Ruth Candler Lovett Fy
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m Emory University Library W 1 9 8 cw 7w Memoriam M ^ Ruth Candler Lovett fy PAUL JONES. PAUL JONES; A ROMANCE. BY ALLAN CUNNINGHAM, AUTHOR OF " SIR MARMADUKE MAXWELL," "TRADITIONAL TALES,1' &c. Success, the mark no mortal wit, Or surest hand, can always hit : For whatsoe'er we perpetrate, We do but row, we're steer'd by Fate, Which in success oft disinherits, For spurious causes, noblest merits. Butler. IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. I. EDINBURGH : PUBLISHED BY OLIVER & BOYD ; LONGMAN, REES, ORME, BROWN, & GREEN, LONDON. 1826. Oliver & Boyd, Printers. TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE CHARLES LONG, LORD FARNBOROUGH, THIS ROMANCE IS MOST RESPECTFULLY INSCRIBED ALLAN CUNNINGHAM. PAUL JONES. CHAPTER I. Streets and walls, The painted chamber, and the desert sea, And upper ends of tables, had they tongues, Could tell what blood has followed, and what feud About your ranks. The caprice of a young and beautiful lady is pure constancy, compared with the caprice of dame For tune ; she showers her favours on strange places, and scatters her gifts at random. From the heir of some noble name, fed on the dainties of the earth, clothed in scarlet and in purple, and endowed with the gathered wisdom of many tongues, she withholds all farther increase of renown ; while over some clod of the valley, some lump of rude and undistinguished clay, she causes her luckiest star to shine, endows him with wit at will, covers him with her glory as with a mantle, consecrates the VOL. i. A 2 PAUL JONES. place of his birth as a spot from whence new bless ings had sprung to man, leads him by the hand among her high places ; while her half-sister, Fame, flies before, crying with a loud voice, " Behold the " man whom we delight to honour."' All this is sufficiently perverse. But half the wild work which she makes among men is not imputed to dame Fortune. When a du cal star glitters on a cold and insensible heart,— when a coronet encloses a dull and an obtuse intel lect,—when one of the hereditary gods of the earth acts below the mark of a mere man, and appears among the rational spirits of the land, like a saint of wood among the saints of heaven, then men cry out with the royal satirist when the arrow missed " its aim,— Such was the will of God trow I ;" and impute to providence the frolics of Fortune. In like manner as Fortune deals with men, so deals she with districts. Look on that land spread out in summer sun-light before you. It is fertile, well-wooded and well-watered, the green hills hem it in, and with their crowning woods enclose it as with a garland. Yon smoke ascends from a fair and populous city,—the sun is slanting its increas ing light on the sails of many busy ships, and the whole country seems laid purposely out, by the kind ness of nature, to obtain fame in history and glory in romance. It has otherwise fortuned—it is un sung in song and unemblazoned in story. But look on yon little shaggy and barren rock, PAUL JONES. 3 with hillocks ofgranite andhollows ofthorn, through which a small brook sullenly brawls,—where yon square tower of grey stone, with a single raven on its summit, overlooks the narrow valley,—where some six or seven trees, bald with age, and bearing token of many a storm, are scattered about ; while a stranded vessel, half-buried in sand, presents to the ruins on shore a twin image of maritime desola tion ; over that rugged spot the genius of romance has long hovered,—history owes it some of its hap piest hours, and song some of its best inspirations. With that wild and desolate place must my story abide : nor shall I seek to hang over rock and tower the splendid tapestry of idle fiction. I could, it is true, as the ancient poet expanded the narrow Hel " lespont into a wide-resounding flood,1' deepen the sea of Solway, strew its bottom with pearls, and. put some six leagues more of sea between Siddick and Saint Bees. Criffel might arise with an increase of height, and overlook her sister Skiddaw ; over the rocks I might strew roses,—the stream, on good pastoral authority, might meander on sands of sil ver and gravel of pure gold ; and the brown wil derness of blossomed heath might become a garden filled with flowers,—its trees covered with fruit, and its walks pressed by the footsteps of beauty. But this I dare not do,—I dread the severe and awful aspect of truth. That shadowy and unem- bodied. spirit