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   2. The diphthong oe is represented by [oe].






THE FATE:


A TALE OF STIRRING TIMES.


BY G. P. R. JAMES, ESQ.,

AUTHOR OF
"THE COMMISSIONER," "HENRY SMEATON," "THE OLD OAK CHEST," "THE
WOODMAN," "GOWRIE," "RUSSELL," "THE FORGERY," "BEAUCHAMP,"
"RICHELIEU," "DARK SCENES OF HISTORY," &c., &c.



NEW YORK:
HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS,
PEARL STREET, FRANKLIN SQUARE.
1864.






Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year one thousand eight
hundred and fifty-one, by

GEORGE P. R. JAMES,

in the Office of the Clerk of the District Court of the Southern
District of New York.




PREFACE.


Change of scene I believe to be as invigorating to the mind as change
of air is to the body, refreshing the weary and exhausted powers, and
affording a stimulus which prompts to activity of thought. To a writer
of fiction, especially, the change may be necessary, not only on
account of the benefits to be derived by his own mind from the
invigorating effects of a new atmosphere, but also on account of the
fresh thoughts suggested by the different circumstances in which he is
placed.

We are curiously-constructed creatures, not unlike the mere brute
creation in many of our propensities; and the old adage, that "custom
is a second nature," is quite as applicable to the mind as to the
body. If we ride a horse along a road to which he is accustomed, he
will generally make a little struggle to stop at a house where his
master has been in the habit of calling, or to turn up a by-lane
through which he has frequently gone. The mind, too, especially of an
author, has its houses of call and by-lanes in plenty; and, so long as
it is in familiar scenes, it will have a strong hankering for its
accustomed roads and pleasant halting-places. Every object around us
is a sort of bough from which we gather our ideas; and it is very
well, now and then, to pluck the apples of another garden, of a flavor
different from our own.

Whether I have in any degree benefited by the change from one side of
the Atlantic to the other--a change much greater when morally than
when physically considered--it is not for me to say; but I trust that,
at all events, the work which is to follow these pages will not show
that I have in any degree or in any way suffered from my visit to and
residence in America. I have written it with interest in the
characters portrayed and the events detailed; and I humbly
desire--without even venturing to hope--that I may succeed in
communicating some portion of the same interest to my readers.

A good deal of laudatory matter has been written upon the
landscape-painting propensities of the author; and one reviewer,
writing in Blackwood's Magazine, has comprehended and pointed out what
has always been one of that author's especial objects in describing
mere scenes of inanimate nature. In the following pages I have
indulged very little in descriptions of this kind; but here, as every
where else, I have ever endeavored to treat the picture of any
particular place or scene with a reference to man's heart, or mind, or
fate--his thoughts, his feelings, his destiny--and to bring forth, as
it were, the latent sympathies between human and mere material nature.
There is, to my mind, a likeness (a shadowing forth--a symbolism) in
all the infinite variations which we see around us in the external
world, to the changeful ideas, sensations, sentiments--as infinite and
as varied--of the world of human life; and I can not think that the
scenes I have visited, or the sights that I have seen, in this
portion of the earth--the richness, the beauty, the grandeur, the
sublimity--can have been without influence upon myself; can have left
the pages of nature here a sealed book to one who has studied their
bright, mysterious characters so diligently in other lands.

Nay, more, I have met with much, in social life, well calculated to
expand the heart, as well as to elevate the mind, which I should be
ungrateful not to mention--kindness, hospitality, friendship, where I
had no claim, and enlightened intercourse with powerful minds, in
which I expected much, and found much more.

Sweet and ineffaceable impressions, ye can not have served to deaden
the feelings or to obscure the intellect!

I will rest, then, in hope that this work, the first which I have
commenced and completed in America, may not be worse than its many
literary brethren, and merely pray that it may be better. Let the
critics say, Amen!

G. P. R. JAMES.

_Stockbridge, Massachusetts_, 30_th July_, 1851.






THE FATE.




CHAPTER I.


