Awake, ye nations, know your powers and rights. Advance! Through Hope and Work, to Freedom's new delights, Advance! Knowledge came down, and waved her steady torch, Sages proclaim'd 'neath many a marble porch, As rapid lightning leaps from peak to peak, And earth grew young, and caroll'd as a bird, Oh! Ireland-oh! my country, wilt thou not Wilt thou not share the world's progressive lot? Must seasons change, and countless years roll on, 'Tis time, thine heart and eye had wider scope - Dear brothers, wake! look up! be firm! be strong! From out the starless night of fraud and wrong The chains have fall'n from off thy wasted hands, Proclaim that then thou wear'st no manacles, Advance ! Advance! thou must advance or perish now,— Advance! Why live with wasted heart and brow! Advance! Or sink at once into the grave; Why fret thy master, if thou must have one? "Advance three steps, the glorious work is done,” Advance! The first is CoURAGE-'tis a giant stride! Advance! With bounding step up Freedom's rugged side KNOWLEDGE will lead ye to the dazzling heights, Be wise, be just, with will as fix'd as Fate's,' THE STRANGE GENTLEMAN.' BY JANE M. WINNARD. CHAPTER XVI. DAVID'S FIRST BOOK. MIRIAM GREY made no comment on the concluding passage of the letter reported in the last chapter. She sat silently, with her face turned towards the distant ocean-line. Great tears collected slowly in those melancholy eyes, and she made no effort to conceal them. She even forgot Mr. Shepherd's presence, as her mind worked painfully on the reali (1) Continued from p. 187. zation of all the strange and (her) wonderful intelligence she had just received,e kind clergyman thought that she was praying composing her spirit to endurance, when she was only endeavouring to understand all that she had heard. She had lived so shut out from the world that this first rude contact with it was bewildering. "Shall I put the rest of these letters away, Miriam, and come and read them in the evening?" asked Mr. Shepherd, gently. "I would much rather hear them now, if you can spare the time;" she said. "I can spare the time, my dear. I will do what is most likely to set your mind at ease. Perhaps you had better know all without further delay." "Yes, yes;" she replied. "Read all the letters which are addressed to me. Do not think I cannot bear them; I can bear anything, now. Then, divining Mr. Shepherd's anxiety on her account, she added, gravely," Do not fear that I shall not forgive David, as he asks. Dear Mr. Shepherd, I am not so foolish as to think of him now as of an old lover: I left that off long ago. In the boy-and-girl world of tinsel romance, forgiveness may be asked and granted; | in the present world of far stronger and truer life, as it begins to shape itself before me, we must not use the word-Forgive! To forgive, there must be condemnation. What have I to do with condemning David,—I, who cannot understand or measure his temptation? If I presume to judge him in this matter, surely it is I who would stand in need of forgiveness from him, as he may stand in need of forgiveness from God. Never, until now, did I comprehend the full force of the words-Who art thou that judgest another? To his own master he standeth or falleth."" "Miriam, my child, I never felt so clearly as I do now, the full meaning of the words, -Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God."" He then adjusted his spectacles once more, and after turning over the open letters, selected the following, and read it aloud, pausing occasionally to observe its effect upon his auditor." "What is the date?" interrupted Miriam. "It is dated from Florence, August 18-, a year after the one I have already read.” "DEAR MIRIAM,-I begin now to give up all hope of receiving a letter from you. I suppose my father's anger against me still endures, and he forbids you to write to me; perhaps he has not given you my former letters. What a world this is! How ingeniously we contrive to make ourselves and others miserable, when, by very much less trouble we might contrive the reverse! If it were not for the solemn promise I made to my dying mother not to seek you or address you except through my father, I would make sure that this letter should reach your hands; at all events, I will write as if I were certain it would reach them. "In any of the great changes of life, whether of out ward condition or of the inward mind, my thoughts | try in which I am) artistic. It is scarcely necessary revert naturally to some of my early friends at to say that my little Leonora is with me. If it were Milford,-to you, dear Miss Grey, more than to any not my greatest pleasure to keep her always near me other. I think within myself,-'I must tell Miriam-it would be a sacred duty. I can never make this; Miriam Grey will like to hear that. Mr. amends to her, poor injured darling, for the disgrace Shepherd is kind and good; but there are times when of her birth! When I am dead, or away from her, we would seck sympathy from a young woman rather others will make her feel it; but while I live, and than from an old man. It is that time with me now, can, at any sacrifice of convenience to myself, have dear Miriam, for I have done what we used to talk her with me, she shall never know the want of a about when we were children. I have written a father's love and protecting care. book, at last; you must read it for the sake of those happy childish talks. The memory of your young smile steals sweetly to my mind as I write, and