Читать книгу: «Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No.307», страница 3

I arrived at Southampton by the night-coach – the railway was but just begun, I remember – and was informed that the best mode of reaching Beaulieu – Bewley, they pronounced it – was by crossing the Southampton river to the village of Hythe, which was but a few miles distance from Beaulieu. As soon as I had breakfasted, I hastened to the quay, and was soon speeding across the tranquil waters in one of the sharp-stemmed wherries which plied constantly between the shores. My attention was soon arrested by two figures in the stern of the boat, a man and woman. A slight examination of their features sufficed to convince me that they were Jones and his wife. They evidently entertained no suspicion of pursuit; and as I heard them tell the boatmen they were going on to Bewley, I determined for the present not to disturb their fancied security. It was fortunate I did so. As soon as we had landed, they passed into a mean-looking dwelling, which, from some nets, and a boat under repair, in a small yard in front of it, I concluded to be a fisherman's. As no vehicle could be readily procured, I determined on walking on, and easily reached Beaulieu, which is charmingly situated just within the skirts of the New Forest, about twelve o'clock. After partaking of a slight repast at the principal inn of the place – I forget its name; but it was, I remember, within a stone's-throw of the celebrated Beaulieu Abbey ruins – I easily contrived, by a few careless, indirect questions, to elicit all the information I required of the loquacious waiting-maid. Mr Lloyd, who seemed to bear an excellent character, lived, I was informed, at a cottage about half a mile distant from the inn, and chiefly supported himself as a measurer of timber – beech and ash: a small stock – the oak was reserved for government purposes – he usually kept on hand. Miss Caroline, the girl said, did beautiful fancy-work; and a group of flowers painted by her, as natural as life, was framed and glazed in the bar, if I would like to see it. Upon the right track sure enough! Mr Lloyd, there could be no longer a doubt, had unconsciously betrayed his unfortunate, guilty brother into the hands of justice, and I, an agent of the iron law, was already upon the threshold of his hiding-place! I felt no pleasure at the success of the scheme. To have bravely and honestly stood up against an adverse fate for so many years, only to fall into crime just as fortune had grown weary of persecuting him, and a long-estranged brother had returned to raise him and his to their former position in society, was melancholy indeed! And the young woman too, whose letter breathed so pure, so gentle, so patient a spirit! – it would not bear thinking about – and I resolutely strove to look upon the affair as one of everyday routine. It would not, do, however; and I was about to quit the room in no very enviable frame of mind, when my boat companions, Mr and Mrs Jones, entered, and seated themselves at one of the tables. The apartment was rather a large one, and as I was seated in the corner of a box at some distance from the entrance, they did not at first observe me; and several words caught my ear which awakened a strong desire to hear more. That I might do so, I instantly adopted a very common, but not the less often very successful device. As soon as the new-comers perceived me, their whispered colloquy stopped abruptly; and after a minute or so, the man said, looking hard at me, 'Good-day, sir; you have had rather a long walk?' and he glanced at my dusty boots.

'Sir,' I replied, enclosing my left ear with my hand in the manner of a natural ear-trumpet, 'did you speak?'

'A dusty walk,' he rejoined in a voice that might have been heard in a hurricane or across Fleet Street.

'One o'clock!' I replied, pulling out my watch. 'No: it wants a quarter yet.'

'Deaf as the Monument,' said Jones to his companion. 'All right.'

The suspended dialogue was but partially resumed.

'Do you think,' said the woman, after the lapse of about five minutes – 'do you think Owen and his family will go with us? I hope not.'

'Not he: I only asked him just for the say-so of the thing. He is too chicken-hearted for that, or for anything else that requires pluck.'

Finishing the spirits and water they had ordered, they soon afterwards went out. I followed.

As soon as we had gone about a hundred paces from the house, I said, 'Pray can you tell me which is Mr Lloyd the beech-merchant's house?'

