Part 12

This beautiful story, true to fact, and so dramatically told, comes upon the reader with a pleasant surprise, and I have quoted it at length not only for its intrinsic beauty, but also as it commemorates a fact in the early history of our country. That venerable man was Richard Whalley, one of the great soldiers of England under Cromwell, and one of the judges who condemned Charles to the block. After the restoration he fled to Massachusetts, and was secreted in the house of the Rev. Mr. Russel at Hadley. It will be remembered that three of the regicides fled to this country—Dixwell, Goffe and Whalley. Dixwell is buried in New Haven in the rear of Center church. Goffe and Whalley are buried in Hadley. It is claimed by some that it was Goffe instead of Whalley who came to the rescue of the village. Scott in his notes assigns the honor to Whalley.

Returning to our story we find that affairs of great moment on the part of the Countess call the young Peveril to London. He finds his father and mother arrested for supposed complicity in a Romish plot. We see the city in great excitement, heated and inflamed by the villain Oates—an episode which Scott weaves gracefully and naturally into the warp and woof of his story. He draws a picture of Colonel Blood, who made the well-known attempt on the crown-jewels, a bold, resolute man, who strange to say, after many acts of violence, lived to enjoy a pension from the king. We see the gay Rochester, still remembered for his celebrated epigrammatic epitaph on Charles the Second, composed at the king’s request, but too pungent, and too true to be relished.

“Here lies our sovereign lord the king, Whose word no man relies on; He never said a foolish thing, And never did a wise one.”

We see the Duchess of Portsmouth, and many another lady of rank, who had more regard for ancient titles than for ancestral virtues; we see George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, a man of princely fortune and excellent talents, tossed about in a whirlpool of frivolous pleasures, whose character the great Dryden embalmed in vigorous lines:

“A man so various, that he seemed to be Not one, but all mankind’s epitome; Stiff in opinions—always in the wrong— Was everything by starts, but nothing long; Who in the course of one revolving moon, Was chemist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon.”

Through the imprisonment of Julian Peveril we are made acquainted with the Tower and Newgate—a sad picture, but somewhat relieved by Scott’s humor in the portrait that he gives us of the well-known doughty dwarf, Sir Geoffrey Hudson; we see London given over to monopolies, to stock-jobbing, and South Sea speculations; we attend a conventicle held in a secret hall of the city, and trace a conspiracy designed to place the Duke of Buckingham upon the throne; until our story, one of the longest and most carefully prepared of the Waverley series, concludes with a court scene in Whitehall, where the faithful love of Edith Bridgenorth and Julian Peveril is announced to the satisfaction at least of two individuals.

“Old Mortality,” our next volume, deals directly with the Covenanters of Scotland. It will be remembered that Charles the Second, on a former expedition into Scotland, before his restoration, had deliberately sworn to support the Solemn League and Covenant. The Presbyterian Church, alive to its own interests, sent an agent to General Monk, who had declared for a free Parliament, and was on his way to London, holding as it were in his hand the destiny of Britain. The agent sent by the Scottish Church was James Sharpe, a man well educated, logical in mind and commanding in character; but, false to his trust, he bartered his principles for power, and received as the price of his infamy the title and office of Lord Bishop of Saint Andrews, and Primate of Scotland. “The great stain” says Scott, in his Miscellaneous Prose Works, “will always remain, that Sharpe deserted and probably betrayed a cause which his brethren entrusted to him. When he returned to Scotland, he pressed the acceptance of the See of Saint Andrews upon Mr. Robert Douglas, affecting himself no ambition for the prelacy. The stern Presbyterian saw into his secret soul, and, when he had given his own positive rejection, demanded of Sharpe what he would do if the offer was made to him? He hesitated. ‘I perceive,’ said Douglas, ‘you are clear—you will engage—you will be Primate of Scotland; take it then,’ he added, laying his hand on his shoulder, ‘and take the curse of God along with it.’ The subject would suit a painter.” Subsequent history shows that the curse was fulfilled.

