Leonard

“ It is astonishing how Leonard had altered since he had left his uncle's. He was both younger and older; for the sense of genius, when it snaps its shackles, makes us both older and wiser as to the world it soars to—younger and blinder as to the world it springs from.
"And it is not a very handsome city either, you say?"
"Very ugly, indeed," said Helen, with some fervor; "at least all I have seen of it."
"But there must be parts that are prettier than others? You say there are parks; why should not we lodge near them, and look upon the green trees?" ”

“ When at last Leonard lifted his head, arousing himself with an effort from the heart-broken reverie into which he had fallen, he found himself in a lonely and secluded spot on the edge of a dreary swamp; and there at his very feet, lying upon the ground, was the body of a man.
With a suppressed cry, Leonard leaped from his horse and made his way hastily to the side of the prostrate man. Something familiar in his aspect struck to the young man’s heart, and with a feeling of horror stealing over him, he lifted the man’s head upon his knee and gazed into the death-like face. ”

“ Leonard. Woe to the men who still bow down before the dead God!
The Man. Dark masses of the people turn and drive upon us.
The Baptized. O Father Abraham!
The Man. Old Eagle of glory, is it not true that my hour is not yet come?
The Baptized. We are lost!
Leonard (stopping immediately in front of Count Henry) . Who are you with that haughty face, citizen, and why do you not join in the solemnities?
The Man. I hastened here when I heard of the revolution; I am a murderer of the Spanish league, and have only arrived to-day.
Leonard. Who is that man hiding himself in the folds of your mantle? ”

“ I give to you a son proved in adversity, and who has fought his own way to fame. Leonard, in the man to whom I prayed you to sacrifice your own ambition, of whom you have spoken with such worthy praise, whose career of honour you have promoted, and whose life, unsatisfied by those honours, you will soothe with your filial love, behold the husband of Nora Avenel! ”

“ Ah, it is Leonard—it is—my dear, dear boy! What joy! So altered, so improved, but still the same honest face. Squire, come here—your old friend, Leonard Fairfield."
"And he wanted to persuade me," said the Squire, shaking Leonard heartily by the hand, "that you were the gentleman in black; but, indeed, he has been in strange humors and tantrums all the morning. Well, Master Lenny; why, you are grown quite a gentleman! The world thrives with you—eh! I suppose you are head-gardener to some grandee."
"Not that, sir," said Leonard, smiling. ”

“ Easy counsel enough to the man of ready resource and quick combative mind; but to Leonard, how hard and how harsh! “Fit his life to his genius!”—renounce contemplation and Nature for the jostle of Oxford Street! Would that life not scare away the genius forever? Perplexed and despondent, though still struggling for fortitude, he returns to his home; and there at his hearth awaits the Soother, and there is the voice that repeats the passages most beloved, and prophesies so confidently of future fame; and gradually all around smiles from the smile of Helen. ”

“ With some difficulty Leonard pacified poor Mrs. Fairfield, and got her to retire to bed; for she was, indeed, thoroughly exhausted. He then stepped forth into the road, musingly. All the stars were out; and Youth, in its troubles, instinctively looks up to the stars. Folding his arms, Leonard gazed on the heavens, and his lips murmured.
From this trance, for so it might be called, he was awakened by a voice in a decidedly London accent; and, turning hastily round, saw Mr. Avenel's very gentlemanlike butler. Leonard's first idea was that his uncle had repented, and sent in search of him. ”

“ Certainly, as we have seen, Leonard, especially in his earlier steps to knowledge, had repined at his position in the many degrees of life—certainly he was still ambitious—certainly he could not now have returned contentedly to the humble occupation he had left; and woe to the young man who does not hear with a quickened pulse, and brightening eye, words that promise independence, and flatter with a hope of distinction. ”

“ Hopeless and unhappy, he has stooped to stimulants and oblivion;—but you cannot understand these things, my pretty preacher."
"Yes I do, Leonard. What is the difference between being good and bad? The good do not yield to temptations, and the bad do."
The definition was so simple and so wise that Leonard was more struck with it than he might have been by the most elaborate sermon by Parson Dale.
"I have often murmured to myself since I lost you, 'Helen was my good angel;'—say on. For my heart is dark to myself, and while you speak light seems to dawn on it." ”