'Yes,' replied the man, taking hold of my arm, and hallooing into my ear with a power sufficient to really deafen one for life: 'we are going there to dine.'

I nodded comprehension, and on we journeyed. We were met at the door by Owen Lloyd himself – a man in whose countenance guilelessness, even to simplicity, seemed stamped by nature's own true hand. So much, thought I, for the reliance to be placed on physiognomy! 'I have brought you a customer,' said Mr Jones; 'but he is as deaf as a stone.' I was courteously invited in by signs; and with much hallooing and shouting, it was finally settled that, after dinner, I should look over Mr Lloyd's stock of wood. Dinner had just been placed on the table by Mrs Lloyd and her daughter. A still very comely, interesting woman was Mrs Lloyd, though time and sorrow had long since set their unmistakeable seals upon her. Her daughter was, I thought, one of the most charming, graceful young women I had ever seen, spite of the tinge of sadness which dwelt upon her sweet face, deepening its interest if it somewhat diminished its beauty. My heart ached to think of the misery the announcement of my errand must presently bring on such gentle beings – innocent, I felt confident, even of the knowledge of the crime that had been committed. I dreaded to begin – not, Heaven knows, from any fear of the men, who, compared with me, were poor, feeble creatures, and I could easily have mastered half-a-dozen such; but the females – that young girl especially – how encounter their despair? I mutely declined dinner, but accepted a glass of ale, and sat down till I could muster sufficient resolution for the performance of my task; for I felt this was an opportunity of quietly effecting the capture of both the suspected criminals which must not be neglected.

Dinner was just over when Mrs Lloyd said, 'Oh, Mr Jones, have you seen anything of my husband's pocket-book? It was on a shelf in the room where you slept – not the last time, but when you were here about three weeks ago. We can find it nowhere; and I thought you might possibly have taken it by mistake.'

'A black, common-looking thing?' said Jones.

'Yes.'

'I did take it by mistake. I found it in one of my parcels, and put it in my pocket, intending of course to return it when I came back; but I remember, when wanting to open a lock of which I had lost the key, taking it out to see if it contained a pencil-case which I thought might answer the purpose; and finding none, tossing it away in a pet, I could not afterwards find it.'

'Then it is lost?'

'Yes; but what of that? There was nothing in it.'

'You are mistaken,' rejoined Owen; 'there was a five-pound country note in it, and the loss will – What is the matter, friend?'

I had sprung upon my feet with uncontrollable emotion: Mr Lloyd's observation recalled me to myself, and I sat down again, muttering something about a sudden pain in the side.

'Oh, if that's the case,' said Jones, 'I'll make it up willingly. I am pretty rich, you know, just now.'

'We shall be much obliged to you,' said Mrs Lloyd; 'its loss would be a sad blow to us.'

'How came you to send those heavy boxes here, Jones?' said Owen Lloyd. 'Would it not have been better to have sent them direct to Portsmouth, where the vessel calls?'

'I had not quite made up my mind to return to America then; and I knew they would be safer here than anywhere else.'

'When do you mean to take them away? We are so badly off for room, that they terribly hamper us.'

'This evening, about nine o'clock. I have hired a smack at Hythe to take us, bag and baggage, down the river to meet the liner which calls off Portsmouth to-morrow. I wish we could persuade you to go with us.'

'Thank you, Jones,' replied Owen in a dejected tone. 'I have very little to hope for here; still my heart clings to the old country.'

I had heard enough; and hastily rising, intimated a wish to look at the timber at once. Mr Lloyd immediately rose, and Jones and his wife left the cottage to return to Hythe at the same time that we did. I marked a few pieces of timber, and promising to send for them in the morning, hastened away.

