Chapter VI: Front Matter (6)

Percival held one peculiar opinion concerning a branch of college education. He objected to the modern practice of teaching the natural sciences by means of a profusion of drawings, models, showy experiments, and other expedients addressing the mind so strongly through the eye. While these might be allowable in popular lectures, before audiences lacking in early intellectual discipline, where amusement was a consideration, and where without it the public ear could not be secured, he thought that the collegian should study differently,--that his understanding should be taxed severely, and that he should be inured, from the first, to rigid attention, in order to a lasting remembrance of the truths offered to him. It would be a useful exercise for the instructor, he thought, to elucidate obscure phenomena and complicated structures by words only, assisting himself, perhaps, occasionally, by extemporaneous drawings. Such a course would inspire the scholar with deference for his teacher, and confidence in his own ability to acquire a similar grasp of the subject. While there is certainly some truth in this opinion, it would not be difficult, perhaps, to invalidate its general force. Why should the ear be the only admitted means of acquiring knowledge? Nature, the greatest of teachers, does not judge thus: she conveys half her wisdom to us by sight, instead of by faith; she gives her first lessons to the infant through the eye. Would Percival, in looking for his attentive audiences, have preferred a congregation of blind men?

Speaking of literary composition, he said that he often took great pains with his productions, shifting words and phrases in many ways, before satisfying himself that he had attained the best form of expression; and he assured me that these slowly elaborated passages were the very ones in which he afterwards recognized the most ease and nature, and which others supposed him to have thrown off carelessly. I asked him how it was that children, in their unpremeditated way, expressed themselves with so much directness and beauty. They have but a single idea to present at a time, he said; they seize without hesitation on the first words that offer for its expression, unperplexed by any such choice of terms as would surely occur to maturer minds; and most important of all, perhaps, they are wholly unembarrassed by limiting qualifications arising from a fuller knowledge of the subject.

His prose style is a rare exemplification of classic severity and perspicuousness. In each paragraph the ideas arrange themselves in faultless connection, like the molecules of a crystal around its centre. The sentences are not long, the construction is simple, the words are English in its purity, without admixture of foreign phrase or idiom. But the most striking peculiarity of his diction is the utter absence of ornament; for Percival evidently held that the chief merits of composition are clearness and directness. Poetic imagery, brilliant climaxes and antitheses, fanciful or grotesque turns of expression, he rejected as unfavorable to that simple truth for which he studied and wrote. This dry, almost mathematical style, was no necessity with him; few men, surely, have had at command a richer vocabulary, English and foreign, than Percival; few could have adorned thought with more or choicer garlands from the fields of knowledge and imagination.

To letter-writing he had a great aversion. I have never seen a letter or note from him to which his signature was attached. The autograph-fanciers, therefore, will find a scanty harvest when they come to forage after the name of Percival. His handwriting corresponded in some sense with his character. It was fine; the lines straight and parallel; the letters completely formed, though without fulness of curve; no flourishes, and no unnecessary prolongations of stroke, above or below the general run of the line. There were few erasures, the punctuation was perfect, and the manuscript was fit for the press as it left his hand.

Literary criticism he rarely indulged in, being too disinclined to praise or blame, and too intensely devoted to the acquisition of positive knowledge. If he commented severely upon anything, it was usually the slovenly diction of some of our State Surveys, or the inaccuracies of translations from foreign languages.

His only published criticism, of which I am aware, was discharged at a phrenological lecturer, whose extraordinary assumptions and _ad-captandum_ style had excited his disgust. Percival did not reverence the science of bumps, and believed, in the words of William Von Humboldt, that "it is one of those discoveries which, when stripped of all the _charlatanerie_ that surrounds them, will show but a very meagre portion of truth." Dr. Barber, an Englishman, and a somewhat noted teacher of elocution, having been converted to the phrenological faith, delivered certain magniloquent lectures on the same to the citizens of New Haven, and took pay therefor, after the manner of his sect. Percival responded with a sharp newspaper pasquinade, entitled "A Lecture on Nosology." At the head of the article was a wood-cut of a gigantic nose, mapped out into faculties. "Gentlemen, the nose is the most prominent feature in this bill," commenced the parody. "The nose is the true seat of the mind; and therefore, gentlemen, Nosology, or the science of the nose, is the true phrenology. He, who knows his nose, foreknows; for he knows that which is before him. Therefore Nosology is the surest guide to conduct. Whatever progress an individual may make, his nose is always in advance. But society is only a congeries of individuals; consequently its nose is always in advance,--therefore its proper guide. The nose, rightly understood, will assuredly work wonders in the cause of improvement; for it is always going ahead, always first in every undertaking, always soonest at the goal. The ancients did not neglect the nose. Look at their busts and statues! What magnification and abduction in Jove! What insinuation and elongation in the Apollo! Then [Greek: nous] (intellect) was surely the nose,--[Greek: gnosis] (knowledge) noses,--[Greek: Minos] my nose. What intussusception, what potation, and, as a necessary consequence, alas! what rubification! But I have seen such noses. Beware of them!--they are bad noses,--very bad noses, I assure you.... Do not, I pray you, consider me irreverent, if I say that Nosology will prove highly favorable to the cause of religion. This is indeed an awful subject, and I would not touch it on slight grounds; but I sincerely believe that what I say is true. Nosology will prove highly favorable to the cause of religion! Does not the nose stand forth like a watchman on the walls of Zion, on the look-out for all assailants? and when our faces are directed upwards in devotion, does not the nose ascend the highest and most especially tend heavenward?... Nosology is a manly science. It stands out in the open light. It does not conceal itself behind scratches and periwigs,--nor does it, like certain false teachers mentioned by St. Paul, go about from house to house, leading astray silly women......Finally, gentlemen, you may rest assured that Nosology will not gently submit to insult. _Noli me tangere!_ Who ever endured a tweak of the nose? It will know how to take vengeance. As Jupiter metamorphosed the inhospitable Lycians into frogs, so its contemners will suddenly find themselves [Greek: Barbarophonoi]!"

