The Press. — London, England, 1855-09-01 00:00:00

838 "ONE MORE FATE." So Lady Clara flies from the custody of her tyrant, but to what a rescue? The very man who loves her, and gives her asylum, pities and deplores her. She scarce dares to look out of the windows of her new home upon the world, lest it should know and reproach her. All the sisterhood of friendship is cut off from her. If she dares to go abroad she feels the sneer of the world as she goes through it; and knows that malice and scorn whisper behind her. People, as criminal but undiscovered, make room for her as if her touch were pollution. She knows she has dark ened the lot and made wretched the home of the man whom she loves best; that his friends who see her, treat her with but a doubtful respect; and the domestics who attend her, with a suspicious obedience. In the country lanes, or the streets of a county town, neighbours look aside as the carriage passes in which she sits splendid and lonely. Rough hunting companions of her husband's come to her table: he is driven perforce to the company of flat terers and men of inferior sort; his equals, at least in his own home, will not live with him. She would be kind, perhaps, and charitable to the cottagers round about her, but she fears to visit them lest they too should scorn her. The clergyman who distributes her charities, blushes and looks awkward on passing her in the village, it he should be walking with his wile or one of his children. Shall they go to the Continent, and set up a grand house at Paris or at Florence ? There they can get society, but of what a sort! Our acquaintances of Baden—Madame Schlangenbad, and Madame de Cruchecassee, and Madame d'lvry, and Messrs. Loder, snd Punter, and Blackball, and Deuceace will come, and dance, and flirt, and quarrel, and gamble, and feast round about her; but what in common with such wild people has this poor, timid, shrinking soul? Even these scorn her. The leers and laughter on those painted faces are quite unlike her own sad countenance. She has no reply to their wit. Their infernal gaiety scares her more than the solitude at home. No wonder that her husband does not like home, except for a short while in the hunting season. No wonder that he is away all day; bow can he like a home which she has made so wretched? Jn the midst of her sorrow, and doubt, and misery, a child comes to her : how she clings to it ; how her whole being, and hope, and passion centres itself on this feeble infant! . . . but she no more belongs to our story : with the new name she has taken, the po - or lady passes out of the history of the Newcomes. If Barnes Newcome's children meet yonder solitary lady' do they know her? if her once•husband thinks upon the unhappy young creature whom his cruelty drove from him, does his conscience affect his sleep at night ? Why should Sir Barnes Newcume's conscience be more squeamish than his country's, which has put money in his pocket for having trampled on the poor weak young thing, and scorned her, and driven her to ruin ? When the whole of the accounts of that wretched bankruptcy are brought up for final audit, which of the unhappy partners shall be shown to be most guilty ? Does the right reverend prelate who did the benedictory business for B trues and Clara his wife repent in secret? Do the parents who pressed the marriage, and the fine folks who signed the book, and ate the breakfast, and applauded the bridegroom's speech, feel a little ashamed? 0 Hymen Hymensee ! The bishops, beadles, clergy, pew•openers, and other officers of the temple dedicated to Heaven under the invocation of St. George, will officiate in the same place at scores and scores more of such marriages: and St. George of England may behold virgin after virgin offered up to the devouring monster, Mammon k with many most respectable female dragons looking on)—may see virgin after virgin given away, just as in the Soldan of Babylon's time, but with never a champion to come to ti:e rescue! THE BROKEN SOLDIER. " Father ! father ! do you remember Orme's ' History of India ' ?" cries Clive. " Ormea history ! of course I do, I could repeat whole pages of it when l was a boy," says the old man, and began forthwith. " The two battalions advanced against each other cannonading, until the French coming to a hollow way imagined that the English would not venture to pass it. But Major Lawrence ordered the sepoys and artillery —the sepoys and artillery to halt and defend the convoy against the Morattoete—Morattoes Orme calls 'em. Ho! ho ! I could repeat whole pages, air." " It is the best book that ever was written," calls out Clive. The Colonel said he had not read it, but he was in formed Mr. Mill's was a very learned history ; he intended to read it. "Eh ! there is plenty of time now," said the good Colonel. " I have all day long at Grey Friars,—after chapel. you know. Do you know, sir, when 1 was a boy I used w hat they call to tib out and run down to a public. house in Cistercian lane—the Red Cow, air,—and buy rum there? I was a terrible wild boy, Clivy. Yon wern't so, sir. thank heaven. A terrible wild boy, and my poor fat - her flogged me, though I think it was very hard on me. It wasn't the pain, you know it wasn't ; the pain, but . . ." Here tears came into his eyes, and he dropped his head on his hand, and the cigar from it fell on to the door, burnt almost out, and scattering white