Complete Works of Thomas Love Peacock

by Thomas Love Peacock

  Mr. Fax. Certainly, the progress of reason is slow, but the ground which it has once gained it never abandons. The interest of rulers, and the prejudices of the people, are equally hostile to everything that comes in the shape of innovation; but all that now wears the strongest sanction of antiquity was once received with reluctance under the semblance of novelty: and that reason, which in the present day can scarcely obtain a footing from the want of precedents, will grow with the growth of years, and become a precedent in its turn.

  Mr. Forester. Reason may be diffused in society, but it is only in minds which have courage enough to despise prejudice and virtue enough to love truth only for itself that its seeds will germinate into wholesome and vigorous life. The love of truth is the most noble quality of human intellect, the most delightful in the interchange of private confidence, the most important in the direction of those speculations which have public happiness for their aim. Yet of all qualities this is the most rare: it is the Phoenix of the intellectual world. In private intercourse, how very very few are they whose assertions carry conviction! How much petty deception, paltry equivocation, hollow profession, smiling malevolence, and polished hypocrisy combine to make a desert and a solitude of what is called society! How much empty pretence and simulated patriotism, and shameless venality, and unblushing dereliction of principle, and clamorous recrimination, and daring imposture, and secret cabal, and mutual undermining of ‘Honourable Friends,’ render utterly loathsome and disgusting the theatre of public life! How much timid deference to vulgar prejudice, how much misrepresentation of the motives of conscientious opponents, how many appeals to unreflecting passion, how much assumption of groundless hypothesis, how many attempts to darken the clearest light and entangle the simplest clue, render not only nugatory, but pernicious, the speculations of moral and political reason! Pernicious, inasmuch as it is better for the benighted traveller to remain stationary in darkness, than to follow an ignis fatuus through the fen! Falsehood is the great vice of the age: falsehood of heart, falsehood of mind, falsehood of every form and mode of intellect and intercourse: so that it is hardly possible to find a man of worth and goodness of whom to make a friend: but he who does find such an one will have more enjoyment of friendship than in a better age; for he will be doubly fond of him, and will love him as Hamlet does Horatio, and with him retiring and getting, as it were, under the shelter of a wall, will let the storm of life blow over him.

  Mr. Fax. But that retirement must be consecrated to philosophical labour, or, however delightful to the individuals, it will be treason to the public cause. Be the world as bad as it may, it would necessarily be much worse if the votaries of truth and the children of virtue were all to withdraw from its vortex, and leave it to itself. If reason be progressive, however slowly, the wise and good have sufficient encouragement to persevere; and even if the doctrine of deterioration be true, it is no less their duty to contribute all in their power to retard its progress, by investigating its causes and remedies.

  Mr. Forester. Undoubtedly. But the progress of theoretical knowledge has a most fearful counterpoise in the accelerated depravation of practical morality. The frantic love of money, which seems to govern our contemporaries to a degree unprecedented in the history of man, paralyses the energy of independence, darkens the light of reason, and blights the blossoms of love.

  Mr. Fax. The amor sceleratus habendi is not peculiar either to our times or to civilised life. Money you must have, no matter from whence, is a sentence, if we may believe Euripides, as old as the heroic age: and the monk Rubruquis says of the Tartars, that, as parents keep all their daughters till they can sell them, their maids are sometimes very stale before they are married, Mr. Forester. In that respect, then, I must acknowledge the Tartars and we are much on a par. It is a collateral question well worth considering, how far the security of property, which contributes so much to the diffusion of knowledge and the permanence of happiness, is favourable to the growth of individual virtue.

  Mr. Fax. Security of property tranquillises the minds of men, and fits them to shine rather in speculation than in action. In turbulent and insecure states of society, when the fluctuations of power, or the incursions of predatory neighbours, hang like the sword of Damocles over the most flourishing possessions, friends are more dear to each other, mutual services and sacrifices are more useful and more necessary, the energies of heart and hand are continually called forth, and shining examples of the self-oblivious virtues are produced in the same proportion as mental speculation is unknown or disregarded: but our admiration of these virtues must be tempered by the remark, that they arise more from impulsive feeling than from reflective principle; and that where life and fortune hold by such a precarious tenure, the first may be risked, and the second abandoned, with much less effort than would be required for inferior sacrifices in more secure and tranquil times.

  Mr. Forester. Alas, my friend! I would willingly see such virtues as do honour to human nature, without being very solicitous as to the comparative quantities of impulse and reflection in which they originate. If the security of property and the diffusion of general knowledge were attended with a corresponding increase of benevolence and individual mental power, no philanthropist could look with despondency on the prospects of the world: but I can discover no symptoms of either the one or the other. Insatiable accumulators, overgrown capitalists, fatteners on public spoil, I cannot but consider as excrescences on the body politic, typical of disease and prophetic of decay: yet it is to these and such as these that the poet tunes his harp, and the man of science consecrates his labours: it is for them that an enormous portion of the population is condemned to unhealthy manufactories, not less deadly but more lingering than the pestilence: it is for them that the world rings with lamentations, if the most trivial accident, the most transient sickness, the most frivolous disappointment befall them: but when the prisons swarm, when the workhouses overflow, when whole parishes declare themselves bankrupt, when thousands perish by famine in the wintry streets, where then is the poet, where is the man of science, where is the elegant philosopher? The poet is singing hymns to the great ones of the world, the man of science is making discoveries for the adornment of their dwellings or the enhancement of their culinary luxuries, and the elegant philosopher is much too refined a personage to allow such vulgar subjects as the sufferings of the poor to interfere with his sublime speculations. They are married and cannot come!

