on the enterprise that lay before him.-The sequence next upon Xavier's of such a name as that of the late Charles Mathews* may appear grotesque; but at any rate he resembled the saint in this averseness to leave-taking, to which his spirits and health at last were quite unequal. In reference to the fact that last days are wretched days, and last moments wretched moments, Mr. Anthony Trollope remarks that it is not the knowledge that parting is coming which makes those days and moments so wretched, but the feeling that something special is expected from them, which something they always fail to produce. Spasmodic periods of pleasure, of affection, or even of study, he argues, seldom fail of disappointment when premeditated. "When last days are coming, they should be allowed to come and glide away without special notice or mention. And as for last moments, there should be none such. Let them ever be ended, even before their presence has been acknowledged."† I believe The world, he had already remarked, in a previous work, makes a great mistake on the subject of saying, or acting, farewell. He maintains that the word or deed should partake of the suddenness of electricity; whereas "we all drawl through it at a snail's pace. We are supposed to tear ourselves from our friends; but tearing is a process which should be done quickly." Colonel Whyte Melville, on the other hand, speaks of this judicious hurrying as the approved way of the world: "The leave-taking was got over more easily than I expected. People generally hustle one off in as great a hurry as the common decencies of society would admit of, in order to shorten as much as possible the unavoidable gêne of parting." Sensible and suggestive is that passage in one of Schleiermacher's letters which mentions his parting with his brother Carl: "The last farewell was uttered in the midst of the confusion of starting. It is one of the few useful effects of human indolence, that it renders the moment of parting less painful, by causing so many things to be put off till the last moment that little else can be thought of." So in one of Henry Mackenzie's tales, Savillon by letter reminds a correspondent, "You would not bid me adieu till the ship was getting under way. you judged aright, if you meant to spare us both: the bustle of the scene, the rattling of the sails, the noise of the sailors, had a mechanical effect on the mind, and stifled those tender feelings, which we indulge in solitude and silence." As Mr. Savage has observed, among the hours and half-hours that are most irksome to pass in this world (such as the half-hour before dinner, or before the rising of the curtain at the play), must certainly be numbered the interval that elapses between the completion of the preliminaries of a journey and the moment of the last embraces and adieux. "It is an interval which cannot be too much abridged for the comfort of all parties; for the tenderest leave-takings do not admit of being protracted for more than a few minutes; sighs cannot be drawn out beyond a limited length, and the tenderest eyes will secrete tears at discretion." Hence this author's opinion that the visits of even common acquaintance have their value on these occasions, provided they do not come to pry into our boxes and eat up our plum†The Small House at Allington, ch. xv. § Kate Coventry, ch. xxiv. Julia de Roubigné, letter xxvi. * Life, ch. xl. The Three Clerks, III. 286. cakes.* M. Emile Souvestre, in one of his histoires d'autrefois, truthfully describes the sensations of expectant departure: "Mille causes, puériles en apparence, produisaient chez lui [Edmond Bian] ce vague malaise que l'on ressent dans les heures d'attente qui précèdent un départ. C'était l'heure inaccoutumée de son lever; l'air froid du matin, l'aspect des paquets de voyage qui encombraient le salon, le silence mélancolique qui l'entourait; la perte de ses habitudes, de ses ennuis même (car les ennuis aussi sont un lien; . . . et plus encore que tout cela, sans doute, l'indicible attachement que nous ressentons pour les objets que nous quittons, et cet attendrissement tout-puissant qui s'éveille dans nos cœurs au dernier pressement d'une main connue."t-But to return once more to avoided leave-takings. ... On a December day in that trying year in Sir Walter Scott's life, 1825, there occurs this entry in his Diary: "This morning Lockhart and Sophia left us early, and without leave-taking; when I rose at eight o'clock, they were gone. This was very right. I hate red eyes and blowing of noses. Agere et pati Romanum est." For his creed, and practice, was, that although we cannot indeed overcome our affections, nor ought if we could, we may repress them within due bounds, and avoid coaxing them to make fools of those who should be their masters. The day was not far distant when Scott was to take his final parting from his wife without taking leave. On the eleventh of May, 1826, he left Abbotsford for Edinburgh; and writes in his journal: "Charlotte was unable to take leave of me, being in a sound sleep, after a very indifferent night. Perhaps it was as well. And yet to part with the companion of twenty-nine years, when so very ill. On the fourteenth, there is but one entry in the journal-brief, and significant: "Received the melancholy intelligence that all is over at Abbotsford."