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+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #60148 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/60148)
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-Project Gutenberg's Graham's Magazine, Vol. XL, No. 4, April 1852, by Various
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
-other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
-whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
-the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
-www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
-to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
-
-Title: Graham's Magazine, Vol. XL, No. 4, April 1852
-
-Author: Various
-
-Editor: George R. Graham
-
-Release Date: August 21, 2019 [EBook #60148]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: UTF-8
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GRAHAM'S MAGAZINE, APRIL 1952 ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by Mardi Desjardins & the online Distributed
-Proofreaders Canada team at https://www.pgdpcanada.net
-from page images generously made available by Google Books
-
-
-
-
-
- GRAHAM’S MAGAZINE.
- Vol. XL. April, 1852. No. 4.
-
-
- Contents
-
- Fiction, Literature and Articles
-
- Optical Phenomena
- The First Age
- Impressions of England in the Autumn of 1851
- Oliver Goldsmith—His Character and Genius
- A Life of Vicissitudes (continued)
- The Bower of Castle Mount
- A Reply to Dwight’s Article on Mozart’s Don
- Giovanni
- A True Irish Story
- The Condor Hunt
- What Glory Costs the Nation
- Eminent Young Men.—No. I
- The Game of the Season
- Was the World Made Out of Nothing?
- A Literary Gossip with Miss Mitford
- The Two Isabels; Or Coquettish Seventeen
- Review of New Books
- Graham’s Small-Talk
-
- Poetry and Music
-
- The Forest Fountain
- Love
- Memory
- The Last Song
- April
- Away
- Song
- Mona Lisa
- To a Canary Bird
- Faded and Gone
- Song of the Spirit of the North
- Sonnet.—Art
- The Autograph of God
- If I Were a Smile
- To Miss Light Underwood
- Beautie
- Lines on Some Violets
- The Destruction of Sodom
- Sorrento
- A Thought of the Future
- The Black Huntsman
- Sweet Sunny Isle
-
-
- Transcriber’s Notes can be found at the end of this eBook.
-
- * * * * *
-
- GRAHAM’S MAGAZINE.
-
- Vol. XL. PHILADELPHIA, APRIL, 1852. No. 4.
-
- * * * * *
-
-
-
-
- THE FOREST FOUNTAIN.
-
-
- BY IGNATIUS L. DONNELLY.
-
-
-[Illustration: a stream flowing through a forest]
-
- Here the sinking sun hath broken through a forest close as night;
- Plashing all the deepened darkness with its thick and wine-like light.
- Shivered lies the broad, red sunbeam slant athwart the withered leaf,
- Laughing back the startled shadows from their high and holy grief;
- Down yon dusk-pool, slant, obliquely, shoots a line like sparry
- splinter,
- As the waking flush of spring-time lightens up the eyes in winter:
- Dimming as it straineth downward melts the red light of the sun,
- Darkling pool and piercing beamlet mingling whitely into one.
- Fallen rays, like broken crystals, spangle thick the shadowy ground,
- Ragged fragments, glorious gushes scattered richly, redly round.
- Where the lazy lilies languish, one intruding sunbeam creeps;
- In the arms of slumberous shadow, like a child it sinks and sleeps;
- And the quiet leaves around it seem to think it all their own,
- ’Mid the grass and lightened lilies sleeping silent and alone.
- Here the dew-damp lingers longest ’mid the plushy fountain moss;
- Here the bergamot’s red blossom leans the stilly stream across;
- Here the shade is darkly silent; here the breeze is liquid cool,
- And the very air seems married to the freshness of that pool.
- See, where down its depths pellucid, Nature’s purest waters well,
- Breaking up in curving current, wimpled line and bubbly swell;
- While in swift and noiseless beauty, through the deep and dewy grass,
- O’er the rock and down the valley, see the hurrying waters pass.
- Oh, how dreamy grow my senses, as I couch me ’mid the flowers,
- Oh, how still the blue sky looketh, oh, how noteless creep the hours;
- Oh, how wide the silence seemeth, not a sound disturbing comes,
- Save a drowsy, sleepy buzzing, that around continuous hums;
- And I seem to float out loosely on weak slumber’s languid breast,
- With a kind of half reluctance that sinks gradually to rest.
- Distant faces group around me, kindly eyes look in my own,
- And I hear, though indistinctly, voices of the lost and gone:
- His whose bark went down in tempest; his whose life and death were
- gloom;
- His whose hopes and young ambitions fell and faded on the tomb;
- Oh, again his earnest language breaks upon my dreaming ear,
- And I catch the tones that waking I shall never, never hear.
-
- * * * * *
-
-
-
-
- LOVE.
-
-
- BY A. J. REQUIER.
-
-
- Oh, with more than the pilgrim of Mecca’s devotion,
- When he looks on the shrine which his worship endears,
- Is the glance which we cast at the young heart’s devotion,
- Its first rose of summer—the last which it bears;
- Bright as a halo of sunshine reposing
- At break of the morn on a billowless stream,
- Where the wavering shadows are fitfully moving,
- Or blush of a Peri that smiles in a dream.
-
- Thus, thus must thou dwell on each glance of affection,
- Each token of love I have strewed at thy shrine,
- When thy bosom first heaved at the fear of detection,
- And its secret alone was imparted to mine;
- It is linked with each thought that is born in thy waking,
- It embosoms each fancy that softens thy sleep,
- And, if e’er it be wild as the waves in their breaking,
- ’Tis the image of Heaven that breaks on the deep!
-
- For vainly the bosom whose pulses have throbbed
- To the beat of a heart it had warmed with its fire,
- Seeks to freeze the remembrance of tears it has sobbed,
- And to smother the anguish of pining desire;
- The remembrance will live, the remembrance will cling.
- As the ever-green ivy encircles the oak,
- And the tempest may strike with its withering wing,
- But together they bend and together are broke!
-
- Bright star of my soul! thus united we stand,
- Intermingled in being and blended in breath,
- Come fate with her darkest, her gloomiest band,
- We will bend, we will break undivided in death;
- ’Twas Heaven decreed it, ’twas Heaven that wove
- The tie which has bound us in home and in heart,
- And this only we know, we live on but to love,
- And thus loving we never, oh, never can part!
-
- * * * * *
-
-
-
-
- MEMORY.
-
-
- BY LYDIA L. A. VERY.
-
-
-“’Tis in the morning that the church-yard of Memory gives up its dead.”
-
-
- Let them rise from the heart’s tomb;
- Spirits, not of sadness or gloom—
- White-robed thoughts of Childhood’s truth,
- Cherished hopes that filled our youth.
- Let them rise a shining band
- Coming from the Spirit-Land.
-
- Let them rise! each well-known face,
- Where so oft we loved to trace
- Smiles that beamed for us alone,
- Eyes o’er which Death’s veil is thrown—
- Let them gather round our bed
- All unheard their noiseless tread!
-
- Let their eyes of love still speak,
- Let their breath be on our cheek,
- And their voice in our ear
- Murmur words we loved to hear:
- Let their spirits fair and bright
- Visit us at morning light.
-
- Death, who cometh thief-like, still
- Taking Life’s bright gems at will;
- With us early, with us late,
- Making hearth-stones desolate—
- Death, who visits all Life’s bowers.
- Cannot gather Memory’s flowers!
-
- * * * * *
-
-
-
-
- THE LAST SONG.
-
-
- FROM THE GERMAN.
-
-
-[Illustration]
-
- “When will your bards be weary
- Of rhyming on? How long
- Ere it is sung and ended,
- The old, eternal song?
-
- “Is it not, long since, empty,
- The horn of full supply;
- And all the posies gathered,
- And all the fountains dry?”
-
- As long as the sun’s chariot
- Yet keeps its azure track,
- And but one human visage
- Gives answering glances back;
-
- As long as skies shall nourish
- The thunderbolt and gale,
- And, frightened at their fury,
- One throbbing heart shall quail;
-
- As long as after tempests
- Shall spring one showery bow,
- One breast with peaceful promise
- And reconcilement glow;
-
- As long as night the concave
- Sows with its starry seed,
- And but one man those letters
- Of golden writ can read;
-
- Long as a moonbeam glimmers,
- Or bosom sighs a vow;
- Long as the wood-leaves rustle
- To cool a weary brow;
-
- As long as roses blossom,
- And earth is green in May;
- As long as eyes shall sparkle,
- And smile in pleasure’s ray;
-
- As long as cypress shadows
- The graves more mournful make,
- Or one cheek’s wet with weeping,
- Or one poor heart can break;—
-
- So long on earth shall wander
- The goddess Poesy,
- And with her, one exulting
- Her votarist to be.
-
- And singing on, triumphing,
- The old earth-mansion through,
- Out marches the last minstrel;—
- He is the last man too.
-
- The Lord holds the creation
- Forth in his hand meanwhile,
- Like a fresh flower just opened,
- And views it with a smile.
-
- When once this Flower Giant
- Begins to show decay,
- And earths and suns are flying
- Like blossom-dust away.
-
- Then ask,—if of the question
- Not weary yet,—“How long,
- Ere it is sung and ended,
- The old, eternal song?”
-
- * * * * *
-
-
-
-
- OPTICAL PHENOMENA.
-
-
- BY THOMAS MILNER, M. A.
-
-
-[Illustration]
-
-It is convenient to place an indefinite title at the head of this
-article, in order to notice various classes of independent phenomena
-which immediately address themselves to the eye; and which are either
-plain developments of electrical action, or simply atmospheric meteors,
-or appearances resulting from its reflecting and refractive properties,
-or of obscure origin, but manifested in the atmosphere. To the former
-class the lightning belongs, beautifully playing among the distant
-clouds, or flashing with blinding glare and tremendous effect near the
-surface of the earth, warning man and beast of the presence of an agency
-able to extinguish animal and vegetable life in a moment, and utterly
-inappreciable in its swiftness, subtility and power. At the close of a
-hot, sultry day, over a level country, the igneous meteor often exhibits
-itself, in rapidly succeeding, broad, noiseless, and imposing sheets of
-flame, lighting up the whole range of the horizon, revealing for the
-moment the contour of the distant landscape upon which the shadows of
-the night have gathered, and discovering the outline of the clouds in
-the dusky sky. These displays, however startling to “the poor Indian,
-whose untutored mind” is alarmed at the slightest deviation from the
-ordinary aspect of things, are always harmless, and invite by their
-innocuousness and fascination the cultivated races to watch the bounding
-coruscations of the elastic element, besides contributing to render the
-fields of corn ripe unto the harvest. But it is otherwise when heat has
-overcharged the atmosphere with vapors, becoming piled into clouds of
-gigantic dimensions and massive architecture, which are often propelled
-by antagonist currents, and in different electrical conditions. After an
-unusual calm of nature, oppressive to the animal system, during which
-not a movement of the air is perceptible, and the leaves hang motionless
-upon the trees, while the brute creation indicate some intelligence of
-an impending change by their restlessness, an explosion commences. The
-flash is seen, the thunder heard, and the clouds open their watery
-store-house, a few distant and heavy drops increasing into a cataract of
-rain. Flash rapidly follows flash, and the interval between each
-appearance and the accompanying thunder peal becomes less. The pale hue
-of the lightning is exchanged for a vivid glare, in which a deep yellow,
-red, or blue is the predominant color, a variety of aberrations marking
-its course, the zigzag form showing that the fearful agent is near
-terrestrial objects. In this manner, “the detraction that wasteth at
-noonday” is frequently exhibited, now striking man and beast to the
-earth, or rending asunder the mighty oak of the forest, or firing the
-vessel of the hapless seaman, or shivering “the cloud-capt towers and
-gorgeous palaces,” the fanes of religion and the fortresses of war. Man
-has then a solemn sense of his helplessness and danger; and almost every
-creature sympathizes with him. The eel is restless in his muddy bed—the
-horse trembles beneath his rider—the cattle gather lowing to a
-covert—the eagle nestles in the cleft of the rock with folded
-wings—the hart looks wild and anxious: only the poor seal seems to
-experience agreeable sensations, for he will come out of his
-hiding-place in the deep, at the call of the thunder, and repose upon
-some overhanging ledge, as if calmly enjoying the convulsion of the
-elements.
-
-Since the month of June 1752, when Franklin performed the celebrated
-kite experiment, by which he became the modern Prometheus, bringing down
-the celestial fire to the earth, the identity of lightning and
-electricity has been universally known. The theory of the electric
-fluid, as it is called, is to be sought for in philosophical treatises,
-our province being to notice its distribution, phenomena, and effects.
-That subtle principle which the Greeks denominated electricity, from
-_elektron_, amber, because the property was first noticed in that
-substance, appears to be a universally diffused agent, its presence
-having been detected in connection with the clouds, with hail, rain and
-snow, with vegetation, animals, and the interior strata of the earth.
-But undue accumulation transpires—the electrical equilibrium is
-disturbed; and the resulting phenomena of equalization are lightning and
-thunder. Thus two clouds, or a cloud and the earth, unequally
-electrified, tend to return to a condition of equality through a
-conducting medium, a metallic or moist body having the preference as a
-conductor, the discharge of electricity appearing in the form of a spark
-or flash, accompanied by a loud detonation according to its violence,
-the peal rebounding in echoes from cloud to cloud, and from hill to
-hill. Some regions of the globe are peculiarly subject to accumulations
-of electricity. Mr. Hamilton, in his work on Asia Minor, observes—“One
-of the most remarkable phenomena which I observed in Angora, was the
-great degree of electricity which seemed to pervade every thing. I
-observed it particularly in silk handkerchiefs, linen and woollen
-stuffs. At times, when I went to bed in the dark, the sparks which were
-emitted from the blanket gave it the appearance of a sheet of fire; when
-I took up a silk handkerchief, the crackling noise would resemble that
-of breaking a handful of dried leaves or grass; and on one or two
-occasions I clearly felt my hands and fingers tingle from the electric
-fluid. I could only attribute it to the extreme dryness of the
-atmosphere, and momentary friction. I did not observe that it was at all
-influenced by wind; the phenomena were the same, whether by night or by
-day, in wind or calm. Not a cloud was visible during the whole of my
-stay.”
-
-Similar striking indications of the prevalence of electric action have
-frequently been observed by travelers when near the summits of high
-mountains, as by Sir W. J. Hooker on Ben Nevis, Saussure on Mont Blanc,
-and Tupper on Mount Etna. The latter, descending a field of snow, a good
-conductor, felt a slight shock upon entering a cloud which seemed
-electric, with a sensation of pain in the back. The hair of his head
-stood erect, and upon moving the hand near the head, a humming sound
-proceeded from it, which arose from a succession of sparks. Though a
-situation of great danger, yet we have several instances of such clouds
-having been traversed with impunity, when in the act of electrical
-explosion. The Abbé Richard, in August 1778, passed through a
-thunder-cloud on the small mountain called Boyer, between Chalons and
-Tournus. Before he entered the cloud, the thunder sounded, as it is wont
-to do, with a prolonged reverberation; but when enveloped in it, only
-single peals were heard, with intervals of silence, without any roll;
-and after he had passed above the cloud, it reverberated as before, and
-the lightning flashed. The sister of M. Arago was a party to a similar
-occurrence between Estagel and Limoux, and some officers of engineers
-likewise, during a trigonometrical survey on the Pyrenees.
-
-The energy of atmospheric electricity appears to decrease as we recede
-from the equator to the poles, thus sympathizing with light and heat;
-for it is in tropical countries that the most terrific flashes of
-lightning and the loudest bursts of heaven’s artillery occur. Awful as
-these manifestations are occasionally in our temperate climate, they are
-but as a skirmishing of outposts to the general engagement of armies,
-when compared with inter-tropical displays. In Hindustan, in the Indian
-Ocean, along the African coast off Cape St. Verde, and in Central
-America, there is often a scene exhibited, which seems a rehearsal of
-the day “when the heavens being on fire shall pass away with a great
-noise.” Humboldt, during his residence at Cumana, witnessed a coincident
-development of electrical action, peculiar atmospheric phenomena, and
-terrestrial disturbance, during what is called the winter of that
-region. From the 10th of October to the 3d of November, a reddish vapor
-rose in the evening, and in a few minutes covered the sky. The
-hygrometer gave no indication of humidity; the diurnal heat was from
-82·4° to 89·6°. The vapor disappeared occasionally in the middle of the
-night, when brilliantly white clouds formed in the zenith, extending
-toward the horizon. They were sometimes so transparent that they did not
-conceal stars even of the fourth magnitude, and the lunar spots were
-clearly distinguishable through the veil. The clouds were arranged in
-masses at equal distances, and seemed to be at a prodigious elevation.
-From the 28th of October to the 3d of November, the fog was thicker than
-it had been before; and the heat at night was stifling, though the
-thermometer indicated only 78·8°. There was no evening breeze. The sky
-appeared as if on fire, and the ground was every where cracked and
-dusty. About two o’clock in the afternoon of November 4th, large clouds
-of extraordinary blackness enveloped the mountains of the Brigantine and
-Tataraqual, extending gradually to the zenith. About four, thunder was
-heard overhead, but at an immense height, and with a dull and often
-interrupted sound. At the moment of the strongest electric explosion,
-two shocks of an earthquake, separated by an interval of fifteen
-seconds, were felt. The people in the streets filled the air with their
-cries. Boupland, who was examining plants, was nearly thrown upon the
-floor, and Humboldt, who was lying in his hammock, felt the concussion
-strongly. A few minutes before the first, there was a violent gust of
-wind followed by large drops of rain. The sky remained cloudy, and the
-blast was succeeded by a dead calm, which continued all night. The
-sunset was a scene of great magnificence. The dark atmospheric shroud
-was rent asunder close to the horizon, and the sun appeared at 12° of
-altitude on an indigo ground, his disc enormously enlarged and
-distorted. The clouds were gilded on the edges, and bundles of rays
-reflecting the most brilliant prismatic colors extended over the
-heavens. About nine in the evening there was a third shock, which,
-though much slighter, was evidently attended with a subterranean noise.
-In the night between the 3d and 4th of November, the red vapor before
-mentioned had been so thick, that the place of the moon could only be
-distinguished by a beautiful halo 20° in diameter. The vapor ceased to
-appear on the 7th; the atmosphere then assumed its former purity; and
-the night of the 11th was cool and extremely lovely. This account, with
-similar details from other observers, seems to indicate a more intimate
-relation than is generally admitted between the interior of the earth
-and its external atmosphere.
-
-Among the regions peculiarly subject to electric phenomena is the
-country around the estuary of the Rio Plata. In the year 1793, one of
-the most destructive thunder-storms perhaps on record, happened at
-Buenos Ayres, when thirty-seven places in the city were struck by the
-lightning, and nineteen of the inhabitants killed. It is an observation
-of Mr. Darwin, founded on statements in books of travels, that
-thunder-storms are very common near the mouths of great rivers; and he
-conjectures that this may arise from the mixture of large bodies of
-fresh and salt water disturbing the electrical equilibrium. “Even,” he
-remarks, “during our occasional visit to this part of South America, we
-heard of a ship, two churches and a house, having been struck. Both the
-church and the house I saw shortly afterward. Some of the effects were
-curious: the paper, for nearly a foot on each side of the line where the
-bell-wires had run, was blackened. The metal had been fused, and
-although the room was about fifteen feet high, the globules, dropping on
-the chairs and furniture, had drilled in them a chain of minute holes. A
-part of the wall was shattered as if by gunpowder, and the fragments had
-been blown off with force sufficient to indent the wall on the opposite
-side of the room. The frame of a looking-glass was blackened; the
-gilding must have been volatilized, for a smelling-bottle, which stood
-on the chimney-piece, was coated with bright metallic particles, which
-adhered as firmly as if they had been enameled.” Near the shores of the
-Rio Plata, in a broad band of sand hillocks, he found those singular
-specimens of electric architecture, a group of vitrified siliceous
-tubes, formed by the lightning striking into loose sand. These tubes had
-a glossy surface, and were about two inches in circumference, the
-thickness of the wall of each tube varying from the twentieth to the
-thirtieth part of an inch. Four sets were noticed, probably not produced
-by successive distinct charges, but by the lightning dividing itself
-into separate branches before entering the ground. Similar cylindrical
-formations have been noticed in other places. Dr. Priestley has
-described, in the Philosophical Transactions, some siliceous tubes,
-which were found in digging into the ground, under a tree, where a man
-had been killed by lightning; and at Drigg, in Cumberland, three were
-observed within an area of fifteen yards, one of which was traced to a
-depth of not less than thirty feet. In the temperate climates electrical
-phenomena are most common, and usually most energetic in the summer
-season, and the displays are grander and more formidable in mountainous
-than in level countries. As we approach the poles, they become less
-striking; thunder is rarely heard in high northern latitudes, and only
-as a feeble detonation; and though lightning is more common, it is
-seldom destructive. In Iceland, in the winter, it often plays in the
-impressive but harmless manner which the natives call laptelltur. This
-is a fluctuating appearance of the whole sky, as if on fire, accompanied
-by a strong wind and drifting snow, but inflicting no further damage
-than that arising from the terrified cattle falling over the rocks in
-their efforts to escape from the phenomenon.
-
-The rapidity of lightning, as measured by means of the camera lucida, M.
-Halvig estimates at probably eight or ten miles in a second, or about
-forty times greater velocity than that of sound; and according to M.
-Gay-Lussac, a flash sometimes darts more than three miles at once in a
-straight direction. M. Arago distinguishes three classes of lightning:
-First, luminous discharges characterized by a long streak of light, very
-thin, and well defined at the edges, of a white, violet, or purple hue,
-moving in a straight line, or deviating into a zigzag track, frequently
-dividing into two or more streams in striking terrestrial objects, but
-invariably proceeding from a single point. Secondly, he notices expanded
-flashes spreading over a vast surface without having any apparent depth,
-of a red, blue, or violet color, not so active as the former class, and
-generally confined to the edges of the clouds from which they appear to
-proceed. Thirdly, he mentions concentrated masses of light, which he
-terms globular lightning, which seem to occupy time, to endure for
-several seconds, and to have a progressive motion. Mr. Hearder of
-Plymouth describes a discharge of lightning of this kind on the
-Dartmouth hills, very near to him. Several vivid flashes had occurred
-before the mass of clouds approached the hill on which he was standing;
-and before he had time to retreat from his dangerous position, a
-tremendous crash and explosion burst close to him. The spark had the
-appearance of a nucleus of intensely ignited matter, followed by a flood
-of light. It struck the path near him, and dashed with fearful
-brilliancy down its whole length to a rivulet at the foot of the hill,
-where it terminated. Analogous to the discharges described as globular
-lightning are the fire-balls so often noticed, about which there has
-been no little scepticism; but the evidence cannot reasonably be
-doubted, that displays of electrical light have repeatedly occurred,
-conveying the impression of balls of fire to the observer. An instance
-is given by Mr. Chalmers while on board the Montague, of seventy-four
-guns, bearing the flag of Admiral Chambers. In the account read to the
-Royal Society, he states, that “on November 4th, 1749, while taking an
-observation on the quarter-deck, one of the quarter-masters requested
-him to look to windward, upon which he observed a large ball of blue
-fire rolling along on the surface of the water, as large as a
-mill-stone, at about three miles distance. Before they could raise the
-main-tack, the ball had reached within forty yards of the main-chains,
-when it rose perpendicularly with a fearful explosion, and shattered the
-main-topmast to pieces.” In an account of the fatal effects of lightning
-in June 1826, on the Malvern Hills, when two ladies were struck dead, it
-is stated, that the electric discharge appeared as a mass of fire
-rolling along the hill toward the building in which the party had taken
-shelter.
-
-Mr. Snow Harris remarks upon the difficulty of explaining these
-appearances on the principles applicable to the ordinary electric spark.
-The amazing rapidity of the latter, and the momentary duration of the
-light, render it impossible that they should be identical with it; but
-he conjectures that there may be a “glow discharge” preceding the main
-shock, some of the atmospheric particles yielding up their electricity
-by a gradual process before a discharge of the whole system takes place.
-In this view, the distinct balls of fire of sensible duration which have
-been perceived, are produced in a given point or points of a charged
-system previously to the more general and rapid union of the electrical
-forces—a supposition which will apply as well to the Mariner’s Lights,
-or St. Elmo’s Fire, observed during storms of thunder and lightning at
-sea. Pliny mentions lights noticed by the Roman mariners during
-tempests, flickering about their vessels, to which Seneca likewise makes
-allusion. By the superstitions of modern times they have been converted
-into indications of the guardian presence of St. Elmo, the patron saint
-of the sailor, hence called _cuerpo sante_ by the Spanish mariners.
-During the second voyage of Columbus among the West India islands, a
-sudden gust of heavy wind came on in the night, and his crew considered
-themselves in great peril, until they beheld several of these lambent
-flames playing about the tops of the masts, and gliding along the
-rigging, which they hailed as an assurance of their supernatural
-protector being near. Fernando Columbus records the circumstance in a
-manner strongly characteristic of the age in which he lived. “On the
-same Saturday, in the night, was seen St. Elmo, with seven lighted
-tapers, at the topmast. There was much rain and great thunder. I mean to
-say that those lights were seen which mariners affirm to be the body of
-St. Elmo, on beholding which they chanted many litanies and orisons,
-holding it for certain, that in the tempest in which he appears, no one
-is in danger.” A similar mention is made of this nautical superstition
-in the voyage of Magellan. During several great storms the presence of
-the saint was welcomed, appearing at the topmast with a lighted candle,
-and sometimes with two, upon which the people shed tears of joy,
-received great consolation, and saluted him according to the custom of
-the Catholic seamen; but he ungraciously vanished, disappearing with a
-great flash of lightning which nearly blinded the crew.
-
-[Illustration: Tower of St. Mark’s, Venice.]
-
-It is a striking instance of the triumph of mind, that by the
-introduction of lightning conductors into different civilized states,
-the power of this most energetic agent of nature is controled, and
-comparative security provided for life and property, otherwise in
-imminent jeopardy, when a severe thunder-storm occurs. Experience has
-taught the prime importance of furnishing exposed or elevated structures
-with a conducting apparatus, and has sufficiently shown that the
-immunity from danger enjoyed by many an unprotected building has been
-merely accidental; for when the teeming thunder-cloud has been wafted
-within reach of the edifice hitherto unscathed, the delusion has
-vanished that man may carelessly and with impunity thrust up his
-handiwork into the region of storms, as if daring the fury of the
-tempest, and inviting down its vengeance. The fine tower of St. Mark’s,
-at Venice, rising to the height of 360 feet, terminates in a pyramid
-which was severely injured in 1388. In 1417 the pyramid was again
-struck, and set on fire, having been constructed of wood. The same event
-happened in 1489, when it was entirely consumed. After being rebuilt of
-stone, the fell lightning renewed its destructive stroke in 1548, 1565,
-1653 and 1745; and on the last occasion the whole tower was rent in
-thirty-seven places, and almost destroyed. It was again ravaged in 1761
-and 1762, but in 1766 a lightning rod was put up, which has since
-protected it from damage. At Glogau, in Silesia, an interesting example
-of the value of conductors occurred in the year 1782. On the 8th of May,
-about eight o’clock in the evening, a thunder-storm from the west
-approached the powder magazine established in the Galgnuburg. An
-intensely vivid flash of lightning took place, accompanied instantly
-with such a tremendous peal of thunder, that the sentinel on duty was
-stupefied, and remained for awhile senseless, but no disaster occurred.
-Some laborers at a short distance from the magazine saw the lightning
-issue from the cloud and strike the point of the conductor, which
-conveyed it in safety by the combustible material. A different result
-took place with reference to a large quantity of unprotected ammunition,
-belonging to the republic of Venice, deposited in the vaults of the
-church of St. Nazaire, at Brescia. The church was struck with lightning
-in the month of August, 1767, and the electric fluid, descending to the
-vaults, exploded upward of 207,600 lbs. of powder, reducing nearly
-one-sixth of the fine city to ruins, and destroying about 3000 of the
-inhabitants. The Indians, whenever the sky wears a lowering aspect, so
-as to threaten a severe thunder-storm, are said to leave their pursuits
-and take refuge under the nearest beech-tree, considering it a complete
-protection, as it is affirmed that no instance has occurred of the beech
-having been struck by atmospheric electricity, when other trees of the
-American forests have been shivered into splinters in its neighborhood.
-
-For ages the inhabitants of the globe have seen the lightning flash and
-heard the thunder rattle; and some writers upon the occult sciences of
-the ancients, as Salverte, have supposed that, tutored by experience,
-without any understanding of the theory of the subject, they possessed
-the secret of warding off from their buildings the thunderbolt by a
-conducting apparatus. It is certain that extraordinary intimations to
-this effect may be culled from their writings. Pliny states that Tullus
-Hostilius, practicing Numa’s art of bringing down fire from heaven, and
-performing it incorrectly, was struck with lightning—a fate which
-Professor Richman of St. Petersburg experienced, while performing
-incautiously the sublime experiment of Franklin, measuring the strength
-of the electricity brought down by a metallic rod in a thunder-storm,
-being instantly killed. Pliny likewise mentions the laurel as the only
-earthly production which lightning does not strike; hence, as a
-protection, these trees were planted around the temple of Apollo.
-Columella, however, mentions white vines surrounding the house of
-Tarchon, the Etruscan, for the same purpose. These expedients may
-provoke a smile without deserving one; for there can be no doubt that
-trees sufficiently high around a temple, or succulent plants covering a
-dwelling, will exercise to some extent a protective power, and act as a
-regular system of conductors. Salverte mentions several medals which
-appear to have reference to this subject, particularly one which
-represents the temple of Juno, the goddess of the air, the roof of which
-is armed with pointed rods. He quotes also Michaelis, upon the temple of
-Jerusalem, to show that the Jews were not unacquainted with the art of
-protecting their public buildings—a position grounded upon the
-following facts: “1. That there is nothing to indicate that the
-lightning ever struck the temple of Jerusalem during the lapse of a
-thousand years.” This, of course, does not make the fact certain; but
-when, as M. Arago justly remarks, we consider how carefully the ancient
-authors recorded the cases in which their public buildings were injured
-by lightning, we may accept the silence observed respecting the temple
-of Jerusalem, as proof that it was never struck. For three centuries the
-cathedral of Geneva, the most elevated in the city, has enjoyed a
-similar immunity, although inferior buildings have been repeatedly
-damaged. Saussure discovered the reason of this, in the tower being
-entirely covered with tinned iron plates, connected with different
-masses of metal on the roof, and again communicating with the ground by
-means of metallic pipes. “2. That according to the account of Josephus,
-a forest of spikes with golden or gilt points, and very sharp, covered
-the roof of this temple; a remarkable feature of resemblance with the
-temple of Juno represented on the Roman medals. 3. That this roof
-communicated with the caverns in the hill of the temple, by means of
-metallic tubes, placed in connection with the thick gilding that covered
-the whole exterior of the building; the points of the spikes there
-necessarily producing the effect of lightning-rods. How are we to
-suppose that it was only by chance they discharged so important a
-function; that the advantage received from it had not been calculated;
-that the spikes were erected in such great numbers only to prevent the
-birds from lodging upon and defiling the roof of the temple? Yet this is
-the sole utility which the historian Josephus attributes to them.” Upon
-a sober review of these facts, it is difficult to resist the conclusion
-that the ancient world had some proficiency in the art of guiding the
-electric fluid from the bosom of the clouds, conducting it in a
-prescribed course, and thus disarming it of its terrors.
-
-The subject of electrical agency is intimately connected with that of
-magnetism, to which this is the fittest place to glance—one of the most
-recondite points of physical science. The relation between the two is
-evident, from the notorious fact that lightning often renders steel
-magnetic, and disturbs the magnetism of the magnetised needle, so that
-in thunder-storms the compass needles of a ship have frequently been
-seriously injured. The magnetic agency, like electricity, has a general
-distribution over the earth, but the phenomena differ in different parts
-of the world, and are subject to periodical differences in the same
-place, the cause of which is very little understood. Every one is
-acquainted with the polarity of a freely suspended magnetic needle, or
-its tendency to lie parallel with the earth’s axis, pointing nearly
-north and south in every region of the globe. What is called the _dip_
-or _inclination_ of the needle is its divergence from a perfectly
-horizontal position. Thus the north pole of the needle inclines downward
-in the latitude of London at an angle of 70°, but conveyed toward the
-equator, the dip diminishes, till no inclination at all appears.
-Transported farther toward the south, the dip again discovers itself,
-but in an opposite direction, the south pole of the needle inclining
-downward. “To understand the reason of this dip of the magnetic needle,
-and of its general direction, we have only to consider that the earth
-itself operates as a great magnet, the poles of which are situated
-beneath its surface. The directive property of the needle is owing to
-these poles; and when the needle is on the north side of the equator,
-the north pole of the earth having the greatest effect, the needle is
-attracted downward toward the north pole; hence exactly over the
-magnetic pole the needle would be vertical. Similar phenomena occur in
-the southern hemisphere; but here the south pole predominates, and of
-course depresses the corresponding pole of the needle; while at the
-magnetic equator, from the equal action of both poles, the needle will
-assume an exactly horizontal position.”
-
-But neither the magnetic equator nor the magnetic poles coincide
-precisely with the geographical equator and poles, and this difference
-constitutes what is termed the _variation_ of the needle. From
-calculation, the north magnetic pole had been fixed in latitude 70°, and
-longitude 98° 30′ west, a spot which Commander Ross approached within
-the distance of ten miles, in the year 1830, but was unable to verify
-the site, for want of the requisite instruments. Upon going through a
-long series of calculations afterward himself, he concluded the above
-position to have been erroneously assigned, and that the real point lay
-in latitude 70° 5′ 17″ north, and longitude 96° 46′ 45″ west, a spot on
-the western coast of Boothia, which he prepared to reach. On the first
-of June, 1831, at eight o’clock in the morning, he arrived at the site
-to which his calculations pointed, and found the same day the amount of
-the dip to be 89° 59′, only one minute less than 90°, the vertical
-position, which would have precisely indicated the polar station; and
-the horizontal needles, suspended in the most delicate manner possible,
-did not betray the slightest movement. The spot was an unattractive
-level site along the coast, rising into ridges from fifty to sixty feet
-high, about a mile inland. The wish expressed by the discoverer was
-natural, that a place so important had possessed more of mark or note,
-but Nature had erected no monument to denote the spot which she had
-chosen as the centre of one of her “great and dark powers.” A cairn of
-some magnitude was constructed by the adventurers, upon which the
-British flag was planted, and underneath, a canister was buried,
-containing a record of the interesting enterprise.
-
-[Illustration: Aurora Borealis—Loch Leven.]
-
-The magnetic needle has frequently exhibited violent disturbance when
-the Aurora Borealis has appeared. This has led to the surmise that these
-brilliant lights are connected with the electric and magnetic properties
-of the earth, though in a manner which we cannot explain. It has been
-remarked that during the appearance of the aurora the electric fluid may
-often be readily collected from the air. If a current of electricity
-also be passed through an exhausted receiver, a very correct imitation
-of the auroral light will be produced, displaying the same variety of
-color and intensity, and the same undulating motions. It is highly
-probable, therefore, that the beautiful and fantastic meteoric display
-is connected with electricity; but great obscurity rests upon this
-department of meteorology.
-
-Of all optical phenomena, the Aurora Borealis, or the northern
-day-break, is one of the most striking, especially in the regions where
-its full glory is revealed. The site of the appearance, in the north
-part of the heavens, and its close resemblance to the aspect of the sky
-before sunrise, have originated the name. The “Derwentwater Lights” was
-long the appellation common in the north of England, owing to their
-display on the night after the execution of the unfortunate earl of that
-name. The scene in the illustration is a picture of the auroral light,
-as observed from the neighborhood of Loch Leven—a scene in itself
-admirably calculated to exhibit the phenomenon; and to convey any
-adequate idea of its magical aspect, as seen in high latitudes, the
-painter’s hand and the poet’s art are needed. A native Russian,
-Lomonosov, thus refers to the spectacle:—
-
- “Where are thy secret laws, O Nature, where?
- Thy torch-lights dazzle in the wintry zone;
- How dost thou light from ice thy torches there?
- There has thy son some sacred, secret throne?
- See in your frozen sea what glories have their birth;
- Thence night leads forth the day t’ illuminate the earth.
-
- “Come then, philosopher, whose privileged eye
- Reads Nature’s hidden pages and decrees:
- Come now, and tell us whence, and where, and why,
- Earth’s icy regions glow with lights like these,
- That fill our souls with awe; profound inquirer, say,
- For thou dost count the stars, and trace the planet’s way.
-
- “What fills with dazzling beams the illumined air?
- What wakes the flames that light the firmament?
- The lightning’s flash: there is no thunder there,
- And earth and heaven with fiery sheets are blent;
- The winter’s night now gleams with brighter, lovelier ray
- Than ever yet adorned the golden summer’s day.
-
- “Is there some vast, some hidden magazine,
- Where the gross darkness flames of fire supplies?
- Some phosphorous fabric, which the mountains screen,
- Whose clouds of light above those mountains rise?
- Where the winds rattle loud around the foaming sea,
- And lift the waves to heaven in thundering revelry?”
-
-The appearances exhibited by the aurora are so various as to render it
-impossible to comprehend every particular in a description that must be
-necessarily brief and general. A cloud, or haze, is commonly seen in the
-northern region of the heavens, but often bearing toward the east or
-west, assuming the form of an arc, seldom attaining a greater altitude
-than 40°, but varying in extent from 5° to 100°. The upper edge of the
-cloud is luminous, sometimes brilliant and irregular. The lower part is
-frequently dark and thick, with the clear sky appearing between it and
-the horizon. Streams of light shoot up in columnar forms from the upper
-part of the cloud, now extending but a few degrees, then as far as the
-zenith, and even beyond it. Instances occur in which the whole
-hemisphere is covered with these coruscations; but the brilliancy is the
-greatest, and the light the strongest, in the north, near the main body
-of the meteor. The streamers have in general a tremulous motion, and
-when close together present the appearance of waves, or sheets of light,
-following each other in rapid succession. But no rule obtains with
-reference to these streaks, which have acquired the name of “the merry
-dancers,” from their volatility, becoming more quick in their motions in
-stormy weather, as if sympathizing with the wildness of the blast. Such
-is the extraordinary aspect they present, that it is not surprising the
-rude Indians should gaze upon them as the spirits of their fathers
-roaming through the land of souls. They are variously white, pale red,
-or of a deep blood-color, and sometimes the appearance of the whole
-rainbow as to hue is presented. When several streamers emerging from
-different points unite at the zenith, a small and dense meteor is
-formed, which seems to burn with greater violence than the separate
-parts, and glows with a green, blue, or purple light. The display is
-over sometimes in a few minutes, or continues for hours, or through the
-whole night, and appears for several nights in succession. Captain
-Beechey remarked a sudden illumination to occur at one extremity of the
-auroral arch, the light passing along the belt with a tremulous
-hesitating movement toward the opposite end, exhibiting the colors of
-the rainbow; and as an illustration of this appearance, he refers to
-that presented by the rays of some molluscous animals in motion. Captain
-Parry notices the same effect as a common one with the aurora, and
-compares it, as far as its motion is concerned, to a person holding a
-long ribbon by one end, and giving it an undulatory movement through its
-whole length, though its general position remains the same. Captain
-Sabine likewise speaks of the arch being bent into convolutions,
-resembling those of a snake in motion. Both Parry, Franklin, and Beechey
-agree in the observation that no streamers were ever noticed shooting
-downward from the arch.
-
-The preceding statement refers to aurora in high northern latitudes,
-where the full magnificence of the phenomenon is displayed. It forms a
-fine compensation for the long and dreary night to which these regions
-are subject, the gay and varying aspect of the heavens contrasting
-refreshingly with the repelling and monotonous appearance of the earth.
-We have already stated that the direction in which the aurora generally
-makes its first appearance, or the quarter in which the arch formed by
-this meteor is usually seen, is to the northward. But this does not hold
-good of very high latitudes, for by the expeditions which have wintered
-in the ice, it was almost always seen to the southward; while by Captain
-Beechey, in the Blossom, in Kotzerne Sound, 250 miles to the southward
-of the ice, it was always observed in a northern direction. It would
-appear, therefore, from this fact, that the margin of the region of
-packed ice is most favorable to the production of the meteor. The
-reports of the Greenland ships confirm this idea; for, according to
-their concurrent testimony, the meteoric display has a more brilliant
-aspect to vessels passing near the situation of the compact ice, than to
-others entered far within it. Instances, however, are not wanting, of
-the aurora appearing to the south of the zenith in comparatively low
-latitudes. Lieutenant Chappell, in his voyage to Hudson’s Bay, speaks of
-its forming in the zenith, in a shape resembling that of an umbrella,
-pouring down streams of light from all parts of its periphery, which
-fell vertically over the hemisphere in every direction. As we retire
-from the Pole, the phenomenon becomes a rarer occurrence, and is less
-perfectly and distinctly developed. In September, 1828, it was observed
-in England as a vast arch of silvery light, extending over nearly the
-whole of the heavens, transient gleams of light separating from the main
-body of the luminosity; but in September, 1827, its hues were red and
-brilliant. Dr. Dalton has furnished the following account of an aurora,
-as observed by him on the 15th of October, 1792:—“Attention,” he
-remarks, “was first excited by a remarkably red appearance of the clouds
-to the south, which afforded sufficient light to read by at 8 o’clock in
-the evening, though there was no moon nor light in the north. From
-half-past nine to ten there was a large, luminous, horizontal arch to
-the southward, and several faint concentric arches northward. It was
-particularly noticed that all the arches seemed exactly bisected by the
-plain of the magnetic meridian. At half-past ten o’clock streamers
-appeared, very low in the south-east, running to and fro from west to
-east. They increased in number, and began to approach the zenith
-apparently with an accelerated velocity, when all on a sudden the whole
-hemisphere was covered with them, and exhibited such an appearance as
-surpasses all description. The intensity of the light, the prodigious
-number and volatility of the beams, the grand intermixture of all the
-prismatic colors in their utmost splendor, variegating the glowing
-canopy with the most luxuriant and enchanting scenery, afforded an
-awful, but at the same time the most pleasing and sublime spectacle in
-nature. Every one gazed with astonishment, but the uncommon grandeur of
-the scene only lasted one minute. The variety of colors disappeared, and
-the beams lost their lateral motion, and were converted into the
-flashing radiations. The aurora continued for several hours.” A copious
-deposition of dew—hard gales in the English channel—and a sudden thaw
-after great cold in northern regions, are circumstances which have been
-frequently noticed in connection with auroral displays.
-
-[Illustration: Aurora Borealis.]
-
-The sky of the southern hemisphere occasionally exhibits this strange
-and mysterious light, contrary to an old opinion upon the subject; and
-here it must be called Aurora Australis, the southern day-break. Its
-appearance, however, is far from being so common as in the northern
-zone, and is much less imposing. Don Antonio Ulloa, off Cape Horn, in
-the year 1745, witnessed the first appearance of the kind upon record in
-this region. Upon the clearing off of a thick mist, a light was observed
-in the southern horizon, extending to an elevation of about thirty
-degrees, sometimes of a reddish color, and sometimes like the light
-which precedes the rise of the moon, but occasionally more brilliant.
-Captain Cook, in the same latitudes, had more distinct views of the
-luminous streamers adorning the night-sky of the south. In the course of
-his second voyage he remarks, that on February the 17th, 1773, “a
-beautiful phenomenon was observed in the heavens. It consisted of long
-colors of a clear, white light, shooting up from the horizon, to the
-eastward, almost to the zenith, and spreading gradually over the whole
-southern part of the sky. These columns sometimes bent sideways at their
-upper extremity; and though in most respects similar to the northern
-lights, yet differed from them in being always of a whitish color,
-whereas ours assume various tints, especially those of a purple and
-fiery hue. The stars were sometimes hid by, and sometimes faintly to be
-seen through, the substance of these southern lights, _Aurora
-Australis_. The sky was generally clear when they appeared, and the air
-sharp and cold, the thermometer standing at the freezing point, the ship
-being in latitude 58° south.”
-
-The history of auroral phenomena goes back to the time of Aristotle, who
-undoubtedly refers to the exhibition in his work on meteors, describing
-it as occurring on calm nights, having a resemblance to flame mingled
-with smoke, or to a distant view of burning stubble, purple, bright red,
-and blood-color, being the predominant hues. Notices of it are likewise
-found in many of the classical writers; and the accounts which occur in
-the chronicles of the middle ages, of surprising lights in the air,
-converted by the imagination of the vulgar into swords gleaming and
-armies fighting, are allusions to the play of the northern lights. There
-is strong reason to believe, though the fact is perfectly inscrutable,
-that the aurora has been much more common in the European region of the
-northern zone, during the last century and a half, than in former
-periods. A very brilliant appearance took place on the 6th of March,
-1716, which forms the subject of a paper by Halley, who remarks, that
-nothing of the kind had occurred in England for more than eighty years,
-nor of the same magnitude since 1574, or about 140 years previous, in
-the reign of Queen Elizabeth, when Cambden and Stow were eye-witnesses
-of it. The latter states in his Annals, that on November 14th, “were
-seen in the air strange impressions of fire and smoke to proceed forth
-from a black cloud in the north toward the south—that the next night
-the heavens from all parts did seem to burn marvelous ragingly, and over
-our heads the flames from the horizon round about rising did meet, and
-there double and roll one in another, as if it had been in a clear
-furnace.” The year following, 1575, it was twice repeated in Holland,
-but not observed in England; and as a specimen of the tone of thought
-respecting the aurora, the description of Cornelius Gemma, a professor
-in the university of Louvain, may be given. Referring to the second
-instance of the year, and speaking in the language of the times, he
-remarks: “The form of the Chasma of the 28th of September following,
-immediately after sunset, was indeed less dreadful, but still more
-confused and various; for in it were seen a great many bright arches,
-out of which gradually issued spears, cities with towers and men in
-battle array; after that, there were excursions of rays every way, waves
-of clouds and battles mutually pursued and fled, and wheeling round in a
-surprising manner.” This phenomenon was repeatedly observed in the last
-century in Sweden, as at present; but prior to the year 1716, the
-inhabitants of Upsal considered it as a great rarity. Nothing is more
-common now in Iceland than the northern lights, exhibited during the
-winter with imposing grandeur and brilliance; but Torfæus, the historian
-of Denmark, an Icelander, who wrote in 1706, records his remembrance of
-the time when the meteor was an object of terror in his native island.
-It deserves remark, that its more frequent occurrence in the Atlantic
-regions has been accompanied by its diminution in the eastern parts of
-Asia, as Baron Von Wrangel was assured by the natives there, who added,
-that formerly it was brighter than at present, and frequently presented
-the vivid coloring of the rainbow.
-
-[Illustration: Halos.]
-
-The simplest form of the halo is that of a white concentric ring
-surrounding the sun or moon, a very common appearance in our climate in
-relation to the moon, occasioned by very thin vapor, or minute particles
-of ice and snow, diffused through the atmosphere deflecting the rays of
-light. Double rings are occasionally seen, displaying the brightest hues
-of the rainbow. The colored ring is produced by globules of visible
-vapor, the resulting halo exhibiting a character of density, and
-appearing contiguous to the luminous body, according as the atmosphere
-is surcharged with humidity. Hence a dense halo close to the moon is
-universally and justly regarded as an indication of coming rain. It has
-been stated as an approximation, that the globules which occasion the
-appearance of colored circles, vary from the 5000th to the 50,000th part
-of an inch in diameter. Though seldom apparent around the sun in our
-climate, yet it is only necessary to remove that glare of light which
-makes delicate colors appear white, to perceive segments of beautifully
-tinted halos on most days when light fleecy clouds are present. The
-illustration shows a nearly complete and slightly eliptical ring around
-the sun, the lower portion hidden by the horizon, which was distinctly
-observed during the past summer in the neighborhood of Ipswich, of an
-extremely pale pink and blue tint. When Humboldt was at Cumana, a large
-double halo around the moon fixed the attention of the inhabitants, who
-considered it as the presage of a violent earthquake. The hygrometer
-denoted great humidity, yet the vapors appeared so perfectly in
-solution, or rather so elastic and uniformly disseminated, that they did
-not alter the transparency of the atmosphere. The moon arose after a
-storm of rain behind the Castle of St. Antonio. As soon as she appeared
-on the horizon, two circles were distinguished, one large and whitish,
-44° in diameter, the other smaller, displaying all the colors of the
-rainbow. The space between the two circles was of the deepest azure. At
-the altitude of 4° they disappeared, while the meteorological
-instruments indicated not the slightest change in the lower regions of
-the air. The phenomenon was chiefly remarkable for the great brilliancy
-of its colors, and for the circumstance that, according to the measures
-taken with Ramsden’s sextant, the lunar disc was not exactly in the
-centre of the halos. Humboldt mentions likewise having seen at Mexico,
-in extremely fine weather, large bands spread along the vault of the
-sky, converging toward the lunar disc, displaying beautiful prismatic
-colors; and he remarks, that within the torrid zone, similar appearances
-are the common phenomena of the night, sometimes vanishing and returning
-in the space of a few minutes, which he assigns to the superior currents
-of air changing the state of the floating vapors, by which the light is
-refracted. Between latitude 15° of the equator, he records having
-observed small tinted halos around the planet Venus, the purple, orange,
-and violet being distinctly perceptible, which was never the case with
-Sirius, Canopus, or Acherner. In the northern regions solar and lunar
-halos are very common appearances, owing to the abundance of minute and
-highly crystallized spicula of ice floating in the atmosphere. The
-Arctic adventurers frequently mention the fall of icy particles during a
-clear sky and a bright sun, so small as scarcely to be visible to the
-naked eye, and most readily detected by their melting upon the skin.
-
- * * * * *
-
-
-
-
- APRIL.
-
-
- BY MRS. E. L. CUSHING.
-
-
- Hark to the silvery sound
- Of the soft April shower
- Telleth it not a pleasant tale
- Of bird, and bee, and flower?
- See, as the bright drops fall,
- How swell the tiny buds
- That gem each bare and leafless bough,
- Like polished agate studs.
-
- The elder by the brook,
- Stands in her tusseled pride
- And the pale willow decketh her
- As might beseem a bride.
- And round the old oak’s foot,
- Where in their wintry play,
- The winds have swept the withered leaves—
- See, the Hepatria!
-
- Its brown and mossy buds
- Greet the first breath of spring,
- And to her shrine, its clustered flowers,
- The earliest offering bring.
- In rocky cleft secure,
- The gaudy columbine
- Shoots forth, ere wintry snows have fled
- A floral wreath to twine.
-
- And many a bud lies hid
- Beneath the foliage pent,
- Waiting spring’s warm and wooing breath
- To deck the vernal year.
- When lo! sweet April comes,
- The wild bird hears her voice,
- And through the grove on glancing wing
- Carols, “rejoice! rejoice!”
-
- Forth from her earthy nest
- The timid wood-mouse steals,
- And the blithe squirrel on the bough
- Her genial influence feels.
- The purple hue of life
- Flushes the teeming earth,
- Above, around, beneath the feet,
- Joy, beauty, spring to birth!
-
- But on the distant verge
- Of the cerulean sky,
- Old Winter stands with angry frown
- And bids the syren fly.
- He waves his banner dark
- Raises his icy hand,
- And a fierce storm of sleet and hail,
- Obey his stern command.
-
- She feareth not his wrath,
- But hides her sunny face
- Behind a soft cloud’s fleecy fold
- For a brief instant’s space,
- Then looketh gayly forth
- With smile of magic power,
- That changeth all his icy darts
- To a bright diamond shower.
-
- Capricious April, hail!
- Herald of all things fair,
- ’Tis thine to loose the imprisoned streams,
- The young buds are thy care.
- To unobservant eye
- Thy charms are few, I ween;
- But he who roves the woodland paths
- Where thy blithe step hath been,
-
- Will trace thee by the tufts
- Of fragrant early flowers,
- That thy sweet breath hath waked, to deck
- The dreary forest bowers;
- And by the bursting buds,
- That at thy touch unfold
- To clothe the tall tree’s naked arms
- With beauty all untold,
-
- Will hear thy tuneful voice
- In the glad leaping streams,
- And catch thy bland, yet fitful smile
- In showers and sunny gleams.
- Then welcome April, fair!
- Bright harbinger of May!
- Month of blue skies and perfumed air—
- The young year’s holyday!
-
- * * * * *
-
-
-
-
- AWAY.
-
-
- B. B.
-
-
- Floateth in upon my senses now the melody of brooks,
- And the drip of fragrant waters, far in solitary nooks—
- O avaunt! ye tedious tasks! O get ye gone! ye irksome books.
-
- Why to linger pent and stifled in this chamber small and low,
- Through the casement on my temples thus to feel the breezes blow,
- Bidding me to come and follow where at liberty they go?
-
- Why amid this noisy Babel mingle in the petty strife,
- In the wearying din and discord with which every day is rife,
- While the full, free life within me yearns to greet its kindred life?
-
- O, those boundless breadths of forest unrestrained to wander through,
- Where the lofty pine mounts upward to the firmament of blue,
- Where the swarth and stalwart savage paddles in his birch canoe.
-
- O, to hear my ringing shout of exultation echo clear
- In the woodland, by the moose-tramp and the covert of the deer,
- Or where stalk the stately bison who have never known to fear,
-
- On the broad and blooming pampas, with their fat and teeming soil
- Never marred by human culture, never by unwilling toil,
- Where the wild herds roam uninjured, and the gleaming serpents coil.
-
- Or where crawls the full-fed Ganges down into his sandy bed,
- And the sluggish hippopotamus uprears his clumsy head,
- Where the beauty-bringing cestus of the torrid zone is spread.
-
- Where many a glowing river rolls along its wealth of tide
- Through the tangled vines and palm-trees bending down on either side,
- With the orange bloom and citron, and the tall acacia’s pride.
-
- Where the scaly cayman basking on the yellow bank is laid,
- And the brilliant-plumaged song-birds call in every spicy glade,
- There to hunt the spotted leopard in the jungle’s depth of shade.
-
- Or beyond the spreading oceans, in some distant Paynim land,
- Swifter than the fiery simoom sweep across the plains of sand,
- On a fleet and naked barb, and wield a keenly flashing brand.
-
- O for days of careless gladness, days that evermore are gone,
- When the spirit-thrilling summons of the silver bugle-horn
- Roused the green-clad host of merry men at break of dewy morn.
-
- —Cease thy prating, foolish Fancy, Fancy wayward, unconfined,
- List the mighty music rushing on the pinions of the wind,
- ’Tis the onward tread of nations, ’tis the endless march of mind.
-
- _Bowdoin College._
-
- * * * * *
-
-
-
-
- SONG.
-
-
- Each gentle word thy lip imparts,
- Each glance of thy dear eye,
- Is hidden in my heart of hearts
- As in a treasury.
-
- And, though but once in life we’ve met
- And ne’er may meet again,
- The memory of this hour, shall yet
- Within my heart remain,
-
- As the bright tinge of crimson dye,
- When the red sun descends,
- Long lingers in the western sky
- And with the twilight blends.
-
- Still let me cherish thoughts of thee
- Till life’s sad hours are o’er;
- Think of me, sometimes, tenderly—
- I may not ask for more.
-
- * * * * *
-
-
-
-
- THE FIRST AGE.
-
-
- BY H. DIDIMUS.
-
-
- BOOK FIRST.
-
- SECTION I.
-
-The broad sun, red, and with softened beams, rose lazily upon the young
-earth. The wide sea, unruffled, heaved to and fro, mirroring in its
-depths the new-made canopy of azure and of gold spread by God’s hand,
-from limit to limit, over water and land, and all the stream of ocean.
-The herbage stood rank, thick, heavy, tall and motionless; and covered
-with vast shade mountain and valley and plain; for not yet had the
-revolving seasons, and storms, with falling rain abraded the soil, and
-bared rocks, and worn acclivities; nor the breath of heaven hastened in
-its course, circling the earth; nor the poles left their place to rise
-and fall, vibrating; but one unending spring ruled throughout the year.
-Rivers rolled—unvexed and noiseless—toward the bosom of their great
-mother; and the mountain stream scarce murmured as it fell, whitening,
-from sward to sward, to sleep in some still lake, happy with water-fowl.
-Herds of cattle—of horses and of deer, the elephant and the
-bison—wandered, uncared for, through fat pastures, beautiful with
-flowers; and the lion roamed at will, and crouched in every dingle, and
-in every glen, and took his prey. The air was vocal with the voice of
-birds, of birds innumerable, which saluted with morning hymn the growing
-day; and the hum of insects—which all night had drummed in the drowsy
-ear of silence—was hushed, and folding their wings, they slept. It is
-the primeval age.
-
- SECTION II.
-
-Chrr-oo-uh; chrr-oo-uh; chrr-oo-eh-uh; oo-ugh, oo-ugh; chrr-oo-uh—A
-white pigeon stood upon the lowest branch, heavy with foliage, of a
-noble oak, planted with creation, and arched his neck, and drooped his
-wings, and turned round and round, calling to his mate. Chrr-oo-uh;
-chrr-oo-uh; chrr-oo-eh-uh; oo-ugh; oo-ugh; chrr-oo-uh—And the white
-pigeon looked out upon the sea, which rolled inward with its new voice,
-deep and hoarse, as it rolls now, and broke softly upon the glittering
-strand, just beneath his feet; and back to the wooded mountains, which
-showed blue and misty through the air, capped with silvery clouds; and
-beneath the arms of the forest trees, where the land rose gently from
-the shore, carpeted with green and gold, and all colors of the sun woven
-into flowers. Chrr-oo-uh; chrr-oo-uh; chrr-oo-eh-uh; oo-ugh; oo-ugh;
-chrr-oo-uh—calling to his mate.
-
- SECTION III.
-
-From a deep, embowered grot—half-hidden within a grove of oranges, and
-trellised with the woodbine and the grape, clustering—came a sweet
-voice, singing; not with the musical cadence and alliteration, and
-returning rhyme of later days, when intellect refined to weaken, but
-with the promptings of the soul, gushing, unmeasured, finding speech as
-it might.
-
-“Call, call to your mate, happy bird, and she shall call to you again;
-but where is he who should call to me, in this day of joy? Erix, my
-Erix, rising like the sun in his strength, with broad shoulders, and a
-brow moulded by God! And the glory of his head, brighter than the beams
-of the morning; those curls which I, with merry fingers, have so often
-twisted, until they sprang from me with life and laughter, and clung
-about his neck, kissingly—why do they not dance before me, gladdening
-my sight? And those arms, like twisted vines, which hold and give every
-happiness—why are they not here to receive me? And those lips, which
-are so used to praise me, until I wonder at my own comeliness, and lose
-my breath in their thieving—why are they not here to bless me, with
-their music so subduing? And those eyes, so large and deep, those wells
-of passion, in which I live a double being, in which I see my own
-blushing—why are they not here, to kindle and to burn? Oh! Erix, my
-Erix, as flowers love the earth, as the earth loves the sun, as the sun
-loves its Maker, so is my love for thee, most beautiful and most
-excellent!”
-
- SECTION IV.
-
-And with the singing, came a fair maid, tripping into the outer air;
-large, lithe of limb, like the moon riding in mid-heaven, when seen in
-her full light, paling the stars. Her hair fell, unbound, even to her
-feet, covering half her shape; and about her waist was knit a robe of
-sables, which flowed downward, and concealed no excellence above the
-girdle. Her form was sister to the antelope, and her face, one, which
-Phidias would have chiseled for a Juno of giant make. Her glowing eyes,
-blue as the ether above them, rolled liquid as she sang, and bent the
-knee, and worshiped, extending her arms, which showed like wreaths of
-snow borne upon the wind, toward the mounting day—not ignorantly, for
-she was too near to God in time, to have forgotten him. Then rising, she
-also looked upon the sea, smiling in the sunlight, and loved it; for she
-was born upon its shores, and, with life, its roar filled her ears. She
-loved it—coming to her, from whence she knew not, from beyond the reach
-of space, which to her eye was bounded by the heavens, that bowed down
-and girdled the waters—and enticed, the robe of sables fell from her,
-and the glad brine received her, and mounting, laved all her beauty.
-Thus swimming, thus sporting, thus playing with young ocean, now
-floating, now dipping beneath his bosom heaving with great joy. The
-white pigeon left its perch, and sought a new rest, even the fair maid’s
-fair brow, rising from the wave, and arched its neck, and drooped its
-wings, and turned round and round, chrr-oo-uh; chrr-oo-uh; chrr-oo-eh
-uh; oo-ugh; oo-ugh; chrr-oo-uh; calling to its mate.
-
-The white pigeon nestled in the grot, and knew its mistress, and her
-caress; and when the maid would have taken it tenderly in her hand,
-smoothing its ruffled feathers, it flew upward, cleaving the air in
-circles, and descending, lighted upon her wrist, and pecked at her taper
-fingers, roseate with health, and arched its neck, and drooped its
-wings, and turned round and round; chrr-oo-uh; chrr-oo-uh;
-chrr-oo-eh-uh; oo-ugh; oo-ugh; chrr-oo-uh; calling to its mate.
-
-“Call, call to your mate, happy bird, and she shall call to you again;
-but, where is he who should call to me, in this my bridal hour? Erix, my
-love, my life, my soul’s sole hope!”
-
- SECTION V.
-
-The sound of merry horns, of laughter, and of shout, came leaping
-through the wood, and the fair maid started like a fawn, like a fawn
-tracked by the hunter, when it first scents its pursuer in the breeze;
-and hastening to the strand, she knit the robe of sables about her
-waist, and it fell down as before, concealing no excellence above the
-girdle. Fresh from the wave, she stood gazing, with hope and expectation
-her handmaids, who with nimble fingers adorned her, and covered her all
-over with tints from the blushing east. Her hair, long and damp, thick
-sown with pearly brine, showed gemmed; and parted lip, and flashing eye,
-the very tell-tales of passion, betrayed the beatings of her heart, her
-fears and her desire. When, in an after age, the poet wove this story
-into mythologic fable, he called her Venus, the Aphrodite, born of the
-foam of the sea; and the sculptor caught her as she stood, her feet like
-flocks of wool, the right advanced, the left raised at the heel,
-rushing, moving, white, and fair.
-
- SECTION VI.
-
-And now, far within the leafy vista, was seen approaching, descending
-toward the strand, a troop of maidens and young men. Crowned with
-chaplets of roses and the fruitful vine, they came on dancing, to shout
-and laughter, and the sound of merry horns; and he who led them was
-taller than the rest, herculean; and from his back hung a boar’s hide,
-and about his loins were girded the skins of foxes and of wolves, spoils
-of the chase. In his hand he held a bow, which he drew proudly at the
-sun; elated with the nearness of his supremest bliss. Child of the
-forest, greater than the sun, immortal, thou shall live when all of
-matter hath wholly passed away; draw then, thy bow, aspiring, if thou
-wilt; it is thy soul, conscious of its superiority, stirring within
-thee.
-
-On, on; love gives fleetness to his feet. “Zella, Zella,” calling to his
-mate. And again the shout, the laughter, and the sound of merry horns;
-and again, “Zella, Zella,” calling to his mate.
-
-But Zella called not to him again. Her heart was upon her tongue, and
-she could not speak; her strength had left her knees, and she stood
-transfixed; while “Zella, Zella,” sprang from every lip, echoed through
-the wood, and died afar off, amid the murmurs of the sea. Again, “Zella,
-Zella;” again the shout, the laughter, and the sound of merry horns; and
-Erix clasped the loved one to his breast.
-
-“Zella!”
-
-“Erix!”
-
-“Now, may the ruler of the heavens and good earth so bless me, as I love
-thee, my soul’s choice! Closer, closer, my heart of hearts; thus
-twining, thus growing, no storm shall divide us; but, with equal step,
-we will move right onward through life, and beyond life, to gather new
-strength and a new glory, in a hereafter.”
-
- SECTION VII.
-
-The band of youths and fair maids danced around them, hand in hand,
-singing, “To the Mighty Giver of all good, praise. He sends the blossom
-and the fruit, praise. From Him come all our joys, praise. He made the
-day, and the night, with all her train of ever-burning fires, the
-fairest labor of His hand, praise. The sun is His servant, the moon His
-daughter, praise. He gave us the earth, with all its beauty of hill and
-valley, of water and of wood, praised be forever His holy name. Oh,
-happy, happy day! oh, happy, happy hour! Open, ye heavens! and let love
-from on high descend upon these two, brooding; that they may live, from
-generation to generation, renewed and renewing, to the end of time.
-Holy, holy, holy, is this compact instituted in the beginning. Now are
-ye of one flesh; hearts the same, wills the same, desires the same; of
-one body, of one mind. Praise Him, praise Him, praise the Mighty Giver
-of all good!”
-
-Then hastening to the sea, they took up water, briny water, in shells,
-and poured it upon the lovers, and baptized them into a new life, and
-cast their chaplets upon them and covered them with flowers; still
-dancing, still singing: “The divided part has become old, put it off;
-the present is bright with every hope, enjoy it; the future shall be
-what you may make it, be not wanting; oh, happy, happy, happy pair! As
-ye are, so we would be; ever drinking draughts of pleasure through each
-revolving year.”
-
- SECTION VIII.
-
-And now came forth the aged of the tribe, slow descending from the wood,
-and embraced them and blessed them; “Be fruitful and multiply—swear.”
-And Erix and Zella stretched out their hands toward heaven and swore, by
-the light, and by the orbs of the air, and by the ocean, far-rounding,
-illimitable, infinite, and by the solid earth, and by Him who moved upon
-the face of the waters and begat this glory, to be forever one. “What
-you receive, I will receive; what you reject, I will reject; your breath
-is my breath, and even as we are now, so death shall find us; leaving
-all else to cleave unto each other.”
-
-The dance, the shout, the sound of merry horns, pointed to the grot, and
-Erix and Zella led the way. He, with head erect and willing feet, proud
-of his victory; she, with downcast eyes and halting gait, irresolute,
-resolved, like a coy maid, half-refusing, like a wife, wholly trusting,
-while youth and maiden, paired, in a long line, came sweeping after. And
-now they sway, first to the right then to the left, with measured step,
-beating upon the glad earth the bridal-song.
-
-“Receive, receive thy children, Paradise, garden new found, not lost to
-us forever.”
-
-“Who are these that come, beautiful with joy?”
-
-“Receive, receive thy children, Paradise, garden new found, not lost to
-us forever.”
-
-“Who are these that knock, pressing to tread upon holy ground?”
-
-“Thy children, father; thy children, mother; open wide the gates that
-they may enter in. Praised be thy name, oh Adam! praised be thy name, oh
-Eve! these are thy offspring, joined as ye were joined, by the hand of
-God; open wide the gates that they may enter in.”
-
-The grot received them, echoing; and shout, and laughter, and the sound
-of many horns, held riot over a feast of fruit, and the chase, and water
-from the brook, till the day went out and night crept slowly in, and
-stars spotted the sky, and the white pigeon descended nestling, timidly,
-to its couch, and arched its neck, and drooped its wings, and turned
-round and round; chrr-oo-uh; chrr-oo-uh; chrr-oo-eh-uh; oo-ugh; oo-ugh;
-chrr-oo-uh; calling to its mate—and she, called to him again.
-
-
- BOOK SECOND.
-
- SECTION I.
-
-Ten circles have passed; ten circles of the earth about the sun; what
-are ten circles to life before the flood! The night is just yielding to
-the day, and in the farthest east streaks of gray light lie floating,
-dividing the ocean from the sky. How quiet the earth is; and seems to
-breathe, long and deep, in its huge slumber, not yet awakened. The
-murmur of the sea is infinite, ceaseless, and breaks, and returns, and
-breaks, in regular cadence upon the shore; ever speaking the same
-words—eternity and power. The sea and silent stars, which look down,
-twinkling, from heaven’s pavement, alone are watchful. How quiet the
-earth is! The owl sits moping upon her perch in some tall pine, and the
-wolf, whose cry, whetted by hunger, pierced the shades of night, gorged
-and reeking, has hastened to his lair. The dew, like rain, is upon the
-grass and all herbage, and hangs, globular, from every leaf. An incense
-rises, the incense of the morning, and fills the air; now known only to
-the wise and the poor, beloved of God. Hour most sweet; when day salutes
-the night, and night kisses day, to part and meet again.
-
- SECTION II.
-
-At such an hour, Erix and Zella shook sleep from their eyelids and came
-forth, ready for the chase. Her hair no longer floated unbound, but, as
-became the matron, was twisted into a knot and confined with strings of
-coral, fashioned by the hand whose soft caress she returned with joys
-unspeakable. Upon her drooping shoulders, white and bare, rests a quiver
-well filled; and a belt of tiny sea-shells interwoven with fibres of the
-lichen, crosses transversely her breast, now full and rounded to
-completion. Sandals are upon her feet, and a tunic of shaggy hide covers
-her from the waist to the knee; all else, the morning air, invigorating,
-embraces. Thus seen, the poet of an after age, changed his story, and
-called her Dian, ruler of the night; and sang her praises in verse set
-to the babbling of brooks, the music of the wood, and sylvan sports.
-Erix, large, erect, perfect in manly beauty, with limbs well knit,
-proportional, combining activity and strength, was less incumbered than
-his mate, and carried, as his sole weapon, an ashen spear, charred and
-hardened at the point by fire. His was the front of Jove, the pagan, not
-yet won from mortality by intellect, or raised above mere matter, to
-express the soul’s labors and ambitions. And first, low bending, rose
-the morning prayer.
-
- SECTION III.
-
-“Hail Father, Creator; Thou who gavest into our hands the earth, with
-its fullness; all hail! Thy children, fashioned after thine own
-excellence, we stand, rejoicing. Greater than the earth are we; greater
-than the sea, that vast stream which compasses all land, forever
-proclaiming thy praises; greater than the orbs of day and night; greater
-than the elements, thy ministers; for thou didst speak unto our fathers,
-and didst promise to raise the seed of Adam higher than the angels. The
-thunder serves us, obedient to thy will; and the quick lightning; and
-the clouds, pregnant with rain. In the air we find thy mercies, and
-every tree, and every flower speaks of thee. Accept, accept our great
-gratitude; and keep us, even as thou keepest all else.”
-
-Again low bending, and Erix and Zella, light of foot, passed onward to
-the chase.
-
- SECTION IV.
-
-They skirt the wood, and narrowly inspect the dewy grass, to find new
-foot-prints of beast or heavy bird, seeking, with returning light, their
-accustomed food. No fairy ring, no shape of naiad or of dryad, no gnome,
-no sprite, met their pure vision, to turn them from their way; for not
-yet had the mind of man built up a superstition unto itself, and peopled
-the clefts of the earth, the water, and the air, giving to nothingness
-forms innumerable. Truth was too near and palpable, to be lost in
-imagination; to be moulded and cast anew, so changed as not to know
-itself; and poetry, the juggler and soul’s cheat, lay hid in matter,
-where God placed it, to be drawn thence for other purposes than those of
-error. It was not until man forgot his origin, that he sought out a new
-creator, even Beauty, the prime element in all God’s works, and so
-wrought with it, as to give strange life to all that is, and is not.
-
-The wily hunters, skilled in their life’s trade, turn on every side,
-observe the lower boughs, fresh cropped, imitate the call of birds, the
-cry of deer, peer through the thick underwood which stood here and there
-in clumps, and plunged into the forest upon a trail which promised
-success.
-
- SECTION V.
-
-The sylva before the flood! Huge, aspiring, with arms reaching outward
-many a rood, each monarch stood; the traveler and man of science, he
-whose name now fills the world, never found, in his many rounds in
-search of knowledge, even in southern climes, such offspring of earth,
-air, water, and the sun; and Australia, with its wondrous herbage,
-sometimes cloud-capped, stand dwarfed and small to the life with which
-God, in his first joy, clothed his work. The poet, too, and writer of
-the Comedies, whose soul was bitter hell, saw not in heaven, nor
-beneath, nor in the orb between, a wood so vast, so majestic, and so
-beautiful. Trees, the growth of many a revolving year, lay mouldering;
-not prostrated by the tornado, nor driven from their seat by floods of
-water and of rock, which leave their track seamed, as one might plough a
-furrow in the field, but fallen through age, and draped with moss of the
-liveliest green, softer to the touch than a woman’s lip. The vine crept
-from limb to limb, and threw out its tendrils joyously; now hanging in
-mid air, and now, a parasite, twisting about the trunk of some gnarled
-oak, adding to strength its sister loveliness; while flowers, broad and
-tall, with petals like masts, and of a hue more delicate than that which
-opens to the garish sun, spotted the ground as stars spot the sky. The
-air pressed heavy, damp, laden with aromatic odors, as to one standing
-beneath the swelling arches of some old temple, raised in the middle-age
-by hands whose labors Michelett has transferred to historic prose, more
-lasting than the stone which was to them a religion and a worship. No
-voice broke the general stillness, save the sound of distant water,
-floating upon the breathings of the wood, just reaching the ear, now
-heard and now lost, as a maid calling to her lover. Amid such
-excellence, the excellence of a primeval age, before man and the seasons
-had marred earth’s face, Erix and Zella hunted.
-
- SECTION VI.
-
-The two moved on, like gods, hastening to outrun the growing light, and
-to make their sport before high noon should steal its freshness from
-their path. So, long after, but less large, less strong, less fleet, and
-less beautiful, did the twin creations of pure intellect, Apollo and his
-mate, pursue the boar in Tempe; while the herdsman who sat afar off,
-upon some high rock, watching his wealth, veiled his face in wonder and
-in fear.
-
-Thus were three full leagues passed over, through the windings of the
-wood; he, crushing the flowers beneath his feet, she, just bending their
-drooping heads, when Erix descried a noble stag standing upon the bank
-of a sweet pool, of narrow round, which, embosomed in the forest, slept
-peaceful, and mirrored in its face the moving foliage and the blue sky
-above. With head depressed, the deer had caught his own image in the
-water, and stood threatening with mimic war his shadowy antagonist,
-returning thrust for thrust. Poor beast! Now strain the nerve and put
-forth thy utmost speed, for no shadows threaten at thy back, but death,
-with feet swifter than the wind. With one loud shout the forest rang,
-and then, clear as the notes of bugle or of flute, played to the
-listening morn, burst forth the hunter’s song; for not yet had the gin
-and pit, and stealth cowardly creeping upon its prey, debased the chase,
-and dishonored with cheat and trick man’s highest sport; but room was
-given and a chance for life, to the course before the flood.
-
- SECTION VII.
-
-See, the east is glowing with golden-tinted light, and the morn calls to
-us with the breath of youth.
-
-See, the incense rises from every dewy leaf; and the morn calls to us
-with the breath of youth.
-
-The air floats, balmy, o’er hill, and wood, and lake; and the morn calls
-to us with the breath of youth.
-
-The spear stands, impatient, by the wall; the bow, unstrung, lies
-mourning at the door; while the morn calls to us with the breath of
-youth.
-
-Hark! The horn winds joy, and the echoes laugh, and leap, and
-dance—trr, trr, trr, trr, trrwhroo, trrwhroo—in circles of mad
-delight.
-
-Awake, then, awake; for the horn winds joy, and the echoes laugh, and
-leap, and dance—trr, trr, trr, trr, trrwhroo, trrwhroo—in circles of
-mad delight; and the morn calls to us with the breath of youth.
-
-Now press the foot, and watchful be the eye, for the spear is in the
-hand, and the arrow on the string, and the horn winds joy, and the
-echoes laugh, and leap, and dance—trr, trr, trr, trr, trrwhroo,
-trrwhroo—in circles of mad delight.
-
-Away, and away, in a race against the sun; while the horn winds joy, and
-the echoes laugh, and leap, and dance—trr, trr, trr, trr, trrwhroo,
-trrwhroo—in circles of mad delight.
-
-Of the strong, we are the strongest, and of the fleet, we are the
-fleetest; while the horn winds joy, and the echoes laugh, and leap, and
-dance—trr, trr, trr, trr, trrwhroo, trrwhroo—in circles of mad
-delight.
-
-The game flies, scudding athwart the forest path, while the horn winds
-joy, and the echoes laugh, and leap, and dance—trr, trr, trr, trr,
-trrwhroo, trrwhroo—in circles of mad delight.
-
-The wolf howls defiance, and hastens to his lair; the deer, suspicious,
-scents the coming storm; the lion’s deep growl comes rolling up the
-glen, while the horn winds joy, and the echoes laugh, and leap, and
-dance—trr, trr, trr, trr, trrwhroo, trrwhroo—in circles of mad
-delight.
-
-Then press the foot, and watchful be the eye; for the spear is in the
-hand, and the arrow on the string; and the horn winds joy, and the
-echoes laugh, and leap, and dance—trr, trr, trr, trr, trrwhroo,
-trrwhroo—in circles of mad delight; and the morn calls to us with the
-breath of youth.
-
- SECTION VIII.
-
-With one bound the stag cleared the narrow pool, and with head erect,
-his branching antlers resting upon his back, fled onward; swifter than
-the wind that, in winter’s dreary reign, under the stars of cold
-December, drives fierce and cutting through the gorge which, in the
-farthest north, divides the granite hills sheer to their base, while the
-song poured thickening upon his rear—sounds of victory and pursuit.
-Thus, with nostrils wide distended and smoking flanks, he led his foes
-through many a double and straight reach, now holding to the cover of
-the wood, and with sure eye, passing beneath gnarled oaks, and through
-hanging vines, and boughs interlocked blacker than night, and now,
-seeking the open plain, where the sea rolled inward to find its limit.
-There the voice of his pursuers no longer urged him on, or was lost in
-that greater voice to which he had fled as to a refuge; and he rested,
-trembling, upon the rim of the ocean, his fetlocks laved by its flaky
-foam, and looking out upon it, sobbing, in search of a safety which the
-water as the land denied. So, in the race of life, the unfortunate,
-hunted by its ills, with hope crushed out, stand upon its utmost verge,
-gazing, and find no joy beyond, till death strikes them through, to
-perish and be forgotten.
-
-Short time was given, for Erix and Zella, side by side, keeping ever,
-like fate, to their fixed end, soon issued from the wood, and with voice
-and gesture urged their prey to a new flight. The game, now driven to
-his last shift, stilled his coward heart, turned and stood at bay; but
-Zella, unwilling thus to close the morning’s sport, drew an arrow to its
-head, and sent the weapon whirring, to glance and fall far out at sea.
-Enraged with such acts, the stag sprang forward, striking on either
-side; and as Erix, yielding, strove to take him by the horns, leaped as
-far as Apollo’s horses leaped, in that great story told by the Greek
-whose song civilized the world. Like a bolt, winged, he sped through the
-whistling air, when Zella, quick turning, with a shaft more fleet, smote
-him, mid-way, quite through his bursting heart. Upon a scented bank,
-deep within the wood, mossy, curling over the stream which there,
-trickling, smooth, and quiet, hastened to kiss the sea, the poor beast
-fell, and groaned his life away; and the warm sun danced and flickered,
-as if in very joy of the beauty it had made, through the tall trees, and
-around the climbing vines, and across the green leaves, and upon the
-silent water, mocking at death, and laughing at the spoil which changes
-but to create again.
-
- SECTION IX.
-
-Erix took Zella’s hand in his and drew her toward him, nothing loth,
-till their lips met; then praised her skill: then pressed again her
-lips—then praised—then pressed—while Zella returned the pressure with
-many a toy beside. Thus rejoicing in a mutual love, they sought, with
-slow step and halting, the mossy bank, where lay in the sunlight, as if
-asleep, the game of late so fleet, and sat them down to rest, and drink
-new draughts of pleasure, and count over the endless good with which
-Heaven had blessed the earth.
-
-“List, dearest, list! how softly upon the ear, in sweetest cadence,
-falls the song of the deep salt sea!” said Erix.
-
-“And the air which hears it, glad to be thus freighted, floats inward,
-murmuring, to tell it to the hills,” said Zella.
-
-“And the hills repeat it, whispering.”
-
-“And the trees catch it; and through the live-long day, and through the
-night, over the whole broad land, play with it, and toss it from bough
-to bough, till it has become a language of its own,” said Zella.
-
-“It is the voice of this earth.”
-
-“It is the voice of its great joy.”
-
-“And has praised from the beginning, and will praise unto the end, the
-hand which made it,” said Erix.
-
-“The sunlight hears it, and moves merrily to the measure upon every
-quivering leaf, now leaping upward to gild the topmost twig, and now
-chasing shadows upon the ground beneath.”
-
-“See, where it streams through the openings of the wood, and rests upon
-this water, smiling! Yes, the sunlight hears it, and grows brighter with
-each draught of a music so divine.”
-
-“The flowers open to it; and there, upon that slope, bending gently
-toward our feet, proud of their colors penciled by the light, stand
-thick—”
-
-“And wonder, and drink deep of the strains which extol their beauty and
-their glory, as they extol the beauty and the glory of all else,” said
-Erix. “Oh the song of the sea, of the deep, salt sea, with the air
-floating inward, and the hills beyond, and the trees, and the sunlight,
-and the flowers thick set upon the slope, gently bending downward toward
-our feet, and this mossy bank, and the pearly brook between—upon such a
-morn as this, in such a place as this, Adam found his Eve.”
-
-“And upon such a morn as this, in such a place as this, Eve gave to Adam
-a love new-created, unknown to the courts trod by angels’ feet, and
-which has raised her daughters above cherub and seraph, to do and to
-suffer for their soul’s choice,” said Zella.
-
-“Zella!”
-
-“Erix!”
-
-Now let the voice of the earth’s joy, the sun, and herbage speaking, the
-mossy bank, the flowery slope, and pearly brook between, bold revel, for
-a passion, blushing like the morn, pure as the marble which grew beneath
-the hands of Praxitiles, without stain or blemish, strong as the
-strongest, weak as the weakest, even love, is here present, and rules
-supreme.
-
- SECTION X.
-
-Erix and Zella, he bearing upon his broad shoulders a burden light—the
-noble game they had hunted to its death—returned homeward along the
-sounding beach, nor made deep foot-prints in the yielding sand.
-Unwearied, lithe, in sheer exuberance of life, they chased the retiring
-waves, then turning, fled to be themselves pursued; till young Ocean,
-pleased, shook his giant limbs, and like a lion by a child subdued,
-rolled at their feet, and roared, and beat, in his great heart, the
-measure to this hymn, which they, alternating, sang.
-
-“Almighty Lord, Maker of the Earth, in loveliness beyond compare hast
-thou fashioned it.”
-
-“Almighty Lord, the maker of our joys, in goodness beyond compare hast
-thou fashioned them.”
-
-“Thou didst build the hills, and crown them with thy glory; and they
-praise forever thy holy name.”
-
-“Thou didst fix the foundations, and form the running streams; and they
-praise forever thy holy name.”
-
-“Thou didst plant the forests, and clothe them with thy beauty; and they
-praise forever thy holy name.”
-
-“The plain is thine, with all its life, and, with voices infinite,
-praises forever thy holy name.”
-
-“The air is thine, and within its bosom bears bounties innumerable, to
-praise forever thy holy name.”
-
-“Praise in the pattering rain.”
-
-“Praise in the gentle dew.”
-
-“Perfume and color.”
-
-“Form and motion.”
-
-“All praise forever thy holy name.”
-
-“Thine is the sea, and thou lov’st it.”
-
-“And the sea loves thee, its Maker, in return.”
-
-“The breezy morn.”
-
-“The ruddy eve.”
-
-“The strength of high noon.”
-
-“The quietude of night.”
-
-“All speak of thee, Almighty Lord, the furnisher of our joys.”
-
-“And praise forever thy holy name.”
-
- SECTION XI.
-
-As Erix and Zella, thus singing, drew nigh unto the grot where first
-their joys commingled, to flow on through life in no divided stream, two
-boys, the offspring of their love, came forth to meet them. The elder,
-from beneath whose locks, curled and dancing, reddened with the sun,
-full many a wild-flower peeped, bore grapes, ripe, fresh-plucked, and
-clutching, pressed the vintage with his hands. The younger, marching
-with an uncertain step, just babbling his first words, caught the
-generous juice in his tiny palms, cup-shaped, and offered to his mother,
-whose lips sought his, and rested, well content to drink only of that
-bliss which God has planted in a mother’s kiss. Then Erix, casting off
-his load, took the elder-born to his arms, and recounted all the
-chase—the scent of the perfumed morn, the song, the flight, the pursuit
-through wood and open plain, the halt by the sounding sea, the leap, the
-fatal shaft, the crowning death, till the boy shouted, and every muscle
-worked in mimic struggle with the mimic game a-foot; and the white
-pigeon descended, hovering o’er the group, and lighted at Zella’s feet,
-and arched its neck, and drooped its wings, and turned round and round;
-chrr-oo-uh; chrr-oo-uh; chrr-oo-eh-uh; oo-ugh; oo-ugh; chrr-oo-uh;
-calling to its mate.
-
- SECTION XII.
-
-And now, sweet friend, who put me to this task, who won my love, not
-knowing how or why, come tread with me the inner-chambers of my house.
-This, the portal, is well passed, and other scenes, and other pictures
-far, wait eyes which kindle, though the fire be false, eyes which flow
-even with the current of a fictitious wo.
-
- [_To be continued._
-
- * * * * *
-
-
-
-
- SONG.
-
-
- BY WILLIAM H. C. HOSMER.
-
-
- (Air—“Homes of England.”)
-
-
- The hallowed wells of Learning,
- No wasting may they know,
- But sparkle, fed by lucid streams,
- Unceasing in their flow;
- And may their waters catch no stain
- Of deep and Stygian dye,
- Though Error for an hour hold reign
- Beneath a darkened sky.
-
- The Sacred Bowers of Learning,
- Be blight afar from them;
- No tree grow up with serpent folds
- Entwining round the stem;
- No bud of precious promise feel
- The frost of cold neglect,
- And heard no solemn funeral peal
- For Genius early wrecked.
-
- The Stately Halls of Learning,
- Forever may they stand,
- And Truth walk down the sounding aisles
- With Honor, hand in hand;
- The columns that uphold the roof
- Be men of noble mould,
- And beauteous daughters, armed in proof,
- Stern war with wrong to hold.
-
- The Holy Shrines of Learning,
- May no polluting flame
- Be lighted on one altar-stone
- By fiends who mock at shame,
- But cloudless light be shed abroad
- A guilty world to cheer,
- And men forget to worship God
- In superstitious fear.
-
- * * * * *
-
-
-
-
- IMPRESSIONS OF ENGLAND IN THE AUTUMN OF 1851.
-
-
- BY FREDERIKA BREMER.
-
-
-It is two years since I first found myself in England. When I was in
-England in the autumn of 1849, the cholera was there. A dense,
-oppressive atmosphere rested over its cities, as of a cloud pregnant
-with lightning. Hearses rolled through the streets. The towns were empty
-of people; for all who had the means of going had fled into the country;
-they who had not were compelled to remain. I saw shadowy figures, clad
-in black, stealing along the streets, more like ghosts than creatures of
-flesh and blood. Never before had I seen human wretchedness in such a
-form as I beheld it in Hull and in London. Wretchedness enough may be
-found, God knows, even in Stockholm, and it shows itself openly enough
-there in street and market. But it is there most frequently an
-undisguised, an unabashed wretchedness. It is not ashamed to beg, to
-show its rags, or its drunken countenance. It is a child of crime; and
-that is perhaps the most extreme wretchedness. But it is less painful to
-behold, because it seems to be suffering only its own deserts. One is
-more easily satisfied to turn one’s head aside and pass on. One thinks,
-“I cannot help that!”
-
-In England, however, misery had another appearance; it was not so much
-that of degradation as of want, pallid want. It was meagre and retiring;
-it ventured not to look up, or it looked up with a glance of hopeless
-beseeching—so spirit-broken! It tried to look respectable. Those men
-with coats and hats brushed till the nap was gone; those pale women in
-scanty, washed-out, but yet decent clothes—it was a sight which one
-could hardly bear. In a solitary walk of ten minutes in the streets of
-Hull, I saw ten times more want than I had seen in a ten months’
-residence in Denmark.
-
-The sun shone joyously as I traveled through the manufacturing
-districts; saw their groups of towns and suburbs; saw their smoking
-pillars and pyramids towering up everywhere in the wide landscape—saw
-glowing gorges of fire open themselves in the earth, as if it were
-burning—a splendid and wonderfully picturesque spectacle, reminding one
-of fire-worshipers of ancient and modern time, and of their altars. But
-I heard the mournful cry of the children from the factories; the cry
-which the public voice has made audible to the world; the cry of the
-children, of the little ones who had been compelled by the lust of gain
-of their parents and the manufacturers, to sacrifice life, and joy, and
-health, in the workshops of machinery; the children who lie down in
-those beds which never are cold, the children who are driven and beaten
-till they sink insensibly into death or fatuity—that living death; I
-heard the wailing cry of the children, which Elizabeth Barrett
-interpreted in her affecting poem; and the wealthy manufacturing
-districts, with their towns, their fire-columns, their pyramids, seemed
-to me like an enormous temple of Moloch, in which the mammon-worshipers
-of England offered up even children to the burning arms of their
-god—children, the hope of the earth, and its most delicious and most
-beautiful joy!
-
-I arrived in London. They told me there was nobody in London. It was not
-the season in which the higher classes were in London. Besides which,
-the cholera was there; and all well-to-do people, who were able, had
-fled from the infected city. And that indeed might be the reason why
-there seemed to me to be so many out of health—why that pale
-countenance of want was so visible. Certain it is, that it became to me
-as a Medusa’s head, which stood between me and every thing beautiful and
-great in that great capital, the rich life and physiognomy of which
-would otherwise have enchanted me. But as it was, the palaces, and the
-statues, and the noble parks, Hampstead and Piccadilly, and Belgravia
-and Westminster, and the Tower, and even the Thames itself, with all its
-ever-changing life, were no more than the decorations of a great
-tragedy. And when in St. Paul’s, I heard the great roar of the voice of
-London—that roar, which, as it is said, never is silent, but merely
-slumbers for an hour between three and four o’clock in the morning—when
-I heard that voice in that empty church, where there was no divine
-worship, and looked up into its beautiful cupola, which was filled by no
-song of praise, but only by that resounding, roaring voice, a dark
-chaotic roar, then seemed I to perceive the sound of the rivers of fate
-rolling onward through time over falling kingdoms and people, and
-bearing them onward down into an immeasurable grave! It was but for a
-moment, but it was a horrible dream!
-
-One sight I beheld in London which made me look up with rejoicing, which
-made me think “that old Yggdrasil is still budding.” This was the
-so-called metropolitan buildings; a structure of many homes in one great
-mass of building, erected by a society of enlightened men for the use of
-the poorer working class, to provide respectable families of that class
-with excellent dwellings at a reasonable rate, where they might possess
-that which is of the most indispensable importance to the rich, as well
-as to the poor, if they are to enjoy health both of body and
-soul—light, air, and water, pure as God created them for the use of
-mankind. The sight of these homes, and of the families that inhabited
-them, as well as of the newly-erected extensive public baths and
-wash-houses for the same class, together with the assurance that these
-institutions already, in the second year of their establishment,
-returned more than full interest to their projectors, produced the
-happiest impression which I at this time received of England. These were
-to me as seed of the future, which gave the promise of verdant shoots in
-the old tree.—
-
-Nevertheless, when I left the shores of England, and saw thick autumnal
-fog enveloping them, it was with a sorrowful feeling for the Old world;
-and with an inquiring glance of longing and hope, I turned myself to the
-New.
-
-Two years passed on—a sun-bright, glowing dream, full of the vigor of
-life—it was again autumn, and I was again in England. Autumn met me
-there with cold, and rain, and tempest, with the most horrible weather
-that can be imagined, and such as I had never seen on the other side of
-the globe. But in social life, everywhere throughout the mental
-atmosphere, a different spirit prevailed. There I perceived with
-astonishment and joy, there it was that of spring.
-
-The Crystal Palace was its full-blown, magnificent blossom—and like
-swarms of rejoicing bees flew the human throng upon the wings of steam,
-backward and forward, to the great world’s blossom; there all the
-nations met together, there all manufactures, there all industry, and
-every kind of product, unfolded their flowers for the observation and
-the joy of all; a Cactus grandiflora, such as the world had never till
-then seen.
-
-I perceived more clearly every day of my stay in England, that this
-period is one of a general awakening to a new, fresh life. In the
-manufacturing districts, in Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, every
-where, I heard the same conversation among all classes; prosperity was
-universal and still advancing. That pale countenance of want, which had
-on my first visit appeared to me so appalling, I now no longer saw as
-formerly; and even where it was seen stealing along, like a gloomy
-shadow near to the tables of abundance, it appeared to me no longer as a
-cloud filled with the breath of cholera, darkening the face of heaven,
-but rather as one of those clouds over which the wind and sun have
-power, and which are swallowed up, which vanish in space, in the bright
-ether. . . .
-
-The low price of grain, the consequence of free-trade, has produced this
-change: and it was universally acknowledged. The only objection I heard
-brought against the low price of corn was this, “The people are become
-proud and careless; I have seen great pieces of bread thrown out into
-the streets!”
-
-Yet bread alone had not really done all this; a nobler bread is required
-for man in order that he may fully derive the benefit even of the
-outward material bread. Nor had free-trade alone done all this either;
-there is also another power besides this which has been operative in
-that general awakening, in that wholesome spirit which I perceived in
-England.
-
-If this power were to be symbolized by art, it would present us with a
-female figure—a beautiful woman with the child at her breast, is the
-symbol which art makes use of, to express human love. And, perhaps, art
-is right in so doing. And perhaps it is the female principle in human
-nature, which, in the present new life in England, enables the man’s
-hand to accomplish the work; because from the most remote antiquity, has
-a male deity been chosen to represent trade, and navigation and mining,
-and all occupation of the earth. But, so says one of the oldest sagas of
-the world—when the divine life revealed itself on the earth, a divine
-pair came forth. In a lotus-flower which ascended from the waters of the
-Nile, were born at the same time Osiris and Isis, and together they went
-forth to bless the earth.
-
-I saw the truth of this saga confirmed by what I beheld in England. But
-in speaking of this, I shall especially linger on the new proofs
-thereof, in the new Institutions which promise a more beautiful future
-to the human race; not upon the old and insufficient, however good they
-may be, but upon the new, because it is upon the new that my eye has
-been especially directed.
-
-Let me linger, in the first place, on works of human love—the female
-figure with the child at her breast; because these are they which lay
-the foundation of all others.
-
-In Liverpool, I visited the so-called Ragged-Schools—the schools where
-are collected from the streets, vagabond, neglected and begging
-children, who are here taught to read and so on—who here receive the
-first rudiments of instruction, even in singing. These schools are, some
-of them evening, others day schools, and in some of them, “the
-Industrial Ragged-Schools,” children are kept there altogether; receive
-food and clothing, and are taught trades. When the schools of this class
-were first established in Liverpool, the number of children who
-otherwise had no chance of receiving instruction, amounted to about
-twenty thousand. Right-minded, thinking men, saw that in these children
-were growing up in the streets, those “dangerous classes” of which so
-much has been said of late times; these men met together, obtained means
-to cover the most necessary outlay of expense, and then, according to
-the eloquent words of Lord Ashley, that “it is in childhood that evil
-habits are formed and take root; it is childhood which must be guarded
-from temptation to crime;” they opened these ragged-schools with the
-design of receiving the most friendless, the most wretched of society’s
-young generation—properly, “the children of rags, born in beggary, and
-for beggary.”
-
-I visited the Industrial Ragged School for boys, intended for the lowest
-grade of these little children, without parents, or abandoned by them to
-the influences of crime. There, I saw the first class sitting in their
-rags, upon benches in a cold room, arranging with their little
-frost-bitten fingers bristles for the brush-maker. The faces of the boys
-were clean: many of them I remarked were handsome, and almost
-universally they had beautiful and bright eyes. Those little fingers
-moved with extraordinary rapidity, the boys were evidently wishful to do
-their best; they knew that they by that means should obtain better
-clothing, and would be removed to the upper room, and more amusing
-employment. I observed these “dangerous classes”—just gathered up from
-the lanes and the kennels, on their way to destruction; and was
-astonished when I thought that their countenances might have borne the
-stamp of crime. Bright glances of childhood, for that were you never
-designed by the Creator! “Suffer little children to come unto me.” These
-words, from the lips of heaven, are forever sounding on earth.
-
-In the upper room a great number of boys were busy pasting paper-bags
-for various trades, confectioners, etc. who make use of such in the
-rapid sale of their wares; here, also, other boys were employed in
-printing upon the bags the names and residences of the various tradesmen
-who had ordered them. The work progressed rapidly, and seemed very
-amusing to the children. The establishment, for their residence and
-their beds, were poor; but all was neat and clean, the air was fresh,
-and the children were cheerful. The institution was, however, but yet in
-its infancy, and its means were small.
-
-Half-a-dozen women in wretched clothes sat in the entrance-room with
-their boys, for whom they hoped to gain admittance into the school, and
-were now, therefore, waiting till the directors of the establishment
-made their appearance.
-
-These gentlemen kindly invited me to be present at the examination of
-these mothers. The women were brought in one at a time, and one and all
-were made to tell her history and explain her circumstances. The
-examination was carried on with earnestness and precision. The result of
-all, however, was, that there was not one of the women now present who
-had a right to the assistance which they desired. On one or two
-occasions I could not help admiring the patience of the directors. Above
-all, it seemed to me, that these mothers needed to go to school even
-more than their children. When will people come to regard in all its
-full extent the influence of the mother upon the child? When will people
-come to reflect on the education of mothers in its higher sense? My
-conductor in Liverpool, Mr. B——, the noble and kind Home
-Missionary,[1] recognized one of these women, and related to me the
-history of herself and her husband—a horrible history of drunkenness,
-which had almost ended in suicide.
-
-Later in the day I visited the evening school for girls, also of the
-ragged class, and heard there a remarkably sweet and beautiful song.
-Later still I accompanied my friendly conductor to a temperance meeting,
-held in the same building, and which meets every Thursday, and where the
-Missionary was accustomed to meet and converse with the poorest brethren
-of his congregation. The wind blew and the rain poured down. I was
-astonished, however, to see when we entered, that the room was filled
-with people who evidently had not much to defend themselves with from
-the wind and rain. The benches were filled both with men and women. It
-became crowded and very hot. Mr. B—— opened the meeting with a speech
-about the dangers and consequences of drunkenness, and as he warmed in
-his subject he related, yet without mentioning any name, the history of
-the mother whom he had this day seen, beseeching that public charity
-would take charge of her son. The assembly, which during the moral
-treatise they had just heard had evidently become somewhat drowsy, woke
-up at once during the relation of that story, and when the narrator
-arrived at the catastrophe, in which the intoxicated woman, urged on by
-the madness of thirst, drank up half a bottle of oil of vitriol, a
-general expression of horror might have been heard, especially from the
-lips of the women.
-
-When this relation, which was full of strong vitality, was ended, Mr.
-B—— read a poem written by a working man in praise of temperance,
-which had the effect of again lulling the auditors—and myself
-even—into an agreeable doze. We all woke up again, however, when Mr.
-B——, in a jocular manner, begged of Mr. J—— to stand up and tell us
-something about “that Great Exhibition in London,” which he had lately
-been to see. Mr. J—— did not however, stand up, because Mr. K——
-wished to speak first. Accordingly, being encouraged to do so by Mr.
-B——, a stout-built man of about sixty came forward; he was dressed in
-coarse, but good clothes, and had an open countenance, over which played
-a smile of humor. He mounted the platform, and was greeted by the
-assembly with evident delight. He related his own history, simple, but
-full of the warmth of life, in that strong-grained, wit-interspersed
-style of popular eloquence, full of heart and humor at the same time,
-which our cultivated orators would do well to study, if they wish to
-make a living impression on the people. He related how he, in his
-younger years, never tasted brandy, but he became a seaman, and began to
-drink, that he might look manly among his fellows; how, by degrees, he
-acquired the power of swallowing more strong liquor than any of them
-all, fell into crime, misery and shame; how he became converted and
-again temperate, and how he had not now for fifteen years tasted
-spirits, and had ever since remained in good health and good
-circumstances.
-
-This was the substance of his story; but how the narrative was
-interspersed with merry conceits, which excited universal amusement, and
-with energetic proverbs—to which Mr. B——, beyond any one else, gave
-the highest applause—how cleverly “Mr. Halcohol” was brought in, and
-how contemptuously “the long-necked gentleman, Mr. Halcohol in the
-bottle,” was treated, and with how much animation all this was done and
-received—must have been heard to have been fully imagined. The speech
-was concluded by recommending “total abstinence” as the only means for
-insuring a perfect change of life.
-
-After this there entered a little throng of children with joyful faces,
-the same whom I had already heard sing in the upper room of the house;
-these children were the so-called “Band of Hope”—children who had taken
-the pledge to abstain from all strong drinks themselves, and to promote
-the advancement of temperance by all the means in their power, for which
-they received printed cards containing their pledge, together with
-symbolical devices, proverbs, etc. That little “Band of Hope” struck up
-with their clear voices, fresh as the morning, various songs, among
-which one in particular, “The Spindle and Shuttle,” was received with
-great delight, all present joining in the chorus. Hymns and patriotic
-songs were also sung by “The Band of Hope,” and now and then the company
-joined in with the children. Before the assembly separated this evening,
-several went forward and took the pledge. Among these was a man and his
-wife. They took each other by the hand. The woman with her other hand
-held her handkerchief over her left eye; it might be seen, nevertheless,
-that this eye was black, probably from the husband’s fist.
-
-What had influenced them to this? What had operated upon these rude
-natures?—induced them to break loose from habits of drunkenness—to
-turn from the pleasures of hell to those of heaven? What was it that had
-operated on all here so awakeningly, so livingly? Could it be the
-discourse they had heard? could it be the poem in praise of temperance?
-Nothing of the kind. I saw them go to sleep during these. I became
-sleepy myself. No, that which operated here so livingly—was the life
-itself. It was that living narrative of the unhappy woman; it was the
-sailor’s history of his own life, his battles with “Mr. Halcohol;” it
-was the songs of the children, the pure, dewy-fresh voices of the little
-“Band of Hope.” All these it was which had operated upon, which had
-awakened their minds, had animated their brains, warmed their hearts;
-this it was which had impelled the husband and wife, hand in hand, to
-come forward and consecrate themselves to a new marriage, to a better
-life. Individual experience of suffering, of joy, of sin, of conversion,
-of love and happiness, must be told, if the relation is to have any
-power over the human heart; life itself must be called into action if we
-would awake the dead.
-
-I could not but remark at this meeting, how cordial and familiar an
-understanding seemed to exist between the leader, Mr. B——, and the
-assembly, and which arose in part from his own peculiar character, and
-in part from his intimate acquaintance with his hearers. In the same
-way, his continual intercourse with those people, and his knowledge of
-their every-day life, is an excellent help to him in giving force to the
-sermons which he preaches among them. I shall not forget the effect
-produced by his story of the woman and the bottle of vitriol.
-
-A few days later I visited, with the same friendly man, some different
-classes of poor people—namely, the wicked and the idle; they who had
-fallen into want through their own improvidence, but who had now raised
-themselves again; and the estimable, who had honorably combated with
-unavoidable poverty. In one certain quarter of Liverpool, it is that the
-first class is especially met with. Of this class of poor in their
-wretched rooms, with their low, brutalized expression, I will not speak;
-companion-pieces to this misery may be met with every where. Most of
-those whom I saw were Irish. It was a Sunday noon, after divine service.
-The ale-houses were already open in this part of the town, and young
-girls and men might be seen talking together before them, or sitting
-upon the steps.
-
-Of the second class I call to mind, with especial pleasure, one little
-household. It was a mother and her son. Her means of support, a mangle,
-stood in the little room in which she had lived since she had raised
-herself up again. It was dinner-time. A table, neatly covered for two
-persons, stood in the room, and upon the iron stand before the fire was
-placed a dish of mashed potatoes, nicely browned, ready to be set on the
-table. The mother was waiting for her son, and the dinner was waiting
-for him. He was the organ-blower in a church during divine service, and
-he returned whilst I was still there. He was well dressed, but was a
-little, weakly man, and squinted; the mother’s eyes, however, regarded
-him with love. This son was her only one, and her all. And he, to whom
-mother Nature had acted as a stepmother, had a noble mother’s heart to
-warm himself with, which prepared for him an excellent home, a
-well-covered table, and a comfortable bed. That poor little home was not
-without its wealth.
-
-As belonging to the third and highest class, I must mention two
-families, both of them shoemakers, and both of them inhabiting cellars.
-The one family consisted of old, the other of young people. The old
-shoemaker had to maintain his wife, who was lame and sick, from a fall
-in the street, and a daughter. The young one had a young wife, and five
-little children to provide for; but work was scanty and the mouths many.
-At this house, also, it was dinner-time, and I saw upon the table
-nothing but potatoes. The children were clean, and had remarkably
-agreeable faces; but—they were pale; so was also the father of the
-family. The young and pretty, but very pale mother, said, “Since I have
-come into this room I have never been well, and this I know—I shall not
-live long!” Her eyes filled with tears; and it was plain enough to see
-that this really delicate constitution could not long sustain the
-effects of the cold, damp room, into which no sunbeam entered. These two
-families, of the same trade, and alike poor, had become friends in need.
-When one of the fathers of the family wanted work, and was informed by
-the Home-Missionary who visited them that the other had it, the
-intelligence seemed a consolation to him. Gladdening sight of human
-sympathy, which keeps the head erect and the heart sound under the
-depressing struggle against competition! But little gladdening to me
-would have been the sight of these families in their cellar-homes, had I
-not at the same time been aware of the increase of those “Model
-Lodging-Houses,” which may be met with in many parts of England, and
-which will remove these inhabitants of cellars, they who sit in
-darkness, into the blessing of the light of life—which will provide
-worthy dwellings for worthy people. But of this I shall speak somewhat
-later, in connection with other new institutions for the advancement of
-the health, both of body and soul, of—all classes.
-
- “For no one for himself doth live or suffer.”
-
-For myself, I was well provided for by English hospitality, and enjoyed
-an excellent home in the house of the noble and popular preacher, J.
-M——. With him, and his wife (one of these beautiful, motherly natures,
-who through a peculiar geniality of heart is able to accomplish so much,
-and to render herself and every thing that is good twofold, in quite
-another manner to that of the multiplication-table, which merely makes
-two and two into four)—with them and their family I spent some
-beautiful days amid conversation and music. There, in the neighborhood
-of their house, I saw also one of those English parks, whose verdant,
-carefully-kept sward, and groups of shrubs and flowers, give so peculiar
-and so attractive a charm to the English landscape. Add to this a
-river-like sheet of water; swans, groups of beautiful children and
-ladies feeding them on the banks, the song of birds every where amongst
-the shrubs; scattered palaces, and handsome country-houses—and every
-thing looking so finished, so splendid, so beautiful and perfect, as if
-nothing out of condition, nothing in tatters or shabby was to be found
-in the world. Such was the impression produced by the Prince’s Park,
-which was laid out by a wealthy private gentleman, Mr. J——, on the
-birth of the Prince of Wales, the eldest son of Queen Victoria, and
-thrown open to the public with only this single admonition exhibited, in
-large letters, in various parts of the park, “it is hoped the public
-will protect that which is intended for the public enjoyment.”
-
-But I must leave this enchanting Idyll, and hasten into the
-manufacturing districts; and, first of all, to Manchester:
-
-In my imagination Manchester was like a colossal woman sitting at her
-spinning-wheel, with her enormous manufactories; her subject towns,
-suburbs, villages, factories, lying for many miles round, spinning,
-spinning, spinning clothes for all the people on the face of the earth.
-And there, as she sat, the queen of the spindle, with her masses of ugly
-houses and factories, enveloped in dense rain-clouds, as if in cobwebs,
-the effect she made upon me was gloomy and depressing. Yet even here,
-also, I was to breathe a more refreshing atmosphere of life; even here
-was I also to see light. Free-trade had brought hither her emancipating
-spirit. It was a time of remarkable activity and prosperity. The
-work-people were fully employed; wages were good, and food was cheap.
-Even here also had ragged-schools been established, together with many
-institutions for improving the condition of the poor working-classes. In
-one of these ragged-schools the boys had a perfectly organized band of
-music, in which they played and blew so that it was a pleasure—and
-sometimes a disadvantage, to hear them. The lamenting “cry of the
-children” was no longer heard from the factories. Government had put an
-end to the cruelties and oppressions formerly practiced on these little
-ones by the unscrupulous lust of gain. No child under ten years old can
-now be employed in the factories, and even such, when employed, must of
-necessity be allowed part of the day for school. Every large factory has
-now generally its own school, with a paid master for the children. The
-boys whom I saw in the great rooms of the factories and with whom I
-conversed, looked both healthy and cheerful.
-
-Two ideas were impressed upon my mind at this place: how dangerous it
-is, even amid a high degree of social culture, to give one class of men
-unrestrained power over another; and how easily a free people, with a
-powerful public spirit, and accustomed to self-government, can raise
-themselves out of humiliating circumstances. This spirit has done much
-already in England, but it has yet more to do.
-
-Upon one of those large, gloomy factories in Manchester, I read,
-inscribed in iron letters, “The Great Beehive;” and in truth, a good
-name for these enormous hives of human industrial toil, in which people
-have sometimes forgotten, and still forget, that man is any thing more
-than a working-bee, which lives to fill its cell in the hive, and die. I
-visited several of these huge beehives. In one of them, which employed
-twelve hundred work-people, I saw, in a large room, above three hundred
-women sitting in rows winding cotton on reels. The room was clean, and
-so also were all the women. It did not appear to be hard work; but the
-steadfastly-fixed attention with which these women pursued their labor
-seemed to me distressingly wearisome. They did not allow themselves to
-look up, still less to turn their heads or to talk. Their life seemed to
-depend upon the cotton thread.
-
-In another of these great beehives, a long, low room, in which were six
-hundred power-looms, represented an extraordinary appearance. What a
-snatching to and fro, what a jingling, what an incessant stir, and what
-a moist atmosphere there was between floor and ceiling, as if the limbs
-of some absurd, unheard-of beast, with a thousand arms, had been
-galvanized! Around us, from three to four hundred operatives, women and
-men, stood among the rapid machinery watching and tending. The twelve
-o’clock bell rung, and now the whole throng of work-people would go
-forth to their various mid-day quarters; the greatest number to their
-respective dwellings in the neighborhood of the factory. I placed
-myself, together with my conductor, in the court outside the door of the
-room, which was on lower ground, in order that I might have a better
-view of the work-people as they came out.
-
-Just as one sees bees coming out of a hive into the air, two, three, or
-four at a time—pause, as it were, a moment from the effects of open air
-and light, and then with a low hum, dart forth into space, each one his
-own way, so was it in this case. Thus came they forth, men and women,
-youths and girls. The greater number were well dressed, looked healthy,
-and full of spirit. In many, however, might be seen the expression of a
-rude life; they bore the traces of depravity about them.
-
-As labor is now organized in the factories at Manchester, it cannot
-easily be otherwise. The master-manufacturer is not acquainted with his
-work-people. He hires spinners; and every spinner is master of a room,
-and he it is who hires the hands. He is the autocrat of the room, and
-not unfrequently is a severe and immoral one. The operatives live in
-their own houses, apart from every thing belonging to the
-master-manufacturer, with the exception of the raw material.
-
-In the country it is otherwise; there the master-manufacturer may be,
-and often is, a fatherly friend and guardian of his people. And where he
-is so, it is in general fully acknowledged. The character which each
-manufacturer bears as an employer, even in Manchester, is perfectly well
-known. People mention with precision the good, the worthless, or the
-wicked master. I visited factories belonging to some of these various
-characters, but perceived a more marked difference in the manners and
-appearance of the masters themselves, than in the appearance and
-condition of the work-people. At the present moment the difference could
-not be very perceptible, because the general demand for hands causes the
-circumstances of the lower classes to be generally good. But, as before
-remarked, the patriarchal connection between master and servant, with
-its good, as well as its evil consequences, no longer exists in the
-manufacturing towns of England. Employer and employed stand beside each
-other, or rather opposed to each other, excepting through the
-requirements of labor. The whole end and aim of the Manchester
-manufacturer—when he is not subjected to machinery, and lives merely as
-a screw, or portion of it—is, to get out of Manchester. He spins and
-makes use of all means, good or bad, to lay by sufficient money to live
-independently, or to build himself a house at a distance from the smoky,
-restless town, away from the bustle—away from the throng of restless,
-striving work-people. His object is to arrive at quiet in the country,
-in a comfortable home; and having attained this object, he looks upon
-the noisy, laboring hive, out of which he has lately come, as a
-something with which he has no concern, and out of which he is glad to
-have escaped with a whole skin. Such is the case with many—God forbid
-that we should say, with all!
-
-Two subjects of conversation occupied the people of Manchester very much
-at this time. The one was the question—a vital question for the whole
-of England—of popular education. The people of Manchester had begun to
-take the subject into serious consideration, and had come to the
-conclusion that there might at once be adopted a simple system of
-education by which, as in the United States, every one should receive in
-the people’s school practical and moral instruction, and that religious
-instruction should be left for the home or for the Sunday teaching. The
-willingness to thus act in concert which has been shown by the clergy of
-the Established Church in Manchester, is a good omen to the various
-religious sects united in this work. All things considered, it seems to
-me that there is at this moment in England the most decided movement
-toward a new development, a new life as well in theoretic as in
-practically popular respects; and it is more apparent in the Established
-Church than in any other religious body.
-
-The second great subject of conversation, as well in Manchester as in
-Liverpool, was Queen Victoria’s expected visit. The Queen had announced
-her intention of visiting the great towns of the manufacturing
-districts, in company with Prince Albert, in the middle of the month,
-and they were accordingly expected in a few days. Several of these towns
-had never before seen a crowned head within their walls, and this, in
-connection with the great popularity of the Queen, and the liking and
-the love which the people have for her, had perfectly enchanted the
-inhabitants of Manchester. They were preparing to give a royal reception
-to their lofty guests. Nothing could be too magnificent or too costly in
-the eyes of the Manchester people which could testify their homage. The
-whole of the district, now that the Queen was expected, was said to be
-“brimful of loyalty,” and the whole of England was at this time, both in
-heart and soul, monarchical. Opposition against the royal family exists
-no longer in England; the former members of this opposition had become
-converted. On all hands there was but one voice of devotion and praise.
-Wonderful! yes, incomprehensible, thought I, when I was informed that
-the Queen had requested not long since to have a grant from Parliament
-of 72,000_l._ for the erection of new stables at her palace of Windsor,
-and the same year 30,000_l._, for Prince Albert to repair his
-dog-kennels, and now, again, just lately, 17,000_l._ for the erection of
-stables at a palace which the Queen has obtained for her eldest son, and
-of which he will take possession on attaining his majority. Thus
-119,000_l._ for stables and dog-kennels.
-
-What? 119,000_l._ for stables and dog-kennels; for the maintenance of
-fine horses and dogs, and that at a time when Ireland is perishing of
-hunger or emigrating in the deepest distress; when even in England so
-infinitely much remains to be done for humanity, so much untold good
-might be effected for the public with this sum. Queen Elizabeth was
-accustomed to say, that she considered her money best put out when it
-was in the pockets of her subjects, and she scorned to desire any great
-project for her own pleasure. Queen Victoria desires, year after year,
-immense grants for her stables and kennels; desires this of her people,
-and yet, for all this, is homage paid to her—is she loved and supported
-by the people in this extraordinary manner! Parliament grumbles, but
-consents to all that the Queen desires, fully consents without a murmur,
-because it loves her. Such projects would otherwise be dangerous to the
-power of the monarch. Such projects overturned the throne of Louis
-Philippe—have undermined many thrones. But the light foot of this
-Queen—a well-beloved little foot it ought to be—dances again and again
-on the brink of the dangerous abyss, and it gives not way. But how is
-this possible? What is it that makes this Queen so popular, so
-universally beloved by the people, spite of the desire for stables and
-dog-kennels, unnecessary articles of luxury, when hundred thousands of
-her subjects are in want even of the necessaries of life; want even the
-means to secure a home and daily bread?
-
-Thus I asked, and thus they replied to me:
-
-The English people wish that their royal family should live with a
-certain degree of state. They are fond of beautiful horses and dogs
-themselves, and it flatters the national pride that the royal personages
-should have such, and should have magnificent dwellings for them. The
-character of the Queen, her domestic and public virtues, and the
-influence of her example, which is of such high value to the nation,
-causes it to regard no sacrifice of money as too great for the
-possession of such a Queen. England is aware that under the protection
-of the throne, under the shadow of the sceptre of this Queen, and the
-stability which it gives to the affairs of the kingdom, she can in
-freedom and peace manage her own internal concerns, and advance forward
-on the path of democratic development and self-government, with a
-security which other nations do not possess.
-
-Hence it is that the reigning family now upon the English throne
-presents a spectacle extraordinary upon this throne, or upon any throne
-in the world. The Queen and her husband stand before the people as the
-personation of every domestic and public virtue! The Queen is an
-excellent wife and mother; she attends to the education of her children,
-and fulfills her duties as sovereign, alike conscientiously. She is an
-early riser; is punctual and regular in great as well as in small
-things. She pays ready money for all that she purchases, and never is in
-debt to any one. Her court is remarkable for its good and beautiful
-morals. On their estates, she and Prince Albert carry every thing out in
-the best manner, establish schools and institutions for the good of the
-poor; these institutions and arrangements of theirs, serve as examples
-to every one. Their uprightness, kindness, generosity, and the tact
-which they under all circumstances display, win the heart of the nation.
-They show a warm sympathy for the great interests of the people, and by
-this very sympathy are they promoted. Of this, the successful carrying
-out of free-trade, and the Exhibition in the Crystal Palace, projected
-in the first instance by Prince Albert, and powerfully seconded by the
-Queen, furnish brilliant examples. The sympathies of the Queen are those
-of the heart as well as of the head. When that noble statesman, the
-great promoter of free-trade, Sir Robert Peel, died, the Queen shut
-herself in for several days, and wept for him as if she had lost a
-father. And whenever a warm sympathy is called forth, either in public
-or in private affairs, it is warmly and fully participated by Queen
-Victoria and Prince Albert.
-
-In confirmation of this opinion regarding Queen Victoria and Prince
-Albert, which I heard every where, and from all parties in England, a
-number of anecdotes of their life and actions were related to me, which
-fully bore it out.
-
-This universal impression, universally produced by the sovereign, who,
-properly speaking, can govern nothing—because it is well known that the
-monarch of England is merely a nominal executor of the wishes of the
-people, a hand which subscribes that which the minister lays before it
-in the name of the people; this great power, in a Queen, is without any
-political power.
-
-Monarchs and their people no longer bear the same relation to each other
-as in the time when, for example, Charles the Ninth put forth his
-demands, with the addition,—
-
-“Do it, and be off with you!”
-
-This injunction to do a thing, and then take themselves off, can no
-longer be given to the people by the King, but by reason. The people
-have arrived at years of discretion, and the monarch is the executor of
-their laws and their wishes. He is so in England, it is said.
-
-From Manchester I traveled to Birmingham. I saw again the land of the
-fire-worshipers, their smoking altars, in tall columns and pyramids,
-towering above the green fields; saw again the burning gulfs yawning in
-the earth, and, saw them now with unmixed pleasure. I heard no longer,
-amid their boiling roar, the lamenting cry of the children; I heard and
-saw them now only as the organs of the public prosperity, and rejoiced
-over them as proofs of man’s power over fire and water, over all the
-powers of nature; the victory of the gods over the giants!
-
-In Birmingham I visited a steel-pen manufactory, and followed from room
-to room the whole process of those small metal tongues which go abroad
-over all the world, and do so much—evil, and so much good; so much that
-is great, so much that is small; so much that is important, so much that
-is trivial. I saw four hundred young girls, sitting in large, light
-rooms, each with her little pen-stamp, employed in a dexterous and easy
-work, especially fitted for women. All were well dressed, seemed healthy
-and cheerful, many were pretty: upon the whole, it was a spectacle of
-prosperity which surpassed even that of the mill-girls in the celebrated
-factories of Lowell, in America.
-
-Birmingham was at this time in a most flourishing condition, and had
-more orders for goods than it could supply, nor were there any male
-paupers to be found in the town; there was full employment for all.
-
-In Birmingham I saw a large school of design. Not less than two hundred
-young female artists studied here in a magnificent hall or rotunda,
-abundantly supplied with models of all kinds, and during certain hours
-in the week, exclusively opened to these female votaries of art. A
-clever, respectable, old woman, the porter of the school-house, spoke of
-many of these with especial pleasure, as if she prided herself on them
-in some degree.
-
-I saw in Birmingham a beautiful park, with hot-houses, in which were
-tropical plants, open to the public; saw also a large concert-room,
-where twice in the week “glees” were sung, and to which the public were
-admitted at a low price: all republican institutions, and which seem to
-prosper more in a monarchical realm than in republics themselves.
-
-I met with a surprise in Birmingham; that is to say, I was all at once
-carried back fifteen centuries into the Syrian desert of Chalsis, and
-there lived a life so unlike Birmingham and Birmingham-life, that just
-for the sake of contrast, it was very refreshing. The thing was quite
-simple in itself, inasmuch as one evening I accompanied an amiable
-family, who resided in Birmingham, to a lecture, which was given by a
-young, gifted preacher, on the old Church-father, Saint Jerome
-(Hieronymus.)
-
-The subject of the lecture, which was extempore, and delivered with much
-ease and perspicuity, was evidently not intended to recommend to his
-auditors, but rather to repel them from an ascetic and contemplative
-life. Saint Jerome was delineated as a noble fool, a curiosity in human
-nature, and was to be deplored as a sacrifice to perverted reason, by no
-means to be imitated. The true end of humanity was not to be attained by
-flying from city life, and burying one’s self in a desert for study and
-self-mortification; that end was rather to be attained in the busy city,
-than in the isolated existence of the wilderness; and so on. Such was
-the lecturer’s moral. But upon me his arguments made an impression
-considerably antithetical to that which he intended. I saw this warrior
-of the third century devoured by a burning thirst of light and
-knowledge, of purity for his whole being; saw him wander out, seeking
-the wells of life; saw him, separating from the agreeable circles of
-city existence, roam on amid catacombs and the tombs of martyrs; saw him
-seeing in Gaul, and on the Rhine, and there finding—Christianity. Saw
-him there, after being baptized, with his Bible under his arm, retire
-into the deserts of Syria, and there, in the burning sands of Chalsis,
-bury himself for a number of years, amid exegetic studies and severe
-deeds of penance. I heard him, even at the time that he, according to
-his own words, “watered his couch with his tears,” and while he was
-given over, and regarded as a fool by his friends, still reproach those
-friends for having chosen the worse part, that of the life of enjoyment
-in the city, and break forth in transport, “O! silent wildernesses,
-flower-strewn by Jesus Christ! O! wild solitudes, full of his spirit!”
-
-I saw him, after his conflict was accomplished, go forth out of the
-desert with his Bible, enter Rome publicly, and unsparingly chastise the
-crimes of the proud city. I saw the haughty ladies of Rome first start,
-then bow themselves to the severe judgment of the teacher; saw Marulla
-and Paula renounce the dissipated life of Rome, and follow the preacher;
-found convents and Christian institutions in accordance with his views;
-saw him grow in the combat with the spirit of the age, till he stood as
-a founder of the greatest power on earth—that of the Christian Church.
-The _fool_, who had buried himself in the sands of Syria, and done
-battle with himself during solitary days and nights.
-
-Ah! this fool, this glowing sun of the desert, as he now stood forth to
-view, through the veil of fifteen centuries, grew greater and greater in
-my eyes, till, finally, he expanded himself over the whole of
-Birmingham, with all its factories, workshops, steel-pens, and the like,
-as a colossus above an ant-hill.
-
-Birmingham is almost entirely of the class of what are called Chartists;
-that is, advocates of universal suffrage. They are this, through good
-and through evil; and the resistance which their just desire to be more
-fully represented in the legislative body has met with from that body,
-has brought them more and more into collision with the power of the
-state, more and more to base their demands in opposition, even to the
-higher principles of justice; for they overlook the duty of rendering
-themselves worthy of the franchise by sound education. But the fault
-here, in the first place, was not theirs. Growing up amid machinery and
-the hum of labor, without schools, without religious or moral worth;
-hardened by hard labor, in continual fight with the difficulties of
-life, they have moulded themselves into a spirit little in harmony with
-life’s higher educational influences, the blessings of which they had
-never experienced. Atheism, radicalism, republicanism, socialism of all
-kinds will and must flourish here in concealment amongst the strong and
-daily augmenting masses of a population, restrained only by the fear of
-the still more mighty powers which may be turned against them, and by
-labor for their daily needs, so long as those powers are sufficing. And
-perhaps the Americans are right where they say, in reference to this
-condition of things;—“England lies at our feet—England cannot do
-without our cotton. If the manufactures of England must come to a stand,
-then has she a popular convulsion at her door.” Perhaps it may be so;
-for these hosts of manufacturing workmen, neglected in the beginning by
-society, neglected by church and state, look upon them merely as
-exacting and despotic powers; and in strict opposition to them, they
-have banded together, and established schools for their own children,
-where only the elements of practical science are admitted, and from
-which religious and moral instruction are strictly excluded. In truth, a
-volcanic foundation for society, and which now, for some time past, has
-powerfully arrested the attention of the most thinking men of England.
-
-But into the midst of this menacing chaos light has already begun to
-penetrate with an organizing power; and over the dark profound hovers a
-spirit which can and will divide the darkness from the light, and
-prepare a new creation.
-
-From Birmingham I traveled, on the morning of the 4th of October, by a
-railway to Leamington, and thence alone in a little carriage to
-Stratford-on-Avon.
-
------
-
-[1] A minister paid by the community for devoting himself exclusively to
-its poor, and one worthy of the confidence reposed in him.
-
- * * * * *
-
-
-
-
- OLIVER GOLDSMITH—HIS CHARACTER AND GENIUS.
-
-
- BY A NEW CONTRIBUTOR.
-
-
- In wit a man, simplicity a child.
- Pope.
-
-For over half a century after Goldsmith’s death, the world continued in
-a state of uncertainty concerning his writings and himself. The greater
-part of the task-work he had performed for the booksellers was unknown,
-and Oliver spoken of, in a traditionary sort of way, as the author of
-the Vicar of Wakefield and the Deserted Village, and a man of laughable
-eccentricities. The majority of his readers—and no poet had more of
-them or enjoyed a wider English popularity—never thought he was other
-than an Englishman; and those who knew the country of his birth differed
-about the place of it—some asserting he was born at Lissoy, in
-Westmeath, and others contending for other localities. Even Dr. Johnson,
-who has set down his native place—Pallas, in Longford—correctly in his
-epitaph, makes a mistake of three years in his age. All this is
-remarkable of the cotemporary of Johnson—one who ranked with that
-literary colossus in his time and was so closely connected with Burke,
-Reynolds, Percy and the other celebrities of that period. Resembling, in
-some measure, Butler, in the obscurity of his personal history and the
-popularity of his works, Goldsmith seemed to be vaguely merging into the
-Vicar of Wakefield, or the Good Natured Man—just as the poet of the
-Restoration had come to be confounded with his Roundhead hero—when
-Prior’s life of him, twenty years ago, first threw a fair light upon the
-past; indicated the great mass of his writings (poorly compensated,
-anonymous and plagiarized, in his life-time,) and cleared away a large
-amount of the misconceptions and fallacies that had been gathered about
-his fame.
-
-There has hardly been any author in modern times, or perhaps in the
-ancient, whose personal character contrasts—is made to contrast—so
-much with the genuine celebrity he has achieved. He would seem to have
-been laughed at a good deal, and treated with a want of consideration
-and respect, even by those who loved him and wept at his death; and the
-impression generally conveyed is, that his manners were uncouth and his
-conversation ridiculous. Those who have helped to create such a
-character for Oliver, think they have compounded with their consciences
-when they have admitted he was a charming writer, and a simple, honest
-soul, who had no harm in him, and always meant well. Nevertheless, but
-one half of their portrait can be received. There were no such violent
-contrarieties in the elements that went to compose Oliver Goldsmith. His
-biographers—to make the most lenient estimate of them—knew him
-imperfectly and found it much easier to produce their effects by glaring
-contrasts than by the patient and loving discrimination due to the truth
-of every man’s character—especially that of a man like Goldsmith—so
-marked by peculiarities of education, and so severely tried by
-circumstances.
-
-The literary character is sure to suffer, more or less, in contact with
-society. Men of letters who spend half their time with the dead are not
-exactly the people to be _au fait_ of all the ways of the living; and
-have not always the good sense of Thomas Baker, who, for that very
-reason, refused, long ago, to be introduced to the Earl of Oxford and
-the polished people of his acquaintance. They generally offend against
-the conventions and are not pardoned in their biographies, which are
-sometimes writ by men of the world, and which, when even written by
-authors, who may be supposed capable of sympathizing more with the
-literary character, still show how the jealousies and prejudices of the
-craft will stand in the way of honest criticism. A man’s character
-depends very much on his historians—and Goldsmith, a literary
-adventurer, a bookseller’s hack, and an Irishman, was
-particularly—perhaps, necessarily—unfortunate in his.
