Various - Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 66, No 405, July 1849

BULLER.

Young Christopher North! Incredible.

NORTH.

I know not how long I slept; but on awaking, I saw an angel with a most beautiful face and most beautiful hair – a little young angel – about the same size as myself – sitting on a stool by my feet. "Are you quite well now, Christopher? Let us go to the meadows and gather flowers." Shame, sorrow, remorse, contrition, came to me with those innocent words – we wept together, and I was comforted. "I have been sinful" – "but you are forgiven." Down all the stairs hand in hand we glided; and there was no longer anger in any eyes – the whole house was happy. All voices were kinder – if that were possible – than they had been when I rose in the morning – a Boy in his Ninth Year. Parental hands smoothed my hair – parental lips kissed it – and parental greetings, only a little more cheerful than prayers, restored me to the Love I had never lost, and which I felt now had animated that brief and just displeasure. I had never heard then of Elysian fields; but I had often heard, and often had dreamt happy, happy dreams of fields of light in heaven. And such looked the fields to be, where fairest Mary Gordon and I gathered flowers, and spoke to the birds, and to one another, all day long – and again, when the day was gone, and the evening going, on till moon-time, below and among the soft-burning stars.

BULLER.

And never has Christopher been in the Sulks since that day.

NORTH.

Under heaven I owe it all to that child's eyes. Still I sternly keep the Anniversary – for, beyond doubt, I was that day possessed with a Devil – and an angel it was, though human, that drove him out.

SEWARD.

Your first Love?

NORTH.

In a week she was in heaven. My friends – in childhood – our whole future life would sometimes seem to be at the mercy of such small events as these. Small call them not – for they are great for good or for evil – because of the unfathomable mysteries that lie shrouded in the growth, on earth, of an immortal soul.

SEWARD.

May I dare to ask you, sir – it is indeed a delicate – a more than delicate question – if the Anniversary – has been brought round with the revolving year since we encamped?

NORTH.

It has.

SEWARD.

Ah! Buller! we know now the reason of his absence that day from the Pavilion and Deeside – of his utter seclusion – he was doing penance in the Swiss Giantess – a severe sojourn.

NORTH.

A Good Temper, friends – not a good Conscience – is the Blessing of Life.

BULLER.

Shocked to hear you say so, sir. Unsay it, my dear sir – unsay it – pernicious doctrine. It may get abroad.

NORTH.

The Sulks! – the Celestials. The Sulks are hell, sirs – the Celestials, by the very name, heaven. I take temper in its all-embracing sense of Physical, Mental, and Moral Atmosphere. Pure and serene – then we respire God's gifts, and are happier than we desire! Is not that divine? Foul and disturbed – then we are stifled by God's gifts – and are wickeder than we fear! Is not that devilish? A good Conscience and a bad Temper! Talk not to me, Young Men, of pernicious doctrine – it is a soul-saving doctrine – "millions of spiritual creatures walk unseen" teaching it – men's Thoughts, communing with heaven, have been teaching it – surely not all in vain – since Cain slew Abel.

SEWARD.

The Sage!

BULLER.

Socrates.

NORTH.

Morose! Think for five minutes on what that word means – and on what that word contains – and you see the Man must be an Atheist. Sitting in the House of God morosely ! Bright, bold, beautiful boys of ours, ye are not morose – heaven's air has free access through your open souls – a clear conscience carries the Friends in their pastimes up the Mountains.

SEWARD.

And their fathers before them.

NORTH.

And their great-grandfather – I mean their spiritual great-grandfather – myself – Christopher North. They are gathering up – even as we gathered up – images that will never die. Evanescent! Clouds – lights – shadows – glooms – the falling sound – the running murmur – and the swinging roar – as cataract, stream, and forest all alike seem wheeling by – these are not evanescent – for they will all keep coming and going – before their Imagination – all life-long at the bidding of the Will – or obedient to a Wish! Or by benign Law, whose might is a mystery, coming back from the far profound – remembered apparitions!

SEWARD.

Dear sir.

NORTH.

Even my Image will sometimes reappear – and the Tents of Cladich – the Camp on Lochawe-side.

BULLER.

My dear sir – it will not be evanescent —

NORTH.

And withal such Devils! But I have given them carte blanche .

SEWARD.

Nor will they abuse it.

NORTH.

I wonder when they sleep. Each has his own dormitory – the cluster forming the left wing of the Camp – but Deeside is not seldom broad awake till midnight; and though I am always up and out by six at the latest, never once have I caught a man of them napping, but either there they are each more blooming than the other, getting ready their gear for a start; – or, on sweeping the Loch with my glass, I see their heads, like wild-ducks – swimming – round Rabbit Island – as some wretch has baptised Inishail – or away to Inistrynish – or, for anything I know, to Port-Sonachan – swimming for a Medal given by the Club! Or there goes Gutta-Percha by the Pass of Brandir, or shooting away into the woods near Kilchurn. Twice have they been on the top of Cruachan – once for a clear hour, and once for a dark day – the very next morning, Marmaduke said, they would have "some more mountain," and the Four Cloud-compellers swept the whole range of Ben-Bhuridh and Bein-Lurachan as far as the head of Glensrea. Though they said nothing about it, I heard of their having been over the hills behind us, t'other night, at Cairndow, at a wedding. Why, only think, sirs, yesterday they were off by daylight to try their luck in Loch Dochart, and again I heard their merriment soon after we had retired. They must have footed it above forty miles. That Cornwall Clipper will be their death. And off again this morning – all on foot – to the Black Mount.

BULLER.

For what?

NORTH.

By permission of the Marquis, to shoot an Eagle. She is said to be again on egg – and to cliff-climbers her eyrie is within rifle-range. But let us forget the Boys – as they have forgot us.

SEWARD.

The Loch is calmer to-day, sir, than we have yet seen it; but the calm is of a different character from yesterday's – that was serene, this is solemn – I had almost said austere. Yesterday there were few clouds; and such was the prevailing power of all those lovely woods on the islands, and along the mainland shores – that the whole reflexion seemed sylvan. When gazing on such a sight, does not our feeling of the unrealities – the shadows – attach to the realities – the substances? So that the living trees – earth-rooted, and growing upwards – become almost as visionary as their inverted semblances in that commingling clime? Or is it that the life of the trees gives life to the images, and imagination believes that the whole, in its beauty, must belong, by the same law, to the same world?

NORTH.

Let us understand, without seeking to destroy, our delusions – for has not this life of ours been wisely called the dream of a shadow!

SEWARD.

To-day there are many clouds, and aloft they are beautiful; nor is the light of the sun not most gracious; but the repose of all that downward world affects me – I know not why – with sadness – it is beginning to look almost gloomy – and I seem to see the hush not of sleep, but of death. There is not the unboundaried expanse of yesterday – the loch looks narrower – and Cruachan closer to us, with all his heights.