236 THE DEATH-CHANT. "Ay," muttered the confessor, still musing; "in a chamber of that house there is "What noise is that?" said the Marchesa, interrupting him. They listened. A few low and querulous notes of the organ sounded at a distance, and stopped again. "What mournful music is that?" said the Marchesa, in a faltering voice; vespers were over long ago." 66 "Daughter," said Schedoni, somewhat sternly, "you said you had a man's courage. Alas! you have a woman's heart." "Excuse me, father; I know not why I feel this agitation, but I will command it. That chamber?" "In that chamber," resumed the confessor, "is a secret door, constructed long ago. A passage leads to the sea. There, on the shore, when darkness covers it; there, plunged amidst the waves, no stain shall hint of”—— "Hark!" interrupted the Marchesa, starting, "that note again!" The organ sounded faintly from the choir, and paused, as before. In the next moment a slow chanting of voices was heard, mingling with the rising peal, in a strain particularly melancholy and solemn. "Who is dead?" said the Marchesa, changing countenance; "it is a requiem!" "Peace be to the departed!" exclaimed Schedoni, and crossed himself. "Hark to that chant!" said the Marchesa, in a trembling voice; "it is a first requiem; the soul has but just quitted the body." They listened in silence. The Marchesa was much affected; her complexion varied at every instant; her breathings were short and interrupted, and she even shed tears a few, but they were those of despair rather than of sorrow. "That body is now cold," said she to herself, "which but an hour ago was warm and animated. Those fine senses are closed in death! And to this condition would I reduce a being like myself! O wretched, wretched mother! to what has the folly of a son reduced thee!" She turned from the confessor, and walked alone in the aisle. Her agitation increased. She wept without restraint, for the evening gloom concealed her, and her sighs were lost amidst the music of the choir. Schedoni remained for a moment on the spot, looking after her, till her figure was lost in the gloom of the long perspective. He then, with thoughtful steps, quitted the church by another door. MRS CHARLOTTE SMITH. MRS RS CHARLOTTE SMITH was the daughter of Nicholas Turner, Esq., of Stoke, near Guildford. Before she was sixteen, she was married to a West India merchant, named Smith, whose fortune failing, she applied herself to literary pursuits in order to maintain a numerous family. She made her first appearance before the public with a volume of graceful poetry, entitled, "Elegiac Sonnets," which was sufficiently well received to encourage her to a second attempt,—a translation of a novel by the Abbé Prevost. This was followed by an adaptation from "Les Causes Célèbres," which she entitled "The Romance of Real Life." Her first original production was the novel of "Emmeline, or the Orphan of the Castle," published in 1788, and very favourably received. Not less successful were "Ethelinde" (1789), "Celestina" (1791), and "Desmond" (1792); to which succeeded her magnum opus, "The Old English Manor House" (1793), whose vitality has preserved it among our standard libraries of fiction down to the present time. Then came the "Wanderings of Warwick," "The Banished Man,” and “Montalbert,” all published in 1794 and 1795. Still indefatigable, Mrs Smith ventured into a new branch of literature in the latter year, and submitted to the world her "Rural Walks; in Dialogues," of which a second series, entitled "Rambles Further," was issued in 1796. In the same year, she issued another novel, "Marchmont," and, in 1798, her last work of feeling, "The Young Philosopher." In 1798, her industrious pen also produced a book entitled "Minor Morals, and Sketches of Natural History;" in 1801, "Letters of a Solitary Wanderer;" in 1803, a "History of England, in Letters ;" and, about the same time, a "Natural History of Birds, for Young Persons.” Her laborious and virtuous life terminated on the 28th of October 1806, at Telford, near Farnham, in Surrey. 240 CHARLOTTE SMITH AS A NOVELIST. Of Mrs Smith as a novelist, Miss Kavanagh observes :-" Freshness, vigour, and truth still mark her efforts, and have left their stamp on all she wrote. A few faults, great faults, though her contemporaries thought them slight, have contributed to make her be too soon forgotten. First of all, she was not genial-few women are—just as few women have the true comic power. Fitful, impatient, and wearied, she sought for relief in composition; and though she was too superior a woman not to write much that was excellent, not to produce entertaining books, full of genuine matter and interest, she failed in what she had talent enough to accomplish-in producing a good story. There is something like personal animosity in her delineation of her hateful characters, and this is a fault, and a great one ; there is decidedly bad temper, a sin that can rarely be forgiven. Truth, her great charm, her gift and her power, is thus not without frequent alloy. She is not all true-who is? and there is no vivid imagination, no sparkling wit, no gaiety of mind or heart, no commanding style to atone for the inevitable coldness, not to say bitterness, which is the tone of her writings. They remain amongst the most remarkable but least-read productions of the time to which she belonged, stamped with the melancholy fiat-above mediocrity, but below genius." |