There is no mistake more common among historians, no mistake more
mischievous, than to take for granted, without deduction, all the
statements of the satirists and splenetics of past-by ages as to the
manners and customs of their own times, and of the people with whom
they mingled. There are half a dozen, at least, of the pleasant little
passions of human nature which lead men, especially men of letters, to
decry their companions, their friends, and their neighbors--nay, even
their countrymen and their country. To say nothing of "envy, hatred,
malice, and all uncharitableness"--sins common enough to be wisely
prayed against--pride, vanity, and levity point the pen, direct the
words, or furnish forth a little drop of gall to every man who is
giving an account of the times in which he lives and the country in
which he dwells, for those who are living or to live at a distance of
space or time from himself. It is pleasant to place our own brightness
on a dark back-ground; and the all but universal propensity of mankind
to caricature derives an extraordinary zest in its exercise, when, by
rendering others around us contemptible or odious, we can bring out
our own characters in bolder relief. But there are other, perhaps even
meaner motives still, which induce men frequently to portray their own
times in broad and distorted sketches. The faculty of admiration is a
very rare one; the faculty of just appreciation a rarer one still; but
every one loves to laugh; every one feels himself elevated by the
contemplation of absurdities in others. There is a vain fondness for
the grotesque lurking in the bosoms of most men; and a consciousness
that sly or even gross satire, and delicate or coarse caricature, are
the best means of giving pleasure to the great mass of mankind, is
probably one reason why we find such depreciatory exaggeration in the
writings of all those who have given pictures of their own times. The
letters of Petrarch, the statements of Hollingshed, the pictures of
Hogarth, the romances of Smollett and Fielding, all furnish, it is
true, certain sketches of their own times from which we can derive
some valuable information, but so distorted by passion, by prejudice,
by a satirical spirit, or a love of the ridiculous, that the portrait
can be no more relied upon, in its details, than Bunbury's caricature
of a Cantab for the general appearance of Cambridge scholars.

To give such pictures is mischievous in itself; but I can not help
thinking that for an historian to follow them without allowance is
more mischievous still. If there be a deviation on either side--though
any deviation should be avoided, if possible--surely it would be
better for every moral object to paint the past more bright rather
than more foul, as the past alone contains the just objects of
imitation, though we may emulate contemporary virtue or aspire to
ideal perfection in the future.

Truth--plain, simple truth, with such reflections upon the verities of
the past as may tend to benefit mankind in the present and the future,
forms all that the historian can desire; but he might as well hope to
draw truth from the pages of the satirists of any age, as a future
portrait painter might represent Lord John Russell or Lord Brougham
from the caricatures in Punch, where a certain likeness is kept up,
but every peculiarity is exaggerated with the grossest extravagance.

I enter my caveat against the picture given of the state of England in
the year 1685 by Mr. Macaulay, in his great and fanciful historical
work, and especially against that part of it which refers to the
English country gentlemen of those times, and to the English country
clergy. That such men did exist as those from which he has drawn his
statement, there can be no doubt; that they did exist in a greater
proportion than at present, there can be no doubt either; but that the
great mass were such as he has represented, may be very safely denied.
Pickwicks, and Tupmans, and Winkles are full of truth; but society is
not made up of these; and the reign of Victoria would appear very ill
in history if, by misfortune, it should have for its future historian
one inclined to paint the state of England in 1850 from similar
sources to those which have been pressed into the service of Mr.
Macaulay.

Nor does his reasoning afford any support to his statements; for, when
important elements are left out of calculation, the result can never
be admitted. Thus, when he says, "A country gentleman who witnessed
the revolution was probably in receipt of about a fourth part of the
rent which his acres now yield to his posterity. He was, therefore, as
compared with his posterity, a poor man, and was generally under the
necessity of residing with little interruption on his estate." The
historian forgets to state what was the comparative value of money at
the period he speaks of, and therefore can not draw as a fair
inference from the amount of rent, that the country gentleman of those
days was condemned by poverty to perpetual seclusion in the country,
which is, in fact, what he attempts to show. The tastes, the habits of
a country gentleman of that period kept him probably more in the
country; but it was not poverty. Even in the eighteenth century, we
find gentlemen of an estate producing two thousand pounds a year
keeping a pack of hounds without burdening their property, and every
true picture of country life which has descended to us shows that the
country gentlemen in general lived more at their ease than the same
class in the present day, and were as numerous in proportion to the
population. If their enjoyments were not so refined, it was because
the age was not so refined; and though the picture of Squire Alworthy
may be a pleasing exaggeration on the one hand, that of Squire Western
is an unpleasant caricature on the other, while the truth lay between,
and a multitude of country gentlemen existed of a very fair degree of
polish, without all the refined virtues of the one or the brutal
coarseness of the other.




CHAPTER II.