  Mr. Fax. Έπαυσα? àAyetvoraraç εμοι μέριμνας! Those elegant philosophers are among the most fatal enemies to the advancement of moral and political knowledge; laborious triflers, profound investigators of nothing, everlasting talkers about taste and beauty, who see in the starving beggar only the picturesqueness of his rags, and in the ruined cottage only the harmonising tints of moss, mildew, and stonecrop.

  Mr. Forester. We talk of public feeling and national sympathy. Our dictionaries may define those words and our lips may echo them, but we must look for the realities among less enlightened nations. The Canadian savages cannot imagine the possibility of any individual in a community having a full meal while another has but half an one still less could they imagine that one should have too much, while another had nothing. Theirs is that bond of brotherhood which nature weaves and civilisation breaks, and from which the older nations grow the farther they recede.

  Mr. Fax. It cannot be otherwise. The state you have described is adapted only to a small community, and to the infancy of human society. I shall make a very liberal concession to your views, if I admit it to be possible that the middle stage of the progress of man is worse than either the point from which he started or that at which he will arrive. But it is my decided opinion that we have passed that middle stage, and that every evil incident to the present condition of human society will be removed by the diffusion of moral and political knowledge, and the general increase of moral and political liberty. I contemplate with great satisfaction the rapid decay of many hoary absurdities, which
a few transcendentai hierophants of the venerable and the mysterious are labouring in vain to revive. I look with well-grounded confidence to a period when there will be neither slaves among the northern, nor monks among the southern Americans. The sun of freedom has risen over that great continent, with the certain promise of a glorious day. I form the best hopes for my own country, in the mental improvement of the people, whenever she shall breathe from the pressure of that preposterous system of finance which sooner or later must fall by its own weight.

  Mr. Forester. I apply to our system of finance a fiction of the northern mythology. The ash of Yggdrasil overshadows the world: Ratatosk, the squirrel, sports in the branches: Nidhogger, the serpent, gnaws at the root. The ash of Yggdrasil is the tree of national prosperity: Ratatosk the squirrel is the careless and unreflecting fundholder: Nidhogger the serpent is POLITICAL CORRUPTION, which will in time consume the root, and spread the branches on the dust. What will then become of the squirrel?

  Mr. Fax. Ratatosk must look to himself: Nidhogger must be killed, and the ash of Yggdrasil will rise like a vegetable Phoenix to flourish again for ages.

  Thus conversing, they arrived on the sea-shore, where we shall leave them to pursue their way, while we investigate the fate of Anthelia.

  CHAPTER XLI

  ALGA CASTLE

  ANTHELIA HAD NOT ventured to resume her solitary rambles after her return from Onevote; more especially as she anticipated the period when she should revisit her favourite haunts in the society of one congenial companion whose presence would heighten the magic of their interest, and restore to them that feeling of security which her late adventure had destroyed. But as she was sitting in her library on the morn ing of her disappearance, she suddenly heard a faint and mournful cry, like the voice of a child in distress. She rose, opened the window, and listened. She heard the sounds more distinctly. They seemed to ascend from that part of the dingle immediately beneath the shrubbery that fringed her windows. It was certainly the cry of a child. She immediately ran through the shrubbery and descended the rocky steps into the dingle, where she found a little boy tied to the stem of a tree, crying and sobbing as if his heart would break. Anthelia easily set him at liberty, and his grief passed away like an April shower. She asked who had the barbarity to treat him in such a manner. He said he could not tell — four strange men on horseback had taken him up on the common where his father lived, and brought him there and tied him to the tree, he could not tell why. Anthelia took his hand and was leading him from the dingle, intending to send him home by Peter Gray, when the men who had made the little child their unconscious decoy broke from their ambush, seized Anthelia, and taking effectual precautions to stifle her cries, placed her on one of their horses, and travelled with great rapidity along narrow and unfrequented ways, till they arrived at a solitary castle on the sea-shore, where they conveyed her to a splendid suite of apartments, and left her in solitude, locking, as they retired, the door of the outer room.

  She was utterly unable to comprehend the motive of so extraordinary a proceeding, or to form any conjecture as to its probable result. An old woman of a very unmeaning physiognomy shortly after entered, to tender her services; but to all Anthelia’s questions she only replied with a shake of the head, and a smile which she meant to be very consolatory.

  The old woman retired, and shortly after reappeared with an elegant dinner, which Anthelia dismissed untouched. ‘There is no harm intended you, my sweet lady,’ said the old woman; ‘so pray don’t starve yourself.’ Anthelia assured her she had no such intention, but had no appetite at that time; but she drank a glass of wine at the old woman’s earnest entreaty.