Percival has been thought over-tenacious of his opinions. He was certainly very circumspect in changing them. I have witnessed, however, several instances in which he yielded to the force of evidence in the modification of his views. He seemed to recognize geology, in particular, as a progressive science, in which new facts are constantly accruing, and therefore compelling re-adaptations of our views. He felt, indeed, in respect to all knowledge, the mathematics excepted, that modifications of belief, in well-regulated minds, are unavoidable, as the result of new information. Approach to higher truth through the sciences he seemed to regard under the aspect of that of besiegers to a beleaguered fortress. Principles and deductions, which were a boon and a triumph for us yesterday, lose their value to-day, when a new parallel of approach has been attained. He lost his interest in what was abandoned, necessary as it had been to the present position, only in the advantage of which, and its sure promise of what was still higher, he allowed himself to rejoice.

But where evidence was wanting, he was never to be moved to a change by any amount of importunity or temptation. This trait of character made him somewhat impracticable as a collaborator, in the philological task he was employed to perform under Dr. Noah Webster. Disagreements were to have been anticipated from the striking contrasts in their minds. They agreed in industry; but Webster was decided, practical, strongly self-reliant, and always satisfied with doing the best that could be done with the time and means at command. Percival was timid and cautious, and, from the very breadth of his linguistic attainments, undecided. He often craved more time for arriving at conclusions. When he happened to differ from the great lexicographer, he would never yield an iota of his ground. These differences led to an early rupture in the engagement, almost before two letters of the alphabet had been completed. He much preferred to relinquish a profitable undertaking to going forward with it under circumstances not agreeable to his elevated standard of literary accuracy and completeness. He felt that he could live on bread and water, or even give up these, if necessary; but he could not violate his convictions of what was true and right. He was a perfect martyr to his literary and scientific conscientiousness.

He evinced the same spirit in respect to the geological survey. As his mind was not satisfied, he would not make known his results to the Legislature. They demanded the report, and he asked for an extension of time. Thus he continued his labors from year to year, upon a stipend scarcely adequate to cover his expenses. Instead, however, of nearing the goal, he only receded from it. New difficulties met him in the work; fresh questions arose, in the progress of geology itself, that called for reëxaminations. His notes swelled to volumes, and his specimens increased to thousands. He was in danger of being crushed under the weight of his doubts and his materials. At last, the people clamored for the end of the work. The Legislature became peremptory, and forced Percival to acquiesce.

In 1842 (seven years from the commencement of the survey) he rendered an octavo report of four hundred and ninety-five pages, in the introduction to which he observes,--"I regret to say, I have not had the means allowed me for additional investigations, nor even for a proper use of my materials, either notes or specimens. The number of localities from which I have collected specimens I have estimated at nearly eight thousand; the records of dips and bearings are still more numerous. The report which follows is but a hasty outline, written mainly from recollection, with only occasional reference to my materials, and under circumstances little calculated for cool consideration. It was written, however, with an intention to state nothing of the truth or probability of which I did not feel satisfied. None can regret more than I do its imperfection; still I cannot but hope that it will contribute something towards the solution of the problem of the highest practical as well as scientific importance, the exact determination of the geological system of the State."

Of this remarkable production it may very briefly be said, that it will ever remain a monument to the scientific and literary powers of its author. It describes every shade of variation in the different rocks, and their exact distribution over the surface of the State. This it accomplishes with a minuteness never before essayed in any similar work. The closeness and brevity of his descriptions make it one of the dryest productions ever issued on geological science, scarcely omitting the work of Humboldt, in which he sought to represent the whole of geology by algebraic symbols. Percival's work actually demands, and would richly repay, a translation into the vernacular of descriptive geology,--the language and mode of illustration employed by Murchison and Hitchcock. In its present form, it is safe to say, it has never found a single reader among the persons for whose benefit it was written.

It is no part of my plan to speak of his poetical reputation. This I leave to others better able to do him justice. Indeed, he had nearly abandoned poetical composition before our acquaintance began. But it is safe, perhaps, to say here, that his writings have placed him among the first of our national poets; and had he resumed this species of composition, he could scarcely have failed of maintaining, in the fullest manner, his poetic fame. He possessed all the qualities reckoned essential to poetical excellence. We have already spoken of his astonishing memory, a trait regarded of such importance to the poet by the ancients as to have led them to call the Muses the daughters of this mental faculty. His powers of abstraction and imagination were no less remarkable,--while for extreme sensitiveness he was unsurpassed. His judgment was clear, and his appreciation of language refined to the last degree. His musical feeling, too, as well of time as of harmony, was intense; while he had at command the universal stores of literature and science.

