because of their wearing an adaptation of the costume of the French Zouaves. The

Papal or Pontifical Zouaves were recruited from French soldiers at Rome in 1860 and under General Lamoricière, a former commander in Algeria, defended the temporal sovereignty of the Pope. They were unsuccessful against the Italian troops at Rome in 1870, and after serving in France against the Germans and the Commune they were disbanded in 1871.


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Rh exhalations by this Love;—what wonder then that Love was aye a mystic?

V

And this self-same morning Pierre was very mystical; not continually, though; but most mystical one moment, and overflowing with mad, unbridled merriment, the next. He seemed a youthful Magian, and almost a mountebank together. Chaldaic improvisations burst from him, in quick Golden Verses, on the heel of humorous retort and repartee. More especially, the bright glance of Lucy was transporting to him. Now, reckless of his horses, with both arms holding Lucy in his embrace, like a Sicilian diver he dives deep down in the Adriatic of her eyes, and brings up some king's-cup of joy. All the waves in Lucy's eyes seemed waves of infinite glee to him. And as if, like veritable seas, they did indeed catch the reflected irradiations of that pellucid azure morning; in Lucy's eyes, there seemed to shine all the blue glory of the general day, and all the sweet inscrutableness of the sky. And certainly, the blue eye of woman, like the sea, is not uninfluenced by the atmosphere. Only in the open air of some divinest, summer day, will you see its ultramarine,—its fluid lapis lazuli. Then would Pierre burst forth in some screaming shout of joy; and the striped tigers of his chestnut eyes leaped in their lashed cages with a fierce delight. Lucy shrank from him in extreme love; for the extremest top of love, is Fear and Wonder.

Soon the swift horses drew this fair god and goddess nigh the wooded hills, whose distant blue, now changed into a variously shaded green, stood before them like old Babylonian walls, overgrown with verdure; while here and there, at regular intervals, the scattered peaks seemed mural towers; and the clumped pines

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The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Zouche, Richard

ZOUCHE, Richard, English legal scholar: b. Anstey, Wiltshire, 1590; d. London, 1 March 1661. He was educated at New College, Oxford; in 1617 was admitted an advocate of Doctors' Commons, and in 1620 became regius professor of civil law at Oxford. In addition to his university duties he had a large practice in London. In 1641 he was made judge of the High Court of Admiralty. He was a Royalist, though not a pronounced one, at the civil war; and, although replaced in the judgeship in 1649, was nevertheless appointed by Cromwell to a special commission of oyer and terminer, and retained his academic appointments. He was regarded with some suspicion by both political parties; but after the Restoration he was appointed to the commission which reinstated the professors and Fellows of Oxford who had been removed under the Protectorate of Cromwell. On 4 Feb. 1661 he was restored to the bench. His writings include a descriptive poem, ‘The Dove, or Passages of Cosmography’ (1613); a comedy, ‘The Sophister’ (1639). and many works of a professional sort, most important of which are ‘Elementa Jurisprudentiæ’ (1629), a general system of legal science, and ‘Juris et Judicii Fecialis Explicatio’ (1650), regarded by critics as the first treatise containing a systematized arrangement of what is now known as international law.


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 —before the widening; and I may remark that Pall Mall is "Paul Mawl," "Pell Mell," or "Pal Mal," to those who know it best. Also there were many tram and bus routes, and different colours to each one, and different shades for each section and branch, and they were covered with advertisements with " grounds " of all colour, so the wanderer might just as well be colour blind.

Cross Waterloo Bridge and take train from a big grimy station there on the right-hand side—up the river by train to Shepperton-on-"Tems." You might stroll round—they are pleasant lanes between deep ditches and blackberry hedges on autumn afternoons. You might stroll round by pleasant brooks, within sound of the river; and by some brickfields, that cannot spoil the scene, and come into the story towards the end, and little unsuspected "hamlets"—that's the word—lying in wait, half-hidden in side pockets, nooks and corners of the hedges—like shy children who want to give you a pleasant surprise—and you'll come to either Halliford, Sunbury, Upper Sunbury, or Sunbury-on-Thames. But I want to get you to Charlton, and you'll be lost in English lanes. But you'll be directed. You'll meet a fresh, peachy-bloomed-faced, clear-eyed youth, with the bulk limbs and plod of an English farm labourer, a detached and shelving underlip, which might do if it were trimmed and shored or braced up—were it not for a vague chin, which is hopeless—and a general expression like a blank note of interrogation—if such a thing could be. But he'll direct you according to the best of his lights.


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196 God hath blessed their lord and lady with a great estate—also for either of these said women I must and will have for either of them a horse. Also I will have six or eight gentlemen, and I will have my two coaches, one lined with velvet to myself with four very fair horses, and a coach for my women lined with cloth and laced with gold, with four good horses. Also I will have two coachmen, one for my own coach, the other for my women. Also, for that it is undecent to crowd up myself with my gentleman-usher in my coach, I will have him to have a convenient horse to attend me. And I must have two footmen. And my desire is that you defray all the charges for me. And for myself, besides my yearly allowance, I would have twenty gownes of apparel, six of them excellent good ones, eight of them for country, and six other of them very excellent good ones. Also I would have to put in my purse £2,000 and £200, and so you to pay my debts. Also I would have £6,000 to buy me jewels and £4,000 to buy me a pearl chain. Now, seeing I have been, and am, so reasonable unto you, I pray you do find my children apparel and their schooling, and all my servants—men and women


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48 them, as lofty archers, and vast, out-looking watchers of the glorious Babylonian City of the Day. Catching that hilly air, the prancing horses neighed; laughed on the ground with gleeful feet. Felt they the gay, delightsome spurrings of the day; for the day was mad with excessive joy; and high in heaven you heard the neighing of the horses of the sun; and down dropped their nostrils' froth in many a fleecy vapour from the hills.

From the plains, the mists rose slowly; reluctant yet to quit so fair a mead. At those green slopings, Pierre reined in his steeds, and soon the twain were seated on the bank, gazing far, and far away; over many a grove and lake; corn-crested uplands, and Herd's-grass low-lands; and long-stretching swales of vividest green, betokening where the greenest bounty of this earth seeks its winding channels; as ever, the most heavenly bounteousness most seeks the lowly places; making green and glad many a humble mortal's breast, and leaving to his own lonely aridness, many a hill-top prince's state.

But Grief, not Joy, is a moraliser; and small moralising wisdom caught Pierre from that scene. With Lucy's hand in his, and feeling, softly feeling of its soft tinglingness; he seemed as one placed in linked correspondence with the summer lightnings; and by sweet shock on shock, receiving intimating foretastes of the etherealest delights of earth.

Now, prone on the grass he falls, with his attentive, upward glance fixed on Lucy's eyes. 'Thou art my heaven, Lucy; and here I lie thy shepherd-king, watching for new eye-stars to rise in thee. Ha! I see Venus' transit now;—lo! a new planet there;—and behind all, an infinite starry nebulousness, as if thy being were back-grounded by some spangled veil of mystery.'

Is Lucy deaf to all these ravings of his lyric love? Why looks she down and vibrates so; and why now from

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Rh —their wages. Also I will have all my houses furnished and my lodging chambers to be suited with all such furniture as is fit; as beds, stools, chairs, suitable cushions, carpets, silver warming pans, cupboards of plate, fair hangings, and such like. So for my drawing chamber, in all houses, I will have them delicately furnished both with hangings, couch, canopy, glass, carpets, chairs, cushions, and all things thereunto belonging." Marriage in these days was very much a commercial proceeding, so much portion against so much income. The love of husbands and wives, of parents and children, was as strong as it had ever been and will ever be, but the ordinary falling in love of young men and women was not considered of the slightest importance. "I mean to marry my daughter to £2,000 a year," wrote one Englishman of this period to another. "I am afraid in these bad times you will not match your sisters as you desire," wrote another.

