The Argosy — page 221: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

A Glance at Knebworth. 206 of the lost, on his Yorkshire schoolboys, he speaks in these verses :-— Oh Heaven ! to think of their white souls, And mine so black and grim ! I could not share in childish prayer, Nor join in evening hymn : Like a devil of the pit I seemed, ’Mid holy Cherubim. And peace went with them one and all, And each calm pillow spread ; But Guilt was my grim Chamberlain That lighted me to bed ; And drew my midnight curtains round, With fingers bloody red ! When we listen to such a voice as this, what a relief it is to think, with a great thinker, that ‘“‘wherever men are conscious of a remorse which stays with them and moves with them, there is a cry ascending to some power, known or unknown—DELIVER US FROM EvIL” !* Wandering from county to county—a fugitive Cain—Eugene Aram came to the vicinity of the Lytton. manor-house as master of a school. In the Hertfordshire town where he sojourned, no trace of him is to be found but this bare fact. But thus much proved beyond a doubt, we may conjecture that he sometimes led his scholars through the Knebworth ‘lanes in quest of woodland or wayside plants. A self- taught proficient in mathematics, philology, and many abstruse studies, he became in his poverty and obscurity a power among the Jearned. But ambition may have moved him less than the love of knowledge for its own sake, or the desire to shut out conscience by incessant occupation of mind. Certain it is that- he went from study to study, just as he went from place to place. At one time he travelled far into ancient European languages, and also into Hebrew, Chaldaic, and Arabic; at another he made himself master of history, poetry, and antiquarian lore—of heraldry, botany, and the science of the herba- list. A great, comprehensive genius—the self-made king of a vast intellectual kingdom—this man was destined to hang on a gibbet in Knaresborough Forest. What a story for romancer, dramatist, moralist ! And now, gentle reader, farewell to our companionship. We have seen something of Knebworth; and have journeyed to a town near it. Here the house of the Lyttons j is out of sight, and our excursion is ended. * Maurice. VOL. XIX. O EOMRniiElooe YN S (CO)