The Antiquary — Complete by Walter Scott (best fiction novels to read TXT) 📖

And yet anon repairs his drooping head, And tricks his beams, and with new-spangled ore Flames on the forehead”—*

* (Lycidas.)

“O! enough, enough!” answered Oldbuck; “I ought to have known what it was to give you advantage over me—But here is what will stop your career of satire, for you are an admirer of nature, I know.” In fact, when they had followed him through a breach in a low, ancient, and ruinous wall, they came suddenly upon a scene equally unexpected and interesting.

They stood pretty high upon the side of the glen, which had suddenly opened into a sort of amphitheatre to give room for a pure and profound lake of a few acres extent, and a space of level ground around it. The banks then arose everywhere steeply, and in some places were varied by rocks—in others covered with the copse, which run up, feathering their sides lightly and irregularly, and breaking the uniformity of the green pasture-ground.—Beneath, the lake discharged itself into the huddling and tumultuous brook, which had been their companion since they had entered the glen. At the point at which it issued from “its parent lake,” stood the ruins which they had come to visit. They were not of great extent; but the singular beauty, as well as the wild and sequestered character of the spot on which they were situated, gave them an interest and importance superior to that which attaches itself to architectural remains of greater consequence, but placed near to ordinary houses, and possessing less romantic accompaniments. The eastern window of the church remained entire, with all its ornaments and tracery work; and the sides, upheld by flying buttresses whose airy support, detached from the wall against which they were placed, and ornamented with pinnacles and carved work, gave a variety and lightness to the building. The roof and western end of the church were completely ruinous; but the latter appeared to have made one side of a square, of which the ruins of the conventual buildings formed other two, and the gardens a fourth. The side of these buildings which overhung the brook, was partly founded on a steep and precipitous rock; for the place had been occasionally turned to military purposes, and had been taken with great slaughter during Montrose’s wars. The ground formerly occupied by the garden was still marked by a few orchard trees. At a greater distance from the buildings were detached oaks and elms and chestnuts, growing singly, which had attained great size. The rest of the space between the ruins and the hill was a close-cropt sward, which the daily pasture of the sheep kept in much finer order than if it had been subjected to the scythe and broom. The whole scene had a repose, which was still and affecting without being monotonous. The dark, deep basin, in which the clear blue lake reposed, reflecting the water lilies which grew on its surface, and the trees which here and there threw their arms from the banks, was finely contrasted with the haste and tumult of the brook which broke away from the outlet, as if escaping from confinement and hurried down the glen, wheeling around the base of the rock on which the ruins were situated, and brawling in foam and fury with every shelve and stone which obstructed its passage. A similar contrast was seen between the level green meadow, in which the ruins were situated, and the large timber-trees which were scattered over it, compared with the precipitous banks which arose at a short distance around, partly fringed with light and feathery underwood, partly rising in steeps clothed with purple heath, and partly more abruptly elevated into fronts of grey rock, chequered with lichen, and with those hardy plants which find root even in the most arid crevices of the crags.

“There was the retreat of learning in the days of darkness, Mr. Lovel!” said Oldbuck,—around whom the company had now grouped themselves while they admired the unexpected opening of a prospect so romantic;—“there reposed the sages who were aweary of the world, and devoted either to that which was to come, or to the service of the generations who should follow them in this. I will show you presently the library;—see that stretch of wall with square-shafted windows—there it existed, stored, as an old manuscript in my possession assures me, with five thousand volumes. And here I might well take up the lamentation of the learned Leland, who, regretting the downfall of the conventual libraries, exclaims, like Rachel weeping for her children, that if the Papal laws, decrees, decretals, clementines, and other such drugs of the devil—yea, if Heytesburg’s sophisms, Porphyry’s universals, Aristotle’s logic, and Dunse’s divinity, with such other lousy legerdemains (begging your pardon, Miss Wardour) and fruits of the bottomless pit,—had leaped out of our libraries, for the accommodation of grocers, candlemakers, soapsellers, and other worldly occupiers, we might have been therewith contented. But to put our ancient chronicles, our noble histories, our learned commentaries, and national muniments, to such offices of contempt and subjection, has greatly degraded our nation, and showed ourselves dishonoured in the eyes of posterity to the utmost stretch of time—O negligence most unfriendly to our land!”

“And, O John Knox” said the Baronet, “through whose influence, and under whose auspices, the patriotic task was accomplished!”

The Antiquary, somewhat in the situation of a woodcock caught in his own springe, turned short round and coughed, to excuse a slight blush as he mustered his answer—“as to the Apostle of the Scottish Reformation”—

But Miss Wardour broke in to interrupt a conversation so dangerous. “Pray, who was the author you quoted, Mr. Oldbuck?”

“The learned Leland, Miss Wardour, who lost his senses on witnessing the destruction of the conventual libraries in England.”

“Now, I think,” replied the young lady, “his misfortune may have saved the rationality of some modern antiquaries, which would certainly have been drowned if so vast a lake of learning had not been diminished by draining.”

“Well, thank Heaven, there is no danger now—they have hardly left us a spoonful in which to perform the dire feat.”

So saying, Mr. Oldbuck led the way down the bank, by a steep but secure path, which soon placed them on the verdant meadow where the ruins stood. “There they lived,” continued the Antiquary, “with nought to do but to spend their time in investigating points of remote antiquity, transcribing manuscripts, and composing new works for the information of posterity.”

“And,” added the Baronet, “in exercising the rites of devotion with a pomp and ceremonial worthy of the office of the priesthood.”

“And if Sir Arthur’s excellence will permit,” said the German, with a low bow, “the monksh might also make de vary curious experiment in deir laboraties, both in chemistry and magia naturalis.”

“I think,” said the clergyman, “they would have enough to do in collecting the teinds of the parsonage and vicarage of three good parishes.”

“And all,” added Miss Wardour, nodding to the Antiquary, “without interruption from womankind.”

“True, my fair foe,” said Oldbuck; “this was a paradise where no Eve was admitted, and we may wonder the rather by what chance the good fathers came to lose it.”

With such criticisms on the occupations of those by whom the ruins had been formerly possessed, they wandered for some time from one moss-grown shrine to another, under the guidance of Oldbuck, who explained, with much plausibility, the ground-plan of the edifice, and read and expounded to the company