prompts me to tell you all that troubles and perplexes, yet gladdens me and makes me grateful at this moment; to wit, this my first book. I will tell you how I wrote it. To do so, I must mention a few facts connected with my external life of late years. "You know that I had determined to devote myself to medicine as a profession, when Admiral Underwood first found me idling about town. I told you he is wealthy; and that he is a person to whom I am proud to be obliged, for I love and esteem him as he does me. He advanced the necessary money for my medical studies, which I have since refunded,-I should be sorry if it were possible for me to repay the real debt of love, gratitude, and respect, I owe to that good man. I would rather owe him that as long as I have being. It is an obligation at once indebted and discharged. What burden then?" " "I took my degree of M. D. in London two years ago. Very soon afterwards, as you may have seen by the newspapers, I was, by accident, called upon to attend one of the royal dukes, in a sudden and dangerous attack of illness, during the absence of his official attendant. My treatment was perfectly successful; and since that time there has been no danger of my starving for want of fees, as is the case, alas! with many better physicians and better fellows than myself. Indeed, I had much more practice than I desired; for it has always been my fixed resolve to become a literary man. It was this resolve which influenced my choice of a profession. You may remember my opinion on this subject as boy. It is not altered now. I still believe that the education and consequent frame of mind of the thorough physician, is, in nine cases out of ten, more calculated to produce what I call a thorough man than the education of lawyers. clergymen, soldiers, or sailors. And it is only from your thorough men that authors of real greatness are ever produced. "But there is no kind of love and protection that my beautiful child wants now. All the household conspire to make her infancy a round of delights. Her beauty is something remarkable, even in this land of beauty; and at least a dozen painters and sculptors have asked me to lend them my bellissima figliuolina as a model. I have, of course, refused. I will not have an unnatural and unhealthy consciousness developed in her, by such means. Besides being beautiful, she is a child of remarkable intelligence, and so full of winning ways, that it is no wonder we all love her and spoil her (such spoiling I would wish all children to have) from Admiral Underwood down to little Amy. "And now I must say a few words about these Underwoods-so different from us of the old stock at the Grange. The admiral, without being a Nelson or a Jarvis, is a fine fellow, and well worthy his rank. He commanded at and at ; both actions highly creditable to him. But these did not make his fortune; it was what is called a mere trifle that did. He was for a long time a messmate of the present king, when they were lads; and the king has never lost an opportunity of showing his esteem for him since. Hence his frequent presence at court, and my own accidental introduction there. The admiral is about the age of my father, and not altogether unlike him. Distant as the relationship is, they have blood enough in common to make an unmistakeable family likeness, physical and mental. The admiral is just what my father would have been if circumstances had made him a sailor, a courtier, and a man of the world. His attachment to me from the first moment of our meeting was, undoubtedly, an 'elective affinity,' not to be explained on any ground, open and subject to the mere reason. The admiral himself explains it by saying, 'Blood is thicker than water;' and that every Underwood must feel himself drawn towards me, because I unite in my single person all the peculiarities of the family. For myself, I love the admiral with a sort of blind, instinctive feeling-such as we "But to return: finding that fashion was making all feel towards the nearest blood-relations—and over my fortune before my education was half completed, and above this filial feeling I love and honour him as I determined to deal honestly with myself and the a man. He is the source and centre of happiness in world. I gave up my London practice, and came his home. He has been twice married. By his first here with Admiral Underwood and his family in the wife (a woman of rank and large fortune) he had two capacity of medical guardian of his only son, a deli-children-a son and a daughter. After her death he cate lad of sixteen, to whom I am much attached, and whose life I hope to be the means of preserving. Great part of my time is spent in study,-scientific, philosophic, and (as you may suppose from the coun devoted himself to his profession for many years, being inconsolable for her loss. During that time his wife's family took charge of the children, who were to inherit a large property. The boy was heir-presumptive to a title; but he died in childhood, to the deep regret of his father and all connected with him, for he was a child of great promise. He had been christened David: this may partly account for the admiral's attraction to myself. The girl, Edith, was so fond of her brother, that she almost killed herself with grief for his loss. This intensity of feeling in a child of nine years old was very uncommon, and caused all those with whom she was domesticated to look for the development of a nature somewhat different from the