Chapter II: Part XIII: NO. XIX.—MOTIVE POWER (continued) (1)

The next morning the sun shone into my windows so brightly that I rose at an earlier hour than I had been accustomed to do for months, and strolled into the gardens, interesting myself in considering the painter’s charge against dressed ground and Tracey’s ingenious reply to it. The mowers were at work upon the lawns. Perhaps among rural sounds there is none which pleases me more than that of the whetting of the scythe—I suppose less from any music in itself, than from associations of midsummer, and hay-fields, and Milton’s ‘Allegro,’ in which the low still sound is admitted among the joyous melodies of Morn. As the gardens opened upon me, with their variety of alleys and by-walks, I became yet more impressed than I had been on the day before, with the art which had planned and perfected them, and the poetry of taste with which the images of the sculptor were so placed, that at every turn they recalled some pleasing but vague reminiscence of what one had seen in a picture, or in travel; or brought more vividly before the mind some charming verse in the poets, whose busts greeted the eye from time to time in bowery nook or hospitable alcove, where the murmur of a waterfall, or the view of a distant landscape opened from out the groves, invited pause and allured to contemplation.

At last, an arched trellis overhung with vine leaves led me out into that part of the park which fronted the library, and to which the Painter had given his preference over the grounds I had just quitted. There, the wildness of the scenery came on me with the suddenness of a surprise. The table-land, on which the house stood on the other side of the building, here abruptly sloped down into a valley through which a stream wound in many a maze, sometimes amidst jagged rocklike crags, sometimes through low grassy banks, round which the deer were grouping. The view was very extensive, but not unbrokenly so; here and there thick copses, in the irregular outline of natural groves, shut out the valley, but still left towering in the background the wavy hill-tops, softly clear in the blue morning sky. Hitherto I had sided with Tracey; now I thought the Painter right. In the garden, certainly, man’s mind forms a visible link with Nature, but in those scenes of Nature not trimmed and decorated to the book-lore of man, Thought takes a less finite scope, and perhaps from its very vagueness is less inclined to find monotony and sameness in the wide expanse over which it wanders to lose itself in reverie.

Descending the hillside, I reached the stream, and came suddenly upon Henry Thornhill, who, screened behind a gnarled old pollard-tree, was dipping his line into a hollow where the waves seemed to calm themselves, and pause before they rushed, in cascade, down a flight of crags, and thence brawled loudly onward.

As I know by experience how little an angler likes to be disturbed, I contented myself with a nod and a smile to the young man, and went my own way in silence; but about an hour afterwards, as I was winding back towards the house, I heard his voice behind me. I turned; he showed me, with some pride, his basket already filled with trout; and after I had sufficiently admired and congratulated, we walked slowly up the slope together. The evening before, Captain Thornhill had prepossessed me less than the other members of the party. He had spoken very little, and appeared to me to have that air of supreme indifference to all persons and things around him, which makes so many young gentlemen like—so many young gentlemen. But this morning he was frank and communicative.

“You have known Sir Percival very long, I think?” said he.

“Very long. I knew him before I had left Cambridge. In my rambles during a summer vacation, chance brought us together; and though he was then one of the most brilliant oracles of the world of fashion, and I an unknown collegian, somehow or other we became intimate.”

“I suppose you find him greatly altered?”

“Do you mean in person or in mind?”

“Well, in both.”

“In person less altered than I could have supposed; his figure just the same—as erect, as light, and seemingly as vigorous. In mind I cannot yet judge, but there is still the same sweetness, and the same cheerfulness; the same mixture of good-tempered irony and of that peculiar vein of sentiment which is formed by the combination of poetical feeling and philosophical contemplation.”

“He is a very fine fellow,” returned Henry Thornhill, with some warmth; “but don’t you think it is a pity he should be so eccentric?”

“In what?”

“In what? Why, in that which must strike everybody; shirking his station, shutting himself up here, planning gardens which nobody sees, and filling his head with learning for which nobody is the wiser.”

“His own friends see the gardens and enjoy them; his own friends may, I suppose, hear him talk, and become the wiser for his learning.”

“His own friends—yes! a dozen or two individuals; most of them undistinguished as—as I am,” added the young man, with visible bitterness. “And, with his talents and fortune, and political influence, he might be, or at least might have been, anything; don’t you think so?”

“Anything is a bold expression; but if you mean that he might, if he so pleased, have acquired a very considerable reputation, and obtained a very large share of the rewards which ambitious men covet, I have no doubt that he could have done so, and very little doubt that he could do so still.”

“I wish you could stir him up to think it. I am vexed to see him so shelved in this out-of-the-way place. He has even given up ever going to Tracey Court now; and as for his castle in Ireland, he would as soon think of going to Kamtschatka.”

“I hope, at all events, his estates, whether in the north or in Ireland, are not ill-managed.”

“No, I must say that no estates can be better managed; and so they ought to be, for he devotes enormous sums to their improvement, as well as to all public objects in their district.”

“It seems, then, that if he shirks some of the pomps of wealth, he does not shirk its duties?”

“Certainly not, unless it be the duty which a great proprietor owes to himself.”

“What is that duty?”

The young man looked puzzled; at last he said—

“To make the most of his station.”

