Guy Livingstone | Page 3

fatal candlestick as an inestimable relic,
wreathing its stem with laurel and myrtle, in imitation of the honors
paid by Athens to the sword that slew the Pisistratid.
CHAPTER II.
"My only books Were woman's looks, And folly all they taught me."
The Count bore his honors very calmly, though every week some fresh
feat of bodily strength or daring kept adding to his popularity. It was no
slight temptation to his vanity; for, as some one has said truly, no
successful adventurer in after-life ever wins such undivided admiration
and hearty partisans as a school hero. The prestige of the liberator
among the Irish peasantry comes nearest to it, I think; or the feeling of
a clan, a hundred years ago, toward their chief. It must be very pleasant
to be quoted so incessantly and believed in so implicitly, and to know
that your decisions are so absolutely without appeal. From that first day
when he interfered in my favor, Guy never ceased to accord me the
ægis of his protection, and it served me well; for, then as now, I was
strong neither in body nor nerve. Yet our tastes, save in one respect,
were as dissimilar as can be imagined. The solitary conformity was,
that we were both, in a desultory way, fond of reading, and our favorite
books were the same. Neither would do more school-work than was
absolutely necessary, but at light literature of a certain class we read
hard.

I don't think Guy's was what is usually called a poetical temperament,
for his taste in this line was quite one-sided. He was no admirer of the
picturesque, certainly. I have heard him say that his idea of a country to
live in was where there was no hill steep enough to wind a horse in
good condition, and no wood that hounds could not run through in
fifteen minutes; therein following the fancy of that eminent French
philosopher, who, being invited to climb Ben Lomond to enjoy the
most magnificent of views, responded meekly, "_Aimez-vous les
beautés de la Nature? Pour moi, je les abhorre_." Can you not fancy the
strident emphasis on the last syllable, revealing how often the poor
materialist had been victimized before he made a stand at last?
All through Livingstone's life the real was to predominate over the
ideal; and so it was at this period of it. He had a great dislike to purely
sentimental or descriptive poetry, preferring to all others those
battle-ballads, like the Lays of Rome, which stir the blood like a
trumpet, or those love-songs which heat it like rough strong wine.
He was very fond of Homer, too. He liked the diapason of those
sonorous hexameters, that roll on, sinking and swelling with the ebb
and flow of a stormy sea. I hear his voice--deep-toned and powerful
even at that early age--finishing the story of Poseidon and his beautiful
prize--their bridal-bed laid in the hollow of a curling wave--
_"Porphureon d' ara kuma peristathê, oureï ison, Kurtôthen, krupsen de
Theon thnêtên te gunaika."_
And yet they say that the glorious old Sciote was a myth, and the
Odyssey a magazine worked out by clever contributors. They might as
well assert that all his marshals would have made up one Napoleon.
I remember how we used to pass in review the beauties of old time, for
whom "many drew swords and died," whose charms convulsed
kingdoms and ruined cities, who called the stars after their own names.
Ah! Gyneth and Ida, peerless queens of beauty, it was exciting,
doubtless, to gaze down from your velveted gallery on the mad tilting
below, to see ever and anon through the yellow dust a kind, handsome

face looking up at you, pale but scarcely reproachful, just before the
horse-hoofs trod it down; ah! fairest Ninons and Dianas--prizes that,
like the Whip at Newmarket, were always to be challenged for--you
were proud when your reckless lover came to woo, with the blood of
last night's favorite not dry on his blade; but what were your fatal
honors compared to those of a reigning toast in the rough, ancient days?
The demigods and heroes that were suitors did not stand upon trifles,
and the contest often ended in the extermination of all the lady's male
relatives to the third and fourth generation. People then took it quite as
a matter of course--rather a credit to the family than otherwise.
Guy and I discussed, often and gravely, the relative merits of Evadne
the violet-haired, Helen, Cleopatra, and a hundred others, just as, on the
steps of White's, or in the smoking-room at the "Rag," men compare
the points of the _débutantes_ of the season.
His knowledge of feminine psychology--it must have been theoretical,
for he was not seventeen--implied a study and depth