Thus a man was an appendage to fortune, children but pawns to advance the position and wealth of their parents. There was bargaining


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 "Chawlton, sir? Oh, yes, sir! Chawlton. You take that lane wot yer see there, sir, and foller it till yer come to a bridge goin' across the water, sir. No, sir, that's not the "Tems," sir—that's only a backwater runnin' inter the Tems, sir. Git through the fence to the right jest before yer come to the bridge, sir; don't cross the bridge. Don't cross the bridge, sir. Git through a panel jist at the foot of the bridge where yer see a path worn, sir. (Don't take no notice of that lane on the other side, sir.) When yer git through yer'll see medder in front of yer, sir—yer'll be in the medder, in fact, sir. Go right across the medder till yer comes to a gate with a turnstile and another stile on either side, sir. Yer can take whichever yer like, sir." (I looked at him for a sign of a bucolic humour, but none was there.) "Go through there an' yer in Harry Leonard's farm, sir. Go right through by the house, and it'll bring yer right inter the road agenst Chawlton, sir. (Mind and don't take no notice of that there lane I told yer of, sir.)"

The farmhouse stands, or rather squats, low, in dark, damp-looking greenery, just inside the orchard—this is on low-lying Terns gravel flats—with a heavy roof of red tiles—stained like iron rust, and some of them glass—that comes down so low behind that you could scratch your shoulders against the eaves. But there are rooms in the roof that hid the mysteries of the births of great, great grandfathers. The old farmhouse, as is the case of many others, looks as if it were taller at one time—higher and lighter at one time, but had settled down, like a big rusty old hen,


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Rh her over-charged lids, drops such warm drops as these? No joy now in Lucy's eyes and seeming tremor on her lips.

'Ah! thou too ardent and impetuous Pierre!'

'Nay, thou too moist and changeful April! know'st thou not, that the moist and changeful April is followed by the glad, assured, and showerless joy of June? And this, Lucy, this day should be thy June, even as it is the earth's?'

'Ah, Pierre! not June to me. But say, are not the sweets of June made sweet by the April tears?'

'Ay, love! but here fall more drops,—more and more;—these showers are longer than beseem the April, and pertain not to the June.'

'June! June!—thou bride's month of the summer,—following the spring's sweet courtship of the earth,—my June, my June is yet to come!'

'Oh! yet to come, but fixedly decreed;—good as come, and better.'

'Then no flower that, in the bud, the April showers have nurtured; no such flower may untimely perish, ere the June unfolds it? Ye will not swear that, Pierre?'

'The audacious immortalities of divinest love are in me; and I now swear to thee all the immutable eternities of joyfulness, that ever woman dreamed of, in this dream-house of the earth. A god decrees to thee unchangeable felicity; and to me, the unchallenged possession of thee and them, for my inalienable fief.—Do I rave? Look on me, Lucy; think on me, girl.'

'Thou art young, and beautiful, and strong; and a joyful manliness invests thee, Pierre; and thy intrepid heart never yet felt the touch of fear;—But——'

'But what?'

'Ah, my best Pierre!'

'With kisses I will suck thy secret from thy cheek!—but what?'

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198 about money matters, discussion as to what the bridegroom elect was bound to supply, the unscrupulous dropping of one proposal after another with the barest motives of interest. Here is the triumphant announcement of an engagement: "Sister Pegg is suddenly to be married to Mr. Elwes, of Northamtonshire; his estate is knowne to the world to be at the least £2,000 a year. He makes her of his owne offer £500 a year good security Joynter"; but a few weeks later follows a lamentable account of this commercial union: "Poor peg has married a very humersome cros boy has ever I see in my life, and she is very much altered for the worse since she was married; I do not blame her, because sometimes he maks her cry night and day."

Large families gave the mother of the period ample occupation; the infant mortality was tremendous, and, if over half the children survived babyhood, the mother was considered a remarkable manager. We hear of a healthy baby of a month old overlaid by his nurse, of another "seven weeks languishing, breeding teeth and ending in a dropsy," of another dying after six fits of a "quartan ague," suffocated by the


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50 'Let us hie homeward, Pierre. Some nameless sadness, faintness, strangely comes to me. Foretaste I feel of endless dreariness. Tell me once more the story of that face, Pierre,—that mysterious, haunting face, which thou once told'st me, thou didst thrice vainly try to shun. Blue is the sky, oh, bland the air, Pierre;—but—tell me the story of the face,—the dark-eyed, lustrous, imploring, mournful face, that so mystically paled, and shrunk at thine. Ah, Pierre, sometimes I have thought,—never will I wed with my best Pierre, until the riddle of that face be known. Tell me, tell me, Pierre;—as a fixed basilisk, with eyes of steady, flaming mournfulness, that face this instant fastens me.'

'Bewitched! bewitched!—Cursed be the hour I acted on the thought, that Love hath no reserves. Never should I have told thee the story of that face, Lucy. I have bared myself too much to thee. Oh, never should Love know all!'

'Knows not all, then loves not all, Pierre. Never shalt thou so say again;—and Pierre, listen to me. Now,—now, in this inexplicable trepidation that I feel, I do conjure thee, that thou wilt ever continue to do as thou hast done; so that I may ever continue to know all that agitatest thee, the airiest and most transient thought, that ever shall sweep into thee from the wide atmosphere of all things that hem mortality. Did I doubt thee here;—could I ever think, that thy heart hath yet one private nook or corner from me;—fatal disenchanting day for me, my Pierre, would that be. I tell thee, Pierre—and 'tis Love's own self that now speaks through me—only in unbounded confidence and interchangings of all subtlest secrets, can Love possibly endure. Love's self is a secret, and so feeds on secrets, Pierre. Did I only know of thee, what the whole common world may know—what then were Pierre to me?—Thou must be wholly a

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Rh "women and maids that attended him and covered him too hot with blankets as he lay in a cradle, near an excessive hot fire in a close room." Children were unsuitably fed and unsuitably dressed. They were little miniatures of their parents, and must have suffered much in the big ruffs and padded breeches of the period. A great deal was expected of them. We hear of a child of three years old being complained of for being "shy and rustic" by his father, till even his stern old grandmother is obliged to intercede for him. "Sonn," she writes, "Edmund must be woone with fiar menes. Let me begge of you and his mother that nobody whip him, but Mr. Parrye; yf you doe goe a violent waye with him, you will be the furst that will rue it, for i veryly beleve he will reseve ingery by it." There was little happy childhood for the children of these days. Lucy Hutchinson has told us that at four years old she could read English perfectly, and was "carried to sermons," which she could afterwards repeat word for word, while at the age of seven she was receiving instruction from no less than eight tutors. But even this pales before the knowledge of poor little Richard Evelyn, a


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Rh secret to me; Love is vain and proud; and when I walk the streets, and meet thy friends, I must still be laughing and hugging to myself the thought,—They know him not;—I only know my Pierre;—none else beneath the circuit of yon sun. Then, swear to me, dear Pierre, that thou wilt never keep a secret from me—no, never, never;—swear!'

'Something seizes me. Thy inexplicable tears, falling, falling on my heart, have now turned it to a stone. I feel icy cold and hard; I will not swear!'

'Pierre! Pierre!'

'God help thee, and God help me, Lucy. I cannot think, that in this most mild and dulcet air, the invisible agencies are plotting treasons against our loves. Oh! if ye be now nigh us, ye things I have no name for; then by a name that should be efficacious—by Christ's holy name, I warn ye back from her and me. Touch her not, ye airy devils; hence to your appointed hell! why come ye prowling in these heavenly purlieus? Cannot the chains of Love omnipotent bind ye, fiends?'

