in mine herte have ’hem in reverence,So hertily, that there is gamé none,
That fro my bokis makith me to gone,
But it be seldome, on the holie daie;
Save certainly whan that the month of Maie
Is cousin, and I here the foulis sing,
And that the flouris ginnin for to spring,
Farwell my boke and my devocion:
when his attention was attracted by a young gentleman who was sitting on a camp stool with a portfolio on his knee, taking a sketch of the Roman Camp, which, as has been already said, was within the enclosed domain of Mr. Crotchet. The young stranger, who had climbed over the fence, espying the portly divine, rose up, and hoped that he was not trespassing. “By no means, sir,” said the divine, “all the arts and sciences are welcome here; music, painting, and poetry; hydrostatics and political economy; meteorology, transcendentalism, and fish for breakfast.”
The Stranger.—A pleasant association, sir, and a liberal and discriminating hospitality. This is an old British camp, I believe, sir?
The Rev. Dr. Folliott.—Roman, sir; Roman; undeniably Roman. The vallum is past controversy. It was not a camp, sir, a castrum, but a castellum, a little camp, or watch-station, to which was attached, on the peak of the adjacent hill, a beacon for transmitting alarms. You will find such here and there, all along the range of chalk hills, which traverses the country from north-east to south-west, and along the base of which runs the ancient Iknield road, whereof you may descry a portion in that long straight white line.
The Stranger.—I beg your pardon, sir; do I understand this place to be your property?
The Rev. Dr. Folliott.—It is not mine, sir: the more is the pity; yet is it so far well, that the owner is my good friend, and a highly respectable gentleman.
The Stranger.—Good and respectable, sir, I take it, means rich?
The Rev. Dr. Folliott.—That is their meaning, sir.
The Stranger.—I understand the owner to be a Mr. Crotchet. He has a handsome daughter, I am told.
The Rev. Dr. Folliott.—He has, sir. Her eyes are like the fish-pools of Heshbon, by the gate of Bethrabbim; and she is to have a handsome fortune, to which divers disinterested gentlemen are paying their addresses. Perhaps you design to be one of them?
The Stranger.—No, sir; I beg pardon if my questions seem impertinent; I have no such design. There is a son too, I believe, sir, a great and successful blower of bubbles?
The Rev. Dr. Folliott.—A hero, sir, in his line. Never did angler in September hook more gudgeons.
The Stranger.—To say the truth, two very amiable young people, with whom I have some little acquaintance, Lord Bossnowl, and his sister, Lady Clarinda, are reported to be on the point of concluding a double marriage with Miss Crotchet and her brother; by way of putting a new varnish on old nobility. Lord Foolincourt, their father, is terribly poor for a lord who owns a borough.
The Rev. Dr. Folliott.—Well, sir, the Crotchets have plenty of money, and the old gentleman’s weak point is a hankering after high blood. I saw your acquaintance, Lord Bossnowl, this morning, but I did not see his sister. She may be there, nevertheless, and doing fashionable justice to this fine May morning, by lying in bed till noon.
The Stranger.—Young Mr. Crotchet, sir, has been, like his father, the architect of his own fortune, has he not? An illustrious example of the reward of honesty and industry?
The Rev. Dr. Folliott.—As to honesty, sir, he made his fortune in the city of London, and if that commodity be of any value there, you will find it in the price current. I believe it is below par, like the shares of young Crotchet’s fifty companies. But his progress has not been exactly like his father’s. It has been more rapid, and he started with more advantages. He began with a fine capital from his father. The old gentleman divided his fortune into three not exactly equal portions; one for himself, one for his daughter, and one for his son, which he handed over to him, saying, “Take it once for all, and make the most of it; if you lose it where I won it, not another stiver do you get from me during my life.” But, sir, young Crotchet doubled, and trebled, and quadrupled it, and is, as you say, a striking example of the reward of industry; not that I think his labour has been so great as his luck.
The Stranger.—But, sir, is all this solid? is there no danger of reaction? no day of reckoning to cut down in an hour prosperity that has grown up like a mushroom?
The Rev. Dr. Folliott.—Nay, sir, I know not. I do not pry into these matters. I am, for my own part, very well satisfied with the young gentleman. Let those who are not so look to themselves. It is quite enough for me that he came down last night from London, and that he had the good sense to bring with him a basket of lobsters. Sir, I wish you a good morning.
The stranger having returned the reverend gentleman’s good morning, resumed his sketch, and was intently employed on it when Mr. Crotchet made his appearance with Mr. Mac Quedy and Mr. Skionar, whom he was escorting round his grounds, according to his custom with new visitors; the principal pleasure of possessing an extensive domain being that of showing it to other people. Mr. Mac Quedy, according also to the laudable custom of his countrymen, had been appraising everything that fell under his observation; but, on arriving at the Roman camp, of which the value was purely imaginary, he contented himself with exclaiming: “Eh! this is just a curiosity, and very pleasant to sit in on a summer day.”
Mr. Skionar.—And call up the days of old, when the Roman eagle spread its wings in the place of that beechen foliage. It gives a fine idea of duration, to think that that fine old tree must have sprung from the earth ages after this camp was formed.
Mr. Mac Quedy.—How old, think you, may the tree be?
Mr. Crotchet.—I have records which show it to be three hundred years old.
Mr. Mac Quedy.—That is a great age for a beech in good condition. But you see the camp is some fifteen hundred years, or so, older; and three times six being eighteen, I think you get a clearer idea of duration out of the simple arithmetic, than out of your eagle and foliage.
Mr. Skionar.—That is a very unpoetical, if not unphilosophical, mode of viewing antiquities. Your philosophy is too literal for our imperfect vision. We cannot look directly into the nature of things; we can only catch glimpses of the mighty shadow in the camera obscura of transcendental intelligence. These six and eighteen are only words to which we give conventional meanings. We can reason, but we cannot feel, by help of them. The tree and the eagle, contemplated in the ideality of space and time, become subjective realities, that rise up as landmarks in the mystery of the past.
Mr. Mac Quedy.—Well, sir, if you understand that, I wish you joy. But I must be excused for holding that my proposition, three times six are eighteen, is more intelligible than yours. A worthy friend of mine, who is a sort of amateur in philosophy, criticism, politics, and a wee bit of many things more, says: “Men never begin to study antiquities till they are saturated with civilisation.”
Mr. Skionar.—What is civilisation?
Mr. Mac Quedy.—It is just respect for property. A state in which no man takes wrongfully what belongs to another, is a perfectly civilised state.
Mr. Skionar.—Your friend’s antiquaries
