PERCIVAL.

Among my letters is one from Dr. E.D. North, desiring me to furnish any facts within my reach, relating to the scientific character and general opinions of the late James G. Percival. This information Dr. North proposed to incorporate into a memoir, to be prefixed to a new edition of Percival's Poems. The biographer, with his task unfinished, has followed the subject of his studies to the tomb.

Dr. North's request revived in me many recollections of Percival; and finally led me to draw out the following sketch of him, as he appeared to my eyes in those days when I saw him often, and sometimes shared his pursuits. Vague and shadowy is the delineation, and to myself seems little better than the reminiscence of a phantom or a dream. Percival's life had few externalities,—he related himself to society by few points of contact; and I have been compelled to paint him chiefly by glimpses of his literary and interior existence.

My acquaintance with him grew out of some conversations on geological topics, and commenced in 1828, when he was working on his translation of Malte-Brun's Geography. The impression made on me by his singular person and manners was vivid and indelible. Slender in form, rather above than under the middle height, he had a narrow chest, and a peculiar stoop, which was not in the back, but high up in the shoulders. His head, without being large, was fine. His eyes were of a dark hazel, and possessed uncommon expression. His nose, mouth, and chin were symmetrically, if not elegantly formed, and came short of beauty only because of that meagreness which marked his whole person. His complexion, light without redness, inclined to sallow, and suggested a temperament somewhat bilious. His dark brown hair had become thin above the forehead, revealing to advantage that most striking feature of his countenance. Taken all together, his appearance was that of a weak man, of delicate constitution,—an appearance hardly justified by the fact; for he endured fatigue and privation with remarkable stanchness.

Percival's face, when he was silent, was full of calm, serious meditation; when speaking, it lighted up with thought, and became noticeably expressive. He commonly talked in a mild, unimpassioned undertone, but just above a whisper, letting his voice sink with rather a pleasing cadence at the completion of each sentence. Even when most animated, he used no gesture except a movement of the first and second fingers of his right hand backward and forward across the palm of the left, meantime following their monotonous unrest with his eyes, and rarely meeting the gaze of his interlocutor. He would stand for hours, when talking, his right elbow on a mantel-piece, if there was one near, his fingers going through their strange palmistry; and in this manner, never once stirring from his position, he would not unfrequently protract his discourse till long past midnight. An inexhaustible, undemonstrative, noiseless, passionless man, scarcely evident to you by physical qualities, and impressing you, for the most part, as a creature of pure intellect.

His wardrobe was remarkably inexpensive, consisting of little more than a single plain suit, brown or gray, which he wore winter and summer, until it became threadbare. He never used boots; and his shoes, though carefully dusted, were never blacked. A most unpretending bow fastened his cravat of colored cambric. For many years his only outer garment was a brown camlet cloak, of very scanty proportions, thinly lined, and a meagre protection against winter. His hat was worn for years before being laid aside, and put you in mind of the prevailing mode by the law of contrast only. He was never seen with gloves, and rarely with an umbrella. The value of his entire wardrobe scarcely exceeded fifty dollars; yet he was always neat, and appeared unconscious of any peculiarity in his costume.

An accurate portrait of him at any period of his life can scarcely be said to exist. His sensitive modesty seems to have made him unwilling to let his features be exposed to the flaring notoriety of canvas. Once, indeed, he allowed himself to be painted by Mr. George A. Flagg; but the picture having been exhibited in the Trumbull Gallery of Yale College, Percival's susceptibility took alarm, and he expressed annoyance,—though whether dissatisfied with the portrait or its public exposure I cannot say. The artist proposed certain alterations, and the poet listened to him with seeming assent. The picture was taken back to the studio; objectionable or questionable parts of it painted out; the likeness destroyed for the purpose of correction; and Percival was to give another sitting at his convenience. That was the last time he put himself within painting reach of Mr. Flagg's easel.[A]

[Footnote A: I remember to have seen an excellent portrait of him, by Alexander, in the studio of that artist, in the year 1825; but in whose possession it now is, I am unable to say.]

In those days of our early acquaintance, he occupied two small chambers, one of which fronted on the business part of Chapel Street (New Haven). His books, already numerous, were piled in double tiers and in heaps against the walls, covering the floors also, and barely leaving space for his sleeping-cot, chair, and writing-table. His library was a sanctum to which the curious visitor hardly ever gained admittance. He met even his friends at the door, and generally held his interviews with them in the adjoining passage. Disinclined to borrow books, he was especially averse to lending. Dr. Guhrauer's assertion respecting Leibnitz, that "his library was numerous and valuable, and its possessor had the peculiarity that he liked to worm in it alone, being very reluctant to let any one see it," applies equally well to Percival.

He was rarely visible abroad except in his walks to and from the country, whither he often resorted to pass not hours only, but frequently entire days, in solitary wanderings,—partly for physical exercise,—still more, perhaps, to study the botany, the geology, and the minutest geographical features of the environs; for his restless mind was perpetually observant, and could not be withheld from external Nature, even by his poetic and philosophic meditation. In these excursions, he often passed his fellow-mortals without noticing them. A friend, if observed, he greeted with a slight nod, and possibly stopped him for conversation. Once started on a subject, Percival rarely quitted it until it was exhausted; and consequently these interviews sometimes outlasted the leisure of his listener. You excused yourself, perhaps; or you were called away by some one else; but you had only put off the conclusion of the discourse, not escaped it. The next time Percival encountered you, his first words were, "As I was saying,"—and taking up the thread of his observations where it had been broken, he went straight to the end.

The excellent bookstore of the late Hezekiah Howe, one of the best in New England, and particularly rich in those rare and costly works which form a bookworm's delight, was one of Percival's best-loved lounging-places. He bought freely, and, when he could not buy, he was welcome to peruse: He read with marvellous rapidity, skipping as if by instinct everything that was unimportant; avoiding the rhetoric, the commonplaces, the falsities; glancing only at what was new, what was true, what was suggestive, he had a distinct object in view; but it was not to amuse himself, nor to compare author with author; it was simply to increase the sum of his own knowledge. Perhaps it was in these rapid forays through unbought, uncut volumes, that he acquired his singular habit of reading books, even his own, without subjecting them to the paper-knife. People who wanted to see Percival and obtain his views on special topics were accustomed to look for him at Mr. Howe's, and always found him willing to pour forth his voluminous information.

His income at this time was derived solely from literary jobs, and was understood to be very limited. What he earned he spent chiefly for books, particularly for such as would assist him in perfecting that striking monument of his varied and profound research, his new translation and edition of Malte-Brun. For this labor the time had been estimated, and the publishers had made him an allowance, which, if he had worked like other men, would have amounted to eight dollars a day. But Percival would let nothing go out of his hands imperfect; a typographical error, even, I have heard him say, sometimes depressed him like actual illness. He translated and revised so carefully, he corrected so many errors and added so many footnotes, that his industry actually devoured its own wages; and his eight dollars gradually diminished to a diurnal fifty cents.

Percival made no merely ceremonial calls, few friendly visits, and attended no parties. If he dropped in upon a family of his acquaintance, he rarely addressed himself to a lady. Otherwise there was nothing peculiar in his deportment; for, if silent, he was not embarrassed,—and if he talked, it was without any appearance of self-consciousness.

Judging from his isolated habits, some persons supposed him misanthropic. Let me give one instance of his good-nature. One of the elder professors of Yale had fallen into a temporary misappreciation with the students, who received his instructions, to say the least, with an ill-concealed indifference. They whispered during his lectures, and in other ways rendered themselves strenuously disagreeable to the sensitive nerves of the professor. Indignant at such behavior toward a worthy and learned man, who had been his own instructor, Percival proposed a plan for stopping the annoyance. It was, that a number of old graduates, professors, and others, himself being one, should attend the lectures, listen to them with the respect they merited, and so, if possible, bring the students to a sense of propriety and of the advantages they were neglecting.

No, Percival was not a misanthrope. During an acquaintance of twenty-five years, I never knew him do an act or utter a word which could countenance this opinion. He indulged in no bitter remarks, cherished no hatred of individuals, affected no scorn of his race; on the contrary, he held large views concerning the noble destinies of mankind, and expressed deep interest in its advancement toward greater intelligence and virtue. The local affections he certainly had, for he was gratified at the prosperity of his fellow-townsmen, proud of his native State, and took a pleasure in defending her name from unjust aspersions. Patriotic, too,—none more so,—he rejoiced in the welfare of the whole country, knew its history thoroughly, and bestowed on its military heroes, in particular, a lively appreciation, which was singular, perhaps, in a man of such gentle habits and nature. I cannot forget the excited pleasure with which we visited, when on the geological survey of Connecticut, Putnam's Stairs at Horseneck, and Putnam's Wolf-Den in Pomfret. At the latter place, Percival's enthusiasm for the heroic hunter and warrior led him to carve his initials on a rock at the entrance of the chasm. It was the only place during the tour where he left a similar memorial.

American statesmen he admired scarcely less than American soldiers; nor did he neglect any information within his reach concerning public men and measures. It was singular to observe with what freedom from excitement he discussed the most irritating phases of party,—speaking of the men and events of his own day with as much philosophic calmness as if they belonged to a previous century; not at all deceived, I think, by the temporary notoriety and power which frequently attend the political bustler,—quite positive, indeed, that many of our "great men" were far inferior to multitudes in private life. Webster he respected greatly, and used to regret that his fortune was not commensurate with his tastes. Like a true poet, he believed devoutly in native genius, considered it something inimitable and incommunicable, and worshipped it whereever he found it.