In the general joy attendant upon the restoration of Charles, the Parliament thought that the people would submit to almost any indignity or inconvenience. By a single sweeping resolution they annulled and rescinded every statute and ordinance which had been made by those holding supreme authority in Scotland since the commencement of the civil wars; the whole Presbyterian Church government was destroyed, and the Episcopal institutions, to which the nation had shown itself averse, were rashly and precipitately established. Thousands of ministers, who, for conscience sake, could not sign the Act of Conformity, were driven from their pulpits. Mere boys and dissolute young men were hastily summoned from schools and colleges to administer spiritual comfort to an indignant people. The solemn league and covenant, which had been solemnly sworn to by nobility, clergy and people, with weeping eyes and uplifted hands, ay, sworn to by the King himself, was burned at the cross of Edinburgh by an edict of Parliament. The Episcopal court severely punished all who left their own parish church to attend private meetings known as conventicles. A persecution like that of the early Christians at Rome was brought home to the descendants of Knox and of Calvin. As the earlier Christians were compelled to hold their meetings in caves and catacombs, so a persecuted people, in the bright dawn of the Reformation, were compelled to fly to the hills and heaths for a refuge, to lift up their banner in solitary and mountain places in order to foil

“A tyrant’s and a bigot’s laws.”

Such was the state of the country at the opening of our story in May, 1679. The west of Scotland is aroused. Archbishop Sharpe is murdered in his carriage, by a party of men, of whom Balfour of Burley is the leader. The battle of Loudon Hill is won by the Covenanters, who increase daily in power until a force of six thousand men are assembled at Bothwell Bridge. Engaged in discussing church polemics, they entirely neglect the discipline necessary for success. Without leaders or guidance they are routed by the Duke of Monmouth. Four hundred men are killed. Twelve hundred prisoners are marched to Edinburgh, and imprisoned “like cattle in a fold” in the Greyfriar’s churchyard. Several ministers are tortured and executed, and many prisoners sent as slaves to the plantations. Henry Morton, one of their leaders, as seen in the story, is exiled. Edith Bellenden, one of the royal party, remains true to him. He returns, after long years of absence and military honor, and readers of fiction can readily guess how the story terminates without reading the postscript by the author.

Such is the rude draft of this great romance, which Coleridge pronounces the grandest of Scott’s novels. It is, in fact, a novel that can not be well analyzed. We could speak of Lady Margaret Bellenden, who never forgot that Charles the Second took breakfast with her on his way to meet Cromwell at the field of Worcester; we could speak of the good natured Major, brave, noble, and generous; of Cuddie and his mother; ay, of Guse Gibbie, unfortunate in all fitting regimentals; of the miserly uncle of Henry Morton; of the cannie waiting-maid of Edith, who felt safe in the triumph of either side, as she had a lover in both armies. The reader will laugh and weep at these characters as he meets them in the pages of “Old Mortality.” But it is for us to refer merely to the historical features about which these characters are grouped; to note the ruggedness of Scotch character, destined to triumph at last, and bring victory out of defeat; a character which, perhaps, “shows most to advantage in adversity, when it seems akin to the native sycamore of their hills, which scorns to be biased in its mode of growth, even by the influence of the prevailing wind, but, shooting its branches with equal boldness in every direction, shows no weather side to the storm, and may be broken, but can never be bended.”

In considering the motives, the ambition, the enthusiasm, or fanaticism of these men, we might stir up controversy. We know it was their lofty purpose to convert all England to the Presbyterian faith; and, whenever they were lifted to power, they were quite as arbitrary as the Episcopacy. It was true of both parties that they suffered persecution without learning mercy. Each side felt that, in pushing its own creed, it was doing the Lord’s work; but in this we all delight to-day, that both sides produced brave men, tenacious of their own rights, who struggled on until in our own generation the opposing forces have been adjusted, and out of chaos and confusion the different systems of faith or theology move serenely and calmly in their own spheres around one central and enduring light—the Creator and Father of all.

The Covenanters were indeed the connecting link between the two great revolutions, which beheaded Charles the First and exiled James the Second; and, whatever our prejudices, or “whatever may be thought of the extravagance or narrow-minded bigotry of many of their tenets, it is impossible to deny the praise of devoted courage to a few hundred peasants, who, without leaders, without money, without any fixed plan of action, and almost without arms, borne out only by their innate zeal, and a detestation of the oppression of their rulers, ventured to declare open war against an established government, supported by a regular army and the whole force of three kingdoms.”

