第73章

You no more interest me than a dozen orange-women in Covent-Garden, or a shop book-keeper in Oxford Street.But you make me think of a time when you were indeed wonderful to behold--when the little French soldiers wore white cockades in their shakos--when the diligence was forty hours going to Paris; and the great-booted postilion, as surveyed by youthful eyes from the coupe, with his jurons, his ends of rope for the harness, and his clubbed pigtail, was a wonderful being, and productive of endless amusement.You young folks don't remember the apple-girls who used to follow the diligence up the hill beyond Boulogne, and the delights of the jolly road? In making continental journeys with young folks, an oldster may be very quiet, and, to outward appearance, melancholy; but really he has gone back to the days of his youth, and he is seventeen or eighteen years of age (as the case may be), and is amusing himself with all his might.He is noting the horses as they come squealing out of the post-house yard at midnight; he is enjoying the delicious meals at Beauvais and Amiens, and quaffing ad libitum the rich table-d'hote wine; he is hail-fellow with the conductor, and alive to all the incidents of the road.A man can be alive in 1860 and 1830 at the same time, don't you see? Bodily, Imay be in 1860, inert, silent, torpid; but in the spirit I am walking about in 1828, let us say;---in a blue dress-coat and brass buttons, a sweet figured silk waistcoat (which I button round a slim waist with perfect ease), looking at beautiful beings with gigot sleeves and tea-tray hats under the golden chestnuts of the Tuileries, or round the Place Vendome, where the drapeau blanc is floating from the statueless column.Shall we go and dine at "Bombarda's," near the "Hotel Breteuil," or at the "Cafe Virginie?"--Away! "Bombarda's" and the "Hotel Breteuil" have been pulled down ever so long.They knocked down the poor old Virginia Coffee-house last year.My spirit goes and dines there.My body, perhaps, is seated with ever so many people in a railway-carriage, and no wonder my companions find me dull and silent.Have you read Mr.Dale Owen's "Footfalls on the Boundary of Another World?"--(My dear sir, it will make your hair stand quite refreshingly on end.) In that work you will read that when gentlemen's or ladies' spirits travel off a few score or thousand miles to visit a friend, their bodies lie quiet and in a torpid state in their beds or in their arm-chairs at home.So in this way, I am absent.My soul whisks away thirty years back into the past.I am looking out anxiously for a beard.

I am getting past the age of loving Byron's poems, and pretend that I like Wordsworth and Shelley much better.Nothing I eat or drink (in reason) disagrees with me; and I know whom I think to be the most lovely creature in the world.Ah, dear maid (of that remote but well-remembered period), are you a wife or widow now?--are you dead?--are you thin and withered and old?--or are you grown much stouter, with a false front? and so forth.

O Eliza, Eliza!--Stay, WAS she Eliza? Well, I protest I have forgotten what your Christian name was.You know I only met you for two days, but your sweet face is before me now, and the roses blooming on it are as fresh as in that time of May.Ah, dear Miss X----, my timid youth and ingenuous modesty would never have allowed me, even in my private thoughts, to address you otherwise than by your paternal name, but THAT (though I conceal it) I remember perfectly well, and that your dear and respected father was a brewer.

CARILLON.--I was awakened this morning with the chime which Antwerp cathedral clock plays at half-hours.The tune has been haunting me ever since, as tunes will.You dress, eat, drink, walk and talk to yourself to their tune: their inaudible jingle accompanies you all day: you read the sentences of the paper to their rhythm.I tried uncouthly to imitate the tune to the ladies of the family at breakfast, and they say it is "the shadow dance of Dinorah." It may be so.I dimly remember that my body was once present during the performance of that opera, whilst my eyes were closed, and my intellectual faculties dormant at the back of the box; howbeit, Ihave learned that shadow dance from hearing it pealing up ever so high in the air, at night, morn, noon.

How pleasant to lie awake and listen to the cheery peal! whilst the old city is asleep at midnight, or waking up rosy at sunrise, or basking in noon, or swept by the scudding rain which drives in gusts over the broad places, and the great shining river; or sparkling in snow which dresses up a hundred thousand masts, peaks, and towers;or wrapped round with thunder-cloud canopies, before, which the white gables shine whiter; day and night the kind little carillon plays its fantastic melodies overhead.The bells go on ringing.

Quot vivos vocant, mortuos plangunt, fulgara frangunt; so on to the past and future tenses, and for how many nights, days, and years!