the worst and most callous sinner. As he looked at her, something appealed to him not to do this great wickedness, to do anything, go through anything, give up anything, sooner than do this. Something made him remember, made him feel with new force and significance, that her life had been one with his before this world's light had dawned upon either of them. He remembered now with photographic accuracy small and loving acts of her childhood, toys given up to him, excuses found to screen his faults, tasks that her quicker intelligence had mastered without difficulty, and that she had so patiently explained and re-explained, to save him from blame and punishment. The witness by which the untaught heathen are to be condemned or justified was striving with him now, and he went very softly out of the room again, and stole down the stairs, at the foot of which Mrs. Ashton was waiting for him. She raised her lantern, and saw that he was alone; she looked him with an expression of anxiety strained into horror. "What is wrong ?" she whispered. up at Nothing. She is fast asleep. But something came over me, I don't know what. I wish we could cut it, somehow." The old woman turned upon him with a ghastly grin. "So you are the one to be frightened when it comes to acting instead of talking," she whispered; "and instead of gaining the fine fortune that was to put the world at our feet, we are to be transported as unsuccessful swindlers !" His cold heart turned to stone beneath the influence of her sneering words; his mind closed with a kind of snap on his former resolution, and never wavered again. He said nothing, but went back to Grace's room, and took out a handkerchief, which he saturated with liquid from the bottle, and held at a little distance from the face of the sleeper, drawing back himself that he might inhale as little as possible of the stupifying drug. Grace moved uneasily, and then became quite still; her sleep was changing to stupor. He saturated the handkerchief again, and put it upon her face; he might touch her soon without any fear of awaking her. Presently he ventured to speak, to move her hand, her arm, her head; he might as well have tried to elicit signs of consciousness from a corpse. He put the bottle in his pocket, to be used again in case of need, and laid the handkerchief over her face; he lifted her in his arms, and carried her quickly down-stairs, past the place where Mrs. Ashton was still standing. He whispered a single word, pointing to Grace: "Dead!" Mrs. Ashton glanced sharply at her, and then answered : "So much the better." One breathless moment, and they stood by the outer door of the kitchen, left wide open; another, and they were out of doors in the "cold light of stars," for the wind had cleared away the mists of an autumn night, and the stars shone brilliantly. Straight to the reservoir, without an instant's delay; Robert had left the weight, with the band attached to it, upon the angle of the low leaden wall; the band was buckled round the victim's waist, the handkerchief was snatched from her face, and she and the weight together were dropped into the water. There was a flash of white, a great hole in the water that filled up instantly, a few bubbles, and nothing more. SENTIMENTAL AND PROSAIC, IN CONTACT AND COLLISION. A CHAPTER OF IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. WITH A SEQUEL TOUCHING PETER BELL AND PRIMROSES. BY FRANCIS Jacox. THE most contemplative of Mr. Helps's Friends in Council, in a work published subsequently to the one which bears that name, after describing his meditations in a wood, tells us how he stepped out of the wood into the beaten road, a change which he always felt to be like what occurs in the mind of a man who, having been wrapt in some romance of his own, suddenly disengages himself from it, and talks with his fellows upon the ordinary topics of the day, affecting a shrewd care about the price of corn, and the matter-of-fact matters of this worky-day world. Stout Silas Foster, in the Blithedale Romance, typifies the "hard and fast" matter-of-fact intellect with which the poetical and sentimental temperament so frequently comes into contact and collision. Miles Coverdale and his dreamy companions-" a knot of dreamers" is the heading of the chapter on the first night of their gathering at Blithedale, cluster together round the hearth, and build splendid castles (or phalansteries rather) and picture beautiful scenes among the fervid coals they gaze on. "Stout Silas Foster mingled little in our conversation; but when he did speak, it was very much to some practical purpose. For instance: Which man among you,' quoth he, is the best judge of swine? Some of us must go to the next Brighton fair, and buy half a dozen pigs.' Pigs! Good Heavens! had we come out from among the swinish multitude for this?" Silas plays the like part in the midnight scene of dragging the water for Zenobia's body, where his running commentary of prosaic reflections, coarsely common-sensical, deepens by a certain grim realism the tragical shadows of the picture, while it relieves by contrast the agitation of the other actors. Franz Horn is of opinion that the presence of