-
-There have been crowds of distinguished literary men whose peculiarities
-were almost as much ridiculed as those of Goldsmith, but who have found
-a more dignified appreciation, by virtue of fairer biographers. Socrates
-was laughed at more than any man in Athens. But his immortal pupil has
-rescued his fame from those wits and satirists who used to loiter about
-the porches, and go, of a morning, to applaud the Clouds of
-Aristophanes. Socrates was an ugly little man—in the midst of the
-fine-faced men of Attica—generally threadbare and slovenly; and even
-Plato has been obliged to allow that his honored master was like an
-apothecary’s gallipot, painted outside with grotesque figures, but
-containing balm within. He was as much laughed at as Goldsmith; but
-nobody can think Socrates a laughable old fellow. There was the Emperor
-Julian. When he sojourned at Antioch, he was ridiculed and lampooned by
-the citizens for his careless dress and beard, and his simple manners.
-Whereupon, instead of treating them as Sulla did those facetious Greeks
-who said “his face was a mulberry sprinkled with meal,” the philosophic
-apostate wrote a book against them, called “Misopogon,” in which he
-pleasantly satirized himself for his literary peculiarities, justified
-his critics, and happily admitted that he did not, indeed, resemble in
-any thing those witty and fashionable people who made merry at his
-expense. If these Antiochans were Julian’s biographers, he should cut
-but a silly figure in the eyes of posterity. As it is, he has hardly
-fared much better in another point of view. La Fontaine was voted
-intolerably stupid in society. The gay Parisians said he merely
-vegetated—and he was called the Fable Tree—bringing forth fables! Poor
-Burns complained that though, when he wished, he could make himself
-“beloved,” he could not make himself “respected.” He confessed that he
-wanted discretion—was prone to a _lapsus linguæ_, and very apt to
-offend the sense of the society he was in—in this, somewhat like
-Goldsmith. We could cite a score of instances showing that famous men
-have been barely tolerated in society and very much exposed to the
-ridicule of it. But their biographers have done their better qualities
-justice, and they are not remembered in any remarkable degree in
-connection with the peculiarities which excited the satire of their
-cotemporaries.
-
-A great many things worked unfavorably for Goldsmith. His face was very
-plain-favored in expression, he spoke with a brogue and hesitated a
-little in his utterance. In his nature he was shy, and his manners in
-society had all the simplicity and unguarded impulse of his earlier
-years. Such a man, living in comparative retirement, might have passed
-through the world without any disparagements. But Goldsmith was thrown
-upon the great stage of London, and into the society of the most
-fastidious critics and gentlemen of the age. Here his ordeal was a
-severe one—as the result showed. Boswell, Hawkins, Cumberland,
-Northcote, Thrale and the rest of those who either wrote memoirs or
-furnished reminiscences of our author, have proved how little they could
-sympathize with the plain, blunt Irishman—who was only a simple child
-of nature and of genius.
-
-Among those who have most contributed to lessen the prestige of
-Goldsmith’s name was James Boswell, Dr. Johnson’s literary henchman and
-biographer. In all that Boswell writes of Oliver he exhibits his desire
-to disparage him. It is true he sometimes expresses partiality for
-Goldsmith’s conversation. But he, doubtless, intends this as a show of
-frankness to obtain the more easy credence for his general opinions of
-the poet. One great cause of this feeling on Boswell’s part was his
-reverent attachment to the fame of Dr. Johnson, and his jealousy of any
-one who came or seemed to come into rivalry with that Ursa Major of the
-British literary firmament. Boswell had the little soul of a parasite,
-and always felt offense at any exhibition of independence toward
-Johnson—such having the effect of rebuking his own absurd
-obsequiousness. Goldsmith, though the easiest and kindliest of men,
-still kept up that frank, irrespective manliness of disposition which
-belongs to genius, and could not sympathize with Boswell’s extreme
-notions of worship. The poet must have felt the folly and impoliteness
-of trumpeting Johnson in season and out of season—often in presence of
-better men than the lexicographer—and must have been offended with it,
-too. On one occasion, indeed, he said to Boswell, with his usual point
-and good sense—“Sir, you are for making a monarchy of that which should
-be a republic.” He respected Dr. Johnson, but never bowed down to him,
-nor to any one else. And the son of a Scottish lord, who venerated on
-all-fours, could not forgive the poor Irish scholar for standing erect
-in presence of the grim idol—as Johnson too often was, in his austere
-moods. Along with all this, Boswell probably knew very well the opinion
-which Goldsmith had of himself. In conversation with some one who called
-Boswell a Scotch cur, Goldsmith remarked—“Not so—he is only a Scotch
-bur: Tom Davies (the publisher) threw him at Johnson and he sticks to
-him.” A saying which, of course, found its way to the _bur’s_ ears. All
-these things are sufficient to account for the animus palpably exhibited
-against Goldsmith in Boswell’s Life of Johnson.
-
-When his book appeared, he was sharply and universally condemned for his
-treatment of the dead writer. Lord Charlemont expressed his indignant
-astonishment how James Boswell could affect to undervalue a man of such
-genius and popularity. Burke said to Lady Crewe, on the subject—“What
-sympathy could you expect to find, my dear madam, between an Irish poet
-and a Scotch lawyer?” Wilkes swore two such characters were moral
-antipodes. Sir Joshua Reynolds, who knew Goldsmith like a brother, and
-who had heard from report how Boswell meant to depict the poet,
-remonstrated earnestly with him on the subject before the biography of
-Johnson came out. Bishop Percy, Mr. Stephens, Mr. Malone and others
-denied that Goldsmith was guilty of the fooleries and grimaces and
-unworthy feelings attributed to him by Boswell, and protested against
-the low estimate he had made of Oliver’s genius and character. And yet
-with all Boswell’s earnestness in the attempt to lessen Goldsmith, it is
-remarkable how little he is really able to injure him in the long run.
-He has created an unfavorable impression of the poet’s manners it is
-true; but this is wearing away; and the fact is, that, not only the
-silly Boswell himself, but the austere doctor whom he delighted to
-honor, and wrote every thing to glorify, seems to be more reflected on
-than Goldsmith, in most things that have been recorded to the
-disparagement of the latter in connection with Johnson.
-
-One of Boswell’s first anecdotes of Johnson and Goldsmith will show the
-paltry, parasitical spirit in which he was in the habit of making his
-notes and comments. They three had been supping at the Mitre tavern,
-when Johnson got up to go home and take tea with his blind dependent,
-Miss Williams. “Dr. Goldsmith,” says Bozzy, “being a privileged man, got
-up to go with him, strutting away and calling to me, with an air of
-superiority, like that of an esoteric over an exoteric disciple of a
-sage of antiquity, ‘I go to Miss Williams.’” He says he envied this
-“mark of distinction,” but soon had the same honor himself! Boswell
-always betrays himself. For, without a grain of Oliver’s genius, he
-shows himself to be as thoughtless and absurd as he would have us think
-the poet to have been. If the latter did really exhibit any thing like
-exultation on the occasion alluded to—the canny Scot mistook it; he
-could not enter into the humorous vein of the author of the Citizen of
-the World, who never let any opportunity of pleasantry of any kind
-escape him, and who, doubtless, with a playful impulse, would, slily and
-aside, for Boswell’s behoof, put on a comic air of loftiness, at the
-idea of his own privilege. Such little _traits_ were very characteristic
-of Oliver Goldsmith, at all periods of his life; and neither his own
-dignity nor that of any one else was much thought of, whenever his funny
-“Cynthias of the minute” came across him. With all his respect for Dr.
-Johnson, he had still—though Boswell does not seem to admit it—a very
-strong sense of what was odd, petulant and _grandiose_ in the doctor’s
-manners, and could sport with it, too, to the bear’s face, with a rare
-and child-like temerity. For instance, once at Jack’s Coffee-house,
-where the pair were dining on rumps and kidneys, Johnson said—“These
-rumps are pretty things; but a man must eat a great number of them.”
-Goldsmith assented with pleasantry, and then, under the easy, unawed
-impulse of his nature, and carried away by the thought that he was not
-at his dreary desk, but at dinner with his friend, pushed on with—“But
-how many of them would go to the moon?” Johnson had, doubtless, said
-such small matters did not _go far_—a common expression, which would
-have provoked Oliver’s pun—though the story says nothing of this.
-
-“To the moon?” replies Johnson; “I think that exceeds your calculation.”
-
-“Not at all, sir,” cries Goldie—looking ludicrously prepense, at the
-terrible, grave face opposite—“I think I could tell.”
-
-“Well, sir,” rejoined Ursa Major; whereupon the other comes out with:
-
-“One, if it was long enough!”
-
-Johnson growled angrily, and said he was a fool to provoke such an
-answer. Not a fool, however, but a solemn bear, whose very grimness,
-contrasted with the absurdity of the solution, was Goldsmith’s
-irresistible temptation. We must, in fact, justify Oliver’s fun—though
-we did not see Johnson’s face. The thing was laughter-compelling.
-Goldsmith had no undue feeling of deference in his nature at all, though
-he used certainly to go on all-fours to amuse the children. His
-irrespective and somewhat careless humor often irritated Johnson, who
-generally supped full of flattery.
-
-“Doctor,” said Johnson one day, “I have not been quite idle; I lately
-made a line of poetry.”
-
-Instead of holding up his hands reverently, Goldsmith cried out with his
-customary levity—“Come, sir, let us hear it; we will try and put a bad
-one to it.”
-
-“No, sir,” replied the petted monster, drawing in; “I have forgotten
-it.”
-
-Boswell’s attempts to depreciate Goldsmith are blunderingly made. He
-always admits enough to betray his own unfair spirit. Johnson having had
-in 1767, an interview with the king in the library of St. James’s
-Palace, the thing was greatly talked of. Boswell says, that once at the
-house of Sir Joshua Reynolds, the doctor was, by request (the henchman’s
-of course), induced to repeat the circumstances of the meeting, and that
-during the recital, Goldsmith was observed to be silent and
-_inattentive_. He says, the latter was envious of Johnson’s luck, but he
-goes on to state that at last the frankness and simplicity of his nature
-prevailed, he advanced to Johnson and told him, he acquitted himself
-admirably—that he (Goldsmith), “should have bowed and stammered through
-the whole of it.” No sign of any very deadly envy in all this, surely.
-Johnson himself, though he mostly made a point of defending Goldsmith
-against attacks, could not help feeling a little pique and jealousy
-toward the wit, who never refrained from arguing the matter with him,
-comically or keenly as he saw fit. Johnson was truculent at times, and
-would speak rudely to Goldsmith in company. One of the surly moralist’s
-formulas, whenever Goldsmith would say, “I don’t see that,” was—“Nay,
-my dear sir, why can you not see what everybody else sees?” On such
-occasions, Goldsmith’s independence, or want of tact was against him.
-Johnson at times, used to put him down in this way. During an argument,
-Goldsmith having been several times contradicted, “sat in restless
-agitation,” says the veracious Boswell, “from a wish to get in and
-shine.” No easy matter when Johnson was cloudy. “Finding himself
-excluded,” he goes on—“he had taken his hat to go away, but remained
-for some time with it in his hand. Once, when beginning again to speak,
-he was overpowered by the loud voice of Johnson, who was at the opposite
-end of the table, and did not notice the attempt. Thus disappointed,
-Goldsmith threw down his hat in a passion, and said—‘take it’—looking
-angrily at Johnson. Then Toplady was about to speak, Oliver hearing
-Johnson growl something, and thinking he was about to go on again,
-begged he would let Toplady proceed, as the latter had heard Johnson
-patiently for an hour. ‘Sir,’ roared Johnson, ‘I was not going to
-interrupt the gentleman. Sir, you are impertinent!’ Goldy said nothing,
-but continued in the company for some time. When they all met in the
-evening at the club, Johnson said aside to Boswell, ‘I’ll make Goldsmith
-forgive me:’ and then aloud—‘Doctor Goldsmith, something passed between
-us, where you and I dined: I ask your pardon.’ Goldsmith answered
-placidly, ‘It must be much from you, sir, that I take ill.’ After
-which,” says Boswell, “Goldsmith was himself again, and rattled away as
-usual.” All this exhibits the usual animus of Boswell, the coarse
-tyranny of Johnson, and the fine disposition of Oliver, in a fair light.
-Goldsmith knew Johnson intimately—_intus et in cute_—and used to say
-of him, with that happiness of thought and fancy which his bashfulness
-could, not entirely mar—“there is no arguing with Johnson; when his
-pistol misses fire, he knocks you down with the but-end of it.”
-
-Johnson talked for victory—Goldsmith for enjoyment. The former came
-armed at all points into the argument—the latter was but too glad to
-fling off all lettered restraint, remove his harness as it were, and
-enjoy himself in the midst of what he loved so cordially, the sight of
-happy human faces. Johnson generally entered into conversation like an
-athlete or a bull into an arena. He once said to Boswell, after some
-literary reunion—“we had good talk to-night.” “Yes, sir,” returned the
-admiring disciple, “you tossed and gored several persons.” A pleasant
-affair, truly, one of those conversations on philosophy and polite
-literature must have been in the Johnsonian times. Poor Goldsmith was
-disposed to be light, discursive, and unaffected in genial society—or
-if affected at all, it was in the desire to contrast his own open
-pleasantry with the dread gravity of Johnson, and those who stood in awe
-of him. Oliver was out of his element, in fact, among the generality of
-those with whom he came into contact at the club and elsewhere. He
-should have lived in the days of the loud-laughing Jerrold, and Hunt,
-the old boy at all times, and the pun-elaborating Lamb; he should have
-known Moore, the gayest of wits, and Maginn, who also _stammered_ forth
-“his logic and his wisdom and his wit.” The simplicity of his
-disposition, and the Irish impulses of his nature, led him to desire a
-hearty enjoyment of his social hours in the midst of his friends. He
-would have quips and cranks, and a spice of that happy frivolity which
-comes as easy to the finest geniuses as their more dignified
-inspirations. But such he was not to have at the Literary Club, where
-Jupiter-Johnson took the chair—or rather the field, and “glowering frae
-him,” kept himself perfectly ready to “toss and gore,” as usual.
-
- “While all the clubbists trembled at his nod.”
-
-A great deal of pedantry and paradox was mixed up with the literature of
-Goldsmith’s time; men’s minds were apt to be as stiff as their costumes,
-and authors were considered to have a certain professional dignity to
-support.
-
-Oliver, as we have said, was out of his element in the midst of such
-circumstances; he did not admire the gravity which is too often a
-mysterious carriage of the body to cover the defects of the mind, but
-was disposed in company
-
- “To rattle on exactly as he’d talk
- To any body in a ride or walk.”
-
-In mixed society he seemed very unequal. He very often sat silent, and
-the shyness of his disposition was thought to be an affectation of
-dignity. But when the occasion grew more festive, as at after-dinner
-times, and the poet’s temperament had received the stimulus of aliment
-and wine, he would overflow with pleasant paradoxes, jests and all sorts
-of unguarded hilarity, believing that those about him who were aware of
-the intrinsic wit and worth of his intellect, would justify him against
-any thought of ridicule or disparagement. In such moods, and before the
-most fastidious wits of the day, he would come out intrepidly
-with—“When I used to lodge among the beggars in Axe Lane.” The effect
-of this on his hearers (we believe it was spoken at one of Sir Joshua
-Reynold’s dinners) was something like that produced on the discomposed
-sovereigns sitting round the table at Tilsit, or Erfurth—we forget
-which—by Napoleon’s reminiscence, beginning—“When I was a lieutenant
-in the regiment of La Fere!” These sayings seem to show a kindred
-consciousness of something beyond the conventions of rank and name.
-Goldsmith was not to be laughed at for that sally—which Socrates or
-Zeno would have enjoyed very much. But the cankered and fastidious
-Walpole, who was present on some such occasion, and found the Irishman
-very blunt in his mode of argument, and very unconcerned at the rank or
-pretensions of Walpole himself, could not tolerate such franknesses, and
-with his usual affectation of point, called Oliver “an inspired idiot;”
-just as Chesterfield had called Johnson “a respectable Hottentot”—but
-indeed with greater justice; for the moralist’s manners at table,
-particularly his modes of eating, were rather savage.
-
-Goldsmith was certainly apt to blunder. But it was when in the simple
-frankness of his nature he thought he was among friends and good fellows
-in such moods and moments. He put his trust in those whose
-conventionalities he would offend, and who must have felt the
-inferiority of their own powers when in contact with his. Disraeli, the
-elder, has made some just remarks on the wrong to which such men expose
-themselves very often in society. He says: “One peculiar trait in the
-conversation of men of genius which has often injured them when
-listeners are not acquainted with the men—are certain sports of a
-vacant mind; a sudden impulse to throw out opinions and take views of
-things in some humor of the moment. Extravagant paradoxes and false
-opinions are caught up by the humblest prosers: and the Philistines are
-thus enabled to triumph over the strong and gifted man, because in an
-hour of confidence and the abandonment of his mind, he laid his head in
-their lap and taught them how he might be shorn of his strength.” All
-this is extremely applicable to the case of Oliver Goldsmith.
-
-Almost all the stories told of him to show his absurdity or jealousy are
-palpably false and must be looked on as failures. Northcote very gravely
-set down how the doctor was offended, when on his route to Paris,
-accompanied by Mrs. Horneck and her daughters, to find the young ladies
-receive more notice and admiration than he himself at a French hotel.
-This was a stupid misconception, to say the least of it—as Miss Horneck
-afterward stated, wondering at the same time how such could ever have
-arisen from the fact. Goldsmith, who was always ready to laugh at
-himself, for the pleasantry of the thing, in any of his playful moods,
-seeing his companions pleased by the admiration they excited, and
-wishing to amuse them, said, with an affectation of wounded self-love,
-that doubtless produced the effect he intended—“Very well, ladies; you
-may find somebody else in vogue, very shortly, as well as yourselves.”
-Such sallies furnish a key to most of those things cited to the ridicule
-of Goldsmith. Another story is told by Col. O’Moore. Burke and O’Moore
-going to the club to dine, saw Oliver among others looking at some
-foreign women in a balcony in Leicester Square. Arrived at the club,
-Burke affected to be offended with Goldsmith and being questioned, said
-he could hardly think of being friendly with a man who could say what
-the doctor had just uttered in the public street. Goldsmith eagerly
-asking to know what it was, was told he expressed surprise that the
-crowd should look at these women, while he, a man of genius, was passing
-by!
-
-“Surely, I did not say so,” says Oliver.
-
-“How should I know it then?” replies Burke.
-
-“True,” admits Goldsmith, “I thought, indeed, something of the kind; but
-I did not think I uttered it.”
-
-All this is merely clumsy and incredible—just the sort of anecdote for
-the colonel to tell. Just as preposterous was the story of Goldsmith
-asking Gibbon, who came into his room while he was writing the History
-of Greece, “What king was that who gave Alexander so much trouble in
-India?” and on being informed it was Montezuma, writing it down at once!
-Then, there is Beauclerc’s funny thing—how Goldsmith, being once
-conversing with Lord Shelburne (termed “Malagrida” by some political
-opponent,) told his lordship he wondered they called him Malagrida,
-_for_ Malagrida was an honest man! Such were the false and stupid
-reminiscences that went to compose the memory of poor Goldsmith—a man
-of the finest perceptions and most excellent judgment.
-
-Exaggerated stories are also told of his love of dress and his personal
-vanity in other matters. His peach-colored coat is thought to be a good
-jest. It is indeed true, that he was somewhat expensive in dress; but a
-man who frequented the politest society of the time was obliged to pay
-attention to his wardrobe. And if his taste in the matter of coats and
-cocked-hats was not so true as it ever was in literary matters, it may
-be stated that Aristotle also underwent the rebuke of Plato for his
-foppishness. A great deal is made of the fact that Goldsmith once
-attempted to leap from the bank to a little island in a pond, at
-Versailles, and fell into the water. This is all natural enough, if we
-refer it to his usual playfulness and the remembrance of the active
-habits of his youth. It amounts to no more than the gravest man may have
-to answer for, if all his doings were chronicled. Johnson, when quite an
-old man, used to make such heavy attempts to be lively. Mrs. Thrale (we
-believe) says that one day, approaching her house, the philosopher flung
-himself in sport over a gate that lay in his way, and was very much
-elated by his own agility.
-
-With all his dignity and philosophy Johnson felt a little jealous of
-Goldsmith, at times, and used to express disparaging opinions of him. He
-said—“His genius is great, but his knowledge is small. As they say of a
-generous man—it is a pity he is not rich; so we may say of
-Goldsmith—it is a pity he is not knowing.” He also said no one was more
-foolish than Goldsmith when he had not a pen in his hand, or wiser when
-he had, thus parodying the saying applied to Charles the Second—
-
- “Who never said a foolish thing,
- And never did a wise one.”
-
-In expressing these opinions, Dr. Johnson seems to forget what he
-himself has elsewhere said, very justly—to the effect that a great deal
-of the truth and correctness of a sentiment is sacrificed to the point
-of it. He also says, amusingly enough—“Goldsmith should not be always
-attempting to shine in conversation,” (certainly not—this would be a
-sort of contumacy in Johnson’s presence!) “he has not temper for it.”
-(Johnson’s own was of such a meek, philosophic stamp!) Even when the
-dignity of Goldsmith’s doings was more questionable than that of his
-sayings or writings, the doctor could not help entertaining some little
-pique. When Oliver had chastised Evans, the publisher, for printing some
-offensive observations, Johnson remarked to his _fidus Achates_: “Why,
-sir, this is the first time he _has_ beaten; he may have _been_ beaten
-before. This is a new pleasure to him.” He alluded to a white-bait
-dinner at Blackwall, where Goldsmith, denouncing obscene novels and the
-indelicacies of Tristram Shandy, created a warm argument among the
-feasters, whence they fell into personalities; then into an uproar, and
-thence to fisticuffs, in the midst of which, it is said, Oliver got a
-smart share of what was going—before they broke up this feast of
-reason—pretty fairly expressed by the _Irish_ participles, _bait_,
-beating, beaten! The affair was very laughable, to be sure. But Johnson
-should have remembered that he himself had knocked his own publisher
-down—Osborne. He should have commented more leniently on poor Goldie.
-The old feuds between authors and publishers were as lively in those
-times as they were before or have been since. Goldsmith wrote a very
-dignified public letter, to justify the beating, and showed that there
-were certain rascalities which called for the imposition of violent
-hands upon them, and that the punishment of them was sanctioned by the
-sense of society, though against the letter of the law. But, as we were
-saying, Johnson permitted himself on many occasions to disparage
-Goldsmith. Still, in the main, he has stood up strongly for the fame of
-his friend—thereby showing that such opinions as the foregoing were not
-very just or generous. When his conscience got the better of his
-occasional feelings, as was usually the case—for his nature was
-intrinsically good (he “had nothing of the bear but the skin,” as
-Goldsmith used to say,) he would do Oliver justice. In this, to be sure,
-he had a consoling sense of the superiority and patronage which belong
-to such a championship; and, in maintaining the cause of his friend, he
-could argue vigorously for himself—for, their fortunes were very much
-alike. He could express his own feelings of scorn for the conventions or
-misconceptions of society, in defending the character of a man of
-genius. Be this as it may, he has left on record sentiments highly
-honorable to himself as well as to Goldsmith; and has had some of them
-graven in his epitaph on the poet, dramatist and historian
-
- “Who ran
- Through each mode of the pen and was master of all.”
-
-Goldsmith, in society, was not the oddity he is represented to be by
-Boswell, Walpole and the others. There is no such contradictory monster
-as they would have us think him. The man who was “inspired” with such
-true genius—who drew the Vicar of Wakefield—could not have been the
-“idiot” that the artificial Walpole would depict him. Nor could any man
-who “wrote like an angel” ever come to “talk like poor Poll,” as Garrick
-says with such antithetical fallacy. The fact was, Oliver’s broad
-Westmeath accent, his stammering mode of speaking, and the careless
-impulses of his thoroughly Irish temperament gave his manners a strange,
-it may be said an intolerable originality, in an age of forms and
-observances in literature and life. It was only in a stiff, artificial
-age, like that in which his lot was cast, that Goldsmith would have been
-so rudely treated and ridiculed. It is felt that it was not Julian but
-the polished Antiochans which were ridiculous. We also know that though
-they laughed at Socrates he was not _laughed at_, as he himself
-expresses it. Absurdity was the cant word of Goldsmith’s day for the
-good-nature, generosity, originality and independence which he brought
-with him, along with that _Shibboleth_ of his from the simple and
-honorable home of his childhood, and which he never lost in all the
-mazes and trials of the great metropolis.
-
-His absurdities, as they termed them, did not, after all, prevent
-Goldsmith from being well received in the best society of London—a very
-strong proof, in itself, that the doctor was as much a gentleman in
-demeanor as he was by his birth and education, and could mingle with the
-polite and the fashionable on very easy terms and without any violence
-to his habits. His sayings in company—such as have been remembered—are
-full of point and pleasantry, and show that he could command, even with
-his shy utterance, much of the happy spirit of his written style. He was
-once explaining to a friend, in Johnson’s presence, that in fables where
-inferior creatures are interlocutors, these should be made to speak in
-character—that animals on land, for instance, should converse
-differently from little fishes. This idea, which is, after all, only
-that which Shakspeare has so beautifully realized, with a difference, in
-his elves of a Midsummer Night’s Dream, his Caliban and his Ariel, set
-Johnson a-chuckling at its childishness, which Goldsmith perceiving, he
-retorted very happily—laughing, too—“You may laugh, doctor, but if
-_you_ had to make little fishes speak, they would talk like whales!” A
-palpable hit at the sesquipedalian moralist.
-
-If we come to consider Goldsmith’s influence upon the literary character
-of his age, we will probably agree that it was second to that of no
-other author. Indeed, it must be considered superior to that of him who
-was supposed to sway most authoritatively the world of letters. Doctor
-Johnson’s style, to be sure, was very impressive, and created a host of
-imitators—the most remarkable of whom was Gibbon, who surpassed his
-model in a certain measured splendor of rhetoric—which is,
-nevertheless, very wearisome at times. But Goldsmith’s many modes of a
-very simple and lucid style produced then, and since, a more permanent
-effect. He wrote the best poem, the best comedy, the best novel, and the
-best history—at least, the best written history of the day. Johnson
-preferred his historic manner to that of Hume or Robertson. Though
-Goldsmith’s literature had not the marked effect of Doctor Johnson’s
-grand Latin idiom; yet being more varied, it reached the wider
-popularity, such as time has confirmed and increased. Goldsmith kept to
-the ancient ways of the vernacular, trod by Addison, Swift, Hume, etc.;
-and contributed not a little to neutralize the Johnsonian mode—which,
-after all, was recognized to be a corrupt rhetoric, and a weakening of
-the genius of the Anglo-Saxon tongue. Goldsmith’s, “racy of the soil,”
-was secured against fluctuations of taste, and the charm of it is as
-fresh to-day as it was eighty years ago. His comedies abolished the
-mawkish sentimentality which—derived partly from the Richardson
-school—dulled the spirit of the stage, and asserted, very happily, the
-old comic claim of setting audiences in a roar. The change was heartily
-welcomed; the Londoners crowded to the comedy to be merry, and a
-respected household tradition, now especially recalled for the sake of
-the dear old narrator of it, has more than once informed us how George
-the Third, his fresh-colored English face, full of merriment, and the
-plain, little cock-nosed Charlotte by his side, in the royal box, both
-joined in the hilarity of the audience during one of the first
-performances of “She Stoops to Conquer,” at Covent Garden Theatre; but,
-at the story of “Old Grouse in the Gun-room,” where everybody laughed on
-the stage, his majesty fairly chimed in with Mr. Hardcastle, and laughed
-as loud as any one in the house. Thus, in the words of Mr. Colman—
-
- “Thus, cheered, at length, by Pleasantry’s bright ray,
- Nature and mirth resumed their legal sway,
- And Goldsmith’s genius basked in open day.”
-
-Goldsmith’s prose is the sweetest and most harmonious in the language.
-His narrative and historical manner is easy and expressive—more so than
-Hume’s. And here, we may remark how odd it was to see a pair of
-provincials—an Irishman and a Scotchman, each with the brogue or the
-burr upon his tongue, and in his manner—vindicating the native purity
-of the Anglo-Saxon against the subversive genius of two of the foremost
-English writers—Johnson and Gibbon—and finally overcoming them on
-their own ground. Goldsmith, in short, as Johnson said very well,
-ornamented whatever he touched, and some of the dryest disquisitions
-become in his hands as interesting as a Persian tale. An honor of
-another kind belongs to Goldsmith.
-
-Among the authors of England none did more than himself to support the
-dignity and independence of British authorship, the honor of which was
-so sadly smirched by the dedications of Dryden and Locke, as well as by
-others before and after them. Oliver instead of thinking of the high
-nobility, set a fine example to all writers—he dedicated “She Stoops to
-Conquer,” to Doctor Johnson; “The Deserted Village” to his other friend,
-Reynolds; and “The Traveler”—his first poem—to his brother, all
-exhibiting the affectionate manliness of his disposition. And with
-reference to his brother, we have a trait of Goldsmith’s character which
-is worth the Vicar of Wakefield. He was once invited to call on the Duke
-of Northumberland, when that nobleman was going to Ireland, as Lord
-Lieutenant. Sir John Hawkins, who was leaving the duke’s presence as
-Oliver was going in, tells the story with indignant reprobation of the
-poet’s fatal absurdity. His grace having complimented Goldsmith on his
-writings (he had just written Edwin and Angelina to amuse the duchess),
-said he was going to Ireland, and would be happy to promote the doctor’s
-interests in any way, etc. Whereupon the doctor told the duke that the
-publishers were treating him pretty well just then; but that he had a
-poor brother in Ireland, a curate on forty pounds a year, with a large
-family, and begged his grace to remember _him_, etc. “In this way,”
-groans Sir John Hawkins, “did Goldsmith dispose of his chance of
-patronage and fortune.”
-
-As a poet, Goldsmith at once took the rank which posterity has almost
-unanimously confirmed. The finest critics in the language have honored
-the claims of the poet of Auburn. Lord Byron says, “where is the poetry
-of which one half is good? Is it Milton’s? Is it Dryden’s; or any one’s
-except Pope’s and Goldsmith’s, of which _all_ is good?” There is no need
-at this time of day, to speak of the nature, pathos and elegance of
-Goldsmith’s muse. In stateliness he sometimes approaches Dryden; as in
-those noble verses which Johnson could not read without a tremor and
-tears of pride:—
-
- “Stern o’er each bosom reason holds her state,
- With daring aims, irregularly great:
- Pride in their port, defiance in their eye,
- I see the lords of human kind pass by.”
-
-But there is one respect in which we think his poetry has not been
-appreciated as it ought.
-
-The great change which has taken place in poetry from the classic
-rhythmus and Cæsural canons of Pope’s school, to the nature and fresher
-phraseology of our modern period has been commonly dated from the rise
-of Wordsworth and Coleridge—sometimes traced to the effect of Bishop
-Percy’s ballads. There is generally an incorrectness in any attempt to
-fix mutations of taste and fashions of style down to chronology. Instead
-of thinking the old poetic spirit of England was revived at the close of
-the eighteenth century, we believe it had not died at all; but had lived
-on, in exile, while a foreign influence bore sway—as the line of Edgar
-Atheling lived long ago; destined, however, in the fullness of time to
-be restored to its ancient supremacy. Bishop Percy’s ballads were a
-manifestation of that spirit, not a cause of it—though he might not
-have known it—a necessary reaction of the national mind. At the time of
-their appearance Goldsmith’s poetry was exhibiting the first tokens of
-the coming change. The theme of it was human nature, with its common
-feelings, hopes, and sufferings; and pouring the warmth, pathos and
-earnestness of his own heart into it, he rendered it attractive and
-popular. His verse had all the vernacular ease and grace of his prose,
-with a polish only inferior to Pope’s. In his original hands the heroic
-couplet was not “the clock-work tintinnabulum of rhyme” beaten by the
-Cawthornes, Darwins, and Hayleys of the day. In his prose criticisms he
-wrote against the cumbrous use of epithets, and discarded it in his own
-verse. He amused himself occasionally among his friends, by reciting the
-lines of several popular authors, with a dissyllable omitted. He would
-read the opening of Gray’s Elegy in this way:
-
- The curfew tolls the knell of day,
- The lowing herd winds o’er the lea:
- The ploughman homeward plods his way
- And leaves the world to gloom and me.
-
-In this respect he must have been rather hard on Johnson, whose poetry
-in many respects is “the hubbub of words,” which Wordsworth so
-scornfully terms some of it. The first couplet of the doctor’s great
-satire has one superfluous line—
-
- Let observation, with extended view,
- Survey mankind from China to Peru—
-
-The poem would have started better from “Survey.”
-
-Johnson, indeed, used to ridicule the taste that came up with the Percy
-Ballads. They had “a false gallop of verses,” in his opinion, and he
-said he could go on making such stanzas for an hour together, thus:
-
- As with my hat upon my head,
- I walked along the Strand,
- There I met another man
- With his hat in his hand.
-
-But in this, as in a great many other matters of literature, morals, and
-taste, Johnson did not prove himself an infallible doctor. Goldsmith’s
-taste, of a genuine _vates_, led him at once to appreciate the simple
-lyrics of Percy’s collection; and his charming ballad of the Hermit
-shows how he felt the fresh spirit of them. This excellent poem was
-written for the Countess of Northumberland. And here we may remark that
-three of the most attractive modern English poems were composed
-especially for ladies of high rank—or at their suggestion:—The Lay of
-the Last Minstrel, at the wish of Lady Anna Scott, daughter of the Duke
-of Buccleuch; The Sofa, for Lady Hesketh; and Goldsmith’s Ballad for the
-Countess.
-
-Goldsmith certainly took the initiative in the change which was followed
-and aided by “the manly and idiomatic simplicity of Cowper”—before
-Wordsworth and Coleridge were heard of. He effected his share of the
-reform quietly; he wrote no doctrinal prefaces, but went and did what he
-meant. In teaching and practicing a new mode, he did not make the noise
-of a reformer. He was rather more favorable to the style of Dryden and
-Pope than to some of the ballad enthusiasts that talked and wrote in
-extremes. He reformed without any affectation of apostleship in the
-matter of words and syllables—was no literary red-republican. Thirty or
-forty years later Wordsworth cried, _Heureka_! as if something were then
-first done or found. He announced his theories in long didactic
-prefaces, laid down doctrines which the genius of Goldsmith and Cowper
-had already suggested or acted on, and fell into extravagancies which
-they never dreamed of—exhibiting his muse in a very _sans culotte_
-condition; the term (having a masculine reference) is somewhat
-inapplicable—or should be in a well-regulated state of society—though
-Mrs. Bloomer is of a contrary opinion. But, Wordsworth, in his love of
-unadorned Nature, used, in fact, to pull off her _garments_, along with
-her _ornaments_, as if he thought, with those other honest fanatics, the
-early Quakers, that a state of nudity was a state of grace! Coleridge
-and Southey were his disciples, but not such mighty prosers; and
-Coleridge was a far superior spirit to the two others, in all subtle
-thought and lofty expression, though some of Wordsworth’s lines are
-truly fine. As for Southey, we are disposed to justify Lord Byron in his
-contempt of the man and his poetry. He was of an overweening and
-splenetic nature; there was nothing in his character to neutralize the
-impression made by the “Vision of Judgment” and “Don Juan” respecting
-him. With regard to Oliver Goldsmith, Southey is convicted of a willful
-injustice to the memory of a more genuine poet and better man than
-himself. In his Life of Cowper, speaking of the poets that came after
-Pope, he never once alludes to the author of The Deserted Village! He
-says “the school of Pope was gradually losing its influence,” in proof
-of which, “almost every poem of any considerable length which obtained
-any celebrity, during the half century between Pope and Cowper, was writ
-in blank verse. With the single exception of Falconer’s Shipwreck, it
-would be in vain to look for any rhymed poem of that age, and of equal
-extent, which is held in equal estimation with the works of Young,
-Thompson, Glover, Somerville, Dyer, Akenside and Armstrong.” We all know
-that one cause, at least, of this studied omission of Goldsmith’s name,
-was Byron’s favorable opinion of his poetry. This deliberate wrong to
-the memory of a great departed poet, because of a vehement hatred of a
-living one, shows Southey’s disposition to be as ungenerous, we may say
-as contemptible, as his hexameters are coldly manufactured, and surely
-fated to be dry upon the popular palate to the end of time. He affects
-to rank Oliver among the followers of Pope and the imitators of his
-style. But there is as little resemblance between Pope’s terse and
-splendid rhetoric, and the graphic simplicity and nature of Goldsmith’s
-poetry, as between the blank verse of Wordsworth or Southey and the
-noble rhythmus of Paradise Lost. Goldsmith scorned as much to fashion
-his verse after the mode of Pope as he did to detract from the great
-merit of that author. He cultivated the elegance and rhyming periods of
-the classic school, and so identified these with his own original
-spirit, that he recommended anew what, in themselves, are genuine graces
-of English poetry. They truly belong to the genius of it—as his fine
-taste must have taught him—and must continue to do so, in spite of all
-the sprawling Thalaba hexameters of Southey. The heroic rhyming couplet
-is capable of as much force, flexibility, and beauty, as any other form
-of English verse, and is never monotonous in original hands—whether of
-Chaucer, Dryden, Crabbe, or Keats. Southey, in thus pretending to shut
-his eyes to the claims of the author of The Traveler, must have still
-felt (for he was not without a critical sense of the genuine in the
-Anglo-Saxon) that the great mass of his own poetry, so like a _hortus
-siccus_, with its elaborated fancies and exotic imagery, must mainly lie
-upon the shelves of libraries, while Goldsmith’s is fated to be found
-upon all book-stalls, and to go about to the households and hearts of
-the people—to be printed in innumerable editions, ornamented with
-costly engravings, and be found in all parts of the world where the
-English language is spoken—read by yet unborn generations on the banks
-of the Burrampooter, the Mississippi, or the Swan River, as freshly and
-as feelingly as it was, at first, and still continues to be, on those of
-the Thames and the Tweed and the Shannon. And so it is; and thus, as the
-clown in Twelfth Night says, “does the whirligig of time bring in his
-revenges.” Somebody, we forget who, says the praise of the people is a
-finer thing than the homage of the critics: and, in this way, the ghost
-of Oliver must be satisfied to see how posterity vindicates him against
-the early and the latter detractors. He was a true English poet with an
-Irish heart; and Sir Joshua Reynolds evinced the genuine prescience of
-genius (though the world said it was only friendship or flattery) when
-he gave the ugly face of Oliver that classic _tournure_ which should
-best suit his destined rank in the peerage of Parnassus.
-
-Goldsmith had left his mark upon the literature of his age, and plainly
-indicated the character of that which was to come, when he quitted his
-painful desk forever, in 1774, being then about forty-five years old. At
-that age Cowper was still unmentioned in the world of letters, but was
-preparing to carry out the salutary innovations which the other had
-begun. Goldsmith died £2000 in debt. The booksellers had advanced him
-money for works to be written. Everybody trusted him. “Was ever poet so
-trusted before?” says Dr. Johnson. Burke wept when he heard Oliver was
-dead. Such tears were as eloquent as Johnson’s epitaph. The eyes of the
-latter were moistened, too; and in a sonorous Greek tetrastich, he
-called on those who cared for Nature, for the charms of song, or the
-deeds of ancient days, to weep for the historian, the naturalist, and
-the poet. Poor Goldie died when he had a chance of liberating himself,
-in another way, from the task-work of publishers. “Every year he lived,”
-says Dr. Johnson, “he would have deserved Westminster Abbey more and
-more.” But Goldsmith’s true Westminster Abbey is the _volitare per ora_
-and the keeping of his honest memory by the _oi polloi_, at their
-firesides, along with the _lares_—when, as Macaulay would say, a
-traveler from the empire of Van Diemans Land may probably be sketching
-the ruins of that British Santa Croce from a broken arch of London
-Bridge:—
-
- Nothing to them the sculptor’s art,
- The funeral columns, wreaths or urns;
-
-as Halleck so well says respecting Robert Burns, in one of the finest of
-his lyrics.
-
- * * * * *
-
-
-
-
- MONA LISA.
-
-
- BY MRS. MARY G. HORSFORD.
-
-
-Leonardo de Vinci is said to have been four years employed upon the
-portrait of Mona Lisa, a fair Florentine, without being able, after all,
-to come up to the idea of her beauty.
-
- Artist! lay the brush aside,
- Twilight gathers chill and gray;
- Turn the picture to the wall—
- Thou hast wrought in vain to-day.
-
- Thrice twelve months have hastened by
- Since thy canvas first grew bright
- With that brow’s bewitching beauty,
- And that dark eye’s melting light.
-
- Yet the early sunbeam shineth
- On thy tireless labors yet,
- And the portrait stands before thee,
- Till the evening sun has set.
-
- Faultless is the robe that falleth
- Round that form of matchless grace;
- Faultless is the softened outline
- Of the fair and oval face.
-
- Thou hast caught the wondrous beauty
- Of the round cheek’s roseate hue;
- And the full red lips are smiling,
- As this morn they smiled on you.
-
- To that lady thou hast given
- Immortality below,
- Wherefore, then, with moody glances
- Dost thou from thy labor go?
-
- From the living face of beauty
- Beams the soul’s expressive ray,
- And, with all thy god-like genius,
- _This_ thou _never_ canst portray!
-
- Of the countless throng around me,
- Each hath labors like to thine;
- Each, methinks, some Mona Lisa
- In his spirit’s inmost shrine.
-
- Visions haunt us from our childhood
- Of a love so pure, so true,
- Seraphs unawares might envy
- As their white wings fan the Blue;
-
- Visions that elude forever,
- As the silent years depart,
- Some unhappy ones and weary—
- Mona Lisas of the heart!
-
- Dreams of a divine completeness
- That we struggle to attain,
- ’Mid the doubts and toils harassing
- Of our earthly life in vain;
-
- Poet fancies we endeavor
- To imprint upon the scroll,
- Yet for worded utterance failing—
- Mona Lisas of the soul!
-
- * * * * *
-
-
-
-
- TO A CANARY BIRD.
-
-
- BY WILLIAM GIBSON, U. S. NAVY.
-
-
- Sweet little faery bird,
- Gentle Canary bird,
- Beats not thy tiny breast with one regret?
- Is it enough for thee
- Ever, as now, to be
- Caged as a prisoner, kissed as a pet?
-
- Gay is thy golden wing,
- Careless thy caroling,
- Thou art as happy as happy can be;
- Singing so merrily,
- Hast thou no memory
- Of thy lost native isle o’er the sea?
-
- Not the Hesperides,
- Floating on fabled seas,
- Nothing in Nature, and nothing in song,
- Match with the magic smile,
- Which, from thine own sweet isle,
- Hushes the heaving wave all the year long.
-
- Summer and youthful Spring,
- Blooming and blossoming,
- Hand-in-hand, sister-like, stray thro’ the clime;
- There thou wert born, amid
- Fruits colored like thee, hid
- In the green groves of the orange and lime.
-
- Then was the silver lute
- Of the young maiden mute,
- When, from the shade of her own cottage-eaves,
- Rang first thy joyous trill,
- While, with a gentle thrill,
- Tho’ the breeze stirred them not, shivered the leaves.
-
- Thou, like a spirit, come
- From thy far island-home,
- Seemest of spring-time and sunshine the voice.
- Light-hearted is thy lay,
- As, on the lemon spray,
- Love, little singing bird, made thee rejoice.
-
- For, from thy lady’s lip,
- Oft is it thine to sip
- Sweetness which dwells not in fruit or in flower;
- And when her shaded eye
- Rests on thee pensively,
- Moonlight was ne’er so soft silv’ring thy bower.
-
- Likest to thee is Love,
- Never it cares to rove,
- When its wild winglets feel Beauty’s control.
- Would, little bird, that I
- Might to thine island fly,
- All, all alone with the girl of my soul!
-
- There should’st thou sing to us,
- Tender and tremulous,
- Our hearts happy with love unexpressed.
- Sweet little faery bird,
- Gentle Canary bird,
- How would’st thou be by that dear girl caressed.
-
- * * * * *
-
-
-
-
- A LIFE OF VICISSITUDES.
-
-
- BY G. P. R. JAMES, ESQ.
-
-
- [Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1852, by
- George Payne Rainsford James, in the Clerk’s Office of the
- District Court of the United States for the District of
- Massachusetts.]
-
- (_Continued from page 279._)
-
-
- A STRUGGLE WITH THE WORLD.
-
-A period of wandering and of danger, of flitting from place to place,
-and land to land, of difficulties and distresses, of almost daily peril,
-of constant uncertainty as to the future, would seem to furnish matter
-enough for memory; but yet the period immediately succeeding my
-separation from Father Bonneville, is very dim and obscure to
-remembrance. I staid so short a time in any place, one event trod so
-fast upon the heels of another, that neither scene nor event had time to
-fix itself firmly in memory, before, like the grass upon a public
-pathway, it was trodden down by passing feet.
-
-At this time, I could speak three languages with almost equal facility:
-English, French, and German; but English perhaps, I understood most
-thoroughly—at all events, I know, I generally thought in that language.
-This facility was of very great advantage to me, and I notice it on that
-account, as I could pass wherever those tongues were spoken for a native
-of the country. It is true, I had not soon occasion to see France again;
-but I wandered through many parts of Switzerland, where French was in
-common use.
-
-The terrible dissensions and frightful bloodshed that were going on in
-that once fair and peaceful land, soon drove me forth, however, though I
-anxiously continued my inquiries for Father Bonneville, as long as there
-seemed a chance of success. My steps were then turned toward the North
-of Germany, without object; and more directed by accidental
-circumstances, than by any predetermination of my own, I walked on foot
-the whole way; for the hundred louis afforded but small means, and I had
-learned the necessity, and the mode of economy. Fifty of those hundred
-louis I put by with the resolution never to touch them except in the
-last extremity; and no one can tell the amount of distress and privation
-I submitted to, rather than violate that resolution. Every thing I could
-part with, I disposed of before I set out: my beloved rifle amongst the
-rest. I had a good many little trinkets, which I had purchased in the
-foolish vanity of youth, but I got rid of them all, and only retained my
-watch, with a seal bearing a coat of arms attached to it, (which seal I
-had possessed as long as I could remember any thing) and the ring and
-little gold chain which had been given to me by Madame de Salins. My
-clothes were all compressed into a knapsack, and in my hunter’s garb,
-with thick, coarse shoes upon my feet, I plodded on my weary way, over
-mountain and moor, through field and forest, in the town and in the
-country, seeking wherever opportunity seemed to present itself, for some
-employment, but finding none. All I could offer to do was to teach, and
-the whole of Europe was so overloaded with persons in the same
-situation, who had been driven forth from France by the Revolution, that
-it was hardly possible to find any profitable occupation of that kind.
-
-Often, often at peasant’s hut, or farmer’s house, I have begged a morsel
-of black bread, and a draught of water. Perhaps this was not very right,
-when I had actually money in my pocket, but yet it is a common custom in
-that country, and almost every artisan, before he becomes a master in
-his trade, spends some years in what is called _fechting_ or in other
-words, begging his way from place to place. The assistance was almost
-always readily given, and sometimes the charity of woman would add a
-drink of milk, or a few kreutzers.
-
-I was within sight of the town of Hamburgh before any chance of
-occupation presented itself, and then it came about in rather a singular
-manner. I was walking on at a quick pace, at about three miles from the
-city, on the same side of the Elbe, when I saw from a little garden
-gate, close by a small summer-house, an elderly gentleman come forth, of
-somewhat peculiar appearance. He was exceedingly thin, brisk and
-active-looking, with powdered hair and a thick queue, an enormous white
-cravat, a vast frill, and a bluish-gray cloak, somewhat threadbare.
-There was a keen, sharp look about his eyes and mouth, which was not
-very promising, and I walked on without taking much notion of him. His
-pace, however, was as fast as my own, and we kept nearly side by side
-for about half-a-mile, without speaking, till we came upon a long wooden
-bridge, which every one who has been in Hamburgh must recollect. He had
-eyed me, I perceived, with great attention, and at length he burst
-forth.
-
-“Well, young man,” he said, “I think you might have given me good time
-of day, at least.”
-
-“I do not know you,” I answered, “and do not like to take liberties with
-strangers.”
-
-“Mighty modest,” rejoined he. “What’s your trade?”
-
-I explained to him, that I was seeking employment as a teacher, having
-been driven out of my own country by Revolution. That seemed to touch
-him; for he had a great abhorrence of Revolutions, and he asked me what
-I could teach.
-
-I told him that I was competent to give instruction in Latin, Greek,
-Mathematics, French, English and German.
-
-“Hundert tausand!” he exclaimed, “the lad is an Encyclopædia. Let us see
-what you can do;” and immediately he poured forth a passage of
-Euripides, with which I was quite familiar. I rendered it at once into
-German, and he then made me give it him in French, which I did as well
-as I could, in that meagre tongue. He rubbed his hands all the time,
-saying—“Ha—ha.” He spoke to me in English, too, such as it was, and
-though his pronunciation would have made a dry salmon laugh, yet I found
-that he had a very thorough acquaintance with all the works of the best
-authors of England. The conversation soon became interesting to us both,
-and we went on chatting and discussing till we reached the gates of the
-town. There he suddenly paused, and looking at me from head to foot,
-exclaimed—
-
-“So you want employment—you are poor, I dare say—very poor?”
-
-I replied, that it was hardly possible to be poorer.
-
-“Well, then, you must not lodge in dear inns,” he said.
-
-I told him I did not know where to lodge, as I was a stranger in the
-town.
-
-“I’ll tell you,” he answered, “I’ll tell you. You must lodge in the
-lower town—in the Hardt-Gasse—number five—with Widow Steinberger.” He
-repeated the direction over three times, and then added—“She should
-board you for two dollars a week—don’t give her more. Everybody asks
-too much, in expectation of being beaten down—a bad system, but
-universal.”
-
-All this time he had been continually turning himself round upon his
-right leg, between each two or three words, as if intending to go away,
-and I perceived no inclination upon his part to help me to employment;
-but when he came to the end of his directions, he drew out a little
-note-book, wrote something in it with his usual rapidity, tore out the
-leaf, and gave it to me saying—
-
-“Come to see me—come to see me. I’ll think of what can be done. We’ll
-find you employment, Polyglot,” and away he turned and left me. I then,
-with better hope than I had hitherto had, inquired my way to the street
-which he had indicated, without having curiosity enough to look at any
-thing but his name, which I found to be “Herman Haas.” I was a long time
-in finding the Hardt-Gasse, and before I did so, I plunged into many a
-dark and gloomy street of tall, old houses, and warehouses. At length,
-the end of a little lane was pointed out to me, the appearance of which
-was more in harmony with the state of my finances, than my desires. But
-I found, on walking up it, that the houses must, at one time, have been
-of some importance, judging by the size of the doors, and the ornaments
-which clustered round them. At number five, I stopped; and finding
-neither knocker or bell, opened the door and went in.
-
-“Who’s there?” screamed a voice from the right, and entering a large,
-dim, old-fashioned room, I found myself in the presence of a stately
-dame, engaged in the dignified occupation of cooking, who instantly
-demanded what I wanted. I found that this was no other than Madame
-Steinberger, herself, but before she would enter into any negociations
-in regard to boarding and lodging me, she insisted upon knowing who had
-sent me there. When I showed her the paper, however, she
-exclaimed—“Professor Haas! Oh! that is another matter;” and our
-arrangements were soon effected. As the professor had anticipated, she
-asked more at first than she was inclined to take, but his dictum was
-all powerful with her, and I was soon installed in a comfortable little
-room, with the advantage of a large sitting-room besides, when I chose
-to use it, for which accommodation, with three meals in the day, I was
-to pay two dollars a week.
-
-On the following morning, at the hour which my landlady told me would be
-most convenient, I went to call upon the professor, whom I found in his
-study; though how he contrived to study at all, I cannot make out; for
-he was in a state of continual movement—the most excitable German I
-ever saw. During the greater part of the time he was talking to me, he
-was taking down one book and putting up another, turning over papers
-upon the table, dipping a pen in the ink and wiping it again, with other
-operations to carry off his superfluous activity. He must have been
-quiet at some time; for he certainly was a very learned man; but I never
-could discover when it was. At length, after having asked a great number
-of questions, he said—“I have got one pupil for you, to make a
-beginning—Come, I’ll show her to you;” and leading me into another
-room, on the same floor, he presented me to a young lady, who sat there
-embroidering, as his daughter. “There,” he said, “teach her English, and
-any thing else you can. I have no time—she is a good girl, but slow.”
-
-The young lady looked up in his face with a calm, placid smile, saying,
-“If there were two such quick people as you in the house, my father,
-they would always be running against each other.”
-
-“True,” replied the old man, “true, and philosophical. Nature loves
-contrasts as well as harmonies. Opposing forces counteract each other.
-You, my Louise, are my _vis inertiæ_. Without you I should get on too
-fast. But come, young gentleman—what is your name?”
-
-“Louis de Lacy,” I replied.
-
-“I like that, I like that,” answered the old man “The _De_, speaks blood
-and good political principles—but come—we will settle the terms in my
-own room, and will try to get you something more to do by and bye.”
-
-I found the good professor had as accurate a knowledge of making a
-bargain, as he had of Greek or Latin. He calculated the worth of my
-services to a pfennig, and, as I found afterward, if I had made the
-slightest opposition, would have beaten me down still lower; for he had
-a pleasure in such sort of triumphs. I let him arrange it all his own
-way, however, and left to his own generosity, he probably added a little
-to the sum which he had intended to give. It was agreed that I was to
-teach his daughter two hours during the day, and as soon as all this was
-settled, he pushed me by the shoulders toward the door, saying, “There,
-go, begin at once. You have three hours before dinner. I must go to my
-recitations.”
-
-I found the way back to the room where Louise Haas was seated, and where
-I passed two hours of every day, for nearly nine months, and generally
-the greater part of every Sunday. She was a pretty creature, with small,
-well-shaped features, a very graceful form, though plump and rounded,
-and a bright, clear complexion, which varied a good deal under different
-emotions. Her mother had died, I found, some four or five years before,
-of that pest of northern countries, consumption. There was nobody in the
-house but herself, her father, and two women servants: hardly any
-society was admitted within the doors, but grave old professors, with
-long hair, not very well combed; and thus tutor and pupil, like Abelard
-and Heloise, were left alone together for many an hour—I having her
-father’s commands to teach her English, and any thing else I could.
-Father Bonneville’s good lessons, however, some knowledge of the world,
-and many hard experiences, together with other feelings, which I cannot
-well describe, prevented me from even thinking of taking any unfair
-advantage of my situation. It was natural, however, that in such
-circumstances, young acquaintance should speedily ripen into intimacy,
-and intimacy into friendship. Nay, it was not unnatural that little
-marks of kindness and tenderness should pass between us; for though very
-calm and gentle, she was of a loving and caressing disposition. I found
-her far from dull—a very apt scholar; but sometimes there were things
-she could not comprehend, and then she would look smiling in my face,
-and ask if she was not very stupid, and let her hand drop into mine and
-rest there, as a messenger sent to beseech forbearance.
-
-We were both very young; she not more than eighteen, and I about twenty,
-and strange new feelings began to come over my heart toward her. I will
-not even now say that it was love; and then, I would not inquire what it
-was, at all. It was a tenderness—a feeling of gentle, quiet
-affection—a fondness for her society—a pleasure in seeing those soft
-eyes, look into mine, and a gratitude for the kindness she ever showed,
-and took every opportunity of showing. What she felt, I learned
-afterward; but let me turn once more to the course of my life in
-Hamburgh.
-
-By the kind offices of the good old professor, I obtained several other
-pupils, and I had the great happiness of finding my income exceed my
-expenditure. I threw off my traveling garb; I brought out from my
-knapsack the clothing which I had so carefully saved: I gained
-admittance into some of the society of the town, and though I do not
-think I was ever very vain, whatever vanity I had, received some
-encouragement. But my favorite resort was still the professor’s house.
-He and his daughter were my first friends in the city, and I became more
-and more intimate with him every day. He was pleased with the progress
-his daughter made, and he was also pleased with the little assistance
-which I gave him, from time to time, in different works he was
-compiling. While I wrote for him, or looked out passages for him, he
-could fidget about the room at his case, and get into every corner of it
-in five minutes. At the end of a month, I had a general invitation to
-spend my evenings there whenever I pleased—and I did please very often.
-Then, after a while, I was sent with Louise to church; for she went
-regularly, although I can’t say that the professor ever wore out the
-steps of any religious edifice, and I took care not to allow my Roman
-Catholic education to prevent my joining a Protestant congregation, with
-my pretty little pupil. Indeed I was hanging at this time very slightly
-by the skirts of the garments of Rome. I had been reading the Bible a
-great deal lately. I read some Romanist books also, but I found that the
-two did not agree, and I liked the Bible best. Besides all this, as
-spring succeeded to winter, and days lengthened, and suns grew warm,
-there was every now and then a moment of very sweet, spring-like
-happiness, when after attending the church, Louise and I took a farther
-walk, till the hour of the good professor’s dinner. Sometimes we had
-another walk, too, in the evening, and sometimes he accompanied us to
-his little garden with the summer-house, near the gate of which I had
-first met him. It was all very delightful; and my ambition, which had
-once been strong and wide, had by this time shrunk to very small
-proportions. I could have been contented to linger on there, with every
-thing just as it was, for an indefinite period of time. But it must be
-remembered, that not one word, regarding love, ever passed between
-Louise and myself, except when it occurred in passages of books. I am
-afraid, however, that those passages, about this time, occurred very
-often. Louise was fond of them, and I turned them up easily for her.
-
-Thus it went on—for I must not dwell upon details—for about eight
-months, when it so miserably happened that an aunt of the professor’s,
-somewhat younger than himself in years, but screwed up by ancient
-maidenhood to the sharpest and very highest tone of the human
-instrument, arrived. She was all eyes, ears and understanding. God
-knows, she might have heard every word that passed between Louise and
-myself, and seen all that we did too—if looks were excepted. But it so
-happened that at this time the influence which France exerted over
-Prussia was so great, that the Protectorate of the latter power over the
-northern circles became a mere tyranny exercised for the purposes of the
-French Republic, principally for the persecution of emigrants. The
-position of such persons as myself became very dangerous; and the
-necessity of my removal from Hamburgh was more than once talked of at
-the professor’s table, where I now dined frequently. It was even
-suggested that I should engage a passage in a vessel which was about to
-sail in a couple of months for the United States of America.
-
-I could not help remarking that Louise turned very pale when these
-things formed the subject of conversation, and during six weeks of
-fluctuating anxiety, I saw with sincere apprehension that she lost
-health and spirits. I dared not, I could not venture to take the idea to
-my heart that that dear, amiable little creature suffered on my account;
-but still I did my best to cheer and comfort her, and perhaps became a
-little more tender in manner and fond in words, than I had ever dared to
-be before. It was now always, “dear Louis” and “dear Louise;” but I do
-not think we went any further than that. Often, often would she ask me
-questions regarding my past history, and as much was told her as I knew
-myself. She seemed to take a deep interest in it; but as it was a
-subject of deep interest to me, that I looked upon as natural. However,
-things had gone on in this way for some time, my pretty Louise still
-failing in health, not losing, but rather increasing her beauty by the
-daily walks which she now forced herself to take.
-
-One day, at length, the explosion came. I met the old professor at the
-top of the stairs, and instead of turning me over at once to Louise, he
-beckoned me into his own study, and then in a very excited state flew
-from corner to corner of the room, glancing at me angrily, but saying
-nothing. This conduct, became so painful, that I at length broke
-silence, saying, “You wish to speak with me, Herr Haas.”
-
-“Ay, sir, ay!” he replied with vivacious sharpness, “Have I not cause to
-speak?—have I not cause to feel anger? Here, I took you in as a beggar,
-and trusted you as a friend, and you have betrayed my trust by winning
-my daughter’s affections under the pretence of giving her instructions.
-Answer it how you may, sir, it is a bad case.”
-
-“As to winning your daughter’s affections, my dear sir,” I replied, “I
-think you must be mistaken; for I can boldly appeal to her to say,
-whether I have once spoken on the subject of love toward her, or on any
-other to justify the imputation you cast upon me. I have always
-respected your hospitality, and owing you so much as I do, I should have
-conceived myself base indeed to seek her affection without your consent.
-We have been thrown much together and—”
-
-But nothing would satisfy the old man. He interrupted me hastily,
-catching at my words, and saying, “that the only way of proving my
-sincerity was to quit Hamburgh at once; that his aunt, who inhabited a
-country-mansion, not many miles distant, had pointed out to him—in the
-course of a morning lecture which she gave him, before her departure
-that day—all that was going on between Louise and myself; that a ship
-would soon sail for America, and that if I really entertained the
-honorable sentiments I expressed, I would take my passage in her, and
-leave his household to recover its peace.” He asked me, in a taunting
-tone, if I knew that his daughter was his heiress, and ended by
-forbidding me the house.
-
-I retired gloomy and desponding, and although he had said nothing to
-lead me to such a conclusion, I felt almost certain that he had spoken
-to Louise, before his conversation with myself. There was a sort of
-gloomy consolation in this conviction, and I hesitated as to whether I
-should quit Hamburgh, or remain in the hope of some change of feeling
-upon his part. There is such a thing as half-love, and I knew—I
-felt—that I could make the dear girl happy, and could be very happy
-with her myself. The remembrance, however, that I had nothing on
-earth—that I was an outcast—a beggar, in reality, and that she was
-probably rich, decided me. I went down to the wharf. I took my passage.
-I paid a part of my passage-money, but I learned—with a strange mixture
-of feelings—that the sailing of the packet was put off for a whole
-month, which made nearly seven weeks from that day. The master took
-pains to inform me, that this delay was occasioned by apprehension on
-the part of his owners, of the English cruisers, which, at that time,
-were behaving as ill to neutral vessels, as they were behaving well in
-combats with the enemy. I cared little for the reasons, however, but
-went away, not knowing whether to be pleased or sorry for this respite.
-
-I could not quit Hamburgh without feelings of regret—I could not leave
-Louise without a bitter pang—I had done what was right—my conscience
-approved; and if accident kept me in the town, and fortune favored me
-with any change of circumstances, Hope might plume her wings without any
-self-reproach.
-
-I little knew with how much anguish that period of delay was to be
-filled.
-
-Good Madame Steinberger had evidently heard something of what had
-occurred at the professor’s house. She had been very kind to me, and was
-kind still; but her reverence for Professor Haas somewhat jostled with
-her regard for her young lodger. I would sit for hours in the evening,
-dreaming of the past, thinking of Louise, dwelling upon happy hours that
-were never to return. And then Madame Steinberger would come and attempt
-to comfort me, saying, that it was mere boy and girl’s love, and would
-soon pass away: that I and the young lady would both soon forget, and
-that she doubted not to see us both happy parents.
-
-If she had taken up a red-hot skewer, and thrust it into my heart, she
-would not have produced more wretchedness than she did by her mode of
-consolation.
-
-No consolation—no thought—no philosophy was of any avail. It was a
-period of intense bitterness, filled with many varied emotions, but all
-of them most painful. Had my love been more ardent, more vehement than
-it was, my condition would probably have been less sad. I should have
-striven—I should have resisted—but a dark and gloomy feeling took
-possession of my mind, that all who loved me, all who felt an interest
-in me were destined to be lost to me, almost as soon as I felt the
-blessing of their sympathy and kindness. I was more miserable than I can
-describe: there was nothing to stimulate: to spur on endeavor: to rouse
-up dormant energy. It was all dull, blank, monotonous, melancholy
-inactivity.
-
-Three weeks had passed in this manner, when one evening, as I was
-sitting in the larger room, where good Frau Steinberger had kindled a
-fire, with my feet upon the andirons, my head leaning on my hand, and a
-book which I had vainly endeavored to read, fallen on the floor by my
-side, there was a step in the passage and the door opened. I took no
-notice: I cared for nothing: I was without hope or expectation: I was
-once more cast upon the world—the fragment of a wreck upon the wide
-ocean.
-
-Suddenly a voice sounded near me, which I knew right well. “Louis,” it
-said. “Louis, can you forgive me? Louis, will you save me—will you save
-my child?”
-
-I started up, and gazed upon the figure before me. I could hardly
-believe it was my old friend the professor, so pale, so worn, so
-sorrow-stricken was his look.
-
-I instantly clasped his extended hand in mine. “My dear, good friend,” I
-said, “what have I to forgive? I never sought to bring sorrow or
-discomfort to your door—I would rather have died. That is all I have to
-say. Tell me what I have to do—tell me what you would wish, and I am
-ready to do it.”
-
-“Come to Louise,” he said, wringing my hand hard. “Come to Louise—I
-have been a fool—a madman—a mercenary wretch. You only can save
-her—Come to her—come to her at once!”
-
-I trembled violently, but I snatched up my hat, exclaiming, “let us go,”
-and rushed out of the house before him.
-
-We flew along the streets, running against every body—seeing
-nobody—heeding nobody. I asked no questions. I knew there was something
-terrible; but I was going to Louise, and felt that I should soon know
-all. All houses stood upon the latch in Hamburgh in those days. I opened
-the door—I went in—I rushed up the stairs—I heard him cry “stop,
-stop”—but the trumpet of an angel would not have called me back. I
-entered her sitting-room. She was not there. I heeded not. I knew her
-bed-room lay beyond. I passed on and opened the door.
-
-She was seated in a chair, with all the bright color gone from her
-cheek, except at one point. A physician stood beside her, with a glass
-in his hand. One old maid-servant was kneeling at her feet, wrapping
-them in flannel. A handkerchief, dyed with blood, was at her lips. Could
-I pause? No, had it killed both her and myself. In an instant I was
-across the room, at her feet, and my arms around her.
-
-“Louise, my own Louise,” I cried.
-
-She looked at me with surprise—then gazed beyond me to her father, who
-followed close—then cast her arms round my neck, and leaned her head
-upon my shoulder, saying in a faint voice, “Louis, dear Louis, you have
-saved me—I feel—I am sure, I shall live to be your wife.”
-
-“Hush, hush,” said the physician. “You must not speak at all.”
-
-“You shall be his wife; you shall be his wife!” cried her father
-eagerly.
-
-“I am very happy,” said Louise.
-
-“I must have perfect silence,” said the physician, “all will go well
-now; but every one must quit the room.”
-
-“No one shall tend her but myself,” I said; “but I will be as still as
-night. She is mine—mine by the deepest and the holiest ties, and I will
-not leave her till this is staid.”
-
-Nor did I; but through the live-long night, with the physician and the
-fond old servant, I remained silently watching, aiding, comforting,
-supporting her. From time to time the spitting of blood returned; but,
-at length, ice was thought of and procured. That checked it effectually.
-Two hours passed without the slightest return of that direful symptom,
-and lifting her in my arms, as a father might a child, I placed her in
-her bed. Then seating myself on a little footstool at the side, I laid
-my head upon the same pillow. I thought she would sleep more happily so.
-Her heavy eyes closed quietly; her breathing became calm and gentle; she
-slept; and ere many minutes had passed, I slept beside her.
-
-
- THE FADING OF THE FLOWER.
-
-The hemorrhage returned no more. Louise and I awoke at nearly the same
-moment, just as the morning light was streaming in through the windows,
-and she smiled sweetly to see me there, with my head upon her pillow,
-and the good old servant sitting fast asleep at the foot of her bed.
-
-Poor girl, she fancied that all danger was passed; that she would soon
-be well, and that we should be very, very happy. But, alas! grief and
-disappointment too frequently shoot with poisoned arrows, and the venom
-remains in the wound, after the shaft has been extracted. She was not
-suffered to rise that day, and was forbidden to speak more than a
-monosyllable at a time. The good physician quoted the Bible to her,
-saying—“Let your communication be yea, yea, nay, nay, for of more
-cometh evil.” On the following day, however, she rose, and gradually was
-permitted to talk more and more, without any evil effect being produced.
-Then for a short time we were very happy. The good, old professor did
-all that he could to make up for his previous harshness, consented to
-any thing that we wished. Spontaneously promised two thousand dollars to
-set Louise and myself off in life, although we were to make our abode
-with him, and talked of obtaining a professorship for me in the
-university. Luckily his avocations kept him from home a good deal each
-day, otherwise his daughter’s health would have suffered more, from his
-continually running in and out of the room. She made some progress
-during the first week after I returned, regained strength in a certain
-degree, and I was full of hope for her, although she had an unpleasant
-cough, very frequent, though not violent. We talked of the coming days,
-and of our marriage, as soon as she was quite well, and I measured her
-finger for the ring, and kissed the little hand on which it was to be
-placed. Oh, they were very, very pleasant dreams, those; and I felt that
-I could be exceedingly happy with that dear, gentle girl—nay, I fancied
-that our happiness was quite assured; for when I looked into her eyes,
-they were so full of light and life, that one could hardly fancy they
-would ever be extinguished in death and darkness. Her bright color did
-not come back into the cheek indeed, except at night, and then it was
-not so generally diffused. Nevertheless, she felt herself so well—we
-all thought she was so well—that our wedding-day was fixed for about
-three weeks afterward. As the time approached, however, she was not
-quite so well again. The weather changed, and two or three days of cold,
-damp wind succeeded, which seemed to affect her very much. It was judged
-expedient that our marriage should be delayed for a fortnight; for she
-felt the least breath of air. Nevertheless, we kept up our spirits well
-for a little while, and she talked confidently of regaining health, and
-being just as well as ever. But as the days went on, I perceived with
-anxiety and alarm, that she grew weaker. I used to take her out whenever
-the air was soft, and the sun shone warmly, for a little walk, in the
-hope that it would restore her strength, and I soon found that she could
-not go so far, without fatigue, as at first; that to climb even the
-little slopes which exist in Hamburgh, rendered her breathing short, and
-increased her cough. Our walks became less and less, till, at length,
-she went out no more. A change, hardly perceptible in its progress, was
-gradually wrought in her. I saw little difference between one day and
-that which preceded; but when I looked back to a week or a fortnight
-before, and compared the present with the past, I could not close my
-eyes to the conviction that she was worse—much worse.
-
-After a while, she took her breakfast in bed; but made an effort to rise
-as early as she could, in order to come and join me in the sitting-room.
-She ever spoke cheerfully, too, and seemed to have no thought of danger.
-But her father was in a terrible state; for he couldn’t close his eyes
-to her situation, and I do believe, that if the sacrifice of his life by
-the most painful kind of death would have purchased his child’s
-recovery, he would have made it without a hesitation. I deceived myself
-more than he did. I had heard of the effect of change of air, and I had
-talked to Louise so often about her recovering strength, and going with
-me for a short time, to some milder climate, that I had almost persuaded
-myself, against conviction, that it would be so. I fancied, too, that I
-could make her so happy, she must needs recover; for I knew what a
-blessed balm happiness is, and thought it must be all-effectual.
-
-As she could no longer go to church, the good minister of the parish
-came several times to see her, and as he had a friendship for me, he
-would often talk with me afterward—not that I liked his conversation
-now as much as formerly; for it was very gloomy, and he strove evidently
-to fill my mind with the dark anticipations which occupied his own. The
-rays of religious hope, he endeavored to pour in too; but it was earthly
-hopes I then clung to, and I did not like to have them taken away.
-
-One morning, after he had been with Louise, I found some tears upon her
-cheek, when I went in to see her; for by this time she did not rise till
-very late in the day, and all painful restraint being removed, I used to
-go and sit by her bedside, and read to her for some hours each morning.
-I was half angry with the old man for depressing her spirits; but she
-soon recovered her cheerfulness, and it was not till two days afterward,
-that I learned he had told her she must die.
-
-I was sitting beside her, with my arm fondly cast round her, as she sat
-propped up by pillows, and I was indulging in those dreamy hopes of the
-future, which I still entertained, and thought she entertained likewise.
-I talked of our proposed journey to the South, and of escaping the cold,
-winter weather of Hamburgh, and of myself and her father—for he was to
-go with us in this dream—nursing her like a tender plant, till the
-bright summer came back again to restore her to perfect health.
-
-She turned her sweet eyes upon me, with a gentle but melancholy smile.
-
-“Do you know, dear Louis,” she said, “I begin to think that time will
-never be?”
-
-I looked aghast, and laying her hand tenderly in mine, she added—
-
-“Nay, more, love, I fear I shall never be your wife, unless—unless you
-can make up your mind to take me as I am now, and part with me very
-soon.”
-
-“O, Louise, Louise!” I cried, pressing her to my heart, with the
-dreadful conviction first fully forced upon me, by words such as she had
-never used before. “Do not, do not entertain such sad fears. Be mine at
-once, dear girl, and let me take you away from this bleak place—by
-slow, easy journeys—by sea—any how.”
-
-A single large tear rose in her eyes, and leaning her head upon my
-shoulder, she said in a low, hesitating voice—
-
-“I will own, it would be very sweet to be your wife, were it but for a
-day—yet what right have I,” she added, “to ask you to make me so, in
-such a state as this—to leave you so soon, so young a widower?”
-
-“Let not such thoughts stop you for a moment, Louise,” I answered. “It
-will be a blessing and a comfort to me. I can then be with you
-always—never leave you—nurse you by night and day, and if the fondest
-cure can save you, still keep my little jewel for my life’s happiness.”
-
-She pressed her lips fondly upon my cheek, and asked—“Do you really
-feel so, Louis?”
-
-“From my heart,” I answered. “There is no blessing—no comfort I desire
-so much. Let it be this very day—may I speak to your father?”
-
-“If you will,” she answered with a bright smile, and I know not that I
-ever in life felt such satisfaction as in seeing the happiness and
-relief I had bestowed upon that dear girl.
-
-The old professor was ready to grant every thing we could desire. He was
-now the complete slave of her will; but the marriage could not take
-place that day, for some few formalities had to be gone through and
-arrangements to be made. It was appointed for the next evening, however,
-and when Louise awoke upon her wedding-day, she sent the maid to tell me
-that she felt much better.
-
-She knew what happiness that news would give me, and I was soon by her
-side to confirm the assurance with my own eyes.
-
-She was better. She looked better. She had rested well, and she was able
-to rise an hour earlier than she had done before. The incorrigible liar,
-Hope, whispered her false promises in the ears of both, I believe, and
-the hours passed more brightly during that afternoon, than they had done
-for many a day before.
-
-At eight o’clock the Protestant minister came, and with him a notary.
-The physician was the only other person present, except Louise, her
-father, and myself. The irrevocable words were soon spoken, the contract
-signed, and the ring upon her finger; but as I put it on, a cold, sad
-feeling came upon my heart. It had been somewhat tight when I first
-bought it, and now it was very loose. We were even obliged to wind some
-silk round it the next day, to prevent it from falling off.
-
-For three days, happiness seemed to have all the effect that I had ever
-attributed to it in my brightest fancies. Louise was certainly better,
-and she looked so happy, so cheerful, walked up and down the passage
-hanging on my arm, with a step so much lightened, that even the old
-professor caught the infection of our hopes, and began to talk of future
-days.
-
-The medicine soon lost its power over the invincible enemy. We had been
-married just six days, and during the three last, Louise had been
-feebler again, and very restless at night. The sixth day was a warm,
-sunny one. The light shone cheerfully into our room, and she talked to
-me of the sweet aspect of the summer, and made me open the window to let
-in the gentle air.
-
-One room of the old professor’s house looked out upon the ramparts,
-planted with trees. It was a large room, seldom used; but Louise asked
-me to go in there, and open the windows before she rose, saying, that
-she should like to sit and look at the green leaves.
-
-Her father came in before she was dressed, and when she was ready, we
-took her out of her room, with a hand resting on the arm of each, and
-led her into that saloon. I had placed an arm-chair for her near the
-window, and she approached feebly and seated herself in it. The air was
-very balmy: a clear, sparkling sunshine brightened the foliage: the sky
-beyond, was as deep and blue as her own eyes, and she gazed for an
-instant, with a look of intense thought upon the scene before her. Then
-looking up in my face as I stood beside her, she placed her hand in
-mine, and said—“Very beautiful!”
-
-They were her last words. The next instant, a strange, vacant expression
-came into those deep thoughtful eyes, a slight shudder passed over her:
-she leaned more and more toward me; and I had just time to kneel by her
-side, and catch her head upon my shoulder. I felt one faint breath fan
-my cheek—and Louise was gone.
-
- (_End of part first._)
-
- * * * * *
-
-
-
-
- FADED AND GONE.
-
-
- BY MISS S. J. C. WHITTLESEY.
-
-
- Faded and gone are the Summer’s sweet flowers,
- Strewn by the wintry winds o’er the dark mould!
- Smilers, when sunlight stole through the soft hours,
- Down from yon azure their leaves to unfold.
- Bright were their beauties when breezes swept on
- O’er the blue waters to gather perfume;
- Whisperers lovely, now faded and gone!
- Slumberers lonely ’mid dullness and gloom!
- Oh! but the Spring-time will come o’er the plain
- Wooing the whispering blossoms again,
- With its soft tread o’er the emerald lawn—
- Then we’ll not mourn for the faded and gone!
-
- Faded and gone are the ones that we cherished,
- Fondly and true, in our bosoms of yore!
- Slumbering buds may awake o’er the perished,
- _Their_ faded hearts shall unfold here no more!
- Sweet is the music that Memory flings
- O’er the oasis of Life’s early love,
- Where flew the Angel on fluttering wings,
- Bearing our lost through the starlight above;
- Oh! there’s a land where the perished ones bloom,
- Where cometh never a shadow of gloom!
- Fadeless and fair is that glorious dawn—
- Then we’ll not mourn for the faded and gone!
-
- Faded and gone are the sweet dreams of childhood,
- When the young wings of the Spirit were free,
- Folded or furled ’mid the shadowy wildwood—
- Sweeping the surface of life’s sunny sea.
- Time’s fading finger hath sullied the leaf,
- Stainless and lovely in childhood’s pure years;
- Pages of beauty once brilliant, yet brief,
- Wear its deep impress of changes and tears!
- Oh! but the blossoms of childhood will bloom
- Brightly again, o’er the shadowy Tomb!
- Infinite gladness flow endlessly on—
- Then we’ll not murmur for the faded and gone!
-
- * * * * *
-
-
-
-
- THE BOWER OF CASTLE MOUNT.
-
-
- A REMINISCENCE OF HEIDELBERG.
-
-
- BY AELDRIC.
-
-
-It was early in the June of 184-. I had been sitting in a German
-railroad-car since early morning, vainly trying to amuse myself in
-discovering a degree of singularity in some one of the many passengers
-that were picked up at the different stations between Kehl and
-Heidelberg. I had taken a seat in the third class car, expecting there
-to find a miscellaneous mingling of the busy classes of Germans; but,
-alas, for my entertainment! it was one class too high—I should have
-taken the fourth. After I had chosen a seat as near comfortable as the
-wooden benches would admit of, I perceived, to my disappointment, that I
-was surrounded by that class of people, neither high enough nor low
-enough to be interesting; every one seemed completely wrapped up in
-himself. There was scarcely any conversation, and each face soon settled
-in the repose of quiet German thoughtfulness. Meerschaums ere long made
-their appearance out of the depths of profound side-pockets; and, as far
-as dependence on my fellow-passengers was concerned, there was none, to
-beguile the tedium of a long journey. A long, heart-felt pull, a quiet
-wink of satisfaction thereat, a somewhat varied fingering of the
-pipe-bowl to press the ashes—that was all. Diagonally across the car
-and nearly facing me, sat a very pretty girl whom, from the timid
-wandering of her deep-blue eyes, I judged to be unmarried. I watched her
-some time to observe where she recognized a protector, but her eye
-rested nowhere particularly; it seemed uneasy, searching, and I
-concluded she was going but a short distance, and alone. Just as the
-train was moving, a handsome young man stepped in the door, looked
-around the car, was recognized by a calming of the uneasy eyes, and took
-his seat before them, in the middle row, turning his back toward me. As
-he bent toward her and whispered, she did not smile, her face seemed too
-thoughtful; she only gazed in his eyes and spoke not a word. Ha! thought
-I, I see how it is, and settled myself to enjoy a morsel of
-sentimentality. My gentleman soon finished his first course, and then
-leaned back in his seat to chew the cud at his leisure. I thought he
-relished it very much, for it was full twenty minutes before he made
-another motion; during all which time the young lady did little but gaze
-at him, it appeared to me, with perfect satisfaction. After a time the
-gaze of satisfaction changed to a look of concern, and finally of marked
-uneasiness. She leaned forward, spoke to him, yet he heeded her not. She
-arose suddenly, and I was so absorbed in anxiety that I almost arose
-with her. He started as from a lethargy, and darted to the vacated
-corner, whilst she quietly took his seat and I saw her face no more. I
-still saw the same blue eyes in the corner, “yet I saw them but a
-moment,” for the lids soon closed over them, and I knew that the kind
-sister had given up her corner for the lazy brother to sleep in.
-“Corn-cobs twist his hair,” said I, for I was doubly provoked, first, at
-his deception, and then, I saw the pretty face no more. I did not
-indulge in romance again, but turned my eyes and my thoughts to the
-outer world. The monotony of the company made me stupid; the prolonged,
-premeditated winks over the smoking bowls made me drowsy, and the
-flitting lights and shadows of the varied scenery seemed to beckon me to
-dreamy lands of wine and song and ghosts and chivalry. Beyond the green
-slopes to the eastward, the Black Forest stretched afar to an
-immeasurable distance; mysterious outlines swelled and dwindled in the
-darkness; a huge head peered over the tree-tops; another and another;
-the ghouls stared at us, it seemed to me, “more in sorrow than in
-anger.” I could not tell why, but their malignity seemed forgotten in
-fear and wonder. There was a scream, a terrific scream—of the
-locomotive—and pell-mell, helter-skelter, heels up, head down, away
-they darted like a squad of frogs before a bouncing poodle. I was fully
-awakened to the surprising loveliness of the landscape around me, but I
-had little time to enjoy it—another scream, a rumble, a series of
-jerks, and we were at the—terminus, in Heidelberg.
-
-I was soon in the good care of mine host of the Hoff, who certainly
-possesses one of the most desirable locations and establishments for
-entertainment in the world. Close by the railroad depot, it is about a
-mile from the town, and a beautiful avenue leading all the way, is lined
-with elms and lindens on either side. On the ascent of a steep hill
-which rises abruptly from the town, and about mid-way to the summit, is
-the celebrated ruined castle of Heidelberg, whose lords once swayed the
-feudal sceptre over all the surrounding country. The gay conversation at
-the _table d’hôte_ was in strong contrast with the, not moodiness but
-apathy, of the railroad car. A large _musical-box_, upon the plan of our
-pocket toy of that name, but as large as a good-sized
-wardrobe—discoursed sweet music the while. The company which I found
-introduction to, was sufficiently entertaining to withhold me from my
-contemplated walk toward the ruins that evening, and the beautiful
-promenades in front of the hotel were quite gay. Early next morning with
-an agreeable English party I set out for the castle. As we neared it
-along the straight avenue, we advanced farther and farther from a flank
-view. The front came slowly out with its red towers and crumbling
-battlements, and the vast structure grew in the majesty of its ruins. As
-we approached the foot of the mount, a road crossed the avenue, leading
-toward the river to the left, to the right leading up the mountain. We
-ascended a considerable time after having lost sight of the castle, and
-as yet, so early was the hour, we had seen no one astir. No habitation
-of any kind was along this road, which, before us, appeared to descend
-from the solitude of the hills. We clambered up, up, up, until at last,
-said one:
-
-“We surely are as high as the castle, and I do believe we ought to have
-taken this left-hand road just below us.”
-
-“No, no!” said another, “let us go on and trust to fortune; for in so
-beautiful and romantic a place we cannot go amiss—maybe that we shall
-make some grand discovery, too, and then we will jointly write a book to
-put it before the world.”
-
-The conversation was cut short by a noise up the road; we looked, and
-there stood a man leaning against a tree by the road-side, waiting for
-his oxen and cart which were moving slowly down the road above him. He
-called to his cattle in a loud voice, and hummed an air as he leaned
-back against the tree again. Just at that moment the piping cry of a
-lark rang through the wood, and ere it died away he peeled forth in
-boisterous answer—
-
- “Ho! for the deep where the sea-bird sings!
- Ho! for the bowers where his merry voice rings!”
-
-Here, as he perceived us, he halted in his strain and walked demurely by
-his cart. In a few words it was determined among us that we should
-inquire of him the road to the castle; but as each one declined the
-honor of gaining the information, upon the plea that perhaps his style
-of German might be unintelligible to the unpolite ears of the rustic, I
-volunteered the undertaking.
-
-“Good morning, my friend?” I hailed him. “Be so good as to tell us the
-way to the castle.”
-
-“Do you wish to see the castle?”
-
-“That is what we have come especially for.”
-
-“O, ’tis a magnificent sight!” (and he gazed fixedly on one of the
-ladies, a gay young beauty, as he spoke.) “O ’tis a magnificent sight!
-No one can tell better than I how beautiful it is. I have seen it in the
-morning when the sun was rising on it, making its red walls look like
-gold. I have seen it in the day, in the evening, and (I’ll tell you) I
-have seen it by the bright moonlight when—O, I have loved every old
-stone of it dearer than I do my life! But if you wish to see it, keep
-the right-hand road at the first fork, and follow it as far as you can,
-and when you come to the bower—Ah, I’ve seen it in the dark nights,
-too, curse it! curses on it!
-
- “Ho! for the bowers where his merry voice rings!
- Ho! for the billows where——”
-
-Here I lost the words of the boisterous music as he swung off and
-hurried to overtake his cart, leaving us all not a little astonished.
-
-“What an eccentric person!” whispered Miss Thornton to me, the lady who
-had attracted his gaze in so marked a manner, and the only lady in the
-company who understood German.
-
-“Ah! I see,” said I, “that admiration is never lost upon a lady, no
-matter from how humble a source it come. He was put beside himself, poor
-fellow! no wonder he appeared eccentric.”
-
-“It was not that,” she said. “Did you not see how he changed when he
-spoke of the arbor, as if some remembrance associated with it excited
-him? No—I think there is or was some one that I look like. I _would_
-like to see any one that looks like me, no matter who she be. It’s so
-unusual, is it not?”
-
-“Vain puss!”
-
-“Then how merry he got again,” she continued, unheeding me. “No, I don’t
-understand such sudden changes—without any cause, too. He’s remarkably
-fine-looking for one in his condition—I beg pardon, sir, I wonder what
-bower he can mean; I never heard of any on the way to the castle.”
-
-“Nor I, but we shall surely find one; and when we do, I fear this little
-incident will engage my imagination more than the historic associations
-of the castle.”
-
-We journeyed on higher and higher, until we came to the fork of the
-road. Here nearly all were inclined to bear away to the left, around the
-mountain, fully satisfied that we were high enough. I explained that the
-young German had been very precise in his directions to keep to the
-right, and all yielded to him, rather to banter fortune than from
-persuasion that we were going the right road. On we toiled, and the road
-at last came to an abrupt termination upon the very summit. A high-road
-bore off to the right, that we could trace a mile or two over the hills,
-and only a tangled path led toward the west. Leaving the company to
-await the result, I proceeded to explore the path, and soon came in view
-of the town lying in the plain below. I stood enchanted with the scene.
-A gently sloping country receded several miles to the Rhine; meandering
-all the way through fields and forests, the legend-consecrated Neckar
-glistened in the morning sun, and beyond, the vine-clad hills of France,
-the country of the Moselle, crowned the horizon. Far away to the south
-could be traced the winding Rhine almost to its native mountains, and to
-the north it was lost among the hills of the Odenwald, as it widened and
-straightened onward toward the plains of Holland. I hailed the party as
-it came up, all were amazed at the magnificent landscape, and each
-avowed he was well repaid for the toilsome journey. A few steps farther
-brought us to a rugged stair of broken stones, and some ten or twelve
-feet below, on a small natural terrace, was an over-grown _bower_.
-
-“O, the bower! the bower!” exclaimed every one. There it was; and as we
-reached it, a full view of the dismantled towers and crumbled walls of
-the castle opened below us, almost beneath our feet. The German was
-right. He thought we wished to _see_ the castle, not to go to it, and we
-had gained the finest view of the finest ruin in the North of Europe. It
-is not my intention that my pen shall wander among those most
-interesting testimonies of grandeur passed away. Suffice it to say, we
-returned home well sated with pleasure, to recruit our humanity by a
-very late breakfast at twelve o’clock. We had walked fasting from six.
-
-From that day the bower became one of my favorite haunts during the few
-weeks of my stay in Heidelberg. One day, with a view to further
-exploration of the heights to the eastward of the bower, a region I had
-often tried to get a view of from the Castle Mount, I set out on
-horseback, and after reaching the summit, took the road that we had seen
-over the hills on our first visit to the castle. For two or three miles
-it was nothing but steep hills and narrow valleys. Not a sound was heard
-save the twittering of birds and the tumbling of waters; not a particle
-of verdure was to be seen but the dark, distant forests, and near, the
-quivering foliage of the vine as it climbed up, up to the very pinnacles
-of the terraced heights. Beyond, the country spread out into fields and
-meadows and grass and waving grain. Farm-houses and villages were
-clustered about. Vineyards lingered upon the knolls, and scarce ventured
-a distance down the sunny slopes. After a long day’s ride I was
-approaching the bower by another road: the sun was about setting; I was
-tired and thirsty; when I was tempted to dismount by a little streamlet
-that fell into and ran down the road-side. An orchard extended from a
-small cottage to the road, and the gate was only upon the other side of
-the way. I led my horse over, and after hitching him to the gate-post,
-was about reaching a harvest-apple that hung near me, when my attention
-was drawn by a small group in front of the cottage door. An old
-gray-haired man was sitting upon a bench watching a young child that was
-rolling on the grass, when my appearance put an end to his occupation.
-He looked at me with no expression of pleasure, evidently not relishing
-so unceremonious an attempt upon his orchard. I resigned my thieving
-intention, and covered the manœuvre by an advance straight up to the
-door. A young woman arose and picked up the child, and then resumed her
-seat upon the grass-plat.
-
-“Good evening, my friend,” said I, for his silence was awkward—“I am
-very tired and warm with a long ride, and was tempted by that cool
-spring and your shady trees to dismount and take a moment’s rest. I am
-glad to take my rest in such good company.”
-
-“You are welcome,” said he. “I perceive you are a stranger; an
-Englishman I suppose?”
-
-“No, I am not an Englishman; I am come from a land much farther off than
-England, and have seen a great many Germans in my country. I am an
-American.”
-
-“What’s that he says, Mary?” cried a voice from within the house. “Tell
-him Roderick is not at home; tell him he wont be at home till
-to-morrow.”
-
-“Hush! do, mother! The gentleman has not come for Roderick.”
-
-“O, yes he has. He knows Roderick has got money and wants to spend it.
-You know—”
-
-“Do hush, mother! It’s a stranger, and what’s more, it’s an American.”
-
-“What does he say about Karl? Ask him when Karl is coming back.”
-
-The tears started to the young woman’s eyes; and as I saw her press her
-babe to her bosom, I knew who Karl was. She seemed to struggle with the
-question that rose to her lips:
-
-“You said, sir, that you have seen many Germans in America: did you ever
-see anybody there from Heidelberg? Did you ever see Karl Wagner there?”
-
-I told her, I never saw Karl Wagner there, and asked her if Karl might
-be her husband; which fact I knew, however, before I asked. She
-answered, that he was; that he was living at a place called Buffalo, and
-had lately sent her money to take her to another place called New York,
-where she would meet him. Her father was anxious that she should go, but
-her mother, who was now doating, would resent the very mention of it,
-and was always expecting Karl to _come home_. Her brother Roderick, she
-said, had been unfortunate, and was bent on going with her; but of this,
-her mother knew nothing. They were afraid to tell her, her reason was so
-weak that they feared she would sink into utter imbecility.
-
-The sun was set, and night was drawing on. I arose to resume my journey,
-for I was anxious to reach the foot of the mount before dark; but the
-old man offered me a plate of the harvest-apples that had tempted me,
-and pressed me to take some supper with them. If I would only be so
-kind—they wished to ask me so many questions about America. I am not
-sure that I should have accepted their invitation had not my eye, as I
-arose, fallen upon a picture hanging against the opposite wall of the
-little room. A second glance showed the marked and benevolent features
-of the old man, looking out from the canvas.
-
-“Ha—ha!” said he, “that is a fine picture. Step in the door, and you
-will see more of them.”
-
-I did so, and to my surprise, beheld four others hanging wherever space
-enough could be found to contain them. One was the portrait of the old
-woman whom I now saw for the first time; another of Mary, and the
-remaining two were, a young man apparently thirty years of age, and a
-boy of sixteen. The old man followed me with his eyes.
-
-“Ha—ha!” said he. “I see you admire them. Poor Roderick! There are few
-who can beat him in his art—but you would not think so to see him now.
-These are the last he ever made. He paid his last tribute to those he
-loved best.”
-
-The old man spoke in a very sorrowful tone. I began to feel a deep
-interest in Roderick, whatever his misfortunes might be.
-
-“Is not Roderick your son?” I asked, supposing that I must have made a
-mistake.
-
-“Yes—that one I suppose you don’t know; that’s Karl Wagner, that’s
-Mary’s husband—a good son he is. And that’s Tommy, that’s our
-Tommy—sturdy Tommy, as they call him. That’s the last one Roderick ever
-made.” And the old man brushed his eyes with his shriveled hands as he
-spoke.
-
-“Where does Roderick live?” I asked. “Is he married?”
-
-“Hush—here!”
-
-“Why is it, that a young man of such talent gives up a glorious art,
-when it opens a field to him to enable him to rise above his condition,
-to gain wealth, honor, fame?”
-
-“Hush!”
-
-“Go, ask Count Reisach!” cried the old woman, starting up. She was in a
-frenzy. Her eyes glared, her bent form trembled from head to foot, her
-hands were clenched, but hung dangling at her side, and she seemed to
-make superhuman efforts to raise them. They were paralyzed. Tears
-coursed each other down her cheeks as she cried—“Go ask Count Reisach!
-Go find him! Go ask poor Father Klaus! Go down and ask Almighty God why
-he let—oh!” she cried, sinking on her knees—her voice choked; sobs,
-spasms convulsed her frame; still her face was raised, it seemed to me
-in prayer, but her hands clasped not, they seemed to weigh her to the
-earth, as they hung lifeless beside her.
-
-“Mein Got! O, mein Got!” cried the old man, as he took her in his arms.
-“O, my poor frau—would to God thy poor spark of reason would go out,
-that I might see this heavy burden off thy soul!”
-
-He raised her tenderly as a child, repelling my assistance, and when he
-had placed her in her arm-chair, left her to Mary’s care, and came to
-resume his seat upon the bench, outside the door.
-
-“She never grieved so for herself, and she has had her own troubles too.
-But she knows not all yet—O, mein Got! mein Got! who will tell her—for
-he must, he must, he must!”
-
-He closed his eyes—as it were—to shut out so near a view of misery. A
-loud voice was heard approaching in the road, and as it became more
-distinct, I started as I recognized the words—
-
- “Ho for the deep where the sea-bird sings!
- Ho for the bowers where his merry voice rings,
- Ho for the billows, the billows, the billows!”
-
-Here the gate flew open, and my acquaintance of castle memory stalked up
-the path, followed by a sturdy lad.
-
-“Father, it’s all arranged,” he bawled. “It’s all arranged. I’ve made up
-my mind. There are three in Heidelberg—”
-
- “Ho for the billows where the storm-king dwells!”
-
-“Stop, Roderick. You know your mother. See, too, here is a stranger.” He
-paused, saluted me as though he had never seen me before, and turned to
-the youth who followed him.
-
-“Where are the cattle, Tommy? That’s right—you must be smart, you know;
-remember what’s on your shoulders!”
-
-Tommy said he knew, and was going to be smart. Mary appeared at the door
-and invited us to supper. The mother was gone, and the old man seemed
-relieved when he missed her, for he looked around the room, and the
-cloud left his brow, ere he asked a blessing on his humble table. After
-supper he lighted his pipe; Tommy took his hat and disappeared, and
-Roderick touched my arm as he moved toward the door. His boisterous
-humor was gone, and he calmly and mannerly asked me to be seated.
-
-“She is worse to-night,” he said. “They have sent Tommy for _him_.”
-After a moment, he continued; “I recognized you at first, and for my
-rudeness I must plead the state of mind I was in. The truth is, I have
-this day arranged my departure for America, to take my sister to her
-husband; and the relief from the burden of suspense I had long been in
-made me quite forgetful of myself.”
-
-“I do not know,” said I, “that you are doing best in taking this course.
-You are an artist, and I must bear witness to the promise of success you
-make in your art; but, as I begin to feel a deep interest in yourself,
-your family, and—I think I may say with truth—in your sorrows, for
-some strange misfortune seems to brood over this house, I feel at
-liberty to remonstrate with you for abandoning what seems to me your
-duty to yourself, and your father’s family. I could not give you hope of
-better success where you purpose going than you would probably meet with
-here. The best of our own artists reside in Europe, for we have no
-models at home. Have you always lived here with your parents?”
-
-“Until within the last few weeks I spent most of my time in the town; my
-occupation kept me very much from home. Of late, I have done nothing but
-assist my father here.”
-
-“It seems to me that you might assist him more with your brush than with
-your ox-goad.”
-
-“If I could use it perhaps I might; but I can paint no more here. I am
-going, and Tommy and I have trimmed his vines and sown his crops, and
-when Tommy shall be able to take care of the vines himself, I shall be
-gone.”
-
-“That is where I cannot excuse you. You are not suffering from poverty;
-you are not driven to emigrate; and it is in leaving your infirm parents
-when they are bowed down by affliction that I think you do not do your
-duty by them. They both seem proud of you, and still—you appear to love
-them as you ought.”
-
-“The affliction is mine! You were at the bower?”
-
-“Yes.”
-
-“Well, I could go there with you, and tell you a tale of sorrow that you
-would never forget. You cannot judge. I know that my father and my poor,
-fond mother grieve—it is for me; but what is their grief to mine? It is
-but the reflection of mine; it is like the cold, borrowed light of the
-moon—mine, the scorching sun. I am plunged from heaven into hell! This
-spot is to me, now, of all the world, like the deepest abyss of infernal
-misery; and, but for Father Klaus, our good old priest, this shadow of
-hell had, ere this, been bartered for the reality. He has kept alive a
-spark of reason in me, that I hope may yet guide me through the world.
-Here he is—I see they have sent Tommy for him. She always forgets her
-own sorrow, when she sees him.”
-
-“Well Roderick, my son,” said the old priest, as he paused at the door,
-“I fear you have been imprudent again. These outbursts of yours will
-bring the poor old mother to the grave. You have heard something since,
-and it has set you beside yourself, poor boy.”
-
-“No, Father, I have heard nothing since I told you Count Reisach was in
-Cologne; that is three weeks ago, and from that time I have sought no
-news but for your sake. The only news I have to tell you is, that my
-departure for America is determined upon; I have made up my mind to go.”
-
-“That’s right; that’s right!”
-
-“You will tell her?”
-
-“Leave it to me. God will surely temper the wind; but not to-night, not
-to-night!” And he sighed as he entered the house and left us alone
-again.
-
-The moon was just rising, and as I pressed the poor fellow’s hand (_poor
-fellow_, I knew he was a _poor fellow_. I pitied him sincerely, but I
-knew not why), he returned the pressure warmly, and asked permission to
-visit me the following day. I appointed an hour, and galloped over the
-hilly road toward home. As I approached the end of the path that led off
-to the bower, I could not help turning my eyes thither, my mind was full
-of Roderick, and I could not disconnect the idea of him from the idea of
-the bower. Had I known his story then as I do now, I could have sighed
-with the sighing trees, that shook and sighed all night on the gloomy
-Castle Mount.
-
-I knew that I had a treat in store for Miss Thornton. I knew what fresh
-interest I would awaken, when I should tell her that the rough peasant
-was an accomplished artist. That evening and the next morning, it was a
-subject she always recurred to when we were alone, she would talk of
-nothing else, and frequently sought opportunities of conversing apart.
-
-The next day, Roderick appeared at the appointed hour, but his garb was
-changed. He wore no longer the coarse clothes of a peasant, and I could
-not but observe that his altered exterior harmonized much better with
-his bearing, and his intellectual features. Several of the party who had
-made with me the morning excursion to the Castle Mount were still at
-Heidelberg, and as we frequently met on our rounds upon the promenade,
-_she_ was the only one, of all, who recognized my companion. His object
-seemed to be to learn, as far as my judgment extended, the probable
-prospects that awaited him in the United States, in the prosecution of
-his art. He dwelt upon the subject calmly, and was perfectly
-self-possessed until we approached Miss T., when he stopped, and
-regarded her with the same fixed gaze that I had remarked upon our first
-interview. From that moment he was a changed person. A strange
-uneasiness seemed to take possession of him. His face was pale, and at
-last he turned abruptly down the avenue. I followed him, and cast one
-look back at her, ere I started. She and her companion had paused; he
-was speaking to unheeding ears, for her gaze was fixed on us, her face
-was pale, and wore the expression of sudden alarm. He led me hastily
-along the avenue; I followed, I scarce knew why: but he could have led
-me anywhere. After a while—
-
-“I cannot tell you,” said he, “until we reach the bower.”
-
-And we began to ascend the mountain. At last, we pushed aside the briars
-that blockaded the little, descending path that led to the bower. The
-magnificent ruins appeared spread out below us, and I half forgot the
-sorrows of my eccentric friend in lively feelings of pleasure. After a
-pause, which I was unwilling to interrupt (for I saw in his countenance,
-in his whole bearing, evidence of a severe interior struggle), he said—
-
-“When I am able to reflect, I know that I am imposing on your generosity
-in some way, but I scarce know how. It is only your goodness which has
-prompted you to undergo all this fatigue and trouble; and now I feel
-bound, I wish to open my heart to you, but it seems as though all I can
-tell you cannot compensate you. At any rate, it will be a relief to me,
-and hereafter it may help the vividness of your recollections of
-Heidelberg. I thought I should never tell this story, or speak this name
-again; but that lady recalled, in so many ways, so lively an image of my
-lost Ella, that I _must_ unburden my heart of its excess. She was the
-niece of Father Klaus. Her parents died when she was very young, and the
-good old man took her into his own charge. No parent could have loved
-her more, or watched over her with more tender solicitude than he did.
-As she grew up, he taught her many things which, but for him, would have
-been entirely beyond her reach; but she repaid him, for an apter scholar
-never learned, and never had man a child who loved him more. She grew to
-be very beautiful, and was talked of for her beauty all the country
-round; but I had won her heart when it was a child’s, and as we grew up
-my only fear in life was for that, and all my efforts were only for
-_that_. Father Klaus knew how matters stood nearly as soon as we, and
-was contented. When we grew up, he ratified and blessed our betrothal,
-and turned his attention to my own prospects. Through his influence with
-the old Count Reisach, I was enabled to enter the academy of Heidelberg,
-and, thanks to the count’s generosity and patronage, I had laid up
-nearly enough to gain Father Klaus’s consent to our marriage. The day
-was fixed; but nearly a year distant, and the good old man was to
-perform the ceremony himself. Often, and often, as I returned home from
-town have I turned down this path, and here was Ella waiting for me, to
-sit a while, and then stroll home together. Here we built this very
-bower, when we were children, with our own hands. She chose the place.
-Here we would sit and watch the setting sun; and I, as a proud young
-artist, would descant to her upon the harmony of the glowing colors,
-scarce brighter than her own bright eyes and glowing cheeks. Here would
-we come and spend hours together—she would bring her needle, and I
-would sketch the castle, the mountain, the town, the plain, the forest,
-and every object that could afford a pretext for remaining. Sometimes,
-when she was very busy, I would gaze, and gaze into her sweet face and
-forget every thing but that. Then she would look up and smile, and come
-and bend her head over my shoulder to see the progress of my sketching,
-and find the whole sheet covered over with images of herself, and Ella,
-Ella, Ella, scribbled in every form, and ornamented with every possible
-device. Then she would steal her little hand over my eyes, and say I was
-a ‘lazy, lazy boy.’ Perhaps, sir, you cannot know why I speak of these
-little things, and you may deem them trifling; but, sir, it is a true
-saying that life is made up of trifles. It was so that she wound about
-me a web that could not be unwound; all these endearing trifles cannot
-be reversed, one by one, and the web uncoiled. There is but one method
-of release, and that is, by a mighty effort to burst the whole
-fabric—even then, the shreds will hang about, and float in every breath
-of memory. Here, time after time, we repeated our vows of love and
-fidelity, and eagerly looked forward to the day that would crown our
-happiness.
-
-“In the meantime Count Reisach died, and his son, a youth of some twenty
-years, succeeded to the estates. He was known ere that time, through all
-the land, for his boldness, courtliness and generosity, courted and
-sought by all the nobility and gentry—for he was handsome and rich.
-Moreover, he was a connoisseur in almost all the fine arts. I was often
-employed by him in copying his paintings for presents to his friends.
-Once he induced me to part with a portrait of Ella, which I was very
-proud of, and which he had seen at Father Klaus’s. I often saw him
-there. One evening last April, as I was returning from town, I turned
-down the path, for I knew I should meet Ella here. I was startled by a
-shriek. I cried, Ella! Ella! In a moment I was here upon the spot, and
-she rushed into my arms, weeping and frightened. To all my questions as
-to what had alarmed her, she only sobbed. I seated her, and examined all
-about the bower; I thought of serpents, and searched under rocks, peered
-over the bushy precipice, but could discover nothing. We could not sit
-and enjoy that evening—she was agitated, and I led her home. She did
-not go often to the bower after that. One evening, it might be a
-fortnight after, upon appointment, I came here again to meet her, and I
-found her weeping. As before, I took her home. Another time, she was not
-weeping, but seemed silent, thoughtful, depressed. We went home again. I
-was puzzled, pained; I knew not what to think or do, and she revealed
-nothing to all my entreaties. She would not go to the bower any more. At
-times she wore a deadly paleness for days, and again she would glow with
-a flush, as though a fresh impulse were given to her life. She was
-evidently declining. All the neighbors watched and pitied “poor Ella;”
-they pitied Father Klaus, but none knew the extent of the agony I nursed
-in secret. When I would beg her to walk with me to the bower that her
-and my childish hands had built, and where we always were so happy, she
-would turn pale and tremble—I dared not speak to her of the bower any
-more. Frequently I would detect her eye resting upon me as if in pain,
-as though _she_ pitied _me_; a starting tear would glisten in her eye
-for a moment, and she would turn away; immediately she would be as
-composed as before. I was pained, shocked; and a presentiment of some
-awful calamity seized me. One evening I was detained in town later than
-usual. I had been for several days employed in restoring a painting for
-Count Reisach, and the next day would see it finished. ‘It is not
-finished yet,’ he whispered. The count had hurried me to work early and
-late. It was a relief to be so busily employed. As I wended my way up
-the mountain, I thought of Ella all the way—I must go to her that
-evening, tired as I was. When I came to the end of the path, I could not
-resist a moment’s visit to the bower; for since pleasure there seemed to
-be henceforth forbidden fruit to me, I longed for a moment even of its
-pain. It was growing dark, and as I brushed past yonder bush, I thought
-I saw something move, just where you sit. I stopped, and distinctly saw
-the cloaked figure of a man disappear down that precipice. I rushed
-forward, for thoughts of some dark crime crowded upon me, and I nearly
-fell upon the prostrate form of a woman at my feet. I knelt, and raised
-the head upon my knees; it was bare, and the dark locks uncoiled upon
-the ground.”
-
-Here he paused. I never before or since beheld such a mute picture of
-agony. He lowered his head upon his hands, and the big drops fell fast
-upon the ground. He tried not to restrain them. At length he raised his
-eyes inquiringly, and I feared not to say,
-
-“_It was Ella._”
-
-He nodded. After a few minutes, which I indulged him in without a
-question or remark, he continued—
-
-“I bounded, as if stung by a serpent, and I hurried to Father Klaus. I
-told him, I know not what. Then I hurried home; and for days, they told
-me, I raved. When I recovered I learned that they were gone.”
-
-“Who?”
-
-“Count Reisach. No traces of them could be found until within three
-weeks, when we learned that they had been in Cologne.”
-
-“Were they—” I could not finish; he gave me an inquiring look, and I
-thought his severe part was going to be acted again. I had not the heart
-to _think_ of it more.
-
-“From that time my poor mother has been a paralytic, and now we fear her
-reason is almost gone. Father Klaus is an older man, but his feelings
-are all for others; he is constantly with _her_. Now, do you wonder that
-I hate this spot, and all that I can see from here? Here have I known my
-happiest and bitterest moments. From this day I see you no more!”
-exclaimed he, starting to his feet, and gazing on the work of his hands:
-“Here I bid _an eternal_, an eternal farewell to you and—” He took his
-pencil and wrote (he would not speak it)—I looked—“Ella Corbyn.”
-
-“Her father was an Englishman,” he said.
-
-I pressed his hand—“Adieu!”
-
-“Adieu!”
-
-“To meet again?”
-
-“To meet again,” said I; and we parted. As he disappeared over the brow
-of the hill, I could hear the poor fellow trying to lighten his crushed
-heart with his boisterous sea-song. The next morning Mr. Thornton and
-his daughter left for England.
-
-A few weeks after that I was in Paris. Months rolled by; September was
-come, and Roderick’s story had nearly slipped from my mind. One fine
-evening I was sauntering along the Champs Elysées, where one is sure to
-see at that time, all the notables that may be luxuriating in the French
-capital; when I recognized in a gay equipage the beautiful features of
-Miss Thornton. She was paler than when I had seen her last, but still
-very beautiful. I watched her some moments, to catch her eye; and when
-she did look toward me, I took the liberty of saluting her. She flushed,
-and turned her head aside, but did not acknowledge the salutation.
-
-“So much for my impudence,” said I; and I saluted no one else that
-evening.
-
-A day or two after, I was dining with some friends at Vantini’s.
-Opposite us at the table d’hôte, were two vacant chairs.
-
-“We are unfortunate to-day,” said my friend, “for I was anxious you
-should see a very pretty English girl who sits opposite. Clara,” said
-he, turning to his wife, “what is the name of our little beauty across
-the table? I never can think of it, for I can’t help calling her Miss
-Mary.”
-
-“Oh,” said Mrs. F., “I wish you to know them—so agreeable; and going on
-a tour through the United States. They are a Mr. and Miss
-Thornton—father and daughter; and as you are going soon, I do wish you
-could go together.”
-
-“So, so!” thought I; “here is a little bit of adventure if they only
-come in.” And I consoled myself with the thought that I could not come
-out of it worst. Soon a couple of servants ushered a lady and gentleman
-along the hall, and Mr. and Miss Thornton appeared before me, she
-glowing with health and beauty. They both greeted me warmly, which
-somewhat astonished my friends as well as myself. I was taken aback, but
-I had been not a little nettled, and was determined not to be outdone,
-so said as little as I could.
-
-“Why!” said Mrs. F., “you are old friends, then! All my anxiety was
-thrown away!”
-
-“I supposed we were,” said I, “until last Tuesday evening.”
-
-“Last Tuesday evening!” exclaimed Miss T. “Why, what happened? You
-puzzle me.”
-
-“Merely that I took the liberty of recognizing _an old friend_, and was
-_cut_—that’s all.”
-
-“You puzzle me still more. Where were you at the time?”
-
-“Below the place d’étoile.”
-
-“Are you sure it was on Tuesday?”
-
-“Perfectly sure.”
-
-She burst into a laugh, and her father smiled.
-
-“It must have been the longest cut I ever gave in my life. I only wish I
-_could_ cut that far off—I know some who should suffer”—and she
-laughed again. “It’s the first time I ever heard of a sane gentleman,
-standing in the Champs Elysées, to take off his hat to a lady in
-Brussels.”
-
-The laugh was decidedly against me, and we were soon on the best of
-terms.
-
-That night a new train of thoughts engaged me. Poor Roderick’s story
-returned, and the memory of his grief with all its thrilling intensity.
-_Had I seen Ella?_ It must be. That pale, thoughtful, _hiding_
-countenance could be only hers. Poor Roderick! I feel for you deeply! I
-wonder if your sorrow feels any alleviation in your new country! I fear
-not.
-
-The next day I made sufficient inquiry to certify me that I had seen
-Count Reisach, and with him, Ella. I saw them once again, it was for a
-moment, and she seemed paler still; as I gazed, again she turned her
-face away. Poor Ella! how she shrank from the eyes of men! There was a
-deep remorse preying upon that wasting beauty; a secret sorrow and shame
-blighting every bud of pleasure and of hope. How bitter will thy end
-soon be, poor trusting, fragile daughter of Eve!
-
-I saw them no more. I walked every day with Miss Thornton to show her
-the lady that she so closely resembled; but we did not see them. They
-were probably seeking new scenes to beguile her short life of its
-fleeting days.
-
-A few weeks after, we were in Havre, awaiting the sailing of the first
-packet ship for New York. We had determined to “go together,” as Mrs. F.
-had desired, and our rooms were taken in the Zurich, one of the fleetest
-of the line. At that time, a line of French government steamships was
-plying between Havre and New York; and one, which was advertised to sail
-on the day we arrived, was to be detained some ten days, to undergo a
-repairing of machinery. Havre is the great port of emigration for the
-French, German, and Swiss emigrants; and the French steamships, offering
-low fares and speedy passage, generally sailed with their between-decks
-well filled with emigrant passengers. On this occasion, some two hundred
-poor creatures had engaged passage upon the detained vessel, and few had
-the means to await in Havre her postponed day of departure; consequently
-there was a rush upon the office of the sailing packets. We went aboard
-about 3 o’clock, P. M. The lower deck was crowded with
-steerage-passengers; and a single glance sufficed to show that they were
-three-fourths Germans. I could not help wondering how many of the two
-hundred poor emigrants below me, I might have seen before, as I
-journeyed through their country a few months ago. Many a one, I thought,
-I might have seen before his cottage door, or through the window of his
-work-shop, ere poverty had _at last_ decreed, that he _must_ go to the
-land beyond the seas, far from his fatherland.
-
-The ship was moving from the dock. The crowds upon the piers cheered us
-on. The stars and stripes sprung into the breeze. O, how my heart
-bounded to feel again the protection of my country’s flag! The first
-time, for years, did the feeling of _home_ thrill through my bosom: and
-tears of patriotic love and pride rushed to my eyes. _I_ was going
-_home_;—there _they_ stood in melancholy groups, gazing their last on
-land contiguous to their own, upon the receding shores of the old world.
-The tri-colors in the distance soon faded into one indefinable hue. The
-green hills of Normandy came forth once again; but “twilight gray soon
-in her sable livery all things clad;” and we were away, away upon the
-sea. After tea, we all came upon deck. The last loom of the land was
-fading away; and my thoughts and feelings, memory and fancy, were busy
-with home before, and the friends and associations I was leaving
-behind—perhaps forever. I was overflowing with expectation and regret.
-Miss T. stood beside me, kindly hearkening to my outpouring feelings.
-The emigrants were all below, save a few scattered ones, and a larger
-group gathered about the fore-mast. They were leaving country, home,
-kindred, all, to seek a refuge in a foreign land: I was leaving friends
-that I had made in many lands; countries and scenes made dear to me by
-long and intimate association; returning to a home wherein death had
-made sad changes during my long sojourn: she was going on a trip of
-pleasure, and present enjoyment was her occupation. Suddenly I heard an
-exclamation—“Oh!” and I thought she was taken ill. I looked, and she
-was pointing to the group around the mast; I saw and recognized a face I
-could never forget. We continued to gaze in astonishment. The few women
-who were there were all in tears; one, whose head was bowed upon her
-knees, sobbed violently. The men were drinking farewell to Fatherland,
-and many an absent friend and fair, was pledged by name. Then there was
-a cry for “a song!” “a song!”—“Let’s have a song from Roderick!”
-Immediately there pealed out those boisterous but musical tones that I
-had heard before, far away from there. My heart thrilled as I listened.
-Every voice hushed. Even the sailor, as he trod the deck, paused to
-listen to that fine, deep voice, as it rang through the ship.
-
- THE EMIGRANT’S SONG.
-
- Ho for the deep where the sea-bird sings!
- Ho for the bowers where his merry voice rings!
- Ho for the billows where the storm-king dwells!
- Ho for the winding of the merry-maids’ shells!
- Ho for the storm where the lightning’s flash!
- Ho for the fury of the merry waves’ dash!
- The spray and the roar and the thunder’s crash!
- Ho for the breeze that shall cling to the mast!
- Ho for the day when the storms shall be past!
- Then hail to the home that the outcast sighs for!
- Hail to the liberty the patriot dies for!
- Hail to the great who will ne’er cast scorn to us!
- Hail to the land where the free shall be born to us!
- But alas for the friends that we leave far away!
- And alas for the tears when there breaks another day!
- Alas for the wo that shall bow the hoary heads!
- And alas for the home where another step treads!
- Alas for the murmuring hill-side rills!
- And alas for the shadow on the ever-green hills!
- Alas for the weeping of the purple-crowned vine!
- And alas for the glory of the golden-rimmed wine!
- Farewell to the land where our forefather’s sleep!
- And we’ll hie to our rest on the wide-spread deep.
- Farewell to the vine, to the home, and the tears!
- And we’ll dream of the land where the good ship steers!
-
-As the last sound died away upon the water, the singer caught sight of
-me, and the fair girl beside me, and disappeared from the deck. The
-listeners, as they dispersed to their several meditations, took up the
-words of the song; each one whatever best suited his feelings at the
-time. It was strange to read the various echoes as they rebounded
-spontaneously from the hearts of the emigrants. When the air of the song
-was forgotten the words were not, and each sang or mumbled them to music
-of his own—sometimes wild and pretty, sometimes discordant enough. One
-would long for
-
- “The deep where the sea-bird sings,”
-
-and I knew he had not many regrets for what he left behind. Another, a
-drunken wretch, yelled
-
- “For the fury of the merry waves’ dash,
- The spray and the roar and the thunder’s crash.”
-
-An old man, as he stole away, uttered a plaintive moan
-
- “For the home that the outcast sighs for;”
-
-and I thought I could read in his furrowed face traces of a life of
-penury and suffering. He was going with a lightened heart, transplanted
-in his decaying age. But by far the greater part dwelt upon the memory
-of their forsaken homes and kindred; their thoughts were gazing afar
-upon “the shadow on the ever-green hills.” Ere long they had nearly all
-disappeared, gone to their crowded chamber to be rocked asleep. Only a
-few women remained beneath the suspended lantern, seated by the mast.
-The one I had noticed weeping, had not raised her head during all this
-time. When she did raise it, she looked up to heaven and her face shone
-with religious fervor. The tears still flowed as she breathed her
-heart-felt prayer. I could see every movement of her lips, and I alone
-perhaps, of all who saw, could tell the source of every tear that
-flowed. I felt awed, unconscious of myself. My whole being seemed merged
-in the intensity of hers. A supplication sprang unbidden to my lips for
-the paralytic mother, for the gray-haired father, in their utter, utter
-loneliness; for it was Mary with her baby on her bosom. She spoke
-calmly, slowly, solemnly.
-
- “THE WOMAN’S PRAYER.
-
- Let us bow, lowly now, ere we seek forgetfulness
- In the blest balm of rest, of trial-worn spirit’s fretfulness,
- Let us call, first of all, pity on our parents’ age,
- For they’re chastened, for they’re hastened on their ending
- pilgrimage.
- O be mild to them, child to them, gentle son of Bethlehem!
- Never suffer that their rougher path bring sooner death to them!
- O remember that December passes cheerlessly away—
- Let their sorrow, on the morrow, mind thee of its Christmas day!
- And leave us not, grieve us not, Father of the wandering!
- Care for us, spare for us, now while time is squandering!
- We are going, far, unknowing, strangers into stranger land—
- But with thee only we’re not lonely, resting in thy hollow hand!”
-
-This was the woman’s prayer—and I devoutly responded “Amen,” as I wiped
-my eyes and went below. I thought of the poor old man, the helpless
-mother, Tommy, the bower, all, and I became unconsciously an actor in
-the scene before me, as I prayed—
-
- “O remember that December passes cheerlessly away!
- Let their sorrow, on the morrow, mind thee of its Christmas day!”
-
-The next day Roderick did not appear upon the deck; in truth there were
-very few who did. After indulging him a few days, which I charged to
-account of sea-sickness, and still not seeing him, I found my way into
-the steerage, and found the poor fellow more sick in mind than in body.
-He had spent the greater part of his money in trying to drown his grief;
-and now that he thought he had nearly succeeded, he looked none the
-better for the success. That face, he said, so like _hers_, he could not
-escape from now; he must remain near it for days, weeks. He could almost
-curse the ill-favored steamship, whose delay had not only doomed him to
-the crowded steerage of the packet, but to weeks of torture he could not
-escape from. He would not appear at all upon deck, and the air of the
-between-decks was almost poisonous. In a few days he was confined to his
-berth with a burning fever. I had confided to Miss Thornton every thing,
-except the history of Ella, which I disguised in such a way as not to
-diminish her sympathies for the invalid. One day, to my great
-astonishment, she had, with her father, gone to minister to him, and
-spoke with gladness of the better condition she had left him in. He
-talked to her very tenderly of Ella. They went, she and her kind father,
-to visit him every day. I saw how the fire was consuming him, and
-endeavored to interpose. I told Mr. Thornton every thing, all; but they
-did not see his condition as I did. Whenever I would go, strange! he
-would always beg me not to let them delay coming; but he was so
-exhausted with fever, that I attributed this wonderful change, rather to
-imbecility or delirium, than to a change of resolution. Poor Mary was
-always by her brother’s side: even her poor babe lay neglected for him.
-More than a fortnight he lay in this miserable condition; yet I was more
-than sorry when I felt in his pulse the returning slow beat of health,
-and saw his eye calm into quiet enjoyment of the congratulations which
-poured in upon him. I was shocked. It is true a mountain of misery was
-moved away, but his _reason was gone_. Miss Thornton went once again to
-visit him, only once: and I shall never forget her look of agony and
-self-reproach as she returned rather hastily to her room. I never knew
-what passed at that interview. Perhaps she saw for the first time, that
-while she deemed she was soothing his misery by her presence, she had
-fed it to madness. He rapidly recovered and seemed happy, for he always
-smiled when he asked me why the captain kept Ella locked up in the cabin
-and sent her tender messages—_which I dared not give_. The last I ever
-saw of him was in New York, when I was about to leave the ship. A young
-man came aboard as we hauled up to the wharf, and I knew from the
-portrait I had seen _in the cottage in Germany_, that it was Karl
-Wagner. He soon found them; and the last I saw of poor Roderick, as I
-went ashore, he was unfolding to the astonished Karl a scheme he had to
-get Ella away from the captain, whilst poor Mary hung upon her husband’s
-arm, her heart bursting with joy and grief.
-
-
- ELLA CORBYN.
-
-Be it remembered that Roderick, in speaking to me on the Mount of
-Heidelberg Castle, said—“Her father was an Englishman.” It was true. He
-was the younger son of a noble English house, though Ella lived until
-her twentieth year unconscious of the fact. She knew he was an
-Englishman, she knew he had been a soldier, but of his family she knew
-nothing. Better far had it been for her had she remained forever in
-ignorance of every circumstance of her ancestral distinction, or had she
-had some other instructor than he who craftily sowed the seeds of pride
-and discontent, that he might reap a glowing harvest of the charms of a
-lovely woman, to her soul’s utter desolation. By night and by stealth,
-like the Evil One, did he sow tares among the richest grain, among a
-perfect luxuriance of womanly virtues; by day, too, like the husbandman
-when the time of the harvest comes, did he pluck up weed and fruit, did
-he trample on pride and virtue, and cast them forth together to wither
-under the scorching solstice of remorse and shame. He tore away the
-flower and left the stem to die. Poor, poor Ella! the only jewel of both
-soul’s and body’s inheritance was charmed away—what wonder then that
-both should droop in poverty, or that, making common friendship from
-common desolation, these mutual foes, the only ones religion ever made,
-should compromise to each other the loss of both health and principle,
-in fatal reconciliation and despair!
-
-The father of Ella Corbyn, an officer in the British army, was disabled
-in action during the Peninsular war, and after the peace of 1815,
-retired to the continent, where he married the beautiful Katrina Klaus,
-supported himself and Katrina many years on his half-pay, until about
-the period of Ella’s birth, when he and the half-pay departed together.
-His daughter, of course, had no recollection of him, and never possessed
-more than the one single article of his property, a miniature on ivory,
-of a lady, young, but by no means beautiful. She never knew who it was;
-her mother could not tell her when she first gave it into little Ella’s
-tiny hands, but supposed it was some one of Mr. Corbyn’s family,
-probably a sister—and so the matter rested for the while. The neighbors
-could tell her scarcely any thing of her father; they had seen him when
-he first came into the neighborhood, but his marriage with his beautiful
-wife, and subsequent removal to a neighboring village, followed so
-quickly, that they could give no account of him, nor further description
-than that of his personal appearance. Of the circumstances attending his
-death all they knew was, that two strangers stopped one afternoon at the
-public-house, that Mr. Corbyn spent part of the evening with them and
-went home early; the next morning he was shot in a duel, but the old
-captain who stood his friend in the affair, thought it no business of
-his to inquire what the difficulty was about. He left no property of any
-value, and his widow supported herself and Ella on her little patrimony
-four years longer, when she, too, died and left the child a helpless
-orphan. This was the time for her uncle, the priest, to come to her
-assistance. He took her into his care and provided for her early
-education by consigning her to the Sisters of Charity in Cologne. Here
-she remained five years; and when her good uncle, deeming that he could,
-with better justice to his finances, superintend her further progress at
-home, took her back, she displayed so much ability and judgment that she
-soon reigned, a little queen, over his modest household.
-
-Ella was in truth a lovely child. In her earlier days, when she played
-alone by the road-side, before the priest’s lawn, not a stranger passed
-but stopped to take a second look at that bright, spiritual little face,
-gazing half-smilingly, half-pensively, half-hidden beneath dark ribbons
-of straying locks. Her complexion was exceedingly fair, not blonde; her
-features, not classical, were _petits_ and regular; her face
-sufficiently full, but playful every where—a pretty child: but from
-almost infancy the striking characteristic of her face was _soul_; never
-did it appear inanimate, never did it lack character—even in her sleep
-the marked corners of the softly-closed lips and little, dimpled brow,
-betokened self-possession; but when she smiled, a perfect sunshine of
-thought and feeling overspread her countenance, and she was irresistibly
-beautiful. As might be expected, the five years’ tuition she had enjoyed
-had developed the intellectuality of her beauty apace with the
-cultivation of her mind, and wherever and whenever a childish passion
-lay suppressed by growing religious principle, its disappearance gave
-place upon her countenance to the sublime, triumphant sentiment that
-crushed it. Mr. Klaus, or as he was termed by his parishioners, Father
-Klaus, was passably skilled in music; and under his systematic
-instruction Ella soon became the most accomplished vocalist in his
-country-choir. The old Count Reisach had, in church, frequently heard
-and appreciated the superior qualities of her voice, and after a few
-Sundays, called at the parsonage to pay his compliments in person to the
-young singer whom fame had already made so conspicuous. Little Ella,
-when summoned into the presence of the count, made her courtesy modestly
-but not diffidently, and he, charmed with the graces of her person and
-behavior, took pains immediately to win upon her confidence, so that she
-soon sang to him all her prettiest songs; whilst Father Klaus sat
-smiling by, perfectly happy in the joy of his triumph. When the old
-nobleman arose to depart, he stood with his hand upon the child’s glossy
-head, and declared he never _saw_ such a singer; then, as he turned up
-to his gaze that little face so beaming with beauty and intelligence, he
-promised by the faith of his knighthood that next Sunday should see her
-talent well rewarded. Next Sunday afternoon arrived a large case for
-Ella. How she danced to see it opened! and when it was opened, how she
-danced and clapped her hands around one of the prettiest harps that ever
-was seen! This was an era in her life. Every day would see her and her
-uncle before the parlor window blundering over the harp-strings, often
-in vain attempts to puzzle out an accompaniment. It was a new instrument
-to him as well as to her. Time, however, and perseverance can conquer
-all things, and ere two months were past, Ella might be seen every
-evening seated beneath a linden that shaded the cottage door, gracefully
-sweeping her harp in accompaniment of the wildest songs of her
-Fatherland; anon would she lift her melting eyes to heaven as she
-touched the trembling chords to the softer melody of a Virgin’s evening
-hymn. The old priest would be absorbed in his breviary, as he paced the
-graveled walk; he had long since given up the race, and the little
-scholar had left him immeasurably behind. It was not wonderful that Ella
-became the admired of all the country around even at that early age: but
-she bore her honors so becomingly, with so much modesty and simplicity,
-that—wonderful to say—there was not one among her companions who did
-not love her. She was so gentle and so good.
