第9章

Pretty D--The venerable church-The stricken heart-Dormant energies-The small packet-Nerves-The books-A picture-Mountain-like billows-The footprint-Spirit of De Foe-Reasoning powers-Terrors of God-Heads of the dragons-High-Church clerk-A journey-The drowned country.

AND when I was between six and seven years of age we were once more at D-,the place of my birth,whither my father had been despatched on the recruiting service.I have already said that it was a beautiful little town-at least it was at the time of which I am speaking-what it is at present I know not,for thirty years and more have elapsed since I last trod its streets.It will scarcely have improved,for how could it be better than it then was?I love to think on thee,pretty quiet D-,thou pattern of an English country town,with thy clean but narrow streets branching out from thy modest market-place,with thine old-fashioned houses,with here and there a roof of venerable thatch,with thy one half-aristocratic mansion,where resided thy Lady Bountiful-she,the generous and kind,who loved to visit the sick,leaning on her gold-headed cane,whilst the sleek old footman walked at a respectful distance behind.Pretty quiet D-,with thy venerable church,in which moulder the mortal remains of England's sweetest and most pious bard.

Yes,pretty D-,I could always love thee,were it but for the sake of him who sleeps beneath the marble slab in yonder quiet chancel.

It was within thee that the long-oppressed bosom heaved its last sigh,and the crushed and gentle spirit escaped from a world in which it had known nought but sorrow.Sorrow!do I say?How faint a word to express the misery of that bruised reed;misery so dark that a blind worm like myself is occasionally tempted to exclaim,Better had the world never been created than that one so kind,so harmless,and so mild,should have undergone such intolerable woe!

But it is over now,for,as there is an end of joy,so has affliction its termination.Doubtless the All-wise did not afflict him without a cause:who knows but within that unhappy frame lurked vicious seeds which the sunbeams of joy and prosperity might have called into life and vigour?Perhaps the withering blasts of misery nipped that which otherwise might have terminated in fruit noxious and lamentable.But peace to the unhappy one,he is gone to his rest;the death-like face is no longer occasionally seen timidly and mournfully looking for a moment through the window-pane upon thy market-place,quiet and pretty D-;the hind in thy neighbourhood no longer at evening-fall views,and starts as he views,the dark lathy figure moving beneath the hazels and alders of shadowy lanes,or by the side of murmuring trout streams,and no longer at early dawn does the sexton of the old church reverently doff his hat,as,supported by some kind friend,the death-stricken creature totters along the church-path to that mouldering edifice with the low roof,inclosing a spring of sanatory waters,built and devoted to some saint,if the legend over the door be true,by the daughter of an East Anglian king.

But to return to my own history.I had now attained the age of six:shall I state what intellectual progress I had been making up to this period?Alas!upon this point I have little to say calculated to afford either pleasure or edification;I had increased rapidly in size and in strength:the growth of the mind,however,had by no means corresponded with that of the body.It is true,I had acquired my letters,and was by this time able to read imperfectly;but this was all:and even this poor triumph over absolute ignorance would never have been effected but for the unremitting attention of my parents,who,sometimes by threats,sometimes by entreaties,endeavoured to rouse the dormant energies of my nature,and to bend my wishes to the acquisition of the rudiments of knowledge;but in influencing the wish lay the difficulty.Let but the will of a human being be turned to any particular object,and it is ten to one that sooner or later he achieves it.At this time I may safely say that I harboured neither wishes nor hopes;I had as yet seen no object calculated to call them forth,and yet I took pleasure in many things which perhaps unfortunately were all within my sphere of enjoyment.Iloved to look upon the heavens,and to bask in the rays of the sun,or to sit beneath hedgerows and listen to the chirping of the birds,indulging the while in musing and meditation as far as my very limited circle of ideas would permit;but,unlike my brother,who was at this time at school,and whose rapid progress in every branch of instruction astonished and delighted his preceptors,Itook no pleasure in books,whose use,indeed,I could scarcely comprehend,and bade fair to be as arrant a dunce as ever brought the blush of shame into the cheeks of anxious and affectionate parents.

But the time was now at hand when the ice which had hitherto bound the mind of the child with its benumbing power was to be thawed,and a world of sensations and ideas awakened to which it had hitherto been an entire stranger.One day a young lady,an intimate acquaintance of our family,and godmother to my brother,drove up to the house in which we dwelt;she stayed some time conversing with my mother,and on rising to depart,she put down on the table a small packet,exclaiming,'I have brought a little present for each of the boys:the one is a History of England,which I intend for my godson when he returns from school,the other is ...'-and here she said something which escaped my ear,as Isat at some distance,moping in a corner,-'I intend it for the youngster yonder,'pointing to myself;she then departed,and,my mother going out shortly after,I was left alone.