WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. ESSEX AND SPENSER. (FROM "IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS," PUBLISHED IN 1840.) Essex. WHY weepest thou, my gentle Spenser? Have the rebels sacked thy house? Spenser. They have plundered and utterly destroyed it. Essex. How? I have heard it reported that thy grounds are fertile, and thy mansion large and pleasant. Spenser. If river and lake, and meadow-ground and mountain, could render any place the abode of pleasantness, pleasant was mine indeed. On the lovely banks of Mulla I found deep contentment. Under the dark alders did I muse and meditate. Innocent hopes were my gravest cares, and my playfullest fancy was with kindly wishes. Ah! surely of all cruelties the worst is to extinguish our kindness. Mine is gone; I love the people and land no longer. My lord, ask me not about them; I may speak injuriously. Essex. Think rather then of thy happier hours and busier occupations; these likewise may instruct me. Spenser. The first seeds I sowed in the garden, ere the old castle was made habitable for my lovely bride, were acorns from Penshurst. I planted a little oak before my mansion at the birth of each child. My sons, I said to myself, shall often play in the shade of them when I am gone, and every year shall take the measure of their growth as fondly as I take theirs. Essex. Well, well; but let not this thought make thee weep so bitterly. Spenser. Poison may ooze from beautiful plants; deadly (1) Almost every possible grace and attraction of fine writing are employed by Landor in his various works. There are few subjects that he does not touch, none that he does not adorn by his touch. Yet he cannot be called popular. The great fault seems to be his inability to make a perfect whole; the parts, however are often very striking and effective. Another drawback is the suspicion one feels of his perfect sincerity. He often seems, as it were, to keep studiously outside his subject himself, even when he is recommending it to others. The melancholy grace, however, of the above dialogue cannot but charm every reader. grief from dearest reminiscences. I must grieve, I must weep; it seems the law of God, and the only one that men are not disposed to contravene. In the performance of this alone do they effectually aid one another. Essex. Spenser! I wish I had at hand any argument or persuasions of force sufficient to remove thy sorrow; but really I am not in the habit of seeing men grieve at anything, except the loss of favour at court, or of a hawk, or of a buck-hound, and were I to swear out my condolences to a man of thy discernment, in the same round roll-call phrases we employ with one another upon these occasions, I should be guilty, not of insincerity, but of insolence. True grief hath ever something sacred in it; and when it visiteth a wise man, and a brave one, is most holy. Nay, kiss not my hand; he whom God smiteth hath God with him. In his presence what am I? Spenser. Never so great, my lord, as at this hour, when you see aright who is greater. May he guide your counsels and preserve your glory! Essex. Where are thy friends; are they with thee? Spenser. Ah, where, indeed! Generous, true-hearted Philip! where art thou? whose presence was unto me peace and safety whose smile was contentment, and whose praise renown. My lord, I cannot but think of him among still heavier losses: he was my earliest friend, and would have taught me wisdom. Essex. Pastoral poetry, my dear Spenser, doth not require tears and lamentations. Dry thine eyes, rebuild thine house: the queen and council, I venture to promise thee, will make ample amends for every evil thou hast sustained. What, does that enforce thee to wail yet louder ? Spenser. Pardon me, bear with me, most noble heart! I have lost what no council, no queen, no Essex, can restore. Essex. We will see that. There are other swords, and other arms to wield them, beside a Leicester's and a Raleigh's. Others can crush their enemies and serve their friends. Spenser. O my sweet child! And of many so powerful, many so wise and so beneficent, was there none to save thee? None! none ! Essex. I now perceive that thou lamentest what almost every father is destined to lament. Happiness must be bought, although the payment may be delayed. Consider; the same calamity might have befallen thee here in London. Neither the houses of ambassadors, nor the palaces of kings, nor the altars of God himself, are asylums against death. How do I know but under this very roof there may sleep some latent calamity, that in an instant shall cover with gloom every inmate of the house, and every far dependent? Spenser. God avert it! Essex. Every day, every hour of the year, do hundreds mourn what thou mournest. Spenser. Oh, no, no, no! Calamities there are around us; calamities there are all over the earth; calamities there are in all seasons; but none in any season, none in any place, like mine. Essex. So say all fathers, so say all husbands. Look at any old mansion-house, and let the sun shine as gloriously as it may on the golden vanes, or the arms recently quartered over the gateway, or the embayed window, and on the happy pair that haply is toying at it; nevertheless, thou mayst say that of a certainty the same fabric hath seen much sorrow within its chambers, and heard many wailings: and each time this was the heaviest stroke of all. Funerals have passed along through the stout-hearted knights upon the wainscot, and amid the laughing