HISTORICAL INSTANCES.

⚫ 113

In preparing for the battle of Culloden, the Duke of Cumberland, apprehensive of the behaviour of his troops, made a speech to them in person, telling them how grieved he was to make the supposition that there could be a man in the British army reluctant to fight. But if there were any here who would prefer to retire, whether from disinclination to the cause, or from having relations in the rebel army, he begged them in the name of God to do so, as he would rather face the Highlanders with one thousand determined men at his back, than have ten thousand with a tithe who were lukewarm. An earlier crown prince, of Shakspeare's painting, in like tone harangues his troops on the plains near Tewkesbury, supposing the possible presence of a coward in their ranks, and yet scouting the supposition, as unworthy of them and of himself:

"I speak not this, as doubting any here:
For, did I but suspect a fearful man,
He should have leave to go away betimes;
Lest, in our need, he might infect another,
And make him of like spirit to himself.
If any such be here, as God forbid!

Let him depart before we need his help."

Just before restoring the combat, and repairing the effect of Scindiah's repulse, at Poonah, by finally routing the Peishwa's troops, the spirited Holkar bade all who did not intend to conquer or die, to return to their wives and children. On hearing of the proposal of some of his officers, instead of attempting the relief of Saragossa, in 1808, to retire to Valencia, Palafox assembled his troops, and after expatiating with fervour on the glorious task which awaited them of delivering their country, offered to give passports to all who wished to leave the army; but such was the ascendency of his intrepid spirit, that not one person, it is recorded, left the ranks. The Czar Alexander sought to animate the patriotism. of his people, in 1812, by the assurance that they stood alone in the contest, and would share with none the glory of success. Napoleon, a week before the battle of Leipsic,-in the middle

of which three Saxon brigades went over to the enemy,—bade those of his troops who were inclined to withdraw from him, to do so at once. Wellington was in hourly expectation of a battle, when he (Nov. 12, 1813,) sent at once all his Spanish forces, except Murillo's division, which alone had behaved properly, out of France-depriving himself, by this vigorous and rigorous measure, of twenty-five thousand now experienced soldiers, at a time when he was in imminent need of them. But the effect, in the long run, if their loss, was his and his army's and his country's gain.

Told by one of his officers that some amongst his guard have fallen off at seeing him outnumbered thus, what says Philip van Artevelde in the play?

-Is't so?

Why, wherefore should I wish that it were not?
The more faint hearts fall off the better, sir;

So fear shall purge us to a sound condition."

THE

SUMMONED BY NAME.

I SAMUEL iii. 4-10.

HE child Samuel was laid down to sleep, when the divine summons by name reached him, and he, running to Eli, as though the voice had been Eli's, answered, "Here am I." Again the supernatural voice aroused him: "Samuel !" Samuel!" And again he arose, and went to Eli, and said, "Here am I, for thou didst call me." Now Samuel did not yet know the Lord, neither was the word of the Lord revealed to him. But it was now about to be revealed, and for that purpose was he again and again summoned by name. That summons by night, and by name, was never to be forgotten by him. Nor is it ever forgotten by those who read the story of his life. It is, as it were, the consecration, and the prophet's dream; only the dream is of God, from God: övap éσtì Aiòs. Like an earlier seer, he heard the words of God, if not yet he saw the vision

of the Almighty. He heard a voice that Eli could not hear; and the time drew nigh for all Israel, from Dan even to Beersheba, to know that Samuel was established to be a prophet of the Lord.

Fiction has made large use of the spell wrought on the fancy by a personal summons by name, mystical in accent, and to all semblance coming from afar. Milton makes impressive mention of

aery tongues that syllable men's names

On sands, and shores, and desert wildernesses."

Thomas Hood notes it as a curious fact, but one which must be familiar to almost every man's experience, that under circumstances of intense anxiety and excitement, the power of the organs of hearing (as well as of sight) will become extended to a very extraordinary degree. To the eager watcher and listener, he says, distant objects and sounds are distinctly perceptible, far beyond the range of any other eye or ear; and the expectant literally receives intelligence as supernaturally exclusive as the announcement to the mourner in the ballad:

"I hear a voice you cannot hear,
That says I must not stay;
I see a hand you cannot see,
That beckons me away."

?