-
-In the _Bower of Castle Mount_, I said that Roderick told me that Father
-Klaus was aware of the growing attachment between him and Ella, almost
-as soon as themselves. In this, two circumstances may seem
-strange—first, that she, educated, accomplished, admired, courted,
-should fancy a poor, plain, hardy country-lad like Roderick; and
-secondly, that her uncle should approve and encourage her in such a
-fancy. Roderick’s family was very humble, scarcely above a peasant’s
-condition; but in this regard she placed herself upon a perfect equality
-with him, and never gave the matter much consideration. The truth is,
-she had loved him with a childish love before she knew that there
-existed any other. The first summer after she returned from Cologne,
-regularly every Saturday afternoon or festival eve, would he come to
-help her gather flowers for the altar. This office of decking the altar
-is only performed by the hands of virgins, and when one enters into the
-state of matrimony she no longer takes her place among the servants of
-the sanctuary. Our young pair (he was but four years older than she)
-would wander off to the woods together, and Roderick would climb the
-highest rocks for moss, or some stray flower blooming alone; and carry
-the heavy basket. At times he would strip off his shoes, and, Paul and
-Virginia-like, stagger with his beloved burden across the streams. When
-evening approached, he would mock the squirrels, the partridges, the
-wood-robins and the katy-dids, and put the whole forest in tune before
-its time, to Ella’s ineffable delight. Often, when he had doffed his
-jacket and thrown it down for her to sit upon, would he recline upon his
-arm, his hat drawn over his brow, pensive and melancholy; and sometimes
-a tear would trickle down, as the truth forced itself upon him, that,
-despite their intimacy, fortune, and fortune only, had placed an
-insurmountable barrier between him and the idol of his thoughts and
-dreams. He would beg her to love him, and she would readily answer that
-she did love him.
-
-“Better than all the other boys?”
-
-“Yes, better than all the other boys.”
-
-Still he was not satisfied. He felt that she did not mean the same kind
-of love that he did; he was doubtful even if she knew any thing about
-it. How should he ascertain? He could not ask her if she would marry
-him: no, that would be breaking the ice of a new and unfathomable
-current, and he might lose the tenure of the ground he then possessed;
-besides, he felt a secret, indefinable shame, and could not proffer the
-words. He looked very wo-begone. Ah! he had it at last.
-
-He did not mean _like_, he meant, did she _love_ him better than all the
-other boys?
-
-Yes, she loved him better; she said so before.
-
-The secret of his new discovery was burning; he blushed. At last it
-came.
-
-Did she love him better than all the _girls_?
-
-The poor boy was breathless.
-
-Yes, she thought she loved him better than all the _girls_?
-
-The mighty weight had turned out a feather; he knew no more than he did
-before. Many a time did the poor fellow try to hit the mark from afar
-off, but always with the same success. He persevered with the same
-affectionate devotion, her very slave; and it was not until several
-years after, when he became assured of more than one suitor’s rejection,
-that he summoned courage to address her plainly, and received an answer
-to his heart’s content.
-
-That Father Klaus approved the betrothal of Roderick and his niece, may
-not seem wonderful. He knew him to be the son of pious parents, a boy of
-good principle and good capacity. He had often seen at his father’s
-house, pasteboard horses, cows, cottages, and even pencil sketches, that
-he amused himself with, when once recovering from a severe illness. When
-the boy recovered he frequently brought into request his
-newly-discovered capacity, and improved very much in his rough
-sketching. He had no idea of prosecuting his ability any further. All
-this was not lost on the priest, who felt assured that he could command
-the necessary influence to enter Roderick in the academy of Heidelberg,
-and enable him to become the master of an honorable and lucrative art.
-He knew that capacity is more unfailing, and possesses more resources
-than wealth; he knew Roderick’s substantial worth and undoubted probity,
-and felt that he had neither right nor inclination to thwart his niece’s
-predilection.
-
-It was during one of these flower-hunting excursions that Roderick and
-Ella first conceived the idea of weaving the bower on the Castle Mount.
-They were accustomed frequently to extend their rambling to the ruined
-castle, in the old garden of which a variety of flowers were still
-cultivated by the guardian of the place; and by the time they had
-clambered up to the terrace on their return, were fain to sit down and
-repose awhile. They soon began to feel a partiality for the place; and
-no wonder, for there was not so fine a view, even to childhood’s eyes,
-to be found in the whole country. Their childish hands there twined the
-bower whose strange demolition I, in after years, witnessed. There they
-spent many of their happiest hours; there they first plighted their
-troth; there they renewed it over and over again; and there poor
-Roderick first saw the—beginning of the end.
-
-It were useless to attempt to say how proud the poor boy was of his
-betrothed, and of her accomplishments. The fact that he never felt a
-pang of jealousy during four long years, frequently under most trying
-circumstances, that his trust in his beloved never for a moment wavered
-till his heart was wrung, and his brain was crazed that eventful evening
-at the bower, loudly testifies to his ingenuousness, and the priest’s
-correct estimate of the man. A neighboring Curé, who had in former years
-been a fellow-student of Father Klaus in Italy, frequently rode over to
-spend half a day. On such occasions Ella was entertained with
-metaphysical disquisitions, which, unknown to her entertainers, her
-deep, psychological nature eagerly drank in, in draughts as great as her
-capacity would admit. To their theological discussions she was a silent,
-attentive listener; subjects which her uncle never upon any other
-occasion spoke of in her presence, were argued with an earnestness that
-made him forgetful of the indirect injury they might work upon her mind.
-She began to propound questions to herself, and to attempt the solution
-of them, of herself. She remembered many delicate cases of morality
-determined by learned heads; pondered over the principles upon which
-those decisions were based; constructed new cases for the application of
-similar principles; in short, became a blundering casuist before she
-knew it. A new light was dawning upon her mind; she saw, for the first
-time, that laws can be stretched to very tension, and not broken. She
-did not reflect that principle is firm as a rock, and lasting and
-unchanging as eternity itself—that there is no going and returning
-there. She knew not that he who ranges about to strain the utmost limits
-of law, has wandered far from the moral centre of gravity—principle.
-She knew not that we do not always stand guiltless in the forum of our
-own conscience, though no other living being dare censure us, even in
-his inmost mind. The world may judge a man for what he does and dares;
-he alone, for what he does _not fear_. Ella was precisely in that
-unfortunate state of mind, in which one knows just too much or too
-little; in which a certain degree of knowledge necessarily requires more
-to prevent its running astray. There is a degree of pride which renders
-one ridiculous, contemptible; a greater degree checks its
-manifestation—governs it. One is vanity; the other despises vanity.
-Such a relation did Ella’s science bear to true philosophy as vanity
-does to pride;—_and she played with it_. One must, one will destroy the
-other. Had her uncle known her infatuation, one word would have
-dispelled every shadow of it.
-
-Oftentimes the college friends would turn their conversation to days
-long past, to reminiscences of their sojourn in Italy. The lore of
-classic and romantic associations of that wonderful country; the graphic
-illustrations of life, and scenes, and elegance, and delights, in that
-delicious clime, enchanted their young listener. Dissertations on the
-political changes there enacting; surmises of changes impending,
-necessarily drew forth a detail of social, historic and scenic minutiæ,
-that expanded her young mind to poetic conceptions; distance lent its
-enchantment to the view, and her rich fancy glowed with the beauty of
-its imaginings. A longing, secret and subtle at first, then craving and
-irrepressible, to taste the sweets of forbidden fruit, took possession
-of her. She was betrothed at that time; she knew that with Roderick she
-could not enjoy those pleasures; she ought and did know that this
-longing would breed discontent;—hence the subtle manner of its entering
-on possession of her heart. Long she repelled it; principle forbade it;
-her reasonings were very nice; and lax as she may have become
-speculatively, she nourished a high-minded honor that would have done
-credit to any child of Adam. Soon she thought it no harm to enjoy the
-victory she had, with so great an effort, gained over herself;
-frequently she did so. Then her sophistry came to the attack; she might
-have regrets in secret, she thought, and they might not be at all
-detrimental to her husband’s happiness; hers would be the only loss, the
-only pain, if pain there were;—and she let her longing take its way.
-Still, she loved her betrothed as much as ever, none the less on that
-account; it is true she became a shade more thoughtful, not quite so
-light-hearted as she was, but she did not notice any change. If her
-heart lost any of its feeling, her harp did not. She took it more
-rarely; her touch was bolder, and still more delicate; a beautiful
-originality undulated more in her modulations, and she played more
-without the words than she ever did before. Her spirit was more
-self-dependent. There was something of the wild energy of insidious
-despair.
-
-About this time the younger Reisach was summoned from England to attend
-his father, who was very ill. Soon the good old count died, and his heir
-entered upon the title and estates, in a manner so becoming and
-consistent with filial affliction, that every one said the young count
-was quite equal to the old one. The rougher field sports he had been
-accustomed to in England were now abandoned, and he lent his mind to the
-more quiet and refined German tastes. Study, poetry, music, painting,
-sculpture, divided his attention; he aimed at conciliating and winning
-all, the little as well as the great, and no undue ostentation had place
-in the details of his establishment. Regular and attentive at church, he
-gained the confidence and esteem of pastor as well as flock. Refined and
-delicate in his speech, no virtuous peasant-girl shrunk from his
-attention whenever he thought proper to bestow it. To the _reunions_ at
-the mansion the Curé had a standing invitation; and in return, the young
-nobleman strolled out upon many a welcome call at the parsonage. It
-would be harsh, it would be unjust, to say that Count Frederick
-commenced his attentions there with any deliberate design of wrong.
-Ella’s harp and voice were frequently brought into request for his
-passing entertainment, and he was not sparing of his eulogiums upon
-them. He soon began to experience deeper and more lasting sensations
-than the momentary pleasure she intended; no one could do otherwise. In
-his presence Ella conversed little, but that little was full of
-refinement, of thought and taste. He felt it difficult to smother his
-feelings or restrain them; and although he strictly maintained the
-distinction in their conditions, in his intercourse with her, and knew
-that a violent death must await all his more tender sentiments toward
-her, still he was unwilling to deprive himself of the pleasure he
-enjoyed in her presence. He was deeply in love with her, and he knew it;
-yet supposed that, like many other impressions he had experienced, it
-would soon pass away, that he might as well enjoy it whilst it
-lasted;—no one would ever be the wiser in the end.
-
-It was before, and about this time, that Roderick and Ella were
-accustomed to spend their hours, and almost days together, at the bower.
-She had grown into womanhood, had entered into her twentieth year; and
-it was on her last birth-day, that she and Roderick had knelt before her
-uncle, to receive his blessing on their betrothal. Roderick had finished
-his course in the academy, and had already acquired his quota, both of
-fame and money, in painting. Ella sincerely loved him; and despite the
-admiration she felt for the young count, would have been supremely happy
-could she have been promised the realization of her imaginary enjoyments
-by his side. She loved him more when in his presence than when away.
-Absence threw no enchantment around him; it was in the sunshine of his
-tenderness and devotion that she felt the full glow of her affection for
-him; at other times she would feel the chilly mingling of her regrets.
-Had they been married then, they would have been very happy.
-
-I said, Count Frederick deemed his love for Ella to be harmless, and
-that he felt no scruples in giving full play to it. It was only when, in
-his frequent rides, he caught a glimpse of the lovers enjoying their
-honest happiness under their own vine and fig-tree, as one might say,
-that the demon of envy, then of jealousy, took possession of him. There
-are few who can look unmoved on the unalloyed happiness of others, nor
-feel one pang of envy; that can see the appropriation by another of a
-secretly-coveted object, even an object one has no right or title to, or
-expectation of, and feel no sting of jealousy. Thus was it with Count
-Frederick: from the window of a mansion he frequently visited in
-Heidelberg, he could look right up to the bower. In the recess of that
-window he frequently sat; and with glass in hand, following with his eye
-every movement of the doomed pair, he conjured up a host of demons to
-torment him. He knew that her faith was given to another; he was aware
-and resolved that he could not marry her; yet, the long and constant
-dwelling of his thoughts upon her, the enlistment of his feelings and
-affections for her, seemed, in his disordered mind, to invest him with
-an indefinable title; he felt the outrage done to it, and casting full
-rein to both anger and passion, vowed to wreak his vengeance on what he
-thenceforward dreamed to be his mistress, and her lover.
-
-Alone, and in secret, did he plot his plans to circumvent them. Lost now
-to every feeling of shame and honor, he repelled no scheme, however
-base, that presented itself; and though the better and more manly
-exercise of his faculties drooped and withered under his scorching
-passion, a deeper, deadlier cunning than he ever knew before, sweltered
-and forged unceasingly the most crafty implements for his hellish
-purpose. He would trust not an iota to the assistance of other hands,
-but assumed the whole burden of contriving and executing upon himself.
-Not a breath did he breathe of his infamous design to human ears. His
-demeanor in public possessed all the semblance of urbanity and good
-feeling that he once felt; but his interior Vulcan reposed not from his
-craft. Every piece of information that he could unsuspectingly acquire
-concerning either poor Roderick or Ella, he stored up and revolved in
-his aristocratic mind, digesting it with his moral venom, as a viper
-would revolve and masticate with poison its loath-some morsel. He
-learned from many sources, partially from herself, the particulars of
-Ella’s history, as far as was known; and contrasting several portions
-with certain circumstances that had fallen under his observation when in
-England, was astonished at the result of his machinations, which now
-doubled upon himself, to involve him too in their fatal entanglement.
-Thus far he had stood apart, aloof, as it were, upon a height above his
-contemplated victims. His baser passions had thrown aside the drapery of
-virtue and honor which once veiled the lovely woman from the gaze of
-rude thought, and he could look down upon her very graces as an object
-of his intended prey; but when the artful interlocking of his web and
-woof turned up to his astonished eyes, in gathered forms, the whole and
-real picture of his contemplated deed; when his study brought to light
-the astounding fact that Ella could claim close kindred with the
-proudest titles of the British peerage, his craven spirit of profligacy
-slunk away, for the time awed, but not quelled, by the air of reverence,
-and veneration that breathed upon it. At its return, elevated, softened,
-warmed, but not purified, by its admixture of romance, he felt his
-sternest anger giving way, his haughtiest pride tottering, his very soul
-melting into admiration and love; he reeled from his position aloof, and
-writhed a whole burnt offering among the other victims to his passion.
-His subtle ingenuity soon brought to the crucible the extraordinary
-change in his sentiments toward the unconscious girl, and the analysis
-did not dispel the new charm that enveloped her. He saw it was perfectly
-natural, and the only fruit of his discovery was a resolution to bring
-the charm to operate upon her own mind—it would open the avenue to a
-secret discontent with her present position, unfold a vast and
-snare-beset field to the vagaries of a romantic imagination, and bring
-her feelings to a sympathetic appreciation of the fellowship of caste
-that existed between her and himself.
-
-Full of this dark resolve, Count Frederick went forth alone one
-afternoon. He had designedly employed the unsuspecting Roderick to
-restore some old paintings that had accumulated the dust of ages. They
-were in a studio in town. There Roderick had labored busily all the day,
-and when evening drew near he was still detained by some management of
-the count, in order to give his lordship the opportunity for his coveted
-interview with Ella. He had learned at what hour she would probably be
-at the appointed rendezvous, and timed his evening excursion
-accordingly. It was a beautiful afternoon in April. From the castle
-heights, the sun was seen slowly creeping down the skies of France, and
-the changing tints of the glittering clouds, were gorgeously reflected
-by the distant waters of the Rhine, and the intermediate mirrors of the
-Neckar. Villages, hamlets, cottages, spread over the plain, rolled their
-black smoke in heavy volumes against the green mountains, about whose
-feet the lights and shadows already had begun to sketch fantastic
-tableaux. How naturally did the words of the Mantuan poet’s pastoral
-seem to spring to Count Frederick’s lips, as he stood within a few paces
-of the bower, gazing abroad upon the scene, observed by the startled
-inmate, and feigning not to observe again. Ella understood perfectly
-well the words of the text, and as they were feelingly and eloquently
-poured forth, as though spontaneously, by the handsome youth, as he
-threw himself upon the turf, lost her surprise in the appropriate beauty
-of the poet’s effusion—
-
- Hic tamen hac mecum poteris requiescere nocte,
- Frondes super virides; sunt nobis mitia poma,
- Castaneæque molles, et pressi copia lactis.
- Et jam summa procul villarum culmina fumant,
- Majoresque codunt altis de montibus umbrae.
-
-The last two lines he rapturously repeated several times, then turning
-his eyes, as though perchance toward the bower, he hastily arose, and in
-a moment stood blandly before Ella, apologizing for his intrusion, and
-in the same breath requesting the favor of one of her pastoral songs.
-She challenged him for a repetition of the verses, and he uttered them
-in so off-hand, theatrical a way, that they both burst into a laugh. The
-ice was broken. Never before had he so far descended from his dignity in
-her presence. There and alone with him, she felt the charm of this
-novelty, and bandied words with him willingly, for she supposed that
-Roderick would soon come, and she thought it would be fine to pique his
-jealousy a little, only to reward it the better afterward with the
-sweetness of perfect tranquillity. He gradually drew forth from her own
-lips what little she knew of her father’s history and family, and
-artfully beguiled away the key to her enjoyments and her regrets. He had
-been intimate, very intimate, he told her, with a nobleman in England,
-whom he now knew must be her uncle. The identity of her father’s
-history, even to his fall in a duel, with that of a brother of Lord B.;
-the same name, even a perceptible resemblance of Ella to him, rendered
-his assurance doubly sure. Then followed many particulars which
-completely set Ella’s willing mind at rest in regard to the nobility of
-her parentage.
-
-So far, all was well. As he anticipated, the disclosure was to her
-astounding and pleasing at the same time. The shadows of incredulity
-that for a moment hovered before the citadel of her happiness, flitted
-away before the march of pleasurable emotions. Her first feelings were
-those of gratitude, and in the liveliness of her satisfaction, as he
-poured into her ears the minuter details of her family history, she
-could have smiled almost any thing, looked almost any reward for him who
-bore her the welcome tidings. She divined the emotion that quivered on
-his lip, fathomed the eloquence that sparkled in his eye, suffusing his
-whole face with its light, and trembled, trembled like an aspen, with
-momentary terror: but, as his glowing speech expatiated on the
-time-honored and world-worshiped glory and privileges of the _noblesse_,
-the spirit of high-toned chivalry that begot, that chose, that ever
-ornamented the knightly order of Christendom, her terrors flew to the
-winds, and left her trembling frame a play-thing in the frenzied hands
-of wilder discord than her bosom had ever known. She no longer shunned
-his gaze; their eyes met again and again; a shadow, as of a dream,
-passed over her faculties; phantoms of law and duty and religion sprang
-up, to clamor for their rights; hastily she breathed an acquiescence,
-and then spurned them away as phantoms, as disturbers of the serenity of
-her soul. For the first time in all her life she felt the thrill of
-passion; the sorcerer beheld it, and closer and closer did he wind his
-web around them both, until, convulsed by the mighty battery within, he
-leaped from his seat, folded her resistless form in her arms, imprinted
-one passionate kiss upon her lips, and disappeared down the precipice.
-
-When she recovered a little self-possession, her mind soon comprehended
-all; she felt and knew that passion had taken possession of her, and
-that love was gone; but never for a moment did she advert to any fault
-of her own. If conscience arose, she hastily repressed it, and despite
-what she inmostly _felt_, declared in her own mind that she could not
-see, measuring by laws of right and possession, wherein she had
-transgressed. Then stepped in pride. She transgressed! Oh! that one idea
-condemns the cause. She, who never had sinned, even in thought, against
-womanly decorum! yet, though her face burned with indignation at the
-thought, it was her own unerring conscience that accused, and against
-which she turned in so virtuous a scorn. Poor Ella! the great sin was
-already done. The loose rein she had given to her ideas, had permitted
-the birth, the growth, the _manifestation_ of what she felt,
-consequently the encouragement of Count Frederick’s excited passion.
-What would strict principle have done? Trembled, and crushed the serpent
-in the egg. It had glided in and twined itself around her bosom so
-gently and unconsciously that she scarcely felt its presence; so
-brilliant and changing were its deadly eyes in their repose, so yielding
-its soft and graceful neck, that, trusting to its tameness, she nursed
-its strength and venom there. At once she felt a tightening of the
-coils. Who, but one willfully deceived, would not have felt death! She
-did not; she saw no death, but felt she could not cast her visitant
-aside, felt that she might have to struggle on and bear her burden
-triumphantly along. What harm if no positive evil came of it? It was her
-own burden; might she not bear it if she could? Thus she beguiled her
-better reason; she did not reflect that whosoever loveth danger shall
-perish in it.
-
-The reaction from the state of excitement she had been in, was powerful,
-and she was just recovering from it, when Roderick came and found her at
-the bower, “pensive and melancholy,” as he termed it; and, since they
-could not enjoy the evening together, tenderly and affectionately led
-her home. This was the first night of Roderick’s grief and Ella’s
-unhappiness. One great effort would then have shaken off her enemy
-forever, and restored the serenity of her mind; but she did not see the
-necessity, the obligation; it could be done at any time. Her pillow was
-bedewed with her tears, but she attributed them to the agitation of her
-feelings. All night, that one moment of delirium was prolonged to hours
-in rapturous dreams. She awoke weary and pale. She was not responsible
-for her dreams, she reasoned; probably she was not; but I would not
-answer for the pleasure of them, for whenever her broken slumbers were
-dispelled by consciousness, through the night, she acknowledged the
-unlawfulness of dwelling upon that pleasure then, and she courted sleep
-as a means to enjoyment in irresponsibility. Her harp lay untouched all
-day. Her daylight reveries were but shadows of her midnight dreams; more
-she did not dare. To her uncle’s somewhat anxious inquiries she replied,
-that she had perspired so, all night;—it was true. The next evening was
-quite as charming as the preceding one. There was no reason why she
-should not take her accustomed stroll to the bower; it was her castle,
-as it were; she had built it, and it was her almost daily haunt; she saw
-no obligation to discontinue her visits there; if any one came, it would
-be his intrusion, not hers. Besides, if she did not meet Roderick there,
-he would be hurt, and probably suspect her of growing indifference. Step
-by step had she advanced so far in blinding herself, as to be deceived
-by such a transparency; in the days of her innocence it would have
-shocked her. Her very duty to her betrothed she converted into a pretext
-to betray him. Still, call her not traitress. Like one who begins to
-believe his oft-told lie to be the truth, a penalty for his deceit, she
-more than half trusted her shallow sophistry. No human power now, no
-stand of honor or pride, can save her now; she has let the enemy within
-the citadel to parley, and whilst she prates in whispered, cowering
-tones, of future peace or victory, he quietly possesses himself of every
-avenue and stronghold, and nothing less than power divine can lend the
-least effective aid. Will she ask it? Well would she wish to do so, but
-the mighty effort of instantaneous renunciation (the only condition for
-God’s help) is too great; and with an ungrounded, forlorn, despairing
-hope, she still thinks some impossibility _may_ come to pass, to save
-her soul. She went earlier than usual, and long sat trembling in her
-accustomed seat. When at last Count Frederick appeared, she was not
-surprised; but an unaccountable dread seized her, and she would have
-fled, had he not gently detained her. She stopped; he saw all at a
-glance, he knew every thought that was agitating her mind; he understood
-her sudden impulse, that it was a last effort of expiring virtue, and he
-understood, too, that he possessed the power to overrule it. He knew it
-was an issue of life or death, and that either way, he held the hat in
-his hand. Neither spoke. He stood, holding the unresisting arm, gazed on
-her shrinking form, her imploring eyes, her lips parted in sudden
-terror, upon her every feature yielding in despair to the agony of a
-struggle for her very soul; the loud beating of her heart struck upon
-his ear with unearthly sound; he thought of the affrighted lamb before
-the altar, felt that in his hand gleamed the keen knife his beautiful
-victim shrank from; his eyes drank in her exceeding loveliness, his
-heart melted, and he burst into tears. He sat upon the bench, half
-turned from her, his elbow resting on the trellis, and his face buried
-in his handkerchief, overcome by the storm of his feelings. At this
-moment, the better nature in both, had a strong game. There is something
-fearful to behold when a strong man bends his head to tears. When a
-woman weeps, it is the drops from a fleeting cloud, an April shower, or,
-at times, the ceaseless pouring of a settled rain—a deluge; but there
-is the flash, and the storm, and the fitful blast that groans and yaws,
-and bursts through all control. No woman can pass on and not feel the
-cloak of her human sympathy draw close around her, as if to impel her to
-go forth and pour the unction of her tenderness upon the troubled heart.
-And there Ella stood beside him; one hand lay gently on his quivering
-shoulder, whilst the other pushed back the scattered curls from his
-noble brow. Oh, what a powerful language there is in the human heart,
-without words! In all this interview, since first they met, neither had
-spoken a word. It was a pantomime in real life; yet, what terrible
-converse they had held! Neither had ever, in all their lives, spoken to
-the other one word of love; and such a scene!
-
-“I intended,” said he, at length, as he pressed her hand to his lips; “I
-intended to beg your forgiveness for my extreme rudeness on yesterday. I
-was overcome, beside myself; and now, when I would utter the words of my
-supplication, they stick in my throat. I am tossed like a leaf, before
-you; and here I sit trembling like a child, beneath your touch. I feel
-in my inmost heart the sweetness of your sympathy. I go, and but for the
-treasure of that sweetness my heart would wither in its desolation. I
-dare not speak to you of love, for your troth is another’s. At least, in
-mercy, vouchsafe to me one glimpse of the Elysium denied me!” He folded
-her once more to his heart; indistinctly she heard in spasmodic
-whispers: _life—soul—dearest_—and he was gone. The nobler nature was
-triumphant; and Ella, overcome by his generosity and her now
-unquenchable love, wept long and bitterly. She turned from side to side
-in her loneliness, gazed into the heavens, upon the wide landscape,
-until the tears blinded her. Then she bent her head upon the trellis
-where he had leaned; her dark hair hung in loose locks upon the
-branching vines, and she moaned in very bitterness.
-
-That night she thought of Roderick, and for a moment compared him with
-Count Frederick. What a contrast! His very name, his only inheritance
-from his forefathers, was essentially plebeian, rustic. Ackerman!
-Roderick Ackerman, the husbandman! She had never thought of that before!
-She, the daughter of a noble house, could never bear that name! Her
-dreams were not those of pleasure only, for Roderick stood all night, a
-horrid phantom, between her impatient love and its unlawful object. Next
-morning she did not quiet her mind with the reflection, that she was not
-responsible for her dreams; and her midnight dreams, pleasure and
-displeasure, were her daylight reveries.
-
-Roderick’s society still possessed a singular charm for her. In his
-presence she became more like her former self. She still loved him with
-a calm, settled love, which nothing on earth could ever destroy. When he
-turned his mournful gaze toward her, there was so much of tenderness and
-truth, so much of ill-concealed anxiety and trust, that tears of anguish
-and of pity would gather upon her eyelids, and she would turn her head,
-to brush them away unseen. There was no selfishness in her love for him;
-it was virtuous and sincere, unshaken; yet, in his absence her thoughts
-continually recurred to the all-absorbing passion that possessed her.
-Day after day would she go to the bower, but she found no pretext now,
-in duty to Roderick, for she always returned before it was time for him
-to be there, and he never knew she went. He said to me on the mount,
-when relating this portion of his history—“She never went to the bower
-any more.” Count Frederick did not come again. He secluded himself at
-home more closely than ever—and let us not trespass upon the sanctuary
-of a penitent heart. Poor Ella might have been seen day after day, as
-evening drew near, wandering alone over the hill, watching, with intense
-anxiety, the path which Count Frederick would take in case he _should_
-go out upon his evening walk. A mournful, restless spirit of solitude
-she seemed, ever wending her silent way among the evening shadows, never
-venturing upon the sun-lit green. At last her daring steps would turn
-toward the manor, and she would take its circuit, on her way to the
-bower. Once she passed, muffled and trembling, through the very lawn. O!
-could she have seen herself as others would have seen her, she would
-have sunk into the earth for very shame. How strange—that he who had
-been the ruthless tempter, in heart and mind the fell destroyer, should
-now, whilst retiring in virtuous seclusion, become the tempted! How
-strange, how passing strange—that she, poor victim, should become
-tempter, persecutor! Yet so it was: and such is man.—And such is
-woman—when she falls.
-
-One day, from his chamber window he beheld her retreating form slowly
-disappearing in a little copse near the manor. The whole truth flashed
-like lightning on his mind: that he was not the only tempter; that not
-with him lay the damning guilt he had supposed; that he was sought; that
-she could be gained. The whirlwind of passion came again. The reflection
-that he had too unjustly accused himself, stifled every breath of
-remorse; and he went forth, in heart a demon, worse than ever. He soon
-gained her, and heaven-attesting vows were exchanged of never-dying
-love. All that was honorable and fair for man to do he promised. Their
-interviews thenceforward were frequent and clandestine; her health was
-failing in a perpetual struggle, and matters were drawing to a crisis.
-She never told her uncle what was done; she feared, she felt in her own
-heart, that it was not honest love. Count Frederick, I said, had
-promised all that was honorable for man to do; that promise he did not
-intend to keep. The more he thought over it, the more fully was he
-persuaded that she was not sanguine of its observance. After a lengthy
-consideration his plot was laid, and he appointed a time with Ella for
-an interview at the bower. It was Roderick’s eventful evening, the one
-he alluded to when he said: “I could not resist a moment’s visit to the
-bower, for, since pleasure there seemed henceforth to be forbidden fruit
-to me, I longed for a moment, even of its pain.” They were both punctual
-to the appointment. Count Frederick was paler than usual; she noticed
-his agitation, and he, to cover it, took out his Virgil and read her
-several beautiful passages. He turned to the Æneiad, and wrought upon
-her mind and her sympathies with the loves and sorrows, the struggles
-and the fall, of the queenly Dido. She caught the incendium, and as he
-repeated over and over, with increasing gusto, the more inflammatory
-passages, in the words of the poet, like Dido herself she sat
-“_pendesque iterum narrantis ab ore_.” At last, as he closed the book,
-he gazed intently on her, trembling with the very burden of his task. He
-took her hand; she smiled.
-
-“Ella,” said he, “dost thou love me?”
-
-She took the book, and marked a passage with her pencil. He read:
-
- “Est mollis flamma medullas,
- Interea et tacitum vivit sub pectore vulnus.”
-
-The glow of her features attested the truth. He continued:
-
-“Wouldst thou be happy to wander the wide world over by my side, to
-revel in the gayeties of Paris, to stand amid the awful ruins of Athens
-and Palmyra, to tread the hallowed spots of Palestine, and bask in the
-sunny skies of Italy?”
-
-“With thee and honor, anywhere.”
-
-“Ella, thou hast a picture; let me see it? Who gave it thee?”
-
-“My mother.”
-
-“When?—dost thou remember?”
-
-“Yes, when I was a tiny child. She gave it in my hands and said it was
-all I had from my dear father but his name.”
-
-“Thou hast his name. Dost thou know, Ella, who this is?”
-
-“I never knew.”
-
-“I know. I have seen her: she is living yet, and bears but a slight
-resemblance now to this young face.”
-
-“Tell me of her; is she my father’s sister?”
-
-“No; but wouldst thou know indeed?”
-
-“Tell me.”
-
-“Listen then—thy father’s wife.”
-
-She sat stupefied; her bosom heaved convulsively.
-
-“Couldst thou marry Roderick, now?”
-
-She started to her feet. “Fiend! I understand you,” she shouted. Her
-eyes flashed, her form dilated, her outstretched arm quivered with the
-strength of her indignation; whilst her melodious voice raised in tones
-of inspiration, rang through the evening stillness with the poet’s
-terrible imprecation:
-
- “Sed mihi vel tellus optem prius ima dehiscat,
- Vel Pater Omnipotens adigat me fulmine ad umbras,
- Pallentes umbras Erebi, noctemque profundam”—
-
-she turned away, and sinking upon one knee, raised her clasped hands and
-streaming eyes—
-
- “Ante pudor quam te violem, aut-tua-jura re-solvam.”
-
-And she fell lifeless upon the ground. A step was heard. The count
-launched himself down the precipice. Roderick came, saw, and flew off on
-the wings of the wind, with a crushed heart and raving brain.
-
-Ella’s first act of returning consciousness was to recognize herself
-reclining in the arms of Count Frederick. The swaying to and fro, the
-heavy lurch, the crackling stones, the dashing tramp, soon brought home
-to her mind the terrible certainty that she had departed from Heidelberg
-forever. How far she was away, whither she was going she knew not: she
-only knew that she was lost beyond redemption. Her body and her mind
-were powerless, paralyzed in utter imbecility: she could not, would not
-will: but as the reality of the world and her existence in it stole on
-her awakening senses, every power of her soul rushed to the view of her
-prostration; her heart struggled in very anguish, her reason staggered
-from side to side in the mazes of a darksome labyrinth; night had
-gathered around, and heavy dews swept through the carriage windows;
-terrors, strange and indefinable, fell like a death chill on her
-sickened soul, and she clung with frenzied grasp to the form beside her.
-Words of love, of courage, of hope, breathed into her ears another life,
-and she abandoned her whole being to the power of its inspiration. Ere
-morning dawned they were far away, and the second nightfall beheld them
-in Cologne.
-
-Before I proceed any further, let me make a little necessary explanation
-concerning Ella’s picture. What Count Frederick said concerning her
-“father’s wife,” he knew to be utterly false. The miniature was that of
-a lady Mr. Corbyn had been affianced to in England, and whom he forsook
-for another, more to his liking. As the engagement had become notorious,
-and he felt the extent of the injury he was indicting upon her and her
-family, he retired into as great obscurity as possible, on the
-continent, and married Katrina. Ere many years he was discovered in his
-retreat, and the arrival of the strangers in his village, his fall in a
-duel with a brother of his former betrothed, were consequent upon that
-discovery. Ella’s birth was honorable as birth could be. The mystery
-which hung about the picture had prepared her mind to become the easy
-dupe of a well-told lie.
-
-Many days Ella lay consuming beneath the fire of a raging fever, whilst
-a sad and anxious watcher, night and day, moved ever silently about the
-darkened chamber. This was the most trying period of Count Frederick’s
-life. Ever and anon the low murmuring of troubled dreams would fall like
-heavy curses on his cowering heart; and as he would gently move aside
-the curtains and bend his ear to feel the parching breath, words fraught
-with the odor of youthful innocence would ascend. Now the light of
-childhood’s golden hours would beam softly on her mind, and smiles of
-love and tenderness and purity would gently play about her mouth,
-dimpling her beautiful features with holy pleasure as she would whisper:
-“Yes, dear mother, Ella knows, listen—‘God keep little Ella from all
-sin.’” Then there would be some uneasy motion, some momentary
-contortion, as from a sudden pang, and then a low, trembling sigh,
-scarce rising with its burden of despair. O, how he shook in very agony!
-Then all was still. Her degradation, though she was unconscious of its
-existence, seemed, like an unknown and unfelt medicinal application, to
-extend, by some inappreciable virtue of its own, its subtle influence
-unceasingly through the system. Soon, names most familiar in her joyous
-girlhood, brief snatches of song or hymn that none but ecstatic moods of
-happiness or devotion ever called forth from her stores of melody; even
-the name of Roderick, accompanied with a tender relaxation and softened
-whisper, rose up like threatening spectres in Count Frederick’s night of
-mental darkness. He gazed and gazed on her pallid loveliness, watched
-every quiver of her parted lips, and could have rejoiced in the life of
-their occasional smile or tranquillity; but, that the hidden, lightless
-eyes, and the ever “chill, changeless brow”—for it never changed in all
-her emotions—appalled with the coldness of some fearful death: and he
-turned away. He would have prayed, if he could, for that poor being, but
-his heart was void; it was his brain that ached, for he knew that all
-that melancholy ruins had fallen from a sublime structure by his fell
-utterance of a lie.
-
-It behooves me now to hasten this lengthy history to a close. As soon as
-possible our wanderers hastened off to Paris, to restore their sunken
-spirits amid the pleasures and gayeties of the _beau monde_. There it
-was I saw them, as they took their evening airing along the Champs
-Elysées. They had been there several months, and poor Ella’s looks and
-manner both told the inefficiency of worldly pleasure, to lighten the
-heavy burden of a guilty soul. The gayety of France was like the smart
-of sparkling wine on an ulcerated sore, and away they wandered into
-distant lands. The still, death-like aspect of the Grecian shores seemed
-like the languor of cold sympathy with her own silent sorrow; and as the
-startling semblance rose up before her, and she viewed in every phase
-and feature that all that was elevating and life-giving was passed away,
-she shuddered at her own kindred desolation. She would venture upon the
-rocky cliffs and gaze into the troubled sea, where—as now in her own
-mind—the lights of Heaven were pictured in flitting and uncertain
-forms; she would look abroad upon the unspotted blue, where not a coming
-or departing sail broke the distinct horizon, and she would reflect how
-the powers of her soul were mouldered away, and brought no more back to
-her enjoyment the riches and the fruits of other climes, the luxuries
-from nature’s and religion’s overflowing bounty. Then she would wander
-upon the lonely strand, and the splashing of the journeyed waters, whose
-tempest roar was spent in low, last murmurs at her feet, reëchoed the
-wild moanings of a dying spirit. Oh! how she sat and cried. Had her
-tears been those of repentance and return, they would have hallowed for
-ever a spot that was only classic, and her groans would have lifted the
-vault of Heaven; but the bitter drops, wrung by degradation and despair,
-were swept away by the encroaching wavelets—and the sighs were borne
-afar by the winds, to swell that everlasting _ROMOR_ of anguish that
-never reaches God.
-
-In the Roman Colosseum, the blood-stained arena of the martyrs seemed to
-burn her very feet, and she looked not upon a stone, nor an herb, in
-that sanctuary of Christendom but returned a look of withering reproach,
-as if by express command of Heaven. There was no peace. Like Jonah, had
-she tried to flee from the wrath of God, and find ease and security in
-sin; and now that she found it not, she longed for death—but dared not
-court it—as the oblivion of all her being.
-
-Again our fugitives sought the resources of Paris. Ella was fast failing
-in health, and both knew that she must soon die. She possessed no longer
-any gayety, and Count Frederick secretly rejoiced in her decline, as the
-only means of ridding himself of a burden now become almost
-insupportable. Still, her death would not have occurred without
-inflicting upon him one severe pang; for her intellect, increasing in
-beauty and brilliancy as the body faded, held him in a spell that seemed
-to involve his very life. A short time after their arrival in Paris, the
-revolution of February put all Europe in a commotion. It was a God-send
-to Count Frederick, for a field now opened to him for the employment of
-his faculties; something at last, if not repose, at least a breathing
-spell to ease him in his tired struggle with a sleepless, unflagging
-remorse. He plunged into the under-revolutionary current, heedless of
-whence it flowed or where it came to light. All manner of impure
-ultraïsm gathering in its way, formed the nuclei of innumerable vortices
-that eddied and whirled at every turn of his onward progress, hurling
-him along with strange fits of semi-delirium, until the following June,
-when the whole concentrated power bubbled in red volumes to the surface,
-and the streets of Paris ran with human blood. Count Frederick became a
-willing tool in crafty hands, and shrank not from offices of most
-imminent danger. All night and all day did he lend his wealth, his
-influence and his labor to the construction of barricades for the
-defense of the populace: he became a leading spirit, and on several
-occasions his sword was foremost in the fray. His attire, his repose,
-his ordinary food, all was forgotten. Once he stood tired and worn,
-within a new barricade not far from the barrière St. Martin; his hat and
-coat were thrown aside, his dress all torn and begrimed with sweat and
-dirt; in one hand he held a naked sword, whilst the other grasped the
-stock of a pistol that was still unmoved from his leathern belt. Upon
-this arm hung poor Ella, still clinging through toil and danger to him
-she could not but love. Her bonnet was thrown aside; a soiled cambric
-handkerchief tied beneath the chin, had kept in check her unbound hair,
-but it was now in places loose and disheveled; one dark lock swung
-around her neck, and as it reposed upon her bosom, the curled, purple
-extremity appeared in fearful contrast with the snowy field it lay upon.
-Woman to the last, she bore upon her person many a mark of blood, and
-many dying lips within the last few hours, had breathed a blessing upon
-the unknown and beautiful angel of mercy that bent above them. Upon a
-stove, that had been carried into the middle of the street, stood a
-popular demagogue, gesticulating wildly, and thundering anathemas
-against the provisional government, that were horrible for ears to
-listen to; whilst around him stood some hundreds of the armed and
-excited populace, venting, at almost every gesture of the frantic
-orator, vows of eternal vengeance on what they deemed the recreant
-soldiery. Some one had just arrived to announce that the military, in
-force, were marching upon them. The shadow of the hand of death seemed
-already to rest upon the multitude, and not an eye was there that did
-not dwell upon eternity. Soon the military, in serried ranks and with
-bristling bayonets, wheeled into view far down the street, and then
-commenced the steady advance upon the barricade. The orator grew wilder
-and wilder, and every heart in that vast multitude quivered in awful
-expectation. The street was cleared, not a soul moved upon the
-side-walks; and the measured tread of the soldiers, with now and then a
-groan or shriek from out some chamber, was all that broke the silence as
-they marched along. Soon the note of death sounded in the rear, then the
-noise of changing muskets, at the word of command—and immediately was
-heard from out the barricade, trembling in solemn melody, low sounds as
-of some unearthly dirge; and the words, “_Mourir pour la patrie_”—arose
-with many a mingled yell. With the gallop of the words—“_c’est la mort
-la plus belle_,” all rushed to action, and when the first great burst of
-the murderous fire was past, the last words of the death-song still rang
-o’er piles of bleeding men.
-
-The attack on this barricade was long and bloody. At the second
-discharge, Count Frederick rolled from the mound of curb-stones upon
-which he had leaped to replace a fallen red-republican ensign, and was
-borne into a neighboring house; there all assistance ceased. As he lay
-bleeding upon the floor, in a state of almost insensibility, Ella knelt
-beside him, striving to staunch with her handkerchief, her dress, her
-hair, the exhaustless spring of blood that welled up from a bullet wound
-in his chest. Not a word escaped her lips, not a tear fell from her eye,
-but she bent all the faculties of her mind to the faithful
-accomplishment of her stupendous task. His breathing became weak and
-weaker; she heeded it not. The veil of eternity was settling upon him,
-and the dim vision of mortality was being illumined under its shadow;
-the heinousness of his damning crime shone out in perfect distinctness;
-but one reparation, he thought, and that a slight one, remained; but how
-could he ever summon courage to speak it there? She seemed to him, in
-truth, an angel, as he turned his glazing eyes toward her; she would not
-yield to despair. He made the sacrifice; collected all his strength of
-body and of mind, and told to the wretched girl the story of his
-deception. It fell upon her like a thunderbolt. For the first time she
-became aware of the stupendous depth of her fall. Her only stay, her
-only consolation, her only anchor of future hope, upon her troubled sea,
-had rested on the excuse of natal degradation: now that was taken away.
-She sunk upon the floor; but in a moment, with frantic energy she
-bounded to her feet, and seizing the flag-staff from the dying hand,
-rushed into the street. The combat still raged; leaping over the dead
-and dying, with a bound she reached the breast-work.
-
-The French journals, in describing the assault upon, and the carrying of
-this barricade, illustrated the enthusiastic patriotism of the
-insurgents, with the story of a young and beautiful girl, who, in the
-hottest of the fight, leaped upon the ramparts, flag in hand, and waving
-it gallantly above her head, shouting—_liberté_—fell, pierced by a
-hundred bullets, outside the barricade. It was Ella Corbyn.
-
- * * * * *
-
-
-
-
- SONG OF THE SPIRIT OF THE NORTH.
-
-
- BY WILLIAM ALBERT SUTLIFFE.
-
-
- Midnight was brooding o’er the Arctic highlands
- Midnight, the dim, and faint, and strangely cold;
- When on an iceberg, ’mid the icy islands,
- Sat the chill Northern Spirit, weird, and cold.
- Her floating tresses hung,
- Wailing unto the blast;
- Her vapory vestment swung
- As the wind hurried past:
- And ever and anon she moaned, and sung,
- With tremulous voice, such as the tempest leaf
- In piny woods, and then again she flung
- Her slender fingers o’er a harp, and wept,
- And wailed unearthly music, as when grieves
- And sings a fallen angel, then it slept
- A moment in the rude arms of the blast—
- The snowy-footed madly rushing past—
- And then sprung up again, as when o’erleap
- Rich showers of harmony Heaven’s rampart steep,
- And, star-like, from on high
- Far-trailing down the sky,
- Strike mortals mad, or wild:
- So the pale Boreal Child
- Sang to the soul of Naught, that brooded o’er
- Lone semi-annual nights, and days as long,
- An icy ocean, with an icy shore,
- And icy islands, sparsely thrown among
- A yest of icy waves; and all was ice,
- By sempiternal Winter wrought
- To many a quaint device.
-
- And then again, when the cold North-wind kissed
- Her pallid lips, up to the amethyst
- Of the far heaven she raised her spirit eyes,
- Then beat, and wept, while ever grim Surprise
- Wondered that she should weep, and then she played
- A prelude to her harp, then sung, then paused,
- While symphonies filled up the gaps she made,
- And Echo woke applause.
- Wondrous the sadness of her floating strain!
- The icebergs thrilled unto their heart of hearts,
- And Ocean’s breast rose with convulsive starts;
- While from her eyes the tearful-beaded rain
- Froze into gems upon her vapory dress,
- Embroidered loveliness.
-
-O Loneliness, O Nothingness, O Death!
- O Dreariness around me, I must weep!
- Would that my very soul were tears to steep
- The wind with, that, at every breath,
- With weeping, I might spend my soul so fast
- My agony’s last throb would soon be past.
-
-O Desolation, wild, and gaunt, and grim!
- O hopeless absence of all glad and bright!
- O horrid shapes fantastical, what hymn
- Of mine, alas! can tell such shapes aright
- Would ye but strike me mad,
- I should indeed be glad,
- I now can pass the dark hours but in weeping;
- And could my soul but freeze,
- Like the breast of the seas,
- How rapturous would be my silent sleeping.
-
- Thou cold and icy moon,
- Thou dost not pity me!
- Six long months hast thou seen
- My weary soul, each year,
- Since Earth began, nor wept.
- Away, thou’rt hateful now!
- Away, for I am mad!
-
- And Earth, detested orb,
- How long must thou exist?
- Each throb of thy vast pulse
- Strikes keenest agony
- Into this soul of mine.
- If thou hast loveliness,
- It ne’er was shown to me.
- Come, let us die together!
- Hurry thy steeds, O Time!
- Bear us into the dark
- Of that Eternity,
- Whose shadows are so deep
- We cannot pierce them yet.
-
- Ye icebergs, that have seen
- My wildest misery,
- Do ye know sympathy?
- Then melt ye down in tears,
- And in a sea of grief
- Flow round me with sweet sound!
-
- They feel not, know not, aught!
- My misery is full!
- I must unto my bower—
- My bower of chillest ice—
- Would that it were my tomb
- Ye smile on me in scorn,
- Ye that do see my grief!
-
- Then spreading out her wings,
- Toward the extremest North
- She took her liquid way.
- The moon withdrew, and wept;
- The stars died out with grief;
- The icebergs thrilled again
- Unto their icy hearts.
- All things were sad for her,
- Saddened by her wild song.
-
- * * * * *
-
-
-
-
- SONNET.—ART.
-
-
- BY WM. ALEXANDER.
-
-
- Art! what were mankind destitute of thee?
- Religion’s handmaid oft do we thee find,
- As to thy polished car seek’st thou to bind
- True elegance with sweet utility—
- Long, wide, extensive is thy magic sway,
- O’er matter all inanimate and mind,
- E’en savage man thou teachest to be kind,
- And charmest his rude soul with thy harmony;
- Cross seas the ship by thy good guidance goes;
- Fields arable, rich gardens, sacred grove,
- Town, temple, feel the influence of thy love;
- Thy sacred power the mind immortal knows,
- Nor can thy empire, universal, end
- Till Nature’s forces all in sweet subjection bend.
-
- * * * * *
-
-
-
-
- A REPLY TO DWIGHT’S ARTICLE ON MOZART’S DON GIOVANNI.
-
-
-This is the title of a long and prominent article in Graham’s February
-number: the writer is but a wordy plagiarist. He has received many
-rebukes already for his cool appropriation of the ideas of others, but
-Aristabulus Bragg fashion, he still goes on, in the calmest, most
-approved style, perfectly unblushing. A year or eighteen months ago an
-article of his in Sartain’s Magazine was pointed out to us as containing
-some clever thoughts on a very original idea, “the Musical Trinity.” Oh,
-we exclaimed, this is not original, the whole idea is stolen from the
-German; then we turned to Goethe’s correspondence with a child, Bettina
-von Arnheim, and found several passages on the same subject in
-conversations with Beethoven and Schlosser. Some time after we read in
-Saroni’s Musical Times that the editor had also detected the plagiarism
-in this article, and pointed out another author, book and page; saying
-with great good-nature that he would not have noticed it, had Mr. Dwight
-only written his article as clearly and concisely as the original; “but
-to rob an author first and then murder him,” says the editor, “is more
-than we can bear.” The author alluded to by Mr. Saroni, is the German
-Marx, and he tells us that the fourth paragraph in Sartain’s article is
-an almost literal translation of a paragraph in Marx’s
-“_Komposition-shlere_,” second edition, p. 24.
-
-We have waded through this last article of Mr. Dwight’s on Don Giovanni,
-partly from curiosity, partly for amusement. We wanted to see the extent
-to which he would go: and then it amused us to detect the little
-pilfered thoughts, trigged out in the Boston transcendental clothing
-until their parents would have scarcely recognized them.
-
-It opens with quite a flourish, trying to decorate the story and hero as
-the German Hoffman did long ago, but though the whole of the first part
-is a spun-out translation of the German critic’s description, it is so
-mingled with his own crude, half-educated thoughts, as to require some
-little skill in separating Hoffman from Dwight. He has made an attempt
-to improve upon the German, and we can not say we admire the Boston
-imitation. Judge for yourself by the following comparison:
-
-
- DWIGHT.
-
- The true conception of Mozart’s Don Giovanni is that of a
- gentleman, to say the least, and more than that, a man of
- genius: a being naturally full of glorious passion, large
- sympathies and irrepressible energies, noble in mind, in person
- and in fortune; a large, imposing, generous, fascinating
- creature. He is such as we all are—“_only more so_,” to borrow
- an expressive vulgarism. He is a sort of ideal impersonation of
- two qualities or springs of character, raised as it were to the
- highest power projected into supernatural dimensions—which is
- only the poet’s and musician’s way of truly recognizing the
- element of infinity in every passion of the human soul, since
- not one ever finds its perfect satisfaction.
-
-
- HOFFMAN.
-
- Nature had provided for Don Giovanni, one of her dearest
- children, all that could elevate a man above the crowd which is
- condemned to be, to do, and to suffer: she had lavished on him
- the gifts which bid the human nature approximate to the divine.
- She had destined him to shine, to conquer and to rule. She had
- animated with a splendid organization that vigorous and
- accomplished frame: had inspired that breast with a celestial
- spark: had given to him a soul of deep feeling, quick and
- penetrating intelligence.
-
-We think Hoffman’s description of Don Giovanni a little exaggerated, but
-the Boston imitation is what may be called a “free translation,” _very_
-free. All that duality business—“_that ideal impersonation of two
-qualities or springs of character_,” is decidedly an attempt to amplify,
-if not to improve the German criticism, and is in the usual
-moral-defying style of the no-principle school of Harbinger and Phalanx
-writers. In olden times our grand-parents, when they saw any thing
-particularly broad or free in expression or action, were apt to say,
-with a proper shrug of the shoulders, that it was “_very French_.” At
-the present day, when we see any thing questionable in morals or
-opinions we exclaim, “_transcendental, mock German_, and, _very
-Boston;_” and thus we say of this attempt of Mr. Dwight’s to idealize
-the very sensual, commonplace libertine of the opera.
-
-We will now give another comparison.
-
-
- DWIGHT.
-
- Excessive love of pleasure, helped by a rare magnetism of
- character, and provoked by the suppressive moralism of the
- times, have engendered in him a reckless, roving, unsatiable
- appetite, which intrigue excites and disappoints until _the very
- passion in which so many souls are first taught the feeling of
- the infinite_ becomes a fiend in his breast, and drives him to a
- devilish love of power that exults over woman’s ruin, or rather,
- that does not mind how many hearts and homes fall victims to his
- unqualified assertion of the every where rejected and snubbed
- faith in Passion.
-
-
- HOFFMAN.
-
- In truth, there is nothing on earth which more elevates a man in
- his own opinion than love, that love whose vast and conquering
- influence gives light to the heart, and gives it at once
- happiness and confusion. Can we be surprised if, when Don Juan
- hoped to appease by love the passions which rent his breast,
- that the devil spread a net for him? It was he who inspired Don
- Juan with the thought that by love and the society of woman we
- may accomplish on earth _those celestial promises which we bear
- written in the deepest recesses of our hearts, that intense
- desire which from our earliest days brings us most closely to
- heaven_.
-
-The principal difference Mr. Dwight makes in his rendering of this
-passage of Hoffman’s is, that where the German, in a very old-fashioned
-manner, attributes Don Juan’s wickedness to the influence of the Spirit
-of Evil, Mr. Dwight, by some slight of hand, metamorphoses the Passion
-of Love into an evil demon, and then gives a _fling_, as he would
-express it, at the religious discipline of the times to which he applies
-the very lucid epithet, “_suppressive moralism_.” We wish we had some of
-that “_suppressive moralism_” at the present day to exercise a little
-wholesome discipline over the authors of this
-
-
- _Phalanx Socialist Literature_.
-
-After this piece of borrowing and altering from Hoffman, the writer
-talks a great deal about “_the old theme and under-current of Opera—the
-Body and the Soul—the liberty of Passion in conflict with the Law
-intensely narrowed down by social custom from God’s great law of
-universal harmony_,” and such like rubbish, and then informs us in a
-note, with his usual precision, by way of illustrating this
-“_under-current_” of “_Body and Soul_” in “_Old Opera theme_,” that,
-strange to say, the first Opera _he_ reads of, and which was produced at
-Rome in 1600, bore the name of “_Rappresentatione di Anima e di Corpo!_”
-
-Now if this were so, it is puzzling to know what it would have to do
-with all his talk about “_the under-current of Body and Soul_” in Don
-Giovanni: but it is not true. The first Opera on record is _Euridice_,
-the libretto composed by the poet Rinuccini, the music by the composer
-Peri. It was presented, as he says, in 1600, but not at Rome—at
-Florence, on the occasion of the marriage of Mary di Medici with Henri
-Quatre of France.
-
-In 1600, Emilio del Cavalieri, of Rome, brought out an _Oratorio_, which
-was sung in a church in that city, which bore the title “_Dell Anima e
-di Corpo_;” and the invention of _Recitative_ dates from these two
-compositions—the opera _Euridice_ of Peri, and the _Sacred Oratorio_ of
-Cavalieri. But it answered his purpose to imagine this the other way,
-and with his usual want of accuracy he applied it—or he was ignorant,
-and with true transcendental presumption, took it for granted no one
-knew any more than he did.
-
-Such reviews as this we now write of would be scarcely worth noticing,
-if it were not for the fact, that they are accepted by the uninstructed,
-for real _bona fide_ musical criticisms, founded on actual knowledge.
-One might have expected that Mr. Saroni’s rebuking exposure of his
-Musical Trinity Article, would have startled the author into something
-like modesty; and when one sees how reckless he is, it makes one wish
-that Mr. Saroni would carry his threat into execution, and publish those
-“certain articles” on Mozart’s Don Giovanni, which bear such a
-remarkable similarity to Mr. Dwight’s lectures.
-
-M. Bombert says, in his “Life of Mozart,” when speaking of this Opera of
-Don Giovanni—
-
-“He (Mozart) shines in the awful accompaniment to the reply of the
-statue—a composition perfectly free from all inflation or bombast—it
-is _the style of Shakspeare in music_.”
-
-Now for Mr. Dwight’s patch-work—straightway he snatches up this idea of
-M. Bombert, and makes use of it thus:
-
-“The splendid sinner’s end is rather melo-dramatic in the Opera, and yet
-there is a poetic and moral truth in it—and _the spectre of the
-commendatore is a creation fully up to Shakspeare_.”
-
-This is literary murder as well as literary theft. Now any one who knows
-any thing of this Opera will see that the “_creation of the
-commendatore_” has nothing remarkable in it, but the _Orchestral
-Accompaniment_ is one of the grandest things ever composed. Mozart cared
-very little for the stage part of the affair; and this is proved by the
-finest music in this Opera being given to the Orchestra. We have
-heard—we cannot give the authority—but we have read somewhere, that a
-contemporary critic said that Mozart had put his statue in the
-Orchestra, and left only the pedestal on the stage—and this is true.
-
-Mr. Dwight gives such an exaggerated, spun-out account of this famous
-Opera, endeavoring at the same time to gloss over the gross, vulgar,
-immorality of the plot, with all that confused mysticism peculiar to
-this Harbinger and Phalanx style of composition, that we will sketch a
-short matter-of-fact outline of it. Mr. Dwight, with the usual insane
-transcendental desire to apply an epithet, and make a speech, says, in a
-short sentence, which he thinks very comprehensive, that it “_is an old
-middle age Catholic story_;” making a sort of defense for the shocking
-immoralities in it, by accusing, impliedly, the strict discipline of the
-church for the libertine hero’s licentiousness, to whom he applies
-another string of expletives. In the opening, Mr. Dwight calls him “_a
-large, imposing, generous, fascinating creature_.” Now he has him “_an
-elegant, full-blooded, rich, accomplished, and seductive gallant_.” A
-sort of “_a love of a man_” according to Mr. Dwight’s ideas.
-
-The subject of the story of Don Giovanni was a favorite one in the 17th
-century—“_the middle age Catholic times!_” Mr. Dwight talks of, in his
-off-hand sentence characterizing the story, was a little earlier than
-that, we think, a trifle of two or three hundred years or so—but let
-that pass. French, Italian, and Spanish writers all used it. Moliere
-wrote a famous play on it, “_Festin de Pierre_,” and from Moliere’s play
-Da Ponte prepared his libretto.
-
-The story is a decided failure; and a great deal of time, and paper, and
-manufactured sentiment have been wasted in endeavoring to excuse and
-even to discover hidden philosophy and a good moral in it. Mr. Dwight is
-not the first one at this piece of business. If the wish is to make
-operatic music elevate and refine the public taste, by contributing to
-the moral purity of our people, composers should not select immoral and
-wicked plots; and no matter how beautiful the music may be, no audience
-should tolerate such a degrading story as Don Giovanni. It is full of
-all sorts of unnatural and disgusting scenes. The opening is very fine,
-and leads one to expect something tragic and grand.
-
-Don Giovanni, a wicked, reckless libertine, has entered at midnight the
-house of an old military officer, and is seen at the rising of the
-curtain rushing out of the door, followed by the beautiful daughter of
-the commander, who he had intended to add to the list of his victims. A
-beautiful, rapid duet ensues between this daughter, Donna Anna, and Don
-Giovanni, she endeavoring to discover the bold ravisher. During this,
-her old father comes out, sword in hand—a combat ensues—Don Giovanni
-kills the old officer, and escapes. Then follows a beautiful _scena_,
-one of the gems of the Opera, between Donna Anna and her lover, Ottavio.
-She expresses her grief in heart-rending notes, and with frantic
-earnestness calls on her lover to avenge the murder. All this promises
-well, and one would imagine from so grand a commencement, something
-magnificently tragic was surely to follow. But the whole of the middle
-part of the Opera is flat and insipid—we are speaking now only of the
-story—filled with disgusting scenes of Don Giovanni’s gallantries. With
-a hard and sensual heart, he betrays alike the high and the low—the
-lady and the maid; he stains the palace and pollutes the peasant’s cot
-with his wanton treachery and crimes. He goes to a village festival, and
-selects for another victim, a poor village girl, a bride—Zerlina. This
-character was one of Madam Malibran’s famous parts, as Donna Anna was of
-Sontag’s. Zerlina, though properly the second Donna’s character,
-occupies more room in the Opera than the first soprano, Donna Anna. The
-famous duet, “_La ci darem la mano_,” is sung by Don Giovanni and her;
-and her little _coquetries_ with the libertine lord, and seductive
-coaxing scenes with her peasant bridegroom, occupy a large portion of
-the middle part of the Opera.
-
-A Donna Elvira, a discarded wife or mistress it seems to matter little
-which—of Don Giovanni comes in also. A trying scene ensues between her
-and Leperello—the impudent, buffoon valet of Don Giovanni—the _buffo_
-character of the opera, during which, he tells her of his master’s
-conquests, while the poor Elvira has to stand mute, and listen to his
-long, comic piece; which—if she is not a better actress than is
-generally cast in a third-rate character—makes it very absurd in
-representation.
-
-After the grand opening scene of the first Act, Donna Anna and her lover
-Ottavio dwindle down into insignificance. All their frantic declarations
-of revenge end in nothing, and they content themselves with following
-the licentious nobleman about in masquerade; once in a while picking him
-up in the streets, unmasking, and entertaining themselves in berating
-him. They sing a beautiful trio with Elvira, just before the banquet
-scene; which is about the only good and useful thing they do in the
-Opera. For it serves a double purpose—as an English critic
-suggests—besides pleasing the audience, it gives time to have the stage
-prepared for the banquet-scene.
-
-Don Giovanni, after flirting with and seducing fine ladies and humble
-peasant maidens, at last meets with his punishment; but not at the hands
-of the injured fair ones, or at the more probable ones of the outraged
-lovers; that would be too reasonable for this most unnatural story, but
-the grave must yield up its dead, and the infernal regions disclose
-their horrible secrets. At midnight, again he enters upon the stage—the
-scene represents a square, containing a marble monument, erected by
-Donna Anna to the memory of her murdered father. Leporello is with him,
-frightened to death at the sight of the grave by moonlight, and he
-declares to his reckless master that the statue moves its head. The bold
-libertine scoffs at the valet’s cowardice, and by way of bravado,
-invites the marble statue to sup with him. To his amazement the Statue
-answers “Yes,” “_Si_,” and here is that beautiful passage in the _music_
-which M. Bombert considers the Shakspearian style in music—it is the
-_Orchestral Accompaniment_ to the simple _reply_ of the Statue. A little
-startled, Don Giovanni leaves the stage. But in the next scene he
-appears as abandoned as ever. What a capital transcendental critic he
-would have made. He is supping alone, and seems to eat with great
-_goût_. During his solitary banquet the Statue enters, according to the
-engagement. Don Giovanni can scarcely credit his senses; but, bold to
-the last, receives his remarkable guest with great ceremony. The Statue
-tells him he has come on a mission of warning, and that he has yet a
-chance for repentance. Don Giovanni scoffs at the offer, and overcoming
-his awe, takes the extended hand of the Statue. In an instant, he is
-struck with the death-pangs—the Statue disappears—and he dies in a
-vision of endless torments, which is generally represented on the stage
-by a display of fireworks, giving the vulgar idea of the infernal
-regions; a place made for the devil and his angels.
-
-Now it is this shameless, coarse libertine that Mr. Dwight in his
-article, following in the wake of others, strives not only to excuse,
-but to idealize and elevate.
-
-We have done with the story: let us return for a few moments to Mozart’s
-part of this Opera—the music. Off of the stage, in a _salon_ or
-concert-room, the effect of this Opera is most beautiful; for on the
-stage the immoral, vulgar story, low buffoonery and farce-like
-appearance of many of the scenes, are sadly at variance with the
-elevated and almost religious tone of the music, and disgust even a
-hearty admirer, if he is candid enough to admit it.
-
-Let us here take leave of this subject and of Mr. Dwight: begging of him
-in future, if he is not able to be original, to at least copy good
-models of style and morals, and not inflict upon the community his own
-exaggerated, loose-principled, Boston notions. Luckily, however, his
-style is so confused and mystified, that much of the injurious effect is
-lost. We have heard these Boston non-religionists talk, and we know with
-what _goût_ they “_defy the moral_” of any matter, to use Mr. Dwight’s
-own words; then, how can one expect better principles, where such laxity
-of morals are avowed. The closing sentence in this Don Giovanni article
-is a pretty fair specimen of this anti-religious, moral-defying kind of
-literature; indeed, the whole article is—for “_passion life_,” “_innate
-gospel of joy_,” and such English run-mad expressions dance through the
-whole article, enlivened and varied, once in a while, with some of the
-fire-engine vernacular.
-
-Shame! shame upon such literature! Mr. Dwight talks of the “_divine good
-of the senses and the passions_,” and longs for that “_pure and perfect
-state_,” when these grosser parts of our nature “_shall be—not dreaded,
-not suppressed; but regulated, harmonized, made rythmical and safe, and
-more than ever lifesome and spontaneous, by Law as broad and as deep
-themselves_.” A pretty state of affairs we should have in such a
-hereafter as these people long for. All this is entirely foreign to our
-old-fashioned notions of Heaven and a hereafter. It may be the Heaven of
-an Agapedome, or a Woman’s Rights Convention, but it is not the Heaven
-of a Christian. And they will find out, sooner or later, that there is a
-real hereafter—a solemn, and stern judging hereafter; and though they
-may imagine that their transcendental “_Souls, with their capacity for
-joy and harmony, is of that godlike and asbestos quality_,” as to defy
-punishment, punishment will come, and pretty effectual it will be, and
-they will see all this “spiritual asbestos quality”—why not _gutta
-percha_, just as well—of little account, when they are found with lamps
-untrimmed, and talents buried in the earth.
-
- Mount Edgecumb.
-
- * * * * *
-
-
-
-
- THE AUTOGRAPH OF GOD.
-
-
- BY GEORGE W. BUNGAY.
-
-
- The thirsty earth, with lips apart,
- Looked up where rolled an orb of flame
- As though a prayer came from its heart
- For rain to come; and lo! it came.
- The Indian corn, with silken plume,
- And flowers with tiny pitchers filled,
- Send up their praise of sweet perfume,
- For silver drops the clouds distilled.
-
- The modest grass is fresh and green—
- The fountain swells its song again;
- An angel’s radiant wing is seen
- In every cloud that brings us rain.
- There is a rainbow in the sky,
- It spans the arch where tempests trod;
- God wrote it ere the world was dry—
- It is the Autograph of God.
-
- Up where the heavy thunders rolled,
- Where clouds on fire were swept along,
- The sun rides in a car of gold,
- And soaring larks dissolve in song.
- The rills that gush from mountains rude,
- Flow trickling to the verdant base—
- Just like the tears of gratitude
- That often steal adown the face.
-
- Great King of peace, deign now to bless—
- The windows of the sky unbar;
- Shower down the rain of righteousness,
- And wash away the stain of war;
- Though we deserve the reeking rod,
- Smile from thy throne of light on high—
- That we may read the name of God,
- In lines of beauty on the sky.
-
- * * * * *
-
-
-
-
- IF I WERE A SMILE.
-
-
- BY RICHARD COE.
-
-
- If I were a smile, a beautiful smile,
- I would play o’er the infant’s face,
- And stamp such an heavenly impress there
- That never a tinge of sorrow or care
- Should ever its beauty efface,
- To appear the while,
- If I were a smile, a beautiful smile.
-
- If I were a sigh, a sorrowing sigh,
- In the breast of a maiden fair;
- I would speed me on angel wings above,
- And lie like a beautiful wounded dove
- At the feet of my Saviour there,
- Till he heard my cry,
- If I were a sigh, a sorrowing sigh.
-
- If I were a tear, a bright, pearly tear,
- In the eye of a Christian mild;
- I would flow at the sight of keen distress,
- As the dew-drop falls on the earth to bless,
- To calm the heart from tumult wild
- Were my task so dear,
- If I were a tear, a bright, pearly tear.
-
- But as I am neither a smile nor sigh,
- Nor even a tear pearly bright;
- But an humble poet singing the while,
- The world of its sorrows and to beguile,
- I’ll scatter my songs with delight
- To the passer-by,
- Till smiles take the place of the tear and sigh.
-
- * * * * *
-
-
-
-
- A TRUE IRISH STORY.
-
-
- BY REDWOOD FISHER.
-
-
- “Erin-Go-Bragh,” the celebrated Irish song of an exiled
- patriot—Why it was written by a Scotchman, with an interesting
- account of Campbell the poet, and some account of Gen. A.
- McC——n, the Irish Patriot.
-
- O, sad is my fate, said the heart-broken stranger:
- The wild deer and wolf to a covert can flee,
- But I have no refuge from famine and danger,
- A home and a country remain not for me.
-
- Ah! never again in the green shady bowers,
- Where my forefathers lived, shall I spend the sweet hours,
- Or cover my harp with the wild woven flowers,
- And strike the sweet numbers of Erin-go-bragh.
- _See Campbell’s Poems._
-
-In the year 1810, a native of Philadelphia resided in the city of
-Altona, and became intimately acquainted with Gen. McC——, who
-commanded the Irish patriots at the battle of Ballanahench.
-
-The general was a real Irish gentleman, with a heart alive to every
-refined sympathy of human nature, and warmly attached to Americans and
-the American character. Never can it be forgotten by those who were so
-happy as to share his confidence, how his fine manly countenance would
-light up, as he listened to the answers his questions would draw forth,
-when inquiring into the private characters of any of our revolutionary
-sages or soldiers.
-
-Often would the tears start into his eyes, when, at the social bowl,
-some unpublished anecdote would be elicited of the daring of Putnam, the
-Hannibal-like qualities of Greene and Marion, the persevering bravery of
-Rifle Morgan, or the daring of General Wayne in his battles with the
-savage foe.
-
-His whole soul would appear to flash from his expressive eye, and he
-would burst forth with the exclamation: “Oh, Erin, oh my beloved
-country, from which, alas! I am banished, when will heroes such as these
-arise and burst the bands by which thou art enslaved?—Will a just God
-never hear thy prayers? Will the groans of enslaved millions, will the
-agonies of a brave and generous people never reach thy throne, and call
-down thy vengeance upon her persecutors? Excuse me,” he would say,
-“excuse the companion of the Emmets, the McNevens, and others, who were
-confined with me in Fort George, in Scotland, from whence I was
-transported hither—banished! What a word! banished from the home of my
-childhood—torn from the land where my forefathers dwelt!” On one
-occasion of this kind, when the most of the company had retired, in his
-own hospitable mansion, he invited his Philadelphia friend to remain and
-hear the sad story of his life.
-
-He rose from the table, and going to a book-case, he produced a copy of
-Campbell’s poems, and turning to the beautiful song of
-Erin-go-bragh—“there,” said he, “is my history, I am the original
-Erin-go-bragh. My countrymen, I am told, often inquire how it happened
-that a Scotchman should write this national, this glowing account of the
-wrongs of my devoted countrymen. Listen to me, and I will truly tell you
-the whole story—that is, if I can tell it! If I can sufficiently
-compose myself, you shall hear it; and should you survive me _you_ may
-publish it, that the mystery may be solved and the world may know how
-the heart of a Scotch poet was touched with the holy sympathy of our
-common nature, and has placed on record, in the most exalted and
-touching numbers, the feelings of an Irish exile. While confined in the
-fortress of Fort George I was, without any knowledge of what was to be
-my fate, conveyed to a seaport and put on board of an English frigate,
-to be banished I knew not whither!” (The name of the port of embarkation
-and of the vessel were given, but are not now remembered.) “On board of
-this vessel was Campbell, the Scotch poet, then about to make his
-pedestrian tour on the continent of Europe. It was not long before we
-became intimately acquainted, and as you may suppose my whole heart was
-filled with wo.
-
-“During our passage to this place, we had many and very close
-conversations, pending which I poured into his attentive ear, in
-impassioned language, the sad—the overwhelming woes of my countrymen,
-and particularly my own hard fate.
-
-“We were not very long in reaching our destination—we landed together
-at Altona, and what was my surprise to find my companion as destitute of
-money as myself. I had been hurried away without the knowledge of my
-friends, who had no intimation of my banishment, and coming from close
-confinement, was not overburdened with a wardrobe, much less with the
-necessary funds for decency, to say nothing of comfort.
-
-“Campbell was as poor as myself, and in this condition we entered a very
-common inn, and were ushered into a room, not very well furnished,
-having nothing but an oaken table and a very few common chairs. We
-seated ourselves at opposite sides of the table, and gazed at each other
-with no enviable feelings, when, on examining our exchequer, we found
-the whole sum in the treasury amounted to no more than a crown. We
-called for a candle, for it was growing dark, and ordered, in consonance
-with our finances, a small bottle of rum. The light came, and you must
-believe me when I tell you it was a dip candle stuck in a black bottle.
-There was something so ludicrous in this, and in our general
-circumstances, that we both indulged in a hearty laugh, applying
-ourselves to the ‘Cruise Keen Lawn’ to keep up for a time the tone of
-our feelings.
-
-“As our spirits were operated upon by the wretched liquor, which we
-drank more to drown the rising sigh than for any partiality for it,
-Campbell called for pen, ink, and paper. ‘Mr. McC.’ said he, ‘your story
-has deeply interested me, and a kind of notion has arisen that I should
-like to put it upon paper.’
-
-“In a little time a miserable ink-horn was produced, and something which
-was called paper, but it was so stained, and otherwise disfigured, it
-seemed almost impossible, with the wretched pen that accompanied it,
-that legible characters could be traced upon it; and I could but indulge
-in my risible propensities, at the idea of any attempt to write with
-such materials.
-
-“But the soul of the poet had been aroused, and he bade me again to
-refresh his memory with my tale, which I did by replying to such
-questions as he from time to time propounded to me. Every now and then
-he would pause, and pledge me in the tin cup with which we were
-furnished, for glasses there were none; when he would again commence to
-write, and before he had finished, so potent were the draughts in which
-we had indulged, that some of the last lines ran in any other direction
-than parallel to each other.
-
-“At last he finished his labors, and the result of them was the song of
-Erin-go-bragh, the very song printed in his works, and which I now hand
-to you.
-
-“This is a true history of that inimitable production, more full of
-feeling, in my opinion, than any thing he has ever written before or
-since.
-
-“Read it to me,” said the general, “for if the king would withdraw the
-act which banished me, the object nearest my Irish heart, I could not
-read that song aloud!”
-
-Such was the story told to the writer, as nearly as it can be
-remembered, after a lapse of thirty-eight years. There are yet living in
-this city several persons who will recognize it, and an appeal to them
-for the accuracy with which it is here told, would confirm it in every
-particular; its only defect being the absence of power in the writer to
-impart to his readers any thing of the enthusiasm with which General
-McC. related it—nor the heart-stirring emotion ever exhibited by him
-when it became, as it often did, the subject of conversation.
-
-As the reader may feel desirous to know what was subsequently the fate
-of the real and original Erin-go-bragh, he may be told that his friends
-found out where he was, remitted him funds, that he embarked in a
-profitable pursuit, and ever after lived in comparative affluence.
-
-The story of his marriage is of so romantic a nature, that as he is now
-no more, and there is therefore no impropriety in giving it publicity,
-the writer is tempted to narrate it, as he has often listened to it from
-the lips of the general, at his own hospitable board, in the presence of
-his wife.
-
-“‘There she is,’ he would say, ‘she is my preserver!’ Campbell and
-myself continued in our lodgings, and with Saturday night came the bill
-of expenses, but alas! our means were exhausted.
-
-“When the bill for the first week was presented to us, ‘Well,’ said the
-poet to me, ‘what do you propose to do, general?’ To which I replied,
-‘Do!—what do I propose to do, did you ask me? I might put the same
-question to you—but no! let an Irishman alone for getting out of a
-scrape. I will call up the landlord, and tell him our story; adding,
-that I expect ere long my relatives will find out whither I have been
-sent, and it cannot be, but that in a short time funds will be sent to
-me.’ Suiting the action to the word, I rang the bell, the landlord
-appeared, and I gave him our story in a few words, for though a German,
-he was well acquainted with our language. ‘An Irish general,’ said the
-apparently incredulous Boniface, ‘and a Scotch poet!’ He left us with
-the exclamation, and after he had gone, I proposed a walk, to which my
-companion assenting, we strolled around the city of Altona, and returned
-to our lodgings, without having met with any occurrence worthy of
-remark. Being somewhat fatigued, and having no book, or other means of
-occupation, we retired to our humble chamber, which had in it two single
-beds, by no means luxurious.
-
-“Another week of anxiety passed away, and no advices reached me. The
-poet and myself were in a considerable stew. Another bill was presented,
-and to our great surprise we found our host very lenient indeed. He made
-no remark when presenting it—simply asked me had I received my funds,
-and on expressing my mortification that my reply must be in the
-negative, he left me with a polite bow.
-
-“‘The accommodations,’ said the poet, ‘are here none of the best, but
-our host is an honest fellow, we have inspired him with confidence, and
-he appears content to wait!’
-
-“I know not how it was, but I felt a strange sensation come over me, a
-feeling that relief was at hand. So strongly was I impressed with this
-belief that I communicated it to my friend, who laughed out at what he
-called my Irish modest assurance.
-
-“‘Relief,’ he said, ‘may come when your relations hear of you, but my
-word for it, that will not be soon. No, no, there is no relief, and I
-must leave you for my continental tour.’
-
-“He however yielded to my solicitation to walk, which was always my
-resource, and as we left the house, I said to him, ‘Campbell, when we
-come back I shall hear something.’
-
-“‘If you do,’ said he, ‘it may be in the shape of a dun for our unpaid
-bills.’
-
-“‘You will see,’ I replied; when we sallied forth, and were gone perhaps
-an hour. On returning to our room, judge of the sensation I experienced
-when I discovered on the oaken table, a neat envelope directed, in a
-female hand, ‘To Gen. A. McC.’ With an eagerness much more easily
-conceived than described, I broke the seal—not a line of manuscript did
-it contain—but for a moment my heart leaped with joy, for I found
-within the envelope a Schleswig Holstein bank bill of twenty dollars!
-Although my surprise was without bounds—‘Did I not tell you,’ said I to
-my friend, ‘that relief was at hand?’
-
-“Our treasury was now replenished, and we had a fruitful subject of
-conversation. Addressing himself to his attentive listener, ‘I wish,’
-said the general, ‘you could have seen the stride with which I paced up
-and down that room.’ Never in my whole eventful life had I such
-commingled sensations. My pride was gratified, that I could now
-discharge our indebtedness to our host, while I suffered the deepest
-humiliation in the reflection, that I was considered an object of
-charity by some unknown person! My curiosity was at fault to determine
-who it could be, and I shall never forget Campbell’s looks as he
-exclaimed, ‘You have conquered here, if you could not in Ireland. But it
-is Cupid who has been your aid. The hand-writing, the neatness of the
-billet, and its diminutive proportions, all declare it to be a
-_billet-doux_. My word for it, your Irish complexion and figure have
-taken captive the heart of some fair lady!’ This idea greatly added to
-my embarrassment, but the pride of being enabled to discharge our
-indebtedness, overcame for the moment all my other sensations, and
-strutting up to the bell, I rang it with so much violence, that our
-landlord ran up in an instant, and demanded to know what was the matter?
-‘_Bring your bill_,’ said I, ‘that I may at once discharge it.’ I
-thought this would be the most agreeable intelligence I could give him.
-What, then, was our joint surprise, when he replied, ‘That, gentlemen,
-is of no kind of importance; I pray of you give yourselves no uneasiness
-on that score—you can pay me at your convenience.’ Saying this, he
-departed, leaving my friend and myself more deeply involved in the
-mystery which had not only supplied us with money, but which had also
-placed us in such ample credit.
-
-“‘You see,’ said the poet, ‘you are known, and Cupid has taken you under
-his special protection. Let us call for wine, and pledge him, and the
-sweet _heart_ he has enlisted in your service, in a bottle of the very
-best the house affords. Would for her sake and our own it were nectar!’
-
-“The wine was ordered, and it was long before it made its appearance,
-for it was a fluid unknown within the precincts of our habitation; but
-it came at last, and though none of the best, never was the choicest
-Burgundy drunk with greater _gusto_, or a toast given with a more hearty
-glee than inspired us till we finished the second bottle.
-
-“Time now passed more pleasantly. The second Saturday brought another
-note, addressed in the same hand-writing, containing a second bank-note
-of the same amount. Finding our finances so much improved we took better
-lodgings, and indulged ourselves with more of the creature comforts, for
-the unknown benefactor found us out in our new abode, and continued the
-supply, which enabled us to do so.
-
-“I think,” continued the general, “it was in the fourth week that I was
-returning to my lodgings alone, in the dusk of the evening, when one of
-the flag-stones of the pavement being somewhat raised above its fellows,
-caused me to strike it with my foot, and being thus thrown from my
-equilibrium, I fell against the porch of a dwelling, in which was seated
-a lady, who did not attract my attention until I heard a voice, a sweet
-voice, which inquired if I was hurt. A voice in my native tongue
-uttering sounds of sympathy would have been accompanied with a charm,
-come from whom it might; but imagine the ecstasy with which I was
-thrilled when I heard the sweet voice which addressed me, and knew it to
-be from the lips of a fair daughter of the Emerald Isle—in plain
-English, an Irish woman.
-
-“‘I hope you are not hurt, general?’
-
-“‘General!’ she knows me then, thought I.
-
-“‘Come,’ said she, ‘and rest yourself in the porch.’
-
-“I could no longer contain myself. I had been dining out with an
-acquaintance—for I had by this time made one or two acquaintances—and
-the generous wine I had imbibed had opened my heart, alive as it was, to
-any and every accent of kindness to an exile. I could contain myself no
-longer.
-
-“Tell me,” said I, “by what blessed influence I have been thus brought
-to listen to the sweet sympathizing accents of a country-woman, and one
-who appears to know me: for if I mistake not, you addressed me by my
-title—the sad, sad title which calls up all my afflictions, and revives
-the sad fate of my companions in a strife which failed to benefit our
-beloved country, proved fatal to one of the best men, and sent me hither
-a wandering exile.”
-
-“There,” said he, pointing to his wife, then present, “there sits the
-angel of mercy, who poured into my attentive ears—till they reached my
-inmost soul—accents attuned to the most holy of all earthly
-consolations: accents of sympathy for me, and the most noble and heroic
-sentiments, applauding the course of our dear native land.”
-
-“Now,” said the lady, “I pray of you do not get into your heroics:” and
-addressing their guest, she continued—“Receive what he says with many
-allowances, for on this subject he is insane. I forgive him, for he has
-suffered much in the cause of that dear land from which we both derive
-our birth; and you who know him know that he never thinks or speaks of
-dear Erin and his exile—of a spot for which he is ready to shed the
-last drop of his blood—that his whole soul is not on fire. Of this he
-may talk to you; and if you will listen to him he will do so till
-to-morrow’s sun shall warm you with his meridian rays—but I forbid him
-to talk of me and of our union.”
-
-“Forbid!” said the husband, “there is no such word in the vocabulary. I
-will tell this to our friend, for you know I love him. I will tell him
-how you courted me, and how you saved me, and made me what I am, your
-happy husband.”
-
-To this the fond wife would reply, deprecating the continuance of his
-narrative, which, however, did not prevent him from doing ample justice
-to every incident which occurred; from the time of their first
-accidental meeting as here related, until Hymen had sealed a union which
-had made both husband and wife as happy as they could be under the
-circumstances of his banishment. This was an eternal source of chagrin
-and mortification to his heroic soul; and never could Ireland be named
-within his hearing, that the tear did not start in his eye.
-
-The substance of his love affair was, that the lady of whom we have
-spoken was an Irish lady, who had come when a young woman with her
-parents to Altona, had married a young German, who did not long survive
-their union. She was left in very comfortable circumstances, and hearing
-from the keeper of the inn that a person was an inmate with him, calling
-himself an Irish general, who had been banished, and who had not heard
-from his friends, and was without funds, she had sent him the weekly
-supply which so much astonished the poet and the general. The
-innkeeper—knowing the lady to be an Irish woman—had gone to consult
-her as to the probability of the general’s story, and had been told to
-withhold nothing, and that she would be responsible. Often did she tell
-the writer that she sent the money without any expectation of ever
-seeing the recipient, who was represented to her as so fine-looking in
-person, that he could not be an impostor. She believed him to be a
-veritable Irishman in distress, and—that was enough—had she never seen
-him, he was a countryman of hers, and had a right to any thing she could
-do for him—happy to have been furnished with an object to call forth
-her patriotic feelings, to exercise them in his behalf was her greatest
-delight. Pure accident had given her a knowledge of who was the cause of
-calling them forth, and his heart was touched and hers responded to his
-love—they had been several years married when the writer became an
-inmate with them—their home was the abode of peace and contentment, and
-a hospitality that knew no limits.
-
-It was enough that their guest was an American to call forth all their
-patriotic feelings: and many were there—besides the writer of this
-imperfect sketch of so noble a character—that can join with the writer
-in esteeming it a high honor, and a source of extreme gratification to
-have been permitted to know and to enjoy the society of the “Original
-Erin-go-bragh.”
-
-His sentence of banishment was remitted many years after the period here
-spoken of; and he was permitted again to return to the home of his
-childhood, and the land of his forefathers, for which he had bled, and
-for the redemption of which he was ever ready to lay down his life—but
-it was not so ordered. He died in peace, and was buried in the tomb of
-his ancestors. General Anthony McCann was the veritable and original
-“Erin-go-bragh.”
-
- * * * * *
-
-
-
-
- TO MISS LIGHT UNDERWOOD.
-
-
- BY J. R. BARRICK.
-
-
- I have been out this lovely eve,
- With Nature’s self to muse,
- While pleasant thoughts fell gently on
- My heart like falling dews;
- And every star and every flower
- That gave their presence to the hour,
- And every voice of melody,
- Seemed laden with sweet thoughts of thee.
-
- I mused upon thy deep, high soul
- Of intellect and grace:
- I mused on all the loveliness
- Of thy fair form and face:
- And thy bright smile unto my dreams
- Came stealing like the glow that beams
- From sky and star, in waves of light
- Upon the far, dim shades of night.
-
- With every tone of moonlight sound,
- With every breeze of balm,
- With every fountain, lake and stream,
- So beautiful and calm,
- With every cloud, with every star,
- And every sound borne from afar,
- Thy voice seemed mingling with the whole,
- Of Music’s self the life and soul.
-
- And as I gazed up to the sky,
- And on the earth below,
- My thoughts went back a few brief months,
- ’Mid saddening scenes of wo:
- When thou wert lost in rayless night,
- A wanderer from the sense of sight,
- When Nature’s self had ceased to cheer
- Thy high heart with her beauty dear,
-
- I mused on the long night of wo
- That thou wert doomed to share,
- When not a hope was left to beam
- Upon thy dark despair:
- I thought how sad it was to be
- From earth and sky shut out like thee,
- To pine beneath a cloud of gloom,
- Hung o’er thee, like a raven’s plume.
-
- But now thou art restored again,
- To former sense of sight,
- And lookest back with fearful gaze
- On that remembered night:
- And happy in thy mind’s high powers
- Thou rangest Thought’s Elysian bowers,
- And canst behold with joyous eyes,
- The wide, green earth, and free blue skies.
-
- * * * * *
-
-
-
-
- THE CONDOR HUNT.[2]
-
-
- BY LIEUT. WM. F. LYNCH.
-
-
-In each division of the American Continent, nature seems to have carried
-on her operations with boundless magnificence, and upon a gigantic
-scale. Chateaubriand, reclining by his watch-fire on the banks of the
-Niagara, where the thunders of its cataract were only interrupted by the
-startling yell of the Iroquois, could yet _feel_, in the midst of
-tumult, the amazing silence and solitude of the North American forest.
-And the hardy mariner, whose bark has escaped the perils of the Southern
-sea, and is wafted along the western coast of Chili, looks with no less
-admiration upon the fertile plains gradually receding into the swell of
-the Andes, which literally lifts its smoking craters and towering
-eminences above the clouds, and upon its snow-capped and sunny summits,
-scarcely feels the undulations of the storms which gather and burst
-around its waist.
-
-With the stars and stripes of the Union floating from the mast-head of
-our frigate, we were sailing along that part of the coast of Chili,
-where the waving line of the Andes rounds within a short distance of the
-Pacific, and were unusually solicitous, after the perils and privations
-of a tempestuous sea-voyage, to tread upon a soil on which nature, from
-her horn of abundance, has poured forth the choicest of her gifts.
-
-Older sailors than ourselves had spoken of the generous hospitality of
-the Spanish colonists, and there were historical associations connected
-with this favored land, well calculated to render a visit agreeable. Who
-that has been nurtured in the lap of freedom, would not long to look
-upon the only race of native people on the western continent who had
-never been subdued, and who, to this day, tread the soil of their
-forefathers unvanquished and invincible?
-
-The Araucanians, who inhabit the southern portion of this delightful
-country, like the Saxons of the European continent, are the only native
-race who have successfully repelled every invader, and who, happier than
-the Saxon, still rejoice in their unbridled freedom.
-
-Neither Diego Almagro, with his brutal treachery, nor Valverde, with his
-unsparing cruelty, could ever subdue or intimidate a race of freemen
-whose liberties still survive the frequent convulsions by which they
-have been agitated. The flame of freedom among this gallant people, like
-the volcanoes of their native mountains, seems destined to burn on for
-ever unextinguished. But I proposed to speak of the Condor Hunt on the
-plains of Chili.
-
-Every one has heard of the Condor or Great Vulture of the Andes,
-rivaling in natural history, the fabled feats of the Roc of Sinbad. Even
-the genius of Humboldt has failed to strip this giant bird of its
-time-honored renown, and his effort to reduce the Chilian Condor to the
-level of the Lammergyer of the Alps, is a signal failure.
-
-Although he has divested this mountain-bird of all its fictitious
-attributes, and stripped a goodly portion of romantic narrative of its
-wildest imagery, yet the Condor still floats in the solitude of the
-higher heavens, the monarch of the feathered race. The favorite
-abiding-place of this formidable bird is along a chain of mountains in
-our southern continent, whose summits, lifted far above the clouds, are
-robed in snow, which a torrid sun may kiss but never melt. Above all
-animal life, and beyond the limit of even mountain vegetation, these
-birds delight to dwell, inhaling an air too highly attenuated to be
-endured by other than creatures peculiarly adapted to it. From the crown
-of these immense elevations they slowly and lazily unfold their sweeping
-pinions, and wheeling in wide and ascending circles, they soar upward
-into the dark blue vault of heaven, until their great bulk diminishes to
-the merest speck, or is entirely lost to the aching sight of the
-observer.
-
- “All day thy wings have fanned,
- At that far height, the cold, thin atmosphere,
- Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land,
- Though the dark night is near.
- There is a Power whose care
- Teaches thy way along that pathless coast—
- The desert and illimitable air—
- Lone wandering—but not lost.
- Thou art gone—the abyss of heaven
- Hath swallowed up thy form.”
-
-In those pure fields of ether, unvisited even by the thunder-cloud,
-regions which may be regarded as his own exclusive domain, the Condor
-delights to sail, and with piercing glance survey the surface of the
-earth, toward which he never stoops but at the call of hunger. Surely
-this power to waft and to sustain himself in the loftiest regions of the
-air—the ability to endure, uninjured, the exceeding cold attendant upon
-such remoteness from the earth, and to breathe with ease in an
-atmosphere of such extreme rarity—together with the keenness of sight
-that, from such vast heights can minutely scan the objects beneath, as
-well as the formidable powers of this bird, when the herds are scattered
-before him; were sufficiently admirable to entitle the Condor to our
-attention, and to give us promise of goodly sport in the approaching
-Condor or Lasso Hunt.
-
-A large landed proprietor, a descendant of one of the early Spanish
-patentees, to whom we had been indebted for abundant supplies of fruit
-and provisions, as well as for numberless civilities, conveyed to us at
-length the welcome tidings that the Condor, numerous as the sands of the
-shore had stooped from his sublime domain, to the base of the mountain,
-and that the hunt would commence in the morning.
-
-The sun had scarcely risen in the heavens, when our party of from
-twenty-five to thirty, sprang from the boats to the beach. The plain
-before us ran in a gently ascending slope to the base of the hill about
-one mile distant. The hunt was up—and the field in the distance was
-dotted with scampering herds of cattle and groups of horsemen, mingled
-in one dusty mêlée, the sight of which lent wings to our speed, as
-vaulting into the deep Spanish saddles, prepared by our worthy host, we
-sprang onward to the field of blood. Impelled by the cravings of
-resistless appetite, the Condor, regardless of danger, pressed forward
-to assail the herds of the plain; while the watchmen, having sounded the
-alarm, the numerous population turned out, as well to protect their
-cattle, as to hunt the mountain-bird—the Chilian’s manly pastime.
-
-From the midst of a canopy of dust, spread wide over the plain, there
-came forth sounds of noisy conflict, resembling the heady current of a
-“foughten field;” and mountain and hill-side were shaken by the shouts
-of the hunters, the tramp of scampering horsemen, and the bellowing of
-enraged and affrighted cattle. The Condor, alone, rapid as the cassowary
-of the desert, pursued in silence his destined prey. As we rapidly
-approached, we perceived one of the herd bursting from the western
-extremity of the cloud of dust, lashing his bleeding side with his tail,
-and his blood-shotten eyes starting wildly from their sockets, while
-foaming at the mouth, he bellowed loudly with pain. With a wonderful
-unity of purpose, he alone was closely pursued by the whole flock of
-birds, who, disregarding the other animals, seemed to follow, as with a
-single will, this stricken one, who was at the same time cautiously
-avoided by his terrified companions. Like all gregarious birds, the
-Condor appeared to have a leader, who, rushing at their head, into the
-midst of the herd, pounced with his greedy beak upon this devoted
-animal, the fattest and the sleekest of the multitude, and tore a piece
-of flesh from his side. Attracted by the sight or the scent of blood,
-the whole flock, like a brood of harpies, joined in the mad pursuit.
-Swift of foot as the fleetest racer, they kept close to his side, ever
-and anon striking with unerring sagacity at his eyes.
-
-Tell me not of the gladiators of martial Rome, or of the Tauridors of
-modern Seville—they were pastimes for children, compared with the
-thrilling excitement of the Condor Hunt. Away they fled, and away we
-hurried in the chase. A thousand horsemen were wheeling rapidly in
-pursuit—a thousand cattle, terrified and frantic, swept over the
-plain—and a thousand Condors mingled in the crowd—until, by the rapid
-movement, herd and Condor were again hidden from the view in clouds of
-dust. A loud shout soon after attracted us to the scene of conflict.
-Bursting forth once again from the cloud of dust into which he had
-vainly rushed, the devoted animal plunged madly forward, yet more
-closely followed by the whole field of vultures. Black with dust, and
-streaming with blood from a hundred wounds inflicted by the remorseless
-beaks of his pursuers, he still fled onward, but with diminished speed.
-As if looking to man for assistance in his extremity, he rushed through
-the midst of our cavalcade, and the Condor, regardless of our presence,
-hung upon his side, or followed in his foot-prints.
-
-From the altered movement of the animal after he had passed us, with his
-head on high, plunging and blundering over the uneven ground, it was
-evident that his course was no longer directed by sight. His eyes were
-gone—they had been torn from their bleeding sockets!
-
-Wearied and panting, his tongue hangs from his mouth, and every thirsty
-beak is upon it. Still onward he flies, hopeful of escape—and onward
-presses the Condor, secure of his prey. The animal now appeared to be
-dashing for the water, but his declining speed and unequal step rendered
-it doubtful whether he could reach it. He seemed suddenly to despair of
-doing so, for wheeling round with one last and desperate effort, he
-gathered himself up in the fullness of his remaining strength, and
-rushed into the midst of the herd, as if he sought by mingling in the
-living mass, to divert the attention of his pursuers. But the mark and
-the scent of blood was upon him, and on the track of blood the Condor is
-untiring and relentless. Beast and bird once again were lost to view
-beneath the curtain of dust which overspread the trembling plain. But,
-in a few moments, pursued by every bird, he broke from the midst of the
-herd, and made a few desperate plunges toward the water, and reeling
-onward, fell at length bleeding and exhausted, on the very margin of the
-sea!
-
- “Sternitur exanimisque tremens procumbit humis bos.”
-
-In an instant he was buried up among his pursuers, his flesh torn off,
-yet quivering, by hungry beaks, and his smoking entrails trailed upon
-the ground. In the distance, on the verge of the horizon, the last of
-the herd might still be discerned, flying upon the wings of the wind
-from the fate of their companion.
-
-Our host gave the signal, and we hurried to the spot to rescue the
-carcass, with a view to visit upon the Condor vengeance for the mischief
-he had done, and the blood he had spilled. At our near approach they
-took reluctantly and lazily to wing, and wheeling in oblique circles,
-they were soon seen floating over the crest of the mountain, dark specks
-in the firmament. The hunters, prepared with stakes about seven feet in
-length, commenced driving them in the ground, a few inches apart, and in
-a circular form around the carcass, leaving a small space open. As soon
-as we retired from the spot, the birds descended upon the plain, and
-entering the inclosure, renewed their feast, and again took wing. In the
-course of a few hours, the huntsmen returned, and throwing into the pen
-an additional supply of food, drove down other stakes in the open space,
-leaving just sufficient room for the admission of the Condor.
-
-The birds, more numerous than ever, returned to their filthy banquet.
-
-Meanwhile, having refreshed our horses, and partaken of the hospitality
-of our worthy host, we once more took the field for vengeance on the
-gorged and lazy foe. As the wings of these birds have a sweep of
-seventeen feet, they are not readily unfurled, so that when the Condor
-has alighted on the plain, he is only enabled to rise by running over a
-space of fifteen or twenty rods, and gradually gathering wind to lift
-himself on high. While in the midst of their ravenous feast, a few of
-the hunters warily approached and closed the opening; and thus, unable
-to soar aloft from a spot so confined and crowded, the Condors were
-captive. But a Chilian scorns thus to slay a foe. Armed with a lasso,
-each of the natives sits upon his horse, eagerly awaiting the turning
-loose of half a dozen birds from the inclosure.
-
-They are out—and away scamper the Condor, fleet as the winds of
-heaven—and away, in rapid pursuit, wheels the mounted Chilian, swinging
-around his head the noose of the unerring lasso, which, falling upon the
-neck of the bird, makes him captive. The line is played out, and away
-sweeps the powerful bird, and away the practiced horseman after him.
-Springing upward, the Condor now unfolds his wings and flutters in such
-width of circle as the rope will permit—and now shoots perpendicularly
-upward—and now falls headlong, and is trailed exhausted on the ground.
-
-The lengthened shadows of evening had fallen along the plain before the
-sport was up, and the last Condor was captured. We returned to our ship,
-well pleased with the entertainment, and swinging into our hammocks sunk
-into deep slumber, for which the exercise of the day had prepared
-us—but our sleep was not too sound for refreshing visitations from
-friends far away,
-
- “O’er the glad waters of the dark blue sea.”
-
------
-
-[2] From Naval Life, published by Chas. Scribner, N. Y.
-
- * * * * *
-
-
-
-
- BEAUTIE.
-
-
- BY MRS. E. J. EAMES.
-
-
- Thou wert a worship in the ages olden,
- Thou bright-veiled image of divinity;
- Crowned with such gleams, imperial and golden,
- As Phidias gave to Immortality!
- A type exquisite of the pure Ideal,
- Forth shadowed in perfect loveliness—
- Embodied and existent in the Real,
- A peerless shape to kneel before, and bless!
-
- With the world’s childhood didst thou spring to being!
- A thing of light!—a _felt_ divinity!
- A stainless spirit, born of Love undying,
- Nurst in that Eden of an earlier day.
- Thence wandering on the morn of thy _awakening_,
- Like a Dream-vision through the world didst go,
- Filling its darkness with bright things, and making
- The wild waste blossom, and the desert glow.
-
- Still o’er the Earth, thy shining foot-prints tarry,
- Upon the mountain-tops thy step yet strays;
- Through the rich woods thy rainbow plume floats airy,
- And on the sea thy form of glory plays!
- Thy purple pinions fan the brow of morning;
- Thy sun-bright splendors on the noonday rest,
- Eve wears the silvery veil of thy adorning,
- And night by thee in queenly robes is drest.
-
- Oh, Beautie! still doth thy bright spirit linger
- In the green vale where Jove was nurst of old:
- Where the Babe Thunderer listened to the singer
- Of “many-fountained Ida,” as ’tis told!
- Still hauntest thou the violet-crowned city—
- The Trojan Mountain, and the Cretan Hill?
- Wanders thy soul yet, in the Syren’s ditty—
- Speaks forth thy heart from the Lost Glory still?
-
- We have rare legends of thy marvelous presence—
- In Egypt’s Queen and bright Zenobia’s form;
- In lovelorn Sappho thrilled thine airiest essence—
- In proud Aspasia’s intellectual charm!
- Nor was thy soul (through Raphael’s pencil) wanting
- In Fornarina’s soft seraphic face!
- And, thanks to Petrarch, Laura’s form is haunting
- Our hearts with dreams of rare and breathing grace.
-
- Once more! thou art the well-beloved of _Nature_!
- Thine empire sweet, is o’er the grand old earth;
- And well thy soft hand printeth on each feature
- The brightness of thine own Immortal birth!
- Thou touchest with rich hues and scents the blossom;
- With emerald lines thou pencilest each leaf;
- Pearlest with dew the lonely flower-bells bosom,
- And flingest thy glory o’er the golden sheaf.
-
- Joy to thy presence, all-pervading spirit!
- Well may we worship at thy magic shrine;
- There is _no gift_ that mortals may inherit
- So favored and god-blest, and dear as thine.
- And still to _me_, thy worshiper, oh, Beautie!
- Come as a guest divine—an angel-friend;
- Give me to see thee, in each darker duty,
- And radiate my life-path to the end!
-
- * * * * *
-
-
-
-
- WHAT GLORY COSTS THE NATION.
-
-
-In the February number, we gave a short extract from Upham’s Manual of
-Peace, in relation to the cost of the Army and Navy of the United
-States. That article has brought out an officer of the Navy, with the
-following—in which we get abuse for facts, and sharp sentences for
-figures. We can stand a moderate amount of flaying without blubbering,
-and have no faith in the theory that a drop of ink will raise a blister,
-except upon persons exceedingly thin-skinned. But our correspondent, who
-takes a narrow view of both _time and figures_, appears to think the
-question a new one, and settled by his article, and both Upham and
-Graham demolished.
-
-“Sir,—Freedom of speech, and freedom of the press, are among the best
-privileges guarantied by a republican form of government; but freedom of
-speech is not to be taken as a license to state for fact what is not
-true without possibility of contradiction. Nor is freedom of speech to
-be construed into a privilege of saying sharp or impertinent and
-impudent things with impunity. It has been said as a rule, ‘joke as much
-as you please, but never trespass on fact,’ which means, when you fall
-into an error, you are bound to correct it.
-
-“With these notions fresh upon me, I venture to point out an erroneous
-statement in the first page of the February number of Graham, which is
-calculated to prejudice a large number of people against the Navy and
-Army of the country. Graham (Upham) states that the cost of maintaining
-the Army and Navy of the United States is equal to eighty per cent.,
-that is, four-fifths of the entire revenue. This must strike every
-reflecting mind to be an expense so enormous as to render it desirable
-to be rid of both Army and Navy. But the statement is entirely
-erroneous, as a moment’s thought will show. If four-fifths of the
-revenue are absorbed in maintaining the Army and Navy, only one fifth is
-left to meet the expense of the ‘civil list,’ president and officers of
-the cabinet, foreign ministers and consuls, custom-house officers,
-light-houses, etc. etc.
-
- “The total expenditure for the Navy and
- Marine Corps, for the fiscal year ending
- June 30, 1850, was $5,523,722 83
- The expenditure for the Army about 6,476,278 17
- ——————
- Total, $12,000,000 00
-
- The revenue for the same period was $47,421,748 90
-
-“So that in round numbers, the expense of the Army and Navy together, is
-about one-fourth, or twenty-five per cent. of the revenue instead of 80
-per cent., as stated, which is an excess of at least 55 per cent.
-
-“It should not be forgotten, however, that twenty-five per cent. of the
-whole revenue for military establishments is a large proportion; but
-without these establishments, it is possible we might soon be entirely
-without revenue, because our commerce, without a navy, would be open to
-the depredation of pirates of all nations, and might be crippled if not
-totally destroyed.
-
-“The expense of keeping a dog may be considerable; but if that dog
-protects us from thieves and burglars, the money spent for his
-maintenance may be regarded as money well laid out.
-
-“The expense of the military establishments is not their fault or sin;
-but the evil is to be attributed to the ignorance of mankind. When the
-whole world becomes educated and instructed, all wars will be conducted
-with pen and ink, and aid of arithmetic. Sensible men, while in their
-senses, never cut each other’s throats for differences of opinion; they
-argue the difference; and he who has most logic and good sense, is
-always willing to ‘do to others as he would others should do unto him.’
-
-“Therefore, friend Graham (Upham) continue to teach your readers TRUTH,
-and they will acquire so strong a sense of justice, as to do away with
-any necessity for fighting among themselves or against others.”
-
-Well, we will “_continue_ to teach our readers _truth_,” and the advice
-points a moral. Navy _officers are bad logicians_!—but are a pretty
-good set of fellows so long as they are paid well for the fighting that
-_may be done_, in the next generation; and are allowed to say
-themselves, that “the expense of the military establishments is to be
-attributed to the ignorance of mankind,” without using any means to
-enlighten mankind upon the subject.
-
-Since our correspondent finds fault with us, or Upham, about his facts
-and figures, we give him the following from a gentleman[3] who has paid
-some attention to the matter, and ask him to look the question in the
-face fairly, and answer the arguments and figures, and if he makes out
-but a partial case, we will publish his reply, however sharp and acrid.
-
-I do not propose to dwell upon the immense cost of War itself. That will
-be present to the minds of all, in the mountainous accumulations of
-debt, piled like Ossa upon Pelion, with which Europe is pressed to the
-earth. According to the most recent tables to which I have had access,
-the public debt of the different European States, so far as it is known,
-amounts to the terrific sum of $6,387,000,000, all of this the growth of
-War! It is said that there are throughout these states, 17,900,000
-paupers, or persons subsisting at the expense of the country, without
-contributing to its resources. If these millions of the public debt,
-forming only a part of what has been wasted in War, could be apportioned
-among these poor, it would give to each of them $375, a sum which would
-place all above want, and which is about equal to the average value of
-the property of each inhabitant of Massachusetts.
-
-The public debt of Great Britain reached in 1839 to $4,265,000,000, the
-growth of War since 1688! This amount is nearly equal to the sum-total,
-according to the calculations of Humboldt, of all the treasures which
-have been reaped from the harvest of gold and silver in the mines of
-Spanish America, including Mexico and Peru, since the first discovery of
-our hemisphere by Christopher Columbus! It is much larger than the mass
-of all precious metals, which at this moment form the circulating medium
-of the world! It is sometimes rashly said by those who have given little
-attention to this subject, that all this expenditure was widely
-distributed, and therefore beneficial to the people; but this apology
-does not bear in mind that it was not bestowed in any productive
-industry, or on any _useful_ object. The magnitude of this waste will
-appear by a contrast with other expenditures; the aggregate capital of
-all the joint stock companies in England, of which there was any known
-record in 1842, embracing canals, docks, bridges, insurance companies,
-banks, gas-lights, water, mines, railways, and other miscellaneous
-objects, was about $835,000,000; a sum which has been devoted to the
-welfare of the people, but how much less in amount than the War Debt!
-For the six years ending in 1836, the average payment for the interest
-on this debt was about $140,000,000 annually. If we add to this sum,
-$60,000,000 during this same period paid annually to the army, navy and
-ordnance, we shall have $200,000,000 as the annual tax of the English
-people, to pay for former wars and to prepare for new. During this same
-period there was an annual appropriation of only $20,000,000 for all the
-civil purposes of the Government. It thus appears that _War_ absorbed
-ninety cents of every dollar that was pressed by heavy taxation from the
-English people, who almost seem to sweat blood! What fabulous monster,
-or chimera dire, ever raged with a maw so ravenous? The remaining ten
-cents sufficed to maintain the splendor of the throne, the
-administration of justice, and the diplomatic relations with foreign
-powers, in short, all the proper objects of a Christian State.[4]
-
-Thus much for the general cost of War. Let us now look exclusively at
-the _Preparations for War in time of peace_. It is one of the miseries
-of War, that, even in peace, its evils continue to be felt by the world,
-beyond any other evils by which poor suffering Humanity is oppressed. If
-Bellona withdraws from the field, we only lose the sight of her flaming
-torches; the bay of her dogs is heard on the mountains, and civilized
-man thinks to find protection from their sudden fury, only by inclosing
-himself in the barbarous armor of battle. At this moment the Christian
-nations, worshiping a symbol of common brotherhood, live as in
-entrenched camps in which they keep armed watch, to prevent surprise
-from each other. Recognizing the _custom_ of War as a proper Arbiter of
-Justice, they hold themselves perpetually ready for the bloody umpirage.
-
-It is difficult, if not impossible, to arrive at any exact estimate of
-the cost of these preparations, ranging under four different heads; the
-Standing Army; the Navy; the Fortifications and Arsenals; and the
-Militia or irregular troops.
-
-The number of soldiers now affecting to keep the peace of European
-Christendom, as a _Standing Army_, without counting the Navy, is upward
-of two millions. Some estimates place it as high as three millions. The
-army of Great Britain exceeds 300,000 men; that of France 350,000; that
-of Russia 730,000, and is reckoned by some as high as 1,000,000; that of
-Austria 275,000; that of Prussia 150,000. Taking the smaller number,
-suppose these two millions to require for their annual support an
-average sum of only $150 each, the result would be $300,000,000, for
-their sustenance alone; and reckoning one officer to ten soldiers, and
-allowing to each of the latter an English shilling a day, or $87 a year,
-for wages, and to the former an average salary of $500 a year, we should
-have for the pay of the whole no less than $256,000,000, or an appalling
-sum-total for both sustenance and pay of $556,000,000. If the same
-calculation be made, supposing the forces to amount to three millions,
-the sum-total will be $835,000,000! But to this enormous sum another
-still more enormous must be added on account of the loss sustained by
-the withdrawal of two millions of hardy, healthy men, in the bloom of
-life, from useful, productive labor. It is supposed that it costs an
-average sum of $500 to rear a soldier; and that the value of his labor,
-if devoted to useful objects, would be $150 a year. The Christian
-Powers, therefore, in setting apart two millions of men, as soldiers,
-sustain a loss of $1,000,000,000 on account of their training; and
-$300,000,000 annually, on account of their labor, in addition to the
-millions already mentioned as annually expended for sustenance and pay.
-So much for the cost of the standing army of European Christendom in
-time of Peace.
-
-Glance now at the _Navy_ of European Christendom. The Royal Navy of
-Great Britain consists at present of 557 ships of all classes; but
-deducting such as are used for convict ships, floating chapels, coal
-depots, the efficient navy consists of 88 sail of the line; 109
-frigates; 190 small frigates, corvettes, brigs and cutters, including
-packets; 65 steamers of various sizes; 3 troop-ships and yachts; in all
-455 ships. Of these there were in commission in 1839, 190 ships,
-carrying in all 4,202 guns. The number of hands employed was 34,465. The
-Navy of France, though not comparable in size with that of England, is
-of vast force. By royal ordinance of 1st January, 1837, it was fixed in
-time of peace at 40 ships of the line, 50 frigates, 40 steamers, and 190
-smaller vessels; and the amount of crews in 1839, was 20,317. The
-Russian Navy consists of two large fleets in the Gulf of Finland and the
-Black Sea; but the exact amount of their force and their available
-resources has been a subject of dispute among naval men and politicians.
-Some idea of the size of the navy may be derived from the number of
-hands employed. The crews of the Baltic fleet amounted in 1837, to not
-less than 30,800 men; and those of the fleet in the Black Sea to 19,800,
-or altogether 50,600. The Austrian Navy consisted in 1837, of 8 ships of
-the line, 8 frigates, 4 sloops, 6 brigs, 7 schooners or galleys, and a
-number of smaller vessels; the number of men in its service in 1839, was
-4,547. The Navy of Denmark consisted at the close of 1837, of 7 ships of
-the line, 7 frigates, 5 sloops, 6 brigs, 3 schooners, 5 cutters, 58
-gun-boats, 6 gun-rafts, and 3 bomb-vessels, requiring about 6,500 men to
-man them. The Navy of Sweden and Norway consisted recently of 238
-gun-boats, 11 ships of the line, 8 frigates, 4 corvettes, 6 brigs, with
-several smaller vessels. The Navy of Greece consists of 32 ships of war,
-carrying 190 guns, and 2,400 men. The Navy of Holland in 1839 consisted
-of 8 ships of the line, 21 frigates, 15 corvettes, 21 brigs, and 95
-gun-boats. Of the immense cost of all these mighty Preparations for War,
-it is impossible to give any accurate idea. But we may lament that
-means, so gigantic, should be applied by European Christendom to the
-erection in time of Peace, of such superfluous wooden walls!
-
-In the _Fortifications and Arsenals_ of Europe, crowning every height,
-commanding every valley, and frowning over every plain and every sea,
-wealth beyond calculation has been sunk. Who can tell the immense sums
-that have been expended in hollowing out, for the purposes of War, the
-living rock of Gibraltar? Who can calculate the cost of all the
-Preparations at Woolwich, its 27,000 cannons, and its hundreds of
-thousands of small arms? France alone contains upward of one hundred and
-twenty fortified places. And it is supposed that the yet unfinished
-fortifications of Paris have cost upward of _fifty millions of dollars_!
-
-The cost of the _Militia_ or irregular troops, the Yeomanry of England,
-the National Guards of Paris, and the _Landwehr_ and _Landsturm_ of
-Prussia, must add other incalculable sums to these enormous amounts.
-
-Turn now to the _United States_, separated by a broad ocean from
-immediate contact with the great powers of Christendom, bound by
-treaties of amity and commerce with all the nations of the earth;
-connected with all by the strong ties of mutual interest; and professing
-a devotion to the principles of Peace. Are the Treaties of Amity mere
-words? Are the relations of commerce and mutual interest mere things of
-a day? Are the professions of Peace vain? Else why not repose in quiet,
-unvexed by Preparations for War?
-
-Enormous as are the expenses of this character in Europe, those in our
-own country are still greater in proportion to the other expenditures of
-the Federal Government.
-
-It appears that the average _annual_ expenditure of the Federal
-Government for the six years ending with 1840, exclusive of payments on
-account of debt, were $26,474,892. Of this sum the average appropriation
-each year for military and naval purposes amounted to $21,328,903, being
-eighty per cent. of the whole amount! Yes; of all the annual
-appropriations by the Federal Government, eighty cents in every dollar
-were applied in this irrational and unproductive manner. The remaining
-twenty cents sufficed to maintain the Government in all its branches,
-Executive, Legislative, and Judicial, the administration of justice, our
-relations with foreign nations, the post-office and all the
-light-houses, which—in happy useful contrast with any forts—shed their
-cheerful signals over the rough waves beating upon our long and indented
-coast, from the bay of Fundy to the mouth of the Mississippi. A table of
-the relative expenditure of nations, for military Preparations in time
-of Peace, exclusive of payments on account of the debts, presents
-results which will surprise the advocates of economy in our country.
-These are in proportion to the whole expenditure of Government:
-
-In Austria, as 33 per cent.,
-
-In France, as 38 per cent.,
-
-In Prussia, as 44 per cent.,
-
-In Great Britain, as 74 per cent.,
-
-In the United States, as 80 per cent.![5]
-
-To this magnificent waste by the Federal Government, may be added the
-still larger and equally superfluous expenses of the Militia throughout
-the country, placed recently by a candid and able writer, at $50,000,000
-a year![6]
-
-By a table[7] of the expenditures of the United States, exclusive of
-payments on account of the Public Debt, it appears, that, _in the
-fifty-three years from the formation of our present Government_, from
-1789 down to 1843, $246,620,055 have been expended for civil purposes,
-comprehending the executive, the legislature, the judiciary, the post
-office, light-houses, and intercourse with foreign governments. During
-this same period $368,626,594 have been devoted to the military
-establishment, and $170,437,684 to the naval establishment; the two
-forming an aggregate of $538,964,278. Deducting from this sum the
-appropriations during three years of war, and we shall find that more
-than _four hundred millions_ were absorbed by vain Preparations in time
-of peace for War. Add to this amount a moderate sum for the expenses of
-the Militia during the same period, which, as we have already seen, have
-been placed recently at $50,000,000 a year; for the past years we may
-take an average of $25,000,000; and we shall have the enormous sum of
-$1,335,000,000 to be added to the $400,000,000; the whole amounting to
-_seventeen hundred and thirty-five millions_ of dollars, a sum beyond
-the conception of human faculties, sunk under the sanction of the
-Government of the United States in mere _peaceful Preparations for War_;
-more than _seven times_ as much as was dedicated by the Government,
-during the same period, to all other purposes whatsoever!
-
-From this serried array of figures the mind instinctively retreats. If
-we examine them from a nearer point of view, and, selecting some
-particular part, compare it with the figures representing other
-interests in the community, they will present a front still more dread.
-Let us attempt the comparison.
-
-Within a short distance of this city (Boston) stands an institution of
-learning, which was one of the earliest cares of the early forefathers
-of the country, the conscientious Puritans. Favored child of an age of
-trial and struggle, carefully nursed through a period of hardship and
-anxiety, endowed at that time by the oblations of men like Harvard,
-sustained from its first foundation by the paternal arm of the
-Commonwealth, by a constant succession of munificent bequests and by the
-prayers of all good men, the University of Cambridge now invites our
-homage as the most ancient, the most interesting, and the most important
-seat of learning in the land; possessing the oldest and most valuable
-library, one of the largest museums of mineralogy and natural history—a
-School of Law, which annually receives into its bosom more than one
-hundred and fifty sons from all parts of the Union, where they listen to
-instruction from professors whose names have become among the most
-valuable possessions of the land—a School of Divinity, the nurse of
-true learning and piety—one of the largest and most flourishing Schools
-of Medicine in the country—besides these, a general body of teachers,
-twenty-seven in number, many of whose names help to keep the name of the
-country respectable in every part of the globe, where science, learning,
-and taste are cherished—the whole presided over at this moment by a
-gentleman, early distinguished in public life by his unconquerable
-energies and his masculine eloquence, at a later period, by the
-unsurpassed ability with which he administered the affairs of our city,
-and now in a green old age, full of years and honor, preparing to lay
-down his present high trust.[8] Such is Harvard University; and as one
-of the humblest of her children, happy in the recollection of a youth
-nurtured in her classic retreats, I cannot allude to her without an
-expression of filial affection and respect.
-
-It appears from the last Report of the Treasurer, that the whole
-available property of the University, the various accumulations of more
-than two centuries of generosity, amounts to $703,175.
-
-Change the scene, and cast your eyes upon another object. There now
-swings idly at her moorings, in this harbor, a ship of the line, the
-Ohio, carrying ninety guns, finished as late as 1836 for $547,888;
-repaired only two years after, in 1838, for $223,012; with an armament
-which has cost $53,945; making an amount of $834,845,[9] as the actual
-cost at this moment of that single ship; more than $100,000 beyond all
-the available accumulations of the richest and most ancient seat of
-learning in the land! Choose ye, my fellow-citizens of a Christian
-state, between the two caskets—that wherein is the loveliness of
-knowledge and truth, or that which contains the carrion death.
-
-I refer thus particularly to the Ohio, because she happens to be in our
-waters. But in so doing I do not take the strongest case afforded by our
-Navy. Other ships have absorbed still larger sums. The expense of the
-Delaware in 1842, had been _one million and fifty-one thousand dollars_.
-
-Pursue the comparison still further. The expenditures of the University
-during the last year, for the general purposes of the College, the
-instruction of the Under-graduates, and for the Schools of Law and
-Divinity, amount to $46,949. The cost of the Ohio for one year in
-service, in salaries, wages, and provisions, is $220,000; being $175,000
-more than the annual expenditures of the University; more than _four
-times_ as much. In other words, for the annual sum which is lavished on
-one ship of the line, _four_ institutions, like Harvard University,
-might be sustained throughout the country!
-
-Still further let us pursue the comparison. The pay of the Captain of a
-ship like the Ohio, is $4,500 when in service; $3,500, when on leave of
-absence, or off duty. The salary of the President of the Harvard
-University is $2,205; without leave of absence, and never being off
-duty!
-
-If the large endowments of Harvard University are dwarfed by a
-comparison with the expense of a single ship of the line, how much more
-must it be so with those of other institutions of learning and
-beneficence, less favored by the bounty of many generations. The average
-cost of a sloop of war is $315,000; more, probably, than all the
-endowments of those twin stars of learning in the Western part of
-Massachusetts, the Colleges at Williamstown and Amherst, and of that
-single star in the East, the guide to many ingenuous youth, the Seminary
-at Andover. The yearly cost of a sloop of war in service is above
-$50,000; more than the annual expenditures of these three institutions
-combined.
-
-I might press the comparison with other institutions of Beneficence,
-with the annual expenditures for the Blind—that noble and successful
-charity, which has shed true lustre upon our Commonwealth—amounting to
-$12,000; and the annual expenditures for the Insane of the Commonwealth,
-another charity dear to humanity, amounting to $27,844.
-
-Take all the Institutions of Learning and Beneficence, the precious
-jewels of the Commonwealth, the schools, colleges, hospitals and
-asylums, and the sums, by which they have been purchased and preserved,
-are trivial and beggarly, compared with the treasures squandered within
-the borders of Massachusetts, in vain preparations for War. There is the
-Navy Yard at Charleston, with its stores on hand, all costing
-$4,741,000; the Fortifications in the harbors of Massachusetts, in which
-incalculable sums have been already sunk, and in which it is now
-proposed to sink $3,853,000 more;[10] and besides the Arsenal at
-Springfield, containing in 1842, 175,118 muskets, valued at
-$2,999,998,[11] and which is fed by an annual appropriation of about
-$200,000; but whose highest value will ever be, in the judgment of all
-lovers of truth, that it inspired a poem, which in its influence shall
-be mightier than a battle, and shall endure when arsenals and
-fortifications have crumbled to the earth. Some of the verses of this
-Psalm of Peace may happily relieve the detail of statistics, while they
-blend with my argument.
-
- Were half the power that fills the world with terror,
- Were half the wealth, bestowed on camp and courts,
- Given to redeem the human mind from error,
- There were no need of arsenals and forts.
-
- The warrior’s name would be a name abhorred!
- And every nation that should lift again
- Its hand against its brother, on its forehead
- Would wear for evermore the curse of Cain!
-
-Look now for one moment at a high and peculiar interest of the nation,
-the administration of justice. Perhaps no part of our system is
-regarded, by the enlightened sense of the country, with more pride and
-confidence. To this, indeed, all the other concerns of Government, all
-its complications of machinery are in a manner subordinate, since it is
-for the sake of justice that men come together in states and establish
-laws. What part of the Government can compare in importance, with the
-Federal Judiciary, that great balance-wheel of the Constitution,
-controlling the relations of the States to each other, the legislation
-of Congress and of the States, besides private interests to an
-incalculable amount? Nor can the citizen, who discerns the True Glory of
-his country, fail to recognize in the judicial labors of Marshall, now
-departed, and in the immortal judgments of Story, who is still spared to
-us—_cerus in cœlum redeat_—a higher claim to admiration and gratitude
-than can be found in any triumph of battle. The expenses of the
-administration of justice throughout the United States, under the
-Federal Government, in 1842—embracing the salaries of the judges, the
-cost of juries, court-houses, and all officers thereof, in short, all
-the outlay by which justice, according to the requirements of Magna
-Charta, is carried to every man’s door—amounted to $560,990, a larger
-sum than is usually appropriated for this purpose, but how insignificant
-compared with the cormorant demands of the Army and Navy!
-
-Let me allude to one more _curiosity_ of waste. It appears, by a
-calculation founded on the expenses of the Navy, that the average cost
-of each gun, carried over the ocean, for one year, amounts to about
-fifteen thousand dollars; a sum sufficient to sustain ten or even twenty
-professors of Colleges, and equal to the salaries of all the Judges of
-the Supreme Court of Massachusetts and the Governor combined!
-
-Such are a few brief illustrations of the tax which the nations
-constituting the great Federation of civilization, and particularly our
-own country, impose on the people in time of profound peace, for no
-permanent, productive work, for no institution of learning, for no
-gentle charity, for no purpose of good. As we wearily climb, in this
-survey, from expenditure to expenditure, from waste to waste, we seem to
-pass beyond the region of ordinary calculation; Alps on Alps arise, on
-whose crowning heights of everlasting ice, far above the habitations of
-man, where no green thing lives, where no creature draws its breath, we
-behold the cold, sharp, flashing glacier of War.
-
-In the contemplation of this spectacle the soul swells with alternate
-despair and hope; with despair, at the thought of such wealth, capable
-of rendering such service to Humanity, not merely wasted but given to
-perpetuate Hate; with hope, as the blessed vision arises of the devotion
-of all these incalculable means to the purposes of Peace. The whole
-world labors at this moment with poverty and distress; and the painful
-question occurs to every observer, in Europe more than here at
-home—what shall become of the poor—the increasing Standing Army of the
-Poor. Could the humble voice that now addresses you, penetrate those
-distant counsels, or counsels nearer home, it would say, disband your
-Standing Armies of soldiers, apply your Navies to purposes of peaceful
-and enriching commerce, abandon your Fortifications and Arsenals, or
-dedicate them to works of Beneficence, as the statue of Jupiter
-Capitolinus was changed to the image of a Christian saint; in fine,
-utterly forsake the present incongruous system of _armed_ Peace.
-
-That I may not seem to press to this conclusion with too much haste, at
-least as regards our own country, I shall consider briefly, as becomes
-the occasion, the asserted usefulness of the national armaments which it
-is proposed to abandon, and shall next expose the outrageous fallacy—at
-least in the present age, and among the Christian Nations, of the maxim
-by which alone they are vindicated, that in time of Peace we must
-prepare for War.
-
-_What is the use of the Standing Army of the United States?_ It has been
-a principle of freedom, during many generations, to avoid a standing
-army; and one of the complaints in the Declaration of Independence was,
-that George III. had quartered large bodies of troops in the colonies.
-For the first years after the adoption of the Federal
-Constitution—during our weakness, before our power was assured, before
-our name had become respected in the family of nations, under the
-administration of Washington—a small sum was deemed ample for the
-military establishment of the United States. It was only when the
-country, at a later day, had been touched by martial insanity, that, in
-unworthy imitation of monarchical states, it abandoned the true economy
-of a Republic, and lavished the means which it begrudged to the purposes
-of Peace, in vain preparation for War. It may now be said of our army,
-as Dunning said of the influence of the crown, it has increased, is
-increasing, and ought to be diminished. At this moment there are, in the
-country, more than fifty-five military posts. It would be difficult to
-assign a reasonable apology for any of these—unless, perhaps, on some
-distant Indian frontier. Of what use is the detachment of the second
-regiment of Artillery in the quiet town of New London in Connecticut? Of
-what use is the detachment of the first regiment of Artillery in that
-pleasant resort of fashion, Newport? By their exhilarating music and
-showy parade they may serve to amuse an idle hour, but it is doubtful if
-emotions of a different character will not be aroused in generous
-bosoms. Surely, he must have lost something of his sensibility to the
-true dignity of human nature, who, without regret and mortification, can
-observe the discipline, the drill, the unprofitable marching and
-counter-marching—the putting guns to the shoulder and then dropping
-them to the earth—which fill the lives of the poor soldiers, and
-prepare them to become the rude, inanimate parts of that _machine_, to
-which an army has been likened by the great living master of the Art of
-War. And this sensibility must be more offended by the spectacle of a
-chosen body of ingenuous youth, under the auspices of the Government,
-amidst the bewitching scenery of West Point, painfully trained to these
-same fantastic and humiliating exercises—at a cost to the country since
-the establishment of this Academy, of upwards of four millions of
-dollars.
-
-In Europe, Standing Armies are supposed to be needed to sustain the
-power of Governments; but this excuse cannot prevail here. The monarchs
-of the Old World, like the chiefs of the ancient German tribes, are
-upborne by the shields of the soldiery. Happily with us the Government
-springs from the hearts of the people, and needs no janizaries for its
-support.
