at this date Travellers for the variety tourist had hardly developed into a distinct species sometimes said in passing, when they cast their eyes up to the signbearing tree, that artists were fond of representing the sign-board hanging thus, but that they themselves had never before noticed so perfect an instance in actual It was near this tree that working order. the waggon was standing into which Gabriel Oak crept on his first journey to Weatherbury; but, owing to the darkness, the sign and the inn had been unobserved. The manners of the inn were of the old-established type. Indeed, in the minds of its frequenters they existed as unalterable formulæ : e.g. since breakfast time this morning, and "Then drink, Joseph, and don't restrain yourself!" said Coggan, handing him a hooped mug three-quarters full. Joseph drank for a moderately long time, then for a longer time, saying, as he lowered the jug, "Tis pretty drinking - very pretty drinking, and is more than cheerful on my melancholy errand, so to speak it." "True, drink is a pleasant delight," said Jan, as one who repeated a truism so familiar to his brain that he hardly noticed its passage over his tongue; and, lifting the cup, Coggan tilted his head gradually backwards, with closed eyes, that his expectant soul might not be diverted for one instant from its bliss by Rap with the bottom of your pint for more irrelevant surroundings. liquor. For tobacco, shout. In calling for the girl in waiting, say, "Maid!" Ditto for the landlady, "Old Soul!" &c. &c. 66 Well, I must be on again," said Poor"Not but that I should like grass. another nip with ye; but the country might lose confidence in me if I was seed here." "Where be ye trading o't to to-day then, Joseph ?" "Back to Weatherbury. I've got poor It was a relief to Joseph's heart when the friendly sign-board came in view, little Fanny Robin in my waggon outside, and, stopping his horse immediately be- and I must be at the churchyard gates at neath it, he proceeded to fulfil an inten-a quarter to five with her." tion made a long time before. His spirits were oozing out of him quite. He turned the horse's head to the green bank, and entered the hostel for a mug of ale. 66 Ay I've heard of it. And so she's nailed up in parish boards after all, and nobody to pay the bell shilling and the grave half-crown." "The parish pays the grave half-crown, but not the bell-shilling, because the However, bèll's a luxury: but 'a can hardly do without the grave, poor body. I expect our mistress will pay all." Going down into the kitchen of the inn, the floor of which was a step below the passage, which in its turn was a step below the road outside, what should Joseph see to gladden his eyes but two cop"A pretty maid as ever I see! But per-coloured discs, in the form of the countenances of Mr. Jan Coggan and Mr. what's yer hurry, Joseph? The pore Mark Clark. These owners of the two woman's dead, and you can't bring her to most appreciative throats in the neigh-life, and you may as well sit down combourhood, on this side of respectability, fortable and finish another with us." "I don't mind taking just the merest were now sitting face to face over a threelegged circular table, having an iron rim thimbleful of imagination more with ye, But only a few minutes, beto keep cups and pots from being acci-sonnies. dentally elbowed off; they might have been said to resemble the setting sun and the full moon shining vis-à-vis across the globe. 66 Why, 'tis neighbour Poorgrass!" said Mark Clark. "I'm sure your face don't praise your mistress's table, Joseph." cause 'tis as 'tis." "Of course, you'll have another drop. A man's twice the man afterwards. You feel so warm and glorious, and you whop and slap at your work without any trouble, and everything goes on like sticks a-breaking. Too much liquor is bad, and leads us to that horned man in "I've had a very pale companion for the smoky house; but, after all, many the last five miles," said Joseph, indul-people haven't the gift of enjoying a soak, ging in a shudder toned down by resigna- and since we are highly favoured with a tion. "And to speak the truth, 'twas power that way, we should make the I assure ye I most o't." beginning to tell upon me. ha'n't seed the colour of victuals or drink 368 LIVING AGE. VOL. VIII. "True," said Mark Clark. "'Tis a 52 and said through the fog, which hung between them like blown flour, "Is that Poorgrass with the corpse?" Gabriel recognized the voice as that of the parson. "The corpse is here, sir," said Gabriel. "I have just been to inquire of Mrs. Troy if she could tell me the reason of the delay. I am afraid it is too late now for the funeral to be performed Have you the with proper decency. registrar's certificate?" 