The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon
foreground, and one of the children holds a bow, all intimating the
knight’s skill in hunting, hawking, and archery, so indispensable to an
accomplished gentleman in those days.*
* Bishop Earle, speaking of the country gentleman of his
time, observes, “His housekeeping is seen much in the
different families of dogs and serving-men attendant on
their kennels; and the deepness of their throats is the
depth of his discourse. A hawk he esteems the true burden of
nobility, and is exceedingly ambitious to seem delighted
with the sport, and have his fist gloved with his jesses.”
And Gilpin, in his description of a Mr. Hastings, remarks,
“He kept all sorts of hounds that run buck, fox, hare,
otter, and badger; and had hawks of all kinds both long and
short winged. His great hall was commonly strewed with
marrow-bones, and full of hawk perches, hounds, spaniels,
and terriers. On a broad hearth, paved with brick, lay some
of the choicest terriers, hounds, and spaniels.”
I regretted to find that the ancient furniture of the hall had
disappeared; for I had hoped to meet with the stately elbow-chair of
carved oak in which the country squire of former days was wont to sway
the sceptre of empire over his rural domains, and in which it might be
presumed the redoubled Sir Thomas sat enthroned in awful state when
the recreant Shakespeare was brought before him. As I like to deck out
pictures for my own entertainment, I pleased myself with the idea that
this very hall had been the scene of the unlucky bard’s examination on
the morning after his captivity in the lodge. I fancied to myself the
rural potentate surrounded by his body-guard of butler, pages, and
blue-coated serving-men with their badges, while the luckless culprit
was brought in, forlorn and chopfallen, in the custody of gamekeepers,
huntsmen, and whippers-in, and followed by a rabble rout of country
clowns. I fancied bright faces of curious housemaids peeping from the
half-opened doors, while from the gallery the fair daughters of the
knight leaned gracefully forward, eyeing the youthful prisoner with that
pity “that dwells in womanhood.” Who would have thought that this poor
varlet, thus trembling before the brief authority of a country squire,
and the sport of rustic boors, was soon to become the delight of
princes, the theme of all tongues and ages, the dictator to the human
mind and was to confer immortality on his oppressor by a caricature and
a lampoon?
I was now invited by the butler to walk into the garden, and I felt
inclined to visit the orchard and harbor where the justice treated Sir
John Falstaff and Cousin Silence “to a last year’s pippin of his own
grafting, with a dish of caraways;” but I had already spent so much
of the day in my ramblings that I was obliged to give up any further
investigations. When about to take my leave I was gratified by the
civil entreaties of the housekeeper and butler that I would take some
refreshment--an instance of good old hospitality which, I grieve to say,
we castle-hunters seldom meet with in modern days. I make no doubt it is
a virtue which the present representative of the Lucys inherits from
his ancestors; for Shakespeare, even in his caricature, makes Justice
Shallow importunate in this respect, as witness his pressing instances
to Falstaff:
“By cock and pye, Sir, you shall not away to-night..... I will not
excuse you; you shall not be excused; excuses shall not be admitted;
there is no excuse shall serve; you shall not be excused.... Some
pigeons, Davy, a couple of short-legged hens; a joint of mutton; and any
pretty little tiny kickshaws, tell ‘William Cook.’”
I now bade a reluctant farewell to the old hall. My mind had become so
completely possessed by the imaginary scenes and characters connected
with it that I seemed to be actually living among them. Everything
brought them as it were before my eyes, and as the door of the
dining-room opened I almost expected to hear the feeble voice of Master
Silence quavering forth his favorite ditty:
“‘Tis merry in hall, when beards wag all,
And welcome merry Shrove-tide!”
On returning to my inn I could not but reflect on the singular gift of
the poet, to be able thus to spread the magic of his mind over the very
face of Nature, to give to things and places a charm and character
not their own, and to turn this “working-day world” into a perfect
fairy-land. He is indeed the true enchanter, whose spell operates,
not upon the senses, but upon the imagination and the heart. Under the
wizard influence of Shakespeare I had been walking all day in a complete
delusion. I had surveyed the landscape through the prism of poetry,
which tinged every object with the hues of the rainbow. I had been
surrounded with fancied beings, with mere airy nothings conjured up
by poetic power, yet which, to me, had all the charm of reality. I had
heard Jaques soliloquize beneath his oak; had beheld the fair Rosalind
and her companion adventuring through the woodlands; and, above all,
had been once more present in spirit with fat Jack Falstaff and his
contemporaries, from the august Justice Shallow down to the gentle
Master Slender and the sweet Anne Page. Ten thousand honors and
blessings on the bard who has thus gilded the dull realities of life
with innocent illusions, who has spread exquisite and unbought pleasures
in my chequered path, and beguiled my spirit in many a lonely hour with
all the cordial and cheerful sympathies of social life!