Percival was indifferent and even disinclined to female society. There is a common story that he had conceived an aversion to the whole sex in consequence of a youthful disappointment in love. I know nothing concerning this alleged chagrin, but I am confident that he cherished no such antipathy. He never, in my hearing, said a hard thing of any woman, or of the sex; and I remember distinctly the flattering and even poetic appreciation with which he spoke of individual ladies. Of one who has since become a distinguished authoress of the South, he said, that "her conversation had as great an intellectual charm for him as that of any scholar among his male acquaintances." Of a lady still resident in New Haven, he observed, that "there was a mysterious beauty in her thoughtful face and dark eyes which reminded him of a deep and limpid forest-fountain." But although he did not hate women, he certainly was disinclined to their society,—an oddity, I beg leave to say, in any man, and a most surprising eccentricity in a poet. Constitutional timidity may have founded this habit during youth; for, as I have already observed, his modesty was sensitive and almost morbid. Then came his multitudinous studies, which absorbed him utterly, and in which, unfortunately for Percival, if not for the ladies, these last took so little interest that conversation was not mutually desirable. A remark he made to a scientific friend, who had just been married, will, perhaps, throw some light on the subject. "How is this?" said he; "I thought you were wedded to science." This was all the felicitation he had to offer; and without asking for the bride, he plunged into the discussion which was the object of the visit.

In 1835 commenced the geological survey of Connecticut, and I became Percival's companion in labor. To him was intrusted the geology proper, and to myself the mineralogy and its economical applications. During the first season, we prosecuted our investigations together, travelling in a one-horse wagon, which carried all our necessary implements, and visiting, before the campaign ended, every parish in the State. Great was the wonder our strange outfit and occupation excited in some rustic neighborhoods; and very often were we called upon to enlighten the popular mind with regard to our object and its uses. This was never a pleasant task to Percival. He did not relish long confabulations with a sovereign people somewhat ignorant of geology; and, moreover, his style of describing our business was so peculiar, that it rarely failed to transfer the curiosity to himself, and lead to tiresome delays. In New Milford, an inquisitive farmer requested us, in a somewhat ungracious manner, to give an account of ourselves. Percival replied, that we were acting under a commission from the Governor to ascertain the useful minerals of the State; whereupon our utilitarian friend immediately demanded to be informed how the citizens at large, including himself, were to be benefited by the undertaking,—putting question on question in a fashion which was most pertinacious and almost impertinent. Percival became impatient, and tried to hurry away. "I demand the information," exclaimed the New Milfordite; "I demand it as my right. You are only servants of the people; and you are paid, in part, at least, out of my pocket." "I'll tell you what we'll do," said Percival; "we can't stop, but we'll refund. Your portion of the geological tax,—let me see,—it must be about two cents. We prefer handing you this to encountering a further delay." Our agricultural friend and master did not take the money, although he did the hint,—and in sulky silence withdrew from our company.

Driving through the town of Warren, we stopped a farmer to inquire the way to certain places in the vicinity. He gave us the information sought, staring at us meanwhile with a benevolently inquisitive expression, and, at last, volunteering the remark, that, if we wanted a job, we had better stop at the factory in the hollow. We thanked him for his goodness, and thought, perhaps, of Sedgewick geologizing by the road-side, and getting a charitable half-crown flung at him by a noble lady who was on her way to dine in his company at the house of a mutual acquaintance.

Let us grant here one brief parenthesis of respect and astonishment to the scientific knowledge and philological acumen of a distinguished graduate of Yale College, and member of Congress, whom we encountered on our travels. Hearing us speak of mosaic granite, a rock occurring in Woodbridge, to which we had given this name, from the checker-like arrangement of its felspathic ingredient, he concluded that we attributed its formation to the era of Moses, and asked Percival what evidence he had for such an opinion. Small blame to him, perhaps, for the blunder, but it seemed a very droll one to geologists.

In Greenwich, the extreme southwestern town of the State, we encountered an incident to which my companion would sometimes refer with a slight degree of merriment. In general, he was no joker, no anecdotist, and had but a feeble appreciation of droll sayings or humorous matters of any kind. But in Greenwich he heard a memorable phrase. Among the tavern-loungers was a man who had evidently seen better days, and who, either for that reason or because of the large amount of rum he had swallowed, entertained a lofty opinion of himself, and discoursed de omnibus rebus in a most consequential fashion. He soon made himself a sort of medium between ourselves and his fellow-loafers. Overhearing us say that we wished to pass the New York frontier for the sake of tracing out the strata then under examination, he proceeded with much pomposity to declare to his deeply curious auditory, that "it was his opinion that the Governor of the State should confer upon these gentlemen discretionary powers to pass the limits of Connecticut, whenever and wherever, in the prosecution of their labors, the interests of science required them so to do." After this, we rarely crossed the State line but Percival observed, "We are now taking advantage of our discretionary powers."

Of the few stories Percival told me, here is one. In one of our country-places, a plain, shrewd townsman fell into chance conversation with him, and entertained him with some account of a neighbor who had been seized with a mania for high Art, and had let loose his frenzy upon canvas in a deluge of oil-colors. If I mistake not, Percival was invited to inspect these productions of untaught and perhaps unteachable genius. They were vast attempts at historical scenes, in which the heads and legs of heroes were visible, but played a very secondary part in the interest, compared with a perfect tempest of drapery, which rolled in ungovernable masses, like the clouds of a thunder-storm.

"What do you think of them?" inquired Percival.

"Well, I don't claim to be a judge of such things," replied his cicerone; "but the fact is, (and I told the painter so,) that, when I look at 'em, about the only thing I can think of is a resurrection of old clothes."

In the town of Lebanon, an incident occurred which affected us rather more seriously. Turning a corner suddenly, we came upon an old man digging up cobble-stones by the road-side and breaking them in pieces with an axe. "A brother-geologist," was our first impression. At that moment the old man sprang toward us, the axe in one hand and half a brick in the other, shouting eagerly,—

"I guess Mr. ——" (name indistinguishable) "will be glad to see you, gentlemen."

"For what?"

"Why, he has got several boxes of jewels; and I gave an advertisement in the paper."

"Whose are they?"

"King Jerome's."

"And who is he?"

"The king of the world!" shouted the maniac, still advancing with a menacing air, and so near the wagon by this time that he might almost have hit Percival with his axe.

Without pausing to hear more about the jewels, a sudden blow to the horse barely enabled us to escape the reach of our fellow-laborer before he had time to use his axe on our own formations.

In the following year, when Percival was pursuing the survey by himself, on horseback, some of the elements of this adventure were repeated, but reversed after a very odd fashion. The late Dr. Carrington, of Farmington, who told me the tale, being ten miles from home on a professional excursion, drove up to a tavern and found himself welcomed with extraordinary emphasis by the innkeeper. The Doctor was just the person he wanted to see; the Doctor's opinion was very much needed about that strange man out there; he wished the Doctor to have a talk with him, and see whether he was crazy or not. The fellow had been there a day or two, picking up stones about the lots; and some of the boys had been sent to watch him, but could get nothing out of him. This morning he wanted to go away, and ordered his horse; but the neighbors wouldn't let it be brought up, for they said he was surely some mad chap who had taken another man's horse. Thus talking, the landlord pointed out Percival, surrounded by a group of villagers, who, quietly, and under pretence of conversation, were holding him under a sort of arrest. The Doctor rushed into the circle, addressed his friend Percival by name, spoke of the survey, and thus satisfied the bystanders, who, guessing their mistake, dispersed silently. No open remonstrance was needed, and perhaps Percival never understood the adventure in which he thus unconsciously formed the principal character.

While we were in Berlin, the native town of Percival, he related to me several incidents of his earlier life. His father was discussing some geographical question with a neighbor; and the future geologist, then a boy of seven or eight, sat by listening until the ignorance of his elders tempted him to speak. "Where did you learn that?" they asked, in astonishment. With timid reluctance, he confessed that he had been reading clandestinely Morse's large geography, of which there was a copy in a society-library kept at his father's house. The book, he added, had an indescribable attraction for him; and even at that almost infantile age he was familiar with its contents. It was this reading of Morse, perhaps, which determined his taste for those geographical studies in which he subsequently became so distinguished. With him, as with Humboldt and Guyot, geography was a term of wide signification. Far from confining it to the names and boundaries of countries, seas, and lakes, to the courses of rivers and the altitudes of mountains, he connected with it meteorology, natural history, and the leading facts of human history, ethnology, and archaeology. He knew London as thoroughly as most Americans know New York or Philadelphia, and yet he had never crossed the Atlantic.

An instance of the minuteness of his geographical information was related to me by the Rev. Mr. Adam, a Scottish clergyman, long resident at Benares, but subsequently settled over the Congregational Church in Amherst, Massachusetts. On his way to visit me at New Haven, he met in the stage-coach a countryman of his, who soon opened a controversy with him respecting the course of a certain river in Scotland. The discussion had continued for some time, when another passenger offered a suggestion which opened the eyes of the debaters to the fact (not unfrequently the case in such controversies) that they were both wrong. "How long since you were there, Sir?" they asked; and the reply was, "I never was in Scotland." "Who are you, Sir?" Mr. Adam wanted to ask, but kept the question until he could put it to me. I did not feel much hesitation in telling him that the stranger must have been Percival; and Percival it was, as I afterwards learned by questioning him of the circumstance.

