and pink, regular and sadly unimpassioned: but bright, lively, arch, quaint, good humoured, with but little colour, yet with a strong glow pervading all. Her eyes and her teeth. were her best points. The latter were clean set and laughing; the former burning-black, large and bright, and flashing like meteors. No: meteors sometimes flash like them. Though quiet, staid and decorous, even timorous before strangers, yet after an interview or two with one to her liking, she would open out like a sensitive plant. She soon began to listen with attention to my accounts of examinations, and tripos aspirations, and to the true and faithful characters of other men I drew for her, of their envy, malice, conceit, &c., &c. She gradually became interwoven into all my hopes and dreams of future comfort. It was not love in a hut. There would be no cottages near seas or woods for me. I did not fancy such thoughtless thriftless prospects. No. I had a bright vision of a model parsonage and a restored church in a parish, where she would enliven the visiting population with her sprightly and wickedly innocent sallies, and where by the force of my profound, learned, and popular preaching, dissenters would be few. Ah! that week! I verily believe my reading average was not eight hours a day. had to go It was her last evening in Cambridge. Jsomewhere and left me in charge. I proposed a walk in the grounds which the aunt declined for herself under pretence of being afraid of the damp and the evening air, but in reality, I could see, to stay behind and ransack J's drawers and overhaul his rooms. Eloisa however was graciously consigned to my care with orders to see she did not catch cold. Off we set. In the day time there was a kind of piquante, saucy, half-sarcasm about her which naturally possessed great fascinations for a strong and vigorous mind like mine, unused as I was to the society of the other sex. But as evening drew on, when that charming calm prevails whose stillness is only rendered more striking by perhaps the evensong of a thrush, perhaps the cooing of ringdoves, or perhaps the moaning of the wind in the topmost branches of immemorial elms, then was the time when all the beauties of her nature came out. Her feelings seemed responsive to the time and the place. I had just been explaining a passage from St. Augustine to her great satisfaction. She murmured some answer, and we walked on in a mutual silence along the banks of the dark green river. A solemn stillness held the air, and we wandered on overawed by the majesty of the scene. A last, at a quotation I brushed up from Gray or Collins, she looked with her liquid eyes right into my face. Had anything been wanting to make me lose all command of head and heart, that look was enough to do it. Her rapt soul sitting in her eyes commingled with mine, which I endeavoured to throw all into one look. She then let fall her eyes and looked away sad and thoughtful: dim memories, I supposed, floating through her brain, delicious thoughts haunting mine. At the sight of the long silken fringy lashes drooping over the humid starlike eyes my heart beat high; indeed all through that walk I felt a kind of exulting pride in the thought of being partner to so heavenly, so spiritual a creature. What I poured into her ear with low impassioned tremulous voice I do not now remember. All I know is, I wished I had studied Byron more than Wood's Algebra, and Shakespeare more than Euclid. At last the bell rang and we returned to J's rooms where we found the aunt hastily closing a drawer. J— had not returned; so in the twilight she sang an old familiar song or two. The old window, the antique wainscot, dark with flickering shadows, the low voice, the dim dusk, and my feelings all harmonised well together, and I was half sorry when J came back, and the lamp was lit, my two cups and three plates borrowed and tea made. But in jokes and merry talk the evening flew quickly, too quickly away. Next morning we saw them away by the coach, and I noticed that she fixed her lustrous eyes on me with a wondering wandering gaze as if her thoughts were far away. After the usual leavetakings the coach rattled off with all the attendant and often-described éclat. That night my rooms did seem cheerless, cold, dreary, desolate. In moody solitary wretchedness I sat by the fire toying unconsciously with the poker, and for the first time in my life (but NOT the last) began the following introduction to a grand Spenserian poem in her honour: The stars of heaven, bright and unquenchable, And the pale moon begins her upward race; The writer is ready to take oath that the pressure of his hand when taking hers was quite imperceptible. Like angel's pitying eye that never knew What sin or sorrow was, and melteth at the view. What was to come after I never determined, for it took me so long to write the above, especially the last line, that I gave up in despair, and after sewing a button on my coat, darning a hole in my stockings, and learning a few Latin quotations, I took down Newton and read five hours like a man. The above episode in my college career lent me new force and energy. I did well in the May, and a few weeks after went down to spend two or three days with J by special invitation from his aunt. I reached the house, situated in the middle of a neat garden (all old maids are good gardeners) and knocked with a beating heart. Welcomed I was, but she was not there, and though I was panting to ask after her, I dared not, and was miserably mute on that subject. At last the aunt vouchsafed the information, that she had gone out with Mr. L to do a little visiting, and they would be back to tea. My blood run cold at this announcement. fell into a fever of jealousy. I conjured up visions of domestic tyranny and meditated elopement. When they did get home at last, I saw it all. No need of an introduction to him as Eloisa's betrothed. Mild and clerical-coated curate as he was, I could not but feel furious at him. To my astonishment she did not blush or falter, but welcomed me with her old manner, with the same smile, the same lively expression. He was the same in manner as her, quite kindly, not at all like what a rival ought to be. That night to me was one of torture. She sang and played (like a Siren I thought), and they all exerted their utmost powers to charm and please. At last Mr. L - left and Jwent part of the way with him. The aunt left the room to scold the servants or perform some other housewifely duties, and we were left alone. managed somehow to get into conversation, she doing all the talking and showing herself to be what in extremely vulgar phrase would be "very jolly." She made me her confidant about Mr. Land talked of her visit to Cambridge; how she was thinking of him in those dear old grounds at dusk when I so kindly took her round them, and how she wondered what he was doing. I could have killed myself! The wondering wandering look in the coach flashed on my memory. What a mistake I had made! What a fool, what an egregious fool I had been! I had had enough of it We (aris Teрa Te), and cut short my visit. Need I say the Spenserian poem was immediately consigned to the flames all unfinished as it was: that they were married; that my success in life has been continual since then; while they have struggled on in married misery? One son is up here now, but he rows, runs, and has been plucked for his Little-Go. I have stuck to Cambridge, and my earnest endeavours have ever been to advance the cause of science, and by the imposition of salutary restrictions on the rebelliously-inclined undergraduates in the way of enforcement of punctual attendance on early and frequent lectures, and regular chapel-keeping, to break them in like wild young colts: so that in their after-life they may perform the daily routine of their profession quietly in harness, and take the bit and wear the collar all the more patiently because they were inured to it in youth, and first driven by men of superior talent and abilities. "SAPERE AUDE." ** THE WORM I' THE BUD. WE thought that life and health were hers But ere another summer came The grass was waving o'er her. At first a short dry cough; 'twas nought Then strange wild ecstasies would come She grew too fair; her dark eyes gleamed We read the truth, but told it not, Her wasting form grew weak and thin, The hectic flush upon her cheek But when the winter past, and spring We thought our flower would bloom again- She died one sunny morn: but while The sweet lips answered with a smile; "SAPERE AUDE." |