The Last Man
place of an active career, of ambition, and those palpable excitements
necessary to the multitude. The collation of philosophical opinions,
the study of historical facts, the acquirement of languages, were at
once my recreation, and the serious aim of my life. I turned author
myself. My productions however were sufficiently unpretending; they
were confined to the biography of favourite historical characters,
especially those whom I believed to have been traduced, or about whom
clung obscurity and doubt.
As my authorship increased, I acquired new sympathies and pleasures. I
found another and a valuable link to enchain me to my fellow-creatures;
my point of sight was extended, and the inclinations and capacities of
all human beings became deeply interesting to me. Kings have been
called the fathers of their people. Suddenly I became as it were the
father of all mankind. Posterity became my heirs. My thoughts were gems
to enrich the treasure house of man’s intellectual possessions; each
sentiment was a precious gift I bestowed on them. Let not these
aspirations be attributed to vanity. They were not expressed in words,
nor even reduced to form in my own mind; but they filled my soul,
exalting my thoughts, raising a glow of enthusiasm, and led me out of
the obscure path in which I before walked, into the bright
noon-enlightened highway of mankind, making me, citizen of the world, a
candidate for immortal honors, an eager aspirant to the praise and
sympathy of my fellow men.
No one certainly ever enjoyed the pleasures of composition more
intensely than I. If I left the woods, the solemn music of the waving
branches, and the majestic temple of nature, I sought the vast halls of
the Castle, and looked over wide, fertile England, spread beneath our
regal mount, and listened the while to inspiring strains of music. At
such times solemn harmonies or spirit-stirring airs gave wings to my
lagging thoughts, permitting them, methought, to penetrate the last
veil of nature and her God, and to display the highest beauty in
visible expression to the understandings of men. As the music went on,
my ideas seemed to quit their mortal dwelling house; they shook their
pinions and began a flight, sailing on the placid current of thought,
filling the creation with new glory, and rousing sublime imagery that
else had slept voiceless. Then I would hasten to my desk, weave the
new-found web of mind in firm texture and brilliant colours, leaving
the fashioning of the material to a calmer moment.
But this account, which might as properly belong to a former period of
my life as to the present moment, leads me far afield. It was the
pleasure I took in literature, the discipline of mind I found arise
from it, that made me eager to lead Perdita to the same pursuits. I
began with light hand and gentle allurement; first exciting her
curiosity, and then satisfying it in such a way as might occasion her,
at the same time that she half forgot her sorrows in occupation, to
find in the hours that succeeded a reaction of benevolence and
toleration.
Intellectual activity, though not directed towards books, had always
been my sister’s characteristic. It had been displayed early in life,
leading her out to solitary musing among her native mountains, causing
her to form innumerous combinations from common objects, giving
strength to her perceptions, and swiftness to their arrangement. Love
had come, as the rod of the master-prophet, to swallow up every minor
propensity. Love had doubled all her excellencies, and placed a diadem
on her genius. Was she to cease to love? Take the colours and odour
from the rose, change the sweet nutriment of mother’s milk to gall and
poison; as easily might you wean Perdita from love. She grieved for the
loss of Raymond with an anguish, that exiled all smile from her lips,
and trenched sad lines on her brow of beauty. But each day seemed to
change the nature of her suffering, and every succeeding hour forced
her to alter (if so I may style it) the fashion of her soul’s mourning
garb. For a time music was able to satisfy the cravings of her mental
hunger, and her melancholy thoughts renewed themselves in each change
of key, and varied with every alteration in the strain. My schooling
first impelled her towards books; and, if music had been the food of
sorrow, the productions of the wise became its medicine. The
acquisition of unknown languages was too tedious an occupation, for one
who referred every expression to the universe within, and read not, as
many do, for the mere sake of filling up time; but who was still
questioning herself and her author, moulding every idea in a thousand
ways, ardently desirous for the discovery of truth in every sentence.
She sought to improve her understanding; mechanically her heart and
dispositions became soft and gentle under this benign discipline. After
awhile she discovered, that amidst all her newly acquired knowledge,
her own character, which formerly she fancied that she thoroughly
understood, became the first in rank among the terrae incognitae, the
pathless wilds of a country that had no chart. Erringly and strangely
she began the task of self-examination with self-condemnation. And then
again she became aware of her own excellencies, and began to balance
with juster scales the shades of good and evil. I, who longed beyond
words, to restore her to the happiness it was still in her power to
enjoy, watched with anxiety the result of these internal proceedings.
