Nightmare Abbey | Page 4

that had ever befallen
mankind; and that their only hope now was to rake the rubbish together,
and rebuild it without any of those loopholes by which the light had
originally crept in. To qualify himself for a coadjutor in this laudable
task, he plunged into the central opacity of Kantian metaphysics, and
lay perdu several years in transcendental darkness, till the common
daylight of common sense became intolerable to his eyes. He called the

sun an _ignis fatuus_; and exhorted all who would listen to his friendly
voice, which were about as many as called 'God save King Richard,' to
shelter themselves from its delusive radiance in the obscure haunt of
Old Philosophy. This word Old had great charms for him. The good old
times were always on his lips; meaning the days when polemic
theology was in its prime, and rival prelates beat the drum ecclesiastic
with Herculean vigour, till the one wound up his series of syllogisms
with the very orthodox conclusion of roasting the other.
But the dearest friend of Mr Glowry, and his most welcome guest, was
Mr Toobad, the Manichaean Millenarian. The twelfth verse of the
twelfth chapter of Revelations was always in his mouth: 'Woe to the
inhabiters of the earth and of the sea! for the devil is come among you,
having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time.'
He maintained that the supreme dominion of the world was, for wise
purposes, given over for a while to the Evil Principle; and that this
precise period of time, commonly called the enlightened age, was the
point of his plenitude of power. He used to add that by and by he would
be cast down, and a high and happy order of things succeed; but he
never omitted the saving clause, 'Not in our time'; which last words
were always echoed in doleful response by the sympathetic Mr Glowry.
Another and very frequent visitor, was the Reverend Mr Larynx, the
vicar of Claydyke, a village about ten miles distant;--a good-natured
accommodating divine, who was always most obligingly ready to take
a dinner and a bed at the house of any country gentleman in distress for
a companion. Nothing came amiss to him,--a game at billiards, at chess,
at draughts, at backgammon, at piquet, or at all-fours in a
_tête-à-tête_,--or any game on the cards, round, square, or triangular, in
a party of any number exceeding two. He would even dance among
friends, rather than that a lady, even if she were on the wrong side of
thirty, should sit still for want of a partner. For a ride, a walk, or a sail,
in the morning,--a song after dinner, a ghost story after supper,--a bottle
of port with the squire, or a cup of green tea with his lady,--for all or
any of these, or for any thing else that was agreeable to any one else,
consistently with the dye of his coat, the Reverend Mr Larynx was at
all times equally ready. When at Nightmare Abbey, he would condole

with Mr Glowry,--drink Madeira with Scythrop,--crack jokes with Mr
Hilary,--hand Mrs Hilary to the piano, take charge of her fan and
gloves, and turn over her music with surprising dexterity,--quote
Revelations with Mr Toobad,--and lament the good old times of feudal
darkness with the transcendental Mr Flosky.
* * * * *
CHAPTER II
Shortly after the disastrous termination of Scythrop's passion for Miss
Emily Girouette, Mr Glowry found himself, much against his will,
involved in a lawsuit, which compelled him to dance attendance on the
High Court of Chancery. Scythrop was left alone at Nightmare Abbey.
He was a burnt child, and dreaded the fire of female eyes. He wandered
about the ample pile, or along the garden-terrace, with 'his cogitative
faculties immersed in cogibundity of cogitation.' The terrace terminated
at the south-western tower, which, as we have said, was ruinous and
full of owls. Here would Scythrop take his evening seat, on a fallen
fragment of mossy stone, with his back resting against the ruined
wall,--a thick canopy of ivy, with an owl in it, over his head,--and the
Sorrows of Werter in his hand. He had some taste for romance reading
before he went to the university, where, we must confess, in justice to
his college, he was cured of the love of reading in all its shapes; and the
cure would have been radical, if disappointment in love, and total
solitude, had not conspired to bring on a relapse. He began to devour
romances and German tragedies, and, by the recommendation of Mr
Flosky, to pore over ponderous tomes of transcendental philosophy,
which reconciled him to the labour of studying them by their mystical
jargon and necromantic imagery. In the congenial solitude of
Nightmare Abbey, the