Page:Once a Week Volume V.djvu/196



When Richard last held her to his breast

Her lips were stainless, her heart was true;

And now—and now—well, let that rest.

Richard is dead: let the past die too!

Let the past die. The present is all.

Lord Arthur’s step is upon the stair.

After dinner the opera and the ball;

This folly will surely not haunt her there.

With a strange wild beauty her cheek is red;

With a strange wild lustre her eyes are bright;

But still the silent face of the dead

Looks full in her face that weary night.

And still, amidst music and whispered sighs,

Thro’ her soul goes a shuddering under-breath,—

Better be Richard Brand where he lies

Than sunk in the slough of a living death!”

“.”

was just three months since; indeed, to speak with preciseness, it was Saturday, the 4th of May. Sophonisba, who is at once the joy and better half of my existence, was breakfasting with me in the dining-room of my pleasant country rectory. Within the room everything (including our two selves), looked agreeable, bright, and warm; out of doors it was cold and cheerless, and anything but agreeable. Although the almanacks assured us that we had entered upon the genial month of May, yet, the east wind was howling, biting, and cutting, and was altogether behaving itself with a rude severity that no panegyric of Mr. Kingsley could mitigate, while a driving hail-storm rattled against the window-panes with a sound like the dropping fire at a Volunteer Review.

“Sophonisba!” I exclaimed to the joy of my existence, as I turned from the kippered salmon to the devilled kidneys (my tastes are proverbially simple), “Sophonisba, it is well that we have not sacrificed our winter garments upon the altar of our fickle climate, but have relied upon the truth of our village adage, ‘Till May be out, Ne’er change a clout.’ If my singing Curate, Motet, were with us, we could perform that pretty old glee, ‘Hail, all hail, thou merry month of May!’ it would be appropriate.”

“Think of the blossoms, my dear Alphonso!” was the response, as a fresh feu de joie of hail rattled against the window. “The wall-fruit is gone; and, now, the apples will be caught.”

Between mouthfulls, I was cutting the leaves of that morning’s “Saturday Review,” and was dipping into their article on “Negroes, and Negro Slavery;” so, instead of vouchsafing any other intelligent reply than a grunt, I shortly called Sophonisba’s attention to the Review. It so happened that, during the previous fortnight, the greater portions of my evenings had been occupied by new books by Consuls Petherick and Hutchinson, on Ethiopia and the Soudan, and by Reid’s “Sketches in North America;” and these works, and the present crisis in America, had made me more than ordinarily impressible on the subject of the slave-trade. I presume that it arose from this combination of circumstances, that I suddenly uttered the Archimedean cry of Eureka! when, after laying aside the “Saturday Review,” I had turned to glance over the various printed and lithographed communications that formed a part of the contents of that morning’s letter-bag.

Now, parsons are peculiarly liable to other visitations than those of an archidiaconal character, and they are notably exposed to the literary attacks of puffing tradesmen. The chief assailants (apart from clerical subjects, appeals from Church Defence Associations, and Insurance Companies), are hatters, grocers, tailors, and wine merchants. They are particularly attentive to me; and, unlike the generality of my brethren, I always glance over their epistolary commendations of their own wares—not with the thought of giving any order to these mercantile anglers (for I never once have risen to their most alluring flies), but solely for the enjoyment that I derived from a perusal of their literary efforts. For, it appears to me, that the literature of the shop is an astonishing evidence of the progress of education, and a distinguishing characteristic of the Victorian era. To me the development of this peculiar branch of literature seems to be a feature of the age—an useful one, probably, and remunerative, or our nation of shopkeepers would not bestow so much care or money upon it. They are no longer content to call a spade, a spade. They send it forth in mountebank disguise, with a nomenclature which is neither English, French, Greek, nor Latin, but perhaps, a base mixture of all four; and, through the aid of literature, this wonderful article is recommended to notice, and puffed into a pseudo fame, by the most ingenious artifices.

De tea fabula narratur.—I might tell you a tale of a tea-merchant in our county-town, or I might cite the cases of the butcher and the two rival tailors, who, every week, in the pages of our “Slowshire Independent,” puff their respective goods through the medium of mortal verse. I am not ashamed to confess that if I do not use or consume their wares, I devour the verses. To my mind, their lyrics form one of the chief attractions of the “Independent,” whose articles, it must be confessed, are not equal in ability to those in the “Saturday Review,” and it is often a subject of curious speculation to me—Who writes their verses? There was the butcher’s poem, last week, on the subject of Garibaldi: I vow that it had all the fire and grace of Tupper! the delightfully easy way in which it turned from Italy and Garibaldi to “Giblett’s juicy chops,” and the delicate yet forcible manner in which it pointed out that Giblett was no less a patriot than Garibaldi in his endeavours to serve his countrymen, was, to my mind, not unworthy of our great Proverbial Philosopher. While, in the same newspaper, there was another poem on the subject of the British Volunteers marching to glory in Aaron’s guinea pants, which Miss Euphemia Gushington might have owned.

“Yes, Sophonisba!” I cried; “I never throw these advertising circulars into the waste-paper basket without having first extracted the honey of their style, and made myself master of their