'Is this Pierre? His eyes glare fearfully; now I see layer on layer deeper in him; he turns round and menaces the air and talks to it, as if defied by the air. Woe is me, that fairy love should raise this evil spell!—Pierre?'

'But now I was infinite distances from thee, oh my Lucy, wandering baffled in the choking night; but thy voice might find me, though I had wandered to the Boreal realm, Lucy. Here I sit down by thee; I catch a soothing from thee.'

'My own, own Pierre! Pierre, into ten trillion pieces I could now be torn for thee; in my bosom would yet hide thee, and there keep thee warm, though I sat down on Arctic ice-floes, frozen to a corpse. My own, best, blessed Pierre! Now, could I plant some poniard in me, that my silly ailings should have power to move thee

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200 few years later, who died at the age of five. His accomplishments are almost incredible, but his father declares that at two and a half years old he could perfectly read any of the English, Latin, French, or Gothic letters, pronouncing the three first languages exactly. "He had before the fifth year not only skill to read most written hands, but to decline all the nouns, conjugate the verbs, regular and most of the irregular, got by heart almost the entire vocabulary of Latin and French primitives and words, could make congruous syntax, turn English into Latin, and vice versa, construe and prove what he read, and did the government and use of relatives, verbs, substantives, ellipses, and many figures and tropes; began himself to write legibly, and had a strong passion for Greek. The number of verses he could recite was prodigious; he had read Æsop, he had a wonderful disposition to mathematics, having by heart divers propositions of Euclid that were read to him in play, and he would make lines and demonstrate them. He had learned all his Catechism early, and understood the historical part of the Bible and New Testament to a wonder."


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52 thus, and pain thee thus. Forgive me, Pierre; thy changed face hath chased the other from me; the fright of thee exceeds all other frights. It does not so haunt me now. Press hard my hand; look hard on me, my love, that its last trace may pass away. Now I feel almost whole again; now, 'tis gone. Up, my Pierre; let us up, and fly these hills, whence, I fear, too wide a prospect meets us. Fly we to the plain. See, thy steeds neigh for thee—they call thee—see, the clouds fly down toward the plain—lo, these hills now seem all desolate to me, and the vale all verdure. Thank thee, Pierre.—See, now, I quit the hills, dry-cheeked; and leave all tears behind to be sucked in by these evergreens, meet emblems of the unchanging love, my own sadness nourishes in me. Hard fate, that Love's best verdure should feed so on tears!'

Now they rolled swiftly down the slopes; nor tempted the upper hills; but sped fast for the plain. Now the cloud hath passed from Lucy's eye; no more the lurid slanting light forks upward from her lover's brow. In the plain they find peace, and love, and joy again.

'It was the merest, idling, wanton vapour, Lucy!'

'An empty echo, Pierre, of a sad sound, long past. Bless thee, my Pierre!'

'The great God wrap thee ever, Lucy. So, now, we are home.'

VI

After seeing Lucy into her aunt's most cheerful parlour, and seating her by the honeysuckle that half clambered into the window there; and near to which was her easel for crayon-sketching, upon part of whose frame Lucy had cunningly trained two slender vines, into whose earth-filled pots two of the three legs of the easel were inserted; and sitting down himself by her, and by his pleasant, lightsome chat, striving to chase the last trace

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Rh Letter-writing, too, was on the increase, encouraged by improved means of communication. In 1635 the first inland post was established by Charles I., who commands his "Postmaster of England … to settle a running post or two to run night and day between Edinburgh and London, to go thither and come back again in six days, and to take with them all such letters as shall be directed to any post-town in or near that road." Five years later eight postal lines were running in England, the rates of postage being 2d. for 80 miles, 4d. for 140 miles, while to Scotland cost 8d. Distance was little considered in these days. Prince Henry, the delicate son of James I., rode 96 miles to meet his father, setting out at one o'clock in the morning to avoid riding through the heat of the day. Hackney carriages were as yet in their infancy. It was not till 1625 that some twenty of them made their appearance in the streets of London, and one smiles at the proclamation ten years later forbidding hackney coaches in London, Westminster or the suburbs to travel more than three miles an hour because they "pestered the streets, broke up the pavements, and made walking dangerous." A few years later, some


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The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Zrinyi, Niklas

ZRINYI, zrēn'yē, Niklas (Miklós), , Hungarian soldier: b. 1508; d. Szigetvár, 7 Sept. 1566. He distinguished himself in the siege of Vienna by Charles V, and in campaigns against John Zápolya and Sultan Suleiman. As ban of Croatia from 1542, he defended that territory against the Turks, and became famous for his defense of Szigetvár (or Sziget) in 1566. His garrison of scarcely 3,000 was reduced to 600, and on 5 September the enemy succeeded in firing the outer fortifications. Zrinyi retreated to the inner fortress, but this also was soon on fire. He thereupon ordered the gates to be opened, and after firing a mortar filled with broken iron into the midst of the Turks, who were surging along a narrow approach to the castle, led a sally of the garrison. He fell, mortally wounded, and the defenders were forced back, but a slow match ignited 3,000 pounds of gunpowder stored within, and great carnage among the Turks ensued. The catastrophe has been made by Theodor Körner the subject of his ‘Zrinyi: Ein Trauerspiel.’


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202 fifty hackney coaches were plying in London and the suburbs, but a greater luxury was the sedan chair, in which ladies and gentlemen who could afford it, might be carried from place to place. It was against these and other luxuries that the Puritans now directed their fiercest attacks. These Puritans had been growing in numbers and strength since the times of Queen Elizabeth. Their aims have been summed up by Carlyle as: "The struggle of men intent on the real essence of things against men intent on the semblances and forms of things … fierce destroyers of Forms; but it were more just to call them haters of untrue Forms." That worship at this time needed reform, few denied, but by suppression and persecution during the reign of Elizabeth the Puritans had become martyrs and their cause grew apace. The new King (James I.) had hardly crossed the Border when the Puritan ministers pressed further for reform. Among other things, they demanded certain alterations in the Prayer-book of Edward VI., they pleaded against the sign of the cross in baptism and the ring in marriage, against the use of cap and surplice, against the "longsomeness of service and the abuse of Church songs and


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The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Zschokke, Johann Heinrich Daniel

ZSCHOKKE, chȯk'kė, Johann Heinrich Daniel, Swiss author: b. Magdeburg, Germany, 22 March 1771; d. Blumenhalde, near Aarau, 27 June 1848. He left his native place in 1788, and for some time wandered about the country as play-writer to a strolling company of actors, but afterward studied at the University of Frankfort-on-the-Oder. In 1792 he began life there as a private teacher, and produced several pieces for the stage. He subsequently settled down in the canton of the

