Originally published in Tait's Edinburgh Magazine (William Tait) vol.4 #19 (Oct 1833).
The Drawing-room was brilliantly lighted up, and pleasantly perfumed. A variety of early flowers was tastefully arranged in a large china vase. The harp stood in its usual place. But its strings had ceased to vibrate. The hands that had struck them were now feeble and powerless, and the voice that had rivalled their sweetest tones was now about to be hushed for ever.
There was indeed a great change. But how beautiful the wreck which still remained! Catharine, reclining on a settée, was enveloped in a white sack, the ample folds of which did not conceal her attenuated form. A profusion of dark ringlets lay neglected on her slender shoulders. Her eyes, naturally brilliant, large, and dark, now shone from their hollow sockets with a sort of supernatural lustre—while a livid circle which surrounded them formed a striking contrast to the marble paleness of her cheeks. The canker-worm was there; it had rioted, but could not consume; for even amidst the desolation which it had wrought, how beautiful, in its ruin, that almost ethereal fabric which was about to be levelled with the earth!
Catharine suddenly started up. Anxiety and alarm were depicted in her aspect. She lifted up her eyes to those who were around her, with a look which eloquently implored that much-needed assistance which yet she knew they could not render. "I feel something which I never felt before," she said, with evident perturbation; and then, turning to her father,[1] who was sitting at the foot of the settée, she added, "Do not weep—it will soon be over!" It was that trying moment, when the angel of death has made his first descent upon the unresisting heart—when the trembling sufferer feels, for the first time, the reality of that fearful struggle which is about to commence betwixt the soul and the body, and which, before, was known only speculatively; when the mind is exceedingly amazed and perplexed under the agony of the present, and the impenetrable darkness which involves the future. In a few minutes she became calm and composed; conversed affectionately with the few friends that attended her; and, in meek resignation, seemed to await that crisis which seals the destiny alike of the timid and the brave.
They who have attended a death-bed, know what passes on such occasions. They have received the parting advice and last benedictions of the dying. They have taken the last mournful "farewell," and have felt the last gentle, but fond pressure of the hand, and have watched the glance which, while feeling and intelligence lasted, became, as death advanced, more and more intense, till at length the feeble voice has become mute for ever; and the restless hands have become motionless; and the eyes, which before gleamed piercingly, beamless and glazed. They have witnessed, as it were, the dissolution of the world itself; for who has not felt, in such an hour, that the world was then nothing to him, as if in fact it had come to an end? They have thus discovered the emptiness of human greatness, and the folly of human pride, and the weakness and imbecility of human strength. They have seen the only real cause of joy or of sorrow.—But humanity seeks to draw a veil over the the more appalling part of the scene. Suffice it to say, that behind the veil is the operation of what we call death. There is experienced the bitterest pang of dissolution; the breaking, and tearing away of the heart-strings; the loosing of the "silver cord," which mysteriously unites the spirit with flesh and blood: the severation of soul and body, never again to come together, till the dawn of an eternal morn.
William left this scene with a heavy heart. He remembered those passages of Scripture which Catharine had uttered. Alas! in such a moment, those words, though full of comfort to others, had none for him. They were like a precious ointment, which a man has in his possession, but whose wounds are too deep, and too painful to be either healed or alleviated by its application. There was "balm in Gilead;" but there was "no physician there," to apply it with efficacy to his wounded spirit. Scarcely breathing, he repeated them, one after another, with the intensest interest. The feeble tone in which Catharine had uttered them had penetrated his heart, and communicated a depth of melancholy to the expressions themselves, and to their import a fearful certainty, which he had never before found attached to them. At length he gave way to a flood of grief, such as had not rushed from his eyes since the days of childhood. But this, so far from soothing, tended only to aggravate and increase that anguish which nature thus vainly strove to assuage. The very consciousness that those tears were unavailing—the bitter sense of their utter inutility, but augmented that agony which was already too much to bear. It was long past midnight. The sky was clear and cloudless. The moon was full, and was careering through the heavens, rejoicing in her own splendour. William hurried on, he "knew not where, and cared not whither."
