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LITTELL'S LIVING AGE.-No. 398.-3 JANUARY, 1852.

From Fraser's Magazine.

THE REVELATIONS OF A COMMON-PLACE MAN.

CHAPTER I.

I ONCE imagined that when a man wrote his life, it was because he could instruct us by his strange experiences, or was a very remarkable personage, into whose secrets the public pined with curiosity I to penetrate. I comprehended that he was content to reveal himself truthfully, rather than leave his character to the sharp steel-pen of Malice, the clumsy pencil of Fiction, or, worst of all, the oily goose-quill of flattering Friendship, pointing out his defects as virtues and extolling as triumphs of wisdom and eccentricities of genius, absurdities or errors which he would not have dared to defend. But an earnest perusal of many recent confessions and reminiscences has led me to doubt the correctness of my ideas on the subject. I have waded through the autobiographies of eminent men, with a growing hope that they might prove eventually to have been rather indifferent fictions than faithful pictures of those I formerly considered the heroes of our age. Bitter, indeed, is the cure of the hero-worshipper.

As charm by charm unwinds,

Which robed our idols, and we see, too sure,
Nor worth nor beauty dwells from out the mind's
Ideal shape of such-

when the distorted limbs, the base material, the clay feet, are displayed, and a statesman figures as a puling boy-or philosophers, philanthropists, and patriots hang, Narcissus-like, over the mirrored reflex of self, mere egotists.

Perhaps you will urge that a long life of fame and flattery cannot fail to inflate the mind with a false estimate of its own powers. I do not believe it; but, if so, then far less offensive would be the revelations of a person, who, unknown to fame, has been preserved from its destructive influence; who is not vain, even for the poor reason that he has nothing of which to be vain!

"Then, my dear John," wrote back my beloved correspondent," why don't you write your life, for you are of all men the most fitted for it, by your own showing! I have often heard that the genuine memoir of the least interesting people on earth would not be destitute of instruction, and so I should, of all things, enjoy reading yours."

Save me from my friends! And yet this friend, this soft-spoken correspondent, is the dearest I have in the world. Who can wonder that with such a gratifying request I comply immediately?

I believe long endurance has blunted me to such assaults. My being common-place has been rung in my ears any day these thirty years, not only by my foes, but by my nearest of kin. And truth has echoed the fact in the recesses of my heart. Fate has confirmed it by weaving my life out of her most colorless yarn; it has been the mere idle, trifling task by which she has mechanically kept her loom in exercise, whilst she planned elaborate patterns, or dyed her brighter webs for more favored mortals. What then? Without such tame adjuncts, such walking gentlemen, the tableau of CCCXCVIII. LIVING AGE. VOL. XXXII. 1

life would be incomplete, a mass of harsh and startling contrasts. As my great grandfather sang

The brightest hues upon the canvass spread,
Form not the pictures which would seem to breathe;
Even your own portraits would be flat and dead
Without the sober coloring underneath.

did not spring from a common-place race.
My great grandfather, you see, was a poet-so

I wish I had. I should not have been such a

blot upon the escutcheon of the wonderful De Is it not interwoven with the thrilling records of Vaincys. Of course the world knows that name. history?

The foundress of our family aided Queen Matilda in her famous tapestry, and bequeathed to the learned court of Beauclerk a son, who would have surpassed that monarch himself in his attainments, had it not been a breach of loyalty.

There is rather a hiatus in the family legends during the Crusades and wars of the Roses, for learning was more our forte than fighting.

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But several abbots of our name were celebrated at. that era for the illuminated missals and fair copied manuscripts with which they enriched their monastic libraries. We were brilliant again in Elizabeth's time, when we went over, with some éclat, to the Protestant cause. A De Vaincy, it is said, first pronounced, "Will Shakspeare to be a fellow of some parts. Of course we were ruined by Oliver Cromwell, who had no taste for our kind of talent, and whose grammar we unmercifully criticized. Nevertheless, Charles the Second shamefully neglected us, and is reported to have declared that we had "more tongue than brains, and were rightly named, being vainer than peacocks." The saying is so destitute of the point he generally gave to his verdicts on men and manners, that it appeared to us unworthy of credit but certain it is, that we ceased from that time to be courtiers, and the title became extinct, the representation of the family descending once more in the female line. But Mistress Euphrosyne de Vaincy, ere she bestowed her hand and estates on a handsome soldier, who had fleshed his sword under the command of the great Marlborough, insisted upon his assumption of her name; which he did, nothing loth, his own being as insignificant as his means were small. Auspicious alliance! from which sprang the great originals of the stiff portraits hanging round me at this moment. grim, gaunt prelate, resting his lean hand on a thick volume of his sermons, is Bishop Hildebrand de Vaincy. His sermons are very long and learned,. and puzzling to read, especially in our old edition; but they are marvellously emphatic, with capital letters marshalled all through the yellow pages, and through the dry bones of the genuine De Vaincy diction there shine a warm, kindly, humane spirit and earnest faith, not uncheering. He must have derived these qualities from his nameless father, they are so unlike De Vaincy intellect. Octavius de Vaincy, his brother, and my great grandfather, was, as I told you, a poet and the