average. As these worthy aristocratic persons were in nothing above the average themselves, except in their amount of self-satisfaction, they naturally dreaded and disliked all exhibition of character that was not akin to their own, and looked upon young Edith Underwood much as the owls looked upon the eaglet they had hatched by mistake. They did their best to chain her spirit and train her up in the way in which they thought she should go. In vain; she could not be made to walk in that way. You know the old story of the Martyrdom of Genius by Mediocrity. That was the fate of Edith Underwood's youth. The converse of that old story, the Martyrdom of Mediocrity by Genius,' is not so often talked of. Miss Underwood bears witness to it generously, now that she is free; and is of opinion that her stately grandmother, and fine-lady aunts, must have suffered more from her 'vagaries,' as they called them, than ever she did from their miserable, meaningless conventionality, and utter deadness to all true virtue and enthusiasm-making a certain something, which they called propriety, do duty instead; and which, to her clearsighted pious young soul, was generally a very improper director of thought or action. I have seen real tears in her eyes when she has spoken of the stupid blindness, the serene self-righteousness, with which these naturally kind-hearted and intelligent ladies were in the habit of prostrating their souls every day before the car of their absurd idol, Propriety. The more they were crushed by it, the better they were pleased; so that a keen tormenting sense of propriety was the most active principle within them at all times, and in all places. This sense of propriety she herself outraged every day, by her own account, and with every wish to avoid doing so, for she loved these ladies. How ever, as she grew older, life with them became, impossible. It was being crushed out of her, when her father came home, saw how matters were, and organized a change. Edith was sent to visit one of his married sisters, and accompanied the family to Italy; where she remained until the admiral's second marriage. She then went home to his house in -shire, to meet her stepmother. "Edith was sixteen-her stepmother ten years older. They were both predisposed to like each other. Mrs. Underwood was, (and I may add is still,) a great beauty-soft, gentle, indolent, and full of admiration for what is called cleverness; by which is meant, I find, any sort of intellectual activity, however small;-not one particle of which Mrs. Underwood possesses herself, and she has the gift to know it,' and the still rarer gift of being unenvious of those who do possess it. I never once heard her regret not being clever-or Edith regret not being beau tiful-though, I dare say, before I knew them, when they were both younger, and had not yet learned to accept the inevitable without a murmur, as God's best gift, they may each have mourned heartily the want of that glorious gift which shone forth so conspicuously in the other. I have never heard one woman speak of another with more sincere affection than Edith speaks of Mrs. Underwood; or have I often seen one woman take more genuine pride in another woman's beauty, than she does in that of her stepmother. From the time of her father's second marriage Edith began to be happy. "I wish I could convey a just idea of my friend Edith. Let me try;-for I am anxious that you should take an interest in all my friends. You will not fall into the error of supposing there is anything like love between us. The love of woman, in that sense, over for me; my little Leonora, and the memory of my first pure passion, are effectual safeguards against all other loves;-these, and my constant intellectual employment. An active brain is ever the best guardian of an empty heart. But my heart is not empty; -on the contrary, within this household it finds almost as many objects of affection as it can hold. Next to my child, Edith Underwood is the being who sheds most light on my life. Dear, nobie, generous Edith! happy am I to be able to love her as a friend only; most unfortunate should I be if it were otherwise; for Edith owns great wealth, and is far above me in station. We are equals only in this household, and in our love of literature and art;-and there is no thought of any other love between us. "Did I tell you it was she who first found me out and induced her father to seek me? She had remarked some poems signed D. U. in one of the leading Magazines, and made inquiries about the author. My name being that of her darling brother, excited a double interest. She contrived to send me a sum of money anonymously, and unknown to any one. (I have told you she was rich.) This money came, like all gifts which God sends by angels' hands, at a moment when that special gift was the one thing needed. It saved me from some of the worst degradations of poverty; and I blessed the unknown giver. Soon after that, I was struck by the vigour and beauty of a certain prose article, in a miscellaneous volume,-it touched upon a subject which I was meditating for my first book. I wrote to the author, anonymously, expressing the real admiration I felt for his work, and requesting to know whether the book I purposed writing, (the one I have just written,) trenched upon ground which he had any intention of occupying. You may imagine my surprise when I received an answer in the very noticeable handwriting which had accompanied the money gift. Edith Underwood