He stopped not till he found himself, without any consciousness of such design, standing before that little recess[2] where he had first seen Miss —. The moon, still unclouded, was just about to set behind the western extremity of the Pentlands. Its light but faintly illuminated the tops of the hills. All below and around was dark. The wind, rustling through the yet unfoliaged branches of the high trees, occasioned a low moaning sound, as if they were mourning for the loss of that light which had left them. He threw himself down on the ground on which the feet of Catharine had once rested. The air was cold and damp. Intensity of mental suffering had rendered him feeble and powerless. A benumbing sensation crept over his frame; and, though sleep was far from him, he felt a sort of morbid drowsiness, such as that which opiates are said to create. He lay thus, it might be, for an hour. His imagination then carried him to the death-couch of Catharine. There she lay, if possible, more pale, and melancholy, and beautiful, than ever. Her father bent over her and wept. William was conscious that this was an illusion. Again he felt the cold ground beneath him, and some drops of rain fall on his face. Immediately a light shone round about him. It was brighter and more dazzling than the sun. He beheld Catharine in the midst of that light. And when he saw her, he could not look up because of the exceeding brightness. She was the same—her eyes the same, but more beautiful than he had ever seen her. She approached, stooped down, and looked upon him. He held out his arms; but, though she was close beside him, some secret power seemed to withhold him from clasping her. She wiped away with her hand the cold dew which had settled on his forehead; and having kissed it, she looked into his eyes with that ardent and steady gaze, which, alas! in former days, had been too well known, He could not suffer it longer. He started up, uttered a wild cry, and looked around him. There was nothing but midnight darkness, "Catharine!" he cried, as if she had been really with him; "Catharine! are you gone?" A voice from the rocks responded to his call, "Catharine—gone!" Recollection returned with its fearful reality; but he reeled, staggered, and sunk down, in a merciful insensibility of that misery which was greater than weak mortality could endure.
It was still dark when William awoke—if one can be said to awake when all power of recollection has gone from him. He opened his eyes with a thrill of horror. A vague perception of existence floated through his brain; but the nature of that existence, or who or what he was, the most painful efforts were unable to distinguish. It was not a lethargy—a mere stupor, or suspension of feeling: such a state would have been comparatively enviable. He was not asleep—of this he was certain; and he retained sensation, too; but it was of the most terrifying nature. It was, in one word, as if he had been a phenomenon in the law of nature—a species of creature at one and the same moment possessing and devoid of the principle of vitality. Forms and colours, of which he either had no knowledge or but a very imperfect idea, passed before him in inconceivably rapid succession; and he heard sounds, of which, before, he had no conception, and the individuality of which no effort of recollection could ever recall. And then there was a chaos of utter darkness and nonentity: nothing visible, nothing perceptible; a fearful void, and a silence still more fearful. He put his hands to his face,—and felt his clothes, with the instinctive purpose of discovering any medium of recognition; but all in vain. He was unable, after the utmost struggles, to ascertain his own identity. In the madness of despair he shrieked aloud. The sound of his own voice brought to his aid some more definite consciousness of being; but it was still horrible and bewildered. Again he made a desperate struggle to shake off his delirium; and again he failed. He was now enabled to cry out. "This is madness," he muttered, gnashing his teeth, and looking wildly around him. "I feel it in my brain; I feel it in every nerve." And he continued to chatter, glaring around him in the thick darkness, more like one possessed of an evil spirit that had effected its escape from hell, than a being who, but a few hours before, had breathed the gentle spirit of humanity.