It is sometimes claimed that Scott is over partial to Claverhouse—that he paints the man as a hero. If so he has poorly succeeded, for I have yet to meet a reader of “Old Mortality” who is fascinated with the portraiture of that cruel man. Scott makes him what history declares him to be, a cool and calculating soldier, bitter and unrelenting, a man without faith, and with no ambition save worldly glory. It rather seems to me on the contrary, that Scott for the time lays aside his own traditional sentiments as he reports the burning words of these Covenant preachers, as they paint the desolation of the Church, describing her “like Hagar watching the waning life of her infant amid the fountainless desert.” His poetic nature seems moved by brave men repairing “to worship the God of nature amid the fortresses of nature’s own construction.”

There are two dramatic scenes in the volume, which can not be overlooked or forgotten: Burley in the cave, with his clasped Bible in one hand, and his drawn sword in the other. “His figure, dimly ruddied by the light of the red charcoal seems that of a fiend in the lurid atmosphere of Pandemonium striving with an imaginary demon.” The other scene reveals Henry Morton, overpowered, disarmed, bound hand and foot, facing a clock which, at the hour of twelve, was to strike his doom. “Among pale-eyed and ferocious zealots, whose hardened brows were soon to be bent, not merely with indifference, but with triumph upon his execution—without a friend to speak a kindly word, or give a look of either sympathy or encouragement—awaiting till the sword destined to slay him crept out of the scabbard gradually, as it were by straw-breadths, and condemned to drink the bitterness of death drop by drop. His executioners, as he gazed around him, seemed to alter their forms and features, like specters in a feverish dream their figures became larger, and their faces more disturbed; the walls seemed to drop with blood, and the light tick of the clock thrilled on his ear with such loud, painful distinctness, as if each sound were the prick of a bodkin inflicted on the naked nerve of the organ.” The maniac preacher, in an attitude of frenzy, springs upon a chair to push forward the fatal index; the party make ready their weapons for immediate execution, when a noise like the rushing of a brook over the pebbles, or the soughing of wind among the branches stays the executioners; it was the galloping of horse, the door is burst open, and Henry Morton is saved.

* * * * *

Men seem neither to understand their riches nor their strength—of the former they believe much more than they should; of the latter much less. Self-reliance and self-denial will teach a man to drink out of his own cistern, and eat his own sweet bread, and to learn and labor truly to get his living, and carefully to expend the good things committed to his trust.—_Bacon._

A PRIVATE CHARITY OF PARIS.

Translated from the French for THE CHAUTAUQUAN.

Among the many interesting charitable institutions of Paris there is none more noteworthy than the private asylum for the blind conducted by the Sisters of St. Paul. This work was begun in 1850, by a woman of great piety, energy and sense, Anne Bergunion. Two blind girls were confided to her care. She proved to be remarkably adapted to training the peculiar characters which the nature of this affliction almost invariably causes. Gradually there grew up a large institution under her supervision. A writer in a late number of the _Revue des deux Mondes_ has given an exhaustive account of the work. The details are most interesting and suggestive. After describing the home of the Sisters and their work, he says: “They have reserved the least comfortable part of the building for themselves, and have given over to the blind the large rooms where the circulation is free, and there is opportunity for exercise. Passing from the convent into the asylum for the blind, I entered the workshop. Twenty workingwomen, whose ages ranged from twenty-five to fifty, started up at the sound of strange footsteps. The sight was pitiful; the faces and eyes seemed expressionless. There was nothing to warm up their terrible pallor, and in their attitude there was a restless attention, as if they were troubled by a presence which they could not define nor understand.

“There is great difference between the different forms of blindness. There are eyes that have been paralyzed, which appear living, but yet are dead. They show neither joy nor sorrow, but remain fixed. A blind person does not move the eye when questioned, but by an unconscious gesture turns the ear to the speaker. Others are projecting, and seem almost bursting from their watery eyelids; they look like those marbles of whitish glass with which the children play; others again are almost invisible, showing only an inflamed line between the nearly closed eyelids. With some the lids are immovable; others continually flutter, like the wings of a frightened bird.

“I saw no coquettishness in the arrangement of the hair, in the pose of the head or the body. Shut up in darkness, they are ignorant of the resources of feminine graces; hearing and touch teach them nothing of them. Their tidiness is extreme, however. If well taught, a blind person can not endure on his garments a particle of dust or drop of water; it wounds his sensitive touch.

