-the moment I get too hungry to do my took the hand still raised in his survey of work well and have no money left. Should his sleeve, pressed it to her lips, and I think it a disgrace to take money from walked with even more than her wonted you? That would show a poverty of state slowly from the room. spirit such as I hope never to fall into. My sole reason for refusing now is that I do not need it." But for all his loving words and assurances Clementina could not stay her tears. She was not ready to weep, but now her eyes were as a fountain. 66 See, then, for your tears are hard to bear, my daughter," he said, "I will take one of these golden ministers, and if it has flown from me ere you come, seeing that, like the raven, it will not return if once I let it go, I will ask you for another. It may be God's will that you should feed me for a time." "Like one of Elijah's ravens," said Clementina, with an attempted laugh that was really a sob. "Like a dove whose wings are covered with silver and her feathers with yellow gold," said the schoolmaster. A moment of silence followed, broken only by Clementina's failures in quieting herself. "To me," he resumed, "the sweetest fountain of money is the hand of love, but a man has no right to take it from that fountain except he is in want of it. I am not. True, I go somewhat bare, my lady; but what is that when my Lord would have it so?" He took the bag of gold from the table and followed her down the stair. Her chariot was waiting her at the door. He handed her in, and laid the bag on the little seat in front. "Will you tell him to drive home?" she said with a firm voice, and a smile which if any one care to understand let him read Spenser's fortieth sonnet. And so they parted. The coachman took the queer, shabby, un-London-like man for a fortune-teller his lady was in the habit of consulting, and paid homage to his power with the handle of his whip as he drove away. The schoolmaster returned to his room- - not to his Plato, not even to Saul of Tarsus, but to the Lord himself. From The Victoria Magazine. MRS. LUCY HUTCHINSON AND LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU. BY P. Q. KEEGAN, LL.D. THE materials from which we may glean the character of Mrs. Lucy Hutchinson, are scattered up and down a brief account of her life written by herself; and the indications which that remarkable production furnishes are most pointed and interesting. She was the daughter of Sir Allen Apsley, lieutenant of the Tower of London, a man of good general ability, benevolence, trustworthiness, piety, and "But your clothes are shabby, sir," said practical aptitude. Her mother, accordClementina, looking at him with a sad lit-ing to the daughter's account, was a tle shake of the head. He opened again the bag, and slowly, reverentially indeed, drew from it one of the new sovereigns with which it was filled. He put it in a waistcoat pocket and laid the bag on the table. "Are they?" he returned, and looked down at his lower garments, reddening and anxious. "I did not think they were more than a little rubbed, but they shine somewhat," he said. "They are indeed polished by use," he went on with a troubled little laugh: "but they have no holes yet at least none that are visible," he corrected. "If you tell me, my lady, if you honestly tell me, that my garments and he looked at the sleeve of his coat, drawing back his head from it to see it better "are unsightly, I will take of your money and buy me a new suit." Over his coat-sleeve he regarded her, questioning. "Everything about you is beautiful," she burst out. "You want nothing but a body that lets the light through." She woman of practical ability and steady piety. Her parents, from an early age, spared no cost to improve on her educa tion. At four years of age, she could read English perfectly, and was characterized by the possession of a retentive memory. When she was only seven years old she was intently occupied with the acquisition of languages, music, dancing, writing, and needlework. Of these she avers that she absolutely hated the needle, that she profited very little by her tuitions in music and dancing, never practising them but when her masters were with her. She despised playing with other children, and seemed, in short, quite averse to everything but her book. "Every moment," she says, "I could steal from my play I would employ on any book I could find when my own were locked up from me." Mean while, moreover, she was convinced that the knowledge of God was the most excellent study, and accordingly she applied herself to it, and to practise it as she was taught it. She used to exhort her mother's maids much, and to turn their idle discourse to good subjects. Mrs. Lucy Hutchinson was a woman of a decidedly grave and serious turn of mind. The love of knowledge and of truth, the desire of real merit, the sense of security from remote evils, modesty these were the emotions which ruled over her spirit, these it was that guided and piloted her general conduct, and to whose empire she owned unswerving allegiance. The steadiness of conduct, the sense of order, the fidelity, and the respect for authority which such an exalted sovereignty ordains instilled her with a feeling of patriotism and of public honor, not superficial by any means, but deeply ingrained and thoroughly well-founded.' In interpreting this part of Mrs. Hutchinson's character, we clearly perceive the deep shadow cast down by the age in which she lived. Her husband was a Roundhead of the time of Charles I. and Cromwell, and her own sympathies were strongly enlisted in the republican cause