Harper's New Monthly Magazine, No. XI.—April, 1851—Vol. II.. Various
found the world cold and selfish, and your heart closed upon it. This was the action of a temperament eager and easily chilled; and it was natural enough that people who could not move your sympathies should think that your heart was dead or callous. Yet there it was, watching for the being who was one day to call up its idolatry – for it is not love that will constitute your happiness, Astræa – it must be idolatry. It is that for which you live – to relinquish yourself for another. All is darkness and probation with you till she who now inspires so much worship to which she is indifferent, shall herself become the worshiper. It is the instinct of your nature, the secret of the enigma, which makes you seem exactly the opposite of what you are."
I might have run on I know not to what excess, for I felt my eloquence kindling and rising to an extravagant height, when I perceived Astræa change color and avert her eyes.
"Have I offended you, Astræa?" I inquired.
"Offended me?" she answered; "no, you have done me a service. You have shown me the error of my life – the folly and delusion of hoping for a destiny different from that of the ordinary lot."
"Why do you call it a delusion? You will yet find that haven of rest toward which your heart looks so tremulously. The bird whose instinct carries it over the wild seas from continent to continent sometimes droops its jaded wings and sinks, but it makes land at last."
"No, no; it was a dream. There is no reality in such foolish notions."
"Come," said I, with increasing earnestness, "you must not speak against your convictions. You do not think it a dream – you rely confidently on the hope that the time will come – "
"The thought is madness," interrupted Astræa, quickly; "no – no – no – there is no such hope for me. Do not misconceive me. You have read my nature as clearly as if the volume of my whole life to its inmost thoughts were laid open before you. But the dream is over. It might have been the pride and glory of my soul to have waited upon some high Intelligence – to have followed its progress, cheered it patiently in secret to exertion, encouraged its ambition, and lain in the shadow of its triumphs. It is over. That may never be!"
Her voice shook, although she looked calmly at me as she spoke, trying to conceal her emotion. Her hand accidentally lay in mine. There was a danger in it which I would not see.
"And you have not found the Intelligence for which you sought?" I demanded, in a voice that conveyed more than it expressed in words.
"Yes," she replied slowly, "I have found Intelligence – original, hard, athletic; but wanting in the sympathy that alone wins the heart of woman."
"Astræa," I replied, "your imagination has pictured an ideal which I fear you will never find realized."
"I have found it!" she cried, betrayed into a transport of feeling; then, checking herself, she added, "and I have lost it. Would to God I had never found it!"
Her head drooped – it touched my shoulder; my arm pressed her waist – I was ignorant of it; a haze swam before my eyes. Tumultuous sensations beat audibly at my heart. Astræa, the haughty beauty – the intellectual, proud Astræa – where was her dominant power – her lofty self-possession now? Subdued, bowed down by emotion, the strength of her will seemed to pass from her to me, reversing our positions, and placing in my hands the ascendency she had so lately wielded. The air seemed to palpitate with these new and agitating feelings. I made an effort to control myself and speak, but could only pronounce her name
"Astræa!"
There were a hundred questions in the word; but she was silent, and in her silence a hundred answers.
"Not here, Astræa," I cried; "we shall be more free to speak elsewhere – away from those vacant eyes through which no hearts find utterance for us. One word, and I will be still – one word – "
She trembled violently, and pressed my hand convulsively, as if she desired that I should not ask that word. But it was no longer possible to restrain it.
That word was spoken.
A shudder passed over her, and as she bent her head I felt a gush of tears upon my hand. At that moment a muffled step was on the stairs, and I had scarcely time to disengage myself when our imp half opened the door, and looked in with a leer of ribaldry and suspicion that chilled me to the core.
WILLIAM PENN'S CONVERSION TO QUAKERISM. 1
Penn did not remain long in London. His father, anxious to keep him apart from his old Puritan friends – and to sustain the habit of devotion to his temporal interests into which he seemed gradually falling, sent him again into Ireland. He had no suspicion that the enemy of his peace lay in ambush at the very gates of his stronghold. But the youth had not resided more than a few months at Shangarry Castle before one of those incidents occurred which destroy in a day the most elaborate attempts to stifle the instincts of nature. When the admiral in England was pluming himself on the triumphs of his worldly prudence, his son, on occasion of one of his frequent visits to Cork, heard by accident that Thomas Loe, his old Oxford acquaintance, was in the city and intended to preach that night. He thought of his boyish enthusiasm at college, and wondered how the preacher's eloquence would stand the censures of his riper judgment. Curiosity prompted him to stay and listen. The fervid orator took for his text the passage – "There is a faith that overcomes the world, and there is a faith that is overcome by the world." The topic was peculiarly adapted to his own situation. Possessed by strong religious instincts, but at the same time docile and affectionate – he had hitherto oscillated between two duties – duty to God and duty to his father. The case was one in which the strongest minds might waver for a time. On the one side – his filial affection, the example of his brilliant friends, the worldly ambition never quite a stranger to the soul of man – all pleaded powerfully in favor of his father's views. On the other there was only the low whisperings of his own heart. But the still voice would not be silenced. Often as he had escaped from thought into business, gay society, or the smaller vanities of the parade and mess-room – the moment of repose again brought back the old emotions. The crisis had come at last. Under Thomas Loe's influence they were restored to a permanent sway. From that night he was a Quaker in his heart.
He now began to attend the meetings of this despised and persecuted sect, and soon learned to feel the bitter martyrdom to which he had given up all his future hopes. In no part of these islands were the Quakers of that time treated as men and as brethren – and least of any where in Ireland. Confounded by ignorant and zealous magistrates with those sterner Puritans who had lately ruled the land with a rod of iron, and had now fallen into the position of a vanquished and prostrate party – they were held up to ridicule in polite society, and pilloried by the vulgar in the market-place. On the 3d of September (1667), a meeting of these harmless people was being held in Cork when a company of soldiers broke in upon them, made the whole congregation prisoners and carried them before the mayor on a charge of riot and tumultuous assembling. Seeing William Penn, the lord of Shangarry Castle and an intimate friend of the viceroy, among the prisoners, the worthy magistrate wished to set him at liberty on simply giving his word to keep the peace, but not knowing that he had violated any law he refused to enter into terms, and was sent to jail with the rest. From the prison he wrote to his friend the Earl of Ossory – Lord President of Munster – giving an account of his arrest and detention. An order was of course sent to the mayor for his immediate discharge; but the incident had made known to all the gossips of Dublin the fact that the young courtier and soldier had turned Quaker.
His friends at the vice-regal court were greatly distressed at this untoward event. The earl wrote off to the admiral to inform him of his son's danger, stating the bare facts just as they had come to his knowledge. The family were thunderstruck. The father especially was seriously annoyed; he thought the boy's conduct not only mad but what was far worse in that libertine age – ridiculous. The world was beginning to laugh at him and his family: – he could bear it no longer. He wrote in peremptory terms, calling him to London. William obeyed without a word of expostulation. At the first interview between father and son nothing was said on the subject which both had so much at heart. The admiral scrutinized the youth with searching eyes – and as he observed no change in
From a new life of Penn, by Hepworth Dixon, in the press of Blanchard and Lea, Philadelphia.