CHAPTER XVI. "Therefore, not unconsoled I wait-in hope As they who have opposed her." WORDSWORTH. AROLD'S first impulse upon receiving the extraordinary announcement which at once palsied his energies, and crushed his hopes was, naturally enough, to request an interview with Plowden, with the view of disabusing his mind of the impression that differences on abstract intellectual subjects were incompatible with the preservation of private friendships. And if Plowden had not been Plowden, this plan would have had much to recommend it. But he was a man who having himself more than his share of strong natural understanding, never thought of seeking knowledge for the love of wisdom itself; or of availing himself of those aids to Truth which well trained minds are never above accepting even from their youngers. It would therefore have been as idle as it was impolitic for Harold to resort to an expedient which might have succeeded with a more reasonable disposition. In this view moreover he was confirmed by the clear and unimpassioned mind of Catharine, and by a circumstance which still further confirmed his wavering resolutions. For Plowden's note did not come alone. In the same cover with it was one from Mabelnot, it may be sure, couched in similar language, but almost to the same effect. An almost tender note: an artless woman's note; full of right feeling; professing noble sentiments, high sense of duty, filial obedience, religious motives: yet withal smiting long cherished hopes, tearing up rooted resolutions, withering, like April eastern winds, the very blossoms which the sunshine smiled to ripen. Gentle female reader, you would think that such a thunder-clap would have bowed a soul to dust-a noble generous soul like Harold's! Alas! you know not proud man's poverty of patience. We You know not how, in sorrow's scorching trialhour, you are our teachers, models, monitors. How is it? We pass unscathed through fierce exhaustions, from which your feebler frames shrink back amazed; our path lies daily through the rude world's frowning strife; your's mid kind faces, and flower-strewed sunny scenes. We bear without a tear all agonies. You weep at the bare mention of another's pain. wince not, where you shudder. We stem a lifelong torrent of adversity, where one short shock would kill you. And yet we can nothing of your meek endurances-your undismayed hopefulness against appearances of ill—strong faith -and willing martyrdoms. Give me a woman's constancy; nothing may shake it: a woman's anchor of belief; nought shall uproot it; a woman's perseverance; nothing shall outlive it! No sooner had Harold read, and read again, and assured himself of the authenticity of, Mabel's note, than his mind seemed suddenly made up. The words that sent daggers through his heart brought illumination to his mind, and fixedness to his purposes. He determined to join the Reformers more vigorously than ever. "What need," he argued with himself, "of any other omen to determine me? So long as she loved me, there might be cause enough to stand aloof from committing myself irrevocably to the work. So long as any overt sworn alliance with them would have been the signal for separation from her, it was meet that I should pause. But now, what do I gain by fighting any longer against my reason and convictions, what lose, by devoting my life henceforth to a work so noble? "And such is woman's love! Like their own strength how frail; like their own beauty, how evanescent! "Farewell, happy days that have so deceived us! farewell, happy dreams that have so forsaken. us! Avaunt, backsliding scruples, compromises, recreant unmanly tamperings with self; welcome, stern path of duty, hostility, resistance, obloquy, and strife!” Nicholas Playfair and Walter Wiseman were at this time two of Harold's most promising cotemporaries at the Bar. The former had been senior wrangler of his year; the other had struggled, on a scanty patrimony and from an obscure parentage, to a level with the gentlest born of his profession. But he was a free-thinker: his cold, hard brow, and sneering lip, told this: and Playfair was little better, for the orgies which his chambers were privy to were often whispered in the robing rooms at Westminster; but the depravities were no one's business but his own, and so, though his bad life was notorious, no one remonstrated with him. But a common ruling passion makes men overlook the differences which separate them in all other things, and sympathy in one great master purpose mates strange companions. So chanced it with St. Just. Though harmonizing with him in nothing else, Playfair and Wiseman espoused the cry |