The Disowned — Volume 02Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron
General
The Disowned — Volume 02
Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron
English fiction -- 19th century
While Warner was yet speaking, the person in question entered. His
were, indeed, the form and face worthy to be seized by the painter.
The peculiarity of his character made him affect a plainness of dress
unusual to the day, and approaching to the simplicity, but not the
neatness, of Quakerism. His hair--then, with all the better ranks, a
principal object of cultivation--was wild, dishevelled, and, in wiry
flakes of the sablest hue, rose abruptly from a forehead on which
either thought or passion had written its annals with an iron pen; the
lower part of the brow, which overhung the eye, was singularly sharp
and prominent; while the lines, or rather furrows, traced under the
eyes and nostrils, spoke somewhat of exhaustion and internal fatigue.
But this expression was contrasted and contradicted by the firmly
compressed lip; the lighted, steady, stern eye; the resolute and even
stubborn front, joined to proportions strikingly athletic and a
stature of uncommon height.
"Well, Wolfe," said the young painter to the person we have described,
"it is indeed a kindness to give me a second sitting."
"Tusk, boy!" answered Wolfe, "all men have their vain points, and I
own that I am not ill pleased that these rugged features should be
assigned, even in fancy, to one of the noblest of those men who judged
the mightiest cause in which a country was ever plaintiff, a tyrant
criminal, and a world witness!" While Wolfe was yet speaking his
countenance, so naturally harsh, took a yet sterner aspect, and the
artist, by a happy touch, succeeded in transferring it to the canvas.
"But, after all," continued Wolfe, "it shames me to lend aid to an art
frivolous in itself, and almost culpable in times when Freedom wants
the head to design, and perhaps the hand to execute, far other and
nobler works than the blazoning of her past deeds upon perishable
canvas."
A momentary anger at the slight put upon his art crossed the pale brow
of the artist; but he remembered the character of the man and
continued his work in silence. "You consider then, sir, that these
are times in which liberty is attacked?" said Clarence.
"Attacked!" repeated Wolfe,--" attacked!" and then suddenly sinking
his voice into a sort of sneer, "why, since the event which this
painting is designed to commemorate, I know not if we have ever had
one solitary gleam of liberty break along the great chaos of jarring
prejudice and barbarous law which we term forsooth a glorious
constitution. Liberty attacked! no, boy; but it is a time when
liberty may be gained."
Perfectly unacquainted with the excited politics of the day, or the
growing and mighty spirit which then stirred through the minds of men,
Clarence remained silent; but his evident attention flattered the
fierce republican, and he proceeded.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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