Though we seem led into a digression thus on setting out, it is well to lose no occasion of representing the kindness of heart in union with lightness of spirits and great simplicity of character which belongs to the common people, and of blending the expression of warm, and generous, and exalted affections with scenes and persons that are in themselves but lowly. Nevertheless, the name of this, the last road leading out of the forest, seems chosen with a view to avoid, as far as possible, leaving any impressions on the mind that are formidable or repulsive to that nature which is so powerful with us all; for there is nothing to raise a cloud in the smiling countenance of any one when he hears of the place of sleep, the cemetery, or of those who pass to it-transeuntium-as when the bodies of the kings of Spain were borne from Madrid to the Escurial in hearses on which was written "Transeuntibus ;" an expression adopted even by historians, as when William of Newbury proceeds to write De transitu Regis Scottorum *, meaning his journey to a better life. Poets say, "To one who has been long in city pent, 'Tis very sweet to look into the fair And open face of heaven." We in London at least think so, as our suburbs every evening in summer can bear witness. It is even sweet to take this pensive road of the tombs, and to see no other verdure than that to which it leads ; while amidst tall shrubs one searches about through wavy grass, and reads some gentle tale of love. and sorrow. Though the first thought may have been only to saunter through the lane, up hill, and across the green, toying by each bank and trifling at each stile till we can frolic it within the woods, following the nimble-footed youth, who, as on the day of the Holy Rood in former times, are all wont upon some holiday to take their way a-nutting; it is often a second thought to visit the encompassed close adjoining, "seen but by few, and perhaps blushing to be seen;" for there is nothing to mar that sweet gaiety which seems unacquainted with grief in passing near the graceful sculptured buildings which line the sunny walks, adorned with laurels, eglantine, and cypress spires. Sunshine makes us all courageous, and here is added even the charm of the arts. An oracle of Apollo spoke of those heroes on the banks of the Asopus, whose tombs are lighted by the setting sun; and without attending to any such fabled admonition, it is certainly a beautiful thing in autumn to see the roseate light of evening warming the marble with a glance of gold, while the yellow leaves are carried off by the wind, causing these tombs to * ii. 18. glitter through the grove. No one, then, need feel repugnance here to proceed; for young men and maidens, who by no means smell of the grave, and who know as yet too little of life to think of death, in the days of their love's enchantment, when every thing looked bright wherever they in their gladness roved, have often, as at Norwood, where the Rambler's Rest attracted them, turned aside first and entered the verdant enclosure to explore the sepulchres, moved with pity and delight, breathing perhaps with a blush some name that before had never passed the lips, while talking of their friends or kinsfolk, and telling some little sad tale of brother Harry or their sister Anne, whose bones are there long mingled with their native clay, and from each of whose graves they seem to think a voice can be heard, saying, "Thus let my memory be with you, friends! Thus ever think of me! Kindly and gently, but as of one For whom 'tis well to be fled and gone- As of a wanderer whose home is found." It has been remarked as an "exquisite and beautiful thing in our nature, that when the heart is touched and softened by some tranquil happiness or affectionate feeling, the memory of the dead comes over it most powerfully and irresistibly." So it is felt here. These young women of the common people, whom Richardson describes when relating how he used to write letters for them in answer to their lovers, one of whom, when asked to indite, said, "I cannot tell you what to write, but," her heart on her lips, "you cannot write too kindly," seem to have quite a predilection for reading tumular inscriptions, which, to say the truth, can be made to accord easily with sweet love-anthologies and songs of the affections; for oh! how many disappointed hopes, how many tender recollections, how much of generosity and affection, are implied in many of the simple words that meet our eyes in this place, where Love might be represented kneeling at the feet of some sleeping figure, his smart bow broken; Faith at the head; Youth and the Graces mourners. The lines for the epitaph, without being necessarily exclusive of highest thoughts, might stand as of old, 66 Qui nunc jacet horrida pulvis, Unius hic quondam servus amoris erat." In one of our old plays, Cleanthes, while taking such a walk as this, says, "I wonder whence that tear came, when I smiled In the production on't; sorrow's a thief That can, when joy looks on, steal forth a grief." * Mrs. Hemans. Such might be the remark now, observing thus "the tear forgot as soon as shed, the sunshine of the breast," the pensive stroll where hearts keep company, each finding in the other a harbour for its rest. "What a fine instrument the human heart is!" exclaims an English author. “Who shall fathom it? Who shall sound it from its lowest note to the top of its compass? Who shall put his hand among the strings and explain their wayward music? The heart alone, when touched by sympathy, trembles and responds to their hidden meaning." Whether it be that Love is known to be no inhabitant of earth, and therefore to be associated with the memory of those who are no longer of it, or from a consciousness that it is with cypress branches Love has wreathed its bower, making its best interpreter a sigh; or from observing that love and death do not much differ, since they both make all things equal; or that in a place of mirth there is no room for love's laments, since either men possess or else forget; or that joy itself must have some tragedy in it, else it will never please; or that as Of human life must spring from woman's breast, Of watching the last hour of him who led them,' and therefore woman's love and death are in the