In closing these reminiscences, I cannot avoid noticing some of the useful impressions exerted by Percival upon the literary community amidst which he passed so large a portion of his life. To some the influence of such a recluse will doubtless seem insignificant. The reverse, however, I am persuaded, was the fact. Few students came to New Haven without bringing with them, imprinted on their youthful memories, some beautiful line of his poetry. Few had not heard of his universal scholarship and profound learning. Next to an acquaintance with the teachers from whom they expected to derive their educational training, their curiosity led them to inquire for Percival. The sight of this modest, shrinking individual, as the possessor of such mines of intellectual wealth, it may well be understood, produced the deepest interest. In him they recognized a man superior to the clamor of vulgar gratification; his indifference to gain, to luxury, and every form of display, his constant preference of the spiritual over the sensual, was always an impressive example to them. The indigent student took fresh courage as he saw in him to what a narrow compass exterior wants might be reduced; the man of fashion and the fop stood abashed before the simplicity of his dress and daily life. And wherever the spirit of classic literature had been imbibed, and the capacity acquired of perceiving the severe worth of the true philosopher, the inspection of such a character, compared with the mere description of it in history, was like the difference between a statue and a living, breathing man. As at early dawn or in the gray twilight his slender form glided by, the thoughtful and poetic scholar could scarce refrain from uttering to himself,--"There goes Diogenes or Chrysippus! There goes one, by the side of whom many a bustler in letters is only a worthless drone, many an idolized celebrity a weak and pitiful sham!" Such a character as Percival's, in the presence of a scholastic community, was a perpetual incentive to industry and manliness; and although he rarely spoke in its hearing, and has left us fewer published works than many others, still I believe that thousands yet live to thank him for lessons derived from the simple survey of his daily life.

Though there is little likelihood that his example of self-abnegation and devotion to study will be followed by many of our youth, nevertheless, the occurrence of such a model now and then in the republic of letters constitutes a pleasing as well as useful phenomenon,--if for no other reason, because it breaks in upon the monotony of literary biography, and communicates a portion of that picturesqueness to scholastic life which belongs to Nature in everything else. That his course was fraught with happiness to himself cannot be doubted; that it was beneficial also to his fellow-men is equally true; and though he may be judged less leniently by minds incapable of pronouncing that to be a character honorable in the sight of God or man, which deviates from their own standard or creed,--to others, who recognize the highest possible cultivation of the mental faculties and unsullied purity of life as the noblest ends of our being, he will ever occupy a position shared by few of mortal race.

* * * * *

ZELMA'S VOW.

IN TWO PARTS.

PART FIRST. HOW IT WAS MADE.

Who does not remember his first play?--the proudly concealed impatience which seemed seething in the very blood,--the provoking coolness of old play-goers,--the music that rather excited than soothed the fever of expectation,--the mystery of mimic life that throbbed behind the curtain,--the welcome tinkle of the prompter's bell,--the capricious swaying to and fro of that mighty painted scroll,--its slow uplift, revealing for an instant, perhaps, the twinkle of flying dancers' feet and the shuffle of belated buskins? And then, the unveiled wonders of that strange, new world of canvas and pasteboard and trap-doors,--people, Nature, Art, and architecture, never before beheld, and but faintly conceived of,--the magic of shifting scenes,--the suddenness and awfulness of subterranean and aerial descents and ascents,--the solemn stage-walk of the heroine,--the majestic strut of the hero,--the princely sweep of velvet,--the illusive sparkle of paste,--the rattle of Brobdignagian pearls,--the saucy tossing of pages' plumes,--the smiles, the wiles, the astonishing bounds and bewildering pirouettes of the dancing Houries,--the great sobs and small shrieks of persecuted beauty,--the blighting smile of the villain,--the lofty indifference of supernumeraries!

It was the first play of our heroine, Zelma Burleigh, and of her Cousin Bessie. The morning before, a fragrant May morning, scores of summers ago, Roger Burleigh, a stout Northumbrian Squire, had rolled himself, in his ponderous way, into the snug family-parlor at the Grange, and addressed his worthy dame with a bluff--

"Well, good wife, wouldn't like to go see the players to-night?"

Ere the good lady could collect herself to reply with the decorous deliberateness becoming her years and station, an embroidery-frame at her side was overturned, and there sprang eagerly forward a comely young damsel of the pure Saxon stock, with eyes like England's violets,--clear, dewy, and wide-awake,--cheeks and lips like its rose-bloom, and hair which held tangled in close, golden folds its fickle and flying sunshine.

"Ay, father!" she cried, "that we would! Zelma and I have never seen any players, save the tumblers over at the Hall, on Sir Harry's birthday, and we are in sad need of a little pleasuring."

"Who spoke to you, or of you, Mistress Bessie?" replied the Squire, playfully. "And what is all your useless, chattering life but pleasuring? The playhouse is but a perilous place for giddy-brained lasses like you; but for once, harkee, for _once_, we'll venture on taking you, if you'll promise to keep your silly head safe under the mother-hen's wing."

"Not so close but that I can get a peep at the players now and then," said Bessie, archly. "They say there are some handsome young men and a pretty woman or two among them. Eh, Zelma?"

"Handsome young men!--pretty women!" exclaimed the Squire, with an explosive snort of contempt. "An arrant set of vagabonds and tramps,--of ranting, strutting, apish creatures, with neither local habitations nor names of their own. And what does Zelma know about them? Out with it, girl!"

The person thus addressed, without lifting the folds of a heavy window-curtain which concealed her, replied in a quiet, though somewhat haughty tone,--

"I saw them all, yesterday afternoon, on their way to Arden. I found them near the entrance to our avenue. One of their carts had broken down, and somebody was hurt. I dismounted to see if I could be of any assistance. My pony pulled away from me and ran up the road. One of the young men caught her for me. I told Cousin Bessie I thought him handsome and proud enough for a lord. I think so still. That is all I know of the players."

"And, gad, that's enough! Take _you_ to the play, indeed! Why, we shall have you strolling next, like your"--Here the Squire, for some reason known to himself, suddenly paused and grew very red in the face. Dame Margery took the word, and, in a tone meant to be severe, but which was only dry, remarked,--

"Zelma is quite too young to go to the play."

