The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon
set off a noble figure of manly symmetry. He was no longer pale and
melancholy. His fine countenance was flushed with the glow of youth, and
joy rioted in his large dark eye.
The mystery was soon cleared up. The cavalier (for, in truth, as you
must have known all the while, he was no goblin) announced himself as
Sir Herman Von Starkenfaust. He related his adventure with the young
count. He told how he had hastened to the castle to deliver the
unwelcome tidings, but that the eloquence of the baron had interrupted
him in every attempt to tell his tale. How the sight of the bride had
completely captivated him and that to pass a few hours near her he
had tacitly suffered the mistake to continue. How he had been sorely
perplexed in what way to make a decent retreat, until the baron’s
goblin stories had suggested his eccentric exit. How, fearing the feudal
hostility of the family, he had repeated his visits by stealth--had
haunted the garden beneath the young lady’s window--had wooed--had
won--had borne away in triumph--and, in a word, had wedded the fair.
Under any other circumstances the baron would have been inflexible, for
he was tenacious of paternal authority and devoutly obstinate in all
family feuds; but he loved his daughter; he had lamented her as lost;
he rejoiced to find her still alive; and, though her husband was of
a hostile house, yet, thank Heaven! he was not a goblin. There was
something, it must be acknowledged, that did not exactly accord with his
notions of strict veracity in the joke the knight had passed upon him of
his being a dead man; but several old friends present, who had served
in the wars, assured him that every stratagem was excusable in love,
and that the cavalier was entitled to especial privilege, having lately
served as a trooper.
Matters, therefore, were happily arranged. The baron pardoned the young
couple on the spot. The revels at the castle were resumed. The
poor relations overwhelmed this new member of the family with
loving-kindness; he was so gallant, so generous--and so rich. The
aunts, it is true, were somewhat scandalized that their system of strict
seclusion and passive obedience should be so badly exemplified, but
attributed it all to their negligence in not having the windows grated.
One of them was particularly mortified at having her marvellous story
marred, and that the only spectre she had ever seen should turn out a
counterfeit; but the niece seemed perfectly happy at having found him
substantial flesh and blood. And so the story ends.
WESTMINSTER ABBEY.
When I behold, with deep astonishment,
To famous Westminster how there resorte,
Living in brasse or stoney monument,
The princes and the worthies of all sorte;
Doe not I see reformde nobilitie,
Without contempt, or pride, or ostentation,
And looke upon offenselesse majesty,
Naked of pomp or earthly domination?
And how a play-game of a painted stone
Contents the quiet now and silent sprites,
Whome all the world which late they stood upon
Could not content nor quench their appetites.
Life is a frost of cold felicitie,
And death the thaw of all our vanitie.
CHRISTOLERO’S EPIGRAMS, BY T. B. 1598.
ON one of those sober and rather melancholy days in the latter part of
autumn when the shadows of morning and evening almost mingle together,
and throw a gloom over the decline of the year, I passed several hours
in rambling about Westminster Abbey. There was something congenial to
the season in the mournful magnificence of the old pile, and as I passed
its threshold it seemed like stepping back into the regions of antiquity
and losing myself among the shades of former ages.
I entered from the inner court of Westminster School, through a long,
low, vaulted passage that had an almost subterranean look, being dimly
lighted in one part by circular perforations in the massive walls.
Through this dark avenue I had a distant view of the cloisters, with
the figure of an old verger in his black gown moving along their shadowy
vaults, and seeming like a spectre from one of the neighboring tombs.
The approach to the abbey through these gloomy monastic remains prepares
the mind for its solemn contemplation. The cloisters still retain
something of the quiet and seclusion of former days. The gray walls are
discolored by damps and crumbling with age; a coat of hoary moss has
gathered over the inscriptions of the mural monuments, and obscured the
death’s heads and other funeral emblems. The sharp touches of the chisel
are gone from the rich tracery of the arches; the roses which adorned
the keystones have lost their leafy beauty; everything bears marks of
the gradual dilapidations of time, which yet has something touching and
pleasing in its very decay.
The sun was pouring down a yellow autumnal ray into the square of
the cloisters, beaming upon a scanty plot of grass in the centre,
and lighting up an angle of the vaulted passage with a kind of dusky
splendor. From between the arcades the eye glanced up to a bit of blue
sky or a passing cloud, and beheld the sun-gilt pinnacles of the abbey
towering into the azure heaven.
