SECTION II.

In the mean while, the domestic circle was rapidly diminished by the successive embarkation of its junior members on the stream of active life,—each followed his own course, and in a few years

the day was delightful, the place in perfect order and beauty; all the walks and shrubberies, which we had just made, are now in the greatest perfection-not one tree we planted that has not grown with the most uncommon luxuriance-the garden full of the finest fruit

'But if all is not sweet for me,

What care I how sweet they be?'

-I gave one parting look, peeped at the cartoons and the great room, and, stepping into the carriage, carried with me a bunch of roses over which I could have played the mournful Philomel.-Where then, say you, was my Peg's philosophy? -I felt, in spite of these natural feelings in my breast, and my heart whispered me, the loss of outward show could never be to it the trial most to be dreaded. If our present situation was more happy, I should have stood with less composure the sight of Roehampton; but a greater evil, and such is our present vexation, is like the brazen serpent which swallowed up all the others. A present evil and fear is always worse than a past, and I have taught my mind to look on what was formerly mine with almost as much indifference as if I had never been possessed of them." "Time," she continues some days afterwards, "always gets a-head of one, and there is no overtaking of the old fellow, he walks so fast. Remember, Madam Anne! he has marched you into your twenty-fifth year, Bal into his twenty-fourth, while sweet young Peg is only in her twenty-second. I have crowed over Balcarres on this subject this fortnight past. We grow old, my dear Anne, and wise, I am afraid! which is the foolishest thing after all that one can do, if Solomon is right in increase of wisdom being increase of sorrow. For my own share, I hug myself when I find a desire for any folly, and, stepping to the glass, say,‘Come, come! I am not so old as I imagined;' and this complacent reflection ensures my good complexion and my good humour for the evening."

"Tranquillity," she writes to her sister about a year afterwards, “is the present goddess of my adoration. How I wish I could build a statue to her of pure white marble, without vein or spot-her eye neither much elevated with expectation nor depressed with disappointment, but with a serene and sweet look observing the busy, angry, and transported world, with equal regard. At present, however, till I get an abode for her, I must endeavour to erect her temple in my own breast, which I will prepare for her reception as well as I can by throwing out every gloomy thought and uneasy retrospect, and endeavouring to crown all by an unbounded confidence in the Author of Peace."

I feel as if I ought to apologise for the preceding citations—but there are sorrows and trials so idealised by the heart and the imagination that they rise by their very purity into a region far above the personal and private, and afford encouragement and strength to all succeeding generations.

Her later years, long after Mr. Fordyce's death, were troubled by the attachment of a man who sacrificed her life and happiness to his selfishness, and whose conduct, says Lady Anne, " while it inspired her with the disdain of him that he merited, also affected the sweetness and peaceableness of her gentle nature. With grief I VOL. II.

there was scarce a quarter of the world of which a Lindsay was not a denizen. Those who hovered nearest home were Lady Margaret; Lady Elizabeth, Countess of Hardwicke,* and mother of fair cousins of Mexborough, Caledon, Stuart de Rothesay,

your

saw that a deep resentment corroded her heart. At length, at the earnest instances of my affection and on calmer views of things, I prevailed on her, upon a solemn occasion of religious duty, to abjure for ever a sentiment which was so contrary to the spirit of Christian forgiveness of injuries. She did so, when taking the sacrament in Dublin, and peace was restored to her mind. Happy, after the chagrins suffered by her heart, to fix her thoughts on a better world, the blessed effects of religion manifested their work in her, and after some painful years of regret, spent in the passage from youth to age, from beauty in all its radiance to decay, the heart and hand of a person of her own time of life being offered to her—one who, as he then acknowledged, had been attached to her almost from infancy-attached with a degree of constancy befitting the days of Hilpah only-it was to the surprise of her acquaintance, but not of the friends who knew the nature of her mind, that she accepted of him; and in the society of his young family by a former wife, who were devoted to her, she found that comfort in her advanced life which she braved the smiles of the world to fold to her heart.-During two years Margaret enjoyed contentment in its fullest extent, and seemed happier than I had ever known her,— at last her Maker recalled her to himself a spirit so pure, so devout, and so ready to join Him, that, when she quitted this life, it was not for her I could grieve, but for myself."

