but restricting his benevolence exclusively to one channel, and having nothing to spare for other great manifestations of love to man, nor scarcely for the nutriment of individual attachments, unless they minister, in some way, to the terrible egotism which he mistakes for an angel of God:—with something of the woman moulded into his great stalwart frame, and a spirit of prayer abiding and working in his heart;—but himself grown to be the vond-slave of his philanthropic theory, which has become to him in effect a cold spectral monster of his own conjuring; persuading himself that the importance of his public ends renders it allowable to throw aside his private conscience; embodying himself in a project, which the disenchanted Zenobia reprobates with hissing defiance as "self, self, self!" Priscilla, again: a weakly bud that blossoms into health and hope under the fostering dime of Blithedale, where she seems a butterfly at play in a flickering bit of sunshine, and mistaking it for a broad and eternal summer—though her gaiety reveals at times how delicate an instrument she is, and what fragile harp-strings are her nerves—a being of slender and shadowy grace, whose mysterious qualities make her seem diaphanous with spiritual light. Silas Foster, too: "lank, stalwart, uncouth, and grisly-bearded;" the prose element, and very dense prose, too, in the poetry of the Communists; with his palm of sole-leather and his joints of rusty iron, and his brain (as Zenobia pronounces it) of Savoy cabbage. And old Moodie, or Fauntleroy—that finished picture of a skulking outcast—shy and serpentine—with a queer appearance of hiding himself behind the patch on his left eye—a deplorable grey shadow—mysterious, but not mad; his mind only needing to be screwed up, like an instrument long out of tune, the strings of which have ceased to vibrate smartly and sharply—"a subdued, undemonstrative old man, who would doubtless drink a glass of liquor, now and then, and probably more than was good for him; not, however, with a purpose of undue exhilaration, but in the hope of bringing his spirits up to the ordinary level of the world's cheerfulness."[1] Miles Coverdale himself is no lay figure in
- ↑ It is fine to see how the old man does "come out" under the spell of claret, when Coverdale beguiles him into telling the story of his blighted life—to recognise the connoisseur in the seedy greybeard's way of handling the glass, in his preliminary snuff at the aroma, in his curious glance at the label of the bottle, as if to learn the brand, in the gustatory skill with which he prolonged the first cautious sip of the wine, to give his palate the full advantage of it. And the transforming efficacy of the flavour and perfume, recalling old associations; so that "instead of the mean, slouching, furtive, painfully depressed air of the old city-vagabond, more like a grey kennel-rat than any other living thing, he began to take the aspect of a decayed gentleman." Even his garments began to look less shabby to his entertainer—but then Coverdale himself had quaffed a glass or two when this phase of the transfiguration opened.
our virtues, when we have any, are merely impulsive and intuitive), passionate, too, and pursuing my foolish and unattainable ends by indirect and cunning, though absurdly chosen means, as an hereditary bond-slave must; false, moreover, to the whole circle of good, in my reckless truth to the little good I saw before me—but still a woman!" And oh the bitter, almost blasphemous, yet o'ermastering pathos of her following words—the sobbing protest of a broken, bankrupt heart—"A creature whom only a little change of earthly fortune, a little kinder smile of Him who sent me hither, and one true heart to encourage and direct me, might have made me all that a woman can be!" Words worthy of thee, Zenobia, queenly straggler against the bars of thy prison-house!—words spoken not wisely, but too well.
