The Missionary: An Indian Tale; vol. I Read online

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  Miss Owenson

  Author of the Missionary St Clair &c]

  THE

  MISSIONARY:

  AN

  Indian Tale.

  BY

  MISS OWENSON.

  WITH A PORTRAIT OF THE AUTHOR.

  IN THREE VOLUMES.

  _FOURTH EDITION._

  VOL. I:

  _LONDON:_

  PRINTED FOR J. J. STOCKDALE, NO. 41, PALL MALL. 1811.

  S. GOSNELL, Printer, Little Queen Street, London.

  TO THE MOST NOBLE

  ANN JANE,

  MARCHIONESS OF ABERCORN,

  THE FOLLOWING

  TALE

  IS RESPECTFULLY INSCRIBED,

  BY

  THE AUTHOR.

  THE

  MISSIONARY,

  &c.

  CHAPTER I.

  In the beginning of the seventeenth century, Portugal, bereft of hernatural sovereigns, had become an object of contention, to variouspowers in Europe. The houses of Braganza and of Parma, of Savoy andMedici, alike published their pretensions, and alike submitted to thatdecision, which the arms of Spain finally made in its own favour. Underthe goading oppression of Philip the Second, and of his two immediatesuccessors, the national independence of a brave people faded graduallyaway, and Portugal, wholly losing its rank in the scale of nations, sunkinto a Spanish province. From the torpid dream of slavish dependence,the victims of a mild oppression were suddenly awakened, by therapacious cruelties of Olivarez, the gloomy minister of Philip theFourth; and the spring of national liberty, receiving its impulse fromthe very pressure of the tyranny which crushed it, already recoveredsomething of that tone of force and elasticity which finally producedone of the most singular and perfect revolutions, which the history ofnations has recorded. It was at this period, that Portugal becamedivided into two powerful factions, and the Spanish partizans, andPortuguese patriots, openly expressed their mutual abhorrence, andsecretly planned their respective destruction. Even Religion forfeitedher dove-like character of peace, and enrolled herself beneath thebanners of civil discord and factious commotion. The Jesuits governedwith the Spaniards; the Franciscans resisted with the Portuguese; andeach accused the other of promulgating heretical tenets, in support ofthat cause, to which each was respectively attached[1].

  It was in the midst of these religious and political feuds, that theOrder of St. Francis became distinguished in Portugal, by the sanctityand genius of one of its members; and the monastery, into which the holyenthusiast had retired from the splendour of opulence and rank, from thepleasures of youth and the pursuits of life, became the shrine ofpilgrimage, to many pious votarists, who sought Heaven through themediation of him, who, on earth, had already obtained the title of “theman without a fault.”

  The monastery of St. Francis stands at the foot of that mighty chain ofmountains, which partially divides the province of Alentejo from thesea-beat shores of Algarva. Excavated from a pile of rocks, its cellsare little better than rude caverns; and its heavy portico, and gloomychapel, are composed of the fragments of a Moorish castle, whosemouldering turrets mingle, in the haze of distance, with the loftyspires of the Christian sanctuary, while both are reflected, by thebosom of one of those lakes so peculiar to Portugal, whose subterraneousthunder rolls with an incessant uproar, even when the waves of the oceanare still, and the air breathes of peace. Celebrated, in the naturalhistory of the country, for its absorbent and sanative qualities,Superstition had wrested the phænomenon to her own mystic purposes; andthe roaring lake, which added so fine and awful a feature to the gloomyscenery of the convent, brought to its altars the grateful tributes ofthose, who piously believed that they obtained, from the consecratedwaters, health in this world, and salvation in the world to come.

  To the left of the monastery, some traces of a Roman fortress, similarto that of Coimbra, were still visible: to the north, the mighty hillsof Alentejo terminated the prospect: while to the south, the view seemedextended to infinitude by the mightier ocean, beyond whose horizonfancy sought the coast of Carthage; and memory, awakening to her magic,dwelt on the altar of Hannibal, or hovered round the victor standard ofScipio Africanus. The mountains; the ocean; the lake of subterraneousthunder; the ruins of Moorish splendour; the vestiges of Roman prowess;the pile of monastic gloom:--magnificent assemblage of great anddiscordant images! What various epochas in time; what various states ofhuman power and human intellect, did not ye blend and harmonize, in onegreat picture! What a powerful influence were not your wildness and yoursolemnity, your grandeur and your gloom, calculated to produce upon themind of religious enthusiasm, upon the spirit of genius and melancholy;upon a character, formed of all the higher elements of human nature,upon such a mind, upon such a genius, upon such a character as thine,Hilarion!

  Amidst the hanging woods which shaded the southern side of the mountainsof Algarva, rose the turrets of the castle of Acugna; and the moon-beamswhich fell upon its ramparts, were reflected back by the glitteringspires of St. Francis.

  To this solitary and deserted castle, Hilarion, Count d’Acugna, had beensent, by his uncle and guardian, the Archbishop of Lisbon, in 1620. Theyoung Hilarion had scarcely attained his tenth year. His sole companionwas his preceptor, an old brother of the order of St. Francis. Historyattests the antiquity and splendour of the House d’Acugna. The royalblood of Portugal flowed in the veins of Hilarion, for his mother was adaughter of the House of Braganza. His elder, and only brother, DonLewis, Duke d’Acugna, was one of the most powerful grandees in thestate; his uncle, the Archbishop of Lisbon, was considered as the leaderof the disaffected nobles, whom the Spanish tyranny had almost driven todesperation; and, while the Duke and the Prelate were involved in allthe political commotions of the day, the young Hilarion, impressed bythe grand solemnity of the images by which he was surrounded; inflamedby the visionary nature of his religious studies; borne away by thecomplexional enthusiasm of his character, and influenced by theeloquence and example of his preceptor, emulated the ascetic life of hispatron saint, sighed to retire to some boundless desert, to livesuperior to nature, and to nature’s laws, beyond the power oftemptation, and the possibility of error; to subdue, alike, the humanweakness and the human passion, and, wholly devoted to Heaven, to givehimself up to such spiritual communions and celestial visions, as visitthe souls of the pure in spirit, even during their probation on earth,until, his unregulated mind becoming the victim of his ardentimagination, he lost sight of the true object of human existence, a lifeacceptable to the Creator by being serviceable to his creatures.Endowed with that complexional enthusiasm, which disdains the ordinarybusiness of life, with that profound sensibility which unfits for itspursuits, wrapt in holy dreams and pious ecstacies, all externalcircumstances gradually faded from his view, and, in his eighteenthyear,
believing himself, by the sudden death of his preceptor, to be the“inheritor of his sacred mantle,” he offered up the sacrifice of hisworldly honours, of his human possessions, to Heaven, and became a monkof the order of St. Francis.

  The Archbishop, and the Duke d’Acugna, received the intelligence of hisprofession with less emotion than surprise. Absence had loosened thetie of natural affection. The political state of Portugal rendered anadequate provision for the younger brother of so illustrious an house,difficult and precarious; and the Patriarch of Lisbon well knew that, toenter the portals of the church was not to close, for ever, the gate oftemporal preferment. The uncle and the brother wrote to felicitate theyoung monk on his heavenly vocation, presented a considerable donationto the monastery of St. Francis, and soon lost sight of theirenthusiast-relative in the public commotions and private factions of theday.