icon 0
icon TOP UP
rightIcon
icon Reading History
rightIcon
icon Log out
rightIcon
icon Get the APP
rightIcon

Lavengro: The Scholar, the Gypsy, the Priest

Chapter 3 No.3

Word Count: 3494    |    Released on: 01/12/2017

ves-The books-A picture-Mountain-like billows-The footprint-Spirit of De Foe-Reasoning po

I last trod its streets. It will scarcely have improved, for how could it be better than it then was? I love to think on thee, pretty quiet D---, thou pattern of an English country town, with thy clean but narrow streets branching out from thy modest market-place, with thine old-fashioned houses, with here and there a roof of venerable thatch, with

is over now, for, as there is an end of joy, so has affliction its termination. Doubtless the All-wise did not afflict him without a cause: who knows but within that unhappy frame lurked vicious seeds which the sunbeams of joy and prosperity might have called into life and vigour? Perhaps the withering blasts of misery nipped that which otherwise might have terminated in fruit noxious and lamentable. But peace to the unhappy one, he is gone to his rest; the death-like face is no longer occasionally seen timidly and mournfully looking for a moment through the window-pane upon thy market-place, q

y parents, who, sometimes by threats, sometimes by entreaties, endeavoured to rouse the dormant energies of my nature, and to bend my wishes to the acquisition of the rudiments of knowledge; but in influencing the wish lay the difficulty. Let but the will of a human being be turned to any particular object, and it is ten to one that sooner or later he achieves it. At this time I may safely say that I harboured neither wishes nor hopes; I had as yet seen no object calculated to call them forth, and yet I took pleasure in many things which perhaps unfortunately were all within my sphere of enjoy

dmother to my brother, drove up to the house in which we dwelt; she stayed some time conversing with my mother, and on rising to depart, she put down on the table a small packet, exclaiming, 'I have brought a little present for each of the boys: the one is a History of England, which I intend f

d mysterious ones in which I have some notion that the mind or soul, call it which you will, has its habitation; how they occasionally tingle and vibrate before any coming event closely connected with the future weal or woe of the human being. Such a feeling was now within me, certainly independent of what the eye had seen or the ear had heard. A book of some description had been brought for me, a present by no means calculated to interest me; what cared I for books? I had a

ly as I had received no injunction to the contrary. Perhaps there was something unsound in this reasoning, something sophistical; but a child is sometimes as ready as a grown-up person in finding excuses for doing that which he is inclined to. But whether the action was right or wrong, and I am afraid it was not altogether right, I undid the packet: it contained three books; two from their simi

ow obtained a glimpse. 'Who are those people, and what could have brought them into that strange situation?' I asked of myself; and now the seed of curiosity, which had so long lain dormant, began to expand, and I vowed to myself to become speedily acquainted with the whole history of the people in the boat. After looking on the picture till every mark and line in it were familiar to me, I turned over various leaves till I came to another engraving; a new source of wonder-a low sandy beach on which the furious sea was breaking in mountain-like billows; cloud and rack deformed the firmament, which wore a dull and leaden-like hue; gulls and other aquatic fowls were toppling upon the blast, or skimming over the tops of the maddening waves-'Mercy upon him! he must be drowned!' I exclaimed, as my eyes fell upon a poor wretch who appeared to be striving to reach the shore; he was upon his legs, but was evidently half smothered with the brine; high above his head curled a horrible billow, as if to engulf him for ever. 'He m

nce certainly greater than any other of modern times-which has been in most people's hands, and with the contents of which even those who cannot read are to a certain extent acquainted-a book from which the most luxuriant and fertile of our modern prose writers have drunk

ngland has better bards than either Greece or Rome, yet I could spare them ea

ed months, and the wondrous volume was my only study and principal source of amusement. For hours together I would sit poring over a page till I had become acquainted with the import of every line. My progress, slow enough at first, became by de

er that I first took to

he most perfect indifference had heard the divine name proceeding from the mouths of people-frequently, alas! on occasions when it ought not to be employed; but I now never heard it without a tremor, for I now knew that God was an awful and inscrutable Being, the Maker of all things; that we were His children, and that we, by our sins, had justly offended Him; that we were in very great peril from His anger, not so much in this life as in another and far stranger state of being yet to come; that we had a Saviour withal to whom it was necessary to look for help: upon this point, however, I was yet v