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fore, had borne their reproof so firmly, their hearts may, perhaps, have whispered that the flower of their race was laid low, and yet, when the first irresistible emotion subsided, they began seriously to consider the propriety of relinquishing all inter course with the unworthy interloper her love had brought amongst them.

friend of everybody who was anybody in those days. He bequeathed to us those autographs of which uncle Julian is so insufferably proud; but all the documents to which his erudite acquaintance appended their signature seem to me inane and unimportant beyond conception. There were other sons and daughters, all remarkable, but I shall only point out that stout damsel in blue, whose tea- Many a voice was audible in support of this digmaking Dr. Johnson praised highly, and her niece, nified resolution, and in all human probability this one of the poetesses of the bas-bleu set, the ally of narrative would never have been penned, had not the De Vesci and Montague. I must hurry over the newly-married wife of cousin Reginald intermy family history to my mother, for only on her fered. That cousin had lately risen into imporside do I claim this pure extraction. She was tance, as the wealth of my grandfather, the head of celebrated for her beauty and her skill in embroid- the house, wasted away. Lord Bacon wrote that ery, (traced to her descent from the tapestry- Nobility of birth commonly abateth industry." worker of the times of the Conquest.) Who shall | What then could be expected from the De Vaiucys! therefore depict the dismay of her illustrious rela- So many intellectual beings, too polished to be contives, when she confessed her attachment to a tented without luxury-too high-bred to work for country squire of such quiet respectability and it themselves, could not long feast upon the paternal and-such a name as my father's! Mediocre, in- resources without obviously diminishing them, and deed, was he, with a moderate fortune, a sub-gradually the De Vaincy establishment had assumed stantial manor-house, a good temper, good health, some sense, and an equanimity which nothing ever disturbed, unless it might be unusual talents in another. Hitherto he had been little proved in this particular; for, to do our neighbors justice, whatever they might think of themselves, there were amongst them few surpassing minds.

To a family, laying claim to hereditary talent and elegance, who never in a single act had departed from the strict rules of propriety, it may be imagined how great a shock was the announcement that the fairest of their circle was about to marry a cominon-place squire of the name of Black.

Yonder is my mother's faded portrait! Cannot you fancy her standing before them-the sunshine streaming on her pale golden curls, and on her delicate features; the finely-cut nostrils of her little aquiline nose just vibrate with suppressed scorn; her De Vaincy blue eyes are full of tears, through which they, nevertheless, flash indignantly as she dares them to throw a slur upon my father's excellence and standing in country society?

What a contemptuous elevation of all the pencilled eyebrows in the De Vaincy circle, as they groan forth simultaneously, "So common-place a man!" Great was the opposition to her choice, doubtful the result, until cousin Reginald, in a happy hour, recollected and quoted a passage from a sermon of the reverend bishop, which strongly censured undue coercion in matrimonial affairs, and as his authority was law, the sacrifice took place. Some malicious persons afterwards doubted the authenticity of that paragraph, or at least its application to the affections, instead of liberty of conscience in religious matters. On this I offer no opinion, although a certain lady (hereafter to be described) inclined to side with the sceptics, and never failed to remind my father of the fraud when he pursued a course contrary to her wishes.

Strange to say, my mother was undeniably happy in her married life, and when, six months after my birth, she caught cold in attending a scientific lecture with a literary connection, and died, my father had the consolation of knowing that her short sojourn in this world had not been embittered by any neglect on his part.

"That was no merit of his," said the De Vaincys; "he was too commonplace to be a bad husband!"

Once more the illustrious family assembled in the ancestral halls; as they missed from their number the fair young creature, who, three years be

66

a dreary aspect of more pomp than comfort; nay, it was even now dawning upon the perception of some, that Vainton Hall itself must ere long be the property of strangers, if the pride of cousin Reginald did not induce him to become its purchaser.