ashes. Clive looked sadly at me. "He was often so at Boulogne, Arthur," he whispered ; " after a scene with that—that woman yonder, his head would go : he never replied to her taunts : he bore her infernal cruelty without an un kind word-0 I I can pay her back, thank God I can pay her I But who shall pay her," he said, trembling in every limb, " for what she has made that good man suffer?" He turned to his father, who still sate lost in hia medi tations. " You need never go back to Grey Friars, father !" he cried out. " Not go back, Clivy ? Must go back, boy, to say Adsum when my name is called—Newcotne ! Adsum I Hey ! that is what we used to say—we used to say I" " You need not go back, except to pack your things, and return and live with me and Boy," Clive continued, and he bold Colonel Newoome rapidly the dory of the legacy. The old men seemed hardly to comprehend it, When he did N. taem seenel, *Wed hi ati when Clive geld, " ths7 hhi... THE PRESS. could now pay Mrs. Mackenzie," the colonel replied, " quite right, quite right," and added up the sum principal and interest, in which they were indebted to her—he knew it well enough, the good old man. "Of course we shall pay her, Clivy, when we can !" But in spite of what Clive had said he did not appear to understand the fact, that the debt to Mrs. Mackenzie was now actually to be paid. OUR FATHER. Mrs. Mackenzie in a tragic manner dashed aside the hand which poor Clive held out to her, and disappeared from the scene of this dismal dinner. Boy presently fell a crying: in spite of all the battle and fury, there was sleep in his eyes. " Maria is too busy, I suppose, to put him to bed," said Clive, with a sad smile ;" " shall we do it father ? Come Tommy, my son !" and be folded his arms round the child, and walked with him to the upper regions. The old man's eyes lighted up ; his scared thoughts returned to him ; he followed his two children up the stairs, and saw his grand son in his little bed ; and, as we walked home with him, he told me how sweetly Boy said Our Father, and prayed God bless all those who loved him, as they laid him to rest. So thesa three generations had joined in that supplica tion : the strong man, humbled by trial and grief, whose loyal heart was yet full of love ;—the child, of the sweet age of those little ones whom the Blessed speaker of the prayer first bade to come unto Him ;—and the old man, whose heart was well nigh as tender and as innocent ; and whose day was approaching, when he should be drawn to the bosom of the Eternal Pity. SHE COLONEL ANSWERS "ADSUM" TO HIS NAME. The days went on, and our hopes, raised sometimes, began to flicker and fail. One evening the Colonel left his chair for his bed in pretty good spirits, but passed a disturbed night, and the next morning was too weak to rise. Then he re mained in his bed, and his friends visited him there. One afternoon he asked for his little gown-boy, and the child was brought to him, and sate by the bed with a very awestricken face ; and then gathered courage, and tried to amuse him by telling him how it was a half-holiday, and they were having a cricket match with the St. Peter's boys in the green, and Grey Friars was in and winning. The Colonel quite understood about it ; he would like to see the game ; he had played many a game on that green when he was a boy. He grew excited ; Clive dismissed his father's little friend, and put a sovereign into his hand ; and away ho ran to say that Codd Colonel had come into a fortune, and to buy tarts, and to see the match out. I, curre, little white-haired gown-boy ! Heaven speed you, little friend. After the child had gone, Thomas Newcome began to wander more and more. He talked louder; he gave the word of command, spoke Hindostanee as if to his men. Then he spoke words in French rapidly, seizing a hand that was near him, and crying, " Toujours, toujours!" But it was Ethel's hand which he took. Ethel and Clive and the nurse were in the room with him ; the latter came to us who were sitting in the adjoining apartment ; Madame de Florae was there, with my wife and Bayham. At the look in the women's countenance Madame de Florae started up. "He is very bad, he wanders a great deal," the nurse whispered. The French lady fell instantly on her knees, and remained rigid in prayer. Some time afterwards Ethel came in with a scared face to our pale group. "He is calling for you again, dear lady," she said, going up to Madame de Florae, who was still kneeling; " and just now he said he wanted P-ndennis to take care of his boy. He will not know you." She hid her tears as she spoke. She went into the room, where Clive was at the bed's foot ; the old man within it talked on rapidly for awhile : then again he would sigh and be still: once more I heard him say hurriedly, " Take care of him when I'm in India!" and then with a heart-rending voice he called out " Leo nore, Leonore !" She was kneeling by his side now. The patient's voice sank into faint murmers; only a moan now and then announced that he has not asleep. At the usual evening hour the chapel bell began to toll, and Thomas Newcome'a hands outside the bed feebly best a time. And just as the last bell struck, a peculiar sweet smile shone over his face, and he lifted up his head a little, and quickly said " Adsum !" and fell back. It was the word we used at school, when names were called ; and 10, he, whose heart was as that of