Grisons and became director of an academy at Reichenau, where he wrote a history of the Grisons (1798). He then became head of the department of public instruction at Aarau, and was soon afterward sent by the Helvetic executive directory to Unterwalden as government commissioner, for the purpose of restoring tranquility. He acquitted himself so satisfactorily that his powers as commissioner were extended to the cantons of Uri, Schwyz and Zug. In 1800 he was appointed commissioner for the organization of the Italian territories of Switzerland. In 1804 he became a member of the board of mines and forests, and in the same year began the issue of his highly popular Schweizerbote (Swiss Messenger). Through the greater part of his life Zschokke appeared as one of the most distinguished and energetic public men in Switzerland, but he found time to cultivate his favorite literary pursuits, and it is chiefly by his numerous writings, historical and fictitious, that he is known to the world at large. Among his works may be mentioned ‘Ueberlieferungen zur Geschichte unserer Zeit’ (1811-27) (Contributions to the History of Our Time); ‘Des Schweizerlandes Geschichte für das Schweizervolk’ (1822) (History of Switzerland for the Swiss People), one of the best of his works, and ‘Bilder aus der Schweiz’ (1824-26) (Pictures from Switzerland). As a writer of tales he possesses a European reputation, and among them we may refer more especially to ‘The Creole,’ ‘Alamontade,’ ‘Jonathan Frock,’ ‘Clementine,’ ‘Oswald or the Goldmakers' Village’ and ‘Master Jordan.’ The work, however, which has had the most extended circulation was his ‘Stunden der Andacht’ (Hours of Devotion) (1809-16; 27 editions in his lifetime), which, though rationalistic, has yet, from the pious feeling pervading it, found admirers among all classes of readers. Editions of his works were published (40 vols., 1824-28; 35 vols., 1851-54), and an edition of his ‘Novellen’ (12 vols., 1904). Consult the studies by Münch (1831); Keller, ‘Beiträge zur Politische, Thätigkeit Zschokkes’ (1887), and Wernly (1894).


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Rh of sadness from her; and not till his object seemed fully gained; Pierre rose to call her good aunt to her, and so take his leave till evening, when Lucy called him back, begging him first to bring her the blue portfolio from her chamber, for she wished to kill her last lingering melancholy—if any indeed did linger now—by diverting her thoughts, in a little pencil sketch, to scenes widely different from those of Saddle Meadows and its hills.

So Pierre went upstairs, but paused on the threshold of the open door. He never had entered that chamber but with feelings of a wonderful reverentialness. The carpet seemed as holy ground. Every chair seemed sanctified by some departed saint, there once seated long ago. Here his book of Love was all a rubric, and said—Bow now, Pierre, bow. But this extreme loyalty to the piety of love, called from him by such glimpses of its most secret inner shrine, was not unrelieved betimes by such quickenings of all his pulses, that in fantasy he pressed the wide beauty of the world in his embracing arms; for all his world resolved itself into his heart's best love for Lucy.

Now, crossing the magic silence of the empty chamber, he caught the snow-white bed reflected in the toilet-glass. This rooted him. For one swift instant, he seemed to see in that one glance the two separate beds—the real one and the reflected one—and an unbidden, most miserable presentiment thereupon stole into him. But in one breath it came and went. So he advanced, and with a fond and gentle joyfulness, his eye now fell upon the spotless bed itself, and fastened on a snow-white roll that lay beside the pillow. Now he started; Lucy seemed coming in upon him; but no—'tis only the foot of one of her little slippers, just peeping into view from under the narrow nether curtains of the bed. Then again his glance fixed itself upon the slender, snow-white, ruffled roll; and he stood as one enchanted. Never

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54 precious parchment of the Greek was half so precious in his eyes. Never trembling scholar longed to unroll the mystic vellum, than Pierre longed to unroll the sacred secrets of that snow-white, ruffled thing. But his hands touched not any object in that chamber, except the one he had gone thither for.

'Here is the blue portfolio, Lucy. See, the key hangs to its silver lock;—were you not fearful I would open it?—'twas tempting, I must confess.'

'Open it!' said Lucy—'why, yes, Pierre, yes; what secret thing keep I from thee? Read me through and through. I am entirely thine. See!' and tossing open the portfolio, all manner of rosy things came floating from it, and a most delicate perfume of some invisible essence.

'Ah! thou holy angel, Lucy!'

'Why, Pierre, thou art transfigured; thou now lookest as one who—why, Pierre?'

'As one who had just peeped in at paradise, Lucy; and——'

'Again wandering in thy mind, Pierre; no more—Come, you must leave me, now. I am quite rested again. Quick, call my aunt, and leave me. Stay, this evening we are to look over the book of plates from the city, you know. Be early;—go now, Pierre.'

'Well, good-bye, till evening, thou height of all delight.'

VII

As Pierre drove through the silent village, beneath the vertical shadows of the noon-day trees, the sweet chamber scene abandoned him, and the mystical face recurred to him, and kept with him. At last, arrived at home, he found his mother absent; so passing straight through the wide middle hall of the mansion, he descended the piazza on the other side, and wandered away in reveries down to the river bank.

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Rh Here one primeval pine-tree had been luckily left standing by the otherwise unsparing woodmen, who long ago had cleared that meadow. It was once crossing to this noble pine, from a clump of hemlocks far across the river, that Pierre had first noticed the significant fact, that while the hemlock and the pine are trees of equal growth and stature, and are so similar in their general aspect, that people unused to woods sometimes confound them; and while both trees are proverbially trees of sadness, yet the dark hemlock hath no music in its thoughtful boughs; but the gentle pine-tree drops melodious mournfulness.

At its half-bared roots of sadness, Pierre sat down, and marked the mighty bulk and far out-reaching length of one particular root, which, straying down the bank, the storms and rains had years ago exposed.

'How wide, how strong these roots must spread! Sure, this pine-tree takes powerful hold of this fair earth! Yon bright flower hath not so deep a root. This tree hath outlived a century of that gay flower's generations, and will outlive a century of them yet to come. This is most sad. Hark, now I hear the pyramidical and numberless, flame-like complainings of this Eolean pine;—the wind breathes now upon it:—the wind,—that is God's breath! Is He so sad? Oh, tree! so mighty thou, so lofty, yet so mournful! This is most strange! Hark! as I look up into thy high secrecies, oh tree, the face, the face, peeps down on me!—"Art thou Pierre? Come to me"—oh, thou mysterious girl, what an ill-matched pendant thou, to that other countenance of sweet Lucy, which also hangs, and first did hang within my heart! Is grief a pendant then to pleasantness? Is grief a self-willed guest that will come in? Yet I have never known thee, Grief;—thou art a legend to me. I have known some fiery broils of glorious frenzy; I have oft tasted of revery; whence comes pensiveness; whence comes

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56 sadness; whence all delicious poetic presentiments;—but thou, Grief! art still a ghost-story to me. I know thee not,—do half disbelieve in thee. Not that I would be without my too little cherished fits of sadness now and then; but God keep me from thee, thou other shape of far profounder gloom! I shudder at thee! The face!—the face!—forth again from thy high secrecies, oh tree! the face steals down upon me. Mysterious girl! who art thou? by what right snatchest thou thus my deepest thoughts? Take thy thin fingers from me;—I am affianced, and not to thee. Leave me!—what share hast thou in me? Surely, thou lovest not me?—that were most miserable for thee, and me, and Lucy. It cannot be. What, who art thou? Oh! wretched vagueness—too familiar to me, yet inexplicable,—unknown, utterly unknown! I seem to founder in this perplexity. Thou seemest to know somewhat of me, that I know not of myself—what is it then? If thou hast a secret in thy eyes of mournful mystery, out with it; Pierre demands it; what is that thou hast veiled in thee so imperfectly, that I seem to see its motion, but not its form? It visibly rustles behind the concealing screen. Now, never into the soul of Pierre, stole there before, a muffledness like this! If aught really lurks in it, ye sovereign powers that claim all my leal worshippings, I conjure ye to lift the veil; I must see it face to face. Tread I on a mine, warn me; advance I on a precipice, hold me back; but abandon me to an unknown misery, that it shall suddenly seize me, and possess me, wholly—that ye will never do; else, Pierre's fond faith in ye—now clean, untouched—may clean depart; and give me up to be a railing atheist. Ah, now the face departs. Pray heaven it hath not only stolen back, and hidden again in thy high secrecies, oh tree! But 'tis gone—gone—entirely gone; and I thank God, and I feel joy

