Green-Mountain freeman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1844-1884, 1860-09-06

de Coverley, and, sickening with envy at the
rising luminary which threatened to overpower
all other lights, was scheming how he might
dim its brightness, and " cuff down the rising
merit" of the little nightingale Of Twcken-
ham," Arbuthnot, unnamed, had Just Sc 2
forth from the press his History Of John Bull,
Careless. hard-hearted Steele was living at the
old cottage, which still stands surrounded by
parallelogrAms of modern brick, halfway be-
tween London and Hampstead, Looming large
in the distance, his gigantic proportions devel-
oping themselves more and more as he recedes
from sight, darker and grander mystery cloud
ing his features and enveloping his form, Swift
towers above his comrades, stern and lonely
Debating to ministers, and domineerlng over
peers, the poor proud vicar of Laracor was at
that moment more courted, followed, Aattered,
and feared, than any man in England. Night
after night he returns to his lodgings" at
eight shillings week"-in Bury Street, sigh
ing for the willows of Laracor, 1ud pouring out
his heart in childish prattle to all the women
who loved HIM through all the trials of his
strange career-the star at whose setting dark
ness more terrible than death descended on bis
soul. Nothing is too minute, nothing too triy-
al, to be recorded in the touching pages of that
journal to Stolla,' But on one subject he is
silent. Day after day he dimes with " neigh
Dor Vanhomrig," yet no word escapes him of
her whom he has made world famous to eterni
ty-with whom, years afterwards, he sat under
the aurels at Cclbridgc-lnurels planted by her
hand to sgnalize his fame A few short
years pass, Laracor and Celbrilge are both
lonely. The willows and the laurels find no
hand to trim their branches or weave them into
chaplets A gaunt fgura sits by the freside in
the Deancry of St. Patriok's Months and
years pass away, but it utters no word and
makes no sign. Day and night, in silence and
in darkness, it lives on, strangeand terrible
spectacle. 1t dies. Earth, only earth at last,
to earth. Let US stand regeree:!!y N the dingy
aisle of St. Patgc!l's by e.tt ,f6s9 Nsacre the
shell which once held, and through dark dread
years survived, that mighty intellect, has long
since mouldered in the DUST let us not seek to
penetrate mystery too deep for us to fathom
bat mceky to trust that the Great Searcher of
Hearts has mercifully dealt with him whom he
50 loved and 50 chascned, on whom he shower.
red down his rarest gifts, and inflicted his most
terrible doom, Let us fancy that the gentle
spirit of Hester johnson and the passionate
soul of Vancssa still hover lovingly around, and
in the divinityof glory which encircles its head,
let us forget that the feet of the idol they wor-
shipped were of clay!
But of Swift and Pope, of Arbuthnot and
Addison, the world of Walkerne, though within
thirty miles of London, knew nothing They
cared nothing for the Spectator nor for the Rape
Of the Lock. Sir Roger de Covcrley and Miss
Bell Fermor were nothing to them. They were
busily employed in hunting witch, and very
absurd farce, which but for the good sense of
one man, would have turned out very deep
tragedy, was being acted in that village by high
and low during the month of February, 17l2
One of the parshioncrs of the Rev. Godfrey
Gardiner, the rector Of Walkerne, was an old
woman Of the name of Jane Wenham She
was married and had children, but her domestic
life had not been happy She was suspected of
too close an intimacy with the devil, and as no
Sir Cresswell Cresswcl then sat to adiudicatq
upon matrimonial differences, her husband
adopted the simpler plan of sending the town
crier round to proclaim that he would not be
answerable for her proceedings. The husband
soon afterwards died miserably, and his death
was Of course attributed to the witchcraft of hi,
wife Nor did her vengeance stop there. The
wife of Richard Harvey, whom the husband haC
employed in some step of this extrajudicial sep
aration, lay sick Jane Wenham = went under
the window where the SICK woman lay, and said
why do they let this creature lie here? why
don't they take her and hang her out of th
way and that night the sick woman aforesai,
died > A child of Susan Aylot, who La,
nursed Harvey wife, was the next victim, anC
soon after, another child sickcned and die
through her cnchantments Her time, when no
occupied in murder, was passed in sendn
pumpkins on fools errands, in bewitching cat
tic, and making elderly rams and discreet eve
stand on their heads in the fashion of the pei
forming elephants at Astley's. Living a 8olito
. ry pariah in her cottage how she kept body an
, soul together is a mystery. Somehow or Other
however, she managed to live on, in miserab
+ poverty, the object of the hatred, terror, an
= contempt of every one around her. Abundanc
I of abuse must have been showered upon her
she appears, however, not to have become who'll