But we must return to Berlin, in order to hear one more of Percival's stories. Passing a field, half a mile from his early home, he told an incident connected with it, and related to his favorite study of natural history. The field had belonged to his father, who, besides being the physician of Berlin, indulged a taste for agriculture. Just before the harvest season, it became palpable that this field, then waving with wheat, was depredated upon to a wasteful extent by some unknown subjects of the animal kingdom. Having watched for the pilferers in vain by day, the proprietor resolved to mount guard by night, and accordingly ambushed himself in the invaded territory. Near midnight, he saw his own flock of geese, hitherto considered so trustworthy, approach silently in single file, make their entry between the rails, and commence transferring the wheat-crop into their own crops, after a ravenous fashion. Having eaten their fill, they re-formed their column of march, with a venerable gander at the head, and trudged silently homeward, cautiously followed by their owner, who noticed, that, on regaining his door-yard, they set up a vociferous cackle, such as he had repeatedly heard from them before at about the same hour. It was a most evident attempt to establish an alibi; it was as much as to say, "If you miss any wheat, we didn't take it; we are honest birds, and stay at home o'nights, Dr. Percival." The next morning, however, a general decapitation overtook the flock of feathered hypocrites. "It was a curious instance of the domestic goose reverting to its wild habit of nocturnal feeding," remarked my narrator, dwelling characteristically upon the natural-history aspect of the fact.

Percival was almost incapable of an irrelevancy. The survey was the business in hand, and he rarely discoursed much of things disconnected with it, except, perhaps, when we were retracing our routes, or when the labors of the day were over. Of poets and poetry he was not inclined to speak. I never heard him quote a line, either his own or another's, nor indulge in a single poetic observation concerning the objects which met us in our wanderings. Indeed, he confessed that he no longer felt disposed to write verses, being satisfied that his productions were not acceptable to the prevailing taste; although he admitted that he composed a few stanzas occasionally, in order to make trial of some unusual measure or new language. He told me that he had versified in thirteen languages; and I have heard from others that he had imitated all the Greek and German metres.

Of politics, foreign and domestic, he talked frequently, but always philosophically and dispassionately, much as if he were speaking of geological stratification. His views of humanity were deduced from a most extensive survey of the race in all its historical and geographical relations. He distinctly recognized the fact of its steady advance from one stage to another, in accordance with a plan of intellectually organic development, as marked as that detected by the geologist in the gradual preparation of the earth for the abode of our species. The slowness and seeming vacillation of man's upward movement could not stagger his faith; for if it had taken thousands of ages to make earth habitable, why should it not take thousands more to bring man to his completeness? Equally free was he from misgiving on account of the remaining presence of so much misery and wretchedness; for these he considered as the indispensable stimuli to progress. Even war, he used to say, is sometimes necessary to the welfare of nations, as sickness and sorrow plainly are to that of individuals; although, to his moral sense, the human authors of this scourge were no more admirable than the devisers of any private calamity. Improvements in knowledge he regarded as the only elements of real progress; and these he looked upon as true germinal principles, bound up organically in the constitution of the human soul. Indeed, that philosophical calmness which was characteristic of him seemed to flow in some measure from his settled persuasion that the same matchless wisdom and benevolence he recognized throughout Nature wrought with a still higher providence and a more earnest love for man and would make all things finally conduce to his welfare. It was clear that he drew a profound tranquillity from the thought that he was a part of the vast and harmonious whole.

Concerning his religious views he was exceedingly taciturn. He had no taste for metaphysical or theological discussions, although his library contained a large number of standard works on these subjects. Religion itself he never alluded to but with the deepest respect. Talking to me of Christianity, he quoted the observation of Goethe, that "it had brought into the world a light never to be extinguished." He spoke of Jesus with poetic, if not with Christian fervor. He contrasted his teachings and deeds with the prevailing maxims and practice of the people among whom he appeared, with the dead orthodoxy of its religious teachers, and with the general ignorance and hypocrisy of the masses. "Had I lived in such a state of society," he said, "I am certain that it would have driven me mad."

He expressed an earnest esteem for the doctrines of the Evangelical clergy, and even approved, though more moderately, the religious awakenings which occur under their labors. He described to me, with some particularity, a revival he had witnessed in his native town, when young; and repeated some of the quaint exhortations of the lay brethren, all in a manner perfectly serious, but calculated, perhaps, to leave the impression, that such views of religion were not necessary to himself, although they might be quite suited to the minds of others.

The rational theology he regarded as anti-poetic in influence, and of very doubtful efficacy in working upon the masses. He appreciated, however, the honesty and superior culture of the Unitarian scholars and clergy of Boston, with many of whom he had been on terms as intimate as his shyness accorded to any one.

He attended church but once with me while we were engaged in the survey. We heard a discourse from a Rev. Dr. E——, upon the conduct of the young ruler who inquired his duty of Christ. The speaker argued from the sacred narrative a universal obligation to devote our possessions to religious purposes,—and upheld, as an example to all men, the self-devotion of a young missionary (then somewhat known) who had despised a splendid fortune, offered him on condition of his remaining at home, and had consecrated himself to the Christianization of Africa.

"How did you like the sermon?" I inquired of Percival.

"I consider it an animating and probably useful performance," he replied; "but it does not accord with comprehensive conceptions of humanity, inasmuch as its main inference was drawn from the exception, and not from the rule. There always have been, and probably always will be, men possessed of the self-immolating or martyr spirit. Such instances are undoubtedly useful, and have my admiration; but they cannot become general, and never were meant to be."

During the survey, we were invited to pass an evening in a family remarkable for its musical talent, and I remember distinctly the evident pleasure with which Percival listened to the chorus of organ tones and rich cultivated voices. In general, however, his appreciation of music was subordinate to his study of syllabic movement in versification; and it was with reference chiefly to poetic measure, I have been told, that he acquired what mastery he had over the accordion and guitar.

Percival's favorite topics, when evening came and we rested from our stony labors, were the modern languages and the philosophy of universal grammar. They seemed to have filled the niches in his heart, from which he had banished, or tried to banish, the Muses. The subtile refinements of Bopp were a perpetual luxury to him; he derived language from language as easily as word from word; and, once started in the intricacies of the Russian or the Basque, there was no predicting the end of the discourse. Thus were thrown away, upon a solitary listener, midnight lectures which would have done honor to the class-rooms of Berlin or the Sorbonne. In looking at such an instance of intellectual pleasure and acumen, as connected in no small degree with the study of foreign languages, one cannot avoid associating together the unsolved mystery of that discrepancy of tongues prevailing in different countries with the disagreeing floras and faunas of the same regions,—each diversity bearing alike the unmistakable marks of Omnipotent design for the happiness and improvement of man.

The perfection of his memory was amazing. During the year following the survey, when we had frequent occasion to compare recollections, I observed that no circumstance of our labors was shadowy or incomplete in his memory. He could refer to every trifling incident of the tour, recall every road and path that we had followed, every field and ledge that we had examined, particularize the day of the week on which we had dined or supped at such a tavern, and mention the name of the landlord. I asked him how he was able to remember such minutiae. He replied, that it was his custom, on going to bed, to call up, in the darkness and stillness, all the incidents of the day's experience, in their proper order, and cause them to move before him like a diorama through a spiritual morning, noon, and evening. "It has often appeared to me," he said, "that in this purely mental process I see objects more distinctly than I behold them in the reality."

But his memory doubtless gained an immense additional advantage from his habitual seclusion, from his unconcern with the distracting customs of society, and, most of all, from the imperturbable abstraction under which he studied and observed. With him there was no blending of collateral subjects, no permitted intrusion of things irrelevant or trivial, so that the channels of his thoughts were always single, deep, and traceable. It was a mental straightforwardness and conscientiousness, as rare, perhaps, as moral rectitude itself.

In diet, Percival was the most abstemious person I ever knew. His health was uniformly good,—the specimens of a geologist, when he collects them himself, being as favorable to digestion and appetite as the pebbles to a chicken; yet, I am persuaded, my companion in no case violated the golden rule of leaving the table unsated. No matter how long had been his fast, he showed no impatience of hunger, made no remark upon the excellence of any dish, found fault with nothing, or, at most, only seemed to miss drinkable coffee and good bread, articles seldom to be met with in the country. He ate slowly, selecting his food with the discrimination which ought to belong to a chemist or physiologist, and then thought no more about it. Alcoholic drinks he never tasted, except an occasional glass of wine, to which his attention perhaps had been called on account of its age or superior excellence. Even then it was not the flavor which interested him, so much as the history, geographical and other.

Peculiar as he was in his own habits of diet, he offered no strictures upon the practice of others, however different, unless it ran into hurtful excesses. The maxim of Epictetus in the "Enchiridion," "Never preach how others ought to eat, but eat you as becomes you," seemed to be his rule. Indeed, Percival was one of those rare men who withhold alike censure and praise respecting the minor matters of life. Not that he was without opinions on such subjects; but, to obtain them, one was forced to question him. On the whole, I do not think it would be going too far to apply to him the above-named moralist's description of the wise man:—"He reproves nobody, praises nobody, blames nobody, nor even speaks of himself; if any one praises him, in his own mind he contemns the flatterer; if any one reproves him, he looks with care that he be not unsettled in the state of tranquillity that he has entered into. All his desires depend on things within his power; he transfers all his aversions to those things which Nature commands us to avoid. His appetites are always moderate. He is indifferent whether he be thought foolish or ignorant. He observes himself with the nicety of an enemy or a spy, and looks on his own wishes as betrayers."

Percival's solitary habits, combined with the invariable seriousness of his manner, led many persons to believe him melancholy, and even disposed to suicide. He did, indeed, confess to me, that he sometimes felt giddy on the edge of a precipice. This was his nearest approach, I am confident, to the idea of self-destruction. While we were examining the great iron furnaces of Salisbury, he told me that he was afraid of walking near the throat of a chimney when in blast, and that more than once he had turned and run from the lurid, murky orifice, lest a sudden failure of self-control should cause him to reel into the consuming abyss. No,—Percival neither felt nor expressed disgust with life. On the contrary, he was strongly attached to it; the acquisition of knowledge clothed it with inexpressible value; the longest day was ever too short to fulfil his designs. Like the wise, laborious men of all ages, he almost repined at the swiftness of the years. "I am amazed at the flight of time," he said to me, on the arrival of his forty-second birthday; "it seems only a year since I was thirty-two;—I have lost ten years of my life."