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Rh again; joy, which I also feel to be my right as man; deprived of joy, I feel I should find cause for deadly feuds with things invisible. Ha! a coat of iron mail seems to grow round, and husk me now; and I have heard, that the bitterest winters are foretold by a thicker husk upon the Indian corn; so our old farmers say. But 'tis a dark similitude. Quit thy analogies; sweet in the orator's mouth, bitter in the thinker's belly. Now, then, I'll up with my own joyful will; and with my joy's face scare away all phantoms:—so, they go; and Pierre is Joy's, and Life's again. Thou pine-tree!—henceforth I will resist thy too treacherous persuasiveness. Thou'lt not so often woo me to thy airy tent, to ponder on the gloomy rooted stakes that bind it. Hence now I go; and peace be with thee, pine! That blessed sereneness which lurks ever at the heart of sadness—mere sadness—and remains when all the rest has gone;—that sweet feeling is now mine, and cheaply mine. I am not sorry I was sad, I feel so blessed now. Dearest Lucy!—well, well;—'twill be a pretty time we'll have this evening; there's the book of Flemish prints—that first we must look over; then, second, is Flaxman's Homer—clear-cut outlines, yet full of unadorned barbaric nobleness. Then Flaxman's Dante;—Dante! Night's and Hell's poet he. No, we will not open Dante. Methinks now the face—the face—minds me a little of pensive, sweet Francesca's face—or, rather, as it had been Francesca's daughter's face—wafted on the sad dark wind, toward observant Virgil and the blistered Florentine. No, we will not open Flaxman's Dante. Francesca's mournful face is now ideal to me. Flaxman might evoke it wholly—make it present in lines of misery—bewitching power. No! I will not open Flaxman's Dante! Damned be the hour I read in Dante! more damned than that wherein Paolo and Francesca read in fatal Launcelot!'

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 BOOK III

THE PRESENTIMENT AND THE VERIFICATION

I

face, of which Pierre and Lucy so strangely and fearfully hinted, was not of enchanted air; but its mortal lineaments of mournfulness had been visibly beheld by Pierre. Nor had it accosted him in any privacy; or in any lonely byway; or beneath the white light of the crescent moon; but in a joyous chamber, bright with candles, and ringing with two-score women's gayest voices. Out of the heart of mirthfulness, this shadow had come forth to him. Encircled by bandelets of light, it had still beamed upon him; vaguely historic and prophetic; backward, hinting of some irrevocable sin; forward, pointing to some inevitable ill. One of those faces, which now and then appear to man, and without one word of speech, still reveal glimpses of some fearful gospel. In natural guise, but lit by supernatural light; palpable to the senses, but inscrutable to the soul; in their perfectest impression on us, ever hovering between Tartarean misery and Paradisaic beauty; such faces, compounded so of hell and heaven, overthrow in us all foregone persuasions, and make us wondering children in this world again.

The face had accosted Pierre some weeks previous to his ride with Lucy to the hills beyond Saddle Meadows; and before her arrival for the summer at the village; moreover it had accosted him in a very common and homely scene; but this enhanced the wonder.

On some distant business, with a farmer-tenant, he had 5em

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text:
The New International Encyclopædia/Zouaves

ZOUAVES. A body of troops in the French Army whose organization dates from 1830, when two battalions were formed by General Clausel from a tribe of Kabyles dwelling in Algeria. The name of the tribe was Zouaoua, which in French gave rise to the term zouave. The organization of these tribesmen as a part of the French Army was brought about to establish a friendly feeling between them and the conquerors, and inasmuch as they had been for years mercenary soldiers, they were considered an important addition to the army. French officers were placed in charge and a certain number of French soldiers were included in the companies, which were formed into two battalions. The mingling of the French and natives did not prove satisfactory, and after 1839 none of the latter were recruited, though regiments of Algerian tirailleurs were subsequently (1842) formed. The Moorish costume originally adopted was retained, and the zouaves, who were recruited from veterans of exceptional physique and courage, achieved a high reputation, serving not only in Africa, but also in the Crimea, Italy, Mexico, and more recently in Tunis and Tongking, The zouaves accordingly became an integral part of the French Army and are now organized into four regiments of five battalions each, divided into four companies, the total strength being somewhat in excess of 13,000 men. The Papal or Pontifical zouaves, under the command of General Lamoricière, served in Rome from 1860 to 1870, and played an important part in resisting the Italian occupation of Rome. In the United States during the Civil War a number of Northern volunteer regiments adopted the zouave uniform and were known as zouaves. Many of these organizations acquired great proficiency in drill and gave exhibitions throughout the Northern States.


text:
User:Alter Fritz

Motto
“Only collecting live. Impressions, knowledge, reading, happenings, everything. Not Asking what for and why. Whether it evolves in a book or memoirs or nothing at all, Whether it clings in my memory or rottens like a bad photographic plate. Not asking, only collecting.“

-Victor Klemperer, loosely translated from: Tagebücher 1918 - 1932.

de:Benutzer:Alter Fritz

title: User:Alter Fritz


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Baker, Humphrey


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Baker, John (d.1558)


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Baker, John (1661-1716)


text:
The New International Encyclopædia/Zrinyi, Miklós

ZRINYI, zrē'nyḗ, (Nicholas), Count (1508-66). A famous Hungarian general, descended from the old Slavic family of Subič who, in 1347, had adopted the name of Zrinyi from Castle Zrin in Croatia. He distinguished himself at the siege of Vienna (1529) and afterwards in the campaigns against John Zápolya and Sultan Solyman. Since 1542 governor of Croatia and Slavonia, he successfully defended that territory against the Turks for many years, and in 1503 was appointed commander-in-chief of the royal forces on the right bank of the Danube and commandant of Sziget. When Solyman, at the head of an army of 65,000 men, attacked that fortress in 1566, Zrinyi ordered a most stubborn resistance. Although his garrison consisted of only 2500 troops, he managed to hold his own from August 6th till September 7th. Neither the Sultan's promise to make him Governor of the whole of Illyria and hereditary possessor of Bosnia, nor the threat to kill his only son George, whom Solyman pretended to hold as a prisoner, could induce him to surrender. On September 5th the Turks succeeded in setting fire to the outer castle, whereupon Zrinyi took refuge in the inner castle, and when this also was fired on the 7th, met his death fighting heroically at the head of his force now reduced to 600. More than 20,000 Turks had been killed during the siege, and Sultan Solyman died on September 4th in a paroxysm of rage at the terrible repulses he encountered. The tragic end of Zrinyi was graphically described by his great-grandson Miklós (1616-64) in the epic Szigeti veszedelem (The Fall of Sziget, 1651). The catastrophe was also repeatedly made the subject of dramatic productions, notably by Theodor Körner.


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Baker, John (d.1745)


text:
User talk:K735437716

Cheers, stephen (talk) 22:34, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

title: User talk:K735437716


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Baker, John (d.1771)


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Baker, John Wynn


text:
Page:The Celtic Review volume 5.djvu/91

 by blood, and as those who had for some time been calling themselves Camerons were not Macgillonies, it would have been extremely unwise for them to try to force their own name on the whole clan.

It is stated in several works that the Macgillonies of Strone fought against the Camerons at Corpach, when John Og of Coll was slain. There is no ground for this assertion. The Macleans had been in possession of Corpach for several years. The Camerons made an unexpected attack upon them and put them to the sword. There may have been some fighting, but there was no battle. Some of the Macgillonies of Strone—possibly persons who had been living with John Og of Coll—took charge of his son, John Abrach, a boy about two years of age, and went with him to Coll. They acted kindly to John Abrach and his mother—a daughter of Ewen Maclean of Kingerloch—but we are not to assume that they had been fighting against the Macgillonies or Camerons of Lochiel.