“The most of the inmates were born blind, or at least became blind so young that they have no remembrance of the light. For them the sun is bright, not because it shines, but because it is warm. There are some among them who have been made completely blind by an accident or a criminal action. Here is one whose eyes seem to have been torn out, and eyelids to have closed over the void. When she was quite a little girl, she owned a tame finch; at night it slept in its cage, but all day it was at the side of its young mistress, now on her head, again on her shoulders; it drank from the same glass with her and took the food from her lips. One day the eyes of the child attracted it; it picked at them and destroyed the sight. There is another who had a pet chicken. She had been accustomed to taking it in her little arms, rocking it, cuddling it, adoring it; they played together until suddenly, one day, the chicken, dashing itself against the face of the child, tore out both its eyes.

“I have noticed among the inmates a woman whose eyes are white; a faint shade marks the outline of the iris. She seems to be about fifty years old; her complexion is sallow, and above her prominent forehead the brown hair is traced by silver; her mouth has a sad, almost bitter expression; her form is thin, and her bony fingers move very swiftly as she knits. When twenty-three years old she was sought in marriage by a young man for whom she did not care. He insisted, she refused. One evening he came to see her with a gun on his shoulder, and demanded: “Will you marry me? Yes, or no.” “No,” she replied. He drew his weapon and fired. The entire charge hit the upper part of her face. When they had picked her up and wiped away the blood, they saw that she was blind, and hopelessly so. Before the court the fellow did not lie. “It is her own fault. I will marry her all the same, if she is willing.” The poor girl did not think it best to give her hand, when asked in this way. She found the Sisters of St. Paul, and has been with them for twenty-five years.

“It seemed very silent to me in the work-room. I am sorry for it. Conversation is as necessary to the blind as light for those who see; to them silence is night, noise is light. This is so true that in the Institution for Blind Young People, the black cell, the cell in which unruly members are confined as a punishment, is one where no sound is heard. I believe that conversation should always be allowed. The blind find an inspiration in it which gives zest to their work.

“Music is their great passion, and some excel in it; the ear is most sensitive; at a sound in the least out of tune their foreheads will contract painfully. A woman sang for me here. She was about thirty-five years old, with pale face and fine features. She sang a fandango intended to be gay, but which was very mournful, coming from her discolored lips. Her voice was true but weak and worn. The poor girl is a worn-out artist. She had been dragged from city to city; had “done” the watering places and springs, had given concerts, and never touched the proceeds. When she had ruined her voice the manager had abandoned her. The poor child, hungry and cold, sought the St. Paul Asylum. She has a shelter here while she lives. She knits, sings, and, perhaps, sighs for the time when she heard the crowd clap after she had sung her piece.

“A blind Sister, with one who has her sight, looks after the workshop. There is but one kind of work here—knitting; it seems to have become mechanical; they knit without thinking, as one breathes without knowing it. Four of the young girls sang a quartette for us, but they knit all the time without ceasing; the blind Sister beat time with her head, but continued to knit; the women in the shop turned toward the singers, listened, and knit. The blind Sisters teach this work. It takes about six weeks to make a skillful knitter, and initiate her into all the mysteries. They earn very little money in this way, however. The wool and patterns are furnished by the contractor, and for the knitting of a pair of child’s socks they will pay but a few cents. It takes a skillful knitter at least four hours to do the work, and then the work must be finished off by some one who sees, the buttons put on, the buttonholes made, and the ornaments attached. In spite of the great industry of the workers the shop earns in this way only about 1,300 francs per year. The great curse which burdens the blind, above all blind women, is that they can not earn a livelihood. It is safe to say that were it not for the Sisters of St. Paul all the persons whom I saw there would have died of hunger. There has been an effort made to find a trade for blind women by which they could at least earn their bread; it has not succeeded. The affliction is so heavy that it seems to paralyze their energies. One trade which seems peculiarly suitable for them, which is learned quickly and requires only a little attention, is that of making lines for fishing, and the like; the tools needed are not costly, and the trade is easy. Many of the blind practice it, and some are very skillful; yet, by the busiest day’s work, they can not earn more than fifteen cents. It is ridiculous to think of furnishing food, clothing and lodgings, on this sum. There has been a great deal of ingenuity spent in trying to teach them trades which require great skill; tact, however, can never take the place of sight. This fact has been forgotten by those who have tried to profit by the services of the blind, rather than put the means of earning their daily bread into their hands. An attempt was made to teach them to turn articles, but the results were curious rather than useful. The trade which they are taught should be as easy as possible; the method should be simple, the tools few and easily handled. Knitting is the model work for them.