was the author of the article in question, and had no suspicion that her new correspondent was the D. U. to whom she had sent the money. Her letter was charming-too charming, and graceful to be the production of a man. I had been mistaken in the sex of the author of the article, I could not be mistaken as to the sex of the letterwriter, although it was signed only with initials. I contrived to keep up a correspondence with this unknown lady, for there was a mysterious fascination about it. During the dread days of my bondage, my blindness; when I thought myself so blessed,—I neglected my unknown correspondent, as well as every other thing not connected with one whose name I now breathe only in my prayers. When the storm was past, and I remained helpless and wretched, with nought but a frail infant's life to bind me to the earth, my gentle unknown correspondent sent yet another letter, full of wisdom and womanly sweetness. At the close she bade me expect a visitor, a relationon the morrow. I was far too miserable to try to avoid this visitor. I forgot him and the letter. He came. It was Admiral Underwood. In five minutes we were speaking like father and son. That interview knit me to him for ever. The next day he carried me off-me and the poor babe to his house. Then I first saw Edith. She met me with the straightforward simplicity of her nature-so like a grown-up child, with a woman's tenderness superadded. I wish you could know her. Your passive and her active nature would combine readily, and form a perfect friendship. You are both ideal women -i.e. women whose specific individuality approaches nearly to the two abstract ideas of perfect womanhood-for there are two. "From that day we have been friends, she and Ineither of us being disappointed, I believe, in our anonymous correspondent. She is of a sunny, bright nature-like a summer lake. I have observed that women who, after the first youth has passed, appear glad and cheerful at all times, or at most times, are often those of the greatest depth and breadth of nature they have learned to subdue selfish sorrowthey take care to keep the fresh current of the upper life pure and sparkling; while down in the depths below, lie the precious relics of shipwrecked hopes and affections. Women, on the contrary, who are given to the display of melancholy, and are constantly putting both mind and body into picturesque positions of grief, are for the most part intensely selfish, and often very shallow in feeling as well as intellect. Until I knew Edith I was not in a condition to make these observations. Among men I had noticed that those who retain a continual sparkle and cork-like buoyancy of nature, after the season of early youth, never have much depth of character. They are very pleasant people, but they do not grapple with the burden of life, they let it slip from them; they are the Celts of the moral world. "With woman it is otherwise, as I said. Probably, it has been so ordained to enable her to perform well her task of comforter and consoler to man. The gravest wisdom, the loftiest reasoning, are far less efficacious in that task than a sunny gladness in the face, and a heart-music ringing in the voice. Cheerfulness and good temper are not the most dazzling or poetic, but they are among the never-failing charms with which woman holds dominion over man. "Edith Underwood is almost always cheerful, and her temper is one of the best I know. It is tried enough by every one of us; and most by my Leonora, to whom she acts as mother, governess, nurse, and constant slave. I, myself, must frequently give her annoyance, for I am subject to fits of obstinate moodiness and despondency. She has been mainly instrumental in rousing and bracing my mind to work, by working with me and for me. If it had not been for her, I doubt whether the volume would ever have been written, which you will receive from Mr.Shepherd about the time you ought to get this letter. It is, as I said before, my first book-the first production to which I have prefixed my name. You will read it with interest, Miriam, as a piece of the mental life of your old friend." "Ah!" murmured Miriam, "how well I remember when you brought me The Trail of the Serpent? It was before I became blind. That is the only one of David's books which I was able to read for myself. I recollect that simple dedication, To my best friend, and brightest example in the art of overcoming evil by good. And that was Edith Underwood! She, indeed, was a helpmeet for him. Tell me, Mr. Shepherd, is she his wife, now ?" I think she must be, my dear; for it was a daughter of Admiral Underwood that he married. Let me finish the letter, it is nearly ended." "You will easily understand that I do not send you and Mr. Shepherd this trifle because I am contented with it. It is far otherwise. But my thoughts reverted naturally to my native valley when I first saw this child of my brain in a completed form. Who is there,' I asked myself, to whom I can send a copy with a certainty of giving pleasure? Only Miriam and my old tutor.' So to Miriam and my old tutor I present copies, praying them to remember sometimes, in their quiet talks, the new author and their ever affectionate friend, "DAVID UNDERWOOD.” two days after we had given up all hope of seeing them | sight of the Italian coast, and that all on board had on earth again. I told you hurriedly, then, that poor Edith had been the only severe sufferer, and that the injury she had sustained had been caused