A mountain seemed removed from off my breast: I felt as if I had achieved a great personal deliverance. Truly a wonderful interposition of Providence, I thought, that has so signally averted the fatal consequences likely to have resulted from the thoughtless imprudence of Owen Lloyd, in allowing his house to be made, however innocently, a receptacle for stolen goods, at the solicitations, too, of a man whose character he knew to be none of the purest. He had had a narrow escape, and might with perfect truth exclaim —

 
'There's a Divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough-hew them how we will.'
 

The warrants of which I was the bearer the London police authorities had taken care to get indorsed by a magistrate of the county of Hampshire, who happened to be in London, so that I found no difficulty in arranging effectually for the capture and safe custody of Jones and his assistants when he came to fetch his booty.

I had just returned to the Beaulieu inn, after completing my arrangements, when a carriage drove furiously up to the door, and who should, to my utter astonishment, alight, but Mr William Lloyd, and Messrs Smith, father and son. I hastened out, and briefly enjoining caution and silence, begged them to step with me into a private room. The agitation of Mr Lloyd and of Mr Arthur Smith was extreme, but Mr Smith appeared cold and impassive as ever. I soon ascertained that Arthur Smith, by his mother's assistance, I suspect, had early penetrated his father's schemes and secrets, and had, in consequence, caused Mr William Lloyd to be watched home, with whom, immediately after I had left, he had a long conference. Later in the evening an éclaircissement with the father took place; and after a long and stormy discussion, it was resolved that all three should the next morning post down to Beaulieu, and act as circumstances might suggest. My story was soon told. It was received of course with unbounded joy by the brother and the lover; and even through the father's apparent indifference I could perceive that his refusal to participate in the general joy would not be of long duration. The large fortune which Mr William Lloyd intimated his intention to bestow upon his niece was a new and softening element in the affair.

Mr Smith, senior, ordered his dinner; and Mr Lloyd and Arthur Smith – but why need I attempt to relate what they did? I only know that when, a long time afterwards, I ventured to look in at Mr Owen Lloyd's cottage, all the five inmates – brother, uncle, lover, niece, and wife – were talking, laughing, weeping, smiling, like distracted creatures, and seemed utterly incapable of reasonable discourse. An hour after that, as I stood screened by a belt of forest-trees in wait for Mr Jones and company, I noticed, as they all strolled past me in the clear moonlight, that the tears, the agitation had passed away, leaving only smiles and grateful joy on the glad faces so lately clouded by anxiety and sorrow. A mighty change in so brief a space!

Mr Jones arrived with his cart and helpers in due time. A man who sometimes assisted in the timber-yard was deputed, with an apology for the absence of Mr Lloyd, to deliver the goods. The boxes, full of plate and other valuables, were soon hoisted in, and the cart moved off. I let it proceed about a mile, and then, with the help I had placed in readiness, easily secured the astounded burglar and his assistants; and early the next morning Jones was on his road to London. He was tried at the ensuing Old-Bailey sessions, convicted, and transported for life; and the discretion I had exercised in not executing the warrant against Owen Lloyd was decidedly approved of by the authorities.

It was about two months after my first interview with Mr Smith that, on returning home one evening, my wife placed before me a piece of bride-cake, and two beautifully-engraved cards united with white satin ribbon, bearing the names of Sir and Mrs Arthur Smith. I was more gratified by this little act of courtesy for Emily's sake, as those who have temporarily fallen from a certain position in society will easily understand, than I should have been by the costliest present. The service I had rendered was purely accidental: it has nevertheless been always kindly remembered by all parties whom it so critically served.

RUINS

Everything is mutable, everything is perishable around us. The forms of nature and the works of art alike crumble away; and amid the gigantic forms that surround it, the soul of man is alone immortal. Knowledge itself ebbs and flows like the changing sea, and art has become extinct in regions where it earliest flourished. Kingdoms that once gave law to the nations, figure no more in the world's history, leaving nothing but a name, and Ruins.