“Perhaps Sir Percival thinks it is better to make the most of his mind, and fancies he can do that better in the way of life which pleases him, than in that which would displease; but he is lucky in stewards if his estates thrive so well without the watch of the master’s eye.”

“Yes, but his stewards are gentlemen—one, at Tracey Court, is a Mr Aston, an old schoolfellow of Sir Percival, who was brought up to expect a fine property at the death of an uncle; but the uncle unluckily married at the age of fifty, and had a large family. Sir Percival heard he was in distress, and gave him this appointment; it just suits him. The Irish steward, Mr Gerrard, is also a capital fellow, who travelled in the East with Sir Percival. Being half Irish himself, Gerrard understands how to make the best of the population; and being half Scotch, he understands how to make the best of the property. I have no doubt that the estates are better managed in Sir Percival’s absence than if he resided on them, for you know how good-natured he is. A bad tenant has only to get at his heart with a tale of distress, in order to renew his lease for whipping the land on his own terms.”

“So then,” said I, “we have come at last to this conclusion, that your wise relation, knowing his own character, in its merits and its failings, has done well in delegating to others, in whose probity and intellect he has a just confidence, the management of those affairs which he could not administer himself with equal benefit to all the persons interested. Is not that the way in which all states are governed? The wisdom of a king in absolute governments, or of a minister in free ones, is in the selection of the right persons for the right places; thus working out a wise system through the instrumentalities of those who best understand its details.”

“Yes; but, talking of ministers, Sir Percival makes nothing of his political influence; he shuns all politics. Can you believe it?—he scarcely ever looks into the leading article of a newspaper!”

“To a man who has been long out of the way of party politics, there is not the interest in leading articles which you and I take.”

“I rather think that Sir Percival does not like to be reminded of politics, for fear he might be induced to take an interest in them.”

“Ah, indeed! Why do you think so?”

“Because, three years ago, Lady Gertrude was very anxious that he should claim the old barony of Ravenscroft, which has been in abeyance for centuries, but to which the heralds and lawyers assured him there could be no doubt of his proving his right. Lady Gertrude was so intent upon this that at one time I thought she would have prevailed. He looked into the case, invited the lawyers here, satisfied himself that the proof was clear, and then suddenly forbade all steps to be taken. Lady Gertrude told me that he said to her, ‘For my family this honour is nought, since the title, if revived, would again die with me; but for myself it is a temptation to change, to destroy the mode of life in which I am happiest, and in which, on the whole, I believe I am morally the least imperfect. If I once took my seat in the Lords, a responsible legislator, how do I know that I should not want to speak, to act, to vie with others, and become ambitious if successful—and fretful if not?’”

“So he declined. Well, after all, a life most in harmony with a man’s character is that in which he is probably not only the happiest, but the best man. Ambition is but noble in proportion as it makes men useful. But, from your own account, Tracey’s private life is useful already, though its uses are not obtrusive. And for public life, three parts of the accomplishments, and perhaps of the virtues, which make his private life beautiful, would not be needed.”

I uttered these defensive suggestions on behalf of my host somewhat in rebuke of the young relation whose criticisms had called them forth, though in my own mind I felt a sort of melancholy regret that Percival’s choice of life should be in walks so cool and sequestered, and the tenor of his way so noiseless: And did not his own fear to be tempted into more active exertions of intellect, if once brought under the influence of emulative competition, indicate that he himself also felt a regret, on looking back to the past, that he had acquired habits of mind to which the thought of distinction had become a sensation of pain?

When our party assembled at breakfast, Tracey said to me, “I had no idea you were so early a riser, or I would have given up my ride to share your rambles.”

“Are you too, then, an early riser?”

“Yes, especially in summer. I have ridden twelve miles with Bourke to show him the remains of an old Roman tower which he has promised to preserve a few ages longer—in a picture.”

Here the entrance of the letter-bag suspended conversation. The most eager for its opening was young Thornhill; and his countenance became at once overcast when he found there was no letter for him; as mine, no doubt, became overcast when I found a large packet of letters forwarded to me. I had left town long before the post closed; and two or three hours suffice to bring plenty of troublesome correspondents upon a busy Londoner. My housekeeper had forwarded them all. I think Lady Gertrude was the only other one of our party for whom the postman sped the soft intercourse from soul to soul. When I looked up from my letters, Henry Thornhill had already glanced rapidly over the panorama of the world, displayed in the ‘Times’ newspaper, and, handing it to the Librarian, said disdainfully, “No news.”

“No news!” exclaimed Caleb Danvers, after his own first peep—“no news! Why, Dr ——’s great library is to be sold by auction on the 14th of next month!”

“That _is_ interesting news,” said Tracey. “Write at once for the catalogue.”

“Any further criticism on the Exhibition of the Royal Academy?” asked the Painter, timidly.

“Two columns,” answered Mr Danvers, laconically.

“Oh,” said the Painter, “that is interesting too.”

“I beg your pardon, Mr Danvers,” said Lady Gertrude, “but will you glance at the foreign intelligence? Look to Germany;—anything about the Court of ——?”

“The Court of ——? yes, our minister there is convalescent, and going to Carlsbad next week.”

“That’s what I wanted to know,” said Lady Gertrude. “My letter is from his dear sister, who is very anxious about him. Going to Carlsbad—I am glad to hear it.”

