A. L. O. E.

“ There are thousands of girls enslaved by the pride of beauty with far less cause than Ida Aumerle.”
“But this folly,” observed Intemperance, “was likely to give you but temporary power. Beauty is merely skin-deep, and passes away like a flower!”
“But often leaves the pride of it behind,” replied his companion. “There is many a wrinkled woman who can never forget that she once was fair,—nay, who seems fondly to imagine that she can never cease to be fair; and who makes herself the laughing-stock of the world by assuming in age the attire and graces of youth. ”

“ The fact is, that Cecilia Bardon’s pride and passion is dress; it has been her weakness since the days of her childhood, when a silly mother delighted to deck out her first-born in all the extravagance of fashion. It is this pride which makes the struggle with poverty more severe, and which is the source of the selfishness which occasionally surprises her friends in one, on all other points, the most kindly and considerate of women. Cecilia would rather go without a meal than wear cotton gloves, and a silk dress affords her more delight than any intellectual feast. ”

“ Bardon longed to see a good home-thrust at the pride of Reginald, Earl of Dashleigh. The mortification of the peer—his confusion—his indignation—was a subject upon which the imagination of the doctor actually feasted, for he had never forgotten or forgiven the words that he had overheard at the Hall.
And yet Bardon was not considered a bad man nor was he such as the word is commonly understood. He was an honest, upright man; a steady friend, an earnest patriot, one who felt for the sufferings of the poor, though he had little power to relieve them. ”

“ What was the spirit of Christ? and hath not Truth declared that if any man hath not the Spirit of Christ he is none of His? Was it not a spirit patient under suffering, meek under insult, a spirit ever ready to forgive? Did He not love his enemies, bless them that cursed Him, and do good to them that persecuted Him? Look on Him, dearest, look on Him, till in the brightness of His glory sin appear all the darker and more hateful! There is no pride in heaven, Annabella; we must throw away the chain ere we reach that bright place, or we never can enter therein! ”

“ They were introduced into a splendid apartment, fitted up with magnificence and taste. Poor Cecilia, as she there awaited the countess, painfully contrasted the room with its glittering mirrors and gilded ceiling, painted panels and velvet cushions, with the homeliness of her own humble abode. Pride, who revels in human misery, would not omit the opportunity of inflicting an envious pang. But his barbed dart went deeper—far deeper into the heart of the unhappy Bardon—the man who would have scornfully laughed at the idea of the possibility of such as he envying any mortal in the world. ”

“ Then the spirit of mischief would breathe out his [64] treason to Annabella: “Your husband, if superior to you in descent, you have now discovered to be so in no single other point. He has neither your wit nor your spirit. He is rather a weak, though an obstinate man, and thinks much more than common-sense warrants of what has been called ‘the accident of birth.’ Have you not much more reason to exult in belonging to the aristocracy of talent, than that of mere rank like him? Do you glory in the name of Countess as you do in that of ‘Egeria,’ by which alone you are known to reading thousands?” ”

“ There was no distinction of mountain or plain, a dim blue hue tinted all. In the words of a former æronaut,—“The whole appeared a perfect plain, the highest building having no apparent height, but reduced all to the same level, and the whole terrestrial prospect seemed like a coloured map.” There lay Dashleigh Hall, the seat of ancestral pride, shrunk to the appearance of a tiny toy,—a mere nothing viewed from that awful height, even as all earth’s pomps and grandeur must appear to those who survey them from heaven. ”

“ Aumerle, who happened at this time to enter the room, “if not she who chooses no guide but her own temper and caprice, who will listen to no advice—not even that of her uncle and her pastor, and who publicly insults the husband whom she is bound in duty to honour? Rise, Ida, rise,” continued the lady, to whose plain sense of right and wrong Annabella’s conduct appeared unpardonable; “I am ashamed to see you on your knees beside a girl who, if she were fifty times a countess, has forfeited claim to our respect.” ”

“ But where Pride is humbled, the spirit of supplication may rest. Never had the peer so felt before the littleness of personal distinctions; never, therefore, before had his heart been so attuned to simple prayer. As Augustine shrank from leading the devotions, which each one present felt would be at once the source of comfort and the fulfilment of duty, the nobleman, with folded hands, repeated aloud the first petitions in the Litany which instinct rather than memory suggested to his mind. Augustine and his young niece in low and earnest tones echoed the cry for mercy upon miserable sinners ”

“ There is an ever-wakeful [29] Wisdom which ofttimes defeats my most subtle schemes, leading the blind by a way they know not, drawing back wandering souls to the orbit of duty, even as that same Wisdom hangs the round world upon nothing, and guides the stars in their courses! My chain was suddenly snapped asunder by a blow which came from a hand of love, but which, in its needful force, laid prostrate the soul which it saved. Aumerle’s loved partner was smitten with sickness, smitten unto death, and the doating husband wrestled in agonizing prayer for her who was dearer to him than life. ”

“ But here Ida sought counsel of the All-wise, and she saw through my glittering snare. The earl, though of character unblemished in the eyes of man, and far from indifferent to religion, is not one whom a heaven-bound pilgrim like Ida would choose as a companion for life. Dashleigh’s spirit is too much clogged with earth; he is too much divided in his service; he wears too openly my chain, as if he deemed it an ornament or distinction. Ida prayed, reflected, and then resolved. She declined the addresses of her uncle’s guest, and returned home at once to her father. ”