On the borders of Lincolnshire stood an old building, which had
preserved the name given to it more than two centuries before, though
the purpose which had given significance and propriety to that name
had passed away. It was a long, tall edifice of stone, somewhat like
the body of a church, and, as if to give it more resemblance still to
a religious edifice, another building had been added to the end of the
first, a story higher, and having some resemblance to a tower. This
additional part was built of brick; but moss and lichen had reduced
both stone and brick to very nearly one color; for though, when viewed
nearer, a variety of hues were to be discovered in the cryptogamous
vegetation which covered the walls, at a distance the general tint was
a brownish gray. The windows in the longer portion of the building
were placed in pointed arches, somewhat rudely and carelessly
decorated; those in the taller and newer portion were, on the
contrary, generally square, with a stone label above them, though some
had that flattened arch peculiarly characteristic of the worst Tudor
architecture. The whole building was not very large, and it was clear,
at first sight, that the long portion was devoted to barns, stables,
cart-houses, &c., while the other was separated for human habitation.
At the distance of some sixty or seventy yards from the house, a long
triple row of old elms topped a high bank, affording nesting-place for
innumerable rooks; and a little, clear stream, not unconscious of
trout, ran babbling along, mixing its melody with the music of the
birds. A stone wall, breast high, and in some decay, encircled the
whole, with two large uncouth posts ornamented with fragments of urns,
giving entrance, unimpeded by any gate between them, to any one who
might wish to approach the front door of the dwelling-house. There
probably had been a gate there once, for some iron work on the posts
seemed to show that they had been intended to support something; but
if so, the gate had long been gone--made into pikes in the civil war
for aught I know.

The scene around this old house, when viewed from the top of the bank,
was desolate enough. A wide, fenny piece of uninclosed land stretched
out far toward the north and east, only interrupted at the distance of
some three miles by an undulating rise of woodland. But, nevertheless,
the coloring was often fine, especially on autumnal evenings, when the
moor assumed a solemn, intense blue tint, and the pools and distant
river gleamed like rubies in the rich light of the setting sun.

On the other side, behind the house, the country had a more cheerful
look, with some well-cultivated fields sloping up, as the land rose to
the west, and many a knoll and gentle wave, and scattered trees, with
a thicker wood beyond, while sweeping away southward were hedgerows
and a hamlet here and there, the tower of a village church, and the
chimneys of a distant manor-house.

Such was the aspect of the building and the scene around it; and now
let us say a word of its history and its name.

In former years, when Plantagenet was the royal name of England, when
popes were powerful in the land, and it was sinful to eat beef on
Friday, among the best fed and best taught people of the country were
the abbots and priors of the various monasteries, who somehow,
notwithstanding vigil, prayer, and fasting--nay, even occasionally
vows of voluntary poverty--got fat, prosperous, and wealthy. Large
domains had these good men, and productive fields, besides tithes and
dues of various sorts, which were usually paid in kind. As the abbot,
and the abbot's bailiff, and other officers made their little profit
upon the sale of such commodities as they did not consume; and as, in
a benevolent and Christian spirit, they took good heed to have
plentiful stores laid up to aid the people in time of scarcity, it was
requisite that they should be provided with barns and garners to
preserve the fruits of the earth which they received. These barns were
called granges, and very often had a small farm attached to them. The
masonry of the edifice was generally solid, and the style of the
architecture in some degree ecclesiastical. When the grange was built
near the abbey, it usually stood by itself, without any dwelling-house
attached; but when it was at a distance, on one of the abbey farms, as
was frequently the case, a good mansion for grieve or farmer was often
added by the care of the monks; and a farmer who had pretty daughters,
or brewed good beer, generally contrived to get very comfortably
accommodated.

The house I have been describing was still called The Grange, and such
as I have stated had been its original destination. The long building
had been the real grange or barn of a neighboring abbey; the taller
building had been added afterward for the convenience of the abbot's
bailiff. When the monasteries were suppressed by the arch plunderer
Henry VIII., we all know how many and how great were those who shared
in the pickings of the defunct fowl of Rome. The Grange and the farm
attached to it fell to the lot of a nobleman in the neighborhood,
together with much other valuable property. He bestowed it upon a
younger son; and from that younger son it had descended in unbroken
line to its present possessor. The fortunes of the house had varied
considerably; some had proved gamblers, some had been soldiers, some
had been profuse, some penurious, some had even made love matches, and
now the farm, and the house, and the family were all in a state not
very prosperous, not very disastrous, somewhere between decay and
preservation. It was lucky, indeed, that the owner thereof had but one
son; for, had he been blessed with as many babes as a curate, there
might have been some danger of a dearth in the pantry. As it was, he
could afford comforts--an occasional bottle even of claret. Punch was
a frequent accessory to digestion, and good sound ale, which would
have done honor to any Cambridge audit, was never wanting for a friend
or a poor man.