SCOTTISH GAELIC DIALECTS

(Continued from vol. iv. p. 280)

Assimilation

a liquid is assimilated to a following liquid or other consonant, the preceding vowel if short, as will be exemplified in some of the instances to be quoted, often becomes long in pronunciation. Thus millse (or milse) sweeter, where i is short and ll long, may be heard as mìse in West Ross. The vowel in such cases is not infrequently marked long in writing, and certainly where the assimilated liquid is left out in the spelling the marking of this compensatory lengthening of the vowel may be justified; but when the silenced liquid is retained in the spelling it would seem better to leave the vowel without the long mark. Thus, to mark i long would be justifiable if we were writing mìse

title: Page:The Celtic Review volume 5.djvu/91


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Baker, Pacificus


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Baker, Philip


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Baker, Richard (1568-1645)


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 over ceaseless generations of chickens. Stable, barn, and one big outhouse of wide—12-inch—weatherboards, tarred. Big trees along the lane to the road "heliums," or beeches, or something it doesn't matter and "hashes" at the hend of it, "agenst the road." Also big, mossy logs that were never cut up for firewood. The short lane runs from the back of the house into the road, and from the road to the kitchen door, or, to be precise, to the outer kitchen, or slush-house, door. As seems the case with most farmhouses round here. The front approach and front door is either a mystery or a legend—a vague bucolic superstition. Maybe there was a front entrance, and visitors, and light—in other days.

Farmer's wife dead—the village people never talk of her to new-comers—perhaps not amongst themselves. Leonard took another woman, with a baby girl—his or some one else's—as housekeeper. Baby grown to fresh, pretty little English village beauty—"fresh" as a half -broken filly—"Miss Leonard." Her girl friend, adopted sister, or something, as companion.

Leonard, who has a little to do with the story, stands smoking—hand to pipe, casually—in the front back-side, or whatever it is, gateway, leading into the road. He is a stoutish man, calm, contented in the gloaming, with a calmness and content that he has made for himself, or rather has made his farm hands make for him (for he owns them body and soul)— with a smile that is watch-dog like, and not altogether bland at any time. Something suggestive of the mas-


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 to London was still full of danger and discomfort, nor were these fears purely imaginary. A journey from the North of England to the capital was so hazardous that men shook their heads and made their wills before starting. Stage coaches already ran between London and many of the large towns, as York, Exeter, Chester, and Bristol. But it was not till the year 1774 that a coach began to run from Manchester and Liverpool to London three times a week, and though nominally three days were occupied on the journey, bad weather sometimes delayed it for ten days or a fortnight. As for the "flying coaches," they were very expensive, and regarded as so dangerous that only "neck-or-nothing mortals" travelled by them. Neither were the dangers of the way much lessened as London was approached. In 1727 George II. and his wife, trying to reach Kew from St. James's Palace, passed a whole night on the road, and once between Hammersmith and Fulham the coach upset altogether and they were thrown out. The road between Kensington and Piccadilly was acknowledged to be "an impassable gulf of mud."

Here is Mrs. Delany's account of a break-down


text:
The New International Encyclopædia/Zschokke, Heinrich

ZSCHOKKE, chṓk ' e, (1771-1848). A German-Swiss novelist and miscellaneous writer, born in Magdeburg. Zschokke ran away from school at seventeen, and was for a time a strolling playwright. He studied afterwards in the University of Frankfort-on-the-Oder, where he became privat-docent, and wrote his novel Abällino (1794), which was successfully dramatized. Then he traveled for a time and kept a boarding-school at Reichenau, in Switzerland, of which country he presently became a patriotic citizen. In 1798 he removed to Aarau, where he filled with energy and sound judgment several public and diplomatic offices. Besides editing several popular periodicals, Zschokke published the lucid and rationalistic religious manual, Stunden der Andacht (1806, twice translated, 1843 and 1862), and several popular studies in Bavarian and Swiss history, of which Des Schweizerlandes Geschichten (1822) was translated in 1855. Zschokke wrote also many novels and tales, from which three selections have been translated (Philadelphia, 1845; New York, 1848; London, 1848). His Works have been collected in 35 volumes (1854). He published an autobiographical Selbstschau (1842, trans. 1847). There are Lives by Emil Zschokke (3d ed., Berlin, 1876); and Born (Basel, 1885). Consult also Keller, Beiträge zur politischen Thätigkeit Zschokkes (Aarau, 1887); and Wernly, Vater Heinrich Zschokke (ib., 1894).


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Rh been absent from the mansion during the best part of the day, and had but just come home, early of a pleasant moonlight evening, when Dates delivered a message to him from his mother, begging him to come for her about half-past seven that night to Mrs. Llanyllyn's cottage, in order to accompany her thence to that of the two Miss Pennies. At the mention of that last name, Pierre well knew what he must anticipate. Those elderly and truly pious spinsters, gifted with the most benevolent hearts in the world, and at mid-age deprived by envious nature of their hearing, seemed to have made it a maxim of their charitable lives, that since God had not given them any more the power to hear Christ's gospel preached, they would therefore thenceforth do what they could toward practising it. Wherefore, as a matter of no possible interest to them now, they abstained from church; and while with prayer-books in their hands the Rev. Mr. Falsgrave's congregation were engaged in worshipping their God, according to the divine behest; the two Miss Pennies, with thread and needle, were hard at work in serving him; making up shirts and gowns for the poor people of the parish. Pierre had heard that they had recently been at the trouble of organising a regular society, among the neighbouring farmers' wives and daughters, to meet twice a month at their own house (the Miss Pennies') for the purpose of sewing in concert for the benefit of various settlements of necessitous emigrants, who had lately pitched their populous shanties further up the river. But though this enterprise had not been started without previously acquainting Mrs. Glendinning of it,—for indeed she was much loved and honoured by the pious spinsters,—and their promise of solid assistance from that gracious manorial lady; yet Pierre had not heard that his mother had been officially invited to preside, or be at all present at the semi-monthly meetings;

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60 though he supposed, that far from having any scruples against so doing, she would be very glad to associate that way, with the good people of the village.

'Now, brother Pierre'—said Mrs. Glendinning, rising from Mrs. Llanyllyn's huge cushioned chair—'throw my shawl around me; and good-evening to Lucy's aunt.—There, we shall be late.'

As they walked along, she added—'Now, Pierre, I know you are apt to be a little impatient sometimes, of these sewing scenes; but courage; I merely want to peep in on them; so as to get some inkling of what they would indeed be at; and then my promised benefactions can be better selected by me. Besides, Pierre, I could have had Dates escort me, but I preferred you; because I want you to know who they are you live among; how many really pretty, and naturally refined dames and girls you shall one day be lord of the manor of. I anticipate a rare display of rural red and white.'

Cheered by such pleasant promises, Pierre soon found himself leading his mother into a room full of faces. The instant they appeared, a gratuitous old body, seated with her knitting near the door, squeaked out shrilly—'Ah! dames, dames,—Madam Glendinning!—Master Pierre Glendinning!'

Almost immediately following this sound, there came a sudden, long-drawn, unearthly, girlish shriek, from the further corner of the long, double room. Never had human voice so affected Pierre before. Though he saw not the person from whom it came, and though the voice was wholly strange to him, yet the sudden shriek seemed to split its way clean through his heart, and leave a yawning gap there. For an instant, he stood bewildered; but started at his mother's voice; her arm being still in his. 'Why do you clutch my arm so, Pierre? You pain me. Pshaw! some one has fainted,—nothing more.'

