Diary And Notes Of Horace Templeton, Esq. Volume II

I wish that I had more command over my faculties; the tricks Imagination plays me at each moment are very painful: scarcely have I composed my mind into a calm and patient frame, than Fancy sets to work at some vision of returning health and strength – of home scenes and familiar faces – of the green lanes of Old England, as seen at sunset of a summer eve, when the last song of the blackbird rings through the clear air, and odours of sweet flowers grow stronger in the heavy atmosphere.

To start from these, and think of what I am – of what so soon I shall be!

What marvellously fine aspirations and noble enterprises cross the sick man’s fancy! The climate of health is sadly unfavourable to the creatures begot of fancy – one tithe of the strange notions that are now warring in my distracted brain would make matter for a whole novelist’s library. Thoughts that are thus engendered are like the wines which the Germans call “Ausgelesene,” and which, falling from the grape unpressed, have none of the impurities of fabrication about them. After all, the things that have been left undone by all of us in this life, would be far better and greater than those we have done.

 
Oh, the fond hearts that have never been smitten,
And all the hot tears that have never been shed!
Not to speak of the books that have never been written;
And all the smart things that have never been said!
 

Weaker and weaker! – the senses fail to retain impressions, and, like cracked vases, let their contents ooze out by slow degrees. Objects of sight become commingled with those of sound; and I can half understand the blind man Locke tells us of, who imagined “the colour scarlet to be like the sound of a trumpet.”

Mesmerism affects the power of transferring the operations of one sense to the organs of another; can it be that, in certain states of the brain, the nervous fluids become intermixed?

It is night – calm, still, and starlit! How large are the stars compared with what they appear in northern latitudes! And the moonlight, too, is pale as silver, and has none of the yellow tint we see with us. Beautifully it lies along that slope of the mountain yonder, where the tall dark yew-trees throw their straight shadows across the glittering surface.

It is the churchyard of St. M – ; and now in the church I can perceive the twinkle of lights – they are the candles around the coffin of him whose funeral I saw this morning. The custom of leaving the body for a day in the church before consigning it to the grave is a touching one. The dimly-lighted aisles, and the solemn air of the place, seem a fitting transition from Life to the sleep of Death.

I have been thinking of that very old man, who came past the window yesterday, and sat down to rest himself on the stone-bench beside the door. Giordano never took a finer head as a study: lofty and massive, with the temples deeply indented; and such a beard, snow-white and waving! How I longed for strength enough to have wandered forth and seated myself beside him! A strange, mysterious feeling was on me – that I should hear words of comfort from his lips! This impression grew out of his own remarkable story. Yes, poor and humble as his dress, lowly as his present condition may seem, he was a “Captain of the Imperial Guard” – a proud title once! He was taken prisoner during the retreat from Moscow, and, with hundreds more, sent away to eternal exile in Siberia! At that period he was in all the pride of manhood, a true specimen of his class – gay, witty, full of daring, and a sceptic; a Frenchman of the Revolution grafted on a gentleman of the old régime! The Fatalism that sustained them – it was their only faith – through long years of banishment, brought many in sadness to the grave! It was a gloomy-religion, whose hope was but chastened despair! He himself lived on, the reckless spirit of a bold heart hardening him against grief as effectually as it excluded memory. When, at length, as time went on, and his companions dropped off around him, a severe and cheerless melancholy settled down upon him, and he lived on in a state of dreamy unreality, less like sleep than death itself! And yet, through this dense cloud a ray of light pierced and fell upon his cold and darkened spirit, like day descending into some cleft between the mountains!

He was sitting at the door of his hut one evening, to taste the few short moments of sunset, when, unwrapping the piece of paper which surrounded his cigar – the one sole luxury the prisoners are permitted – he was proceeding to light it, when a thought occurred that he would read the lines, for it was a printed paper. He opened the bit of torn and ragged paper, and found there three verses from the Gospel of St. John. Doubtless he had often sat in weariness before the most heart-stirring appeals and earnest exhortations; and yet these few lines did what years of such teaching failed to do. The long-thirsting heart was refreshed by this one drop of clear water! He became a believer, firm and faithful! His liberation, which he owed to the clemency of the Emperor Alexander, set him free to wander over the world as a missionary, and this he has been ever since. How striking are his calm and benevolent features among the faces which pass you in every street – for we live in times of eager and insensate passion. The volcano has thrown forth ashes, and who knows how soon the flame may follow!

How long this night appears! I have sat, as I believe, for hours here, and yet it is but two o’clock! The dreary vacuity of weakness is like a wide and pathless waste. I see but one great spreading moorland, with a low, dark horizon; no creature moves across the surface – no light glimmers on it. It is the plain before the Valley of the Shadow of Death.

Poor Gilbert! – how soundly he sleeps, believing that I am also sunk to rest! The deep-drawn breathings of his strong chest are strange beside the fluttering hurry of my respiration. He was wearied out with watching – wearied, as I feel myself: but Death comes not the sooner for our weariness; we must bide our time, even like the felon whose sentence has fixed the day and the hour.

Three o’clock! What a chill is on me! The fire no longer warms me, nor does the great cloak with which I braved the snows of Canada. This is a sensation quite distinct from mere cold – it is like as though my body were itself the source from which the air became chilled. I have tried to heap more wood upon the fire, but am too weak to reach it. I cannot bear to awaken that poor fellow. It is but enduring a little – a very little longer – and all will be over!

There was a man upon the terrace below the window, walking slowly back and forwards. What can it mean, so late? It has made me nervous and irritable to watch his shadow as it crosses before me. There! – how strange! – he has beckoned to me! Is this real? Now I see no one! Some trick of imagination; but how weak it has left me! My hand trembles, too, with a strange fear.

It has struck again! It must be four; and I have slept. What a long night it has been! O Life! Life! how little your best and highest ambitions seem to him who sits, like me, waiting to be released! Now and then the heart beats full and strong, and a momentary sense of vigour flashes across my mind; and then the icy current comes back, the faint straggle to breathe shaking the frame as a wrecked vessel trembles with each crashing wave!

Day breaks at length – that must be the dawn! But my eyes are failing, and my hands are numbed. Poor Gilbert! how sound is his sleep! He has turned – and now he dreams! What is he muttering? Good night! good night! Even so – good night!

How cold – how very cold I feel! I thought it had been over! Oh, for a little longer of this dalliance here! – ay, even here, on the last shores of life! Inexpressibly sweet the odours are, and the birds! How I drink in those strains! – they will float with me along the journey I am going! Weaker and weaker. This must be death! Farewell!

The circumstances which have placed these papers in my hands afford me the only apology I can offer for making them public. They were bequeathed to me, in some sort, as a recompense for services which my poor master had long intended to have rewarded very differently; nor, save under the pressure of an actual necessity, should I devote them now to the purpose of personal assistance. I neither understand how to correct nor arrange them. I have no skill in editorship, and send them to the printer without the addition of a letter by any hand except his who wrote them. It is true, some pages have been withheld – I am not sure whether necessarily or not – for I have no competent judgment to guide me. I would, however, hope, that what I here give to the world may, while benefiting the servant, leave no stain upon the memory of the best of masters.

GEORGE GILBERT,

Valet to the late H. Templeton, Esq.

Dover, January 1848.

Postscript to Envoy.

A word may be necessary as to the political allusions, as they were all written in the autumn of the past year, many are, of course, inapplicable to countries whose condition the wonderful events lately occurring have modified: many are, however, almost correct in every detail of prophetic foresight; and, it is not necessary that I should repeat, have neither been changed nor added to since penned by my late master.

THE END.