-
-But I hear the voice of some defender of this abuse, some upholder of
-this “rotten borough” of our Constitution, crying, the Army is needed
-for the defense of the country! As well might you say that the shadow is
-needed for the defense of the body; for what is the army of the United
-States but the feeble shadow of the power of the American people? _In
-placing the army on its present footing, so small in numbers compared
-with the forces of the great European States, our Government has tacitly
-admitted its superfluousness for defense._ It only remains to declare
-distinctly, that the country will repose in the consciousness of right,
-without the wanton excess of supporting soldiers, lazy consumers of the
-fruits of the earth, who might do the State good service in the various
-departments of useful industry.
-
-_What is the use of the Navy of the United States?_ The annual expense
-of our Navy, during recent years, has been upward of six millions of
-dollars. For what purpose is this paid? Not for the apprehension of
-pirates; for frigates and ships of the line are of too great bulk to be
-of service for this purpose. Not for the suppression of the Slave Trade;
-for under the stipulations with Great Britain, we employ only eighty
-guns in this holy alliance. Not to protect our coasts; for all agree
-that our few ships would form an unavailing defense against any serious
-attack. Not for these purposes, you will admit, _but for the protection
-of our Navigation_. This is not the occasion for minute calculations.
-Suffice it to say, that an intelligent merchant, who has been
-extensively engaged in commerce for the last twenty years, and who
-speaks, therefore, with the authority of knowledge, has demonstrated in
-a tract of perfect clearness, that the annual profits of the whole
-mercantile marine of the country do not equal the annual expenditure of
-our Navy. Admitting the profit of a merchant ship to be four thousand
-dollars a year, which is a large allowance, it will take the earnings of
-one hundred ships to build and employ for one year a single sloop of
-War—one hundred and fifty ships to build and employ a frigate, and
-nearly three hundred ships to build and employ a ship of the line. Thus
-more than five hundred ships must do a profitable business, in order to
-earn a sufficient sum to sustain this little fleet. Still further,
-taking a received estimate of the value of the mercantile marine of the
-United States at forty millions of dollars, we find that it is only a
-little more than six times the annual cost of the navy; so that this
-interest is protected at a charge of more than _fifteen per cent._ of
-its whole value! Protection at such price is more ruinous than one of
-Pyrrhus’s victories!
-
------
-
-[3] Orations and Speeches by Charles Sumner, vol. I, page 71.
-
-[4] I have relied here and in subsequent pages upon McCulloch’s
-Commercial Dictionary; The Edinburgh Geography, founded on the works of
-Malte Brun and Balbi; and the calculations of Mr. Jay in _Peace and
-War_, p. 16, and in his Address before the Peace Society, pp. 28, 29.
-
-[5] I have verified these results by the expenditures of these different
-nations, but I do little more than follow Mr. Jay, who has illustrated
-this important point with his accustomed accuracy.—_Address_, p. 30.
-
-[6] Jay’s Peace and War, p. 13.
-
-[7] American Almanac for 1845, p. 143.
-
-[8] Hon. Josiah Quincy.
-
-[9] Document No. 132, House of Representatives, 3rd session, 27th
-Congress.
-
-[10] Document; Report of Secretary of War; No. 2. Senate, 27th Congress,
-2nd session; where it is proposed to invest in a general system of land
-defenses $51,677,929.
-
-[11] Exec. Documents of 1842-43, Vol. I. No. 3.
-
- * * * * *
-
-
-
-
- LINES ON SOME VIOLETS,
-
-
- LEFT UPON MY DESK WHILE I WAS AT A FUNERAL.
-
-
- He brought these violets yester eve,
- While I was with the dead,
- And when I hither came to grieve,
- To me they meekly said—
-
- “Let not thy gentle heart-founts flow
- For her who is at rest,
- But joy and sing for all who go
- To sit among the Blest.
-
- “Weep for thyself, and not for her,
- Child of melodious Grief!
- And pray thy angels, hovering near,
- To make Life’s journey brief.
-
- “For now we hear thy spirit beat
- With bleeding plumes its grate,
- And treading with impatient feet,
- Like one that could not wait.
-
- “Like one who, pale ’mid dungeon gloom,
- Paces his scanty floor,
- Awaiting till the jailer come
- To ope his prison-door!”
-
- E. ANNA LEWIS.
-
- * * * * *
-
-[Illustration: Painted by J. Martin
-
-THE DESTRUCTION OF SODOM AND GOMORRAH.]
-
- * * * * *
-
-
-
-
- THE DESTRUCTION OF SODOM.
-
-
- [WITH A STEEL ENGRAVING.]
-
-
- BY MARGARET JUNKIN.
-
-
- The fair, broad plains of Jordan, rich with all
- Their wealth of summer fruitage, stretched themselves
- Beneath the orient day. The haunting mists
- Still folded to their bosoms the hushed streams,
- O’er which they had kept night-watch. Flocks and herds
- Dotting the green, fresh pastures stirless lay,
- While shepherds slept beside them.
-
- Peacefully
- The morning twilight slowly raised its lids
- On the devoted city, quiet now,
- With its wild midnight orgies overworn—
- As from its gate a little band stole forth
- With fearful footsteps, and affrighted gaze
- Turned ever upward to the clear, deep heavens,
- Where all the stars were fading into day.
-
- A light, irradiate as the astral glow
- Of planetary lustre, marked the brows
- Of those who guided them—betokening
- Angelic nature, as in the quick haste
- Of their divine commission fast they urged
- The trembling lingerers. They pressed the speed
- Of the old man, bewildered and amazed
- By weakening terror, and they caught the hands
- Which the distracted mother madly wrung,
- To think upon her children left behind,
- ’Mid the doomed multitude, and drew her on
- With gentle violence: they cheered the flight
- Of the twain daughters, who, aghast with fear,
- Were fain to lay their foreheads in the dust,
- In palsied helplessness. With the sweet power
- Of angel eloquence—with sympathies
- That yearned above their poor humanity
- In Christ-like tenderness, they hasted still
- Their lagging steps.
-
- “Escape ye, for your lives
- Look not behind you! neither tarry ye
- In all the verdant plain:—Escape, escape
- Safe to the mountain, lest ye be consumed:”
-
- The level sunbeams slant athwart the plain
- Through the long shadows of the flying group—
- Yet the destruction lingered; yet the sky
- Gave forth no presage of the coming wrath.
- The sward, dew-beaded, yielded to their tread
- Never more softly, and the bannered palms
- Playfully dallied with the morning breeze.
- Doubt grew to strength within the mother’s soul,
- Beneath the firmamental quietude;
- And though the angel’s clasp was on her hand,
- She backward looked, with longing, loving gaze,
- Incredulous of evil, to the roofs
- And lines of fair, white walls, that glittering lay
- Serene in the pure dawn. The rigid hand
- Dropped icy from the angel’s—the stark form
- Stood fixed, and motionless, and marble pale—
- A ghostly monument of unbelief.
-
- Dumb with the tracking fear that suffered not
- A moment’s waste in sorrow—on they pressed
- And gained the place of refuge. Then they turned,
- Breathless and tottering, with their straining eyes
- Clouded with horror, and their lips apart
- In speechless eagerness, and awful dread,
- Toward the distant city.
-
- The calm morn
- Seemed sliding downward to abysmal night:
- All Nature’s face grew sickly: through the plain,
- The fell simoom came sweeping like a fiend,
- Twisting the tallest palm-trees, as their stems
- Were lithest summer reeds, and wrenching up
- Centurial cedars. Silver-threaded streams
- Grew to a leaden blackness: tempest-clouds,
- Lurid with fiery fringes, marshaled all
- Their most terrific grandeur, and rolled on
- In thunderous darkness, till the funeral heavens
- Thrilled to the shock, and the fast-anchored earth
- Seemed throbbing in the agitated swell
- Of fathomless ether. Sulphurous, forked flames,
- Like myriads of avenging swords, flashed out
- Above the guilty cities, and the shriek
- Of frantic multitudes came roaring on
- In dismal howls, as if the eternal pit
- Had emptied forth its demons. The hot wrath
- Of God’s fierce anger rained with scathing breath
- The deluge-fire of a descending hell—
- And in the flaming sheets, the stately towers—
- The lofty mausoleums—the proud walls—
- The rich abodes of princes—and the homes
- Of Heaven-defying wickedness, were wrapped
- As in a fitting cerement.
-
- When the strength
- Of the spent storm of fury died away,
- And the ghast ministers of wrath drew off
- Their fearful hosts from that grim battle-field—
- The holy Patriarch, who had sought by prayer
- To turn aside the vengeance, stretched his view
- Across the plains of Jordan; but no walls
- Gleamed in the early sunshine; no fair flocks
- Studded the bleak, swart slopes; no waving trees
- Bent to the morning wind. Destruction swooped,
- Like a fierce raven screaming o’er its prey,
- Above the desert-waste: the seething smoke
- Hung, pall-like, round the ruins: and he bowed
- His head in sad yet meek submissiveness
- Before the righteous judgments of his God.
-
- * * * * *
-
-
-
-
- EMINENT YOUNG MEN.—NO. I.
-
-
- BENJAMIN H. BREWSTER
-
-
-In our last number we proposed to give a short biographical sketch of
-Benjamin Harris Brewster, as the first of a series of rapid portraits of
-such eminent young men as chance and association have made us intimate
-with, that we might thereby incite in the minds of some of the young men
-amongst our readers a laudable ambition to excel, and arouse that latent
-energy of character which is the foundation of all true personal
-greatness in America.
-
-Benjamin Harris Brewster is a lineal descendant on his father’s side of
-Elder William Brewster, whose name is embalmed in all true hearts as the
-intrepid ruling elder in that Band of Heroes and unbending worshipers of
-freedom of conscience, who landed from the Mayflower at Plymouth, in
-December 1620. The heroism of Brewster, Robinson and others of that
-immortal band of brave men and women, prior to their embarkation at
-Holland, are facts of history, and as familiar to every student as their
-subsequent trials and dauntless energy in braving them.
-
-Mr. Brewster’s family were originally from New Jersey. A descendant of
-Elder Brewster’s removed from Plymouth to New Jersey, and there Mr. B.
-H. Brewster, his great-grandson, was born. In his mother’s family a
-great-grandfather—a Duval, was a refugee Huguenot—“one of that handful
-of whom the world was not worthy, who without stain, without reproach,
-were crushed to the dust, were delivered up to the rack, the scourge,
-the dungeon, the stake, as if accursed of Heaven, until at last a
-weeping and bleeding remnant of them found their way to our land and
-poured into our veins the rich stream of Huguenot blood.” Thus from both
-sides of his house he inherits rich, old democratic blood. Puritan and
-Huguenot blood. Blood that an American may be proud of. His ancestors
-assisted in planting that holy seed of Liberty which has sprung into so
-mighty a tree, and under whose thick spreading branches the oppressed of
-all nations find shelter.
-
-Mr. Brewster was born in Salem county, New Jersey, during a transient
-residence of his parents in that place. When only a few months old his
-parents returned to their former residence in Philadelphia, where he has
-ever since lived. He early gave promise of great quickness of intellect,
-but from his earliest childhood he was particularly remarkable for
-strict truthfulness and integrity—he scorned a lie, even an evasion,
-though it might save him the dreaded humiliation of punishment. “Manly,
-straightforward, upright,” were words always applied to him by those who
-knew him in youth, and these qualities made him a stay and a comfort to
-his family at an age when most young men are dependents.
-
-He left the preparatory school of Dr. Wiltbank at fourteen and entered
-the University of Pennsylvania, but was removed from it six months after
-to Princeton College, where he graduated at the age of eighteen years,
-and commenced the study of law in this city, in the office of Eli K.
-Price, Esq. In 1837, at the age of 21 years, he became a member of the
-Philadelphia bar. Starting on the road of life in that most arduous of
-all professions, the law, with few friends, he early exhibited those
-peculiar traits of fitness for his profession that so speedily placed
-him among its leaders. His success has been remarkable—not in the sense
-of the world generally—but in the substantial character of his
-business, and in his position among his brethren of the bar. He early
-saw the door of distinction open to him, and resolved to pass its
-threshold and make for himself an honorable name. With that industry and
-energy that are part of his character, he speedily, while yet a young
-man, rose in his profession, and took a prominent place among the best
-of that bar, long since acknowledged to be the strongest in the country.
-His mind is Analytical in an eminent degree, it perceives and grasps
-with a quickness, oftentimes wonderful, the strong points of a case,
-which are lucidly put before the jury. He uses little ornament, as we
-usually understand it, though he has at times shown his ability to wield
-that most effective of all the orator’s weapons; he presents in a brief,
-sententious style, with all the force that such a style is so naturally
-fitted for the gist of his case. His forte as a lawyer is before the
-court in banc upon a question of law—the forum that tests the real
-ability of so many—where mere speech-making—the tinsel and clap-trap
-of the profession pass at their real value, and where mind alone is the
-genuine currency—where educated minds are to be taught, altered, or
-convinced. In this department of his profession Mr. Brewster is at home,
-and brings to bear on the argument of his cases, all the powers of his
-peculiarly well-stored mind. He is by no means, however, deficient
-before a jury, as many of our citizens will recollect, in recalling to
-mind his many triumphs in this city. While he is kind to his colleagues,
-he is respectful but independent in his bearing toward the Court, but
-permitting no undue interference in his or his client’s business, yet
-giving to all the respect that position or talents should demand.
-
-Mr. Brewster’s appearance before the Court is impressive. Thoughtful,
-earnest, and of fine manners, he at once impresses you with the
-importance of his cause, and that that which he is about to say is the
-result of no passing thought, but of care and deliberation—graceful and
-dignified in his manner he yet becomes, when warm with his subject,
-vehement without losing his self-possession, oftentimes treading a
-little out of his path to indulge in a pleasantry to relieve the dry
-detail of legal discussion, still maintaining the thread and course of
-his argument. Always courteous in an eminent degree to his adversary,
-high-toned and honorable in all his intercourse with the world, he
-exhibits it in argument, by refusing at all times to pervert facts, to
-overstrain or misstate the well-settled law of the land. He is ready and
-apt; exhibiting his readiness, and the ability with which he has
-prepared his case by the prompt answers of points against him suggested
-during argument by the Court or his adversary.
-
-Mr. Kingman, the highly talented and veteran correspondent of the New
-York Journal of Commerce, said of him, “His (Mr. Brewster’s) manner is
-happy and winning—his voice mellow and flowing, and, as Mr. Wirt used
-to say of one of his favorites, he can render interesting to any
-auditory the dryest legal citation by the magical effect of his tasteful
-reading.” His talents as a lawyer have drawn him from our local courts,
-and the scenes of his greatest success have been in that “strongest of
-Courts” the Supreme Court of the United States at Washington. In a case
-that now presents itself to our mind, he more than distinguished
-himself—we mention, we are sure, from its public character, and the
-importance of the questions involved to all, a familiar case, when we
-name “The United States vs. The County of Philadelphia.” It involved the
-great constitutional question of the right of a State Government to tax
-the unceded realty of the United States necessary for the purposes of
-the Federal Government. This was a question particularly suited to the
-turn of mind of Mr. Brewster, and it was to be argued before a Court,
-the ablest and the brightest in the land. His argument elicited from all
-parts the highest and the warmest praise. The New York Tribune, a paper
-of high character for ability and impartiality, says, that “a long,
-elaborate, and powerful argument was delivered before the Supreme Court
-yesterday by Benjamin H. Brewster, of Philadelphia, which has produced a
-great impression in our legal circles, and secured at once for Mr.
-Brewster the reputation of being one of the ablest constitutional
-lawyers in the country. The principle to be defined and settled in the
-case in which Mr. B. is engaged, is of the highest importance, and the
-whole country is certainly greatly indebted to the learning and
-eloquence of that gentleman for the convincing manner in which he
-pointed out and defined the rights of the States, and the ability with
-which he defended those rights against Federal encroachment.” The New
-York Journal of Commerce said of it, “Mr. Brewster’s argument
-necessarily embraced some detail, and some citations, and various
-illustrations, and still he managed to bring it all within the compass
-of less than two hours. Mr. Brewster is a rising star, and destined at
-no distant day to become a shining light of the federal tribunal.” And
-these are but two, selected at random from a host of such compliments.
-The result showed the truth of these views of Mr. Brewster’s argument.
-
-His argument in this now famous case, was not published, notwithstanding
-the urgent request of many friends that it should be—with a modesty
-that we think false, but which is usually the attendant upon real
-ability, he was contented with having done work well without seeking by
-parade to make it the medium of pecuniary benefit. His character does
-not, of course, stand upon this case alone, as the records of the court
-at Washington will show, though, in truth, it might stand on a less
-secure foundation. Almost as a necessary consequence of Mr. Brewster’s
-professional life, he has been more or less identified with the various
-political questions of the day. Early in life he attached himself from
-conviction to the Democratic party, and steadily since, “through good
-and evil report,” he has adhered to and defended with voice and pen, the
-interest and doctrines of that party. He was a senatorial delegate from
-Pennsylvania to the Baltimore Convention of 1844, and was the mover of
-the “two-third rule” in that Convention, to which fact Mr. Polk
-unquestionably owed his nomination. Shortly after the inauguration, Mr.
-Polk tendered him, unsolicited, the judicial appointment of Cherokee
-Commissioner. This Mr. Brewster accepted. It was an arduous and
-responsible position, requiring great industry and ability to discharge
-faithfully. By his course as Commissioner, he won the esteem and respect
-of the suitors, and saved to the government, from the jaws of rapacious
-speculators, millions of dollars. He received at the expiration of the
-term for which the office was enacted, the thanks and approval of the
-President.
-
-Mr. Brewster is a warm supporter of the political views of Gen. Cass,
-and is, perhaps, the most efficient, both with voice and pen, of the
-many friends of that distinguished statesman in Pennsylvania. Differing
-widely, as we do, from Mr. Brewster in political sentiment, we can yet
-bear testimony to the intrepid conduct of the man, his high-hearted
-courage in the cause of his friend, and his energetic endeavors to
-secure the ultimate triumph of General Cass in the next Baltimore
-Convention. And although we cannot vote for General Cass, we can almost
-wish him success for the sake of seeing Mr. Brewster’s earnest and manly
-efforts crowned with success. If General Cass has many such friends—and
-Mr. Brewster’s friendship is of personal intimacy—he must have
-qualities that most politicians deny opponents and rivals, for we are
-satisfied that no man can attach to himself _heartily_, any number of
-men of intellectual force such as Brewster has, without possessing
-qualities of head and heart far above the grade of many aspiring
-candidates for the presidency.
-
-Since his retirement from connection with the administration of Mr.
-Polk, Mr. Brewster has been engaged so much in the active pursuits of
-his profession as to prevent his giving much of his time to active
-politics, though often since by his pen, he has shown his interest in
-the great questions that have been lately agitating the country; and
-whenever the interests of General Cass are in jeopardy, his voice is
-heard in council, and his pen, lightning-winged, flies to the rescue.
-
-Having thus hastily glanced at Mr. Brewster’s position as a lawyer and a
-public man, and used, as we confess we have done, the opinions and
-sentiments of more than one member of the Philadelphia bar in high
-standing, and the unsolicited endorsement of men high in his party, let
-us take a closer view of the man—of his personal character, the proud
-arch and basis of the structure, and tell, with all the freedom of an
-intimate friend, what we feel we _ought_ to say, both in justice to our
-readers, to give them a fair view of the man, and to Mr. Brewster, to
-show how great have been his achievements against formidable odds.
-
-Mr. Brewster has inherited in an eminent degree the endurance and high
-courage of his ancestors. His path has been a rough one, with an
-accumulation of difficulties besetting him on all sides, at the very
-threshold of boyhood, which would have prostrated almost any other man.
-But he at that early age made a resolute front, and met and pressed
-struggling through all opposition.
-
-He in early life met with an accident, the scars from which still linger
-upon his countenance. This, in the opinion of the timid and ill-advised,
-was sufficient for them to urge him into a more quiet and secluded
-profession than that of an advocate. But they little knew, these weak
-ones, the dauntless bravery of his soul—the fearless, determined
-purpose, the iron will of the man. His motto has been, from early
-boyhood, and his life has illustrated it nobly—“There is nothing
-unconquerable to him that dares.” His whole life has been one of
-struggles, of resolves and of victories. His manly self-possession under
-all disasters, his vehement purpose to overcome, in spite of fate and
-circumstances, have given an impetuosity and daring to his character
-which enable him to overleap the impossibilities of other men. Had he
-submitted to the dictation of the doubtful, regarded the counsel of the
-timid-wise, his lofty soul would have been dwarfed, his heroic will
-chafing for action in seclusion, would have made him a misanthrope—a
-pining and peevish companion, a cynic toward man and a snarler at
-Providence—the plague of a household, a weariness unto himself.
-
-But with the true courage which faces disasters, the inborn greatness
-which judges of its own capacity to endure, with an eye fixed upon the
-successful future, which lifts its blazing front to the gaze of true
-genius, he spurned all control, and consulting the inward teachings of
-his own spirit, he resolved, he dared and he has triumphed. With a manly
-heart, lifted in its gigantic resolves above all mere considerations of
-self—obeying all of its generous and noble impulses, he has from early
-manhood devoted his energies to build a paradise around those he
-loves—to render his home the abode of all that refines, of Art, Music
-and Society—to gather around him those who appreciated his manhood, and
-to impart by all the delicate and tender relations and attentions of a
-son and a brother, the largest amount of happiness which domestic life
-can afford. With what a royalty of soul he has done all this, let those
-answer who have spent their most delightful hours in his
-drawing-rooms—where the stern lawyer, the energetic champion of
-political principles and rights has unbended, and let loose the bounding
-joyousness of the man—where his heart has let off its bubbles in very
-glee, and where the exhaustless stores of his memory are poured out in
-wantonness, and his imagination and wit flash and play in perfect
-abandonment. No man who has not enjoyed his intimacy, his confidence and
-his friendship, can make any just estimate of his ability or worth.
-
-As a conversationalist, it has not been our fortune to meet with many
-who are his equals, either in the readiness or the variety of his
-topics, the fine play of his fancy, or the mellow flow of his words.
-There is not at this bar, a man of his years, who is his equal in
-scholarship—who has accumulated so vast a mass of curious learning.
-Upon all questions of History, Philosophy or Biography—he is the
-referee among his friends. His accuracy is singularly nice—no event of
-which he has read, seems ever to escape the tenacious grasp of his
-memory. No quotation from the Classics, apt at the moment, is ever
-wanting to illustrate or point an anecdote or a sentence. His knowledge
-of old English literature is thorough, and his acquaintance with the
-modern familiar and full. He is, in all respects a thorough
-student—stealing the hours which others devote to idle pleasure or
-indolent sleep, to enlarge his stores of knowledge and make broader and
-surer the foundations of intellectual power.
-
-The defect of Mr. Brewster’s character has been the terrible impetuosity
-of his impulses, which would carry him to the gates of Hades in pursuit
-of a foe, and through a burning river in support of a
-friend—frequently, too, without stopping to ask whether either was
-worth the sacrifice. Hence, he has sometimes become the assailant and
-the champion, without the clearest notions as to which side victory
-justly belonged. These impulses, too, were as quick as they were strong.
-The lightning was not more sudden than his wrath—nor more certain in
-its destructiveness. No man made an enemy of him and escaped the
-well-timed blow. But his vengeance was rarely garnered, but blazed out
-in a fury which lent additional terror to the funeral pile of his
-victim. His generous sentiments are easily touched. His time, his
-talents, his whole soul are given to the cause of a friend. There is no
-halfway-house on the road to his heart—the door is fast shut, or the
-whole of the spacious apartments are thrown open, and the visitor is
-received amid a blaze of light from every genial corner.
-
-Mr. Brewster has recently been abroad, and travel, which is so often a
-test of character, has improved him. He returns from Europe with his
-energy of soul held in check—his feelings are composed and
-chastened—his manner is subdued to a more Christian serenity—his voice
-has not its old, impetuous volume—the rushing heat of passion comes
-from his lips with less of its scorching severity. Life has broader aims
-in his eyes than formerly—the hour and to-day, are less important—the
-immediate success less looked to—the distant future is lived for more
-earnestly, with wiser hopes of a happy present hereafter. All this comes
-upon us—his old associate—with a force the greater, because we have
-been less with him, of late; and the gradual, familiar growing of these
-better purposes of soul have been less visible to us—they burst upon us
-like a strain of pure music when discord has suddenly been stilled. Mr.
-Brewster, himself, is a happier man—his old exuberant gayety is a
-well-tempered serenity and joyousness—the picture has been toned down,
-and the artist dwells upon it as a diviner effort of the Creator.
-
-Mr. Brewster has nothing to do now but to _wait_!—high honors will come
-to him unsolicited. His position is assured. His ability, his integrity,
-his earnest energy of soul for the right and the true, open the pathway
-for all that the ambition of a Christian has a right to look for. This
-is Prophecy—the Inspiration which Truth impresses upon the soul.
-
- G. R. G.
-
- * * * * *
-
-
-
-
- SORRENTO.
-
-
- BY C. P. CRANCH.
-
-
- On such a blue and breezy summer’s day,
- The winds seem charmed that wander round this bay.
- The waves that murmur on the sunward beach,
- Whisper of things beyond the Present’s reach.
- Each winged bark that skims along the sea
- Seems gliding like a dream of mystery.
- Light of far Grecian days comes glimmering through
- This pure crystaline sky of cloudless blue.
- Here are the rocks where gold-haired syrens sang;
- Here Tasso’s harp in later ages rang.
- Over the sacred waves the purple isles
- Answer the heavens with their serenest smiles:
- Round yonder point, steep Capri with her caves;
- Beyond, where the sky kisses the far waves,
- Those amethystine sisters of the sea,
- Prochyta and the blue Inarime.
- Along the shore from Baia’s rained towers
- To marble Pompeii, half embalmed in flowers,
- Stretches the chain of towns along the sea;
- And gleaming in the midst, proud Napoli
- Sits like a young and pearl-crowned ocean queen
- Gazing into her mirror of clear green.
- And over all the bodeful genius
- Of this fair clime—fire-eyed Vesuvius
- Frowns, the sole troubled spirit of the scene—
- And even him the distance makes serene.
- All this I see from my still summer home,
- A bower where nought but peace and beauty come.
- Geraniums and roses round me bloom—
- From orange-groves, amid whose verdant gloom
- Gold fruit and silver flowers together shine,
- Come orient odors. A thick blossoming vine
- Shadows the terrace where, even as I write,
- The wind snows down the olive-blossoms white.
- Above, the birds’ sweet and unwearied song;
- Beneath, the ocean whispers all day long.
- Sometimes, when morning lights the rippling waves
- Below the steep rocks and the ocean caves,
- The sunshine weaves a net of flickering gleams.
- Fit to entrap a Syren in her dreams.
- There tangled braids of ever-changing light
- In golden mazes glitter up the sand,
- And underneath, the rocks and pebbles bright
- Glow like rich jewels of the Eastern land.
- Well might such sweet, transparent waters hold
- Tritons and nymphs with locks of liquid gold;
- For nothing were too beautiful to be
- Born from the pure depths of this summer sea.
-
- ———
-
- Four moons have passed—and nights and days have flown
- Cloudless—a summer of an orient tone,
- Since my unequal pen essayed to tell
- Brief passages of what I loved so well.
- Above me now, where blossoms fell in spring,
- Large purple grapes hang thickly clustering;
- The fig-tree near, with ample leaves displayed,
- Shelters its sweet, cool fruit beneath their shade.
- Still hang the oranges upon their stems,
- Whose dark green foliage makes them glow like gems.
- The cypresses by yonder convent wall
- Shoot up as freshly green, as stately tall,
- And there the drowsy vesper-bell ne’er tires
- Calling to prayers the brown-robed, bearded friars.
- Down on the beach, content with slender gain,
- Still drag their nets the red-capped fishermen.
- Still glide the days as fair—the nights more cool,
- The sea is still as ever beautiful;
- And yonder purple mount, towering as proud
- Still blends its light smoke with the flying cloud.
- And now, ere I these pleasant scenes resign,
- I would yet linger o’er and make them mine.
- I would remember every odorous breeze
- That wafted incense from these orange-trees—
- The roses clustering on their leafy stalks,
- Dropping their faint leaves in the garden walks—
- The sweet geraniums and the passion flowers
- Entwined with multifloras—the noon hours
- When underneath the oaks I watched the sea
- Rippling below me calm and dreamily.
- The hueless olives where the full moon came
- Kindling behind them with a holy flame,
- Touching their pale leaves with mysterious sheen
- And shimmering o’er old boughs of silvery green—
- Above, the inextinguishable lights
- That made all nights in heaven like festal nights,
- That seemed too holy for frail men to keep,
- And yet too costly to be spent in sleep.
- O lovely nights and days! too quickly flown;
- Leave me the memory of your sweetest tone.
- O ocean! long I’ve lingered on thy shore,
- Lulled by thy whisper, wakened by thy roar.
- Ere I depart and see no more thy face,
- Let me retain some sign of thy embrace—
- Not pearls nor painted shells, nor coral rare,
- But dreams of Beauty. So the goddess fair,
- Who rules all hearts, and fills the Olympian home,
- Rose in a sea-shell from thy glittering foam—
- Sprang an immortal to the blaze of day,
- And wide o’er gods and men extends her sway.
-
- * * * * *
-
-[Illustration: THE CARIBOO; OR AMERICAN REIN-DEER.]
-
- * * * * *
-
-
-
-
- THE GAME OF THE SEASON.
-
-
- BY FRANK FORESTER, AUTHOR OF “FIELD SPORTS OF AMERICA,” “FISH AND
- FISHING,” ETC.
-
-
- THE CARIBOO; AND CARIBOO HUNTING
-
- _Cervus Tarandus._ American Rein-Deer.
-
- [SEE ENGRAVING.]
-
-It is not a little extraordinary, that this magnificent and noble
-species, which exists in considerable numbers within two hundred miles
-of the spot where I sit writing, in the Adirondack Highlands—I mean, of
-New York—which abounds in the north-eastern part of Maine, swarms in
-New Brunswick and Newfoundland, and indeed everywhere North of the St.
-Lawrence and Ottawa, to the extremest Arctic Regions yet penetrated by
-the foot of man, should be yet less known to American writers—even on
-the topic of Natural History—than most animals of Central Asia, or the
-inhospitable wilds of Southern Africa. It is not even determined—so
-little care has been taken in examining or identifying
-specimens—whether it is one and the same, or a different species from
-the Reindeer of the Europe-Asiatic continent; nor have any of its
-peculiarities been noted down, such as the common indications of its
-stature, antlers, pelage, and color, much less its anatomical and
-osseous structure, so as to permit of any accurate comparison being
-drawn, or decision arrived at.
-
-In proof of the loose way in which these self-styled descriptions of
-rare animals are drawn, in books of solemn pretension and supposed
-authority, I shall proceed to quote the following from the Encyclopædia
-Americana—a work of which I can only say, that it is equally profuse of
-needless information on subjects trite to every Sophomore, and sparing
-of facts, such as require research and are required by men of ordinary
-reading, who will search its pages vainly for what on occasion they may
-need to ask it.
-
-“_Reindeer_”—says the authority. “These animals inhabit the Arctic
-Islands of Spitzbergen, and the northern extremity of the Old Continent,
-never having extended, according to Cuvier, to the southward of the
-Baltic. They have been long domesticated, and their appearance and
-habits are well described by naturalists. The American Reindeer, or
-Cariboo, are much less generally known; they have, however, so strong a
-resemblance to the Lapland deer, that they have always been considered
-to be the same species, though the fact has never been completely
-established. The American Indians have never profited by the docility of
-this animal, to aid them in transporting their families and property,
-though they annually destroy great numbers for their flesh and hides.
-There appear to be several varieties of this useful quadruped peculiar
-to the high northern regions of the American Continent, which are ably
-described by Doctor Richardson, one of the companions of Captain
-Franklin, in his arduous attempt to reach the North Pole by land. The
-closeness of the hair of the Cariboo, and the lightness of its skin,
-when dressed, render it the most appropriate article for winter clothing
-in the high latitudes. The hoofs of the Reindeer are very large, and
-spread greatly, and thus enable it to cross the yielding snows without
-sinking.”
-
-And this—without one word of the height, weight, color, or habitat of
-the animal—is the only information which the Editor of the American
-Encyclopædia thinks proper to give his readers—except a brief
-description of Doctor Richardson, about whom he seems to know a little,
-if he knew nothing about Cariboo—concerning an animal, which is killed
-almost annually within fifty miles of Albany, sold annually in Montreal,
-and in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia almost as common an article as
-venison, or Moose-meat during winter in the markets.
-
-Would not any one suppose, on reading the above, that he was dealing
-with the description of an animal, which roamed only wastes untrodden by
-the foot of the white man, save the adventurous explorers of the Arctic
-Circles, and concerning which no information can be gained by the
-ordinary naturalists of this country?
-
-Cuvier and Richardson, and Audubon’s stupendous work are not attainable
-by general readers, or even ordinary writers of cities; to those of the
-country they are utterly inaccessible—but to Encyclopædists, and to men
-who sit down to reproduce great works on Natural History, who choose to
-consult them, they are perfectly and easily open; and there is no shadow
-of excuse for those who profess to teach others, yet refuse to learn
-themselves.
-
-Had the writer of the above worthless trash thought fit to compare
-Doctor Richardson’s description of the Cariboo, which it seems he had
-read—and which, like all that singularly able naturalist’s
-descriptions, is doubtless as minute as correct—with Cuvier’s
-description of the Reindeer, he might have pronounced as easily, as he
-could whether two and two make four or five, whether the American and
-Europe-Asiatic deer are identical or different. Godman, in his
-“Quadrupeds of North America,” though a little more definite than Dr.
-Leiber, is scarce less bald and brief. Dr. Dekay, whose lamented life
-has recently been brought to an untimely close, though he suspected it
-to be a denizen of New York, was not fully assured of the fact, and
-therefore has not, I think, described it in his Fauna of that State.
-
-I have myself, unfortunately, no immediate access to either Richardson
-or Cuvier; nor even to any well established work on the Animals of
-Northern Europe. But I have seen a large herd, in my youth, of the
-Lapland Reindeer, which, with their Esquimaux attendants were exhibited
-many years ago in London; previous to a futile attempt at naturalizing
-them in the Highlands and Western Isles of Scotland; and have a fair,
-general remembrance of the animal. I possess antlers of the Cariboo,
-which hang in my hall, and which are accurately portrayed in the
-wood-cut; I have handled twenty times the hides of this great deer; and
-I have daily opportunities—in the office of my friend, W. T. Porter, of
-the Spirit of the Times—to examine the preserved heads and legs of even
-finer specimens than my own. I have also letters, private, and writings
-published, of a New Brunswicker, who has killed the Cariboo fifty times,
-and had opportunities of seeing the European Reindeer, at the Zoological
-Gardens in London, long since myself. I can, therefore, form a very fair
-conjecture at the identity or non-identity of the species. At least I
-can give some particulars of structure, stature, and pelage of the
-American Cariboo, which will enable others to judge, who are better
-posted up than I, in the peculiarities of the Lapland Reindeer. And
-first—I will premise that although I have never seen the Cariboo in
-life, or in his native woods—which I trust to do before the snows of
-the next March shall have melted—the wood-cut illustration of this
-number is so closely made up from measurements of the various parts,
-heads, antlers, legs and hides of the animal, that I believe it to be as
-nearly correct as any likeness can be, which is not taken from an
-especial individual of the race.
-
-In the first place—as to the stature of the Cariboo, I was long ago
-struck by the statements of the New Brunswick writer, “Meadows,” alias
-Mr. Barton Wallop, alluded to above, which may be found in Porter’s
-edition of Hawker’s Field Sports, p. 326-333—“The Cariboo of this
-country are very like the Reindeer, only a little larger”—and
-again—“as this is the first time you have seen a Cariboo trail, you
-will observe it is much like that of an _ox_, save that the cleft is
-much more open, and the pastern of the animal being very long and
-flexible, comes down the whole length on the snow, and gives the animal
-additional support.”
-
-Arguing on this statement, in my “Field Sports,” knowing Meadows to have
-seen both animals, that they must be distinct, I pointed out—no one
-could dream of comparing a Lapland Reindeer’s track to that of an _ox_,
-any more than to that of an elephant; and observed further, that the
-Lapland Reindeer is not a larger, but—to my recollection—a smaller
-animal than the common American Red-deer, _Cervus_ _Virginianus_ of
-Naturalists. This coming casually under Mr. Wallop’s eye, he wrote to
-me, in full confirmation of my opinion, that he had recently seen
-Lapland Reindeer in the Regent’s Park Zoological Gardens, and wished to
-amend his former _dictum_, by saying, that the Cariboo is at least
-one-third taller than the Lapland deer, and otherwise larger, and in
-other respects very different. Also, that the Lapland animal is not
-taller than the British Stag, or the American Common Deer, or, if at
-all, very slightly so.
-
-Now, to come to my own observation, verified by measurement. The Cariboo
-antlers in my own possession, not an unusually large pair, measure as
-follows:
-
-Extreme width from tip to tip, one foot 4½ inches. Length of curvature
-of antlers, from root to tip, two feet 3½ inches. Direct height, 23
-inches. Breadth of the palmated brow antlers, 8 inches. Length of do.,
-11 inches. Breadth of upper palm, 8 inches. Length of do., 12 inches.
-Girth at the root of antler, 5½ inches. At insertion of upper prong, 4
-inches. Number of prongs at the tips, unequal—three and two. At the
-upper palms, three. On the lower palms, seven processes, including the
-principal point.
-
-Compare with this, the measurements of the antlers of a very fine
-specimen of the common American deer, _Cervus Virginianus_.
-
-Extreme width from tip to tip, 11 inches. Length of curvature along the
-back of antlers from root to tip, two feet and half an inch. Direct
-height, 15 inches.
-
-Observe, however, that the greater curvature in the horns of the
-American deer, while it causes a larger comparative measurement, leaves
-a vast excess in height and show to the Cariboo.
-
-In the Cariboo, moreover—see cut—the structure of the horns is
-directly the reverse of that of any other palmated-horned animal I ever
-remember to have seen; as the Moose, the English Fallow-deer, and to the
-best of my recollection the Europe-Asiatic Reindeer. In both the former
-of these animals, the broad palms form the extreme upper tips; while the
-lower spurs and brow antlers are round prongs; and, to the best of my
-memory, the reindeer has no very conspicuous palms at all.
-
-In our common deer, again, contrary to any other deer I have ever
-seen—except a very noble non-descript specimen recently sent from
-Calcutta to the Spirit of the Times—the main branch of the antlers
-curves _forward_ over the brow, offering the main defenses, the true
-brow antlers being mere erect prongs; while all the tines are posterior
-to the main branch.
-
-In the American Elk, and in the British Stag, or Red-deer, and in all
-other round-horned deer I ever saw, the main antlers rise erectly, with
-a slight _backward_ curve, the brow antler and all the other tines
-springing from it anteriorly, and forming the true weapons for the
-animal’s defense.
-
-The Cariboo, therefore, presents a curious combination of the
-round-horned and palmated-horned deer, in the first instance; and of the
-usual, and American, round-horn structure, in the second. First, it has
-the round, pointed tips and sharp, round prongs of the round-horned deer
-above, with the flat, leaf-like blades of the palmated-horned deer
-below. And, secondly, it has the forward curve at the tips and backward
-prongs, above, of the American round-horn, with the terrible brow
-antlers and forward tines of the usual structure below.
-
-Lastly, it differs from all in this—that its brow antlers, instead of
-dividing with an outward curve over and without each eye, closes with a
-straight inward inclination, until the tips almost meet, nearly in the
-centre of a brow.
-
-Once more, as to size, there are the leg, with hoof, pastern and
-cannon-bone of an ordinary sized Cariboo; and the leg, with hoof,
-pastern and cannon-bone of an extraordinarily large-sized American deer,
-and as such selected, hanging side by side in Mr. Porter’s office. The
-limb of the Cariboo is considerably more than one-third superior in size
-to that of the common deer, and is fully equal to that of a yearling
-heifer of the very largest stature, and from its peculiar structure,
-being cleft nearly the full length of the pastern to the fetlock-joint,
-would evidently leave a much larger track.
-
-I have seen and ridden aged thorough-bred horses of fourteen and a half
-hands—four foot ten inches high—whose limbs were in all respects
-inferior to that of this superb specimen of the deer tribe; and right
-confident am I, from observation of several of their heads, their hides
-and hoofs, that from fourteen and a half to fifteen hands will be found
-to be the average height of the Cariboo. If the Lapland Reindeer ever
-exceeds thirteen it will be surprising to me. While on this topic,
-however, I will beg the first Canadian or Nova Scotian hunter whose eye
-this may meet, to furnish me with the full statements of height, weight
-and measurement of any Cariboo he may be so fortunate as to kill, or to
-have killed, during the present winter. Readers of Graham will find in
-the February number of the present year a correct and spirited
-representation of the antlers of the English red-deer; and, if they will
-look back to the June and August numbers of 1851, they will find those
-of the moose and American deer, designed by myself from the life, which
-will far more easily convey the comparison which I desire to draw than
-written words.
-
-As regards the nature of the pelage, or fur, for it is almost such, of
-the Cariboo, so far from its being, as the wiseacre of the Encyclopædia
-states, remarkable for closeness and compactness, it is by all odds the
-loosest and longest haired of any deer I ever saw; being, particularly
-about the head and neck, so shaggy as to appear almost maned.
-
-In color, it is the most grizzly of deer, and though comparatively dark
-brown on the back, the hide is generally speaking light, almost dun
-colored, and on the head and neck fulvous, or tawny gray, largely mixed
-with white hairs.
-
-The flesh is said to be delicious; and the leather made by the Indians
-from its skin, by their peculiar process, is of unsurpassed excellence
-for leggings, moccasons or the like; especially for the moccason to be
-used under snow-shoes.
-
-As to its habits, while the Lapland or Siberian Reindeer is the tamest
-and most docile of its genus, the American Cariboo is the fiercest,
-fleetest, wildest, shyest and most untameable. So much so, that they are
-rarely pursued by white hunters, or shot by them, except through casual
-good-fortune; Indians alone having the patience and instinctive craft,
-which enables them to crawl on them unseen, unsmelt—for the nose of the
-Cariboo can detect the smallest taint upon the air of any thing human at
-least two miles up wind of him—and unsuspected. If he take alarm and
-start off on the run, no one dreams of pursuing. As well pursue the
-wind, of which no man knoweth whence it cometh or whither it goeth.
-Snow-shoes against him alone avail nothing, for propped up on the broad,
-natural snow-shoes of his long, elastic pasterns and wide-cleft clacking
-hoofs, he shoots over the thinnest crust, over the deepest drifts,
-unbroken; in which the lordly moose would soon flounder, shoulder-deep,
-if hard pressed, and the graceful deer would fall despairing, and bleat
-in vain for mercy—but he, the ship of the winter wilderness, outspeeds
-the wind among his native pines and tamaracks—even as the desert ship,
-the dromedary, outtrots the red simoom on the terrible Zahara—and once
-started, may be seen no more by human eyes, nor run down by fleetest
-feet of man, no, not if they pursue him from their nightly-casual camps,
-unwearied, following his trail by the day, by the week, by the month,
-till a fresh snow efface his tracks, and leave the hunter at the last,
-as he was at the first of the chase; less only the fatigue, the
-disappointment and the folly.
-
-Therefore by woodsmen, whether white or red-skinned, he is never
-followed. Indians by hundreds in the provinces, and many loggers and
-hunters in the Eastern states, can take and keep his trail in suitable
-weather—the best _time_ is the latter end of February or the beginning
-of March; the best _weather_ is when a light, fresh snow of some three
-or four inches has fallen on the top of deep drifts and a solid crust;
-the fresh snow giving the means of following the trail; the firm crust
-yielding a support to the broad snow-shoes and enabling the stalkers to
-trail with silence and celerity combined. Then they crawl onward,
-breathless and voiceless, up wind always, following the foot-prints of
-the wandering, pasturing, wantoning deer; judging by signs, unmistakable
-to the veteran hunter, undistinguishable to the novice, of the distance
-or proximity of their game; until they steal upon the herd unsuspected,
-and either finish the day with a sure shot and a triumphant whoop; or
-discover that the game has taken alarm and started on the jump, and so
-give it up in despair.
-
-One man perhaps in a thousand can still-hunt, or stalk, Cariboo in the
-summer season. He, when he has discovered a herd feeding _up wind_, at a
-leisurely pace and clearly unalarmed, stations a comrade in close
-ambush, well down wind and to leeward of their upward track, and then
-himself, after closely observing their mood, motions and line of course,
-strikes off in a wide circle well to leeward, until he has got a mile or
-two ahead of the herd, when very slowly and guardedly, observing the
-profoundest silence, he cuts across their direction, and gives them his
-wind, as it is technically termed, dead ahead. This is the crisis of the
-affair; if he give the wind too strongly, or too rashly, if he make the
-slightest noise or motion, they scatter in an instant, and away. If he
-give it slightly, gradually, and casually as it were, not fancying
-themselves pursued, they merely turn away from the remote danger, and
-instead of flying, merely _feed_ away from it, working their way _down
-wind_ to the deadly ambush, of which their keenest scent cannot so
-inform them. If he succeed in this, inch by inch, he crawls after them,
-never pressing them, or drawing in upon them, but preserving the same
-distance still, still giving them the same wind as at the first, so that
-he creates no panic or confusion, until at length, when close upon the
-hidden peril, his sudden whoop sends them headlong down the deceitful
-breeze upon the treacherous rifle.
-
-Of all wood-craft none is so difficult, none requires so rare a
-combination as this, of quickness of sight, wariness of tread, very
-instinct of the craft, and perfection of judgment. When resorted to, and
-performed to the very admiration of woodmen, it does not succeed once in
-a hundred times—therefore not by one man in a thousand is it ever
-resorted to at all, and by him, rather in the wantonness of wood-craft,
-and by way of boastful experiment, than with any hope, much less
-expectation of success.
-
-For once, in my illustration, the trick has been played, and the game
-wins—the whoop is pealing on the wind beyond the dark, sheltering pines
-and hemlocks—the herd is scattered to the four winds of heaven—but the
-monarch of the wilderness, the prime bull of the herd, bears down in his
-headlong terror full on the ambushed rifle.
-
-Lo! with how brave a bound he clears that prostrate log. But the keen
-eye of the woodman is upon him; another moment, and it shall glare along
-the deadly rifle; the sharp, short crack shall awake the echoes of the
-forest, and ere they shall have subsided into silence, the pride of the
-woods shall have gasped out his last sigh on the gory green-sward.
-
-But this you will say is fancy—scarcely fact. Be it so. What follows
-shall be fact, not fancy. For I shall beg leave to quote a few pages
-from Porter’s Hawker by that “Meadows,” whom I have already
-mentioned—since his is the best description of this noble sport extant;
-since to reproduce it, giving his thoughts in my own altered words were
-rankest plagiary; and since, if it meet his eye, he will be rather
-pleased than hurt that I have winged his words into a wider field and to
-a larger audience than he at first addressed them.
-
-I will premise only, that “Howard,” who figures as the hero, is a New
-Brunswicker, in New Brunswick; “Meadows,” the narrator, an English tyro
-visiting his friend in the province; Sabatisie, a Micmac Indian,
-henchman and guide of Meadows; and Billy, last not least, Howard’s pet
-bull terrier. Scene, daybreak! they have issued from the camp close to
-the hunting-ground where the Cariboo are supposed to “won”—as Chaucer
-would have written it—when lo! quoth Meadows—
-
-“After a hearty meal, every thing being ready, we _mounted_ our
-snow-shoes and marched. The first golden rays were just struggling
-through the gray East, and dispersing the thick mist which hung over our
-camp, as I strode forth on my first Cariboo hunt, my heart leaping in
-anxious anticipation, and my nerves strung by the healthy atmosphere. We
-proceeded in silence, and had ample time to observe the lonely grandeur
-of the surrounding forest; the death-like stillness enlivened only by
-the cheerful chirp of the active ground-squirrel, or the loud boring of
-that most beautiful of woodpeckers, the Hid. We crossed Cariboo tracks
-at every step, but still the Indian proceeded, his quick eye glancing at
-every trail. After about an hour’s walk, we found ourselves ascending a
-steep mountain. Here the Indian came to a halt: in a low tone he told us
-that we were now near the Cariboo ground, this being the warm side of
-the hill, and good feeding ground; cautioning us to be quiet, we again
-advanced, but had not gone far before we came to a trail that the Indian
-said was only made last night. Sabatisie chose the outside track of the
-herd, to take the wind—which, having followed about three miles,
-brought us to where the Cariboo had rested during the night. Tom placed
-his hand on the damp snow, and remarked that the Cariboo had not been up
-much before us, and could not be far off.
-
-“Rifles were now examined, and fresh caps put on—Billy secured by a
-cord to Howard’s belt. The tracks from the resting-place of the Cariboo
-branched off in every direction; and the Indian leaving us, took a
-_cast_ round, some distance, and having ascertained the direction the
-herd had taken, he returned, and we cautiously followed him. I now
-perceived that at the bottom of the tracks the snow was a deep blue, and
-quite soft; we were therefore quite near the game. Sabatisie halted and
-took off his snow-shoes that he might proceed with less noise. Howard
-beckoned me to him, and in a low whisper said—‘Do exactly as you see me
-do—follow close upon my track, and do not for your life make the
-slightest noise—we are close on them!’
-
-“Sabatisie and Howard now slung their snow-shoes on their backs: to
-prevent the crackling of the crust, the Indian with his fingers broke
-the snow before him, and placing his foot in the hole he made, quietly
-advanced—Howard putting his in the track the Indian had left, I mine in
-Howard’s. By this means we proceeded without the slightest noise; and as
-our movements were simultaneous, we should to a person in front appear
-as one body. Our situations were certainly any thing but agreeable, up
-to the waist in snow. The trail became every moment more fresh, and the
-eagle eye of our sagacious guide pried far into the depths of the forest
-in front. Suddenly he cast himself at full length on the snow, and
-remained so long in that position that I innocently thrust my head out
-of the line to see what was the matter; but the Indian glared at me with
-anger and contempt, and Howard’s sign recalled my senses. In front, the
-wood being quite open, Sabatisie had seen the Cariboo, and now made for
-a large pine to shelter his approach. His movements, as he dragged
-himself along on his belly in the snow, were snake-like; and we
-followed, endeavoring as far as possible to imitate his very
-_interesting contortions_. At last I caught sight of the game. They were
-a large herd of 18 or 20—some rubbing the bark from the
-branches—others performing their morning toilet, licking their
-dark-brown, glossy jackets, and combing them with their noble antlers.
-All appeared unconscious of the approach of their most deadly foes, save
-one noble bull, the leader of the herd. He seemed suspicious—with head
-erect, eyes darting in every direction, ears wagging to and fro, and
-nostril expanded, he snuffed the breeze. Upon this splendid creature the
-Indian kept his eye, never venturing to move save when the head of the
-Cariboo was turned away. Inch by inch we approached the tree. Oh! the
-agony of suspense I suffered in those few minutes!
-
-“At length we reached our shelter. No time was lost. Howard signed to me
-to single out a Cariboo, while he took the noble leader, which was about
-100 yards distant—the Indian reserving his fire. We stationed ourselves
-each side of the tree, and our rifles exploded almost at the same
-moment. Springing up to see the effect of my shot, I was pulled down by
-the Indian; what was my astonishment to see the bull Howard had fired
-at, stamping the snow, and gazing around, with fire and rage in his eye,
-in search of his hidden enemy. As I looked at his formidable antlers,
-his majestic height, and great strength—a thought of our helpless
-situation crossed my mind. The Indian now rested his gun quietly on the
-tree, and took a long, steady aim—the cap alone exploded with a sharp
-crack! Quick as lightning the bull discovered our ambush, and with a
-loud snort made directly for us. Defense or retreat against such a foe,
-in our situation, up to the waist in snow, was almost impossible. In
-another bound the antlers of the enraged beast would have been in my
-side, when our gallant little dog dashed forward and seized the bull by
-the muzzle. Sabatisie and Howard were busily employed putting on their
-snow-shoes; and I endeavored to do the same, but with little success.
-The dog had luckily checked the beast, but he was no match for the
-enormous strength and wonderful activity of his adversary. Tossing his
-head, the Cariboo beat the poor little fellow on the snow and against
-the tree, till I thought every bone was broken. Finding this of no
-avail, the bull reared, and with his fore-legs dealt such a shower of
-quick and powerful blows, that I expected to see the dog drop every
-minute. While the Cariboo was in this position, the Indian approached
-him behind and endeavored to hamstring him. But the eye of the bull was
-too quick; wheeling like lightning, he made a rush at Sabatisie, which
-must have been serious, but was avoided by his falling flat on his face,
-the Cariboo passing over him and wounding his back. Meanwhile Howard had
-loaded, but his rifle having become wet, he could not discharge it. The
-violent exertions of the Cariboo had by this time broke the hold of the
-dog, and the furious beast now turned to the prostrate Indian—but
-before he could reach his prey, the dog was again at his head, checking,
-but not stopping his mad career. Sabatisie on his knee received the
-shock, and at the moment grasping the bull by the antlers, brought him
-down; when Howard sprang forward and plunged his knife to the hilt in
-the breast of the Cariboo. With a last mighty effort, the noble creature
-dashed the Indian in the air, and the next moment his own strong limbs
-were quivering in death.
-
-“From the commencement of this burst, I confess, I was a little
-agitated—so much so, that I had not coolness sufficient to tie on my
-snow-shoes, or load my rifle; but let not any blame me until they
-themselves have had the pleasure of being placed in the same delicate
-situation, up to the waist in snow, and one of those emperors of the
-deer tribe dancing round in mad fury, threatening instant annihilation.
-On examination, we found Howard’s ball had taken effect just behind the
-shoulder, and would have caused death in a short time.
-
-“‘Hillo! old boy, are you hurt?’ said Tom Howard, seeing the Indian
-still on his back.
-
-“‘Cariboo _sartain bery strong_,’ grunted the poor fellow. His back was
-much lacerated. ‘Brother cut some gum, and soon be well,’ said
-Sabatisie.
-
-“Howard gathered some balsam formed by the sap running from the bark of
-the fir-tree, and spreading it on a piece of his handkerchief, formed a
-strong adhesive plaster—staunching the blood, he placed it on the
-wound.
-
-“‘And now, Meadows, what has become of your game—think he is hit?’
-
-“‘Yes, by Jove, I’ll bet my rifle to a pop-gun he is—for see, Billy has
-settled down on his track, and is in chase.’
-
-“‘On with your snow-shoes, and away!—the track with the blood will be
-plain as a van wagon—if you come up with the Cariboo, do not fire
-unless you are sure to kill. I must stop and see if the Indian is much
-hurt, and swab out my rifle—but I will soon overtake you—away now!’
-
-“So urged, I started off, and found large drops of blood on the track
-the prime little dog had taken. As I proceeded, I saw the strides of the
-Cariboo were shorter, and he had been down several times. As I pressed
-on, in great hopes of overtaking the game before Howard came up, I
-observed the Cariboo had made for the valley, and after a sharp walk of
-an hour, I came to the stream, which was open. Here I lost the track,
-but saw the marks of the dog down the stream—these I followed, and soon
-heard the baying of the dog. As I proceeded, the river was every moment
-more rapid. After a sharp turn the stream was compressed between two
-huge cliffs, and rushed down a water-gap, forming a cascade of nearly
-one hundred feet. To the very verge of the fall the river was open; but
-over the fall itself there was a thin coating of transparent ice, which
-clung to the perpendicular cliffs on each side of the narrow gap,
-forming a gauze-like veil. The towering cliffs around were covered with
-a frosting of ice; and from the stunted pines which clung to the barren
-rock, hung myriads of fantastic icicles. At the foot of the fall, the
-blue water rushed out, dashing the white foam many feet in the air; and
-through the thick woods which overhung the cascade, the sun cast his
-rays upon the gorgeous prospect, making every object throw forth a
-thousand brilliant shades, and the glittering ice which encircled the
-fall was so transparent, that the blue water could be seen beneath
-dashing furiously down, as if enraged at restraint. Not ten feet from
-the verge of the fall, on a rock in the centre of the river, stood the
-wounded Cariboo. The water around him was fearfully rapid—one false
-step would carry him under the ice, and down the fall. On the bank stood
-the dog: my first care was to secure him, as he appeared ready every
-instant to make a spring that must have been fatal. The Cariboo had
-chosen a most admirable place of retreat; nothing living could approach
-him with safety. On each side the perpendicular cliffs towered many feet
-over his head—before him the roaring torrent, and behind the ice-bound
-cataract. After feasting my eyes on this wild and romantic scene, I
-approached as near the fall as the rugged cliff would permit. The
-Cariboo saw me, and with glaring eye-balls he shook his branching
-antlers in impotent rage, presenting to my rifle his broad front, as in
-defiance. I am not ashamed to say I was happy when I glanced at the
-rapid water and rugged cliff between me and my devoted prey; for I have
-no doubt, had it been in his power he would have soon shortened the
-distance between us—and after what I had so lately witnessed, I had no
-very great desire (seeing I was not as yet a perfect harlequin on
-snow-shoes,) to play the same game over again with my friend on the
-rock. To put an end to his wishes and my fears, I presented. My ball
-took effect directly in his brain, and he quietly dropped into the
-stream, leaving me master of the _field_. The next moment I could see,
-through the transparent ice, his glossy hide gliding down the cascade.”
-
-Amiable reader, thus it was that “Meadows” slew his first Cariboo; and
-thus, pray for me, that I may kill mine, this very month. If I do,
-believe me, I will try to tell you how I did it, as well—better I may
-not tell you—as Meadows. And so, until next month, fare you well!
-
- * * * * *
-
-
-
-
- A THOUGHT OF THE FUTURE.
-
-
-Do we not _all_, sometimes, desire to look into the future, but is it
-not _well_ for us, that it is _hidden from our view_? S. D. S.
-
- Couldst thou have looked beyond the mist that veiled
- The unseen Future from thy longing sight,
- Would not thy courage in that hour have failed,
- To see the shadows of Death’s coming night?
-
- Wouldst thou have grieved that nevermore for thee
- Would the clear waters gush, the sweet flowers bloom?
- That more than one fond heart would homeless be,
- When thou wert gone in silence to the tomb?
-
- What didst _dream_ of? when the rose-lip smiled,
- And bade thee welcome to the social hearth,
- Where voices low and sweet the hours beguiled—
- Were they not dear, those fireside hours of mirth?
-
- What didst thou hope for? with thy kindling eye,
- And thoughtful brow, that wore the laurels well;
- As thou wert climbing to the temple high,
- Not hearing on the winds the passing knell!
-
- Till ah! one morn, thy throbbing heart grew chill,
- And from thy pale lip faintly came the breath;
- We saw thee slumbering beautiful and still,
- And knew it was the dreamless sleep of death!
-
- Through the “dark valley,” and the “shadows” dim,
- Thy Father’s “rod and staff” did comfort thee!
- Meekly didst thou repose thy trust in Him,
- And launch thy frail bark on Eternity!
-
- Could some bright spirit, from a distant sphere,
- Bend down to listen to our feeble wail,
- To our vain longings with a pitying ear,
- And for one moment raise the mystic veil!
-
- That we might see, though rocking on the tide,
- If our frail barks would gain the port at last;
- If sailing on Life’s ocean far and wide
- We’d gain the haven when the storm was past.
-
- Oh! looking backward on our dreary way—
- Recalling all our dreams of love and truth,
- And the “green spots” wherein we might not stay,
- Far back upon the “fairy isle” of Youth—
-
- And thinking of the hours of grief and pain,
- Of all the bitter tears that we have shed,
- That only ceased awhile, to flow again,
- Above the loved, the beautiful, the dead!
-
- Would we not close our eyes, nor dare the sight?
- The many blighted hopes, the cares, the fears—
- The fond eyes closed, that round us shed their light,
- The clouds that hang above our coming years?
-
- Would not a fearful shriek then pierce the sky,
- Sent up by thousands from this erring world
- Would they not then for pardon wildly cry,
- Ere in the whirlpool of Destruction hurled?
-
- ’Tis “hidden from our view,” and it is well!
- But traveling through this vale of sin and strife,
- Should not thy memory be to us a spell,
- Thy pure and holy thoughts, thy blameless life?
-
- They who above thy grave so sadly wept
- Shall change as other years roll swiftly by—
- And look upon the tokens they have kept,
- Scarce yielding thee the tribute of a sigh.
-
- Oh what is Life? We live a few short hours.
- Eternal joy or pain hang on a breath;
- We pass from earth, as fade the summer flowers,
- Wither and die away—and _this is Death_!
-
- Cora
-
- * * * * *
-
-
-
-
- WAS THE WORLD MADE OUT OF NOTHING?
-
-
-The idea of creation may be symbolically represented under a variety of
-images: under that of the evolution of numbers from an original unity;
-that of the eradiation of light from an original light; or that of an
-expression of syllables and tones, answered for aught we know to the
-contrary, _by an echo_. The Hebrews seem to have preferred this last
-symbol. “In the beginning God _created_ (Heb. BARA, _brought forth_) the
-heavens and the earth.” In the verb _bara_, the meaning _create_ and
-_cry_ are identified: for this reason, it is eminently adapted to denote
-a creation capable of being symbolically represented by a vocal
-utterance.
-
-“The primary sense of _create_ and _cry_”—says Noah Webster, and we are
-careful to adduce in this place the testimony of a man whom no one will
-suppose to have been led astray by ontological speculations—“is the
-same, to throw, to drive out, to bring forth, precisely as in the
-Shemitic BARA.” The Hebrew text may indeed be correctly but inadequately
-rendered: “In the beginning God _bore_ (or _bare_, preserving in the
-English word the radical letters of the original BARA) the heavens and
-the earth.” For the same lexicographer says in another place, “The verb
-_to bear_, I suppose to be radically the same as the Shemitic BARA, to
-produce: the primary sense is, to throw out, to bring forth, to thrust,
-to drive along.”
-
-The author of the epistle to the Hebrews says: “By faith we understand
-that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are
-seen were not made of things which do appear.” These things which _do
-not appear_ are real existences; for the apostle says, “the things which
-are seen are temporal, but the things that are unseen (that is, which do
-not appear,) are eternal.” The text therefore does not affirm that the
-worlds were made out of nothing, but implies, on the contrary, that they
-were framed out of invisible (that is, virtual or potential) things.
-Plato says: “Let us lay down two classes of being, the seen and the
-unseen; the unseen, eternal in their relations; the seen, never the same
-but ever changing.”
-
-A cause which creates from nothing as material on which to operate, must
-of necessity itself stand as substance to its own creature: in such a
-case, the creator and the creature must be consubstantial. The dogma
-therefore that the worlds are created absolutely out of nothing, is
-_Pantheism_. The statement that the worlds are created out of nothing is
-not found in Scripture, neither is it possible that it should be found
-there; for the idea is absurd in itself, since out of nothing, nothing
-can come, and a universe absolutely created out of nothing would be a
-mere prolongation of Supreme Power; and moreover, there is no Hebrew
-word, nor known collocation of Hebrew words, capable of expressing such
-an absolute creation. The verb BARA, as we have seen, signifies
-something quite different.
-
-Fabre d’Olivet, who has endeavored to reconstruct the Hebrew language
-from its biliteral roots, translates the passage, “The earth was without
-_form and void_ (Heb. _tho-hu va bo-hu_)” as follows: “The earth was a
-contingent potentiality of being, and in a potentiality of being.” He
-affirms that the term _hu_ is derived from _hua_ (_being_, that which
-_is_,) and that it is formed of _h_, the letter of life, taken in
-connection with one of the signs of manifestation. The signs of
-manifestation are these, _i_, _o_, _u_, and are used in this way: _u_
-represents latent or virtual manifestation, _i_ represents the passage
-from potentiality into actuality, _o_ represents manifestation in its
-intensity and actual realization. Thus _hu_, in tho-hu va bo-hu, is
-latent or virtual being, while _ho_, in Jehovah, is Being in the
-fullness of actual existence. The blinding of the vowel in _ho_, which
-gives _hu_, represents the retrocession of being from the fullness of
-actuality into mere invisibility or potentiality; while on the contrary,
-the opening of the vowel in _hu_, that is, the changing of _hu_ into
-_ho_, represents the opposite process, or the procession of being from
-potentiality into actuality. This same root appears again in the same
-verse in the word _thehom_, translated in our version by the term
-“deep.”
-
-The Hebrew cosmogony is more scientific than that of India. The Hindoos
-tell us that the universe exists in two states, that it is sometimes
-visible and sometimes invisible; but they do not tell us by what process
-things come forth from the _thehom_ or “deep,” and return again into the
-same. But in the Hebrew cosmogony all that is explained. According to
-the Hebrews, things are in this “deep” when they are not related to each
-other; and they come forth from this “deep” by coming into relations
-with each other. According to the Hebrews, things have no power in
-themselves to come into relations with each other, that is, to emerge
-from this “deep,” but must be brought into such relations by the Divine
-Energy: so it is the putting forth of the Divine Energy which causes
-this universe to appear, and the withdrawing of that Energy which causes
-it to disappear again. This may be illustrated. In order to the
-possibility of an act of vision, it is necessary not only that there
-should be some person capable of seeing and some object capable of being
-seen, but also that the light requisite in order that these two may be
-brought into relations should exist. Who can see in the dark? So long as
-there is no light, the seer and the seen exist to each other potentially
-only: but as soon as the light shines these two become related.
-
-In the Hebrew Scriptures, the Divine Powers, which bring finite
-existences into relations with each other, thus causing them to emerge
-from the _thehom_, or “deep,” are called—_the Spirit of God_. “Darkness
-was on the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God moved on the face of
-the waters.” This Divine Spirit, operating upon man in its ordinary
-measure, makes man to be what he is; operating beyond its ordinary
-measure, it becomes especial _inspiration_. The Hebrews supposed this
-universe would continue in visible existence so long as the Spirit of
-God should breath upon it, but that it would fall back into the
-_the-hom_ the moment that spirit should withdraw its vivifying power.
-
-We read in the speech of Elihu, reported in the book of Job:—
-
- “There is a spirit in man:
- And the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them understanding. . .
- .
- The Spirit of God hath made me,
- And the breath of the Almighty hath given me life. . . .
- Who hath given unto God a charge over the earth?
- Or who hath disposed the whole world?
- If He set his heart upon man—
- _If He gather unto Himself his Spirit and his breath;_
- _All flesh shall perish together._
- _And man shall turn again unto dust._”
-
-Also in the 104th Psalm:
-
- “Thy creatures wait all upon thee;
- That thou mayest give them their meat in due season.
- That thou givest them, they gather:
- Thou openest thine hand—they are filled with good.
- _Thou hidest thy face—they are troubled:_
- _Thou takest away their breath—they die and return to their dust._
- _Thou sendest forth thy Spirit—they are (re-) created:_
- _And thou renewest the face of the earth._”
-
-Inspiration, therefore, does not consist in an intensification of the
-soul’s being, in the implanting of a new principle, or springing source
-in the centre of its substance, but it consists in a leading forth of
-the soul to a greater intensity of _manifestation_—to a greater
-distance from the original chaos, _the-hom_, or “deep.”
-
- BETH.
-
- * * * * *
-
-
-
-
- A LITERARY GOSSIP WITH MISS MITFORD.[12]
-
-
-Draw the curtains, stir the fire, make a semicircle round the rug, and
-now for a _causerie_. Mary Russell Mitford shall talk to us out of the
-three volumes of reminiscences she has just given to the world; and
-whatever we have to say about the sundry things she discourseth upon
-therein shall be said in a cordial, and, at the same time, perfectly
-frank spirit, as becometh an honest fireside.
-
-There she sits in the large chair, not quite so young as she was when
-she charmed all homesteads and hearth-stones with pictures of her own
-quiet Berkshire village, before railroads came to destroy the pretty
-wayside inns, where travelers used to be so snug and comfortable in tiny
-carpeted rooms with dimity curtains and glass cupboards full of
-antediluvian china: when little Red-riding-hoods were as plenty as
-blackberries, and the gipsies were never at a loss for secluded nooks
-and dells, where they could camp and cook, and tell stories under the
-hedge-rows, with a feeling of solitude and security they can never enjoy
-again in merry England. That was a long, long time ago; yet Mary Russell
-Mitford looks as ready as she was in her brightest days to enter with a
-relishing zest into the garden delights and book pleasures that have
-formed the occupation and happiness of her life, and made her name known
-and welcome wherever natural description and unaffected feeling are
-truly appreciated.
-
-There she sits, with as homely and good-humored an air as if, instead of
-writing books and holding correspondence with half the celebrities of
-her time, she had no other vocation in this world than to attend to
-domestic affairs, prune shrubs on the lawn, dispense flannels at
-Christmas to the poor, and look after a neighboring school. Beside her
-chair stands her constant companion, a remarkable stick, with an odd
-sort of a head to it; and to make her actual presence the more palpable
-she should be surrounded by her inseparable friends—Fanchon, her little
-dog, that might be crouched at her feet, with its sensitive ears lifting
-and falling at every sound; her neat maid, Nancy, watching her on a low
-stool, and her boy, Henry—(we hope he is still a boy,) and that he will
-contrive, for her sake, to continue so—standing behind her chair.
-
-That stick has a biography all to itself, and a very curious one it is.
-Sixty years ago it was a stick of quality, and belonged to some Dowager
-Duchess of Athol, who has no more reality for us than one of the
-embroidered ladies in an old piece of tapestry. So far as its original
-owner is concerned, the stick, for aught we know to the contrary, may be
-a phantom-stick, or a witch-stick; but, be that as it may, Miss
-Mitford’s father bought it at the sale of Berkshire House, where it was
-huddled by the auctioneer into a lot of old umbrellas, watering-pots,
-and flower-stands. It was then light, straight, and slender, nearly four
-feet high, polished, veined, and of a yellowish color, and of the order
-called a crook, such, says Miss Mitford, who is evidently very
-particular about it, as may be seen upon a chimney-piece figuring in the
-hand of some trim shepherdess of Dresden china. First, the housekeeper
-carried this stick—then, when the housekeeper died, Miss Mitford’s
-mother took possession of it; and from her it descended to Miss Mitford,
-herself, who, first out of whim, and afterward from habit and necessity,
-made it her trusty supporter on all occasions. The adventures of that
-stick are as full of perils and hair-breadth escapes as ever befell a
-South Sea whaler, or a Hudson’s bay trapper. Once it was lost in a fair,
-once forgotten in a marquee at a cricket match, and at another time
-stolen by a little boy, which cost its mistress a ten miles walk for its
-recovery. But the worst calamity that befell it was, when in the act of
-drawing down a rich branch of woodbine from the top of a hedge, its
-ivory crook came off, falling into a muddy ditch, and sinking so
-irretrievably that it was never recovered. The crook, it seems, was very
-handsome, and was bound with a silver rim, imparting a lady-like
-appearance to the stick, which at the first sight, gave you a hint of
-its aristocratic origin. In this extremity it was sent to a parasol shop
-to have a new crook put on, but the stupid people first docked many
-inches of its height, and then put on a bone umbrella-top, that fell off
-of its own accord in a few days. A good-natured friend remedied the
-second loss by fastening on an ebony top, which looks, after four or
-five years’ wear, a little graver, “and more fit for the poor old
-mistress, who having at first taken to a staff in sport, is now so lame
-as to be unable to walk without one.” The memoirs of a walking-stick may
-strike our readers as a mere waste of words and paper; but it is
-surprising what slight incidents rise into importance and interest in a
-country life, and how much the reality of its portraiture is indebted to
-trivial, but by no means unessential features. At all events, Miss
-Mitford’s stick is a stick of note, and should no more be passed over in
-silence than the ruff of Queen Elizabeth, or the flowing ringlets of
-Congreve.
-
-Miss Mitford’s life seems to have opened upon her in that page of the
-old quarto edition of “Percy’s Reliques,” where the ballad of the
-“Children in the Wood” is to be found. It is the first book, almost the
-first event she remembers. They used to put her upon a table before she
-was three years old, when she was, as she says, only a sort of
-twin-sister to her own doll, to make her read leading articles out of
-the morning papers; and the reward for this terrible penance was to hear
-her mother recite the “Children in the Wood,” just as children are
-rewarded for taking nauseous things by a promise of a lump of sugar. At
-last, she got possession of the volumes themselves, and made
-acquaintance with the rest of the ballads, which possess as great a
-charm for her now as they did then; and she never looks upon the old
-books—the very same edition Dr. Johnson used to treat with a very
-learned and unwise superciliousness—that the days of her childhood, or
-doll-hood, do not come vividly back upon her.
-
-She still keeps to the Percy collection. She does not seem to care about
-the lore that has been dug up since, or the antiquarian research that
-has come to the illustration of our old English poetry. Even the first
-edition contents her—she will have no other—she has an affection for
-it—it is enough for her purpose—it recalls the happy time when its
-pages disclosed a new world of enchantments to her—and she holds it in
-reverence amongst her literary penates. There is nothing in her
-reminiscences to show that she troubles herself about Percy societies,
-or Shakspeare societies, that she has ever dipped into Notes and
-Queries, or would think herself obliged to the officious critic who
-should detect a flaw in her two precious quarto volumes. The faith and
-the enthusiasm of childhood still cling to the well-known book, and
-would be very much put out by being disturbed at their devotions. And
-this is the character of Miss Mitford’s mind. She would rather believe
-in an old tradition than have it dispelled by the detective police that
-go about exploring chronicles and ferreting out damaging facts. She
-thinks a pleasant delusion better than a disagreeable truth; and it is
-to this fondness for old books, and old places, and the old stories that
-have grown up into a popular creed about them, that we may trace the
-paramount charm of simplicity and trustfulness, the cheerful spirit and
-the teeming good-nature which abound in her writings.
-
-To us, we must acknowledge, this freshness of the heart and entire
-freedom of the imagination, is very delightful. Miss Mitford is not a
-critic; but she is something a great deal better and more agreeable. She
-is of too enjoyable a temperament for a critic; she has not a tinge of
-the malice or perversity of criticism in her genial nature. For this
-reason, her opinions are sometimes slightly heterodox, but it is always
-on the side of a good-will, and a hearty admiration of some gracious or
-gentle quality which she has been at the pains to discover, and which
-few people would take the trouble to look for. She speaks rapturously of
-Davis’ “Life of Curran;” has such innocent rural views of literature,
-that she thinks nobody reads Pope and Dryden now, and that George Darley
-is unknown as a poet to the English public; detects a close resemblance
-between the Irish novels of Banim and the romanticist creations of
-Victor Hugo, Sue, Dumas, and the rest of that school; thinks that few
-works are better worth reading than Moncton Milnes’ “Life of Keats,” not
-only for the sake of Keats, but of his “generous benefactors, Sir James
-Clarke and Mr. Severn;” regrets that certain works have fallen into
-oblivion, from which no effort of fashionable or literary patronage can
-redeem them; considers Willis, Lowell and Poe the great American poets;
-and hopes that Richardson’s novels and Walpole’s letters will never come
-to an end. Nobody’s judgment can suffer any damage from such amiable
-notions; and the world is always sure to derive benefit from the kindly
-spirit that overlooks a hundred defects and follies for the sake of a
-single virtue it finds hidden beneath them. We wish there were more Miss
-Mitfords, with her intellect, to set us so influential an example of
-toleration and a willingness to be pleased.
-
-She confesses that she was a spoilt child, and that papa spoilt her. It
-is evident, from what we have just said, that sudden and high as was the
-growth of her reputation, the public have not spoilt her. What the
-applause of critics and the admiration of her readers failed to do, papa
-did. “Not content with spoiling me in-doors, he spoilt me out. How well
-I remember his carrying me round the orchard on his shoulder, holding
-fast my little three-year-old feet, whilst the little hands hung on to
-his pig-tail, which I called my bridle—those were days of
-pig-tails—hung so fast, and lugged so heartily, that sometimes the
-ribbon would come off between my fingers, and send his hair floating,
-and the powder flying down his back.” The papa who thus made her first
-acquainted with the orchard, occupies a still more prominent space in
-her subsequent reminiscences. From him to whom she was indebted for her
-early love of nature, and the happy hours of childhood, she also derived
-the heaviest sorrow of her life. The story is strange and melancholy.
-
-A young physician, clever, handsome, gay, in a small town in Hampshire,
-Miss Mitford’s father won the hand of an heiress with a property of
-eight-and-twenty thousand pounds. With the exception of two hundred a
-year, settled on her as pin-money, the whole of this fortune was
-injudiciously placed at the free use of Dr. Mitford, who seems to have
-possessed every quality to make his wife happy—except prudence. Being
-an eager Whig, he plunged into election politics and made enemies; being
-very hospitable, he spent more money than he could afford; and,
-endeavoring to retrieve the waste by cards and speculation, he sank
-nearly the whole of his resources. In this extremity, he thought he
-would do better in a fresh place, and so the family removed to Lyme
-Regis, where they had a fine house, which twenty years before had been
-rented by the great Lord Chatham for the use of his sons. Here they led
-a very gay life for two or three seasons—balls, excursions, dinners;
-yet in the midst of it, Miss Mitford says, she felt a secret conviction
-that something was wrong—“such a foreshowing as makes the quicksilver
-in the barometer sink while the weather is still bright and clear.” Her
-father went ominously to London, and lost more money—she does not say
-how—all was now gone except the pin-money: friends departed one by one,
-and there was great hurry and confusion, and then everything was to be
-parted with, and everybody to be paid, and the family made a forced
-journey to London, part of which was performed in a tilted cart without
-springs, for lack of better conveyance.
-
-Settled in a dingy, comfortless lodging in one of the suburbs beyond
-Westminster Bridge, Dr. Mitford’s constitutional vivacity returned. He
-used to take his little girl, then ten years old, in his hand about town
-to show her the sights; and one day they stopped at an Irish
-lottery-office, and showing her certain mysterious bits of paper with
-numbers on them, he desired her to choose one. She selected No. 2,224;
-but as this was only a quarter, and papa wanted to purchase a whole
-ticket, he desired her to choose again. But her heart was set on No.
-2,224, because the numbers added together made up ten, and that day
-happened to be her tenth birth-day. Fortunately, the lottery-office man
-had the whole number in shares, and so the ticket was bought. She must
-relate the sequel in her own words.
-
- “The whole affair was a secret between us, and my father,
- whenever he got me to himself, talked over our future twenty
- thousand pounds, just like Almaschar over his basket of eggs.
-
- “Meanwhile time passed on, and one Sunday morning we were all
- preparing to go to church, when a face that I had forgotten, but
- my father had not, made its appearance. It was the clerk of the
- lottery-office. An express had just arrived from Dublin,
- announcing that No. 2,224 had drawn a prize of twenty thousand
- pounds, and he had hastened to communicate the good news.
-
- “Ah, me! in less than twenty years what was left of the produce
- of the ticket so strangely chosen? What? except the Wedgwood
- dinner service that my father had had made to commemorate the
- event, with the Irish harp within the border on one side, and
- his family crest on the other. That fragile and perishable ware
- long outlasted the more perishable money!”
-
-Miss Mitford relates these painful recollections with a serenity and
-patience that yield a lesson from which her readers may profit as
-largely as from the example of extravagance and recklessness which made
-so severe a demand on her feelings and her philosophy; and it is
-pleasant, after all her vicissitudes and jolting over the rough ways of
-the world, to find her in a tranquil cottage, in the midst of the
-scenery she loves, with her dog and her maid, her stick and her pony,
-enjoying as much felicity as can be reasonably looked for in the sunset
-of a chequered life.
-
-Scattered over the volumes without much heed of chronology or sequence,
-are many little personal scraps that will hereafter enter into her
-biography, from the light which they throw upon the cast and color of
-her training. The papa, who was so indifferent to money, who was
-addicted to such ruinous habits, and who in his general relations with
-society, seems to have sacrificed the comfort and repose of his home,
-was, nevertheless, the most devoted of fathers. From her earliest
-childhood to the last hour of his life, he treated her with an
-affectionate and caressing tenderness that, in spite of his manifest
-errors, leaves an amiable impression of his character behind. One of the
-incidents on which she dwells with the greatest satisfaction was her
-first visit to London; and the mode of it is not only illustrative of
-the comparatively primitive habits of the time, but of the simplicity of
-the man in his domestic life. Having occasion to come to London in the
-middle of July, he suddenly announced his intention of taking her up
-with him in his gig; and at this open fashion they started, stopping to
-dine at Crauford Bridge in a little inn—then a very famous
-posting-house—whose pretty garden and Portugal laurels she still
-remembers; and then on to Hatchett’s Hotel in Piccadilly, where she
-stood looking out of the window and wondering when the crowd would go
-by; and in the evening she was so unconscious of fatigue from this
-exciting journey that papa took her to the Haymarket to see a
-comedy—one of the comedies, she says, that George III. used to enjoy so
-heartily, although what sort of comedy it was we know not, unless, which
-we shrewdly suspect, it was a specimen of Colman the Younger, or of the
-Morton and Reynolds school. She had seen plays before in a barn—but
-never such a play as this. The whole description of this trip to London
-is as good in its way as anything Fielding himself could have done.
-
-“Dear papa,” in the pride of his heart, insisted upon making an
-accomplished musician of her, and would “stick her up” to the piano,
-although she had neither ear, taste, nor application. Her master was
-Hook, the father of the facetious Theodore, and she was taught in the
-schoolroom where Miss Landon passed the greater part of her life.
-Luckily they shut her up in a room to make her practise the harp, and as
-it was full of books she fell to reading, and under these auspicious
-circumstances made her first acquaintance with the plays of Voltaire and
-Molière. She was caught in the fact of laughing till the tears ran down
-her cheeks over that passage in the “Bourgeois Gentilhomme,” where the
-angry father apostrophises the galley, “Que diable alloit-il faire dans
-cette galère!” As her good stars had it, she was detected in her
-delinquency by the husband of the schoolmistress, who happened to be a
-Frenchman, an adorer of Molière, and a hater of music, and who, instead
-of chiding her for her neglect of the instrument, dismissed the
-harp-mistress, and made the young student a present of a cheap edition
-of Molière, for her own reading, which she has to this hour, in twelve
-unbound, foreign-looking, little volumes.
-
-After these scenes, we find her in a cottage, at Taplow—at this time a
-grown-up lady—looking over a garden of honeysuckles, lilies, and roses,
-making excursions to Windsor, to Gray’s Lawn at Stoke Poges, to Burke’s
-at Beaconsfield, and to the College at Chalfont, where Milton found a
-refuge during the plague. We always associate Miss Mitford with
-cottages. We cannot imagine her living in a slated house, three stories
-high, with a carriage sweep, and steps up to the door—we cannot suffer
-her in our imagination to have any of the comforts and solidity of a
-well-built mansion about her; it must be a cottage, with its ivy
-creepers, its portico and latticed windows, and everything round it
-looking as green and rural as a wilderness of trees and shrubs, growing
-up luxuriantly in a warm, languid climate can make it. In short, we must
-smother her in flowers, or she is not the Miss Mitford that we know so
-well in the pastoral books she has written.
-
-Turning from the autobiographical passages which form so interesting a
-part of these volumes, there are a variety of literary sketches of an
-equally attractive kind. Miss Mitford runs over a wide field of books
-and recollections; and from her extensive acquaintance with literary
-people, and the desultory character of her reading, she supplies an
-abundant store of anecdote and remark.
-
-The following is new, and certainly very curious. The scene is an old,
-wooden, picturesque house, at Cambridge, in America, once the head
-quarters of Washington, but now the residence of Longfellow, the poet.
-
- “One night the poet chanced to look out of his window, and saw
- by the vague starlight a figure riding slowly past the mansion.
- The face could not be distinguished; but the tall, erect person,
- the cocked hat, the traditional costume, the often-described
- white horse, all were present. Slowly he paced before the house,
- and then returned, and then again passed by, after which,
- neither horse nor rider were seen or heard of.”
-
-Miss Mitford does not give us any authority for this anecdote; but the
-collectors of ghost stories are not very particular about authorities,
-and will be content to take it upon her own, as we do.
-
-There is a sketch of Elizabeth Barrett, and a little biography attached
-to it, which will be read with interest. Miss Mitford’s acquaintance
-with her commenced fifteen years ago.
-
- “Of a slight, delicate figure, with a shower of dark curls
- falling on either side of a most expressive face large, tender
- eyes richly fringed by dark eye-lashes, a smile like a sunbeam,
- and such a look of youthfulness, that I had some difficulty in
- persuading a friend, in whose carriage we went together to
- Chiswick, that the translator of the ‘Prometheus of Æschylus,’
- the authoress of the ‘Essay on Mind,’ was old enough to be
- introduced into company, or, in technical language, was _out_.”
-
-It was in the following year that Miss Barrett broke a blood-vessel in
-the lungs, which consigned her to a long illness, during which she lost
-a favorite brother by one of those melancholy accidents which leave
-ineffaceable memories in the hearts of the survivors. He was drowned,
-with two companions, in sight of her windows at Torquay, whither she was
-ordered for change of air. This tragedy nearly killed her; and more than
-a year afterward, when she was removed to London by easy journeys, she
-told Miss Mitford that, “during that whole winter, the sound of the
-waves rang in her ears like the moans of one dying.”
-
-William Cobbett was one of the notabilities to whom Miss Mitford was
-introduced by her father, whose intimacy with him was brought about
-through their mutual attachment to field sports. She describes him in
-his own house as a man of unfailing good humor and great heartiness;
-tall, stout and athletic, with a bright smile, and an air compounded of
-the soldier and the farmer, to which his habitual red waistcoat
-contributed not a little. His activity was something to be remembered,
-for he would begin the day by mowing his own lawn, a laborious pastime
-in which he beat his gardener, who was esteemed, except himself, the
-best mower in the parish.
-
-Upon one occasion, Dr. Mitford and his daughter were invited to
-Cobbett’s to meet the wife and daughters of a certain Dr. Blamire; and
-as it appeared that Dr. Mitford had formerly flirted with Mrs. Blamire,
-some amusement was expected from seeing how they would meet after a
-lapse of twenty years, both of them having shaken off the old _liaison_,
-and married in the meanwhile.
-
- “The most diverting part of this scene, very amusing to a
- bystander, was, that my father, the only real culprit, was the
- only person who throughout maintained the appearance and
- demeanor of the most unconscious innocence. He complimented Mrs.
- Blamire on her daughters—two very fine girls—inquired after
- his old friend, the doctor, and laughed and talked over by-gone
- stories with the one lady, just as if he had not jilted her, and
- played the kind and attentive husband to the other, just as if
- he had never in all his days made love to anybody except his own
- dear wife.”
-
-Formerly, we frequently met with physicians who belonged to this class,
-and who were indebted for their professional success mainly to their
-social tactics and invincible pleasantry; but although you still
-occasionally fall in with a medical man who considers it as necessary to
-cultivate popularity amongst ladies as to attend to the practice of his
-art, the age of the flirt-physicians, we are happy to believe, has
-passed away.
-
-Miss Mitford’s literary “recollections” bear rather more upon books than
-upon the authors of them. The book-gossip to which she invites us,
-traverses a considerable round of poets, novelists, and miscellaneous
-writers, and the specimens of their works over which she lingers with
-delight, make a body of extracts which enhance the value and variety of
-the publication. Her notes upon these selected passages discover a
-geniality and earnestness which will be grateful even to the reader who
-may sometimes have occasion to think that her praise is a little in
-excess, or who may doubt the judgment that has been shown in particular
-selections.
-
-This tendency to a good-natured estimate of her favorite authors, shows
-itself most conspicuously in her admiration of certain poets, whose
-merits the world has not hitherto rated so highly. We are not sorry,
-nevertheless, to meet snatches of such people as Mr. Spencer and Miss
-Catharine Fanshawe—whose chief claim to notice is, that she was the
-author of the Enigma on the letter H, which used to be ascribed to
-Byron—for, except through the flattering medium of books like these, we
-are not very likely to see the _vers de société_ that were in such
-request some fifty years ago, disinterred for our special delectation.
-They are abundantly curious, and discover a certain verbal facility and
-gayety of the thinnest and airiest kind, which will at least amuse, if
-not instruct the reader, by setting him thinking of the extinct modes
-and tastes to which they were addressed, and out of which they extracted
-their fugitive popularity. But poetasters of this order, however
-cheerfully and successfully they help to shed a grace on private life,
-and to give a sort of intellectual vivacity to social intercourse, can
-never be made to survive their hour in print. They must perish with the
-occasion that gave them birth; and you might as well hope to procure for
-the acted charade, if it were taken down in short-hand and published,
-the same success in the closet that it received on its impromptu
-delivery, as to procure for the graceful trifles thrown off for the
-amusement of a _coterie_, the honors of a permanent place in the
-library. They never aimed at such a destiny, and can never achieve it;
-and it may be doubted whether their fragile existence should be risked
-in print at all.
-
-Of all the neglected, forgotten, or unknown books Miss Mitford has
-brought to life again, the Autobiography of Holcroft is the most
-deserving of resuscitation. We know no memoir of its kind—excepting the
-only one forbidden book in French literature—that possesses its charm
-of frankness, truthfulness of detail, and quiet development of
-character. Unfortunately it is nothing more than a fragment, consisting
-of seventeen chapters, dictated by Holcroft—a prolific author and
-translator—in his last illness; stopping short at an interesting point
-in his career, and furnishing such evidences of clear-sighted judgment,
-and happy skill in relation and portraiture, as to leave an indelible
-regret upon the mind of the reader at finding himself cast upon the
-grander diction of Hazlitt for the continuation of the narrative. The
-contrast is painful. The brilliancy and paradoxical genius of Hazlitt,
-rendered him of all men the most unfit to follow up the unpretending
-strength and simplicity of Holcroft; and the transition is something
-like being transported from the fresh air and pastoral beauty of a
-natural landscape into a severe Italian garden. There was but one point
-in common between them—and that was the most contracted and least
-characteristic of all—their agreement in politics. Holcroft was a man
-of larger powers, and a wider range of tastes than might be predicated
-from that party martyrdom which gave him so distressing a notoriety in
-the latter days of his life, to the partial eclipse of his literary
-reputation. But the subject is not likely to be revived now, nor would
-it repay the labors of a more competent editor. Miss Mitford, however,
-has done well in drawing attention to Holcroft’s book, and the extracts
-she has given from it will be read with interest; but it is only from
-the memoir itself, as a whole, tracing the course of the self-educated
-boy from his origin upward, that an adequate notion can be formed of the
-enthralling charm of that singular narrative.
-
-We have exceeded our limits. A gossip, intended to occupy only five
-minutes or so, has already run over the brim of the measure which we
-proposed to fill up to the health of Miss Mitford. It is not the first
-time she has tempted us into an excess of this kind; but, if the reader
-will open her volumes over the fireside as we have done, we are mistaken
-if he do not find quite as much difficulty as we do now in shutting them
-up and putting them down again.
-
------
-
-[12] Recollections of a Literary Life; or Books, Places, and People. By
-Mary Russell Mitford, Author of “Our Village,” etc. 3 vols.
-
- * * * * *
-
-
-
-
- THE BLACK HUNTSMAN.
-
-
- HORACE W. SMITH.
-
-
- Loud blew the wind at the midnight hour,
- With many a wintry blast,
- Which fairly shook old Rodenstine’s tower,
- As the Wild Black Huntsman passed.
-
- The deer he sprang from his leafy bed,
- As he heard the piercing sounds,
- And the oak boughs crashed to his antlered head,
- As he flew from the phantom hounds.
-
- The rite of the holy monk was stayed,
- And he trembling dropped his beads,
- As he heard the tramp through the forest glades
- And the neigh of the goblin steeds.
-
- From the revellers hand the wine-cup fell,
- At the forester’s festive board;
- And a sudden charm came o’er the spell
- Of the minstrels tuneful chord.
-
- The old oak shook in its ancient hold,
- The abbey bell tolled to the blast;
- And the cloud and the tempest onward rolled,
- As the Wild Black Huntsman passed.
-
- * * * * *
-
-[Illustration: J. Hayter, W.H. Mote
-
-COQUETISH SEVENTEEN.
-Graham’s Magazine 1852]
-
- * * * * *
-
-
-
-
- THE TWO ISABELS;
-
-
- OR COQUETISH SEVENTEEN.
-
-
- [with a steel plate.]
-
- BY MRS. S. C. HALL.
-
-
- Oh love, love, love, love!—love is like a dizziness,
- It will not let a poor man go about his business.
- Old Song.
-
- And are those follies going,
- And is my proud heart growing
- Too cold, or wise, for woman’s eyes
- Again to set it glowing?
- Moore.
-
-The General put on his spectacles, and looked steadfastly at Isabel for
-at least two minutes. “Turn your head,” he said, at last—“there, to the
-left.”
-
-Isabel Montford, although an acknowledged beauty, was as amiable as she
-was admired; she had also a keen appreciation of character; and, though
-somewhat piqued, was amused by the oddity of her aunt’s old lover. The
-General was a fine example of the well-preserved person and manners of
-the past century; beauty always recognizes beauty as a distinguished
-relative; and Isabel turned her head, to render it as attractive as it
-could be.
-
-The General smiled, and after gazing for another minute with evident
-pleasure, he said—“Do me the favor to keep that attitude, and walk
-across the room.”
-
-Isabella did so with much dignity; she certainly was exceedingly
-handsome;—her step light, but firm; her figure, admirably poised; her
-head, well and gracefully placed; her features, finely formed; her eyes
-and smile, bright and confiding. She would have been more captivating
-had her dress been less studied; her taste was evidently Parisien rather
-than classic. The gentleman muttered something, in which the words,
-“charming,” and “to be regretted,” only met her ear; then he spoke
-distinctly:
-
-“You solicited my candor, young lady—you challenged comparison between
-you and your compeers, and the passing belles whom I have seen. Now, be
-so kind as to walk out of the room, re-enter, and curtsey.”
-
-Had Isabel Montford been an uneducated young lady, she might have
-flounced out of the _salon_, in obedience to her displeasure, which was
-very decided; but as it was, she drew herself to her full height, and
-swept through the folding-doors. The General took a very large pinch of
-snuff. “That is so perfectly a copy of her poor aunt!” he
-murmured;—“just so would she pass onward, like a ruffled swan; she went
-after that exact fashion into the ante-room, when she refused me, for
-the fourth time, thirty-five years ago.”
-
-The young Isabel re-entered, and curtseyed. The gentleman seated
-himself, leaned his clasped hands upon the head of his beautiful inlaid
-cane—which he carried rather for show than use—and said, “Young lady,
-you look a divinity! Your _tourneure_ is perfection; but your curtsey is
-frightful! A dip, a bob, a bend, a shuffle, a slide, a canter—neither
-dignified, graceful, nor self-possessed! A curtsey is in grace what an
-_adagio_ is in music;—only masters of the art can execute either the
-one or the other. Why, the beauty of the Duchess of Devonshire could not
-have saved her reputation as a graceful woman, if she had dared such a
-curtsey as that.”
-
-“I assure you, sir,” remonstrated the offended Isabel, “that Madame
-Micheau——”
-
-“What do I care for the woman!” exclaimed the General, indignantly.
-“Have I not memory?”
-
-“Can you not teach me?” said Isabel, amused and interested by his
-earnestness.
-
-“I teach you!—I! No; the curtseys which captivated thousands in my
-youth were more an inspiration than an art. The very queen of _ballet_,
-in the present day, cannot curtsey.”
-
-“Could my aunt?” inquired Isabel, a little saucily.
-
-“Your aunt, Miss Montford, was grace itself. Ah! there are no such women
-now a-days!”
-
-And, after the not very flattering observation, the General moved to the
-piano. Isabel’s brows contracted and her cheeks flushed; however, she
-glanced at the looking-glass, was comforted, and smiled. He raised the
-cover, placed the seat with the grave gallantry of an old courtier, and
-invited the young lady to play. She obeyed, to do her justice, with
-prompt politeness; she was not without hope that _there_, at least, the
-old gentleman would confess she was triumphant. Her white hands, gemmed
-with jewels, flew over the keys like winged seraphs; they bewildered the
-eye by the rapidity of their movements. The instrument thundered, but
-the thunder was so continuous that _there was no echo_! “The contrast
-will come by-and-by,” thought the disciple of the old school—“there
-must be some shadow to throw up the lights.”
-
-Thunder—crash—thunder—crash—drum—rattle—a confused, though
-eloquent, running backward and forward of sounds, the rings flashing
-like lightning! Another crash—louder—a great deal of crossing
-hands—violent strides from one end of the instrument to the
-other—prodigious displays of strength on the part of the fair
-performer—a terrific shake! “What desperate exertion!” thought the
-General; “and all to produce a soulless noise.” Then followed a fearful
-banditti of octaves—another crash, louder and more prolonged than the
-rest; and she looked up with a triumphant smile—a smile conveying the
-same idea as the pause of an opera-dancer after a most wonderful
-_pirouette_.
-
-“Do you keep a tuner in the house, my dear young lady?” inquired the
-General.
-
-If a look could have annihilated, he would have crumbled into ashes; but
-he only returned it with admiration, thinking, “How astonishingly like
-her aunt, when she refused me the second time!”
-
-“And that is fashionable music, Miss Montford? I have lived so long out
-of England, only hearing the music of Beethoven, and Mozart, and
-Mendelssohn, I was not aware that noise was substituted for power, and
-that execution had banished expression. Dear me!—why, the piano is
-vibrating at this moment! Poor thing! How long does a piano last you,
-Miss Montford?”
-
-Isabel was losing her temper, when fortunately her aunt—still Miss
-Vere—came to the rescue. The lovers of thirty years past, would have
-met any where else as strangers. The once rounded and queen-like form of
-the elder Isabel was shorn of its grace and beauty; of all her
-attributes, of all her attractions, dignity only remained; and it was
-that high-bred, innate dignity which can never be acquired, and is never
-forgotten. She had not lost the eighth of an inch of her height, and her
-gray hair was braided in full folds over her fair but wrinkled brow.
-Isabel Montford looked so exactly what Isabel Vere had been, that
-General Gordon was sorely perplexed; Isabel Vere, if truth must be told,
-had taken extra pains with her dress; her niece had met the General the
-night before, and her likeness to her aunt had so recalled the past,
-that his promised visit to his old sweetheart (as he still called her)
-had fluttered and agitated her more than she thought it possible an
-interview with _any man_ could do; she quarreled with her beautiful gray
-hair, she cast off her black velvet dress disdainfully, and put on a
-blue _Moire antique_. (She remembered how much the Captain—no, the
-General, once admired blue.) She was not a coquette; even gray hair at
-fifty-five does not cure coquetry where it has existed in all its
-strength; but, for the sake of her dear niece, she wished to look as
-well as possible. She wondered why she had so often refused “poor
-Gordon.” She had been all her life of too delicate a mind to be a
-husband-hunter, too well satisfied with her position to calculate how it
-could be improved, and yet, she did not hesitate to confess to herself
-that now, in the commencement of old age, however verdant it might be,
-she would have been happier, of more consequence, of more value, as a
-married woman. She had too much good sense, and good taste, to belong to
-the class of discontented females, consisting of husbandless and
-childless women, who seek to establish laws at war with the laws of the
-Almighty; so, if her heart did beat a little stiffly, and sundry
-passages passed through her brain in connection with her old adorer, and
-what the future might be—she may be forgiven, and will be, by those not
-strong-minded women who understand enough of the waywardness of human
-nature to know that, if _young_ heads and _old_ hearts are sometimes
-found together, so are young hearts and old heads. The young laugh to
-scorn the idea of Cupid and a crutch, but Cupid has strange vagaries,
-and at any moment can barb his crutch with the point of an arrow.
-
-“The old people,” as Isabel Montford irreverently called them that
-evening, did not get on well together; they were in a great degree
-disappointed one with the other. They stood up to dance the _minuet de
-la cour_, and Isabel Vere languished and swam as she had never done
-before; but the General only wondered how stiff she had grown, and hoped
-that he was not as ill used by time as Mistress Isabel Vere had been. At
-first, Isabel Montford thought it “good fun” to see the antiquities
-bowing and curtseying, but she became interested in the lingering
-courtliness of the little scene, trembled lest her aunt should appear
-ridiculous, and then wondered how she could have refused such a man as
-General Gordon must have been.
-
-Days and weeks flew fast; the General became a constant visitor in the
-square, and the heart of Isabel Vere had never beaten so loudly at
-twenty as it did at fifty-and-five; nothing, she thought, could be more
-natural than that the General should recall the days of his youth, and
-seek the friendship and companionship of her who had never married,
-while he—faithless man!—had been guilty of two wives during his
-“services in India.” It was impossible to tell which of the ladies he
-treated with the most attention. Isabel Montford took an especial
-delight in tormenting him, and he was cynical enough towards her at
-times. Although he frankly abused her piano-forte-playing, yet he
-evidently preferred it to the music Miss Vere practised so indefatigably
-to please him, or to the songs she sang, in a voice which from a high
-“soprano,” had been crushed by time into what might be considered a very
-singular “mezzo.” He somehow forgot how to find fault with Miss
-Montford’s dancing, and more than once became her partner in a
-quadrille. It was evident, that while the General was growing young,
-Miss Vere remained—“as she was!” Isabel Montford amused herself at his
-expense, but he did not—quick-sighted and man-of-the-world though he
-was—perceive it. At first he was remarkably fond of recalling and
-dating events, and dwelling upon the grace, and beauty, and interest,
-and advantage, of whatever was past and gone—much to the occasional
-pain of Isabel Vere, who, gentle-hearted as she was, would have
-consigned _dates_ to the bottomless pit; latterly, however, he talked a
-good deal more of the present than of the past, and, greatly to the
-annoyance of younger men, fell into the duties of escort to both
-ladies,—accompanying them to places of public promenade and amusement.
-
-On such occasions, Miss Isabel Vere looked either earnest or
-bashful—yes, positively bashful; and Miss Isabel Montford, brimful of
-as much mischief as a lady could delight in. At times, the General laid
-aside his cynical observations, together with his cane, which was not
-even replaced by an umbrella; to confess the truth, he had experienced
-several symptoms of _heart disease_, which, though they made him
-restless and uncomfortable, brought hopes and aspirations of life,
-rather than fears of death.
-
-One morning, Isabel Montford and the General were alone in the _salon_
-where this little scene first opened:
-
-“Our difference has never been settled yet,” she exclaimed, gaily; “you
-have never proved to me the superiority of the Old school over the New.”
-
-“Simply because of your superiority to both,” he replied.
-
-“I do not perceive the point of the answer,” said the young lady. “What
-has my superiority over _both_ to do with the question?”
-
-The General arose and shut the door. “Do you think you could listen to
-me seriously for five minutes?” he said.
-
-“Listening is always serious work,” she answered. He took her hand
-within his; she felt it was the hand of age; the bones and sinews
-pressed on her soft palm with an earnest pressure.
-
-“Isabel Montford—could you love an old man?”
-
-She raised her eyes to his, and wondered at the light which filled
-them:—
-
-“Yes,” she answered, “I could love an old man dearly; I could confide to
-him the dearest secret of my heart.”
-
-“And your heart, your heart itself? Such things have been, sweet
-Isabel.” His hand was _very_ hard, but she did not withdraw hers.
-
-“No, not _that_, because—because I have not my heart to give.” She
-spoke rapidly, and with emotion. “I have it not to give, and I have so
-longed to tell you my secret! You have such influence with my aunt, you
-have been so affectionate, so like a father to me, that if you would
-only intercede with _her_, for HIM and me, I know she could not refuse.
-I have often——often thought of entreating this, and now it was so kind
-of you to ask, if I could love an old man, giving me the opportunity of
-showing that I do, by confiding in you, and asking your intercession.”
-
-The room became misty to the General’s eyes, and the rattle of a
-battle-field sounded in his ears, and beat upon his heart.
-
-“And pray, Miss Montford,” he said, after a pause, “who may _him_ be?”
-
-“Ah, _you_ do not know him!—my aunt forbade the continuance of our
-acquaintance the day before I had the happiness to meet you. It was most
-fortunate I wooed you to call upon her, thinking—” (she looked up at
-his fine face, whose very wrinkles were aristocratic, and smiled her
-most bewitching smile) “thinking the presence of the only man she ever
-loved would soften her, and hoping that I should one day be privileged
-to address you as my friend, my uncle!” And she kissed his hand.—It
-really was hard to bear. “I have heard her say,” persisted the young
-lady, “that when prompted by evil counsel, she refused you, she loved
-you, and since your return she only lives in your presence.” The General
-wondered if this was true, and thought he would not give the young
-beauty a triumph. He was recovering his self-possession. “I remembered
-your admiration of _passing belles_, and felt how kindly you tolerated
-me, _for my aunt’s sake_; and surely you will aid me in a matter upon
-which my happiness, and the happiness of that poor dear fellow depends?”
-She bent her beautiful eyes on the ground.
-
-“And who is the poor dear fellow?” inquired the General, in a singularly
-husky voice.
-
-“Henry Mandeville,” half-whispered Isabel. “Oh, is it not a beautiful
-name? the initials on those lovely handkerchiefs you gave me will still
-do; I shall still be I. M.”
-
-“A son of old Admiral Mandeville’s?”
-
-“The _youngest_ son,” she sighed, “that is my aunt’s objection; were he
-the _eldest_, she would have been too happy. Oh, sir, he is such a fine
-fellow—such a hero!—lost a leg at Cabool, and received I don’t know
-how many stabs from those horrid Affgauns.”
-
-“Lost a leg!” repeated the General, with an approving glance at his own;
-“why he can never dance with you.”
-
-“No, but he can admire my dancing, and does not think my curtsey a dip,
-a shuffle, a bend, a bob, a slide, a canter! Ah! dear General, I was
-always perfection in his eyes.”
-
-“By the immortal duke,” thought the General, “the young divinity is
-laughing at me.”
-
-“My aunt only objects to his want of money; now I have abundance for
-both; and your recommendation, dear sir, at the Horse Guards, would at
-once place him in some position of honor and of profit; and even if it
-were abroad, I could leave my dear aunt with the consciousness that her
-happiness is secured by you, dear, guardian angel that you are. Ah! sir,
-at your time of life you can have no idea of our feelings.”
-
-“Oh yes, I have!” sighed the General.
-
-“Bless you!” she exclaimed enthusiastically; “I thought you would recall
-the days of your youth and feel for us; and when you see my dear
-Harry”—
-
-“With a cork leg”—
-
-“Ay, or with two cork legs—you will I know be convinced that my
-happiness is as secure as your own.”
-
-“Women are riddles, one and all!” said the General, “and I should have
-known that before.”
-
-“Oh! do not say such cruel things and disappoint me, depending as I have
-been on your kindness and affection. Hark!” she continued, “I hear my
-aunt’s footstep: now dear, _dear_ General, reason coolly with her—my
-very existence depends on it. If you only knew him! Promise, do promise,
-that you will use your influence, all-powerful as it is, to save my
-life.”
-
-She raised her beautiful eyes, swimming in unshed tears, to his; she
-called him her uncle, her dear noble-hearted friend; she rested her
-snowy hand lovingly, imploringly on his shoulder, and even murmured a
-hope that, her aunt’s consent once gained, it might not be impossible to
-have the two weddings _on the same day_.
-
-The General may have dreaded the banter of sundry members of the “Senior
-United Service Club,” who had already jested much at his devotion to the
-two Isabels; he _may_ have felt a generous desire to make two young
-people happy, and his good sense doubtless suggested that sixty-five and
-seventeen bear a strong affinity to January and May; he certainly did
-himself honor, by adopting the interests of a brave young officer as his
-own, and avoided the banter of “the club,” by pledging his thrice-told
-vows to his “old love,” the same bright morning that his “new love” gave
-her heart and hand to Henry Mandeville.
-
- * * * * *
-
-
-
-
- REVIEW OF NEW BOOKS.
-
-
- _The Works of Shakspeare: the Text Carefully Restored According
- to the First Editions; With Introductions, Notes, Original and
- Selected, and a Life of the Poet. By the Rev. H. N. Hudson, A.
- M. In Eleven Volumes. Boston: James Monroe & Co. Vol. 3._
-
-This beautiful edition of Shakspeare, a fac-simile of the celebrated
-Chiswick edition in type and paper, has now reached its third volume. It
-is edited by Mr. Hudson, well known all over the country as one of the
-most accomplished of Shakspeare’s critics and commentators, and who in
-his present labors has far surpassed the reputation he obtained by his
-lectures on the same subject. The present volume contains The Merchant
-of Venice, As You Like It, All’s Well that Ends Well, and The Taming of
-the Shrew. The text is very carefully revised, and the notes are clear,
-short, and full of matter, and flash the meaning of obscure phrases,
-remote allusions, and other difficulties of the text, at once upon the
-reader’s mind, without any parade of learning or paradox of
-interpretation. It is, however, in the introductory notices to the plays
-that the analytical and interpretative genius of the editor shines forth
-most resplendently. Every lover of Shakspeare should possess this
-edition, had it nothing to recommend it but these alone. They give the
-results of meditations, alike penetrating and profound, on the interior
-processes of Shakspeare’s mind in creating character and in forming
-plots; and the marvel of his genius, in its depth, delicacy,
-comprehension, fertility, and sweetness, is developed with the austerity
-of science and the geniality of a sympathizing spirit. These
-introductions are not only thus critical, but they include in a short
-space a large amount of antiquarian knowledge respecting the
-bibliography and sources of the plays; and the old tales which suggested
-or formed the basis of the plots, are re-told with much skill and
-simplicity of narration.
-
-The masterpiece of the present volume is the introduction to The
-Merchant of Venice. It is exceedingly brilliant in style, but the
-brilliancy seems to come from an inward heat and fervor generated by an
-intense contemplation of the subject, so that the diction sparkles, as
-Ben Jonson would say, “like salt in fire.” The brilliancies are flashes,
-not of fancy, but of thought; and frequently are the result of vigorous
-condensation in statement, or of logic which gets on fire by the very
-rapidity of its movement. The finest elements of the style, however, are
-its subtleties of statement and representation, subtleties which follow
-the most intricate windings and enfoldings of complex thought, speeding
-on the fire track of an ideal allusion to the very limits of its course,
-and thoroughly mastering all the obstacles of expression in giving form
-to the most evanescent workings of the creative power.
-
-Thus in speaking of the apparent heterogeneousness but real unity of the
-play, he remarks: “The persons naturally fall into three several groups,
-with each its several plot and action; yet the three are most skillfully
-complotted, each standing out clear and distinct in its place, yet
-concurring with the others in dramatic unity, so that every thing helps
-on every other thing, without either the slightest confusion or the
-slightest appearance of care to avoid it. Of these three groups it is
-hardly necessary to add that Antonio, Shylock and Portia are the
-respective centres; while the part of Lorenzo and Jessica, though
-strictly an episode, seems, nevertheless, to grow forth as an element of
-the original germ, _a sort of inherent superfluity_, and as such
-essential, not indeed to the being, but to the well-being of the work;
-in short, a fine romantic undertone accompaniment to the other parts,
-yet contemplated and provided for in the whole plan and structure of the
-piece; _itself_ in harmony with all the rest, and therefore perfecting
-their harmony with one another.” We will put it to the consciousness of
-every reader of Shakspeare if this does not chime with his feeling of
-the matter; but to show the grounds of this instinctive taste, and
-exhibit it in its intellectual form, and justify it by the austerest
-principles of philosophical criticism, requires Mr. Hudson’s sharpness
-of eye and ready refinements of expression. The specimen we have given,
-as it is not the best which might be selected, so is it a very common
-and unobtrusive characteristic of his criticism.
-
-In commenting on the characters of the play, Mr. Hudson displays more
-than ordinary keenness and discrimination. We are acquainted with no
-student of Shakspeare who could read the analysis of Shylock, Antonio,
-Portia and Jessica, without receiving an addition to his knowledge. Even
-Launcelot Gobbo has his share of the critic’s acumen; his necessity, in
-the organism of the piece, is demonstrated; and the exquisite
-_non-sequiturism_ of his whole personality is finely described. “A
-mixture, indeed, of conceit and drollery, and hugely wrapped up in self,
-yet he is by no means a commonplace buffoon, but stands firm and secure
-in the sufficiency of his original stock. His elaborate nonsense, his
-grasping at a pun without catching it, yet feeling just as grand as if
-he did, is both ludicrous and natural; his jokes, to be sure, are mostly
-failures; nevertheless they are laughable, because he dreams not but
-that they succeed.”
-
-It is needless to say that the prominent feature in Mr. Hudson’s
-criticism is Shylock. The combination in him of the individual and the
-national, Shylock the Jew and the Jew Shylock, is indicated with a bold,
-firm hand. One paragraph is especially powerful. “Shylock,” he says, “is
-a true representative of his nation; wherein we have a pride which for
-ages never ceased to provoke hostility, but which no hostility could
-ever subdue; a thrift which still invited rapacity, but which no
-rapacity could ever exhaust; and a weakness, which, while it exposed the
-subjects to wrong, only deepened their hate, because it left them
-without the means or the hope of redress. Thus Shylock is a type of
-national sufferings, sympathies, and antipathies. Himself an object of
-bitter insult and scorn to those about him; surrounded by enemies whom
-he is too proud to conciliate and too weak to oppose; he can have no
-life among them but money; no hold upon them but interest; no indemnity
-out of them but revenge. Such being the case, what wonder that the
-elements of national greatness became congealed or petrified into
-malignity? As avarice was the passion in which he mainly lived, of
-course, the Christian virtues which thwarted this were the greatest
-wrong that could be done him. With these strong national traits are
-interwoven personal traits equally strong. Thoroughly and intensely
-Jewish, he is not more a Jew than he is Shylock. In his hard, icy
-intellectuality, and his ‘dry, mummy-like tenacity’ of purpose, with a
-dash now and then of biting sarcastic humor, we see the remains of a
-great and noble nature, out of which all the genial sap of humanity has
-been pressed by accumulated injuries. With as much elasticity of mind as
-stiffness of neck, every step he takes but the last is as firm as the
-earth he treads upon. Nothing can daunt, nothing disconcert him;
-remonstrance cannot move, ridicule cannot touch, obloquy cannot
-exasperate him; when he has not provoked, he has been forced to bear
-them; and now that he does provoke them, he is proof against them. In a
-word, he may be broken; he cannot be bent.”
-
-We cannot refrain from picking out a sentence, here and there, in the
-critic’s admirable delineation of Portia. “Eminently practical in her
-tastes and turn of mind, full of native, home-bred sense and virtue, she
-unites therewith something of the ripeness and dignity of a sage, a
-rich, mellow eloquence, and a large, noble discourse, the whole being
-tempered with the best grace and sensibility of womanhood. . . Nothing
-can be more fitting and well-placed than her demeanor, now bracing her
-speech with grave maxims of moral and practical wisdom, now unbending
-her mind in playful sallies of wit, or innocent, roguish banter. . . .
-It is no drawback upon Portia’s strength and substantial dignity of
-character, that her nature is all overflowing with romance; rather, this
-it is that glorifies her and breathes enchantment about her; it adds
-that precious seeing to the eye which conducts her to such winning
-beauty and sweetness of deportment, and makes her the ‘rich-souled’
-creature that Schlegel describes her to be.”
-
-The introductions to All’s Well that Ends Well, and The Taming of the
-Shrew, are replete with shrewd remark and acute analysis, but both are
-inferior to the criticism of As You Like It. The woodland sweetness of
-this play tasks all the subtlety and all the enthusiasm of Mr. Hudson to
-do it justice. An exquisite ideal beauty casts its sweet and satisfying
-charm over the whole of this matchless comedy, and we envy Shakspeare’s
-delight in its composition more than Campbell envied his happiness in
-bodying forth A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Even Le Beau, the courtier of
-Frederic, is an ideal courtier; on inborn gentlemanliness, of the finest
-kind, stealing out from him in performing his most ungracious duties.
-This character is commonly performed on the stage by the worst actor the
-manager has in his company, but we have always noticed that the feeblest
-performer became lifted into dignity by simply pronouncing one golden
-sentence in the first act. It is where Le Beau expresses at once his
-loyal duty to Frederic and his admiration for Orlando’s brave and gentle
-qualities. As his master has chosen to be Orlando’s enemy, he cannot
-obey his impulse to be Orlando’s friend, and his parting words to the
-latter are touchingly noble:
-
- “Sir, fare you well:
- Hereafter in a better world than this,
- I shall desire more love and knowledge of you.”
-
-Mr. Hudson says very acutely of the characters of As You Like It, that,
-“diverted by fortune from all their cherished plans and purposes, they
-pass before us in just that _moral and intellectual dishabille_, which
-best reveals their indwelling graces of heart and mind.” This, it seems
-to us, touches the inmost secret of the delight all mankind have in this
-play. There is a complete absence of restraint upon expression, and the
-tongues of all run of their own sweet will, in a region of perfect
-freedom. It is whim exalted into poetry. Of Touchstone, our critic
-remarks, that though he never touches so deep a chord as the poor fool
-in Lear, that “he is the most entertaining of Shakspeare’s privileged
-characters. . . . It is curious to observe how the poet takes care to
-let us know from the first, that beneath the affectations of his calling
-some precious sentiments have been kept alive; that far within the fool
-_there is a secret reserve of the man_, ready to leap forth and combine
-with better influences as soon as the incrustations of art are thawed
-and broken up.” Passing over some keen observations on Jaques and the
-class of character to which he belongs, we come to Mr. Hudson’s
-exquisite description of Rosalind, the style of which would alone tempt
-one to extract it. The ideal merriment of Rosalind—and after listening
-to her for an hour, it seems a misuse of the word merriment to apply it
-to glee less graceful, light and lark-like than her own—has rarely been
-touched with so delicate an analysis. “For wit,” he says, “this strange,
-queer, lovely being is fully equal, perhaps superior to Beatrice, yet
-nowise resembling her. A soft, subtle, nimble essence, consisting in one
-knows not what, ‘and springing up one can hardly tell how,’ her wit
-neither stings nor burns, but plays briskly and airily over all things
-within its reach, enriching and adorning them, insomuch that one could
-ask no greater pleasure than to be the continual theme of it. In its
-irrepressible vivacity it waits not for occasion, but runs on forever,
-and we wish it to run on forever: we have a sort of faith that her
-dreams are made of cunning, quirkish, graceful fancies. And her heart
-seems a perennial fountain of affectionate cheerfulness; no trial can
-break, no sorrow chill her flow of spirits; even her deepest sighs are
-breathed forth in a wrappage of innocent mirth; an arch, roguish smile
-irradiates her saddest tears. Yet beneath all her playfulness we feel
-that there is a firm basis of thought and womanly dignity, so that she
-never laughs away our respect.”
-
-An edition of Shakspeare, edited so admirably as this—so convenient in
-its form, so elegant in its execution, and so cheap in its price—will,
-we hope, have a circulation over the country corresponding to its great
-merits.
-
- * * * * *
-
- _Utterance; or, Private Voices to the Public Heart. A Collection
- of Home Poems. By Caroline A. Briggs. Boston: Phillips, Sampson
- & Co. 1 vol. 12mo._
-
-Our first impression of this volume we received from its title, and that
-impression was, of course, unfavorable, as the title certainly smacks of
-affectation. But it requires but a slight examination of the book to
-dissipate such a prejudice. It is a thoroughly genuine expression of a
-sensitive, thoughtful, artless, affectionate, and fanciful nature, and
-readily wins its way into the reader’s esteem. Even those passages which
-evince a sort of innocent ignorance of the conventions of society and
-letters, have a _naïveté_ which charms while it amuses. The volume is a
-collection of short poems, ranged under the general titles of Voices of
-Affection, Voices of Grief, Voices of Cheer, Sacred Voices, and Voices
-of the Way, and one powerful Voice for the Poor, written in a measure
-whose movement has something of the fitful swiftness of the cold, wild
-wind, whose cruelty it deprecates. The following lines convey a vivid
-picture of desolation; the verse itself seeming to shudder in sympathy
-with the objects it holds up to pity:
-
- Oh, the Poor!
- The poor and old,
- On the moor
- And on the wold—
- How desolate they are to-night and cold!
- —I peeped into the broken panes,
- Where the snow, and sleet, and rains
- Of many a weary year have stolen,
- Till the sashes are smeared, and soaked and swollen.
- Little children with tangled hair,
- And lips awry and feet half bare,
- Huddled around the smouldering fire,
- Like beasts half crouching in their lair;
- While each, the while, by stealth drew nigher,
- _Covetous of the other’s share._
- Oh! ’twas a pitiful sight to see!
- And mothers too were there,
- With infants shivering on their knee,
- Or closer held with a mother’s care,
- Or laid to rest with a hurried prayer,
- A moan, half hope and half despair,
- A muttered, “Pitiless Storm, forbear!”
-
-When we say that there is in this volume some poems that an austere
-taste would have omitted, we merely say what we suspect is the truth,
-that the poetess is young, and that this is her first introduction to
-the public. We might object to a piece, here and there, that the feeling
-outruns the thought and fancy, and that commonplace lines occasionally
-glide stealthily in to meet the demands of the rhyme; but the faults
-which criticism might exhibit are few in comparison with the merits
-which shine forth of their own light on almost every page. The general
-impression which the whole book leaves on the memory is very pleasing.
-The defect of all young poets, that of expansiveness, is continually
-apparent; but it is a natural result of the movement of a nature so full
-of sensibility that it refuses to submit to the restraints of
-condensation, but pours itself out of its own sweet will. As a natural
-result of this extreme sensitiveness, the volume is comparatively
-destitute of those electric flashes of impassioned imagination, which
-come, swift, sure, and smiling from moods of the mind in which thought
-is condensed as well as animated by passion; but it still exhibits so
-genial a love of nature, a flow of feeling so kindly and sympathetic, so
-much beauty, and purity and sweetness of fancy, and withal so much
-richness of promise, and such a ready yielding of the mind to the
-poetical aspects of things, that we trust it will meet with the success
-due to its native excellencies of heart and brain.
-
- * * * * *
-
- _The Snow-Image, and other Twice-Told Tales. By Nathaniel
- Hawthorne. Boston: Ticknor, Reed & Fields. 1 vol. 16mo._
-
-This is a collection of Mr. Hawthorne’s Sketches and Stories which have
-not been included in any previous collection, and comprise his earliest
-and latest contributions to periodical literature. It can hardly add to
-his great reputation, though it fully sustains it. “The Snow-Image,”
-with which the volume commences, is one of those delicate creations
-which no imagination less etherial and less shaping than Hawthorne’s
-could body forth. “Main Street,” a sketch but little known, is an
-exquisite series of historical pictures, which bring the persons and
-events in the history of Salem, vividly home to the eye and the fancy.
-“Ethan Brand,” one of the most powerful of Hawthorne’s works, is a
-representation of a man, tormented with a desire to discover the
-unpardonable sin, and ending with finding it in his own breast. “The
-Great Stone Face,” a system of philosophy given in a series of
-characterizations, contains, among other forcible delineations, a full
-length of Daniel Webster. The volume contains a dozen other tales, some
-of them sunny in sentiment and subtle in humor, with touches as fine and
-keen as Addison’s or Steele’s: and others dark and fearful, as though
-the shadow of a thunder-cloud fell on the author’s page as he wrote. All
-are enveloped in the atmosphere, cheerful or sombre, of the mood of mind
-whence they proceeded, and all convey that unity of impression which
-indicates a firm hold on one strong conception. As stories, they arrest,
-fasten, fascinate attention; but, to the thoughtful reader they are not
-merely tales, but contributions to the philosophy of the human mind.
-
- * * * * *
-
- _Memories of the Great Metropolis: or London from the Tower to
- the Crystal Palace. By F. Sanders. New York: Geo. P. Putnam. 1
- vol. 12mo._
-
-This elegant volume, sumptuous in its binding and finely printed and
-illustrated, meets a want both in the traveled and the untraveled
-public. The work of a gentleman who knows every nook and corner of the
-empire city by personal observation, and who, by his large acquaintance
-with English authors and English literary history, is enabled to point
-out all the localities consecrated by genius and heroism; it is full of
-interesting and attractive matter to all readers. As a guide to London,
-it will be found a genial as well as a knowing companion to the tourist.
-We have been especially pleased with those portions which describe the
-shops of the booksellers and the residences of the authors. The volume
-is exceedingly well written, and though crammed with facts, betrays
-neither the dryness nor confusion too often characteristic of similar
-books. The author’s “memories” are never dull, but sparkle with
-animation and point.
-
- * * * * *
-
- _Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli. Boston: Phillips, Sampson &
- Co. 2 vols. 12mo._
-
-This biography is the work of three “eminent hands”—William H.
-Channing, James Freeman Clarke, and Ralph Waldo Emerson, each writing
-that portion of Margaret’s life most familiar to himself. The result is
-one of the most curious, attractive and stimulating books of the season.
-The impression it conveys of the subject of the memoirs, is of a woman
-“large in heart and brain,” of great vigor and depth of nature,
-accomplished in many literatures, with an understanding capacious and
-masculine, and with a sensibility somewhat irregular and chaotic, in
-which powerful passions, delicate emotions and vague aspirations, seem
-never to have been harmonized into unity. The character, however, in
-spite of many limitations and some petty traits, was generally large and
-noble, and its essential excellence is not only demonstrated by the
-private journals and correspondence contained in these volumes, but by
-the fact that she merited the esteem and admiration of three such men as
-her biographers. Her defects are promptly admitted by all three, but in
-the opinion of all three they were superficial in comparison with the
-real graces and powers of her mind. In all those letters and journals in
-which her soul finds adequate expression, in which her most secret
-thoughts and most genuine aspirations are revealed, she is invariably
-true and noble; egotism, satire and pique have in them no place.
-
-Mr. Emerson’s portion of these memoirs is done with his usual felicity
-of phrase and sharpness of statement, and is as attractive as any of his
-essays. He writes in a kindly spirit, and is evidently a genuine admirer
-of his subject, but his friendship is unaccompanied with exaggeration,
-and is combined with his usual austere but graceful honesty in stating
-his whole opinion. Thus, he gives the first impression which Miss Fuller
-made on him in these unflattering words: “Her extreme plainness—a trick
-of incessantly opening and shutting her eyelids—the nasal tone of her
-voice—all repelled; and I said to myself we shall never get far. It is
-to be said that Margaret made a disagreeable first impression on most
-persons, including those who became afterward her best friends, to such
-an extreme that they did not wish to be in the same room with her. This
-was partly the effect of her manners, which expressed an overweening
-sense of power and slight esteem of others, and partly the prejudice of
-her fame. She had a dangerous reputation for satire, in addition to her
-great scholarship. The men thought she carried too many guns, and the
-women did not like one who despised them.” He also gives some amusing
-instances of her self-esteem. “Margaret at first astonished and repelled
-us by a complacency that seemed the most assured since the days of
-Scaliger. . . . She occasionally let slip, with all the innocence
-imaginable, some phrase betraying the presence of a rather mountainous
-ME, in a way to surprise those who knew her good sense. She could say,
-as if she were stating a scientific fact, in enumerating the merits of
-somebody, ‘He appreciates ME.’”
-
-Mr. Emerson accounts for this egotism partly on the ground of hereditary
-organization, and partly on “an ebullient sense of power, which she felt
-to be in her, and which as yet had found no channels.” In further
-illustration of this he adds, that in conversation she seldom, “except
-as a special grace, admitted others upon an equal ground with herself.”
-She was exceedingly tender, when she pleased to be, and most cherishing
-in her influence; but to elicit this tenderness, it was necessary to
-submit first to her personally. When a person was overwhelmed by her and
-answered not a word, except ‘Margaret, be merciful to me a sinner,’ then
-her love and tenderness would come like a seraph’s, and often an
-acknowledgment that she had been too harsh, and even a craving for
-pardon, with a humility—which, perhaps, she had caught from the other.
-But her instinct was not humility—that was an after thought.
-
-This peculiarity, so honestly stated by Mr. Emerson, probably made
-Margaret Fuller all her enemies; and it is a fault which every person is
-bound to resent, though it appeared in an angel or archangel. It cannot
-be justified though it may be accounted for; and by those who knew her
-best, it was explained on principle! which relieved it of positive
-offensiveness. Some of her intellectual dependents, persons who gloried
-in wearing her mental livery, and were delighted with the servitude she
-enforced, might say very naively, in explanation, that Margaret was the
-greatest woman that ever was, and that Margaret was very sincere, and
-that being sincere it was very proper that she should not conceal her
-knowledge even of her own greatness.
