CHAPTER LIX.
AVE! VALE! SALVE!
And now must I bury my dead out of my sight--bid farewell to the oldresplendent, stately, scarred, defiant Raglan, itself the grave of manyan old story, and the cradle of the new, and alas! in contrast with theold, not merely the mechanical, but the unpoetic and commonplace, yesvulgar era of our island's history. Little did lord Herbert dream of theage he was initiating--of the irreverence and pride and destruction thatwere about to follow in his footsteps, wasting, defiling, scarring,obliterating, turning beauty into ashes, and worse! That divinemechanics should thus, through selfishness and avarice, be leagued withfilth and squalor and ugliness! When one looks upon Raglan, indignationrises--not at the storm of iron which battered its walls to powder,hardly even at the decree to level them with the dust, but at the laterdestroyer who could desecrate the beauty yet left by wrath and fear, whowith the stones of my lady's chamber would build a kennel, or with thecarved stones of chapel or hall a barn or cowhouse! What would theinventor of the water-commanding engine have said to the pollution ofour waters, the destruction of the very landmarks of our history, thedesecration of ruins that ought to be venerated for their loveliness aswell as their story! Would he not have broken it to pieces, that theruin it must occasion might not be laid to his charge? May all such menas for the sake of money constitute themselves the creators of ugliness,not to speak of far worse evils in the land, live--or die, I care notwhich--to know in their own selves what a lovely human Psyche lies hideven in the chrysalis of a railway-director, and to loathe their pastselves as an abomination--incredible but that it had been. He who callssuch a wish a curse, must undergo it ere his being can be other than ablot.
But this era too will pass, and truth come forth in forms new and morelovely still.
The living Raglan has gone from me, and before me rise the broken,mouldering walls which are the monument of their own past. My heartswells as I think of them, lonely in the deepening twilight, when theivy which has flung itself like a garment about the bareness of theirlooped and windowed raggedness is but as darker streaks of the allprevailing dusk, and the moon is gathering in the east. Fain would thesoul forsake the fettersome body for a season, to go flitting hither andthither, alighting and flitting, like a bat or a bird--now drawingitself slow along a moulding to taste its curve and flow, now creepinginto a cranny, and brooding and thinking back till the fancy feels thetremble of an ancient kiss yet softly rippling the air, or descries thedim stain which no tempest can wash away. Ah, here is a stair! Truethere are but three steps, a broken one and a fragment. What said I? Seehow the phantom-steps continue it, winding up and up to the door of mylady's chamber! See its polished floor, black as night, its walls richwith tapestry, lovelily old, and harmoniously withered, for the ancienttime had its ancient times, and its things that had come down fromsolemn antiquity--see the silver sconces, the tall mirrors, thepart-open window, long, low, carved latticed, and filled with lozengepanes of the softest yellow green, in a multitude of shades! Therestands my lady herself, leaning from it, looking down into the court!Ah, lovely lady! is not thy heart as the heart of my mother, my wife, mydaughters? Thou hast had thy troubles. I trust they are over now, andthat thou art satisfied with God for making thee!
The vision fades, and the old walls rise like a broken cenotaph. But thesame sky, with its clouds never the same, hangs over them; the same moonwill fold them all night in a doubtful radiance, befitting the thingsthat dwell alone, and are all of other times, for she too is but aghost, a thing of the past, and her light is but the light of memory;into the empty crannies blow the same winds that once refreshed thesouls of maiden and man-at-arms, only the yellow flower that grew in itsgardens now grows upon its walls. And however the mind, or even thespirit of man may change, the heart remains the same, and an effort toread the hearts of our forefathers will help us to know the heart of ourneighbour.
Whoever cares to distinguish the bones of fact from the drapery ofinvention in the foregone tale, will find them all in the late Mr.Dirck's 'Life of the Marquis of Worcester,' and the 'CertamenReligiosum' and 'Golden Apophthegms' of Dr. Bayly.
THE END.
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