Who can describe, where all is bright, From one bright spot of crimson glow- It pour'd around a waving light; That gleams upon the brow of night. "No female gnome or fairy bright Lest, blasted by excess of light, Queen of the Gnomes is Ida now, And glittering wreaths confine her hair? Though clustering rubies form her zone, She scorns the sparkling diadem, She loathes the bright zone's splendid round; For, whilst withheld the sovereign gem, Is she with matchless glory crown'd? Through distant realms, to spread his power, She views the stone: it pours a glow, Enchanting odours* breathe around, And sudden rapture thrills her veins. Extended on the golden floor! THE LAST OF THE FAMILY. All perish'd-I alone am left on earth, To whom nor blood nor relative remains No! not a kindred drop that runs in human veins. CAMPBELL. It was about the middle of summer that an old schoolfellow, recently returned from abroad, came to our ancient little town to spend a few days with us, and take another look at scenes, hallowed by the delightful reminiscences of boyhood. "You In one of our evening walks, as we were passing through the town, my companion was struck with the great alteration, in a particular part of the street. He appeared to feel considerable chagrin at this little circumstance; and enquired, with some anxiety, or at least disappointment, when the former house and appurtenances had been taken down, what had become of the quondam proprietor. "How do you come to be interested in his fate ?" said I. could have no acquaintance with him." 'No," answered he, "I never had; but any thing connected with our old remembrances is interesting. Things, in the days of yore, had a more stationary aspect than they now appear to possess; and, finding a change, where I anticipated a renewal of old sensations, is equivalent to a blot falling upon, or a brush washing out, a particular spot in the map of Memory. Besides, in your old country-towns, there is much less of that ebb and flow, that change in the mass of population, which one finds in the larger cities. I suppose that a third of the families here possess the tenements of their fathers, and can point out the residences of their progenitors for a couple of centuries back, without removing a quarter of a mile to the right or to the left." "True," continued I, "and the very person, whose fate you are enquiring after, was the sole representative of a race, who, for many generations, lived and died in the house which has been taken down. Indeed, I believe I am correct when I aver, that his family have been longer resident in the parish than any other of which it can boast." "What has become of him?" asked my friend: "is he alive still? he was a healthy, young-looking man." 66 He is still alive," I replied, "but far from this-nor likely ever to return. If he did, and, possessing a single particle of feeling, saw the change that is here, what a heart were his !" "Let me know something of Mr. Selcraig's history; I think that was his name?" I bowed assent. * One of the most noxious fire-damps of the mines is attended with an exquisite perfume, resembling the scent of the sweet-pea. 66 Although he had extensive premises around him, I never recollect his seeming to follow any occupation." You are not far from the truth," I replied. "His father, and I believe his grandfather, were considerable brewers, and remembered by some old people yet alive as ranking in their day and generation with the foremost of the town in wealth and respectability. At the death of his father, which happened some five-and-twenty years ago, Robert, who had received the education of a gentleman, was left heir to the property and a flourishing concern. In a short time, however, without any very palpable cause, the trade began to fall off. Matters were not conducted about the premises with the same order and regularity as before; and, though people spoke of the young heir as a pleasant, well-informed, respectable, and goodnatured man, year after year found "confusion more confounded," matters getting worse, and business decaying. The customers still retained were not of the best; bad debts were accumulating, and the buildings falling into disrespair. He was not a man addicted to extravagant habits; nor did he lavish much money either in personal decoration or in entertaining company: but there was an evil-a radical defect, slow in its operation, but sure in the performance of its end, which, though but of negative power, caused and accounted for the whole. His besetting sin was indolence of disposition. "Out of respect to the family he was admitted into the town-council; and, without doing good to the community, or harm to any but himself, lounged away much of his time in attendance on its meetings, public and social. His servants had been discharged, one after another, as his trade declined, till only one was retained, who had been brought up from his boyhood in the family, and what little remained of business was committed to this man's sole guidance and guardianship. I have never heard it laid to the poor fellow's charge that he committed any sins of direct peculation or dishonesty; but, finding the reins of government entirely relaxed, and lying unhandled on his own shoulders, he became as careless and slovenly as his superior, slept on an empty hogshead with his back to the wall on sunny forenoons, and turned out by far the best customer for the stingo of his own manufacturing. "A pleasant land of drowsy-head it was. From want of activity and exertion Selcraig was at length totally forsaken by the little business which he once had, and by which he pocketed not a farthing, while indolence forbade the slightest effort to retrieve his affairs. He now found himself master of a ruinous property, a drunken old drayman, and a thick bundle of desperate debts-a dreary heritage! "It is perfectly true that in life nothing stands still. If we are not advancing we are retrograding: if we are not doing good we are to a certainty doing evil: and, if we are not laying up the good things of this life, they are day by day slipping from our grasp. Probably Mr. Selcraig hardly saw how this could be; but he was soon made to feel the truth of the apophthegm. He had no near relatives to stimulate him to exertion or to do any thing for him. His seeming occupation was gone, and his resources were exhausted. He made not an effort to redeem himself. His clothes became so shabby, though with the remains of gentility about them, that the meetings of the town-council were abandoned; and