McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader Part 27

Why, how now, Cromwell!

Crom. I have no power to speak, sir.

Wol. What, amazed At my misfortunes? Can thy spirit wonder, A great man should decline? Nay, an you weep, I am fall'n indeed.

Crom. How does your grace?

Wol. Why, well; Never so truly happy, my good Cromwell.

I know myself now; and I fed within me A peace above all earthly dignities, A still and quiet conscience. The king has cured me, I humbly thank his grace; and from these shoulders, These ruin'd pillars, out of pity, taken A load would sink a navy!--too much honor: Oh, 't is a burthen, Cromwell, 'tis a burthen, Too heavy for a man that hopes for heaven!

Crom. I am glad your grace has made that right use of it.

Wol. I hope I have: I am able now, methinks, Out of a fort.i.tude of soul I feel, To endure more miseries, and greater far, Than my weak-hearted enemies dare offer.

What news abroad?

Crom. The heaviest, and the worst, Is your displeasure with the king.

Wol. G.o.d bless him!

Crom. The next is, that Sir Thomas More is chosen Lord chancellor in your place.

Wol. That's somewhat sudden: But he's a learned man. May he continue Long in his highness' favor, and do justice For truth's sake and his conscience; that his bones, When he has run his course, and sleeps in blessings, May have a tomb of orphans' tears wept on 'em!

What more?

Crom. That Cranmer is return'd with welcome, Install'd lord archbishop of Canterbury.

Wol. That's news indeed!

Crom. Last, that the Lady Anne, Whom the king hath in secrecy long married, This day was viewed in open as his queen, Going to chapel; and the voice is now Only about her coronation.

Wol. There was the weight that pull'd me down. O Cromwell, The king has gone beyond me: all my glories In that one woman I have lost forever: No sun shall ever usher forth mine honors, Or gild again the n.o.ble troops that waited Upon my smiles. Go! get thee from me! Cromwell; I am a poor, fall'n man, unworthy now To be thy lord and master: seek the king; That sun, I pray, may never set! I have told him What and how true thou art: he will advance thee; Some little memory of me will stir him-- I know his n.o.ble nature--not to let Thy hopeful service perish, too: good Cromwell, Neglect him not; make use now, and provide For thine own future safety.

Crom. O my lord, Must I, then, leave you? Must I needs forego So good, so n.o.ble, and so true a master?

Bear witness, all that have not hearts of iron, With what a sorrow Cromwell leaves his lord.

The king shall have my service; but my prayers Forever and forever shall be yours.

Wol. Cromwell, I did not think to shed a tear In all my miseries; but thou hast forced me, Out of thy honest truth, to play the woman.

Let's dry our eyes: and thus far hear me, Cromwell; And, when I am forgotten, as I shall be, And sleep in dull, cold marble, where no mention Of me more must be heard of, say, I taught thee; Say, Wolsey, that once trod the ways of glory, And sounded all the depths and shoals of honor, Found thee a way, out of his wreck, to rise in; A sure and safe one, though thy master missed it.

Mark but my fall, and that that ruin'd me.

Cromwell, I charge thee, fling away ambition: By that sin fell the angels; how can man, then, The image of his Maker, hope to win by it?

Love thyself last: cherish those hearts that hate thee; Corruption wins not more than honesty.

Still in thy right hand carry gentle peace, To silence envious tongues. Be just, and fear not: Let all the ends thou aim'st at be thy country's, Thy G.o.d's, and truth's; then, if thou fall'st, O Cromwell, Thou fall'st, a blessed martyr! Serve the king; And,--prithee, lead me in: There, take an inventory of all I have, To the last penny; 't is the king's: my robe, And my integrity to Heaven, is all I dare now call mine own. O Cromwell, Cromwell!

Had I but served my G.o.d with half the zeal I served my king, He would not in mine age Have left me naked to mine enemies.

Crom. Good sir, have patience.

Wol. So I have. Farewell The hopes of court! my hopes in Heaven do dwell.

Shakespeare.--Henry VIII, Act iii, Scene ii.

NOTES.--Wolsey, Cardinal Thomas (b. 1471, d. 1530), was for several years the favored minister or Henry VIII. of England. He acquired great wealth and power. In 1522, he was one of the candidates for the Papal Throne. In 1529, he was disgraced at the English court and arrested.