He represented a younger branch, now much the richest, owing to sundry accidents of marriage which had very likely been originally condemned by the main stem, but which were in time graciously overlooked in consideration of the aristocratic dictum, Il faut quelquefois engraisser ses terres-the truth of which was proved by the far greener foliage they have nurtured.

When Reginald further obliged the De Vaincys by choosing as his wife a pretty orphan of their name, with whose support they would otherwise have been unpleasantly burdened, he unconsciously added another claim to those he already possessed upon their respect. He had saved the rest a considerable yearly sum; he had shown a proper estimation of the superior qualities of the family, by thus more firmly cementing his union with it; in short, he was decidedly popular, and when his bride pleaded in behalf of the poor widower and his two helpless children, she was heard with proper sympathy.

Reginald himself, remembering that he had promoted the marriage, spoke up about the infants in whose veins flowed the blood of which they all boasted. Electrical was the effect of his little speech! Shame to those who would abandon such to a commonplace father and ordinary nurses.

"The more especially," observed a venerable grand-aunt in a letter I found lately amongst that very Cousin Reginald's papers, 66 as we, unlike most families, have ever been principally distinguished in the female line. Look at our honored foundress; look at the talent always evinced by the women! When, indeed, does genius not descend from the mother? And why, if properly educated, should not poor Matilda's son show himself a true scion of the De Vaincys? My grandmother was a lady of ready wit; notorious for her skill in managing her neighbors' affairs, and whilst this discussion took place-even whilst behind her cambric handkerchief she bewailed the loss of one daughter, she conceived a brilliant project for the disposal of another, at that period travelling abroad. It was suspected that the tempers of the mother and daughter did not altogether accord, which might in part account for the unselfishness with which the former now proposed to deprive herself of the latter's filial

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attentions, that the orphans of her lost Matilda pride of knowledge was blended a little anxiety to
might be cherished as they ought to be. The hint be admired as beautiful. One after another, sisters,
was eagerly seconded. My father, prepared for cousins, and friends married, but Maddalena was
utter neglect, was thunderstruck by the sudden ar- too clever to be chosen, or too fastidious to choose
rival of his wife's most important relatives-was any helpmate from amongst those who were con-
soothed, argued, and cajoled into a bewildered ac-sidered worthy of her acquaintance, and having
quiescence in their plans, and in less than a month,
Miss De Vaincy arrived to assume the reins of au-
thority at Ripplestone-reins which she firmly
grasped for years, and by which no one was more
sternly driven than her luckless brother-in-law.
My aunt!-ah, mystic appellation, which was a
As here I write
spell of terror to my infancy!
it for the first time in my autobiography, let me
My aunt!
pause and repeat it solemnly to myself."
Dread name, never gently softened to be more fit-
ting for our childish lisp-what a key-note it proved
to my history! How many joys it blighted! How
many griefs inflicted! Had I never spoken it,
what a different being I might have become!

waited many years, in expectation of some star turning up on the brilliant wheel of fortune, she averred her decided opinion, that no superior woman would ever dream of marrying, and lent a favorable degree of attention to the scheme which her mother set before her in glowing terms, when she announced my father's bereaved position. To devote her energy to the education of youth, to become the tutelary saint of a young genius, such as poor Matilda's infant would assuredly prove, appeared a graceful mode of exit from the gay world. Perhaps a vision of our comfortable house, our sleek carriage horses, our regularly paid bills, and thoroughly respectable position, may have been far This is a terrible result to the many years of from unpleasing to the needy daughter of proud care which Miss De Vaincy bestowed upon us; for but pinched Vainton Hall. I have often heard she was no pendant to the wicked uncle of the babes her tell how, during her journey to England, she in the wood-no coveter was she of our little for-drew many a picture of her youthful charge, of tune-no sentiment of revenge did she cherish in her bosom, and yet, would we had never seen her!