"Just one week younger than my Cousin Bessie. So, please you, aunt, I will wait a few days," was the quiet reply from the invisible.

"Right cleverly answered, lass!" said the Squire, with a good-humored chuckle. "Well, we will try you, too, for once; but mind, if I find you making eyes at any of the villains, I'll cut you off with a shilling."

"That is more than I look for from you, Uncle Roger," replied the hitherto hidden speaker, emerging from the window-seat, holding in her hand the fashionable and interminable novel of "Sir Charles Grandison." As she spoke, she laughed lightly, but her voice was somewhat cold and bitter, and there was in her laugh more of defiance than merriment.

"Oh, _don't_, Zella!" exclaimed the Squire, with a look of comic deprecation,--"don't speak in that way to your old uncle! He's blunt and rough-spoken, but he means kindly, and does kindly, in his way,--don't he?"

"Yes, that he does!" said the young girl, frankly; "and I beg his pardon for my pettishness."

Zelma Burleigh, as she stood thus, a faint, regretful smile softening the habitual _hauteur_ of her face, was beautiful, and something more; yet nobody in the country round about the Grange had ever dreamed of calling her "a beauty." She was a tall, gracefully-formed girl, with that strong, untamable character of figure and feature, and that peculiar, sun-tinted, forest-shadowed hue of the skin, which betray the slightest admixture of gypsy blood. In fact, Zelma Burleigh was the fruit of a strange _mésalliance_ between the younger brother of the Squire, a reckless, dissipated soldier of fortune, and a beautiful Spanish Zineala, whom he met in a foreign campaign, and whom he could not bind to himself by any tie less honorable than marriage. She was said to be of Rommany blood-royal, and was actually disowned by her tribe for _her mésalliance_. She followed the camp for a few years, the willing, though sad and fast-fading slave of her Ishmaelitish lord, himself the slave of lawless passions, yet not wholly depraved, --fitfully tender and tyrannic,--and when, at last, he fell in some inglorious skirmish, she buried him with her own hands, and wept and fasted over his shallow grave till she died. There was a child, but she had no look of the father to charm that poor, broken heart back to life; she was left in the camp and became a little "Daughter of the Regiment." At last, however, she was taken to England by a faithful comrade of the dead soldier, who sought out her uncle and left her in his care, taking leave of the frightened, clinging little creature with a grim, unspoken tenderness, and a strange quiver of his gray moustache.

Roger Burleigh, after having made himself sure of the legitimacy of the child, adopted the poor, wild thing, made her the companion of his daughter, and honestly strove to treat her, at all times, with parental care and affection.

Here, in the hospitable circle of an English home, the orphan alien had grown up with her kinsfolk, but not of them,--proud, reticent, ambitious, secretly hating the monotonous duties and pursuits, the decorous forms and prescribed pleasures of the social and domestic life around her. Nomadic and lawless instincts stirred in her blood; vague longings for freedom and change, though in wandering, peril, and want, sometimes filled her soul with the spirit of revolt and unrest.

In her bluff uncle's house all were kind, and one, at least, was fond. Her Cousin Bessie, gay and tender heart, had found the southern exposure of her nature, and had crept up it, and clambered over it, and clasped it, and bloomed against it, and ripened on it, till nothing cold, hard, or defiant could be seen on that side. And Zelma seemed well content to be the sombre background and strong support of so much bloom, sweetness, and graceful dependence.

Nothing could be more unlike than the two cousins. Bessie was small, her form inclining to fulness, her face childlike in dimpled smiles and innocent blushes,--betraying no lack of intellect, but most expressive of a quiet, almost indolent amiability. Zelma was large, but lithe, supple, and vigorous, with a pard-like freedom and elasticity of movement,--dark, with a subdued and changing color,--the fluttering signal of sudden emotion, not the stationary sign of robust health. She had hair of a glistening blackness, which she wore turned back from a strong, compact forehead, in the somewhat severe style which imperial beauty has rendered classic in our time. Her eyes were of the Oriental type,--full, heavy-lidded, ambushed in thick, black lashes,--themselves dark and unfathomable as the long night of mystery which hangs over the history of her wild and wandering race, those unsubduable, unseducible children of Nature,--the voluntary Pariahs of the world. Sad were those eyes always, but with a vague, uncommunicable sadness; soft they were in times of quiet; beautiful and terrible they could be, with live gleams of suddenly awakened passion.

With but one affection not poisoned by a sense of obligation and condescension, and that a sentiment in which her intellect had little share, a gentle, protective, household love, which quickened no daring fancy, inspired no dream of freedom or power, Zelma's mind was driven in upon itself, and out of the seclusion and triteness of her life fashioned a fairy world of romance and beauty. With the high-wrought, sentimental fictions of the day for her mental aliment, she grew more and more distinct and apart from the actual, prosaic existences around her; the smouldering fires of genius and ambition glowed out almost fiercely at times, through the dark dream of her eyes, startling the dullest apprehension, as she moved amid a narrow circle of country gentry, the fox-hunting guests of her uncle, the prim gossips of her aunt, the gay lovers and companions of her cousin, an unrecognized heroine, an uncrowned tragedy-queen.

The small provincial town of Arden possessed no playhouse proper, but, after a good deal of hesitation and discussion, the venerable Hall of St. George, the glory of all Ardenites, had been accorded to the players, "for a few nights only."

On the night of the first performance, Squire Burleigh and his family arrived betimes, and took their places with some bustle and ceremony.