As I paced the cloisters, sometimes contemplating this mingled
picture of glory and decay, and sometimes endeavoring to decipher the
inscriptions on the tombstones which formed the pavement beneath my
feet, my eye was attracted to three figures rudely carved in relief,
but nearly worn away by the footsteps of many generations. They were
the effigies of three of the early abbots; the epitaphs were entirely
effaced; the names alone remained, having no doubt been renewed in later
times (Vitalis. Abbas. 1082, and Gislebertus Crispinus. Abbas. 1114,
and Laurentius. Abbas. 1176). I remained some little while, musing over
these casual relics of antiquity thus left like wrecks upon this distant
shore of time, telling no tale but that such beings had been and had
perished, teaching no moral but the futility of that pride which hopes
still to exact homage in its ashes and to live in an inscription. A
little longer, and even these faint records will be obliterated and the
monument will cease to be a memorial. Whilst I was yet looking down
upon the gravestones I was roused by the sound of the abbey clock,
reverberating from buttress to buttress and echoing among the cloisters.
It is almost startling to hear this warning of departed time sounding
among the tombs and telling the lapse of the hour, which, like a billow,
has rolled us onward towards the grave. I pursued my walk to an
arched door opening to the interior of the abbey. On entering here the
magnitude of the building breaks fully upon the mind, contrasted with
the vaults of the cloisters. The eyes gaze with wonder at clustered
columns of gigantic dimensions, with arches springing from them to such
an amazing height, and man wandering about their bases, shrunk into
insignificance in comparison with his own handiwork. The spaciousness
and gloom of this vast edifice produce a profound and mysterious awe.
We step cautiously and softly about, as if fearful of disturbing the
hallowed silence of the tomb, while every footfall whispers along the
walls and chatters among the sepulchres, making us more sensible of the
quiet we have interrupted.
It seems as if the awful nature of the place presses down upon the soul
and hushes the beholder into noiseless reverence. We feel that we are
surrounded by the congregated bones of the great men of past times, who
have filled history with their deeds and the earth with their renown.
And yet it almost provokes a smile at the vanity of human ambition
to see how they are crowded together and jostled in the dust; what
parsimony is observed in doling out a scanty nook, a gloomy corner, a
little portion of earth, to those whom, when alive, kingdoms could not
satisfy, and how many shapes and forms and artifices are devised to
catch the casual notice of the passenger, and save from forgetfulness
for a few short years a name which once aspired to occupy ages of the
world’s thought and admiration.
I passed some time in Poet’s Corner, which occupies an end of one of
the transepts or cross aisles of the abbey. The monuments are generally
simple, for the lives of literary men afford no striking themes for
the sculptor. Shakespeare and Addison have statues erected to their
memories, but the greater part have busts, medallions, and sometimes
mere inscriptions. Notwithstanding the simplicity of these memorials,
I have always observed that the visitors to the abbey remained longest
about them. A kinder and fonder feeling takes place of that cold
curiosity or vague admiration with which they gaze on the splendid
monuments of the great and the heroic. They linger about these as about
the tombs of friends and companions, for indeed there is something of
companionship between the author and the reader. Other men are known
to posterity only through the medium of history, which is continually
growing faint and obscure; but the intercourse between the author and
his fellowmen is ever new, active, and immediate. He has lived for them
more than for himself; he has sacrificed surrounding enjoyments, and
shut himself up from the delights of social life, that he might the more
intimately commune with distant minds and distant ages. Well may the
world cherish his renown, for it has been purchased not by deeds of
violence and blood, but by the diligent dispensation of pleasure.
Well may posterity be grateful to his memory, for he has left it an
inheritance not of empty names and sounding actions, but whole treasures
of wisdom, bright gems of thought, and golden veins of language.
From Poet’s Corner I continued my stroll towards that part of the abbey
which contains the sepulchres of the kings. I wandered among what once
were chapels, but which are now occupied by the tombs and monuments
of the great. At every turn I met with some illustrious name or the
cognizance of some powerful house renowned in history. As the eye
darts into these dusky chambers of death it catches glimpses of quaint
effigies--some kneeling in niches, as if in devotion; others stretched
upon the tombs, with hands piously pressed together; warriors in armor,
as if reposing after battle; prelates, with crosiers and mitres; and
nobles in robes and coronets, lying as it were in state. In glancing
over this scene, so strangely populous, yet where every form is so still
and silent, it seems almost as if we were treading a mansion of that
fabled city where every being had been suddenly transmuted into stone.
I paused to contemplate a tomb on which lay the effigy of a knight in
complete armor. A large buckler was on one arm; the hands were pressed
together in supplication upon the breast; the face was almost covered by
the morion; the legs were crossed, in token of the warrior’s having been
engaged in the holy war. It was the tomb of a crusader, of one of those
military enthusiasts who so strangely mingled religion and romance,
and whose exploits form the connecting link between fact and fiction,
between the history and the fairytale. There is something extremely
picturesque in the tombs of these adventurers, decorated as they are
with rude armorial bearings and Gothic sculpture. They comport with the
antiquated chapels in which they are generally found; and in considering
them the imagination is apt to kindle with the legendary associations,
the romantic fiction, the chivalrous pomp and pageantry which poetry has
spread over the wars for the sepulchre of Christ. They are the relics
of times utterly gone by, of beings passed from recollection, of customs
and manners with which ours have no affinity. They are like objects from