“ I have had great happiness of Leonard's companionship, and I have been proud to be myself a proof that a man and a woman can be close, dear, daily friends without being lovers or kin, and earth be only more like heaven for it, to them and all theirs. If Leonard has confessed one word more than that for me,—or even for himself, Arthur, dearest,—he has lost his reason. ”

“ But the poet's heart gave back no echo,—suddenly it seemed void and desolate. Yet when Leonard walked back by the moonlight, he muttered to himself, "Strange, strange, so mere a child! this cannot be love! Still, what else to love is there left to me?"
And so he paused upon the bridge where he had so often stood with Helen, and on which he had found the protector that had given to her a home, to himself a career. And life seemed very long, and fame but a dreary phantom. Courage still, Leonard! These are the sorrows of the heart that teach thee more than all the precepts of sage and critic. ”

“ Without some such preparation, I fear that Leonard would have gone forth into the world with an exaggerated notion of his own acquirements, and with a notion yet more exaggerated as to the kind of power that such knowledge as he possessed would obtain for itself. As it was, when Mr. Dale broke to him the news of the experimental journey before him, cautioning him against being over-sanguine, Leonard received the intelligence with a serious meekness, and thoughts that were nobly solemn. ”

“ Leonard listened with admiration and some surprise to the singularly subtle and sagacious insight into character which Harley evinced in the brief clear strokes by which he had thus depicted Peschiera and Beatrice, and was struck by the boldness with which Harley rested a whole system of action upon a few deductions drawn from his reasonings on human motive and characteristic bias. Leonard had not expected to find so much practical acuteness in a man who, however accomplished, usually seemed indifferent, dreamy, and abstracted to the ordinary things of life. ”

“ In youth, at least, everything has its bright side,—even the appointment of Protector to the Parish Stocks. For the stocks itself Leonard had no affection, it is true; but he had no sympathy with its aggressors, and he could well conceive that the squire would be very much hurt at the revolutionary event of the night. “So,” thought poor Leonard in his simple heart,—“so, if I can serve his honour, by keeping off mischievous boys, or letting him know who did the thing, I’m sure it would be a proud day for Mother.” ”

“ But not here shall this picture of Helen close. Even the Ideal can only complete its purpose by connection with the Real; even in solitude the writer must depend upon mankind.
Leonard at last has completed the work, which has been the joy and the labour of so many years,—the work which he regards as the flower of all his spiritual being, and to which he has committed all the hopes that unite the creature of today with the generations of the future. ”

“ LEONARD.
And that then is his grave!—Before his death
You said that he saw many happy years?
PRIEST.
Aye, that he did—
LEONARD.
⁠And all went well with him—
PRIEST.
If he had one, the Lad had twenty homes.
LEONARD.
And you believe then, that his mind was easy—
PRIEST.
Yes, long before he died, he found that time
Is a true friend to sorrow, and unless
His thoughts were turn'd on Leonard's luckless fortune,
He talk'd about him with a chearful love.
LEONARD.
He could not come to an unhallow'd end! ”

“ Hurrying forward in the opposite direction, Leonard glanced at the ancient and picturesque houses on either side of the way,—now bathed in the moonlight, and apparently hushed in repose and security,—and he could not repress a shudder as he reflected that an evil angel was, indeed, abroad, who might suddenly arouse their slumbering inmates to despair and death. ”

“ Leonard wonderingly saw he had given pain, and with the good breeding which comes instinctively from good-nature, replied—"I judged you by your heart, sir, and your likeness to my grandfather—otherwise I should never have presumed to fancy we could be relations."
"Hum!" answered Richard. "You can just wash your hands, and then come down to dinner; you will hear the gong in ten minutes. There's the bell; ring for what you want." ”

“ But Leonard—
Leonard.
⁠Then James still is left among you?
Priest.
'Tis of the elder Brother I am speaking:
They had an Uncle;—he was at that time
A thriving man, and trafficked on the seas:
And, but for that same Uncle, to this hour
Leonard had never handled rope or shroud.
For the Boy loved the life which we lead here;
And, though of unripe years, a stripling only,
His soul was knit to this his native soil.
But, as I said, old Walter was too weak
To strive with such a torrent ”