The master of Burleigh Grange appeared in the almost forgotten glory of his court suit,--a coat of crimson velvet, a flowered waistcoat, satin knee-breeches, and a sword at his side. The mistress wore an equally memorable brocade, enormous bouquets thrown upon a silvery ground, so stiff and shiny that it seemed a texture of ice and frozen flowers. Her hair was cushioned and powdered; she looked comely and stately, and wore her lustres well. The pretty Bessie was attired in maidenly white muslin, an India fabric of marvellous fineness, with a sash and streamers of blue, and the light fleecy curls of her hair unadorned save by a slight pendent spray of jasmines. Her cousin's dress, though in reality less costly, was more striking, being composed of materials and colors which admirably harmonized with the darkness and richness of her beauty. Her lustrous black hair was arranged as usual; but a wreath, formed of some delicate vine hung thick with drooping scarlet blossoms, ran like flowering flame around her head. Like the sumptuous exotic of Zenobia, it was an ornament which seemed to bloom out of the character of the woman.

Bessie cast about her bright, innocent looks of girlish curiosity, which yet shrank from any chance encounter with the furtive glance or cool stare of admiration. Zelma sat motionless and impassive. Her eyes wandered naturally, but coldly, over the audience, seeming to take no cognizance of any face, strange or familiar; but when they were lifted above the crowd, to the old carved ceiling of the hall, or dropped upon the beautiful hands which lay listlessly folded in her lap, the cold, blank look she had set against the world went out of them. Then, in their mystic depths of brooding, introverted thought, new spheres of life, rarer, brighter, fairer, seemed rounding into form and dawning like stars.

Mrs. Margery Burleigh sat with her face turned from the stage, to dissemble the secret impatience with which she awaited the uprolling of the curtain, and slowly waved to and fro a huge, flowered fan, which charged the air with a heavy Indian perfume.

At length, soft, mournful music arose from the orchestra, and every heart stirred to the premonitory waver and lift of the curtain. Slowly it rose, and discovered a mourning apartment, with a lady in mourning, sitting in a mourning chair, and attended by a mourning maid. The play was Congreve's tragedy of "The Mourning Bride," one of the best of a class of sentimental and stiltified dramatic productions which the public of our great-grandfathers meekly accepted,--quaffing the frothy small-beer of rant and affectation, in lieu of deep draughts of Nature and passion, the rich, red wine of human life, poured generously forth by the dramatists of a better era. The excesses of fashion then prevailing, hoops, high heels, powder, and patches, were not more essentially absurd and artificial than such representations of high-life and high-tragedy.

"The Mourning Bride" contains a few situations in which real passion can have play, some fine points and poetic passages, and its moral tone is at least respectable,--not great things to say of a famous tragedy, certainly, but they give it an honorable distinction over many plays of its time. There figure in it one or two characters which can be made interesting, and even impressive, by uncommon power in the actor; though they were usually given, at the period of which I write, in a manner sufficiently tame to suit the dullest of courts,--likely to disturb neither my lord in his napping nor my lady in her prim flirting.

Zara, the Captive Queen, is beyond comparison the strong character of this play. There is a spice and fire even in her wickedness, which make her terribly attractive, and give her a more powerful hold on the sympathies than the decorous and dolorous Almeria, for all her virtuous sorrows and perplexities. Zara's passion is of the true Oriental type, leaping from the extremes of love and hate with the fierceness and rapidity of lightning.

It is a character in which several great actresses have distinguished themselves,--chief among them Siddons. On the memorable night at Arden, however, it was but wretchedly rendered by a tall, small-voiced, flaxen-haired young woman, who stalked about the stage in high-heeled shoes and prodigious hoops, and declaimed the most fiery passages with an execrable drawl. The remainder of the company were barely passable as strolling players, with the exception of the actor who personated Osmyn. This was a young man named Bury, of respectable parentage and education, it was said, and considerable reputation, though his aspiring buskin had never yet trod the London boards. He was a handsome, shapely person, with an assured, dashing manner, and a great amount of spirit and fire, which usually passed with his audience, and always with himself, for genius.

His voice was powerful and resonant, his elocution effective, if not faultless, and his physical energy inexhaustible. Understanding and managing perfectly his own resources, he produced upon most provincial critics the impression of extraordinary power and promise, few perceiving that he had already come into full possession of his dramatic gifts.

Only finely-trained ears could discover in this sounding, shining metal the lack of the sharp, musical ring of the genuine coin. Young men grew frantic in applause of his bold action, his stormy declamation, his startling _tours de force_; while young women wondered, wept, languished, and swooned. It was said, that, whenever he died in Romeo, Pierre, or Zanga, numbers of his fair slain were borne out of the playhouse, to be revived with difficulty by the application of salts and the severing of stay-lacings.

But his effects, though so positive, were superficial and evanescent,--audible, visible, and, as it were, physical. There was always wanting that fine shock of genuine passion, striking home to kindred passions in the breasts of his auditors, and sending through every nerve a magnetic shiver of delight,--that subtile, mysterious element of genius, playing like quick flame along the dullest lines of the poet and charging them with its own life and fire.

In the virtuous, but negative character of Osmyn there was little room for effective declamation; our actor was fain to content himself with being interesting, through the misfortunes of the Prince of Valentia, his woful lawful love, and the besettings of an unreturned passion. In this he succeeded so well, that the feminine portion of his audience grew tender with Almeria, and despairing with Zara.