As I crossed the bridge over the Avon on my return, I paused to
contemplate the distant church in which the poet lies buried, and could
not but exult in the malediction which has kept his ashes undisturbed
in its quiet and hallowed vaults. What honor could his name have
derived from being mingled in dusty companionship with the epitaphs
and escutcheons and venal eulogiums of a titled multitude? What would
a crowded corner in Westminster Abbey have been, compared with this
reverend pile, which seems to stand in beautiful loneliness as his sole
mausoleum! The solitude about the grave may be but the offspring of
an overwrought sensibility; but human nature is made up of foibles and
prejudices, and its best and tenderest affections are mingled with these
factitious feelings. He who has sought renown about the world, and has
reaped a full harvest of worldly favor, will find, after all, that there
is no love, no admiration, no applause, so sweet to the soul as that
which springs up in his native place. It is there that he seeks to be
gathered in peace and honor among his kindred and his early friends. And
when the weary heart and failing head begin to warn him that the evening
of life is drawing on, he turns as fondly as does the infant to
the mother’s arms to sink to sleep in the bosom of the scene of his
childhood.
How would it have cheered the spirit of the youthful bard when,
wandering forth in disgrace upon a doubtful world, he cast back a heavy
look upon his paternal home, could he have foreseen that before many
years he should return to it covered with renown; that his name should
become the boast and glory of his native place; that his ashes should
be religiously guarded as its most precious treasure; and that its
lessening spire, on which his eyes were fixed in tearful contemplation,
should one day become the beacon towering amidst the gentle landscape to
guide the literary pilgrim of every nation to his tomb!
TRAITS OF INDIAN CHARACTER.
“I appeal to any white man if ever he entered Logan’s cabin hungry, and
he gave him not to eat; if ever he came cold and naked, and he clothed
him not.”--Speech of au Indian Chief.
THERE is something in the character and habits of the North American
savage, taken in connection with the scenery over which he is accustomed
to range, its vast lakes, boundless forests, majestic rivers, and
trackless plains, that is, to my mind, wonderfully striking and sublime.
He is formed for the wilderness, as the Arab is for the desert.
His nature is stern, simple, and enduring, fitted to grapple with
difficulties and to support privations. There seems but little soil in
his heart for the support of the kindly virtues; and yet, if we would
but take the trouble to penetrate through that proud stoicism
and habitual taciturnity which lock up his character from casual
observation, we should find him linked to his fellow-man of civilized
life by more of those sympathies and affections than are usually
ascribed to him.
It has been the lot of the unfortunate aborigines of America in the
early periods of colonization to be doubly wronged by the white men.
They have been dispossessed of their hereditary possessions by mercenary
and frequently wanton warfare, and their characters have been traduced
by bigoted and interested writers. The colonists often treated them like
beasts of the forest, and the author has endeavored to justify him
in his outrages. The former found it easier to exterminate than to
civilize; the latter to vilify than to discriminate. The appellations of
savage and pagan were deemed sufficient to sanction the hostilities
of both; and thus the poor wanderers of the forest were persecuted and
defamed, not because they were guilty, but because they were ignorant.
The rights of the savage have seldom been properly appreciated or
respected by the white man. In peace he has too often been the dupe of
artful traffic; in war he has been regarded as a ferocious animal whose
life or death was a question of mere precaution and convenience. Man
is cruelly wasteful of life when his own safety is endangered and he is
sheltered by impunity, and little mercy is to be expected from him
when he feels the sting of the reptile and is conscious of the power to
destroy.
The same prejudices, which were indulged thus early, exist in common
circulation at the present day. Certain learned societies have, it is
true, with laudable diligence, endeavored to investigate and record
the real characters and manners of the Indian tribes; the American
government, too, has wisely and humanely exerted itself to inculcate
a friendly and forbearing spirit towards them and to protect them from
fraud and injustice.* The current opinion of the Indian character,
however, is too apt to be formed from the miserable hordes which infest
the frontiers and hang on the skirts of the settlements. These are too
commonly composed of degenerate beings, corrupted and enfeebled by the
vices of society, without being benefited by its civilization. That
proud independence which formed the main pillar of savage virtue has
been shaken down, and the whole moral fabric lies in ruins. Their
spirits are humiliated and debased by a sense of inferiority, and their
native courage cowed and daunted by the superior knowledge and power of
their enlightened neighbors. Society has advanced upon them like one of
those withering airs that will sometimes breed desolation over a whole
region of fertility. It has enervated their strength, multiplied their
diseases, and superinduced upon their original barbarity the low vices
of artificial life. It has given them a thousand superfluous wants,
whilst it has diminished their means of mere existence. It has driven
before it the animals of the chase, who fly from the sound of the axe
and the smoke of the settlement and seek refuge in the depths of remoter
forests and yet untrodden wilds. Thus do we too often find the Indians
on our frontiers to be the mere wrecks and remnants of once powerful
tribes, who have lingered in the vicinity of the settlements and sunk
into precarious and vagabond existence. Poverty, repining and hopeless
poverty, a canker of the mind unknown in savage life, corrodes their