Before entering upon the survey of Connecticut, he was not specially devoted to any one branch of physics, although his tastes inclined him most toward geology. While he could sympathize perfectly, he said, with those who threw their whole force into a single study, he felt himself attracted equally by the entire circle of Nature, and thought omniscience a nobler object of ambition than any one science. He admitted that the search after all knowledge is incompatible with eminence in any particular department; but he believed that it affords higher pleasure to the mind, and confers ability to do signal service to mankind in pointing out the grand connections, the general laws, of Nature.

It is not, perhaps, widely known, that Percival was a well-informed botanist. He studied this branch when a medical student under Professor Ives, and assisted his instructor in laying out a small botanical garden, the plants of which were arranged after the natural orders of Jussieu. Soon after finishing his medical education, he gave a course of lectures on botany in Charleston, South Carolina, before a very select audience, composed mostly of Ladies. The only drawback to the lecturer's success was his excessive timidity. As an evidence of the assiduity with which he botanized, it may be mentioned that he had seen the Geranium Robertianum (a plant which nestles in the sunny clefts of our trap mountains) in bloom, during every month of the year. One year he found its blossoms in December, another in January, and so on, until the round of the monthly calendar was completed.

Percival was an earnest advocate of popular education. He manifested much interest in the first systematic attempt (at the instance of Mr. James Brewster) to furnish the people of New Haven with popular instruction in the form of lectures. At a public dinner, given by Mr. Brewster, on the occasion of opening the building in which rooms had been fitted up for these lectures, the late Mr. Skinner gave the toast, "Our mechanics, the right arm of New Haven," and Percival followed with, "Science, the right eye which directs the right arm of New Haven." He believed most fully in the superiority of intelligent labor. He pointed out cases in which a college-training had been connected with signal eminence in mechanical invention, and said, that, according to his observations, persons engaged in industrial pursuits usually succeeded in proportion to the thoroughness of their education.

Percival himself gave a course of lectures, or rather, lessons, in New Haven,—not in the building above mentioned, for his natural timidity was too great to encounter a public audience, but in the theological lecture-room of Yale College. They were on the German language, and consisted chiefly of translations of prose and poetry into English, intermingled with philosophical commentaries on the peculiarities of the original. It was pure grammar; he did not talk German, and claimed no acquaintance with the niceties of pronunciation; but all his listeners, most of whom were graduates, were struck with his perfect mastery of the subject.

Percival held one peculiar opinion concerning a branch of college education. He objected to the modern practice of teaching the natural sciences by means of a profusion of drawings, models, showy experiments, and other expedients addressing the mind so strongly through the eye. While these might be allowable in popular lectures, before audiences lacking in early intellectual discipline, where amusement was a consideration, and where without it the public ear could not be secured, he thought that the collegian should study differently,—that his understanding should be taxed severely, and that he should be inured, from the first, to rigid attention, in order to a lasting remembrance of the truths offered to him. It would be a useful exercise for the instructor, he thought, to elucidate obscure phenomena and complicated structures by words only, assisting himself, perhaps, occasionally, by extemporaneous drawings. Such a course would inspire the scholar with deference for his teacher, and confidence in his own ability to acquire a similar grasp of the subject. While there is certainly some truth in this opinion, it would not be difficult, perhaps, to invalidate its general force. Why should the ear be the only admitted means of acquiring knowledge? Nature, the greatest of teachers, does not judge thus: she conveys half her wisdom to us by sight, instead of by faith; she gives her first lessons to the infant through the eye. Would Percival, in looking for his attentive audiences, have preferred a congregation of blind men?

Speaking of literary composition, he said that he often took great pains with his productions, shifting words and phrases in many ways, before satisfying himself that he had attained the best form of expression; and he assured me that these slowly elaborated passages were the very ones in which he afterwards recognized the most ease and nature, and which others supposed him to have thrown off carelessly. I asked him how it was that children, in their unpremeditated way, expressed themselves with so much directness and beauty. They have but a single idea to present at a time, he said; they seize without hesitation on the first words that offer for its expression, unperplexed by any such choice of terms as would surely occur to maturer minds; and most important of all, perhaps, they are wholly unembarrassed by limiting qualifications arising from a fuller knowledge of the subject.

His prose style is a rare exemplification of classic severity and perspicuousness. In each paragraph the ideas arrange themselves in faultless connection, like the molecules of a crystal around its centre. The sentences are not long, the construction is simple, the words are English in its purity, without admixture of foreign phrase or idiom. But the most striking peculiarity of his diction is the utter absence of ornament; for Percival evidently held that the chief merits of composition are clearness and directness. Poetic imagery, brilliant climaxes and antitheses, fanciful or grotesque turns of expression, he rejected as unfavorable to that simple truth for which he studied and wrote. This dry, almost mathematical style, was no necessity with him; few men, surely, have had at command a richer vocabulary, English and foreign, than Percival; few could have adorned thought with more or choicer garlands from the fields of knowledge and imagination.

To letter-writing he had a great aversion. I have never seen a letter or note from him to which his signature was attached. The autograph-fanciers, therefore, will find a scanty harvest when they come to forage after the name of Percival. His handwriting corresponded in some sense with his character. It was fine; the lines straight and parallel; the letters completely formed, though without fulness of curve; no flourishes, and no unnecessary prolongations of stroke, above or below the general run of the line. There were few erasures, the punctuation was perfect, and the manuscript was fit for the press as it left his hand.

Literary criticism he rarely indulged in, being too disinclined to praise or blame, and too intensely devoted to the acquisition of positive knowledge. If he commented severely upon anything, it was usually the slovenly diction of some of our State Surveys, or the inaccuracies of translations from foreign languages.

His only published criticism, of which I am aware, was discharged at a phrenological lecturer, whose extraordinary assumptions and ad-captandum style had excited his disgust. Percival did not reverence the science of bumps, and believed, in the words of William Von Humboldt, that "it is one of those discoveries which, when stripped of all the charlatanerie that surrounds them, will show but a very meagre portion of truth." Dr. Barber, an Englishman, and a somewhat noted teacher of elocution, having been converted to the phrenological faith, delivered certain magniloquent lectures on the same to the citizens of New Haven, and took pay therefor, after the manner of his sect. Percival responded with a sharp newspaper pasquinade, entitled "A Lecture on Nosology." At the head of the article was a wood-cut of a gigantic nose, mapped out into faculties. "Gentlemen, the nose is the most prominent feature in this bill," commenced the parody. "The nose is the true seat of the mind; and therefore, gentlemen, Nosology, or the science of the nose, is the true phrenology. He, who knows his nose, foreknows; for he knows that which is before him. Therefore Nosology is the surest guide to conduct. Whatever progress an individual may make, his nose is always in advance. But society is only a congeries of individuals; consequently its nose is always in advance,—therefore its proper guide. The nose, rightly understood, will assuredly work wonders in the cause of improvement; for it is always going ahead, always first in every undertaking, always soonest at the goal. The ancients did not neglect the nose. Look at their busts and statues! What magnification and abduction in Jove! What insinuation and elongation in the Apollo! Then [Greek: nous] (intellect) was surely the nose,—[Greek: gnosis] (knowledge) noses,—[Greek: Minos] my nose. What intussusception, what potation, and, as a necessary consequence, alas! what rubification! But I have seen such noses. Beware of them!—they are bad noses,—very bad noses, I assure you…. Do not, I pray you, consider me irreverent, if I say that Nosology will prove highly favorable to the cause of religion. This is indeed an awful subject, and I would not touch it on slight grounds; but I sincerely believe that what I say is true. Nosology will prove highly favorable to the cause of religion! Does not the nose stand forth like a watchman on the walls of Zion, on the look-out for all assailants? and when our faces are directed upwards in devotion, does not the nose ascend the highest and most especially tend heavenward?… Nosology is a manly science. It stands out in the open light. It does not conceal itself behind scratches and periwigs,—nor does it, like certain false teachers mentioned by St. Paul, go about from house to house, leading astray silly women……Finally, gentlemen, you may rest assured that Nosology will not gently submit to insult. Noli me tangere! Who ever endured a tweak of the nose? It will know how to take vengeance. As Jupiter metamorphosed the inhospitable Lycians into frogs, so its contemners will suddenly find themselves [Greek: Barbarophonoi]!"

Percival has been thought over-tenacious of his opinions. He was certainly very circumspect in changing them. I have witnessed, however, several instances in which he yielded to the force of evidence in the modification of his views. He seemed to recognize geology, in particular, as a progressive science, in which new facts are constantly accruing, and therefore compelling re-adaptations of our views. He felt, indeed, in respect to all knowledge, the mathematics excepted, that modifications of belief, in well-regulated minds, are unavoidable, as the result of new information. Approach to higher truth through the sciences he seemed to regard under the aspect of that of besiegers to a beleaguered fortress. Principles and deductions, which were a boon and a triumph for us yesterday, lose their value to-day, when a new parallel of approach has been attained. He lost his interest in what was abandoned, necessary as it had been to the present position, only in the advantage of which, and its sure promise of what was still higher, he allowed himself to rejoice.