Meanwhile Clara, who had possessed herself of the supplementary sheet, cried out, joyously—“O dear Henry, only think—Ellen has got a baby. How pleased they will be at the Grange! A son and heir at last!”

“Tut,” growled Henry, breaking an egg-shell.

“So,” said Tracey, “you see the ‘Times’ has news for every one except my friend here, who read in London yesterday what we in the country read to-day; and Captain Thornhill, who finds nothing that threatens to break the peace of the world to the promotion of himself and the decimation of his regiment.”

Henry laughed, but not without constraint, and muttered something about civilians being unable to understand the interest a soldier takes in his profession.

After breakfast, Tracey said to me, “Doubtless you have your letters to answer, and will be glad to have your forenoon to yourself. About two o’clock we propose adjourning to a certain lake, which is well shaded from the sun. I have a rude summer pavilion on the banks; there we can dine, and shun the Dogstar. Clara, who happily does not know that I am thinking of Tyndaris, will bring her lute, Aunt Gertrude her work, Bourke his sketch-book; and the lake is large enough for a sailing excursion, if Henry will kindly exchange, for the day, military repose for nautical activity.”

All seemed pleased with the proposal except Henry, who merely shrugged his shoulders, and the party dispersed for the morning.

My letters were soon despatched, and my instincts or habits (which are, practically speaking, much the same thing) drew me into the library. Certainly it was a very noble collection of books, and exceedingly well arranged. Opening volume after volume, I found that most of those containing works of imperishable name were interleaved; and the side-pages thus formed were inscribed with critical notes and comments in my host’s handwriting.

I was greatly struck with the variety and minuteness of the knowledge in many departments, whether of art, scholarship, or philosophy, which these annotations displayed, and the exquisite critical discrimination and taste by which the knowledge was vivified and adorned. While thus gratifying my admiring curiosity, I was accosted by the Librarian, who had entered the room unobserved by me.

“Ay,” said he, glancing over my shoulder at the volume in my hand—“Shakespeare; I see you have chanced there upon one of Sir Percival’s most interesting speculations. He seeks first to prove how much more largely than is generally supposed Shakespeare borrowed, in detail, from others; and next, to show how much more patently than is generally supposed Shakespeare reveals to us his own personal nature, his religious and political beliefs, his favourite sentiments and cherished opinions. In fact, it is one of Sir Percival’s theories, that though the Drama is, of all compositions, that in which the author can least obtrude on us his personality, yet that of all dramatists Shakespeare the most frequently presents to us his own. Our subtle host seeks to do this by marking all the passages of assertion or reflection in Shakespeare’s plays which are not peculiarly appropriate to the speaker, nor called for by the situation—often, indeed, purely episodical to the action; and where in such passages the same or similar ideas are repeated, he argues that Shakespeare himself is speaking, and not the person in the dialogue. I observe in the page you have opened, that Sir Percival is treating of the metaphysical turn of mind so remarkably developed in Shakespeare, and showing how much that turn of mind was the character of the exact time in which he lived. You see how appositely he quotes from Sir John Davies, Shakespeare’s contemporary—who, though employed in active professional pursuits, a lawyer—nay, even an Attorney-General and a Serjeant; a member of Parliament, nay, even a Speaker, and in an Irish House of Commons—prepared himself for those practical paths of life by the composition of a poem the most purely and profoundly metaphysical which England, or indeed modern Europe, has ever produced: at this day it furnishes the foundation of all our immaterial schools of metaphysics. You will see, if you look on, how clearly Sir Percival shows that Shakespeare had intently studied that poem, and imbued his own mind, not so much with its doctrines, as with its manner of thought.”

“Tracey was always fond of metaphysics, and of applying his critical acuteness to the illustration of poets. I am pleased to see he has, in the tastes of his youth, so pleasing a resource in his seclusion.”

“But it is not only in metaphysics or poetry that he occupies his mind; you might be still more forcibly struck with his information and his powers of reasoning if you opened any of the historians he has interleaved—Clarendon, for instance, or our earlier Chronicles. I cannot but think he would have been a remarkable writer, if he had ever acquired the concentration of purpose, for which, perhaps, the idea of publishing what one writes is indispensably necessary.”

“Has he never had the ambition to be an author?”

“Never since I have known him; and he never could conceive it now. You look as if you thought that a pity.”

“Well, is it not a pity?”

“Sir,” quoth the Librarian, taking snuff, “that is not a fair question to put to me, who have passed my life in reading books, and cherishing a humane compassion for those who are compelled to write them. But permit me to ask whether a very clever man, himself a voluminous writer, has not composed a popular work called the ‘Calamities of Authors’?—did you ever know any writer who has composed a work on the ‘Felicities of Authors’? Do you think, from your own experience, that you could write such a work yourself?”

“Rhetorically, yes; conscientiously, no. But let us hope that the calamities of authors lead to the felicities of readers.”

Thus talking we arrived at the Librarian’s own private sanctuary, a small study at the end of the library, looking on the wilder part of the park. Pointing to doors on the opposite side of a corridor, he said, “Those lead to Sir Percival’s private apartments—they are placed in the Belvidere Tower, the highest room of which he devotes to his scientific pursuits; and those pursuits occupy him at this moment, for he expects a visit very shortly from a celebrated Swedish philosopher, with whom he has opened a correspondence.”

