A Love Story, by a Bushman by - (classic literature books TXT) đ
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equals to commune with, he first entered the miniature world, as a student
at Heidelberg.
His education had been miserably neglected. He had read much; but his
reading had been without order and without system.
The deepest metaphysics, and the wildest romances had been devoured in
succession; until the young man hardly knew which was the real, or which
was the visionary world:âthe one he actually lived in, or the one he was
always brooding over:âwhere souls are bound together by mysterious and
hidden links, and where men sell themselves to Satan;âthe penalty merely
being:âto walk through life, and throw no shadow.
Enrolled amongst a select corps of brĂŒschen, warm and true; his ear was
caught by the imposing jargon of patriotism; and his imagination dwelt on
those high sounding words, âthe rights of man;ââuntil he became the
staunch advocate and unflinching votary of a state of things, which, for
aught we know, may exist in one of the planets, but which never can, and
which never will exist on this earth of ours.
âWhat!â would exclaim our enthusiast, âhave we not all our bodily and our
mental, energies? Doth not dame Nature, in our birth, as in our death,
deal out impartial justice? She may endow me with stronger limbs, than
another:âour feelings as we grow up, may not be chained down to one
servile monotony;âthe lip of the precocious cynicââthis was addressed to
a young matter of fact Englishmanââwho sneers at my present animation,
may not curl with a smile as often as my own; but let our powers of
acting be equal,âour prerogatives the same.â
Carl Obers, with his youth and his vivacity, carried his auditorsâa
little knot of beer drinking liberty-mongersâ_with_ him, and for him,
in all he said; and the orator would look round, with conscious power, and
considerable satisfaction; and flatter himself, that his specious
arguments were as unanswerable, as they were then unanswered.
Many of our generation may remember the unparalleled enthusiasm, which,
like an electric flash, spread over the civilised world; as Greece armed
herself, to shake off her Moslem ruler.
It was one that few could help sharing.
To almost all, is Greece a magic word. Her romantic historyâthe legacies
she has left usâour early recollections, identifying with her existence
as a nation, all that is good and glorious;âno wonder these things should
have shed a bright halo around her,âand have made each breast deeply
sympathise with her in her unwonted struggle for freedom.
Carl Obers did not hear of this struggle with indifference. He at once
determined to give Greece the benefit of his co-operation, and the aid of
his slender means. He immediately commenced an active canvass amongst his
personal friends, in order to form a band of volunteers, who might be
efficient, and worthy of the cause on which his heart was set.
He now first read an useful lesson from lifeâs unrolled volume.
Many a voice, that had rung triumphantly the changes on liberty, was
silent now, or deprecated the active attempt to establish it.
The hands that waved freely in the debating room, were not the readiest to
grasp the swordâs hilt. Many who had poetically expatiated on the
splendours of modern Greece; on reflection preferred the sunny views of
the Neckar, to the prospect of eating honey on Hymettus.
Youth, however, is the season for enterprise; and Carl, with twenty-three
comrades, was at length on his way to Trieste.
He had been offered the command of the little band, but had declined it,
with the sage remark, that âas they were about to fight for equality, it
was their business to preserve it amongst themselves.â
A slight delay in procuring a vessel, took place at Trieste. This delay
caused a defection of eight of the party.
The remaining students embarked in a miserable Greek brigantine, and after
encountering some storms in the Adriatic, thought themselves amply repaid,
as the purple hills of Greece rose before them.
On their landing, they felt disappointed.
No plaudits met them; no vivas rung in the air: but a Greek soldier
filched Carlâs valise, and on repairing to the commandant of the town,
they were told that no redress could be afforded them.
Willing to hope that the scum of the irregular troops was left behind, and
that better feeling, and stricter discipline, existed nearer the main
body; our students left on the morrow;âplaced themselves under the
command of one of the noted leaders of the Revolution:âand had shortly
the satisfaction of crossing swords with the Turk.
For some months, the party went through extraordinary hardships;âengaged
in a series of desultory but sanguinary expeditions;âand gradually learnt
to despise the nation, in whose behalf they were zealously combating.
At the end of these few months, what a change in the hopes and prospects
of the little band! Some had rotted in battle field, food for vultures;
others had died of malaria in Greek hamlets, without one friend to close
their eyes, or one hand to proffer the cooling draught to quench the dying
thirst;âtwo were missingâhad perhaps been murdered by the peasants;âand
five only remained, greatly disheartened, cursing the nation, and their
own individual folly.
Four of the five turned homewards.
Carl was left alone, but fought on.
Now there was a Greek, Achilles MetaxĂ by name, who had attached himself
to Carlâs fortunes. In person, he was the very model of an ancient hero.
He had the capacious brow, the eye of fire, and the full black beard,
descending in wavy curls to his chest.
The man was brave, too, for Carl and he had fought together.
It so happened, that they slept one night in a retired convent. Their
hardships latterly had been great, and the complaints of Achilles had been
unceasing in consequence. In the morning Carl rose, and found that his
clothes and arms had vanished, and that his friend was absent also.