But where evidence was wanting, he was never to be moved to a change by any amount of importunity or temptation. This trait of character made him somewhat impracticable as a collaborator, in the philological task he was employed to perform under Dr. Noah Webster. Disagreements were to have been anticipated from the striking contrasts in their minds. They agreed in industry; but Webster was decided, practical, strongly self-reliant, and always satisfied with doing the best that could be done with the time and means at command. Percival was timid and cautious, and, from the very breadth of his linguistic attainments, undecided. He often craved more time for arriving at conclusions. When he happened to differ from the great lexicographer, he would never yield an iota of his ground. These differences led to an early rupture in the engagement, almost before two letters of the alphabet had been completed. He much preferred to relinquish a profitable undertaking to going forward with it under circumstances not agreeable to his elevated standard of literary accuracy and completeness. He felt that he could live on bread and water, or even give up these, if necessary; but he could not violate his convictions of what was true and right. He was a perfect martyr to his literary and scientific conscientiousness.

He evinced the same spirit in respect to the geological survey. As his mind was not satisfied, he would not make known his results to the Legislature. They demanded the report, and he asked for an extension of time. Thus he continued his labors from year to year, upon a stipend scarcely adequate to cover his expenses. Instead, however, of nearing the goal, he only receded from it. New difficulties met him in the work; fresh questions arose, in the progress of geology itself, that called for reëxaminations. His notes swelled to volumes, and his specimens increased to thousands. He was in danger of being crushed under the weight of his doubts and his materials. At last, the people clamored for the end of the work. The Legislature became peremptory, and forced Percival to acquiesce.

In 1842 (seven years from the commencement of the survey) he rendered an octavo report of four hundred and ninety-five pages, in the introduction to which he observes,—"I regret to say, I have not had the means allowed me for additional investigations, nor even for a proper use of my materials, either notes or specimens. The number of localities from which I have collected specimens I have estimated at nearly eight thousand; the records of dips and bearings are still more numerous. The report which follows is but a hasty outline, written mainly from recollection, with only occasional reference to my materials, and under circumstances little calculated for cool consideration. It was written, however, with an intention to state nothing of the truth or probability of which I did not feel satisfied. None can regret more than I do its imperfection; still I cannot but hope that it will contribute something towards the solution of the problem of the highest practical as well as scientific importance, the exact determination of the geological system of the State."

Of this remarkable production it may very briefly be said, that it will ever remain a monument to the scientific and literary powers of its author. It describes every shade of variation in the different rocks, and their exact distribution over the surface of the State. This it accomplishes with a minuteness never before essayed in any similar work. The closeness and brevity of his descriptions make it one of the dryest productions ever issued on geological science, scarcely omitting the work of Humboldt, in which he sought to represent the whole of geology by algebraic symbols. Percival's work actually demands, and would richly repay, a translation into the vernacular of descriptive geology,—the language and mode of illustration employed by Murchison and Hitchcock. In its present form, it is safe to say, it has never found a single reader among the persons for whose benefit it was written.

It is no part of my plan to speak of his poetical reputation. This I leave to others better able to do him justice. Indeed, he had nearly abandoned poetical composition before our acquaintance began. But it is safe, perhaps, to say here, that his writings have placed him among the first of our national poets; and had he resumed this species of composition, he could scarcely have failed of maintaining, in the fullest manner, his poetic fame. He possessed all the qualities reckoned essential to poetical excellence. We have already spoken of his astonishing memory, a trait regarded of such importance to the poet by the ancients as to have led them to call the Muses the daughters of this mental faculty. His powers of abstraction and imagination were no less remarkable,—while for extreme sensitiveness he was unsurpassed. His judgment was clear, and his appreciation of language refined to the last degree. His musical feeling, too, as well of time as of harmony, was intense; while he had at command the universal stores of literature and science.

In closing these reminiscences, I cannot avoid noticing some of the useful impressions exerted by Percival upon the literary community amidst which he passed so large a portion of his life. To some the influence of such a recluse will doubtless seem insignificant. The reverse, however, I am persuaded, was the fact. Few students came to New Haven without bringing with them, imprinted on their youthful memories, some beautiful line of his poetry. Few had not heard of his universal scholarship and profound learning. Next to an acquaintance with the teachers from whom they expected to derive their educational training, their curiosity led them to inquire for Percival. The sight of this modest, shrinking individual, as the possessor of such mines of intellectual wealth, it may well be understood, produced the deepest interest. In him they recognized a man superior to the clamor of vulgar gratification; his indifference to gain, to luxury, and every form of display, his constant preference of the spiritual over the sensual, was always an impressive example to them. The indigent student took fresh courage as he saw in him to what a narrow compass exterior wants might be reduced; the man of fashion and the fop stood abashed before the simplicity of his dress and daily life. And wherever the spirit of classic literature had been imbibed, and the capacity acquired of perceiving the severe worth of the true philosopher, the inspection of such a character, compared with the mere description of it in history, was like the difference between a statue and a living, breathing man. As at early dawn or in the gray twilight his slender form glided by, the thoughtful and poetic scholar could scarce refrain from uttering to himself,—"There goes Diogenes or Chrysippus! There goes one, by the side of whom many a bustler in letters is only a worthless drone, many an idolized celebrity a weak and pitiful sham!" Such a character as Percival's, in the presence of a scholastic community, was a perpetual incentive to industry and manliness; and although he rarely spoke in its hearing, and has left us fewer published works than many others, still I believe that thousands yet live to thank him for lessons derived from the simple survey of his daily life.

Though there is little likelihood that his example of self-abnegation and devotion to study will be followed by many of our youth, nevertheless, the occurrence of such a model now and then in the republic of letters constitutes a pleasing as well as useful phenomenon,—if for no other reason, because it breaks in upon the monotony of literary biography, and communicates a portion of that picturesqueness to scholastic life which belongs to Nature in everything else. That his course was fraught with happiness to himself cannot be doubted; that it was beneficial also to his fellow-men is equally true; and though he may be judged less leniently by minds incapable of pronouncing that to be a character honorable in the sight of God or man, which deviates from their own standard or creed,—to others, who recognize the highest possible cultivation of the mental faculties and unsullied purity of life as the noblest ends of our being, he will ever occupy a position shared by few of mortal race.

* * * * *

ZELMA'S VOW.

IN TWO PARTS.

PART FIRST. HOW IT WAS MADE.

Who does not remember his first play?—the proudly concealed impatience which seemed seething in the very blood,—the provoking coolness of old play-goers,—the music that rather excited than soothed the fever of expectation,—the mystery of mimic life that throbbed behind the curtain,—the welcome tinkle of the prompter's bell,—the capricious swaying to and fro of that mighty painted scroll,—its slow uplift, revealing for an instant, perhaps, the twinkle of flying dancers' feet and the shuffle of belated buskins? And then, the unveiled wonders of that strange, new world of canvas and pasteboard and trap-doors,—people, Nature, Art, and architecture, never before beheld, and but faintly conceived of,—the magic of shifting scenes,—the suddenness and awfulness of subterranean and aerial descents and ascents,—the solemn stage-walk of the heroine,—the majestic strut of the hero,—the princely sweep of velvet,—the illusive sparkle of paste,—the rattle of Brobdignagian pearls,—the saucy tossing of pages' plumes,—the smiles, the wiles, the astonishing bounds and bewildering pirouettes of the dancing Houries,—the great sobs and small shrieks of persecuted beauty,—the blighting smile of the villain,—the lofty indifference of supernumeraries!

It was the first play of our heroine, Zelma Burleigh, and of her Cousin Bessie. The morning before, a fragrant May morning, scores of summers ago, Roger Burleigh, a stout Northumbrian Squire, had rolled himself, in his ponderous way, into the snug family-parlor at the Grange, and addressed his worthy dame with a bluff—

"Well, good wife, wouldn't like to go see the players to-night?"

Ere the good lady could collect herself to reply with the decorous deliberateness becoming her years and station, an embroidery-frame at her side was overturned, and there sprang eagerly forward a comely young damsel of the pure Saxon stock, with eyes like England's violets,—clear, dewy, and wide-awake,—cheeks and lips like its rose-bloom, and hair which held tangled in close, golden folds its fickle and flying sunshine.

"Ay, father!" she cried, "that we would! Zelma and I have never seen any players, save the tumblers over at the Hall, on Sir Harry's birthday, and we are in sad need of a little pleasuring."

"Who spoke to you, or of you, Mistress Bessie?" replied the Squire, playfully. "And what is all your useless, chattering life but pleasuring? The playhouse is but a perilous place for giddy-brained lasses like you; but for once, harkee, for once, we'll venture on taking you, if you'll promise to keep your silly head safe under the mother-hen's wing."

"Not so close but that I can get a peep at the players now and then," said Bessie, archly. "They say there are some handsome young men and a pretty woman or two among them. Eh, Zelma?"

"Handsome young men!—pretty women!" exclaimed the Squire, with an explosive snort of contempt. "An arrant set of vagabonds and tramps,—of ranting, strutting, apish creatures, with neither local habitations nor names of their own. And what does Zelma know about them? Out with it, girl!"

The person thus addressed, without lifting the folds of a heavy window-curtain which concealed her, replied in a quiet, though somewhat haughty tone,—

"I saw them all, yesterday afternoon, on their way to Arden. I found them near the entrance to our avenue. One of their carts had broken down, and somebody was hurt. I dismounted to see if I could be of any assistance. My pony pulled away from me and ran up the road. One of the young men caught her for me. I told Cousin Bessie I thought him handsome and proud enough for a lord. I think so still. That is all I know of the players."

"And, gad, that's enough! Take you to the play, indeed! Why, we shall have you strolling next, like your"—Here the Squire, for some reason known to himself, suddenly paused and grew very red in the face. Dame Margery took the word, and, in a tone meant to be severe, but which was only dry, remarked,—

"Zelma is quite too young to go to the play."