-
-In our opinion this egotism was the result of the vigor of her nature,
-which, in conversation, broke all conventional bounds, and came out in
-its whole wealth of thought and acquisition, eager for controversy or
-ravenous for sympathy, and communicating to her mind a bright and strong
-sense of individual power which at the time almost palliated its
-excesses. The excitement of her mind produced that effect which we often
-see in persons who are enraged—a condition in which expressions,
-regretted afterward for their extravagance, seem at the time too weak to
-convey the hot feeling of wrong which burns beneath them. In her
-journals, where she sharply scrutinises what she is and what she has
-produced, and where there is no excitement to stimulate her powers, she
-is sufficiently humble, acutely feels her imperfections, and the
-“mountainous me” dwindles into a mole-hill. She seems to have had the
-aspirations and the ambitions of great genius, had sufficient breadth of
-mind to take in the wide varieties of human power in history and
-literature, and had a corresponding scorn for the little and the common
-in mental effort; but she lacked a creative imagination, and was
-incapable of producing anything which at all realized the intimations of
-her nature. In conversation she rose instantly into sympathetic
-companionship with creative minds, and in the heat of the moment mistook
-it for a companionship and community in power. In this mood she might
-despise many who were her superiors in the shaping power of genius,
-though her inferiors in its loftiest aspirations.
-
-These volumes are full of instances of her sincerity, her geniality, her
-love of the beautiful in nature and art, her fine critical powers, her
-enthusiasm for great measures of reform in America and Europe, and the
-noble scale on which she conducted her mental and moral culture. Though
-many may take exception to the generosity of the praise which her
-biographers lavish on her various graces and gifts of mind, every one
-must acknowledge the extreme richness of the materials which are frankly
-exhibited, to enable the reader to judge for himself. We doubt if there
-is any other American biography in which the whole interior truth
-relating to the character of the subject is so completely set forth, or
-which presents to the curious in mental organization so interesting a
-study in psychology.
-
- * * * * *
-
- _Ravenscliffe. By the author of “The Old Men’s Tales,” etc. etc.
- New York: Harper & Brother._
-
-In this novel the authoress puts forth her whole resources of passion
-and power in delineating hatred and revenge. The story sweeps on like a
-deep stream harrying to the sea, and the firm grasp of the writer on the
-reader’s arrested attention is not loosed for a moment. The influence of
-the same passion on the two characters of Randal Langford and Marcus
-Fitzroy, is exhibited with masterly skill. The motto of the book should
-have been taken from Shelley’s tremendous quatrain:
-
- “Revenge and wrong bring forth their kind;
- The foul cubs like their parents are;
- Their den is in the human mind,
- And conscience feeds them with despair.”
-
-The vice of the novel is its continuous intensity, a peculiarity which
-characterizes all of Mrs. Marsh’s novels. The characters are only seen
-in their passionate moods, and the leading quality of their natures is
-developed with the consistency of a logical deduction. Though this gives
-emphasis to the ethical intent of the authoress, she sacrifices to it
-some of the most important principles of the true method of
-characterization. Her persons are apt to slide into personified
-passions.
-
- * * * * *
-
- _A Popular Account of Discoveries at Nineveh. By Austin Henry
- Layard, D. C. L. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1 vol. 12mo._
-
-This is an abridgment, by the author himself, of his larger work on
-Nineveh, which has obtained such extraordinary success. It is
-illustrated by a number of well executed wood-cuts, and is beautifully
-printed. The matter, it is needless to say, is full of interest and
-attractiveness, and will well repay all readers who may be repelled by
-the size of the original work.
-
- * * * * *
-
- _Women of Christianity, Exemplary for Acts of Piety and Charity.
- By Julia Kavanagh, author of “Nathalie,” etc. New York: D.
- Appleton & Co. 1 vol. 12mo._
-
-Christian women of this and all past ages would seem to be under
-especial obligations to the Messrs. Appletons for bringing their virtues
-and heroism before the public. The Women of the Old and New Testament,
-the Women of Early Christianity, and now the Christian Women of all
-Ages, witness their chivalrous devotion to the very best examples of the
-sex. Miss Kavanagh’s book gives short but admirable sketches of a great
-number of eminent devotees, from the virgins of the primitive church to
-Hannah More and Elizabeth Fry. Though her space hardly allows her to do
-full justice to the subject, she uses her materials so skillfully, and
-writes her condensed biographies with such fervor and power, that she
-escapes the imputation of meagreness.
-
- * * * * *
-
- _The Broken Bud; or, Reminiscences of a Bereaved Mother. New
- York: Robert Carter & Brothers. 1 vol. 16mo._
-
- _Blossoms of Childhood. Edited by the author of “The Broken
- Bud”. New York: Robert Carter & Brothers. 1 vol. 16mo._
-
-The first of these little volumes is the record of a child, who died
-just as her mind was expanding into affection and intelligence; and it
-is the most notable book of the kind we have ever seen. As giving the
-psychology of a mother’s feelings, it is well worthy of attention. It is
-written close to the heart of the matter, and is full of examples of
-that searching pathos which calls up instinctive tears. Rarely have we
-read a work of more affectionate intensity, or one in which a mournful
-experience, tempered by religious faith, is expressed with such genuine
-simplicity and truth to inward emotion. There are passages whose
-eloquence is so identical with the things it celebrates, that the reader
-sees and feels with hardly the consciousness of the agency of words. The
-other volume is a collection of poetry relating to children, in which
-the mother’s heart, so constantly present in the previous volume, ranges
-over the whole field of poetry, hoarding the precious lyrics which bring
-consolation by inspiring religious trust. Both works are of a peculiar
-character, indicating the presiding influence of one overmastering
-feeling, and striking at the very sources of emotion.
-
- * * * * *
-
- _The Standard Speaker; containing exercises in Prose and Poetry
- for Declamation in Schools, Academies, Lyceums, Colleges. Newly
- Translated or Compiled from Celebrated Orators, Authors, and
- Popular Debaters, Ancient and Modern. A Treatise on Oratory and
- Elocution. Notes Explanatory and Biographical. By Epes Sargent.
- 1 vol., large 12mo. 558 pages. Philadelphia: Thomas,
- Cowperthwait & Co._
-
-Mr. Sargent has here given us a “Speaker” far more comprehensive in
-design and elaborate in execution than any that has yet appeared. The
-great feature of the work is the completeness of the Senatorial
-Department, in which he has introduced not only passages of rare beauty
-and effect from Chatham, Burke, Grattan, Shell, Macaulay, and many
-others—all the passages of the right length for speaking—but has given
-some translations from Mirabeau, Victor Hugo, and other great speakers
-of France, which will become great favorites in Schools and Elocutionary
-Classes. The dramatic and poetical departments are also well filled,
-many new and striking pieces for Declamation and Recitation being
-introduced. No sectional favoritism seems to have been exercised in the
-compilation. All parts of the country, and indeed all countries are
-fairly represented in their contributions to all the forms of eloquence
-suitable for the purpose of the book. A great amount of original
-research and labor seems to have been expended on this volume, which—
-
- “Is not the hasty product of a day,
- But the well-ripened fruit of sage delay.”
-
-In his position as Editor of a daily journal, the editor has had a more
-favorable opportunity than many enjoy to make collections for a work of
-this kind, and with what success he has availed himself of it, a cursory
-glance will show. While he has preserved all the old, indispensable
-masterpieces, he has placed side by side with them a majority of new
-ones, that promise to become equally celebrated. The work cannot fail to
-claim the prompt and favorable attention of Students and Teachers. It is
-issued in excellent style, by Messrs. Thomas, Cowperthwait & Co.
-
- * * * * *
-
-Bangs, Brother & Co., New York, have sent us fine editions of “Gibbon’s
-Greece,” “Ancient History of Herodotus,” Randall’s “Sheep Husbandry,”
-and an excellent edition of the “Tatler and Guardian,” with biographical
-memoranda by Thomas Babington Macaulay, all of which we will notice in
-future numbers.
-
- * * * * *
-
-Pretty Strong.—We do not charge Peterson any thing for the following as
-an advertisement. It is a better joke than has appeared in the
-Small-Talk:
-
-It has been for years the cherished wish of the writer of this work, to
-make “THE TOWER OF LONDON,” the proudest monument of antiquity,
-(considered with reference to its historical associations,) _in the
-known world_—the groundwork of a Romance; and it is no slight
-satisfaction to him, that circumstances at length have enabled him to
-carry into effect his favorite project, in conjunction with the
-inimitable artist, whose _Ninety-eight Original Designs and Engravings
-of all the Principal Objects of Attraction and Interest_ to the reader,
-accompany the work.
-
-The author has exhibited in this work, the “Tower of London” in the
-light of a Palace, a Prison, and a Fortress, and he has also contrived
-such a series of incidents as to introduce every relic of the old
-pile—its Towers, Chapels, Halls, Chambers, Gateways, Arches and
-Drawbridges—so that no part of this, the most venerable and interesting
-building _in the known world_, should remain unillustrated to the
-reader.
-
-It is beyond all doubt one of the most interesting works ever published
-_in the known world_, and can be read and re-read with pleasure and
-satisfaction by every body. We advise all persons to get it and read it,
-for there is much to learn and valuable information to be gained from
-its pages, which cannot be obtained in any other work published _in the
-known world_. Published and for sale by
-
- T. B. PETERSON.
-
-We shall look with great interest for Top’s first book from the
-_unknown_ world, and have a right to expect something good. We only hope
-that the author will not “_contrive_ such a series of incidents about
-Drawbridges,” as to let us down without fair warning.
-
- * * * * *
-
-Fitzgerald’s City Item.—This is the name of a weekly paper, now in its
-fifth year, published in this city by Fitzgerald & Co., at Two Dollars
-per annum. This journal enjoys the reputation of being undoubted
-authority upon all Literary, Musical, Fine Art, and Dramatic Matters. It
-has been conducted from the beginning by Mr. Fitzgerald, and we have
-often admired his good-nature, his frankness, and his ability. Untiring
-industry has established The City Item upon a firm basis. Fitzgerald &
-Co. offer as a premium to new subscribers, an admirable life-size
-portrait of the Hungarian patriot, Kossuth. Graham’s Magazine and The
-City Item may be secured for Four Dollars.
-
- * * * * *
-
-
-
-
- GRAHAM’S SMALL-TALK.
-
-
-Held in his idle moments, with his Readers, Correspondents and Exchanges.
-
-
-Our Small-Talk has afforded food for infinite jest to a few unfledged
-wits and cubs of critics, clever word-snappers, who keep reiterating the
-joke that the Small-Talk _is_ small—_very_. Of course it is, goslings!
-it was so called and set down originally in the bills. So do not imagine
-that you are discoverers, and set yourselves off to the Polar regions in
-search of Sir John Franklin. The Small-Talk is more than _small_—it is
-pert, impudent, audacious, outrageous, insolent, and, cool. More than
-that, it is—“to be continued.”
-
- * * * * *
-
-Ah! now, isn’t this delightful? We were wondering whether we should
-_ever_ get another love-letter, when lo! in comes the mail, from which
-we extract the following delicious epistle from a young lady, who, we
-know, would love us, if we _were_ only a bachelor:
-
- “To Graham.
-
- “A ‘bachelor,’ thou sayest?—ha-ha—have a care—
- A target too tempting—I bid thee beware!
- Now stand and deliver, thou ‘knave of the heart!’
- Thy ‘clubs’ shall not parry the aim of my dart.
-
- “Thy armor—thy pleading, and dodging is vain,
- Wry faces uncalled for! ’tis hymenial chain
- We wish to throw round thee—surrender! I bid—
- All woven of roses, the thorns are quite hid.
-
- “A net-work of love shall enshroud thee forever—
- (‘Enshroud’ is too icy, it makes Cupid shiver—
- _Imprison_ is better—I like the word best—)
- When the heart’s taken captive the spirit’s at rest.
-
- “Two short little weeks, out of fifty or more,
- Is all we can claim—and one year out of four—
- We must make up in speed, what we lack for in time,
- And make a bold push or have no Valentine.
-
- “An abrupt, ringing laugh, from a friend standing near,
- And—‘I read you it wrong!’ he says, ‘_Benedict_!’ do ye hear?
- How _horrid provoking_ to play me this game!
- I don’t care, I will send it subscribed with my name.”
-
- H. H.
-
-We wont give the name in full, or we should never receive another love
-token. But—what have we here? as we live—another Valentine! and with a
-sprig of geranium, too, pressed loving between the paper—and love
-verses! No—we will not print these, they are too confidingly tender and
-hardly “allowable” rhyme.
-
-But here comes one, with a full, round superscription, for all the world
-like the hand of a lady we used to love when we were a boy—adoringly,
-wildly, _most_ insanely. She was _older_ than we were, and didn’t take
-the matter so much to heart. Some other fellow took her off—a cadet, or
-something of that sort from West Point—and she never returned our love
-letter. But what _is_ this? Ha! $3— there is something in this, that is
-a cure for the twinges of an old love wound:
-
- “_Fort Meade, Florida, Feb. 10th, 1852._
-
- “Dear Graham—The February number of your Magazine has this day
- come to hand, and acting on the hint you give in your
- Small-Talk, _i. e._ ‘Money is worth 2 per cent. a month,’ I
- herewith inclose the $3 for this year’s subscription to your
- book. I showed that portion of your Small-Talk(?) headed ‘That
- bill again,’ to my wife; and what do you think? Why, instead of
- calling you a good-for-nothing-impertinent man, she said, ‘Why
- _don’t_ you give the man his money? Graham is a dear, good
- fellow and he deserves it,’ etc. Of course, I had to back down,
- and here is the tin.
-
- “Truly yours,
- G. D.”
-
-Now we like that woman, and will bet she was just the girl that _would_
-go off with a soldier—full of all brave and good thoughts, and loving
-as a southern wind in an orange grove. If we ever do go to Florida, we
-shall stop at the Fort and see this lady, and shake hands all round with
-the G. D.’s.
-
- * * * * *
-
-Thanks.—Our space is limited, in this number, although we have much to
-say to our friends and readers; but we shall take room enough to thank
-most sincerely and heartily, the many editors who have sent us clubs and
-single subscribers for the year 1852. We had intended to notice, by
-letter, the many kind expressions of regard for our business welfare,
-but so many and rapidly sent were these missives of good-will, that we
-abandoned the undertaking, and must here content ourself with
-saying—_to one and all_—_Thanks_!
-
-We can get up no theatrical speech for the occasion, and can only
-promise to devote such abilities as we have been blessed with, be they
-poor or rich, to making “Graham”—what we hope it can be made, under our
-administration—“_the best Magazine in the country_.” We can only say,
-that our whole time and thought are freely bestowed upon the work—that
-we have no other avocation, similar, or adverse, to distract our
-attention, and if we fail to realize our aim, in the opinion of our
-readers and friends, that our ability comes short of our ambition. So
-said—_so done_. This number is a fair sample of what we can do; and we
-think we can do better, and shall _try_.
-
- * * * * *
-
-The Saturday Gazette.—This well-known Family Paper is now under the
-charge of Alexander Cummings and Mrs. Joseph C. Neal, and has been, both
-in typographical execution and in literary excellence, much improved.
-Mrs. Neal’s delightful Letters from the South, are a very decided
-addition to the intellectual attractions of the Gazette—the Foreign
-Correspondence is more complete than ever, and the Stories and Essays to
-be found in its ample pages are of the very highest order.
-
-A prospectus of the paper, setting forth in detail the advantages of the
-Gazette, will be found upon the third page of our cover, and a specimen
-copy of the paper will be sent to such of our readers as desire to see
-it, upon application to A. Cummings & Co.
-
- * * * * *
-
-The News-Letter, at Galesburg, gives us a notice of a column, full of
-all sorts of hits and good things. The Cynthiana News and the Rifle must
-buck up or they will lose the stakes. Although the metal of Rifle is
-good, and the bore perfect, we can beat the editor with pistols, at ten
-paces, _for a Turkey_! We send Atkinson of the News a sheet—Wilcox will
-supply and suit you—cash or approved paper—samples forwarded. We
-accept the Sandy Hill Herald’s invitation! said shall look at those
-“acres” until our heart aches.
-
- * * * * *
-
-
- TEMPERANCE.
-
-“Shall the Maine question now be put?” is the great inquiry that
-agitates the country, and stirs, in all true hearts, a lively
-affirmative. The _people_ are “ready for the question.” Graham himself
-is ready, and having in times past been a good judge of the various
-brands, he believes that one and all corrupt and destroy the brain and
-conscience. So he is down upon King Alcohol and his cohorts. We do not
-propose to give a temperance _lecture_ upon the present “interesting
-occasion”—but if any body can read the following ode by Brown—the
-accomplished translator of Spanish literature, and feel no misgiving
-about Rum, his sensibilities are fire-proof. “The English language
-contains nothing more forcibly and terribly eloquent than this unique
-lexicon of horrors.”
-
- * * * * *
-
-
- ODE TO RUM.
-
- BY WILLIAM C. BROWN.
-
-
- “Oh, thou invisible spirit of Rum! if thou hadst no name by
- which to know thee, we would call thee—devil.”—Shakspeare.
-
- Let thy devotee extol thee,
- And thy wondrous virtues sum;
- But the worst of names I’ll call thee,
- O, thou hydra monster, Rum!
-
- Pimple-maker, visage-bloater,
- Health-corrupter, idler’s mate;
- Mischief breeder, vice promoter,
- Credit spoiler, devil’s bait.
-
- Almshouse builder, pauper maker,
- Trust betrayer, sorrow’s source;
- Pocket emptier, Sabbath breaker,
- Conscience stiller, guilt’s resource.
-
- Nerve enfeebler, system shatterer,
- Thirst increaser, vagrant thief;
- Cough producer, treacherous flatterer,
- Mud bedauber, mock relief.
-
- Business hinderer, spleen instiller,
- Wo begetter, friendship’s bane;
- Anger heater, Bridewell filler,
- Debt involver, toper’s chain.
-
- Memory drowner, honor wrecker,
- Judgment warper, blue-faced quack;
- Feud beginner, rags bedecker,
- Strife enkindler, fortune’s wreck.
-
- Summer’s cooler, winter’s warmer,
- Blood polluter, specious snare;
- Mob collector, man transformer,
- Bond undoer, gambler’s fare.
-
- Speech bewrangler, headlong bringer,
- Vitals burner, deadly fire;
- Riot mover, firebrand flinger,
- Discord kindler, misery’s sire.
-
- Sinews robber, worth depriver,
- Strength subduer, hideous foe;
- Reason thwarter, fraud contriver,
- Money waster, nations’ wo.
-
- Vile seducer, joy dispeller,
- Peace disturber, blackguard guest;
- Sloth implanter, liver sweller,
- Brain distracter, hateful pest.
-
- Wit destroyer, joy impairer,
- Scandal dealer, foul-mouthed scourge;
- Senses blunter, youth ensnarer,
- Crime inventor, ruin’s verge.
-
- Virtue blaster, base deceiver,
- Spite displayer, sot’s delight;
- Noise exciter, stomach heaver,
- Falsehood spreader, scorpion’s bite.
-
- Quarrel plotter, rage discharger,
- Giant conqueror, wasteful sway;
- Chin carbuncler, tongue enlarger,
- Malice venter, death’s broadway.
-
- Household scatterer, high-hope dasher,
- Death’s forerunner, hell’s dire brink;
- Ravenous murderer, windpipe slasher,
- _Drunkard’s lodging, meat and drink_!
-
-Well—what are the arguments of the opponents of the “Maine Law!” We
-have heard them—having been present at the grand gathering of
-Distillers, Rum-sellers, and Drinkers at Tripler Hall, on Friday
-evening, the 27th of February. About as precious a set of “jolly
-fellows” as we ever saw in all our life, were there assembled to listen
-to the advantages of dying by slow poison. We give a picture, which sets
-forth the point and moral of the matter.
-
-[Illustration: Arguments of the opponents of the Maine
-law—_illustrated_.]
-
-This was the pith and marrow of the whole affair. “Rum was”—Well, what?
-Why—“Rum!” Every body was enlightened and saw clearly. There was not a
-shadow of doubt about the matter. Its character was not in the least
-altered—it was the same devil, only painted a little red—not at all
-improved either, by the artists—in fact, Mr. Camp made him rather more
-hideous by attempting to make him a facetious, jolly sort of a devil,
-without any evil quality, but much given to poetry, philosophy, and
-particularly, mechanics. His _inventive_ powers, however, were not
-brought out quite as clearly as Mr. Camp’s own, who, with a fine
-delivery and sonorous ring of voice, did all that it was possible for
-man to do in a bad cause—still he did not _do_—at least, not the
-majority there assembled. The whole affair was a horrible jest—it
-was—Yes! it was a Rum-joke—and nothing else.
-
-No one was hardy enough to attempt to _prove_, that Rum ever made a
-great man greater—or improved the mental calibre of a small one. Ever
-warmed the heart of a miser to do an unrepented act of generosity—or
-enlarged the soul to permanent and consistent acts of lofty heroism for
-the welfare of mankind. Ever filled the cottage with smiling faces and
-happy hearts, permanently—shed plenty upon the tables of the poor, or
-made a wife happier or children more respected—ever, in short, carried
-any thing but a concealed curse in its bright bubbles and brilliant
-hues.
-
-We came away with no change of opinion as to the deleterious effects of
-Rum as a beverage. Taken either at the social board, with jolly good
-fellows, or among wits, poets and philosophers—it carries the same
-horror on its front, the same death in its smile. Even the
-sounding-boards, from which the notes of Jenny Lind floated out, almost
-divinely, gave no music to the voice of Rum’s advocate—the best joke
-had a croak—and the laughter a horribly consumptive sound.
-
- * * * * *
-
-
- “THE SOCIAL GLASS.”
-
-[Illustration: “A little tipple will do us no harm.”]
-
- * * * * *
-
-
- “JOLLY GOOD FELLOWS.”
-
-[Illustration]
-
- “We wont go home till morning,
- We wont go home till morning,
- Till daylight doth appear.”
-
- * * * * *
-
-
- “A SPIRIT-KNOCKER.”
-
-[Illustration: A very sudden call by a very ugly customer.]
-
- * * * * *
-
-
-
-
- SWEET SUNNY ISLE.
-
-
- OR “MY BOYHOOD’S HOME.”
-
-
-[Illustration]
-COMPOSED BY JOHN H. TAYLOR.—DEDICATED TO MISS ELIZABETH TAYLOR, BARBADOES,
- W. I.
-
- Published by permission of LEE & WALKER, 188 Chestnut Street,
- Philadelphia,
-
- _Publishers and Importers of Music and Musical Instruments_.
-
-[Illustration: musical score]
-
- Sweet sunny Isle! my native land!
- How dear thou art to me,
- Were all the world at
-
-[Illustration: musical score]
-
- my command,
- I still would cling to thee.
- My boyhood’s home could I forget?
- Though I might be forgot;
- For those I love are living yet,
- In that dear cherish’d spot.
- For those I love are living yet
- In that dear cherish’d spot.
-
- Sweet sunny Isle! though now a man,
- Wherever I may roam,
- My heart I know it never can
- Forget my boyhood’s home.
- One only hope one only care
- Next that of Heaven above,
- That I might once again be there—
- Once more with those I love.
-
- Those kindred hearts, those loving friends,
- And all my boyish pets,
- Would welcome me and make amends
- For all long past regrets.
- But ah! I fear ’twill never prove
- Again my happy lot;
- Then all I ask of those I love,
- One thought—“Forget me not.”
-
- * * * * *
-
-Transcriber’s Notes:
-
-Table of Contents has been added for reader convenience. Archaic
-spellings and hyphenation have been retained. Obvious typesetting and
-punctuation errors have been corrected without note. Other errors have
-been corrected as noted below. For illustrations, some caption text may
-be missing or incomplete due to condition of the originals available for
-preparation of the eBook.
-
-page 364, children where the ==> children were the
-page 372, and author’s were ==> and authors were
-page 404, read in Saronis’ Musical ==> read in Saroni’s Musical
-page 405, Rappresentatione del Animo e del ==> Rappresentatione di Anima e
- di
-page 405, Cavaliere, of Rome, ==> Cavalieri, of Rome,
-page 405, title “_Dell Animo e del_ ==> title “_Dell_ _Anima e di_
-page 405, of Cavaliere. But it ==> of Cavalieri. But it
-page 414, feet, are not ==> feet, they are not
-page 440, those horrid Affgaun’s ==> those horrid Affgauns
-
-
-[End of Graham’s Magazine, Vol. XL, No. 4, April 1852]
-
-
-
-
-
-End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Graham's Magazine, Vol. XL, No. 4,
-April 1852, by Various
-
-*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GRAHAM'S MAGAZINE, APRIL 1952 ***
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-
-Project Gutenberg's Graham's Magazine, Vol. XL, No. 4, April 1852, by Various
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
-other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
-whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
-the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
-www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
-to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
-
-Title: Graham's Magazine, Vol. XL, No. 4, April 1852
-
-Author: Various
-
-Editor: George R. Graham
-
-Release Date: August 21, 2019 [EBook #60148]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: UTF-8
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GRAHAM'S MAGAZINE, APRIL 1952 ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by Mardi Desjardins & the online Distributed
-Proofreaders Canada team at https://www.pgdpcanada.net
-from page images generously made available by Google Books
-
-
-
-
-
-
-</pre>
-
-<div class='figcenter'>
-<img src='images/cover.jpg' alt='' id='iid-0000' style='width:70%;height:auto;'/>
-</div>
-
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;margin-top:1.5em;font-size:1.9em;font-weight:bold;'>GRAHAM’S MAGAZINE.</p>
-
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;margin-top:1.5em;font-size:1.2em;font-weight:bold;'><span class='sc'>Vol. XL.</span> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;April, 1852. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;No. 4.</p>
-
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;margin-top:1.5em;margin-bottom:1em;font-size:1.2em;font-weight:bold;'>Contents</p>
-
-<table id='tab1' summary='' class='center'>
-<colgroup>
-<col span='1' style='width: 25em;'/>
-<col span='1' style='width: 1em;'/>
-</colgroup>
-<tr><td class='tab1c1 tab1c1-col2 tdStyle0' colspan='2'><span class='bold'><span style='font-size:larger'>Fiction, Literature and Articles</span></span></td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle1'></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle2'>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle1'><a href='#opt'>Optical Phenomena</a></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle2'></td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle1'><a href='#age'>The First Age</a></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle2'></td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle1'><a href='#imp'>Impressions of England in the Autumn of 1851</a></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle2'></td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle1'><a href='#oli'>Oliver Goldsmith—His Character and Genius</a></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle2'></td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle1'><a href='#life'>A Life of Vicissitudes</a> <span style='font-size:smaller'>(continued)</span></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle2'></td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle1'><a href='#bow'>The Bower of Castle Mount</a></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle2'></td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle1'><a href='#don'>A Reply to Dwight’s Article on Mozart’s Don Giovanni</a></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle2'></td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle1'><a href='#true'>A True Irish Story</a></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle2'></td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle1'><a href='#hunt'>The Condor Hunt</a></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle2'></td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle1'><a href='#what'>What Glory Costs the Nation</a></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle2'></td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle1'><a href='#emin'>Eminent Young Men.—No. I</a></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle2'></td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle1'><a href='#game'>The Game of the Season</a></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle2'></td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle1'><a href='#was'>Was the World Made Out of Nothing?</a></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle2'></td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle1'><a href='#lit'>A Literary Gossip with Miss Mitford</a></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle2'></td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle1'><a href='#two'>The Two Isabels; Or Coquettish Seventeen</a></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle2'></td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle1'><a href='#rev'>Review of New Books</a></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle2'></td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle1'><a href='#talk'>Graham’s Small-Talk</a></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle2'></td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle1'></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle2'>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-</table>
-
-<table id='tab2' summary='' class='center'>
-<colgroup>
-<col span='1' style='width: 25em;'/>
-<col span='1' style='width: 1em;'/>
-</colgroup>
-<tr><td class='tab2c1 tab2c1-col2 tdStyle0' colspan='2'><span class='bold'><span style='font-size:larger'>Poetry and Music</span></span></td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle1'></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle2'>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle1'><a href='#fount'>The Forest Fountain</a></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle2'></td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle1'><a href='#love'>Love</a></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle2'></td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle1'><a href='#mem'>Memory</a></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle2'></td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle1'><a href='#last'>The Last Song</a></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle2'></td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle1'><a href='#april'>April</a></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle2'></td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle1'><a href='#away'>Away</a></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle2'></td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle1'><a href='#song2'>Song</a></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle2'></td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle1'><a href='#mona'>Mona Lisa</a></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle2'></td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle1'><a href='#bird'>To a Canary Bird</a></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle2'></td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle1'><a href='#faded'>Faded and Gone</a></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle2'></td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle1'><a href='#north'>Song of the Spirit of the North</a></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle2'></td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle1'><a href='#art'>Sonnet.—Art</a></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle2'></td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle1'><a href='#god'>The Autograph of God</a></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle2'></td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle1'><a href='#ifi'>If I Were a Smile</a></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle2'></td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle1'><a href='#miss'>To Miss Light Underwood</a></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle2'></td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle1'><a href='#beau'>Beautie</a></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle2'></td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle1'><a href='#vio'>Lines on Some Violets</a></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle2'></td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle1'><a href='#sod'>The Destruction of Sodom</a></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle2'></td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle1'><a href='#sor'>Sorrento</a></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle2'></td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle1'><a href='#fut'>A Thought of the Future</a></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle2'></td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle1'><a href='#hun'>The Black Huntsman</a></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle2'></td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle1'><a href='#isle'>Sweet Sunny Isle</a></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle2'></td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle1'><a href='# '> </a></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle2'></td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle1'></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle2'>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-</table>
-
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;margin-top:1.3em;'><a href='#notes'>Transcriber’s Notes</a> can be found at the end of this eBook.</p>
-
-<hr class='tbk100'/>
-
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;margin-top:1.5em;font-size:1.9em;font-weight:bold;'>GRAHAM’S MAGAZINE.</p>
-
-<hr class='tbk101'/>
-
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;font-size:1.2em;font-weight:bold;'><span class='sc'>Vol. XL.</span> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;PHILADELPHIA, APRIL, 1852. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<span class='sc'>No. 4.</span></p>
-
-<hr class='tbk102'/>
-
-<div><h1 class='nobreak'>THE FOREST FOUNTAIN.<a id='fount'></a></h1></div>
-
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;'>———</p>
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;font-size:0.8em;font-weight:bold;'>BY IGNATIUS L. DONNELLY.</p>
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;margin-bottom:1.5em;'>———</p>
-
-<div class='figcenter'>
-<img src='images/i001.jpg' alt='' id='iid-0001' style='width:70%;height:auto;'/>
-</div>
-
-
- <div class='poetry-container' style=''>
- <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' -->
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>Here the sinking sun hath broken through a forest close as night;</p>
-<p class='line0'>Plashing all the deepened darkness with its thick and wine-like light.</p>
-<p class='line0'>Shivered lies the broad, red sunbeam slant athwart the withered leaf,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Laughing back the startled shadows from their high and holy grief;</p>
-<p class='line0'>Down yon dusk-pool, slant, obliquely, shoots a line like sparry splinter,</p>
-<p class='line0'>As the waking flush of spring-time lightens up the eyes in winter:</p>
-<p class='line0'>Dimming as it straineth downward melts the red light of the sun,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Darkling pool and piercing beamlet mingling whitely into one.</p>
-<p class='line0'>Fallen rays, like broken crystals, spangle thick the shadowy ground,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Ragged fragments, glorious gushes scattered richly, redly round.</p>
-<p class='line0'>Where the lazy lilies languish, one intruding sunbeam creeps;</p>
-<p class='line0'>In the arms of slumberous shadow, like a child it sinks and sleeps;</p>
-<p class='line0'>And the quiet leaves around it seem to think it all their own,</p>
-<p class='line0'>’Mid the grass and lightened lilies sleeping silent and alone.</p>
-<p class='line0'>Here the dew-damp lingers longest ’mid the plushy fountain moss;</p>
-<p class='line0'>Here the bergamot’s red blossom leans the stilly stream across;</p>
-<p class='line0'>Here the shade is darkly silent; here the breeze is liquid cool,</p>
-<p class='line0'>And the very air seems married to the freshness of that pool.</p>
-<p class='line0'>See, where down its depths pellucid, Nature’s purest waters well,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Breaking up in curving current, wimpled line and bubbly swell;</p>
-<p class='line0'>While in swift and noiseless beauty, through the deep and dewy grass,</p>
-<p class='line0'>O’er the rock and down the valley, see the hurrying waters pass.</p>
-<p class='line0'>Oh, how dreamy grow my senses, as I couch me ’mid the flowers,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Oh, how still the blue sky looketh, oh, how noteless creep the hours;</p>
-<p class='line0'>Oh, how wide the silence seemeth, not a sound disturbing comes,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Save a drowsy, sleepy buzzing, that around continuous hums;</p>
-<p class='line0'>And I seem to float out loosely on weak slumber’s languid breast,</p>
-<p class='line0'>With a kind of half reluctance that sinks gradually to rest.</p>
-<p class='line0'>Distant faces group around me, kindly eyes look in my own,</p>
-<p class='line0'>And I hear, though indistinctly, voices of the lost and gone:</p>
-<p class='line0'>His whose bark went down in tempest; his whose life and death were gloom;</p>
-<p class='line0'>His whose hopes and young ambitions fell and faded on the tomb;</p>
-<p class='line0'>Oh, again his earnest language breaks upon my dreaming ear,</p>
-<p class='line0'>And I catch the tones that waking I shall never, never hear.</p>
-</div>
-</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend -->
-
-<hr class='tbk103'/>
-
-<div><h1><a id='love'></a>LOVE.</h1></div>
-
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;'>———</p>
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;font-size:0.8em;font-weight:bold;'>BY A. J. REQUIER.</p>
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;margin-bottom:1.5em;'>———</p>
-
-
- <div class='poetry-container' style=''>
- <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' -->
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>Oh, with more than the pilgrim of Mecca’s devotion,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;When he looks on the shrine which his worship endears,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Is the glance which we cast at the young heart’s devotion,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Its first rose of summer—the last which it bears;</p>
-<p class='line0'>Bright as a halo of sunshine reposing</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;At break of the morn on a billowless stream,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Where the wavering shadows are fitfully moving,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Or blush of a Peri that smiles in a dream.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>Thus, thus must thou dwell on each glance of affection,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Each token of love I have strewed at thy shrine,</p>
-<p class='line0'>When thy bosom first heaved at the fear of detection,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;And its secret alone was imparted to mine;</p>
-<p class='line0'>It is linked with each thought that is born in thy waking,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;It embosoms each fancy that softens thy sleep,</p>
-<p class='line0'>And, if e’er it be wild as the waves in their breaking,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;’Tis the image of Heaven that breaks on the deep!</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>For vainly the bosom whose pulses have throbbed</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;To the beat of a heart it had warmed with its fire,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Seeks to freeze the remembrance of tears it has sobbed,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;And to smother the anguish of pining desire;</p>
-<p class='line0'>The remembrance will live, the remembrance will cling.</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;As the ever-green ivy encircles the oak,</p>
-<p class='line0'>And the tempest may strike with its withering wing,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;But together they bend and together are broke!</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>Bright star of my soul! thus united we stand,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Intermingled in being and blended in breath,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Come fate with her darkest, her gloomiest band,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;We will bend, we will break undivided in death;</p>
-<p class='line0'>’Twas Heaven decreed it, ’twas Heaven that wove</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;The tie which has bound us in home and in heart,</p>
-<p class='line0'>And this only we know, we live on but to love,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;And thus loving we never, oh, never can part!</p>
-</div>
-</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend -->
-
-<hr class='tbk104'/>
-
-<div><h1><a id='mem'></a>MEMORY.</h1></div>
-
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;'>———</p>
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;font-size:0.8em;font-weight:bold;'>BY LYDIA L. A. VERY.</p>
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;margin-bottom:1.5em;'>———</p>
-
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;margin-bottom:1.3em;'>“ <span style='font-size:smaller'>’Tis in the morning that the church-yard of Memory gives up its dead.”</span></p>
-
-
- <div class='poetry-container' style=''>
- <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' -->
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>Let them rise from the heart’s tomb;</p>
-<p class='line0'>Spirits, not of sadness or gloom—</p>
-<p class='line0'>White-robed thoughts of Childhood’s truth,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Cherished hopes that filled our youth.</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Let them rise a shining band</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Coming from the Spirit-Land.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>Let them rise! each well-known face,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Where so oft we loved to trace</p>
-<p class='line0'>Smiles that beamed for us alone,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Eyes o’er which Death’s veil is thrown—</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Let them gather round our bed</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;All unheard their noiseless tread!</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>Let their eyes of love still speak,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Let their breath be on our cheek,</p>
-<p class='line0'>And their voice in our ear</p>
-<p class='line0'>Murmur words we loved to hear:</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Let their spirits fair and bright</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Visit us at morning light.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>Death, who cometh thief-like, still</p>
-<p class='line0'>Taking Life’s bright gems at will;</p>
-<p class='line0'>With us early, with us late,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Making hearth-stones desolate—</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Death, who visits all Life’s bowers.</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Cannot gather Memory’s flowers!</p>
-</div>
-</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend -->
-
-<hr class='tbk105'/>
-
-<div><h1><a id='last'></a>THE LAST SONG.</h1></div>
-
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;margin-bottom:1.5em;font-weight:bold;'>FROM THE GERMAN.</p>
-
-<div class='figleft' style='width:40%'>
-<img src='images/i008.jpg' alt='' id='iid-0002' style='width:60%;height:auto;'/>
-</div>
-
-
- <div class='poetry-container' style=''>
- <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' -->
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>“When will your bards be weary</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Of rhyming on? How long</p>
-<p class='line0'>Ere it is sung and ended,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;The old, eternal song?</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>“Is it not, long since, empty,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;The horn of full supply;</p>
-<p class='line0'>And all the posies gathered,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;And all the fountains dry?”</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>As long as the sun’s chariot</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Yet keeps its azure track,</p>
-<p class='line0'>And but one human visage</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Gives answering glances back;</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>As long as skies shall nourish</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;The thunderbolt and gale,</p>
-<p class='line0'>And, frightened at their fury,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;One throbbing heart shall quail;</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>As long as after tempests</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Shall spring one showery bow,</p>
-<p class='line0'>One breast with peaceful promise</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;And reconcilement glow;</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>As long as night the concave</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Sows with its starry seed,</p>
-<p class='line0'>And but one man those letters</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Of golden writ can read;</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>Long as a moonbeam glimmers,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Or bosom sighs a vow;</p>
-<p class='line0'>Long as the wood-leaves rustle</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;To cool a weary brow;</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>As long as roses blossom,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;And earth is green in May;</p>
-<p class='line0'>As long as eyes shall sparkle,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;And smile in pleasure’s ray;</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>As long as cypress shadows</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;The graves more mournful make,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Or one cheek’s wet with weeping,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Or one poor heart can break;—</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>So long on earth shall wander</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;The goddess Poesy,</p>
-<p class='line0'>And with her, one exulting</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Her votarist to be.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>And singing on, triumphing,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;The old earth-mansion through,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Out marches the last minstrel;—</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;He is the last man too.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>The Lord holds the creation</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Forth in his hand meanwhile,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Like a fresh flower just opened,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;And views it with a smile.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>When once this Flower Giant</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Begins to show decay,</p>
-<p class='line0'>And earths and suns are flying</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Like blossom-dust away.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>Then ask,—if of the question</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Not weary yet,—“How long,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Ere it is sung and ended,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;The old, eternal song?”</p>
-</div>
-</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend -->
-
-<hr class='tbk106'/>
-
-<div><h1><a id='opt'></a>OPTICAL PHENOMENA.</h1></div>
-
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;'>———</p>
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;font-size:0.8em;font-weight:bold;'>BY THOMAS MILNER, M. A.</p>
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;margin-bottom:1.5em;'>———</p>
-
-<div class='figcenter'>
-<img src='images/i009.jpg' alt='' id='iid-0003' style='width:100%;height:auto;'/>
-</div>
-
-<p class='pindent'>It is convenient to place an indefinite title at the
-head of this article, in order to notice various classes
-of independent phenomena which immediately address
-themselves to the eye; and which are either
-plain developments of electrical action, or simply
-atmospheric meteors, or appearances resulting from
-its reflecting and refractive properties, or of obscure
-origin, but manifested in the atmosphere. To the
-former class the lightning belongs, beautifully playing
-among the distant clouds, or flashing with blinding
-glare and tremendous effect near the surface of
-the earth, warning man and beast of the presence of
-an agency able to extinguish animal and vegetable
-life in a moment, and utterly inappreciable in its
-swiftness, subtility and power. At the close of a
-hot, sultry day, over a level country, the igneous
-meteor often exhibits itself, in rapidly succeeding,
-broad, noiseless, and imposing sheets of flame, lighting
-up the whole range of the horizon, revealing for
-the moment the contour of the distant landscape upon
-which the shadows of the night have gathered, and
-discovering the outline of the clouds in the dusky
-sky. These displays, however startling to “the
-poor Indian, whose untutored mind” is alarmed at
-the slightest deviation from the ordinary aspect of
-things, are always harmless, and invite by their innocuousness
-and fascination the cultivated races to
-watch the bounding coruscations of the elastic element,
-besides contributing to render the fields of corn
-ripe unto the harvest. But it is otherwise when
-heat has overcharged the atmosphere with vapors,
-becoming piled into clouds of gigantic dimensions
-and massive architecture, which are often propelled
-by antagonist currents, and in different electrical conditions.
-After an unusual calm of nature, oppressive
-to the animal system, during which not a movement
-of the air is perceptible, and the leaves hang motionless
-upon the trees, while the brute creation indicate
-some intelligence of an impending change by their
-restlessness, an explosion commences. The flash is
-seen, the thunder heard, and the clouds open their
-watery store-house, a few distant and heavy drops
-increasing into a cataract of rain. Flash rapidly follows
-flash, and the interval between each appearance
-and the accompanying thunder peal becomes
-less. The pale hue of the lightning is exchanged
-for a vivid glare, in which a deep yellow, red, or
-blue is the predominant color, a variety of aberrations
-marking its course, the zigzag form showing
-that the fearful agent is near terrestrial objects. In
-this manner, “the detraction that wasteth at noonday”
-is frequently exhibited, now striking man and
-beast to the earth, or rending asunder the mighty
-oak of the forest, or firing the vessel of the hapless
-seaman, or shivering “the cloud-capt towers and
-gorgeous palaces,” the fanes of religion and the fortresses
-of war. Man has then a solemn sense of his
-helplessness and danger; and almost every creature
-sympathizes with him. The eel is restless in his
-muddy bed—the horse trembles beneath his rider—the
-cattle gather lowing to a covert—the eagle nestles
-in the cleft of the rock with folded wings—the hart
-looks wild and anxious: only the poor seal seems to
-experience agreeable sensations, for he will come
-out of his hiding-place in the deep, at the call of the
-thunder, and repose upon some overhanging ledge,
-as if calmly enjoying the convulsion of the elements.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Since the month of June 1752, when Franklin
-performed the celebrated kite experiment, by which
-he became the modern Prometheus, bringing down
-the celestial fire to the earth, the identity of lightning
-and electricity has been universally known.
-The theory of the electric fluid, as it is called, is to
-be sought for in philosophical treatises, our province
-being to notice its distribution, phenomena, and effects.
-That subtle principle which the Greeks denominated
-electricity, from <span class='it'>elektron</span>, amber, because
-the property was first noticed in that substance, appears
-to be a universally diffused agent, its presence
-having been detected in connection with the clouds,
-with hail, rain and snow, with vegetation, animals,
-and the interior strata of the earth. But undue accumulation
-transpires—the electrical equilibrium is
-disturbed; and the resulting phenomena of equalization
-are lightning and thunder. Thus two clouds,
-or a cloud and the earth, unequally electrified, tend
-to return to a condition of equality through a conducting
-medium, a metallic or moist body having
-the preference as a conductor, the discharge of electricity
-appearing in the form of a spark or flash, accompanied
-by a loud detonation according to its
-violence, the peal rebounding in echoes from cloud
-to cloud, and from hill to hill. Some regions of the
-globe are peculiarly subject to accumulations of electricity.
-Mr. Hamilton, in his work on Asia Minor,
-observes—“One of the most remarkable phenomena
-which I observed in Angora, was the great degree
-of electricity which seemed to pervade every thing.
-I observed it particularly in silk handkerchiefs, linen
-and woollen stuffs. At times, when I went to bed
-in the dark, the sparks which were emitted from
-the blanket gave it the appearance of a sheet of fire;
-when I took up a silk handkerchief, the crackling
-noise would resemble that of breaking a handful of
-dried leaves or grass; and on one or two occasions
-I clearly felt my hands and fingers tingle from the
-electric fluid. I could only attribute it to the extreme
-dryness of the atmosphere, and momentary
-friction. I did not observe that it was at all influenced
-by wind; the phenomena were the same,
-whether by night or by day, in wind or calm. Not
-a cloud was visible during the whole of my stay.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Similar striking indications of the prevalence of
-electric action have frequently been observed by travelers
-when near the summits of high mountains, as
-by Sir W. J. Hooker on Ben Nevis, Saussure on
-Mont Blanc, and Tupper on Mount Etna. The latter,
-descending a field of snow, a good conductor,
-felt a slight shock upon entering a cloud which
-seemed electric, with a sensation of pain in the back.
-The hair of his head stood erect, and upon moving
-the hand near the head, a humming sound proceeded
-from it, which arose from a succession of sparks.
-Though a situation of great danger, yet we have
-several instances of such clouds having been traversed
-with impunity, when in the act of electrical
-explosion. The Abbé Richard, in August 1778,
-passed through a thunder-cloud on the small mountain
-called Boyer, between Chalons and Tournus.
-Before he entered the cloud, the thunder sounded, as
-it is wont to do, with a prolonged reverberation; but
-when enveloped in it, only single peals were heard,
-with intervals of silence, without any roll; and after
-he had passed above the cloud, it reverberated as before,
-and the lightning flashed. The sister of M.
-Arago was a party to a similar occurrence between
-Estagel and Limoux, and some officers of engineers
-likewise, during a trigonometrical survey on the
-Pyrenees.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The energy of atmospheric electricity appears to
-decrease as we recede from the equator to the poles,
-thus sympathizing with light and heat; for it is in
-tropical countries that the most terrific flashes of
-lightning and the loudest bursts of heaven’s artillery
-occur. Awful as these manifestations are occasionally
-in our temperate climate, they are but as a skirmishing
-of outposts to the general engagement of
-armies, when compared with inter-tropical displays.
-In Hindustan, in the Indian Ocean, along the African
-coast off Cape St. Verde, and in Central America,
-there is often a scene exhibited, which seems a rehearsal
-of the day “when the heavens being on fire
-shall pass away with a great noise.” Humboldt,
-during his residence at Cumana, witnessed a coincident
-development of electrical action, peculiar
-atmospheric phenomena, and terrestrial disturbance,
-during what is called the winter of that region.
-From the 10th of October to the 3d of November, a
-reddish vapor rose in the evening, and in a few
-minutes covered the sky. The hygrometer gave no
-indication of humidity; the diurnal heat was from
-82·4° to 89·6°. The vapor disappeared occasionally
-in the middle of the night, when brilliantly white
-clouds formed in the zenith, extending toward the
-horizon. They were sometimes so transparent that
-they did not conceal stars even of the fourth magnitude,
-and the lunar spots were clearly distinguishable
-through the veil. The clouds were arranged in
-masses at equal distances, and seemed to be at a prodigious
-elevation. From the 28th of October to the
-3d of November, the fog was thicker than it had been
-before; and the heat at night was stifling, though the
-thermometer indicated only 78·8°. There was no
-evening breeze. The sky appeared as if on fire, and
-the ground was every where cracked and dusty.
-About two o’clock in the afternoon of November
-4th, large clouds of extraordinary blackness enveloped
-the mountains of the Brigantine and Tataraqual,
-extending gradually to the zenith. About four,
-thunder was heard overhead, but at an immense
-height, and with a dull and often interrupted sound.
-At the moment of the strongest electric explosion,
-two shocks of an earthquake, separated by an interval
-of fifteen seconds, were felt. The people in the
-streets filled the air with their cries. Boupland, who
-was examining plants, was nearly thrown upon the
-floor, and Humboldt, who was lying in his hammock,
-felt the concussion strongly. A few minutes before
-the first, there was a violent gust of wind followed
-by large drops of rain. The sky remained cloudy,
-and the blast was succeeded by a dead calm, which
-continued all night. The sunset was a scene of great
-magnificence. The dark atmospheric shroud was
-rent asunder close to the horizon, and the sun appeared
-at 12° of altitude on an indigo ground, his disc
-enormously enlarged and distorted. The clouds were
-gilded on the edges, and bundles of rays reflecting
-the most brilliant prismatic colors extended over the
-heavens. About nine in the evening there was a
-third shock, which, though much slighter, was evidently
-attended with a subterranean noise. In the
-night between the 3d and 4th of November, the red
-vapor before mentioned had been so thick, that the
-place of the moon could only be distinguished by a
-beautiful halo 20° in diameter. The vapor ceased
-to appear on the 7th; the atmosphere then assumed
-its former purity; and the night of the 11th was cool
-and extremely lovely. This account, with similar
-details from other observers, seems to indicate a
-more intimate relation than is generally admitted between
-the interior of the earth and its external atmosphere.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Among the regions peculiarly subject to electric
-phenomena is the country around the estuary of the
-Rio Plata. In the year 1793, one of the most destructive
-thunder-storms perhaps on record, happened
-at Buenos Ayres, when thirty-seven places in the
-city were struck by the lightning, and nineteen of
-the inhabitants killed. It is an observation of Mr.
-Darwin, founded on statements in books of travels,
-that thunder-storms are very common near the
-mouths of great rivers; and he conjectures that this
-may arise from the mixture of large bodies of fresh
-and salt water disturbing the electrical equilibrium.
-“Even,” he remarks, “during our occasional visit
-to this part of South America, we heard of a ship,
-two churches and a house, having been struck.
-Both the church and the house I saw shortly afterward.
-Some of the effects were curious: the paper,
-for nearly a foot on each side of the line where the
-bell-wires had run, was blackened. The metal had
-been fused, and although the room was about fifteen
-feet high, the globules, dropping on the chairs and
-furniture, had drilled in them a chain of minute
-holes. A part of the wall was shattered as if by
-gunpowder, and the fragments had been blown off
-with force sufficient to indent the wall on the opposite
-side of the room. The frame of a looking-glass
-was blackened; the gilding must have been volatilized,
-for a smelling-bottle, which stood on the
-chimney-piece, was coated with bright metallic
-particles, which adhered as firmly as if they had
-been enameled.” Near the shores of the Rio Plata,
-in a broad band of sand hillocks, he found those singular
-specimens of electric architecture, a group of
-vitrified siliceous tubes, formed by the lightning
-striking into loose sand. These tubes had a glossy
-surface, and were about two inches in circumference,
-the thickness of the wall of each tube varying
-from the twentieth to the thirtieth part of an inch.
-Four sets were noticed, probably not produced by
-successive distinct charges, but by the lightning dividing
-itself into separate branches before entering
-the ground. Similar cylindrical formations have
-been noticed in other places. Dr. Priestley has described,
-in the Philosophical Transactions, some
-siliceous tubes, which were found in digging into
-the ground, under a tree, where a man had been
-killed by lightning; and at Drigg, in Cumberland,
-three were observed within an area of fifteen yards,
-one of which was traced to a depth of not less than
-thirty feet. In the temperate climates electrical
-phenomena are most common, and usually most energetic
-in the summer season, and the displays are
-grander and more formidable in mountainous than in
-level countries. As we approach the poles, they
-become less striking; thunder is rarely heard in high
-northern latitudes, and only as a feeble detonation;
-and though lightning is more common, it is seldom
-destructive. In Iceland, in the winter, it often plays
-in the impressive but harmless manner which the
-natives call laptelltur. This is a fluctuating appearance
-of the whole sky, as if on fire, accompanied by
-a strong wind and drifting snow, but inflicting no
-further damage than that arising from the terrified
-cattle falling over the rocks in their efforts to escape
-from the phenomenon.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The rapidity of lightning, as measured by means
-of the camera lucida, M. Halvig estimates at probably
-eight or ten miles in a second, or about forty
-times greater velocity than that of sound; and according
-to M. Gay-Lussac, a flash sometimes darts more
-than three miles at once in a straight direction. M.
-Arago distinguishes three classes of lightning: First,
-luminous discharges characterized by a long streak
-of light, very thin, and well defined at the edges, of
-a white, violet, or purple hue, moving in a straight
-line, or deviating into a zigzag track, frequently dividing
-into two or more streams in striking terrestrial
-objects, but invariably proceeding from a single
-point. Secondly, he notices expanded flashes spreading
-over a vast surface without having any apparent
-depth, of a red, blue, or violet color, not so active as
-the former class, and generally confined to the edges
-of the clouds from which they appear to proceed.
-Thirdly, he mentions concentrated masses of light,
-which he terms globular lightning, which seem to
-occupy time, to endure for several seconds, and to
-have a progressive motion. Mr. Hearder of Plymouth
-describes a discharge of lightning of this kind
-on the Dartmouth hills, very near to him. Several
-vivid flashes had occurred before the mass of clouds
-approached the hill on which he was standing; and
-before he had time to retreat from his dangerous
-position, a tremendous crash and explosion burst close
-to him. The spark had the appearance of a nucleus
-of intensely ignited matter, followed by a flood of
-light. It struck the path near him, and dashed with
-fearful brilliancy down its whole length to a rivulet
-at the foot of the hill, where it terminated. Analogous
-to the discharges described as globular lightning
-are the fire-balls so often noticed, about which
-there has been no little scepticism; but the evidence
-cannot reasonably be doubted, that displays of electrical
-light have repeatedly occurred, conveying the
-impression of balls of fire to the observer. An instance
-is given by Mr. Chalmers while on board the
-Montague, of seventy-four guns, bearing the flag of
-Admiral Chambers. In the account read to the
-Royal Society, he states, that “on November 4th,
-1749, while taking an observation on the quarter-deck,
-one of the quarter-masters requested him to
-look to windward, upon which he observed a large
-ball of blue fire rolling along on the surface of the
-water, as large as a mill-stone, at about three miles
-distance. Before they could raise the main-tack, the
-ball had reached within forty yards of the main-chains,
-when it rose perpendicularly with a fearful
-explosion, and shattered the main-topmast to pieces.”
-In an account of the fatal effects of lightning in June
-1826, on the Malvern Hills, when two ladies were
-struck dead, it is stated, that the electric discharge appeared
-as a mass of fire rolling along the hill toward
-the building in which the party had taken shelter.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Mr. Snow Harris remarks upon the difficulty of
-explaining these appearances on the principles applicable
-to the ordinary electric spark. The amazing
-rapidity of the latter, and the momentary duration of
-the light, render it impossible that they should be
-identical with it; but he conjectures that there may
-be a “glow discharge” preceding the main shock,
-some of the atmospheric particles yielding up their
-electricity by a gradual process before a discharge of
-the whole system takes place. In this view, the distinct
-balls of fire of sensible duration which have been
-perceived, are produced in a given point or points of
-a charged system previously to the more general and
-rapid union of the electrical forces—a supposition
-which will apply as well to the Mariner’s Lights, or
-St. Elmo’s Fire, observed during storms of thunder
-and lightning at sea. Pliny mentions lights noticed
-by the Roman mariners during tempests, flickering
-about their vessels, to which Seneca likewise makes
-allusion. By the superstitions of modern times they
-have been converted into indications of the guardian
-presence of St. Elmo, the patron saint of the sailor,
-hence called <span class='it'>cuerpo sante</span> by the Spanish mariners.
-During the second voyage of Columbus among the
-West India islands, a sudden gust of heavy wind
-came on in the night, and his crew considered themselves
-in great peril, until they beheld several of these
-lambent flames playing about the tops of the masts,
-and gliding along the rigging, which they hailed as
-an assurance of their supernatural protector being
-near. Fernando Columbus records the circumstance
-in a manner strongly characteristic of the age in
-which he lived. “On the same Saturday, in the
-night, was seen St. Elmo, with seven lighted tapers,
-at the topmast. There was much rain and great
-thunder. I mean to say that those lights were seen
-which mariners affirm to be the body of St. Elmo,
-on beholding which they chanted many litanies and
-orisons, holding it for certain, that in the tempest in
-which he appears, no one is in danger.” A similar
-mention is made of this nautical superstition in the
-voyage of Magellan. During several great storms
-the presence of the saint was welcomed, appearing
-at the topmast with a lighted candle, and sometimes
-with two, upon which the people shed tears of joy,
-received great consolation, and saluted him according
-to the custom of the Catholic seamen; but he ungraciously
-vanished, disappearing with a great flash
-of lightning which nearly blinded the crew.</p>
-
-<div class='figcenter'>
-<img src='images/i017.jpg' alt='' id='iid-0004' style='width:70%;height:auto;'/>
-<p class='caption'><span class='bold'>Tower of St. Mark’s, Venice.</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<p class='pindent'>It is a striking instance of the triumph of mind,
-that by the introduction of lightning conductors into
-different civilized states, the power of this most
-energetic agent of nature is controled, and comparative
-security provided for life and property, otherwise
-in imminent jeopardy, when a severe
-thunder-storm occurs. Experience has taught
-the prime importance of furnishing exposed or
-elevated structures with a conducting apparatus,
-and has sufficiently shown that the immunity from
-danger enjoyed by many an unprotected building
-has been merely accidental; for when the
-teeming thunder-cloud has been wafted within
-reach of the edifice hitherto unscathed, the
-delusion has vanished that man may carelessly
-and with impunity thrust up his handiwork
-into the region of storms, as if daring the fury
-of the tempest, and inviting down its vengeance.
-The fine tower of St. Mark’s, at Venice, rising
-to the height of 360 feet, terminates in a pyramid
-which was severely injured in 1388. In
-1417 the pyramid was again struck, and set on
-fire, having been constructed of wood. The
-same event happened in 1489, when it was entirely
-consumed. After being rebuilt of stone,
-the fell lightning renewed its destructive stroke
-in 1548, 1565, 1653 and 1745; and on the last
-occasion the whole tower was rent in thirty-seven
-places, and almost destroyed. It was
-again ravaged in 1761 and 1762, but in 1766 a
-lightning rod was put up, which has since protected
-it from damage. At Glogau, in Silesia,
-an interesting example of the value of conductors
-occurred in the year 1782. On the 8th of
-May, about eight o’clock in the evening, a
-thunder-storm from the west approached the
-powder magazine established in the Galgnuburg.
-An intensely vivid flash of lightning took
-place, accompanied instantly with such a tremendous
-peal of thunder, that the sentinel on duty was
-stupefied, and remained for awhile senseless, but no
-disaster occurred. Some laborers at a short distance
-from the magazine saw the lightning issue from the
-cloud and strike the point of the conductor, which
-conveyed it in safety by the combustible material.
-A different result took place with reference to a
-large quantity of unprotected ammunition, belonging
-to the republic of Venice, deposited in the vaults of
-the church of St. Nazaire, at Brescia. The church
-was struck with lightning in the month of August,
-1767, and the electric fluid, descending to the vaults,
-exploded upward of 207,600 lbs. of powder, reducing
-nearly one-sixth of the fine city to ruins, and destroying
-about 3000 of the inhabitants. The Indians, whenever
-the sky wears a lowering aspect, so as to threaten
-a severe thunder-storm, are said to leave their pursuits
-and take refuge under the nearest beech-tree, considering
-it a complete protection, as it is affirmed
-that no instance has occurred of the beech having
-been struck by atmospheric electricity, when other
-trees of the American forests have been shivered
-into splinters in its neighborhood.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>For ages the inhabitants of the globe have seen
-the lightning flash and heard the thunder rattle; and
-some writers upon the occult sciences of the ancients,
-as Salverte, have supposed that, tutored by
-experience, without any understanding of the theory
-of the subject, they possessed the secret of warding
-off from their buildings the thunderbolt by a conducting
-apparatus. It is certain that extraordinary intimations
-to this effect may be culled from their
-writings. Pliny states that Tullus Hostilius, practicing
-Numa’s art of bringing down fire from heaven,
-and performing it incorrectly, was struck with lightning—a
-fate which Professor Richman of St. Petersburg
-experienced, while performing incautiously
-the sublime experiment of Franklin, measuring the
-strength of the electricity brought down by a metallic
-rod in a thunder-storm, being instantly killed.
-Pliny likewise mentions the laurel as the only
-earthly production which lightning does not strike;
-hence, as a protection, these trees were planted
-around the temple of Apollo. Columella, however,
-mentions white vines surrounding the house of Tarchon,
-the Etruscan, for the same purpose. These
-expedients may provoke a smile without deserving
-one; for there can be no doubt that trees sufficiently
-high around a temple, or succulent plants covering a
-dwelling, will exercise to some extent a protective
-power, and act as a regular system of conductors.
-Salverte mentions several medals which appear to
-have reference to this subject, particularly one
-which represents the temple of Juno, the goddess of
-the air, the roof of which is armed with pointed
-rods. He quotes also Michaelis, upon the temple of
-Jerusalem, to show that the Jews were not unacquainted
-with the art of protecting their public buildings—a
-position grounded upon the following facts:
-“1. That there is nothing to indicate that the lightning
-ever struck the temple of Jerusalem during the
-lapse of a thousand years.” This, of course, does
-not make the fact certain; but when, as M. Arago
-justly remarks, we consider how carefully the ancient
-authors recorded the cases in which their
-public buildings were injured by lightning, we may
-accept the silence observed respecting the temple of
-Jerusalem, as proof that it was never struck. For
-three centuries the cathedral of Geneva, the most
-elevated in the city, has enjoyed a similar immunity,
-although inferior buildings have been repeatedly
-damaged. Saussure discovered the reason of this, in
-the tower being entirely covered with tinned iron
-plates, connected with different masses of metal on
-the roof, and again communicating with the ground
-by means of metallic pipes. “2. That according to
-the account of Josephus, a forest of spikes with
-golden or gilt points, and very sharp, covered the
-roof of this temple; a remarkable feature of resemblance
-with the temple of Juno represented on the
-Roman medals. 3. That this roof communicated
-with the caverns in the hill of the temple, by means
-of metallic tubes, placed in connection with the thick
-gilding that covered the whole exterior of the building;
-the points of the spikes there necessarily producing
-the effect of lightning-rods. How are we to
-suppose that it was only by chance they discharged
-so important a function; that the advantage received
-from it had not been calculated; that the spikes
-were erected in such great numbers only to prevent
-the birds from lodging upon and defiling the roof of
-the temple? Yet this is the sole utility which the
-historian Josephus attributes to them.” Upon a
-sober review of these facts, it is difficult to resist the
-conclusion that the ancient world had some proficiency
-in the art of guiding the electric fluid from
-the bosom of the clouds, conducting it in a prescribed
-course, and thus disarming it of its terrors.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The subject of electrical agency is intimately connected
-with that of magnetism, to which this is the
-fittest place to glance—one of the most recondite
-points of physical science. The relation between
-the two is evident, from the notorious fact that lightning
-often renders steel magnetic, and disturbs the
-magnetism of the magnetised needle, so that in
-thunder-storms the compass needles of a ship have
-frequently been seriously injured. The magnetic
-agency, like electricity, has a general distribution
-over the earth, but the phenomena differ in different
-parts of the world, and are subject to periodical differences
-in the same place, the cause of which is
-very little understood. Every one is acquainted
-with the polarity of a freely suspended magnetic
-needle, or its tendency to lie parallel with the earth’s
-axis, pointing nearly north and south in every region
-of the globe. What is called the <span class='it'>dip</span> or <span class='it'>inclination</span>
-of the needle is its divergence from a perfectly horizontal
-position. Thus the north pole of the needle
-inclines downward in the latitude of London at an
-angle of 70°, but conveyed toward the equator, the
-dip diminishes, till no inclination at all appears.
-Transported farther toward the south, the dip again
-discovers itself, but in an opposite direction, the
-south pole of the needle inclining downward. “To
-understand the reason of this dip of the magnetic
-needle, and of its general direction, we have only to
-consider that the earth itself operates as a great
-magnet, the poles of which are situated beneath its
-surface. The directive property of the needle is owing
-to these poles; and when the needle is on the
-north side of the equator, the north pole of the earth
-having the greatest effect, the needle is attracted
-downward toward the north pole; hence exactly
-over the magnetic pole the needle would be vertical.
-Similar phenomena occur in the southern hemisphere;
-but here the south pole predominates, and of
-course depresses the corresponding pole of the
-needle; while at the magnetic equator, from the
-equal action of both poles, the needle will assume an
-exactly horizontal position.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>But neither the magnetic equator nor the magnetic
-poles coincide precisely with the geographical equator
-and poles, and this difference constitutes what is
-termed the <span class='it'>variation</span> of the needle. From calculation,
-the north magnetic pole had been fixed in latitude
-70°, and longitude 98° 30′ west, a spot which
-Commander Ross approached within the distance of
-ten miles, in the year 1830, but was unable to verify
-the site, for want of the requisite instruments. Upon
-going through a long series of calculations afterward
-himself, he concluded the above position to have
-been erroneously assigned, and that the real point
-lay in latitude 70° 5′ 17″ north, and longitude 96° 46′
-45″ west, a spot on the western coast of Boothia,
-which he prepared to reach. On the first of June,
-1831, at eight o’clock in the morning, he arrived at
-the site to which his calculations pointed, and found
-the same day the amount of the dip to be 89° 59′,
-only one minute less than 90°, the vertical position,
-which would have precisely indicated the polar station;
-and the horizontal needles, suspended in the
-most delicate manner possible, did not betray the
-slightest movement. The spot was an unattractive
-level site along the coast, rising into ridges from fifty
-to sixty feet high, about a mile inland. The wish
-expressed by the discoverer was natural, that a
-place so important had possessed more of mark or
-note, but Nature had erected no monument to denote
-the spot which she had chosen as the centre of one
-of her “great and dark powers.” A cairn of some
-magnitude was constructed by the adventurers, upon
-which the British flag was planted, and underneath,
-a canister was buried, containing a record of the interesting
-enterprise.</p>
-
-<div class='figcenter'>
-<img src='images/i023.jpg' alt='' id='iid-0005' style='width:90%;height:auto;'/>
-<p class='caption'><span class='bold'>Aurora Borealis—Loch Leven.</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The magnetic needle has frequently exhibited
-violent disturbance when the Aurora Borealis has
-appeared. This has led to the surmise that these
-brilliant lights are connected with the electric and
-magnetic properties of the earth, though in a manner
-which we cannot explain. It has been remarked
-that during the appearance of the aurora the electric
-fluid may often be readily collected from the air. If
-a current of electricity also be passed through an exhausted
-receiver, a very correct imitation of the
-auroral light will be produced, displaying the same
-variety of color and intensity, and the same undulating
-motions. It is highly probable, therefore, that
-the beautiful and fantastic meteoric display is connected
-with electricity; but great obscurity rests
-upon this department of meteorology.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Of all optical phenomena, the Aurora Borealis, or
-the northern day-break, is one of the most striking,
-especially in the regions where its full glory is revealed.
-The site of the appearance, in the north
-part of the heavens, and its close resemblance to the
-aspect of the sky before sunrise, have originated the
-name. The “Derwentwater Lights” was long the
-appellation common in the north of England, owing
-to their display on the night after the execution of
-the unfortunate earl of that name. The scene in
-the illustration is a picture of the auroral light, as
-observed from the neighborhood of Loch Leven—a
-scene in itself admirably calculated to exhibit the
-phenomenon; and to convey any adequate idea of
-its magical aspect, as seen in high latitudes, the
-painter’s hand and the poet’s art are needed. A native
-Russian, Lomonosov, thus refers to the spectacle:—</p>
-
-
- <div class='poetry-container' style=''>
- <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' -->
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;“Where are thy secret laws, O Nature, where?</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;Thy torch-lights dazzle in the wintry zone;</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;How dost thou light from ice thy torches there?</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;There has thy son some sacred, secret throne?</p>
-<p class='line0'>See in your frozen sea what glories have their birth;</p>
-<p class='line0'>Thence night leads forth the day t’ illuminate the earth.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;“Come then, philosopher, whose privileged eye</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;Reads Nature’s hidden pages and decrees:</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Come now, and tell us whence, and where, and why,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;Earth’s icy regions glow with lights like these,</p>
-<p class='line0'>That fill our souls with awe; profound inquirer, say,</p>
-<p class='line0'>For thou dost count the stars, and trace the planet’s way.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;“What fills with dazzling beams the illumined air?</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;What wakes the flames that light the firmament?</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;The lightning’s flash: there is no thunder there,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;And earth and heaven with fiery sheets are blent;</p>
-<p class='line0'>The winter’s night now gleams with brighter, lovelier ray</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Than ever yet adorned the golden summer’s day.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;“Is there some vast, some hidden magazine,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;Where the gross darkness flames of fire supplies?</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Some phosphorous fabric, which the mountains screen,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;Whose clouds of light above those mountains rise?</p>
-<p class='line0'>Where the winds rattle loud around the foaming sea,</p>
-<p class='line0'>And lift the waves to heaven in thundering revelry?”</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend -->
-
-<p class='pindent'>The appearances exhibited by the aurora are so
-various as to render it impossible to comprehend
-every particular in a description that must be necessarily
-brief and general. A cloud, or haze, is commonly
-seen in the northern region of the heavens,
-but often bearing toward the east or west, assuming
-the form of an arc, seldom attaining a greater altitude
-than 40°, but varying in extent from 5° to 100°.
-The upper edge of the cloud is luminous, sometimes
-brilliant and irregular. The lower part is frequently
-dark and thick, with the clear sky appearing between
-it and the horizon. Streams of light shoot up in columnar
-forms from the upper part of the cloud, now
-extending but a few degrees, then as far as the zenith,
-and even beyond it. Instances occur in which the
-whole hemisphere is covered with these coruscations;
-but the brilliancy is the greatest, and the light
-the strongest, in the north, near the main body of
-the meteor. The streamers have in general a tremulous
-motion, and when close together present the
-appearance of waves, or sheets of light, following
-each other in rapid succession. But no rule obtains
-with reference to these streaks, which have acquired
-the name of “the merry dancers,” from their volatility,
-becoming more quick in their motions in stormy
-weather, as if sympathizing with the wildness of
-the blast. Such is the extraordinary aspect they
-present, that it is not surprising the rude Indians
-should gaze upon them as the spirits of their fathers
-roaming through the land of souls. They are
-variously white, pale red, or of a deep blood-color,
-and sometimes the appearance of the whole rainbow
-as to hue is presented. When several streamers
-emerging from different points unite at the zenith, a
-small and dense meteor is formed, which seems to
-burn with greater violence than the separate parts,
-and glows with a green, blue, or purple light. The
-display is over sometimes in a few minutes, or continues
-for hours, or through the whole night, and appears
-for several nights in succession. Captain
-Beechey remarked a sudden illumination to occur at
-one extremity of the auroral arch, the light passing
-along the belt with a tremulous hesitating movement
-toward the opposite end, exhibiting the colors of the
-rainbow; and as an illustration of this appearance, he
-refers to that presented by the rays of some molluscous
-animals in motion. Captain Parry notices the
-same effect as a common one with the aurora, and
-compares it, as far as its motion is concerned, to a
-person holding a long ribbon by one end, and giving
-it an undulatory movement through its whole length,
-though its general position remains the same. Captain
-Sabine likewise speaks of the arch being bent
-into convolutions, resembling those of a snake in motion.
-Both Parry, Franklin, and Beechey agree in
-the observation that no streamers were ever noticed
-shooting downward from the arch.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The preceding statement refers to aurora in high
-northern latitudes, where the full magnificence of
-the phenomenon is displayed. It forms a fine compensation
-for the long and dreary night to which
-these regions are subject, the gay and varying aspect
-of the heavens contrasting refreshingly with the repelling
-and monotonous appearance of the earth. We
-have already stated that the direction in which the
-aurora generally makes its first appearance, or the
-quarter in which the arch formed by this meteor is
-usually seen, is to the northward. But this does not
-hold good of very high latitudes, for by the expeditions
-which have wintered in the ice, it was almost
-always seen to the southward; while by Captain
-Beechey, in the Blossom, in Kotzerne Sound, 250
-miles to the southward of the ice, it was always observed
-in a northern direction. It would appear,
-therefore, from this fact, that the margin of the region
-of packed ice is most favorable to the production of
-the meteor. The reports of the Greenland ships confirm
-this idea; for, according to their concurrent testimony,
-the meteoric display has a more brilliant
-aspect to vessels passing near the situation of the
-compact ice, than to others entered far within it.
-Instances, however, are not wanting, of the aurora
-appearing to the south of the zenith in comparatively
-low latitudes. Lieutenant Chappell, in his voyage
-to Hudson’s Bay, speaks of its forming in the zenith,
-in a shape resembling that of an umbrella, pouring
-down streams of light from all parts of its periphery,
-which fell vertically over the hemisphere in every
-direction. As we retire from the Pole, the phenomenon
-becomes a rarer occurrence, and is less perfectly
-and distinctly developed. In September, 1828,
-it was observed in England as a vast arch of silvery
-light, extending over nearly the whole of the heavens,
-transient gleams of light separating from the main
-body of the luminosity; but in September, 1827, its
-hues were red and brilliant. Dr. Dalton has furnished
-the following account of an aurora, as observed by
-him on the 15th of October, 1792:—“Attention,” he
-remarks, “was first excited by a remarkably red appearance
-of the clouds to the south, which afforded
-sufficient light to read by at 8 o’clock in the evening,
-though there was no moon nor light in the north.
-From half-past nine to ten there was a large, luminous,
-horizontal arch to the southward, and several
-faint concentric arches northward. It was particularly
-noticed that all the arches seemed exactly bisected
-by the plain of the magnetic meridian. At
-half-past ten o’clock streamers appeared, very low
-in the south-east, running to and fro from west to
-east. They increased in number, and began to approach
-the zenith apparently with an accelerated
-velocity, when all on a sudden the whole hemisphere
-was covered with them, and exhibited such an appearance
-as surpasses all description. The intensity
-of the light, the prodigious number and volatility of
-the beams, the grand intermixture of all the prismatic
-colors in their utmost splendor, variegating the
-glowing canopy with the most luxuriant and enchanting
-scenery, afforded an awful, but at the same
-time the most pleasing and sublime spectacle in nature.
-Every one gazed with astonishment, but the
-uncommon grandeur of the scene only lasted one minute.
-The variety of colors disappeared, and the
-beams lost their lateral motion, and were converted
-into the flashing radiations. The aurora continued
-for several hours.” A copious deposition of dew—hard
-gales in the English channel—and a sudden
-thaw after great cold in northern regions, are circumstances
-which have been frequently noticed in connection
-with auroral displays.</p>
-
-<div class='figcenter'>
-<img src='images/i026.jpg' alt='' id='iid-0006' style='width:90%;height:auto;'/>
-<p class='caption'><span class='bold'>Aurora Borealis.</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The sky of the southern hemisphere occasionally
-exhibits this strange and mysterious light, contrary
-to an old opinion upon the subject; and here it must
-be called Aurora Australis, the southern day-break.
-Its appearance, however, is far from being so common
-as in the northern zone, and is much less imposing.
-Don Antonio Ulloa, off Cape Horn, in the year
-1745, witnessed the first appearance of the kind upon
-record in this region. Upon the clearing off of a thick
-mist, a light was observed in the southern horizon,
-extending to an elevation of about thirty degrees,
-sometimes of a reddish color, and sometimes like the
-light which precedes the rise of the moon, but occasionally
-more brilliant. Captain Cook, in the same
-latitudes, had more distinct views of the luminous
-streamers adorning the night-sky of the south. In
-the course of his second voyage he remarks, that on
-February the 17th, 1773, “a beautiful phenomenon
-was observed in the heavens. It consisted of long
-colors of a clear, white light, shooting up from the
-horizon, to the eastward, almost to the zenith, and
-spreading gradually over the whole southern part of
-the sky. These columns sometimes bent sideways
-at their upper extremity; and though in most respects
-similar to the northern lights, yet differed
-from them in being always of a whitish color,
-whereas ours assume various tints, especially those
-of a purple and fiery hue. The stars were sometimes
-hid by, and sometimes faintly to be seen
-through, the substance of these southern lights, <span class='it'>Aurora
-Australis</span>. The sky was generally clear when
-they appeared, and the air sharp and cold, the thermometer
-standing at the freezing point, the ship being
-in latitude 58° south.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The history of auroral phenomena goes back to
-the time of Aristotle, who undoubtedly refers to the
-exhibition in his work on meteors, describing it as
-occurring on calm nights, having a resemblance to
-flame mingled with smoke, or to a distant view of
-burning stubble, purple, bright red, and blood-color,
-being the predominant hues. Notices of it are likewise
-found in many of the classical writers; and the
-accounts which occur in the chronicles of the middle
-ages, of surprising lights in the air, converted by the
-imagination of the vulgar into swords gleaming and
-armies fighting, are allusions to the play of the
-northern lights. There is strong reason to believe,
-though the fact is perfectly inscrutable, that the
-aurora has been much more common in the European
-region of the northern zone, during the last century
-and a half, than in former periods. A very brilliant
-appearance took place on the 6th of March, 1716,
-which forms the subject of a paper by Halley, who
-remarks, that nothing of the kind had occurred in
-England for more than eighty years, nor of the same
-magnitude since 1574, or about 140 years previous,
-in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, when Cambden and
-Stow were eye-witnesses of it. The latter states in
-his Annals, that on November 14th, “were seen in
-the air strange impressions of fire and smoke to proceed
-forth from a black cloud in the north toward
-the south—that the next night the heavens from all
-parts did seem to burn marvelous ragingly, and over
-our heads the flames from the horizon round about
-rising did meet, and there double and roll one in another,
-as if it had been in a clear furnace.” The
-year following, 1575, it was twice repeated in Holland,
-but not observed in England; and as a specimen
-of the tone of thought respecting the aurora, the
-description of Cornelius Gemma, a professor in the
-university of Louvain, may be given. Referring to
-the second instance of the year, and speaking in the
-language of the times, he remarks: “The form of
-the Chasma of the 28th of September following, immediately
-after sunset, was indeed less dreadful, but
-still more confused and various; for in it were seen
-a great many bright arches, out of which gradually
-issued spears, cities with towers and men in battle
-array; after that, there were excursions of rays
-every way, waves of clouds and battles mutually
-pursued and fled, and wheeling round in a surprising
-manner.” This phenomenon was repeatedly observed
-in the last century in Sweden, as at present;
-but prior to the year 1716, the inhabitants of Upsal
-considered it as a great rarity. Nothing is more
-common now in Iceland than the northern lights,
-exhibited during the winter with imposing grandeur
-and brilliance; but Torfæus, the historian of Denmark,
-an Icelander, who wrote in 1706, records his
-remembrance of the time when the meteor was an
-object of terror in his native island. It deserves remark,
-that its more frequent occurrence in the Atlantic
-regions has been accompanied by its diminution
-in the eastern parts of Asia, as Baron Von
-Wrangel was assured by the natives there, who
-added, that formerly it was brighter than at present,
-and frequently presented the vivid coloring of the
-rainbow.</p>
-
-<div class='figcenter'>
-<img src='images/i030.jpg' alt='' id='iid-0007' style='width:90%;height:auto;'/>
-<p class='caption'><span class='bold'>Halos.</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The simplest form of the halo is that of a white
-concentric ring surrounding the sun or moon, a very
-common appearance in our climate in relation to the
-moon, occasioned by very thin vapor, or minute particles
-of ice and snow, diffused through the atmosphere
-deflecting the rays of light. Double rings
-are occasionally seen, displaying the brightest hues
-of the rainbow. The colored ring is produced by
-globules of visible vapor, the resulting halo exhibiting
-a character of density, and appearing contiguous
-to the luminous body, according as the atmosphere
-is surcharged with humidity. Hence a dense halo
-close to the moon is universally and justly regarded
-as an indication of coming rain. It has been stated
-as an approximation, that the globules which occasion
-the appearance of colored circles, vary from the
-5000th to the 50,000th part of an inch in diameter.
-Though seldom apparent around the sun in our climate,
-yet it is only necessary to remove that glare
-of light which makes delicate colors appear white,
-to perceive segments of beautifully tinted halos on
-most days when light fleecy clouds are present.
-The illustration shows a nearly complete and slightly
-eliptical ring around the sun, the lower portion hidden
-by the horizon, which was distinctly observed
-during the past summer in the neighborhood of Ipswich,
-of an extremely pale pink and blue tint.
-When Humboldt was at Cumana, a large double
-halo around the moon fixed the attention of the inhabitants,
-who considered it as the presage of a violent
-earthquake. The hygrometer denoted great
-humidity, yet the vapors appeared so perfectly in
-solution, or rather so elastic and uniformly disseminated,
-that they did not alter the transparency of
-the atmosphere. The moon arose after a storm of
-rain behind the Castle of St. Antonio. As soon as
-she appeared on the horizon, two circles were distinguished,
-one large and whitish, 44° in diameter,
-the other smaller, displaying all the colors of the
-rainbow. The space between the two circles was
-of the deepest azure. At the altitude of 4° they disappeared,
-while the meteorological instruments indicated
-not the slightest change in the lower regions
-of the air. The phenomenon was chiefly remarkable
-for the great brilliancy of its colors, and for the
-circumstance that, according to the measures taken
-with Ramsden’s sextant, the lunar disc was not exactly
-in the centre of the halos. Humboldt mentions
-likewise having seen at Mexico, in extremely fine
-weather, large bands spread along the vault of the
-sky, converging toward the lunar disc, displaying
-beautiful prismatic colors; and he remarks, that
-within the torrid zone, similar appearances are the
-common phenomena of the night, sometimes vanishing
-and returning in the space of a few minutes,
-which he assigns to the superior currents of air
-changing the state of the floating vapors, by which
-the light is refracted. Between latitude 15° of the
-equator, he records having observed small tinted
-halos around the planet Venus, the purple, orange,
-and violet being distinctly perceptible, which was
-never the case with Sirius, Canopus, or Acherner.
-In the northern regions solar and lunar halos are
-very common appearances, owing to the abundance
-of minute and highly crystallized spicula of ice floating
-in the atmosphere. The Arctic adventurers frequently
-mention the fall of icy particles during a
-clear sky and a bright sun, so small as scarcely to
-be visible to the naked eye, and most readily detected
-by their melting upon the skin.</p>
-
-<hr class='tbk107'/>
-
-<div><h1><a id='april'></a>APRIL.</h1></div>
-
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;'>———</p>
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;font-size:0.8em;font-weight:bold;'>BY MRS. E. L. CUSHING.</p>
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;margin-bottom:1.5em;'>———</p>
-
-
- <div class='poetry-container' style=''>
- <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' -->
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>Hark to the silvery sound</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Of the soft April shower</p>
-<p class='line0'>Telleth it not a pleasant tale</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Of bird, and bee, and flower?</p>
-<p class='line0'>See, as the bright drops fall,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;How swell the tiny buds</p>
-<p class='line0'>That gem each bare and leafless bough,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Like polished agate studs.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>The elder by the brook,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Stands in her tusseled pride</p>
-<p class='line0'>And the pale willow decketh her</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;As might beseem a bride.</p>
-<p class='line0'>And round the old oak’s foot,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Where in their wintry play,</p>
-<p class='line0'>The winds have swept the withered leaves—</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;See, the Hepatria!</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>Its brown and mossy buds</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Greet the first breath of spring,</p>
-<p class='line0'>And to her shrine, its clustered flowers,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;The earliest offering bring.</p>
-<p class='line0'>In rocky cleft secure,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;The gaudy columbine</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Shoots forth, ere wintry snows have fled</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;A floral wreath to twine.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>And many a bud lies hid</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Beneath the foliage pent,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Waiting spring’s warm and wooing breath</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;To deck the vernal year.</p>
-<p class='line0'>When lo! sweet April comes,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;The wild bird hears her voice,</p>
-<p class='line0'>And through the grove on glancing wing</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Carols, “rejoice! rejoice!”</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>Forth from her earthy nest</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;The timid wood-mouse steals,</p>
-<p class='line0'>And the blithe squirrel on the bough</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Her genial influence feels.</p>
-<p class='line0'>The purple hue of life</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Flushes the teeming earth,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Above, around, beneath the feet,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Joy, beauty, spring to birth!</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>But on the distant verge</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Of the cerulean sky,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Old Winter stands with angry frown</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;And bids the syren fly.</p>
-<p class='line0'>He waves his banner dark</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Raises his icy hand,</p>
-<p class='line0'>And a fierce storm of sleet and hail,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Obey his stern command.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>She feareth not his wrath,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;But hides her sunny face</p>
-<p class='line0'>Behind a soft cloud’s fleecy fold</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;For a brief instant’s space,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Then looketh gayly forth</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;With smile of magic power,</p>
-<p class='line0'>That changeth all his icy darts</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;To a bright diamond shower.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>Capricious April, hail!</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Herald of all things fair,</p>
-<p class='line0'>’Tis thine to loose the imprisoned streams,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;The young buds are thy care.</p>
-<p class='line0'>To unobservant eye</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Thy charms are few, I ween;</p>
-<p class='line0'>But he who roves the woodland paths</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Where thy blithe step hath been,</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>Will trace thee by the tufts</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Of fragrant early flowers,</p>
-<p class='line0'>That thy sweet breath hath waked, to deck</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;The dreary forest bowers;</p>
-<p class='line0'>And by the bursting buds,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;That at thy touch unfold</p>
-<p class='line0'>To clothe the tall tree’s naked arms</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;With beauty all untold,</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>Will hear thy tuneful voice</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;In the glad leaping streams,</p>
-<p class='line0'>And catch thy bland, yet fitful smile</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;In showers and sunny gleams.</p>
-<p class='line0'>Then welcome April, fair!</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Bright harbinger of May!</p>
-<p class='line0'>Month of blue skies and perfumed air—</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;The young year’s holyday!</p>
-</div>
-</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend -->
-
-<hr class='tbk108'/>
-
-<div><h1><a id='away'></a>AWAY.</h1></div>
-
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;'>———</p>
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;font-size:0.8em;font-weight:bold;'>B. B.</p>
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;margin-bottom:1.5em;'>———</p>
-
-
- <div class='poetry-container' style=''>
- <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' -->
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>Floateth in upon my senses now the melody of brooks,</p>
-<p class='line0'>And the drip of fragrant waters, far in solitary nooks—</p>
-<p class='line0'>O avaunt! ye tedious tasks! O get ye gone! ye irksome books.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>Why to linger pent and stifled in this chamber small and low,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Through the casement on my temples thus to feel the breezes blow,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Bidding me to come and follow where at liberty they go?</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>Why amid this noisy Babel mingle in the petty strife,</p>
-<p class='line0'>In the wearying din and discord with which every day is rife,</p>
-<p class='line0'>While the full, free life within me yearns to greet its kindred life?</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>O, those boundless breadths of forest unrestrained to wander through,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Where the lofty pine mounts upward to the firmament of blue,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Where the swarth and stalwart savage paddles in his birch canoe.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>O, to hear my ringing shout of exultation echo clear</p>
-<p class='line0'>In the woodland, by the moose-tramp and the covert of the deer,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Or where stalk the stately bison who have never known to fear,</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>On the broad and blooming pampas, with their fat and teeming soil</p>
-<p class='line0'>Never marred by human culture, never by unwilling toil,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Where the wild herds roam uninjured, and the gleaming serpents coil.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>Or where crawls the full-fed Ganges down into his sandy bed,</p>
-<p class='line0'>And the sluggish hippopotamus uprears his clumsy head,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Where the beauty-bringing cestus of the torrid zone is spread.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>Where many a glowing river rolls along its wealth of tide</p>
-<p class='line0'>Through the tangled vines and palm-trees bending down on either side,</p>
-<p class='line0'>With the orange bloom and citron, and the tall acacia’s pride.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>Where the scaly cayman basking on the yellow bank is laid,</p>
-<p class='line0'>And the brilliant-plumaged song-birds call in every spicy glade,</p>
-<p class='line0'>There to hunt the spotted leopard in the jungle’s depth of shade.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>Or beyond the spreading oceans, in some distant Paynim land,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Swifter than the fiery simoom sweep across the plains of sand,</p>
-<p class='line0'>On a fleet and naked barb, and wield a keenly flashing brand.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>O for days of careless gladness, days that evermore are gone,</p>
-<p class='line0'>When the spirit-thrilling summons of the silver bugle-horn</p>
-<p class='line0'>Roused the green-clad host of merry men at break of dewy morn.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>—Cease thy prating, foolish Fancy, Fancy wayward, unconfined,</p>
-<p class='line0'>List the mighty music rushing on the pinions of the wind,</p>
-<p class='line0'>’Tis the onward tread of nations, ’tis the endless march of mind.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'><span class='it'><span style='font-size:smaller'>Bowdoin College.</span></span></p>
-</div>
-</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend -->
-
-<hr class='tbk109'/>
-
-<div><h1><a id='song'></a>SONG.</h1></div>
-
-
- <div class='poetry-container' style=''>
- <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' -->
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>Each gentle word thy lip imparts,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Each glance of thy dear eye,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Is hidden in my heart of hearts</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;As in a treasury.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>And, though but once in life we’ve met</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;And ne’er may meet again,</p>
-<p class='line0'>The memory of this hour, shall yet</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Within my heart remain,</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>As the bright tinge of crimson dye,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;When the red sun descends,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Long lingers in the western sky</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;And with the twilight blends.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>Still let me cherish thoughts of thee</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Till life’s sad hours are o’er;</p>
-<p class='line0'>Think of me, sometimes, tenderly—</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;I may not ask for more.</p>
-</div>
-</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend -->
-
-<hr class='tbk110'/>
-
-<div><h1>THE FIRST AGE.<a id='age'></a></h1></div>
-
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;'>———</p>
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;font-size:0.8em;font-weight:bold;'>BY H. DIDIMUS.</p>
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;margin-bottom:1.5em;'>———</p>
-
-<h2 class='nobreak'>BOOK FIRST.</h2>
-
-<h3>SECTION I.</h3>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The broad sun, red, and with softened beams, rose
-lazily upon the young earth. The wide sea, unruffled,
-heaved to and fro, mirroring in its depths the
-new-made canopy of azure and of gold spread by
-God’s hand, from limit to limit, over water and land,
-and all the stream of ocean. The herbage stood
-rank, thick, heavy, tall and motionless; and covered
-with vast shade mountain and valley and plain; for
-not yet had the revolving seasons, and storms, with
-falling rain abraded the soil, and bared rocks, and
-worn acclivities; nor the breath of heaven hastened
-in its course, circling the earth; nor the poles left
-their place to rise and fall, vibrating; but one unending
-spring ruled throughout the year. Rivers rolled—unvexed
-and noiseless—toward the bosom of their
-great mother; and the mountain stream scarce murmured
-as it fell, whitening, from sward to sward, to
-sleep in some still lake, happy with water-fowl.
-Herds of cattle—of horses and of deer, the elephant
-and the bison—wandered, uncared for, through fat
-pastures, beautiful with flowers; and the lion roamed
-at will, and crouched in every dingle, and in every
-glen, and took his prey. The air was vocal with
-the voice of birds, of birds innumerable, which saluted
-with morning hymn the growing day; and the
-hum of insects—which all night had drummed in the
-drowsy ear of silence—was hushed, and folding their
-wings, they slept. It is the primeval age.</p>
-
-<h3>SECTION II.</h3>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Chrr-oo-uh; chrr-oo-uh; chrr-oo-eh-uh; oo-ugh,
-oo-ugh; chrr-oo-uh—A white pigeon stood upon the
-lowest branch, heavy with foliage, of a noble oak,
-planted with creation, and arched his neck, and
-drooped his wings, and turned round and round, calling
-to his mate. Chrr-oo-uh; chrr-oo-uh; chrr-oo-eh-uh;
-oo-ugh; oo-ugh; chrr-oo-uh—And the white
-pigeon looked out upon the sea, which rolled inward
-with its new voice, deep and hoarse, as it rolls now,
-and broke softly upon the glittering strand, just beneath
-his feet; and back to the wooded mountains,
-which showed blue and misty through the air, capped
-with silvery clouds; and beneath the arms of the
-forest trees, where the land rose gently from the
-shore, carpeted with green and gold, and all colors
-of the sun woven into flowers. Chrr-oo-uh; chrr-oo-uh;
-chrr-oo-eh-uh; oo-ugh; oo-ugh; chrr-oo-uh—calling
-to his mate.</p>
-
-<h3>SECTION III.</h3>
-
-<p class='pindent'>From a deep, embowered grot—half-hidden within
-a grove of oranges, and trellised with the woodbine
-and the grape, clustering—came a sweet voice, singing;
-not with the musical cadence and alliteration,
-and returning rhyme of later days, when intellect
-refined to weaken, but with the promptings of the
-soul, gushing, unmeasured, finding speech as it
-might.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Call, call to your mate, happy bird, and she shall
-call to you again; but where is he who should call
-to me, in this day of joy? Erix, my Erix, rising
-like the sun in his strength, with broad shoulders,
-and a brow moulded by God! And the glory of his
-head, brighter than the beams of the morning; those
-curls which I, with merry fingers, have so often
-twisted, until they sprang from me with life and
-laughter, and clung about his neck, kissingly—why
-do they not dance before me, gladdening my sight?
-And those arms, like twisted vines, which hold and
-give every happiness—why are they not here to receive
-me? And those lips, which are so used to
-praise me, until I wonder at my own comeliness,
-and lose my breath in their thieving—why are they
-not here to bless me, with their music so subduing?
-And those eyes, so large and deep, those wells of
-passion, in which I live a double being, in which I
-see my own blushing—why are they not here, to
-kindle and to burn? Oh! Erix, my Erix, as flowers
-love the earth, as the earth loves the sun, as the sun
-loves its Maker, so is my love for thee, most beautiful
-and most excellent!”</p>
-
-<h3>SECTION IV.</h3>
-
-<p class='pindent'>And with the singing, came a fair maid, tripping
-into the outer air; large, lithe of limb, like the moon
-riding in mid-heaven, when seen in her full light,
-paling the stars. Her hair fell, unbound, even to her
-feet, covering half her shape; and about her waist
-was knit a robe of sables, which flowed downward,
-and concealed no excellence above the girdle. Her
-form was sister to the antelope, and her face, one,
-which Phidias would have chiseled for a Juno of
-giant make. Her glowing eyes, blue as the ether
-above them, rolled liquid as she sang, and bent the
-knee, and worshiped, extending her arms, which
-showed like wreaths of snow borne upon the wind,
-toward the mounting day—not ignorantly, for she
-was too near to God in time, to have forgotten him.
-Then rising, she also looked upon the sea, smiling
-in the sunlight, and loved it; for she was born upon
-its shores, and, with life, its roar filled her ears. She
-loved it—coming to her, from whence she knew not,
-from beyond the reach of space, which to her eye
-was bounded by the heavens, that bowed down and
-girdled the waters—and enticed, the robe of sables
-fell from her, and the glad brine received her, and
-mounting, laved all her beauty. Thus swimming,
-thus sporting, thus playing with young ocean, now
-floating, now dipping beneath his bosom heaving
-with great joy. The white pigeon left its perch,
-and sought a new rest, even the fair maid’s fair brow,
-rising from the wave, and arched its neck, and
-drooped its wings, and turned round and round, chrr-oo-uh;
-chrr-oo-uh; chrr-oo-eh uh; oo-ugh; oo-ugh;
-chrr-oo-uh; calling to its mate.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The white pigeon nestled in the grot, and knew
-its mistress, and her caress; and when the maid
-would have taken it tenderly in her hand, smoothing
-its ruffled feathers, it flew upward, cleaving the air
-in circles, and descending, lighted upon her wrist,
-and pecked at her taper fingers, roseate with health,
-and arched its neck, and drooped its wings, and
-turned round and round; chrr-oo-uh; chrr-oo-uh;
-chrr-oo-eh-uh; oo-ugh; oo-ugh; chrr-oo-uh; calling
-to its mate.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Call, call to your mate, happy bird, and she shall
-call to you again; but, where is he who should call
-to me, in this my bridal hour? Erix, my love, my
-life, my soul’s sole hope!”</p>
-
-<h3>SECTION V.</h3>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The sound of merry horns, of laughter, and of
-shout, came leaping through the wood, and the fair
-maid started like a fawn, like a fawn tracked by the
-hunter, when it first scents its pursuer in the breeze;
-and hastening to the strand, she knit the robe of sables
-about her waist, and it fell down as before, concealing
-no excellence above the girdle. Fresh from
-the wave, she stood gazing, with hope and expectation
-her handmaids, who with nimble fingers adorned
-her, and covered her all over with tints from the
-blushing east. Her hair, long and damp, thick sown
-with pearly brine, showed gemmed; and parted lip,
-and flashing eye, the very tell-tales of passion, betrayed
-the beatings of her heart, her fears and her
-desire. When, in an after age, the poet wove this
-story into mythologic fable, he called her Venus, the
-Aphrodite, born of the foam of the sea; and the
-sculptor caught her as she stood, her feet like flocks
-of wool, the right advanced, the left raised at the
-heel, rushing, moving, white, and fair.</p>
-
-<h3>SECTION VI.</h3>
-
-<p class='pindent'>And now, far within the leafy vista, was seen approaching,
-descending toward the strand, a troop of
-maidens and young men. Crowned with chaplets
-of roses and the fruitful vine, they came on dancing,
-to shout and laughter, and the sound of merry horns;
-and he who led them was taller than the rest, herculean;
-and from his back hung a boar’s hide, and
-about his loins were girded the skins of foxes and of
-wolves, spoils of the chase. In his hand he held a
-bow, which he drew proudly at the sun; elated with
-the nearness of his supremest bliss. Child of the
-forest, greater than the sun, immortal, thou shall live
-when all of matter hath wholly passed away; draw
-then, thy bow, aspiring, if thou wilt; it is thy soul,
-conscious of its superiority, stirring within thee.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>On, on; love gives fleetness to his feet. “Zella,
-Zella,” calling to his mate. And again the shout,
-the laughter, and the sound of merry horns; and
-again, “Zella, Zella,” calling to his mate.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>But Zella called not to him again. Her heart was
-upon her tongue, and she could not speak; her
-strength had left her knees, and she stood transfixed;
-while “Zella, Zella,” sprang from every lip, echoed
-through the wood, and died afar off, amid the murmurs
-of the sea. Again, “Zella, Zella;” again the
-shout, the laughter, and the sound of merry horns;
-and Erix clasped the loved one to his breast.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Zella!”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Erix!”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Now, may the ruler of the heavens and good
-earth so bless me, as I love thee, my soul’s choice!
-Closer, closer, my heart of hearts; thus twining, thus
-growing, no storm shall divide us; but, with equal
-step, we will move right onward through life, and
-beyond life, to gather new strength and a new glory,
-in a hereafter.”</p>
-
-<h3>SECTION VII.</h3>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The band of youths and fair maids danced around
-them, hand in hand, singing, “To the Mighty Giver
-of all good, praise. He sends the blossom and the
-fruit, praise. From Him come all our joys, praise.
-He made the day, and the night, with all her train
-of ever-burning fires, the fairest labor of His hand,
-praise. The sun is His servant, the moon His
-daughter, praise. He gave us the earth, with all its
-beauty of hill and valley, of water and of wood,
-praised be forever His holy name. Oh, happy, happy
-day! oh, happy, happy hour! Open, ye heavens!
-and let love from on high descend upon these two,
-brooding; that they may live, from generation to
-generation, renewed and renewing, to the end of
-time. Holy, holy, holy, is this compact instituted
-in the beginning. Now are ye of one flesh; hearts
-the same, wills the same, desires the same; of one
-body, of one mind. Praise Him, praise Him, praise
-the Mighty Giver of all good!”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Then hastening to the sea, they took up water,
-briny water, in shells, and poured it upon the lovers,
-and baptized them into a new life, and cast their
-chaplets upon them and covered them with flowers;
-still dancing, still singing: “The divided part has
-become old, put it off; the present is bright with
-every hope, enjoy it; the future shall be what you
-may make it, be not wanting; oh, happy, happy,
-happy pair! As ye are, so we would be; ever
-drinking draughts of pleasure through each revolving
-year.”</p>
-
-<h3>SECTION VIII.</h3>
-
-<p class='pindent'>And now came forth the aged of the tribe, slow
-descending from the wood, and embraced them and
-blessed them; “Be fruitful and multiply—swear.”
-And Erix and Zella stretched out their hands toward
-heaven and swore, by the light, and by the orbs of
-the air, and by the ocean, far-rounding, illimitable,
-infinite, and by the solid earth, and by Him who
-moved upon the face of the waters and begat this
-glory, to be forever one. “What you receive, I will
-receive; what you reject, I will reject; your breath
-is my breath, and even as we are now, so death
-shall find us; leaving all else to cleave unto each
-other.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The dance, the shout, the sound of merry horns,
-pointed to the grot, and Erix and Zella led the way.
-He, with head erect and willing feet, proud of his
-victory; she, with downcast eyes and halting gait,
-irresolute, resolved, like a coy maid, half-refusing,
-like a wife, wholly trusting, while youth and maiden,
-paired, in a long line, came sweeping after. And
-now they sway, first to the right then to the left,
-with measured step, beating upon the glad earth the
-bridal-song.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Receive, receive thy children, Paradise, garden
-new found, not lost to us forever.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Who are these that come, beautiful with joy?”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Receive, receive thy children, Paradise, garden
-new found, not lost to us forever.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Who are these that knock, pressing to tread upon
-holy ground?”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Thy children, father; thy children, mother;
-open wide the gates that they may enter in. Praised
-be thy name, oh Adam! praised be thy name, oh
-Eve! these are thy offspring, joined as ye were
-joined, by the hand of God; open wide the gates
-that they may enter in.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The grot received them, echoing; and shout, and
-laughter, and the sound of many horns, held riot
-over a feast of fruit, and the chase, and water from
-the brook, till the day went out and night crept
-slowly in, and stars spotted the sky, and the white
-pigeon descended nestling, timidly, to its couch,
-and arched its neck, and drooped its wings, and
-turned round and round; chrr-oo-uh; chrr-oo-uh;
-chrr-oo-eh-uh; oo-ugh; oo-ugh; chrr-oo-uh; calling
-to its mate—and she, called to him again.</p>
-
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;margin-top:1em;'>——</p>
-
-<h2 class='nobreak'>BOOK SECOND.</h2>
-
-<h3>SECTION I.</h3>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Ten circles have passed; ten circles of the earth
-about the sun; what are ten circles to life before the
-flood! The night is just yielding to the day, and in
-the farthest east streaks of gray light lie floating,
-dividing the ocean from the sky. How quiet the
-earth is; and seems to breathe, long and deep, in its
-huge slumber, not yet awakened. The murmur of
-the sea is infinite, ceaseless, and breaks, and returns,
-and breaks, in regular cadence upon the shore; ever
-speaking the same words—eternity and power. The
-sea and silent stars, which look down, twinkling,
-from heaven’s pavement, alone are watchful. How
-quiet the earth is! The owl sits moping upon her
-perch in some tall pine, and the wolf, whose cry,
-whetted by hunger, pierced the shades of night,
-gorged and reeking, has hastened to his lair. The
-dew, like rain, is upon the grass and all herbage, and
-hangs, globular, from every leaf. An incense rises,
-the incense of the morning, and fills the air; now
-known only to the wise and the poor, beloved of
-God. Hour most sweet; when day salutes the
-night, and night kisses day, to part and meet again.</p>
-
-<h3>SECTION II.</h3>
-
-<p class='pindent'>At such an hour, Erix and Zella shook sleep from
-their eyelids and came forth, ready for the chase.
-Her hair no longer floated unbound, but, as became
-the matron, was twisted into a knot and confined
-with strings of coral, fashioned by the hand whose
-soft caress she returned with joys unspeakable.
-Upon her drooping shoulders, white and bare, rests
-a quiver well filled; and a belt of tiny sea-shells interwoven
-with fibres of the lichen, crosses transversely
-her breast, now full and rounded to completion.
-Sandals are upon her feet, and a tunic of
-shaggy hide covers her from the waist to the knee;
-all else, the morning air, invigorating, embraces.
-Thus seen, the poet of an after age, changed his
-story, and called her Dian, ruler of the night; and
-sang her praises in verse set to the babbling of
-brooks, the music of the wood, and sylvan sports.
-Erix, large, erect, perfect in manly beauty, with
-limbs well knit, proportional, combining activity and
-strength, was less incumbered than his mate, and
-carried, as his sole weapon, an ashen spear, charred
-and hardened at the point by fire. His was the front
-of Jove, the pagan, not yet won from mortality by
-intellect, or raised above mere matter, to express the
-soul’s labors and ambitions. And first, low bending,
-rose the morning prayer.</p>
-
-<h3>SECTION III.</h3>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Hail Father, Creator; Thou who gavest into our
-hands the earth, with its fullness; all hail! Thy
-children, fashioned after thine own excellence, we
-stand, rejoicing. Greater than the earth are we;
-greater than the sea, that vast stream which compasses
-all land, forever proclaiming thy praises;
-greater than the orbs of day and night; greater than
-the elements, thy ministers; for thou didst speak
-unto our fathers, and didst promise to raise the seed
-of Adam higher than the angels. The thunder
-serves us, obedient to thy will; and the quick lightning;
-and the clouds, pregnant with rain. In the air
-we find thy mercies, and every tree, and every
-flower speaks of thee. Accept, accept our great
-gratitude; and keep us, even as thou keepest all
-else.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Again low bending, and Erix and Zella, light of
-foot, passed onward to the chase.</p>
-
-<h3>SECTION IV.</h3>
-
-<p class='pindent'>They skirt the wood, and narrowly inspect the
-dewy grass, to find new foot-prints of beast or heavy
-bird, seeking, with returning light, their accustomed
-food. No fairy ring, no shape of naiad or of dryad,
-no gnome, no sprite, met their pure vision, to turn
-them from their way; for not yet had the mind of
-man built up a superstition unto itself, and peopled
-the clefts of the earth, the water, and the air, giving
-to nothingness forms innumerable. Truth was too
-near and palpable, to be lost in imagination; to be
-moulded and cast anew, so changed as not to know
-itself; and poetry, the juggler and soul’s cheat, lay
-hid in matter, where God placed it, to be drawn
-thence for other purposes than those of error. It
-was not until man forgot his origin, that he sought
-out a new creator, even Beauty, the prime element
-in all God’s works, and so wrought with it, as to
-give strange life to all that is, and is not.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The wily hunters, skilled in their life’s trade, turn
-on every side, observe the lower boughs, fresh cropped,
-imitate the call of birds, the cry of deer, peer
-through the thick underwood which stood here and
-there in clumps, and plunged into the forest upon a
-trail which promised success.</p>
-
-<h3>SECTION V.</h3>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The sylva before the flood! Huge, aspiring, with
-arms reaching outward many a rood, each monarch
-stood; the traveler and man of science, he whose
-name now fills the world, never found, in his many
-rounds in search of knowledge, even in southern
-climes, such offspring of earth, air, water, and the
-sun; and Australia, with its wondrous herbage,
-sometimes cloud-capped, stand dwarfed and small to
-the life with which God, in his first joy, clothed his
-work. The poet, too, and writer of the Comedies,
-whose soul was bitter hell, saw not in heaven, nor
-beneath, nor in the orb between, a wood so vast, so
-majestic, and so beautiful. Trees, the growth of
-many a revolving year, lay mouldering; not prostrated
-by the tornado, nor driven from their seat by
-floods of water and of rock, which leave their track
-seamed, as one might plough a furrow in the field,
-but fallen through age, and draped with moss of the
-liveliest green, softer to the touch than a woman’s
-lip. The vine crept from limb to limb, and threw
-out its tendrils joyously; now hanging in mid air,
-and now, a parasite, twisting about the trunk of
-some gnarled oak, adding to strength its sister loveliness;
-while flowers, broad and tall, with petals like
-masts, and of a hue more delicate than that which
-opens to the garish sun, spotted the ground as stars
-spot the sky. The air pressed heavy, damp, laden
-with aromatic odors, as to one standing beneath the
-swelling arches of some old temple, raised in the
-middle-age by hands whose labors Michelett has
-transferred to historic prose, more lasting than the
-stone which was to them a religion and a worship.
-No voice broke the general stillness, save the sound
-of distant water, floating upon the breathings of the
-wood, just reaching the ear, now heard and now
-lost, as a maid calling to her lover. Amid such excellence,
-the excellence of a primeval age, before
-man and the seasons had marred earth’s face, Erix
-and Zella hunted.</p>
-
-<h3>SECTION VI.</h3>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The two moved on, like gods, hastening to outrun
-the growing light, and to make their sport before
-high noon should steal its freshness from their path.
-So, long after, but less large, less strong, less fleet,
-and less beautiful, did the twin creations of pure
-intellect, Apollo and his mate, pursue the boar in
-Tempe; while the herdsman who sat afar off, upon
-some high rock, watching his wealth, veiled his face
-in wonder and in fear.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Thus were three full leagues passed over, through
-the windings of the wood; he, crushing the flowers
-beneath his feet, she, just bending their drooping
-heads, when Erix descried a noble stag standing
-upon the bank of a sweet pool, of narrow round,
-which, embosomed in the forest, slept peaceful, and
-mirrored in its face the moving foliage and the blue
-sky above. With head depressed, the deer had
-caught his own image in the water, and stood threatening
-with mimic war his shadowy antagonist,
-returning thrust for thrust. Poor beast! Now strain
-the nerve and put forth thy utmost speed, for no
-shadows threaten at thy back, but death, with feet
-swifter than the wind. With one loud shout the
-forest rang, and then, clear as the notes of bugle or
-of flute, played to the listening morn, burst forth the
-hunter’s song; for not yet had the gin and pit, and
-stealth cowardly creeping upon its prey, debased the
-chase, and dishonored with cheat and trick man’s
-highest sport; but room was given and a chance for
-life, to the course before the flood.</p>
-
-<h3>SECTION VII.</h3>
-
-<p class='pindent'>See, the east is glowing with golden-tinted light,
-and the morn calls to us with the breath of youth.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>See, the incense rises from every dewy leaf; and
-the morn calls to us with the breath of youth.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The air floats, balmy, o’er hill, and wood, and
-lake; and the morn calls to us with the breath of
-youth.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The spear stands, impatient, by the wall; the bow,
-unstrung, lies mourning at the door; while the morn
-calls to us with the breath of youth.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Hark! The horn winds joy, and the echoes laugh,
-and leap, and dance—trr, trr, trr, trr, trrwhroo,
-trrwhroo—in circles of mad delight.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Awake, then, awake; for the horn winds joy, and
-the echoes laugh, and leap, and dance—trr, trr, trr,
-trr, trrwhroo, trrwhroo—in circles of mad delight;
-and the morn calls to us with the breath of youth.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Now press the foot, and watchful be the eye, for
-the spear is in the hand, and the arrow on the string,
-and the horn winds joy, and the echoes laugh, and
-leap, and dance—trr, trr, trr, trr, trrwhroo, trrwhroo—in
-circles of mad delight.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Away, and away, in a race against the sun;
-while the horn winds joy, and the echoes laugh, and
-leap, and dance—trr, trr, trr, trr, trrwhroo, trrwhroo—in
-circles of mad delight.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Of the strong, we are the strongest, and of the
-fleet, we are the fleetest; while the horn winds joy,
-and the echoes laugh, and leap, and dance—trr, trr,
-trr, trr, trrwhroo, trrwhroo—in circles of mad delight.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The game flies, scudding athwart the forest path,
-while the horn winds joy, and the echoes laugh, and
-leap, and dance—trr, trr, trr, trr, trrwhroo, trrwhroo—in
-circles of mad delight.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The wolf howls defiance, and hastens to his lair;
-the deer, suspicious, scents the coming storm; the
-lion’s deep growl comes rolling up the glen, while
-the horn winds joy, and the echoes laugh, and leap,
-and dance—trr, trr, trr, trr, trrwhroo, trrwhroo—in
-circles of mad delight.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Then press the foot, and watchful be the eye; for
-the spear is in the hand, and the arrow on the string;
-and the horn winds joy, and the echoes laugh, and
-leap, and dance—trr, trr, trr, trr, trrwhroo, trrwhroo—in
-circles of mad delight; and the morn calls to us
-with the breath of youth.</p>
-
-<h3>SECTION VIII.</h3>
-
-<p class='pindent'>With one bound the stag cleared the narrow pool,
-and with head erect, his branching antlers resting
-upon his back, fled onward; swifter than the wind
-that, in winter’s dreary reign, under the stars of cold
-December, drives fierce and cutting through the
-gorge which, in the farthest north, divides the granite
-hills sheer to their base, while the song poured
-thickening upon his rear—sounds of victory and pursuit.
-Thus, with nostrils wide distended and smoking
-flanks, he led his foes through many a double
-and straight reach, now holding to the cover of the
-wood, and with sure eye, passing beneath gnarled
-oaks, and through hanging vines, and boughs interlocked
-blacker than night, and now, seeking the
-open plain, where the sea rolled inward to find its
-limit. There the voice of his pursuers no longer
-urged him on, or was lost in that greater voice to
-which he had fled as to a refuge; and he rested,
-trembling, upon the rim of the ocean, his fetlocks
-laved by its flaky foam, and looking out upon it,
-sobbing, in search of a safety which the water as
-the land denied. So, in the race of life, the unfortunate,
-hunted by its ills, with hope crushed out,
-stand upon its utmost verge, gazing, and find no joy
-beyond, till death strikes them through, to perish and
-be forgotten.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Short time was given, for Erix and Zella, side by
-side, keeping ever, like fate, to their fixed end, soon
-issued from the wood, and with voice and gesture
-urged their prey to a new flight. The game, now
-driven to his last shift, stilled his coward heart,
-turned and stood at bay; but Zella, unwilling thus
-to close the morning’s sport, drew an arrow to its
-head, and sent the weapon whirring, to glance and
-fall far out at sea. Enraged with such acts, the stag
-sprang forward, striking on either side; and as Erix,
-yielding, strove to take him by the horns, leaped
-as far as Apollo’s horses leaped, in that great story
-told by the Greek whose song civilized the world.
-Like a bolt, winged, he sped through the whistling
-air, when Zella, quick turning, with a shaft more
-fleet, smote him, mid-way, quite through his bursting
-heart. Upon a scented bank, deep within the wood,
-mossy, curling over the stream which there, trickling,
-smooth, and quiet, hastened to kiss the sea,
-the poor beast fell, and groaned his life away; and
-the warm sun danced and flickered, as if in very
-joy of the beauty it had made, through the tall
-trees, and around the climbing vines, and across the
-green leaves, and upon the silent water, mocking at
-death, and laughing at the spoil which changes but
-to create again.</p>
-
-<h3>SECTION IX.</h3>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Erix took Zella’s hand in his and drew her toward
-him, nothing loth, till their lips met; then praised
-her skill: then pressed again her lips—then praised—then
-pressed—while Zella returned the pressure
-with many a toy beside. Thus rejoicing in a mutual
-love, they sought, with slow step and halting, the
-mossy bank, where lay in the sunlight, as if asleep,
-the game of late so fleet, and sat them down to rest,
-and drink new draughts of pleasure, and count over
-the endless good with which Heaven had blessed the
-earth.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“List, dearest, list! how softly upon the ear, in
-sweetest cadence, falls the song of the deep salt
-sea!” said Erix.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“And the air which hears it, glad to be thus
-freighted, floats inward, murmuring, to tell it to the
-hills,” said Zella.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“And the hills repeat it, whispering.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“And the trees catch it; and through the live-long
-day, and through the night, over the whole
-broad land, play with it, and toss it from bough to
-bough, till it has become a language of its own,”
-said Zella.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“It is the voice of this earth.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“It is the voice of its great joy.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“And has praised from the beginning, and will
-praise unto the end, the hand which made it,” said
-Erix.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“The sunlight hears it, and moves merrily to the
-measure upon every quivering leaf, now leaping
-upward to gild the topmost twig, and now chasing
-shadows upon the ground beneath.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“See, where it streams through the openings of the
-wood, and rests upon this water, smiling! Yes, the
-sunlight hears it, and grows brighter with each
-draught of a music so divine.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“The flowers open to it; and there, upon that
-slope, bending gently toward our feet, proud of their
-colors penciled by the light, stand thick—”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“And wonder, and drink deep of the strains which
-extol their beauty and their glory, as they extol the
-beauty and the glory of all else,” said Erix. “Oh the
-song of the sea, of the deep, salt sea, with the air
-floating inward, and the hills beyond, and the trees,
-and the sunlight, and the flowers thick set upon the
-slope, gently bending downward toward our feet, and
-this mossy bank, and the pearly brook between—upon
-such a morn as this, in such a place as this, Adam
-found his Eve.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“And upon such a morn as this, in such a place
-as this, Eve gave to Adam a love new-created, unknown
-to the courts trod by angels’ feet, and which
-has raised her daughters above cherub and seraph, to
-do and to suffer for their soul’s choice,” said Zella.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Zella!”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Erix!”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Now let the voice of the earth’s joy, the sun, and
-herbage speaking, the mossy bank, the flowery slope,
-and pearly brook between, bold revel, for a passion,
-blushing like the morn, pure as the marble which
-grew beneath the hands of Praxitiles, without stain
-or blemish, strong as the strongest, weak as the
-weakest, even love, is here present, and rules supreme.</p>
-
-<h3>SECTION X.</h3>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Erix and Zella, he bearing upon his broad shoulders
-a burden light—the noble game they had
-hunted to its death—returned homeward along the
-sounding beach, nor made deep foot-prints in the
-yielding sand. Unwearied, lithe, in sheer exuberance
-of life, they chased the retiring waves, then
-turning, fled to be themselves pursued; till young
-Ocean, pleased, shook his giant limbs, and like a
-lion by a child subdued, rolled at their feet, and
-roared, and beat, in his great heart, the measure to
-this hymn, which they, alternating, sang.</p>
-
-<hr class='tbk111'/>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Almighty Lord, Maker of the Earth, in loveliness
-beyond compare hast thou fashioned it.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Almighty Lord, the maker of our joys, in goodness
-beyond compare hast thou fashioned them.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Thou didst build the hills, and crown them with
-thy glory; and they praise forever thy holy name.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Thou didst fix the foundations, and form the running
-streams; and they praise forever thy holy name.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Thou didst plant the forests, and clothe them with
-thy beauty; and they praise forever thy holy name.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“The plain is thine, with all its life, and, with voices
-infinite, praises forever thy holy name.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“The air is thine, and within its bosom bears bounties
-innumerable, to praise forever thy holy name.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Praise in the pattering rain.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Praise in the gentle dew.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Perfume and color.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Form and motion.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“All praise forever thy holy name.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Thine is the sea, and thou lov’st it.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“And the sea loves thee, its Maker, in return.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“The breezy morn.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“The ruddy eve.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“The strength of high noon.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“The quietude of night.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“All speak of thee, Almighty Lord, the furnisher of
-our joys.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“And praise forever thy holy name.”</p>
-
-<h3>SECTION XI.</h3>
-
-<p class='pindent'>As Erix and Zella, thus singing, drew nigh unto
-the grot where first their joys commingled, to flow
-on through life in no divided stream, two boys, the
-offspring of their love, came forth to meet them. The
-elder, from beneath whose locks, curled and dancing,
-reddened with the sun, full many a wild-flower
-peeped, bore grapes, ripe, fresh-plucked, and clutching,
-pressed the vintage with his hands. The
-younger, marching with an uncertain step, just babbling
-his first words, caught the generous juice in
-his tiny palms, cup-shaped, and offered to his mother,
-whose lips sought his, and rested, well content to
-drink only of that bliss which God has planted in a
-mother’s kiss. Then Erix, casting off his load, took
-the elder-born to his arms, and recounted all the
-chase—the scent of the perfumed morn, the song,
-the flight, the pursuit through wood and open plain,
-the halt by the sounding sea, the leap, the fatal shaft,
-the crowning death, till the boy shouted, and every
-muscle worked in mimic struggle with the mimic
-game a-foot; and the white pigeon descended, hovering
-o’er the group, and lighted at Zella’s feet, and
-arched its neck, and drooped its wings, and turned
-round and round; chrr-oo-uh; chrr-oo-uh; chrr-oo-eh-uh;
-oo-ugh; oo-ugh; chrr-oo-uh; calling to
-its mate.</p>
-
-<h3>SECTION XII.</h3>
-
-<p class='pindent'>And now, sweet friend, who put me to this task,
-who won my love, not knowing how or why, come
-tread with me the inner-chambers of my house.
-This, the portal, is well passed, and other scenes,
-and other pictures far, wait eyes which kindle,
-though the fire be false, eyes which flow even with
-the current of a fictitious wo.</p>
-
-<p class='line' style='text-align:right;margin-right:3em;margin-top:0.5em;'>[<span class='it'>To be continued.</span></p>
-
-<hr class='tbk112'/>
-
-<div><h1><a id='song2'></a>SONG.</h1></div>
-
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;'>———</p>
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;font-size:0.8em;font-weight:bold;'>BY WILLIAM H. C. HOSMER.</p>
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;margin-bottom:1.5em;'>———</p>
-
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;margin-bottom:1.3em;'>(Air—“Homes of England.”)</p>
-
-
- <div class='poetry-container' style=''>
- <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' -->
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>The hallowed wells of Learning,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;No wasting may they know,</p>
-<p class='line0'>But sparkle, fed by lucid streams,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Unceasing in their flow;</p>
-<p class='line0'>And may their waters catch no stain</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Of deep and Stygian dye,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Though Error for an hour hold reign</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Beneath a darkened sky.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>The Sacred Bowers of Learning,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Be blight afar from them;</p>
-<p class='line0'>No tree grow up with serpent folds</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Entwining round the stem;</p>
-<p class='line0'>No bud of precious promise feel</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;The frost of cold neglect,</p>
-<p class='line0'>And heard no solemn funeral peal</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;For Genius early wrecked.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>The Stately Halls of Learning,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Forever may they stand,</p>
-<p class='line0'>And Truth walk down the sounding aisles</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;With Honor, hand in hand;</p>
-<p class='line0'>The columns that uphold the roof</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Be men of noble mould,</p>
-<p class='line0'>And beauteous daughters, armed in proof,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Stern war with wrong to hold.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>The Holy Shrines of Learning,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;May no polluting flame</p>
-<p class='line0'>Be lighted on one altar-stone</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;By fiends who mock at shame,</p>
-<p class='line0'>But cloudless light be shed abroad</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;A guilty world to cheer,</p>
-<p class='line0'>And men forget to worship God</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;In superstitious fear.</p>
-</div>
-</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend -->
-
-<hr class='tbk113'/>
-
-<div><h1><a id='imp'></a>IMPRESSIONS OF ENGLAND IN THE AUTUMN OF 1851.</h1></div>
-
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;'>———</p>
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;font-size:0.8em;font-weight:bold;'>BY FREDERIKA BREMER.</p>
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;margin-bottom:1.5em;'>———</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>It is two years since I first found myself in
-England. When I was in England in the autumn
-of 1849, the cholera was there. A dense, oppressive
-atmosphere rested over its cities, as of a cloud pregnant
-with lightning. Hearses rolled through the
-streets. The towns were empty of people; for all
-who had the means of going had fled into the
-country; they who had not were compelled to remain.
-I saw shadowy figures, clad in black, stealing
-along the streets, more like ghosts than creatures of
-flesh and blood. Never before had I seen human
-wretchedness in such a form as I beheld it in Hull
-and in London. Wretchedness enough may be
-found, God knows, even in Stockholm, and it shows
-itself openly enough there in street and market. But
-it is there most frequently an undisguised, an unabashed
-wretchedness. It is not ashamed to beg, to
-show its rags, or its drunken countenance. It is a
-child of crime; and that is perhaps the most extreme
-wretchedness. But it is less painful to behold, because
-it seems to be suffering only its own deserts.
-One is more easily satisfied to turn one’s head aside
-and pass on. One thinks, “I cannot help that!”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>In England, however, misery had another appearance;
-it was not so much that of degradation as of
-want, pallid want. It was meagre and retiring; it
-ventured not to look up, or it looked up with a glance
-of hopeless beseeching—so spirit-broken! It tried to
-look respectable. Those men with coats and hats
-brushed till the nap was gone; those pale women in
-scanty, washed-out, but yet decent clothes—it was a
-sight which one could hardly bear. In a solitary
-walk of ten minutes in the streets of Hull, I saw ten
-times more want than I had seen in a ten months’
-residence in Denmark.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The sun shone joyously as I traveled through the
-manufacturing districts; saw their groups of towns
-and suburbs; saw their smoking pillars and pyramids
-towering up everywhere in the wide landscape—saw
-glowing gorges of fire open themselves in the earth,
-as if it were burning—a splendid and wonderfully picturesque
-spectacle, reminding one of fire-worshipers
-of ancient and modern time, and of their altars. But
-I heard the mournful cry of the children from the
-factories; the cry which the public voice has made
-audible to the world; the cry of the children, of the
-little ones who had been compelled by the lust of gain
-of their parents and the manufacturers, to sacrifice
-life, and joy, and health, in the workshops of machinery;
-the children who lie down in those beds which
-never are cold, the children who are driven and
-beaten till they sink insensibly into death or fatuity—that
-living death; I heard the wailing cry of the
-children, which Elizabeth Barrett interpreted in her
-affecting poem; and the wealthy manufacturing districts,
-with their towns, their fire-columns, their
-pyramids, seemed to me like an enormous temple
-of Moloch, in which the mammon-worshipers of
-England offered up even children to the burning
-arms of their god—children, the hope of the earth,
-and its most delicious and most beautiful joy!</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>I arrived in London. They told me there was nobody
-in London. It was not the season in which
-the higher classes were in London. Besides which,
-the cholera was there; and all well-to-do people,
-who were able, had fled from the infected city. And
-that indeed might be the reason why there seemed
-to me to be so many out of health—why that pale
-countenance of want was so visible. Certain it is,
-that it became to me as a Medusa’s head, which
-stood between me and every thing beautiful and
-great in that great capital, the rich life and physiognomy
-of which would otherwise have enchanted
-me. But as it was, the palaces, and the statues, and
-the noble parks, Hampstead and Piccadilly, and Belgravia
-and Westminster, and the Tower, and even
-the Thames itself, with all its ever-changing life,
-were no more than the decorations of a great tragedy.
-And when in St. Paul’s, I heard the great
-roar of the voice of London—that roar, which, as it
-is said, never is silent, but merely slumbers for an
-hour between three and four o’clock in the morning—when
-I heard that voice in that empty church, where
-there was no divine worship, and looked up into its
-beautiful cupola, which was filled by no song of
-praise, but only by that resounding, roaring voice, a
-dark chaotic roar, then seemed I to perceive the
-sound of the rivers of fate rolling onward through
-time over falling kingdoms and people, and bearing
-them onward down into an immeasurable grave!
-It was but for a moment, but it was a horrible
-dream!</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>One sight I beheld in London which made me look
-up with rejoicing, which made me think “that old
-Yggdrasil is still budding.” This was the so-called
-metropolitan buildings; a structure of many homes
-in one great mass of building, erected by a society
-of enlightened men for the use of the poorer working
-class, to provide respectable families of that class
-with excellent dwellings at a reasonable rate, where
-they might possess that which is of the most indispensable
-importance to the rich, as well as to the
-poor, if they are to enjoy health both of body and
-soul—light, air, and water, pure as God created them
-for the use of mankind. The sight of these homes,
-and of the families that inhabited them, as well as of
-the newly-erected extensive public baths and wash-houses
-for the same class, together with the assurance
-that these institutions already, in the second
-year of their establishment, returned more than full
-interest to their projectors, produced the happiest
-impression which I at this time received of England.
-These were to me as seed of the future, which gave
-the promise of verdant shoots in the old tree.—</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Nevertheless, when I left the shores of England,
-and saw thick autumnal fog enveloping them, it was
-with a sorrowful feeling for the <span class='sc'>Old</span> world; and
-with an inquiring glance of longing and hope, I turned
-myself to the <span class='sc'>New</span>.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Two years passed on—a sun-bright, glowing
-dream, full of the vigor of life—it was again autumn,
-and I was again in England. Autumn met me there
-with cold, and rain, and tempest, with the most horrible
-weather that can be imagined, and such as I
-had never seen on the other side of the globe. But
-in social life, everywhere throughout the mental atmosphere,
-a different spirit prevailed. There I perceived
-with astonishment and joy, there it was that
-of spring.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The Crystal Palace was its full-blown, magnificent
-blossom—and like swarms of rejoicing bees flew
-the human throng upon the wings of steam, backward
-and forward, to the great world’s blossom;
-there all the nations met together, there all manufactures,
-there all industry, and every kind of product,
-unfolded their flowers for the observation and the joy
-of all; a Cactus grandiflora, such as the world had
-never till then seen.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>I perceived more clearly every day of my stay in
-England, that this period is one of a general awakening
-to a new, fresh life. In the manufacturing districts,
-in Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, every
-where, I heard the same conversation among all
-classes; prosperity was universal and still advancing.
