The Loyalists, Volumes 1-3 | Page 5

jump with
common spirits, And rank me with the barb'rous multitudes.
Shakspeare.
About the commencement of the reign of King Charles the First, a
stranger came to reside in a populous village in Lancashire, under
circumstances of considerable interest and mystery. He was young, and
elegant in his person; his language not only evinced the cultivated
chasteness of education, but the nicer polish of refined society. When
drawn into conversation (to which he seemed averse), he discovered
classical learning enlivened by brilliant wit, and seasoned by deep
reflection. He was versed in the history of foreign courts; and if he
forbore to speak of our own, it seemed more from caution than from
ignorance. He excelled in fashionable exercises, rode the great horse
with a military air, and alarmed the rustics by his skill in fencing, as

much as he delighted them by the till then unheard tones which he drew
from the viola-de-gamba. It was impossible that, with these
accomplishments, a sad-coloured cloak and plain beaver could conceal
the gentleman. In vain did he report himself to be a Blackwell-hall
factor, whom an unfortunate venture had reduced to ruin.--Every one
discovered that his manners did not correspond with this description,
and they would have at once determined him to be some gay gallant,
whose wantonness of expense had outstripped his ability, had not his
purse contained good store of broad pieces, which his hand liberally
bestowed, as often as poverty appealed to his benevolence.
A Lancashire gentleman in those times had less intercourse with the
metropolis of the British empire, than one of the present day, has with
Canton. No London correspondent, therefore, could whisper the sudden
disappearance of a sparkling blade, who, after blazing awhile at
Whitehall, had unaccountably vanished like a meteor from its horizon;
nor had the depredation of swindlers, or the frequent intrusion of
impertinent hangers-on compelled the owners of manorial houses to
shut their doors on uninvited guests. The jovial coarse hospitality of
those times delighted in a crowded board; the extensive household
daily required ample provision, and refinement was too little advanced
from its earliest stage to make nice arrangement or rare delicacies
necessary to an esquire's table. Such a guest therefore as Evellin, was
eagerly sought and warmly welcomed. He joined with the joyous
hunters in the morning, he relieved the sameness of their repasts with
his diversified information; and in the evening he was equally
gratifying to the ladies, who being then generally confined to the
uniform routine of domestic privacy, loved to hear of what was passing
in the great world. He could describe the jewels which bound the hair
of the Queen of Bohemia, and he had seen the hood in which Anne of
Austria ensnared the aspiring heart of the Duke of Buckingham; beside,
he led off the dance with matchless grace, and to their native hornpipe
enabled them to add the travelled accomplishments of the galliard and
saraband. What a concentration of agreeable qualities! It must be owing
to the invincible pressure of secret uneasiness, and not to a suspicion of
the cordiality with which his entertainers welcomed him, if Evellin ever
passed a day in solitude.

Yet he came into society with the air of one who sought it as a
temporary relief from anxiety, rather than as a source of real enjoyment.
A visible dissatisfaction, constraint, and unsubdued aversion to the
present, arising from regret at the past, sometimes interrupted his
graceful courtesy, and oftener made him indifferent to the passing
scene, or unconscious of it. This humour increased whenever he
received a dispatch from London, and at one time the mortification
which his letters excited, threw him into such a mental agony, that the
cottagers with whom he lodged, recurring to what was then deemed a
specific for troubled minds, called in the aid of Dr. Eusebius Beaumont
to give him ghostly consolation. I am not going to bring a mortified
Franciscan friar on the scene: his reverence was the village pastor,
happy and respectable as a husband and father, and largely endowed
with those which have signalized the Church of England, whenever she
has been called to any conspicuous trial. Learning and piety were in
him two neighbouring stars that reflected radiance on each other, and
were rather brightened than obscured by his humility. His manners and
habits of life retained the simplicity of the primitive ages, yet were they
so blended with courtesy, nobleness of mind, and superiority to every
mean selfish consideration, that the most travelled cavalier of the times
could not more winningly display the true gentleman. His example
shewed that the superiority which distinguishes that character consists
not in adopting the reigning mode (that poor ambition of a copyist), but
in the refined suavity which defies imitation, and is an inborn