nymphs upon the arras. Old servants have shaken their heads as if somebody had deceived them, when they found that beauty and nobility could perish. Edmund! the things that are too true pass by us as if they were not true at all; and when they have singled us out, then only do they strike us. Thou and I must go too. Perhaps the next year may blow us away with its fallen leaves. Spenser. For you, my lord, many years (I trust) are waiting. I never shall see those fallen leaves. No leaf, no bud, will spring upon the earth before I sink into her breast for ever. Essex. Thou, who art wiser than most men, shouldst bear with patience, equanimity, and courage, what is common to all. Spenser. Enough! enough! enough! Have all men seen their infant burned to ashes before their eyes? Essex. Gracious God! Merciful Father, what is this? Spenser. Burned alive! burned to ashes! burned to ashes! The flames dart their serpent-tongues through the nursery window. I cannot quit thee, my Elizabeth! I cannot lay down our Edmund. Oh, these flames! they persecute, they enthrall me, they curl round my temples, they hiss upon my brain, they taunt me with their fierce, foul voices, they carp at me, they wither me, they consume me, throwing back to me a little of life to roll and suffer in, with their fangs upon me. Ask me, my lord, the things you wish to know from me; I may answer them; I am now composed again. Command me, my gracious lord! I would yet serve you; soon I shall be unable. You have stooped to raise me up; you have borne with me; you have pitied me, even like one not powerful; you have brought comfort, and will leave it with me; for gratitude is comfort. Oh! my memory stands all a tip-toe in one burning point: when it drops from it, then it perishes. Spare me ask me nothing; let me weep before you in peace, the kindest act of greatness. Essex. I should rather have dared to mount into the midst of the conflagration than I now dare entreat thee not to weep. The tears that overflow thy heart, my Spenser, will staunch and heal it in their sacred stream, but not without hope in God. Spenser. My hope in God is that I may soon see again what he has taken from me. Amid the myriads of angels there is not one so beautiful: and even he (if there be any) who is appointed my guardian, could never love me so. Ah! these are idle thoughts, vain wanderings, distempered dreams. If there ever were guardian angels, he who so wanted one, my helpless boy, would not have left these arms upon my knees. Essex. God help and sustain thee too, gentle Spenser! I never will desert thee. But what am I? Great they have called me! Alas! how powerless, then, and infantile is greatness in the presence of calamity! Come, give me thy hand: let us walk up and down the gallery. Bravely done! I will envy no more a Sidney or a Raleigh. ALEXANDER WILLIAM KINGLAKE.1 THE VILLAGE BELLS HEARD IN THE DESERT. (FROM "EÖTHEN," PUBLISHED IN 1840.) ON the fifth day of my journey the air above lay dead, and all the whole earth that I could reach with my utmost sight and keenest listening was dull and lifeless, as some dispeopled and (1) That Kinglake is a powerful writer, the above extract-which has counterparts by the score in his "Eöthen," and other writings-sufficiently shows. That he is always judicious and tasteful, either in skill or matter, will not be maintained with equal tenacity. forgotten world, that rolls round and round in the heavens through wasted floods of light. The sun, growing fiercer and fiercer, shone down more mightily now than ever on me he shone before, and, as I drooped my head under his fire, and closed my eyes against the glare that surrounded me, I slowly fell asleep—for how many minutes or moments I cannot tell; but after awhile I was gently awakened by a peal of church bells—my native bells-the innocent bells of Marlen, that never before sent forth their music beyond the Blaygon Hills! My first idea naturally was that I still remained fast under the power of a dream. I roused myself, and drew aside the silk that covered my eyes, and plunged my bare face into the light. Then, at least, I was well enough wakened; but still those old Marlen bells rang on, not ringing for joy, but properly, prosily, steadily, merrily ringing "for church." After awhile the sound died away slowly; it happened that neither I nor any of my party had a watch by which to measure the exact time of its lasting; but it seemed to me that about ten minutes had passed before the bells ceased. I attributed the effect to the great heat of the sun, the perfect dryness of the clear air through which I moved, and the deep stillness of all around me; it seemed to me that these causes, by occasioning a great tension, and consequent susceptibility of the hearing organs, had rendered them liable to tingle under the passing touch of some mere memory that must have swept across my brain in a moment of sleep. Since my return to England, it has been told me that like sounds have been heard at sea, and that the sailor, becalmed under a vertical sun in the midst of the wide ocean, has listened in trembling wonder to the chime of his own village bells. ARTHUR HELPS. AIDS TO CONTENTMENT.1 (FROM ESSAYS WRITTEN IN THE INTERVALS OF BUSINESS," CONTENTMENT abides with truth. You will generally suffer for wishing to appear other than what you are; whether it be (1) The passages above do not perhaps represent the originality, but they do the refinement and taste, of the author's mind. He owes much, no doubt, to the |