I left the Librarian to his books, and took my way into the drawing-room. There I found only Clara Thornhill, seated by the window, and with a mournful shade on her countenance, which habitually was cheerful and sunny. I attributed the shade to the guilty Henry, and my conjecture proved right; for after some small-talk on various matters, I found myself suddenly admitted into her innocent confidence. Henry was unhappy! Unreasonable man! A time had been when Henry had declared that the supremest happiness of earth would be to call Clara his! Such happiness then seemed out of his reach; Clara’s parents were ambitious, and Henry had no fortune but “his honour and his sword.” Percival Tracey, _Deus ex machinâ_, had stepped in—propitiated Clara’s parents by handsome settlements. Henry’s happiness was apparently secured. Percival had bestowed on him an independent income, had sought to domicile him in his own neighbourhood by the offer of a charming cottage which Tracey had built by the sea-side as an occasional winter residence for himself; had proposed to find him occupation as a magistrate—nay, as a commanding officer of gallant volunteers—in vain—

“He was all for deeds of arms;
Honour called him to the field.”

The trophies of Miltiades would not suffer him to sleep.

Henry had been moving heaven and earth to get removed into a regiment which was ordered abroad, not exactly for what we call a war, but for one of those smaller sacrifices of human life which are always going on somewhere or other in distant corners of our empire, and make less figure in our annals than they do in our estimates. Such trivial enterprises might at least prepare his genius and expedite his promotion.

“Mox in reluctantes dracones,” &c.

Percival, who was in secret league with Clara against this restlessness for renown which it is to be fervently hoped the good sense of Europe will refuse to gratify, had done his best, by a pleasant irony and banter, to ridicule Henry out of his martial discontent. In vain—Henry only resented his kinsman’s disapproval of his honourable ambition, and hence his regret that Sir Percival did not “make the most of his station.” Surely, did he do so, a word from a man of such political importance in point of territory would have due effect on the War Office. Henry thought himself entitled not only to a chance of fighting, but to the dignity of Major. All this, by little and little, though in her own artless words, and in wifelike admiration of Henry’s military genius as well as ardour, I extracted from Clara, who (all women being more or less, though often unconsciously, artful in the confidences with which they voluntarily honour our sex) had her own reason for frankness; she had seen Sir Percival since breakfast, and he had sought to convince her that it would be wise to let Henry have his own way. The cunning creature wished me to reason with Tracey, and set before him all the dangers to limb and life to which even a skirmish with barbarians might expose a life so invaluable as her Henry’s. “I could see him depart without a tear, if it were to defend his country,” said she, with spirit. “But to think of all the hardships he must undergo in a savage land, and fighting for nothing I can comprehend, against a people I never heard of—_that_ is hard! it is so reckless in him—and, poor dear, his health _is_ delicate, though you would not think it!”

I promised all that a discreet diplomatist under such untoward circumstances could venture to promise; and on the Painter entering the room, poor Clara went up-stairs, trying her womanly best to smile away her tears.

Left alone with the artist, he drew my attention to some pictures on the wall which had been painted by Sir Percival, commended their gusto and brilliancy of execution, and then said, “If our host had begun life on fifty pounds a year, he would have been a great painter.”

“Does it require poverty in order to paint well?”

“It requires, I suppose, a motive to do anything exceedingly well; and what motive could Sir Percival Tracey have to be a professed painter?”

“I think you have hit on the truth in his painting, and perhaps in his other accomplishments: all he wants is the concentration of motive.”

“Is it not that want which makes three-fourths of the difference between the famous man and the obscure man?” asked the Painter.

“Perhaps not three-fourths; but if it make one-fourth, it would go a long way to account for the difference. One good of a positive profession is, that it supplies a definite motive for any movement which the intellect gives itself the trouble to take. He who enters a profession naturally acquires the desire to get on in it, and perhaps in the profession of art more ardently than in any other, because a man does not take to art from sheer necessity, and without any inclination for it, but _with_ a strong inclination, to which necessity gives the patient forces of labour. I presume that I am right in this conjecture.”

“Yes,” said the Painter, ingenuously. “So far back as I can remember, I had an inclination, nay a passion, for painting; still I might not have gone through the requisite drudgery and apprenticeship; might not have studied the naked figure when I wished to get at once to some gorgeous draperies, or fagged at perspective when I wanted to deck out a sunset, if I had not had three sisters and a widowed mother to think of.”

“I comprehend; but now that you have mastered the fundamental difficulties of your art, and accustomed yourself to hope for fame in the fuller and freer developments of that art, do you think that you would gladly accept the wealth of Sir Percival Tracey, on the condition that you were never to paint for the public, and to renounce every idea of artistic distinction? or, if you did accept that offer for the sake of your sisters and mother, would it be with reluctance and the pang of self-sacrifice?”

“I don’t think I could accept such an offer on such conditions even for them. I am now, sir, utterly unknown—at best one of those promising pupils, of whom there are hundreds; but still I think there is a something in me as painter, as artist, which would break my heart if, some day or other, it did not force itself out.”