"Just one week younger than my Cousin Bessie. So, please you, aunt, I will wait a few days," was the quiet reply from the invisible.

"Right cleverly answered, lass!" said the Squire, with a good-humored chuckle. "Well, we will try you, too, for once; but mind, if I find you making eyes at any of the villains, I'll cut you off with a shilling."

"That is more than I look for from you, Uncle Roger," replied the hitherto hidden speaker, emerging from the window-seat, holding in her hand the fashionable and interminable novel of "Sir Charles Grandison." As she spoke, she laughed lightly, but her voice was somewhat cold and bitter, and there was in her laugh more of defiance than merriment.

"Oh, don't, Zella!" exclaimed the Squire, with a look of comic deprecation,—"don't speak in that way to your old uncle! He's blunt and rough-spoken, but he means kindly, and does kindly, in his way,—don't he?"

"Yes, that he does!" said the young girl, frankly; "and I beg his pardon for my pettishness."

Zelma Burleigh, as she stood thus, a faint, regretful smile softening the habitual hauteur of her face, was beautiful, and something more; yet nobody in the country round about the Grange had ever dreamed of calling her "a beauty." She was a tall, gracefully-formed girl, with that strong, untamable character of figure and feature, and that peculiar, sun-tinted, forest-shadowed hue of the skin, which betray the slightest admixture of gypsy blood. In fact, Zelma Burleigh was the fruit of a strange mésalliance between the younger brother of the Squire, a reckless, dissipated soldier of fortune, and a beautiful Spanish Zineala, whom he met in a foreign campaign, and whom he could not bind to himself by any tie less honorable than marriage. She was said to be of Rommany blood-royal, and was actually disowned by her tribe for her mésalliance. She followed the camp for a few years, the willing, though sad and fast-fading slave of her Ishmaelitish lord, himself the slave of lawless passions, yet not wholly depraved, —fitfully tender and tyrannic,—and when, at last, he fell in some inglorious skirmish, she buried him with her own hands, and wept and fasted over his shallow grave till she died. There was a child, but she had no look of the father to charm that poor, broken heart back to life; she was left in the camp and became a little "Daughter of the Regiment." At last, however, she was taken to England by a faithful comrade of the dead soldier, who sought out her uncle and left her in his care, taking leave of the frightened, clinging little creature with a grim, unspoken tenderness, and a strange quiver of his gray moustache.

Roger Burleigh, after having made himself sure of the legitimacy of the child, adopted the poor, wild thing, made her the companion of his daughter, and honestly strove to treat her, at all times, with parental care and affection.

Here, in the hospitable circle of an English home, the orphan alien had grown up with her kinsfolk, but not of them,—proud, reticent, ambitious, secretly hating the monotonous duties and pursuits, the decorous forms and prescribed pleasures of the social and domestic life around her. Nomadic and lawless instincts stirred in her blood; vague longings for freedom and change, though in wandering, peril, and want, sometimes filled her soul with the spirit of revolt and unrest.

In her bluff uncle's house all were kind, and one, at least, was fond. Her Cousin Bessie, gay and tender heart, had found the southern exposure of her nature, and had crept up it, and clambered over it, and clasped it, and bloomed against it, and ripened on it, till nothing cold, hard, or defiant could be seen on that side. And Zelma seemed well content to be the sombre background and strong support of so much bloom, sweetness, and graceful dependence.

Nothing could be more unlike than the two cousins. Bessie was small, her form inclining to fulness, her face childlike in dimpled smiles and innocent blushes,—betraying no lack of intellect, but most expressive of a quiet, almost indolent amiability. Zelma was large, but lithe, supple, and vigorous, with a pard-like freedom and elasticity of movement,—dark, with a subdued and changing color,—the fluttering signal of sudden emotion, not the stationary sign of robust health. She had hair of a glistening blackness, which she wore turned back from a strong, compact forehead, in the somewhat severe style which imperial beauty has rendered classic in our time. Her eyes were of the Oriental type,—full, heavy-lidded, ambushed in thick, black lashes,—themselves dark and unfathomable as the long night of mystery which hangs over the history of her wild and wandering race, those unsubduable, unseducible children of Nature,—the voluntary Pariahs of the world. Sad were those eyes always, but with a vague, uncommunicable sadness; soft they were in times of quiet; beautiful and terrible they could be, with live gleams of suddenly awakened passion.

With but one affection not poisoned by a sense of obligation and condescension, and that a sentiment in which her intellect had little share, a gentle, protective, household love, which quickened no daring fancy, inspired no dream of freedom or power, Zelma's mind was driven in upon itself, and out of the seclusion and triteness of her life fashioned a fairy world of romance and beauty. With the high-wrought, sentimental fictions of the day for her mental aliment, she grew more and more distinct and apart from the actual, prosaic existences around her; the smouldering fires of genius and ambition glowed out almost fiercely at times, through the dark dream of her eyes, startling the dullest apprehension, as she moved amid a narrow circle of country gentry, the fox-hunting guests of her uncle, the prim gossips of her aunt, the gay lovers and companions of her cousin, an unrecognized heroine, an uncrowned tragedy-queen.

The small provincial town of Arden possessed no playhouse proper, but, after a good deal of hesitation and discussion, the venerable Hall of St. George, the glory of all Ardenites, had been accorded to the players, "for a few nights only."

On the night of the first performance, Squire Burleigh and his family arrived betimes, and took their places with some bustle and ceremony.

The master of Burleigh Grange appeared in the almost forgotten glory of his court suit,—a coat of crimson velvet, a flowered waistcoat, satin knee-breeches, and a sword at his side. The mistress wore an equally memorable brocade, enormous bouquets thrown upon a silvery ground, so stiff and shiny that it seemed a texture of ice and frozen flowers. Her hair was cushioned and powdered; she looked comely and stately, and wore her lustres well. The pretty Bessie was attired in maidenly white muslin, an India fabric of marvellous fineness, with a sash and streamers of blue, and the light fleecy curls of her hair unadorned save by a slight pendent spray of jasmines. Her cousin's dress, though in reality less costly, was more striking, being composed of materials and colors which admirably harmonized with the darkness and richness of her beauty. Her lustrous black hair was arranged as usual; but a wreath, formed of some delicate vine hung thick with drooping scarlet blossoms, ran like flowering flame around her head. Like the sumptuous exotic of Zenobia, it was an ornament which seemed to bloom out of the character of the woman.

Bessie cast about her bright, innocent looks of girlish curiosity, which yet shrank from any chance encounter with the furtive glance or cool stare of admiration. Zelma sat motionless and impassive. Her eyes wandered naturally, but coldly, over the audience, seeming to take no cognizance of any face, strange or familiar; but when they were lifted above the crowd, to the old carved ceiling of the hall, or dropped upon the beautiful hands which lay listlessly folded in her lap, the cold, blank look she had set against the world went out of them. Then, in their mystic depths of brooding, introverted thought, new spheres of life, rarer, brighter, fairer, seemed rounding into form and dawning like stars.

Mrs. Margery Burleigh sat with her face turned from the stage, to dissemble the secret impatience with which she awaited the uprolling of the curtain, and slowly waved to and fro a huge, flowered fan, which charged the air with a heavy Indian perfume.

At length, soft, mournful music arose from the orchestra, and every heart stirred to the premonitory waver and lift of the curtain. Slowly it rose, and discovered a mourning apartment, with a lady in mourning, sitting in a mourning chair, and attended by a mourning maid. The play was Congreve's tragedy of "The Mourning Bride," one of the best of a class of sentimental and stiltified dramatic productions which the public of our great-grandfathers meekly accepted,—quaffing the frothy small-beer of rant and affectation, in lieu of deep draughts of Nature and passion, the rich, red wine of human life, poured generously forth by the dramatists of a better era. The excesses of fashion then prevailing, hoops, high heels, powder, and patches, were not more essentially absurd and artificial than such representations of high-life and high-tragedy.

"The Mourning Bride" contains a few situations in which real passion can have play, some fine points and poetic passages, and its moral tone is at least respectable,—not great things to say of a famous tragedy, certainly, but they give it an honorable distinction over many plays of its time. There figure in it one or two characters which can be made interesting, and even impressive, by uncommon power in the actor; though they were usually given, at the period of which I write, in a manner sufficiently tame to suit the dullest of courts,—likely to disturb neither my lord in his napping nor my lady in her prim flirting.

Zara, the Captive Queen, is beyond comparison the strong character of this play. There is a spice and fire even in her wickedness, which make her terribly attractive, and give her a more powerful hold on the sympathies than the decorous and dolorous Almeria, for all her virtuous sorrows and perplexities. Zara's passion is of the true Oriental type, leaping from the extremes of love and hate with the fierceness and rapidity of lightning.

It is a character in which several great actresses have distinguished themselves,—chief among them Siddons. On the memorable night at Arden, however, it was but wretchedly rendered by a tall, small-voiced, flaxen-haired young woman, who stalked about the stage in high-heeled shoes and prodigious hoops, and declaimed the most fiery passages with an execrable drawl. The remainder of the company were barely passable as strolling players, with the exception of the actor who personated Osmyn. This was a young man named Bury, of respectable parentage and education, it was said, and considerable reputation, though his aspiring buskin had never yet trod the London boards. He was a handsome, shapely person, with an assured, dashing manner, and a great amount of spirit and fire, which usually passed with his audience, and always with himself, for genius.

His voice was powerful and resonant, his elocution effective, if not faultless, and his physical energy inexhaustible. Understanding and managing perfectly his own resources, he produced upon most provincial critics the impression of extraordinary power and promise, few perceiving that he had already come into full possession of his dramatic gifts.