Most of the ruins of the ancient world are remarkable as monuments of a political element now happily extinct. They are emblems of that despotic rule which, in the early history of mankind, was well-nigh universal; which delighted in rearing immense structures, like the Pyramids, of little utility, but requiring an enormous expenditure of labour; and contrasted with the capriciousness and violence of which, the most arbitrary of modern governments is liberty itself. But such ruins not only teach us to be grateful to Heaven for the blessings of political freedom, but reveal to us glimpses of a past which, but for them, would remain veiled in obscurity. By a right use of them we discover, more or less perfectly, the history and the customs of races long dead. Buried Herculaneum, once more given back to the sunbeams, reveals to us the domestic life of ancient Rome; the hieroglyphics of Egypt, the paintings and sculptures of Nineveh, tell us stories of their kings, and show us symbols of their splendour. What geology is to us in relation to the early earth, such are ruins in regard to its human habitants: they are their history in stone.

There is a peculiar grandeur and impressiveness in the ruins which date from the era of the old universal monarchies. So many centuries have rolled away since then, conquest and desolation have so often swept over their territories, and tyranny so decimated their inhabitants, that among them Decay assumes a grander form than elsewhere in the world. It is not single edifices dilapidated that meet our view, but whole cities desolate – whole cities so crumbled into dust, that the very sites of some of the greatest of ancient capitals have slipped from the world's memory. Egypt, Greece, Persia, the Assyrian realm, are great names, once filling earth with their glory, now all but obliterated from the roll of nations. We enter the regions where once sat those old Queens of the East, and look for some reflection of former greatness still lingering on the brows of the inhabitants. We look in vain. Cities are mean; poverty is everywhere; man is degraded, nature half desolate, and the testimony of our senses makes us sceptical as to the truth of history. But search yet further, and lo! silent and inanimate witnesses for the dead rise around. Amid the solitude and the desert, pillar and obelisk, palace and temple, cities immense even in their ruins, mark how the barren sands were once a garden, and the solitude was peopled by busy myriads. Those shattered colonnades, those fallen capitals and mutilated statues, once rose above the dwellings of Hundred-gated Thebes; those mounds of rubbish, now shunned even by the wild Bedouin, cover the wondrous relics of Nineveh; those silent mountains that look down on the lone, ruin-covered plain of Merdusht, once echoed back the shouts of royal Persepolis. Ruins are the voice of past ages chiding the present for its degeneracy. They are like sea-ware on the shore at low water, marking how high the tide of civilisation once rose.

When we consider the remote period at which such edifices were constructed, we are at first surprised by two qualities which they exhibit, sometimes united, sometimes apart – magnitude and beauty. Magnitude always exerts a great influence on the senses; and without seeking to explain how such an effect is produced, it is evident from history that an admiration of the colossal is especially characteristic of the human mind in the early stages of its development. Accordingly, and perhaps also from a recollection of gigantic works before the Flood, the first undertaking of the united race of Postdiluvians was the vastly-imagined Tower of Babel. The first family of man in Europe – the Pelasgi – mute and inglorious in everything else, have left samples of an enormous architecture, whose ruins to this day exist under the title of Cyclopean. This peculiarity is not confined to the shores of the Mediterranean. In the remote East, and in the long undiscovered regions of the West, in Ceylon and in Mexico, the aboriginal races have left their sole memorials in similar masses of masonry. With them size seems to have been everything; it was magnitude which then fascinated the imagination. Even when men are well advanced in civilisation, the same spirit is perceptible among them, and a love of exaggeration, the frequent use of hyperbole, characterises the early literature of all nations.

