Obrázky na stránke
PDF
ePub

Then the deep bell tolling over head

A note from a loftier clime,

Seems to come as a voice from the mighty dead

That would mingle with present time;

And the full soul borne from the earth away

Hath forgotten its crime and ill,

And expatiates as though no house of clay
Prison'd its boundless will.

And the full-robed choir, in their garb of white,
The fancy may wildly dream,

Are spirits that bask in immortal light
From heaven's own quenchless beam;
While their lips in their adoration's tone
Chant the holy song and prayer—
Oh, who would think that the lip alone
Tenders heaven its worship there!

Religion's pomp is the grace of art-
She dwells not in walls of stone,
But flies afar from the hollow heart
That worships in form alone :

Let the notes be grand and the forms profound,

Even kings may consecrate;

She scorns the purple pomp and the ground

Where no heart offerings wait.

Then give me the temple of air and sky,
With man's purple pomp forgot,

Where the soul springs upward exultingly,

And the trick of art is not;

By the craggy rock on the sea-beat shore,

To the music of the wave;

Or nigh by the rapid torrent's roar,

Where tall pines darkly wave.

Where Niagara pours his watery world

In his black unplumed abyss,

More loud than a thousand thunders hurl'd

Where God's great image is;

Or where the untrodden Andes rise,

Where raging Hecla burns ;

Or the Obi under Siberian skies

Thaws from his frozen urns.

Or at home by the smiling greenwood side,

My music the dashing stream,

The wild winds that hollow by me ride

Whispering the holy name;

And creation all worshipping around

In harmony of praise,

With cheerful heart and with sight and sound,

Him of eternal days

New Monthly Magazın。.

THE PLANTER.

A WEST INDIAN STORY.*

FIFTY-Sixty-seventy (any given number of) years ago, the West Indies were not as they are now, in these days of purity. Then, Lord Dunderhead was Secretary of State for the Colonies, and Mr Bribely was his secretary. The pains which the former took with his department were prodigious. It was his estate. He had the same care for it, was as jealous of it, and farmed it out precisely in the same manner as a landlord does his acres. John Pitchfork was not, indeed, landlord of Thistledown Farm: but General Gubbins, grown grey in the service (by walking daily from the Horse Guards to Bond Street,) was appointed Governor of Demerara or Berbice ; -or Sergeant Kitely was appointed Judge:-and each duly rendered to the "noble Secretary," in the shape of rent, two-thirds of the supposed profits of his appointment. And as Lord Dunderhead mulcted the Governors and Judges, so did Mr Bribely fleece the underlings;-and as the Governors and Judges paid for their dignities, so did they make the most of them. Imprisonment, flogging, fining, favouring, delaying,—these were the methods of collecting the revenue; these, too, were the weapons with which their Arrogances' in black and scarlet, tamed down the spirit of their subjects, and widened the space between the colony and Great Britain.

[ocr errors]

The colonists, themselves, were not what they are at present; that is to say, they were not then meek, modest, humane, temperate, independent people and lovers of liberty:-on the contrary, they were boastful, and loved Scheidam and pine-apple rum, worshipped their superiors in station, and despised every body below themselves. Thus the newly imported Englishers held the regular colonists in utter contempt: the colonists (a white race) requited themselves, by contemning the mustees and quadroons: these last, on their parts, heartily despised the half-caste; who, in turn, transmitted the scorn on to the heads of the downright blacks. Whom the blacks despised, I never could learn; but probably all the rest : and, in fact, they seem to have had ample cause for so doing, unless the base, beggarly, and cruel vanity imputed to their "superiors," be at once a libel and a fable.

Such was the state of things in the colony of Demerara, in the year 17, when a young Englishman went there, in order to in

* From Friendship's Offering' for 1831.

spect his newly-acquired property. His name was John Vivian. He came of a tolerably good family in shire; possessed (without being at all handsome) a dark, keen, intelligent countenance; and derived, from his maternal uncle, large estates in Demerara, and from his father, a small farm in his own county, a strong constitution, and a resolute, invincible spirit. Perhaps he had too much obstinacy of character-perhaps, also, an intrepidity of manner, and carelessness of established forms, which would have been unsuitable to society as now constituted. All this we will not presume to determine. We do not wish to extenuate his faults, of which he had as handsome a share as usually falls to the lot of young gentlemen who are under no control, though not altogether of precisely the same character. In requital for these defects, however, he was a man of firm mind, of a generous spirit, and would face danger, and stand up against oppression, as readily on behalf of others as of himself; and, at the bottom of all, though it had lain hid from his birth, (like some of those antediluvian fossils which perplex our geologists and antiquaries) he had a tenderness and delicacy of feeling, which must not be passed by without, at least, our humble commendation.

Exactly eight weeks from the day of his stepping on board the good ship, "Wager," at Bristol, Vivian found himself standing on the shore of the river Demerara, and in front of its capital, Stabroek. In that interval, he had been tossed on the wild waters of the Atlantic-had passed from woollens to nankeens-from English cold to tropic heat-and now stood eyeing the curious groups which distinguish our colonies, where creatures of every shade, from absolute sable to pallid white, may be seen-for the trouble only of a journey.

