Nature and Art | Page 5

life,
she wrote to a friend from a room in which she cooked, and ate, and
also her saucepans were cleaned:- "Thank God, I can say No. I say No
to all the vanities of the world, and perhaps soon shall have to say that I
allow my poor infirm sister a hundred a year. I have raised my
allowance to eighty; but in the rapid stride of her wants, and my
obligation as a Christian to make no selfish refusal to the poor, a few
months, I foresee, must make the sum a hundred." In 1816, when that
sister died, and Mrs. Inchbald buried the last of her immediate home

relations--though she had still nephews to find money for--she said it
had been a consolation to her when sometimes she cried with cold to
think that her sister, who was less able to bear privation, had her fire
lighted for her before she rose, and her food brought to her ready
cooked.
Even at fifty Mrs. Inchbald's beauty of face inspired admiration. The
beauty of the inner life increased with years. Lively and quick of
temper, impulsive, sensitive, she took into her heart all that was best in
the sentiments associated with the teaching of Rousseau and the dreams
of the French Revolution. Mrs. Inchbald spoke her mind most fully in
this little story, which is told with a dramatic sense of construction that
swiftly carries on the action to its close. She was no weak
sentimentalist, who hung out her feelings to view as an idle form of
self-indulgence. Most unselfishly she wrought her own life to the
pattern in her mind; even the little faults she could not conquer, she
well knew.
Mrs. Inchbald died at the age of sixty-eight, on the 1st of August, 1821,
a devout Roman Catholic, her thoughts in her last years looking
habitually through all disguises of convention up to Nature's God.
H. M.

NATURE AND ART.

CHAPTER I.

At a time when the nobility of Britain were said, by the poet laureate, to
be the admirers and protectors of the arts, and were acknowledged by
the whole nation to be the patrons of music--William and Henry,
youths under twenty years of age, brothers, and the sons of a country
shopkeeper who had lately died insolvent, set out on foot for London,
in the hope of procuring by their industry a scanty subsistence.
As they walked out of their native town, each with a small bundle at his
back, each observed the other drop several tears: but, upon the sudden
meeting of their eyes, they both smiled with a degree of disdain at the
weakness in which they had been caught.

"I am sure," said William (the elder), "I don't know what makes me
cry."
"Nor I neither," said Henry; "for though we may never see this town
again, yet we leave nothing behind us to give us reason to lament."
"No," replied William, "nor anybody who cares what becomes of us."
"But I was thinking," said Henry, now weeping bitterly, "that, if my
poor father were alive, HE would care what was to become of us: he
would not have suffered us to begin this long journey without a few
more shillings in our pockets."
At the end of this sentence, William, who had with some effort
suppressed his tears while his brother spoke, now uttered, with a voice
almost inarticulate,--"Don't say any more; don't talk any more about it.
My father used to tell us, that when he was gone we must take care of
ourselves: and so we must. I only wish," continued he, giving way to
his grief, "that I had never done anything to offend him while he was
living."
"That is what I wish too," cried Henry. "If I had always been dutiful to
him while he was alive, I would not shed one tear for him now that he
is gone--but I would thank Heaven that he has escaped from his
creditors."
In conversation such as this, wherein their sorrow for their deceased
parent seemed less for his death than because he had not been so happy
when living as they ought to have made him; and wherein their own
outcast fortune was less the subject of their grief, than the reflection
what their father would have endured could he have beheld them in
their present situation;--in conversation such as this, they pursued their
journey till they arrived at that metropolis, which has received for
centuries past, from the provincial towns, the bold adventurer of every
denomination; has stamped his character with experience and example;
and, while it has bestowed on some coronets and mitres--on some the
lasting fame of genius--to others has dealt beggary, infamy, and
untimely death.

CHAPTER II.

After three weeks