From the exquisite beauty of much of the architecture, poetry, and sculpture that have come down to us from antiquity, the singular fact is apparent, that the fine arts reached perfection at a time when those conducive to the material comforts were still in infancy. In those days the race of man was yet young; and youth in the species, as in the individual, is the season of the Beautiful. It was a lively love and susceptibility to the charms of nature that peopled the woods and waters, the sunny skies and the sparkling sea, with deities in sympathy with man – that saw in the rainbow a messenger from heaven to earth, and in the thunder of the tempest the wrath of the Most High. The vague ever excites interest; and the mysterious phenomena of nature contributed to fix their attention on her aspects, and consequently on her beauties. Cœlum and Terra, heaven and earth – in one word, Nature was the great goddess of paganism. She was the great parent of their Pantheon – from her all other gods drew birth; they were personifications of her powers, and, till the days of the Greeks, it was under forms of her that they were worshipped. This susceptibility to beauty in nature was the parent of the beautiful in art. In stone, in bronze, on the canvas, they strove to reproduce the perfection of form that they beheld in select nature – to attain the same harmony of parts – and thus to awaken in the beholder corresponding emotions of pleasure. Thus art, in different countries, varied with the aspects of nature. The monotonous vastness and horizontal lines of the scenery of Egypt, find a counterpart in the heavy and monotonous grandeur of its temples; and the unhandsome features of its inhabitants, in the half-Negro faces of its gods. In Greece, on the other hand, the variety in its architecture corresponds with the varied aspects of the country; and its exquisite sculpture is but a reflection of the noble lineaments of the people. The showy prettiness of Chinese decoration is typical of the Flowery Realm; and from the exuberance of animal life in Central Asia, springs the profusion of animal forms in the sculpture and architecture of India, Persia, and Assyria.

External circumstances also then fostered genius in architecture. Splendour was the glory of the kings of those days – partly from taste, but not less so from necessity. The moral faculties of their subjects were too weak to be alone regarded: their senses had to be appealed to. As, during the Heroic Age, the king distinguished himself from his army by his valour in the field, so, during peace, he had to distinguish himself from his subjects by his magnificence. The royal mansion, constructed of enduring granite or shining marble, represented the visibility of power; and the people felt that they could as soon shake the globe as overturn the lord of so much might: hence the palaces of Persia. Religion, too, availed herself of like means of impressing the unspiritual mind of the people; while superstition imagined that the gods were pleased by the splendour of the temples reared for their worship. Hence the stupendous temples of Luxor and Carnac, with their huge ornamented propylæ, and far-stretching avenues of pillars and sphinxes – and the countless other sacred structures of Egypt, whose very ruins have all but perished: hence, too, the rock-temples of Ellora and Elephanta, where the labour of the worshippers has hollowed out of the mountain rock a mansion for their deity, and has sculptured its sides with groups from Hindoo mythology. Even in the New World traces of a similar spirit are to be found; and doubtless the vast ruins recently discovered in Yucatan were designed to magnify the worship of the great sun-god of the ancient Indians.

The noblest source from which architecture can proceed was pre-eminently exhibited in the republics of Greece. The exalted race that peopled that favoured land had passed the stage of intellectual development in which magnitude is the chief object of admiration; and among them the great object of desire was beauty, and their chief characteristic was the love of the beautiful. Among them Despotism was not seen building palaces to exhibit its own glory; it was a people gratifying an elevating passion, and, while doing so, voluntarily adding majesty to the state. Simple and unostentatious in their private dwellings, they lavished genius and splendour in the construction of their public buildings; for the state was but a concentration of themselves, and in its glory they felt they were all partakers. Nevertheless they desired beauty more for itself than for its concomitant splendour; and even in religion they were less worshippers of heaven than adorers of the beautiful. It is the loftiest of delights to say to the beautiful – 'I am thy Maker!' and when kneeling before the matchless statues of their gods, the Greeks rather gloried in them as divine creations of their genius, than humbled themselves before them as emblems of their deities. Favoured by blood and climate, by the character of their country, and the advent to its shores of all the knowledge of the old East – the Greeks had a noble career before them; and well did they fulfil their destiny. Genius and power have long departed from the descendants of that lordly race; but mankind still flock to the Hellenic strand to gaze on the divine relics of the past. The sun of Greece has long set – but the land is still radiant with her ruins.