Bas-relief

“ Bassus maintained, sadly, "no extenuation even, for a commander who loses a whole squadron of warships to an inferior enemy and is himself the sole survivor. And if there were anything to be said in my favor it would have no weight. I must be made an example of. There is no use trying to deceive our minds. I go to death. My only chance is one of his whims. It is a small chance. Let us hope till the end. But even if death is a certainty for me, let us not forget what we have to rejoice over." ”

“ So far from pitying the rowers' distress, they pointed out the men's faces to each other, and laughed at the grotesque expressions on the faces of the crew who were straining every muscle; but in the fore part of the boat the soldier, the peasant, and the old beggar woman watched the sailors with the sympathy naturally felt by toilers who live by the sweat of their brow and know the rough struggle, the strenuous excitement of effort. These folk, moreover, whose lives were spent in the open air, had all seen the warnings of danger in the sky, and their faces were grave. ”

“ Heartfelt "Amens" and "Glorys" rose from the whole congregation. The cool evening wind rustled at intervals through the trees; and it needed no faith in the Methodist creed, no excitement of spiritual ecstasy, to make one thrill all through with the consciousness that the leaves rustled as if invisible hosts were passing by. Whatever be one's religious belief, however he may disapprove of all his class of abnormal influences, he cannot witness such a scene unmoved, unless he be of a hard and scoffing nature. John Bassett was astonished. ”

“ As he crossed from the mainland, scarcely an hour’s distance, he felt a presentiment that his hopes were to be fulfilled; and afterwards, when as yet he had seen nothing of the convent but its walls, and of the nuns not so much as their robes; while he had merely heard the chanting of the service, there were dim auguries under the walls and in the sound of the voices to justify his frail hope. And, indeed, however faint those so unaccountable presentiments might be, never was human passion more vehemently excited than the General’s curiosity at that moment. ”

“ There 's money enough;" and so the treacherous hope allied itself to the blinded love, and both together lured John Bassett on until one day in midwinter he rang the door-bell of the grand house in which Fanny Lane lived "in town." He had not come with any assured hope; not at all; toward the last, his strong, good sense had come to look on the step more as a desperate remedy for a desperate hurt, than as a probable healing of the wound by the gentle and blessed healing of happiness. He said to himself, grimly: "It 's the only way I 'll every get free from it. ”

“ I did not walk, I flew. That look I carried within me; it bathed me with light just as her last words, "Adieu, monsieur," still sounded in my soul with the harmonies of "O filii, o filioe" in the paschal choir. I was born into a new life, I was something to her! I slept on purple and fine linen. Flames darted before my closed eyelids, chasing each other in the darkness like threads of fire in the ashes of burned paper. In my dreams her voice became, though I cannot describe it, palpable, an atmosphere of light and fragrance wrapping me, a melody enfolding my spirit. ”

“ The noble ladies in the garret could no longer doubt that their protector was the stranger of the expiatory mass on the night of the 22nd of January, 1793; and a kind of cult of him sprung up among them. Their one hope was in him; they lived through him. They added special petitions for him to their prayers; night and morning the pious souls prayed for his happiness, his prosperity, his safety; entreating God to remove all snares far from his path, to deliver him from his enemies, to grant him a long and peaceful life. ”

“ Three Days will soon be o'er, and your Return,
Shall make me fully blest——If I should stay
'Twould look like base Distrust, and I can't think
Bassino would be false——
Bass. (aside.) Oh! Heaven that I were not!
Arm. Indeed, my Lord, I think you're truly happy.
Scarce does any Age produce so good a Wife.
Bass. Oh! that I could reward this wondrous Goodness!
Pla. My Lord, what makes you sigh?
Bass. To part from thee: But since 'tis your Desire,
It shall be so. Armando, to thy Charge
I here commit the Treasure of my Soul,
Take Care of her, and think that on her Safety
My Life depends. ”

“ Now is the time; in the name of the devil who is leaving you in this world, be your own Providence! Every one knows that the channel is fearfully dangerous; I have been to and fro across it these thirty years. Am I facing a storm for the first time to-night?"
He stood at the helm, and looked, as before, at his boat and at the sea and sky in turn.
"The skipper always laughs at everything," muttered Thomas.
"Will God leave us to perish along with those wretched creatures?" ”

