Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge

d not make in her diaries Florence anything but dull. I shall confine myself to sketchin

rsia, and India; he penetrated a little way into Thibet, and saw China and Japan; he went up to the mouth of the Siberian rivers, travelling for three months with a party of gipsies, who taught him many curious things, such as their own language and freemasonry, the use of simples, the properties of water, and the strange things that can be done with even such things as docks and nettle

in a lovely climate-hot, but not unbearable for Europeans; houses, horses, and servants are extraordinarily cheap. The house that Arthur took was situated in large gardens or pleasure-grounds of the natural wilderness type t

rough tramping life, and resolutely determined to recruit his energies by some deliberate luxury, a recipe far more useful than the normal Englishman is at all inclined to admit, thinking, as he does so er

cool flashing fountain in the centre of an oasis of marble pavement, streaked and veined. About seven it became cooler, and then in the light n

shrubs or gorgeous red and white flowers, whose fragrance literally streamed into the evening air, in that delicate d

owered road; Arthur suddenly roused himself to find that he was passing close to a large sombre house, that had evidently once been fortified, looming very

proceeding from the centre of one of the shrubberies, asking him his business in Persian. Looking in that directi

pologized for his unintentional intrusion, mingling a good deal

, regarded him with some curiosity. It was a tall man, paler in complexion than the natives are w

g from the figure: "An Englishman, I presume." The accent was a little affected, but the speaker was evidently more

n the party. "It is very refreshing," he said, "to hear my native tongue by chance; I can not resist the temptation of beggin

rose at their approach, and Arthur could see that they were two boys of fifteen or sixteen, of extraordina

d not catch, and, rapidly presenting him, requested him to be seate

ll acquainted with literature and events of a certain date, but not of later departures in any branch; and fin

hich Arthur gladly accepted. One of the boys conducted him to the gate, speaking a few English sentences with tha

s repeated and accepted. The stranger became more communicativ

t fancy to him, and used to wait for his coming at the gate; but they would never come to his house,

rent conversation he told Arthur the following story, and made

has made no attempts to discover my antecedents; it is not the usual characteristic of our nation. If you are disposed to hear, I

liberty to repeat. They surprised even Arthur when he heard the

long since dead. Many people will no doubt remember the shock which the news of the premature death of this indivi

ed. The connections and influence of my family would have made such a plan liable to constant disaster. From Palermo, after superintending the making of my tombstone, I came straight back here, to a house which I had already prepared for myself under an anonymous name. I travelled with the utmost

t mind telling you now, at this lapse of time, though I have never before opened my reasons to a

ples now incorporated with the very existence of the most influential men in it seemed to me to be radically erroneous, and

Coleridge's life and work is as follows: 'Devoted as he was to mystic and ideal contemplation,

sing on them daily and yearly. Those who protest occasionally against current thought, who appear like prophets with bitter invective and words of warning on their lips, a

omes an extreme deference to other people, a heated straining of the ears to catch the murmurs of that vague uncertain heart-Public Opinion. And why? It follows: if it is in this life alone that trium

t for whom alone the scenes are enacted, and who, though apparently so silent and motionless, are the raison d'être of the whole performance. The play must and will continue through t

imates the whole, can be here descried and here alone, as in a mirror faintly: it is not only the man who fumes and paces up and down for a few moments and

vented, is now traditional, of closing the eyes easily and thoughtlessly to the whole; and we are content to catch that contagion from our predecessors: we eat and drin

on high educational aims. They held, so far as any teachers can be said to hold, many futures in

hist; to smoke in the sun; to get through a certain amount of general reading for conversational purposes, and to gossip about one another and their doings, and talk about their work, in which, it must be confessed, they were enthusiastically interested, only in a gossipy detailed way, amassing incident rathe

gh ideal is high, but because so few are capable of carrying it out; and in tha

re young soul said once, 'as an engine of power, that I may have a platform where men will listen to me;' but the effort of struggling thither has been too much, and once arrived there, what is his obj

secrets of His being and ours, of our why and wherefore, if we could but read them. Like the characters and monuments of a bygone age staring from a waste of sand or the front of a precipice, these words and phrases seem to say, not 'There was a king who was mighty, but whose throne is cut down,' but 'There liv

raight and flowery road to God, pressing through but one hedge of thorns, while you and others struggle to Him along the dusty road that winds and wanders. But our paradise wou

ld that I could tell you with what different eyes we look on life and death, God and nature, from this divine vantage-ground on which we stand, and you would imperil all, run through fire and water, to win it too; but you must find the way yourself-no man can sho

s in your ear; if I opened the door, you would not see the light. Ay, and I do not wish it; for every step ou

need not answer now; you ma

rdly they are alike, inwardly ver

d upon the way already, though he little suspects

en. His trial will be a sharp one; through many paths he will have to be taught the truth. I could hardly bear it, when I look at the ten

als, and most of all, their whims and caprices; and, what is more, I could never appreciate them now. Ten years' isolation is enough to spoil one for that; in ten years many social tra

wever, for some time that it would be undertaken and accomplished for me. You have been sent to me, later th

ffectionate, and in danger there; quick to anger, and in danger there; personally fascinating and beautiful, and in danger there; and in these th

he told me, and the fragrant Eastern garden seemed from moment to moment of the strange adventure to swim and become vague and phantasmal; but again the quiet air of certainty with which

doubt," he added with a smile, "of what that answer will be. But I beg of you do not give the question a hasty consideration and then reverse yo

d with your journey to-morrow; and indeed I think it will perhaps be as well that this sho

lness was broken only by the faintest stir of odorous wind

your first intimation of the goal to-day, and the future will not be wanting in indications of the same; but, as

me, but for the great Master of all. You are the chosen instrument for this. My work li

at has taken years to scale once, and that must be scaled again. For you walk among the clouds, or very near them; y

ow farewell for a season. When we next meet we shall have a

shall go with you to your house to-night, and travel with yo

him as he came out, and accompanying him home. The boy had formed a great attachment to him, and the idea of their future relations sent a strang

will say that on some real lines I have constructed a romance of the wildest type, and that Arthur is no longer an inte

cts I should have toned this down to something more prosaic. But every one who has had any experience of life will know that her surprises ar

he left such vivid and detailed descriptions of both events that I have been enabled to give one (the letter) exactly as it stands, and the intervie

predominant and central threads, cast the rest away; in this process rejecting facts and incidents whose isolated interest is o

n his later life, so necessary to the logical development of his principles, tha