“Then you would not lose your motive for becoming a great painter, even did you succeed to the wealth and station which you say deprive Sir Percival of a motive, supposing that, in accepting such gifts of fortune, you were _not_ required to sacrifice the inclination you take from nature?”

“No, I should not lose the motive. Better famine in a garret than obscurity in a palace!”

Our conversation was here broken off by the entrance of Lady Gertrude. “It is just time for our expedition,” said she. “I think it is about to strike two, and Percival is always punctual.”

“I am quite ready,” said I.

“And I shall be so in five minutes,” cried the Painter; “I must run up-stairs for my sketch-book.”

“Oh, I see what is keeping my nephew,” said Lady Gertrude, looking out of the window; and as I joined her she drew my attention to two figures walking slowly in the garden; in one I recognised Tracey, the other was unknown to me.

“He must have come by the early train,” said Lady Gertrude, musingly. “I wonder whether he means to stay and go with us to the lake.”

“You mean the gentleman in black?” said I; “I think not, whoever he may be, for, see, he is just shaking hands with Tracey like a man who is about to take leave. By his dress he seems a clergyman.”

“Yes, don’t betray me—Percival’s London almoner. My nephew has employed him for seven years, and it is only within the last year that I discovered by accident what the employment is. He comes here when he likes—seldom stays over a day! One of those good men who are bored if they are not always about their work; and indeed he bores Percival by constantly talking of sorrow and suffering, which Percival is always wishing to relieve, but never wishes to hear discussed. You don’t know to what a degree my nephew carries his foible!”

“What foible?”

“That of desiring everybody to be and to look happy. A year ago, his valet, who had lived with him since he came of age, died. I found him another valet, with the highest character—the best servant possible—not a fault to find with him; but he had a very melancholy expression of countenance. This fretted Percival; he complained to me. ‘Dolman is unhappy or discontented,’ he said. ‘Find out what it is; remedy it.’ I spoke to the poor man; he declared himself most satisfied, most fortunate in obtaining such a place. Still he continued to look mournful. Percival could not stand it. One day he thrust a bank-note into the man’s hand, and said, ‘Go, friend, and before sunset look miserable elsewhere.’”

I was laughing at this characteristic anecdote, when Percival entered the room with his usual beaming aspect and elastic step. “Ready?” said he; “that’s well: will you ride with me?” (this addressed to myself). “I have a capital sure-footed pony for you.”

“I thought of giving your friend a seat in my pony-chaise,” said Lady Gertrude.

Percival glanced at his aunt quickly, and replied, “So be it.” I should have preferred riding with Tracey; but before he set off he whispered in my ear, “It makes the dear woman happy to monopolise a new-comer—otherwise——” He stopped short, and I resigned myself to the pony-chaise.

“Pray,” said Lady Gertrude, when we were fairly but slowly in movement along a shady road in the park,—“pray, don’t you think it is very much to be regretted that Percival should be single—should never have married?”

“I don’t know. He seems to me very happy as he is.”

“Yes, happy, no doubt. I believe he would make himself happy in a dungeon; and——” Lady Gertrude rather spitefully whipped the ponies.

“Perhaps,” said I, as soon as I had recovered the first sensation of alarm, with which I am always seized when by the side of ladies who drive ponies and whip them—“perhaps,” said I—“take care of that ditch—perhaps Percival has never seen the woman with whom it would be felicity to share a dungeon?”

“When you knew him first, while he was yet young, did you think him a man not likely to fall very violently in love?”

“Well, ‘fall’ and ‘violently’ are two words that I should never have associated with his actions at any time of life. But I should have said that he was a man not likely to form a very passionate attachment to any woman who did not satisfy his refinement of taste, which is exquisitely truthful when applied to poems and statues, but a little too classically perfect for just appreciation of flesh and blood, at least in that sex which is so charming that every defect in it is a shock on the _beau ideal_.”

“Nevertheless,” said Lady Gertrude, after acknowledging, with a gracious smile, the somewhat old-fashioned gallantry conveyed in my observations—“nevertheless, Percival has loved deeply and fervently, and, what may seem to you strange, has been crossed in his affections.”

“Strange! Alas! in love nothing is strange. No one is _loved_ for his merits any more than for his fortune or rank; but men, and women too, are _married_ for their merits, and still more for their rank and their fortune. I can imagine, therefore, though with difficulty, a girl wooed by Percival Tracey not returning his love, but I cannot conceive her refusing his hand. How was it?”

“You see how I am confiding in you. But you are almost the only friend of his youth whom Percival has invited as his guest; and your evident appreciation of his worth at once opens my heart to you. In the course of that lengthened absence from England—on the eve of which you took leave of him nearly thirty years ago—Percival formed a close friendship with a fellow-traveller in the East: Percival considers that to the courage, presence of mind, and devotion of this gentleman, a few years younger than himself, he owed his life in some encounter with robbers. Mr Gerrard (that is this friend’s name) was poor and without a profession. When Percival was about to return to Europe, he tried in vain to persuade Mr Gerrard to accompany him—meaning, though he did not say so, to exert such interest with Ministers as he possessed, to obtain for Gerrard some honourable opening in the public service. The young man refused, and declared his intention of settling permanently at Cairo. Percival, in the course of his remonstrances, discovered that the cause of this self-exile was a hopeless attachment, which had destroyed all other objects of ambition in Gerrard’s life, and soured him with the world itself. He did not, however, mention the name of the lady, nor the reasons which had deprived his affection of hope. Well, Percival left him at Cairo, and travelled back into Europe. At a German spa he became acquainted with an Irish peer who had run out his fortune, been compelled to sell his estates, and was living upon a small annuity allowed to him either by his creditors or his relations; a man very clever, very accomplished, not of very high principle, and sanguine of bettering his own position, and regaining the luxuries to which he had been accustomed, through some brilliant marriage, which the beauty of his only daughter might enable her to make. Beauty to a very rare degree she possessed—nor beauty alone; her mind was unusually cultivated, and her manners singularly fascinating. You guess already?”