66 "I expect Poor'No," said Gabriel. grass has that; and he's at the Buck's Head.' I forgot to ask him for it." "Then that settles the matter. We'll put off the funeral till to-morrow morning. The body may be brought on to the church, or it may be left here at the farm and fetched by the bearers in the morning. They waited more than an hour, and have now gone home." covenanted mercies are extended towards her, and that she is a member of the flock of Christ." The parson's words spread into the heavy air with a sad yet unperturbed cadence, and Gabriel shed an honest tear. Bathsheba seemed unmoved. Mr. Thirdly then left them, and Gabriel lighted a lantern. Fetching three other men to assist him, they bore the unconscious truant indoors, placing the coffin on two benches in the middle of a little sittingroom next the hall, as Bathsheba directed. Oak Every one except Gabriel Oak then left the room. He still indecisively lingered beside the body. He was deeply troubled at the wretchedly ironical aspect that circumstances were putting on with regard to Troy's wife, and at his own powerlessness to counteract them. In spite of his careful manœuvring all this day, the very worst event that could in Gabriel had his reasons for thinking any way have happened in connection the latter a most objectionable plan, not- with the burial had happened now. withstanding that Fanny had been an imagined a terrible discovery resulting inmate of the farmhouse for several from this afternoon's work that might years in the lifetime of Bathsheba's un-cast over Bathsheba's life a shade which cle. Visions of several unhappy contin- the interposition of many lapsing years gencies which might arise from this delay might but indifferently lighten, and fitted before him. But his will was not which nothing at all might altogether relaw, and he went indoors to inquire of move. Suddenly, as in a last attempt to save his mistress what were her wishes on the subject. He found her in an unusual Bathsheba from, at any rate, immediate mood: her eyes as she looked up to him anguish, he looked again, as he had were suspicious and perplexed as with looked before, at the chalk writing upon some antecedent thought. Troy had not the coffin-lid. The scrawl was this simyet returned. At first Bathsheba assent-ple one," Fanny Robin and child." Gaed with a mien of indifference to his proposition that they should go on to the church at once with their burden; but immediately afterwards, following Gabriel to the gate, she swerved to the extreme of solicitousness on Fanny's account, and desired that the girl might be Oak argued brought into the house. upon the convenience of leaving her in 66 Very well, then," said the parson. Mrs. Troy is right in feeling that we can- briel took his handkerchief and carefully rubbed out the two latter words. He then left the room, and went out quietly by the front door." From Chambers' Journal. THE LIFE OF FLOWERS. Nulla planta sine animâ (No plant without a soul), Aristotle is said to have observed. The proposition can certainly not be maintained on scientific grounds; and even the great German poet, who glorifies the flowers as "decked with the hues of a splendour divine," is obliged at last to address to them the invocation : Weep, kindly children of the Spring, To you has Heaven a soul denied. Yet, for the imagination and the feelings, there is a sense in which the saying is true. We are in the habit of imputing to flowers a sort of personality, in a much - "I wish you'd show yourself a man of spirit, and not sit whining there!" - "Don't take on so, shepherd!" said | have b-b-been called a d-d-drunkard in Mark Clark, looking reproachfully at the such a way!" candle, which appeared to possess special features of interest for his eyes. "Nobody can hurt a dead woman,” at length said Coggan, with the precision of a machine. "All that could be done for her is done she's beyond us: and why should a man put himself in a tearing hurry for lifeless clay that can neither feel nor see, and don't know what you do with her at all? If she'd been alive, I would have been the first to help her. If she now wanted victuals and drink, I'd pay for it, money down. But she's dead, and no speed of ours will bring her to life. The woman's past us-time spent upon her is throwed away: why should we hurry to do what's not required? Drink, shepherd, and be friends, for tomorrow we may be like her." "We may," added Mark Clark, emphatically, at once drinking himself to run no further risk of losing his chance by the event alluded to. Jan meanwhile merging his additional thoughts of tomorrow in a song: - To-mor-row, to-mor-row! And while peace and plen-ty I find at my board, With a heart free from sick-ness and sor row, With my friends will I share what to-day may And let them spread the ta-ble to-morrow. "Do hold thy horning, Jan! said Oak; and turning upon Poorgrass, "As for you, Joseph, who do your wicked deeds in such confoundedly holy ways, you are as drunk as you can stand." "No, Shepherd Oak, no! Listen to reason, shepherd. All that's the matter with me is the affliction called the multiplying eye, and that's how it is I look double to you - I mean you look double to me." "A multiplying eye is a very distressing thing," said Mark Clark. "Show myself a man of spirit? . . Ah, well! let me take the name of drunkard humbly-let me be a man of contrite knees - let it be! I know that I always do say 'Please God' afore I do anything, from my getting up to my going down of the same, and I am willing to take as much disgrace as belongs to that holy act. Hah, yes! ... But not a man of spirit? Have I ever allowed the toe of pride to be lifted against my person without shouting manfully that I question the right to do so? I enquire that query boldly!" "We can't say that you have, Joseph Poorgrass," said Jan, emphatically. "Never have I allowed such treatment to pass unquestioned! Yet the shepherd says in the face of that rich testimony that I am not a man of spirit! well, let it pass by, and death is a kind friend." Gabriel, seeing that neither of the three was in a fit state to take charge of the waggon for the remainder of the journey, made