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Rh Instantly Pierre recovered himself, and affecting to mock at his own trepidation, hurried across the room to offer his services, if such were needed. But dames and maidens had been all beforehand with him; the lights were wildly flickering in the air-current made by the flinging open of the casement near to where the shriek had come. But the climax of the tumult was soon past; and presently, upon closing the casement, it subsided almost wholly. The elder of the spinster Pennies, advancing to Mrs. Glendinning, now gave her to understand, that one of the further crowd of the industrious girls present, had been attacked by a sudden, but fleeting fit, vaguely imputable to some constitutional disorder or other. She was now quite well again. And so the company, one and all, seemingly acting upon their natural good-breeding, which in any one at bottom, is but delicacy and charity, refrained from all further curiosity; reminded not the girl of what had passed; noted her scarce at all; and all needles stitched away as before.

Leaving his mother to speak with whom she pleased, and attend alone to her own affairs with the society; Pierre, oblivious now in such a lively crowd, of any past unpleasantness, after some courtly words to the Miss Pennies,—insinuated into their understandings through a long coiled trumpet, which, when not in use, the spinsters wore, hanging like a powder-horn from their girdles:—and likewise, after manifesting the profoundest and most intelligent interest in the mystic mechanism of a huge woollen sock, in course of completion by a spectacled old lady of his more particular acquaintance; after all this had been gone through, and something more too tedious to detail, but which occupied him for nearly half an hour, Pierre, with a slightly blushing, and imperfectly balanced assurance, advanced toward the further crowd of maidens; where, by the light of many a well-snuffed

title: Page:Pierre.djvu/75


text: 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Lear, Edward


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62 candle, they clubbed all their bright contrasting cheeks, like a dense bed of garden tulips. There were the shy and pretty Maries, Marthas, Susans, Betties, Jennies, Nellies; and forty more fair nymphs, who skimmed the cream, and made the butter of the fat farms of Saddle Meadows.

Assurance is in presence of the assured. Where embarrassments prevail, they affect the most disembarrassed. What wonder, then, that gazing on such a thick array of wreathing, roguish, half-averted, blushing faces—still audacious in their very embarrassment—Pierre, too, should flush a bit, and stammer in his attitudes a little? Youthful love and graciousness were in his heart; kindest words upon his tongue; but there he stood, target for the transfixing glances of those ambushed archers of the eye.

But his abashments last too long; his cheek hath changed from blush to pallor; what strange thing does Pierre Glendinning see? Behind the first close, busy breastwork of young girls, are several very little stands, or circular tables, where sit small groups of twos and threes, sewing in small comparative solitudes, as it were. They would seem to be the less notable of the rural company; or else, for some cause, they have voluntarily retired into their humble banishment. Upon one of these persons engaged at the furthermost and least conspicuous of these little stands, and close by a casement, Pierre's glance is palely fixed.

The girl sits steadily sewing; neither she nor her two companions speak. Her eyes are mostly upon her work; but now and then a very close observer would notice that she furtively lifts them, and moves them sideways and timidly toward Pierre; and then, still more furtively and timidly toward his lady mother, further off. All the while, her preternatural calmness sometimes seems only made to cover the intensest struggle in her bosom. Her

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Rh unadorned and modest dress is black; fitting close up to her neck, and clasping it with a plain, velvet border. To a nice perception, that velvet shows elastically; contracting and expanding, as though some choked, violent thing were risen up there within from the teeming region of her heart. But her dark, olive cheek is without a blush, or sign of any disquietude. So far as this girl lies upon the common surface, ineffable composure steeps her. But still, she sideways steals the furtive, timid glance. Anon, as yielding to the irresistible climax of her concealed emotion, whatever that may be, she lifts her whole marvellous countenance into the radiant candlelight, and for one swift instant, that face of supernaturalness unreservedly meets Pierre's. Now, wonderful loveliness, and a still more wonderful loneliness, have with inexplicable implorings, looked up to him from that henceforth immemorial face. There, too, he seemed to see the fair ground where Anguish had contended with Beauty, and neither being conqueror, both had laid down on the field.

Recovering at length from his all too obvious emotion, Pierre turned away still further, to regain the conscious possession of himself. A wild, bewildering, and incomprehensible curiosity had seized him, to know something definite of that face. To this curiosity, at the moment, he entirely surrendered himself; unable as he was to combat it, or reason with it in the slightest way. So soon as he felt his outward composure returned to him, he purposed to chat his way behind the breastwork of bright eyes and cheeks, and on some parlour pretence or other, hear, if possible, an audible syllable from one whose mere silent aspect had so potentially moved him. But at length, as with this object in mind, he was crossing the room again, he heard his mother's voice, gaily calling him away; and turning, saw her shawled and bonneted.

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64 He could now make no plausible stay, and smothering the agitation in him, he bowed a general and hurried adieu to the company, and went forth with his mother.

They had gone some way homeward, in perfect silence, when his mother spoke.

'Well, Pierre, what can it possibly be?'

'My God, mother, did you see her, then?'

'My son!' cried Mrs. Glendinning, instantly stopping in terror, and withdrawing her arm from Pierre, 'what—what under heaven ails you? This is most strange! I but playfully asked, what you were so steadfastly thinking of; and here you answer me by the strangest question, in a voice that seems to come from under your great-grandfather's tomb! What, in heaven's name, does this mean, Pierre? Why were you so silent, and why now are you so ill-timed in speaking? Answer me;—explain all this;—she—she—what she should you be thinking of but Lucy Tartan?—Pierre, beware, beware! I had thought you firmer in your lady's faith, than such strange behaviour as this would seem to hint. Answer me, Pierre, what may this mean? Come, I hate a mystery; speak, my son.'

Fortunately, this prolonged verbalised wonder in his mother afforded Pierre time to rally from his double and aggravated astonishment, brought about by first suspecting that his mother also had been struck by the strange aspect of the face, and then, having that suspicion so violently beaten back upon him, by her apparently unaffected alarm at finding him in some region of thought wholly unshared by herself at the time.

'It is nothing—nothing, sister Mary; just nothing at all in the world. I believe I was dreaming—sleepwalking, or something of that sort. They were vastly pretty girls there this evening, sister Mary, were they not? Come, let us walk on—do, sister mine.'

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Rh 'Pierre, Pierre!—but I will take your arm again;—and have you really nothing more to say? were you really wandering, Pierre?'

'I swear to you, my dearest mother, that never before in my whole existence, have I so completely gone wandering in my soul, as at that very moment. But it is all over now.' Then in a less earnest and somewhat playful tone, he added: 'And sister mine, if you know aught of the physical and sanitary authors, you must be aware, that the only treatment for such a case of harmless temporary aberration, is for all persons to ignore it in the subject. So no more of this foolishness. Talking about it only makes me feel very unpleasantly silly, and there is no knowing that it may not bring it back upon me.'

'Then by all means, my dear boy, not another word about it. But it's passing strange—very, very strange indeed. Well, about that morning business; how fared you? Tell me about it.'

II

So Pierre, gladly plunging into this welcome current of talk, was enabled to attend his mother home without furnishing further cause for her concern or wonderment. But not by any means so readily could he allay his own concern and wonderment. Too really true in itself, however evasive in its effect at the time, was that earnest answer to his mother, declaring that never in his whole existence had he been so profoundly stirred. The face haunted him as some imploring, and beauteous, impassioned, ideal Madonna's haunts the morbidly longing and enthusiastic, but ever-baffled artist. And ever, as the mystic face thus rose before his fancy's sight, another sense was touched in him; the long-drawn, unearthly, girlish shriek pealed through and through his soul; for

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66 now he knew the shriek came from the face—such Delphic shriek could only come from such a source. And wherefore that shriek? thought Pierre. Bodes it ill to the face, or me, or both? How am I changed, that my appearance on any scene should have power to work such woe? But it was mostly the face—the face, that wrought upon him. The shriek seemed as incidentally embodied there.