which then sprung up-the cause, viz., of the prudential, nervous stability of the sterling-hearted, though Puritanized, middle and lower classes of England, against the crack-brained vivacity, the over-demonstrative, open-handed frivolity and thoughtlessness, and the immorality of the court. The English Reformation, however mischievous in other respects, seemed to bear at least this one good fruit - viz., it rendered the English people more prudent and self-controlled, more capable of seeing into the distant future, so as to take all means, measures, and precautions requisite to the establishment of a popular government upon an immovable foundation; in short, it rendered the English nation more capable than heretofore of governing itself and all others of Celtic complexion. Doubtless Magna Charta and other valuable privileges and immunities were granted to the commonalty in old Catholic times; but all such donations and franchises seem to have been imparted amid the sounds of mirth and revelry. The Englishmen of those old times were steady, inflexible, and brave; but we suspect they were too merry and laughter-loving, too fond of lingering and dangling at the surface of things rather than descending to the bottom; and consequently their political constitution was built upon a sandy foundation, and awaited only the rude breath of a Henry VIII. to crumble to atoms. Oliver Cromwell, no doubt, may be regarded as the fittest aspirant and the worthiest recipient of English national liberty. Moreover (throwing out of view his duplicity, ambition, etc.) he may be regarded as a true type of the English national character. The comparative impiety of our days probably hinders us from perceiving this fact so clearly as we might have done two hundred years ago - i.e., at a period when the doctrines and practices of Christianity were more deeply incorporated into the tissue of household existence, than they are at present. He was a man, as everybody knows, of singular capacity. He had that steady prudence, that far-sighted view of things, that marvellous grasp of the means requisite to accomplish desired ends, which alone would stamp him as one of the most extraordinary men that ever lived. His intellectual powers were not perhaps remarkably vigorous; his morality wandered about amid the labyrinthian passages of the Bible, seeking in vain for a firm and steadfast seat; and his conduct with respect to the murder of Charles I. was infamous and abominable. Minor and less conspicuous developments of the character now sketched, contributed therewith to overturn the ancient sovereignty of England, and to establish upon its ruins, as upon an immovable basis, the fabric of English popular liberty. Never was there a time when the prudentminded characteristics of the Saxon race were so powerfully developed, or so conspicuously displayed; and the prevailing condition of social life and manners borrowed its hues from the predominant circumstance. We may observe, that the large and respectable body of the country gentlemen stood foremost amongst the ranks of the commonalty, as distinguished from the aristocracy; and it was from this body, that the vast majority of the people derived their habits, their prejudices, and their religious and political opinions. This majority were ingrained with Puritan principles, and these views operated upon their minds and conduct in such a manner, as to produce the characteristic of deep thought, steady enthusiasm, and self-command. We do not believe that the stern gloom, the blighting asceticism, the rigid morosity wherewith the career of the Roundheads has been commonly associated, were generally predominant amongst that class of men. Some prominent force-of-character fanatics, of that power of association whereby like showing or rather shadowing forth suggests like amid a crowd of diverse amongst their fellows, have been seized objects. The extensive Bible-reading upon (as by Scott, for instance, in" Old then prevalent probably contributed to Mortality"), and held up as typical speci- deepen and extend this native tendency of mens of their class; but there is every the intellectual forces. We observe it reason to suppose that these instances beautifully displayed in the magnificently were merely exceptional. embroidered prose of Milton. We trace it, too, in the writings of Mrs. Hutchinson, as, for instance, in the following passages: Speaking of her own birth, she says, "It was not in the midnight of Popery, nor in the dawn of the gospel's restored day, when lights and shades were blended and almost undistinguished, but when the sun of truth was exalted in his progress and hastening towards a meridian glory." Nevertheless, we are constrained to think that the Puritans were not kindhearted as a rule, but rather selfish. They carried about with them opinions regarding certain harmless amusements (such as theatre-going, card-playing, etc.), which would, if expressed in our day, be provocative of laughter. Nevertheless, we need not pretend that sports, in the ordinary sense of the word, were not commonly practised during the Puritan régime. The pastime of angling, in particular, must, we think, have had many devotees at that time. Izaac Walton's old treatise on this subject was extensively patronized, no less than five editions having been called for in the course of his life. The piscatorial sport, by reason of its comparative quietude and melancholy, was admirably suited to the Roundhead character; and hence, in the opening chapters of the aforesaid book, we find an able and eloquent defence and recommendation thereof; and throughout