no reply, but, closing the door again upon them, went across to where the vehicle stood, now getting indistinct in the fog and gloom of this mildewy time. He pulled the horse's head from the large patch of turf it had eaten bare, readjusted the boughs over the coffin, and drove along through the unwholesome night. It had gradually become rumoured in the village that the body to be brought and buried that day was all that was left of the unfortunate Fanny Robin who had followed the Eleventh from Casterbridge to Melchester. But, thanks to Boldwood's reticence and Oak's generosity, the lover she had followed had never been individualized as Troy. Gabriel hoped that the whole truth of the matter might not be published till It always comes on when I have been at any rate the girl had been in her in a public-house a little time," said grave for a few days, when the interJoseph Poorgrass, meekly. "Yes, I see posing barriers of earth and time, and a two of every sort, as if I were some holy sense that the events had been someman living in the times of King Noah and what shut into oblivion, would deaden entering into the ark. Y-y-y-yes," the sting that revelation and invidious he added, becoming much affected by remark would have for Bathsheba just the picture of himself as a person thrown now. away, and shedding tears, "I feel too By the time that Gabriel reached the good for England: I ought to have old manor-house, her residence, which lived in Genesis by rights, like the other lay in his way to the church, it was men of sacrifice, and then I shouldn't quite dark. A man came from the gate and said through the fog, which hung between them like blown flour, "Is that Poorgrass with the corpse?" Gabriel recognized the voice as that of the parson. covenanted mercies are extended towards her, and that she is a member of the flock of Christ." The parson's words spread into the heavy air with a sad yet unperturbed cadence, and Gabriel shed an honest tear. Bathsheba seemed unmoved. Mr. Thirdly then left them, and Gabriel lighted a lantern. Fetching three other men to assist him, they bore the unconscious truant indoors, placing the coffin on two benches in the middle of a little sittingPoor-room next the hall, as Bathsheba directed. "The corpse is here, sir," said Gabriel. "I have just been to inquire of Mrs. Troy if she could tell me the reason of the delay. I am afraid it is too late now for the funeral to be performed with proper decency. Have you the registrar's certificate?" 66 No," said Gabriel. "I expect grass has that; and he's at the Buck's Head.' I forgot to ask him for it." "Then that settles the matter. We'll put off the funeral till to-morrow morning. The body may be brought on to the church, or it may be left here at the farm and fetched by the bearers in the morning. They waited more than an hour, and have now gone home." In Every one except Gabriel Oak then left the room. He still indecisively lingered beside the body. He was deeply troubled at the wretchedly ironical aspect that circumstances were putting on with regard to Troy's wife, and at his own powerlessness to counteract them. spite of his careful manoeuvring all this day, the very worst event that could in any way have happened in connection with the burial had happened now. imagined a terrible discovery resulting from this afternoon's work that might cast over Bathsheba's life a shade which the interposition of many lapsing years might but indifferently lighten, and which nothing at all might altogether remove. Oak Gabriel had his reasons for thinking the latter a most objectionable plan, notwithstanding that Fanny had been an inmate of the farmhouse for several years in the lifetime of Bathsheba's uncle. Visions of several unhappy contingencies which might arise from this delay fitted before him. But his will was not law, and he went indoors to inquire of his mistress what were her wishes on the Suddenly, as in a last attempt to save subject. He found her in an unusual Bathsheba from, at any rate, immediate mood: her eyes as she looked up to him anguish, he looked again, as he had were suspicious and perplexed as with looked before, at the chalk writing upon some antecedent thought. Troy had not the coffin-lid. The scrawl was this simyet returned. At first Bathsheba assent-ple one, “Fanny Robin and child." Gaed with a mien of indifference to his proposition that they should go on to the church at once with their burden; but immediately afterwards, following Gabriel to the gate, she swerved to the extreme of solicitousness on Fanny's account, and desired that the girl might be brought into the house. Oak argued upon the convenience of leaving her in the waggon, just as she lay now, with her flowers and green leaves about her, merely wheeling the vehicle into the coach-house till the morning, but to no purpose. It is unkind and unchristian," she said, "to leave the poor thing in a coach-house all night." 