-That pale countenance of want, which had on
-my first visit appeared to me so appalling, I now no
-longer saw as formerly; and even where it was seen
-stealing along, like a gloomy shadow near to the tables
-of abundance, it appeared to me no longer as a
-cloud filled with the breath of cholera, darkening the
-face of heaven, but rather as one of those clouds over
-which the wind and sun have power, and which are
-swallowed up, which vanish in space, in the bright
-ether.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The low price of grain, the consequence of free-trade,
-has produced this change: and it was universally
-acknowledged. The only objection I heard
-brought against the low price of corn was this,
-“The people are become proud and careless; I
-have seen great pieces of bread thrown out into the
-streets!”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Yet bread alone had not really done all this; a
-nobler bread is required for man in order that he may
-fully derive the benefit even of the outward material
-bread. Nor had free-trade alone done all this
-either; there is also another power besides this
-which has been operative in that general awakening,
-in that wholesome spirit which I perceived in
-England.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>If this power were to be symbolized by art, it
-would present us with a female figure—a beautiful
-woman with the child at her breast, is the symbol
-which art makes use of, to express human love.
-And, perhaps, art is right in so doing. And perhaps
-it is the female principle in human nature, which, in
-the present new life in England, enables the man’s
-hand to accomplish the work; because from the
-most remote antiquity, has a male deity been chosen
-to represent trade, and navigation and mining, and
-all occupation of the earth. But, so says one of the
-oldest sagas of the world—when the divine life revealed
-itself on the earth, a divine pair came forth.
-In a lotus-flower which ascended from the waters
-of the Nile, were born at the same time Osiris and
-Isis, and together they went forth to bless the
-earth.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>I saw the truth of this saga confirmed by what I
-beheld in England. But in speaking of this, I shall
-especially linger on the new proofs thereof, in the new
-Institutions which promise a more beautiful future
-to the human race; not upon the old and insufficient,
-however good they may be, but upon the new, because
-it is upon the new that my eye has been especially
-directed.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Let me linger, in the first place, on works of human
-love—the female figure with the child at her
-breast; because these are they which lay the foundation
-of all others.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>In Liverpool, I visited the so-called Ragged-Schools—the
-schools where are collected from the
-streets, vagabond, neglected and begging children,
-who are here taught to read and so on—who here
-receive the first rudiments of instruction, even in
-singing. These schools are, some of them evening,
-others day schools, and in some of them, “the
-Industrial Ragged-Schools,” children are kept there
-altogether; receive food and clothing, and are taught
-trades. When the schools of this class were first
-established in Liverpool, the number of children who
-otherwise had no chance of receiving instruction,
-amounted to about twenty thousand. Right-minded,
-thinking men, saw that in these children were
-growing up in the streets, those “dangerous classes”
-of which so much has been said of late times; these
-men met together, obtained means to cover the most
-necessary outlay of expense, and then, according to
-the eloquent words of Lord Ashley, that “it is in
-childhood that evil habits are formed and take root;
-it is childhood which must be guarded from temptation
-to crime;” they opened these ragged-schools
-with the design of receiving the most friendless, the
-most wretched of society’s young generation—properly,
-“the children of rags, born in beggary, and for
-beggary.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>I visited the Industrial Ragged School for boys,
-intended for the lowest grade of these little children,
-without parents, or abandoned by them to the influences
-of crime. There, I saw the first class sitting
-in their rags, upon benches in a cold room, arranging
-with their little frost-bitten fingers bristles for the
-brush-maker. The faces of the boys were clean:
-many of them I remarked were handsome, and almost
-universally they had beautiful and bright eyes. Those
-little fingers moved with extraordinary rapidity, the
-boys were evidently wishful to do their best; they
-knew that they by that means should obtain better
-clothing, and would be removed to the upper room,
-and more amusing employment. I observed these
-“dangerous classes”—just gathered up from the
-lanes and the kennels, on their way to destruction;
-and was astonished when I thought that their countenances
-might have borne the stamp of crime.
-Bright glances of childhood, for that were you never
-designed by the Creator! “Suffer little children to
-come unto me.” These words, from the lips of
-heaven, are forever sounding on earth.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>In the upper room a great number of boys were
-busy pasting paper-bags for various trades, confectioners,
-etc. who make use of such in the rapid sale
-of their wares; here, also, other boys were employed
-in printing upon the bags the names and residences
-of the various tradesmen who had ordered them.
-The work progressed rapidly, and seemed very
-amusing to the children. The establishment, for their
-residence and their beds, were poor; but all was
-neat and clean, the air was fresh, and the children
-were cheerful. The institution was, however, but
-yet in its infancy, and its means were small.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Half-a-dozen women in wretched clothes sat in the
-entrance-room with their boys, for whom they hoped
-to gain admittance into the school, and were now,
-therefore, waiting till the directors of the establishment
-made their appearance.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>These gentlemen kindly invited me to be present
-at the examination of these mothers. The women
-were brought in one at a time, and one and all were
-made to tell her history and explain her circumstances.
-The examination was carried on with
-earnestness and precision. The result of all, however,
-was, that there was not one of the women now
-present who had a right to the assistance which they
-desired. On one or two occasions I could not help
-admiring the patience of the directors. Above all,
-it seemed to me, that these mothers needed to go to
-school even more than their children. When will
-people come to regard in all its full extent the influence
-of the mother upon the child? When will
-people come to reflect on the education of mothers
-in its higher sense? My conductor in Liverpool,
-Mr. B——, the noble and kind Home Missionary,<a id='r1'/><a href='#f1' style='text-decoration:none'><sup><span style='font-size:0.9em'>[1]</span></sup></a>
-recognized one of these women, and related to me the
-history of herself and her husband—a horrible history
-of drunkenness, which had almost ended in suicide.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Later in the day I visited the evening school for
-girls, also of the ragged class, and heard there a remarkably
-sweet and beautiful song. Later still I
-accompanied my friendly conductor to a temperance
-meeting, held in the same building, and which meets
-every Thursday, and where the Missionary was accustomed
-to meet and converse with the poorest
-brethren of his congregation. The wind blew and
-the rain poured down. I was astonished, however,
-to see when we entered, that the room was filled
-with people who evidently had not much to defend
-themselves with from the wind and rain. The
-benches were filled both with men and women. It
-became crowded and very hot. Mr. B—— opened
-the meeting with a speech about the dangers and
-consequences of drunkenness, and as he warmed in
-his subject he related, yet without mentioning any
-name, the history of the mother whom he had this
-day seen, beseeching that public charity would take
-charge of her son. The assembly, which during the
-moral treatise they had just heard had evidently become
-somewhat drowsy, woke up at once during
-the relation of that story, and when the narrator
-arrived at the catastrophe, in which the intoxicated
-woman, urged on by the madness of thirst, drank up
-half a bottle of oil of vitriol, a general expression of
-horror might have been heard, especially from the
-lips of the women.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>When this relation, which was full of strong vitality,
-was ended, Mr. B—— read a poem written by
-a working man in praise of temperance, which had
-the effect of again lulling the auditors—and myself
-even—into an agreeable doze. We all woke up
-again, however, when Mr. B——, in a jocular manner,
-begged of Mr. J—— to stand up and tell us
-something about “that Great Exhibition in London,”
-which he had lately been to see. Mr. J—— did not
-however, stand up, because Mr. K—— wished to
-speak first. Accordingly, being encouraged to do so
-by Mr. B——, a stout-built man of about sixty came
-forward; he was dressed in coarse, but good clothes,
-and had an open countenance, over which played a
-smile of humor. He mounted the platform, and was
-greeted by the assembly with evident delight. He
-related his own history, simple, but full of the warmth
-of life, in that strong-grained, wit-interspersed style
-of popular eloquence, full of heart and humor at the
-same time, which our cultivated orators would do
-well to study, if they wish to make a living impression
-on the people. He related how he, in his
-younger years, never tasted brandy, but he became
-a seaman, and began to drink, that he might look
-manly among his fellows; how, by degrees, he acquired
-the power of swallowing more strong liquor
-than any of them all, fell into crime, misery and shame;
-how he became converted and again temperate, and
-how he had not now for fifteen years tasted spirits,
-and had ever since remained in good health and
-good circumstances.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>This was the substance of his story; but how the
-narrative was interspersed with merry conceits,
-which excited universal amusement, and with energetic
-proverbs—to which Mr. B——, beyond any one
-else, gave the highest applause—how cleverly “Mr.
-Halcohol” was brought in, and how contemptuously
-“the long-necked gentleman, Mr. Halcohol in the
-bottle,” was treated, and with how much animation
-all this was done and received—must have been
-heard to have been fully imagined. The speech
-was concluded by recommending “total abstinence”
-as the only means for insuring a perfect change of
-life.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>After this there entered a little throng of children
-with joyful faces, the same whom I had already
-heard sing in the upper room of the house; these
-children <a id='were'></a>were the so-called “Band of Hope”—children
-who had taken the pledge to abstain from
-all strong drinks themselves, and to promote the advancement
-of temperance by all the means in their
-power, for which they received printed cards containing
-their pledge, together with symbolical devices,
-proverbs, etc. That little “Band of Hope”
-struck up with their clear voices, fresh as the morning,
-various songs, among which one in particular,
-“The Spindle and Shuttle,” was received with great
-delight, all present joining in the chorus. Hymns
-and patriotic songs were also sung by “The Band
-of Hope,” and now and then the company joined in
-with the children. Before the assembly separated
-this evening, several went forward and took the
-pledge. Among these was a man and his wife.
-They took each other by the hand. The woman
-with her other hand held her handkerchief over her
-left eye; it might be seen, nevertheless, that this eye
-was black, probably from the husband’s fist.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>What had influenced them to this? What had
-operated upon these rude natures?—induced them
-to break loose from habits of drunkenness—to turn
-from the pleasures of hell to those of heaven? What
-was it that had operated on all here so awakeningly,
-so livingly? Could it be the discourse they had
-heard? could it be the poem in praise of temperance?
-Nothing of the kind. I saw them go to
-sleep during these. I became sleepy myself. No,
-that which operated here so livingly—was the life
-itself. It was that living narrative of the unhappy
-woman; it was the sailor’s history of his own life,
-his battles with “Mr. Halcohol;” it was the songs
-of the children, the pure, dewy-fresh voices of the
-little “Band of Hope.” All these it was which had
-operated upon, which had awakened their minds,
-had animated their brains, warmed their hearts; this
-it was which had impelled the husband and wife,
-hand in hand, to come forward and consecrate themselves
-to a new marriage, to a better life. Individual
-experience of suffering, of joy, of sin, of conversion,
-of love and happiness, must be told, if the
-relation is to have any power over the human heart;
-life itself must be called into action if we would
-awake the dead.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>I could not but remark at this meeting, how cordial
-and familiar an understanding seemed to exist
-between the leader, Mr. B——, and the assembly,
-and which arose in part from his own peculiar character,
-and in part from his intimate acquaintance
-with his hearers. In the same way, his continual
-intercourse with those people, and his knowledge of
-their every-day life, is an excellent help to him in
-giving force to the sermons which he preaches
-among them. I shall not forget the effect produced
-by his story of the woman and the bottle of
-vitriol.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>A few days later I visited, with the same friendly
-man, some different classes of poor people—namely,
-the wicked and the idle; they who had fallen into
-want through their own improvidence, but who had
-now raised themselves again; and the estimable,
-who had honorably combated with unavoidable poverty.
-In one certain quarter of Liverpool, it is
-that the first class is especially met with. Of this
-class of poor in their wretched rooms, with their
-low, brutalized expression, I will not speak; companion-pieces
-to this misery may be met with every
-where. Most of those whom I saw were Irish. It
-was a Sunday noon, after divine service. The ale-houses
-were already open in this part of the town,
-and young girls and men might be seen talking together
-before them, or sitting upon the steps.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Of the second class I call to mind, with especial
-pleasure, one little household. It was a mother and
-her son. Her means of support, a mangle, stood in
-the little room in which she had lived since she had
-raised herself up again. It was dinner-time. A
-table, neatly covered for two persons, stood in the
-room, and upon the iron stand before the fire was
-placed a dish of mashed potatoes, nicely browned,
-ready to be set on the table. The mother was waiting
-for her son, and the dinner was waiting for him.
-He was the organ-blower in a church during divine
-service, and he returned whilst I was still there.
-He was well dressed, but was a little, weakly man,
-and squinted; the mother’s eyes, however, regarded
-him with love. This son was her only one, and
-her all. And he, to whom mother Nature had
-acted as a stepmother, had a noble mother’s heart to
-warm himself with, which prepared for him an excellent
-home, a well-covered table, and a comfortable
-bed. That poor little home was not without its
-wealth.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>As belonging to the third and highest class, I must
-mention two families, both of them shoemakers, and
-both of them inhabiting cellars. The one family
-consisted of old, the other of young people. The old
-shoemaker had to maintain his wife, who was lame
-and sick, from a fall in the street, and a daughter.
-The young one had a young wife, and five little
-children to provide for; but work was scanty and
-the mouths many. At this house, also, it was dinner-time,
-and I saw upon the table nothing but potatoes.
-The children were clean, and had remarkably
-agreeable faces; but—they were pale; so was also
-the father of the family. The young and pretty, but
-very pale mother, said, “Since I have come into
-this room I have never been well, and this I know—I
-shall not live long!” Her eyes filled with tears;
-and it was plain enough to see that this really delicate
-constitution could not long sustain the effects of
-the cold, damp room, into which no sunbeam entered.
-These two families, of the same trade, and
-alike poor, had become friends in need. When one
-of the fathers of the family wanted work, and was
-informed by the Home-Missionary who visited them
-that the other had it, the intelligence seemed a consolation
-to him. Gladdening sight of human sympathy,
-which keeps the head erect and the heart
-sound under the depressing struggle against competition!
-But little gladdening to me would have been
-the sight of these families in their cellar-homes, had
-I not at the same time been aware of the increase of
-those “Model Lodging-Houses,” which may be met
-with in many parts of England, and which will
-remove these inhabitants of cellars, they who sit in
-darkness, into the blessing of the light of life—which
-will provide worthy dwellings for worthy
-people. But of this I shall speak somewhat later,
-in connection with other new institutions for the advancement
-of the health, both of body and soul, of—all
-classes.</p>
-
-<div class='blockquote'>
-
-
- <div class='poetry-container' style=''>
- <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' -->
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>“For no one for himself doth live or suffer.”</p>
-</div>
-</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend -->
-
-</div>
-
-<p class='pindent'>For myself, I was well provided for by English
-hospitality, and enjoyed an excellent home in the
-house of the noble and popular preacher, J. M——.
-With him, and his wife (one of these beautiful, motherly
-natures, who through a peculiar geniality of
-heart is able to accomplish so much, and to render
-herself and every thing that is good twofold, in quite
-another manner to that of the multiplication-table,
-which merely makes two and two into four)—with
-them and their family I spent some beautiful days
-amid conversation and music. There, in the neighborhood
-of their house, I saw also one of those
-English parks, whose verdant, carefully-kept sward,
-and groups of shrubs and flowers, give so peculiar
-and so attractive a charm to the English landscape.
-Add to this a river-like sheet of water; swans,
-groups of beautiful children and ladies feeding them
-on the banks, the song of birds every where amongst
-the shrubs; scattered palaces, and handsome country-houses—and
-every thing looking so finished, so
-splendid, so beautiful and perfect, as if nothing out
-of condition, nothing in tatters or shabby was to be
-found in the world. Such was the impression produced
-by the Prince’s Park, which was laid out by
-a wealthy private gentleman, Mr. J——, on the birth
-of the Prince of Wales, the eldest son of Queen
-Victoria, and thrown open to the public with only
-this single admonition exhibited, in large letters, in
-various parts of the park, “it is hoped the public
-will protect that which is intended for the public
-enjoyment.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>But I must leave this enchanting Idyll, and hasten
-into the manufacturing districts; and, first of all,
-to Manchester:</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>In my imagination Manchester was like a colossal
-woman sitting at her spinning-wheel, with her enormous
-manufactories; her subject towns, suburbs,
-villages, factories, lying for many miles round, spinning,
-spinning, spinning clothes for all the people on
-the face of the earth. And there, as she sat, the
-queen of the spindle, with her masses of ugly houses
-and factories, enveloped in dense rain-clouds, as if
-in cobwebs, the effect she made upon me was gloomy
-and depressing. Yet even here, also, I was to breathe
-a more refreshing atmosphere of life; even here was
-I also to see light. Free-trade had brought hither
-her emancipating spirit. It was a time of remarkable
-activity and prosperity. The work-people were
-fully employed; wages were good, and food was
-cheap. Even here also had ragged-schools been
-established, together with many institutions for improving
-the condition of the poor working-classes.
-In one of these ragged-schools the boys had a perfectly
-organized band of music, in which they played
-and blew so that it was a pleasure—and sometimes
-a disadvantage, to hear them. The lamenting “cry
-of the children” was no longer heard from the factories.
-Government had put an end to the cruelties
-and oppressions formerly practiced on these little
-ones by the unscrupulous lust of gain. No child
-under ten years old can now be employed in the
-factories, and even such, when employed, must of
-necessity be allowed part of the day for school.
-Every large factory has now generally its own
-school, with a paid master for the children. The
-boys whom I saw in the great rooms of the factories
-and with whom I conversed, looked both healthy
-and cheerful.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Two ideas were impressed upon my mind at this
-place: how dangerous it is, even amid a high degree
-of social culture, to give one class of men unrestrained
-power over another; and how easily a free
-people, with a powerful public spirit, and accustomed
-to self-government, can raise themselves out
-of humiliating circumstances. This spirit has done
-much already in England, but it has yet more to do.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Upon one of those large, gloomy factories in Manchester,
-I read, inscribed in iron letters, “<span class='sc'>The
-Great Beehive</span>;” and in truth, a good name for
-these enormous hives of human industrial toil, in
-which people have sometimes forgotten, and still
-forget, that man is any thing more than a working-bee,
-which lives to fill its cell in the hive, and die.
-I visited several of these huge beehives. In one of
-them, which employed twelve hundred work-people,
-I saw, in a large room, above three hundred
-women sitting in rows winding cotton on reels.
-The room was clean, and so also were all the women.
-It did not appear to be hard work; but the
-steadfastly-fixed attention with which these women
-pursued their labor seemed to me distressingly wearisome.
-They did not allow themselves to look up,
-still less to turn their heads or to talk. Their life
-seemed to depend upon the cotton thread.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>In another of these great beehives, a long, low
-room, in which were six hundred power-looms, represented
-an extraordinary appearance. What a
-snatching to and fro, what a jingling, what an incessant
-stir, and what a moist atmosphere there was
-between floor and ceiling, as if the limbs of some
-absurd, unheard-of beast, with a thousand arms, had
-been galvanized! Around us, from three to four
-hundred operatives, women and men, stood among
-the rapid machinery watching and tending. The
-twelve o’clock bell rung, and now the whole throng
-of work-people would go forth to their various mid-day
-quarters; the greatest number to their respective
-dwellings in the neighborhood of the factory. I
-placed myself, together with my conductor, in the
-court outside the door of the room, which was on
-lower ground, in order that I might have a better
-view of the work-people as they came out.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Just as one sees bees coming out of a hive into
-the air, two, three, or four at a time—pause, as it
-were, a moment from the effects of open air and
-light, and then with a low hum, dart forth into space,
-each one his own way, so was it in this case. Thus
-came they forth, men and women, youths and girls.
-The greater number were well dressed, looked
-healthy, and full of spirit. In many, however, might
-be seen the expression of a rude life; they bore the
-traces of depravity about them.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>As labor is now organized in the factories at Manchester,
-it cannot easily be otherwise. The master-manufacturer
-is not acquainted with his work-people.
-He hires spinners; and every spinner is master of a
-room, and he it is who hires the hands. He is the
-autocrat of the room, and not unfrequently is a severe
-and immoral one. The operatives live in their
-own houses, apart from every thing belonging to the
-master-manufacturer, with the exception of the raw
-material.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>In the country it is otherwise; there the master-manufacturer
-may be, and often is, a fatherly friend
-and guardian of his people. And where he is so, it
-is in general fully acknowledged. The character
-which each manufacturer bears as an employer, even
-in Manchester, is perfectly well known. People
-mention with precision the good, the worthless, or
-the wicked master. I visited factories belonging to
-some of these various characters, but perceived a
-more marked difference in the manners and appearance
-of the masters themselves, than in the appearance
-and condition of the work-people. At the
-present moment the difference could not be very
-perceptible, because the general demand for hands
-causes the circumstances of the lower classes to be
-generally good. But, as before remarked, the patriarchal
-connection between master and servant, with
-its good, as well as its evil consequences, no longer
-exists in the manufacturing towns of England. Employer
-and employed stand beside each other, or
-rather opposed to each other, excepting through the
-requirements of labor. The whole end and aim of
-the Manchester manufacturer—when he is not subjected
-to machinery, and lives merely as a screw, or
-portion of it—is, to get out of Manchester. He spins
-and makes use of all means, good or bad, to lay by
-sufficient money to live independently, or to build
-himself a house at a distance from the smoky, restless
-town, away from the bustle—away from the
-throng of restless, striving work-people. His object
-is to arrive at quiet in the country, in a comfortable
-home; and having attained this object, he looks upon
-the noisy, laboring hive, out of which he has lately
-come, as a something with which he has no concern,
-and out of which he is glad to have escaped
-with a whole skin. Such is the case with many—God
-forbid that we should say, with all!</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Two subjects of conversation occupied the people
-of Manchester very much at this time. The one
-was the question—a vital question for the whole of
-England—of popular education. The people of
-Manchester had begun to take the subject into serious
-consideration, and had come to the conclusion
-that there might at once be adopted a simple system
-of education by which, as in the United States, every
-one should receive in the people’s school practical
-and moral instruction, and that religious instruction
-should be left for the home or for the Sunday teaching.
-The willingness to thus act in concert which
-has been shown by the clergy of the Established
-Church in Manchester, is a good omen to the various
-religious sects united in this work. All things
-considered, it seems to me that there is at this moment
-in England the most decided movement toward
-a new development, a new life as well in theoretic
-as in practically popular respects; and it is more apparent
-in the Established Church than in any other
-religious body.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The second great subject of conversation, as well
-in Manchester as in Liverpool, was Queen Victoria’s
-expected visit. The Queen had announced
-her intention of visiting the great towns of the manufacturing
-districts, in company with Prince Albert,
-in the middle of the month, and they were accordingly
-expected in a few days. Several of these
-towns had never before seen a crowned head within
-their walls, and this, in connection with the great
-popularity of the Queen, and the liking and the love
-which the people have for her, had perfectly enchanted
-the inhabitants of Manchester. They were
-preparing to give a royal reception to their lofty
-guests. Nothing could be too magnificent or too
-costly in the eyes of the Manchester people which
-could testify their homage. The whole of the district,
-now that the Queen was expected, was said to
-be “brimful of loyalty,” and the whole of England
-was at this time, both in heart and soul, monarchical.
-Opposition against the royal family exists no
-longer in England; the former members of this opposition
-had become converted. On all hands there
-was but one voice of devotion and praise. Wonderful!
-yes, incomprehensible, thought I, when I was
-informed that the Queen had requested not long since
-to have a grant from Parliament of 72,000<span class='it'>l.</span> for the
-erection of new stables at her palace of Windsor,
-and the same year 30,000<span class='it'>l.</span>, for Prince Albert to repair
-his dog-kennels, and now, again, just lately,
-17,000<span class='it'>l.</span> for the erection of stables at a palace which
-the Queen has obtained for her eldest son, and of
-which he will take possession on attaining his
-majority. Thus 119,000<span class='it'>l.</span> for stables and dog-kennels.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>What? 119,000<span class='it'>l.</span> for stables and dog-kennels; for
-the maintenance of fine horses and dogs, and that at
-a time when Ireland is perishing of hunger or emigrating
-in the deepest distress; when even in England
-so infinitely much remains to be done for humanity,
-so much untold good might be effected for
-the public with this sum. Queen Elizabeth was
-accustomed to say, that she considered her money
-best put out when it was in the pockets of her subjects,
-and she scorned to desire any great project for
-her own pleasure. Queen Victoria desires, year
-after year, immense grants for her stables and kennels;
-desires this of her people, and yet, for all this,
-is homage paid to her—is she loved and supported by
-the people in this extraordinary manner! Parliament
-grumbles, but consents to all that the Queen
-desires, fully consents without a murmur, because it
-loves her. Such projects would otherwise be dangerous
-to the power of the monarch. Such projects
-overturned the throne of Louis Philippe—have undermined
-many thrones. But the light foot of this
-Queen—a well-beloved little foot it ought to be—dances
-again and again on the brink of the dangerous
-abyss, and it gives not way. But how is this possible?
-What is it that makes this Queen so popular,
-so universally beloved by the people, spite of the desire
-for stables and dog-kennels, unnecessary articles
-of luxury, when hundred thousands of her subjects
-are in want even of the necessaries of life; want
-even the means to secure a home and daily bread?</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Thus I asked, and thus they replied to me:</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The English people wish that their royal family
-should live with a certain degree of state. They are
-fond of beautiful horses and dogs themselves, and it
-flatters the national pride that the royal personages
-should have such, and should have magnificent dwellings
-for them. The character of the Queen, her domestic
-and public virtues, and the influence of her
-example, which is of such high value to the nation,
-causes it to regard no sacrifice of money as too great
-for the possession of such a Queen. England is
-aware that under the protection of the throne, under
-the shadow of the sceptre of this Queen, and the
-stability which it gives to the affairs of the kingdom,
-she can in freedom and peace manage her own internal
-concerns, and advance forward on the path of
-democratic development and self-government, with
-a security which other nations do not possess.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Hence it is that the reigning family now upon the
-English throne presents a spectacle extraordinary
-upon this throne, or upon any throne in the world.
-The Queen and her husband stand before the people
-as the personation of every domestic and public virtue!
-The Queen is an excellent wife and mother;
-she attends to the education of her children, and
-fulfills her duties as sovereign, alike conscientiously.
-She is an early riser; is punctual and regular in great
-as well as in small things. She pays ready money
-for all that she purchases, and never is in debt to any
-one. Her court is remarkable for its good and beautiful
-morals. On their estates, she and Prince
-Albert carry every thing out in the best manner, establish
-schools and institutions for the good of the
-poor; these institutions and arrangements of theirs,
-serve as examples to every one. Their uprightness,
-kindness, generosity, and the tact which they under
-all circumstances display, win the heart of the nation.
-They show a warm sympathy for the great interests
-of the people, and by this very sympathy are they
-promoted. Of this, the successful carrying out of
-free-trade, and the Exhibition in the Crystal Palace,
-projected in the first instance by Prince Albert, and
-powerfully seconded by the Queen, furnish brilliant
-examples. The sympathies of the Queen are those
-of the heart as well as of the head. When that noble
-statesman, the great promoter of free-trade, Sir
-Robert Peel, died, the Queen shut herself in for
-several days, and wept for him as if she had lost a
-father. And whenever a warm sympathy is called
-forth, either in public or in private affairs, it is
-warmly and fully participated by Queen Victoria and
-Prince Albert.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>In confirmation of this opinion regarding Queen
-Victoria and Prince Albert, which I heard every
-where, and from all parties in England, a number of
-anecdotes of their life and actions were related to me,
-which fully bore it out.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>This universal impression, universally produced
-by the sovereign, who, properly speaking, can govern
-nothing—because it is well known that the monarch
-of England is merely a nominal executor of the
-wishes of the people, a hand which subscribes that
-which the minister lays before it in the name of the
-people; this great power, in a Queen, is without
-any political power.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Monarchs and their people no longer bear the same
-relation to each other as in the time when, for example,
-Charles the Ninth put forth his demands, with
-the addition,—</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Do it, and be off with you!”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>This injunction to do a thing, and then take themselves
-off, can no longer be given to the people by
-the King, but by reason. The people have arrived
-at years of discretion, and the monarch is the executor
-of their laws and their wishes. He is so in
-England, it is said.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>From Manchester I traveled to Birmingham. I
-saw again the land of the fire-worshipers, their
-smoking altars, in tall columns and pyramids, towering
-above the green fields; saw again the burning
-gulfs yawning in the earth, and, saw them now with
-unmixed pleasure. I heard no longer, amid their
-boiling roar, the lamenting cry of the children; I
-heard and saw them now only as the organs of the
-public prosperity, and rejoiced over them as proofs
-of man’s power over fire and water, over all the
-powers of nature; the victory of the gods over the
-giants!</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>In Birmingham I visited a steel-pen manufactory,
-and followed from room to room the whole process
-of those small metal tongues which go abroad over
-all the world, and do so much—evil, and so much
-good; so much that is great, so much that is small;
-so much that is important, so much that is trivial. I
-saw four hundred young girls, sitting in large, light
-rooms, each with her little pen-stamp, employed in
-a dexterous and easy work, especially fitted for women.
-All were well dressed, seemed healthy and
-cheerful, many were pretty: upon the whole, it was
-a spectacle of prosperity which surpassed even that
-of the mill-girls in the celebrated factories of Lowell,
-in America.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Birmingham was at this time in a most flourishing
-condition, and had more orders for goods than it
-could supply, nor were there any male paupers to
-be found in the town; there was full employment
-for all.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>In Birmingham I saw a large school of design.
-Not less than two hundred young female artists studied
-here in a magnificent hall or rotunda, abundantly
-supplied with models of all kinds, and during certain
-hours in the week, exclusively opened to these female
-votaries of art. A clever, respectable, old woman,
-the porter of the school-house, spoke of many
-of these with especial pleasure, as if she prided herself
-on them in some degree.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>I saw in Birmingham a beautiful park, with hot-houses,
-in which were tropical plants, open to the
-public; saw also a large concert-room, where twice
-in the week “glees” were sung, and to which the
-public were admitted at a low price: all republican
-institutions, and which seem to prosper more in a
-monarchical realm than in republics themselves.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>I met with a surprise in Birmingham; that is to
-say, I was all at once carried back fifteen centuries
-into the Syrian desert of Chalsis, and there lived a
-life so unlike Birmingham and Birmingham-life, that
-just for the sake of contrast, it was very refreshing.
-The thing was quite simple in itself, inasmuch as
-one evening I accompanied an amiable family, who
-resided in Birmingham, to a lecture, which was
-given by a young, gifted preacher, on the old Church-father,
-Saint Jerome (Hieronymus.)</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The subject of the lecture, which was extempore,
-and delivered with much ease and perspicuity, was
-evidently not intended to recommend to his auditors,
-but rather to repel them from an ascetic and contemplative
-life. Saint Jerome was delineated as a
-noble fool, a curiosity in human nature, and was to
-be deplored as a sacrifice to perverted reason, by no
-means to be imitated. The true end of humanity
-was not to be attained by flying from city life, and
-burying one’s self in a desert for study and self-mortification;
-that end was rather to be attained in the busy
-city, than in the isolated existence of the wilderness;
-and so on. Such was the lecturer’s moral. But upon
-me his arguments made an impression considerably
-antithetical to that which he intended. I saw this
-warrior of the third century devoured by a burning
-thirst of light and knowledge, of purity for his whole
-being; saw him wander out, seeking the wells of
-life; saw him, separating from the agreeable circles
-of city existence, roam on amid catacombs and the
-tombs of martyrs; saw him seeing in Gaul, and on
-the Rhine, and there finding—Christianity. Saw
-him there, after being baptized, with his Bible under
-his arm, retire into the deserts of Syria, and there,
-in the burning sands of Chalsis, bury himself for a
-number of years, amid exegetic studies and severe
-deeds of penance. I heard him, even at the time that
-he, according to his own words, “watered his couch
-with his tears,” and while he was given over, and
-regarded as a fool by his friends, still reproach those
-friends for having chosen the worse part, that of the
-life of enjoyment in the city, and break forth in transport,
-“O! silent wildernesses, flower-strewn by Jesus
-Christ! O! wild solitudes, full of his spirit!”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>I saw him, after his conflict was accomplished, go
-forth out of the desert with his Bible, enter Rome
-publicly, and unsparingly chastise the crimes of the
-proud city. I saw the haughty ladies of Rome first
-start, then bow themselves to the severe judgment
-of the teacher; saw Marulla and Paula renounce the
-dissipated life of Rome, and follow the preacher;
-found convents and Christian institutions in accordance
-with his views; saw him grow in the combat
-with the spirit of the age, till he stood as a founder
-of the greatest power on earth—that of the Christian
-Church. The <span class='it'>fool</span>, who had buried himself in the
-sands of Syria, and done battle with himself during
-solitary days and nights.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Ah! this fool, this glowing sun of the desert, as he
-now stood forth to view, through the veil of fifteen
-centuries, grew greater and greater in my eyes, till,
-finally, he expanded himself over the whole of
-Birmingham, with all its factories, workshops,
-steel-pens, and the like, as a colossus above an
-ant-hill.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Birmingham is almost entirely of the class of what
-are called Chartists; that is, advocates of universal
-suffrage. They are this, through good and through
-evil; and the resistance which their just desire to be
-more fully represented in the legislative body has
-met with from that body, has brought them more and
-more into collision with the power of the state, more
-and more to base their demands in opposition, even
-to the higher principles of justice; for they overlook
-the duty of rendering themselves worthy of the
-franchise by sound education. But the fault here, in
-the first place, was not theirs. Growing up amid
-machinery and the hum of labor, without schools,
-without religious or moral worth; hardened by hard
-labor, in continual fight with the difficulties of life,
-they have moulded themselves into a spirit little in
-harmony with life’s higher educational influences,
-the blessings of which they had never experienced.
-Atheism, radicalism, republicanism, socialism of all
-kinds will and must flourish here in concealment
-amongst the strong and daily augmenting masses of
-a population, restrained only by the fear of the still
-more mighty powers which may be turned against
-them, and by labor for their daily needs, so long as
-those powers are sufficing. And perhaps the Americans
-are right where they say, in reference to this
-condition of things;—“England lies at our feet—England
-cannot do without our cotton. If the manufactures
-of England must come to a stand, then has
-she a popular convulsion at her door.” Perhaps it
-may be so; for these hosts of manufacturing workmen,
-neglected in the beginning by society, neglected by
-church and state, look upon them merely as exacting
-and despotic powers; and in strict opposition to them,
-they have banded together, and established schools
-for their own children, where only the elements of
-practical science are admitted, and from which religious
-and moral instruction are strictly excluded.
-In truth, a volcanic foundation for society, and
-which now, for some time past, has powerfully
-arrested the attention of the most thinking men of
-England.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>But into the midst of this menacing chaos light has
-already begun to penetrate with an organizing power;
-and over the dark profound hovers a spirit which can
-and will divide the darkness from the light, and prepare
-a new creation.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>From Birmingham I traveled, on the morning of
-the 4th of October, by a railway to Leamington, and
-thence alone in a little carriage to Stratford-on-Avon.</p>
-
-<hr class='footnotemark'/>
-
-<div class='footnote'>
-<table summary='footnote_1'>
-<colgroup>
-<col span='1' class='footnoteid'/>
-<col span='1'/>
-</colgroup>
-<tr><td style='vertical-align:top;'>
-<div class='footnote-id' id='f1'><a href='#r1'>[1]</a></div>
-</td><td>
-
-<p class='pindent'>A minister paid by the community for devoting himself
-exclusively to its poor, and one worthy of the confidence
-reposed in him.</p>
-
-</td></tr>
-</table>
-</div>
-
-<hr class='tbk114'/>
-
-<div><h1><a id='oli'></a>OLIVER GOLDSMITH—HIS CHARACTER AND GENIUS.</h1></div>
-
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;'>———</p>
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;font-size:0.8em;font-weight:bold;'>BY A NEW CONTRIBUTOR.</p>
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;margin-bottom:1.5em;'>———</p>
-
-<div class='literal-container' style=''><div class='literal'> <!-- rend=';' -->
-<p class='line'>In wit a man, simplicity a child.</p>
-<p class='line' style='text-align:right;margin-right:0em;margin-bottom:0.75em;'><span class='sc'>Pope.</span></p>
-</div></div> <!-- end rend -->
-
-<p class='pindent'>For over half a century after Goldsmith’s death, the
-world continued in a state of uncertainty concerning
-his writings and himself. The greater part of the
-task-work he had performed for the booksellers was
-unknown, and Oliver spoken of, in a traditionary
-sort of way, as the author of the Vicar of Wakefield
-and the Deserted Village, and a man of laughable
-eccentricities. The majority of his readers—and no
-poet had more of them or enjoyed a wider English
-popularity—never thought he was other than an
-Englishman; and those who knew the country of
-his birth differed about the place of it—some asserting
-he was born at Lissoy, in Westmeath, and
-others contending for other localities. Even Dr.
-Johnson, who has set down his native place—Pallas,
-in Longford—correctly in his epitaph, makes a mistake
-of three years in his age. All this is remarkable
-of the cotemporary of Johnson—one who ranked
-with that literary colossus in his time and was so
-closely connected with Burke, Reynolds, Percy and
-the other celebrities of that period. Resembling, in
-some measure, Butler, in the obscurity of his personal
-history and the popularity of his works, Goldsmith
-seemed to be vaguely merging into the Vicar
-of Wakefield, or the Good Natured Man—just as the
-poet of the Restoration had come to be confounded
-with his Roundhead hero—when Prior’s life of him,
-twenty years ago, first threw a fair light upon the
-past; indicated the great mass of his writings (poorly
-compensated, anonymous and plagiarized, in his life-time,)
-and cleared away a large amount of the misconceptions
-and fallacies that had been gathered
-about his fame.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>There has hardly been any author in modern
-times, or perhaps in the ancient, whose personal
-character contrasts—is made to contrast—so much
-with the genuine celebrity he has achieved. He
-would seem to have been laughed at a good deal,
-and treated with a want of consideration and respect,
-even by those who loved him and wept at his
-death; and the impression generally conveyed is,
-that his manners were uncouth and his conversation
-ridiculous. Those who have helped to create such
-a character for Oliver, think they have compounded
-with their consciences when they have admitted he
-was a charming writer, and a simple, honest soul,
-who had no harm in him, and always meant well.
-Nevertheless, but one half of their portrait can be
-received. There were no such violent contrarieties
-in the elements that went to compose Oliver Goldsmith.
-His biographers—to make the most lenient
-estimate of them—knew him imperfectly and found
-it much easier to produce their effects by glaring
-contrasts than by the patient and loving discrimination
-due to the truth of every man’s character—especially
-that of a man like Goldsmith—so marked by
-peculiarities of education, and so severely tried by
-circumstances.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The literary character is sure to suffer, more or
-less, in contact with society. Men of letters who
-spend half their time with the dead are not exactly
-the people to be <span class='it'>au fait</span> of all the ways of the living;
-and have not always the good sense of Thomas
-Baker, who, for that very reason, refused, long ago,
-to be introduced to the Earl of Oxford and the polished
-people of his acquaintance. They generally
-offend against the conventions and are not pardoned
-in their biographies, which are sometimes writ by
-men of the world, and which, when even written by
-authors, who may be supposed capable of sympathizing
-more with the literary character, still show
-how the jealousies and prejudices of the craft will
-stand in the way of honest criticism. A man’s
-character depends very much on his historians—and
-Goldsmith, a literary adventurer, a bookseller’s hack,
-and an Irishman, was particularly—perhaps, necessarily—unfortunate
-in his.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>There have been crowds of distinguished literary
-men whose peculiarities were almost as much ridiculed
-as those of Goldsmith, but who have found a
-more dignified appreciation, by virtue of fairer biographers.
-Socrates was laughed at more than any
-man in Athens. But his immortal pupil has rescued
-his fame from those wits and satirists who used to
-loiter about the porches, and go, of a morning, to applaud
-the Clouds of Aristophanes. Socrates was an
-ugly little man—in the midst of the fine-faced men
-of Attica—generally threadbare and slovenly; and
-even Plato has been obliged to allow that his honored
-master was like an apothecary’s gallipot, painted
-outside with grotesque figures, but containing balm
-within. He was as much laughed at as Goldsmith;
-but nobody can think Socrates a laughable old fellow.
-There was the Emperor Julian. When he
-sojourned at Antioch, he was ridiculed and lampooned
-by the citizens for his careless dress and
-beard, and his simple manners. Whereupon, instead
-of treating them as Sulla did those facetious
-Greeks who said “his face was a mulberry sprinkled
-with meal,” the philosophic apostate wrote a book
-against them, called “Misopogon,” in which he pleasantly
-satirized himself for his literary peculiarities,
-justified his critics, and happily admitted that he did
-not, indeed, resemble in any thing those witty and
-fashionable people who made merry at his expense.
-If these Antiochans were Julian’s biographers, he
-should cut but a silly figure in the eyes of posterity.
-As it is, he has hardly fared much better in another
-point of view. La Fontaine was voted intolerably
-stupid in society. The gay Parisians said he
-merely vegetated—and he was called the Fable
-Tree—bringing forth fables! Poor Burns complained
-that though, when he wished, he could make himself
-“beloved,” he could not make himself “respected.”
-He confessed that he wanted discretion—was
-prone to a <span class='it'>lapsus linguæ</span>, and very apt to offend
-the sense of the society he was in—in this,
-somewhat like Goldsmith. We could cite a score
-of instances showing that famous men have been
-barely tolerated in society and very much exposed
-to the ridicule of it. But their biographers have
-done their better qualities justice, and they are not
-remembered in any remarkable degree in connection
-with the peculiarities which excited the satire of
-their cotemporaries.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>A great many things worked unfavorably for
-Goldsmith. His face was very plain-favored in expression,
-he spoke with a brogue and hesitated a
-little in his utterance. In his nature he was shy, and
-his manners in society had all the simplicity and unguarded
-impulse of his earlier years. Such a man,
-living in comparative retirement, might have passed
-through the world without any disparagements.
-But Goldsmith was thrown upon the great stage of
-London, and into the society of the most fastidious
-critics and gentlemen of the age. Here his ordeal
-was a severe one—as the result showed. Boswell,
-Hawkins, Cumberland, Northcote, Thrale and the
-rest of those who either wrote memoirs or furnished
-reminiscences of our author, have proved how
-little they could sympathize with the plain, blunt
-Irishman—who was only a simple child of nature
-and of genius.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Among those who have most contributed to lessen
-the prestige of Goldsmith’s name was James Boswell,
-Dr. Johnson’s literary henchman and biographer.
-In all that Boswell writes of Oliver he exhibits
-his desire to disparage him. It is true he sometimes
-expresses partiality for Goldsmith’s conversation.
-But he, doubtless, intends this as a show of
-frankness to obtain the more easy credence for his
-general opinions of the poet. One great cause of
-this feeling on Boswell’s part was his reverent attachment
-to the fame of Dr. Johnson, and his jealousy
-of any one who came or seemed to come into
-rivalry with that Ursa Major of the British literary
-firmament. Boswell had the little soul of a parasite,
-and always felt offense at any exhibition of independence
-toward Johnson—such having the effect
-of rebuking his own absurd obsequiousness. Goldsmith,
-though the easiest and kindliest of men, still
-kept up that frank, irrespective manliness of disposition
-which belongs to genius, and could not sympathize
-with Boswell’s extreme notions of worship.
-The poet must have felt the folly and impoliteness
-of trumpeting Johnson in season and out of season—often
-in presence of better men than the lexicographer—and
-must have been offended with it, too. On
-one occasion, indeed, he said to Boswell, with his
-usual point and good sense—“Sir, you are for making
-a monarchy of that which should be a republic.”
-He respected Dr. Johnson, but never bowed down
-to him, nor to any one else. And the son of a Scottish
-lord, who venerated on all-fours, could not forgive
-the poor Irish scholar for standing erect in presence
-of the grim idol—as Johnson too often was, in
-his austere moods. Along with all this, Boswell
-probably knew very well the opinion which Goldsmith
-had of himself. In conversation with some
-one who called Boswell a Scotch cur, Goldsmith
-remarked—“Not so—he is only a Scotch bur: Tom
-Davies (the publisher) threw him at Johnson and he
-sticks to him.” A saying which, of course, found
-its way to the <span class='it'>bur’s</span> ears. All these things are sufficient
-to account for the animus palpably exhibited
-against Goldsmith in Boswell’s Life of Johnson.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>When his book appeared, he was sharply and universally
-condemned for his treatment of the dead
-writer. Lord Charlemont expressed his indignant
-astonishment how James Boswell could affect to
-undervalue a man of such genius and popularity.
-Burke said to Lady Crewe, on the subject—“What
-sympathy could you expect to find, my dear madam,
-between an Irish poet and a Scotch lawyer?”
-Wilkes swore two such characters were moral antipodes.
-Sir Joshua Reynolds, who knew Goldsmith
-like a brother, and who had heard from report
-how Boswell meant to depict the poet, remonstrated
-earnestly with him on the subject before the biography
-of Johnson came out. Bishop Percy, Mr.
-Stephens, Mr. Malone and others denied that Goldsmith
-was guilty of the fooleries and grimaces and
-unworthy feelings attributed to him by Boswell, and
-protested against the low estimate he had made of
-Oliver’s genius and character. And yet with all
-Boswell’s earnestness in the attempt to lessen Goldsmith,
-it is remarkable how little he is really able to
-injure him in the long run. He has created an unfavorable
-impression of the poet’s manners it is true;
-but this is wearing away; and the fact is, that, not
-only the silly Boswell himself, but the austere doctor
-whom he delighted to honor, and wrote every thing
-to glorify, seems to be more reflected on than Goldsmith,
-in most things that have been recorded to the
-disparagement of the latter in connection with
-Johnson.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>One of Boswell’s first anecdotes of Johnson and
-Goldsmith will show the paltry, parasitical spirit in
-which he was in the habit of making his notes and
-comments. They three had been supping at the
-Mitre tavern, when Johnson got up to go home and
-take tea with his blind dependent, Miss Williams.
-“Dr. Goldsmith,” says Bozzy, “being a privileged
-man, got up to go with him, strutting away and
-calling to me, with an air of superiority, like that of
-an esoteric over an exoteric disciple of a sage of antiquity,
-‘I go to Miss Williams.’ ” He says he
-envied this “mark of distinction,” but soon had the
-same honor himself! Boswell always betrays himself.
-For, without a grain of Oliver’s genius, he
-shows himself to be as thoughtless and absurd as he
-would have us think the poet to have been. If the
-latter did really exhibit any thing like exultation on
-the occasion alluded to—the canny Scot mistook it;
-he could not enter into the humorous vein of the
-author of the Citizen of the World, who never let
-any opportunity of pleasantry of any kind escape
-him, and who, doubtless, with a playful impulse,
-would, slily and aside, for Boswell’s behoof, put on
-a comic air of loftiness, at the idea of his own privilege.
-Such little <span class='it'>traits</span> were very characteristic of
-Oliver Goldsmith, at all periods of his life; and neither
-his own dignity nor that of any one else was
-much thought of, whenever his funny “Cynthias of
-the minute” came across him. With all his respect
-for Dr. Johnson, he had still—though Boswell does
-not seem to admit it—a very strong sense of what
-was odd, petulant and <span class='it'>grandiose</span> in the doctor’s
-manners, and could sport with it, too, to the bear’s
-face, with a rare and child-like temerity. For instance,
-once at Jack’s Coffee-house, where the pair
-were dining on rumps and kidneys, Johnson said—“These
-rumps are pretty things; but a man must
-eat a great number of them.” Goldsmith assented
-with pleasantry, and then, under the easy, unawed
-impulse of his nature, and carried away by the
-thought that he was not at his dreary desk, but at
-dinner with his friend, pushed on with—“But how
-many of them would go to the moon?” Johnson
-had, doubtless, said such small matters did not <span class='it'>go far</span>—a
-common expression, which would have provoked
-Oliver’s pun—though the story says nothing
-of this.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“To the moon?” replies Johnson; “I think that
-exceeds your calculation.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Not at all, sir,” cries Goldie—looking ludicrously
-prepense, at the terrible, grave face opposite—“I
-think I could tell.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Well, sir,” rejoined Ursa Major; whereupon
-the other comes out with:</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“One, if it was long enough!”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Johnson growled angrily, and said he was a fool
-to provoke such an answer. Not a fool, however,
-but a solemn bear, whose very grimness, contrasted
-with the absurdity of the solution, was Goldsmith’s
-irresistible temptation. We must, in fact, justify
-Oliver’s fun—though we did not see Johnson’s face.
-The thing was laughter-compelling. Goldsmith
-had no undue feeling of deference in his nature at
-all, though he used certainly to go on all-fours to
-amuse the children. His irrespective and somewhat
-careless humor often irritated Johnson, who
-generally supped full of flattery.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Doctor,” said Johnson one day, “I have not
-been quite idle; I lately made a line of poetry.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Instead of holding up his hands reverently, Goldsmith
-cried out with his customary levity—“Come,
-sir, let us hear it; we will try and put a bad one
-to it.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“No, sir,” replied the petted monster, drawing in;
-“I have forgotten it.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Boswell’s attempts to depreciate Goldsmith are
-blunderingly made. He always admits enough to
-betray his own unfair spirit. Johnson having had
-in 1767, an interview with the king in the library of
-St. James’s Palace, the thing was greatly talked
-of. Boswell says, that once at the house of Sir
-Joshua Reynolds, the doctor was, by request (the
-henchman’s of course), induced to repeat the circumstances
-of the meeting, and that during the recital,
-Goldsmith was observed to be silent and <span class='it'>inattentive</span>.
-He says, the latter was envious of Johnson’s
-luck, but he goes on to state that at last the frankness
-and simplicity of his nature prevailed, he advanced
-to Johnson and told him, he acquitted himself
-admirably—that he (Goldsmith), “should have
-bowed and stammered through the whole of it.” No
-sign of any very deadly envy in all this, surely.
-Johnson himself, though he mostly made a point
-of defending Goldsmith against attacks, could not
-help feeling a little pique and jealousy toward the
-wit, who never refrained from arguing the matter
-with him, comically or keenly as he saw fit. Johnson
-was truculent at times, and would speak rudely
-to Goldsmith in company. One of the surly moralist’s
-formulas, whenever Goldsmith would say,
-“I don’t see that,” was—“Nay, my dear sir, why
-can you not see what everybody else sees?” On
-such occasions, Goldsmith’s independence, or want
-of tact was against him. Johnson at times, used to
-put him down in this way. During an argument,
-Goldsmith having been several times contradicted,
-“sat in restless agitation,” says the veracious Boswell,
-“from a wish to get in and shine.” No easy
-matter when Johnson was cloudy. “Finding himself
-excluded,” he goes on—“he had taken his hat to go
-away, but remained for some time with it in his
-hand. Once, when beginning again to speak, he
-was overpowered by the loud voice of Johnson, who
-was at the opposite end of the table, and did not notice
-the attempt. Thus disappointed, Goldsmith
-threw down his hat in a passion, and said—‘take it’—looking
-angrily at Johnson. Then Toplady was
-about to speak, Oliver hearing Johnson growl something,
-and thinking he was about to go on again,
-begged he would let Toplady proceed, as the latter
-had heard Johnson patiently for an hour. ‘Sir,’
-roared Johnson, ‘I was not going to interrupt the
-gentleman. Sir, you are impertinent!’ Goldy said
-nothing, but continued in the company for some
-time. When they all met in the evening at the club,
-Johnson said aside to Boswell, ‘I’ll make Goldsmith
-forgive me:’ and then aloud—‘Doctor Goldsmith,
-something passed between us, where you and I
-dined: I ask your pardon.’ Goldsmith answered
-placidly, ‘It must be much from you, sir, that I take
-ill.’ After which,” says Boswell, “Goldsmith was
-himself again, and rattled away as usual.” All this
-exhibits the usual animus of Boswell, the coarse tyranny
-of Johnson, and the fine disposition of Oliver,
-in a fair light. Goldsmith knew Johnson intimately—<span class='it'>intus
-et in cute</span>—and used to say of him, with
-that happiness of thought and fancy which his bashfulness
-could, not entirely mar—“there is no arguing
-with Johnson; when his pistol misses fire, he knocks
-you down with the but-end of it.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Johnson talked for victory—Goldsmith for enjoyment.
-The former came armed at all points into
-the argument—the latter was but too glad to fling off
-all lettered restraint, remove his harness as it were,
-and enjoy himself in the midst of what he loved so
-cordially, the sight of happy human faces. Johnson
-generally entered into conversation like an athlete or
-a bull into an arena. He once said to Boswell, after
-some literary reunion—“we had good talk to-night.”
-“Yes, sir,” returned the admiring disciple, “you
-tossed and gored several persons.” A pleasant affair,
-truly, one of those conversations on philosophy
-and polite literature must have been in the Johnsonian
-times. Poor Goldsmith was disposed to be
-light, discursive, and unaffected in genial society—or
-if affected at all, it was in the desire to contrast
-his own open pleasantry with the dread gravity of
-Johnson, and those who stood in awe of him. Oliver
-was out of his element, in fact, among the generality
-of those with whom he came into contact at
-the club and elsewhere. He should have lived in
-the days of the loud-laughing Jerrold, and Hunt, the
-old boy at all times, and the pun-elaborating Lamb;
-he should have known Moore, the gayest of wits,
-and Maginn, who also <span class='it'>stammered</span> forth “his logic
-and his wisdom and his wit.” The simplicity of his
-disposition, and the Irish impulses of his nature, led
-him to desire a hearty enjoyment of his social hours
-in the midst of his friends. He would have quips
-and cranks, and a spice of that happy frivolity which
-comes as easy to the finest geniuses as their more dignified
-inspirations. But such he was not to have at the
-Literary Club, where Jupiter-Johnson took the chair—or
-rather the field, and “glowering frae him,” kept
-himself perfectly ready to “toss and gore,” as usual.</p>
-
-<div class='blockquote'>
-
-
- <div class='poetry-container' style=''>
- <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' -->
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>“While all the clubbists trembled at his nod.”</p>
-</div>
-</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend -->
-
-</div>
-
-<p class='pindent'>A great deal of pedantry and paradox was mixed
-up with the literature of Goldsmith’s time; men’s
-minds were apt to be as stiff as their costumes, and
-<a id='auth'></a>authors were considered to have a certain professional
-dignity to support.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Oliver, as we have said, was out of his element
-in the midst of such circumstances; he did not admire
-the gravity which is too often a mysterious
-carriage of the body to cover the defects of the mind,
-but was disposed in company</p>
-
-<div class='blockquote'>
-
-
- <div class='poetry-container' style=''>
- <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' -->
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>“To rattle on exactly as he’d talk</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;To any body in a ride or walk.”</p>
-</div>
-</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend -->
-
-</div>
-
-<p class='noindent'>In mixed society he seemed very unequal. He very
-often sat silent, and the shyness of his disposition
-was thought to be an affectation of dignity. But
-when the occasion grew more festive, as at after-dinner
-times, and the poet’s temperament had received
-the stimulus of aliment and wine, he would
-overflow with pleasant paradoxes, jests and all sorts
-of unguarded hilarity, believing that those about
-him who were aware of the intrinsic wit and worth
-of his intellect, would justify him against any thought
-of ridicule or disparagement. In such moods, and
-before the most fastidious wits of the day, he would
-come out intrepidly with—“When I used to lodge
-among the beggars in Axe Lane.” The effect of
-this on his hearers (we believe it was spoken at one
-of Sir Joshua Reynold’s dinners) was something
-like that produced on the discomposed sovereigns
-sitting round the table at Tilsit, or Erfurth—we forget
-which—by Napoleon’s reminiscence, beginning—“When
-I was a lieutenant in the regiment of La
-Fere!” These sayings seem to show a kindred
-consciousness of something beyond the conventions
-of rank and name. Goldsmith was not to be laughed
-at for that sally—which Socrates or Zeno would
-have enjoyed very much. But the cankered and
-fastidious Walpole, who was present on some such
-occasion, and found the Irishman very blunt in his
-mode of argument, and very unconcerned at the
-rank or pretensions of Walpole himself, could not
-tolerate such franknesses, and with his usual affectation
-of point, called Oliver “an inspired idiot;” just
-as Chesterfield had called Johnson “a respectable
-Hottentot”—but indeed with greater justice; for the
-moralist’s manners at table, particularly his modes
-of eating, were rather savage.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Goldsmith was certainly apt to blunder. But it
-was when in the simple frankness of his nature he
-thought he was among friends and good fellows in
-such moods and moments. He put his trust in those
-whose conventionalities he would offend, and who
-must have felt the inferiority of their own powers
-when in contact with his. Disraeli, the elder, has
-made some just remarks on the wrong to which
-such men expose themselves very often in society.
-He says: “One peculiar trait in the conversation of
-men of genius which has often injured them when
-listeners are not acquainted with the men—are certain
-sports of a vacant mind; a sudden impulse to
-throw out opinions and take views of things in some
-humor of the moment. Extravagant paradoxes and
-false opinions are caught up by the humblest prosers:
-and the Philistines are thus enabled to triumph over
-the strong and gifted man, because in an hour of
-confidence and the abandonment of his mind, he laid
-his head in their lap and taught them how he might
-be shorn of his strength.” All this is extremely applicable
-to the case of Oliver Goldsmith.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Almost all the stories told of him to show his absurdity
-or jealousy are palpably false and must be
-looked on as failures. Northcote very gravely set
-down how the doctor was offended, when on his
-route to Paris, accompanied by Mrs. Horneck and
-her daughters, to find the young ladies receive more
-notice and admiration than he himself at a French
-hotel. This was a stupid misconception, to say the
-least of it—as Miss Horneck afterward stated, wondering
-at the same time how such could ever have
-arisen from the fact. Goldsmith, who was always
-ready to laugh at himself, for the pleasantry of the
-thing, in any of his playful moods, seeing his companions
-pleased by the admiration they excited, and
-wishing to amuse them, said, with an affectation of
-wounded self-love, that doubtless produced the effect
-he intended—“Very well, ladies; you may find
-somebody else in vogue, very shortly, as well as
-yourselves.” Such sallies furnish a key to most of
-those things cited to the ridicule of Goldsmith.
-Another story is told by Col. O’Moore. Burke and
-O’Moore going to the club to dine, saw Oliver
-among others looking at some foreign women in a
-balcony in Leicester Square. Arrived at the club,
-Burke affected to be offended with Goldsmith and
-being questioned, said he could hardly think of being
-friendly with a man who could say what the doctor
-had just uttered in the public street. Goldsmith
-eagerly asking to know what it was, was told he
-expressed surprise that the crowd should look at
-these women, while he, a man of genius, was passing
-by!</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Surely, I did not say so,” says Oliver.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“How should I know it then?” replies Burke.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“True,” admits Goldsmith, “I thought, indeed,
-something of the kind; but I did not think I uttered
-it.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>All this is merely clumsy and incredible—just the
-sort of anecdote for the colonel to tell. Just as preposterous
-was the story of Goldsmith asking Gibbon,
-who came into his room while he was writing the
-History of Greece, “What king was that who gave
-Alexander so much trouble in India?” and on being
-informed it was Montezuma, writing it down at
-once! Then, there is Beauclerc’s funny thing—how
-Goldsmith, being once conversing with Lord
-Shelburne (termed “Malagrida” by some political
-opponent,) told his lordship he wondered they called
-him Malagrida, <span class='it'>for</span> Malagrida was an honest man!
-Such were the false and stupid reminiscences that
-went to compose the memory of poor Goldsmith—a
-man of the finest perceptions and most excellent
-judgment.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Exaggerated stories are also told of his love of dress
-and his personal vanity in other matters. His peach-colored
-coat is thought to be a good jest. It is indeed
-true, that he was somewhat expensive in dress;
-but a man who frequented the politest society of the
-time was obliged to pay attention to his wardrobe.
-And if his taste in the matter of coats and cocked-hats
-was not so true as it ever was in literary matters,
-it may be stated that Aristotle also underwent
-the rebuke of Plato for his foppishness. A great deal
-is made of the fact that Goldsmith once attempted to
-leap from the bank to a little island in a pond, at
-Versailles, and fell into the water. This is all natural
-enough, if we refer it to his usual playfulness
-and the remembrance of the active habits of his
-youth. It amounts to no more than the gravest man
-may have to answer for, if all his doings were
-chronicled. Johnson, when quite an old man, used
-to make such heavy attempts to be lively. Mrs.
-Thrale (we believe) says that one day, approaching
-her house, the philosopher flung himself in sport over
-a gate that lay in his way, and was very much elated
-by his own agility.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>With all his dignity and philosophy Johnson felt a
-little jealous of Goldsmith, at times, and used to express
-disparaging opinions of him. He said—“His
-genius is great, but his knowledge is small. As they
-say of a generous man—it is a pity he is not rich;
-so we may say of Goldsmith—it is a pity he is not
-knowing.” He also said no one was more foolish
-than Goldsmith when he had not a pen in his hand,
-or wiser when he had, thus parodying the saying
-applied to Charles the Second—</p>
-
-<div class='blockquote'>
-
-
- <div class='poetry-container' style=''>
- <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' -->
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>“Who never said a foolish thing,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;And never did a wise one.”</p>
-</div>
-</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend -->
-
-</div>
-
-<p class='noindent'>In expressing these opinions, Dr. Johnson seems to
-forget what he himself has elsewhere said, very
-justly—to the effect that a great deal of the truth and
-correctness of a sentiment is sacrificed to the point
-of it. He also says, amusingly enough—“Goldsmith
-should not be always attempting to shine in
-conversation,” (certainly not—this would be a sort
-of contumacy in Johnson’s presence!) “he has not
-temper for it.” (Johnson’s own was of such a
-meek, philosophic stamp!) Even when the dignity
-of Goldsmith’s doings was more questionable than
-that of his sayings or writings, the doctor could not
-help entertaining some little pique. When Oliver
-had chastised Evans, the publisher, for printing some
-offensive observations, Johnson remarked to his <span class='it'>fidus
-Achates</span>: “Why, sir, this is the first time he <span class='it'>has</span>
-beaten; he may have <span class='it'>been</span> beaten before. This is a
-new pleasure to him.” He alluded to a white-bait
-dinner at Blackwall, where Goldsmith, denouncing
-obscene novels and the indelicacies of Tristram
-Shandy, created a warm argument among the feasters,
-whence they fell into personalities; then into
-an uproar, and thence to fisticuffs, in the midst of
-which, it is said, Oliver got a smart share of what
-was going—before they broke up this feast of reason—pretty
-fairly expressed by the <span class='it'>Irish</span> participles,
-<span class='it'>bait</span>, beating, beaten! The affair was very laughable,
-to be sure. But Johnson should have remembered
-that he himself had knocked his own publisher
-down—Osborne. He should have commented more
-leniently on poor Goldie. The old feuds between
-authors and publishers were as lively in those times
-as they were before or have been since. Goldsmith
-wrote a very dignified public letter, to justify the
-beating, and showed that there were certain rascalities
-which called for the imposition of violent hands
-upon them, and that the punishment of them was
-sanctioned by the sense of society, though against
-the letter of the law. But, as we were saying,
-Johnson permitted himself on many occasions to
-disparage Goldsmith. Still, in the main, he has
-stood up strongly for the fame of his friend—thereby
-showing that such opinions as the foregoing were
-not very just or generous. When his conscience
-got the better of his occasional feelings, as was
-usually the case—for his nature was intrinsically
-good (he “had nothing of the bear but the skin,” as
-Goldsmith used to say,) he would do Oliver justice.
-In this, to be sure, he had a consoling sense of the
-superiority and patronage which belong to such a
-championship; and, in maintaining the cause of his
-friend, he could argue vigorously for himself—for,
-their fortunes were very much alike. He could
-express his own feelings of scorn for the conventions
-or misconceptions of society, in defending the character
-of a man of genius. Be this as it may, he has
-left on record sentiments highly honorable to himself
-as well as to Goldsmith; and has had some of
-them graven in his epitaph on the poet, dramatist
-and historian</p>
-
-<div class='blockquote'>
-
-
- <div class='poetry-container' style=''>
- <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' -->
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;“Who ran</p>
-<p class='line0'>Through each mode of the pen and was master of all.”</p>
-</div>
-</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend -->
-
-</div>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Goldsmith, in society, was not the oddity he is
-represented to be by Boswell, Walpole and the
-others. There is no such contradictory monster as
-they would have us think him. The man who was
-“inspired” with such true genius—who drew the
-Vicar of Wakefield—could not have been the
-“idiot” that the artificial Walpole would depict
-him. Nor could any man who “wrote like an
-angel” ever come to “talk like poor Poll,” as Garrick
-says with such antithetical fallacy. The fact
-was, Oliver’s broad Westmeath accent, his stammering
-mode of speaking, and the careless impulses
-of his thoroughly Irish temperament gave his manners
-a strange, it may be said an intolerable originality,
-in an age of forms and observances in literature
-and life. It was only in a stiff, artificial age,
-like that in which his lot was cast, that Goldsmith
-would have been so rudely treated and ridiculed. It
-is felt that it was not Julian but the polished Antiochans
-which were ridiculous. We also know that
-though they laughed at Socrates he was not <span class='it'>laughed
-at</span>, as he himself expresses it. Absurdity was the
-cant word of Goldsmith’s day for the good-nature,
-generosity, originality and independence which he
-brought with him, along with that <span class='it'>Shibboleth</span> of his
-from the simple and honorable home of his childhood,
-and which he never lost in all the mazes and
-trials of the great metropolis.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>His absurdities, as they termed them, did not, after
-all, prevent Goldsmith from being well received in
-the best society of London—a very strong proof, in
-itself, that the doctor was as much a gentleman in
-demeanor as he was by his birth and education, and
-could mingle with the polite and the fashionable on
-very easy terms and without any violence to his
-habits. His sayings in company—such as have been
-remembered—are full of point and pleasantry, and
-show that he could command, even with his shy
-utterance, much of the happy spirit of his written
-style. He was once explaining to a friend, in Johnson’s
-presence, that in fables where inferior creatures
-are interlocutors, these should be made to speak in
-character—that animals on land, for instance, should
-converse differently from little fishes. This idea,
-which is, after all, only that which Shakspeare has
-so beautifully realized, with a difference, in his
-elves of a Midsummer Night’s Dream, his Caliban
-and his Ariel, set Johnson a-chuckling at its childishness,
-which Goldsmith perceiving, he retorted
-very happily—laughing, too—“You may laugh,
-doctor, but if <span class='it'>you</span> had to make little fishes speak,
-they would talk like whales!” A palpable hit at
-the sesquipedalian moralist.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>If we come to consider Goldsmith’s influence upon
-the literary character of his age, we will probably
-agree that it was second to that of no other author.
-Indeed, it must be considered superior to that of him
-who was supposed to sway most authoritatively the
-world of letters. Doctor Johnson’s style, to be sure,
-was very impressive, and created a host of imitators—the
-most remarkable of whom was Gibbon, who
-surpassed his model in a certain measured splendor
-of rhetoric—which is, nevertheless, very wearisome
-at times. But Goldsmith’s many modes of a very
-simple and lucid style produced then, and since, a
-more permanent effect. He wrote the best poem,
-the best comedy, the best novel, and the best history—at
-least, the best written history of the day. Johnson
-preferred his historic manner to that of Hume or Robertson.
-Though Goldsmith’s literature had not the
-marked effect of Doctor Johnson’s grand Latin idiom;
-yet being more varied, it reached the wider popularity,
-such as time has confirmed and increased.
-Goldsmith kept to the ancient ways of the vernacular,
-trod by Addison, Swift, Hume, etc.; and contributed
-not a little to neutralize the Johnsonian mode—which,
-after all, was recognized to be a corrupt rhetoric, and a
-weakening of the genius of the Anglo-Saxon tongue.
-Goldsmith’s, “racy of the soil,” was secured against
-fluctuations of taste, and the charm of it is as fresh to-day
-as it was eighty years ago. His comedies abolished
-the mawkish sentimentality which—derived
-partly from the Richardson school—dulled the spirit
-of the stage, and asserted, very happily, the old comic
-claim of setting audiences in a roar. The change
-was heartily welcomed; the Londoners crowded to
-the comedy to be merry, and a respected household
-tradition, now especially recalled for the sake
-of the dear old narrator of it, has more than once informed
-us how George the Third, his fresh-colored
-English face, full of merriment, and the plain, little
-cock-nosed Charlotte by his side, in the royal box,
-both joined in the hilarity of the audience during one
-of the first performances of “She Stoops to Conquer,”
-at Covent Garden Theatre; but, at the story of “Old
-Grouse in the Gun-room,” where everybody laughed
-on the stage, his majesty fairly chimed in with Mr.
-Hardcastle, and laughed as loud as any one in the
-house. Thus, in the words of Mr. Colman—</p>
-
-<div class='blockquote'>
-
-
- <div class='poetry-container' style=''>
- <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' -->
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>“Thus, cheered, at length, by Pleasantry’s bright ray,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;Nature and mirth resumed their legal sway,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;And Goldsmith’s genius basked in open day.”</p>
-</div>
-</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend -->
-
-</div>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Goldsmith’s prose is the sweetest and most harmonious
-in the language. His narrative and historical
-manner is easy and expressive—more so than
-Hume’s. And here, we may remark how odd it
-was to see a pair of provincials—an Irishman and a
-Scotchman, each with the brogue or the burr upon
-his tongue, and in his manner—vindicating the native
-purity of the Anglo-Saxon against the subversive genius
-of two of the foremost English writers—Johnson
-and Gibbon—and finally overcoming them on their
-own ground. Goldsmith, in short, as Johnson said
-very well, ornamented whatever he touched, and
-some of the dryest disquisitions become in his hands
-as interesting as a Persian tale. An honor of another
-kind belongs to Goldsmith.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Among the authors of England none did more than
-himself to support the dignity and independence of
-British authorship, the honor of which was so sadly
-smirched by the dedications of Dryden and Locke,
-as well as by others before and after them. Oliver
-instead of thinking of the high nobility, set a fine example
-to all writers—he dedicated “She Stoops to
-Conquer,” to Doctor Johnson; “The Deserted Village”
-to his other friend, Reynolds; and “The Traveler”—his
-first poem—to his brother, all exhibiting
-the affectionate manliness of his disposition. And
-with reference to his brother, we have a trait of
-Goldsmith’s character which is worth the Vicar of
-Wakefield. He was once invited to call on the Duke
-of Northumberland, when that nobleman was going to
-Ireland, as Lord Lieutenant. Sir John Hawkins,
-who was leaving the duke’s presence as Oliver was
-going in, tells the story with indignant reprobation
-of the poet’s fatal absurdity. His grace having complimented
-Goldsmith on his writings (he had just
-written Edwin and Angelina to amuse the duchess),
-said he was going to Ireland, and would be happy to
-promote the doctor’s interests in any way, etc.
-Whereupon the doctor told the duke that the publishers
-were treating him pretty well just then; but
-that he had a poor brother in Ireland, a curate on
-forty pounds a year, with a large family, and begged
-his grace to remember <span class='it'>him</span>, etc. “In this way,”
-groans Sir John Hawkins, “did Goldsmith dispose
-of his chance of patronage and fortune.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>As a poet, Goldsmith at once took the rank which
-posterity has almost unanimously confirmed. The
-finest critics in the language have honored the claims
-of the poet of Auburn. Lord Byron says, “where
-is the poetry of which one half is good? Is it Milton’s?
-Is it Dryden’s; or any one’s except Pope’s
-and Goldsmith’s, of which <span class='it'>all</span> is good?” There is
-no need at this time of day, to speak of the nature,
-pathos and elegance of Goldsmith’s muse. In stateliness
-he sometimes approaches Dryden; as in those
-noble verses which Johnson could not read without
-a tremor and tears of pride:—</p>
-
-<div class='blockquote'>
-
-
- <div class='poetry-container' style=''>
- <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' -->
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>“Stern o’er each bosom reason holds her state,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;With daring aims, irregularly great:</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;Pride in their port, defiance in their eye,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;I see the lords of human kind pass by.”</p>
-</div>
-</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend -->
-
-</div>
-
-<p class='noindent'>But there is one respect in which we think his poetry
-has not been appreciated as it ought.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The great change which has taken place in poetry
-from the classic rhythmus and Cæsural canons of
-Pope’s school, to the nature and fresher phraseology
-of our modern period has been commonly dated from
-the rise of Wordsworth and Coleridge—sometimes
-traced to the effect of Bishop Percy’s ballads.
-There is generally an incorrectness in any attempt
-to fix mutations of taste and fashions of style down
-to chronology. Instead of thinking the old poetic
-spirit of England was revived at the close of the
-eighteenth century, we believe it had not died at all;
-but had lived on, in exile, while a foreign influence
-bore sway—as the line of Edgar Atheling lived long
-ago; destined, however, in the fullness of time to be
-restored to its ancient supremacy. Bishop Percy’s
-ballads were a manifestation of that spirit, not a
-cause of it—though he might not have known it—a
-necessary reaction of the national mind. At the time
-of their appearance Goldsmith’s poetry was exhibiting
-the first tokens of the coming change. The
-theme of it was human nature, with its common
-feelings, hopes, and sufferings; and pouring the
-warmth, pathos and earnestness of his own heart into
-it, he rendered it attractive and popular. His
-verse had all the vernacular ease and grace of his
-prose, with a polish only inferior to Pope’s. In his
-original hands the heroic couplet was not “the clock-work
-tintinnabulum of rhyme” beaten by the Cawthornes,
-Darwins, and Hayleys of the day. In his
-prose criticisms he wrote against the cumbrous use
-of epithets, and discarded it in his own verse. He
-amused himself occasionally among his friends, by
-reciting the lines of several popular authors, with a
-dissyllable omitted. He would read the opening of
-Gray’s Elegy in this way:</p>
-
-<div class='blockquote'>
-
-
- <div class='poetry-container' style=''>
- <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' -->
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>The curfew tolls the knell of day,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;The lowing herd winds o’er the lea:</p>
-<p class='line0'>The ploughman homeward plods his way</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;And leaves the world to gloom and me.</p>
-</div>
-</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend -->
-
-</div>
-
-<p class='noindent'>In this respect he must have been rather hard on Johnson,
-whose poetry in many respects is “the hubbub
-of words,” which Wordsworth so scornfully terms
-some of it. The first couplet of the doctor’s great
-satire has one superfluous line—</p>
-
-<div class='blockquote'>
-
-
- <div class='poetry-container' style=''>
- <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' -->
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>Let observation, with extended view,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Survey mankind from China to Peru—</p>
-</div>
-</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend -->
-
-</div>
-
-<p class='noindent'>The poem would have started better from “Survey.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Johnson, indeed, used to ridicule the taste that
-came up with the Percy Ballads. They had “a false
-gallop of verses,” in his opinion, and he said he could
-go on making such stanzas for an hour together,
-thus:</p>
-
-<div class='blockquote'>
-
-
- <div class='poetry-container' style=''>
- <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' -->
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>As with my hat upon my head,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;I walked along the Strand,</p>
-<p class='line0'>There I met another man</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;With his hat in his hand.</p>
-</div>
-</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend -->
-
-</div>
-
-<p class='noindent'>But in this, as in a great many other matters of literature,
-morals, and taste, Johnson did not prove himself
-an infallible doctor. Goldsmith’s taste, of a
-genuine <span class='it'>vates</span>, led him at once to appreciate the
-simple lyrics of Percy’s collection; and his charming
-ballad of the Hermit shows how he felt the fresh
-spirit of them. This excellent poem was written for
-the Countess of Northumberland. And here we
-may remark that three of the most attractive modern
-English poems were composed especially for ladies
-of high rank—or at their suggestion:—The Lay of
-the Last Minstrel, at the wish of Lady Anna Scott,
-daughter of the Duke of Buccleuch; The Sofa, for
-Lady Hesketh; and Goldsmith’s Ballad for the
-Countess.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Goldsmith certainly took the initiative in the
-change which was followed and aided by “the
-manly and idiomatic simplicity of Cowper”—before
-Wordsworth and Coleridge were heard of. He
-effected his share of the reform quietly; he wrote no
-doctrinal prefaces, but went and did what he meant.
-In teaching and practicing a new mode, he did not
-make the noise of a reformer. He was rather more
-favorable to the style of Dryden and Pope than to
-some of the ballad enthusiasts that talked and wrote
-in extremes. He reformed without any affectation
-of apostleship in the matter of words and syllables—was
-no literary red-republican. Thirty or forty
-years later Wordsworth cried, <span class='it'>Heureka</span>! as if something
-were then first done or found. He announced
-his theories in long didactic prefaces, laid down doctrines
-which the genius of Goldsmith and Cowper
-had already suggested or acted on, and fell into extravagancies
-which they never dreamed of—exhibiting
-his muse in a very <span class='it'>sans culotte</span> condition;
-the term (having a masculine reference) is somewhat
-inapplicable—or should be in a well-regulated state
-of society—though Mrs. Bloomer is of a contrary
-opinion. But, Wordsworth, in his love of unadorned
-Nature, used, in fact, to pull off her <span class='it'>garments</span>, along
-with her <span class='it'>ornaments</span>, as if he thought, with those
-other honest fanatics, the early Quakers, that a state
-of nudity was a state of grace! Coleridge and
-Southey were his disciples, but not such mighty prosers;
-and Coleridge was a far superior spirit to the
-two others, in all subtle thought and lofty expression,
-though some of Wordsworth’s lines are truly fine.
-As for Southey, we are disposed to justify Lord
-Byron in his contempt of the man and his poetry.
-He was of an overweening and splenetic nature;
-there was nothing in his character to neutralize the
-impression made by the “Vision of Judgment” and
-“Don Juan” respecting him. With regard to Oliver
-Goldsmith, Southey is convicted of a willful injustice
-to the memory of a more genuine poet and
-better man than himself. In his Life of Cowper,
-speaking of the poets that came after Pope, he never
-once alludes to the author of The Deserted Village!
-He says “the school of Pope was gradually losing
-its influence,” in proof of which, “almost every
-poem of any considerable length which obtained any
-celebrity, during the half century between Pope and
-Cowper, was writ in blank verse. With the single
-exception of Falconer’s Shipwreck, it would be in
-vain to look for any rhymed poem of that age, and
-of equal extent, which is held in equal estimation
-with the works of Young, Thompson, Glover,
-Somerville, Dyer, Akenside and Armstrong.” We
-all know that one cause, at least, of this studied
-omission of Goldsmith’s name, was Byron’s favorable
-opinion of his poetry. This deliberate wrong
-to the memory of a great departed poet, because of
-a vehement hatred of a living one, shows Southey’s
-disposition to be as ungenerous, we may say as contemptible,
-as his hexameters are coldly manufactured,
-and surely fated to be dry upon the popular
-palate to the end of time. He affects to rank Oliver
-among the followers of Pope and the imitators of his
-style. But there is as little resemblance between
-Pope’s terse and splendid rhetoric, and the graphic
-simplicity and nature of Goldsmith’s poetry, as between
-the blank verse of Wordsworth or Southey
-and the noble rhythmus of Paradise Lost. Goldsmith
-scorned as much to fashion his verse after the
-mode of Pope as he did to detract from the great
-merit of that author. He cultivated the elegance and
-rhyming periods of the classic school, and so identified
-these with his own original spirit, that he recommended
-anew what, in themselves, are genuine
-graces of English poetry. They truly belong to the
-genius of it—as his fine taste must have taught him—and
-must continue to do so, in spite of all the sprawling
-Thalaba hexameters of Southey. The heroic
-rhyming couplet is capable of as much force, flexibility,
-and beauty, as any other form of English
-verse, and is never monotonous in original hands—whether
-of Chaucer, Dryden, Crabbe, or Keats.
-Southey, in thus pretending to shut his eyes to the
-claims of the author of The Traveler, must have still
-felt (for he was not without a critical sense of the
-genuine in the Anglo-Saxon) that the great mass of
-his own poetry, so like a <span class='it'>hortus siccus</span>, with its
-elaborated fancies and exotic imagery, must mainly
-lie upon the shelves of libraries, while Goldsmith’s
-is fated to be found upon all book-stalls, and to go
-about to the households and hearts of the people—to
-be printed in innumerable editions, ornamented with
-costly engravings, and be found in all parts of the
-world where the English language is spoken—read
-by yet unborn generations on the banks of the Burrampooter,
-the Mississippi, or the Swan River, as
-freshly and as feelingly as it was, at first, and still
-continues to be, on those of the Thames and the
-Tweed and the Shannon. And so it is; and thus, as
-the clown in Twelfth Night says, “does the whirligig
-of time bring in his revenges.” Somebody, we
-forget who, says the praise of the people is a finer
-thing than the homage of the critics: and, in this way,
-the ghost of Oliver must be satisfied to see how posterity
-vindicates him against the early and the latter
-detractors. He was a true English poet with an
-Irish heart; and Sir Joshua Reynolds evinced the
-genuine prescience of genius (though the world said
-it was only friendship or flattery) when he gave the
-ugly face of Oliver that classic <span class='it'>tournure</span> which should
-best suit his destined rank in the peerage of Parnassus.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Goldsmith had left his mark upon the literature
-of his age, and plainly indicated the character of that
-which was to come, when he quitted his painful
-desk forever, in 1774, being then about forty-five
-years old. At that age Cowper was still unmentioned
-in the world of letters, but was preparing to
-carry out the salutary innovations which the other
-had begun. Goldsmith died £2000 in debt. The
-booksellers had advanced him money for works to
-be written. Everybody trusted him. “Was ever
-poet so trusted before?” says Dr. Johnson. Burke
-wept when he heard Oliver was dead. Such tears
-were as eloquent as Johnson’s epitaph. The eyes of
-the latter were moistened, too; and in a sonorous
-Greek tetrastich, he called on those who cared for
-Nature, for the charms of song, or the deeds of ancient
-days, to weep for the historian, the naturalist,
-and the poet. Poor Goldie died when he had a
-chance of liberating himself, in another way, from
-the task-work of publishers. “Every year he lived,”
-says Dr. Johnson, “he would have deserved Westminster
-Abbey more and more.” But Goldsmith’s
-true Westminster Abbey is the <span class='it'>volitare per ora</span> and
-the keeping of his honest memory by the <span class='it'>oi polloi</span>,
-at their firesides, along with the <span class='it'>lares</span>—when, as
-Macaulay would say, a traveler from the empire of
-Van Diemans Land may probably be sketching the
-ruins of that British Santa Croce from a broken arch
-of London Bridge:—</p>
-
-<div class='blockquote'>
-
-
- <div class='poetry-container' style=''>
- <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' -->
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>Nothing to them the sculptor’s art,</p>
-<p class='line0'>The funeral columns, wreaths or urns;</p>
-</div>
-</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend -->
-
-</div>
-
-<p class='noindent'>as Halleck so well says respecting Robert Burns, in
-one of the finest of his lyrics.</p>
-
-<hr class='tbk115'/>
-
-<div><h1><a id='mona'></a>MONA LISA.</h1></div>
-
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;'>———</p>
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;font-size:0.8em;font-weight:bold;'>BY MRS. MARY G. HORSFORD.</p>
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;margin-bottom:1.5em;'>———</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Leonardo de Vinci is said to have been four years employed upon the portrait of Mona Lisa, a fair Florentine,
-without being able, after all, to come up to the idea of her beauty.</p>
-
-
- <div class='poetry-container' style=''>
- <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' -->
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-<p class='line0'>Artist! lay the brush aside,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Twilight gathers chill and gray;</p>
-<p class='line0'>Turn the picture to the wall—</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Thou hast wrought in vain to-day.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>Thrice twelve months have hastened by</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Since thy canvas first grew bright</p>
-<p class='line0'>With that brow’s bewitching beauty,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;And that dark eye’s melting light.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>Yet the early sunbeam shineth</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;On thy tireless labors yet,</p>
-<p class='line0'>And the portrait stands before thee,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Till the evening sun has set.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>Faultless is the robe that falleth</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Round that form of matchless grace;</p>
-<p class='line0'>Faultless is the softened outline</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Of the fair and oval face.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>Thou hast caught the wondrous beauty</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Of the round cheek’s roseate hue;</p>
-<p class='line0'>And the full red lips are smiling,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;As this morn they smiled on you.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>To that lady thou hast given</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Immortality below,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Wherefore, then, with moody glances</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Dost thou from thy labor go?</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>From the living face of beauty</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Beams the soul’s expressive ray,</p>
-<p class='line0'>And, with all thy god-like genius,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;<span class='it'>This</span> thou <span class='it'>never</span> canst portray!</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>Of the countless throng around me,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Each hath labors like to thine;</p>
-<p class='line0'>Each, methinks, some Mona Lisa</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;In his spirit’s inmost shrine.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>Visions haunt us from our childhood</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Of a love so pure, so true,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Seraphs unawares might envy</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;As their white wings fan the Blue;</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>Visions that elude forever,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;As the silent years depart,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Some unhappy ones and weary—</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Mona Lisas of the heart!</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>Dreams of a divine completeness</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;That we struggle to attain,</p>
-<p class='line0'>’Mid the doubts and toils harassing</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Of our earthly life in vain;</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>Poet fancies we endeavor</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;To imprint upon the scroll,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Yet for worded utterance failing—</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Mona Lisas of the soul!</p>
-</div>
-</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend -->
-
-<hr class='tbk116'/>
-
-<div><h1><a id='bird'></a>TO A CANARY BIRD.</h1></div>
-
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;'>———</p>
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;font-size:0.8em;font-weight:bold;'>BY WILLIAM GIBSON, U. S. NAVY.</p>
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;margin-bottom:1.5em;'>———</p>
-
-
- <div class='poetry-container' style=''>
- <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' -->
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;Sweet little faery bird,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;Gentle Canary bird,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Beats not thy tiny breast with one regret?</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;Is it enough for thee</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;Ever, as now, to be</p>
-<p class='line0'>Caged as a prisoner, kissed as a pet?</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;Gay is thy golden wing,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;Careless thy caroling,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Thou art as happy as happy can be;</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;Singing so merrily,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;Hast thou no memory</p>
-<p class='line0'>Of thy lost native isle o’er the sea?</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;Not the Hesperides,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;Floating on fabled seas,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Nothing in Nature, and nothing in song,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;Match with the magic smile,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;Which, from thine own sweet isle,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Hushes the heaving wave all the year long.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;Summer and youthful Spring,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;Blooming and blossoming,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Hand-in-hand, sister-like, stray thro’ the clime;</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;There thou wert born, amid</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;Fruits colored like thee, hid</p>
-<p class='line0'>In the green groves of the orange and lime.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;Then was the silver lute</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;Of the young maiden mute,</p>
-<p class='line0'>When, from the shade of her own cottage-eaves,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;Rang first thy joyous trill,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;While, with a gentle thrill,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Tho’ the breeze stirred them not, shivered the leaves.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;Thou, like a spirit, come</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;From thy far island-home,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Seemest of spring-time and sunshine the voice.</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;Light-hearted is thy lay,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;As, on the lemon spray,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Love, little singing bird, made thee rejoice.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;For, from thy lady’s lip,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;Oft is it thine to sip</p>
-<p class='line0'>Sweetness which dwells not in fruit or in flower;</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;And when her shaded eye</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;Rests on thee pensively,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Moonlight was ne’er so soft silv’ring thy bower.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;Likest to thee is Love,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;Never it cares to rove,</p>
-<p class='line0'>When its wild winglets feel Beauty’s control.</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;Would, little bird, that I</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;Might to thine island fly,</p>
-<p class='line0'>All, all alone with the girl of my soul!</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;There should’st thou sing to us,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;Tender and tremulous,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Our hearts happy with love unexpressed.</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;Sweet little faery bird,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;Gentle Canary bird,</p>
-<p class='line0'>How would’st thou be by that dear girl caressed.</p>
-</div>
-</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend -->
-
-<hr class='tbk117'/>
-
-<div><h1><a id='life'></a>A LIFE OF VICISSITUDES.</h1></div>
-
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;'>———</p>
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;font-size:0.8em;font-weight:bold;'>BY G. P. R. JAMES, ESQ.</p>
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;margin-bottom:1.5em;'>———</p>
-
-<div class='blockquote'>
-
-<p class='pindent'><span style='font-size:smaller'>[Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1852, by <span class='sc'>George Payne Rainsford James</span>, in the Clerk’s
-Office of the District Court of the United States for the District of Massachusetts.]</span></p>
-
-</div>
-
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;margin-bottom:1em;'>(<span class='it'>Continued from page 279.</span>)</p>
-
-<h2 class='nobreak'>A STRUGGLE WITH THE WORLD.</h2>
-
-<p class='pindent'>A period of wandering and of danger, of flitting
-from place to place, and land to land, of difficulties
-and distresses, of almost daily peril, of constant uncertainty
-as to the future, would seem to furnish
-matter enough for memory; but yet the period immediately
-succeeding my separation from Father
-Bonneville, is very dim and obscure to remembrance.
-I staid so short a time in any place, one
-event trod so fast upon the heels of another, that
-neither scene nor event had time to fix itself firmly
-in memory, before, like the grass upon a public pathway,
-it was trodden down by passing feet.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>At this time, I could speak three languages with
-almost equal facility: English, French, and German;
-but English perhaps, I understood most thoroughly—at
-all events, I know, I generally thought in that
-language. This facility was of very great advantage
-to me, and I notice it on that account, as I could
-pass wherever those tongues were spoken for a native
-of the country. It is true, I had not soon occasion
-to see France again; but I wandered through
-many parts of Switzerland, where French was in
-common use.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The terrible dissensions and frightful bloodshed
-that were going on in that once fair and peaceful
-land, soon drove me forth, however, though I anxiously
-continued my inquiries for Father Bonneville,
-as long as there seemed a chance of success.
-My steps were then turned toward the North of
-Germany, without object; and more directed by accidental
-circumstances, than by any predetermination
-of my own, I walked on foot the whole way;
-for the hundred louis afforded but small means, and
-I had learned the necessity, and the mode of economy.
-Fifty of those hundred louis I put by with the
-resolution never to touch them except in the last extremity;
-and no one can tell the amount of distress
-and privation I submitted to, rather than violate that
-resolution. Every thing I could part with, I disposed
-of before I set out: my beloved rifle amongst
-the rest. I had a good many little trinkets, which I
-had purchased in the foolish vanity of youth, but I
-got rid of them all, and only retained my watch,
-with a seal bearing a coat of arms attached to it,
-(which seal I had possessed as long as I could remember
-any thing) and the ring and little gold chain
-which had been given to me by Madame de Salins.
-My clothes were all compressed into a knapsack,
-and in my hunter’s garb, with thick, coarse shoes
-upon my feet, I plodded on my weary way, over
-mountain and moor, through field and forest, in the
-town and in the country, seeking wherever opportunity
-seemed to present itself, for some employment,
-but finding none. All I could offer to do was to
-teach, and the whole of Europe was so overloaded
-with persons in the same situation, who had been
-driven forth from France by the Revolution, that it
-was hardly possible to find any profitable occupation
-of that kind.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Often, often at peasant’s hut, or farmer’s house, I
-have begged a morsel of black bread, and a draught
-of water. Perhaps this was not very right, when I
-had actually money in my pocket, but yet it is a
-common custom in that country, and almost every
-artisan, before he becomes a master in his trade,
-spends some years in what is called <span class='it'>fechting</span> or in
-other words, begging his way from place to place.
-The assistance was almost always readily given, and
-sometimes the charity of woman would add a drink
-of milk, or a few kreutzers.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>I was within sight of the town of Hamburgh before
-any chance of occupation presented itself, and
-then it came about in rather a singular manner. I
-was walking on at a quick pace, at about three miles
-from the city, on the same side of the Elbe, when I
-saw from a little garden gate, close by a small summer-house,
-an elderly gentleman come forth, of
-somewhat peculiar appearance. He was exceedingly
-thin, brisk and active-looking, with powdered
-hair and a thick queue, an enormous white cravat, a
-vast frill, and a bluish-gray cloak, somewhat threadbare.
-There was a keen, sharp look about his eyes
-and mouth, which was not very promising, and I
-walked on without taking much notion of him. His
-pace, however, was as fast as my own, and we kept
-nearly side by side for about half-a-mile, without
-speaking, till we came upon a long wooden bridge,
-which every one who has been in Hamburgh must
-recollect. He had eyed me, I perceived, with great
-attention, and at length he burst forth.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Well, young man,” he said, “I think you might
-have given me good time of day, at least.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“I do not know you,” I answered, “and do not
-like to take liberties with strangers.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Mighty modest,” rejoined he. “What’s your
-trade?”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>I explained to him, that I was seeking employment
-as a teacher, having been driven out of my
-own country by Revolution. That seemed to touch
-him; for he had a great abhorrence of Revolutions,
-and he asked me what I could teach.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>I told him that I was competent to give instruction
-in Latin, Greek, Mathematics, French, English and
-German.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Hundert tausand!” he exclaimed, “the lad is an
-Encyclopædia. Let us see what you can do;” and
-immediately he poured forth a passage of Euripides,
-with which I was quite familiar. I rendered it at
-once into German, and he then made me give it him
-in French, which I did as well as I could, in that
-meagre tongue. He rubbed his hands all the time,
-saying—“Ha—ha.” He spoke to me in English,
-too, such as it was, and though his pronunciation
-would have made a dry salmon laugh, yet I found
-that he had a very thorough acquaintance with all
-the works of the best authors of England. The conversation
-soon became interesting to us both, and we
-went on chatting and discussing till we reached the
-gates of the town. There he suddenly paused, and
-looking at me from head to foot, exclaimed—</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“So you want employment—you are poor, I dare
-say—very poor?”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>I replied, that it was hardly possible to be poorer.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Well, then, you must not lodge in dear inns,” he
-said.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>I told him I did not know where to lodge, as I was
-a stranger in the town.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“I’ll tell you,” he answered, “I’ll tell you. You
-must lodge in the lower town—in the Hardt-Gasse—number
-five—with Widow Steinberger.” He repeated
-the direction over three times, and then added—“She
-should board you for two dollars a week—don’t
-give her more. Everybody asks too much, in
-expectation of being beaten down—a bad system, but
-universal.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>All this time he had been continually turning himself
-round upon his right leg, between each two or
-three words, as if intending to go away, and I perceived
-no inclination upon his part to help me to employment;
-but when he came to the end of his directions,
-he drew out a little note-book, wrote something
-in it with his usual rapidity, tore out the leaf,
-and gave it to me saying—</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Come to see me—come to see me. I’ll think of
-what can be done. We’ll find you employment,
-Polyglot,” and away he turned and left me. I then,
-with better hope than I had hitherto had, inquired
-my way to the street which he had indicated, without
-having curiosity enough to look at any thing but
-his name, which I found to be “Herman Haas.” I
-was a long time in finding the Hardt-Gasse, and before
-I did so, I plunged into many a dark and gloomy
-street of tall, old houses, and warehouses. At length,
-the end of a little lane was pointed out to me, the
-appearance of which was more in harmony with the
-state of my finances, than my desires. But I found,
-on walking up it, that the houses must, at one time,
-have been of some importance, judging by the size
-of the doors, and the ornaments which clustered
-round them. At number five, I stopped; and finding
-neither knocker or bell, opened the door and
-went in.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Who’s there?” screamed a voice from the right,
-and entering a large, dim, old-fashioned room, I
-found myself in the presence of a stately dame, engaged
-in the dignified occupation of cooking, who
-instantly demanded what I wanted. I found that
-this was no other than Madame Steinberger, herself,
-but before she would enter into any negociations in
-regard to boarding and lodging me, she insisted upon
-knowing who had sent me there. When I showed
-her the paper, however, she exclaimed—“Professor
-Haas! Oh! that is another matter;” and our arrangements
-were soon effected. As the professor had
-anticipated, she asked more at first than she was inclined
-to take, but his dictum was all powerful with
-her, and I was soon installed in a comfortable little
-room, with the advantage of a large sitting-room besides,
-when I chose to use it, for which accommodation,
-with three meals in the day, I was to pay
-two dollars a week.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>On the following morning, at the hour which my
-landlady told me would be most convenient, I went
-to call upon the professor, whom I found in his study;
-though how he contrived to study at all, I cannot
-make out; for he was in a state of continual movement—the
-most excitable German I ever saw.
-During the greater part of the time he was talking
-to me, he was taking down one book and putting up
-another, turning over papers upon the table, dipping
-a pen in the ink and wiping it again, with other
-operations to carry off his superfluous activity. He
-must have been quiet at some time; for he certainly
-was a very learned man; but I never could discover
-when it was. At length, after having asked a great
-number of questions, he said—“I have got one pupil
-for you, to make a beginning—Come, I’ll show her
-to you;” and leading me into another room, on the
-same floor, he presented me to a young lady, who
-sat there embroidering, as his daughter. “There,”
-he said, “teach her English, and any thing else you
-can. I have no time—she is a good girl, but
-slow.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The young lady looked up in his face with a calm,
-placid smile, saying, “If there were two such quick
-people as you in the house, my father, they would
-always be running against each other.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“True,” replied the old man, “true, and philosophical.
-Nature loves contrasts as well as harmonies.
-Opposing forces counteract each other. You,
-my Louise, are my <span class='it'>vis inertiæ</span>. Without you I
-should get on too fast. But come, young gentleman—what
-is your name?”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Louis de Lacy,” I replied.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“I like that, I like that,” answered the old man
-“The <span class='it'>De</span>, speaks blood and good political principles—but
-come—we will settle the terms in my own
-room, and will try to get you something more to do
-by and bye.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>I found the good professor had as accurate a knowledge
-of making a bargain, as he had of Greek or
-Latin. He calculated the worth of my services to a
-pfennig, and, as I found afterward, if I had made
-the slightest opposition, would have beaten me down
-still lower; for he had a pleasure in such sort of
-triumphs. I let him arrange it all his own way,
-however, and left to his own generosity, he probably
-added a little to the sum which he had intended to
-give. It was agreed that I was to teach his daughter
-two hours during the day, and as soon as all this
-was settled, he pushed me by the shoulders toward
-the door, saying, “There, go, begin at once. You
-have three hours before dinner. I must go to my
-recitations.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>I found the way back to the room where Louise
-Haas was seated, and where I passed two hours of
-every day, for nearly nine months, and generally the
-greater part of every Sunday. She was a pretty
-creature, with small, well-shaped features, a very
-graceful form, though plump and rounded, and a
-bright, clear complexion, which varied a good deal
-under different emotions. Her mother had died, I
-found, some four or five years before, of that pest of
-northern countries, consumption. There was nobody
-in the house but herself, her father, and two
-women servants: hardly any society was admitted
-within the doors, but grave old professors, with long
-hair, not very well combed; and thus tutor and pupil,
-like Abelard and Heloise, were left alone together
-for many an hour—I having her father’s
-commands to teach her English, and any thing else
-I could. Father Bonneville’s good lessons, however,
-some knowledge of the world, and many hard experiences,
-together with other feelings, which I
-cannot well describe, prevented me from even thinking
-of taking any unfair advantage of my situation.
-It was natural, however, that in such circumstances,
-young acquaintance should speedily ripen into intimacy,
-and intimacy into friendship. Nay, it was not
-unnatural that little marks of kindness and tenderness
-should pass between us; for though very calm
-and gentle, she was of a loving and caressing disposition.
-I found her far from dull—a very apt scholar;
-but sometimes there were things she could not comprehend,
-and then she would look smiling in my
-face, and ask if she was not very stupid, and let her
-hand drop into mine and rest there, as a messenger
-sent to beseech forbearance.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>We were both very young; she not more than
-eighteen, and I about twenty, and strange new feelings
-began to come over my heart toward her. I
-will not even now say that it was love; and then, I
-would not inquire what it was, at all. It was a tenderness—a
-feeling of gentle, quiet affection—a fondness
-for her society—a pleasure in seeing those soft
-eyes, look into mine, and a gratitude for the kindness
-she ever showed, and took every opportunity
-of showing. What she felt, I learned afterward;
-but let me turn once more to the course of my life
-in Hamburgh.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>By the kind offices of the good old professor, I obtained
-several other pupils, and I had the great happiness
-of finding my income exceed my expenditure.
-I threw off my traveling garb; I brought out from
-my knapsack the clothing which I had so carefully
-saved: I gained admittance into some of the society
-of the town, and though I do not think I was ever
-very vain, whatever vanity I had, received some
-encouragement. But my favorite resort was still
-the professor’s house. He and his daughter were
-my first friends in the city, and I became more and
-more intimate with him every day. He was pleased
-with the progress his daughter made, and he was
-also pleased with the little assistance which I gave
-him, from time to time, in different works he was
-compiling. While I wrote for him, or looked out
-passages for him, he could fidget about the room at
-his case, and get into every corner of it in five
-minutes. At the end of a month, I had a general
-invitation to spend my evenings there whenever I
-pleased—and I did please very often. Then, after a
-while, I was sent with Louise to church; for she
-went regularly, although I can’t say that the professor
-ever wore out the steps of any religious edifice,
-and I took care not to allow my Roman Catholic
-education to prevent my joining a Protestant
-congregation, with my pretty little pupil. Indeed I
-was hanging at this time very slightly by the skirts
-of the garments of Rome. I had been reading the
-Bible a great deal lately. I read some Romanist
-books also, but I found that the two did not agree,
-and I liked the Bible best. Besides all this, as
-spring succeeded to winter, and days lengthened,
-and suns grew warm, there was every now and then
-a moment of very sweet, spring-like happiness,
-when after attending the church, Louise and I took
-a farther walk, till the hour of the good professor’s
-dinner. Sometimes we had another walk, too, in
-the evening, and sometimes he accompanied us to
-his little garden with the summer-house, near the
-gate of which I had first met him. It was all very
-delightful; and my ambition, which had once been
-strong and wide, had by this time shrunk to very
-small proportions. I could have been contented to
-linger on there, with every thing just as it was, for
-an indefinite period of time. But it must be remembered,
-that not one word, regarding love, ever passed
-between Louise and myself, except when it occurred
-in passages of books. I am afraid, however, that
-those passages, about this time, occurred very often.
-Louise was fond of them, and I turned them up
-easily for her.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Thus it went on—for I must not dwell upon details—for
-about eight months, when it so miserably
-happened that an aunt of the professor’s, somewhat
-younger than himself in years, but screwed up by
-ancient maidenhood to the sharpest and very highest
-tone of the human instrument, arrived. She was all
-eyes, ears and understanding. God knows, she might
-have heard every word that passed between Louise
-and myself, and seen all that we did too—if looks were
-excepted. But it so happened that at this time the
-influence which France exerted over Prussia was so
-great, that the Protectorate of the latter power over
-the northern circles became a mere tyranny exercised
-for the purposes of the French Republic, principally
-for the persecution of emigrants. The position
-of such persons as myself became very dangerous;
-and the necessity of my removal from
-Hamburgh was more than once talked of at the
-professor’s table, where I now dined frequently. It
-was even suggested that I should engage a passage
-in a vessel which was about to sail in a couple of
-months for the United States of America.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>I could not help remarking that Louise turned
-very pale when these things formed the subject of
-conversation, and during six weeks of fluctuating
-anxiety, I saw with sincere apprehension that she
-lost health and spirits. I dared not, I could not venture
-to take the idea to my heart that that dear,
-amiable little creature suffered on my account; but
-still I did my best to cheer and comfort her, and perhaps
-became a little more tender in manner and fond
-in words, than I had ever dared to be before. It
-was now always, “dear Louis” and “dear Louise;”
-but I do not think we went any further than that.
-Often, often would she ask me questions regarding
-my past history, and as much was told her as I knew
-myself. She seemed to take a deep interest in it;
-but as it was a subject of deep interest to me, that
-I looked upon as natural. However, things had gone
-on in this way for some time, my pretty Louise still
-failing in health, not losing, but rather increasing her
-beauty by the daily walks which she now forced
-herself to take.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>One day, at length, the explosion came. I met the
-old professor at the top of the stairs, and instead of
-turning me over at once to Louise, he beckoned me
-into his own study, and then in a very excited state
-flew from corner to corner of the room, glancing at
-me angrily, but saying nothing. This conduct,
-became so painful, that I at length broke silence,
-saying, “You wish to speak with me, Herr
-Haas.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Ay, sir, ay!” he replied with vivacious sharpness,
-“Have I not cause to speak?—have I not
-cause to feel anger? Here, I took you in as a beggar,
-and trusted you as a friend, and you have betrayed
-my trust by winning my daughter’s affections
-under the pretence of giving her instructions. Answer
-it how you may, sir, it is a bad case.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“As to winning your daughter’s affections, my
-dear sir,” I replied, “I think you must be mistaken;
-for I can boldly appeal to her to say, whether I have
-once spoken on the subject of love toward her, or on
-any other to justify the imputation you cast upon
-me. I have always respected your hospitality, and
-owing you so much as I do, I should have conceived
-myself base indeed to seek her affection without
-your consent. We have been thrown much together
-and—”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>But nothing would satisfy the old man. He interrupted
-me hastily, catching at my words, and saying,
-“that the only way of proving my sincerity was
-to quit Hamburgh at once; that his aunt, who inhabited
-a country-mansion, not many miles distant,
-had pointed out to him—in the course of a morning
-lecture which she gave him, before her departure
-that day—all that was going on between Louise and
-myself; that a ship would soon sail for America, and
-that if I really entertained the honorable sentiments
-I expressed, I would take my passage in her, and
-leave his household to recover its peace.” He
-asked me, in a taunting tone, if I knew that his
-daughter was his heiress, and ended by forbidding
-me the house.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>I retired gloomy and desponding, and although he
-had said nothing to lead me to such a conclusion, I felt
-almost certain that he had spoken to Louise, before
-his conversation with myself. There was a sort of
-gloomy consolation in this conviction, and I hesitated
-as to whether I should quit Hamburgh, or remain
-in the hope of some change of feeling upon his
-part. There is such a thing as half-love, and I
-knew—I felt—that I could make the dear girl happy,
-and could be very happy with her myself. The remembrance,
-however, that I had nothing on earth—that
-I was an outcast—a beggar, in reality, and that
-she was probably rich, decided me. I went down
-to the wharf. I took my passage. I paid a part of
-my passage-money, but I learned—with a strange
-mixture of feelings—that the sailing of the packet
-was put off for a whole month, which made nearly
-seven weeks from that day. The master took pains
-to inform me, that this delay was occasioned by apprehension
-on the part of his owners, of the English
-cruisers, which, at that time, were behaving as ill
-to neutral vessels, as they were behaving well in
-combats with the enemy. I cared little for the reasons,
-however, but went away, not knowing whether
-to be pleased or sorry for this respite.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>I could not quit Hamburgh without feelings of
-regret—I could not leave Louise without a bitter
-pang—I had done what was right—my conscience
-approved; and if accident kept me in the town, and
-fortune favored me with any change of circumstances,
-Hope might plume her wings without any
-self-reproach.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>I little knew with how much anguish that period
-of delay was to be filled.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Good Madame Steinberger had evidently heard
-something of what had occurred at the professor’s
-house. She had been very kind to me, and was
-kind still; but her reverence for Professor Haas
-somewhat jostled with her regard for her young
-lodger. I would sit for hours in the evening, dreaming
-of the past, thinking of Louise, dwelling upon
-happy hours that were never to return. And then
-Madame Steinberger would come and attempt to
-comfort me, saying, that it was mere boy and girl’s
-love, and would soon pass away: that I and the
-young lady would both soon forget, and that she
-doubted not to see us both happy parents.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>If she had taken up a red-hot skewer, and thrust
-it into my heart, she would not have produced
-more wretchedness than she did by her mode of
-consolation.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>No consolation—no thought—no philosophy was
-of any avail. It was a period of intense bitterness,
-filled with many varied emotions, but all of them
-most painful. Had my love been more ardent,
-more vehement than it was, my condition would
-probably have been less sad. I should have striven—I
-should have resisted—but a dark and gloomy
-feeling took possession of my mind, that all who
-loved me, all who felt an interest in me were destined
-to be lost to me, almost as soon as I felt the
-blessing of their sympathy and kindness. I was
-more miserable than I can describe: there was nothing
-to stimulate: to spur on endeavor: to rouse up
-dormant energy. It was all dull, blank, monotonous,
-melancholy inactivity.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Three weeks had passed in this manner, when
-one evening, as I was sitting in the larger room,
-where good Frau Steinberger had kindled a fire,
-with my feet upon the andirons, my head leaning on
-my hand, and a book which I had vainly endeavored
-to read, fallen on the floor by my side, there was a
-step in the passage and the door opened. I took no
-notice: I cared for nothing: I was without hope
-or expectation: I was once more cast upon the
-world—the fragment of a wreck upon the wide
-ocean.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Suddenly a voice sounded near me, which I knew
-right well. “Louis,” it said. “Louis, can you
-forgive me? Louis, will you save me—will you
-save my child?”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>I started up, and gazed upon the figure before
-me. I could hardly believe it was my old friend
-the professor, so pale, so worn, so sorrow-stricken
-was his look.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>I instantly clasped his extended hand in mine.
-“My dear, good friend,” I said, “what have I to
-forgive? I never sought to bring sorrow or discomfort
-to your door—I would rather have died. That
-is all I have to say. Tell me what I have to do—tell
-me what you would wish, and I am ready to
-do it.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Come to Louise,” he said, wringing my hand
-hard. “Come to Louise—I have been a fool—a
-madman—a mercenary wretch. You only can save
-her—Come to her—come to her at once!”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>I trembled violently, but I snatched up my hat,
-exclaiming, “let us go,” and rushed out of the house
-before him.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>We flew along the streets, running against every
-body—seeing nobody—heeding nobody. I asked no
-questions. I knew there was something terrible;
-but I was going to Louise, and felt that I should
-soon know all. All houses stood upon the latch in
-Hamburgh in those days. I opened the door—I
-went in—I rushed up the stairs—I heard him cry
-“stop, stop”—but the trumpet of an angel would
-not have called me back. I entered her sitting-room.
-She was not there. I heeded not. I knew
-her bed-room lay beyond. I passed on and opened
-the door.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>She was seated in a chair, with all the bright color
-gone from her cheek, except at one point. A physician
-stood beside her, with a glass in his hand.
-One old maid-servant was kneeling at her feet, wrapping
-them in flannel. A handkerchief, dyed with
-blood, was at her lips. Could I pause? No, had
-it killed both her and myself. In an instant I was
-across the room, at her feet, and my arms around
-her.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Louise, my own Louise,” I cried.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>She looked at me with surprise—then gazed beyond
-me to her father, who followed close—then
-cast her arms round my neck, and leaned her head
-upon my shoulder, saying in a faint voice, “Louis,
-dear Louis, you have saved me—I feel—I am sure,
-I shall live to be your wife.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Hush, hush,” said the physician. “You must
-not speak at all.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“You shall be his wife; you shall be his wife!”
-cried her father eagerly.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“I am very happy,” said Louise.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“I must have perfect silence,” said the physician,
-“all will go well now; but every one must
-quit the room.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“No one shall tend her but myself,” I said; “but
-I will be as still as night. She is mine—mine by the
-deepest and the holiest ties, and I will not leave her
-till this is staid.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Nor did I; but through the live-long night, with
-the physician and the fond old servant, I remained
-silently watching, aiding, comforting, supporting her.
-From time to time the spitting of blood returned;
-but, at length, ice was thought of and procured.
-That checked it effectually. Two hours passed
-without the slightest return of that direful symptom,
-and lifting her in my arms, as a father might a child,
-I placed her in her bed. Then seating myself on a
-little footstool at the side, I laid my head upon the
-same pillow. I thought she would sleep more happily
-so. Her heavy eyes closed quietly; her breathing
-became calm and gentle; she slept; and ere
-many minutes had passed, I slept beside her.</p>
-
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;margin-top:1em;'>——</p>
-
-<h2 class='nobreak'>THE FADING OF THE FLOWER.</h2>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The hemorrhage returned no more. Louise and I
-awoke at nearly the same moment, just as the morning
-light was streaming in through the windows, and
-she smiled sweetly to see me there, with my head
-upon her pillow, and the good old servant sitting fast
-asleep at the foot of her bed.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Poor girl, she fancied that all danger was passed;
-that she would soon be well, and that we should be
-very, very happy. But, alas! grief and disappointment
-too frequently shoot with poisoned arrows, and
-the venom remains in the wound, after the shaft has
-been extracted. She was not suffered to rise that
-day, and was forbidden to speak more than a monosyllable
-at a time. The good physician quoted the
-Bible to her, saying—“Let your communication be
-yea, yea, nay, nay, for of more cometh evil.” On
-the following day, however, she rose, and gradually
-was permitted to talk more and more, without any
-evil effect being produced. Then for a short time
-we were very happy. The good, old professor did
-all that he could to make up for his previous harshness,
-consented to any thing that we wished. Spontaneously
-promised two thousand dollars to set
-Louise and myself off in life, although we were to
-make our abode with him, and talked of obtaining a
-professorship for me in the university. Luckily his
-avocations kept him from home a good deal each
-day, otherwise his daughter’s health would have
-suffered more, from his continually running in and
-out of the room. She made some progress during
-the first week after I returned, regained strength in
-a certain degree, and I was full of hope for her, although
-she had an unpleasant cough, very frequent,
-though not violent. We talked of the coming days,
-and of our marriage, as soon as she was quite well,
-and I measured her finger for the ring, and kissed the
-little hand on which it was to be placed. Oh, they
-were very, very pleasant dreams, those; and I felt
-that I could be exceedingly happy with that dear,
-gentle girl—nay, I fancied that our happiness was
-quite assured; for when I looked into her eyes, they
-were so full of light and life, that one could hardly
-fancy they would ever be extinguished in death and
-darkness. Her bright color did not come back into
-the cheek indeed, except at night, and then it was
-not so generally diffused. Nevertheless, she felt
-herself so well—we all thought she was so well—that
-our wedding-day was fixed for about three
-weeks afterward. As the time approached, however,
-she was not quite so well again. The
-weather changed, and two or three days of cold,
-damp wind succeeded, which seemed to affect her
-very much. It was judged expedient that our marriage
-should be delayed for a fortnight; for she felt
-the least breath of air. Nevertheless, we kept up
-our spirits well for a little while, and she talked confidently
-of regaining health, and being just as well as
-ever. But as the days went on, I perceived with
-anxiety and alarm, that she grew weaker. I used to
-take her out whenever the air was soft, and the sun
-shone warmly, for a little walk, in the hope that it
-would restore her strength, and I soon found that she
-could not go so far, without fatigue, as at first; that
-to climb even the little slopes which exist in Hamburgh,
-rendered her breathing short, and increased
-her cough. Our walks became less and less, till,
-at length, she went out no more. A change, hardly
-perceptible in its progress, was gradually wrought
-in her. I saw little difference between one day and
-that which preceded; but when I looked back to a
-week or a fortnight before, and compared the present
-with the past, I could not close my eyes to the conviction
-that she was worse—much worse.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>After a while, she took her breakfast in bed; but
-made an effort to rise as early as she could, in order
-to come and join me in the sitting-room. She ever
-spoke cheerfully, too, and seemed to have no thought
-of danger. But her father was in a terrible state; for
-he couldn’t close his eyes to her situation, and I do
-believe, that if the sacrifice of his life by the most
-painful kind of death would have purchased his
-child’s recovery, he would have made it without a
-hesitation. I deceived myself more than he did. I
-had heard of the effect of change of air, and I had
-talked to Louise so often about her recovering
-strength, and going with me for a short time, to
-some milder climate, that I had almost persuaded
-myself, against conviction, that it would be so. I
-fancied, too, that I could make her so happy, she
-must needs recover; for I knew what a blessed
-balm happiness is, and thought it must be all-effectual.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>As she could no longer go to church, the good
-minister of the parish came several times to see her,
-and as he had a friendship for me, he would often
-talk with me afterward—not that I liked his conversation
-now as much as formerly; for it was very
-gloomy, and he strove evidently to fill my mind with
-the dark anticipations which occupied his own. The
-rays of religious hope, he endeavored to pour in too;
-but it was earthly hopes I then clung to, and I did not
-like to have them taken away.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>One morning, after he had been with Louise, I
-found some tears upon her cheek, when I went in to
-see her; for by this time she did not rise till very
-late in the day, and all painful restraint being removed,
-I used to go and sit by her bedside, and read
-to her for some hours each morning. I was half angry
-with the old man for depressing her spirits; but
-she soon recovered her cheerfulness, and it was not
-till two days afterward, that I learned he had told her
-she must die.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>I was sitting beside her, with my arm fondly cast
-round her, as she sat propped up by pillows, and I
-was indulging in those dreamy hopes of the future,
-which I still entertained, and thought she entertained
-likewise. I talked of our proposed journey to the
-South, and of escaping the cold, winter weather of
-Hamburgh, and of myself and her father—for he
-was to go with us in this dream—nursing her like a
-tender plant, till the bright summer came back again
-to restore her to perfect health.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>She turned her sweet eyes upon me, with a gentle
-but melancholy smile.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Do you know, dear Louis,” she said, “I begin
-to think that time will never be?”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>I looked aghast, and laying her hand tenderly in
-mine, she added—</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Nay, more, love, I fear I shall never be your
-wife, unless—unless you can make up your mind to
-take me as I am now, and part with me very
-soon.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“O, Louise, Louise!” I cried, pressing her to my
-heart, with the dreadful conviction first fully forced
-upon me, by words such as she had never used before.
-“Do not, do not entertain such sad fears. Be
-mine at once, dear girl, and let me take you away
-from this bleak place—by slow, easy journeys—by
-sea—any how.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>A single large tear rose in her eyes, and leaning
-her head upon my shoulder, she said in a low, hesitating
-voice—</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“I will own, it would be very sweet to be your
-wife, were it but for a day—yet what right have I,”
-she added, “to ask you to make me so, in such a
-state as this—to leave you so soon, so young a widower?”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Let not such thoughts stop you for a moment,
-Louise,” I answered. “It will be a blessing and a
-comfort to me. I can then be with you always—never
-leave you—nurse you by night and day, and if
-the fondest cure can save you, still keep my little
-jewel for my life’s happiness.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>She pressed her lips fondly upon my cheek, and
-asked—“Do you really feel so, Louis?”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“From my heart,” I answered. “There is no
-blessing—no comfort I desire so much. Let it be
-this very day—may I speak to your father?”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“If you will,” she answered with a bright smile,
-and I know not that I ever in life felt such satisfaction
-as in seeing the happiness and relief I had bestowed
-upon that dear girl.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The old professor was ready to grant every thing
-we could desire. He was now the complete slave
-of her will; but the marriage could not take place
-that day, for some few formalities had to be gone
-through and arrangements to be made. It was appointed
-for the next evening, however, and when
-Louise awoke upon her wedding-day, she sent the
-maid to tell me that she felt much better.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>She knew what happiness that news would give
-me, and I was soon by her side to confirm the assurance
-with my own eyes.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>She was better. She looked better. She had
-rested well, and she was able to rise an hour earlier
-than she had done before. The incorrigible liar,
-Hope, whispered her false promises in the ears of
-both, I believe, and the hours passed more brightly
-during that afternoon, than they had done for many
-a day before.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>At eight o’clock the Protestant minister came, and
-with him a notary. The physician was the only
-other person present, except Louise, her father, and
-myself. The irrevocable words were soon spoken,
-the contract signed, and the ring upon her finger;
-but as I put it on, a cold, sad feeling came upon my
-heart. It had been somewhat tight when I first
-bought it, and now it was very loose. We were
-even obliged to wind some silk round it the next day,
-to prevent it from falling off.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>For three days, happiness seemed to have all the
-effect that I had ever attributed to it in my brightest
-fancies. Louise was certainly better, and she looked
-so happy, so cheerful, walked up and down the passage
-hanging on my arm, with a step so much lightened,
-that even the old professor caught the infection
-of our hopes, and began to talk of future days.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The medicine soon lost its power over the invincible
-enemy. We had been married just six days,
-and during the three last, Louise had been feebler
-again, and very restless at night. The sixth day was
-a warm, sunny one. The light shone cheerfully into
-our room, and she talked to me of the sweet aspect
-of the summer, and made me open the window to
-let in the gentle air.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>One room of the old professor’s house looked out
-upon the ramparts, planted with trees. It was a
-large room, seldom used; but Louise asked me to
-go in there, and open the windows before she rose,
-saying, that she should like to sit and look at the
-green leaves.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Her father came in before she was dressed, and
-when she was ready, we took her out of her room,
-with a hand resting on the arm of each, and led her
-into that saloon. I had placed an arm-chair for her
-near the window, and she approached feebly and seated
-herself in it. The air was very balmy: a clear,
-sparkling sunshine brightened the foliage: the sky
-beyond, was as deep and blue as her own eyes, and
-she gazed for an instant, with a look of intense
-thought upon the scene before her. Then looking
-up in my face as I stood beside her, she placed her
-hand in mine, and said—“Very beautiful!”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>They were her last words. The next instant, a
-strange, vacant expression came into those deep
-thoughtful eyes, a slight shudder passed over her:
-she leaned more and more toward me; and I had
-just time to kneel by her side, and catch her head
-upon my shoulder. I felt one faint breath fan my
-cheek—and Louise was gone.</p>
-
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;margin-top:0.5em;'>(<span class='it'>End of part first.</span>)</p>
-
-<hr class='tbk118'/>
-
-<div><h1><a id='faded'></a>FADED AND GONE.</h1></div>
-
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;'>———</p>
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;font-size:0.8em;font-weight:bold;'>BY MISS S. J. C. WHITTLESEY.</p>
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;margin-bottom:1.5em;'>———</p>
-
-
- <div class='poetry-container' style=''>
- <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' -->
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>Faded and gone are the Summer’s sweet flowers,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Strewn by the wintry winds o’er the dark mould!</p>
-<p class='line0'>Smilers, when sunlight stole through the soft hours,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Down from yon azure their leaves to unfold.</p>
-<p class='line0'>Bright were their beauties when breezes swept on</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;O’er the blue waters to gather perfume;</p>
-<p class='line0'>Whisperers lovely, now faded and gone!</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Slumberers lonely ’mid dullness and gloom!</p>
-<p class='line0'>Oh! but the Spring-time will come o’er the plain</p>
-<p class='line0'>Wooing the whispering blossoms again,</p>
-<p class='line0'>With its soft tread o’er the emerald lawn—</p>
-<p class='line0'>Then we’ll not mourn for the faded and gone!</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>Faded and gone are the ones that we cherished,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Fondly and true, in our bosoms of yore!</p>
-<p class='line0'>Slumbering buds may awake o’er the perished,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;<span class='it'>Their</span> faded hearts shall unfold here no more!</p>
-<p class='line0'>Sweet is the music that Memory flings</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;O’er the oasis of Life’s early love,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Where flew the Angel on fluttering wings,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Bearing our lost through the starlight above;</p>
-<p class='line0'>Oh! there’s a land where the perished ones bloom,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Where cometh never a shadow of gloom!</p>
-<p class='line0'>Fadeless and fair is that glorious dawn—</p>
-<p class='line0'>Then we’ll not mourn for the faded and gone!</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>Faded and gone are the sweet dreams of childhood,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;When the young wings of the Spirit were free,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Folded or furled ’mid the shadowy wildwood—</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Sweeping the surface of life’s sunny sea.</p>
-<p class='line0'>Time’s fading finger hath sullied the leaf,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Stainless and lovely in childhood’s pure years;</p>
-<p class='line0'>Pages of beauty once brilliant, yet brief,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Wear its deep impress of changes and tears!</p>
-<p class='line0'>Oh! but the blossoms of childhood will bloom</p>
-<p class='line0'>Brightly again, o’er the shadowy Tomb!</p>
-<p class='line0'>Infinite gladness flow endlessly on—</p>
-<p class='line0'>Then we’ll not murmur for the faded and gone!</p>
-</div>
-</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend -->
-
-<hr class='tbk119'/>
-
-<div><h1><a id='bow'></a>THE BOWER OF CASTLE MOUNT.</h1></div>
-
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;margin-bottom:1em;font-weight:bold;'>A REMINISCENCE OF HEIDELBERG.</p>
-
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;'>———</p>
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;font-size:0.8em;font-weight:bold;'>BY AELDRIC.</p>
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;margin-bottom:1.5em;'>———</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>It was early in the June of 184-. I had been sitting
-in a German railroad-car since early morning,
-vainly trying to amuse myself in discovering a degree
-of singularity in some one of the many passengers
-that were picked up at the different stations
-between Kehl and Heidelberg. I had taken a seat
-in the third class car, expecting there to find a miscellaneous
-mingling of the busy classes of Germans;
-but, alas, for my entertainment! it was one class too
-high—I should have taken the fourth. After I had
-chosen a seat as near comfortable as the wooden
-benches would admit of, I perceived, to my disappointment,
-that I was surrounded by that class of
-people, neither high enough nor low enough to be
-interesting; every one seemed completely wrapped
-up in himself. There was scarcely any conversation,
-and each face soon settled in the repose of quiet
-German thoughtfulness. Meerschaums ere long
-made their appearance out of the depths of profound
-side-pockets; and, as far as dependence on my fellow-passengers
-was concerned, there was none, to
-beguile the tedium of a long journey. A long, heart-felt
-pull, a quiet wink of satisfaction thereat, a
-somewhat varied fingering of the pipe-bowl to press
-the ashes—that was all. Diagonally across the car
-and nearly facing me, sat a very pretty girl whom,
-from the timid wandering of her deep-blue eyes, I
-judged to be unmarried. I watched her some time
-to observe where she recognized a protector, but her
-eye rested nowhere particularly; it seemed uneasy,
-searching, and I concluded she was going but a short
-distance, and alone. Just as the train was moving,
-a handsome young man stepped in the door, looked
-around the car, was recognized by a calming of the
-uneasy eyes, and took his seat before them, in the
-middle row, turning his back toward me. As he
-bent toward her and whispered, she did not smile,
-her face seemed too thoughtful; she only gazed in
-his eyes and spoke not a word. Ha! thought I, I
-see how it is, and settled myself to enjoy a morsel
-of sentimentality. My gentleman soon finished his
-first course, and then leaned back in his seat to chew
-the cud at his leisure. I thought he relished it very
-much, for it was full twenty minutes before he made
-another motion; during all which time the young
-lady did little but gaze at him, it appeared to me,
-with perfect satisfaction. After a time the gaze of
-satisfaction changed to a look of concern, and finally
-of marked uneasiness. She leaned forward, spoke to
-him, yet he heeded her not. She arose suddenly,
-and I was so absorbed in anxiety that I almost arose
-with her. He started as from a lethargy, and darted
-to the vacated corner, whilst she quietly took his
-seat and I saw her face no more. I still saw the
-same blue eyes in the corner, “yet I saw them but
-a moment,” for the lids soon closed over them, and I
-knew that the kind sister had given up her corner
-for the lazy brother to sleep in. “Corn-cobs twist
-his hair,” said I, for I was doubly provoked, first, at
-his deception, and then, I saw the pretty face no
-more. I did not indulge in romance again, but
-turned my eyes and my thoughts to the outer world.
-The monotony of the company made me stupid; the
-prolonged, premeditated winks over the smoking
-bowls made me drowsy, and the flitting lights and
-shadows of the varied scenery seemed to beckon me
-to dreamy lands of wine and song and ghosts and
-chivalry. Beyond the green slopes to the eastward,
-the Black Forest stretched afar to an immeasurable
-distance; mysterious outlines swelled and dwindled
-in the darkness; a huge head peered over the tree-tops;
-another and another; the ghouls stared at us,
-it seemed to me, “more in sorrow than in anger.”
-I could not tell why, but their malignity seemed forgotten
-in fear and wonder. There was a scream, a
-terrific scream—of the locomotive—and pell-mell,
-helter-skelter, heels up, head down, away they
-darted like a squad of frogs before a bouncing poodle.
-I was fully awakened to the surprising loveliness of
-the landscape around me, but I had little time to
-enjoy it—another scream, a rumble, a series of
-jerks, and we were at the—terminus, in Heidelberg.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>I was soon in the good care of mine host of the
-Hoff, who certainly possesses one of the most desirable
-locations and establishments for entertainment
-in the world. Close by the railroad depot, it is
-about a mile from the town, and a beautiful avenue
-leading all the way, is lined with elms and lindens
-on either side. On the ascent of a steep hill which
-rises abruptly from the town, and about mid-way to
-the summit, is the celebrated ruined castle of Heidelberg,
-whose lords once swayed the feudal sceptre
-over all the surrounding country. The gay conversation
-at the <span class='it'>table d’hôte</span> was in strong contrast with
-the, not moodiness but apathy, of the railroad car.
