Volume I Part 17 (1/2)

What force does all this give to the pa.s.sage in his diary in which he records his estimate of life!--”What is this world? a dream within a dream. As we grow older, each step is an awakening. The youth awakes, as he thinks, from childhood; the full-grown man despises the pursuits of youth as visionary; the old man looks on manhood as a feverish dream.

The grave the last sleep? No; it is the last and final awakening.”

It has often been remarked, that there is no particular moral purpose aimed at by Scott in his writings; he often speaks of it himself in his last days, in a tone of humility. He represents himself as having been employed mostly in the comparatively secondary department of giving innocent amus.e.m.e.nt. He often expressed, humbly and earnestly, the hope that he had, at least, done no harm; but I am inclined to think, that although moral effect was not primarily his object, yet the influence of his writings and whole existence on earth has been decidedly good.

It is a great thing to have a mind of such power and such influence, whose recognitions of right and wrong, of virtue and vice, were, in most cases, so clear and determined. He never enlists our sympathies in favor of vice, by drawing those seductive pictures, in which it comes so near the shape and form of virtue that the mind is puzzled as to the boundary line. He never makes young ladies feel that they would like to marry corsairs, pirates, or sentimental villains of any description. The most objectionable thing, perhaps, about his influence, is its sympathy with the war spirit. A person Christianly educated can hardly read some of his descriptions in the Lady of the Lake and Marmion without an emotion of disgust, like what is excited by the same things in Homer; and as the world comes more and more under the influence of Christ, it will recede more and more from this kind of literature.

Scott has been censured as being wilfully unjust to the Covenanters and Puritans. I think he meant really to deal fairly by them, and that what _he_ called fairness might seem rank injustice to those brought up to venerate them, as we have been. I suppose that in Old Mortality it was Scott's honest intention to balance the two parties about fairly, by putting on the Covenant side his good, steady, well-behaved hero, Mr.

Morton, who is just as much of a Puritan as the Puritans would have been had they taken Sir Walter Scott's advice; that is to say, a very nice, sensible, moral man, who takes the Puritan side because he thinks it the _right_ side, but contemplates all the devotional enthusiasm and religious ecstasies of his a.s.sociates from a merely artistic and pictorial point of view. The trouble was, when he got his model Puritan done, n.o.body ever knew what he was meant for; and then all the young ladies voted steady Henry Morton a bore, and went to falling in love with his Cavalier rival, Lord Evandale, and people talked as if it was a preconcerted arrangement of Scott, to surprise the female heart, and carry it over to the royalist side.

The fact was, in describing Evandale he made a living, effective character, because he was describing something he had full sympathy with, and put his whole life into; but Henry Morton is a laborious arrangement of starch and pasteboard to produce one of those supposit.i.tious, just-right men, who are always the stupidest of mortals after they are made. As to why Scott did not describe such a character as the martyr Duke of Argyle, or Hampden, or Sir Harry Vane, where high birth, and n.o.ble breeding, and chivalrous sentiment were all united with intense devotional fervor, the answer is, that he could not do it; he had not that in him wherewith to do it; a man cannot create that of which he has not first had the elements in himself; and devotional enthusiasm is a thing which Scott never felt. Nevertheless, I believe that he was perfectly sincere in saying that he would, ”if necessary, die a martyr for Christianity.” He had calm, firm principle to any extent, but it never was kindled into fervor. He was of too calm and happy a temperament to sound the deepest recesses of souls torn up from their depths by mighty conflicts and sorrows. There are souls like the ”alabaster vase of ointment, very precious,” which shed no perfume of devotion because a great sorrow has never broken them. Could Scott have been given back to the world again after the heavy discipline of life had pa.s.sed over him, he would have spoken otherwise of many things. What he vainly struggled to say to Lockhart on his death bed would have been a new revelation, of his soul to the world, could he have lived to unfold it in literature. But so it is: when we have learned to live, life's purpose is answered, and we die!

This is the sum and substance of some conversations held while rambling among these scenes, going in and out of arches, climbing into nooks and through loopholes, picking moss and ivy, and occasionally retreating under the shadow of some arch, while the skies were indulging in a sudden burst of emotion. The poor woman who acted as our guide, ensconcing herself in a dry corner, stood like a literal Patience on a monument, waiting for us to be through; we were sorry for her, but as it was our first and last chance, and she would stay there, we could not help it.

Near by the abbey is a square, modern mansion, belonging to the Earl of Buchan, at present untenanted. There were some black, solemn yew trees there, old enough to have told us a deal of history had they been inclined to speak; as it was, they could only drizzle.

As we were walking through the yard, a bird broke out into a clear, sweet song.

”What bird is that?” said I.

”I think it is the mavis,” said the guide. This brought up,--

”The mavis wild, wie mony a note, Sings drowsy day to rest.”

And also,--

”Merry it is in wild green wood, When mavis and merle are singing.”

A verse, by the by, dismally suggestive of contrast to this rainy day.

As we came along out of the gate, walking back towards the village of Dryburgh, we began, to hope that the skies had fairly wept themselves out; at any rate the rain stopped, and the clouds wore a sulky, leaden-gray aspect, as if they were thinking what to do next.

We saw a knot of respectable-looking laboring men at a little distance, conversing in a group, and now and then stealing glances at us; one of them at last approached and inquired if this was Mrs. Stowe, and being answered in the affirmative, they all said heartily, ”Madam, ye're right welcome to Scotland.” The chief speaker, then, after a little conversation, asked our party if we would do him the favor to step into his cottage near by, to take a little refreshment after our ramble; to which we a.s.sented with alacrity. He led the way to a neat, stone cottage, with a flower garden before the door, and said to a thrifty, rosy-cheeked woman, who met us, ”Well, and what do you think, wife, if I have brought Mrs. Stowe and her party to take a cup of tea with us?”

We were soon seated in a neat, clean kitchen, and our hostess hastened to put the teakettle over the grate, lamenting that she had not known of our coming, that she might have had a fire ”ben the house,” meaning by the phrase what we Yankees mean by ”in the best room.” We caught a glimpse of the carpet and paper of this room, when the door was opened to bring out a few more chairs.

”Belyve the bairns cam dropping in,”

rosy-cheeked, fresh from school, with satchel and school books, to whom I was introduced as the mother of Topsy and Eva.

”Ah,” said the father, ”such a time as we had, when we were reading the book; whiles they were greetin' and whiles in a rage.”

My host was quite a young-looking man, with the clear blue eye and glowing complexion which one so often meets here; and his wife, with her blooming cheeks, neat dress, and well-kept house, was evidently one of those fully competent

”To gar old claes look amaist as weel as new.”

I inquired the ages of the several children, to which the father answered with about as much chronological accuracy as men generally display in such points of family history. The gude wife, after correcting his figures once or twice, turned away with a somewhat indignant exclamation about men that didn't know their own bairns' ages, in which many of us, I presume, could sympathize.

I must not omit to say, that a neighbor of our host had been pressed to come in with us; an intelligent-looking man, about fifty. In the course of conversation, I found that they were both masons by trade, and as the rain had prevented their working, they had met to spend their time in reading. They said they were reading a work on America; and thereat followed a good deal of general conversation on our country. I found that, like many others in this old country, they had a tie to connect them with the new--a son in America.