his clear blue eyes, his golden locks, and the fair broad forehead, beneath which slumbered - the organs her wand of power was to awaken into If there were in this world no evil but such as is energy. When a remarkably uninteresting baby was presented to the wonder-loving lady, when intentional, I believe it would be allowed to be a much more respectable and happy place than it the blue eyes proved to be dark, and the golden now is. Few do wrong deliberately. We love to ringlets faded into a scanty sprinkling of dull brown cheat ourselves into the persuasion that we mean hairs, her enthusiasm was severely checked. But well. We do not often look into our own hearts she remembered how often the dawn is cold and and read unfalteringly there that we are fraudulent, gray, which brightens into a glorious noon, and, cruel, or vindictive. No! the shrinking victim wilfully pretending not to perceive my plainness, may deem us harsh, may deprecate with tears, she invoked a blessing on this promising descendant almost of blood, our cutting words, and the iron of the De Vaincys, and contented herself by remarkhand that thrusts him forth relentlessly, but we ing that her care would remedy all defects-an Thus much of her conduct upon her arriknow that we are actuated neither by temper nor observation neither forgotten nor forgiven by my parsimony. The pure love of justice, the glorious nurse. strength of our will, the sensitive delicacy of our val, tradition has preserved, and the same authority honor, triumph over all weak compassion. He states that Aunt Maddalena presided with due digis poor, he is erring, he is dependent upon our aid-nity and success over the whole course of my begone! what have we to do with guilt and ruin? Does a man say we played him false? The accusation shows his evil imagination. We saw too plainly that he meant to wrong us-we thought him shuffling-we distrusted him, and so we saved ourselves. We could not be expected not to indemnify ourselves somewhat for our natural disappointment in his character. He complains that we have beggared him! What a disreputable creature he must be to have been so near beggary! And does any one know what we have lost?

Yes, generally we mean well. But some evil destiny instantly mars the issue of our acts. My aunt meant me to be, under her guidance, a hero, a statesman, a poet, a philosopher; but I became only asubject fit for my own pen-a common-place man!

CHAPTER II.

AT the period of my poor mother's death, Aunt
Maddalena was more than thirty years of age-how
much more was never ascertained by the junior
members of the family. One part of the De Vaincy
archives was wrapped in mystery-viz., all that
related to the birth of the ladies. Perhaps some
condition of secresy on this subject was connected
Such religious ob-
with the tenure of the estate.
servance of silence makes the supposition plausible.
have heard that my aunt was a handsome girl,
but her object of ambition then was fame for talent
and learning. As her charms waned, womanly
vanity began to assert its right, and now with her

childish disorders; for though my sight was en-
dangered by a new medical theory, when I had the
measles, and my life put in jeopardy by her pre-
scriptions for the hooping-cough, yet these storms
were weathered, and, despite the peculiar diet which
she patronized, I grew apace, and had I been left
to nature, would have cherished no wish in my
heart, no thought in my head, beyond what related
to eating, sleeping, and playing. Mine were, how-
ever, cheerless games. I recollect them joylessly
even now; each toy being but the emblem of some
grave science. My ball was a correct representa-
tion of the globe, and an explanation of its form and
divisions invariably preceded its use, until my little
hand almost trembled to toss about so carelessly
the mighty sphere on which we dwelt, and on
which a certain speck of ink denoted to my private
vision the domains of Ripplestone. My hoop
was another awful figure of the like nature. It
was the equator; it also served to illustrate a long
hard word, which it gave me infinite trouble to
read and pronounce, when it was tossed to me in
the dislocated form of ivory letters-c-i-r-c-u-m-
f-e-r-e-n-c-e. I knew I was a biped before I clearly
understood that ordinary people called me a little
boy; and I stood in awe of the dogs and cats, be-
cause I learned that they belonged to a terrific-
sounding genius, the quadruped. I caused my
aunt disappointment by my tardy attempts to speak,
but she was more successful in teaching me to read
early. It is my favorite theory that she thus in-

jured my memory. I have noticed since how | Nor was my disposition less painfully bandaged wonderfully well children recollect the stories we into Miss de Vaincy's form of perfection. Whatrepeat to them; and I think, that in the childhood ever I showed a desire to do or to possess, was forof man, as in that of nations, nature points out oral bidden; whatever I disliked, was made an imperateaching as the best. To a certain extent, reading tive duty. She carried her supervision into most and writing replace memory. We do not care to frivolous details. If a tempting orange appeared remember accurately what we can at once recall by at dessert, it was not given me to eat quietly, as a casting our eyes upon the book. I firmly believe, thing of no importance. No, it must be peeled that if I had not been taught my letters until I was slowly, carefully dissected into a hundred minute seven or eight, all my powers, mental and physical, portions, (thus often being the medium of impresswould have gained in strength. Knowledge pur- ing upon me a complex arithmetical problem,) then sued me everywhere. I was not clever-therefore sugared to a nicety, whilst I, screwed up on my acquired it with difficulty; docile-therefore re-high chair, watched the laborious process with belled not; affectionate-therefore suffered acutely, eager eyes and desiring palate, continually exhorted when my dull apprehension drew upon me punish- to patience. Nor was the classical doom of Tanment, not corporeal, but what was worse, rebukes, talus unknown to me either by precept or practice, appeals to my conscience and my better feelings- for if I enjoyed the first long-expected morsel too reminders of my duty as a human being, account- well, a swift hand bore away plate, orange, and all, able to Heaven for my use of its gifts, until my and a stern voice reproved my gluttony. Was I poor brain ached with the effort of understanding not taken abroad at the advanced age of eight, that the delicate shades of my delinquency, and I shud- I might acquire the correct French and German deringly suspected that my neglected spelling-lesson accent, that my mind might be further developed would call down upon me the wrath of that great by the study of new scenes and new people? Yet power, which the word Heaven indicated. that was not altogether an injudicious step. It rendered unavoidable some intermission of regular lessons, and change of air counteracted the bad effect of this forcing system upon my health. My jaded spirits rose, my weary body was invigorated, and my father's ejaculation on our return was a very fervent "Thank God!" as he embraced me.