Horatio in the churchyard with Hamlet assists in relieving the funereal effect upon the reader. The "practical turn of mind" of the "excellent but somewhat limited Horatio" shows him immediately that all these fine speculations of Hamlet on death and on the skulls which he handles lead to nothing, and he is anxious to be gone. His exclamations are the "miserable common-places of the barrenest conversation,"-almost the perfection of imperfect sympathy, in their way. Moore, in his Diary, has an "A propos of loss of friends, somebody was saying the other day, before Morgan, the great calculator of lives, that they had lost so many friends (mentioning the number) in a certain space of time; upon which Morgan, coolly taking down a book from his office shelf, and looking into it, said, 'So you ought, sir, and three more. "§ * Companions of My Solitude, ch. vi. Sancho Panza is a pre-eminent type of the prosaic in contact with Don Quixote's crack-brained poetics. Witness his answers to the Don's highflown inquiries touching Dulcinea. What was that queen of beauty doing, on the squire's arrival? stringing pearls, perhaps, or embroidering some device with threads of gold for this her captive knight? "No, faith!" answered Sancho; "I found her winnowing two bushels of wheat in a back-yard of her house." And so on with a series of Quixotic fallacies. One thing the Don is assured, however, that Sancho will not, cannot deny; when near her, he must have perceived a Sabæan odour, an aromatic fragrance, a something sweet, and sweetly nondescript―a scent, a perfume- -as if he were in the shop of some refined and exquisite perfumer. But Sancho has perceived no other strong smell than what exudes from hard labouring people in hot weather; for Dulcinea was hard at work, and the weather was hot.* Sancho's rough and ready realism is always at hand as a solvent to disenchant the Don his master, could anything do Two such natures in such constant cohesion as well as collision, are a study, and by a master. SO. Fielding's Partridge is of Sancho's type, in the answers he makes to Mr. Jones's rhapsodies about the moon and lovers, during their journey together among the Gloucestershire hills one cold night. If Jones often sighs from sentiment, Benjamin as often groans from an empty stomach. "Who knows, Partridge," cried the former, "but the loveliest creature in the universe may have her eyes now fixed on that very moon which I behold at this instant ?" 66 Very likely, sir," says Partridge; and adds that if his eyes were fixed on a good sirloin of roast-beef, the foul fiend might take the moon and her horns into the bargain,† for what he cared. Did ever Tramontane make such a reply? is his companion's remonstrant query. be re When Lucy, in Miss Ferrier's Highland story of Destiny, expresses her lively admiration of the site and surroundings of Mr. McDow's manse, that reverend gentleman professes himself delighted to hear her say so, and expatiates on the "amazing convenience" of the steam-boat on the loch, that now comes regularly twice a week. Besides making a most interesting object in the view, "I get my tea and sugar brought to my very door by her for a mere trifle. I can even get a loaf of bread from Glasgow within four-and-twenty hours after it's out of the oven, for a penny or so additional," &c. &c. To the same category may ferred Theodore Hook's stockbroker, Mr. Apperton: for instance, in the discussion with Miss Maxwell as to the watering-place they shall visit,— Hastings being named, the lady praises the country about it as pretty, and refers to the many agreeable objects in the neighbourhood, while the spot itself is historically interesting. "So it is," said Apperton, "and I dare say it is a nice place enough; but they gave some friends of mine, last year, an infernal bad dinner at an inn there-thirteen shillings a bottle for claret-and the fish not over good." Brighton is then suggested, and is not secluded enough for Kate Maxwell's taste, but Apperton thinks better of it: "They tell me the beef isn't good at Brighton,” continued the stockbroker; "but I dare say we shall be very happy; the mutton, * Don Quixote, ch. xxxi. passim. Tom Jones, ch. lxxxviii. my friend Hopkins says, is famous, and fish I know is uncommon cheap." There was no romance in this, remarks the author, adding, that "whenever he [Apperton] came out with his matter-of-fact prosing, poor Katherine sighed, and thought of "* somebody else, more after her own mind. I From another of Hook's fictions take Rodney the poet, and his perversely prosaic wife. One of their conjugal colloquies begins on his part with this proem inviting her confidence: "The mind, when overcharged, droops, as it were; and like the rose suffused with evening dew, seeks, if may be allowed the expression, support from its kindred branches. I have much to tell, and much to ask of you." "Well, I'm sure I shall be very glad to hear what you have to say; but" said Mrs. Rodney, "while I think of it, I'd better tell you that Evans charges sevenpencehalfpenny a pound for that mutton which we had last week, and Mrs. Fisher tells me they get theirs at Miller's for sevenpence. Mutton, my angel," said the