The owner of that house, however, was a man of a peculiar disposition,
which prevented him from enjoying as much as he might have done the
favorable position in which fate had placed him. I do not mean to say
that he was of a discontented mood, nor that he was precisely a
melancholy man. He was whimsical, somewhat cynical, and certain it is
he had always the art, though a good and kind man at heart, of
discovering the bad or ridiculous side of every thing. He was a
learned man withal, and could often fit an occasion with a quaint
quotation, often twisted considerably from its just application, but
always serving his own purpose very well. He had passed a long time at
the University, and gained odd habits and some distinction. He had
then suddenly married a very beautiful woman of good family and small
fortune. For her sake he determined to exert himself, to strive with
the crowd for honors and distinctions, to place her in the same
position in which his ancestors and hers had stood. For this purpose
he went to the bar, around which he had been indolently buzzing for
some time previous. He was engaged in one cause: circumstances favored
him; the senior counsel was taken ill; the weight, the responsibility
fell upon the junior, but with them the opportunity. He made a
brilliant speech, a powerful argument, carried the court and jury
along with him, and saved his client from fine and imprisonment.

Then came the heaviest blow of his life. His wife died and left him
with one infant. The law was thrown up; the object of ambition was
gone; all his old habits returned, more wrinkled and stiff than ever.
He retired to his small property at The Grange; and there he had lived
ever since, cultivating his acres and his oddities. But let us venture
within the old walls, and see the proprietor in his glory.

Mark the knocker as you pass, reader--that great truncheon of iron, I
mean, suspended by a ring surrounded by a marvelously cut plate of
steel, with a large boss at the lower part, just beneath the obtuse
end of the hammer. The door, too, is worth a look, with oak enough in
it to build a modern house. Then we come to a low passage, none of the
widest, and diminished in space by two chairs with tall backs, each
back having round rods or bars joining the two sides together,
ornamented with round, movable pieces of wood, which may be rattled
from side to side, and resemble exactly those upon the curious machine
with which in popular schools we teach the infant mind to count, now
that we have discarded nature's original numeration table furnished by
our own ten fingers. Between the chairs, in order not to leave space
for intruders to pass too readily, is a suit of complete armor,
somewhat rusty, while on the other side are three cuirasses and three
steel caps, with sundry pikes, swords, and gauntlets, arranged with
some taste and garnished with much dust and many cobwebs.

Now, take care! There is a step--not up, but down; for the floor is
made to accommodate the ground, not the ground leveled to accommodate
the floor. Then this small door on the left hand, with sundry names
and capital letters carved in it with a penknife, to prove the
universality of idle habits in all ages and countries, leads into the
room where we would be.

But, ere we enter, let us take a glance around.

Seated at a small table, near a fire, with one foot resting on the
massive carved brass dog's head which ornaments the end of the
andiron, at the imminent risk of burning the slipper, and with the
other drawn up under his chair--which, by-the-way, was as tall and
stiff-backed as a corporal of dragoons, and would have been a most
uncomfortable seat had it not been well cushioned and partially
covered with Genoa velvet--sat a gentleman of perhaps five-and-fifty
years of age. He wore his own gray hair, though wigs were even then
beginning to domineer over the crown, and the somewhat slovenly
easiness of his whole apparel forbade the supposition that he would
have ever consented to embarrass his cranium with a load of horsehair
only fitted to stew the brains of the wearer into an unintellectual
mass of jelly. He had upon his back a brocade dressing-gown, which
might have been handsome at some former epoch--say twenty years
before; but which, though not actually dirty, was faded, and though
not actually ragged, was patched. He wore stockings of gray thread,
and breeches of a chocolate color, and by some antipathy between the
waistband thereof and the fawn- silk waistcoat above, a large
portion of that part of his shirt which covered the pit of his stomach
was exposed to view; but then that shirt was of the very finest and
cleanest linen. Every man has somewhere a point of coxcombry about
him, and fine linen was his weak spot. The ruffles and the cravat were
of lawn, and white as snow.

On the table before him was a large candle, shedding its light upon an
open book; and ever and anon, as he read, he raised one finger and
rubbed a spot a little above the temple, which, by long labor of the
same kind, he had contrived to render quite bald.

The room was by no means a large one, and the ceiling was of black
oak, which rendered its appearance even smaller than the reality; but
the greater part of three sides was covered with book-cases, and an
immense number of curious and antiquated pieces of furniture
encumbered the floor. The chairs were of all sizes and all
descriptions then in use; the tables were as numerous and as
various as the chairs. The latter, moreover, were loaded with large
glass tankards, curious specimens of Delftware--some exceedingly
coarse in material and coloring, but remarkable in device or
ornament--richly-covered wooden-bound books, strange daggers, and
fragments of goldsmith's work, with one or two pieces of China and
enamel of great value, besides coins and small pictures inestimable in
the eyes of an antiquary. The large center-table was tolerably clear,
for supper-time was approaching, and on it he took his frugal evening
meal, although he had a dining-room on the other side of the passage,
furnished with the most remarkable simplicity, and paved with hard
flag-stones. It was enough for him, however, to