First Love. Mrs. Loudon
was very thin.
“My premises, madam, led to no such monstrous conclusion!” replied Mr. Jackson, with much more severity of tone than the occasion called for.
“Monstrous conclusion!” echoed the doctor. “Come, that’s very good! The person your ladyship has just mentioned, is somewhat monstrous, it cannot be denied.”
Mr. Jackson, meanwhile, with a gravity not to be shaken, proceeded addressing Mrs. Montgomery as follows:—“In my mental visions, I have often indulged in speculations on the possible appearance of angels. I have, ’tis true, always pictured them to myself decked in that freshness of beauty peculiar to extreme youth; yet, on the brow, I have imagined an expression resembling what may be traced here!” and he passed his hand over the forehead of Edmund. Then taking off the little plumed Scotch bonnet, and viewing him as he spoke, he continued: “That look, I had almost said of thought, that touch of sentiment, scarcely corresponding with the dimpled and infantine loveliness of the cheek: that smile too, of perfect happiness, emanating from the blissful consciousness of never even wishing wrong! No seeds of jarring passions there, madam! no contentions of spirit: but that absolute harmony of soul, so rarely to be met with on earth, when every impulse of the native will is in unison with the sense of right implanted in all, by the great Author and Source of good!”
Lady Theodosia was dying to laugh, but dare not, Mr. Jackson’s face was so perfectly serious. Edmund looked up at the moment, conscious that he was spoken of, though, of course, not comprehending what was said.
“The eye,” continued Mr. Jackson, “when it meets yours, certainly conveys a tender appeal, a silent claim on protection, that we scarcely expect in that of a superior intelligence.”
Lady Theodosia philosophically observed, that the child’s hair was black, and that angels were always depicted with golden locks. (Her ladyship’s were auburn, bordering on red.) “And as to supposing,” continued the lady, “that angels must invariably be children,” (Lady Theodosia was no child,) “it is quite an erroneous idea. Milton’s angels were of all ages.”
“But there were no ladies among them, Theodosia!” said Lord L., just coming up. “Lovers call you angels, but brothers and married men may speak the truth; and, it must be confessed, that all the angels upon record are either children or young men.”
“Oh fie! my lord,” ventured the doctor; “is it not recorded every day before our eyes, in the fairest characters,” bowing and smiling to Lady Theodosia, “that the ladies are angels! Fair characters! fair characters! Come, that’s fair, very fair, a’n’t?”
CHAPTER XI.
“There is nothing great,
Which religion does not teach; nothing good,
Of which she is not the eternal source;
At once the motive and the recompense.”
From the evening of the birth of Lady L.’s babies, it was evident that our hero, though not yet seven years old, no longer thought himself little. He assumed a manly air and carriage, and could not bear the idea of being suspected of wanting assistance or protection. He, indeed, was always ready to give his assistance, if one of the babies stretched a little hand for any thing, or his protection, if the bark of a dog, the sight of a stranger, or any such awful occurrence, alarmed either of them; or his soothings, if they cried.
He would no longer hold by any one’s hand in walking, but would step out in front of the nursery party, with quite a proud air, looking over his shoulder, from time to time, and telling the nurses that he was going first, to see that there was nothing there to hurt the babies. He often asked if they would ever be as big as he was; and always kept alive, by perpetual inquiries, and additional caresses, a perfect recollection of the identity of the eldest baby—the one that had been held across his arms, the evening it was born; and which, at the moment it seemed to clasp his finger, had awakened in his little breast the first emotion of tenderness, that was not accompanied by that almost awe-inspiring feeling—a grateful looking up, as from an immeasurable distance, to beings, in whose love and protection he himself sought shelter.
The partiality evinced by Mr. Jackson for our hero, on the day of the christening, encouraged Mrs. Montgomery to put in immediate execution a plan which Lady L. and herself had been for some time meditating; namely, to request that gentleman to undertake the education of Edmund, till he was of an age to be sent to the Naval College.
Mr. Jackson was eminently fitted for the task of instructing youth. He had been a fellow of one of the universities, and distinguished both for his learning and his talents.
Since his retirement from college on his present living, he had enjoyed much leisure, and had devoted it to elegant studies: modern classics, modern languages, the fine arts, late discoveries in science, &c. &c. In short, to use his own words, he had, since that period, wandered daily through the pleasure-grounds of literature; not suffering his mind to sink into utter indolence, yet giving it no more than the healthful stimulus of gentle exercise. He was born a poet, but had, through life, indulged more in poetical feelings than in poetical effusions; unless, indeed, we admit as such, the energetic overflowing of his spontaneous eloquence in conversation; for his sermons, he took care, should be plain and practical. He was not a shepherd, who, at the instigation of vanity, would turn the green pasture-lands of his flock into beds of tulips. Yet did not the pure and perspicuous style, which good taste, as well as good feeling, taught him to adopt on sacred subjects, want for that true sublime which is derived from simplicity, when the grandeur of the thought itself leaves laboured language far behind.
The topic on which he was unwearied was, the inseparable connexion between right faith and right practice, and between both and happiness. He proved, by the most beautiful and feeling arguments and illustrations, that, like the root, the blossom, and the fruit, they grew out of, necessarily produced, and, as necessarily, could not exist without each other. He then proceeded to show, that the whole chain of natural causes and effects formed one unbroken, practical revelation of the Almighty will, ordaining virtue and forbidding vice; inasmuch as not only is virtue necessary to make us capable of happiness even here, but out of vice invariably grows suffering, not only moral, but generally physical also, lest the lowest capacity should be slow to comprehend this manifestation of the sovereign purpose of him who called us into being, but bestows upon us that felicity, towards which, his all-wise government is constituted to lead us; of him who, had it been possible even to infinite power, to bestow a consciousness of individuality of spiritual being, without an equal consciousness of freedom of will, would have rendered it impossible for his creatures to err; or, in other words, to forfeit that bliss which “eye hath not seen, ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive.”
“For,” our Christian philosopher would add, as he drew his arguments to their close, “had that emanation of the divinity which is the soul of man, been without choice between good and evil; or, in other words, necessitated to act by no other impulse than that of its great source, the Almighty had created but a material world, all spiritual intelligence, the whole soul of the universe, had still been God himself!”
Mr. Jackson’s imaginings, especially when he walked alone amid the majestic scenery that surrounded his dwelling, certainly were poetry; but he seldom interrupted his pleasing reveries, or checked his nights of fancy, to place them on paper, or even to arrange them in any precise order of words. Indeed, it was one of his favourite positions, (and he was famous for theories of his own,) that a man might be a poet, without possessing one word of any language whatsoever, in which to express his poetic ideas.
In judging a new work, too, he seldom descended to verbal criticism; but, taking an enlarged view of the spirit in which the thing was written, pronounced it, at once, to want, or to possess, that poetical spark, that vivifying principle, which must, he maintained, breathe a soul into every composition, whether prose or verse, worth the trouble of reading.
To complete Mr. Jackson’s qualifications