In the first scene with Almeria, who was a shade worse than the Zara of the night, the young actor indulged himself in a cool, comprehensive glance at the house, over her fair shoulders. As his keen gaze swept round the small aristocratic circle, it encountered and seemed to recognize the face of Zelma Burleigh, now kindling with a new enthusiasm, which was never wholly to die out of her breast. There was something in the watchful, absorbed gaze of her great dark eyes so unlike the wondering or languishing looks usually bent by women upon the rising actor, that on the instant he was struck, pierced, by those subtile shafts of light, to the heart he had believed till then vowed alone to the love of his art and the schemes of a sleepless ambition.

Reluctantly he withdrew his regard from a face which bespoke a character of singular originality and force, not wanting either in womanly pride or tenderness,--a face in which beauty itself was so subordinate to something higher, more ineffable, that one could scarcely define feature or color through the illuminated and changeful atmosphere of soul which hung about it,--the shadows of great thoughts, the light mists of dreamy and evanescent fancy.

It was toward the close of the second act, when Sir Harry Willerton, of Willerton Hall, entered his box, accompanied by three or four dashing companions, who, it was soon whispered about, were titled young bloods from London.

Sir Harry Willerton was a fresh, frank-looking young gallant,--fast, from the fiery impulses of youth and a high spirit,--not pricked on by vanity, nor goaded by low passions,--not heartless, not _blasé_,--the only kind of a rake for whom reformation is possible or reclamation worth the while.

Sir Harry was not fond of tragedy; and after five minutes' strained attention to the players, he turned his eyes from the stage, and began casting easy, good-humored glances of curiosity or recognition over the audience. He bowed to all his neighbors with a kindly familiarity, untainted by condescension, but most courteously, perhaps, to the party from the Grange. He liked the bluff Squire heartily,--as who did not? Then his eye--a laughing blue eye it was--rested and lingered, not on the dark, dramatic face of Zelma, but on the pretty, girlish head of her cousin.

Bessie sat with her face partly averted from the baronet's gay party, and her gaze fixed intently upon the stage. Sir Harry could only see half the rose of one cheek, and the soft sweep of golden hair which lightly shaded it; and feasting his fancy on that bit of fluctuating color, entangled in the meshes of a tremulous screen of curls, he settled himself to await the close of the act.

It was with a child's eager interest and pliant imagination that Bessie looked and listened,--susceptible, credulous, unfastidious. To her, the Osmyn of the night was radiant with all heroic qualities and manly graces, the weakly simulated sorrow of Almeria brought real tears to her eyes, and she drew her white shoulders forward with a shudder when the wooden Zara kindled into cursing and jealous rage. Illusions most transparent to others hoodwinked her senses; her willing fancy supplied feeling, and even made up for deficiencies of art in the players, till the mimic world before her became more real than reality.

Not so with Zelma. She was satisfied, even charmed, with the personation of Osmyn; but, from the first, she could not abide either of the heroines, who, each in her part, strove to outdo the other in mincing, mouthing, attitudinizing, and all imaginable small sins against Nature and Art. She saw at once, by the sure intuitions of genius, how everything they did could be done better, and burned to do it. The part of Almeria she soon dismissed from her thoughts, as mere milk-and-water; but she saw that in that of Zara there was a stream of lava, though dulled and crusted over by the coldness of the actress, which might be made to sweep all before it. Her critical dissatisfaction with the personation became, at last, little short of torture; there was an involuntary lowering of her dark brows, a scornful quiver of her spirited nostril, she bit her lip with angry impatience, and shrugged her shoulders with irrepressible contempt.

In the great scene where Zara surprises Almeria in the cell of Osmyn, it was astonishing how the flaxen-haired representative of the Captive Queen managed to turn her fiery rain of curses into a little pattering shower of womanish reproaches. It was really a masterly performance, in its way.

At this point Zelma threw herself back in utter weariness and disgust, exclaiming, audibly,--"Miserable!--most miserable." When, looking round, she saw the traces of her cousin's innocent emotion, the flush and tearfulness which bespoke her uncritical sympathy with passions so unskilfully represented, she could not suppress a smile at such childish simplicity. And yet this was also her first play.

The tragedy was succeeded by a farce, at which Bessie laughed as heartily as she had wept a little while before, but which was utterly distasteful to Zelma; and at an alarmingly late hour, for that quiet community, the green curtain came heavily plunging down on the final scene of all, and the audience dispersed to their homes.

On the day following, Sir Harry Willerton's guests returned to town, but, to their surprise, unaccompanied by their host, who seemed to have suddenly discovered that his presence was needed on his estate. So he remained. Soon it was remarked that a singular intimacy had sprung up between him and Squire Burleigh, with whom, at length, the larger portion of his time was passed, either in following the hounds or dining at the Grange. There were rumors and surmises that the attractions which drew the young baronet to his bluff neighbor's hospitable hall were not the Squire's hearty cheer, old wine, and older stories, but a pair of shy, yet tender eyes,--red lips, that smiled a wordless welcome, and sometimes pouted at a late coming,--cheeks whose blushes daily grew warmer in love's ripening glow,--a voice whose tones daily grew deeper, and seemed freighted with more delicious meanings.

There was little discussion as to which of the young ladies of the Grange was the enchantress and the elect Lady Willerton.

"Surely," said the gossips, "it cannot be that gypsy niece of the Squire, that odd, black-browed girl, who scours over the country in all weathers, on that elfish black pony, with her hair flying,--for all the world as though in search of her wild relations. No, the blood of the Willertons would never run so low as that;--it must be sweet Miss Bessie, and she is a match for a lord."

For once the gossips were right. But it is with the poor "Rommany girl," not with the heiress of Burleigh Grange, that we have to do.