“Yes. Percival saw here one with whom he did not _fall_ in love, but for whom he _rose into love_. He found his ideal.”

“Exactly so. I need not say that the father gave him all encouragement. Percival was on the point of proposing, when he received a letter from Mr Gerrard (to whom he had written, some weeks before, communicating the acquaintance he had made, and the admiration he had conceived); and the letter, written under great excitement, revealed the object of Gerrard’s hopeless attachment. Of Irish family himself, he had known this young lady from her childhood—and from her childhood loved her. He had been permitted to hope by Lord ——, who was at that time in a desperate struggle to conceal or stave off his ruin, and who did not scruple to borrow from his daughter’s suitor all that he could extract from him. Thus, when the final crash came, Lord ——’s ruin involved nearly the whole of Gerrard’s patrimony; and, of course, Lord —— declared that a marriage was impossible between two young persons who had nothing to live upon. It was thus that Edmund Gerrard had become an exile.

“This intelligence at once reversed the position of the rivals. From that moment Percival devoted himself to bless the life of the man who had saved his own. How he effected this object I scarcely know; but Lord —— gave his consent to Gerrard’s suit, and lived six years longer with much pomp and luxury in Paris. Gerrard settled with his wife in Percival’s Irish castle, and administers Percival’s Irish estates, at a salary which ranks him with the neighbouring gentry. But Percival never visits that property—I do not think he would trust himself to see the only woman he ever loved as the wife of another, though she is no longer young, and is the mother of children, whose future fortunes he has, doubtless, assured.”

“What you tell me,” said I, with emotion, “is so consistent with Tracey’s character that it gives me no surprise. That which does surprise me is, not the consent of the ruined father, but the consent of the accomplished daughter. Did Percival convince himself that she preferred his rival?”

“That is a question I can scarcely answer. My own belief is, that her first fancy had been caught by Gerrard, and that she had given him cause to believe that that first fancy was enduring love; but that, if her intimate acquaintance with Percival had continued longer, and had arrived at a stage at which his heart had been confessed to her, and her own heart frankly wooed, the first fancy would not have proved enduring love. But the acquaintance did not reach to that stage; and I have always understood that her marriage has been a very happy one.”

“In that happiness Tracey is consoled?”

“Yes, now, no doubt. But I will tell you this, that as soon as all obstacles to the marriage were removed, and Gerrard on his way from the East, Percival left Germany and reached Lausanne, to be seized with a brain fever, which threatened his life, and from the effects of which it was long before he recovered. But answer me candidly one question, Do you think it is too late in life for him to marry yet?”

Poor Lady Gertrude asked this question in so pleading a tone of voice, that I found it very difficult to answer with the candour which was insisted on as the condition of my reply. At length I said, bravely—

“My dear Lady Gertrude, if a man hard upon sixty chooses to marry, it becomes all his true friends to make the best of it, and say that he has done a wise thing. But if asked beforehand whether it be not too late in life for such an experiment, a true friend must answer, ‘Yes.’”

“Yet there have been very happy marriages with great disparity of years,” said Lady Gertrude, musingly, “and Percival is very young for his age.”

“Excellent after-reflections, if he do marry. But is he not very happy as he is? I know not why, but you all seem to conspire against his being happy in his own way. One of you wants him to turn politician, another to turn Benedict. For my part, the older I grow, the more convinced I am of the truth of one maxim—whether for public life or for private—‘Leave well alone.’”

By this time we had arrived into the heart of a forest that realised one’s dreams of Ardennes; a young man would have looked round for a Rosalind, a moralising sage for a Jacques. Many a green vista was cut through the mass of summer foliage, and in full view before us stretched a large wild lake; its sides, here and there, clothed with dipping trees or clustered brushwood. On the opposite margin, to which, in a neck of the lake, a rustic bridge gave access, there was a long and picturesque building, in the style of those quaint constructions of white plaster and black oak beams and rafters, which are still seen in Cheshire, but with ruder reliefs of logwood pilasters and balconies; a charming, old-fashioned garden stretched before it, rich in the genuine English flowers of the Elizabethan day; and scattered round, on inviting spots, were lively-coloured tents and awnings. The heron rose alarmed from the reeds as we drew near the water; but the swans, as if greeting the arrival of familiar friends, sailed slowly towards us. Tracey had already arrived at the cottage, and we saw him dismounting at the door, and talking to an old couple who came out to meet and welcome him.