poet, "mutton as nutriment is wholesome, nay needful," and he expresses admiration of his Cordelia's unsophisticated housewifery. "But at this moment, Cordelia, I am too much engaged in matters where hearts are concerned to lend myself to other topics." "The hearts, my dear," said Mrs. Rodney, "are fourpence-halfpenny anywhere, that is, if you take the livers with them." "Oh, lovely East!" raves Madame Carolina in Mr. Disraeli's first novel, with a certain unsympathetic Baroness for listener: "Why was I not oriental? Land where the voice of the nightingale is never mute! Land of the cedar and the citron, the turtle and the myrtle-of ever-blooming flowers and ever-shining skies! Illustrious East! Cradle of Philosophy! My dearest Baroness, why do you not feel as I do? From the East we obtain everything!" "Indeed!" said the Baroness, with great simplicity; "I thought we only got Cashmere shawls!" So with Mr. Mystic's rhapsody, burlesquing Coleridge's lay sermon, in one of the late Mr. Peacock's satirical novelets: "Mystery! I hail thee! Who art thou?-Jargon! I love thee! Who art thou ?-Superstition! I worship thee! Hail, transcendental Triad!" Mr. Fox cut short the thread of his eloquence by saying he would trouble him for the cream-jug.§-Mr. Hannay epigrammatically hits off two of his characters by saying that the daughter was very fond of the moon, while her father considered it a kind of patent, self-acting lamp. When Lord Lytton's Maltravers asks Ferrers, the cynical worldling, if ever he felt poetry, and Ferrers repeats inquiringly, "Feel it !"-the other rejoins, "Yes; if you put the moon into your verses, did you first feel it shining into your heart ?" My dear Maltravers," is the reply, "if I put the moon into my verses, in all probability it was to rhyme to noou. 'The night was at her noon'-is a capital ending for the first hexameter-and the moon is booked for the next stage. Come in." "No, I shall stay out [in the moonlight].” "Don't be nonsensical." "By moonlight there is no nonsense like common sense." In such moods and tenses (or times), the nature of a Lumley Ferrers is almost as antipathetic to that of a Maltravers as, in * Maxwell, ch. iii. ‡ Vivian Grey, book vii. ch. vi. Eustace Conyers, ch. vi. † Passion and Principle, ch. iv. another of Lord Lytton's stories, was that of Mervale, with his sarcastic laugh, to Glyndon, when enamoured of Viola, and ennobled by the passion. "Who does not know the effect of the world's laugh? Mervale was the personation of the world. The whole world seemed to shout derision in those ringing tones." The ridicule may be of a kind to carry the reader with it, such as that of Peter Pallmall in the play interposing homely prosaics into his sister Polly's poetics : Pallm. Polly, where are you going? Polly. Going to hear the nightingale. Pallm. She's hoarse, and doesn't sing to-night; so go to bed. Pallm. Respect! . . . . To bed with you. I like to hear the nightingale, myself, between the sheets. Polly. Stars-flowers-dewdrops-moonlight, and a lover kneeling. Ah, Peter, that's real poetry! Pallm. Real rheumatism, if the gentleman kneels long. Bed, Polly, bed. Polly. And then, with faithful ring-doves cooing from a bush-(screams)— Oh, Peter! Pallm. What's the matter? Polly. It's a-a spasm. (Aside.) 'Tis the Lieutenant. Pallm. Spasm! I knew how 'twould be; it's those rabbits. Polly. Rabbits! Unromantic fellow! Your vulgarity, Peter, would kill a whole circulating library.† Such, again, as that of Mr. Slick in colloquy with sentimental "sister Sal," who, if he don't "go the whole figur' with her," in admiring what she admires as sweetly romantic and pathetic, is "as mad as a hatter," and rates him with characteristic effusion: "You hante got no soul in you at all, Sam, says she, I never seed sich a crittur: I do believe in my heart you think of nothin' but dollars and cents." Whereupon he hoaxes her into explaining the inexplicable to him, to "pint out the beauties" of the passage she so extremely admires, laughing at her in his sleeve the while, and anon wearing the laugh on his sleeve, so that she sees it, and flings out of the room "a-poutin' like anything." It's grand fun, that, the Clockmaker declares, " and don't do a gal no harm nother, for there is nothin' like havin' a string to a kite, when it's a-gettin' away out of sight a'most, to bring it down agin. Of all the seventeen senses, I like common sense about as well as any on 'em, arter all; now, don't you, squire?"‡ The The history of the fourteenth century has been characterised by Michelet as a strange medley of opposite qualities, of serious drama and rollicking extravaganza-a romance of Arthur and farce of Scaramouch. whole epoch is double, and squinting, he says: contrasts prevail; prose and poetry in all directions give one another the lie, and rally one another. "It is a Midsummer Night's Dream, where the noble Theseus figures by the side of Bottom the weaver, whose fine ass's ears turn Titania's head."§ To any historical inquirer with an eye for the humorous, these interlacings and cross-threadings of the ideal and the * Zanoni, book iii. ch. x. †The Prisoner of War, Act I. Sc. 3. The Clockmaker, Third Series, ch. xv. |