On the morning succeeding the play, Zelma Burleigh, taking in her hand an odd volume of Shakspeare, one of the few specimens of dramatic literature which her uncle's scant library afforded, strolled down a lonely lane, running back from the house, toward the high pasture-lands, on which grazed and basked the wealthy Squire's goodly flocks and herds. This was her favorite walk, as it was the most quiet, shaded, out-of-the-way by-path on the estate. She now directed her steps to a little rustic seat, almost hidden from view by the pendent branches of an old willow-tree, and close under a hawthorn-hedge, now in full, fragrant bloom. Here she seated herself, or rather flung herself down, half languidly, half petulantly, an expression of _ennui_ and unrest darkening her face,--the dusky traces of a sleepless night hanging heavily about her eyes. She opened her book at the play of "Romeo and Juliet," and began to read, not silently, nor yet aloud, but in a low, dreamy tone, in which the sounds of Nature about her, the gurgle of a brook behind the hedge, the sighing of the winds among the pendulous branches of the willow, the silver shiver of the lance-like leaves, the murmurous coming and going of bees, the loving duets of nest-building birds, all seemed to mingle and merge. As she read, a new light seemed to illumine the page, caught from her recent experience of dramatic personation and scenic effects, limited and unsatisfactory though that experience had been. In fancy, she floated over the stage, as the gay young Juliet at the masquerade; then she caught sight of young Romeo, and, lo! his face was that of the sentimental hero of the last night's tragedy, but ennobled by the glow and dignity of genuine passion. In fancy, she sat on the balcony, communing with night and the stars,--the newly-risen star of love silvering all life for her. Then, leaning her cheek upon her hand, she poured forth Juliet's impassioned apostrophe. When she came to the passage,--

"O Romeo, Romeo!--wherefore art thou Romeo?"

she was startled by a rustling of the leaves behind her. She paused and looked round fearfully. A blackbird darted out of the hedge and away over the fields. Zelma smiled at her own alarm, and read on, till she reached the tender adjuration,--

"Romeo, doff thy name;
And for thy name, which is no part of thee,
Take all myself!"

when,--suddenly, a fragrant shower of hawthorn-blossoms fell upon the page before her, and the next instant there lightly vaulted over the hedge at her side the hero of her secret thoughts, the young player, Lawrence Bury! He stood before her, flushed and smiling, with his head uncovered, and in an attitude of respectful homage; yet, with a look and tone of tender, unmistakable meaning, took up the words of the play,--

"I take thee at thy word.
Call me but love, and I'll be new-baptized;
Henceforth I never will be Romeo."

Poor Zelma did not have the presence of mind to greet this sudden apparition of a lover in the apt words of her part,--

"What man art thou, that, thus bescreened in night,
So stumblest on my counsel?"

She had no words at all for the intruder, but, frightened and bewildered, sprang from her seat and turned her face toward home, with a startled bird's first impulse to flight. As she rose, her book slid from her lap and fell among the daisies at her feet. The actor caught it up and presented it to her, with the grace of a courtly knight restoring the dropped glove of a princess, but, as he did so, exclaimed, in a half-playful tone, looking at the volume rather than the lady,--

"I thank thee, O my master, for affording me so fair an excuse for mine audacity!"

Then, assuming a more earnest manner, he proceeded to make excuses and entreat pardon for the suddenness, informality, and presumption of his appearance before her:--

"You know, Madam," he said,--"if, indeed, you are so unfortunate as to know anything about us,--that we players are an impulsive, unconventional class of beings, lawless and irresponsible, the Gypsies of Art."

Here Zelma flushed and drew herself up, while a suspicious glance shot from her eyes;--but the stranger seemed not to understand or perceive it, for he went on quite innocently, and with increasing earnestness of tone and manner:--

"I know I have been presuming, impertinent, audacious, in thus intruding myself upon you, and acknowledge that you would be but severely just in banishing me instantly from your bright presence, and in withdrawing from me forever the light of your adorable eyes. Oh, those eyes!" he continued, clasping his hands in an ecstasy of lover-like enthusiasm, --"those wild, sweet orbs!--bewildering lights of love, dear as life, but cruel as death!--can they not quicken, even as they slay? Oh, gentle lady, be like her of Verona!--be gracious, be kind, or, at least, be merciful, and do not banish me!--

'For exile hath more terror in his look,
Much more, than death; do not say banishment!'"

He paused, but did not remove his passionate looks from the young girl's face,--looks which, though cast down, for he was much the taller of the two, had the effect of most lowly and deprecating entreaty;--and then there happened an event,--a very slight, common, natural event,--the result more of girlish embarrassment than of any conscious emotion or purpose, yet of incalculable importance at that moment, and, perhaps, decisive of the fate of two human hearts,--Zelma smiled. It was a quick, involuntary smile, which seemed to _escape_ from the firm lips and half-averted eyes, flashed over the face, touched the cold features with strange radiance, and then was gone,--and, in its place, the old shadow of reserve and distrust, for the moment, darker than ever.

