Page:The fortunes of Perkin Warbeck.djvu/64

56 and fidelity; bub because, from some motive springing from the unselfish part of our nature, they exposed themselves to danger and to death.

It was at times such as these that friendship formed the chief solace of man's life. The thought of his lady-love supported the knight during his wanderings, and rewarded him on his return; but the society of his brothers in arms shortened the weary hours, and made peril pleasure. Death, the severer of hearts and destroyer of hope, is, in its actual visitation, the great evil of life—the ineffaceable blot, the tarnisher of the imagination's brightest hues; but if he never came, but only hovered, the anticipation of his advent might be looked upon as the refiner of our nature. To go out under the shadow of his dark banner, hand in hand, to encounter a thousand times his grim likeness; to travel on through unknown ways, during starless nights, through forests beset with enemies, over mountains, whose defiles hid him but to assure his aim; to meet him arrayed in his full panoply on the field of battle; to separate in danger; to meet on the verge of annihilation; and still, through every change, to reap joy, because every peril was mutual, every emotion shared, was a school for heroic friendship that does not now exist. In those times, also, man was closer linked with nature than now; and the sublimity of her creations exalted his imagination, and elevated his enthusiasm—dark woods, wild mountains, and the ocean's vast expanse, form a stage on which, when we act our parts, we feel that mightier natures than our own witness the scenes we present, and our hearts are subdued by awe to resignation.

Edmund Plantagenet, the forest-bred son of Richard the Third, the late companion of the illustrious Lincoln and gallant Lovel, lay long insensible on the field of battle, surrounded by the dead—he awoke from his swoon to the consciousness that they lay strewed around him dead, whom he had worshipped as heroes, loved as friends. Life became a thankless boon; willingly would he have closed his eyes, and bid his soul also go on her journey to the unknown land, to which almost all those to whom he had been linked during his past existence had preceded him. He was rescued by a charitable friar from this sad state—his wound was dressed—life, and with it liberty, restored to him. After some reflection, the first use he resolved to make of these gifts was to visit the young duke of York at Tournay.

Edmund's mind, without being enterprising, was full of latent energy, and contemplative enthusiasm. The love of virtue reigned paramount in it; nor could he conceive happiness unallied to some pursuit, whose origin was duty, whose aim was