those pages, too, we may glean the true relation of the Puritan spirit to the sportive side of human nature. Therein we may learn that all dissipation that did not extravagantly ruffle, excite, or exhaust the animal spirits, was perfectly compatible with the orthodox Roundhead doctrine on this point. Effervescence of animal spirits, on the other hand, was regarded as part and parcel, a sign and index of the crazy temperament, of the man barely fit to take care of himself of the irreligious, the profligate man. The literature of the Commonwealth period throws manifold rays of light upon the character of the men whose thoughts and feelings it expressed. The style wherein it was couched was lofty, classical, pedantic, and, though frequently diffuse and deficient in smoothness and ease, it was commonly adorned with profuse and glowing imagery. There was an almost universal prevalence of analogical, metaphorical expression. Men did not express themselves so directly and plainly as at present; they borrowed illustrations of their subject-matter from all natural ob jects; in fact, they seemed to view everything by the light of simile. Truly there was at this time, an extraordinary development of that department of the intellect, Of her husband she affirms, that "his soul ever reigned as king in the internal throne, and never was captive to his senses; religion and reason, its two favored councillors, took order that all the passions, kept within their just bounds, there did him good service, and furthered the public weal." We do not often encounter such elaborately wrought, poetical strains of writing as these, throughout the literary produc tions of the female mind; and the foregoing instance thereof may, therefore, be regarded as indicative of the masculine force of intellect which this lady possessed. The very circumstance itself, that she should have written a lengthy memoir, embracing several historical events, and indicating, as it does, very considerable powers of judging men and things, demonstrates beyond a doubt the intellectual calibre of her mind, and the preponderance of the intellectual over the emotional department thereof. Nevertheless, the character of the times she lived in must be taken into account; for we know that, in a subsequent age, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, a woman of probably equal intellectual strength and attainments, mainly occupied her literary talents with descriptions of her own personal pleasures, or of the objects and persons encountered during her travels; she even did not disdain to retail the latest scandal. We do not hear that Mrs. Hutchinson was skilled in music, in painting, or in any of the fine arts, properly so called, although no doubt she had a taste for them. She seems to have been destitute of that peculiar Celtic nervous acuteness or excitability, which is apparently indispensable to such artistic talent; and this being the case, her sociable proclivities, how ever liberally implanted by nature, must self-command, not being the general char737 have been more or less checked in growth acteristics of the race of men now in exand development. But she indubitably istence, are not now reflected by the clear, possessed an unusually retentive memory, sheeny waters of woman's heart. Men and a keen, discriminative judgment, that nowadays are for the most part too much cast a serenity over her life, and induced given to frivolity of all kinds, to feel disher to be prudent and sober-minded, and posed to patronize exhibitions of sobriety thus rendered her eminently sane and prop- of conduct, or studious habits in women. erly conducted. Nevertheless, in spite of Let the men be only more plentifully this grave and sober steadfastness of de- endowed with thoughtfulness, steady enmeanor, in spite of this moral propriety of thusiasm in religion, and in such other at least her public conduct, it reflects no matters as are ancillary to their eternal great credit on the social character of this welfare; let them be prudent, and hold the lady, that she was so much disposed to coursers of their inclinations well in hand; despise playing with other children, and let them eschew, or at least considerably that she tired the mwith more grave in- moderate, their habits of drinking, smokstructions than their mothers, and kept the ing, betting, and general fast living; and children in such awe that they were glad then we shall be blessed with a more staid when she entertained herself with older and sober-minded order of women. company. We confess that, regard it as we may, this is a feature in the character of this remarkable woman that we cannot esteem. The child who would be guilty of such conduct in the present day, would be most deservedly unpopular, and would even, we suspect, be considered as tinged with insanity. She certainly would not be liked in any degree by her playmates and schoolfellows; and after a time, she would be probably shunned and ignored by them, as well as by the more penetrating among her elders. It may be averred in her defence, that she was very young at the time when such disagreeable traits were exhibited, but our own experience of such matters has invariably pointed to the conclusion that the native disposition of individuals is as clearly reflected, in fact more so, in their general deportment when they are young in years, as when the mantle of age has fallen on their shoulders. The fulsome praise, too, which she so lavishly showers on the character and qualities of her father, her mother, and her husband, simply because their good points happened to be somewhat similar to those possessed by herself, suggests the idea that she would have been as equally prepared to heap censure and reproach upon individuals of a more sprightly and vivacious disposition, however good and irreproachable their conduct in other respects might have been. We fear that her experience of human nature was not sufficiently extensive to enable her to pierce through the veil which invariably covers the actions of men, hiding from obtuse mortal ken their intrinsic good or evil, morality or depravity. Ours is not the age competent to produce another Mrs. Lucy Hutchinson; for sage and sober thoughtfulness, and steady LIVING AGE. VOL. XVIII. 