But we have a letter of our hero's on this subject, written to a friend in England, on his landing, which we will unfold for the reader's benefit. Considering that the writer had the range of foolscap before him, and was transmitting news from the torrid to the temperate zone, it may, at least, lay claim to the virtue of brevity. Thus

it runs :

"To Richard Clinton, Esq. &c. &c. Middle Temple, London, England.

"Well, Dick,-Here am I, thy friend, John Vivian, safely arrived at the country of cotton and tobacco. Six months ago, I would have ventured a grosschen that nothing on this base earth could have tempted me to leave foggy England: but the unkennelling a knave was a temptation not to be resisted; and accordingly I am here, as you see.

"Since I shook your hand at Bristol, I have seen somewhat of

the world. The Cove of Cork-the Madeiras-the Peak of Teneriffe—the flying fish—the nautilus-the golden-finned dorado -the deep blue seas-and the tropic skies-are matters which some would explain to you in a chapter. But I have not the pen of a ready writer; so you must be content with a simple enumeration. "My voyage was, like all voyages, detestable. I began with seasickness and piercing winds-I ended with head-ache and languor, and weather to which your English dog-days are a jest. The burning, blazing heat was so terrific, that I had well nigh oozed away into a sea-god. Nothing but the valiant army of bottles which your care provided could have saved me. My mouth was wide open, like the seams of our vessel; but, unlike them, it would not be content with water. I poured in draught after draught of the brave liquor. I drank deep healths to you and other friends; till, at last, the devil, who broils Europeans in these parts, took to his wings and fled. Thus it was, Clinton, that I arrived finally at

Demerara.

"But now comes your question of What sort of a place is this same Demerara?' I'faith, Dick, 'tis flat enough. The run up the river is, indeed, pretty; and there are trees enough to satisfy even your umbrageous-loving taste. It is, in truth, a land of woods-at least, on one side; and you may roam among orange and lemon trees, and guavas and mangoes, amidst aloes and cocoa-nut, and cotton and mahogany trees, till you would wish yourself once more on a Lancashire moor. Stabroek, our capital, is a place where the houses are built of wood; where melons, and oranges, and pineapples grow as wild as thyself, Dick; and where black, brown, white, and whitey-brown people, sangaree and cigars, abound. Of all these marvels I shall know more shortly. I lodge here at the house of a Dutch planter, where you must address me under my travelling cognomen. John Vivian is extinct for a season; but your letter will find me, if it be addressed to Mr John Vernon, to the care of Mynheer Schlachenbruchen, merchant, in Demerara.' That respectable individual would die the death of shame, did he know that he held the great 'proprietor,' Vivian, in his garret. At present, I am nothing more than a poor protegee of Messrs Greffulhe, come out to the hot latitudes for the sake of health and employment.

"You shall hear from me again speedily: in the mean time write to me at length. This letter is a preface merely to the innumerable number of good things which I design to scribble for your especial instruction and amusement. It bears for you only a certificate of my safe arrival, and the assurance that I am, as ever, your true friend, "VIVIAN."

Vivian was, in truth, tolerably pleased with the banks of the river, fringed as it was with trees, and spotted with cottages; but when he actually trod upon the ground of the New World, and found himself amidst a crowd of black and tawny faces-amidst hats like umbrellas, paroquets, and birds of every colour of the rainbow, and children, almost as various, plunging in and out of the river like water-dogs or mud-larks-he could not conceal his admiration, but laughed outright.

He was not left long to his contemplations, however; for the seaport of a West Indian colony has as many volunteers of all sorts as Dublin itself. A score of blacks were ready to assist him with his luggage, and at least a dozen of free negresses and mulattoes had baskets of the best fruit in the world. He might have had a wheelbarrowful for sixpence, and the aid of a dozen Sambos for an insignificant compliment in copper. Neglecting these advantages, Vivian made the best of his way to the house of the Mynheer Schlachenbruchen, the Fleming, which was well known to all the clamorous rogues on the quay. The merchant was not at home; having retired, as usual, to sleep at his plantation house, a few miles from town. Our hero, however, was received, with slow and formal respect, by his principal clerk, Hans Wassel, a strange figure, somewhat in the shape of a cone, that had originally sprung up (and almost struck root) somewhere near Ghent or Bruges. Holding Vivian's credentials at arm's length, this "shape" proceeded to decypher the address of the letter through an enormous pair of iron spectacles. In due time he appeared to detect the hand-writing of the London correspondent; for he breathed out, "Aw! Mynheer Franz Greffulhe!" and proceeded to open a seal as big as a saucer, and investigate the contents. These were evidently satisfactory; for he put on a look of benevolence, and welcomed the new-comer (who was announced as Mr Vernon) to Stabroek. "You will take a schnap ?" inquired he, with a look which anticipated an affirmation. "As soon as you please," replied Vivian; to which the other retorted with another "Aw!" and left the room with something approaching to alertness, in order to give the necessary orders.

The ordinary domestics of the Fleming were much more rapid in their movements; for Vivian had scarcely time to look round and admire the neatness of the room, when a clatter at the door compelled him to turn his eyes to that quarter. He saw a livelylooking black come in, with a large pipe of curious construction and a leaden box containing tobacco, followed close by his co-mate Sambo, (another "nigritude,") who bore, in both hands, a huge glass, almost as big as a punch-bowl, filled to the brim with true

« PredošláPokračovať »