66 Very well, then," said the parson. "And I will arrange that the funeral shall take place early to-morrow. Perhaps Mrs. Troy is right in feeling that we cannot treat a dead fellow-creature too thoughtfully. We must remember that though she may have erred grievously in leaving her home, she is still our sister; and it is to be believed that God's un briel took his handkerchief and carefully rubbed out the two latter words. He then left the room, and went out quietly by the front door. From Chambers' Journal. THE LIFE OF FLOWERS. Nulla planta sine anima (No plant without a soul), Aristotle is said to have observed. The proposition can certainly not be maintained on scientific grounds; and even the great German poet, who glorifies the flowers as "decked with the hues of a splendour divine," is obliged at last to address to them the invocation: Weep, kindly children of the Spring, To you has Heaven a soul denied. Yet, for the imagination and the feelings, there is a sense in which the saying is true. We are in the habit of imputing to flowers a sort of personality, in a much of the woods. Atropa Belladonna! It suggests some Florentine countess of the middle ages with dark, alluring eyes, who "wooed but to destroy," subtle, poisonous perfumes exhaling from her luxuriant hair! higher degree than to other inanimate things. It is not only that the love we bear them for their beauty, their frailty, and tenderness, lifts them above the category of things, to rank them in a higher; they have so much more to say to the feelings, and say it so much more specially, than But to descend from the realms of fancy any other class of natural objects, that to those of fact, there really are many we get to speak of them in terms de- phenomena connected with the life of scriptive not merely of form, size, colour, plants closely resembling those of animal, bearing, &c., but in such as attribute to not to say of conscious existence. The them personal character, human qualities pimpernel, prescient of the coming showand passions. Each one seems to breathe er, closes its petals an hour or two bea sentiment and speak a language of its fore it descends; the sensitive plant Own. We need not go to the poets for shrinks from a foreign touch, and huddles proof and illustration of our point; the lan-its pairs of leaflets together, as if cowerguage of common life will supply us with ing under the presence of a foe; the Both. It does not restrict itself to such water-lilies, at the approach of evening, epithets as tall, stately, slender, and the draw down their white or yellow heads like, in referring to the flowers; we hear of beneath the surface, and so await the rethe flaunting foxglove, the lowly violet, the turn of day. Such phenomena are usumodest daisy, the deadly nightshade, the ally referred to automatic movement. weeping willow. Sometimes the name But call them what we will, they are the itself, without the addition of any adjec- first faint suggestions, the dim prophetive, bears witness to some single, dis- cies of that fully developed, glorious continct, and powerful impression of quali-sciousness, of which the complex and ties in the plant, other than those which magnificent phenomena of intellect and appeal to the senses. Day's-eye, eye- will are part and parcel. The plant-life bright, nightshade, are all of this class. is but the life of man in its elementary We know not how and when such names and undeveloped state. came into being; but we all feel their fitness. They must have had some single inventor, we suppose, but the universal acceptation of them is a proof of the sameness and universality of the impression made by each individual flower upon the common heart and imagination. Nay, sometimes even Science itself yields to the fascination, and in reconstructing floral nomenclature for its own purposes, instead of conferring upon a plant a name founded upon some characteristic peculiarity (differentia, as the logicians say), Once more, how nearly the plantwhich shall serve as a basis for classifica- life resembles our own in its periods, tion into order, genus, species, it does but its seasons, its epochs! Like us, they translate the old poetical name, or embody have their period of childhood, in which the conception it conveys under a new they put forth buds only; in youth, image. Thus the magnificent plant with they attain to fuller beauty and strength; the lurid blossoms, and the black, lus- in the ripe autumn of their days, they cious, poisonous, berries, which pre- bring their fruit to perfection; and then sented itself to the imagination of our fade away. As their vital energies, beforefathers as some baleful shadow of tween the beginning and end of their night, beneath which "all life expires," becomes in scientific terminology Atropa Belladonna, which we shall venture to translate as "Fate-fraught, beautiful Damsel." Science recognizes the truth of the idea expressed by the old name, but does justice to the incomparable At the approach of Night all Nature beauty of this the largest of the English puts on an attitude of expectation. A herbaceous plants (not excepting the bur- deep silence settles down on lands, and dock), in size and aspect the real queen' woods, and waters. Hushed are all the We might go a little farther, without losing hold of the ground of safe speculation. The flowers are planted by the roots fast down in the earth; yet, through the stiffest clay and marl, winding round rocks, displacing stones, they struggle upwards to the light of day. By a similar necessity, man, too, climbs upwards towards the ideal. The soul is uncontented with what is low and dark, and, like the plant, struggles towards the heaven of truth, and the light of God's presence. lives, first grow, and then decline, so each individual day witnesses a corresponding waxing and waning. With sunrise, they awaken, bloom airily throughout the day'; and, like us, shut their eyes wearily together, when the night is come. |