“ Was nature to help in compensating us for what we had lost and left behind? Had fate been cruel a year ago in order to be kinder now? At any rate I felt as I looked out over it all, then up at the small flag flaunting its red gaily against the blue, that with these hills about me, with this river in front and with that flag and God above me, I could be happy. I breathed a prayer, then I resolved to make a home for my mother and sisters on the River St. John. ”

“ We take it there are few who thus upon the threshold of manhood welcome one-and-twenty. Who knows? The example of Basil may beget followers.
Early the next morning, Basil took his road to Primrose Place. He had resolved at once to ask Bessy of her father. He would not accept a shilling of Jericho; he would not compromise his conscience by submitting to the poorest obligation at his hands; nevertheless, he felt in his heart such a spring-tide of hope and happiness, that the worst worldly difficulties were but as a hedge of thorns, to be thrust aside by an arm of resolution. ”

“ When a man is forward, we may conclude he has some selfish view, some self ends. Brother asked him if he and his party would carry that argument through. It holds stronger against Captain Thayer and Major Miller, than it ever did against anybody in this town, excepting Colonel Gooch and Captain Mills. But I desire the proof of Bass s forwardness. Has he been more so than Major Miller? Come, come, Mr. Veasey, says Master Jo Cleverly, don't you say too much ; I an't of that mind. Ego. Bass is an active, capable man, but no seeker by mean begging or buying of votes. ”

“ His was an expectant martyrdom, an exile from his true home, a daily dying on earth, tending but to one desired end. Nature could be more easily reconciled in the one case than in the other to thoughts of parting. Basil was my all, my second self, my sole treasure,—the prop on which rested youth's hopes, earth's joys, life's sole comfort ”

“ Bass inquired, with an air of surprise.
"Take it—no; devilish clear of it. Why, he's a reg'lar genius; can make a plough beam, wagon tongue—anything, as well as you can. Marshall wanted to put up one of his niggers agin him and raffle for them, but I told him I would see the devil have him first."
"I don't see anything remarkable about him," Bass observed.
"Why, just feel of him, now," Epps rejoined. "You don't see a boy very often put together any closer than he is. He's a thin-skin'd cuss, and won't bear as much whipping as some; but he's got the muscle in him, and no mistake." ”

“ Lady Bassett sat and heard the bell toll.
Strange, sad thoughts passed through her mind. “Is it saddest when it tolls, or when it rings—that bell? He has killed his own child by robbing me of my husband. We are in the hands of God, after all, let Wheeler be ever so cunning, and Oldfield ever so simple.—And I am not acting by that.—Where is my trust in God's justice?—Oh, thou of little faith!—What shall I do? Love is stronger in me than faith—stronger than anything in heaven or earth. ”

“ Can you guess what for?"
"Indeed I cannot," said Basil, "except that you have lost one who is dear to you. What comfort can I, a stranger, offer you that you cannot find for yourself? It is small consolation to say that your loss is a common human experience. ”

“ With a plank for your wall you would tell a different tale.”
“I have tried the plank,” said Bassett, with a smile. “Though, as you say, Master Shipman, we know not other’s lives till we try them, and maybe you, if you lived here, would think more kindly of what you call a drone’s hive.”
“The Church and the Pope swallow up all a poor man’s savings,” said the sailor, less gruffly. “’Tis nothing but fresh taxes, and these Lombard usurers are every whit as bad as the Jews. I would the king could make as clean a sweep of them. To make money without working for it is a sin and a shame.” ”

“ And the astrologer said unto him, “Thou wilt die in the evening, and thy soul shall go forth from thy body [at the time] .” And Saint Basil said unto him, “If I remain [alive] , and do not die until the morning, wilt thou became a Christian?” And the astrologer said unto him, “Yea.” And Saint Basil entreated God, and God added three days to his days, and that wise and learned Jewish astrologer, who was the greatest of his class, believed, and Saint Basil baptized him and all the men of his house with Christian baptism, and then he died in peace. ”