* Authoress of a beautiful translation of the Gerusalemme Liberata,' in MS.— The following Address to Entick' was written in a more playful vein, when a mere girl, on the fly-leaf of Entick's Grammar,' on the occasion of an absurd task having been imposed on her by her schoolmistress :

"Say, dreaded Entick! cause of infant tears,

Who fill'st the little trembler's heart with fears,
When in the nether shades thou tread'st the way,
To answer for thy crimes in upper day,
Oh say, what chastisement, what fiercer pain,
Shall frowning Rhadamanthus thee ordain?
Ixion's wheel? Prometheus' endless groan?
The fate of Tantalus? or the rolling stone?
Not Entick there; for thou, with deeper aim,
Giv'st to thy blacker crimes a legal name,
And subtle draw'st from Science' earliest page
A sure pretext to plague the rising age.
No hissing furies shall their serpents reach,-
Thy torments, villain! shall be parts of speech.
The adjective, the substantive, shall aid
To din thy ears with rules thyself hast made.
If for a moment they shall absence plead,
The pronoun shall be ready in their stead;
Passive or active, still the verb intrude,
Its action ever varying with its mood;
Articles, adverbs, prepositions,

Shall vex thee with their definitions;

The weak conjunctions, too, shall help to join
The scientific tortures of the line;

But yet, in pity to thy abject moan,

The interjections shall be all thy own!"

and Somers; and Charles Dalrymple Lindsay, Bishop of Kildare, the revered and beloved sire of a numerous tribe of Lindsays in Ireland. The rest of the family were for many years almost strangers in Europe. Two brothers fought in India, two in

* The melancholy fate of the gifted Lord Viscount Royston, eldest son of the late Earl of Hardwicke, and whose Remains' have recently been given to the public, throws a deep interest over the following lines addressed to him by his mother on his birthday, and sent to him at Harrow, in May, 1796-lines which I acknowledge with gratitude the permission of inserting here:

"Again the jocund month of May,
With all its blossoms fresh and gay,
Returning, brings the happy morn
On which my child, my son, was born.
With what delight thy mother smiled,
Thy father wept and kiss'd his child;
And first, he thanked indulgent Heaven
For all the blessings it had given,
And next, his secret prayer began
To make his son AN HONEST MAN.

'An honest man!' I hear you call,
In truth the boon he asked was small!
Why sure, mamma, 't were strange belief
To think that I could be a thief;

To rob another of his gains

Indeed were little worth my pains,—
And honesty, besides, I know,

Consists in paying what I owe.'

Does it, my child?—no more I ask ;

Nor think thy debt an easy task.
Wilt thou repay thy parents' care,

Their earliest thought, their latest prayer?
Wilt thou repay thy sisters' love,
A faithful, fond protector prove?
Wilt thou repay the talents lent
By nature, in their full extent ?
Repay thy friends their feelings kind,
By best affections of the mind?
And e'en to fortune pay thy part,
With open hand and liberal heart?
-Nor even here thy task will cease,
For every hour thy debts increase;
Think not thy filial duty done,—
Britannia claims thee as her son,
And bids thee guard, with pious awe,
Her king, her altar, and her law.
Thus pay-if erring mortals can-
The debt imposed by God on man.

Is then, dear boy, the boon so small?
Ah! strive, my child, to pay it all;
And let it be thy anxious care
To second well thy father's prayer—
Fulfil the wish that he began,

And be, like him-AN HONEST MAN !"

It was reserved for his affectionate aunt, Lady Margaret, to sing his dirge-in the following lines, commencing with a translation of some Greek verses inscribed

America; your grandfather resided at Sylhet, on the borders of the Burmese empire; a seventh and an eighth brother entered the navy, of whom the elder, William, a gallant young officer, was drowned at St. Helena, and the younger, Hugh, after serving till

by him in the album at the Falls of Trolhâtte, in Sweden, and sent to England after his decease :

"Nature her wondrous gifts with liberal hand

Has scattered round to deck the smiling land;
Her hidden treasures in earth, sea, or sky,
Impervious are to the neglectful eye.
For wisdom's daughter opes not nature's store
To sloth or ignorance; but crowns the lore
Of him, whose ardent gaze and onward course
Follow untired and seek her at her source.
On him the goddess smiles with gentlest air,
And binds the deathless laurel round his hair.
In ease immersed, these eyes had ne'er surveyed
These sacred caves where smiling Naiads played.
Waves of Trolhatte, wondrous to behold,
Rocks, which the dawning sunbeam tips with gold,
Forests, to brightest beams impervious yet,
Your varied charms I never can forget!'