Cromwell, Thomas (b. 1490, d. 1540), was Wolsey's servant, After Wolsey's death, he became secretary to Henry VIII., and towards the close of his life was made Earl of Ess.e.x.

XL. THE PHILOSOPHER. (171)

John P. Kennedy, 1796-1870. This gentleman, eminent in American politics and literature, was born in Baltimore, graduated at the College of Baltimore, and died in the same city. He served several years in the Legislature of his native state, and three terms in the United States House of Representatives. He was Secretary of the Navy during a part of President Fillmore's administration, and was active in sending out the famous j.a.pan expedition, and Dr. Kane's expedition in search of Sir John Franklin. Mr. Kennedy wrote several novels, as well as political and other papers. His writings are marked by ease and freshness, The following extract is from "Swallow Barn," a series of sketches of early Virginia.

From the house at Swallow Barn there is to be seen, at no great distance, a clump of trees, and in the midst of these a humble building is discernible, that seems to court the shade in which it is modestly embowered. It is an old structure built of logs. Its figure is a cube, with a roof rising from all sides to a point, and surmounted by a wooden weatherc.o.c.k, which somewhat resembles a fish and somewhat a fowl.

This little edifice is a rustic shrine devoted to Cadmus, and is under the dominion of parson Chub. He is a plump, rosy old gentleman, rather short and thickset, with the blood vessels meandering over his face like rivulets,--a pair of prominent blue eyes, and a head of silky hair not unlike the covering of a white spaniel. He may be said to be a man of jolly dimensions, with an evident taste for good living, sometimes sloven in his attire, for his coat--which is not of the newest--is decorated with sundry spots that are scattered over it in constellations. Besides this, he wears an immense cravat, which, as it is wreathed around his short neck, forms a bowl beneath his chin, and--as Ned says--gives the parson's head the appearance of that of John the Baptist upon a charger, as it is sometimes represented in the children's picture books. His beard is grizzled with silver stubble, which the parson reaps about twice a week--if the weather be fair.

Mr. Chub is a philosopher after the order of Socrates. He was an emigrant from the Emerald Isle, where he suffered much tribulation in the disturbances, as they are mildly called, of his much-enduring country. But the old gentleman has weathered the storm without losing a jot of that broad, healthy benevolence with which Nature has enveloped his heart, and whose ensign she has hoisted in his face. The early part of his life had been easy and prosperous, until the rebellion of 1798 stimulated his republicanism into a fever, and drove the full-blooded hero headlong into a quarrel, and put him, in spite of his peaceful profession, to standing by his pike in behalf of his principles. By this unhappy boiling over of the caldron of his valor, he fell under the ban of the ministers, and tested his share of government mercy. His house was burnt over his head, his horses and hounds (for, by all accounts, he was a perfect Actaeon) were "confiscate to the state," and he was forced to fly. This brought him to America in no very compromising mood with royalty.

Here his fortunes appear to have been various, and he was tossed to and fro by the battledoor of fate, until he found a snug harbor at Swallow Barn; where, some years ago, he sat down in that quiet repose which a worried and badgered patriot is best fitted to enjoy.

He is a good scholar, and, having confined his readings entirely to the learning of the ancients, his republicanism is somewhat after the Grecian mold. He has never read any politics of later date than the time of the Emperor Constantine, not even a newspaper,--so that he may be said to have been contemporary with AEschines rather than Lord Castlereagh--until that eventful epoch of his life when his blazing rooftree awakened him from his anachronistical dream. This notable interruption, however, gave him but a feeble insight into the moderns, and he soon relapsed to Thucydides and Livy, with some such glimmerings of the American Revolution upon his remembrance as most readers have of the exploits of the first Brutus.

The old gentleman had a learned pa.s.sion for folios. He had been a long time urging Meriwether to make some additions to his collections of literature, and descanted upon the value of some of the ancient authors as foundations, both moral and physical, to the library. Frank gave way to the argument, partly to gratify the parson, and partly from the proposition itself having a smack that touched his fancy. The matter was therefore committed entirely to Mr. Chub, who forthwith set out on a voyage of exploration to the north. I believe he got as far as Boston. He certainly contrived to execute his commission with a curious felicity.

Some famous Elzevirs were picked up, and many other antiques that n.o.body but Mr. Chub would ever think of opening.