mind associated; or whether the fact results from some inexplicable connexion which needs a sciential brain to trace disparting bliss from its neighbour pain, defining their pettish limits, and estranging their points of contact,-one who in Love's own college has spent sweet days a graduate may be heard bidding us remark, how it is near or among the tombs that those who love each other, and to whom even the blue skies seem fairer because they love, often keep their guileless tryst "Only to meet again more close, and share The inward fragrance of each other's heart, Unknown of any, free from suspicious eyes." Hark to the sweet voice which whispers, "I am attended at the cypress grove south of the city.” What hast thou to do with tombs or those who come from deathbeds, funerals or tears? Hast thou prepared weak nature to digest a sight so much distasteful? Hast seared thy conscience? The rich and stately, who do not gratify one's predilection for happy faces, who are but marble in their sense, and whose hearts are often more heavy than a tyrant's crown, may have only a suspicious answer; and truly, standing as we do where death so eloquently, and yet mildly, proclaims the equality of us all, this is an occasion when One some one may exclaim with a celebrated writer," Would that I lived more among the people!" Would that some at least of my friends were among those who, in order to borrow a little money, have not, like Marie d'Anjou, wife of Charles VII., their own valet-de-chambre to apply to, and who can count on obtaining all they want by leaving only in his hands a Bible in pledge, as that queen wrote, saying, "pour laquelle somme lui avons baillé et gaigé nostre Bible *;" but who have to strip their poor chest of drawers and their whitewashed walls of nearly every thing, and repair with it all to a stranger, and who, in fact, have always half their clothes and furniture at his shop, or, as they tell us smilingly, "at their uncle's." It is strange that the amiable author of Men and Manners should say, dissuading some one from forming acquaintance with the poor, "Persons in an inferior station to yourself will doubt your good intentions and misapprehend your plainest expressions. All that you swear to them is a riddle or downright nonsense. You cannot by possibility translate your thoughts into their dialect. They will be ignorant of the meaning of half you say, and laugh at the rest.” can understand certainly that a metaphysician or a sophist, who must be proclaiming his thoughts to all the world, will not be likely to please any of the people who can have no feelings or tastes in common with such transcendental individuals; but let a man be only natural, and content to pass for a son of Adam, and however soft they may find his hands, or high they may suspect his birth to be, he is one of themselves in an instant, and entitled to all the privileges that they can confer. Now, as companions," says the author of Sibyl, "independent of every thing else, they are superior to any that I have been used to. They feel and they think. If they do want our conventional discipline, they have a native breeding which far excels it. Compared with their converse, the tattle of our saloons has in it something humiliating. It is not merely that it is deficient in warmth, and depth, and breadth; that it is always discussing persons and cloaking its want of thought in mimetic dogmas, and its want of feeling in superficial raillery; it is not merely that it has neither imagination, nor fancy, nor sentiment, nor feeling, nor knowledge to recommend it; but it appears, even as regards manner and expression, inferior in refinement and phraseology." Curran said truly that "the judgment despises it and the heart renounces it." Now, all this has an immediate relation to our present subject; for, as Lord Jeffrey observes, in allusion to one of Crabbe's poems, "We cannot conceive any walk of gentlemen and ladies made for drawing-rooms, all being in the whistling of their snatch-up silks that should furnish out such a picture as is fur * P. Clement.-Jacques Coeur, Etud. hist. nished here;" but the simple, deeply-feeling, merry, and yet thoughtful common people, who form, happily, the far greater part of our fellow-creatures, the spirit of whose women can bear up against more than all the philosophers can master, each of whose sons and daughters-" cui sæpe immundo Sacra conteritur Via socco," as the old poet says-of imperturbable good temper, and an unconscious practical philosophy that defies care and all its works, has tears of pity as readily as laughter in soft eyes, will sometimes take a walk like this without either insensibility or gloom. Their melancholy and their mirth become them equally. Their sadness is a kind of mirth, so mingled as if mirth did make them sad, and sadness merry; those darker humours that stick misbecomingly on others, on them live in fair dwelling. Many a pair of such friends will pass an evening hour thus deliciously, though it may deserve, perhaps, to be written in red letters in their future history; for one of the parties in each may have gained another revelation of the beauty and excellence of woman's character, ever potent, in all ranks of life, to mould our destiny; since it still continues true, what Strabo says every one knows, that women are more religious than men, and that they invite men to pay more attention to divine things, to observe festivals and to make supplications, and that it is rare for a man who lives all alone by himself to care for any thing of the sort, σπάνιον δ ̓ εἴ τις ἀνὴρ καθ ̓ αὑτὸν ζῶν εὑρίσκεται τοιοῦτος *. Men seem to regard this indifference as arguing a masculine character; women know better. The "eye-judging sex" have more tact and insight into character than men; as Hazlitt says, they find out a pedant, a pretender, a blockhead sooner." The explanation is, that they trust more to the first impressions and natural indications of things, as to physiognomy, without troubling themselves with a learned theory of them. 66 "O women! that some one of you would take And grave in paper (which the writ shall make Your matchless virtues to posterities; Which the defective race of envious man Woman often has need, like Juliet, of many orisons to move the * Lib. vii. 4. |