The energies of mind and body were more than spent. A deathlike stillness overspread his frame, and he lay prostrate on the ground, in a state bordering upon total insensibility. In this perilous situation, a flash of lightning passed over him, accompanied with a great whirlwind. It was succeeded, almost instantaneously, by a peal of thunder, so loud and prolonged, that the hills groaned, as if shaken to their foundations. The bolt had struck the rock under which he lay. It was rent and shivered into a thousand pieces. A huge fragment, separated from the principal mass, tottered for a few seconds on the edge of the precipice, and hurled down, rending and crashing, into the valley beneath. The rolling of the thunder—the rushing of the whirlwind—the splashing of the rain, as it fell down from the clouds with the noise of a mountain torrent; the creaking of the oaks—the ceaseless cawing of the rooks, as, driven by terror from their resting-place, they wheeled round in short, broken circles, many of them encountering, in their desperate flights, the electric fluid; the bellowing of the distracted cattle, with the restless bleating of the flocks, when their feeble voices could be heard in the brief intervals of the storm—and, above all, the lurid and unearthly glare of the lightning itself, as, in the darkness of the night, it darted, almost without intermission, its forked and appalling form over the breadth of the earth,—all seemed to announce that some fearful crisis was approaching.
In the midst of this elemental war, the dormant faculties of William had been roused; but they were strangely perverted by the mysterious occurrences of the night. The vision which be had seen still floated through his fancy, accompanied with various supernatural connexions, real or imaginary; and the bewildered and agonizing impressions which these had left, were little fitted to dispel the illusions under which he laboured. His first impression was that he had been long dead—buried, and had now risen out of his grave. He heard the sound of trumpets, and the noise as of an army rushing to battle. As he listened, he saw a great assemblage of what he would have accounted human beings, but for a bright spiritual light that emanated from their bodies—beings in whom were blended more than earthly beauty, with the dazzling and unsullied effulgence of an ethereal essence. And many of them had harps. And when these touched the strings of their harps, the sound was as it were the sound of angels' voices. And while he wondered what this might mean, he saw an innumerable multitude of creatures, of frightful shape and aspect; some maddening with fiendish rage—others, apparently stupified with horror, venting, by terrific looks and gestures, their unutterable despair; and all impotently struggling to elude, while they were precipitately borne down by, some unknown power, the brightness of which was terrible to look upon. And then there arose fearful shrieks, and sounds of wailing and wo. And then all was silence and darkness as before. And he shuddered at the thought that he had been recalled to a sense of existence, only that he might be struck into utter nonentity. Again the lightning burst, and the thunder rolled. Flash succeeded flash, in such rapid and uninterrupted succession that the heavens and the earth seemed in one continuous blaze; while the concave rocks and huge basaltic columns on the wester hill reverberated heaven's ordnance in interminable roarings. He sunk down in the attitude of supplication. His eyes, lifted upwards, assumed a spectre-like immobility of glare. His hands were clenched. His whole frame became convulsed. He uttered some words, but they were words of incoherence and fear. His head began to swim—his limbs gave way under him, and he again fell prostrate on the ground, with a feeble groan.
The morning dawned, and a bright sun shone on the green tops of the hills. Everything was so still that it seemed as if nature, exhausted by the ebullition of her fury, was recruiting her energies in profound repose. William sat on a fragment of the rock. He was wet, cold, and stiff. His head leaned on his hand. His eyes rested languidly on the verdant summit,—and, as he looked upon it, he contrasted the freshness and serenity of the scene with the withering blight that had fallen on his heart. "This world," he said, "is a mere delusion. There is nothing in it which is real. All is airy and unsubstantial. What is pleasure? it is but a dream. What is joy? it is an empty sound. We raise the cup to our mouth, with the confident belief that we have only to drink, to make us completely happy. Our lips have scarcely touched its brim before this cup, with all its prized contents, is, by an unseen hand, dashed to the ground. Life itself is but "a vapour, which appeareth for a little while, and then vanisheth away!"
1. Perhaps no man that Scotland has produced has done more towards the advancement of science, and the diffusion of sound and liberal views, than the gifted individual here alluded to. His writings, though the greater part of them were given to the world in his younger years, are characterized and distinguished by a purity and vigour of conception, by a condensation of argument, and profundity of reasoning, which at once obtained for their author that admiration and respect which splendid talents must ever acquire to their possessor. The most abstract and speculative truths were rendered familiar and attractive to the meanest capacity, by the clear and luminous positions in which he had placed them, the arrangement he adopted, and the classical elegance of his style.
2. A rocky seat on the east of the policy of Craig Lockhart, in the formation of which art has aided nature.