“ When any one says, 'I am going to the Fourth Bastion,' a slight agitation or a too marked indifference is always noticeable in him; if men are joking they say, 'You should be sent to the Fourth Bastion.' When you meet some one carried on a stretcher, and ask, 'Where from?' the answer usually is, 'From the Fourth Bastion.'... ”

“ Making my way slowly back to the hotel for tea, I was touched on the arm by a young French priest to whom I had spoken earlier in the day. He had been lamenting the great wave of godlessness that has seemed for the moment to submerge the whole of France. But now his eyes were shining. "Is it not wonderful," he cried, "to see all this so great faith?" He moved his hands expressively. "Ah, la belle France, the heart of her [Pg 147] people is still hungry for its God—and some day—some day it will lift Him up again for all the world to see." ”

“ I can only take it where these gentlemen say; but—but if I had, I'd take you back to let y’ tell him, boy—yes, to let y’ tell him now and thank him—as well as y’ can.”
“No, Bassett,”—our Chief had cleared his throat and raised his head quickly to meet the skipper’s challenge. “No, Bassett.” he said, “you wouldn’t take him back to that island—to that little lonely island of his Hope, lost back there, to tell Aim there or thank him—there. You wouldn’t yourself. ”

“ Sir Charles slept peacefully that night, and forgot his one grief and his one enemy for a time.
Not so Lady Bassett. She lay awake all night and thought deeply of Richard Bassett and “his unrelenting, impenitent malice.” Women of her fine fiber, when they think long and earnestly on one thing, have often divinations. ”

“ Richard Bassett saw this from his tower of observation; saw it, and chuckled. “Aha!” said he. “Husband sick in bed. Wife walking in the garden with a young man—a parson, too. He is dark, she is fair. Something will come of this. Ha, ha!”
Lady Bassett now talked of sending to London for advice; but Mary Wells dissuaded her. “Physic can't cure him. There's only one can cure him, and that is yourself, my lady.” ”

“ Some man about him was the festival robe
That made him shew so glorious and divine.
Bass. I cannot tell, my Lord; but I should know,
If any such there were.
Vinc. Should know, quoth you?
I warrant, you know well. Well, some there be,
Shall have the fortune to have such rare men
(Like brave Beasts to their arms) support their state;
When others, of as high a worth and breed,
Are made the wasteful food of them they feed.—
What state hath your Lord made you for your service?
******
The same Bassiolo described. ”

“ Every barrier had been removed, every thwarting force had been brought into abeyance, and afterward, with an inconsistency typical of human nature, the leveler of the road fretted at his son's lack of aggressiveness, his eyes, ordinarily so hawklike in their vision, blinded to the fact that what his son was he had to a great extent made him, and if the product caused secret disappointment he had no one to thank for it but himself. ”

“ Towards the end of supper a slight contre-temps occurs, for Basan, being ordered in a voice of thunder to ring the bell, starts up, poor willing youth, with extraordinary celerity and not spying a large silver dish-cover lying near him, plants a well-directed kick in the centre of its hollow body, which sends it flying across the room into the fire-place, where it lodges amid a crash of falling irons. ”

“ Very beautiful in Basil's eyes showed the piety and calm which here surrounded him, and his reverence for the founder of this house of peace fell little short of that with which he regarded the Saints in heaven. Never before—unless it were at certain moments when conversing with the Lady Silvia—had he felt the loveliness of a life in which religion was supreme; and never, assuredly, had there stirred within him a spirit so devout. He longed to attain unto righteousness, that entire purity of will, which, it now seemed to him, could be enjoyed only in monastic seclusion. ”

“ From that period, and he was then not more than twenty-eight, Basil turned his thoughts solely to the edification of the Christian Church; but first he spent some years in retreat among the hermits of the desert, as was the fashion of that day, living, as they did, in abstinence, poverty, and abstracted study; acknowledging neither country, family, home, nor friends, nor fortune, nor worldly interests of any kind, but with his thoughts fixed solely on eternal life in another world. In these austerities he, as was also usual, consumed and ruined his bodily health ”