GEORGE CROLY

Salathiel, or Tarry Thou Till I Come!

      George Croly, the author of “Salathiel,” was born at Dublin
     on August 17, 1780, and became a clergyman of the Church of
     England.  After a short time as curate in the north of Ireland
     he came to London and devoted himself chiefly to literary
     pursuits.  In 1835 he was presented to the valuable living of
     St. Stephen’s, Walbrook, London, by Lord Brougham, where his
     eloquent preaching attracted large congregations.  It was a
     saying among Americans of the period, “Be sure and hear
     Croly!” Croly was a scholar, an orator, and a man of
     incredible energy.  Poems, biographies, dramas, sermons,
     novels, satires, magazine articles, newspaper leaders, and
     theological works were dashed off by his facile pen; and,
     according to Hogg, the Ettrick shepherd, he was great in
     conversation.  Croly’s chef d’oeuvre is “Salathiel,” which,
     published in 1829, created a prodigious sensation, Salathiel
     being the character better known as the Wandering Jew.  The
     description of the fall of Jerusalem is a wonderful piece of
     sustained eloquence, hardly to be squalled in romantic
     writings.  Croly died on November 24, 1860.

I.—­Immortality on Earth

“Tarry thou till I come!” The words shot through me.  I felt them like an arrow in my heart.  The troops, the priests, the populace, the world, passed from before my senses like phantoms.

Every fibre of my frame quivers as I still hear the echo of the anathema that sprang first from my furious lips, the self-pronounced ruin, the words of desolation, “His blood be upon us, and our children!”

But in the moment of my exultation I was stricken.  He who had refused an hour of life to the victim was, in terrible retribution, condemned to know the misery of life interminable.  I heard through all the voices of Jerusalem—­I should have heard through all the thunders of heaven, the calm, low voice, “Tarry thou till I come!”

I felt at once my fate.  I sprang away through the shouting hosts as if the avenging angel waved his sword above my head.  I was never to know the shelter of the grave!  Immortality on earth!  The perpetual compulsion of existence in a world made for change!  I was to survive my country.  Wife, child, friend, even to the last being with whom my heart could imagine a human bond, were to perish in my sight.  I was to know no limit to the weight already crushing me.  The guilt of life upon life, the surges of an unfathomable ocean of crime were to roll in eternal progress over my head.  Immortality on earth!

Overwhelmed with despair, I rushed through Jerusalem, crowded with millions come to the Passover, and made my way through the Gate of Zion to the open country and the mountains that were before me, like a barrier shutting out the living world.  There, as I lay in an agony of fear, my soul seemed to be whirled on the wind into the bosom of a thundercloud.  I felt the weight of the rolling vapours.  I saw a blaze.  I was stunned by a roar that shook the firmament.