"It is a dangerous attack, and she is very weak," he replied, concealing, though scarcely able to conceal, the curiosity with which he regarded Egbert; for the marriage had now become generally known.
The evening and night wore on. Great events in which he could not participate seemed to be passing over Egbert's head; a stir was in progress, of whose results he grasped but small and fragmentary notions. And, on the other hand, it was mournfully strange to notice her father's behavior during these hours of doubt. It was only when he despaired that he looked upon Egbert with tolerance. When he hoped, the young man's presence was hateful to him.
Not knowing what to do when out of her chamber, having nobody near him to whom he could speak on intimate terms, Egbert passed a wretched time of three long days. After watching by her for several hours on the third day, he went downstairs, and into the open air. There intelligence was brought him that another effusion, more violent than any which preceded it, had taken place. Egbert rushed back to her room. Powerful remedies were applied, but none availed. A fainting-fit followed, and in two or three hours it became plain to those who understood that there was no Geraldine for the morrow.
Sometimes she was lethargic, and as if her spirit had already flown; then her mind wandered; but towards the end she was sensible of all that was going on, though unable to speak, her strength being barely enough to enable her to receive an idea.
It was a gentle death. She was as acquiescent as if she had been a saint, which was not the least striking and uncommon feature in the life of this fair and unfortunate lady. Her husband held one tiny hand, remaining all the time on the right side of the bed in a nook beside the curtains, while her father and the rest remained on the left side, never raising their eyes to him, and scarcely ever addressing him.
Everything was so still that her weak act of trying to live seemed a silent wrestling with all the powers of the universe. Pale and hopelessly anxious they all waited and watched the heavy shadows close over her. It might have been thought that death felt for her and took her tenderly. She sighed twice or three times; then her heart stood still; and this strange family alliance was at an end forever.Thomas Hardy.
From Fraser's Magazine.
THE PUBLIC CAREER AND PERSONAL CHARACTER OF FRANCIS BACON.[1]
BY JAMES ROWLEY.
The subject of this paper, difficult as it is even to men of exceptional knowledge and capacity, has yet two conspicuous advantages — its limits are marked with tolerable distinctness, and the area those limits inclose is not too wide to be fairly taken in by any mind of average capacity. It is true that to most the mere mention of the name "Lord Bacon" suggests a field of intellectual labor-that stretches far beyond the horizon of all ordinary and of most extraordinary observers; but that is because those that think and talk about Lord Bacon generally think and talk about the writer of the "Novum Organum" and "History of Henry VII.," not about the learned counsel, the attorney-general, the lord chancellor. My business at present is exclusively with the latter. Not only too is the range of the subject distinctly limited, but also the facts it deals with have been fairly ascertained. Thanks to Bacon's own care in preserving the letters and other documents that reveal or illustrate his actions, and the loving diligence of a succession of scholars — of whom Mr. James Spedding is the latest, fullest, and worthiest — the most eventful passages of his life have been laid bare to the satisfaction of rational curiosity. There is not much dispute about what Bacon actually said and did on the occasions which supply the most abundant matter for controversy; it is almost invariably on the right interpretation of his sayings and doings that the disputants join issue. Bacon’s apologists do not deny that he had, been nobly befriended by the man against whose life he pleaded in court, that he watched — so far as we know, without flinching — the agonies of a half-crazy parson in whose unpreached sermon the king professed that he saw most dangerous treason, that he allowed the reigning favorite to write him letters desiring him as chancellor to show all the favor he might to particular suitors, that he took presents from parties to causes in his court whose cases were still undecided, and that he was active in many of the transactions that the historians of James’s reign have visited with emphatic reprobation; but they maintain that in most of these alleged misdeeds Bacon was justified by their circumstances or by the practice of the time, and in the
- ↑ This paper is the substance of a lecture given at the Museum and Library, Bristol, in February last.