-A large <span class='it'>musical-box</span>, upon the plan of our pocket
-toy of that name, but as large as a good-sized wardrobe—discoursed
-sweet music the while. The
-company which I found introduction to, was sufficiently
-entertaining to withhold me from my contemplated
-walk toward the ruins that evening, and the
-beautiful promenades in front of the hotel were quite
-gay. Early next morning with an agreeable English
-party I set out for the castle. As we neared it
-along the straight avenue, we advanced farther and
-farther from a flank view. The front came slowly
-out with its red towers and crumbling battlements,
-and the vast structure grew in the majesty of its
-ruins. As we approached the foot of the mount, a
-road crossed the avenue, leading toward the river to
-the left, to the right leading up the mountain. We
-ascended a considerable time after having lost sight
-of the castle, and as yet, so early was the hour, we
-had seen no one astir. No habitation of any kind
-was along this road, which, before us, appeared to
-descend from the solitude of the hills. We clambered
-up, up, up, until at last, said one:</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“We surely are as high as the castle, and I do believe
-we ought to have taken this left-hand road just
-below us.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“No, no!” said another, “let us go on and trust
-to fortune; for in so beautiful and romantic a place
-we cannot go amiss—maybe that we shall make
-some grand discovery, too, and then we will jointly
-write a book to put it before the world.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The conversation was cut short by a noise up the
-road; we looked, and there stood a man leaning
-against a tree by the road-side, waiting for his oxen
-and cart which were moving slowly down the road
-above him. He called to his cattle in a loud voice,
-and hummed an air as he leaned back against the
-tree again. Just at that moment the piping cry of
-a lark rang through the wood, and ere it died away
-he peeled forth in boisterous answer—</p>
-
-<div class='blockquote'>
-
-
- <div class='poetry-container' style=''>
- <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' -->
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>“Ho! for the deep where the sea-bird sings!</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;Ho! for the bowers where his merry voice rings!”</p>
-</div>
-</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend -->
-
-</div>
-
-<p class='noindent'>Here, as he perceived us, he halted in his strain and
-walked demurely by his cart. In a few words it
-was determined among us that we should inquire of
-him the road to the castle; but as each one declined
-the honor of gaining the information, upon the plea
-that perhaps his style of German might be unintelligible
-to the unpolite ears of the rustic, I volunteered
-the undertaking.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Good morning, my friend?” I hailed him. “Be
-so good as to tell us the way to the castle.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Do you wish to see the castle?”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“That is what we have come especially for.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“O, ’tis a magnificent sight!” (and he gazed
-fixedly on one of the ladies, a gay young beauty, as
-he spoke.) “O ’tis a magnificent sight! No one
-can tell better than I how beautiful it is. I have
-seen it in the morning when the sun was rising on
-it, making its red walls look like gold. I have seen
-it in the day, in the evening, and (I’ll tell you) I
-have seen it by the bright moonlight when—O, I
-have loved every old stone of it dearer than I do my
-life! But if you wish to see it, keep the right-hand
-road at the first fork, and follow it as far as you can,
-and when you come to the bower—Ah, I’ve seen
-it in the dark nights, too, curse it! curses on it!</p>
-
-<div class='blockquote'>
-
-
- <div class='poetry-container' style=''>
- <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' -->
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>“Ho! for the bowers where his merry voice rings!</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;Ho! for the billows where——”</p>
-</div>
-</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend -->
-
-</div>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Here I lost the words of the boisterous music as
-he swung off and hurried to overtake his cart, leaving
-us all not a little astonished.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“What an eccentric person!” whispered Miss
-Thornton to me, the lady who had attracted his gaze
-in so marked a manner, and the only lady in the company
-who understood German.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Ah! I see,” said I, “that admiration is never
-lost upon a lady, no matter from how humble a
-source it come. He was put beside himself, poor
-fellow! no wonder he appeared eccentric.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“It was not that,” she said. “Did you not see
-how he changed when he spoke of the arbor, as if
-some remembrance associated with it excited him?
-No—I think there is or was some one that I look
-like. I <span class='it'>would</span> like to see any one that looks like
-me, no matter who she be. It’s so unusual, is it
-not?”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Vain puss!”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Then how merry he got again,” she continued,
-unheeding me. “No, I don’t understand such sudden
-changes—without any cause, too. He’s remarkably
-fine-looking for one in his condition—I
-beg pardon, sir, I wonder what bower he can mean;
-I never heard of any on the way to the castle.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Nor I, but we shall surely find one; and when
-we do, I fear this little incident will engage my imagination
-more than the historic associations of the
-castle.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>We journeyed on higher and higher, until we
-came to the fork of the road. Here nearly all were
-inclined to bear away to the left, around the mountain,
-fully satisfied that we were high enough. I
-explained that the young German had been very
-precise in his directions to keep to the right, and all
-yielded to him, rather to banter fortune than from
-persuasion that we were going the right road. On
-we toiled, and the road at last came to an abrupt
-termination upon the very summit. A high-road
-bore off to the right, that we could trace a mile or
-two over the hills, and only a tangled path led toward
-the west. Leaving the company to await the
-result, I proceeded to explore the path, and soon
-came in view of the town lying in the plain below.
-I stood enchanted with the scene. A gently sloping
-country receded several miles to the Rhine; meandering
-all the way through fields and forests, the
-legend-consecrated Neckar glistened in the morning
-sun, and beyond, the vine-clad hills of France, the
-country of the Moselle, crowned the horizon. Far
-away to the south could be traced the winding
-Rhine almost to its native mountains, and to the
-north it was lost among the hills of the Odenwald,
-as it widened and straightened onward toward the
-plains of Holland. I hailed the party as it came up,
-all were amazed at the magnificent landscape, and
-each avowed he was well repaid for the toilsome
-journey. A few steps farther brought us to a rugged
-stair of broken stones, and some ten or twelve
-feet below, on a small natural terrace, was an over-grown
-<span class='it'>bower</span>.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“O, the bower! the bower!” exclaimed every
-one. There it was; and as we reached it, a full
-view of the dismantled towers and crumbled walls
-of the castle opened below us, almost beneath our
-feet. The German was right. He thought we
-wished to <span class='it'>see</span> the castle, not to go to it, and we had
-gained the finest view of the finest ruin in the North
-of Europe. It is not my intention that my pen shall
-wander among those most interesting testimonies of
-grandeur passed away. Suffice it to say, we returned
-home well sated with pleasure, to recruit our
-humanity by a very late breakfast at twelve o’clock.
-We had walked fasting from six.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>From that day the bower became one of my favorite
-haunts during the few weeks of my stay in
-Heidelberg. One day, with a view to further exploration
-of the heights to the eastward of the bower,
-a region I had often tried to get a view of from the
-Castle Mount, I set out on horseback, and after
-reaching the summit, took the road that we had seen
-over the hills on our first visit to the castle. For
-two or three miles it was nothing but steep hills and
-narrow valleys. Not a sound was heard save the
-twittering of birds and the tumbling of waters; not
-a particle of verdure was to be seen but the dark,
-distant forests, and near, the quivering foliage of the
-vine as it climbed up, up to the very pinnacles of the
-terraced heights. Beyond, the country spread out
-into fields and meadows and grass and waving grain.
-Farm-houses and villages were clustered about.
-Vineyards lingered upon the knolls, and scarce ventured
-a distance down the sunny slopes. After a
-long day’s ride I was approaching the bower by another
-road: the sun was about setting; I was tired
-and thirsty; when I was tempted to dismount by a
-little streamlet that fell into and ran down the road-side.
-An orchard extended from a small cottage to
-the road, and the gate was only upon the other side
-of the way. I led my horse over, and after hitching
-him to the gate-post, was about reaching a harvest-apple
-that hung near me, when my attention was
-drawn by a small group in front of the cottage door.
-An old gray-haired man was sitting upon a bench
-watching a young child that was rolling on the grass,
-when my appearance put an end to his occupation.
-He looked at me with no expression of pleasure,
-evidently not relishing so unceremonious an attempt
-upon his orchard. I resigned my thieving intention,
-and covered the manœuvre by an advance straight
-up to the door. A young woman arose and picked
-up the child, and then resumed her seat upon the
-grass-plat.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Good evening, my friend,” said I, for his silence
-was awkward—“I am very tired and warm with a
-long ride, and was tempted by that cool spring and
-your shady trees to dismount and take a moment’s
-rest. I am glad to take my rest in such good company.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“You are welcome,” said he. “I perceive you
-are a stranger; an Englishman I suppose?”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“No, I am not an Englishman; I am come from
-a land much farther off than England, and have seen
-a great many Germans in my country. I am an
-American.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“What’s that he says, Mary?” cried a voice
-from within the house. “Tell him Roderick is not
-at home; tell him he wont be at home till to-morrow.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Hush! do, mother! The gentleman has not
-come for Roderick.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“O, yes he has. He knows Roderick has got
-money and wants to spend it. You know—”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Do hush, mother! It’s a stranger, and what’s
-more, it’s an American.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“What does he say about Karl? Ask him when
-Karl is coming back.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The tears started to the young woman’s eyes;
-and as I saw her press her babe to her bosom, I
-knew who Karl was. She seemed to struggle with
-the question that rose to her lips:</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“You said, sir, that you have seen many Germans
-in America: did you ever see anybody there
-from Heidelberg? Did you ever see Karl Wagner
-there?”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>I told her, I never saw Karl Wagner there, and
-asked her if Karl might be her husband; which fact
-I knew, however, before I asked. She answered,
-that he was; that he was living at a place called Buffalo,
-and had lately sent her money to take her to another
-place called New York, where she would meet
-him. Her father was anxious that she should go, but
-her mother, who was now doating, would resent the
-very mention of it, and was always expecting Karl
-to <span class='it'>come home</span>. Her brother Roderick, she said, had
-been unfortunate, and was bent on going with her;
-but of this, her mother knew nothing. They were
-afraid to tell her, her reason was so weak that they
-feared she would sink into utter imbecility.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The sun was set, and night was drawing on. I
-arose to resume my journey, for I was anxious to
-reach the foot of the mount before dark; but the old
-man offered me a plate of the harvest-apples that had
-tempted me, and pressed me to take some supper
-with them. If I would only be so kind—they wished
-to ask me so many questions about America. I am
-not sure that I should have accepted their invitation
-had not my eye, as I arose, fallen upon a picture
-hanging against the opposite wall of the little room.
-A second glance showed the marked and benevolent
-features of the old man, looking out from the canvas.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Ha—ha!” said he, “that is a fine picture. Step
-in the door, and you will see more of them.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>I did so, and to my surprise, beheld four others
-hanging wherever space enough could be found to
-contain them. One was the portrait of the old woman
-whom I now saw for the first time; another of
-Mary, and the remaining two were, a young man apparently
-thirty years of age, and a boy of sixteen.
-The old man followed me with his eyes.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Ha—ha!” said he. “I see you admire them.
-Poor Roderick! There are few who can beat him
-in his art—but you would not think so to see him
-now. These are the last he ever made. He paid his
-last tribute to those he loved best.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The old man spoke in a very sorrowful tone. I
-began to feel a deep interest in Roderick, whatever
-his misfortunes might be.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Is not Roderick your son?” I asked, supposing
-that I must have made a mistake.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Yes—that one I suppose you don’t know; that’s
-Karl Wagner, that’s Mary’s husband—a good son he
-is. And that’s Tommy, that’s our Tommy—sturdy
-Tommy, as they call him. That’s the last one Roderick
-ever made.” And the old man brushed his
-eyes with his shriveled hands as he spoke.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Where does Roderick live?” I asked. “Is he
-married?”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Hush—here!”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Why is it, that a young man of such talent gives
-up a glorious art, when it opens a field to him to enable
-him to rise above his condition, to gain wealth,
-honor, fame?”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Hush!”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Go, ask Count Reisach!” cried the old woman,
-starting up. She was in a frenzy. Her eyes glared,
-her bent form trembled from head to foot, her hands
-were clenched, but hung dangling at her side, and
-she seemed to make superhuman efforts to raise
-them. They were paralyzed. Tears coursed each
-other down her cheeks as she cried—“Go ask Count
-Reisach! Go find him! Go ask poor Father Klaus!
-Go down and ask Almighty God why he let—oh!”
-she cried, sinking on her knees—her voice choked;
-sobs, spasms convulsed her frame; still her face was
-raised, it seemed to me in prayer, but her hands
-clasped not, they seemed to weigh her to the earth,
-as they hung lifeless beside her.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Mein Got! O, mein Got!” cried the old man,
-as he took her in his arms. “O, my poor frau—would
-to God thy poor spark of reason would go
-out, that I might see this heavy burden off thy
-soul!”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>He raised her tenderly as a child, repelling my assistance,
-and when he had placed her in her arm-chair,
-left her to Mary’s care, and came to resume
-his seat upon the bench, outside the door.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“She never grieved so for herself, and she has had
-her own troubles too. But she knows not all yet—O,
-mein Got! mein Got! who will tell her—for he
-must, he must, he must!”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>He closed his eyes—as it were—to shut out so near
-a view of misery. A loud voice was heard approaching
-in the road, and as it became more distinct, I
-started as I recognized the words—</p>
-
-<div class='blockquote'>
-
-
- <div class='poetry-container' style=''>
- <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' -->
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>“Ho for the deep where the sea-bird sings!</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;Ho for the bowers where his merry voice rings,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;Ho for the billows, the billows, the billows!”</p>
-</div>
-</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend -->
-
-</div>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Here the gate flew open, and my acquaintance of
-castle memory stalked up the path, followed by a
-sturdy lad.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Father, it’s all arranged,” he bawled. “It’s all
-arranged. I’ve made up my mind. There are three
-in Heidelberg—”</p>
-
-<div class='blockquote'>
-
-
- <div class='poetry-container' style=''>
- <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' -->
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>“Ho for the billows where the storm-king dwells!”</p>
-</div>
-</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend -->
-
-</div>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Stop, Roderick. You know your mother. See,
-too, here is a stranger.” He paused, saluted me as
-though he had never seen me before, and turned to
-the youth who followed him.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Where are the cattle, Tommy? That’s right—you
-must be smart, you know; remember what’s on
-your shoulders!”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Tommy said he knew, and was going to be smart.
-Mary appeared at the door and invited us to supper.
-The mother was gone, and the old man seemed relieved
-when he missed her, for he looked around the
-room, and the cloud left his brow, ere he asked a
-blessing on his humble table. After supper he lighted
-his pipe; Tommy took his hat and disappeared, and
-Roderick touched my arm as he moved toward the
-door. His boisterous humor was gone, and he calmly
-and mannerly asked me to be seated.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“She is worse to-night,” he said. “They have
-sent Tommy for <span class='it'>him</span>.” After a moment, he continued;
-“I recognized you at first, and for my rudeness
-I must plead the state of mind I was in. The
-truth is, I have this day arranged my departure for
-America, to take my sister to her husband; and the
-relief from the burden of suspense I had long been in
-made me quite forgetful of myself.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“I do not know,” said I, “that you are doing best
-in taking this course. You are an artist, and I must
-bear witness to the promise of success you make in
-your art; but, as I begin to feel a deep interest in
-yourself, your family, and—I think I may say with
-truth—in your sorrows, for some strange misfortune
-seems to brood over this house, I feel at liberty to
-remonstrate with you for abandoning what seems to
-me your duty to yourself, and your father’s family.
-I could not give you hope of better success where
-you purpose going than you would probably meet
-with here. The best of our own artists reside in Europe,
-for we have no models at home. Have you
-always lived here with your parents?”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Until within the last few weeks I spent most of
-my time in the town; my occupation kept me very
-much from home. Of late, I have done nothing but
-assist my father here.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“It seems to me that you might assist him more
-with your brush than with your ox-goad.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“If I could use it perhaps I might; but I can paint
-no more here. I am going, and Tommy and I have
-trimmed his vines and sown his crops, and when
-Tommy shall be able to take care of the vines himself,
-I shall be gone.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“That is where I cannot excuse you. You are
-not suffering from poverty; you are not driven to
-emigrate; and it is in leaving your infirm parents
-when they are bowed down by affliction that I think
-you do not do your duty by them. They both seem
-proud of you, and still—you appear to love them
-as you ought.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“The affliction is mine! You were at the bower?”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Yes.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Well, I could go there with you, and tell you a
-tale of sorrow that you would never forget. You
-cannot judge. I know that my father and my poor,
-fond mother grieve—it is for me; but what is their
-grief to mine? It is but the reflection of mine; it is
-like the cold, borrowed light of the moon—mine, the
-scorching sun. I am plunged from heaven into hell!
-This spot is to me, now, of all the world, like the
-deepest abyss of infernal misery; and, but for Father
-Klaus, our good old priest, this shadow of hell had,
-ere this, been bartered for the reality. He has kept
-alive a spark of reason in me, that I hope may yet
-guide me through the world. Here he is—I see they
-have sent Tommy for him. She always forgets her
-own sorrow, when she sees him.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Well Roderick, my son,” said the old priest, as
-he paused at the door, “I fear you have been imprudent
-again. These outbursts of yours will bring
-the poor old mother to the grave. You have heard
-something since, and it has set you beside yourself,
-poor boy.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“No, Father, I have heard nothing since I told you
-Count Reisach was in Cologne; that is three weeks
-ago, and from that time I have sought no news but
-for your sake. The only news I have to tell you is,
-that my departure for America is determined upon;
-I have made up my mind to go.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“That’s right; that’s right!”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“You will tell her?”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Leave it to me. God will surely temper the
-wind; but not to-night, not to-night!” And he
-sighed as he entered the house and left us alone
-again.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The moon was just rising, and as I pressed the
-poor fellow’s hand (<span class='it'>poor fellow</span>, I knew he was a
-<span class='it'>poor fellow</span>. I pitied him sincerely, but I knew not
-why), he returned the pressure warmly, and asked
-permission to visit me the following day. I appointed
-an hour, and galloped over the hilly road toward
-home. As I approached the end of the path that led
-off to the bower, I could not help turning my eyes
-thither, my mind was full of Roderick, and I could
-not disconnect the idea of him from the idea of the
-bower. Had I known his story then as I do now, I
-could have sighed with the sighing trees, that shook
-and sighed all night on the gloomy Castle Mount.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>I knew that I had a treat in store for Miss Thornton.
-I knew what fresh interest I would awaken,
-when I should tell her that the rough peasant was an
-accomplished artist. That evening and the next
-morning, it was a subject she always recurred to
-when we were alone, she would talk of nothing
-else, and frequently sought opportunities of conversing
-apart.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The next day, Roderick appeared at the appointed
-hour, but his garb was changed. He wore no longer
-the coarse clothes of a peasant, and I could not but
-observe that his altered exterior harmonized much
-better with his bearing, and his intellectual features.
-Several of the party who had made with me the
-morning excursion to the Castle Mount were still at
-Heidelberg, and as we frequently met on our rounds
-upon the promenade, <span class='it'>she</span> was the only one, of all,
-who recognized my companion. His object seemed
-to be to learn, as far as my judgment extended, the
-probable prospects that awaited him in the United
-States, in the prosecution of his art. He dwelt upon
-the subject calmly, and was perfectly self-possessed
-until we approached Miss T., when he stopped, and
-regarded her with the same fixed gaze that I had remarked
-upon our first interview. From that moment
-he was a changed person. A strange uneasiness
-seemed to take possession of him. His face was
-pale, and at last he turned abruptly down the avenue.
-I followed him, and cast one look back at her, ere I
-started. She and her companion had paused; he
-was speaking to unheeding ears, for her gaze was
-fixed on us, her face was pale, and wore the expression
-of sudden alarm. He led me hastily along the
-avenue; I followed, I scarce knew why: but he
-could have led me anywhere. After a while—</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“I cannot tell you,” said he, “until we reach the
-bower.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>And we began to ascend the mountain. At last,
-we pushed aside the briars that blockaded the little,
-descending path that led to the bower. The magnificent
-ruins appeared spread out below us, and I half
-forgot the sorrows of my eccentric friend in lively
-feelings of pleasure. After a pause, which I was unwilling
-to interrupt (for I saw in his countenance, in
-his whole bearing, evidence of a severe interior
-struggle), he said—</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“When I am able to reflect, I know that I am imposing
-on your generosity in some way, but I scarce
-know how. It is only your goodness which has
-prompted you to undergo all this fatigue and trouble;
-and now I feel bound, I wish to open my heart to
-you, but it seems as though all I can tell you cannot
-compensate you. At any rate, it will be a relief to
-me, and hereafter it may help the vividness of your
-recollections of Heidelberg. I thought I should never
-tell this story, or speak this name again; but that lady
-recalled, in so many ways, so lively an image of my
-lost Ella, that I <span class='it'>must</span> unburden my heart of its excess.
-She was the niece of Father Klaus. Her parents
-died when she was very young, and the good
-old man took her into his own charge. No parent
-could have loved her more, or watched over her
-with more tender solicitude than he did. As she
-grew up, he taught her many things which, but for
-him, would have been entirely beyond her reach;
-but she repaid him, for an apter scholar never learned,
-and never had man a child who loved him more.
-She grew to be very beautiful, and was talked of for
-her beauty all the country round; but I had won her
-heart when it was a child’s, and as we grew up
-my only fear in life was for that, and all my efforts
-were only for <span class='it'>that</span>. Father Klaus knew how matters
-stood nearly as soon as we, and was contented.
-When we grew up, he ratified and blessed our betrothal,
-and turned his attention to my own prospects.
-Through his influence with the old Count Reisach,
-I was enabled to enter the academy of Heidelberg,
-and, thanks to the count’s generosity and patronage,
-I had laid up nearly enough to gain Father Klaus’s
-consent to our marriage. The day was fixed; but
-nearly a year distant, and the good old man was to
-perform the ceremony himself. Often, and often, as
-I returned home from town have I turned down this
-path, and here was Ella waiting for me, to sit
-a while, and then stroll home together. Here
-we built this very bower, when we were children,
-with our own hands. She chose the place. Here
-we would sit and watch the setting sun; and I, as a
-proud young artist, would descant to her upon the
-harmony of the glowing colors, scarce brighter than
-her own bright eyes and glowing cheeks. Here
-would we come and spend hours together—she would
-bring her needle, and I would sketch the castle, the
-mountain, the town, the plain, the forest, and every
-object that could afford a pretext for remaining.
-Sometimes, when she was very busy, I would gaze,
-and gaze into her sweet face and forget every thing
-but that. Then she would look up and smile, and
-come and bend her head over my shoulder to see the
-progress of my sketching, and find the whole sheet
-covered over with images of herself, and Ella, Ella,
-Ella, scribbled in every form, and ornamented with
-every possible device. Then she would steal her
-little hand over my eyes, and say I was a ‘lazy, lazy
-boy.’ Perhaps, sir, you cannot know why I speak
-of these little things, and you may deem them trifling;
-but, sir, it is a true saying that life is made up of trifles.
-It was so that she wound about me a web that
-could not be unwound; all these endearing trifles cannot
-be reversed, one by one, and the web uncoiled.
-There is but one method of release, and that is, by a
-mighty effort to burst the whole fabric—even then,
-the shreds will hang about, and float in every breath
-of memory. Here, time after time, we repeated our
-vows of love and fidelity, and eagerly looked forward
-to the day that would crown our happiness.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“In the meantime Count Reisach died, and his son,
-a youth of some twenty years, succeeded to the
-estates. He was known ere that time, through all
-the land, for his boldness, courtliness and generosity,
-courted and sought by all the nobility and gentry—for
-he was handsome and rich. Moreover, he was a
-connoisseur in almost all the fine arts. I was often
-employed by him in copying his paintings for presents
-to his friends. Once he induced me to part
-with a portrait of Ella, which I was very proud of,
-and which he had seen at Father Klaus’s. I often
-saw him there. One evening last April, as I was
-returning from town, I turned down the path, for I
-knew I should meet Ella here. I was startled by a
-shriek. I cried, Ella! Ella! In a moment I was
-here upon the spot, and she rushed into my arms,
-weeping and frightened. To all my questions as to
-what had alarmed her, she only sobbed. I seated
-her, and examined all about the bower; I thought
-of serpents, and searched under rocks, peered over
-the bushy precipice, but could discover nothing.
-We could not sit and enjoy that evening—she was
-agitated, and I led her home. She did not go often
-to the bower after that. One evening, it might be
-a fortnight after, upon appointment, I came here
-again to meet her, and I found her weeping. As
-before, I took her home. Another time, she was
-not weeping, but seemed silent, thoughtful, depressed.
-We went home again. I was puzzled,
-pained; I knew not what to think or do, and she
-revealed nothing to all my entreaties. She would
-not go to the bower any more. At times she wore
-a deadly paleness for days, and again she would glow
-with a flush, as though a fresh impulse were given
-to her life. She was evidently declining. All the
-neighbors watched and pitied “poor Ella;” they
-pitied Father Klaus, but none knew the extent of
-the agony I nursed in secret. When I would beg
-her to walk with me to the bower that her and my
-childish hands had built, and where we always were
-so happy, she would turn pale and tremble—I dared
-not speak to her of the bower any more. Frequently
-I would detect her eye resting upon me as if in pain,
-as though <span class='it'>she</span> pitied <span class='it'>me</span>; a starting tear would glisten
-in her eye for a moment, and she would turn away;
-immediately she would be as composed as before.
-I was pained, shocked; and a presentiment of some
-awful calamity seized me. One evening I was detained
-in town later than usual. I had been for
-several days employed in restoring a painting for
-Count Reisach, and the next day would see it
-finished. ‘It is not finished yet,’ he whispered. The
-count had hurried me to work early and late. It
-was a relief to be so busily employed. As I wended
-my way up the mountain, I thought of Ella all the
-way—I must go to her that evening, tired as I was.
-When I came to the end of the path, I could not resist
-a moment’s visit to the bower; for since pleasure
-there seemed to be henceforth forbidden fruit to
-me, I longed for a moment even of its pain. It was
-growing dark, and as I brushed past yonder bush, I
-thought I saw something move, just where you sit.
-I stopped, and distinctly saw the cloaked figure of a
-man disappear down that precipice. I rushed forward,
-for thoughts of some dark crime crowded
-upon me, and I nearly fell upon the prostrate form
-of a woman at my feet. I knelt, and raised the head
-upon my knees; it was bare, and the dark locks uncoiled
-upon the ground.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Here he paused. I never before or since beheld
-such a mute picture of agony. He lowered his head
-upon his hands, and the big drops fell fast upon the
-ground. He tried not to restrain them. At length he
-raised his eyes inquiringly, and I feared not to say,</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“<span class='it'>It was Ella.</span>”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>He nodded. After a few minutes, which I indulged
-him in without a question or remark, he continued—</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“I bounded, as if stung by a serpent, and I hurried
-to Father Klaus. I told him, I know not what.
-Then I hurried home; and for days, they told me, I
-raved. When I recovered I learned that they
-were gone.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Who?”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Count Reisach. No traces of them could be
-found until within three weeks, when we learned
-that they had been in Cologne.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Were they—” I could not finish; he gave me
-an inquiring look, and I thought his severe part was
-going to be acted again. I had not the heart to
-<span class='it'>think</span> of it more.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“From that time my poor mother has been a
-paralytic, and now we fear her reason is almost
-gone. Father Klaus is an older man, but his feelings
-are all for others; he is constantly with <span class='it'>her</span>.
-Now, do you wonder that I hate this spot, and all
-that I can see from here? Here have I known my
-happiest and bitterest moments. From this day I
-see you no more!” exclaimed he, starting to his
-feet, and gazing on the work of his hands: “Here
-I bid <span class='it'>an eternal</span>, an eternal farewell to you and—”
-He took his pencil and wrote (he would not speak
-it)—I looked—“Ella Corbyn.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Her father was an Englishman,” he said.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>I pressed his hand—“Adieu!”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Adieu!”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“To meet again?”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“To meet again,” said I; and we parted. As he
-disappeared over the brow of the hill, I could hear
-the poor fellow trying to lighten his crushed heart
-with his boisterous sea-song. The next morning
-Mr. Thornton and his daughter left for England.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>A few weeks after that I was in Paris. Months
-rolled by; September was come, and Roderick’s
-story had nearly slipped from my mind. One fine
-evening I was sauntering along the Champs Elysées,
-where one is sure to see at that time, all the notables
-that may be luxuriating in the French capital; when
-I recognized in a gay equipage the beautiful features
-of Miss Thornton. She was paler than when
-I had seen her last, but still very beautiful. I watched
-her some moments, to catch her eye; and when she
-did look toward me, I took the liberty of saluting
-her. She flushed, and turned her head aside, but did
-not acknowledge the salutation.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“So much for my impudence,” said I; and I
-saluted no one else that evening.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>A day or two after, I was dining with some friends
-at Vantini’s. Opposite us at the table d’hôte, were
-two vacant chairs.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“We are unfortunate to-day,” said my friend,
-“for I was anxious you should see a very pretty
-English girl who sits opposite. Clara,” said he,
-turning to his wife, “what is the name of our little
-beauty across the table? I never can think of it, for
-I can’t help calling her Miss Mary.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Oh,” said Mrs. F., “I wish you to know them—so
-agreeable; and going on a tour through the
-United States. They are a Mr. and Miss Thornton—father
-and daughter; and as you are going soon, I
-do wish you could go together.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“So, so!” thought I; “here is a little bit of adventure
-if they only come in.” And I consoled myself
-with the thought that I could not come out
-of it worst. Soon a couple of servants ushered a
-lady and gentleman along the hall, and Mr. and Miss
-Thornton appeared before me, she glowing with
-health and beauty. They both greeted me warmly,
-which somewhat astonished my friends as well as
-myself. I was taken aback, but I had been not a
-little nettled, and was determined not to be outdone,
-so said as little as I could.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Why!” said Mrs. F., “you are old friends,
-then! All my anxiety was thrown away!”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“I supposed we were,” said I, “until last Tuesday
-evening.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Last Tuesday evening!” exclaimed Miss T.
-“Why, what happened? You puzzle me.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Merely that I took the liberty of recognizing <span class='it'>an
-old friend</span>, and was <span class='it'>cut</span>—that’s all.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“You puzzle me still more. Where were you at
-the time?”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Below the place d’étoile.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Are you sure it was on Tuesday?”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Perfectly sure.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>She burst into a laugh, and her father smiled.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“It must have been the longest cut I ever gave
-in my life. I only wish I <span class='it'>could</span> cut that far off—I
-know some who should suffer”—and she laughed
-again. “It’s the first time I ever heard of a sane
-gentleman, standing in the Champs Elysées, to take
-off his hat to a lady in Brussels.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The laugh was decidedly against me, and we were
-soon on the best of terms.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>That night a new train of thoughts engaged me.
-Poor Roderick’s story returned, and the memory of
-his grief with all its thrilling intensity. <span class='it'>Had I seen
-Ella?</span> It must be. That pale, thoughtful, <span class='it'>hiding</span>
-countenance could be only hers. Poor Roderick!
-I feel for you deeply! I wonder if your sorrow feels
-any alleviation in your new country! I fear not.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The next day I made sufficient inquiry to certify
-me that I had seen Count Reisach, and with him,
-Ella. I saw them once again, it was for a moment,
-and she seemed paler still; as I gazed, again she
-turned her face away. Poor Ella! how she shrank
-from the eyes of men! There was a deep remorse
-preying upon that wasting beauty; a secret sorrow
-and shame blighting every bud of pleasure and of
-hope. How bitter will thy end soon be, poor trusting,
-fragile daughter of Eve!</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>I saw them no more. I walked every day with
-Miss Thornton to show her the lady that she so
-closely resembled; but we did not see them. They
-were probably seeking new scenes to beguile her
-short life of its fleeting days.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>A few weeks after, we were in Havre, awaiting
-the sailing of the first packet ship for New York.
-We had determined to “go together,” as Mrs. F.
-had desired, and our rooms were taken in the
-Zurich, one of the fleetest of the line. At that time,
-a line of French government steamships was plying
-between Havre and New York; and one, which
-was advertised to sail on the day we arrived, was
-to be detained some ten days, to undergo a repairing
-of machinery. Havre is the great port of emigration
-for the French, German, and Swiss emigrants;
-and the French steamships, offering low fares and
-speedy passage, generally sailed with their between-decks
-well filled with emigrant passengers. On this
-occasion, some two hundred poor creatures had engaged
-passage upon the detained vessel, and few had
-the means to await in Havre her postponed day of
-departure; consequently there was a rush upon the
-office of the sailing packets. We went aboard about
-3 o’clock, P. M. The lower deck was crowded
-with steerage-passengers; and a single glance sufficed
-to show that they were three-fourths Germans. I
-could not help wondering how many of the two
-hundred poor emigrants below me, I might have
-seen before, as I journeyed through their country a
-few months ago. Many a one, I thought, I might
-have seen before his cottage door, or through the
-window of his work-shop, ere poverty had <span class='it'>at last</span>
-decreed, that he <span class='it'>must</span> go to the land beyond the
-seas, far from his fatherland.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The ship was moving from the dock. The crowds
-upon the piers cheered us on. The stars and stripes
-sprung into the breeze. O, how my heart bounded
-to feel again the protection of my country’s flag!
-The first time, for years, did the feeling of <span class='it'>home</span>
-thrill through my bosom: and tears of patriotic love
-and pride rushed to my eyes. <span class='it'>I</span> was going <span class='it'>home</span>;—there
-<span class='it'>they</span> stood in melancholy groups, gazing
-their last on land contiguous to their own, upon the
-receding shores of the old world. The tri-colors in
-the distance soon faded into one indefinable hue.
-The green hills of Normandy came forth once again;
-but “twilight gray soon in her sable livery all things
-clad;” and we were away, away upon the sea.
-After tea, we all came upon deck. The last loom
-of the land was fading away; and my thoughts and
-feelings, memory and fancy, were busy with home
-before, and the friends and associations I was leaving
-behind—perhaps forever. I was overflowing
-with expectation and regret. Miss T. stood beside
-me, kindly hearkening to my outpouring feelings.
-The emigrants were all below, save a few scattered
-ones, and a larger group gathered about the fore-mast.
-They were leaving country, home, kindred,
-all, to seek a refuge in a foreign land: I was leaving
-friends that I had made in many lands; countries
-and scenes made dear to me by long and intimate
-association; returning to a home wherein death had
-made sad changes during my long sojourn: she was
-going on a trip of pleasure, and present enjoyment
-was her occupation. Suddenly I heard an exclamation—“Oh!”
-and I thought she was taken ill. I
-looked, and she was pointing to the group around
-the mast; I saw and recognized a face I could never
-forget. We continued to gaze in astonishment.
-The few women who were there were all in tears;
-one, whose head was bowed upon her knees, sobbed
-violently. The men were drinking farewell to Fatherland,
-and many an absent friend and fair, was
-pledged by name. Then there was a cry for “a
-song!” “a song!”—“Let’s have a song from Roderick!”
-Immediately there pealed out those boisterous
-but musical tones that I had heard before, far
-away from there. My heart thrilled as I listened.
-Every voice hushed. Even the sailor, as he trod
-the deck, paused to listen to that fine, deep voice, as
-it rang through the ship.</p>
-
-<div class='blockquote'>
-
-
- <div class='poetry-container' style=''>
- <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' -->
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;THE EMIGRANT’S SONG.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>Ho for the deep where the sea-bird sings!</p>
-<p class='line0'>Ho for the bowers where his merry voice rings!</p>
-<p class='line0'>Ho for the billows where the storm-king dwells!</p>
-<p class='line0'>Ho for the winding of the merry-maids’ shells!</p>
-<p class='line0'>Ho for the storm where the lightning’s flash!</p>
-<p class='line0'>Ho for the fury of the merry waves’ dash!</p>
-<p class='line0'>The spray and the roar and the thunder’s crash!</p>
-<p class='line0'>Ho for the breeze that shall cling to the mast!</p>
-<p class='line0'>Ho for the day when the storms shall be past!</p>
-<p class='line0'>Then hail to the home that the outcast sighs for!</p>
-<p class='line0'>Hail to the liberty the patriot dies for!</p>
-<p class='line0'>Hail to the great who will ne’er cast scorn to us!</p>
-<p class='line0'>Hail to the land where the free shall be born to us!</p>
-<p class='line0'>But alas for the friends that we leave far away!</p>
-<p class='line0'>And alas for the tears when there breaks another day!</p>
-<p class='line0'>Alas for the wo that shall bow the hoary heads!</p>
-<p class='line0'>And alas for the home where another step treads!</p>
-<p class='line0'>Alas for the murmuring hill-side rills!</p>
-<p class='line0'>And alas for the shadow on the ever-green hills!</p>
-<p class='line0'>Alas for the weeping of the purple-crowned vine!</p>
-<p class='line0'>And alas for the glory of the golden-rimmed wine!</p>
-<p class='line0'>Farewell to the land where our forefather’s sleep!</p>
-<p class='line0'>And we’ll hie to our rest on the wide-spread deep.</p>
-<p class='line0'>Farewell to the vine, to the home, and the tears!</p>
-<p class='line0'>And we’ll dream of the land where the good ship steers!</p>
-</div>
-</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend -->
-
-</div>
-
-<p class='pindent'>As the last sound died away upon the water, the
-singer caught sight of me, and the fair girl beside
-me, and disappeared from the deck. The listeners,
-as they dispersed to their several meditations, took
-up the words of the song; each one whatever best
-suited his feelings at the time. It was strange to
-read the various echoes as they rebounded spontaneously
-from the hearts of the emigrants. When the
-air of the song was forgotten the words were not,
-and each sang or mumbled them to music of his
-own—sometimes wild and pretty, sometimes discordant
-enough. One would long for</p>
-
-<div class='blockquote'>
-
-
- <div class='poetry-container' style=''>
- <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' -->
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>“The deep where the sea-bird sings,”</p>
-</div>
-</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend -->
-
-</div>
-
-<p class='noindent'>and I knew he had not many regrets for what he
-left behind. Another, a drunken wretch, yelled</p>
-
-<div class='blockquote'>
-
-
- <div class='poetry-container' style=''>
- <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' -->
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>“For the fury of the merry waves’ dash,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;The spray and the roar and the thunder’s crash.”</p>
-</div>
-</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend -->
-
-</div>
-
-<p class='noindent'>An old man, as he stole away, uttered a plaintive
-moan</p>
-
-<div class='blockquote'>
-
-
- <div class='poetry-container' style=''>
- <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' -->
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>“For the home that the outcast sighs for;”</p>
-</div>
-</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend -->
-
-</div>
-
-<p class='noindent'>and I thought I could read in his furrowed face
-traces of a life of penury and suffering. He was
-going with a lightened heart, transplanted in his decaying
-age. But by far the greater part dwelt upon
-the memory of their forsaken homes and kindred;
-their thoughts were gazing afar upon “the shadow
-on the ever-green hills.” Ere long they had nearly
-all disappeared, gone to their crowded chamber to
-be rocked asleep. Only a few women remained
-beneath the suspended lantern, seated by the mast.
-The one I had noticed weeping, had not raised her
-head during all this time. When she did raise it,
-she looked up to heaven and her face shone with religious
-fervor. The tears still flowed as she breathed
-her heart-felt prayer. I could see every movement
-of her lips, and I alone perhaps, of all who saw,
-could tell the source of every tear that flowed. I
-felt awed, unconscious of myself. My whole being
-seemed merged in the intensity of hers. A supplication
-sprang unbidden to my lips for the paralytic
-mother, for the gray-haired father, in their utter,
-utter loneliness; for it was Mary with her baby on
-her bosom. She spoke calmly, slowly, solemnly.</p>
-
-<div class='blockquote'>
-
-
- <div class='poetry-container' style=''>
- <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' -->
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;“THE WOMAN’S PRAYER.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>Let us bow, lowly now, ere we seek forgetfulness</p>
-<p class='line0'>In the blest balm of rest, of trial-worn spirit’s fretfulness,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Let us call, first of all, pity on our parents’ age,</p>
-<p class='line0'>For they’re chastened, for they’re hastened on their ending pilgrimage.</p>
-<p class='line0'>O be mild to them, child to them, gentle son of Bethlehem!</p>
-<p class='line0'>Never suffer that their rougher path bring sooner death to them!</p>
-<p class='line0'>O remember that December passes cheerlessly away—</p>
-<p class='line0'>Let their sorrow, on the morrow, mind thee of its Christmas day!</p>
-<p class='line0'>And leave us not, grieve us not, Father of the wandering!</p>
-<p class='line0'>Care for us, spare for us, now while time is squandering!</p>
-<p class='line0'>We are going, far, unknowing, strangers into stranger land—</p>
-<p class='line0'>But with thee only we’re not lonely, resting in thy hollow hand!”</p>
-</div>
-</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend -->
-
-</div>
-
-<p class='pindent'>This was the woman’s prayer—and I devoutly
-responded “Amen,” as I wiped my eyes and went
-below. I thought of the poor old man, the helpless
-mother, Tommy, the bower, all, and I became unconsciously
-an actor in the scene before me, as I
-prayed—</p>
-
-<div class='blockquote'>
-
-
- <div class='poetry-container' style=''>
- <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' -->
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>“O remember that December passes cheerlessly away!</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;Let their sorrow, on the morrow, mind thee of its Christmas day!”</p>
-</div>
-</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend -->
-
-</div>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The next day Roderick did not appear upon the
-deck; in truth there were very few who did. After
-indulging him a few days, which I charged to account
-of sea-sickness, and still not seeing him, I
-found my way into the steerage, and found the poor
-fellow more sick in mind than in body. He had
-spent the greater part of his money in trying to
-drown his grief; and now that he thought he had
-nearly succeeded, he looked none the better for the
-success. That face, he said, so like <span class='it'>hers</span>, he could
-not escape from now; he must remain near it for
-days, weeks. He could almost curse the ill-favored
-steamship, whose delay had not only doomed him
-to the crowded steerage of the packet, but to weeks
-of torture he could not escape from. He would not
-appear at all upon deck, and the air of the between-decks
-was almost poisonous. In a few days he was
-confined to his berth with a burning fever. I had
-confided to Miss Thornton every thing, except the
-history of Ella, which I disguised in such a way as
-not to diminish her sympathies for the invalid. One
-day, to my great astonishment, she had, with her
-father, gone to minister to him, and spoke with gladness
-of the better condition she had left him in. He
-talked to her very tenderly of Ella. They went,
-she and her kind father, to visit him every day. I
-saw how the fire was consuming him, and endeavored
-to interpose. I told Mr. Thornton every thing,
-all; but they did not see his condition as I did.
-Whenever I would go, strange! he would always
-beg me not to let them delay coming; but he was
-so exhausted with fever, that I attributed this wonderful
-change, rather to imbecility or delirium, than
-to a change of resolution. Poor Mary was always
-by her brother’s side: even her poor babe lay neglected
-for him. More than a fortnight he lay in this
-miserable condition; yet I was more than sorry
-when I felt in his pulse the returning slow beat of
-health, and saw his eye calm into quiet enjoyment
-of the congratulations which poured in upon him.
-I was shocked. It is true a mountain of misery
-was moved away, but his <span class='it'>reason was gone</span>.
-Miss Thornton went once again to visit him, only
-once: and I shall never forget her look of agony and
-self-reproach as she returned rather hastily to her
-room. I never knew what passed at that interview.
-Perhaps she saw for the first time, that while she
-deemed she was soothing his misery by her presence,
-she had fed it to madness. He rapidly recovered
-and seemed happy, for he always smiled
-when he asked me why the captain kept Ella
-locked up in the cabin and sent her tender messages—<span class='it'>which
-I dared not give</span>. The last I ever saw of
-him was in New York, when I was about to leave
-the ship. A young man came aboard as we hauled
-up to the wharf, and I knew from the portrait I had
-seen <span class='it'>in the cottage in Germany</span>, that it was Karl
-Wagner. He soon found them; and the last I saw
-of poor Roderick, as I went ashore, he was unfolding
-to the astonished Karl a scheme he had to get
-Ella away from the captain, whilst poor Mary hung
-upon her husband’s arm, her heart bursting with joy
-and grief.</p>
-
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;margin-top:1em;'>——</p>
-
-<h2 class='nobreak'>ELLA CORBYN.</h2>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Be it remembered that Roderick, in speaking to
-me on the Mount of Heidelberg Castle, said—“Her
-father was an Englishman.” It was true. He was
-the younger son of a noble English house, though
-Ella lived until her twentieth year unconscious of
-the fact. She knew he was an Englishman, she
-knew he had been a soldier, but of his family she
-knew nothing. Better far had it been for her had
-she remained forever in ignorance of every circumstance
-of her ancestral distinction, or had she had
-some other instructor than he who craftily sowed
-the seeds of pride and discontent, that he might reap
-a glowing harvest of the charms of a lovely woman,
-to her soul’s utter desolation. By night and by
-stealth, like the Evil One, did he sow tares among
-the richest grain, among a perfect luxuriance of womanly
-virtues; by day, too, like the husbandman
-when the time of the harvest comes, did he pluck
-up weed and fruit, did he trample on pride and virtue,
-and cast them forth together to wither under
-the scorching solstice of remorse and shame. He
-tore away the flower and left the stem to die. Poor,
-poor Ella! the only jewel of both soul’s and body’s
-inheritance was charmed away—what wonder then
-that both should droop in poverty, or that, making
-common friendship from common desolation, these
-mutual foes, the only ones religion ever made, should
-compromise to each other the loss of both health
-and principle, in fatal reconciliation and despair!</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The father of Ella Corbyn, an officer in the British
-army, was disabled in action during the Peninsular
-war, and after the peace of 1815, retired to the
-continent, where he married the beautiful Katrina
-Klaus, supported himself and Katrina many years on
-his half-pay, until about the period of Ella’s birth,
-when he and the half-pay departed together. His
-daughter, of course, had no recollection of him, and
-never possessed more than the one single article of
-his property, a miniature on ivory, of a lady, young,
-but by no means beautiful. She never knew who
-it was; her mother could not tell her when she first
-gave it into little Ella’s tiny hands, but supposed it
-was some one of Mr. Corbyn’s family, probably a
-sister—and so the matter rested for the while. The
-neighbors could tell her scarcely any thing of her
-father; they had seen him when he first came into
-the neighborhood, but his marriage with his beautiful
-wife, and subsequent removal to a neighboring
-village, followed so quickly, that they could give no
-account of him, nor further description than that of
-his personal appearance. Of the circumstances attending
-his death all they knew was, that two
-strangers stopped one afternoon at the public-house,
-that Mr. Corbyn spent part of the evening with
-them and went home early; the next morning he
-was shot in a duel, but the old captain who stood his
-friend in the affair, thought it no business of his to
-inquire what the difficulty was about. He left no
-property of any value, and his widow supported
-herself and Ella on her little patrimony four years
-longer, when she, too, died and left the child a helpless
-orphan. This was the time for her uncle, the
-priest, to come to her assistance. He took her into
-his care and provided for her early education by consigning
-her to the Sisters of Charity in Cologne.
-Here she remained five years; and when her good
-uncle, deeming that he could, with better justice to
-his finances, superintend her further progress at
-home, took her back, she displayed so much ability
-and judgment that she soon reigned, a little queen,
-over his modest household.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Ella was in truth a lovely child. In her earlier
-days, when she played alone by the road-side, before
-the priest’s lawn, not a stranger passed but stopped
-to take a second look at that bright, spiritual little
-face, gazing half-smilingly, half-pensively, half-hidden
-beneath dark ribbons of straying locks. Her
-complexion was exceedingly fair, not blonde; her
-features, not classical, were <span class='it'>petits</span> and regular; her
-face sufficiently full, but playful every where—a
-pretty child: but from almost infancy the striking
-characteristic of her face was <span class='it'>soul</span>; never did it appear
-inanimate, never did it lack character—even in
-her sleep the marked corners of the softly-closed
-lips and little, dimpled brow, betokened self-possession;
-but when she smiled, a perfect sunshine of
-thought and feeling overspread her countenance, and
-she was irresistibly beautiful. As might be expected,
-the five years’ tuition she had enjoyed had
-developed the intellectuality of her beauty apace
-with the cultivation of her mind, and wherever and
-whenever a childish passion lay suppressed by growing
-religious principle, its disappearance gave place
-upon her countenance to the sublime, triumphant
-sentiment that crushed it. Mr. Klaus, or as he was
-termed by his parishioners, Father Klaus, was passably
-skilled in music; and under his systematic instruction
-Ella soon became the most accomplished
-vocalist in his country-choir. The old Count Reisach
-had, in church, frequently heard and appreciated
-the superior qualities of her voice, and after
-a few Sundays, called at the parsonage to pay his
-compliments in person to the young singer whom
-fame had already made so conspicuous. Little
-Ella, when summoned into the presence of the
-count, made her courtesy modestly but not diffidently,
-and he, charmed with the graces of her person
-and behavior, took pains immediately to win upon
-her confidence, so that she soon sang to him all her
-prettiest songs; whilst Father Klaus sat smiling by,
-perfectly happy in the joy of his triumph. When
-the old nobleman arose to depart, he stood with his
-hand upon the child’s glossy head, and declared he
-never <span class='it'>saw</span> such a singer; then, as he turned up to
-his gaze that little face so beaming with beauty and
-intelligence, he promised by the faith of his knighthood
-that next Sunday should see her talent well
-rewarded. Next Sunday afternoon arrived a large
-case for Ella. How she danced to see it opened!
-and when it was opened, how she danced and clapped
-her hands around one of the prettiest harps that
-ever was seen! This was an era in her life. Every
-day would see her and her uncle before the parlor
-window blundering over the harp-strings, often in
-vain attempts to puzzle out an accompaniment. It
-was a new instrument to him as well as to her.
-Time, however, and perseverance can conquer all
-things, and ere two months were past, Ella might
-be seen every evening seated beneath a linden that
-shaded the cottage door, gracefully sweeping her
-harp in accompaniment of the wildest songs of her
-Fatherland; anon would she lift her melting eyes to
-heaven as she touched the trembling chords to the
-softer melody of a Virgin’s evening hymn. The old
-priest would be absorbed in his breviary, as he paced
-the graveled walk; he had long since given up the
-race, and the little scholar had left him immeasurably
-behind. It was not wonderful that Ella became
-the admired of all the country around even at that
-early age: but she bore her honors so becomingly,
-with so much modesty and simplicity, that—wonderful
-to say—there was not one among her companions
-who did not love her. She was so gentle
-and so good.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>In the <span class='it'>Bower of Castle Mount</span>, I said that Roderick
-told me that Father Klaus was aware of the
-growing attachment between him and Ella, almost
-as soon as themselves. In this, two circumstances
-may seem strange—first, that she, educated, accomplished,
-admired, courted, should fancy a poor, plain,
-hardy country-lad like Roderick; and secondly, that
-her uncle should approve and encourage her in such
-a fancy. Roderick’s family was very humble,
-scarcely above a peasant’s condition; but in this
-regard she placed herself upon a perfect equality
-with him, and never gave the matter much consideration.
-The truth is, she had loved him with a
-childish love before she knew that there existed any
-other. The first summer after she returned from
-Cologne, regularly every Saturday afternoon or festival
-eve, would he come to help her gather flowers
-for the altar. This office of decking the altar is
-only performed by the hands of virgins, and when
-one enters into the state of matrimony she no longer
-takes her place among the servants of the sanctuary.
-Our young pair (he was but four years older than
-she) would wander off to the woods together, and
-Roderick would climb the highest rocks for moss, or
-some stray flower blooming alone; and carry the
-heavy basket. At times he would strip off his shoes,
-and, Paul and Virginia-like, stagger with his beloved
-burden across the streams. When evening approached,
-he would mock the squirrels, the partridges,
-the wood-robins and the katy-dids, and put
-the whole forest in tune before its time, to Ella’s
-ineffable delight. Often, when he had doffed his
-jacket and thrown it down for her to sit upon, would
-he recline upon his arm, his hat drawn over his
-brow, pensive and melancholy; and sometimes a
-tear would trickle down, as the truth forced itself
-upon him, that, despite their intimacy, fortune, and
-fortune only, had placed an insurmountable barrier
-between him and the idol of his thoughts and dreams.
-He would beg her to love him, and she would readily
-answer that she did love him.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Better than all the other boys?”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Yes, better than all the other boys.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Still he was not satisfied. He felt that she did not
-mean the same kind of love that he did; he was
-doubtful even if she knew any thing about it. How
-should he ascertain? He could not ask her if she
-would marry him: no, that would be breaking the
-ice of a new and unfathomable current, and he might
-lose the tenure of the ground he then possessed;
-besides, he felt a secret, indefinable shame, and
-could not proffer the words. He looked very wo-begone.
-Ah! he had it at last.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>He did not mean <span class='it'>like</span>, he meant, did she <span class='it'>love</span> him
-better than all the other boys?</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Yes, she loved him better; she said so before.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The secret of his new discovery was burning; he
-blushed. At last it came.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Did she love him better than all the <span class='it'>girls</span>?</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The poor boy was breathless.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Yes, she thought she loved him better than all the
-<span class='it'>girls</span>?</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The mighty weight had turned out a feather; he
-knew no more than he did before. Many a time
-did the poor fellow try to hit the mark from afar off,
-but always with the same success. He persevered
-with the same affectionate devotion, her very slave;
-and it was not until several years after, when he became
-assured of more than one suitor’s rejection, that
-he summoned courage to address her plainly, and
-received an answer to his heart’s content.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>That Father Klaus approved the betrothal of Roderick
-and his niece, may not seem wonderful. He
-knew him to be the son of pious parents, a boy of
-good principle and good capacity. He had often
-seen at his father’s house, pasteboard horses, cows,
-cottages, and even pencil sketches, that he amused
-himself with, when once recovering from a severe
-illness. When the boy recovered he frequently
-brought into request his newly-discovered capacity,
-and improved very much in his rough sketching.
-He had no idea of prosecuting his ability any further.
-All this was not lost on the priest, who felt
-assured that he could command the necessary influence
-to enter Roderick in the academy of Heidelberg,
-and enable him to become the master of an
-honorable and lucrative art. He knew that capacity
-is more unfailing, and possesses more resources
-than wealth; he knew Roderick’s substantial worth
-and undoubted probity, and felt that he had neither
-right nor inclination to thwart his niece’s predilection.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>It was during one of these flower-hunting excursions
-that Roderick and Ella first conceived the idea
-of weaving the bower on the Castle Mount. They
-were accustomed frequently to extend their rambling
-to the ruined castle, in the old garden of which
-a variety of flowers were still cultivated by the
-guardian of the place; and by the time they had
-clambered up to the terrace on their return, were
-fain to sit down and repose awhile. They soon
-began to feel a partiality for the place; and no
-wonder, for there was not so fine a view, even to
-childhood’s eyes, to be found in the whole country.
-Their childish hands there twined the bower whose
-strange demolition I, in after years, witnessed. There
-they spent many of their happiest hours; there they
-first plighted their troth; there they renewed it over
-and over again; and there poor Roderick first saw
-the—beginning of the end.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>It were useless to attempt to say how proud the
-poor boy was of his betrothed, and of her accomplishments.
-The fact that he never felt a pang of
-jealousy during four long years, frequently under
-most trying circumstances, that his trust in his beloved
-never for a moment wavered till his heart
-was wrung, and his brain was crazed that eventful
-evening at the bower, loudly testifies to his ingenuousness,
-and the priest’s correct estimate of the man.
-A neighboring Curé, who had in former years been
-a fellow-student of Father Klaus in Italy, frequently
-rode over to spend half a day. On such occasions
-Ella was entertained with metaphysical disquisitions,
-which, unknown to her entertainers, her deep, psychological
-nature eagerly drank in, in draughts as great
-as her capacity would admit. To their theological
-discussions she was a silent, attentive listener; subjects
-which her uncle never upon any other occasion
-spoke of in her presence, were argued with an
-earnestness that made him forgetful of the indirect
-injury they might work upon her mind. She began
-to propound questions to herself, and to attempt the
-solution of them, of herself. She remembered many
-delicate cases of morality determined by learned
-heads; pondered over the principles upon which
-those decisions were based; constructed new cases
-for the application of similar principles; in short,
-became a blundering casuist before she knew it.
-A new light was dawning upon her mind; she saw,
-for the first time, that laws can be stretched to very
-tension, and not broken. She did not reflect that
-principle is firm as a rock, and lasting and unchanging
-as eternity itself—that there is no going and returning
-there. She knew not that he who ranges
-about to strain the utmost limits of law, has wandered
-far from the moral centre of gravity—principle.
-She knew not that we do not always stand guiltless
-in the forum of our own conscience, though no other
-living being dare censure us, even in his inmost
-mind. The world may judge a man for what he
-does and dares; he alone, for what he does <span class='it'>not fear</span>.
-Ella was precisely in that unfortunate state of mind,
-in which one knows just too much or too little; in
-which a certain degree of knowledge necessarily requires
-more to prevent its running astray. There
-is a degree of pride which renders one ridiculous,
-contemptible; a greater degree checks its manifestation—governs
-it. One is vanity; the other despises
-vanity. Such a relation did Ella’s science
-bear to true philosophy as vanity does to pride;—<span class='it'>and
-she played with it</span>. One must, one will destroy the
-other. Had her uncle known her infatuation, one
-word would have dispelled every shadow of it.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Oftentimes the college friends would turn their
-conversation to days long past, to reminiscences of
-their sojourn in Italy. The lore of classic and romantic
-associations of that wonderful country; the
-graphic illustrations of life, and scenes, and elegance,
-and delights, in that delicious clime, enchanted their
-young listener. Dissertations on the political changes
-there enacting; surmises of changes impending,
-necessarily drew forth a detail of social, historic and
-scenic minutiæ, that expanded her young mind to
-poetic conceptions; distance lent its enchantment to
-the view, and her rich fancy glowed with the beauty
-of its imaginings. A longing, secret and subtle at
-first, then craving and irrepressible, to taste the
-sweets of forbidden fruit, took possession of her.
-She was betrothed at that time; she knew that with
-Roderick she could not enjoy those pleasures; she
-ought and did know that this longing would breed
-discontent;—hence the subtle manner of its entering
-on possession of her heart. Long she repelled it;
-principle forbade it; her reasonings were very nice;
-and lax as she may have become speculatively, she
-nourished a high-minded honor that would have
-done credit to any child of Adam. Soon she thought
-it no harm to enjoy the victory she had, with so
-great an effort, gained over herself; frequently she
-did so. Then her sophistry came to the attack; she
-might have regrets in secret, she thought, and they
-might not be at all detrimental to her husband’s happiness;
-hers would be the only loss, the only pain,
-if pain there were;—and she let her longing take its
-way. Still, she loved her betrothed as much as ever,
-none the less on that account; it is true she became
-a shade more thoughtful, not quite so light-hearted
-as she was, but she did not notice any change. If
-her heart lost any of its feeling, her harp did not.
-She took it more rarely; her touch was bolder, and
-still more delicate; a beautiful originality undulated
-more in her modulations, and she played more without
-the words than she ever did before. Her spirit
-was more self-dependent. There was something
-of the wild energy of insidious despair.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>About this time the younger Reisach was summoned
-from England to attend his father, who was
-very ill. Soon the good old count died, and his
-heir entered upon the title and estates, in a manner
-so becoming and consistent with filial affliction, that
-every one said the young count was quite equal to
-the old one. The rougher field sports he had been
-accustomed to in England were now abandoned, and
-he lent his mind to the more quiet and refined German
-tastes. Study, poetry, music, painting, sculpture,
-divided his attention; he aimed at conciliating
-and winning all, the little as well as the great, and
-no undue ostentation had place in the details of his
-establishment. Regular and attentive at church, he
-gained the confidence and esteem of pastor as well
-as flock. Refined and delicate in his speech, no
-virtuous peasant-girl shrunk from his attention whenever
-he thought proper to bestow it. To the <span class='it'>reunions</span>
-at the mansion the Curé had a standing invitation;
-and in return, the young nobleman strolled
-out upon many a welcome call at the parsonage. It
-would be harsh, it would be unjust, to say that Count
-Frederick commenced his attentions there with any
-deliberate design of wrong. Ella’s harp and voice
-were frequently brought into request for his passing
-entertainment, and he was not sparing of his eulogiums
-upon them. He soon began to experience deeper
-and more lasting sensations than the momentary
-pleasure she intended; no one could do otherwise.
-In his presence Ella conversed little, but that little
-was full of refinement, of thought and taste. He felt
-it difficult to smother his feelings or restrain them;
-and although he strictly maintained the distinction
-in their conditions, in his intercourse with her, and
-knew that a violent death must await all his more
-tender sentiments toward her, still he was unwilling
-to deprive himself of the pleasure he enjoyed in her
-presence. He was deeply in love with her, and he
-knew it; yet supposed that, like many other impressions
-he had experienced, it would soon pass away,
-that he might as well enjoy it whilst it lasted;—no
-one would ever be the wiser in the end.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>It was before, and about this time, that Roderick
-and Ella were accustomed to spend their hours, and
-almost days together, at the bower. She had grown
-into womanhood, had entered into her twentieth
-year; and it was on her last birth-day, that she and
-Roderick had knelt before her uncle, to receive his
-blessing on their betrothal. Roderick had finished
-his course in the academy, and had already acquired
-his quota, both of fame and money, in painting.
-Ella sincerely loved him; and despite the admiration
-she felt for the young count, would have been
-supremely happy could she have been promised the
-realization of her imaginary enjoyments by his side.
-She loved him more when in his presence than when
-away. Absence threw no enchantment around him;
-it was in the sunshine of his tenderness and devotion
-that she felt the full glow of her affection for him;
-at other times she would feel the chilly mingling of
-her regrets. Had they been married then, they
-would have been very happy.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>I said, Count Frederick deemed his love for Ella
-to be harmless, and that he felt no scruples in giving
-full play to it. It was only when, in his frequent
-rides, he caught a glimpse of the lovers enjoying their
-honest happiness under their own vine and fig-tree,
-as one might say, that the demon of envy, then of
-jealousy, took possession of him. There are few
-who can look unmoved on the unalloyed happiness
-of others, nor feel one pang of envy; that can see
-the appropriation by another of a secretly-coveted
-object, even an object one has no right or title to, or
-expectation of, and feel no sting of jealousy. Thus
-was it with Count Frederick: from the window of a
-mansion he frequently visited in Heidelberg, he
-could look right up to the bower. In the recess of
-that window he frequently sat; and with glass in
-hand, following with his eye every movement of the
-doomed pair, he conjured up a host of demons to torment
-him. He knew that her faith was given to
-another; he was aware and resolved that he could
-not marry her; yet, the long and constant dwelling
-of his thoughts upon her, the enlistment of his feelings
-and affections for her, seemed, in his disordered
-mind, to invest him with an indefinable title; he felt
-the outrage done to it, and casting full rein to both
-anger and passion, vowed to wreak his vengeance
-on what he thenceforward dreamed to be his mistress,
-and her lover.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Alone, and in secret, did he plot his plans to circumvent
-them. Lost now to every feeling of shame
-and honor, he repelled no scheme, however base,
-that presented itself; and though the better and more
-manly exercise of his faculties drooped and withered
-under his scorching passion, a deeper, deadlier cunning
-than he ever knew before, sweltered and forged
-unceasingly the most crafty implements for his hellish
-purpose. He would trust not an iota to the assistance
-of other hands, but assumed the whole burden of
-contriving and executing upon himself. Not a breath
-did he breathe of his infamous design to human ears.
-His demeanor in public possessed all the semblance
-of urbanity and good feeling that he once felt; but
-his interior Vulcan reposed not from his craft.
-Every piece of information that he could unsuspectingly
-acquire concerning either poor Roderick or
-Ella, he stored up and revolved in his aristocratic
-mind, digesting it with his moral venom, as a viper
-would revolve and masticate with poison its loath-some
-morsel. He learned from many sources, partially
-from herself, the particulars of Ella’s history,
-as far as was known; and contrasting several portions
-with certain circumstances that had fallen under
-his observation when in England, was astonished
-at the result of his machinations, which now doubled
-upon himself, to involve him too in their fatal entanglement.
-Thus far he had stood apart, aloof, as it
-were, upon a height above his contemplated victims.
-His baser passions had thrown aside the drapery of
-virtue and honor which once veiled the lovely woman
-from the gaze of rude thought, and he could
-look down upon her very graces as an object of his
-intended prey; but when the artful interlocking of
-his web and woof turned up to his astonished eyes,
-in gathered forms, the whole and real picture of his
-contemplated deed; when his study brought to
-light the astounding fact that Ella could claim
-close kindred with the proudest titles of the
-British peerage, his craven spirit of profligacy
-slunk away, for the time awed, but not quelled, by
-the air of reverence, and veneration that breathed
-upon it. At its return, elevated, softened, warmed,
-but not purified, by its admixture of romance, he felt
-his sternest anger giving way, his haughtiest pride
-tottering, his very soul melting into admiration and
-love; he reeled from his position aloof, and writhed
-a whole burnt offering among the other victims to
-his passion. His subtle ingenuity soon brought to
-the crucible the extraordinary change in his sentiments
-toward the unconscious girl, and the analysis
-did not dispel the new charm that enveloped her.
-He saw it was perfectly natural, and the only fruit
-of his discovery was a resolution to bring the charm
-to operate upon her own mind—it would open the avenue
-to a secret discontent with her present position,
-unfold a vast and snare-beset field to the vagaries of
-a romantic imagination, and bring her feelings to a
-sympathetic appreciation of the fellowship of caste
-that existed between her and himself.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Full of this dark resolve, Count Frederick went
-forth alone one afternoon. He had designedly employed
-the unsuspecting Roderick to restore some
-old paintings that had accumulated the dust of ages.
-They were in a studio in town. There Roderick
-had labored busily all the day, and when evening
-drew near he was still detained by some management
-of the count, in order to give his lordship the
-opportunity for his coveted interview with Ella.
-He had learned at what hour she would probably
-be at the appointed rendezvous, and timed his evening
-excursion accordingly. It was a beautiful
-afternoon in April. From the castle heights, the sun
-was seen slowly creeping down the skies of France,
-and the changing tints of the glittering clouds, were
-gorgeously reflected by the distant waters of the
-Rhine, and the intermediate mirrors of the Neckar.
-Villages, hamlets, cottages, spread over the plain,
-rolled their black smoke in heavy volumes against
-the green mountains, about whose feet the lights
-and shadows already had begun to sketch fantastic
-tableaux. How naturally did the words of the Mantuan
-poet’s pastoral seem to spring to Count Frederick’s
-lips, as he stood within a few paces of the
-bower, gazing abroad upon the scene, observed by
-the startled inmate, and feigning not to observe
-again. Ella understood perfectly well the words of
-the text, and as they were feelingly and eloquently
-poured forth, as though spontaneously, by the handsome
-youth, as he threw himself upon the turf, lost
-her surprise in the appropriate beauty of the poet’s
-effusion—</p>
-
-<div class='blockquote'>
-
-
- <div class='poetry-container' style=''>
- <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' -->
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>Hic tamen hac mecum poteris requiescere nocte,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Frondes super virides; sunt nobis mitia poma,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Castaneæque molles, et pressi copia lactis.</p>
-<p class='line0'>Et jam summa procul villarum culmina fumant,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Majoresque codunt altis de montibus umbrae.</p>
-</div>
-</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend -->
-
-</div>
-
-<p class='noindent'>The last two lines he rapturously repeated several
-times, then turning his eyes, as though perchance
-toward the bower, he hastily arose, and in a moment
-stood blandly before Ella, apologizing for his intrusion,
-and in the same breath requesting the favor of
-one of her pastoral songs. She challenged him for
-a repetition of the verses, and he uttered them in so
-off-hand, theatrical a way, that they both burst into
-a laugh. The ice was broken. Never before had
-he so far descended from his dignity in her presence.
-There and alone with him, she felt the charm of
-this novelty, and bandied words with him willingly,
-for she supposed that Roderick would soon come,
-and she thought it would be fine to pique his jealousy
-a little, only to reward it the better afterward with
-the sweetness of perfect tranquillity. He gradually
-drew forth from her own lips what little she knew
-of her father’s history and family, and artfully beguiled
-away the key to her enjoyments and her regrets.
-He had been intimate, very intimate, he told
-her, with a nobleman in England, whom he now
-knew must be her uncle. The identity of her father’s
-history, even to his fall in a duel, with that of a brother
-of Lord B.; the same name, even a perceptible
-resemblance of Ella to him, rendered his assurance
-doubly sure. Then followed many particulars
-which completely set Ella’s willing mind at rest in
-regard to the nobility of her parentage.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>So far, all was well. As he anticipated, the disclosure
-was to her astounding and pleasing at the
-same time. The shadows of incredulity that for a
-moment hovered before the citadel of her happiness,
-flitted away before the march of pleasurable emotions.
-Her first feelings were those of gratitude,
-and in the liveliness of her satisfaction, as he poured
-into her ears the minuter details of her family history,
-she could have smiled almost any thing, looked
-almost any reward for him who bore her the welcome
-tidings. She divined the emotion that quivered
-on his lip, fathomed the eloquence that sparkled in his
-eye, suffusing his whole face with its light, and trembled,
-trembled like an aspen, with momentary terror:
-but, as his glowing speech expatiated on the time-honored
-and world-worshiped glory and privileges of
-the <span class='it'>noblesse</span>, the spirit of high-toned chivalry that
-begot, that chose, that ever ornamented the knightly
-order of Christendom, her terrors flew to the winds,
-and left her trembling frame a play-thing in the frenzied
-hands of wilder discord than her bosom had
-ever known. She no longer shunned his gaze; their
-eyes met again and again; a shadow, as of a dream,
-passed over her faculties; phantoms of law and duty
-and religion sprang up, to clamor for their rights;
-hastily she breathed an acquiescence, and then
-spurned them away as phantoms, as disturbers of
-the serenity of her soul. For the first time in all
-her life she felt the thrill of passion; the sorcerer beheld
-it, and closer and closer did he wind his web
-around them both, until, convulsed by the mighty
-battery within, he leaped from his seat, folded her
-resistless form in her arms, imprinted one passionate
-kiss upon her lips, and disappeared down the precipice.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>When she recovered a little self-possession, her
-mind soon comprehended all; she felt and knew that
-passion had taken possession of her, and that love
-was gone; but never for a moment did she advert
-to any fault of her own. If conscience arose, she
-hastily repressed it, and despite what she inmostly
-<span class='it'>felt</span>, declared in her own mind that she could not see,
-measuring by laws of right and possession, wherein
-she had transgressed. Then stepped in pride. She
-transgressed! Oh! that one idea condemns the
-cause. She, who never had sinned, even in thought,
-against womanly decorum! yet, though her face
-burned with indignation at the thought, it was her
-own unerring conscience that accused, and against
-which she turned in so virtuous a scorn. Poor Ella!
-the great sin was already done. The loose rein she
-had given to her ideas, had permitted the birth, the
-growth, the <span class='it'>manifestation</span> of what she felt, consequently
-the encouragement of Count Frederick’s
-excited passion. What would strict principle have
-done? Trembled, and crushed the serpent in the
-egg. It had glided in and twined itself around her
-bosom so gently and unconsciously that she scarcely
-felt its presence; so brilliant and changing were its
-deadly eyes in their repose, so yielding its soft and
-graceful neck, that, trusting to its tameness, she
-nursed its strength and venom there. At once she
-felt a tightening of the coils. Who, but one willfully
-deceived, would not have felt death! She did not;
-she saw no death, but felt she could not cast her
-visitant aside, felt that she might have to struggle
-on and bear her burden triumphantly along. What
-harm if no positive evil came of it? It was her own
-burden; might she not bear it if she could? Thus
-she beguiled her better reason; she did not reflect
-that whosoever loveth danger shall perish in it.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The reaction from the state of excitement she had
-been in, was powerful, and she was just recovering
-from it, when Roderick came and found her at the
-bower, “pensive and melancholy,” as he termed it;
-and, since they could not enjoy the evening together,
-tenderly and affectionately led her home. This was
-the first night of Roderick’s grief and Ella’s unhappiness.
-One great effort would then have shaken
-off her enemy forever, and restored the serenity of
-her mind; but she did not see the necessity, the obligation;
-it could be done at any time. Her pillow
-was bedewed with her tears, but she attributed them
-to the agitation of her feelings. All night, that one
-moment of delirium was prolonged to hours in rapturous
-dreams. She awoke weary and pale. She
-was not responsible for her dreams, she reasoned;
-probably she was not; but I would not answer for
-the pleasure of them, for whenever her broken slumbers
-were dispelled by consciousness, through the
-night, she acknowledged the unlawfulness of dwelling
-upon that pleasure then, and she courted sleep
-as a means to enjoyment in irresponsibility. Her
-harp lay untouched all day. Her daylight reveries
-were but shadows of her midnight dreams; more
-she did not dare. To her uncle’s somewhat anxious
-inquiries she replied, that she had perspired so, all
-night;—it was true. The next evening was quite
-as charming as the preceding one. There was no
-reason why she should not take her accustomed
-stroll to the bower; it was her castle, as it were; she
-had built it, and it was her almost daily haunt; she
-saw no obligation to discontinue her visits there;
-if any one came, it would be his intrusion, not hers.
-Besides, if she did not meet Roderick there, he
-would be hurt, and probably suspect her of growing
-indifference. Step by step had she advanced so far
-in blinding herself, as to be deceived by such a
-transparency; in the days of her innocence it would
-have shocked her. Her very duty to her betrothed
-she converted into a pretext to betray him. Still,
-call her not traitress. Like one who begins to believe
-his oft-told lie to be the truth, a penalty for his
-deceit, she more than half trusted her shallow sophistry.
-No human power now, no stand of honor
-or pride, can save her now; she has let the enemy
-within the citadel to parley, and whilst she prates in
-whispered, cowering tones, of future peace or victory,
-he quietly possesses himself of every avenue and
-stronghold, and nothing less than power divine can
-lend the least effective aid. Will she ask it? Well
-would she wish to do so, but the mighty effort of instantaneous
-renunciation (the only condition for
-God’s help) is too great; and with an ungrounded,
-forlorn, despairing hope, she still thinks some impossibility
-<span class='it'>may</span> come to pass, to save her soul. She
-went earlier than usual, and long sat trembling in
-her accustomed seat. When at last Count Frederick
-appeared, she was not surprised; but an unaccountable
-dread seized her, and she would have fled, had
-he not gently detained her. She stopped; he saw
-all at a glance, he knew every thought that was
-agitating her mind; he understood her sudden impulse,
-that it was a last effort of expiring virtue, and
-he understood, too, that he possessed the power to
-overrule it. He knew it was an issue of life or death,
-and that either way, he held the hat in his hand.
-Neither spoke. He stood, holding the unresisting
-arm, gazed on her shrinking form, her imploring
-eyes, her lips parted in sudden terror, upon her every
-feature yielding in despair to the agony of a struggle
-for her very soul; the loud beating of her heart
-struck upon his ear with unearthly sound; he thought
-of the affrighted lamb before the altar, felt that in
-his hand gleamed the keen knife his beautiful victim
-shrank from; his eyes drank in her exceeding loveliness,
-his heart melted, and he burst into tears. He
-sat upon the bench, half turned from her, his elbow
-resting on the trellis, and his face buried in his handkerchief,
-overcome by the storm of his feelings. At
-this moment, the better nature in both, had a strong
-game. There is something fearful to behold when
-a strong man bends his head to tears. When a woman
-weeps, it is the drops from a fleeting cloud, an
-April shower, or, at times, the ceaseless pouring of
-a settled rain—a deluge; but there is the flash, and
-the storm, and the fitful blast that groans and yaws,
-and bursts through all control. No woman can pass
-on and not feel the cloak of her human sympathy
-draw close around her, as if to impel her to go forth
-and pour the unction of her tenderness upon the
-troubled heart. And there Ella stood beside him;
-one hand lay gently on his quivering shoulder, whilst
-the other pushed back the scattered curls from his
-noble brow. Oh, what a powerful language there
-is in the human heart, without words! In all this
-interview, since first they met, neither had spoken a
-word. It was a pantomime in real life; yet, what
-terrible converse they had held! Neither had ever,
-in all their lives, spoken to the other one word of
-love; and such a scene!</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“I intended,” said he, at length, as he pressed her
-hand to his lips; “I intended to beg your forgiveness
-for my extreme rudeness on yesterday. I was overcome,
-beside myself; and now, when I would utter
-the words of my supplication, they stick in my
-throat. I am tossed like a leaf, before you; and
-here I sit trembling like a child, beneath your touch.
-I feel in my inmost heart the sweetness of your sympathy.
-I go, and but for the treasure of that sweetness
-my heart would wither in its desolation. I dare
-not speak to you of love, for your troth is another’s.
-At least, in mercy, vouchsafe to me one glimpse of
-the Elysium denied me!” He folded her once more
-to his heart; indistinctly she heard in spasmodic
-whispers: <span class='it'>life—soul—dearest</span>—and he was gone.
-The nobler nature was triumphant; and Ella, overcome
-by his generosity and her now unquenchable
-love, wept long and bitterly. She turned from side to
-side in her loneliness, gazed into the heavens, upon the
-wide landscape, until the tears blinded her. Then
-she bent her head upon the trellis where he had
-leaned; her dark hair hung in loose locks upon the
-branching vines, and she moaned in very bitterness.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>That night she thought of Roderick, and for a moment
-compared him with Count Frederick. What
-a contrast! His very name, his only inheritance
-from his forefathers, was essentially plebeian, rustic.
-Ackerman! Roderick Ackerman, the husbandman!
-She had never thought of that before! She, the
-daughter of a noble house, could never bear that
-name! Her dreams were not those of pleasure only,
-for Roderick stood all night, a horrid phantom, between
-her impatient love and its unlawful object.
-Next morning she did not quiet her mind with the
-reflection, that she was not responsible for her
-dreams; and her midnight dreams, pleasure and displeasure,
-were her daylight reveries.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Roderick’s society still possessed a singular charm
-for her. In his presence she became more like her
-former self. She still loved him with a calm, settled
-love, which nothing on earth could ever destroy.
-When he turned his mournful gaze toward her,
-there was so much of tenderness and truth, so much
-of ill-concealed anxiety and trust, that tears of anguish
-and of pity would gather upon her eyelids, and
-she would turn her head, to brush them away unseen.
-There was no selfishness in her love for him;
-it was virtuous and sincere, unshaken; yet, in his
-absence her thoughts continually recurred to the all-absorbing
-passion that possessed her. Day after day
-would she go to the bower, but she found no pretext
-now, in duty to Roderick, for she always returned
-before it was time for him to be there, and he never
-knew she went. He said to me on the mount, when
-relating this portion of his history—“She never went
-to the bower any more.” Count Frederick did not
-come again. He secluded himself at home more
-closely than ever—and let us not trespass upon the
-sanctuary of a penitent heart. Poor Ella might have
-been seen day after day, as evening drew near, wandering
-alone over the hill, watching, with intense
-anxiety, the path which Count Frederick would take
-in case he <span class='it'>should</span> go out upon his evening walk.
-A mournful, restless spirit of solitude she seemed,
-ever wending her silent way among the evening
-shadows, never venturing upon the sun-lit green.
-At last her daring steps would turn toward the
-manor, and she would take its circuit, on her way
-to the bower. Once she passed, muffled and trembling,
-through the very lawn. O! could she have
-seen herself as others would have seen her, she
-would have sunk into the earth for very shame.
-How strange—that he who had been the ruthless
-tempter, in heart and mind the fell destroyer, should
-now, whilst retiring in virtuous seclusion, become
-the tempted! How strange, how passing strange—that
-she, poor victim, should become tempter, persecutor!
-Yet so it was: and such is man.—And such
-is woman—when she falls.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>One day, from his chamber window he beheld her
-retreating form slowly disappearing in a little copse
-near the manor. The whole truth flashed like lightning
-on his mind: that he was not the only tempter;
-that not with him lay the damning guilt he had supposed;
-that he was sought; that she could be gained.
-The whirlwind of passion came again. The reflection
-that he had too unjustly accused himself, stifled
-every breath of remorse; and he went forth, in heart
-a demon, worse than ever. He soon gained her, and
-heaven-attesting vows were exchanged of never-dying
-love. All that was honorable and fair for
-man to do he promised. Their interviews thenceforward
-were frequent and clandestine; her health
-was failing in a perpetual struggle, and matters were
-drawing to a crisis. She never told her uncle what
-was done; she feared, she felt in her own heart,
-that it was not honest love. Count Frederick, I
-said, had promised all that was honorable for man to
-do; that promise he did not intend to keep. The
-more he thought over it, the more fully was he persuaded
-that she was not sanguine of its observance.
-After a lengthy consideration his plot was laid, and
-he appointed a time with Ella for an interview at
-the bower. It was Roderick’s eventful evening, the
-one he alluded to when he said: “I could not resist
-a moment’s visit to the bower, for, since pleasure
-there seemed henceforth to be forbidden fruit to me,
-I longed for a moment, even of its pain.” They
-were both punctual to the appointment. Count
-Frederick was paler than usual; she noticed his
-agitation, and he, to cover it, took out his Virgil and
-read her several beautiful passages. He turned to
-the Æneiad, and wrought upon her mind and her
-sympathies with the loves and sorrows, the struggles
-and the fall, of the queenly Dido. She caught
-the incendium, and as he repeated over and over,
-with increasing gusto, the more inflammatory passages,
-in the words of the poet, like Dido herself she
-sat “<span class='it'>pendesque iterum narrantis ab ore</span>.” At
-last, as he closed the book, he gazed intently on her,
-trembling with the very burden of his task. He
-took her hand; she smiled.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Ella,” said he, “dost thou love me?”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>She took the book, and marked a passage with her
-pencil. He read:</p>
-
-<div class='blockquote'>
-
-
- <div class='poetry-container' style=''>
- <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' -->
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;“Est mollis flamma medullas,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Interea et tacitum vivit sub pectore vulnus.”</p>
-</div>
-</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend -->
-
-</div>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The glow of her features attested the truth. He
-continued:</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Wouldst thou be happy to wander the wide
-world over by my side, to revel in the gayeties of
-Paris, to stand amid the awful ruins of Athens and
-Palmyra, to tread the hallowed spots of Palestine,
-and bask in the sunny skies of Italy?”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“With thee and honor, anywhere.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Ella, thou hast a picture; let me see it? Who
-gave it thee?”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“My mother.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“When?—dost thou remember?”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Yes, when I was a tiny child. She gave it in
-my hands and said it was all I had from my dear father
-but his name.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Thou hast his name. Dost thou know, Ella,
-who this is?”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“I never knew.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“I know. I have seen her: she is living yet, and
-bears but a slight resemblance now to this young
-face.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Tell me of her; is she my father’s sister?”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“No; but wouldst thou know indeed?”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Tell me.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Listen then—thy father’s wife.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>She sat stupefied; her bosom heaved convulsively.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Couldst thou marry Roderick, now?”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>She started to her feet. “Fiend! I understand
-you,” she shouted. Her eyes flashed, her form dilated,
-her outstretched arm quivered with the
-strength of her indignation; whilst her melodious
-voice raised in tones of inspiration, rang through the
-evening stillness with the poet’s terrible imprecation:</p>
-
-<div class='blockquote'>
-
-
- <div class='poetry-container' style=''>
- <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' -->
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>“Sed mihi vel tellus optem prius ima dehiscat,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;Vel Pater Omnipotens adigat me fulmine ad umbras,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;Pallentes umbras Erebi, noctemque profundam”—</p>
-</div>
-</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend -->
-
-</div>
-
-<p class='noindent'>she turned away, and sinking upon one knee, raised
-her clasped hands and streaming eyes—</p>
-
-<div class='blockquote'>
-
-
- <div class='poetry-container' style=''>
- <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' -->
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>“Ante pudor quam te violem, aut-tua-jura re-solvam.”</p>
-</div>
-</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend -->
-
-</div>
-
-<p class='noindent'>And she fell lifeless upon the ground. A step was
-heard. The count launched himself down the precipice.
-Roderick came, saw, and flew off on the
-wings of the wind, with a crushed heart and raving
-brain.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Ella’s first act of returning consciousness was to
-recognize herself reclining in the arms of Count
-Frederick. The swaying to and fro, the heavy
-lurch, the crackling stones, the dashing tramp, soon
-brought home to her mind the terrible certainty that
-she had departed from Heidelberg forever. How
-far she was away, whither she was going she knew
-not: she only knew that she was lost beyond redemption.
-Her body and her mind were powerless, paralyzed
-in utter imbecility: she could not, would not
-will: but as the reality of the world and her existence
-in it stole on her awakening senses, every power of
-her soul rushed to the view of her prostration; her
-heart struggled in very anguish, her reason staggered
-from side to side in the mazes of a darksome labyrinth;
-night had gathered around, and heavy dews
-swept through the carriage windows; terrors, strange
-and indefinable, fell like a death chill on her sickened
-soul, and she clung with frenzied grasp to the form
-beside her. Words of love, of courage, of hope,
-breathed into her ears another life, and she abandoned
-her whole being to the power of its inspiration.
-Ere morning dawned they were far away, and
-the second nightfall beheld them in Cologne.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Before I proceed any further, let me make a little
-necessary explanation concerning Ella’s picture.
-What Count Frederick said concerning her “father’s
-wife,” he knew to be utterly false. The miniature
-was that of a lady Mr. Corbyn had been affianced to
-in England, and whom he forsook for another, more
-to his liking. As the engagement had become notorious,
-and he felt the extent of the injury he was indicting
-upon her and her family, he retired into as
-great obscurity as possible, on the continent, and
-married Katrina. Ere many years he was discovered
-in his retreat, and the arrival of the strangers in
-his village, his fall in a duel with a brother of his
-former betrothed, were consequent upon that discovery.
-Ella’s birth was honorable as birth could
-be. The mystery which hung about the picture had
-prepared her mind to become the easy dupe of a well-told
-lie.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Many days Ella lay consuming beneath the fire of
-a raging fever, whilst a sad and anxious watcher,
-night and day, moved ever silently about the darkened
-chamber. This was the most trying period of
-Count Frederick’s life. Ever and anon the low murmuring
-of troubled dreams would fall like heavy
-curses on his cowering heart; and as he would gently
-move aside the curtains and bend his ear to feel the
-parching breath, words fraught with the odor of
-youthful innocence would ascend. Now the light
-of childhood’s golden hours would beam softly on
-her mind, and smiles of love and tenderness and purity
-would gently play about her mouth, dimpling her
-beautiful features with holy pleasure as she would
-whisper: “Yes, dear mother, Ella knows, listen—‘God
-keep little Ella from all sin.’ ” Then there would
-be some uneasy motion, some momentary contortion,
-as from a sudden pang, and then a low, trembling
-sigh, scarce rising with its burden of despair. O,
-how he shook in very agony! Then all was still.
-Her degradation, though she was unconscious of its
-existence, seemed, like an unknown and unfelt medicinal
-application, to extend, by some inappreciable virtue
-of its own, its subtle influence unceasingly through
-the system. Soon, names most familiar in her joyous
-girlhood, brief snatches of song or hymn that none
-but ecstatic moods of happiness or devotion ever
-called forth from her stores of melody; even the
-name of Roderick, accompanied with a tender relaxation
-and softened whisper, rose up like threatening
-spectres in Count Frederick’s night of mental darkness.
-He gazed and gazed on her pallid loveliness,
-watched every quiver of her parted lips, and could
-have rejoiced in the life of their occasional smile or
-tranquillity; but, that the hidden, lightless eyes, and
-the ever “chill, changeless brow”—for it never
-changed in all her emotions—appalled with the coldness
-of some fearful death: and he turned away. He
-would have prayed, if he could, for that poor being,
-but his heart was void; it was his brain that ached,
-for he knew that all that melancholy ruins had
-fallen from a sublime structure by his fell utterance
-of a lie.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>It behooves me now to hasten this lengthy history
-to a close. As soon as possible our wanderers hastened
-off to Paris, to restore their sunken spirits amid
-the pleasures and gayeties of the <span class='it'>beau monde</span>. There
-it was I saw them, as they took their evening airing
-along the Champs Elysées. They had been there
-several months, and poor Ella’s looks and manner
-both told the inefficiency of worldly pleasure, to
-lighten the heavy burden of a guilty soul. The gayety
-of France was like the smart of sparkling wine on an
-ulcerated sore, and away they wandered into distant
-lands. The still, death-like aspect of the Grecian
-shores seemed like the languor of cold sympathy
-with her own silent sorrow; and as the startling
-semblance rose up before her, and she viewed in
-every phase and feature that all that was elevating
-and life-giving was passed away, she shuddered at
-her own kindred desolation. She would venture
-upon the rocky cliffs and gaze into the troubled sea,
-where—as now in her own mind—the lights of Heaven
-were pictured in flitting and uncertain forms;
-she would look abroad upon the unspotted blue,
-where not a coming or departing sail broke the distinct
-horizon, and she would reflect how the powers
-of her soul were mouldered away, and brought no
-more back to her enjoyment the riches and the fruits
-of other climes, the luxuries from nature’s and religion’s
-overflowing bounty. Then she would wander
-upon the lonely strand, and the splashing of the
-journeyed waters, whose tempest roar was spent in
-low, last murmurs at her feet, reëchoed the wild
-moanings of a dying spirit. Oh! how she sat and
-cried. Had her tears been those of repentance and
-return, they would have hallowed for ever a spot that
-was only classic, and her groans would have lifted
-the vault of Heaven; but the bitter drops, wrung by
-degradation and despair, were swept away by the
-encroaching wavelets—and the sighs were borne afar
-by the winds, to swell that everlasting <span class='it'>ROMOR</span> of anguish
-that never reaches God.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>In the Roman Colosseum, the blood-stained arena
-of the martyrs seemed to burn her very feet, and she
-looked not upon a stone, nor an herb, in that sanctuary
-of Christendom but returned a look of withering
-reproach, as if by express command of Heaven.
-There was no peace. Like Jonah, had she tried to
-flee from the wrath of God, and find ease and security
-in sin; and now that she found it not, she longed
-for death—but dared not court it—as the oblivion of
-all her being.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Again our fugitives sought the resources of Paris.
-Ella was fast failing in health, and both knew that
-she must soon die. She possessed no longer any
-gayety, and Count Frederick secretly rejoiced in
-her decline, as the only means of ridding himself of
-a burden now become almost insupportable. Still,
-her death would not have occurred without inflicting
-upon him one severe pang; for her intellect, increasing
-in beauty and brilliancy as the body faded,
-held him in a spell that seemed to involve his very
-life. A short time after their arrival in Paris, the
-revolution of February put all Europe in a commotion.
-It was a God-send to Count Frederick, for a
-field now opened to him for the employment of his
-faculties; something at last, if not repose, at least a
-breathing spell to ease him in his tired struggle with
-a sleepless, unflagging remorse. He plunged into the
-under-revolutionary current, heedless of whence it
-flowed or where it came to light. All manner of
-impure ultraïsm gathering in its way, formed the
-nuclei of innumerable vortices that eddied and
-whirled at every turn of his onward progress, hurling
-him along with strange fits of semi-delirium,
-until the following June, when the whole concentrated
-power bubbled in red volumes to the surface,
-and the streets of Paris ran with human blood.
-Count Frederick became a willing tool in crafty
-hands, and shrank not from offices of most imminent
-danger. All night and all day did he lend his wealth,
-his influence and his labor to the construction of
-barricades for the defense of the populace: he became
-a leading spirit, and on several occasions his
-sword was foremost in the fray. His attire, his
-repose, his ordinary food, all was forgotten. Once
-he stood tired and worn, within a new barricade
-not far from the barrière St. Martin; his hat and coat
-were thrown aside, his dress all torn and begrimed
-with sweat and dirt; in one hand he held a naked
-sword, whilst the other grasped the stock of a pistol
-that was still unmoved from his leathern belt. Upon
-this arm hung poor Ella, still clinging through toil
-and danger to him she could not but love. Her
-bonnet was thrown aside; a soiled cambric handkerchief
-tied beneath the chin, had kept in check
-her unbound hair, but it was now in places loose
-and disheveled; one dark lock swung around her
-neck, and as it reposed upon her bosom, the curled,
-purple extremity appeared in fearful contrast with
-the snowy field it lay upon. Woman to the last,
-she bore upon her person many a mark of blood,
-and many dying lips within the last few hours, had
-breathed a blessing upon the unknown and beautiful
-angel of mercy that bent above them. Upon a stove,
-that had been carried into the middle of the street,
-stood a popular demagogue, gesticulating wildly,
-and thundering anathemas against the provisional
-government, that were horrible for ears to listen to;
-whilst around him stood some hundreds of the armed
-and excited populace, venting, at almost every gesture
-of the frantic orator, vows of eternal vengeance
-on what they deemed the recreant soldiery. Some
-one had just arrived to announce that the military,
-in force, were marching upon them. The shadow
-of the hand of death seemed already to rest upon the
-multitude, and not an eye was there that did not
-dwell upon eternity. Soon the military, in serried
-ranks and with bristling bayonets, wheeled into
-view far down the street, and then commenced the
-steady advance upon the barricade. The orator
-grew wilder and wilder, and every heart in that vast
-multitude quivered in awful expectation. The street
-was cleared, not a soul moved upon the side-walks;
-and the measured tread of the soldiers, with now
-and then a groan or shriek from out some chamber,
-was all that broke the silence as they marched along.
-Soon the note of death sounded in the rear, then the
-noise of changing muskets, at the word of command—and
-immediately was heard from out the barricade,
-trembling in solemn melody, low sounds as of
-some unearthly dirge; and the words, “<span class='it'>Mourir pour
-la patrie</span>”—arose with many a mingled yell. With
-the gallop of the words—“<span class='it'>c’est la mort la plus
-belle</span>,” all rushed to action, and when the first great
-burst of the murderous fire was past, the last words
-of the death-song still rang o’er piles of bleeding
-men.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The attack on this barricade was long and bloody.
-At the second discharge, Count Frederick rolled
-from the mound of curb-stones upon which he had
-leaped to replace a fallen red-republican ensign, and
-was borne into a neighboring house; there all assistance
-ceased. As he lay bleeding upon the floor, in
-a state of almost insensibility, Ella knelt beside him,
-striving to staunch with her handkerchief, her dress,
-her hair, the exhaustless spring of blood that welled
-up from a bullet wound in his chest. Not a word
-escaped her lips, not a tear fell from her eye, but
-she bent all the faculties of her mind to the faithful
-accomplishment of her stupendous task. His breathing
-became weak and weaker; she heeded it not.
-The veil of eternity was settling upon him, and the
-dim vision of mortality was being illumined under
-its shadow; the heinousness of his damning crime
-shone out in perfect distinctness; but one reparation,
-he thought, and that a slight one, remained; but
-how could he ever summon courage to speak it
-there? She seemed to him, in truth, an angel, as he
-turned his glazing eyes toward her; she would not
-yield to despair. He made the sacrifice; collected
-all his strength of body and of mind, and told to the
-wretched girl the story of his deception. It fell
-upon her like a thunderbolt. For the first time she
-became aware of the stupendous depth of her fall.
-Her only stay, her only consolation, her only anchor
-of future hope, upon her troubled sea, had rested on
-the excuse of natal degradation: now that was taken
-away. She sunk upon the floor; but in a moment,
-with frantic energy she bounded to her feet, and
-seizing the flag-staff from the dying hand, rushed into
-the street. The combat still raged; leaping over the
-dead and dying, with a bound she reached the breast-work.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The French journals, in describing the assault
-upon, and the carrying of this barricade, illustrated
-the enthusiastic patriotism of the insurgents, with
-the story of a young and beautiful girl, who, in the
-hottest of the fight, leaped upon the ramparts, flag in
-hand, and waving it gallantly above her head, shouting—<span class='it'>liberté</span>—fell,
-pierced by a hundred bullets, outside
-the barricade. It was Ella Corbyn.</p>
-
-<hr class='tbk120'/>
-
-<div><h1><a id='north'></a>SONG OF THE SPIRIT OF THE NORTH.</h1></div>
-
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;'>———</p>
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;font-size:0.8em;font-weight:bold;'>BY WILLIAM ALBERT SUTLIFFE.</p>
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;margin-bottom:1.5em;'>———</p>
-
-<div class='dramastart'><!----></div>
-
-<p class='dramaline-cont'>Midnight was brooding o’er the Arctic highlands</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>&ensp;&ensp;Midnight, the dim, and faint, and strangely cold;</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>When on an iceberg, ’mid the icy islands,</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>&ensp;&ensp;Sat the chill Northern Spirit, weird, and cold.</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;Her floating tresses hung,</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;Wailing unto the blast;</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;Her vapory vestment swung</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;As the wind hurried past:</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>And ever and anon she moaned, and sung,</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>&ensp;&ensp;With tremulous voice, such as the tempest leaf</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>In piny woods, and then again she flung</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>Her slender fingers o’er a harp, and wept,</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>&ensp;&ensp;And wailed unearthly music, as when grieves</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>And sings a fallen angel, then it slept</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>A moment in the rude arms of the blast—</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>The snowy-footed madly rushing past—</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>And then sprung up again, as when o’erleap</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>Rich showers of harmony Heaven’s rampart steep,</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>And, star-like, from on high</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>Far-trailing down the sky,</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>Strike mortals mad, or wild:</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>So the pale Boreal Child</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>Sang to the soul of Naught, that brooded o’er</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>&ensp;&ensp;Lone semi-annual nights, and days as long,</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>An icy ocean, with an icy shore,</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>&ensp;&ensp;And icy islands, sparsely thrown among</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>A yest of icy waves; and all was ice,</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>&ensp;&ensp;By sempiternal Winter wrought</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>To many a quaint device.</p>
-
-<p class='dramaline-cont'>And then again, when the cold North-wind kissed</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>Her pallid lips, up to the amethyst</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>Of the far heaven she raised her spirit eyes,</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>Then beat, and wept, while ever grim Surprise</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>Wondered that she should weep, and then she played</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>&ensp;&ensp;A prelude to her harp, then sung, then paused,</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>While symphonies filled up the gaps she made,</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>&ensp;&ensp;And Echo woke applause.</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>Wondrous the sadness of her floating strain!</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>&ensp;&ensp;The icebergs thrilled unto their heart of hearts,</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>&ensp;&ensp;And Ocean’s breast rose with convulsive starts;</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>While from her eyes the tearful-beaded rain</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>Froze into gems upon her vapory dress,</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>Embroidered loveliness.</p>
-
-<p class='dramaline-cont'>O Loneliness, O Nothingness, O Death!</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>&ensp;&ensp;O Dreariness around me, I must weep!</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>&ensp;&ensp;Would that my very soul were tears to steep</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>The wind with, that, at every breath,</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>With weeping, I might spend my soul so fast</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>My agony’s last throb would soon be past.</p>
-
-<p class='dramaline-cont'>O Desolation, wild, and gaunt, and grim!</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>&ensp;&ensp;O hopeless absence of all glad and bright!</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>O horrid shapes fantastical, what hymn</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>&ensp;&ensp;Of mine, alas! can tell such shapes aright</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>Would ye but strike me mad,</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>I should indeed be glad,</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>I now can pass the dark hours but in weeping;</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>&ensp;&ensp;And could my soul but freeze,</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>&ensp;&ensp;Like the breast of the seas,</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>How rapturous would be my silent sleeping.</p>
-
-<p class='dramaline-cont'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;Thou cold and icy moon,</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;Thou dost not pity me!</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;Six long months hast thou seen</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;My weary soul, each year,</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;Since Earth began, nor wept.</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;Away, thou’rt hateful now!</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;Away, for I am mad!</p>
-
-<p class='dramaline-cont'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;And Earth, detested orb,</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;How long must thou exist?</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;Each throb of thy vast pulse</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;Strikes keenest agony</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;Into this soul of mine.</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;If thou hast loveliness,</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;It ne’er was shown to me.</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;Come, let us die together!</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;Hurry thy steeds, O Time!</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;Bear us into the dark</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;Of that Eternity,</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;Whose shadows are so deep</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;We cannot pierce them yet.</p>
-
-<p class='dramaline-cont'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;Ye icebergs, that have seen</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;My wildest misery,</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;Do ye know sympathy?</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;Then melt ye down in tears,</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;And in a sea of grief</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;Flow round me with sweet sound!</p>
-
-<p class='dramaline-cont'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;They feel not, know not, aught!</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;My misery is full!</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;I must unto my bower—</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;My bower of chillest ice—</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;Would that it were my tomb</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;Ye smile on me in scorn,</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;Ye that do see my grief!</p>
-
-<p class='dramaline-cont'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;Then spreading out her wings,</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;Toward the extremest North</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;She took her liquid way.</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;The moon withdrew, and wept;</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;The stars died out with grief;</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;The icebergs thrilled again</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;Unto their icy hearts.</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;All things were sad for her,</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;Saddened by her wild song.</p>
-
-<hr class='tbk121'/>
-
-<div><h1><a id='art'></a>SONNET.—ART.</h1></div>
-
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;'>———</p>
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;font-size:0.8em;font-weight:bold;'>BY WM. ALEXANDER.</p>
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;margin-bottom:1.5em;'>———</p>
-
-
- <div class='poetry-container' style=''>
- <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' -->
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>Art! what were mankind destitute of thee?</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Religion’s handmaid oft do we thee find,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;As to thy polished car seek’st thou to bind</p>
-<p class='line0'>True elegance with sweet utility—</p>
-<p class='line0'>Long, wide, extensive is thy magic sway,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;O’er matter all inanimate and mind,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;E’en savage man thou teachest to be kind,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;And charmest his rude soul with thy harmony;</p>
-<p class='line0'>Cross seas the ship by thy good guidance goes;</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Fields arable, rich gardens, sacred grove,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Town, temple, feel the influence of thy love;</p>
-<p class='line0'>Thy sacred power the mind immortal knows,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Nor can thy empire, universal, end</p>
-<p class='line0'>Till Nature’s forces all in sweet subjection bend.</p>
-</div>
-</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend -->
-
-<hr class='tbk122'/>
-
-<div><h1><a id='don'></a>A REPLY TO DWIGHT’S ARTICLE ON MOZART’S DON GIOVANNI.</h1></div>
-
-<p class='pindent'>This is the title of a long and prominent article in
-Graham’s February number: the writer is but a
-wordy plagiarist. He has received many rebukes
-already for his cool appropriation of the ideas of
-others, but Aristabulus Bragg fashion, he still goes
-on, in the calmest, most approved style, perfectly
-unblushing. A year or eighteen months ago an article
-of his in Sartain’s Magazine was pointed out to
-us as containing some clever thoughts on a very
-original idea, “the Musical Trinity.” Oh, we exclaimed,
-this is not original, the whole idea is stolen
-from the German; then we turned to Goethe’s correspondence
-with a child, Bettina von Arnheim, and
-found several passages on the same subject in conversations
-with Beethoven and Schlosser. Some time
-after we read in <a id='sar'></a>Saroni’s Musical Times that the
-editor had also detected the plagiarism in this article,
-and pointed out another author, book and page; saying
-with great good-nature that he would not have
-noticed it, had Mr. Dwight only written his article
-as clearly and concisely as the original; “but to rob
-an author first and then murder him,” says the editor,
-“is more than we can bear.” The author alluded
-to by Mr. Saroni, is the German Marx, and he tells
-us that the fourth paragraph in Sartain’s article
-is an almost literal translation of a paragraph in
-Marx’s “<span class='it'>Komposition-shlere</span>,” second edition, p. 24.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>We have waded through this last article of Mr.
-Dwight’s on Don Giovanni, partly from curiosity,
-partly for amusement. We wanted to see the extent
-to which he would go: and then it amused us
-to detect the little pilfered thoughts, trigged out in
-the Boston transcendental clothing until their parents
-would have scarcely recognized them.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>It opens with quite a flourish, trying to decorate
-the story and hero as the German Hoffman did long
-ago, but though the whole of the first part is a spun-out
-translation of the German critic’s description, it
-is so mingled with his own crude, half-educated
-thoughts, as to require some little skill in separating
-Hoffman from Dwight. He has made an attempt
-to improve upon the German, and we can not say
-we admire the Boston imitation. Judge for yourself
-by the following comparison:</p>
-
-<h2 class='nobreak'>DWIGHT.</h2>
-
-<div class='blockquote'>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The true conception of
-Mozart’s Don Giovanni is
-that of a gentleman, to say
-the least, and more than
-that, a man of genius: a being
-naturally full of glorious
-passion, large sympathies
-and irrepressible energies,
-noble in mind, in person and
-in fortune; a large, imposing,
-generous, fascinating
-creature. He is such as we
-all are—“<span class='it'>only more so</span>,” to
-borrow an expressive vulgarism.
-He is a sort of
-ideal impersonation of two
-qualities or springs of character,
-raised as it were to
-the highest power projected
-into supernatural dimensions—which
-is only the
-poet’s and musician’s way
-of truly recognizing the
-element of infinity in every
-passion of the human soul,
-since not one ever finds its
-perfect satisfaction.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<h2 class='nobreak'>HOFFMAN.</h2>
-
-<div class='blockquote'>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Nature had provided for
-Don Giovanni, one of her
-dearest children, all that
-could elevate a man above
-the crowd which is condemned
-to be, to do, and to
-suffer: she had lavished on
-him the gifts which bid the
-human nature approximate
-to the divine. She had destined
-him to shine, to conquer
-and to rule. She had
-animated with a splendid
-organization that vigorous
-and accomplished frame:
-had inspired that breast
-with a celestial spark: had
-given to him a soul of deep
-feeling, quick and penetrating
-intelligence.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<p class='pindent'>We think Hoffman’s description of Don Giovanni
-a little exaggerated, but the Boston imitation is what
-may be called a “free translation,” <span class='it'>very</span> free. All that
-duality business—“<span class='it'>that ideal impersonation of two
-qualities or springs of character</span>,” is decidedly an attempt
-to amplify, if not to improve the German criticism,
-and is in the usual moral-defying style of the no-principle
-school of Harbinger and Phalanx writers. In
-olden times our grand-parents, when they saw any
-thing particularly broad or free in expression or action,
-were apt to say, with a proper shrug of the
-shoulders, that it was “<span class='it'>very French</span>.” At the present
-day, when we see any thing questionable in
-morals or opinions we exclaim, “<span class='it'>transcendental,
-mock German</span>, and, <span class='it'>very Boston;</span>” and thus we say
-of this attempt of Mr. Dwight’s to idealize the very
-sensual, commonplace libertine of the opera.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>We will now give another comparison.</p>
-
-<h2 class='nobreak'>DWIGHT.</h2>
-
-<div class='blockquote'>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Excessive love of pleasure,
-helped by a rare magnetism
-of character, and
-provoked by the suppressive
-moralism of the times,
-have engendered in him a
-reckless, roving, unsatiable
-appetite, which intrigue
-excites and disappoints until
-<span class='it'>the very passion in which
-so many souls are first
-taught the feeling of the infinite</span>
-becomes a fiend in his
-breast, and drives him to a
-devilish love of power that
-exults over woman’s ruin,
-or rather, that does not
-mind how many hearts and
-homes fall victims to his
-unqualified assertion of the
-every where rejected and
-snubbed faith in Passion.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<h2 class='nobreak'>HOFFMAN.</h2>
-
-<div class='blockquote'>
-
-<p class='pindent'>In truth, there is nothing
-on earth which more elevates
-a man in his own
-opinion than love, that love
-whose vast and conquering
-influence gives light to the
-heart, and gives it at once
-happiness and confusion.
-Can we be surprised if,
-when Don Juan hoped to
-appease by love the passions
-which rent his breast,
-that the devil spread a net
-for him? It was he who
-inspired Don Juan with the
-thought that by love and
-the society of woman we
-may accomplish on earth
-<span class='it'>those celestial promises
-which we bear written in
-the deepest recesses of our
-hearts, that intense desire
-which from our earliest
-days brings us most closely
-to heaven</span>.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The principal difference Mr. Dwight makes in his
-rendering of this passage of Hoffman’s is, that where
-the German, in a very old-fashioned manner, attributes
-Don Juan’s wickedness to the influence of the
-Spirit of Evil, Mr. Dwight, by some slight of hand,
-metamorphoses the Passion of Love into an evil
-demon, and then gives a <span class='it'>fling</span>, as he would express
-it, at the religious discipline of the times to
-which he applies the very lucid epithet, “<span class='it'>suppressive
-moralism</span>.” We wish we had some of that
-“<span class='it'>suppressive moralism</span>” at the present day to exercise
-a little wholesome discipline over the authors
-of this</p>
-
-<h2 class='nobreak'><span class='it'>Phalanx Socialist Literature</span>.</h2>
-
-<p class='pindent'>After this piece of borrowing and altering from
-Hoffman, the writer talks a great deal about “<span class='it'>the
-old theme and under-current of Opera—the Body
-and the Soul—the liberty of Passion in conflict
-with the Law intensely narrowed down by social
-custom from God’s great law of universal harmony</span>,”
-and such like rubbish, and then informs us
-in a note, with his usual precision, by way of illustrating
-this “<span class='it'>under-current</span>” of “<span class='it'>Body and Soul</span>”
-in “<span class='it'>Old Opera theme</span>,” that, strange to say, the first
-Opera <span class='it'>he</span> reads of, and which was produced at Rome
-in 1600, bore the name of “<span class='it'>Rappresentatione <a id='del'></a>di
-Anima e di Corpo!</span>”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Now if this were so, it is puzzling to know what
-it would have to do with all his talk about “<span class='it'>the
-under-current of Body and Soul</span>” in Don Giovanni:
-but it is not true. The first Opera on record is
-<span class='it'>Euridice</span>, the libretto composed by the poet Rinuccini,
-the music by the composer Peri. It was presented,
-as he says, in 1600, but not at Rome—at
-Florence, on the occasion of the marriage of Mary
-di Medici with Henri Quatre of France.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>In 1600, Emilio del <a id='cav1'></a>Cavalieri, of Rome, brought
-out an <span class='it'>Oratorio</span>, which was sung in a church in that
-city, which bore the title <a id='anima'></a>“<span class='it'>Dell Anima e di Corpo</span>;”
-and the invention of <span class='it'>Recitative</span> dates from these
-two compositions—the opera <span class='it'>Euridice</span> of Peri, and
-the <span class='it'>Sacred Oratorio</span> of <a id='cav2'></a>Cavalieri. But it answered
-his purpose to imagine this the other way, and with
-his usual want of accuracy he applied it—or he was
-ignorant, and with true transcendental presumption,
-took it for granted no one knew any more than he
-did.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Such reviews as this we now write of would be
-scarcely worth noticing, if it were not for the fact,
-that they are accepted by the uninstructed, for real
-<span class='it'>bona fide</span> musical criticisms, founded on actual
-knowledge. One might have expected that Mr.
-Saroni’s rebuking exposure of his Musical Trinity
-Article, would have startled the author into something
-like modesty; and when one sees how reckless
-he is, it makes one wish that Mr. Saroni would
-carry his threat into execution, and publish those
-“certain articles” on Mozart’s Don Giovanni, which
-bear such a remarkable similarity to Mr. Dwight’s
-lectures.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>M. Bombert says, in his “Life of Mozart,” when
-speaking of this Opera of Don Giovanni—</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“He (Mozart) shines in the awful accompaniment
-to the reply of the statue—a composition perfectly
-free from all inflation or bombast—it is <span class='it'>the style of
-Shakspeare in music</span>.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Now for Mr. Dwight’s patch-work—straightway
-he snatches up this idea of M. Bombert, and makes
-use of it thus:</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“The splendid sinner’s end is rather melo-dramatic
-in the Opera, and yet there is a poetic and moral
-truth in it—and <span class='it'>the spectre of the commendatore is a
-creation fully up to Shakspeare</span>.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>This is literary murder as well as literary theft.
-Now any one who knows any thing of this Opera
-will see that the “<span class='it'>creation of the commendatore</span>”
-has nothing remarkable in it, but the <span class='it'>Orchestral Accompaniment</span>
-is one of the grandest things ever composed.
-Mozart cared very little for the stage part
-of the affair; and this is proved by the finest music
-in this Opera being given to the Orchestra. We
-have heard—we cannot give the authority—but we
-have read somewhere, that a contemporary critic
-said that Mozart had put his statue in the Orchestra,
-and left only the pedestal on the stage—and this is
-true.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Mr. Dwight gives such an exaggerated, spun-out
-account of this famous Opera, endeavoring at the
-same time to gloss over the gross, vulgar, immorality
-of the plot, with all that confused mysticism
-peculiar to this Harbinger and Phalanx style of composition,
-that we will sketch a short matter-of-fact
-outline of it. Mr. Dwight, with the usual insane
-transcendental desire to apply an epithet, and make
-a speech, says, in a short sentence, which he thinks
-very comprehensive, that it “<span class='it'>is an old middle age
-Catholic story</span>;” making a sort of defense for the
-shocking immoralities in it, by accusing, impliedly,
-the strict discipline of the church for the libertine
-hero’s licentiousness, to whom he applies another
-string of expletives. In the opening, Mr. Dwight
-calls him “<span class='it'>a large, imposing, generous, fascinating
-creature</span>.” Now he has him “<span class='it'>an elegant, full-blooded,
-rich, accomplished, and seductive gallant</span>.”
-A sort of “<span class='it'>a love of a man</span>” according to
-Mr. Dwight’s ideas.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The subject of the story of Don Giovanni was a
-favorite one in the 17th century—“<span class='it'>the middle age
-Catholic times!</span>” Mr. Dwight talks of, in his off-hand
-sentence characterizing the story, was a little
-earlier than that, we think, a trifle of two or three
-hundred years or so—but let that pass. French,
-Italian, and Spanish writers all used it. Moliere
-wrote a famous play on it, “<span class='it'>Festin de Pierre</span>,” and
-from Moliere’s play Da Ponte prepared his libretto.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The story is a decided failure; and a great deal
-of time, and paper, and manufactured sentiment have
-been wasted in endeavoring to excuse and even to
-discover hidden philosophy and a good moral in it.
-Mr. Dwight is not the first one at this piece of business.
-If the wish is to make operatic music elevate
-and refine the public taste, by contributing to the
-moral purity of our people, composers should not
-select immoral and wicked plots; and no matter
-how beautiful the music may be, no audience should
-tolerate such a degrading story as Don Giovanni.
-It is full of all sorts of unnatural and disgusting scenes.
-The opening is very fine, and leads one to expect
-something tragic and grand.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Don Giovanni, a wicked, reckless libertine, has
-entered at midnight the house of an old military
-officer, and is seen at the rising of the curtain rushing
-out of the door, followed by the beautiful daughter
-of the commander, who he had intended to add to
-the list of his victims. A beautiful, rapid duet ensues
-between this daughter, Donna Anna, and Don Giovanni,
-she endeavoring to discover the bold ravisher.
-During this, her old father comes out, sword in hand—a
-combat ensues—Don Giovanni kills the old officer,
-and escapes. Then follows a beautiful <span class='it'>scena</span>, one
-of the gems of the Opera, between Donna Anna and
-her lover, Ottavio. She expresses her grief in heart-rending
-notes, and with frantic earnestness calls on
-her lover to avenge the murder. All this promises
-well, and one would imagine from so grand a commencement,
-something magnificently tragic was
-surely to follow. But the whole of the middle part
-of the Opera is flat and insipid—we are speaking
-now only of the story—filled with disgusting scenes
-of Don Giovanni’s gallantries. With a hard and
-sensual heart, he betrays alike the high and the low—the
-lady and the maid; he stains the palace and
-pollutes the peasant’s cot with his wanton treachery
-and crimes. He goes to a village festival, and selects
-for another victim, a poor village girl, a bride—Zerlina.
-This character was one of Madam Malibran’s
-famous parts, as Donna Anna was of Sontag’s.
-Zerlina, though properly the second Donna’s character,
-occupies more room in the Opera than the
-first soprano, Donna Anna. The famous duet, “<span class='it'>La
-ci darem la mano</span>,” is sung by Don Giovanni and
-her; and her little <span class='it'>coquetries</span> with the libertine lord,
-and seductive coaxing scenes with her peasant
-bridegroom, occupy a large portion of the middle
-part of the Opera.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>A Donna Elvira, a discarded wife or mistress it
-seems to matter little which—of Don Giovanni comes
-in also. A trying scene ensues between her and Leperello—the
-impudent, buffoon valet of Don Giovanni—the
-<span class='it'>buffo</span> character of the opera, during which, he
-tells her of his master’s conquests, while the poor
-Elvira has to stand mute, and listen to his long,
-comic piece; which—if she is not a better actress
-than is generally cast in a third-rate character—makes
-it very absurd in representation.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>After the grand opening scene of the first Act,
-Donna Anna and her lover Ottavio dwindle down into
-insignificance. All their frantic declarations of revenge
-end in nothing, and they content themselves
-with following the licentious nobleman about in
-masquerade; once in a while picking him up in the
-streets, unmasking, and entertaining themselves in
-berating him. They sing a beautiful trio with Elvira,
-just before the banquet scene; which is about
-the only good and useful thing they do in the Opera.
-For it serves a double purpose—as an English critic
-suggests—besides pleasing the audience, it gives
-time to have the stage prepared for the banquet-scene.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Don Giovanni, after flirting with and seducing fine
-ladies and humble peasant maidens, at last meets
-with his punishment; but not at the hands of the injured
-fair ones, or at the more probable ones of the
-outraged lovers; that would be too reasonable for
-this most unnatural story, but the grave must yield
-up its dead, and the infernal regions disclose their
-horrible secrets. At midnight, again he enters upon
-the stage—the scene represents a square, containing
-a marble monument, erected by Donna Anna to the
-memory of her murdered father. Leporello is with
-him, frightened to death at the sight of the grave by
-moonlight, and he declares to his reckless master
-that the statue moves its head. The bold libertine
-scoffs at the valet’s cowardice, and by way of bravado,
-invites the marble statue to sup with him.
-To his amazement the Statue answers “Yes,” “<span class='it'>Si</span>,”
-and here is that beautiful passage in the <span class='it'>music</span> which
-M. Bombert considers the Shakspearian style in music—it
-is the <span class='it'>Orchestral Accompaniment</span> to the
-simple <span class='it'>reply</span> of the Statue. A little startled, Don
-Giovanni leaves the stage. But in the next scene he
-appears as abandoned as ever. What a capital transcendental
-critic he would have made. He is supping
-alone, and seems to eat with great <span class='it'>goût</span>. During
-his solitary banquet the Statue enters, according to
-the engagement. Don Giovanni can scarcely credit
-his senses; but, bold to the last, receives his remarkable
-guest with great ceremony. The Statue tells
-him he has come on a mission of warning, and that
-he has yet a chance for repentance. Don Giovanni
-scoffs at the offer, and overcoming his awe, takes the
-extended hand of the Statue. In an instant, he is
-struck with the death-pangs—the Statue disappears—and
-he dies in a vision of endless torments, which
-is generally represented on the stage by a display of
-fireworks, giving the vulgar idea of the infernal regions;
-a place made for the devil and his angels.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Now it is this shameless, coarse libertine that Mr.
-Dwight in his article, following in the wake of others,
-strives not only to excuse, but to idealize and elevate.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>We have done with the story: let us return for a
-few moments to Mozart’s part of this Opera—the
-music. Off of the stage, in a <span class='it'>salon</span> or concert-room,
-the effect of this Opera is most beautiful; for on the
-stage the immoral, vulgar story, low buffoonery and
-farce-like appearance of many of the scenes, are
-sadly at variance with the elevated and almost religious
-tone of the music, and disgust even a hearty
-admirer, if he is candid enough to admit it.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Let us here take leave of this subject and of Mr.
-Dwight: begging of him in future, if he is not able
-to be original, to at least copy good models of style
-and morals, and not inflict upon the community his
-own exaggerated, loose-principled, Boston notions.
-Luckily, however, his style is so confused and mystified,
-that much of the injurious effect is lost. We
-have heard these Boston non-religionists talk, and
-we know with what <span class='it'>goût</span> they “<span class='it'>defy the moral</span>” of
-any matter, to use Mr. Dwight’s own words; then,
-how can one expect better principles, where such
-laxity of morals are avowed. The closing sentence
-in this Don Giovanni article is a pretty fair specimen
-of this anti-religious, moral-defying kind of literature;
-indeed, the whole article is—for “<span class='it'>passion life</span>,”
-“<span class='it'>innate gospel of joy</span>,” and such English run-mad
-expressions dance through the whole article, enlivened
-and varied, once in a while, with some of
-the fire-engine vernacular.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Shame! shame upon such literature! Mr. Dwight
-talks of the “<span class='it'>divine good of the senses and the passions</span>,”
-and longs for that “<span class='it'>pure and perfect state</span>,”
-when these grosser parts of our nature “<span class='it'>shall be—not
-dreaded, not suppressed; but regulated, harmonized,
-made rythmical and safe, and more than
-ever lifesome and spontaneous, by Law as broad
-and as deep themselves</span>.” A pretty state of affairs
-we should have in such a hereafter as these
-people long for. All this is entirely foreign to our
-old-fashioned notions of Heaven and a hereafter. It
-may be the Heaven of an Agapedome, or a Woman’s
-Rights Convention, but it is not the Heaven of a
-Christian. And they will find out, sooner or later,
-that there is a real hereafter—a solemn, and stern
-judging hereafter; and though they may imagine
-that their transcendental “<span class='it'>Souls, with their capacity
-for joy and harmony, is of that godlike and asbestos
-quality</span>,” as to defy punishment, punishment
-will come, and pretty effectual it will be, and they
-will see all this “spiritual asbestos quality”—why not
-<span class='it'>gutta percha</span>, just as well—of little account, when
-they are found with lamps untrimmed, and talents
-buried in the earth.</p>
-
-<p class='line' style='text-align:right;margin-right:3em;margin-top:0.5em;'><span class='sc'>Mount Edgecumb.</span></p>
-
-<hr class='tbk123'/>
-
-<div><h1><a id='god'></a>THE AUTOGRAPH OF GOD.</h1></div>
-
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;'>———</p>
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;font-size:0.8em;font-weight:bold;'>BY GEORGE W. BUNGAY.</p>
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;margin-bottom:1.5em;'>———</p>
-
-
- <div class='poetry-container' style=''>
- <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' -->
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>The thirsty earth, with lips apart,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Looked up where rolled an orb of flame</p>
-<p class='line0'>As though a prayer came from its heart</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;For rain to come; and lo! it came.</p>
-<p class='line0'>The Indian corn, with silken plume,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;And flowers with tiny pitchers filled,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Send up their praise of sweet perfume,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;For silver drops the clouds distilled.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>The modest grass is fresh and green—</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;The fountain swells its song again;</p>
-<p class='line0'>An angel’s radiant wing is seen</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;In every cloud that brings us rain.</p>
-<p class='line0'>There is a rainbow in the sky,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;It spans the arch where tempests trod;</p>
-<p class='line0'>God wrote it ere the world was dry—</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;It is the <span class='sc'>Autograph of God</span>.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>Up where the heavy thunders rolled,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Where clouds on fire were swept along,</p>
-<p class='line0'>The sun rides in a car of gold,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;And soaring larks dissolve in song.</p>
-<p class='line0'>The rills that gush from mountains rude,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Flow trickling to the verdant base—</p>
-<p class='line0'>Just like the tears of gratitude</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;That often steal adown the face.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>Great King of peace, deign now to bless—</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;The windows of the sky unbar;</p>
-<p class='line0'>Shower down the rain of righteousness,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;And wash away the stain of war;</p>
-<p class='line0'>Though we deserve the reeking rod,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Smile from thy throne of light on high—</p>
-<p class='line0'>That we may read the name of God,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;In lines of beauty on the sky.</p>
-</div>
-</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend -->
-
-<hr class='tbk124'/>
-
-<div><h1><a id='ifi'></a>IF I WERE A SMILE.</h1></div>
-
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;'>———</p>
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;font-size:0.8em;font-weight:bold;'>BY RICHARD COE.</p>
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;margin-bottom:1.5em;'>———</p>
-
-
- <div class='poetry-container' style=''>
- <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' -->
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>If I were a smile, a beautiful smile,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;I would play o’er the infant’s face,</p>
-<p class='line0'>And stamp such an heavenly impress there</p>
-<p class='line0'>That never a tinge of sorrow or care</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Should ever its beauty efface,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;To appear the while,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;If I were a smile, a beautiful smile.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>If I were a sigh, a sorrowing sigh,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;In the breast of a maiden fair;</p>
-<p class='line0'>I would speed me on angel wings above,</p>
-<p class='line0'>And lie like a beautiful wounded dove</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;At the feet of my Saviour there,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;Till he heard my cry,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;If I were a sigh, a sorrowing sigh.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>If I were a tear, a bright, pearly tear,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;In the eye of a Christian mild;</p>
-<p class='line0'>I would flow at the sight of keen distress,</p>
-<p class='line0'>As the dew-drop falls on the earth to bless,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;To calm the heart from tumult wild</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;Were my task so dear,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;If I were a tear, a bright, pearly tear.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>But as I am neither a smile nor sigh,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Nor even a tear pearly bright;</p>
-<p class='line0'>But an humble poet singing the while,</p>
-<p class='line0'>The world of its sorrows and to beguile,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;I’ll scatter my songs with delight</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;To the passer-by,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Till smiles take the place of the tear and sigh.</p>
-</div>
-</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend -->
-
-<hr class='tbk125'/>
-
-<div><h1><a id='true'></a>A TRUE IRISH STORY.</h1></div>
-
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;'>———</p>
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;font-size:0.8em;font-weight:bold;'>BY REDWOOD FISHER.</p>
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;margin-bottom:1.5em;'>———</p>
-
-<div class='blockquote'>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Erin-Go-Bragh,” the celebrated Irish song of an exiled patriot—Why it was written by a Scotchman, with an
-interesting account of Campbell the poet, and some account of Gen. A. McC——n, the Irish Patriot.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-
- <div class='poetry-container' style=''>
- <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' -->
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>O, sad is my fate, said the heart-broken stranger:</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;The wild deer and wolf to a covert can flee,</p>
-<p class='line0'>But I have no refuge from famine and danger,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;A home and a country remain not for me.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>Ah! never again in the green shady bowers,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Where my forefathers lived, shall I spend the sweet hours,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Or cover my harp with the wild woven flowers,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;And strike the sweet numbers of Erin-go-bragh.</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;<span class='it'>See Campbell’s Poems.</span></p>
-</div>
-</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend -->
-
-<p class='pindent'>In the year 1810, a native of Philadelphia resided
-in the city of Altona, and became intimately
-acquainted with Gen. McC——, who commanded
-the Irish patriots at the battle of Ballanahench.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The general was a real Irish gentleman, with a
-heart alive to every refined sympathy of human nature,
-and warmly attached to Americans and the
-American character. Never can it be forgotten by
-those who were so happy as to share his confidence,
-how his fine manly countenance would light up, as
-he listened to the answers his questions would draw
-forth, when inquiring into the private characters of
-any of our revolutionary sages or soldiers.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Often would the tears start into his eyes, when,
-at the social bowl, some unpublished anecdote would
-be elicited of the daring of Putnam, the Hannibal-like
-qualities of Greene and Marion, the persevering
-bravery of Rifle Morgan, or the daring of General
-Wayne in his battles with the savage foe.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>His whole soul would appear to flash from his
-expressive eye, and he would burst forth with the
-exclamation: “Oh, Erin, oh my beloved country,
-from which, alas! I am banished, when will heroes
-such as these arise and burst the bands by which
-thou art enslaved?—Will a just God never hear
-thy prayers? Will the groans of enslaved millions,
-will the agonies of a brave and generous people never
-reach thy throne, and call down thy vengeance upon
-her persecutors? Excuse me,” he would say, “excuse
-the companion of the Emmets, the McNevens,
-and others, who were confined with me in Fort
-George, in Scotland, from whence I was transported
-hither—banished! What a word! banished from
-the home of my childhood—torn from the land where
-my forefathers dwelt!” On one occasion of this kind,
-when the most of the company had retired, in his
-own hospitable mansion, he invited his Philadelphia
-friend to remain and hear the sad story of his life.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>He rose from the table, and going to a book-case,
-he produced a copy of Campbell’s poems, and turning
-to the beautiful song of Erin-go-bragh—“there,”
-said he, “is my history, I am the original Erin-go-bragh.