“ Sadly and silently she dropped into the dark abyss the love token of the unhappy Annabella.
More than an hour elapsed before the silence again was broken. The thin air of these upper regions had become intensely cold, and Mabel shivered in her spring attire. The balloon was drifting steadily on before the night breeze, as was marked by its dark globe appearing to blot out one constellation after another from the sky as it swept on, the sole object that broke the immense expanse of the star-lit heavens. ”

“ I should be as much a gentleman in a chaise, or a cart, drawn by a donkey or a dog, as if I’d fifty racers in my stables, and a handle a mile long to my name.”
The pride of the father and the daughter were at variance, but it was the same passion that worked in both. Cecilia sought dignity in accessories, Dr. Bardon found it in self. She would climb up to distinction in the world by grasping at every advantage held out by the rank and wealth of her friends; he would rise also, but by trampling under foot rank and wealth as things to be despised. ”

“ Mine eyes never rested on a more goodly man.”
“Personal pride!” repeated the dark one with a mocking laugh, “Augustine Aumerle is by far too proud for that. He would not stoop to so childish a weakness. No, his is the pride of intellect, the pride of conscious genius, the pride to mortals, perhaps, the most perilous of all, which trusts its own power to explore impenetrable mystery, and thereby involves in a hopeless labyrinth; that seeks to sound unfathomable depths, and may sink for ever in the attempt.” ”

“ Imagine the sensations of some nobleman, fostered in the lap of luxury, accustomed to every indulgence, full of the pride of birth, when the rolling death-cart brings him suddenly in view of the horrible engine of destruction, and the dense crowd of eager spectators assembled to witness his cruel end! A sense of personal dignity struggles with that of mortal fear. He must not show the inward agony that chills his shuddering frame; he must be firm and calm before the gaze of those thousand curious eyes ”

“ The child, if a spark of generous feeling be left in his nature, is more pained by the kindness of his offended parent than he would have been by a sign of anger. His heart is melted; his conscience is touched. Timon Bardon had hardened his heart in adversity; he had girt on the panoply of pride; he had gloried in his powers of endurance, as one ready to do battle with the world, and to trample down all its frivolous distinctions. ”

“ Or, to change the metaphor, if you feel the proud spirit within, like the inflated sphere of the æronaut, ready to bear you aloft to a cloudy and perilous height, whence you will look down on your fellow-creatures, stop not to dally with danger, persuade not yourself that the peril is unreal, but resolute as one who knows that life and more than life is at stake, clip the soaring wing of the Eaglet,—cut the cords of your balloon! ”

“ The eye of the young heiress had not, like that of her cousin Ida, been fixed upon objects so high that the glare of earthly grandeur died away before it like the sparkles of fireworks below. Annabella was completely dazzled by the idea of such a brilliant alliance. Her imagination immediately invested the young earl with every great and glorious quality. Love threw a halo around him, and the maiden fancied that she saw realized in her noble suitor every [62] poetical dream of her girlhood. Nor was love the only chord that vibrated to rapture in the heart of Dashleigh’s young bride. ”

“ In the strong revulsion of feeling and anguish of remorse, the countess could scarcely remember a fault in him whom she had lately stigmatised as tyrannical, and satirized as weak. The earl’s tragical fate seemed to throw a halo around him, and his wife remembered him but as the tender wooer, the affectionate husband, the dignified, yet courteous nobleman, graceful in person, lofty in principle—who had sought and won the heart of a girl whose pride, petulance, and passion, had destroyed the man whom she loved! ”

“ She found herself united to a man at least as proud as herself, though his pride took a different form. As long as the bride was contented simply to please, there was domestic harmony; Annabella was happy in her husband, and he thought that no companion could be so agreeable as his witty and lively wife. But the moment that the countess attempted to rule, the elements of discord began to work. The earl, who never lost consciousness of high birth and distinguished rank, was aware that he had married one who, though of good family, was yet considerably below himself in social position. ”

“ How much trouble and misery has been caused by one act of selfish folly! Because Augustine—too great a genius, I suppose, to judge like a sensible man—fancies to roam through the clouds, and take with him a wilful, disobedient child, while a petulant girl eggs on her husband to follow so absurd an example, a whole family must be plunged into terror, grief, and alarm! ”

“ The natural sense cannot recognise their presence; the eye beholds them not, the human ear cannot catch the low thunder of their speech; and yet there they stand, terrible realities,—known, like the invisible plague, by their effects upon those whom they destroy!
There is a wild light in the eyes of Intemperance, not caught from the glad sunbeams that are bathing the world in glory; it is like a red meteor playing over some deep morass, and though there is often mirth in his tone, it is such mirth as jars upon the shuddering soul like the laugh of a raving maniac! ”

“ And so they parted, the tempter and the tempted—the countess to return to the vicarage with her almost heart-broken companions, Dr. Bardon to brood in his solitary cottage over deep, unavailing regrets!
In the dark abode of endless woe thus may bitter recrimination deepen the anguish of the lost, when some wretched soul recognises the author of his misery in one called on earth his friend, who had stirred up his evil passions, and pampered his fatal pride! ”