Thus sang the youth, almost a parting strain,
The matchless youth, for whom we mourn in vain.
No flimsy freight he purposed to import

Of each vain trifle from the vainer court;

Far from his native land, in keen pursuit

Of science only and of wisdom's fruit,

Where arts, or laws, or poetry, were found,

There lay his course, through wild or cultured ground,
Mine, mountain, city that deserved renown,

Or classic ground forgot, or horde unknown.
No danger stopped him-vain primæval snow,
Vain parching plains, where noxious vapours blow.
Onward he pressed, and, like the industrious bee,
Knowledge he drew from weed, or flower, or tree.
Oh precious honey! what had been the store
Of him, whose cruel fate we now deplore,
Had Heaven restored him to our vows alive,
With all his sweets to deck his parent hive!

Thine was the eye that, blessed with ray divine,

Saw at a glance and made all nature thine;

'Gainst thee in vain had language power to bar

Thy steady way with momentary war,

While yet the unmeaning sounds still mocked thine ear,

That rapid ray had taught thee how to hear :

Though blessed with youth, health, beauty, rank, and power,
All that could gild or could ensnare the hour,

With even purpose, like the sapient king,

Knowledge thou sought'st, upborne on eagle's wing;

While other youths pursued the chace, the dance,

The flute, the goblet, led by whim or chance,

Thy comprehensive powers and buoyant mind

In tender youth left wondering age behind.

Witness

the cessation of all promotion at the close of the American war, embraced the sea-service of the East India Company, dividing his time thenceforward between London and Canton;* and the authoress of Auld Robin Gray' accompanied her husband, Mr.

a

Witness Cassandra, prophetess of ill,

Obscure by fate, yet lucid by thy skill :-
Nor had gay Fancy on thy favoured head
Forgot her motley flowers to twine or shed;
Oft have I seen thee in the social hour

Lead with thy chosen few the mirthful power,-
The playful verse sprang instant at thy will,
In brilliant bubbles sparkling as they fell.

Ah! hadst thou reached once more thy native soil,
Fraught with the treasures of thy generous toil,
How had the hearts exulted that now sink

In sorrow's wave immersed! Yet, while they drink
The bitter cup ordained e'en to the lees,
They bend to Him who past and future sees,
Who brings to nought the justest pride of man
At His blest will-and who that will shall scan?
Yet is it nought, mother with grief undone !
That thou hast borne and fostered such a son?
Father, who bleed'st like her at every vein,
Who gavest him life, is 't nothing that in vain
Thou didst not toil to form from thine his heart
For that blest country where we never part,
Where no dire storms destroy the hope of years,
And drown the parent's heart in endless tears?
Pure shall ye meet in spirit, freed from pain,
And knowledge bloom on life's fair tree again."

* The circumstances of this change of service are thus related by Lady Anne in 'Memorandum respecting my Brother, Hugh Lindsay:'-" Lord Howe objected to Hugh Lindsay's appointment as lieutenant by Rodney in the West Indies, to bar similar claims which he was afraid would come heavy on Government on the peace. But he conferred the favour required on a friend of his own, under parallel circumstances with my brother. Hugh thought that a hardship, and told him so. The great man was offended and tried to browbeat the little man, and said that ' if the cases were parallel, he would confirm him too, but he denied the fact.' The Secretary of the Admiralty was called in, and allowed the statement of Hugh to be correct. Lord Howe left the room in displeasure-no redress was granted-and Hugh Lindsay, disgusted, quitted the navy for the East India Company's service." -An interesting Chinese adventure, contributed some years ago by Mr. Hugh Lindsay to the family archives, will be found in the third volume of these 'Lives.'

a Lord Royston's translation of Lycophron's Cassandra,' which, “independent of its merits as a poem, evinces a knowledge of history and mythology, a profundity of research, and a combination of taste and learning, altogether astonishing in so young a writer," was originally privately printed, at Cambridge, in 4to., 1806, and was published, for the first time, in the

volume of Remains,' &c., edited by the Rev. Henry Pepys, now Bishop of Worcester. His letters to his father, (the late accomplished and excellent Earl of Hardwicke,) descriptive of the scenes of his last wanderings, precede the 'Cassandra,' and are as remarkable for the varied information they convey as for their agreeable and lucid style as compositions.