he sequestered himself in his own dwelling or garden. He was never met in the streets, or seen, except perhaps for a few minutes during twilight, standing with his hands behind his back, looking along the causeway at the busy throngs moving about their different concerns, none of which bore reference to him, and listening to the "most musical, most melancholy" chime of the curfew bell-the same that had charmed the ear of his childhood. "While misery was thus pressing upon him, forsaken by lukewarm acquaintances, and left to solitary unsatisfying thought, he summoned resolution to call a meeting of his creditors, and, when his disordered affairs were somewhat arranged, it was found that he had barely a sufficiency left to satisfy their claims. The whole of his goods and chattels, houses, furniture, implements of work, and other things, were brought to the hammer. On the last day of the sale, his library, consisting of several hundred volumes, was sold. I could not help feeling deeply when I saw this storehouse of thought ransacked, especially when many curious old volumes with the names of his grandfather and great grandfather upon them were knocked down to indifferent spectators, as so much waste paper. Poor Selcraig was walking in the apartment at the time, twirling a piece of green twig in his hand, and masking, under a brow artificially cheerful, the powerful but ill-concealed workings of nature in his breast. My morbid sensibility would not allow me to bid for a volume. I figured to myself what I should have experienced on a like occasion." 'What became of him afterward," said my friend, "when the home of his fathers was taken from him, and when he was thus cast loose on the wide ocean of society?" "A few weeks afterwards I observed him passing frequently through the streets, dressed considerably better than I had seen him for years before. On the afternoon of the same day (it was in the heart of August, and the streets baked with thirst, under a cloudless and burning sun) I met him, and, with a forced smile upon his face, he informed me that he had taken his passage in a vessel bound for Van Dieman's Land, which was to sail on the morrow. We shook hands and parted, likely for ever: I could not help turning round, when he was at some distance, and muttering in heart-felt depression to myself— Let me take a last look: that man has been familiar to my eyes from my earliest childhood. A fibre is torn from the heart-I shall never behold that man in this world again!'' By this time my friend and I were come into the parish churchyard, which is beautifully and romantically situated, commanding an extensive prospect around, and encompassed on one side with ancient and shady trees. In the centre stand the remains of an ancient Roman Catholic chapel, converted after the reformation into a Presbyterian meeting-house. The roof is grey with age, and some lilac trees, that had found footing in the crevices and niches, blossomed in despite of the scanty soil in a wild and luxuriant manner, hiding the ravages of time, and softening over its austerities with their bright glossy green branches. Most of the monuments, in the quiet field of graves, are very old, and so much worn that the inscriptions are in many places illegible. Some are half sunk into the earth; others entirely encrusted with moss and lichen. In deciphering these I shewed my friend those of the father, grandfather, and a host of progenitors, male and female, of poor Selcraig. One after another had they entered into the great arena of life, and performed their allotted parts on them, one after another, had the burthen of years pressed; and, touched by the silent finger of Death, at longer or shorter intervals, had they, in succession, here lain down to their last sleep. What a mass of misery is saved to us in our ignorance of the fates and fortunes of those whom in death we are forced to leave behind us! and what a kind provision of Destiny it is-the bidding us look through the shades of futurity with more of the joyful anticipations of hope than the depressing gloom of doubt! What if it had been foretold to these ancient burghers, that the sum of possessions, slowly and laboriously heaped together by life-times of patient industry, should at length pass into the listless hands of a final inheritor, who should sigh year after year over his lessening resources without a single effort on his part to redeem his fortunes, and be at length forced to abandon his native country, and leave the home of his sires for a wild, unsettled, and uncertain habitation, among the far distant and unexplored wastes of another hemisphere ! As we were returning home, in the calm soft evening, through fields, whose flowers of every hue and odour loaded the air with a rich delightful fragrance, under a sky whose western boundary yet intensely glowed with the traces of a most glorious sunset, a multitude of old remembrances crowded involuntarily upon my mind, for they were all of a dreamy, sombre, and pensive cast. So brightly, so beautifully, thought I, arose that evening-star, and sank that sun a thousand years ago, when that little old town, to which our steps are approaching, began to increase and flourish. What a succession of generations, with their different fashions and modes of life, have grown old and died within its walls since then!-old families, maintaining their places, and preserving their names perhaps for centuries, but, at length, leaving their sole representation to a single descendant, with whom their name and lineage is speedily destined to perish. A few corroded, grey, and mossy gravestones carry down a faint and feeble remembrance-a shadowy memento of their existence a few years longer; and are then mutilated by the hand of Wantonness, or torn up, that the ground, wherein their ashes lie, may be appropriated to new comers, who, pursuing the occupations they once pursued, flourish where they once flourished. Their old habitations are thrown down, that modern mansions may be built on their sites. The old trees and the ancient sundial in the garden are dug up. Society is changed from its foundations, for the world is in a perpetual state of decay and renovation. Their name hath perished from the earth; like the clouds or sunshine of yesterday they have passed away; and " the place which once knew them now knows them no more!!" The foregoing paper is from the popular pen of the Author of "Mansie Wauch," "Legend of Genevieve," &c.. We shall be glad to hear from him occasionally at his convenience. EDITOR. |