Only finely-trained ears could discover in this sounding, shining metal the lack of the sharp, musical ring of the genuine coin. Young men grew frantic in applause of his bold action, his stormy declamation, his startling tours de force; while young women wondered, wept, languished, and swooned. It was said, that, whenever he died in Romeo, Pierre, or Zanga, numbers of his fair slain were borne out of the playhouse, to be revived with difficulty by the application of salts and the severing of stay-lacings.

But his effects, though so positive, were superficial and evanescent,—audible, visible, and, as it were, physical. There was always wanting that fine shock of genuine passion, striking home to kindred passions in the breasts of his auditors, and sending through every nerve a magnetic shiver of delight,—that subtile, mysterious element of genius, playing like quick flame along the dullest lines of the poet and charging them with its own life and fire.

In the virtuous, but negative character of Osmyn there was little room for effective declamation; our actor was fain to content himself with being interesting, through the misfortunes of the Prince of Valentia, his woful lawful love, and the besettings of an unreturned passion. In this he succeeded so well, that the feminine portion of his audience grew tender with Almeria, and despairing with Zara.

In the first scene with Almeria, who was a shade worse than the Zara of the night, the young actor indulged himself in a cool, comprehensive glance at the house, over her fair shoulders. As his keen gaze swept round the small aristocratic circle, it encountered and seemed to recognize the face of Zelma Burleigh, now kindling with a new enthusiasm, which was never wholly to die out of her breast. There was something in the watchful, absorbed gaze of her great dark eyes so unlike the wondering or languishing looks usually bent by women upon the rising actor, that on the instant he was struck, pierced, by those subtile shafts of light, to the heart he had believed till then vowed alone to the love of his art and the schemes of a sleepless ambition.

Reluctantly he withdrew his regard from a face which bespoke a character of singular originality and force, not wanting either in womanly pride or tenderness,—a face in which beauty itself was so subordinate to something higher, more ineffable, that one could scarcely define feature or color through the illuminated and changeful atmosphere of soul which hung about it,—the shadows of great thoughts, the light mists of dreamy and evanescent fancy.

It was toward the close of the second act, when Sir Harry Willerton, of Willerton Hall, entered his box, accompanied by three or four dashing companions, who, it was soon whispered about, were titled young bloods from London.

Sir Harry Willerton was a fresh, frank-looking young gallant,—fast, from the fiery impulses of youth and a high spirit,—not pricked on by vanity, nor goaded by low passions,—not heartless, not blasé,—the only kind of a rake for whom reformation is possible or reclamation worth the while.

Sir Harry was not fond of tragedy; and after five minutes' strained attention to the players, he turned his eyes from the stage, and began casting easy, good-humored glances of curiosity or recognition over the audience. He bowed to all his neighbors with a kindly familiarity, untainted by condescension, but most courteously, perhaps, to the party from the Grange. He liked the bluff Squire heartily,—as who did not? Then his eye—a laughing blue eye it was—rested and lingered, not on the dark, dramatic face of Zelma, but on the pretty, girlish head of her cousin.

Bessie sat with her face partly averted from the baronet's gay party, and her gaze fixed intently upon the stage. Sir Harry could only see half the rose of one cheek, and the soft sweep of golden hair which lightly shaded it; and feasting his fancy on that bit of fluctuating color, entangled in the meshes of a tremulous screen of curls, he settled himself to await the close of the act.

It was with a child's eager interest and pliant imagination that Bessie looked and listened,—susceptible, credulous, unfastidious. To her, the Osmyn of the night was radiant with all heroic qualities and manly graces, the weakly simulated sorrow of Almeria brought real tears to her eyes, and she drew her white shoulders forward with a shudder when the wooden Zara kindled into cursing and jealous rage. Illusions most transparent to others hoodwinked her senses; her willing fancy supplied feeling, and even made up for deficiencies of art in the players, till the mimic world before her became more real than reality.

Not so with Zelma. She was satisfied, even charmed, with the personation of Osmyn; but, from the first, she could not abide either of the heroines, who, each in her part, strove to outdo the other in mincing, mouthing, attitudinizing, and all imaginable small sins against Nature and Art. She saw at once, by the sure intuitions of genius, how everything they did could be done better, and burned to do it. The part of Almeria she soon dismissed from her thoughts, as mere milk-and-water; but she saw that in that of Zara there was a stream of lava, though dulled and crusted over by the coldness of the actress, which might be made to sweep all before it. Her critical dissatisfaction with the personation became, at last, little short of torture; there was an involuntary lowering of her dark brows, a scornful quiver of her spirited nostril, she bit her lip with angry impatience, and shrugged her shoulders with irrepressible contempt.

In the great scene where Zara surprises Almeria in the cell of Osmyn, it was astonishing how the flaxen-haired representative of the Captive Queen managed to turn her fiery rain of curses into a little pattering shower of womanish reproaches. It was really a masterly performance, in its way.

At this point Zelma threw herself back in utter weariness and disgust, exclaiming, audibly,—"Miserable!—most miserable." When, looking round, she saw the traces of her cousin's innocent emotion, the flush and tearfulness which bespoke her uncritical sympathy with passions so unskilfully represented, she could not suppress a smile at such childish simplicity. And yet this was also her first play.

The tragedy was succeeded by a farce, at which Bessie laughed as heartily as she had wept a little while before, but which was utterly distasteful to Zelma; and at an alarmingly late hour, for that quiet community, the green curtain came heavily plunging down on the final scene of all, and the audience dispersed to their homes.

On the day following, Sir Harry Willerton's guests returned to town, but, to their surprise, unaccompanied by their host, who seemed to have suddenly discovered that his presence was needed on his estate. So he remained. Soon it was remarked that a singular intimacy had sprung up between him and Squire Burleigh, with whom, at length, the larger portion of his time was passed, either in following the hounds or dining at the Grange. There were rumors and surmises that the attractions which drew the young baronet to his bluff neighbor's hospitable hall were not the Squire's hearty cheer, old wine, and older stories, but a pair of shy, yet tender eyes,—red lips, that smiled a wordless welcome, and sometimes pouted at a late coming,—cheeks whose blushes daily grew warmer in love's ripening glow,—a voice whose tones daily grew deeper, and seemed freighted with more delicious meanings.

There was little discussion as to which of the young ladies of the Grange was the enchantress and the elect Lady Willerton.

"Surely," said the gossips, "it cannot be that gypsy niece of the Squire, that odd, black-browed girl, who scours over the country in all weathers, on that elfish black pony, with her hair flying,—for all the world as though in search of her wild relations. No, the blood of the Willertons would never run so low as that;—it must be sweet Miss Bessie, and she is a match for a lord."

For once the gossips were right. But it is with the poor "Rommany girl," not with the heiress of Burleigh Grange, that we have to do.

On the morning succeeding the play, Zelma Burleigh, taking in her hand an odd volume of Shakspeare, one of the few specimens of dramatic literature which her uncle's scant library afforded, strolled down a lonely lane, running back from the house, toward the high pasture-lands, on which grazed and basked the wealthy Squire's goodly flocks and herds. This was her favorite walk, as it was the most quiet, shaded, out-of-the-way by-path on the estate. She now directed her steps to a little rustic seat, almost hidden from view by the pendent branches of an old willow-tree, and close under a hawthorn-hedge, now in full, fragrant bloom. Here she seated herself, or rather flung herself down, half languidly, half petulantly, an expression of ennui and unrest darkening her face,—the dusky traces of a sleepless night hanging heavily about her eyes. She opened her book at the play of "Romeo and Juliet," and began to read, not silently, nor yet aloud, but in a low, dreamy tone, in which the sounds of Nature about her, the gurgle of a brook behind the hedge, the sighing of the winds among the pendulous branches of the willow, the silver shiver of the lance-like leaves, the murmurous coming and going of bees, the loving duets of nest-building birds, all seemed to mingle and merge. As she read, a new light seemed to illumine the page, caught from her recent experience of dramatic personation and scenic effects, limited and unsatisfactory though that experience had been. In fancy, she floated over the stage, as the gay young Juliet at the masquerade; then she caught sight of young Romeo, and, lo! his face was that of the sentimental hero of the last night's tragedy, but ennobled by the glow and dignity of genuine passion. In fancy, she sat on the balcony, communing with night and the stars,—the newly-risen star of love silvering all life for her. Then, leaning her cheek upon her hand, she poured forth Juliet's impassioned apostrophe. When she came to the passage,—

"O Romeo, Romeo!—wherefore art thou Romeo?"

she was startled by a rustling of the leaves behind her. She paused and looked round fearfully. A blackbird darted out of the hedge and away over the fields. Zelma smiled at her own alarm, and read on, till she reached the tender adjuration,—

"Romeo, doff thy name; And for thy name, which is no part of thee, Take all myself!"

when,—suddenly, a fragrant shower of hawthorn-blossoms fell upon the page before her, and the next instant there lightly vaulted over the hedge at her side the hero of her secret thoughts, the young player, Lawrence Bury! He stood before her, flushed and smiling, with his head uncovered, and in an attitude of respectful homage; yet, with a look and tone of tender, unmistakable meaning, took up the words of the play,—

"I take thee at thy word. Call me but love, and I'll be new-baptized; Henceforth I never will be Romeo."

Poor Zelma did not have the presence of mind to greet this sudden apparition of a lover in the apt words of her part,—

"What man art thou, that, thus bescreened in night, So stumblest on my counsel?"

She had no words at all for the intruder, but, frightened and bewildered, sprang from her seat and turned her face toward home, with a startled bird's first impulse to flight. As she rose, her book slid from her lap and fell among the daisies at her feet. The actor caught it up and presented it to her, with the grace of a courtly knight restoring the dropped glove of a princess, but, as he did so, exclaimed, in a half-playful tone, looking at the volume rather than the lady,—

"I thank thee, O my master, for affording me so fair an excuse for mine audacity!"