The cargo arrived at Swallow Burn in the dead of winter. During the interval between the parson's return from his expedition and the coming of the books, the reverend little schoolmaster was in a remarkably unquiet state of body, which almost prevented him from sleeping: and it is said that the sight of the long-expected treasures had the happiest effect upon him. There was ample accommodation for this new acquisition of ancient wisdom provided before its arrival, and Mr. Chub now spent a whole week in arranging the volumes on their proper shelves, having, as report affirms, altered the arrangement at least seven times during that period.

Everybody wondered what the old gentleman was at, all this time; but it was discovered afterwards, that he was endeavoring to effect a distribution of the works according to a minute division of human science, which entirely failed, owing to the unlucky accident of several of his departments being without any volumes.

After this matter was settled, he regularly spent his evenings in the library. Frank Meriwether was hardly behind the parson in this fancy, and took, for a short time, to abstruse reading. They both consequently deserted the little family circle every evening after tea, and might have continued to do so all the winter but for a discovery made by Hazard.

Ned had seldom joined the two votaries of science in their philosophical retirement, and it was whispered in the family that the parson was giving Frank a quiet course of lectures in the ancient philosophy, for Meriwether was known to talk a great deal, about that time, of the old and new Academicians. But it happened upon one dreary winter night, during a tremendous snowstorm, which was banging the shutters and doors of the house so as to keep up a continual uproar, that Ned, having waited in the parlor for the philosophers until midnight, set out to invade their retreat--not doubting that he should find them deep in study. When he entered the library, both candles were burning in their sockets, with long, untrimmed wicks; the fire was reduced to its last embers, and, in an armchair on one side of the table, the parson was discovered in a sound sleep over Jeremy Taylor's "Ductor Dubitantium," whilst Frank, in another chair on the opposite side, was snoring over a folio edition of Montaigne.

And upon the table stood a small stone pitcher, containing a residuum of whisky punch, now grown cold. Frank started up in great consternation upon hearing Ned's footstep beside him, and, from that time, almost entirely deserted the library. Mr. Chub, however, was not so easily drawn away from the career of his humor, and still shows his hankering after his leather-coated friends.

NOTES.--Cadmus is said to have taught the Greeks the use of the alphabet.

Socrates (b. 469, d. 399 B. C.), a noted Athenian philosopher.

Rebellion.--In 1798, the Irish organized and rose against the English rule. The rebellion was suppressed.

Actaeon [Ak-te'on], a fabled Greek hunter, who was changed into a stag.

Constantine, the Great (b. 272, d, 337), the first Christian emperor of Rome. He was an able general and wise legislator, In 328, he removed his capital to Byzantium, which he named Constantinople. AEschines [es'ke-nez]

(b. 389, d. 314 B. C.), an Athenian orator, the rival of Demosthenes.

Castlereagh, Lord (b. 1769, d. 1822), a British statesman. He was in power, and prominent in the suppression of the Rebellion. Brutus, see p.

145.

Elzevirs [el'ze-virs], the name of a family of Dutch printers noted for the beauty of their workmans.h.i.+p. They lived from 1540 to 1680.

Academicians.-The Old Academy was founded by Plato, at Athens, about 380 B. C. The New, by Carneades, about two hundred years later.

Jeremy Taylor (b. 1613, d. 1667), an English bishop and writer. His Ductor Dubitantium, or "Rule of Conscience," was one of his chief works.

Montaigne, Michel (b. 1533, d. 1592), was a celebrated French writer of peculiar characteristics. He owes his reputation entirely to his "Essais."

XLI. MARMION AND DOUGLAS. (176)

Not far advanced was morning day, When Marmion did his troop array To Surrey's camp to ride; He had safe conduct for his band, Beneath the royal seal and hand, And Douglas gave a guide.

The train from out the castle drew, But Marmion stopped to bid adieu: "Though something I might plain," he said, "Of cold respect to stranger guest, Sent hither by your king's behest, While in Tantallon's towers I staid, Part we in friends.h.i.+p from your land, And, n.o.ble Earl, receive my hand."

But Douglas round him drew his cloak, Folded his arms, and thus he spoke: "My manors, halls, and bowers shall still Be open, at my sovereign's will, To each one whom he lists, howe'er Unmeet to be the owner's peer.

My castles are my king's alone, From turret to foundation stone; The hand of Douglas is his own; And never shall, in friendly grasp, The hand of such as Marmion clasp."