§ One may remember the words of the old Doge, in Byron's tragedy, taking leave of his wife on his way to the scaffold: -Alas! she faints, She has no breath, no pulse! Guards! lend your aid I cannot leave her thus,-and yet 'tis better, I shall be with the Eternal. The husband in Wordsworth's touching episode of Margaret leaves her by stealth, lest he be unnerved for his scheme by the pangs of leavetaking. One morning when she wakes she espies a folded paper near her tremblingly she opens it, and finds no writing, but pieces of money carefully enclosed, silver and gold. -"I shuddered at the sight," Said Margaret," for I knew it was his hand He left me thus-he could not gather heart * Reuben Medlicott, ch. iv. † Emile Souvestre: La Bourgeoisie, ch. v. Diary of Sir Walter Scott, Dec. 5, 1825. When Joan of Arc quitted for ever her village and family, she took leave of all her friends but the one she loved best, Haumette: "her, whom she loved most of all, she preferred quitting without leavetaking."* Mr. Helps makes even his rather cynical Ellesmere catch eagerly at an opportunity of escaping a farewell scene with Gretchen: "I spared myself the anguish of parting with her: a case came on rather unexpectedly in a distant part of the country, and I was sent for 'special,' as we say." "Kings and tetrarchs, the cool-nerved barrister protests, might have quarrelled for what he cared; he would not have meddled in their feuds to lose one hour of Gretchen's sweet companionship, if he might have had it heartily and fairly; but as things were, he adds, "I thought this a famous opportunity for making my escape without a parting."t For even your barristers are sometimes known to have a sensitive nervous system covered up by that parchment hide which tradition assigns them for an epidermis. Sir Samuel Romilly begins a letter to a dear friend by avowing that he ought to have taken leave of him in the coach at Rochester, "but could not, because I perceived I had not sufficient fortitude for the ceremony." Fanny Burney, in one of her letters to her father, is "almost afraid to ask," she says, "how my poor mother bore the last farewell [with another of her children]. Indeed, I hope she was virtuously cheated of a leave-taking."§ "That cursed good-bye," says Robert Southey, "is a word I never pronounce if it mean more than a fortnight's separation." Goethe's systematic avoidance of the same thing is highly characteristic of the man and of his philosophy of life. He left Leipzig in 1768 without saying adieu: "I saw the lamp burning and went to the steps; he afterwards writes to his old love, Käthchen Schönkopf, "but I had not the courage to mount." Mr. Lewes gives extracts from Kestner's Diary, of four years later, illustrative, as he says, of that dislike of "scenes", which made Goethe shrink from those emotions of leave-taking usually so eagerly sought by lovers.** And again, in relation to the Frau von Stein, in 1786, his biographer explains Goethe's concealing from her his projected journey to Italy, by his dread of 66 scenes. For, "leave-taking, as we know, was one of those painful emotions he always avoided when possible;" besides which, he may, on this occasion, it is hinted, have doubted the strength of his own resolution if it had to contend against her tears as well as his own sorrow.†† Those who distrust the depth of Goethe's emotional nature, and who regard him as a cold artist, of the self-sufficing epicurean school, may be reminded of what our best of essayists on social subjects has to observe of people who never will say good-bye, or encounter a parting, because they cannot stand it. The essayist propounds another rationale for this horror of scenes, and extreme solicitude to avoid them, as more in accordance with probability than the one so readily acquiesced in. "Men imagine *Michelet, Histoire de France, t. iv. 1. x. ch. iii, See Lewes's Life and Works of Goethe, book ii. ch. iv. ** Cf. Ibid., book iii. ch. iii. †† Ibid., vol. ii. book v. ch. iv. VOL. LXIII. M they are afraid of any expression of feeling because they might risk exposing themselves by some unmanly excess of vehement emotion; but have they not also other grounds for evading the trial?" The putter of that query shrewdly suspects that, under this superficial persuasion of our being too deeply moved in certain situations-perhaps torn and convulsed by tragic or pathetic passion-there is a lurking, unacknowledged misgiving that possibly we should not be moved enough for our credit, or even for our self-esteem: for to discover that the crust is impenetrablein fact, no crust at all, but just nether millstone inside and out-would be by no means gratifying to our self-love. "Yet people whose feelings are never reached, who carefully keep themselves out of the way of having them tried, are much more likely to have too little feeling than too much."* THE KNIGHT OF RIDLEY'S SON. BY WILLIAM JONES. I. PLEASANT are the woods of Ridley, Summer shines upon the dwelling, Not a friend his hearth to cheer, Lone he sits, and now is thinking Of his rent-roll, and the riches Care, that noble traits effaces, Robs the cheek of ruddy health--- Has in deep lines left the traces * Essays on Social Subjects, First Series, p. 90. Softly enters in his chamber One who knew him years beforeOne of firm, persuasive manners, Who had seldom cross'd his door; But a duty now impels him Thus to seek his former friend, And a strange, sad tale he tells him, Careless if his words offend. "Knight of Ridley, scant the welcome That you give to those you knew In the days of happier boyhood, When our hearts at least were true: We were then, as youth is ever, "Let that pass; stern age has taught us So may the mercy we expect To others free be given, For as we pardon or reject, We shall be judged in Heaven! "But to my theme: Some days gone by I met, when sauntering near, A woman and child in tatters, The meanest would loathe to wear: The mother and boy were smitten, "Nay, turn not aside, Sir Richard, "God's mercy! they would have found it; Had shielded the famish'd outcasts, When all other hope had fled: From your portal, ruthless driven, That is never blest by the poor, They had pass'd through the gates of Heaven, As Lazarus pass'd before! "I took them to my own dwelling, I nursed them and soothed their anguish, |