a little child, had answered to his name, and stood iu the presence of The Master. Against one inconsistency in the Colonel's career we must enter our protest. That so simpla and kindhearted a man, so genuine a lover of his kind, should have adopted political views rather poetical than practical, more Utopian than feasible, is quite in keep ing; but that so truehearted a gentleman and so good a man should, under any circum stances, express sympathy with the Whigs, or allow himself to be put forward as the cham pion of the most selfish and intolerant of all factions, we think our readers will agree with us is so improbable, not to say impossible, that not all Colonel Newcome's ignorance of politics or hatred of his nephew will make us believe that he could have adopted a course from which his instinct as a gentleman and a generous-hearted man must have made him shrink. Lyra Germanica: Hymns for the Sundays and Chief Festivals of the Christian Year. Trans lated from the German by Catherine Wink worth. London : Longman's. Tunas are two distinct spades of religious pstg or rather there ars two principles under SATURDAY, one or other of which what we most admire in it may be ranged. One is common to all kinds of poetry, depending for its excellence on the force of its ideas and expression, the variety and beauty of its images, and generally on those qualities which move the imagination. This kind of religious poetry may be composed by profane writers, and we find numerous specimens of it in their works, from Lucretius to Byron. One common form of it consists in describing the wonders of creation and refer ing them to Deity, or in accumulating fanciful images as emblems of His Nature and of its workings. The other species is more special. Its excellence lies in the fervour with which it expresses purely devotional feelings, as love and gratitude, representing the soul as in earnest communion with God, imploring his favour or deprecating his wrath. The one kind is the poetry of natural religion (if there be such a thing), the other of revelation. The lines of Byron to the ocean, Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty form, and even the magnificent hymn of Addison, describing the glories of the heavens, are but the expression of that sentiment of awful reverence which the view of the wonders of creation irresistibly forces on an imagina tive mind But this vague sentiment has very little in common with that approach of the soul to God, arising from firm belief in His Fatherhood, and in His nearness to us, which we require in devotional poetry. This element is only to be comprehended and appreciated by believing Christian people. The poet, as a poet merely, either does not perceive it, or is inclined to condemn it as faulty in taste. When the Psalmist exclaims, "As " the hart panteth after the water-brooks, so " panteth my soul after thee, 0 God," every one can recognise a certain degree of beauty in the imagery ; but it is those only who know from actual experience what this longing is, how ardent is the passion and with what in tensity it seizes on the soul, that can make the verse their own, and feel in it a living truth far more precious to them than the poetical image. The best kind of devotional poetry is not that the significance of which can he instantly perceived and generally appreciated, but that which requires some sympathetic feeling for its comprehension, and which grows on the mind, and becomes more prized as it is more medi tated. That fervour, however, which is its best characteristic, is apt to ran into vulgar and even irreverent extravagance, unless it be under the guidance of a truly poetic imagina- tion. Most of our Methodist hymns show this tendency, while the collections commonly used in our churches are, as a whole, deficient in the requisites both of spiritual aspiration and poetic beauty. That collection most ex tensively in use, and which is printed with the recommendation of the Bishop of London, is far from satisfactory. One hymn commences with the emphatic line, I'm not ashamed to own the Lord— a wonderful instance of condescension, it must be admitted, on the part of a Christian congregation. Psalmody, as practised in our churches, is too plainly a contrivance to allow the minister a breathing pause, or to afford the congregation relief from one posture to another, or to till up the gap necessarily occasioned in the in tervals between distinct parts of the service. It does not appear to be practised for its own sake, and hence the two or three verses chosen —too brief for the expansion of a sentiment or of a striking passage in Scripture—are languidly listened to by the congregation, and endured as a necessary formality. The German churches, to judge from this selection, are much better supplied with devo tional poetry than our own Church. We wish the translator of this attractive volume had given us some information as to the actual practice amohg German congregations. All of these pieces, according to our usage, would be much too long to be sung at once, yet their effect would be spoilt if split into frag ments. Were Psahnody made a really important and vital part of our service, one or two such poems as are contained in this volume might be sung entire, with great advantage to the devotional fervour of the congregation. As it is, there is soaroely one of them which would not, from He length, ..