Lady Temple

“ Temple, a distant cousin of ours, at their house of Royston in Derbyshire, and John was desirous that Mrs. Temple should come up to Oxford and chaperone her daughter Constance and myself at the balls and various other entertainments which take place at the close of the summer term. Owing to Royston being some two hundred miles from Worth Maltravers, our families had hitherto seen little of one another, but during my present visit I had learned to love Mrs. Temple, a lady of singular sweetness of disposition, and had contracted a devoted attachment to her daughter Constance. ”

“ Except Lady Anne, and by courtesy Lady Mary, we were none of us young enough for a pastoral. We supped in the grotto, which is as proper to this climate as a sea-coal fire would be in the dog-days at Tivoli.
But the chief entertainment of the week, at least what was so to the Princess, was an arch, which Lord Temple has erected to her honour in the most enchanting of all picturesque scenes. It is inscribed on one side, 'Amelia Sophia Aug.,' and has a medallion of her on the other. It is placed on an eminence at the top of the Elysian fields, in a grove of orange-trees. ”

“ Other beauty not outward, of which we, too, may have seen something, mirrowed darkly in these letters; which we, too, as well as Temple, may know existed in Dorothy. For it is not beauty of face and form, but of what men call the soul, that made Dorothy to Temple, in fact as she was in name,—the gift of God.
Appendix LADY TEMPLE
Of Lady Temple there is very little to be known, and what there is can be best understood by following the career of her husband, which has been written at some length, and with laboured care, by Mr. ”

“ Two bonzes (Buddhist priests) , enveloped in black gauze, followed by a big dog, served as guides to us. The Temple is surrounded by a magnificent shady park of camphor and other aromatic trees. We inhaled with delight the perfume of myrtle and orange blossoms. We found our way into a courtyard open to the sky, where a fountain played over a marble basin. Beyond is a long, low building, the sides are simple wooden screens. It is the Temple. Men and women kneel and pray before the entrance of the Temple. ”

“ She might be John Temple’s wife, for anything he knew, and what good could his hard words do? None, he felt. He might, he would, punish John Temple, but what could he do to the girl? With a curse between his bitten lips he turned away, and walking back to the shop he had seen May and Miss Webster enter and leave, he went in under the pretense of buying a bonnet for his mother.
“I want a bonnet for an old lady,” he said to a pretty, smiling shopwoman, adding immediately afterward: “Who were the two ladies who have just been here—I saw them go out—a young lady and an old one?” ”

“ A lovely lady garmented in light
From her own beauty—deep her eyes, as are
Two openings of unfathomable night
Seen through a Temple's cloven roof—her hair
Dark—the dim brain whirls dizzy with delight. ”

“ Temple to his fate, and escaped to the drawing-room. He glided to a seat on an ottoman, by the side of his hostess, and listened in silence to the conversation. What a conversation! At any other time, under any other circumstances, Ferdinand would have been teased and wearied with its commonplace current: all the dull detail of county tattle, in which the squire’s lady was a proficient, and with which Miss Temple was too highly bred not to appear to sympathise; and yet the conversation, to Ferdinand, appeared quite charming. Every accent of Henrietta’s sounded like wit ”

“ Mary Temple was to count, and in more lives than can now be named, to an extraordinary degree; count as a young and shining apparition, a creature who owed to the charm of her every aspect (her aspects were so many!) and the originality, vivacity, audacity, generosity, of her spirit, an indescribable grace and weight—if one might impute weight to a being so imponderable in common scales. ”

“ One cannot conveniently stop to talk on the streets in the activity of this rapid city. The Women’s Temple is one of the noblest structures ever106 erected for benevolent work by women, and the Produce Exchange fittingly expresses its purpose. ”