“I believe,” said Lady Gertrude, “that Percival’s secret reason for building that cottage was to place in it these two old servants from Tracey Court. They had known him there when he was a boy, and are so attached to him that they implored him to let them serve him wherever he resided. But they were too old and too opinionated to suit our moderate establishment, which does not admit of supernumeraries, so he suddenly found out that it would be very pleasant to have a forest lodge for the heats of summer, built that house, and placed them in it. The old woman, who was housekeeper at Tracey Court, is, however, as I hope you will acknowledge, a very good cook on these holiday occasions; and her husband, who was butler there, is so proud and so happy to wait on us, that——. But no doubt you understand how young it makes us old folks feel, to see those who remember us in our youth, and to whom we are still young.”

Our party now assembled in front of the forest lodge, and the grooms took back the ponies, with orders to return before nightfall. Tracey carried me over the lodge, while Henry Thornhill and the Painter busied themselves with a small sailing vessel which rode at anchor in a tiny bay.

This rustic habitation was one for which two lovers might have sighed. Its furniture very simple, but picturesquely arranged, with some of those genuine relics of the Elizabethan age, or perhaps rather that of James I., which are now rarely found, though their Dutch imitations are in every curiosity-shop. As in the house we had left there was everywhere impressive the sentiment of the classic taste, so here all expressed the sentiment of that day in our own history which we associate with the poets, who are _our_ most beloved classics. It was difficult, when one looked round, to suppose that the house could have been built and furnished by a living contemporary; it seemed a place in which Milton might have lodged when he wrote the ‘Lycidas,’ or Izaak Walton and Cotton have sought shelter in the troubled days of the Civil War, with a sigh of poetic regret as they looked around, for the yet earlier age when Sidney escaped from courts to meditate the romance of ‘Arcadia.’

“I have long thought,” said Tracey, “that if we studied the secrets of our English climate a little more carefully than most of us do, we could find, within a very small range, varieties of climate which might allow us to dispense with many a long journey. For instance, do you not observe how much cooler and fresher the atmosphere is here than in the villa yonder, though it is but five miles distant? Here, not only the sun is broken by the forest-trees, but the ground is much more elevated than it is yonder. We get the bracing air of the northern hills, to which I have opened the woods, and here, in the hot relaxing days of summer, I often come for days or weeks together. The lodge is not large enough to admit more than two, or at most three other visitors, and therefore it is only very intimate friends whom I can invite. But I always look forward to a fortnight or so here, as a time to be marked with the whitest chalk, and begin to talk of it as soon as the earliest nightingale is heard. Again, on the other extremity of my property, by the sea-side, I have made my winter residence, my Tarentum, my Naples, my Nice. There the aspect is due south—cliffs, ranged in semicircle, form an artificial screen from the winds and frosts. The cottage I have built there is a sun-trap. At Christmas I breakfast in a bower of geraniums, and walk by hedgerows of fuchsia and myrtle. All this is part of my philosophical plan, on settling down for life—viz., to collect all the enjoyments this life can give me into the smallest possible compass. Before you go, you must see my winter retreat. I should like to prove to you how many climates, with a little heed, an Englishman may find within a limit of twenty miles. I had thought of giving Bellevue (my sea-side cottage) to the Thornhills, and delighted in the thought of becoming their guest in the winter, for aunt. Gertrude does not fancy the place as I do, and wherever I go cannot live quite alone, nor quite without that humanising effect of drawing-room scenery, which the play-writers call ‘petticoat interest.’ But when a man allows himself to be selfish, he deserves to be punished. Henry Thornhill disdains Bellevue and comfort, and insists on misery and bivouacs.”

“Ah, my dear Tracey,” said I, mindful of my promise to Clara, “Henry Thornhill is much too fine a young fellow to be wasted upon ignoble slaughter, and still more ignoble agues and marsh fevers. I hope you do not intend to gratify his preposterous desire to plant laurels at the other end of the world, and on soil in which it may be reasonably doubted whether any laurels will grow——”

Tracey’s brow became clouded. He threw himself on a seat niched into the recess of a lattice window, looked out at first abstractedly, and then, as the cloud left his brow, observantly.

“See, my dear friend,” said he—“see, how listlessly, for a mere holiday pleasure, that brave lad is running up the sails. Do you think that he would be thus indifferent if he were clearing decks for a fight, if responsibility, and honour, and duty, and fame were his motive powers? No. If he stayed at home inactive, he would be miserable the more Clara and I tried to make him happy in our holiday way. That which a man feels, however unphilosophically (according to other men’s philosophy), to be an essential to the object for which he deems it noble to exist—that the man must do, or at least attempt; if we prevent him, we mar the very clockwork of his existence, for we break its mainspring. Henry must have his own way. And I say that for Clara’s sake; for if he has not, he will seek excitement in something else, and become a bad man and a very bad husband.”

“Hem!” said I; “of course you know him best; but I own I do not see in him a genius equal to his restlessness or his ambition; and I think his wife very superior to himself in intellect. If, besides giving him your sea-side villa, you gave him a farm, surely he might become famous for his mangold-wurzel; and it is easier for all men, including even Henry Thornhill, to grow capital wurzel than it is to beat Hannibal or Wellington.”