The wonders of the night season are the theme of another popular writer, who takes occasion to ask his reader if he never heard an unaccountable scream in the night-one sudden, piercing, agonizing shriek—coming whence, who can say Was it caused, he speculates, by the sharp knife of the doctor, by the dagger of the assassin, by the word of doom, by the sting of long-suppressed remorse? Or is it but fancy-the reaction of nerves too quickly soothed—“a fancy such as musing in bed leads you to believe that your own name has suddenly been pronounced imperatively, sharply, distinctly, close to your very pillow, and when telling you of a weird companionship you feel conscious of complete isolation ?" Mrs. Craik, in one of her tales, describes the seeming floating

above a heroine's storm of passion, of an audible voice, just as if the mind of one she knew to be thinking of her, then spoke to her mind, with the wondrous communication of sympathy in dreams: a communication which " appears both possible and credible to those who have felt any strong attachment, especially that one which for the sake of its object seems able to cross the bounds of distance, time," etc. The heroine in question has an experience of this kind, which neither at the time nor afterwards she can ever account for: "while she lay weeping across her bed, she seemed to hear distinctly, just as if it had been a voice gliding past the window," a sound of words which made a crisis in her life. Adam Bede calling to Dinah by name, as he stands within three paces of her on the hill side, is at first taken by her for a more spiritual, less palpable appellant: she starts without looking round, as if she connected the sound with no place. "Dinah !' Adam said again. He knew quite well what was in her mind. She was so accustomed to think of impressions as purely spiritual monitions, that she looked for no material visible accompaniment of the voice." The late Alexander Smith, in his one work of prose fiction, pictured an aged spinster lady asleep in her easy-chair, her nephew writing a letter near at hand, in which employment he suddenly hears his aunt call out, "Yes. Coming!" and looking up, sees her sitting bolt upright, her shawl fallen off her shoulders, her hands trembling, and an alarmed look in her eyes. "Who called my name, John? Did you? Did you hear anything?" No one had called her, he says. But she had heard her name called distinctly, and the sound was ringing in her ears yet. "I was called by name as if from a great distance, and the voice was a voice I know, or have known. What can it have been?" John suggests that his aunt has been dreaming perhaps, and only fancied it. Miss Kate lies back again in the cushioned chair, and before long, instead of the look of alarm, a strangely serene smile covers her face; the eyes close, and an almost infantile repose smoothes the furrows of careworn age; and she may be overheard murmuring to herself, "I knew your voice, Richard, across the wastes of

seventy years.

READINGS IN ROMANCE.

117

I am coming, Richard." She tells others afterwards that she heard this voice calling her name as distinctly, that night, as she had heard him long ago calling it from the red sunset cliffs behind her home, or from the boats in the bay, in the years when she was happy. And she knew his voice, and awoke, crying, "Yes, I am coming." The mother, in Mrs. Gaskell's story, who is all but drowned in crossing the sands near Morecambe Bay, hears her baby crying for her at home, miles away, above the gurgling of the rising waters, as plain as ever she heard anything. Mr. Hawthorne, in his Blithedale Romance, makes much of Priscilla having the air, at times, of one who hears her own name spoken at a distance, and is reluctant to obey the call. "All at once she paused, looked round about her, towards the river, the road, the woods, and back towards us, appearing to listen, as if she heard some one calling her name, and knew not precisely in what direction. "Have you bewitched her?' I exclaimed.— 'It is no sorcery of mine,' said Zenobia; 'but I have seen the girl do that identical thing once or twice before. Can you imagine what is the matter with her?' 'No; unless,' said I, 'she has the gift of hearing those "airy tongues that syllable men's names," which Milton speaks of.' On another occasion Priscilla is in full talk with Miles Coverdale, and suddenly, as before, there comes that unintelligible gesture which is indicative of her being a listener to a distant voice. The mysterious Professor is at the bottom of the mystery,* if we accept his

* Something after the sort of Lord Lytton's Strange Story, where Margrave's rod is by hypothesis charged with some occult fluid, that runs through all creation, and can be so disciplined as to establish communication wherever life and thought can reach to beings that live and think. So at least the mystics of old would presumably explain what perplexes the antobiographer; who is in possession of that slight wand, light as a reed in his grasp, by means of which Margrave sends his irresistible will through air and space; and by means of which its present possessor essays to summon Margrave, knowing not his whereabouts, but exercising a concentrated energy of desire that its influence shall reach him and command him; as it does. "And a voice was conveyed to my senses, saying, as from a great distance, and in weary yet angry accents-'You have summoned me! Wherefore?"" (Chapter Ixi.)