“ A mask, a convenient costume, hides ever face and form. They all, however, know the Queen of the Temple,"—she placed her hand upon her breast; "and the password, without which no one can cross the threshold of this house, is issued by the Queen of the Temple."
"Queen of the Temple?" echoed Nameless.
"Yes, Queen of the Temple! A Queen who rules by midnight—and the temple of whose power,—gay, voluptuous, flower-crowned, as you see it,—is founded upon pollution and death."
She paused; and Nameless saw her bosom heave, and heard the sigh which escaped from her lips. ”

“ Once again woman had become an oracle of a new dispensation and a new civilization. She can only properly be this when a temple economy comes round in the unfolding of the ages. She can only be a legitimate oracle in the temple.
When she dares to play the oracle, without her divine mission and anointing, she is accounted in society as a witch, a fortune-teller, a medium, who divines for hire and sells the gift of the invisibles for money.
But in the temple woman is a sacred and sublime oracle. She is a prophetess and a high priestess. ”

“ As to the people gathered there, they are the beloved of God and His chosen ones whose faces shine with wonderful and heavenly beauty. The woman sitting at the side of the Temple is the law of God, which will soon dispel all veils and its beauty will appear, after which it shall be established forever and ever. ”

“ He preferred indeed to gain the heart of a woman like Miss Temple, who, without having in the least degree forfeited the innate purity of her nature and the native freshness of her feelings, had yet learnt in some degree to penetrate the mystery of the passions, to one so untutored in the world’s ways, that she might have bestowed upon him a heart less experienced indeed, but not more innocent. ”

“ Temple, wildly and passionately. “Love! to make you endure such pain; to make your life a burden; each day a fresh pang! If this is love, I know not what it is.”
“It seems strange,” said John Temple, and then without another word he went away.
An hour or so later two men were sitting in the same railway carriage together traveling to town, but they were not talking of the loves or the tragedies of their lives. They were talking gravely of the passing topics of the day, of politics, of books, and the names of May Churchill and Kathleen Weir were never once mentioned between them. ”

“ It is not in such terms that men write of faithless wives, nor is it in the nature of such women to wear the white veil of innocence for a series of years in the presence of those nearest to them. There was a temple built in her honor which still keeps guard as a church over the Roman forum, a permanent monument to the devotion of this tender husband. A charitable institution for girls, that bore her name, has long since gone the way of all perishable things. ”

“ How different in expression, yet how similar in strength, is the landscape of that seeming miracle, "The Presentation in the Temple"! It is clear, confident day,—so pure and perfect a day abroad over the happy earth, that all things lure forth into an atmosphere so unsullied that to breathe it is life and joy,—over an earth youthful with spring, fresh with morning; and hither have come the people to see confirmed the future mother of Christ, now the child Mary. ”

“ In this excavation Mr. Wood found the statue of Diana, which we may hope is the ancient sacred image, guarded by the priests as the most precious treasure of the temple, and imposed upon the credulity of men as heaven-descended. This is all that remains of one of the Seven Wonders of the world,—a temple whose fame is second to none in antiquity; a temple seven times burned and eight times built, and always with increased magnificence; a temple whose origin, referable doubtless to the Cyclopean builders of this coast, cannot be less than fifteen hundred years before our era ”

“ There were nothing strange or unusual in freedom of conversation between the Priestess and the Sculptor—who, in former years, had added many decorations to the Temple. The virgin priestesses were permitted to receive the visits of men by day; by night none but women were suffered to enter their apartments, which adjoined the sacred building in which they ministered. Each priestess was pledged to continence for thirty years. ”

“ I lashed Temple in my aunt's presence with a rod of real eloquence that astonished her, and him, and myself too; and as he had a sense of guilt not quite explicable in his mind, he consented to bear what was in reality my burden; for Julia had distinguished me and not him with all the signs of affection, and of the two I had the more thoroughly forgotten her; I believe Temple was first in toasting her at Squire Gregory's table. There is nothing like a pent- up secret of the heart for accumulating powers of speech; I mean in youth. ”