through thy power: thou brakest the

athan in pieces: and gavest him to be

ins, and waters out of the hard ro

the night is thine: thou hast

rifles of the sturdy Yankees were sending the leaden hail sharp and thick amidst the red-coated ranks; for Philoh had not always been a man of peace, nor an exhorter to turn the other cheek to the smiter, but had even arrived at the dignity of a halberd in his country's service before his six-foot form required rest, and the gray-haired veteran retired, after a long peregrination, to his native town, to enjoy ease and respectability on a pension of 'eighteenpence a day'; and well did his fellow-townsmen act, when, to increase that ease and respectability, and with a thoughtful regard for the dignity of the good church service, they made him clerk and precentor-the man of the tall form and of the

tely fallen, was completely submerged. At a large town we got on board a kind of passage-boat, crowded with people; it had neither sails nor oars, and those were not the days of steam-vessels; it was a treck-schuyt, and was drawn by horses. Young as I was, there was much connected with this journey which highly surprised me, and which brought to my remembrance particular scenes described in the book which I now generally carried in my bosom. The country was, as I have already said, submerged-entirely drowned-no land was visible; the trees were growing bolt upright in the flood, whilst farmhouses and cottages were standing ins

Claim Your Bonus at the APP

Open
1 Chapter 1 No.12 Chapter 2 No.23 Chapter 3 No.34 Chapter 4 No.45 Chapter 5 No.56 Chapter 6 No.67 Chapter 7 No.78 Chapter 8 No.89 Chapter 9 No.910 Chapter 10 No.1011 Chapter 11 No.1112 Chapter 12 No.1213 Chapter 13 No.1314 Chapter 14 No.1415 Chapter 15 No.1516 Chapter 16 No.1617 Chapter 17 No.1718 Chapter 18 No.1819 Chapter 19 No.1920 Chapter 20 No.2021 Chapter 21 No.2122 Chapter 22 No.2223 Chapter 23 No.2324 Chapter 24 No.2425 Chapter 25 No.2526 Chapter 26 No.2627 Chapter 27 No.2728 Chapter 28 No.2829 Chapter 29 No.2930 Chapter 30 No.3031 Chapter 31 No.3132 Chapter 32 No.3233 Chapter 33 No.3334 Chapter 34 No.3435 Chapter 35 No.3536 Chapter 36 No.3637 Chapter 37 No.3738 Chapter 38 No.3839 Chapter 39 No.3940 Chapter 40 No.4041 Chapter 41 No.4142 Chapter 42 No.4243 Chapter 43 No.4344 Chapter 44 No.4445 Chapter 45 No.4546 Chapter 46 No.4647 Chapter 47 No.4748 Chapter 48 No.4849 Chapter 49 No.4950 Chapter 50 No.5051 Chapter 51 No.5152 Chapter 52 No.5253 Chapter 53 No.5354 Chapter 54 No.5455 Chapter 55 No.5556 Chapter 56 No.5657 Chapter 57 No.5758 Chapter 58 No.5859 Chapter 59 No.5960 Chapter 60 No.6061 Chapter 61 No.6162 Chapter 62 No.6263 Chapter 63 No.6364 Chapter 64 No.6465 Chapter 65 No.6566 Chapter 66 No.6667 Chapter 67 No.6768 Chapter 68 No.6869 Chapter 69 No.6970 Chapter 70 No.7071 Chapter 71 No.7172 Chapter 72 No.7273 Chapter 73 No.7374 Chapter 74 No.7475 Chapter 75 No.7576 Chapter 76 No.7677 Chapter 77 No.7778 Chapter 78 No.7879 Chapter 79 No.7980 Chapter 80 No.8081 Chapter 81 No.8182 Chapter 82 No.8283 Chapter 83 No.8384 Chapter 84 No.8485 Chapter 85 No.8586 Chapter 86 No.8687 Chapter 87 No.87