  In the evening the mystery was elucidated by a visit from Lord Anophel Achthar; who, falling on his knees before her, entreated her to allow the violence of his passion to plead his pardon for a proceeding which nothing but the imminent peril of seeing her in the arms of a rival could have induced him to adopt. Anthelia replied that, if his object were to obtain her affections, he had taken the most effectual method to frustrate his own views; that if he thought by constraint and cruelty to obtain her hand without her affections, he might be assured that he would never succeed. Her heart, however, she candidly told him, was no longer in her power to dispose of; and she hoped, after this frank avowal, he would see the folly, if not the wickedness, of protracting his persecution.

  He now, still on his knees, broke out into a rhapsody about love, and hope, and death, and despair, in which he developed the whole treasury of his exuberant and overflowing folly. He then expatiated on his expectations, and pointed out all the advantages of wealth and consequence attached to the title of Marchioness of Agaric, and concluded by saying that she must be aware so important and decisive a measure had not been taken without the most grave and profound deliberation, and that he never could suffer her to make her exit from Alga Castle in any other character than that of Lady Achthar. He then left her to meditate on his heroic resolution.

  The next day he repeated his visit — resumed his supplications — reiterated his determination to persevere — and received from Anthelia the same reply. She endeavoured to reason with him on the injustice and absurdity of his proceedings; but he told her the Reverend Mr. Grovelgrub and Mr. Feathernest the poet had taught him that all reasonings pretending to point out absurdity and injustice were manifestly jacobinical, which he, as one of the pillars of the state, was bound not to listen to.

  He renewed his visits every day for a week, becoming with every new visit less humble and more menacing, and consequently more disagreeable to Anthelia, as the Reverend Mr. Grovelgrub, by whose instructions he acted, secretly foresaw and designed. The latter now undertook to plead his Lordship’s cause, and set in a clear point of view to Anthelia the inflexibility of his Lordship’s resolutions, which, properly expounded, could not fail to have due weight against the alternatives of protracted solitude and hopeless resistance.

  The reverend gentleman, however, had other views than those he held out to Lord Anophel, and presented himself to Anthelia with an aspect of great commiseration. He said he was an unwilling witness of his Lordship’s unjust proceedings, which he had done all in his power to prevent, and which had been carried into effect against his will. It was his firm intention to set her at liberty as soon as he could devise the means of doing so; but all the outlets of Alga Castle were so guarded that he had not yet been able to devise any feasible scheme for her escape; but it should be his sole study night and day to effect it.

  Anthelia thanked him for his sympathy, and asked why he could not give notice to her friends of her situation, which would accomplish the purpose at once. He replied that Lord Anophel already mistrusted him, and that if anything of the kind were done, however secretly he might proceed, the suspicion would certainly fall upon him, and that he should then be a ruined man, as all his worldly hopes rested on the Marquis of Agaric. Anthelia offered to make him the utmost compensation for the loss of the Marquis of Agaric’s favour; but he said that was impossible, unless she could make him a bishop, as the Marquis of Agaric would do. His plan, he said, must be to effect her liberation, without seeming to be himself in any way whatever concerned in it; and though he would willingly lose everything for her sake, yet he trusted she would not think ill of him for wishing to wait a few days, that he might try to devise the means of serving her without ruining himself.

  He continued his daily visits of sympathy, sometimes amusing her with a hopeful scheme, at others detailing with a rueful face the formidable nature of some unexpected obstacle, hinting continually at his readiness to sacrifice everything for her sake, lamenting the necessity of delay, and assuring her that in the meanwhile no evil should happen to her. He flattered himself that Anthelia, wearied out with the irksomeness of confinement, and the continual alternations of hope and disappointment, and contrasting the respectful tenderness of his manner with the disagreeable system of behaviour to which he had fashioned Lord Anophel, would at length come to a determ
ination of removing all his difficulties by offering him her hand and fortune as a compensation for his anticipated bishopric. It was not, however, very long before Anthelia penetrated his design; but as she did not deem it prudent to come to a rupture with him at that time, she continued to listen to his daily details of plans and impediments, and allowed him to take to himself all the merit he seemed to assume for supplying her with music and books; though he expressed himself very much shocked at her asking him for Gibbon and Rousseau, whose works, he said, ought to be burned in foro by the hands of Carnifex.

  The windows of her apartment were at an immense elevation from the beach, as that part of the castle-wall formed a continued line with the black and precipitous side of the rock on which it stood. During the greater portion of the hours of daylight she sate near the window with her harp, gazing on the changeful aspects of the wintry sea, now slumbering like a summer lake in the sunshine of a halcyon day — now raging beneath the sway of the tempest, while the dancing snow-flakes seemed to accumulate on the foam of the billows, and the spray was hurled back like snow-dust from the rocks. The feelings these scenes suggested she developed in the following stanzas, to which she adapted a wild and impassioned air, and they became the favourite song of her captivity.