“ CHAPTER XIV. Containing an Incident Which Is the Termination of Most Tales, though Almost the Beginning of the Present.
IT WAS about two hours before sunset that Captain Armine summoned up courage to call at Ducie Bower. He enquired for Mr. Temple, and learned to his surprise that Mr. Temple had quitted Ducie yesterday morning for Scotland. ‘And Miss Temple?’ said Ferdinand. ‘Is at home, Sir,’ replied the servant. ”

“ Our coolies went in to offer incense and to invoke the goddess, as they did on their arrival at Tali Fu; for she is a great favourite with the coolie class. There is a beautiful little shrine perched on a big rock in a sort of small tank, which the goddess (under the guise of an old woman) is supposed to have brought here. In the courtyard beyond is a Buddhist temple, and in one of the side courts a temple to a famous general, containing a statue of him much more life-like than any we have yet seen. ”

“ The women, like the women at the sepulcher, were early to aid in laying the foundation of the temple and in helping to carry up the noble structure and in the name of their God set up their banner; most of our aged mothers are gone from this to a better state of things. ”

“ This temple was constructed with a great many winding galleries appropriated to the reception of the women, and the strangers who, allured by debauchery, never failed to assemble there in great numbers, being allowed to choose any woman they thought proper from among those who came there in obedience to the law. ”

“ Each woman, and even tiny little girl, bears a basin of perfumed water in her hands, and all trip along gaily, dressed in all the finery at their disposal, chatting and jesting merrily together, to the temple. As they enter its grounds, which are enclosed by low white-plastered brick walls, along two sides of which are erected sheds for the accommodation of pilgrims, the abbot and his monks, in their bright yellow garments, and with their bald pates glistening in the sun, may be seen strolling amongst the pleasant shady fruit-trees. ”

“ Temple is a calm, sensible man. You will laugh at me, but the truth is, with him it must be a matter of calculation: on the one hand, his daughter’s happiness, a union with a family second to none in blood, alliances, and territorial position, and only wanting his wealth to revive all its splendour; on the other, his daughter broken-hearted, and a duke for his son-in-law. Mr. Temple is too sensible a man to hesitate, particularly when I remove the greatest difficulty he must experience. Where shall I out you down? Berkeley-Square?’
CHAPTER XXII. Ferdinand Meditates over His Good Fortune. ”

“ Temple was a young man, his feelings warm and impetuous; unacquainted with the world, his heart had not been rendered callous by being convinced of its fraud and hypocrisy. He pitied their sufferings, overlooked their faults, thought every bosom as generous as his own, and would cheerfully have divided his last guinea with an unfortunate fellow creature.
No wonder, then, that such a man (without waiting a moment for the interference of Madam Prudence) should resolve to raise money sufficient for the relief of Eldridge, by mortgaging part of his fortune. ”

“ The collation being finished, and Miss Temple undressed: “Let us retire,” said Miss Hobart, “to the bathing closet, where we may enjoy a little conversation secure from any impertinent visit.” Miss Temple consented, and both of them sitting down on a couch: “You are too young, my dear Temple,” said she, “to know the baseness of men in general, and too short a time acquainted with the court to know the character of its inhabitants. ”

“ What occupant of dreary chambers in the Temple, reading this page, cannot look back to a bright day, when young, beautiful, and pure as sanctity, Lilian, or Kate, or Olive, entered his room radiant with smiles, delicate in attire, and musical with gleesome gossip about country neighbors, and the life of a joyous home?
Seldom does a Templar of the present generation receive so fair and innocent a visitor. To him the presence of a gentlewoman in his court, is an occasion for ingenious conjecture ”

“ I know nothing more picturesque than the carts laden with grapes, and drawn by milk-white steers.’
They drove gaily along at the foot of green hills, crowned ever and anon by a convent or a beautiful stone-pine. The landscape attracted the admiration of Miss Temple. A palladian villa rose from the bosom of a gentle elevation, crowned with these picturesque trees. A broad terrace of marble extended in front of the villa, on which were ranged orange trees. On either side spread an olive-grove. The sky was without a cloud, and deeply blue ”