Carl remained long enough to satisfy himself, that his friend was the
culprit; and then turned towards the sea coast, determined at all hazards
to leave Greece.
He succeeded in reaching Missolonghi, in the early part of 1823, shortly
after the death of Marco Botzarisâbeing then in a state of perfect
destitution, and his mental sufferings greatly aggravated by the
consciousness, that he had induced so many of his comrades to sacrifice
their lives and prospects in an unworthy cause.
At Missolonghi, where Mavrocordato reigned supreme, he was grudged the
paltry ration of a Suliote soldier, and might have died of starvation, had
it not been for the timely interposition of a stranger.
Moved by that strangerâs persuasion, Carl consented to form one of a
contemplated expedition against Lepanto; and, had his illustrious
benefactor lived, might have found a steady friend.
As it was, he waited not to hear the funeral oration, delivered by
Spiridion Tricoupi; but was on the deck of the vessel that was to bear him
homewards, and shed tears of mingled grief, admiration, and gratitude, as
thirty-seven minute guns, fired from the battery, told Greece and Carl
Obers, that they had lost Byron, their best friend.
Carl reached Germany, a wiser man than when he left it.
He found his father dead, and he came into possession of his small
patrimony; but felt greatly, as all men do who are suddenly removed from
active pursuits, the want of regular and constant employment.
He was glad to renew his intercourse with his old University; and found
himself greatly looked up to by the students, who were never wearied with
listening to his accounts of the Morea, and of the privations he had there
encountered.
We need hardly inform our readers, that Carl Obers was one of the
pedestrian students at Wallensee, and was indeed the identical narrator of
the Vienna story.
We left George and his brother, on the shore below the priestâs
cottage. The one was laid cold and motionlessâthe other wished that
he also were so.
Immediately on DelmĂ©âs falling, the young guide alarmed the
priestâbrought him down to the spotâpointed to the brothersâthrew
himself into the boatâand paddled swiftly across the lake, to alarm the
guests at the inn.
It was with feelings of deep commiseration, that Carl looked on the two
brothers. He was the only person present, whose time was comparatively his
own; he spoke English, although imperfectly; and he owed a deep debt of
gratitude to an Englishman.
These circumstances seemed to point him out, as the proper person to
attend to the wants of the unfortunate traveller; and Carl Obers mentally
determined, that he would not leave Delmé, as long as he had it in his
power to befriend him, Sir Henry Delmé was completely unmanned by his
bereavement. He had been little prepared for such a severe loss; although
it is more than probable, that Georgeâs life had long been hanging on a
thread, which a single moment might snap.
The medical men had been singularly sanguine in his case, for it is rarely
that disease of the heart attacks one so young; but it now seemed evident,
that even had not anxiety of mind, and great constitutional irritability,
hastened the fatal result, that poor George could never have hoped to have
survived to a ripe old age.
There was much in his character at any time, to endear him to an only
brother. As it was, Delmé had seen George under such trying
circumstancesâhad entered so fully into his feelings and sufferingsâthat
this abrupt termination to his brotherâs sorrows, appeared to Sir Henry
Delmé, to bring with it a sable pall, that enveloped in darkness his own
future life and prospects.
The remains of poor George were placed in a small room, communicating with
one intended for Sir Henry.
Here Delmé shut himself up, brooding over his loss, and permitting no one
to intrude on his privacy.
Carl had offered his services, which were gratefully accepted, in making
the necessary arrangements for his brotherâs obsequies; and Sir Henry, in
the solitude of the dead manâs chamber, could give free scope to a flood
of bitter recollections.
It may be, that those silent hours of agony, when the brother looked
fixedly on that moveless face, and implored the departed spirit to breathe
its dread and awful secret, were not without their improving tendency; for
haggard and wan as was the mournerâs aspect, there was no outward sign of
quivering, even as he saw the rude coffin lowered, and as fell on his ear,
the creaking of cords, and that harsh jarring sound, to which there is
nothing parallel on earth, the heavy clods falling on the coffin lid.
The general arrangements had been simple; but Carlâs directions had been
given in such a sympathising spirit, that they could not be otherwise than
acceptable.
About the church-yard itself, there is nothing very striking. It is
formed round a small knoll, on the summit of which stands a sarcophagus
literally buried in ivy.
Beneath this, is the vault of the baronial family, that for centuries
swayed the destinies of the little hamlet; but which family has been
extinct for some years.
Round it are grouped the humbler osiered graves; over which, in lieu of
tomb stones, are placed large black iron crosses, ornamented with brass,
and bearing the simple initials of the bygone dead.
Even DelmĂ©, with all his ancestral pride, felt that George âslept well.â
It is true no leaden coffin enclosed his relics, nor did the murky vault
of his ancestors, open with creaking hinge to receive another of the race.
No escutcheon darkened the porch whence they
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