But man is a strange animal. We cannot calculate on his forces like
that of an engine; and, though an impulse draw with a forty-horse power
at what appears willing to yield to one, yet in contempt of calculation
the movement is not effected. Neither grief, philosophy, nor love could
make Perdita think with mildness of the dereliction of Raymond. She now
took pleasure in my society; towards Idris she felt and displayed a
full and affectionate sense of her worth—she restored to her child in
abundant measure her tenderness and care. But I could discover, amidst
all her repinings, deep resentment towards Raymond, and an unfading
sense of injury, that plucked from me my hope, when I appeared nearest
to its fulfilment. Among other painful restrictions, she has occasioned
it to become a law among us, never to mention Raymond’s name before
her. She refused to read any communications from Greece, desiring me
only to mention when any arrived, and whether the wanderers were well.
It was curious that even little Clara observed this law towards her
mother. This lovely child was nearly eight years of age. Formerly she
had been a light-hearted infant, fanciful, but gay and childish. After
the departure of her father, thought became impressed on her young
brow. Children, unadepts in language, seldom find words to express
their thoughts, nor could we tell in what manner the late events had
impressed themselves on her mind. But certainly she had made deep
observations while she noted in silence the changes that passed around
her. She never mentioned her father to Perdita, she appeared half
afraid when she spoke of him to me, and though I tried to draw her out
on the subject, and to dispel the gloom that hung about her ideas
concerning him, I could not succeed. Yet each foreign post-day she
watched for the arrival of letters—knew the post mark, and watched me
as I read. I found her often poring over the article of Greek
intelligence in the newspaper.
There is no more painful sight than that of untimely care in children,
and it was particularly observable in one whose disposition had
heretofore been mirthful. Yet there was so much sweetness and docility
about Clara, that your admiration was excited; and if the moods of mind
are calculated to paint the cheek with beauty, and endow motions with
grace, surely her contemplations must have been celestial; since every
lineament was moulded into loveliness, and her motions were more
harmonious than the elegant boundings of the fawns of her native
forest. I sometimes expostulated with Perdita on the subject of her
reserve; but she rejected my counsels, while her daughter’s sensibility
excited in her a tenderness still more passionate.
After the lapse of more than a year, Adrian returned from Greece.
When our exiles had first arrived, a truce was in existence between the
Turks and Greeks; a truce that was as sleep to the mortal frame, signal
of renewed activity on waking. With the numerous soldiers of Asia, with
all of warlike stores, ships, and military engines, that wealth and
power could command, the Turks at once resolved to crush an enemy,
which creeping on by degrees, had from their stronghold in the Morea,
acquired Thrace and Macedonia, and had led their armies even to the
gates of Constantinople, while their extensive commercial relations
gave every European nation an interest in their success. Greece
prepared for a vigorous resistance; it rose to a man; and the women,
sacrificing their costly ornaments, accoutred their sons for the war,
and bade them conquer or die with the spirit of the Spartan mother. The
talents and courage of Raymond were highly esteemed among the Greeks.
Born at Athens, that city claimed him for her own, and by giving him
the command of her peculiar division in the army, the
commander-in-chief only possessed superior power. He was numbered among
her citizens, his name was added to the list of Grecian heroes. His
judgment, activity, and consummate bravery, justified their choice. The
Earl of Windsor became a volunteer under his friend.
“It is well,” said Adrian, “to prate of war in these pleasant shades,
and with much ill-spent oil make a show of joy, because many thousand
of our fellow-creatures leave with pain this sweet air and natal earth.
I shall not be suspected of being averse to the Greek cause; I know and
feel its necessity; it is beyond every other a good cause. I have
defended it with my sword, and was willing that my spirit should be
breathed out in its defence; freedom is of more worth than life, and
the Greeks do well to defend their privilege unto death. But let us not
deceive ourselves. The Turks are men; each fibre, each limb is as
feeling as our own, and every spasm, be it mental or bodily, is as
truly felt in a Turk’s heart or brain, as in a Greek’s. The last action
at which I was present was the taking of ——. The Turks resisted to the
last, the garrison perished on the ramparts, and we entered by assault.
Every breathing creature within the walls was massacred. Think you,
amidst the shrieks of violated innocence and helpless infancy, I did
not feel in every nerve the cry of a fellow being? They were men and
women, the sufferers, before they were Mahometans, and when they rise
turbanless from the grave, in what except their good or evil actions
will they be the better or worse than we? Two soldiers contended for a
girl, whose rich dress and extreme beauty excited the brutal appetites
of these wretches, who, perhaps good men among their families, were
changed by the fury of the moment into incarnated evils. An old man,
with a silver beard, decrepid and bald, he might be her grandfather,
interposed to save her; the battle axe of one of them clove his skull.
I rushed to her defence, but rage made them blind and deaf; they did
not distinguish my Christian garb or heed my words—words were blunt
weapons then, for while war cried “havoc,” and murder gave fit echo,
how could I—
Turn back the tide of ills, relieving wrong
With mild accost of soothing eloquence?
One of the fellows, enraged at my interference, struck me with his
bayonet in the side, and I fell senseless.
“This wound will probably shorten my life, having shattered a frame,
weak of itself. But I am content to die. I have learnt in Greece that