solely by her efforts (thank God, successful efforts!) to rescue my poor insensible child from that terrible death. "It is not of death I am going to tell you now, Miriam; nor of sorrow or suffering; but of a solemn chastened joy. At length it has pleased God to make me happy in the enjoyment of a woman's love. You, in your saint-like seclusion in the old tower, in your oblivion of the past, will smile sweetly, I think, to hear that the wild, world-stained David Underwood, is going to be married at last; married to a woman whom you would honour from the bottom of that gentle heart of yours. "Let me tell you how it happened. Even now I cannot understand how I lived so long in daily communion with her-the warmth of her loving soul circling all round me and permeating my being, and yet I loved her not. But that is false; I loved her and knew it not. Noble, generous Edith! Strong, soft-hearted woman! "How could I, the fallen one, think of loving her? She-a very angel of love and good works. How could I, the half-taught, dimly-thinking man, aspire to the love of the one woman I have known, who to every charm of her own sex adds the knowledge, and moral strength, and intellectual vigour of the best men ? "How could 1, the poor physician, with no fortune but his brain, think of loving a woman who has been sought in marriage by half the peerage, for her large property and her noble connexions? "On the other hand,--how could I live with Edith Underwood, and not love her otherwise than as I did? The materials for kindling an enduring flame lay for a long time in my heart; there needed only the touch of one living spark to set it ablaze. The spark descended there at last, and the kindled flame needs no fauning now, and will expire but with my life. Edith will be my wife in one little week. Rejoice with me, my early friend. Shall I tell you of my blindness and insensibility? Dolt that I was! Edith loved me, and became conscious of her love long ago. Then, fearing that I or some one might discover it, she determined to avoid me, and return to England. This unaccountable determination induced her father to alter his plans. He thought it best to send the whole household back with her. Mrs. Underwood, Edith, the children, governesses and servants were to sail directly to England from Malta; I, and his son, William, were to remain with him there six months longer, as I wished William to avoid a winter in England. "No sooner had I lost sight of Edith than I began to feel a strange yearning within me. It was not for Leonora, who had gone with her, it was for a sight of Edith herself I longed. perished; with the speechless horror that crept through my veins at the thought of my lovely child, was added a new feeling-the woman who had slowly and unconsciously won all the love of my mature life, was gone from me for ever. I cannot attempt to describe how I passed the next forty-eight hours. Again, for the third time, life had become a burden almost too heavy for me to bear. But now, through Edith's influence, I knew how to wait patiently for help from above. My stricken soul was arousing itself. The words, 'Thy will be done,' were on my lips, when some one stood beside me, shook me gently, and said, They are all saved! Up! up! you are wanted, Dr. Underwood. Mamma says you must come and attend to Edith directly, or she will die.' I must pass over that meeting. Leonora was there-they were all there! safe! safe! All but Edith! I unclasped my arms from Leonora, and walked mechanically after Mrs. Underwood to a chamber above. I understood but dimly. I was a physician. Edith was ill; dying,-in consequence of her exertions on board the burning vessel. I must attend her; cure her, if possible; at all events, alleviate her pain. Seeing me apparently indifferent or stupid, Mrs. Underwood added, by way of incentive to my activity, 'It was in saving Leonora that she risked her life at the time, and will perhaps lose it, even now. Can you guess the feelings with which I stood by Edith's bedside? In all my professional experience I have never scen more physical suffering, or more patience and fortitude. It would be incredible to all who were not witnesses of that triumph of the soul over physical agony. Yet it is good for us to repeat,—to try to credit such stories of the virtue of our race. Oh! it is a glorious thing to be a human being! How touching in its union of weakness and strength must humanity be in the sight of God's angels! Ever since that day I have thanked the Creator, from my innost heart, for having made me a man, and not a being of a higher order. I am of the same race with Edith Underwood, and a thousand more who have shown in their lives 'how divine a thing it is to suffer and be strong.' "She did suffer! Suffered horribly!—for my child's sake. "They told me all, afterwards. "In less than a quarter of an hour from the first alarming cry of Fire! fire!' on board the vessel, it was in flames from stem to stern. Edith, always rapid and clear in thought as one of the cherubim, had organized in her mind, and carried into execution a plan for the salvation of our precious group, as soon as she saw that the flames mastered the crew, and that the officers who should have commanded all on board, had lost their presence of mind. She called two of her own men-servants, and ordered them to scize, and lower into the sea, a life-boat, which she was taking as a present from the Admiral to some naval friend in England. It was on a new principle. |