“ Leonard made his young master change his clothes, and after making him comfortable, left him to amuse himself in the open park with his ball, where the light-hearted Charles was soon thoughtlessly happy, and forgetful of the unkindness of Robert and the injustice of his parents. So light are the cares and mishaps of youth, so easily forgotten are its hardships, either seeming or real. Happy childhood! ”

“ Leonard, during these colloquies, had sat apart, seemingly absorbed in reading, and secretly stung by Randal's disregard of his presence. For indeed that young man, in his superb self-esteem, and in the absorption of his ambitious projects, scarce felt even curiosity as to Leonard's rise above his earlier station, and looked on him as a mere journeyman of Burley's. But the self-taught are keen and quick observers. ”

“ By accustoming ourselves to survey all things with the spirit that retains and reproduces them only in their lovelier or grander aspects, a vast philosophy of toleration for what we before gazed on with scorn or hate insensibly grows upon us. Leonard looked into his heart after the enchantress had breathed upon it; and through the mists of the fleeting and tender melancholy which betrayed where she had been, he beheld a new sun of delight and joy dawning over the landscape of human life. ”

“ They play'd like two young ravens on the crags:
Then they could write, aye and speak too, as well
As many of their betters—and for Leonard!
The very night before he went away,
In my own house I put into his hand
A Bible, and I'd wager twenty pounds,
That, if he is alive, he has it yet. ”

“ He was too shrewd not to see that all hope of that borough was over,—he would have been hooted in the streets and pelted from the hustings. Forlorn in the vast metropolis as Leonard had once been, in his turn he loitered on the bridge, and gazed on the remorseless river. He had neither money nor connections,—nothing save talents and knowledge to force his way back into the lofty world in which all had smiled on him before; and talents and knowledge, that had been exerted to injure a benefactor, made him but the more despised. ”

“ If Paula grieved that Leonard labored under the disadvantage of the rigid practice of his denomination as to vesture and pulpit accessories, to those by whom such disadvantages were unrecognized his personality was no less persuasive of his fitness for noble deeds. As a rising theologian and young teacher of the divine science, he was, to those who watched his course, of excellent promise; destined to be a defender of that ancient creed which of late had been often attacked by able, if deluded, foes. ”

“ At the very time the despairing poet had locked himself up in his garret, to dismiss his soul from its earthly ordeal, his genius had just found its way into the light of renown. Good and learned and powerful men were preparing to serve and save him. Another year,—nay, perchance, another month—and he might have stood acknowledged and sublime in the foremost front of his age.
"Oh Helen!" cried Leonard, raising his brows from which the cloud had passed,—"Why, indeed, did you leave me?" ”

“ Now I have given you, what no one gave me, a lift in the world; and where I place you, there you must help yourself."
"Such is my duty, and my desire," said Leonard, heartily.
"Good. You are a clever lad, and a genteel lad, and will do me credit. I have had doubts of what is best for you. At one time I thought of sending you to College. That, I know, is Mr. Dale's wish; perhaps it is your own. But I have given up that idea; I have something better for you. You have a clear head for business, and are a capital arithmetician. ”

“ While Leonard accustoms himself gradually to the splendours that surround him, and often turns with a sigh to the remembrance of his mother’s cottage and the sparkling fount in the Italian’s flowery garden, we will make with thee, O reader, a rapid flight to the metropolis, and drop ourselves amidst the gay groups that loiter along the dusty ground or loll over the roadside palings of Hyde Park. ”

“ Till tolls the bell, and strife and troubles cease,
Calls for our praise; his labour praise deserves,
But not our pity; Reuben has no nerves.
'Mid noise and dirt, and stench, and play, and prate,
He calmly cuts the pen or views the slate.
But Leonard!—yes, for Leonard's fate I grieve,
110
Who loathes the station which he dares not leave;
He cannot dig, he will not beg his bread;
All his dependence rests upon his head;
And, deeply skill'd in sciences and arts,
On vulgar lads he wastes superior parts.
Alas! what grief that feeling mind sustains,
In guiding hands and stirring torpid brains ”