931 high social position, and that circumstance mind, the absence of vanity and ostenta- and the subdued, properly regulated love of power of her nobility as guarantees of safety from further aggression by them upon her dearly cherished liberties, permitted that high order of men to remain, probably on the principle that they, being free-born and vested with no objectionable privileges, had as good a right to exist as anybody else. had in view, and she did not shrink from | less, the hereditary aristocracy of the kingtaking advantage of this useful knowledge. dom had not been overthrown. England, She possessed much kind-heartedness. accepting the well-known common sense, After an attack by some of the royalist soldiery upon the town of Nottingham, the wounded of her own party were brought in to her, and she dressed their wounds, some of which were dangerous, with such success, that they were all cured in convenient time. Afterwards, and in spite of bigoted expostulation, she proceeded to bind up and dress the wounds of three prisoners that had been captured from the enemy. During the period of her husband's unjust imprisonment, too, she frequently solaced him by her presence, and labored assiduously by eloquent appeals for his release. But, notwithstanding these political ameliorations, a broad chasm still subsisted between the court, including the nobility on the one hand, and the mighty mass of the commonalty on the other. The former of these was the central founBut her consciousness of her own tal- tain of patronage. He who was talented ents and good qualities saturated her mind and accomplished, and wished to unmask with a profound sense of her intellectual his light to the world, must first unseal superiority and righteous conduct. All the waters of that fountain, ere the prodmust admit that this woman was proud. ucts of his powers could be diffused We do not hear that she was popular; we throughout the provinces of society at do not find her name in the common rec- large. The seeds of genius could never ords of the time when she flourished. spring forth and be developed in the sight Something internal seemed perpetually to of men, until they had been previously whisper to her that her religious and other irrigated and refreshed by the sparkling opinions were founded on the rock of waters of aristocratic patronage. That truth itself, and that her actions were com- eminent literary pioneer, Dr. Johnson, had monly, if not invariably, the emanation of not yet arrived upon the scene to clear most infallibly directed conscience. away obstructions, and the rays of popu Thence we may trace the rise of a some-lar influence were as yet too weak to what exalted self-conceit, and of a stub- exert much beneficial influence upon the born opiniativeness, which seem, in the tender plant. sublunary condition of the human soul, to be at least very frequent attendants upon individuals of a recognized intellectual or moral calibre. a An idiosyncrasy as to tastes, habits, and manners, characterized the upper ten at this remarkable period. The reign of Charles I. had been one of comparative Let us now turn over the annals of En- quietude in the moral world; but when glish political events, till we come to the Charles II. ascended the throne, the hellplace where the transactions of the first hounds of vice and immorality were quarter of the eighteenth century are freely let loose upon aristocratic society, related, i.e., about sixty years after the and they rampaged about with a fury and Cromwellian rebellion, or about the time perversity that set all the frowns of public when George I. ascended the throne. opinion at defiance. It was this depraved Here we shall observe a completely dif- nobility that constituted the reading class ferent picture from what we have been of the community; and the literature hitherto contemplating. The face of which pandered to their epicurean tastes society had changed, exhibiting more was necessarily immoral, and, though brilgaudy hues, and more diversified features liant and felicitous in respect of expresthan of yore. The fire and smoke of sion, it was yet poor and vile in respect of political contention - an unseemly sight thought. Men gambled and patronized in England - had cleared away, and the brutal sports, and swore continually, reliberties of the nation seemed finally estab- tailed scandal, attended immoral plays, lished upon an immovable foundation. and in general conducted themselves as if The unsightly scaffolding, which of old the coursers of their sensual passions had had deformed, while no doubt it somewhat galloped madly away with their conscience promoted the building up of the fabric of and their self-command. 66 No more the constitution, was now entirely removed, gloomy Puritanism here;" no practical so that the noble edifice itself shone forth belief in the Christian doctrines to a in bright, unsullied splendor. Neverthe-future state of reward and punishment. |