Then, assuming a more earnest manner, he proceeded to make excuses and entreat pardon for the suddenness, informality, and presumption of his appearance before her:—

"You know, Madam," he said,—"if, indeed, you are so unfortunate as to know anything about us,—that we players are an impulsive, unconventional class of beings, lawless and irresponsible, the Gypsies of Art."

Here Zelma flushed and drew herself up, while a suspicious glance shot from her eyes;—but the stranger seemed not to understand or perceive it, for he went on quite innocently, and with increasing earnestness of tone and manner:—

"I know I have been presuming, impertinent, audacious, in thus intruding myself upon you, and acknowledge that you would be but severely just in banishing me instantly from your bright presence, and in withdrawing from me forever the light of your adorable eyes. Oh, those eyes!" he continued, clasping his hands in an ecstasy of lover-like enthusiasm, —"those wild, sweet orbs!—bewildering lights of love, dear as life, but cruel as death!—can they not quicken, even as they slay? Oh, gentle lady, be like her of Verona!—be gracious, be kind, or, at least, be merciful, and do not banish me!—

'For exile hath more terror in his look, Much more, than death; do not say banishment!'"

He paused, but did not remove his passionate looks from the young girl's face,—looks which, though cast down, for he was much the taller of the two, had the effect of most lowly and deprecating entreaty;—and then there happened an event,—a very slight, common, natural event,—the result more of girlish embarrassment than of any conscious emotion or purpose, yet of incalculable importance at that moment, and, perhaps, decisive of the fate of two human hearts,—Zelma smiled. It was a quick, involuntary smile, which seemed to escape from the firm lips and half-averted eyes, flashed over the face, touched the cold features with strange radiance, and then was gone,—and, in its place, the old shadow of reserve and distrust, for the moment, darker than ever.

But to the adventurous lover that brief light had revealed his doubtful way clear before him. He saw, with a thrill of exultation, that henceforth he had really nothing to fear from such womanly defences as he had counted on,—coldness, prejudice, disdain,—that all he had taken for these were but unsubstantial shadows. Still he showed no premature triumph in word or look, but remained silent and humble, waiting the reply to his passionate appeal, as though life or death, in very truth, were depending upon it. And Zelma spoke at last,—briefly and coldly, but in a manner neither suspicious nor unfriendly. She herself, she said, was unconventional, in her instincts, at least,—so could afford to pardon somewhat of lawlessness in another,—especially, she added, with a shy smile, in one whom Melpomene, rather than Cupid, had made mad. Still she was not a Juliet, though he, for all she knew, might be a Romeo; and only in lands verging on the tropics, or in the soul of a poet, could a passion like that of the gentle Veronese spring up, bud, and blossom, in a single night. As for her, the fogs of England, the heavy chill of its social atmosphere, had obstructed the ripening sunshine of romance and repressed the flowering of the heart—

"And kept your beautiful nature all the more pure and fresh!" exclaimed Mr. Lawrence Bury, with real or well-assumed enthusiasm; but Zelma, replying to his interruption only by a slight blush, went on to say, that she had been taught that poetry, art, and romances were all idle pastimes and perilous lures, unbecoming and unwholesome to a young English gentlewoman, whose manifest destiny it was to tread the dull, beaten track of domestic duty, with spirit chastened and conformed. She had had, she would acknowledge, some aspirations and rebellious repinings, some wild day-dreams of life of another sort; but it was best that she should put these down,—yes, doubtless, best that she should fall into her place in the ranks of duty and staid respectability, and be a mere gentlewoman, like the rest.—Here a slight shrug of the shoulders and curl of the lip contradicted her words,—yet, with a tone of rigid determination, she added, that it was also best she should cherish no tastes and form no associations which might distract her imagination and further turn her heart from this virtuous resolution; and therefore must she say farewell, firmly and finally, to the, she doubted not, most worthy gentleman who had done her the honor to entertain for her sentiments of such high consideration and romantic devotion. She would not deny that his intrusion on her privacy had, at first, startled and displeased her,—but she already accepted it as an eccentricity of dramatic genius, a thoughtless offence, and, being, as she trusted, at once the first and the last, pardonable. She wished him happiness, fame, fortune,—and a very good morning! Then, with a wave of the hand which would have done honor to Oldfield herself, she turned and walked proudly up the lane.

Mr. Bury saw her depart silently, standing in a submissive, dejected attitude, but with a quiet, supercilious smile lightly curling his finely-cut lips; for did he not know that she would return to her haunt the next day, and that he would be there to see?

And Zelma did return the next day,—persuading herself that she was only acting naturally, and with proper dignity and independence. She argued with herself that to abandon her favorite walk or avoid her usual resting-place would be to confess, if not a fear of the stranger's presuming and persistent suit, at least, a disturbing consciousness of his proximity, and of the possibility of his braving her displeasure by a second and unpardonable intrusion. No, she would live as she had lived, freely, carelessly; she would go and come, ride and walk, just as though nothing had happened,—for, indeed, nothing had happened that a woman of sense and pride should take cognizance of. So, after a half-hour's strange hesitation, she took her book and went to the old place. Longer than usual she sat there, idly and abstractedly turning over the leaves of her Shakspeare, starting and flushing with every chance sound that broke on the still, sweet air; yet no presumptuous intruder disturbed her maiden meditations, and she rose wearily at last, and walked slowly homeward, saying to herself, "It is well. I have conquered," but feeling that nothing was well in life, or her own heart, and that she was miserably defeated. Ah, little did she suspect that her clouded, dissatisfied face had been keenly scanned by the very eyes she dreaded, yet secretly longed to meet,—that her most unconscious sigh of disappointment had been heard by her Romeo of the previous day, now lying just behind the hedge, buried in the long brook-side grass, and laughing to himself a very pleasant laugh of gratulation and triumph.

That night, the good Squire of Burleigh Grange relented from his virtuous resolve, and took his wife, daughter, and niece to the play.

The piece was Howe's tragedy of "Tamerlane." Mr. Bury personated the imperial Tartar, a noble rôle, which so well became him, costumes and all, and brought him so much applause, that Zelma's heart was effectually softened, and she even felt a regretful pride in having received and rejected the homage of a man of such parts.

The next day, as the hour for her stroll arrived, she said to herself, "I can surely take my walks in safety now,—he will never come near me more." So she went,—but, to her unspeakable confusion, she found him, quietly seated in her little rustic bower, his head bared to the sunshine, and his "Hyperion curls" tossed and tumbled about by a frolicsome wind. He rose when the lady appeared, stammered out an apology, bowed respectfully, and would have retired, but that Zelma, feeling that she was the intruder this time, begged him to remain. She thought herself, simple child! merely courteous and duly hospitable, in giving this invitation; but the quick, eager ear of the actor and lover heard, quivering through the assumed indifference and cold politeness of her tones, the genuine impulse and ardent wish of her heart. So he yielded and lingered, proffering apologies and exchanging polite commonplaces.

After a little time, Zelma, to prove her freedom from embarrassment or suspicion, quietly seated herself on the rustic bench, giving, as she did so, a regal spread to her ample skirts, that there might be no vacant place beside her. The actor stood for a while before her, just going, but never gone, talking gayly, but respectfully, on indifferent topics,—till, at last, touching on some theme of deeper interest, and apparently forgetting everything but it and the fair lady, who neither expressed nor looked a desire to shorten the interview, he flung himself, with what seemed a boy's natural impulse, upon the soft, inviting turf, under the shade of the willow. There, reclining in the attitude of Hamlet at the feet of Ophelia, he rambled on from subject to subject, in a careless, graceful way, plucking up grass and picking daisies to pieces, as he talked, giving every now and then, from beneath the languid sweep of his heavy eyelashes, quick flashes of tender meaning, as fitful and beautiful as the "heat-lightnings" of summer twilights, and apparently as harmless.

There was something so magnetic and contagious in this frank, confiding manner, that Zelma, ere she was aware, grew unrestrained and communicative in turn. One by one, the icicles of pride and reserve, which a strange and ungenial atmosphere had hung around her affluent and spontaneous nature, melted in the unwanted sunshine, dropped away from her, and the quick bloom of a Southern heart revealed itself in smiles and blushes. The divine poet whose volume she now held clasped caressingly in both hands had prepared the way for this, by sending through every vein and fibre of her being the sweet, subtile essence of passionate thought,—the spring-tide of youth and love, which makes the story of Romeo and Juliet glow and throb with immortal freshness and vitality.

So, at length, those two talked freely and pleasantly together. They discussed the quiet rural scenery around them, the deep green valley of Arden, shut in by an almost unbroken circle of hills, and Zelma told of a peculiar silvery mist which sometimes floated over it, like the ghost of the lake which, it was said, once filled it; they spoke of wood, stream, moor, and waterfall, sunsets and moonlight and stars, poetry and—love; floating slowly, and almost unconsciously, down the smooth current of summer talk and youthful fancies, toward the ocean of all their thoughts, whose mysterious murmurs already filled one heart at least with a tender awe and a vague longing, which was yet half fear.

The next day, and the next, and every day while the players remained at Arden, the two friends met by tacit agreement in the lane of Burleigh Grange, and, gradually, Lawrence Bury became less the actor and more the man, in the presence of a genuine woman, without affectation or artifice, stage-rant or art-cant,—one from whose face the glare of the foot-lights had not stricken the natural bloom, whose heart had never burned with the feverish excitement of the stage, its insatiable ambition, its animosities and exceeding fierce jealousies. For Zelma, she grew more humble and simple and less exacting, the more she bestowed from a "bounty boundless as the sea."