My nurse had sometimes pointed to the blue sky and I loved the harmless fancy that He to whom I prayed at her knee had his throne aloft in that clear expanse that he smiled upon me in the warm sunshine, and that the fragrant breeze fanning my cheek was wafted from the snowy wings of his angels.

I could fold my hands gladly, and pray to our Father. I had no dread of one who reigned in realms so beautiful-nay, I almost wished the time were come when, if I were good, he would welcome me into that azure dome. My faith might not be orthodox, but it was one of love, not fear. "Perfect love casteth out fear." It comforted me when I went to my bed weeping over my stupidity. It was a gentle dream which warded from me the terrors of dark night. But my aunt soon dispelled the illusion.

This journey to the continent introduces a new era in my history and a new actress on the scene Hitherto I have spoken chiefly of myself, because in truth, little else was thought of at Ripplestone. My sister Ella, Miss De Vainey found neither time nor inclination to notice, and I, poor wretched slave, had scarcely leisure to attend to anything or person besides my miserable self. Yet I loved Ella, and she deserved all the importance unwisely concentrated upon her common-place brother. Had my aunt descried in her any resemblance to my mother, possibly her heart might have been drawn towards Into my astonished ears she poured truer infor- the child; but Ella was pale, and rather sallow; mation as to what I called heaven. She told me her dark hair and eyes made her, at the first glance, that the stars were worlds, full, perhaps, of sin and like her father. That was no recommendation to sorrow like our own-that the moon, the mild lu- my aunt. Moreover, having resolved that I should minary which I loved to see shining through the be the pride of the family, the latter had not room nursery windows when I awoke, was probably but in her affections for two. I wonder whether woa barren waste, rife with exhausted volcanoes; sub-men have an innate jealousy of their own sex. lime truths, which I now behold in their real glory, Perhaps in those early days, although reconciled but which were then too great for my comprehension. What had my childish intellect to do with the "plurality of worlds?" Besides, to me the earth itself had been revealed chiefly by its symbol, the terrestrial globe, and I hated to have my stars, which I deemed jewels paving the courts of heaven, turned into mere blotches on another arid ball, scrawled over with heathen names, and daubed with feeble colors.

to the prospect of a clever nephew, Miss De Vaincy might not relish the idea of having constantly beside her a niece, uniting the freshness of youth to the advantages of a superior education, and showing that she herself might be surpassed. Yet my sister was not excluded from the system of highpressure education under which I groaned. She was taught, and what was more, was present at my lessons. But she was a year older. She had enMy aunt grew seriously annoyed by my pertina-joyed a blessed period of liberty ere Miss De Vaincy cious adherence to my old belief. She called me arrived; indeed, the fact of her being able to walk out when a storm was raging, and asked me how I liked to watch my realms of glory when the sullen clouds were marshalled there in massive hosts, and the terrible voice of thunder reverberated from the blackened dome, which only the lurid gleam of forked lightning at intervals illuminated.

I saw and trembled. The light was extinguished in my soul; the divinity, in whose loving sunshine I basked, was removed from me; the splendor of his smiles was obscured, and his dwelling-place became thick darkness.

Knowledge was dearly purchased at such a price.

and talk without any aid from that lady, gave a prejudice against her. She was punished less on the appeal-to-conscience system. She was allowed to take shelter with her father, and prattle to him as she pleased, secure that he would not comment on her frivolity and the necessity of keeping the mind rivetted upon improving topics.

I loved Ella, but it was from a distance. I had no time for much intercourse with her, and she was not considered a worthy associate for me. Indeed, no young Grand Llama was ever more reli[giously hoarded up from too close communication

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