“Pish!” said Tracey, smiling, “you ought to know mankind too well to think seriously what you say in sarcasm. Pray, where and what would England be if every sharp young fellow in the army did not set a Hannibal or a Wellington before his eyes; or if every young politician did not haunt his visions with a Pitt, a Fox, or a Burke? What Henry Thornhill may become, Heaven only knows; but if you could have met Arthur Wellesley before he went to India, do you think you would have guessed that he would become the hero of England? Can any of us detect beforehand the qualities of a man of action?—Of a man of letters, yes, to a certain degree, at least. We can often, though not always, foresee whether a man may become a great writer; but a great man of action—no!! Henry has no literature, no literary occupation, nor even amusement. Probably Hannibal had none, and Wellington very little. _Bref_—he thinks his destiny is action, and military action. Every man should have a fair chance of fulfilling what he conceives to be his destiny. Suppose Henry Thornhill fail; what then? He comes back, reconciled to what fate will still tender him—reconciled to my sea-side villa—to his charming wife—reconciled to life as it _is_ for him. But now he is coveting a life which _may_ be. A man only does that which fate intends him to do, in proportion as he obeys the motive which gives him his power in life. Henry Thornhill’s motive is military ambition. It is no use arguing the point—what man thinks, he is.”

I bowed my head. I felt that Tracey was right, and sighed aloud, “Poor little Clara!”

“Poor little Clara!” said Tracey, sighing also, “must, like other poor dear little loving women, take her chance. If her Henry succeed, how proud she will be to congratulate him! if he fail, how proud she will be to console him!”

“Ah, Tracey!” said I, rising, “in all you have said I recognise your acute discernment and your depth of reasoning. But when you not only concede to, but approve, the motive power which renders this young man restless, pray forgive so old a friend for wondering why you yourself have never found some motive power which might, long ere this, have rendered you renowned.”

“Hush!” said Tracey, with his winning, matchless smile—“hush, look out on yon woods and waters. Has not the life which Nature bestows on any man who devoutly loves her a serener happiness than can be found in the enjoyments that estrange us from her charms? How few understand the distinction between life artificial and life artistic! Artificial existence is a reverence for the talk of men; artistic existence is in the supreme indifference to the talk of men. You and I, in different ways, seek to complete our being on earth, not artificially, but artistically. Neither of us can be insincere mouthpieces of talk in which we have no faith. You cannot write in a book—you cannot say in a speech—that which you know to be a falsehood. But the artificial folks are the very echoes of falsehood; the noise they make is in repeating its last sounds. An artist must be true to nature, even though he add to nature something from his soul of man which nature cannot give in her representations of truth. Is it not so?”

“Certainly,” said I, with warmth. “I could neither write nor speak what I did not believe to be, in the main, truthful. A man may or may not, according to the quality of his mind, give to nature that which clearly never can be in nature—viz., the soul or the intellect of man. But soul or intellect he must give to nature—that is, to everything which external objects present to his senses as truthful—or he is in art a charlatan, and in action a knave. But then truth, as Humanity knows it, is not what the schoolmen call it, One and Indivisible; it is like light, and splits not only into elementary colours, but into numberless tints. Truth with Raffaelle is not the same as truth with Titian; truth with Shakespeare is not the same as truth with Milton; truth with St Xavier is not the same as truth with Luther; truth with Pitt is not the same as truth with Fox. Each man takes from life his favourite truth, as each man takes from light his favourite colour.”

“Bravo!” cried Tracey, clapping his hands.

“Why bravo?” said I, testily. “Can the definition I hazard be construed into a defence of what I presume to be your view of the individual allegiance which each man owes to truth as he conceives it? No; for each man is bound to support and illustrate, with all his power, truth as truth seems to him, Raffaelle as Raffaelle, Titian as Titian, Shakespeare as Shakespeare, Milton as Milton, Pitt as Pitt, Fox as Fox. And the man who says, ‘I see truth in my own way, and I do not care to serve her cause;’ who, when Nature herself, ever moving, ever active, exhorts him to bestir himself for the truth he surveys, and to animate that truth with his own life and deed, shrugs his shoulder, and cries ‘_Cui bono?_’—that man, my dear Tracey, may talk very finely about despising renown, but in reality he shuffles off duty. Pardon me; I am thinking of you. I would take your part against others; but as friend to friend, and to your own face, I condemn you.”

To this discourteous speech Tracey was about to reply, when Lady Gertrude and Clara Thornhill entered the room to tell us that the boat was ready, and that we had less than two hours for aquatic adventure, as we were to dine at five.

“I am not sorry to have a little time to think over my answer to those reproaches which are compliments on the lips of friends,” said Tracey to me, resting his arm on my shoulder; and in a few minutes more we were gliding over the lake, with a gentle breeze from the hills, just lively enough to fill the sail. Clara, bewitchingest of those womanliest women who unfairly enthral and subdue us, while we not only know that their whole hearts are given to another, but love and respect them the more for it,—Clara nestled herself by my side. And I had not even the satisfaction of thinking that that infamous Henry was jealous. He did indeed once or twice pause from his nautical duties to vouchsafe us a scowl; but it was sufficiently evident that the monster was only angry because he knew that Clara loved him so well, that she was seeking to enlist me on her side against his abominable ambition of learning the art of homicide.

“Well,” whispered Clara to me—“well, you have spoken to Sir Percival!”