appears before me whenever I deviate from her path, and leads me back into her way 4 PAUL JONES. with a dignity which awes me long into humility and submission. There is, however, a grosser reason for my love of sincerity. I can invent nothing which looks half so natural, or seizes upon the heart with the alacrity of truth. I cannot believe in what I ima gine—the Avings of fiction cannot bear me from the earth ; or, if I succeed in a short excursion, I feel like the bird which so singed, its wings as it flew by torch-light, that it was unable to fly by day. Let me dip my pen only in the honest and steadfast colours of truth. Could I present a picture of my native shore with the poetic skill and glowing fidelity of Turner,—the portraits of its peasant ry with the easy grace and intellectual shrewdness of Wilkie, and images of some of the stirring spirits of old Scotland with the native vigour and happy elegance of Chantrey, my book would endure. The flight of fifty years has wrought a change upon the hills and dales of Caledonia. The plough has invaded the sheep-pastures, and corn waves now where the black-cocks crowed. The rivulet, which meandered at will over thehaughs and holms, and raced about like a young colt, forming many curious turns and leaps between its banks of broom and brier, is now, by human force, confined with in walls of stone, and runs its career in a straight and undeviating line. Trees, instead of being sown by the winds, and scattered about in the careless and happy haste of nature, are now dibbled out PAUL JONES. 5 by the line and the measure ; while the abodes of men are no longer sheltered on the sunny side of the hill, and clustered together according to the ca price of a shepherd or a ploughman, but are perched up on some picturesque point of view, where they are visited by all the storms of heaven. The rich and the noble have left their moated castles, their halls strewn with rushes, and their vaulted chambers hung with old tapestry and old banners,—the places consecrated by the memory of five hundred years, and all that can link men's hearts to inanimate nature, and are gone to reside in cities or in palaces. The farmer has forsaken his low and thatched spence, with its carved oak furni ture, its hearth-fire, and its floor of stone or clay ; the magic wand of opulence has raised to him a loftier house, with a slated roof, floors of deal, carpets of many colours, and furniture of polished mahogany. A similar enchantment is performed on the peasant, both in person and in house. His Sunday's coat is no longer of home-spun yarn, his linen comes from Coleraine instead of his native rivulet bank ; his wife has aspired to a silk gown, and her vanity has been rewarded ; while from his house the homely hereditary furniture of the family has been dis placed by plenishing of a more fashionable form. There is nothing over which man has control that has not undergone a change. The trident of Neptune, which the ancient bard employed in ob literating the Grecian entrenchments before Troy, 6 PAUL JONES. did not accomplish its task more surely than the hand of improvement : it has levelled old towers, smoothed down old manners, and pruned and trim med into lip-courtesy and external politeness, the rough, blunt, generous spirit of old Scotland. One fine summer evening, some fifty years ago, two young men were observed seated side by side on the ground, in a small woody bay on the Scot tish side of the sea of Solway—a place of great na tural beauty, and called, from a wild legend which mariners connected with it, the Mermaid-bay. The old square tower, already mentioned, was half hid in trees behind them ; while the moon, accom panied by many stars, had arisen above the tops of the pasture-hills, and was scattering her light along the swelling surface of the sea, while cliff, and tree, and hill, and tower, were honoured by a fuller and a broader beam. The tide had nearly reached its height, and was still moving onwards, not with a gradual and almost imperceptible increase of waters, but with one rank of waves succeeding another, rolling in a continued and foaming line, three feet deep abreast, from side to side of the frith. The young men looked upon the increasing wa ters—upon the passing ships,—they heard the tide singing in the waving line of polished shells which separates the grass of the land from the sand of the sea, and they saw it at times leaping upon the green sward, and almost touching their feet.