The emotions he experienced seemed to have taken hold of the deepest roots and subtlest fibres of his being. And so much the more that it was so subterranean in him, so much the more did he feel its weird inscrutableness. What was one unknown, sad-eyed, shrieking girl to him? There must be sad-eyed girls somewhere in the world, and this was only one of them. And what was the most beautiful sad-eyed girl to him? Sadness might be beautiful, as well as mirth—he lost himself trying to follow out this tangle. 'I will no more of this infatuation,' he would cry; but forth from regions of irradiated air, the divine beauty and imploring sufferings of the face, stole into his view.

Hitherto I have ever held but lightly, thought Pierre, all stories of ghostly mysticalness in man; my creed of this world leads me to believe in visible, beautiful flesh, and audible breath, however sweet and scented; but only in visible flesh, and audible breath, have I hitherto believed. But now!—now!—and again he would lose himself in the most surprising and preternatural ponderings, which baffled all the introspective cunning of his mind. Himself was too much for himself. He felt that what he had always before considered the solid land of veritable reality, was now being audaciously encroached upon by bannered armies of hooded phantoms, disembarking in his soul, as from flotillas of spectre-boats.

The terrors of the face were not those of Gorgon;

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Rh not by repelling hideousness did it smite him so; but bewilderingly allured him, by its nameless beauty, and its long-suffering, hopeless anguish.

But he was sensible that this general effect upon him, was also special; the face somehow mystically appealing to his own private and individual affections; and by a silent and tyrannic call, challenging him in his deepest moral being, and summoning Truth, Love, Pity, Conscience, to the stand. Apex of all wonders! thought Pierre; this indeed almost unmans me with its wonderfulness. Escape the face he could not. Muffling his own in his bed-clothes—that did not hide it. Flying from it by sunlight down the meadows, was as vain.

Most miraculous of all to Pierre was the vague impression, that somewhere he had seen traits of the likeness of that face before. But where, he could not say; nor could he, in the remotest degree, imagine. He was not unaware—for in one or two instances, he had experienced the fact—that sometimes a man may see a passing countenance in the street, which shall irresistibly and magnetically affect him, for a moment, as wholly unknown to him, and yet strangely reminiscent of some vague face he has previously encountered, in some fancied time, too, of extreme interest to his life. But not so was it now with Pierre. The face had not perplexed him for a few speculative minutes, and then glided from him, to return no more. It stayed close by him; only—and not invariably—could he repel it, by the exertion of all his resolution and self-will. Besides, what of general enchantment lurked in his strange sensations, seemed concentringly condensed, and pointed to a spear-head, that pierced his heart with an inexplicable pang, whenever the specialising emotion—to call it so—seized the possession of his thoughts, and waved into his visions, a thousand forms of bygone times, and many an old

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68 legendary family scene, which he had heard related by his elderly relations, some of them now dead.

Disguising his wild reveries as best he might from the notice of his mother, and all other persons of her household, for two days Pierre wrestled with his own haunted spirit; and at last, so effectually purged it of all weirdnesses, and so effectually regained the general mastery of himself, that for a time, life went with him, as though he had never been stirred so strangely. Once more, the sweet unconditional thought of Lucy slid wholly into his soul, dislodging thence all such phantom occupants. Once more he rode, he walked, he swam, he vaulted; and with new zest threw himself into the glowing practice of all those manly exercises, he so dearly loved. It almost seemed in him, that ere promising forever to protect, as well as eternally to love, his Lucy, he must first completely invigorate and embrawn himself into the possession of such a noble muscular manliness, that he might champion Lucy against the whole physical world.

Still—even before the occasional reappearance of the face to him—Pierre, for all his wilful ardour in his gymnasticals and other diversions, whether indoors or out, or whether by book or foil; still, Pierre could not but be secretly annoyed, and not a little perplexed, as to the motive, which, for the first time in his recollection, had impelled him, not merely to conceal from his mother a singular circumstance in his life (for that, he felt would have been but venial; and besides, as will eventually be seen, he could find one particular precedent for it, in his past experience) but likewise, and superaddedly, to parry, nay, to evade, and, in effect, to return something alarmingly like a fib, to an explicit question put to him by his mother;—such being the guise, in which part of the conversation they had had that eventful night, now appeared to his fastidious sense. He considered also, that his evasive

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Rh answer had not pantheistically burst from him in a momentary interregnum of self-command. No; his mother had made quite a lengthy speech to him; during which he well remembered, he had been carefully, though with trepidation, turning over in his mind, how best he might recall her from her unwished-for and untimely scent. Why had this been so? Was this his wont? What inscrutable thing was it, that so suddenly had seized him, and made him a falsifyer—ay, a falsifyer and nothing less—to his own dearly beloved, and confiding mother? Here, indeed, was something strange for him; here was stuff for his utmost ethical meditations. But, nevertheless, on strict introspection, he felt, that he would not willingly have it otherwise; not willingly would he now undissemble himself in this matter to his mother. Why was this, too? Was this his wont? Here, again, was food for mysticism. Here, in imperfect inklings, tinglings, presentiments, Pierre began to feel—what all mature men, who are Magians, sooner or later know, and more or less assuredly—that not always in our actions, are we our own factors. But this conceit was very dim in Pierre; and dimness is ever suspicious and repugnant to us; and so, Pierre shrank abhorringly from the infernal catacombs of thought, down into which this fœtal fancy beckoned him. Only this, though in secret, did he cherish; only this, he felt persuaded of; namely, that not for both worlds would he have his mother made a partner to his sometime mystic mood.

But with this nameless fascination of the face upon him, during those two days that it had first and fully possessed him for its own, did perplexed Pierre refrain from that apparently most natural of all resources,—boldly seeking out, and returning to the palpable cause, and questioning her, by look or voice, or both together—the mysterious girl herself? No; not entirely did Pierre

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70 here refrain. But his profound curiosity and interest in the matter—strange as it may seem—did not so much appear to be embodied in the mournful person of the olive girl, as by some radiations from her, embodied in the vague conceits which agitated his own soul. There, lurked the subtler secret: that, Pierre had striven to tear away. From without, no wonderful effect is wrought within ourselves, unless some ulterior, responding wonder meets it. That the starry vault shall surcharge the heart with all rapturous marvellings, is only because we ourselves are greater miracles, and superber trophies than all the stars in universal space. Wonder interlocks with wonder; and then the confounding feeling comes. No cause have we to fancy, that a horse, a dog, a fowl, ever stand transfixed beneath yon skyey load of majesty. But our soul's arches underfit into its; and so prevent the upper arch from falling on us with unsustainable inscrutableness. 'Explain ye my deeper mystery,' said the shepherd Chaldean king, smiting his breast, lying on his back upon the plain; 'and then, I will bestow all my wonderings upon ye, ye stately stars!' So, in some sort, with Pierre. Explain thou this strange integral feeling in me myself, he thought—turning upon the fancied face—and I will then renounce all other wonders, to gaze wonderingly at thee. But thou hast evoked in me profounder spells than the evoking one, thou face! For me, thou hast uncovered one infinite, dumb, beseeching countenance of mystery, underlying all the surfaces of visible time and space.

But during those two days of his first wild vassalage to his original sensations, Pierre had not been unvisited by less mysterious impulses. Two or three very plain and practical plannings of desirable procedures in reference to some possible homely explication of all this nonsense—so he would momentarily denominate

title: Page:Pierre.djvu/84