Imatges de pàgina
PDF
EPUB
[graphic]

I have frequently heard my father say, (and he was likely to know, as he held a farm near the spot;) that he had seen the coffin in the chair; and I am inclined to believe that the body has lately been deposited in a vault beneath, as the window shutters were formerly left open to the view of every visitor; but within these few years have been closed up. R. BROWN,

[merged small][ocr errors]

In the "Beauties of England and Wales," by Messrs. Britton and Brayley, it is observed relative to the cemetery, that" in general the witty atheist is satisfied with entertaining his contemporaries, but Mr. Tilley wished to have his sprightliness known to posterity. With this view, in ridicule of the resurrection, he obliged his executors to place his dead body in his usual garb, and in his elbow chair, upon the top of a hill, and to arrange on a table before him, bottles, glasses, pipes, and tobacco. In this situation, he ordered himself to be immured in a tower of such dimensions as he prescribed, where he proposed, he said, patiently to wait the event. All this was done, and the tower, still enclosing its tenant, remains as a monument of his impiety and profane

ness.

[ocr errors]

"The fear-struck hind with superstitious gaze,
Trembling and pale th' unhallow'd tomb surveys;
And half expects, while horror chills his breast,
To see the spectre of its impious guest."

SONNET.-MORN.

[ocr errors]

BY G. F. RICHARDSON, AUTHOR OF POETIC HOURS,"
LIFE AND POEMS OF KORNER," &c.

66

Sweet is the morn to all, but sweetest far,
To him the pining slave of discontent,
Who, deep within some populous city pent,
With care and toil doth wage a life long war!
Though he himself, perchance, would gladly bar
The dubious prospect of his future gains;
So he were rid of those life-wearying pains
That poison life, and fair enjoyment mar.
For when he marks the loveliness of morn,
Views the bright splendour of its gorgeous dreams,
Or hears the lays that hail its rising beams,
He half forgets awhile his fate forlorn;

Feels joys unwonted o'er his heart-strings play,
Or mantle to his cheek to fade and die away.

THE LIGHT-HOUSE.

Richard Clifton was one of those wild, yet commanding spirits, that are great in good or evil, according to the more or less favorable circumstances, in which they may happen to be placed. His earliest years had been devoted to the navy, where, by his own unassisted merit, he had risen to the rank of a first-lieutenant; when a blow, given to his superior officer, thrust him on the world, a pennyless outcast. The same energies, which had before made him the best of seamen, now rendered him the worst of citizens; for power is like the fiend that, once called up, must have something to employ it, or it falls on its master. There was a blight on his fame and on his hopes, yet still there was one chance for him: he had long been attached to Lucy Ellis, who on her side most truly loved her sailor, in spite of all his faults, real or supposed, and the one list was equal to the other; for calumny, like the raven, is fond of preying on the dying and the dead. Had the father of the maiden consented to their union, it is most probable that the life of Richard would have been honourable to himself, and useful to his country; but old Ellis was one of those heartless, selfish beings, who love their children only as they minister to their own comfort, or gratification: he wished to see his daughter married to a rich man, not because those riches might make her lot more comfortable, but because a rich son-in-law added to his own importance. Such a proposal, therefore, excited his warmest indignation; it was a cutting up of all his prospects, of the hopes that he had been toiling to realise for many years; she would be a beggar-an outcast; the alliance was infamy. In all this, however, there was much more regard shown for himself than his child; and Lucy felt that there was. This was the corner stone of the subsequent evils: the harshness of her father made her more open to the false flatteries of her lover; though at the same time she was not altogether ignorant of her own weakness: in the hour of temptation she flung herself on the honour of the man she adored; she owned her inability to resist him, in all the fervor of a real passion, and urged that very passion as a plea for his forbearance. With many this prayer had been effectual, but not with men like

Richard Clifton, who have no settled rule of conduct, and are either bad or good only from the impulse of the moment. The consequence was the seduction of Lucy, and in a few months afterwards, her lover joined a band of smugglers, and was either killed, or drowned, or had fled the country; for each of these reports had its particular defenders.

In the mean time the dishonour of Lucy became too gross for longer concealment. On the discovery of her situation, the merchant at once turned her out of doors, as the destroyer of all his dearest expectations; and bade her starve or live, as she could best settle the matter with the world: nor could any after arguments of his friends, in the least affect his resolution; he was deaf to all remonstrance, whether of justice, or humanity. But the wrath of heaven, which had first smitten the guilty child, was not slow in punishing the heartless pa rent, who had arrogated to himself the office of vengeance, and executed it with more of passion than of equity. In his eagerness to amass a fortune, the merchant overstepped the bounds of prudent speculation. The first great loss stimulated to a second adventure for its retrieval; and that, miscarrying, in turn brought with it a further hazard, to fail like those before it; till the proud and wealthy Ellis found himself a destitute bankrupt, pursued and crushed by the vindictive spirit of disappointed creditors, who pleaded his cruelty in excuse for theirs. "You showed no mercy to your own child, how then can you expect it from me, a stranger?" was the answer of one to whom he was deeply indebted, and who had formerly been a fruitless intercessor for poor Lucy. Some, too, were actuated by less disinterested motives, and were glad to shelter their hatred of the father under the show of compassion for the child; but the result was the same to Ellis-he was a ruined man. His ostentatious charities, which had been so much praised in the days of his success, were now considered in their true light, and had not procured a single friend to pity or assist him in his difficulties.

So complete had been the failure, and so rigid his creditors, that a few weeks found him possessed of a few pounds only, whose word had once been good for thousands. In this dilemma he quitted his native town, which for the last month he had inhabited out of mere pride, and after a long course of suffering, became the guardian of a light-house, on one of

the wildest parts of the English coast. A very short residence in this sad abode, made him a weaker, though not a better, man; he grew, not less selfish, but more timid,--more impressed with the actual and near presence of a creator; and he began to feel that there was not only an after, but a present, vengeance. Nor is this to be wondered at; loneliness brings the mind more immediately in contact with the works of the Creator, and from them with the Creator himself. No man of any imagination was ever an atheist in solitude, and, though in the case of old Ellis, religion was only the religion of fear, yet still it was better than no faith at all; it taught him a little more lenity to the faults of others.

Nearly two years had thus past, when, one September's evening, a poor maniac, in squalid weeds, and with a face gaunt from long misery, came to his door and begged for a morsel of bread for the love of charity-it was his daughter! The recognition was quick and mutual, but with very opposite feelings, Sorrow, and pain, and remorse, suddenly threw a dark cloud over the old man's face; while the maniac's eye was lit up with an expression of rage and triumph, that was truly fiendlike, as she screamed out, "Ho, ho, ho! have I found you at last? take back your curse, old man; I have borne it long enough, and a sad load, and a weary one it has been to me; but take it back—it has curdled the milk of my bosom to poison, and my poor babe sucked and died. But take it back, and look that it does not sink you into the depths of hell. Many a time it has lain heavy on me, and I felt myself sinking, sinking, sinking, like one that struggled with the waters; but then my sweet babe would come, with his cherub face all bright with glory, just like those skies where the sun is setting, and his little hand was stronger than my strength, for it would draw me back again when I was up to my breast in fire. But you have no child to save you, therefore look that your heart be strong; you had best-no childno child, old man; for I deny you-I cast you off-goleave this earth-it is mine-go-do you hear?-you are the only peace-breaker, and I'll none of you. Go-you'll ask whither? but that's your concern; there's a large world above, and a larger one below, and if they refuse you in the one, it will only be a better recommendation to the other." She might still have gone on thus, for Ellis was too much

« AnteriorContinua »