But to the adventurous lover that brief light had revealed his doubtful way clear before him. He saw, with a thrill of exultation, that henceforth he had really nothing to fear from such womanly defences as he had counted on,--coldness, prejudice, disdain,--that all he had taken for these were but unsubstantial shadows. Still he showed no premature triumph in word or look, but remained silent and humble, waiting the reply to his passionate appeal, as though life or death, in very truth, were depending upon it. And Zelma spoke at last,--briefly and coldly, but in a manner neither suspicious nor unfriendly. She herself, she said, was unconventional, in her instincts, at least,--so could afford to pardon somewhat of lawlessness in another,--especially, she added, with a shy smile, in one whom Melpomene, rather than Cupid, had made mad. Still she was not a Juliet, though he, for all she knew, might be a Romeo; and only in lands verging on the tropics, or in the soul of a poet, could a passion like that of the gentle Veronese spring up, bud, and blossom, in a single night. As for her, the fogs of England, the heavy chill of its social atmosphere, had obstructed the ripening sunshine of romance and repressed the flowering of the heart--

"And kept your beautiful nature all the more pure and fresh!" exclaimed Mr. Lawrence Bury, with real or well-assumed enthusiasm; but Zelma, replying to his interruption only by a slight blush, went on to say, that she had been taught that poetry, art, and romances were all idle pastimes and perilous lures, unbecoming and unwholesome to a young English gentlewoman, whose manifest destiny it was to tread the dull, beaten track of domestic duty, with spirit chastened and conformed. She had had, she would acknowledge, some aspirations and rebellious repinings, some wild day-dreams of life of another sort; but it was best that she should put these down,--yes, doubtless, best that she should fall into her place in the ranks of duty and staid respectability, and be a mere gentlewoman, like the rest.--Here a slight shrug of the shoulders and curl of the lip contradicted her words,--yet, with a tone of rigid determination, she added, that it was also best she should cherish no tastes and form no associations which might distract her imagination and further turn her heart from this virtuous resolution; and therefore must she say farewell, firmly and finally, to the, she doubted not, most worthy gentleman who had done her the honor to entertain for her sentiments of such high consideration and romantic devotion. She would not deny that his intrusion on her privacy had, at first, startled and displeased her,--but she already accepted it as an eccentricity of dramatic genius, a thoughtless offence, and, being, as she trusted, at once the first and the last, pardonable. She wished him happiness, fame, fortune,--and a very good morning! Then, with a wave of the hand which would have done honor to Oldfield herself, she turned and walked proudly up the lane.

Mr. Bury saw her depart silently, standing in a submissive, dejected attitude, but with a quiet, supercilious smile lightly curling his finely-cut lips; for did he not know that she would return to her haunt the next day, and that he would be there to see?

And Zelma did return the next day,--persuading herself that she was only acting naturally, and with proper dignity and independence. She argued with herself that to abandon her favorite walk or avoid her usual resting-place would be to confess, if not a fear of the stranger's presuming and persistent suit, at least, a disturbing consciousness of his proximity, and of the possibility of his braving her displeasure by a second and unpardonable intrusion. No, she would live as she had lived, freely, carelessly; she would go and come, ride and walk, just as though nothing had happened,--for, indeed, nothing _had_ happened that a woman of sense and pride should take cognizance of. So, after a half-hour's strange hesitation, she took her book and went to the old place. Longer than usual she sat there, idly and abstractedly turning over the leaves of her Shakspeare, starting and flushing with every chance sound that broke on the still, sweet air; yet no presumptuous intruder disturbed her maiden meditations, and she rose wearily at last, and walked slowly homeward, saying to herself, "It is well. I have conquered," but feeling that nothing was well in life, or her own heart, and that she was miserably defeated. Ah, little did she suspect that her clouded, dissatisfied face had been keenly scanned by the very eyes she dreaded, yet secretly longed to meet,--that her most unconscious sigh of disappointment had been heard by her Romeo of the previous day, now lying just behind the hedge, buried in the long brook-side grass, and laughing to himself a very pleasant laugh of gratulation and triumph.

That night, the good Squire of Burleigh Grange relented from his virtuous resolve, and took his wife, daughter, and niece to the play.

The piece was Howe's tragedy of "Tamerlane." Mr. Bury personated the imperial Tartar, a noble _rôle_, which so well became him, costumes and all, and brought him so much applause, that Zelma's heart was effectually softened, and she even felt a regretful pride in having received and rejected the homage of a man of such parts.

The next day, as the hour for her stroll arrived, she said to herself, "I can surely take my walks in safety now,--_he_ will never come near me more." So she went,--but, to her unspeakable confusion, she found him, quietly seated in her little rustic bower, his head bared to the sunshine, and his "Hyperion curls" tossed and tumbled about by a frolicsome wind. He rose when the lady appeared, stammered out an apology, bowed respectfully, and would have retired, but that Zelma, feeling that she was the intruder this time, begged him to remain. She thought herself, simple child! merely courteous and duly hospitable, in giving this invitation; but the quick, eager ear of the actor and lover heard, quivering through the assumed indifference and cold politeness of her tones, the genuine impulse and ardent wish of her heart. So he yielded and lingered, proffering apologies and exchanging polite commonplaces.

After a little time, Zelma, to prove her freedom from embarrassment or suspicion, quietly seated herself on the rustic bench, giving, as she did so, a regal spread to her ample skirts, that there might be no vacant place beside her. The actor stood for a while before her, just going, but never gone, talking gayly, but respectfully, on indifferent topics,--till, at last, touching on some theme of deeper interest, and apparently forgetting everything but it and the fair lady, who neither expressed nor looked a desire to shorten the interview, he flung himself, with what seemed a boy's natural impulse, upon the soft, inviting turf, under the shade of the willow. There, reclining in the attitude of Hamlet at the feet of Ophelia, he rambled on from subject to subject, in a careless, graceful way, plucking up grass and picking daisies to pieces, as he talked, giving every now and then, from beneath the languid sweep of his heavy eyelashes, quick flashes of tender meaning, as fitful and beautiful as the "heat-lightnings" of summer twilights, and _apparently_ as harmless.