KAVANAGH, A TALE. BY HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW AUTHOR OF "HYPERION," "EVANGELINE," &C. The flighty purpose never is o'ertook, SHAKSPEARE. LONDON: GEORGE SLATER, 252, STRAND. 1849. KAVANAGH. I. GREAT men stand like solitary towers in the city of God, and secret passages running deep beneath external nature give their thoughts intercourse with higher intelligences, which strengthens and consoles them, and of which the labourers on the surface do not even dream! Some such thought as this was floating vaguely through the brain of Mr. Churchill, as he closed his school-house door behind him; and if in any degree he applied it to himself, it may, perhaps, be pardoned in a dreamy, poetic man like him; for we judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done. And moreover his wife considered him equal to great things. To the people in the village, he was the schoolmaster, and nothing more. They beheld in his form and countenance no outward sign of the divinity within. They saw him daily moiling and delving in the common path, like a beetle, and little B2 thought that underneath that hard and cold exterior, lay folded delicate golden wings, wherewith, when the heat of the day was over, he soared and revelled in the pleasant evening air. To day he was soaring and revelling before the sun had set;-for it was Saturday. With a feeling of infinite relief he left behind him the empty schoolhouse, into which the hot sun of a September afternoon was pouring. All the bright young faces were gone; all the impatient little hearts were gone; all the fresh voices, shrill, but musical with the melody of childhood, were gone; and the lately busy realm was given up to silence, and the dusty sun-shine, and the old grey flies, that buzzed and bumped their heads against the window-panes. The sound of the outer door creaking on its hebdomadal hinges, was like a sentinel's challenge, to which the key growled responsive in the lock; and the master casting a furtive glance at the last caricature of himself in red chalk on the wooden fence close by, entered with a light step the solemn avenue of pines that led to the margin of the river. At first his step was quick and nervous; and he swung his cane as if aiming blows at some invisible and retreating enemy. Though a meek man, there were moments when he remembered with bitterness the unjust reproaches of fathers and their insulting words; and then he fought imaginary battles with people out of sight, and struck them to the ground, and trampled upon them; for Mr. Churchill was not exempt from the weakness of human nature, nor the customary vexations of a schoolmaster's life. Un ruly sons and unreasonable fathers did sometimes embitter his else sweet days and nights. But as he walked, his step grew slower, and his heart calmer. The coolness and shadows of the great trees comforted and satisfied him, and he heard the voice of the wind as it were the voice of spirits calling around him in the air. So that when he emerged from the black woodlands into the meadows by the river's side, all his cares were forgotten. He lay down for a moment under a sycamore, and thought of the Roman Consul Licinius, passing a night with eighteen of his followers in the hollow trunk of the great Lycian plane-tree. From the branches overhead the falling seeds were wafted away through the soft air on plumy tufts of down. The continuous murmur of the leaves and of the swift-running stream seemed rather to deepen than disturb the pleasing solitude and silence of the place; and for a moment he imagined himself far away in the broad prairies of the west, and lying beneath the luxuriant trees that overhang the banks of the Wabash and the Kaskaskia. He saw the sturgeon leap from the river, and flash for a moment in the sunshine. Then a flock of wild fowl flew across the sky towards the sea-mist that was rising slowly in the east; and his soul seemed to float away on the river's current, till he had glided far out into the measureless sea, and the sound of the wind among the leaves was no longer the sound of the wind, but of the sea. Nature had made Mr. Churchill a poet, but destiny made him a schoolmaster. This produced a |