-My countrymen, I am told, often inquire
-how it happened that a Scotchman should write this
-national, this glowing account of the wrongs of my
-devoted countrymen. Listen to me, and I will truly
-tell you the whole story—that is, if I can tell it! If
-I can sufficiently compose myself, you shall hear it;
-and should you survive me <span class='it'>you</span> may publish it, that
-the mystery may be solved and the world may know
-how the heart of a Scotch poet was touched with
-the holy sympathy of our common nature, and has
-placed on record, in the most exalted and touching
-numbers, the feelings of an Irish exile. While confined
-in the fortress of Fort George I was, without
-any knowledge of what was to be my fate, conveyed
-to a seaport and put on board of an English frigate,
-to be banished I knew not whither!” (The name
-of the port of embarkation and of the vessel were
-given, but are not now remembered.) “On board
-of this vessel was Campbell, the Scotch poet, then
-about to make his pedestrian tour on the continent
-of Europe. It was not long before we became intimately
-acquainted, and as you may suppose my
-whole heart was filled with wo.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“During our passage to this place, we had many
-and very close conversations, pending which I
-poured into his attentive ear, in impassioned language,
-the sad—the overwhelming woes of my
-countrymen, and particularly my own hard fate.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“We were not very long in reaching our destination—we
-landed together at Altona, and what was
-my surprise to find my companion as destitute of
-money as myself. I had been hurried away without
-the knowledge of my friends, who had no intimation
-of my banishment, and coming from close confinement,
-was not overburdened with a wardrobe, much
-less with the necessary funds for decency, to say
-nothing of comfort.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Campbell was as poor as myself, and in this
-condition we entered a very common inn, and were
-ushered into a room, not very well furnished, having
-nothing but an oaken table and a very few common
-chairs. We seated ourselves at opposite sides of
-the table, and gazed at each other with no enviable
-feelings, when, on examining our exchequer, we
-found the whole sum in the treasury amounted to
-no more than a crown. We called for a candle, for
-it was growing dark, and ordered, in consonance
-with our finances, a small bottle of rum. The light
-came, and you must believe me when I tell you it
-was a dip candle stuck in a black bottle. There
-was something so ludicrous in this, and in our general
-circumstances, that we both indulged in a hearty
-laugh, applying ourselves to the ‘Cruise Keen Lawn’
-to keep up for a time the tone of our feelings.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“As our spirits were operated upon by the
-wretched liquor, which we drank more to drown
-the rising sigh than for any partiality for it, Campbell
-called for pen, ink, and paper. ‘Mr. McC.’ said he,
-‘your story has deeply interested me, and a kind of
-notion has arisen that I should like to put it upon
-paper.’</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“In a little time a miserable ink-horn was produced,
-and something which was called paper, but
-it was so stained, and otherwise disfigured, it seemed
-almost impossible, with the wretched pen that accompanied
-it, that legible characters could be traced
-upon it; and I could but indulge in my risible propensities,
-at the idea of any attempt to write with
-such materials.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“But the soul of the poet had been aroused, and
-he bade me again to refresh his memory with my
-tale, which I did by replying to such questions as he
-from time to time propounded to me. Every now
-and then he would pause, and pledge me in the tin
-cup with which we were furnished, for glasses there
-were none; when he would again commence to
-write, and before he had finished, so potent were the
-draughts in which we had indulged, that some of the
-last lines ran in any other direction than parallel to
-each other.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“At last he finished his labors, and the result of
-them was the song of Erin-go-bragh, the very song
-printed in his works, and which I now hand to you.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“This is a true history of that inimitable production,
-more full of feeling, in my opinion, than any
-thing he has ever written before or since.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Read it to me,” said the general, “for if the
-king would withdraw the act which banished me,
-the object nearest my Irish heart, I could not read
-that song aloud!”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Such was the story told to the writer, as nearly as
-it can be remembered, after a lapse of thirty-eight
-years. There are yet living in this city several persons
-who will recognize it, and an appeal to them
-for the accuracy with which it is here told, would
-confirm it in every particular; its only defect being
-the absence of power in the writer to impart to his
-readers any thing of the enthusiasm with which
-General McC. related it—nor the heart-stirring emotion
-ever exhibited by him when it became, as it
-often did, the subject of conversation.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>As the reader may feel desirous to know what
-was subsequently the fate of the real and original
-Erin-go-bragh, he may be told that his friends found
-out where he was, remitted him funds, that he embarked
-in a profitable pursuit, and ever after lived in
-comparative affluence.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The story of his marriage is of so romantic a nature,
-that as he is now no more, and there is therefore
-no impropriety in giving it publicity, the writer
-is tempted to narrate it, as he has often listened to it
-from the lips of the general, at his own hospitable
-board, in the presence of his wife.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“ ‘There she is,’ he would say, ‘she is my preserver!’
-Campbell and myself continued in our
-lodgings, and with Saturday night came the bill of
-expenses, but alas! our means were exhausted.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“When the bill for the first week was presented
-to us, ‘Well,’ said the poet to me, ‘what do you
-propose to do, general?’ To which I replied, ‘Do!—what
-do I propose to do, did you ask me? I might
-put the same question to you—but no! let an Irishman
-alone for getting out of a scrape. I will call
-up the landlord, and tell him our story; adding, that
-I expect ere long my relatives will find out whither
-I have been sent, and it cannot be, but that in a short
-time funds will be sent to me.’ Suiting the action to
-the word, I rang the bell, the landlord appeared, and
-I gave him our story in a few words, for though a
-German, he was well acquainted with our language.
-‘An Irish general,’ said the apparently incredulous
-Boniface, ‘and a Scotch poet!’ He left us with
-the exclamation, and after he had gone, I proposed
-a walk, to which my companion assenting, we
-strolled around the city of Altona, and returned to
-our lodgings, without having met with any occurrence
-worthy of remark. Being somewhat fatigued, and
-having no book, or other means of occupation, we
-retired to our humble chamber, which had in it two
-single beds, by no means luxurious.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Another week of anxiety passed away, and no
-advices reached me. The poet and myself were in a
-considerable stew. Another bill was presented, and
-to our great surprise we found our host very lenient
-indeed. He made no remark when presenting it—simply
-asked me had I received my funds, and on expressing
-my mortification that my reply must be in
-the negative, he left me with a polite bow.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“ ‘The accommodations,’ said the poet, ‘are here
-none of the best, but our host is an honest fellow, we
-have inspired him with confidence, and he appears
-content to wait!’</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“I know not how it was, but I felt a strange sensation
-come over me, a feeling that relief was at
-hand. So strongly was I impressed with this belief
-that I communicated it to my friend, who laughed
-out at what he called my Irish modest assurance.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“ ‘Relief,’ he said, ‘may come when your relations
-hear of you, but my word for it, that will not
-be soon. No, no, there is no relief, and I must leave
-you for my continental tour.’</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“He however yielded to my solicitation to walk,
-which was always my resource, and as we left the
-house, I said to him, ‘Campbell, when we come
-back I shall hear something.’</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“ ‘If you do,’ said he, ‘it may be in the shape of
-a dun for our unpaid bills.’</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“ ‘You will see,’ I replied; when we sallied
-forth, and were gone perhaps an hour. On returning
-to our room, judge of the sensation I experienced
-when I discovered on the oaken table, a neat envelope
-directed, in a female hand, ‘To Gen. A. McC.’
-With an eagerness much more easily conceived than
-described, I broke the seal—not a line of manuscript
-did it contain—but for a moment my heart leaped
-with joy, for I found within the envelope a Schleswig
-Holstein bank bill of twenty dollars! Although
-my surprise was without bounds—‘Did I not tell
-you,’ said I to my friend, ‘that relief was at hand?’</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Our treasury was now replenished, and we had
-a fruitful subject of conversation. Addressing himself
-to his attentive listener, ‘I wish,’ said the
-general, ‘you could have seen the stride with which
-I paced up and down that room.’ Never in my
-whole eventful life had I such commingled sensations.
-My pride was gratified, that I could now
-discharge our indebtedness to our host, while I
-suffered the deepest humiliation in the reflection,
-that I was considered an object of charity by some
-unknown person! My curiosity was at fault to determine
-who it could be, and I shall never forget
-Campbell’s looks as he exclaimed, ‘You have conquered
-here, if you could not in Ireland. But it is
-Cupid who has been your aid. The hand-writing,
-the neatness of the billet, and its diminutive proportions,
-all declare it to be a <span class='it'>billet-doux</span>. My word
-for it, your Irish complexion and figure have taken
-captive the heart of some fair lady!’ This idea
-greatly added to my embarrassment, but the pride
-of being enabled to discharge our indebtedness, overcame
-for the moment all my other sensations, and
-strutting up to the bell, I rang it with so much violence,
-that our landlord ran up in an instant, and demanded
-to know what was the matter? ‘<span class='it'>Bring your
-bill</span>,’ said I, ‘that I may at once discharge it.’ I
-thought this would be the most agreeable intelligence
-I could give him. What, then, was our joint
-surprise, when he replied, ‘That, gentlemen, is of
-no kind of importance; I pray of you give yourselves
-no uneasiness on that score—you can pay me
-at your convenience.’ Saying this, he departed,
-leaving my friend and myself more deeply involved
-in the mystery which had not only supplied us with
-money, but which had also placed us in such ample
-credit.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“ ‘You see,’ said the poet, ‘you are known, and
-Cupid has taken you under his special protection.
-Let us call for wine, and pledge him, and the sweet
-<span class='it'>heart</span> he has enlisted in your service, in a bottle of
-the very best the house affords. Would for her sake
-and our own it were nectar!’</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“The wine was ordered, and it was long before it
-made its appearance, for it was a fluid unknown
-within the precincts of our habitation; but it came
-at last, and though none of the best, never was the
-choicest Burgundy drunk with greater <span class='it'>gusto</span>, or a
-toast given with a more hearty glee than inspired us
-till we finished the second bottle.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Time now passed more pleasantly. The second
-Saturday brought another note, addressed in the
-same hand-writing, containing a second bank-note of
-the same amount. Finding our finances so much
-improved we took better lodgings, and indulged ourselves
-with more of the creature comforts, for the
-unknown benefactor found us out in our new abode,
-and continued the supply, which enabled us to do
-so.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“I think,” continued the general, “it was in
-the fourth week that I was returning to my lodgings
-alone, in the dusk of the evening, when one of the
-flag-stones of the pavement being somewhat raised
-above its fellows, caused me to strike it with my
-foot, and being thus thrown from my equilibrium, I
-fell against the porch of a dwelling, in which was
-seated a lady, who did not attract my attention until
-I heard a voice, a sweet voice, which inquired if I
-was hurt. A voice in my native tongue uttering
-sounds of sympathy would have been accompanied
-with a charm, come from whom it might; but imagine
-the ecstasy with which I was thrilled when I
-heard the sweet voice which addressed me, and
-knew it to be from the lips of a fair daughter of the
-Emerald Isle—in plain English, an Irish woman.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“ ‘I hope you are not hurt, general?’</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“ ‘General!’ she knows me then, thought I.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“ ‘Come,’ said she, ‘and rest yourself in the porch.’</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“I could no longer contain myself. I had been
-dining out with an acquaintance—for I had by this
-time made one or two acquaintances—and the generous
-wine I had imbibed had opened my heart, alive
-as it was, to any and every accent of kindness to an
-exile. I could contain myself no longer.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Tell me,” said I, “by what blessed influence
-I have been thus brought to listen to the sweet sympathizing
-accents of a country-woman, and one who
-appears to know me: for if I mistake not, you addressed
-me by my title—the sad, sad title which calls
-up all my afflictions, and revives the sad fate of my
-companions in a strife which failed to benefit our beloved
-country, proved fatal to one of the best men,
-and sent me hither a wandering exile.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“There,” said he, pointing to his wife, then present,
-“there sits the angel of mercy, who poured into
-my attentive ears—till they reached my inmost
-soul—accents attuned to the most holy of all earthly
-consolations: accents of sympathy for me, and the
-most noble and heroic sentiments, applauding the
-course of our dear native land.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Now,” said the lady, “I pray of you do not
-get into your heroics:” and addressing their guest,
-she continued—“Receive what he says with many
-allowances, for on this subject he is insane. I forgive
-him, for he has suffered much in the cause of
-that dear land from which we both derive our birth;
-and you who know him know that he never thinks
-or speaks of dear Erin and his exile—of a spot for
-which he is ready to shed the last drop of his blood—that
-his whole soul is not on fire. Of this he may
-talk to you; and if you will listen to him he will do
-so till to-morrow’s sun shall warm you with his meridian
-rays—but I forbid him to talk of me and of our
-union.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Forbid!” said the husband, “there is no such
-word in the vocabulary. I will tell this to our friend,
-for you know I love him. I will tell him how you
-courted me, and how you saved me, and made me
-what I am, your happy husband.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>To this the fond wife would reply, deprecating the
-continuance of his narrative, which, however, did
-not prevent him from doing ample justice to every
-incident which occurred; from the time of their first
-accidental meeting as here related, until Hymen had
-sealed a union which had made both husband and
-wife as happy as they could be under the circumstances
-of his banishment. This was an eternal
-source of chagrin and mortification to his heroic
-soul; and never could Ireland be named within his
-hearing, that the tear did not start in his eye.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The substance of his love affair was, that the
-lady of whom we have spoken was an Irish lady,
-who had come when a young woman with her parents
-to Altona, had married a young German, who
-did not long survive their union. She was left in
-very comfortable circumstances, and hearing from
-the keeper of the inn that a person was an inmate
-with him, calling himself an Irish general, who had
-been banished, and who had not heard from his
-friends, and was without funds, she had sent him
-the weekly supply which so much astonished the
-poet and the general. The innkeeper—knowing the
-lady to be an Irish woman—had gone to consult her
-as to the probability of the general’s story, and had
-been told to withhold nothing, and that she would be
-responsible. Often did she tell the writer that she
-sent the money without any expectation of ever seeing
-the recipient, who was represented to her as so
-fine-looking in person, that he could not be an impostor.
-She believed him to be a veritable Irishman
-in distress, and—that was enough—had she never
-seen him, he was a countryman of hers, and had a
-right to any thing she could do for him—happy to
-have been furnished with an object to call forth her
-patriotic feelings, to exercise them in his behalf was
-her greatest delight. Pure accident had given her a
-knowledge of who was the cause of calling them
-forth, and his heart was touched and hers responded
-to his love—they had been several years married
-when the writer became an inmate with them—their
-home was the abode of peace and contentment, and
-a hospitality that knew no limits.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>It was enough that their guest was an American
-to call forth all their patriotic feelings: and many
-were there—besides the writer of this imperfect
-sketch of so noble a character—that can join with
-the writer in esteeming it a high honor, and a source
-of extreme gratification to have been permitted to
-know and to enjoy the society of the “Original
-Erin-go-bragh.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>His sentence of banishment was remitted many
-years after the period here spoken of; and he was
-permitted again to return to the home of his childhood,
-and the land of his forefathers, for which he
-had bled, and for the redemption of which he was
-ever ready to lay down his life—but it was not
-so ordered. He died in peace, and was buried
-in the tomb of his ancestors. General Anthony
-McCann was the veritable and original “Erin-go-bragh.”</p>
-
-<hr class='tbk126'/>
-
-<div><h1><a id='miss'></a>TO MISS LIGHT UNDERWOOD.</h1></div>
-
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;'>———</p>
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;font-size:0.8em;font-weight:bold;'>BY J. R. BARRICK.</p>
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;margin-bottom:1.5em;'>———</p>
-
-
- <div class='poetry-container' style=''>
- <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' -->
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>I have been out this lovely eve,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;With Nature’s self to muse,</p>
-<p class='line0'>While pleasant thoughts fell gently on</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;My heart like falling dews;</p>
-<p class='line0'>And every star and every flower</p>
-<p class='line0'>That gave their presence to the hour,</p>
-<p class='line0'>And every voice of melody,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Seemed laden with sweet thoughts of thee.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>I mused upon thy deep, high soul</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Of intellect and grace:</p>
-<p class='line0'>I mused on all the loveliness</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Of thy fair form and face:</p>
-<p class='line0'>And thy bright smile unto my dreams</p>
-<p class='line0'>Came stealing like the glow that beams</p>
-<p class='line0'>From sky and star, in waves of light</p>
-<p class='line0'>Upon the far, dim shades of night.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>With every tone of moonlight sound,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;With every breeze of balm,</p>
-<p class='line0'>With every fountain, lake and stream,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;So beautiful and calm,</p>
-<p class='line0'>With every cloud, with every star,</p>
-<p class='line0'>And every sound borne from afar,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Thy voice seemed mingling with the whole,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Of Music’s self the life and soul.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>And as I gazed up to the sky,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;And on the earth below,</p>
-<p class='line0'>My thoughts went back a few brief months,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;’Mid saddening scenes of wo:</p>
-<p class='line0'>When thou wert lost in rayless night,</p>
-<p class='line0'>A wanderer from the sense of sight,</p>
-<p class='line0'>When Nature’s self had ceased to cheer</p>
-<p class='line0'>Thy high heart with her beauty dear,</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>I mused on the long night of wo</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;That thou wert doomed to share,</p>
-<p class='line0'>When not a hope was left to beam</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Upon thy dark despair:</p>
-<p class='line0'>I thought how sad it was to be</p>
-<p class='line0'>From earth and sky shut out like thee,</p>
-<p class='line0'>To pine beneath a cloud of gloom,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Hung o’er thee, like a raven’s plume.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>But now thou art restored again,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;To former sense of sight,</p>
-<p class='line0'>And lookest back with fearful gaze</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;On that remembered night:</p>
-<p class='line0'>And happy in thy mind’s high powers</p>
-<p class='line0'>Thou rangest Thought’s Elysian bowers,</p>
-<p class='line0'>And canst behold with joyous eyes,</p>
-<p class='line0'>The wide, green earth, and free blue skies.</p>
-</div>
-</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend -->
-
-<hr class='tbk127'/>
-
-<div><h1><a id='hunt'></a>THE CONDOR HUNT.<a id='r2'/><a href='#f2' style='text-decoration:none'><sup><span style='font-size:0.9em'>[2]</span></sup></a></h1></div>
-
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;'>———</p>
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;font-size:0.8em;font-weight:bold;'>BY LIEUT. WM. F. LYNCH.</p>
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;margin-bottom:1.5em;'>———</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>In each division of the American Continent, nature
-seems to have carried on her operations with boundless
-magnificence, and upon a gigantic scale. Chateaubriand,
-reclining by his watch-fire on the banks
-of the Niagara, where the thunders of its cataract
-were only interrupted by the startling yell of the
-Iroquois, could yet <span class='it'>feel</span>, in the midst of tumult, the
-amazing silence and solitude of the North American
-forest. And the hardy mariner, whose bark has
-escaped the perils of the Southern sea, and is wafted
-along the western coast of Chili, looks with no less
-admiration upon the fertile plains gradually receding
-into the swell of the Andes, which literally lifts its
-smoking craters and towering eminences above the
-clouds, and upon its snow-capped and sunny summits,
-scarcely feels the undulations of the storms
-which gather and burst around its waist.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>With the stars and stripes of the Union floating
-from the mast-head of our frigate, we were sailing
-along that part of the coast of Chili, where the waving
-line of the Andes rounds within a short distance of
-the Pacific, and were unusually solicitous, after
-the perils and privations of a tempestuous sea-voyage,
-to tread upon a soil on which nature, from her
-horn of abundance, has poured forth the choicest of
-her gifts.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Older sailors than ourselves had spoken of the
-generous hospitality of the Spanish colonists, and
-there were historical associations connected with
-this favored land, well calculated to render a visit
-agreeable. Who that has been nurtured in the lap
-of freedom, would not long to look upon the only
-race of native people on the western continent who
-had never been subdued, and who, to this day, tread
-the soil of their forefathers unvanquished and invincible?</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The Araucanians, who inhabit the southern portion
-of this delightful country, like the Saxons of the
-European continent, are the only native race who
-have successfully repelled every invader, and who,
-happier than the Saxon, still rejoice in their unbridled
-freedom.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Neither Diego Almagro, with his brutal treachery,
-nor Valverde, with his unsparing cruelty, could ever
-subdue or intimidate a race of freemen whose liberties
-still survive the frequent convulsions by which
-they have been agitated. The flame of freedom
-among this gallant people, like the volcanoes of their
-native mountains, seems destined to burn on for ever
-unextinguished. But I proposed to speak of the
-Condor Hunt on the plains of Chili.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Every one has heard of the Condor or Great Vulture
-of the Andes, rivaling in natural history, the
-fabled feats of the Roc of Sinbad. Even the genius
-of Humboldt has failed to strip this giant bird of its
-time-honored renown, and his effort to reduce the
-Chilian Condor to the level of the Lammergyer of
-the Alps, is a signal failure.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Although he has divested this mountain-bird of
-all its fictitious attributes, and stripped a goodly portion
-of romantic narrative of its wildest imagery,
-yet the Condor still floats in the solitude of the
-higher heavens, the monarch of the feathered race.
-The favorite abiding-place of this formidable bird is
-along a chain of mountains in our southern continent,
-whose summits, lifted far above the clouds, are
-robed in snow, which a torrid sun may kiss but never
-melt. Above all animal life, and beyond the limit
-of even mountain vegetation, these birds delight to
-dwell, inhaling an air too highly attenuated to be
-endured by other than creatures peculiarly adapted
-to it. From the crown of these immense elevations
-they slowly and lazily unfold their sweeping pinions,
-and wheeling in wide and ascending circles, they
-soar upward into the dark blue vault of heaven,
-until their great bulk diminishes to the merest
-speck, or is entirely lost to the aching sight of the
-observer.</p>
-
-<div class='blockquote'>
-
-
- <div class='poetry-container' style=''>
- <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' -->
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>“All day thy wings have fanned,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;At that far height, the cold, thin atmosphere,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;Though the dark night is near.</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;There is a Power whose care</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;Teaches thy way along that pathless coast—</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;The desert and illimitable air—</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;Lone wandering—but not lost.</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;Thou art gone—the abyss of heaven</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;Hath swallowed up thy form.”</p>
-</div>
-</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend -->
-
-</div>
-
-<p class='pindent'>In those pure fields of ether, unvisited even by the
-thunder-cloud, regions which may be regarded as
-his own exclusive domain, the Condor delights to
-sail, and with piercing glance survey the surface of
-the earth, toward which he never stoops but at the
-call of hunger. Surely this power to waft and to
-sustain himself in the loftiest regions of the air—the
-ability to endure, uninjured, the exceeding cold attendant
-upon such remoteness from the earth, and
-to breathe with ease in an atmosphere of such extreme
-rarity—together with the keenness of sight
-that, from such vast heights can minutely scan the
-objects beneath, as well as the formidable powers
-of this bird, when the herds are scattered before
-him; were sufficiently admirable to entitle the Condor
-to our attention, and to give us promise of goodly
-sport in the approaching Condor or Lasso Hunt.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>A large landed proprietor, a descendant of one of
-the early Spanish patentees, to whom we had been
-indebted for abundant supplies of fruit and provisions,
-as well as for numberless civilities, conveyed
-to us at length the welcome tidings that the Condor,
-numerous as the sands of the shore had stooped
-from his sublime domain, to the base of the mountain,
-and that the hunt would commence in the
-morning.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The sun had scarcely risen in the heavens, when
-our party of from twenty-five to thirty, sprang from
-the boats to the beach. The plain before us ran in a
-gently ascending slope to the base of the hill about
-one mile distant. The hunt was up—and the field
-in the distance was dotted with scampering herds of
-cattle and groups of horsemen, mingled in one dusty
-mêlée, the sight of which lent wings to our speed,
-as vaulting into the deep Spanish saddles, prepared
-by our worthy host, we sprang onward to the field
-of blood. Impelled by the cravings of resistless appetite,
-the Condor, regardless of danger, pressed
-forward to assail the herds of the plain; while the
-watchmen, having sounded the alarm, the numerous
-population turned out, as well to protect their cattle,
-as to hunt the mountain-bird—the Chilian’s manly
-pastime.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>From the midst of a canopy of dust, spread wide
-over the plain, there came forth sounds of noisy conflict,
-resembling the heady current of a “foughten
-field;” and mountain and hill-side were shaken by
-the shouts of the hunters, the tramp of scampering
-horsemen, and the bellowing of enraged and affrighted
-cattle. The Condor, alone, rapid as the
-cassowary of the desert, pursued in silence his destined
-prey. As we rapidly approached, we perceived
-one of the herd bursting from the western
-extremity of the cloud of dust, lashing his bleeding
-side with his tail, and his blood-shotten eyes starting
-wildly from their sockets, while foaming at the
-mouth, he bellowed loudly with pain. With a wonderful
-unity of purpose, he alone was closely pursued
-by the whole flock of birds, who, disregarding the
-other animals, seemed to follow, as with a single
-will, this stricken one, who was at the same time
-cautiously avoided by his terrified companions.
-Like all gregarious birds, the Condor appeared to
-have a leader, who, rushing at their head, into the
-midst of the herd, pounced with his greedy beak
-upon this devoted animal, the fattest and the sleekest
-of the multitude, and tore a piece of flesh from his
-side. Attracted by the sight or the scent of blood,
-the whole flock, like a brood of harpies, joined in the
-mad pursuit. Swift of foot as the fleetest racer,
-they kept close to his side, ever and anon striking
-with unerring sagacity at his eyes.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Tell me not of the gladiators of martial Rome, or
-of the Tauridors of modern Seville—they were pastimes
-for children, compared with the thrilling excitement
-of the Condor Hunt. Away they fled, and
-away we hurried in the chase. A thousand horsemen
-were wheeling rapidly in pursuit—a thousand
-cattle, terrified and frantic, swept over the plain—and
-a thousand Condors mingled in the crowd—until,
-by the rapid movement, herd and Condor were again
-hidden from the view in clouds of dust. A loud
-shout soon after attracted us to the scene of conflict.
-Bursting forth once again from the cloud of dust
-into which he had vainly rushed, the devoted animal
-plunged madly forward, yet more closely followed
-by the whole field of vultures. Black with dust, and
-streaming with blood from a hundred wounds inflicted
-by the remorseless beaks of his pursuers, he
-still fled onward, but with diminished speed. As if
-looking to man for assistance in his extremity, he
-rushed through the midst of our cavalcade, and the
-Condor, regardless of our presence, hung upon his
-side, or followed in his foot-prints.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>From the altered movement of the animal after he
-had passed us, with his head on high, plunging and
-blundering over the uneven ground, it was evident
-that his course was no longer directed by sight.
-His eyes were gone—they had been torn from their
-bleeding sockets!</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Wearied and panting, his tongue hangs from his
-mouth, and every thirsty beak is upon it. Still onward
-he flies, hopeful of escape—and onward presses
-the Condor, secure of his prey. The animal now
-appeared to be dashing for the water, but his declining
-speed and unequal step rendered it doubtful
-whether he could reach it. He seemed suddenly to
-despair of doing so, for wheeling round with one last
-and desperate effort, he gathered himself up in the
-fullness of his remaining strength, and rushed into
-the midst of the herd, as if he sought by mingling in
-the living mass, to divert the attention of his pursuers.
-But the mark and the scent of blood was
-upon him, and on the track of blood the Condor is
-untiring and relentless. Beast and bird once again
-were lost to view beneath the curtain of dust which
-overspread the trembling plain. But, in a few moments,
-pursued by every bird, he broke from the
-midst of the herd, and made a few desperate plunges
-toward the water, and reeling onward, fell at length
-bleeding and exhausted, on the very margin of the
-sea!</p>
-
-<div class='blockquote'>
-
-
- <div class='poetry-container' style=''>
- <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' -->
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>“Sternitur exanimisque tremens procumbit humis bos.”</p>
-</div>
-</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend -->
-
-</div>
-
-<p class='pindent'>In an instant he was buried up among his pursuers,
-his flesh torn off, yet quivering, by hungry
-beaks, and his smoking entrails trailed upon the
-ground. In the distance, on the verge of the horizon,
-the last of the herd might still be discerned,
-flying upon the wings of the wind from the fate of
-their companion.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Our host gave the signal, and we hurried to the
-spot to rescue the carcass, with a view to visit upon
-the Condor vengeance for the mischief he had done,
-and the blood he had spilled. At our near approach
-they took reluctantly and lazily to wing, and wheeling
-in oblique circles, they were soon seen floating
-over the crest of the mountain, dark specks in the
-firmament. The hunters, prepared with stakes about
-seven feet in length, commenced driving them in
-the ground, a few inches apart, and in a circular
-form around the carcass, leaving a small space open.
-As soon as we retired from the spot, the birds descended
-upon the plain, and entering the inclosure,
-renewed their feast, and again took wing. In the
-course of a few hours, the huntsmen returned, and
-throwing into the pen an additional supply of food,
-drove down other stakes in the open space, leaving
-just sufficient room for the admission of the
-Condor.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The birds, more numerous than ever, returned to
-their filthy banquet.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Meanwhile, having refreshed our horses, and partaken
-of the hospitality of our worthy host, we
-once more took the field for vengeance on the
-gorged and lazy foe. As the wings of these birds
-have a sweep of seventeen feet, <a id='they'></a>they are not readily
-unfurled, so that when the Condor has alighted on
-the plain, he is only enabled to rise by running over
-a space of fifteen or twenty rods, and gradually gathering
-wind to lift himself on high. While in the
-midst of their ravenous feast, a few of the hunters
-warily approached and closed the opening; and thus,
-unable to soar aloft from a spot so confined and
-crowded, the Condors were captive. But a Chilian
-scorns thus to slay a foe. Armed with a lasso, each
-of the natives sits upon his horse, eagerly awaiting
-the turning loose of half a dozen birds from the inclosure.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>They are out—and away scamper the Condor,
-fleet as the winds of heaven—and away, in rapid
-pursuit, wheels the mounted Chilian, swinging
-around his head the noose of the unerring lasso,
-which, falling upon the neck of the bird, makes him
-captive. The line is played out, and away sweeps
-the powerful bird, and away the practiced horseman
-after him. Springing upward, the Condor now unfolds
-his wings and flutters in such width of circle
-as the rope will permit—and now shoots perpendicularly
-upward—and now falls headlong, and is trailed
-exhausted on the ground.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The lengthened shadows of evening had fallen
-along the plain before the sport was up, and the last
-Condor was captured. We returned to our ship,
-well pleased with the entertainment, and swinging
-into our hammocks sunk into deep slumber, for
-which the exercise of the day had prepared us—but
-our sleep was not too sound for refreshing visitations
-from friends far away,</p>
-
-<div class='blockquote'>
-
-
- <div class='poetry-container' style=''>
- <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' -->
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>“O’er the glad waters of the dark blue sea.”</p>
-</div>
-</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend -->
-
-</div>
-
-<hr class='footnotemark'/>
-
-<div class='footnote'>
-<table summary='footnote_2'>
-<colgroup>
-<col span='1' class='footnoteid'/>
-<col span='1'/>
-</colgroup>
-<tr><td style='vertical-align:top;'>
-<div class='footnote-id' id='f2'><a href='#r2'>[2]</a></div>
-</td><td>
-
-<p class='pindent'>From Naval Life, published by Chas. Scribner, N. Y.</p>
-
-</td></tr>
-</table>
-</div>
-
-<hr class='tbk128'/>
-
-<div><h1><a id='beau'></a>BEAUTIE.</h1></div>
-
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;'>———</p>
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;font-size:0.8em;font-weight:bold;'>BY MRS. E. J. EAMES.</p>
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;margin-bottom:1.5em;'>———</p>
-
-
- <div class='poetry-container' style=''>
- <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' -->
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>Thou wert a worship in the ages olden,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Thou bright-veiled image of divinity;</p>
-<p class='line0'>Crowned with such gleams, imperial and golden,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;As Phidias gave to Immortality!</p>
-<p class='line0'>A type exquisite of the pure Ideal,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Forth shadowed in perfect loveliness—</p>
-<p class='line0'>Embodied and existent in the Real,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;A peerless shape to kneel before, and bless!</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>With the world’s childhood didst thou spring to being!</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;A thing of light!—a <span class='it'>felt</span> divinity!</p>
-<p class='line0'>A stainless spirit, born of Love undying,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Nurst in that Eden of an earlier day.</p>
-<p class='line0'>Thence wandering on the morn of thy <span class='it'>awakening</span>,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Like a Dream-vision through the world didst go,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Filling its darkness with bright things, and making</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;The wild waste blossom, and the desert glow.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>Still o’er the Earth, thy shining foot-prints tarry,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Upon the mountain-tops thy step yet strays;</p>
-<p class='line0'>Through the rich woods thy rainbow plume floats airy,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;And on the sea thy form of glory plays!</p>
-<p class='line0'>Thy purple pinions fan the brow of morning;</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Thy sun-bright splendors on the noonday rest,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Eve wears the silvery veil of thy adorning,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;And night by thee in queenly robes is drest.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>Oh, Beautie! still doth thy bright spirit linger</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;In the green vale where Jove was nurst of old:</p>
-<p class='line0'>Where the Babe Thunderer listened to the singer</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Of “many-fountained Ida,” as ’tis told!</p>
-<p class='line0'>Still hauntest thou the violet-crowned city—</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;The Trojan Mountain, and the Cretan Hill?</p>
-<p class='line0'>Wanders thy soul yet, in the Syren’s ditty—</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Speaks forth thy heart from the Lost Glory still?</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>We have rare legends of thy marvelous presence—</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;In Egypt’s Queen and bright Zenobia’s form;</p>
-<p class='line0'>In lovelorn Sappho thrilled thine airiest essence—</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;In proud Aspasia’s intellectual charm!</p>
-<p class='line0'>Nor was thy soul (through Raphael’s pencil) wanting</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;In Fornarina’s soft seraphic face!</p>
-<p class='line0'>And, thanks to Petrarch, Laura’s form is haunting</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Our hearts with dreams of rare and breathing grace.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>Once more! thou art the well-beloved of <span class='it'>Nature</span>!</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Thine empire sweet, is o’er the grand old earth;</p>
-<p class='line0'>And well thy soft hand printeth on each feature</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;The brightness of thine own Immortal birth!</p>
-<p class='line0'>Thou touchest with rich hues and scents the blossom;</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;With emerald lines thou pencilest each leaf;</p>
-<p class='line0'>Pearlest with dew the lonely flower-bells bosom,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;And flingest thy glory o’er the golden sheaf.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>Joy to thy presence, all-pervading spirit!</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Well may we worship at thy magic shrine;</p>
-<p class='line0'>There is <span class='it'>no gift</span> that mortals may inherit</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;So favored and god-blest, and dear as thine.</p>
-<p class='line0'>And still to <span class='it'>me</span>, thy worshiper, oh, Beautie!</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Come as a guest divine—an angel-friend;</p>
-<p class='line0'>Give me to see thee, in each darker duty,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;And radiate my life-path to the end!</p>
-</div>
-</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend -->
-
-<hr class='tbk129'/>
-
-<div><h1><a id='what'></a>WHAT GLORY COSTS THE NATION.</h1></div>
-
-<p class='pindent'>In the February number, we gave a short extract
-from Upham’s Manual of Peace, in relation to the
-cost of the Army and Navy of the United States.
-That article has brought out an officer of the Navy,
-with the following—in which we get abuse for facts,
-and sharp sentences for figures. We can stand a
-moderate amount of flaying without blubbering, and
-have no faith in the theory that a drop of ink will
-raise a blister, except upon persons exceedingly thin-skinned.
-But our correspondent, who takes a narrow
-view of both <span class='it'>time and figures</span>, appears to think the
-question a new one, and settled by his article, and
-both Upham and Graham demolished.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Sir,—Freedom of speech, and freedom of the
-press, are among the best privileges guarantied by a
-republican form of government; but freedom of
-speech is not to be taken as a license to state for
-fact what is not true without possibility of contradiction.
-Nor is freedom of speech to be construed
-into a privilege of saying sharp or impertinent and
-impudent things with impunity. It has been said as
-a rule, ‘joke as much as you please, but never trespass
-on fact,’ which means, when you fall into an
-error, you are bound to correct it.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“With these notions fresh upon me, I venture to
-point out an erroneous statement in the first page of
-the February number of Graham, which is calculated
-to prejudice a large number of people against
-the Navy and Army of the country. Graham
-(Upham) states that the cost of maintaining the
-Army and Navy of the United States is equal to
-eighty per cent., that is, four-fifths of the entire revenue.
-This must strike every reflecting mind to be
-an expense so enormous as to render it desirable to
-be rid of both Army and Navy. But the statement
-is entirely erroneous, as a moment’s thought will
-show. If four-fifths of the revenue are absorbed in
-maintaining the Army and Navy, only one fifth is
-left to meet the expense of the ‘civil list,’ president
-and officers of the cabinet, foreign ministers and consuls,
-custom-house officers, light-houses, etc. etc.</p>
-
-<table id='tab3' summary='' class='center'>
-<colgroup>
-<col span='1' style='width: 22.5em;'/>
-<col span='1' style='width: 3.5em;'/>
-<col span='1' style='width: 7.5em;'/>
-<col span='1' style='width: 0.5em;'/>
-</colgroup>
-<tr><td class='tab3c1 tdStyle1'>“The total expenditure for the Navy and Marine Corps, for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1850, was</td><td class='tab3c2 tdStyle3'></td><td class='tab3c3 tdStyle4'>$5,523,722 83</td><td class='tab3c4 tdStyle2'></td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab3c1 tdStyle1'>The expenditure for the Army about</td><td class='tab3c2 tdStyle3'></td><td class='tab3c3 tdStyle4'>6,476,278 17</td><td class='tab3c4 tdStyle2'></td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab3c1 tdStyle1'></td><td class='tab3c2 tdStyle3'></td><td class='tab3c3 tdStyle4'>——————</td><td class='tab3c4 tdStyle2'>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab3c1 tdStyle1'></td><td class='tab3c2 tdStyle3'>Total,</td><td class='tab3c3 tdStyle4'>$12,000,000 00</td><td class='tab3c4 tdStyle2'></td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab3c1 tdStyle1'></td><td class='tab3c2 tdStyle3'>&nbsp;</td><td class='tab3c3 tdStyle4'>&nbsp;</td><td class='tab3c4 tdStyle2'>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab3c1 tdStyle1'>The revenue for the same period was</td><td class='tab3c2 tdStyle3'></td><td class='tab3c3 tdStyle4'>$47,421,748 90</td><td class='tab3c4 tdStyle2'></td></tr>
-</table>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“So that in round numbers, the expense of the
-Army and Navy together, is about one-fourth, or
-twenty-five per cent. of the revenue instead of 80
-per cent., as stated, which is an excess of at least
-55 per cent.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“It should not be forgotten, however, that twenty-five
-per cent. of the whole revenue for military
-establishments is a large proportion; but without
-these establishments, it is possible we might soon
-be entirely without revenue, because our commerce,
-without a navy, would be open to the depredation
-of pirates of all nations, and might be crippled if not
-totally destroyed.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“The expense of keeping a dog may be considerable;
-but if that dog protects us from thieves
-and burglars, the money spent for his maintenance
-may be regarded as money well laid out.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“The expense of the military establishments is
-not their fault or sin; but the evil is to be attributed
-to the ignorance of mankind. When the whole world
-becomes educated and instructed, all wars will be
-conducted with pen and ink, and aid of arithmetic.
-Sensible men, while in their senses, never cut each
-other’s throats for differences of opinion; they argue
-the difference; and he who has most logic and good
-sense, is always willing to ‘do to others as he would
-others should do unto him.’</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Therefore, friend Graham (Upham) continue to
-teach your readers <span style='font-size:smaller'>TRUTH</span>, and they will acquire so
-strong a sense of justice, as to do away with any
-necessity for fighting among themselves or against
-others.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Well, we will “<span class='it'>continue</span> to teach our readers
-<span class='it'>truth</span>,” and the advice points a moral. Navy <span class='it'>officers
-are bad logicians</span>!—but are a pretty good set of
-fellows so long as they are paid well for the fighting
-that <span class='it'>may be done</span>, in the next generation; and are
-allowed to say themselves, that “the expense of the
-military establishments is to be attributed to the
-ignorance of mankind,” without using any means to
-enlighten mankind upon the subject.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Since our correspondent finds fault with us, or
-Upham, about his facts and figures, we give him the
-following from a gentleman<a id='r3'/><a href='#f3' style='text-decoration:none'><sup><span style='font-size:0.9em'>[3]</span></sup></a> who has paid some
-attention to the matter, and ask him to look the question
-in the face fairly, and answer the arguments and
-figures, and if he makes out but a partial case, we
-will publish his reply, however sharp and acrid.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>I do not propose to dwell upon the immense cost
-of War itself. That will be present to the minds of all,
-in the mountainous accumulations of debt, piled like
-Ossa upon Pelion, with which Europe is pressed to
-the earth. According to the most recent tables to
-which I have had access, the public debt of the
-different European States, so far as it is known,
-amounts to the terrific sum of $6,387,000,000, all of
-this the growth of War! It is said that there are
-throughout these states, 17,900,000 paupers, or persons
-subsisting at the expense of the country, without
-contributing to its resources. If these millions of
-the public debt, forming only a part of what has been
-wasted in War, could be apportioned among these
-poor, it would give to each of them $375, a sum
-which would place all above want, and which is
-about equal to the average value of the property of
-each inhabitant of Massachusetts.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The public debt of Great Britain reached in 1839
-to $4,265,000,000, the growth of War since 1688!
-This amount is nearly equal to the sum-total, according
-to the calculations of Humboldt, of all the
-treasures which have been reaped from the harvest of
-gold and silver in the mines of Spanish America,
-including Mexico and Peru, since the first discovery
-of our hemisphere by Christopher Columbus! It is
-much larger than the mass of all precious metals,
-which at this moment form the circulating medium
-of the world! It is sometimes rashly said by those
-who have given little attention to this subject, that
-all this expenditure was widely distributed, and
-therefore beneficial to the people; but this apology
-does not bear in mind that it was not bestowed in
-any productive industry, or on any <span class='it'>useful</span> object.
-The magnitude of this waste will appear by a contrast
-with other expenditures; the aggregate capital
-of all the joint stock companies in England, of which
-there was any known record in 1842, embracing canals,
-docks, bridges, insurance companies, banks,
-gas-lights, water, mines, railways, and other miscellaneous
-objects, was about $835,000,000; a sum
-which has been devoted to the welfare of the people,
-but how much less in amount than the War
-Debt! For the six years ending in 1836, the average
-payment for the interest on this debt was about
-$140,000,000 annually. If we add to this sum,
-$60,000,000 during this same period paid annually to
-the army, navy and ordnance, we shall have
-$200,000,000 as the annual tax of the English people,
-to pay for former wars and to prepare for new.
-During this same period there was an annual appropriation
-of only $20,000,000 for all the civil purposes
-of the Government. It thus appears that <span class='it'>War</span> absorbed
-ninety cents of every dollar that was pressed
-by heavy taxation from the English people, who almost
-seem to sweat blood! What fabulous monster,
-or chimera dire, ever raged with a maw so ravenous?
-The remaining ten cents sufficed to maintain
-the splendor of the throne, the administration
-of justice, and the diplomatic relations with foreign
-powers, in short, all the proper objects of a Christian
-State.<a id='r4'/><a href='#f4' style='text-decoration:none'><sup><span style='font-size:0.9em'>[4]</span></sup></a></p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Thus much for the general cost of War. Let us
-now look exclusively at the <span class='it'>Preparations for War
-in time of peace</span>. It is one of the miseries of War,
-that, even in peace, its evils continue to be felt by
-the world, beyond any other evils by which poor
-suffering Humanity is oppressed. If Bellona withdraws
-from the field, we only lose the sight of her flaming
-torches; the bay of her dogs is heard on the
-mountains, and civilized man thinks to find protection
-from their sudden fury, only by inclosing himself
-in the barbarous armor of battle. At this moment
-the Christian nations, worshiping a symbol of
-common brotherhood, live as in entrenched camps
-in which they keep armed watch, to prevent surprise
-from each other. Recognizing the <span class='it'>custom</span> of War
-as a proper Arbiter of Justice, they hold themselves
-perpetually ready for the bloody umpirage.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>It is difficult, if not impossible, to arrive at any
-exact estimate of the cost of these preparations,
-ranging under four different heads; the Standing
-Army; the Navy; the Fortifications and Arsenals;
-and the Militia or irregular troops.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The number of soldiers now affecting to keep the
-peace of European Christendom, as a <span class='it'>Standing
-Army</span>, without counting the Navy, is upward of two
-millions. Some estimates place it as high as three
-millions. The army of Great Britain exceeds 300,000
-men; that of France 350,000; that of Russia 730,000,
-and is reckoned by some as high as 1,000,000; that
-of Austria 275,000; that of Prussia 150,000. Taking
-the smaller number, suppose these two millions to
-require for their annual support an average sum of
-only $150 each, the result would be $300,000,000,
-for their sustenance alone; and reckoning one officer
-to ten soldiers, and allowing to each of the latter an
-English shilling a day, or $87 a year, for wages, and
-to the former an average salary of $500 a year, we
-should have for the pay of the whole no less than
-$256,000,000, or an appalling sum-total for both sustenance
-and pay of $556,000,000. If the same calculation
-be made, supposing the forces to amount to
-three millions, the sum-total will be $835,000,000!
-But to this enormous sum another still more enormous
-must be added on account of the loss sustained
-by the withdrawal of two millions of hardy, healthy
-men, in the bloom of life, from useful, productive
-labor. It is supposed that it costs an average sum
-of $500 to rear a soldier; and that the value of his
-labor, if devoted to useful objects, would be $150 a
-year. The Christian Powers, therefore, in setting
-apart two millions of men, as soldiers, sustain a loss
-of $1,000,000,000 on account of their training; and
-$300,000,000 annually, on account of their labor, in
-addition to the millions already mentioned as annually
-expended for sustenance and pay. So much for the
-cost of the standing army of European Christendom
-in time of Peace.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Glance now at the <span class='it'>Navy</span> of European Christendom.
-The Royal Navy of Great Britain consists at
-present of 557 ships of all classes; but deducting such
-as are used for convict ships, floating chapels, coal
-depots, the efficient navy consists of 88 sail of the
-line; 109 frigates; 190 small frigates, corvettes, brigs
-and cutters, including packets; 65 steamers of various
-sizes; 3 troop-ships and yachts; in all 455 ships.
-Of these there were in commission in 1839, 190
-ships, carrying in all 4,202 guns. The number of
-hands employed was 34,465. The Navy of France,
-though not comparable in size with that of England,
-is of vast force. By royal ordinance of 1st January,
-1837, it was fixed in time of peace at 40 ships of the
-line, 50 frigates, 40 steamers, and 190 smaller vessels;
-and the amount of crews in 1839, was 20,317.
-The Russian Navy consists of two large fleets in
-the Gulf of Finland and the Black Sea; but the exact
-amount of their force and their available resources
-has been a subject of dispute among naval men and
-politicians. Some idea of the size of the navy may
-be derived from the number of hands employed.
-The crews of the Baltic fleet amounted in 1837, to
-not less than 30,800 men; and those of the fleet in
-the Black Sea to 19,800, or altogether 50,600. The
-Austrian Navy consisted in 1837, of 8 ships of the
-line, 8 frigates, 4 sloops, 6 brigs, 7 schooners or galleys,
-and a number of smaller vessels; the number
-of men in its service in 1839, was 4,547. The Navy
-of Denmark consisted at the close of 1837, of 7 ships
-of the line, 7 frigates, 5 sloops, 6 brigs, 3 schooners,
-5 cutters, 58 gun-boats, 6 gun-rafts, and 3 bomb-vessels,
-requiring about 6,500 men to man them. The
-Navy of Sweden and Norway consisted recently of
-238 gun-boats, 11 ships of the line, 8 frigates, 4 corvettes,
-6 brigs, with several smaller vessels. The
-Navy of Greece consists of 32 ships of war, carrying
-190 guns, and 2,400 men. The Navy of Holland in
-1839 consisted of 8 ships of the line, 21 frigates, 15
-corvettes, 21 brigs, and 95 gun-boats. Of the immense
-cost of all these mighty Preparations for
-War, it is impossible to give any accurate idea.
-But we may lament that means, so gigantic, should
-be applied by European Christendom to the erection
-in time of Peace, of such superfluous wooden
-walls!</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>In the <span class='it'>Fortifications and Arsenals</span> of Europe,
-crowning every height, commanding every valley,
-and frowning over every plain and every sea, wealth
-beyond calculation has been sunk. Who can tell the
-immense sums that have been expended in hollowing
-out, for the purposes of War, the living rock of
-Gibraltar? Who can calculate the cost of all the
-Preparations at Woolwich, its 27,000 cannons, and
-its hundreds of thousands of small arms? France
-alone contains upward of one hundred and twenty
-fortified places. And it is supposed that the yet unfinished
-fortifications of Paris have cost upward of
-<span class='it'>fifty millions of dollars</span>!</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The cost of the <span class='it'>Militia</span> or irregular troops, the
-Yeomanry of England, the National Guards of Paris,
-and the <span class='it'>Landwehr</span> and <span class='it'>Landsturm</span> of Prussia, must
-add other incalculable sums to these enormous
-amounts.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Turn now to the <span class='it'>United States</span>, separated by a
-broad ocean from immediate contact with the great
-powers of Christendom, bound by treaties of amity and
-commerce with all the nations of the earth; connected
-with all by the strong ties of mutual interest;
-and professing a devotion to the principles of Peace.
-Are the Treaties of Amity mere words? Are the
-relations of commerce and mutual interest mere
-things of a day? Are the professions of Peace vain?
-Else why not repose in quiet, unvexed by Preparations
-for War?</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Enormous as are the expenses of this character in
-Europe, those in our own country are still greater in
-proportion to the other expenditures of the Federal
-Government.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>It appears that the average <span class='it'>annual</span> expenditure
-of the Federal Government for the six years ending
-with 1840, exclusive of payments on account of debt,
-were $26,474,892. Of this sum the average appropriation
-each year for military and naval purposes
-amounted to $21,328,903, being eighty per cent. of
-the whole amount! Yes; of all the annual appropriations
-by the Federal Government, eighty cents
-in every dollar were applied in this irrational and
-unproductive manner. The remaining twenty cents
-sufficed to maintain the Government in all its
-branches, Executive, Legislative, and Judicial, the
-administration of justice, our relations with foreign
-nations, the post-office and all the light-houses, which—in
-happy useful contrast with any forts—shed their
-cheerful signals over the rough waves beating upon
-our long and indented coast, from the bay of Fundy
-to the mouth of the Mississippi. A table of the relative
-expenditure of nations, for military Preparations
-in time of Peace, exclusive of payments on account
-of the debts, presents results which will surprise
-the advocates of economy in our country.
-These are in proportion to the whole expenditure of
-Government:</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>In Austria, as 33 per cent.,</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>In France, as 38 per cent.,</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>In Prussia, as 44 per cent.,</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>In Great Britain, as 74 per cent.,</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>In the <span class='sc'>United States</span>, as 80 per cent.!<a id='r5'/><a href='#f5' style='text-decoration:none'><sup><span style='font-size:0.9em'>[5]</span></sup></a></p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>To this magnificent waste by the Federal Government,
-may be added the still larger and equally superfluous
-expenses of the Militia throughout the
-country, placed recently by a candid and able writer,
-at $50,000,000 a year!<a id='r6'/><a href='#f6' style='text-decoration:none'><sup><span style='font-size:0.9em'>[6]</span></sup></a></p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>By a table<a id='r7'/><a href='#f7' style='text-decoration:none'><sup><span style='font-size:0.9em'>[7]</span></sup></a> of the expenditures of the United
-States, exclusive of payments on account of the
-Public Debt, it appears, that, <span class='it'>in the fifty-three years
-from the formation of our present Government</span>, from
-1789 down to 1843, $246,620,055 have been expended
-for civil purposes, comprehending the executive, the
-legislature, the judiciary, the post office, light-houses,
-and intercourse with foreign governments. During
-this same period $368,626,594 have been devoted to
-the military establishment, and $170,437,684 to the
-naval establishment; the two forming an aggregate
-of $538,964,278. Deducting from this sum the appropriations
-during three years of war, and we shall
-find that more than <span class='it'>four hundred millions</span> were absorbed
-by vain Preparations in time of peace for
-War. Add to this amount a moderate sum for the
-expenses of the Militia during the same period,
-which, as we have already seen, have been placed
-recently at $50,000,000 a year; for the past years
-we may take an average of $25,000,000; and we
-shall have the enormous sum of $1,335,000,000 to be
-added to the $400,000,000; the whole amounting to
-<span class='it'>seventeen hundred and thirty-five millions</span> of dollars,
-a sum beyond the conception of human faculties,
-sunk under the sanction of the Government of
-the United States in mere <span class='it'>peaceful Preparations
-for War</span>; more than <span class='it'>seven times</span> as much as was
-dedicated by the Government, during the same period,
-to all other purposes whatsoever!</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>From this serried array of figures the mind instinctively
-retreats. If we examine them from a
-nearer point of view, and, selecting some particular
-part, compare it with the figures representing other
-interests in the community, they will present a
-front still more dread. Let us attempt the comparison.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Within a short distance of this city (Boston) stands
-an institution of learning, which was one of the earliest
-cares of the early forefathers of the country, the
-conscientious Puritans. Favored child of an age of
-trial and struggle, carefully nursed through a period
-of hardship and anxiety, endowed at that time by
-the oblations of men like Harvard, sustained from
-its first foundation by the paternal arm of the Commonwealth,
-by a constant succession of munificent
-bequests and by the prayers of all good men, the
-University of Cambridge now invites our homage as
-the most ancient, the most interesting, and the most
-important seat of learning in the land; possessing
-the oldest and most valuable library, one of the
-largest museums of mineralogy and natural history—a
-School of Law, which annually receives into its
-bosom more than one hundred and fifty sons from all
-parts of the Union, where they listen to instruction
-from professors whose names have become among
-the most valuable possessions of the land—a School
-of Divinity, the nurse of true learning and piety—one
-of the largest and most flourishing Schools of
-Medicine in the country—besides these, a general
-body of teachers, twenty-seven in number, many of
-whose names help to keep the name of the country
-respectable in every part of the globe, where science,
-learning, and taste are cherished—the whole presided
-over at this moment by a gentleman, early distinguished
-in public life by his unconquerable energies
-and his masculine eloquence, at a later period, by
-the unsurpassed ability with which he administered
-the affairs of our city, and now in a green old age,
-full of years and honor, preparing to lay down his
-present high trust.<a id='r8'/><a href='#f8' style='text-decoration:none'><sup><span style='font-size:0.9em'>[8]</span></sup></a> Such is Harvard University;
-and as one of the humblest of her children, happy in
-the recollection of a youth nurtured in her classic retreats,
-I cannot allude to her without an expression
-of filial affection and respect.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>It appears from the last Report of the Treasurer, that
-the whole available property of the University, the
-various accumulations of more than two centuries of
-generosity, amounts to $703,175.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Change the scene, and cast your eyes upon another
-object. There now swings idly at her moorings,
-in this harbor, a ship of the line, the Ohio,
-carrying ninety guns, finished as late as 1836 for
-$547,888; repaired only two years after, in 1838, for
-$223,012; with an armament which has cost $53,945;
-making an amount of $834,845,<a id='r9'/><a href='#f9' style='text-decoration:none'><sup><span style='font-size:0.9em'>[9]</span></sup></a> as the actual cost at
-this moment of that single ship; more than $100,000
-beyond all the available accumulations of the richest
-and most ancient seat of learning in the land!
-Choose ye, my fellow-citizens of a Christian state,
-between the two caskets—that wherein is the loveliness
-of knowledge and truth, or that which contains
-the carrion death.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>I refer thus particularly to the Ohio, because she
-happens to be in our waters. But in so doing I do
-not take the strongest case afforded by our Navy.
-Other ships have absorbed still larger sums. The
-expense of the Delaware in 1842, had been <span class='it'>one million
-and fifty-one thousand dollars</span>.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Pursue the comparison still further. The expenditures
-of the University during the last year, for the
-general purposes of the College, the instruction of
-the Under-graduates, and for the Schools of Law
-and Divinity, amount to $46,949. The cost of the
-Ohio for one year in service, in salaries, wages, and
-provisions, is $220,000; being $175,000 more than
-the annual expenditures of the University; more
-than <span class='it'>four times</span> as much. In other words, for the
-annual sum which is lavished on one ship of the
-line, <span class='it'>four</span> institutions, like Harvard University,
-might be sustained throughout the country!</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Still further let us pursue the comparison. The
-pay of the Captain of a ship like the Ohio, is $4,500
-when in service; $3,500, when on leave of absence,
-or off duty. The salary of the President of the Harvard
-University is $2,205; without leave of absence,
-and never being off duty!</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>If the large endowments of Harvard University
-are dwarfed by a comparison with the expense of a
-single ship of the line, how much more must it be so
-with those of other institutions of learning and beneficence,
-less favored by the bounty of many generations.
-The average cost of a sloop of war is $315,000;
-more, probably, than all the endowments of those
-twin stars of learning in the Western part of Massachusetts,
-the Colleges at Williamstown and Amherst,
-and of that single star in the East, the guide to many
-ingenuous youth, the Seminary at Andover. The
-yearly cost of a sloop of war in service is above
-$50,000; more than the annual expenditures of these
-three institutions combined.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>I might press the comparison with other institutions
-of Beneficence, with the annual expenditures
-for the Blind—that noble and successful charity,
-which has shed true lustre upon our Commonwealth—amounting
-to $12,000; and the annual expenditures
-for the Insane of the Commonwealth,
-another charity dear to humanity, amounting to
-$27,844.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Take all the Institutions of Learning and Beneficence,
-the precious jewels of the Commonwealth,
-the schools, colleges, hospitals and asylums, and the
-sums, by which they have been purchased and preserved,
-are trivial and beggarly, compared with the
-treasures squandered within the borders of Massachusetts,
-in vain preparations for War. There is
-the Navy Yard at Charleston, with its stores on
-hand, all costing $4,741,000; the Fortifications in
-the harbors of Massachusetts, in which incalculable
-sums have been already sunk, and in which it is
-now proposed to sink $3,853,000 more;<a id='r10'/><a href='#f10' style='text-decoration:none'><sup><span style='font-size:0.9em'>[10]</span></sup></a> and besides
-the Arsenal at Springfield, containing in 1842,
-175,118 muskets, valued at $2,999,998,<a id='r11'/><a href='#f11' style='text-decoration:none'><sup><span style='font-size:0.9em'>[11]</span></sup></a> and which
-is fed by an annual appropriation of about $200,000;
-but whose highest value will ever be, in the judgment
-of all lovers of truth, that it inspired a poem,
-which in its influence shall be mightier than a battle,
-and shall endure when arsenals and fortifications
-have crumbled to the earth. Some of the verses of
-this Psalm of Peace may happily relieve the detail
-of statistics, while they blend with my argument.</p>
-
-<div class='blockquote'>
-
-
- <div class='poetry-container' style=''>
- <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' -->
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>Were half the power that fills the world with terror,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Were half the wealth, bestowed on camp and courts,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Given to redeem the human mind from error,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;There were no need of arsenals and forts.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>The warrior’s name would be a name abhorred!</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;And every nation that should lift again</p>
-<p class='line0'>Its hand against its brother, on its forehead</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Would wear for evermore the curse of Cain!</p>
-</div>
-</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend -->
-
-</div>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Look now for one moment at a high and peculiar
-interest of the nation, the administration of justice.
-Perhaps no part of our system is regarded, by the
-enlightened sense of the country, with more pride
-and confidence. To this, indeed, all the other concerns
-of Government, all its complications of machinery
-are in a manner subordinate, since it is for the
-sake of justice that men come together in states and
-establish laws. What part of the Government can
-compare in importance, with the Federal Judiciary,
-that great balance-wheel of the Constitution, controlling
-the relations of the States to each other, the legislation
-of Congress and of the States, besides private
-interests to an incalculable amount? Nor can
-the citizen, who discerns the True Glory of his
-country, fail to recognize in the judicial labors of
-<span class='sc'>Marshall</span>, now departed, and in the immortal judgments
-of <span class='sc'>Story</span>, who is still spared to us—<span class='it'>cerus in
-cœlum redeat</span>—a higher claim to admiration and gratitude
-than can be found in any triumph of battle.
-The expenses of the administration of justice
-throughout the United States, under the Federal
-Government, in 1842—embracing the salaries of the
-judges, the cost of juries, court-houses, and all officers
-thereof, in short, all the outlay by which justice,
-according to the requirements of Magna Charta, is
-carried to every man’s door—amounted to $560,990,
-a larger sum than is usually appropriated for this
-purpose, but how insignificant compared with the
-cormorant demands of the Army and Navy!</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Let me allude to one more <span class='it'>curiosity</span> of waste. It
-appears, by a calculation founded on the expenses
-of the Navy, that the average cost of each gun,
-carried over the ocean, for one year, amounts to
-about fifteen thousand dollars; a sum sufficient to
-sustain ten or even twenty professors of Colleges,
-and equal to the salaries of all the Judges of the
-Supreme Court of Massachusetts and the Governor
-combined!</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Such are a few brief illustrations of the tax which
-the nations constituting the great Federation of
-civilization, and particularly our own country, impose
-on the people in time of profound peace, for no
-permanent, productive work, for no institution of
-learning, for no gentle charity, for no purpose of
-good. As we wearily climb, in this survey, from
-expenditure to expenditure, from waste to waste, we
-seem to pass beyond the region of ordinary calculation;
-Alps on Alps arise, on whose crowning heights
-of everlasting ice, far above the habitations of man,
-where no green thing lives, where no creature draws
-its breath, we behold the cold, sharp, flashing glacier
-of War.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>In the contemplation of this spectacle the soul
-swells with alternate despair and hope; with despair,
-at the thought of such wealth, capable of rendering
-such service to Humanity, not merely wasted
-but given to perpetuate Hate; with hope, as the
-blessed vision arises of the devotion of all these incalculable
-means to the purposes of Peace. The
-whole world labors at this moment with poverty and
-distress; and the painful question occurs to every
-observer, in Europe more than here at home—what
-shall become of the poor—the increasing Standing
-Army of the Poor. Could the humble voice that
-now addresses you, penetrate those distant counsels,
-or counsels nearer home, it would say, disband your
-Standing Armies of soldiers, apply your Navies to
-purposes of peaceful and enriching commerce, abandon
-your Fortifications and Arsenals, or dedicate them
-to works of Beneficence, as the statue of Jupiter
-Capitolinus was changed to the image of a Christian
-saint; in fine, utterly forsake the present incongruous
-system of <span class='it'>armed</span> Peace.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>That I may not seem to press to this conclusion
-with too much haste, at least as regards our own
-country, I shall consider briefly, as becomes the occasion,
-the asserted usefulness of the national armaments
-which it is proposed to abandon, and shall
-next expose the outrageous fallacy—at least in the
-present age, and among the Christian Nations, of the
-maxim by which alone they are vindicated, that in
-time of Peace we must prepare for War.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'><span class='it'>What is the use of the Standing Army of the
-United States?</span> It has been a principle of freedom,
-during many generations, to avoid a standing army;
-and one of the complaints in the Declaration of Independence
-was, that George III. had quartered large
-bodies of troops in the colonies. For the first years
-after the adoption of the Federal Constitution—during
-our weakness, before our power was assured,
-before our name had become respected in the family
-of nations, under the administration of Washington—a
-small sum was deemed ample for the military
-establishment of the United States. It was only
-when the country, at a later day, had been touched
-by martial insanity, that, in unworthy imitation of
-monarchical states, it abandoned the true economy of
-a Republic, and lavished the means which it begrudged
-to the purposes of Peace, in vain preparation
-for War. It may now be said of our army, as
-Dunning said of the influence of the crown, it has increased,
-is increasing, and ought to be diminished.
-At this moment there are, in the country, more than
-fifty-five military posts. It would be difficult to assign
-a reasonable apology for any of these—unless, perhaps,
-on some distant Indian frontier. Of what use is
-the detachment of the second regiment of Artillery in
-the quiet town of New London in Connecticut? Of
-what use is the detachment of the first regiment of
-Artillery in that pleasant resort of fashion, Newport?
-By their exhilarating music and showy parade they
-may serve to amuse an idle hour, but it is doubtful
-if emotions of a different character will not be aroused
-in generous bosoms. Surely, he must have lost
-something of his sensibility to the true dignity of human
-nature, who, without regret and mortification,
-can observe the discipline, the drill, the unprofitable
-marching and counter-marching—the putting guns to
-the shoulder and then dropping them to the earth—which
-fill the lives of the poor soldiers, and prepare
-them to become the rude, inanimate parts of that
-<span class='it'>machine</span>, to which an army has been likened by the
-great living master of the Art of War. And this
-sensibility must be more offended by the spectacle
-of a chosen body of ingenuous youth, under the auspices
-of the Government, amidst the bewitching
-scenery of West Point, painfully trained to these
-same fantastic and humiliating exercises—at a cost
-to the country since the establishment of this Academy,
-of upwards of four millions of dollars.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>In Europe, Standing Armies are supposed to be
-needed to sustain the power of Governments; but
-this excuse cannot prevail here. The monarchs of
-the Old World, like the chiefs of the ancient German
-tribes, are upborne by the shields of the soldiery.
-Happily with us the Government springs from the
-hearts of the people, and needs no janizaries for its
-support.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>But I hear the voice of some defender of this
-abuse, some upholder of this “rotten borough” of
-our Constitution, crying, the Army is needed for the
-defense of the country! As well might you say that
-the shadow is needed for the defense of the body;
-for what is the army of the United States but the
-feeble shadow of the power of the American people?
-<span class='it'>In placing the army on its present footing, so small
-in numbers compared with the forces of the great
-European States, our Government has tacitly admitted
-its superfluousness for defense.</span> It only remains
-to declare distinctly, that the country will repose
-in the consciousness of right, without the wanton
-excess of supporting soldiers, lazy consumers of
-the fruits of the earth, who might do the State good
-service in the various departments of useful industry.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'><span class='it'>What is the use of the Navy of the United States?</span>
-The annual expense of our Navy, during recent
-years, has been upward of six millions of dollars.
-For what purpose is this paid? Not for the apprehension
-of pirates; for frigates and ships of the line
-are of too great bulk to be of service for this purpose.
-Not for the suppression of the Slave Trade; for
-under the stipulations with Great Britain, we employ
-only eighty guns in this holy alliance. Not to protect
-our coasts; for all agree that our few ships
-would form an unavailing defense against any serious
-attack. Not for these purposes, you will admit, <span class='it'>but
-for the protection of our Navigation</span>. This is not
-the occasion for minute calculations. Suffice it to
-say, that an intelligent merchant, who has been extensively
-engaged in commerce for the last twenty
-years, and who speaks, therefore, with the authority
-of knowledge, has demonstrated in a tract of perfect
-clearness, that the annual profits of the whole mercantile
-marine of the country do not equal the annual
-expenditure of our Navy. Admitting the profit of a
-merchant ship to be four thousand dollars a year,
-which is a large allowance, it will take the earnings
-of one hundred ships to build and employ for one
-year a single sloop of War—one hundred and fifty
-ships to build and employ a frigate, and nearly three
-hundred ships to build and employ a ship of the line.
-Thus more than five hundred ships must do a profitable
-business, in order to earn a sufficient sum to
-sustain this little fleet. Still further, taking a received
-estimate of the value of the mercantile marine
-of the United States at forty millions of dollars,
-we find that it is only a little more than six times the
-annual cost of the navy; so that this interest is protected
-at a charge of more than <span class='it'>fifteen per cent.</span> of
-its whole value! Protection at such price is more
-ruinous than one of Pyrrhus’s victories!</p>
-
-<hr class='footnotemark'/>
-
-<div class='footnote'>
-<table summary='footnote_3'>
-<colgroup>
-<col span='1' class='footnoteid'/>
-<col span='1'/>
-</colgroup>
-<tr><td style='vertical-align:top;'>
-<div class='footnote-id' id='f3'><a href='#r3'>[3]</a></div>
-</td><td>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Orations and Speeches by Charles Sumner, vol. I,
-page 71.</p>
-
-</td></tr>
-</table>
-</div>
-
-<div class='footnote'>
-<table summary='footnote_4'>
-<colgroup>
-<col span='1' class='footnoteid'/>
-<col span='1'/>
-</colgroup>
-<tr><td style='vertical-align:top;'>
-<div class='footnote-id' id='f4'><a href='#r4'>[4]</a></div>
-</td><td>
-
-<p class='pindent'>I have relied here and in subsequent pages upon McCulloch’s
-Commercial Dictionary; The Edinburgh Geography,
-founded on the works of Malte Brun and Balbi;
-and the calculations of Mr. Jay in <span class='it'>Peace and War</span>, p. 16,
-and in his Address before the Peace Society, pp. 28, 29.</p>
-
-</td></tr>
-</table>
-</div>
-
-<div class='footnote'>
-<table summary='footnote_5'>
-<colgroup>
-<col span='1' class='footnoteid'/>
-<col span='1'/>
-</colgroup>
-<tr><td style='vertical-align:top;'>
-<div class='footnote-id' id='f5'><a href='#r5'>[5]</a></div>
-</td><td>
-
-<p class='pindent'>I have verified these results by the expenditures of
-these different nations, but I do little more than follow
-Mr. Jay, who has illustrated this important point with
-his accustomed accuracy.—<span class='it'>Address</span>, p. 30.</p>
-
-</td></tr>
-</table>
-</div>
-
-<div class='footnote'>
-<table summary='footnote_6'>
-<colgroup>
-<col span='1' class='footnoteid'/>
-<col span='1'/>
-</colgroup>
-<tr><td style='vertical-align:top;'>
-<div class='footnote-id' id='f6'><a href='#r6'>[6]</a></div>
-</td><td>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Jay’s Peace and War, p. 13.</p>
-
-</td></tr>
-</table>
-</div>
-
-<div class='footnote'>
-<table summary='footnote_7'>
-<colgroup>
-<col span='1' class='footnoteid'/>
-<col span='1'/>
-</colgroup>
-<tr><td style='vertical-align:top;'>
-<div class='footnote-id' id='f7'><a href='#r7'>[7]</a></div>
-</td><td>
-
-<p class='pindent'>American Almanac for 1845, p. 143.</p>
-
-</td></tr>
-</table>
-</div>
-
-<div class='footnote'>
-<table summary='footnote_8'>
-<colgroup>
-<col span='1' class='footnoteid'/>
-<col span='1'/>
-</colgroup>
-<tr><td style='vertical-align:top;'>
-<div class='footnote-id' id='f8'><a href='#r8'>[8]</a></div>
-</td><td>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Hon. Josiah Quincy.</p>
-
-</td></tr>
-</table>
-</div>
-
-<div class='footnote'>
-<table summary='footnote_9'>
-<colgroup>
-<col span='1' class='footnoteid'/>
-<col span='1'/>
-</colgroup>
-<tr><td style='vertical-align:top;'>
-<div class='footnote-id' id='f9'><a href='#r9'>[9]</a></div>
-</td><td>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Document No. 132, House of Representatives, 3rd
-session, 27th Congress.</p>
-
-</td></tr>
-</table>
-</div>
-
-<div class='footnote'>
-<table summary='footnote_10'>
-<colgroup>
-<col span='1' class='footnoteid'/>
-<col span='1'/>
-</colgroup>
-<tr><td style='vertical-align:top;'>
-<div class='footnote-id' id='f10'><a href='#r10'>[10]</a></div>
-</td><td>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Document; Report of Secretary of War; No. 2.
-Senate, 27th Congress, 2nd session; where it is proposed
-to invest in a general system of land defenses $51,677,929.</p>
-
-</td></tr>
-</table>
-</div>
-
-<div class='footnote'>
-<table summary='footnote_11'>
-<colgroup>
-<col span='1' class='footnoteid'/>
-<col span='1'/>
-</colgroup>
-<tr><td style='vertical-align:top;'>
-<div class='footnote-id' id='f11'><a href='#r11'>[11]</a></div>
-</td><td>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Exec. Documents of 1842-43, Vol. I. No. 3.</p>
-
-</td></tr>
-</table>
-</div>
-
-<hr class='tbk130'/>
-
-<div><h1><a id='vio'></a>LINES ON SOME VIOLETS,</h1></div>
-
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;margin-bottom:1em;font-weight:bold;'>LEFT UPON MY DESK WHILE I WAS AT A FUNERAL.</p>
-
-
- <div class='poetry-container' style=''>
- <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' -->
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>He brought these violets yester eve,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;While I was with the dead,</p>
-<p class='line0'>And when I hither came to grieve,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;To me they meekly said—</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>“Let not thy gentle heart-founts flow</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;For her who is at rest,</p>
-<p class='line0'>But joy and sing for all who go</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;To sit among the Blest.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>“Weep for thyself, and not for her,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Child of melodious Grief!</p>
-<p class='line0'>And pray thy angels, hovering near,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;To make Life’s journey brief.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>“For now we hear thy spirit beat</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;With bleeding plumes its grate,</p>
-<p class='line0'>And treading with impatient feet,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Like one that could not wait.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>“Like one who, pale ’mid dungeon gloom,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Paces his scanty floor,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Awaiting till the jailer come</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;To ope his prison-door!”</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;<span style='font-size:smaller'>E. ANNA LEWIS.</span></p>
-</div>
-</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend -->
-
-<hr class='tbk131'/>
-
-<div class='figcenter'>
-<img src='images/i190.jpg' alt='' id='iid-0008' style='width:100%;height:auto;'/>
-<p class='caption'><span style='font-size:smaller'>Painted by J. Martin</span><br/></p> <br/><span class='bold'><span style='font-size:smaller'>THE DESTRUCTION OF SODOM AND GOMORRAH.</span></span>
-</div>
-
-<hr class='tbk132'/>
-
-<div><h1><a id='sod'></a>THE DESTRUCTION OF SODOM.</h1></div>
-
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;margin-bottom:1em;'>[WITH A STEEL ENGRAVING.]</p>
-
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;'>———</p>
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;font-size:0.8em;font-weight:bold;'>BY MARGARET JUNKIN.</p>
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;margin-bottom:1.5em;'>———</p>
-
-
- <div class='poetry-container' style=''>
- <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' -->
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>The fair, broad plains of Jordan, rich with all</p>
-<p class='line0'>Their wealth of summer fruitage, stretched themselves</p>
-<p class='line0'>Beneath the orient day. The haunting mists</p>
-<p class='line0'>Still folded to their bosoms the hushed streams,</p>
-<p class='line0'>O’er which they had kept night-watch. Flocks and herds</p>
-<p class='line0'>Dotting the green, fresh pastures stirless lay,</p>
-<p class='line0'>While shepherds slept beside them.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;Peacefully</p>
-<p class='line0'>The morning twilight slowly raised its lids</p>
-<p class='line0'>On the devoted city, quiet now,</p>
-<p class='line0'>With its wild midnight orgies overworn—</p>
-<p class='line0'>As from its gate a little band stole forth</p>
-<p class='line0'>With fearful footsteps, and affrighted gaze</p>
-<p class='line0'>Turned ever upward to the clear, deep heavens,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Where all the stars were fading into day.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>A light, irradiate as the astral glow</p>
-<p class='line0'>Of planetary lustre, marked the brows</p>
-<p class='line0'>Of those who guided them—betokening</p>
-<p class='line0'>Angelic nature, as in the quick haste</p>
-<p class='line0'>Of their divine commission fast they urged</p>
-<p class='line0'>The trembling lingerers. They pressed the speed</p>
-<p class='line0'>Of the old man, bewildered and amazed</p>
-<p class='line0'>By weakening terror, and they caught the hands</p>
-<p class='line0'>Which the distracted mother madly wrung,</p>
-<p class='line0'>To think upon her children left behind,</p>
-<p class='line0'>’Mid the doomed multitude, and drew her on</p>
-<p class='line0'>With gentle violence: they cheered the flight</p>
-<p class='line0'>Of the twain daughters, who, aghast with fear,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Were fain to lay their foreheads in the dust,</p>
-<p class='line0'>In palsied helplessness. With the sweet power</p>
-<p class='line0'>Of angel eloquence—with sympathies</p>
-<p class='line0'>That yearned above their poor humanity</p>
-<p class='line0'>In Christ-like tenderness, they hasted still</p>
-<p class='line0'>Their lagging steps.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;“Escape ye, for your lives</p>
-<p class='line0'>Look not behind you! neither tarry ye</p>
-<p class='line0'>In all the verdant plain:—Escape, escape</p>
-<p class='line0'>Safe to the mountain, lest ye be consumed:”</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>The level sunbeams slant athwart the plain</p>
-<p class='line0'>Through the long shadows of the flying group—</p>
-<p class='line0'>Yet the destruction lingered; yet the sky</p>
-<p class='line0'>Gave forth no presage of the coming wrath.</p>
-<p class='line0'>The sward, dew-beaded, yielded to their tread</p>
-<p class='line0'>Never more softly, and the bannered palms</p>
-<p class='line0'>Playfully dallied with the morning breeze.</p>
-<p class='line0'>Doubt grew to strength within the mother’s soul,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Beneath the firmamental quietude;</p>
-<p class='line0'>And though the angel’s clasp was on her hand,</p>
-<p class='line0'>She backward looked, with longing, loving gaze,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Incredulous of evil, to the roofs</p>
-<p class='line0'>And lines of fair, white walls, that glittering lay</p>
-<p class='line0'>Serene in the pure dawn. The rigid hand</p>
-<p class='line0'>Dropped icy from the angel’s—the stark form</p>
-<p class='line0'>Stood fixed, and motionless, and marble pale—</p>
-<p class='line0'>A ghostly monument of unbelief.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>Dumb with the tracking fear that suffered not</p>
-<p class='line0'>A moment’s waste in sorrow—on they pressed</p>
-<p class='line0'>And gained the place of refuge. Then they turned,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Breathless and tottering, with their straining eyes</p>
-<p class='line0'>Clouded with horror, and their lips apart</p>
-<p class='line0'>In speechless eagerness, and awful dread,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Toward the distant city.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;The calm morn</p>
-<p class='line0'>Seemed sliding downward to abysmal night:</p>
-<p class='line0'>All Nature’s face grew sickly: through the plain,</p>
-<p class='line0'>The fell simoom came sweeping like a fiend,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Twisting the tallest palm-trees, as their stems</p>
-<p class='line0'>Were lithest summer reeds, and wrenching up</p>
-<p class='line0'>Centurial cedars. Silver-threaded streams</p>
-<p class='line0'>Grew to a leaden blackness: tempest-clouds,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Lurid with fiery fringes, marshaled all</p>
-<p class='line0'>Their most terrific grandeur, and rolled on</p>
-<p class='line0'>In thunderous darkness, till the funeral heavens</p>
-<p class='line0'>Thrilled to the shock, and the fast-anchored earth</p>
-<p class='line0'>Seemed throbbing in the agitated swell</p>
-<p class='line0'>Of fathomless ether. Sulphurous, forked flames,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Like myriads of avenging swords, flashed out</p>
-<p class='line0'>Above the guilty cities, and the shriek</p>
-<p class='line0'>Of frantic multitudes came roaring on</p>
-<p class='line0'>In dismal howls, as if the eternal pit</p>
-<p class='line0'>Had emptied forth its demons. The hot wrath</p>
-<p class='line0'>Of God’s fierce anger rained with scathing breath</p>
-<p class='line0'>The deluge-fire of a descending hell—</p>
-<p class='line0'>And in the flaming sheets, the stately towers—</p>
-<p class='line0'>The lofty mausoleums—the proud walls—</p>
-<p class='line0'>The rich abodes of princes—and the homes</p>
-<p class='line0'>Of Heaven-defying wickedness, were wrapped</p>
-<p class='line0'>As in a fitting cerement.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;When the strength</p>
-<p class='line0'>Of the spent storm of fury died away,</p>
-<p class='line0'>And the ghast ministers of wrath drew off</p>
-<p class='line0'>Their fearful hosts from that grim battle-field—</p>
-<p class='line0'>The holy Patriarch, who had sought by prayer</p>
-<p class='line0'>To turn aside the vengeance, stretched his view</p>
-<p class='line0'>Across the plains of Jordan; but no walls</p>
-<p class='line0'>Gleamed in the early sunshine; no fair flocks</p>
-<p class='line0'>Studded the bleak, swart slopes; no waving trees</p>
-<p class='line0'>Bent to the morning wind. Destruction swooped,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Like a fierce raven screaming o’er its prey,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Above the desert-waste: the seething smoke</p>
-<p class='line0'>Hung, pall-like, round the ruins: and he bowed</p>
-<p class='line0'>His head in sad yet meek submissiveness</p>
-<p class='line0'>Before the righteous judgments of his God.</p>
-</div>
-</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend -->
-
-<hr class='tbk133'/>
-
-<div><h1><a id='emin'></a>EMINENT YOUNG MEN.—NO. I.</h1></div>
-
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;margin-bottom:1.5em;font-weight:bold;'>BENJAMIN H. BREWSTER</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>In our last number we proposed to give a short
-biographical sketch of Benjamin Harris Brewster,
-as the first of a series of rapid portraits of such eminent
-young men as chance and association have
-made us intimate with, that we might thereby incite
-in the minds of some of the young men amongst our
-readers a laudable ambition to excel, and arouse that
-latent energy of character which is the foundation of
-all true personal greatness in America.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Benjamin Harris Brewster is a lineal descendant
-on his father’s side of Elder William Brewster,
-whose name is embalmed in all true hearts as the
-intrepid ruling elder in that Band of Heroes and unbending
-worshipers of freedom of conscience, who
-landed from the Mayflower at Plymouth, in December
-1620. The heroism of Brewster, Robinson and
-others of that immortal band of brave men and women,
-prior to their embarkation at Holland, are facts
-of history, and as familiar to every student as their subsequent
-trials and dauntless energy in braving them.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Mr. Brewster’s family were originally from New
-Jersey. A descendant of Elder Brewster’s removed
-from Plymouth to New Jersey, and there Mr. B. H.
-Brewster, his great-grandson, was born. In his mother’s
-family a great-grandfather—a Duval, was a refugee
-Huguenot—“one of that handful of whom the
-world was not worthy, who without stain, without
-reproach, were crushed to the dust, were delivered up
-to the rack, the scourge, the dungeon, the stake, as if
-accursed of Heaven, until at last a weeping and bleeding
-remnant of them found their way to our land and
-poured into our veins the rich stream of Huguenot
-blood.” Thus from both sides of his house he inherits
-rich, old democratic blood. Puritan and Huguenot
-blood. Blood that an American may be proud of.
-His ancestors assisted in planting that holy seed of
-Liberty which has sprung into so mighty a tree, and
-under whose thick spreading branches the oppressed
-of all nations find shelter.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Mr. Brewster was born in Salem county, New
-Jersey, during a transient residence of his parents in
-that place. When only a few months old his parents
-returned to their former residence in Philadelphia,
-where he has ever since lived. He early gave promise
-of great quickness of intellect, but from his
-earliest childhood he was particularly remarkable
-for strict truthfulness and integrity—he scorned a lie,
-even an evasion, though it might save him the
-dreaded humiliation of punishment. “Manly, straightforward,
-upright,” were words always applied to
-him by those who knew him in youth, and these
-qualities made him a stay and a comfort to his family
-at an age when most young men are dependents.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>He left the preparatory school of Dr. Wiltbank at
-fourteen and entered the University of Pennsylvania,
-but was removed from it six months after to Princeton
-College, where he graduated at the age of eighteen
-years, and commenced the study of law in this city,
-in the office of Eli K. Price, Esq. In 1837, at the
-age of 21 years, he became a member of the Philadelphia
-bar. Starting on the road of life in that
-most arduous of all professions, the law, with few
-friends, he early exhibited those peculiar traits of
-fitness for his profession that so speedily placed him
-among its leaders. His success has been remarkable—not
-in the sense of the world generally—but in the
-substantial character of his business, and in his position
-among his brethren of the bar. He early saw
-the door of distinction open to him, and resolved to
-pass its threshold and make for himself an honorable
-name. With that industry and energy that are part
-of his character, he speedily, while yet a young man,
-rose in his profession, and took a prominent place
-among the best of that bar, long since acknowledged
-to be the strongest in the country. His mind is
-Analytical in an eminent degree, it perceives and
-grasps with a quickness, oftentimes wonderful, the
-strong points of a case, which are lucidly put before
-the jury. He uses little ornament, as we
-usually understand it, though he has at times
-shown his ability to wield that most effective
-of all the orator’s weapons; he presents in a
-brief, sententious style, with all the force that
-such a style is so naturally fitted for the gist of
-his case. His forte as a lawyer is before the court
-in banc upon a question of law—the forum that tests
-the real ability of so many—where mere speech-making—the
-tinsel and clap-trap of the profession
-pass at their real value, and where mind alone is the
-genuine currency—where educated minds are to be
-taught, altered, or convinced. In this department
-of his profession Mr. Brewster is at home, and brings
-to bear on the argument of his cases, all the powers
-of his peculiarly well-stored mind. He is by no
-means, however, deficient before a jury, as many
-of our citizens will recollect, in recalling to mind
-his many triumphs in this city. While he is kind
-to his colleagues, he is respectful but independent
-in his bearing toward the Court, but permitting no
-undue interference in his or his client’s business, yet
-giving to all the respect that position or talents should
-demand.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Mr. Brewster’s appearance before the Court is
-impressive. Thoughtful, earnest, and of fine manners,
-he at once impresses you with the importance
-of his cause, and that that which he is about
-to say is the result of no passing thought, but of care
-and deliberation—graceful and dignified in his manner
-he yet becomes, when warm with his subject, vehement
-without losing his self-possession, oftentimes
-treading a little out of his path to indulge in a pleasantry
-to relieve the dry detail of legal discussion,
-still maintaining the thread and course of his argument.
-Always courteous in an eminent degree to
-his adversary, high-toned and honorable in all his
-intercourse with the world, he exhibits it in argument,
-by refusing at all times to pervert facts, to
-overstrain or misstate the well-settled law of the
-land. He is ready and apt; exhibiting his readiness,
-and the ability with which he has prepared his case
-by the prompt answers of points against him suggested
-during argument by the Court or his adversary.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Mr. Kingman, the highly talented and veteran
-correspondent of the New York Journal of Commerce,
-said of him, “His (Mr. Brewster’s) manner
-is happy and winning—his voice mellow and flowing,
-and, as Mr. Wirt used to say of one of his
-favorites, he can render interesting to any auditory
-the dryest legal citation by the magical effect
-of his tasteful reading.” His talents as a lawyer
-have drawn him from our local courts, and the
-scenes of his greatest success have been in that
-“strongest of Courts” the Supreme Court of the
-United States at Washington. In a case that now
-presents itself to our mind, he more than distinguished
-himself—we mention, we are sure, from its
-public character, and the importance of the questions
-involved to all, a familiar case, when we
-name “The United States vs. The County of
-Philadelphia.” It involved the great constitutional
-question of the right of a State Government to tax
-the unceded realty of the United States necessary
-for the purposes of the Federal Government. This
-was a question particularly suited to the turn of mind
-of Mr. Brewster, and it was to be argued before a
-Court, the ablest and the brightest in the land. His
-argument elicited from all parts the highest and
-the warmest praise. The New York Tribune, a
-paper of high character for ability and impartiality,
-says, that “a long, elaborate, and powerful argument
-was delivered before the Supreme Court yesterday
-by Benjamin H. Brewster, of Philadelphia,
-which has produced a great impression in our legal
-circles, and secured at once for Mr. Brewster the
-reputation of being one of the ablest constitutional
-lawyers in the country. The principle to be defined
-and settled in the case in which Mr. B. is engaged,
-is of the highest importance, and the whole
-country is certainly greatly indebted to the learning
-and eloquence of that gentleman for the convincing
-manner in which he pointed out and defined the
-rights of the States, and the ability with which he
-defended those rights against Federal encroachment.”
-The New York Journal of Commerce said of it,
-“Mr. Brewster’s argument necessarily embraced
-some detail, and some citations, and various illustrations,
-and still he managed to bring it all within
-the compass of less than two hours. Mr. Brewster
-is a rising star, and destined at no distant day to become
-a shining light of the federal tribunal.” And
-these are but two, selected at random from a host
-of such compliments. The result showed the truth
-of these views of Mr. Brewster’s argument.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>His argument in this now famous case, was not
-published, notwithstanding the urgent request of
-many friends that it should be—with a modesty that
-we think false, but which is usually the attendant
-upon real ability, he was contented with having
-done work well without seeking by parade to make it
-the medium of pecuniary benefit. His character does
-not, of course, stand upon this case alone, as the records
-of the court at Washington will show, though,
-in truth, it might stand on a less secure foundation.
-Almost as a necessary consequence of Mr. Brewster’s
-professional life, he has been more or less identified
-with the various political questions of the day.
-Early in life he attached himself from conviction to
-the Democratic party, and steadily since, “through
-good and evil report,” he has adhered to and defended
-with voice and pen, the interest and doctrines
-of that party. He was a senatorial delegate
-from Pennsylvania to the Baltimore Convention of
-1844, and was the mover of the “two-third rule”
-in that Convention, to which fact Mr. Polk unquestionably
-owed his nomination. Shortly after the
-inauguration, Mr. Polk tendered him, unsolicited,
-the judicial appointment of Cherokee Commissioner.
-This Mr. Brewster accepted. It was an arduous
-and responsible position, requiring great industry and
-ability to discharge faithfully. By his course as
-Commissioner, he won the esteem and respect of
-the suitors, and saved to the government, from the
-jaws of rapacious speculators, millions of dollars.
-He received at the expiration of the term for which
-the office was enacted, the thanks and approval of
-the President.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Mr. Brewster is a warm supporter of the political
-views of Gen. Cass, and is, perhaps, the most
-efficient, both with voice and pen, of the many
-friends of that distinguished statesman in Pennsylvania.
-Differing widely, as we do, from Mr.
-Brewster in political sentiment, we can yet bear
-testimony to the intrepid conduct of the man, his
-high-hearted courage in the cause of his friend, and
-his energetic endeavors to secure the ultimate triumph
-of General Cass in the next Baltimore Convention.
-And although we cannot vote for General
-Cass, we can almost wish him success for the sake
-of seeing Mr. Brewster’s earnest and manly efforts
-crowned with success. If General Cass has many
-such friends—and Mr. Brewster’s friendship is of
-personal intimacy—he must have qualities that most
-politicians deny opponents and rivals, for we are
-satisfied that no man can attach to himself <span class='it'>heartily</span>,
-any number of men of intellectual force such as
-Brewster has, without possessing qualities of head
-and heart far above the grade of many aspiring candidates
-for the presidency.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Since his retirement from connection with the
-administration of Mr. Polk, Mr. Brewster has
-been engaged so much in the active pursuits of his
-profession as to prevent his giving much of his time
-to active politics, though often since by his pen, he
-has shown his interest in the great questions that
-have been lately agitating the country; and whenever
-the interests of General Cass are in jeopardy,
-his voice is heard in council, and his pen, lightning-winged,
-flies to the rescue.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Having thus hastily glanced at Mr. Brewster’s
-position as a lawyer and a public man, and used, as
-we confess we have done, the opinions and sentiments
-of more than one member of the Philadelphia
-bar in high standing, and the unsolicited endorsement
-of men high in his party, let us take a closer view
-of the man—of his personal character, the proud arch
-and basis of the structure, and tell, with all the freedom
-of an intimate friend, what we feel we <span class='it'>ought</span> to
-say, both in justice to our readers, to give them a
-fair view of the man, and to Mr. Brewster, to show
-how great have been his achievements against formidable
-odds.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Mr. Brewster has inherited in an eminent degree
-the endurance and high courage of his ancestors.
-His path has been a rough one, with an accumulation
-of difficulties besetting him on all sides, at the
-very threshold of boyhood, which would have prostrated
-almost any other man. But he at that early
-age made a resolute front, and met and pressed
-struggling through all opposition.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>He in early life met with an accident, the scars
-from which still linger upon his countenance. This,
-in the opinion of the timid and ill-advised, was sufficient
-for them to urge him into a more quiet and
-secluded profession than that of an advocate. But
-they little knew, these weak ones, the dauntless
-bravery of his soul—the fearless, determined purpose,
-the iron will of the man. His motto has been, from
-early boyhood, and his life has illustrated it nobly—“There
-is nothing unconquerable to him that dares.”
-His whole life has been one of struggles, of resolves
-and of victories. His manly self-possession under
-all disasters, his vehement purpose to overcome, in
-spite of fate and circumstances, have given an impetuosity
-and daring to his character which enable
-him to overleap the impossibilities of other men.
-Had he submitted to the dictation of the doubtful,
-regarded the counsel of the timid-wise, his lofty soul
-would have been dwarfed, his heroic will chafing
-for action in seclusion, would have made him a misanthrope—a
-pining and peevish companion, a cynic
-toward man and a snarler at Providence—the plague
-of a household, a weariness unto himself.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>But with the true courage which faces disasters,
-the inborn greatness which judges of its own capacity
-to endure, with an eye fixed upon the successful
-future, which lifts its blazing front to the gaze of true
-genius, he spurned all control, and consulting the
-inward teachings of his own spirit, he resolved, he
-dared and he has triumphed. With a manly heart,
-lifted in its gigantic resolves above all mere considerations
-of self—obeying all of its generous and noble
-impulses, he has from early manhood devoted his
-energies to build a paradise around those he loves—to
-render his home the abode of all that refines, of
-Art, Music and Society—to gather around him those
-who appreciated his manhood, and to impart by all
-the delicate and tender relations and attentions of a
-son and a brother, the largest amount of happiness
-which domestic life can afford. With what a royalty
-of soul he has done all this, let those answer
-who have spent their most delightful hours in his
-drawing-rooms—where the stern lawyer, the energetic
-champion of political principles and rights has
-unbended, and let loose the bounding joyousness of
-the man—where his heart has let off its bubbles in
-very glee, and where the exhaustless stores of his
-memory are poured out in wantonness, and his imagination
-and wit flash and play in perfect abandonment.
-No man who has not enjoyed his intimacy,
-his confidence and his friendship, can make any just
-estimate of his ability or worth.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>As a conversationalist, it has not been our fortune
-to meet with many who are his equals, either in the
-readiness or the variety of his topics, the fine play
-of his fancy, or the mellow flow of his words. There
-is not at this bar, a man of his years, who is his
-equal in scholarship—who has accumulated so vast a
-mass of curious learning. Upon all questions of History,
-Philosophy or Biography—he is the referee
-among his friends. His accuracy is singularly nice—no
-event of which he has read, seems ever to
-escape the tenacious grasp of his memory. No quotation
-from the Classics, apt at the moment, is ever
-wanting to illustrate or point an anecdote or a sentence.
-His knowledge of old English literature is
-thorough, and his acquaintance with the modern familiar
-and full. He is, in all respects a thorough
-student—stealing the hours which others devote to
-idle pleasure or indolent sleep, to enlarge his stores
-of knowledge and make broader and surer the foundations
-of intellectual power.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The defect of Mr. Brewster’s character has been
-the terrible impetuosity of his impulses, which would
-carry him to the gates of Hades in pursuit of a foe,
-and through a burning river in support of a friend—frequently,
-too, without stopping to ask whether
-either was worth the sacrifice. Hence, he has sometimes
-become the assailant and the champion, without
-the clearest notions as to which side victory
-justly belonged. These impulses, too, were as
-quick as they were strong. The lightning was not
-more sudden than his wrath—nor more certain in its
-destructiveness. No man made an enemy of him
-and escaped the well-timed blow. But his vengeance
-was rarely garnered, but blazed out in a fury which
-lent additional terror to the funeral pile of his victim.
-His generous sentiments are easily touched.
-His time, his talents, his whole soul are given to the
-cause of a friend. There is no halfway-house on
-the road to his heart—the door is fast shut, or the
-whole of the spacious apartments are thrown open,
-and the visitor is received amid a blaze of light
-from every genial corner.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Mr. Brewster has recently been abroad, and
-travel, which is so often a test of character, has improved
-him. He returns from Europe with his
-energy of soul held in check—his feelings are composed
-and chastened—his manner is subdued to a
-more Christian serenity—his voice has not its old,
-impetuous volume—the rushing heat of passion
-comes from his lips with less of its scorching severity.
-Life has broader aims in his eyes than formerly—the
-hour and to-day, are less important—the
-immediate success less looked to—the distant
-future is lived for more earnestly, with wiser hopes
-of a happy present hereafter. All this comes upon
-us—his old associate—with a force the greater, because
-we have been less with him, of late; and the
-gradual, familiar growing of these better purposes of
-soul have been less visible to us—they burst upon
-us like a strain of pure music when discord has suddenly
-been stilled. Mr. Brewster, himself, is a happier
-man—his old exuberant gayety is a well-tempered
-serenity and joyousness—the picture has been
-toned down, and the artist dwells upon it as a diviner
-effort of the Creator.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Mr. Brewster has nothing to do now but to <span class='it'>wait</span>!—high
-honors will come to him unsolicited. His
-position is assured. His ability, his integrity, his
-earnest energy of soul for the right and the true, open
-the pathway for all that the ambition of a Christian
-has a right to look for. This is Prophecy—the Inspiration
-which Truth impresses upon the soul.</p>
-
-<p class='line' style='text-align:right;margin-right:3em;margin-top:0.5em;'><span style='font-size:smaller'>G. R. G.</span></p>
-
-<hr class='tbk134'/>
-
-<div><h1><a id='sor'></a>SORRENTO.</h1></div>
-
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;'>———</p>
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;font-size:0.8em;font-weight:bold;'>BY C. P. CRANCH.</p>
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;margin-bottom:1.5em;'>———</p>
-
-<div class='dramastart'><!----></div>
-
-<p class='dramaline-cont'>On such a blue and breezy summer’s day,</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>The winds seem charmed that wander round this bay.</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>The waves that murmur on the sunward beach,</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>Whisper of things beyond the Present’s reach.</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>Each winged bark that skims along the sea</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>Seems gliding like a dream of mystery.</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>Light of far Grecian days comes glimmering through</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>This pure crystaline sky of cloudless blue.</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>Here are the rocks where gold-haired syrens sang;</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>Here Tasso’s harp in later ages rang.</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>Over the sacred waves the purple isles</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>Answer the heavens with their serenest smiles:</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>Round yonder point, steep Capri with her caves;</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>Beyond, where the sky kisses the far waves,</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>Those amethystine sisters of the sea,</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>Prochyta and the blue Inarime.</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>Along the shore from Baia’s rained towers</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>To marble Pompeii, half embalmed in flowers,</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>Stretches the chain of towns along the sea;</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>And gleaming in the midst, proud Napoli</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>Sits like a young and pearl-crowned ocean queen</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>Gazing into her mirror of clear green.</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>And over all the bodeful genius</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>Of this fair clime—fire-eyed Vesuvius</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>Frowns, the sole troubled spirit of the scene—</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>And even him the distance makes serene.</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>All this I see from my still summer home,</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>A bower where nought but peace and beauty come.</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>Geraniums and roses round me bloom—</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>From orange-groves, amid whose verdant gloom</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>Gold fruit and silver flowers together shine,</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>Come orient odors. A thick blossoming vine</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>Shadows the terrace where, even as I write,</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>The wind snows down the olive-blossoms white.</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>Above, the birds’ sweet and unwearied song;</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>Beneath, the ocean whispers all day long.</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>Sometimes, when morning lights the rippling waves</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>Below the steep rocks and the ocean caves,</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>The sunshine weaves a net of flickering gleams.</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>Fit to entrap a Syren in her dreams.</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>There tangled braids of ever-changing light</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>In golden mazes glitter up the sand,</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>And underneath, the rocks and pebbles bright</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>Glow like rich jewels of the Eastern land.</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>Well might such sweet, transparent waters hold</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>Tritons and nymphs with locks of liquid gold;</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>For nothing were too beautiful to be</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>Born from the pure depths of this summer sea.</p>
-
-<p class='dramaline-cont'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;———</p>
-
-<p class='dramaline-cont'>Four moons have passed—and nights and days have flown</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>Cloudless—a summer of an orient tone,</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>Since my unequal pen essayed to tell</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>Brief passages of what I loved so well.</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>Above me now, where blossoms fell in spring,</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>Large purple grapes hang thickly clustering;</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>The fig-tree near, with ample leaves displayed,</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>Shelters its sweet, cool fruit beneath their shade.</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>Still hang the oranges upon their stems,</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>Whose dark green foliage makes them glow like gems.</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>The cypresses by yonder convent wall</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>Shoot up as freshly green, as stately tall,</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>And there the drowsy vesper-bell ne’er tires</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>Calling to prayers the brown-robed, bearded friars.</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>Down on the beach, content with slender gain,</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>Still drag their nets the red-capped fishermen.</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>Still glide the days as fair—the nights more cool,</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>The sea is still as ever beautiful;</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>And yonder purple mount, towering as proud</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>Still blends its light smoke with the flying cloud.</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>And now, ere I these pleasant scenes resign,</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>I would yet linger o’er and make them mine.</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>I would remember every odorous breeze</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>That wafted incense from these orange-trees—</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>The roses clustering on their leafy stalks,</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>Dropping their faint leaves in the garden walks—</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>The sweet geraniums and the passion flowers</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>Entwined with multifloras—the noon hours</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>When underneath the oaks I watched the sea</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>Rippling below me calm and dreamily.</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>The hueless olives where the full moon came</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>Kindling behind them with a holy flame,</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>Touching their pale leaves with mysterious sheen</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>And shimmering o’er old boughs of silvery green—</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>Above, the inextinguishable lights</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>That made all nights in heaven like festal nights,</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>That seemed too holy for frail men to keep,</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>And yet too costly to be spent in sleep.</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>O lovely nights and days! too quickly flown;</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>Leave me the memory of your sweetest tone.</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>O ocean! long I’ve lingered on thy shore,</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>Lulled by thy whisper, wakened by thy roar.</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>Ere I depart and see no more thy face,</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>Let me retain some sign of thy embrace—</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>Not pearls nor painted shells, nor coral rare,</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>But dreams of Beauty. So the goddess fair,</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>Who rules all hearts, and fills the Olympian home,</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>Rose in a sea-shell from thy glittering foam—</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>Sprang an immortal to the blaze of day,</p>
-<p class='dramaline'>And wide o’er gods and men extends her sway.</p>
-
-<hr class='tbk135'/>
-
-<div class='figcenter'>
-<img src='images/i202.jpg' alt='' id='iid-0009' style='width:100%;height:auto;'/>
-<p class='caption'><span style='font-size:smaller'><span class='bold'>THE CARIBOO; OR AMERICAN REIN-DEER.</span></span></p>
-</div>
-
-<hr class='tbk136'/>
-
-<div><h1><a id='game'></a>THE GAME OF THE SEASON.</h1></div>
-
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;'>———</p>
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;font-size:0.8em;font-weight:bold;'>BY FRANK FORESTER, AUTHOR OF “FIELD SPORTS OF AMERICA,” “FISH AND FISHING,” ETC.</p>
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;margin-bottom:1.5em;'>———</p>
-
-<h2 class='nobreak'>THE CARIBOO; AND CARIBOO HUNTING</h2>
-
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;margin-bottom:1em;'><span style='font-size:smaller'><span class='it'>Cervus Tarandus.</span> <span class='sc'>American Rein-Deer.</span></span></p>
-
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;margin-bottom:1em;'>[SEE ENGRAVING.]</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>It is not a little extraordinary, that this magnificent
-and noble species, which exists in considerable
-numbers within two hundred miles of the spot where
-I sit writing, in the Adirondack Highlands—I mean,
-of New York—which abounds in the north-eastern
-part of Maine, swarms in New Brunswick and
-Newfoundland, and indeed everywhere North of the
-St. Lawrence and Ottawa, to the extremest Arctic
-Regions yet penetrated by the foot of man, should
-be yet less known to American writers—even on
-the topic of Natural History—than most animals of
-Central Asia, or the inhospitable wilds of Southern
-Africa. It is not even determined—so little care has
-been taken in examining or identifying specimens—whether
-it is one and the same, or a different species
-from the Reindeer of the Europe-Asiatic continent;
-nor have any of its peculiarities been noted down,
-such as the common indications of its stature, antlers,
-pelage, and color, much less its anatomical and
-osseous structure, so as to permit of any accurate
-comparison being drawn, or decision arrived at.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>In proof of the loose way in which these self-styled
-descriptions of rare animals are drawn, in books of
-solemn pretension and supposed authority, I shall
-proceed to quote the following from the Encyclopædia
-Americana—a work of which I can only say,
-that it is equally profuse of needless information on
-subjects trite to every Sophomore, and sparing of
-facts, such as require research and are required by
-men of ordinary reading, who will search its pages
-vainly for what on occasion they may need to
-ask it.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“<span class='it'>Reindeer</span>”—says the authority. “These animals
-inhabit the Arctic Islands of Spitzbergen, and
-the northern extremity of the Old Continent, never
-having extended, according to Cuvier, to the southward
-of the Baltic. They have been long domesticated,
-and their appearance and habits are well described
-by naturalists. The American Reindeer, or
-Cariboo, are much less generally known; they have,
-however, so strong a resemblance to the Lapland
-deer, that they have always been considered to be
-the same species, though the fact has never been
-completely established. The American Indians have
-never profited by the docility of this animal, to aid
-them in transporting their families and property,
-though they annually destroy great numbers for their
-flesh and hides. There appear to be several varieties
-of this useful quadruped peculiar to the high
-northern regions of the American Continent, which
-are ably described by Doctor Richardson, one of the
-companions of Captain Franklin, in his arduous attempt
-to reach the North Pole by land. The closeness
-of the hair of the Cariboo, and the lightness of
-its skin, when dressed, render it the most appropriate
-article for winter clothing in the high latitudes.
-The hoofs of the Reindeer are very large, and spread
-greatly, and thus enable it to cross the yielding snows
-without sinking.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>And this—without one word of the height, weight,
-color, or habitat of the animal—is the only information
-which the Editor of the American Encyclopædia
-thinks proper to give his readers—except a brief
-description of Doctor Richardson, about whom he
-seems to know a little, if he knew nothing about
-Cariboo—concerning an animal, which is killed almost
-annually within fifty miles of Albany, sold annually
-in Montreal, and in New Brunswick and
-Nova Scotia almost as common an article as venison,
-or Moose-meat during winter in the markets.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Would not any one suppose, on reading the above,
-that he was dealing with the description of an animal,
-which roamed only wastes untrodden by the
-foot of the white man, save the adventurous explorers
-of the Arctic Circles, and concerning which
-no information can be gained by the ordinary naturalists
-of this country?</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Cuvier and Richardson, and Audubon’s stupendous
-work are not attainable by general readers, or even
-ordinary writers of cities; to those of the country
-they are utterly inaccessible—but to Encyclopædists,
-and to men who sit down to reproduce great works
-on Natural History, who choose to consult them,
-they are perfectly and easily open; and there is no
-shadow of excuse for those who profess to teach
-others, yet refuse to learn themselves.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Had the writer of the above worthless trash
-thought fit to compare Doctor Richardson’s description
-of the Cariboo, which it seems he had read—and
-which, like all that singularly able naturalist’s descriptions,
-is doubtless as minute as correct—with
-Cuvier’s description of the Reindeer, he might have
-pronounced as easily, as he could whether two and
-two make four or five, whether the American and
-Europe-Asiatic deer are identical or different. Godman,
-in his “Quadrupeds of North America,” though
-a little more definite than Dr. Leiber, is scarce less
-bald and brief. Dr. Dekay, whose lamented life has
-recently been brought to an untimely close, though
-he suspected it to be a denizen of New York, was
-not fully assured of the fact, and therefore has not, I
-think, described it in his Fauna of that State.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>I have myself, unfortunately, no immediate access
-to either Richardson or Cuvier; nor even to any
-well established work on the Animals of Northern
-Europe. But I have seen a large herd, in my youth,
-of the Lapland Reindeer, which, with their Esquimaux
-attendants were exhibited many years ago in
-London; previous to a futile attempt at naturalizing
-them in the Highlands and Western Isles of Scotland;
-and have a fair, general remembrance of the
-animal. I possess antlers of the Cariboo, which
-hang in my hall, and which are accurately portrayed
-in the wood-cut; I have handled twenty times the
-hides of this great deer; and I have daily opportunities—in
-the office of my friend, W. T. Porter, of the
-Spirit of the Times—to examine the preserved heads
-and legs of even finer specimens than my own. I
-have also letters, private, and writings published, of
-a New Brunswicker, who has killed the Cariboo
-fifty times, and had opportunities of seeing the
-European Reindeer, at the Zoological Gardens
-in London, long since myself. I can, therefore,
-form a very fair conjecture at the identity or non-identity
-of the species. At least I can give some
-particulars of structure, stature, and pelage of the
-American Cariboo, which will enable others to judge,
-who are better posted up than I, in the peculiarities
-of the Lapland Reindeer. And first—I will premise
-that although I have never seen the Cariboo in life,
-or in his native woods—which I trust to do before
-the snows of the next March shall have melted—the
-wood-cut illustration of this number is so closely
-made up from measurements of the various parts,
-heads, antlers, legs and hides of the animal, that I
-believe it to be as nearly correct as any likeness can
-be, which is not taken from an especial individual
-of the race.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>In the first place—as to the stature of the Cariboo,
-I was long ago struck by the statements of the New
-Brunswick writer, “<span class='sc'>Meadows</span>,” alias Mr. Barton
-Wallop, alluded to above, which may be found in
-Porter’s edition of Hawker’s Field Sports, p. 326-333—“The
-Cariboo of this country are very like the
-Reindeer, only a little larger”—and again—“as this
-is the first time you have seen a Cariboo trail, you
-will observe it is much like that of an <span class='it'>ox</span>, save that
-the cleft is much more open, and the pastern of the
-animal being very long and flexible, comes down the
-whole length on the snow, and gives the animal additional
-support.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Arguing on this statement, in my “Field Sports,”
-knowing <span class='sc'>Meadows</span> to have seen both animals, that
-they must be distinct, I pointed out—no one could
-dream of comparing a Lapland Reindeer’s track to
-that of an <span class='it'>ox</span>, any more than to that of an elephant;
-and observed further, that the Lapland Reindeer is
-not a larger, but—to my recollection—a smaller animal
-than the common American Red-deer, <span class='it'>Cervus</span>
-<span class='it'>Virginianus</span> of Naturalists. This coming casually
-under Mr. Wallop’s eye, he wrote to me, in full confirmation
-of my opinion, that he had recently seen
-Lapland Reindeer in the Regent’s Park Zoological
-Gardens, and wished to amend his former <span class='it'>dictum</span>,
-by saying, that the Cariboo is at least one-third taller
-than the Lapland deer, and otherwise larger, and in
-other respects very different. Also, that the Lapland
-animal is not taller than the British Stag, or
-the American Common Deer, or, if at all, very
-slightly so.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Now, to come to my own observation, verified by
-measurement. The Cariboo antlers in my own
-possession, not an unusually large pair, measure as
-follows:</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Extreme width from tip to tip, one foot 4½ inches.
-Length of curvature of antlers, from root to tip, two
-feet 3½ inches. Direct height, 23 inches. Breadth
-of the palmated brow antlers, 8 inches. Length of
-do., 11 inches. Breadth of upper palm, 8 inches.
-Length of do., 12 inches. Girth at the root of antler,
-5½ inches. At insertion of upper prong, 4
-inches. Number of prongs at the tips, unequal—three
-and two. At the upper palms, three. On the
-lower palms, seven processes, including the principal
-point.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Compare with this, the measurements of the antlers
-of a very fine specimen of the common American
-deer, <span class='it'>Cervus Virginianus</span>.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Extreme width from tip to tip, 11 inches. Length
-of curvature along the back of antlers from root to
-tip, two feet and half an inch. Direct height, 15
-inches.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Observe, however, that the greater curvature in
-the horns of the American deer, while it causes a
-larger comparative measurement, leaves a vast excess
-in height and show to the Cariboo.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>In the Cariboo, moreover—see cut—the structure
-of the horns is directly the reverse of that of any
-other palmated-horned animal I ever remember to
-have seen; as the Moose, the English Fallow-deer,
-and to the best of my recollection the Europe-Asiatic
-Reindeer. In both the former of these animals, the
-broad palms form the extreme upper tips; while the
-lower spurs and brow antlers are round prongs; and,
-to the best of my memory, the reindeer has no very
-conspicuous palms at all.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>In our common deer, again, contrary to any other
-deer I have ever seen—except a very noble non-descript
-specimen recently sent from Calcutta to the
-Spirit of the Times—the main branch of the antlers
-curves <span class='it'>forward</span> over the brow, offering the main defenses,
-the true brow antlers being mere erect
-prongs; while all the tines are posterior to the main
-branch.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>In the American Elk, and in the British Stag, or
-Red-deer, and in all other round-horned deer I ever
-saw, the main antlers rise erectly, with a slight
-<span class='it'>backward</span> curve, the brow antler and all the other
-tines springing from it anteriorly, and forming the
-true weapons for the animal’s defense.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The Cariboo, therefore, presents a curious combination
-of the round-horned and palmated-horned
-deer, in the first instance; and of the usual, and
-American, round-horn structure, in the second.
-First, it has the round, pointed tips and sharp, round
-prongs of the round-horned deer above, with the
-flat, leaf-like blades of the palmated-horned deer
-below. And, secondly, it has the forward curve at
-the tips and backward prongs, above, of the American
-round-horn, with the terrible brow antlers and
-forward tines of the usual structure below.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Lastly, it differs from all in this—that its brow
-antlers, instead of dividing with an outward curve
-over and without each eye, closes with a straight inward
-inclination, until the tips almost meet, nearly
-in the centre of a brow.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Once more, as to size, there are the leg, with
-hoof, pastern and cannon-bone of an ordinary sized
-Cariboo; and the leg, with hoof, pastern and cannon-bone
-of an extraordinarily large-sized American
-deer, and as such selected, hanging side by side in
-Mr. Porter’s office. The limb of the Cariboo is considerably
-more than one-third superior in size to that
-of the common deer, and is fully equal to that of a yearling
-heifer of the very largest stature, and from its peculiar
-structure, being cleft nearly the full length of
-the pastern to the fetlock-joint, would evidently leave
-a much larger track.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>I have seen and ridden aged thorough-bred horses
-of fourteen and a half hands—four foot ten inches
-high—whose limbs were in all respects inferior to
-that of this superb specimen of the deer tribe; and
-right confident am I, from observation of several of
-their heads, their hides and hoofs, that from fourteen
-and a half to fifteen hands will be found to be the
-average height of the Cariboo. If the Lapland Reindeer
-ever exceeds thirteen it will be surprising to
-me. While on this topic, however, I will beg the
-first Canadian or Nova Scotian hunter whose eye
-this may meet, to furnish me with the full statements
-of height, weight and measurement of any
-Cariboo he may be so fortunate as to kill, or to have
-killed, during the present winter. Readers of Graham
-will find in the February number of the present
-year a correct and spirited representation of the antlers
-of the English red-deer; and, if they will look
-back to the June and August numbers of 1851, they
-will find those of the moose and American deer,
-designed by myself from the life, which will far
-more easily convey the comparison which I desire
-to draw than written words.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>As regards the nature of the pelage, or fur, for it is
-almost such, of the Cariboo, so far from its being, as
-the wiseacre of the Encyclopædia states, remarkable
-for closeness and compactness, it is by all odds the
-loosest and longest haired of any deer I ever saw;
-being, particularly about the head and neck, so
-shaggy as to appear almost maned.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>In color, it is the most grizzly of deer, and though
-comparatively dark brown on the back, the hide is
-generally speaking light, almost dun colored, and on
-the head and neck fulvous, or tawny gray, largely
-mixed with white hairs.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The flesh is said to be delicious; and the leather
-made by the Indians from its skin, by their peculiar
-process, is of unsurpassed excellence for leggings,
-moccasons or the like; especially for the moccason to
-be used under snow-shoes.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>As to its habits, while the Lapland or Siberian
-Reindeer is the tamest and most docile of its genus,
-the American Cariboo is the fiercest, fleetest, wildest,
-shyest and most untameable. So much so, that
-they are rarely pursued by white hunters, or shot
-by them, except through casual good-fortune; Indians
-alone having the patience and instinctive craft,
-which enables them to crawl on them unseen, unsmelt—for
-the nose of the Cariboo can detect the
-smallest taint upon the air of any thing human at
-least two miles up wind of him—and unsuspected.
-If he take alarm and start off on the run, no one
-dreams of pursuing. As well pursue the wind, of
-which no man knoweth whence it cometh or whither
-it goeth. Snow-shoes against him alone avail nothing,
-for propped up on the broad, natural snow-shoes of his
-long, elastic pasterns and wide-cleft clacking hoofs,
-he shoots over the thinnest crust, over the deepest
-drifts, unbroken; in which the lordly moose would
-soon flounder, shoulder-deep, if hard pressed, and the
-graceful deer would fall despairing, and bleat in vain
-for mercy—but he, the ship of the winter wilderness,
-outspeeds the wind among his native pines and tamaracks—even
-as the desert ship, the dromedary,
-outtrots the red simoom on the terrible Zahara—and
-once started, may be seen no more by human eyes,
-nor run down by fleetest feet of man, no, not if they
-pursue him from their nightly-casual camps, unwearied,
-following his trail by the day, by the week,
-by the month, till a fresh snow efface his tracks, and
-leave the hunter at the last, as he was at the first of
-the chase; less only the fatigue, the disappointment
-and the folly.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Therefore by woodsmen, whether white or red-skinned,
-he is never followed. Indians by hundreds
-in the provinces, and many loggers and hunters in
-the Eastern states, can take and keep his trail in suitable
-weather—the best <span class='it'>time</span> is the latter end of
-February or the beginning of March; the best
-<span class='it'>weather</span> is when a light, fresh snow of some three or
-four inches has fallen on the top of deep drifts and a
-solid crust; the fresh snow giving the means of following
-the trail; the firm crust yielding a support to
-the broad snow-shoes and enabling the stalkers to
-trail with silence and celerity combined. Then they
-crawl onward, breathless and voiceless, up wind
-always, following the foot-prints of the wandering,
-pasturing, wantoning deer; judging by signs, unmistakable
-to the veteran hunter, undistinguishable to
-the novice, of the distance or proximity of their
-game; until they steal upon the herd unsuspected,
-and either finish the day with a sure shot and a
-triumphant whoop; or discover that the game has
-taken alarm and started on the jump, and so give it
-up in despair.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>One man perhaps in a thousand can still-hunt, or
-stalk, Cariboo in the summer season. He, when
-he has discovered a herd feeding <span class='it'>up wind</span>, at a
-leisurely pace and clearly unalarmed, stations a comrade
-in close ambush, well down wind and to leeward
-of their upward track, and then himself, after closely
-observing their mood, motions and line of course,
-strikes off in a wide circle well to leeward, until he
-has got a mile or two ahead of the herd, when very
-slowly and guardedly, observing the profoundest
-silence, he cuts across their direction, and gives
-them his wind, as it is technically termed, dead
-ahead. This is the crisis of the affair; if he give
-the wind too strongly, or too rashly, if he make the
-slightest noise or motion, they scatter in an instant,
-and away. If he give it slightly, gradually, and
-casually as it were, not fancying themselves pursued,
-they merely turn away from the remote danger,
-and instead of flying, merely <span class='it'>feed</span> away from it,
-working their way <span class='it'>down wind</span> to the deadly ambush,
-of which their keenest scent cannot so inform
-them. If he succeed in this, inch by inch, he crawls
-after them, never pressing them, or drawing in upon
-them, but preserving the same distance still, still
-giving them the same wind as at the first, so that he
-creates no panic or confusion, until at length, when
-close upon the hidden peril, his sudden whoop sends
-them headlong down the deceitful breeze upon the
-treacherous rifle.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Of all wood-craft none is so difficult, none requires
-so rare a combination as this, of quickness of sight,
-wariness of tread, very instinct of the craft, and perfection
-of judgment. When resorted to, and performed
-to the very admiration of woodmen, it does
-not succeed once in a hundred times—therefore not
-by one man in a thousand is it ever resorted to at all,
-and by him, rather in the wantonness of wood-craft,
-and by way of boastful experiment, than with any
-hope, much less expectation of success.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>For once, in my illustration, the trick has been
-played, and the game wins—the whoop is pealing
-on the wind beyond the dark, sheltering pines and
-hemlocks—the herd is scattered to the four winds
-of heaven—but the monarch of the wilderness, the
-prime bull of the herd, bears down in his headlong
-terror full on the ambushed rifle.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Lo! with how brave a bound he clears that prostrate
-log. But the keen eye of the woodman is
-upon him; another moment, and it shall glare along
-the deadly rifle; the sharp, short crack shall awake
-the echoes of the forest, and ere they shall have
-subsided into silence, the pride of the woods shall
-have gasped out his last sigh on the gory green-sward.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>But this you will say is fancy—scarcely fact. Be
-it so. What follows shall be fact, not fancy. For
-I shall beg leave to quote a few pages from Porter’s
-Hawker by that “Meadows,” whom I have already
-mentioned—since his is the best description of this
-noble sport extant; since to reproduce it, giving his
-thoughts in my own altered words were rankest
-plagiary; and since, if it meet his eye, he will be
-rather pleased than hurt that I have winged his
-words into a wider field and to a larger audience
-than he at first addressed them.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>I will premise only, that “Howard,” who figures
-as the hero, is a New Brunswicker, in New Brunswick;
-“Meadows,” the narrator, an English tyro
-visiting his friend in the province; Sabatisie, a Micmac
-Indian, henchman and guide of Meadows; and
-Billy, last not least, Howard’s pet bull terrier.
-Scene, daybreak! they have issued from the camp
-close to the hunting-ground where the Cariboo are
-supposed to “won”—as Chaucer would have written
-it—when lo! quoth Meadows—</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“After a hearty meal, every thing being ready,
-we <span class='it'>mounted</span> our snow-shoes and marched. The
-first golden rays were just struggling through the
-gray East, and dispersing the thick mist which hung
-over our camp, as I strode forth on my first Cariboo
-hunt, my heart leaping in anxious anticipation, and
-my nerves strung by the healthy atmosphere. We
-proceeded in silence, and had ample time to observe
-the lonely grandeur of the surrounding forest; the
-death-like stillness enlivened only by the cheerful
-chirp of the active ground-squirrel, or the loud boring
-of that most beautiful of woodpeckers, the Hid. We
-crossed Cariboo tracks at every step, but still the
-Indian proceeded, his quick eye glancing at every
-trail. After about an hour’s walk, we found ourselves
-ascending a steep mountain. Here the Indian
-came to a halt: in a low tone he told us that we
-were now near the Cariboo ground, this being the
-warm side of the hill, and good feeding ground;
-cautioning us to be quiet, we again advanced, but
-had not gone far before we came to a trail that the
-Indian said was only made last night. Sabatisie
-chose the outside track of the herd, to take the wind—which,
-having followed about three miles, brought
-us to where the Cariboo had rested during the night.
-Tom placed his hand on the damp snow, and remarked
-that the Cariboo had not been up much before
-us, and could not be far off.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Rifles were now examined, and fresh caps put
-on—Billy secured by a cord to Howard’s belt. The
-tracks from the resting-place of the Cariboo branched
-off in every direction; and the Indian leaving us,
-took a <span class='it'>cast</span> round, some distance, and having ascertained
-the direction the herd had taken, he returned,
-and we cautiously followed him. I now perceived
-that at the bottom of the tracks the snow was a deep
-blue, and quite soft; we were therefore quite near
-the game. Sabatisie halted and took off his snow-shoes
-that he might proceed with less noise. Howard
-beckoned me to him, and in a low whisper said—‘Do
-exactly as you see me do—follow close upon my
-track, and do not for your life make the slightest
-noise—we are close on them!’</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Sabatisie and Howard now slung their snow-shoes
-on their backs: to prevent the crackling of
-the crust, the Indian with his fingers broke the snow
-before him, and placing his foot in the hole he made,
-quietly advanced—Howard putting his in the track
-the Indian had left, I mine in Howard’s. By this
-means we proceeded without the slightest noise; and
-as our movements were simultaneous, we should to
-a person in front appear as one body. Our situations
-were certainly any thing but agreeable, up to
-the waist in snow. The trail became every moment
-more fresh, and the eagle eye of our sagacious
-guide pried far into the depths of the forest in front.
-Suddenly he cast himself at full length on the snow,
-and remained so long in that position that I innocently
-thrust my head out of the line to see what
-was the matter; but the Indian glared at me with
-anger and contempt, and Howard’s sign recalled my
-senses. In front, the wood being quite open, Sabatisie
-had seen the Cariboo, and now made for a large
-pine to shelter his approach. His movements, as he
-dragged himself along on his belly in the snow, were
-snake-like; and we followed, endeavoring as far as
-possible to imitate his very <span class='it'>interesting contortions</span>.
-At last I caught sight of the game. They were a
-large herd of 18 or 20—some rubbing the bark from
-the branches—others performing their morning toilet,
-licking their dark-brown, glossy jackets, and combing
-them with their noble antlers. All appeared unconscious
-of the approach of their most deadly foes, save
-one noble bull, the leader of the herd. He seemed suspicious—with
-head erect, eyes darting in every direction,
-ears wagging to and fro, and nostril expanded,
-he snuffed the breeze. Upon this splendid creature
-the Indian kept his eye, never venturing to move
-save when the head of the Cariboo was turned away.
-Inch by inch we approached the tree. Oh! the
-agony of suspense I suffered in those few minutes!</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“At length we reached our shelter. No time was
-lost. Howard signed to me to single out a Cariboo,
-while he took the noble leader, which was about
-100 yards distant—the Indian reserving his fire. We
-stationed ourselves each side of the tree, and our rifles
-exploded almost at the same moment. Springing up
-to see the effect of my shot, I was pulled down by
-the Indian; what was my astonishment to see the
-bull Howard had fired at, stamping the snow, and
-gazing around, with fire and rage in his eye, in search
-of his hidden enemy. As I looked at his formidable
-antlers, his majestic height, and great strength—a
-thought of our helpless situation crossed my mind.
-The Indian now rested his gun quietly on the tree,
-and took a long, steady aim—the cap alone exploded
-with a sharp crack! Quick as lightning the bull
-discovered our ambush, and with a loud snort made
-directly for us. Defense or retreat against such a
-foe, in our situation, up to the waist in snow, was
-almost impossible. In another bound the antlers of
-the enraged beast would have been in my side, when
-our gallant little dog dashed forward and seized the
-bull by the muzzle. Sabatisie and Howard were
-busily employed putting on their snow-shoes; and
-I endeavored to do the same, but with little success.
-The dog had luckily checked the beast, but he was
-no match for the enormous strength and wonderful
-activity of his adversary. Tossing his head, the
-Cariboo beat the poor little fellow on the snow and
-against the tree, till I thought every bone was
-broken. Finding this of no avail, the bull reared,
-and with his fore-legs dealt such a shower of quick
-and powerful blows, that I expected to see the dog
-drop every minute. While the Cariboo was in this
-position, the Indian approached him behind and endeavored
-to hamstring him. But the eye of the bull
-was too quick; wheeling like lightning, he made a
-rush at Sabatisie, which must have been serious,
-but was avoided by his falling flat on his face, the
-Cariboo passing over him and wounding his back.
-Meanwhile Howard had loaded, but his rifle having
-become wet, he could not discharge it. The violent
-exertions of the Cariboo had by this time broke the
-hold of the dog, and the furious beast now turned
-to the prostrate Indian—but before he could reach
-his prey, the dog was again at his head, checking,
-but not stopping his mad career. Sabatisie on his
-knee received the shock, and at the moment grasping
-the bull by the antlers, brought him down; when
-Howard sprang forward and plunged his knife to
-the hilt in the breast of the Cariboo. With a last
-mighty effort, the noble creature dashed the Indian
-in the air, and the next moment his own strong
-limbs were quivering in death.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“From the commencement of this burst, I confess,
-I was a little agitated—so much so, that I had not
-coolness sufficient to tie on my snow-shoes, or load
-my rifle; but let not any blame me until they themselves
-have had the pleasure of being placed in the
-same delicate situation, up to the waist in snow, and
-one of those emperors of the deer tribe dancing round
-in mad fury, threatening instant annihilation. On
-examination, we found Howard’s ball had taken effect
-just behind the shoulder, and would have caused
-death in a short time.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“ ‘Hillo! old boy, are you hurt?’ said Tom Howard,
-seeing the Indian still on his back.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“ ‘Cariboo <span class='it'>sartain bery strong</span>,’ grunted the poor
-fellow. His back was much lacerated. ‘Brother
-cut some gum, and soon be well,’ said Sabatisie.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Howard gathered some balsam formed by the sap
-running from the bark of the fir-tree, and spreading
-it on a piece of his handkerchief, formed a strong adhesive
-plaster—staunching the blood, he placed it on
-the wound.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“ ‘And now, Meadows, what has become of your
-game—think he is hit?’</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“ ‘Yes, by Jove, I’ll bet my rifle to a pop-gun he
-is—for see, Billy has settled down on his track, and
-is in chase.’</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“ ‘On with your snow-shoes, and away!—the
-track with the blood will be plain as a van wagon—if
-you come up with the Cariboo, do not fire unless
-you are sure to kill. I must stop and see if the Indian
-is much hurt, and swab out my rifle—but I will
-soon overtake you—away now!’</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“So urged, I started off, and found large drops of
-blood on the track the prime little dog had taken.
-As I proceeded, I saw the strides of the Cariboo were
-shorter, and he had been down several times. As I
-pressed on, in great hopes of overtaking the game
-before Howard came up, I observed the Cariboo had
-made for the valley, and after a sharp walk of an
-hour, I came to the stream, which was open. Here
-I lost the track, but saw the marks of the dog down
-the stream—these I followed, and soon heard the
-baying of the dog. As I proceeded, the river was
-every moment more rapid. After a sharp turn the
-stream was compressed between two huge cliffs,
-and rushed down a water-gap, forming a cascade of
-nearly one hundred feet. To the very verge of the
-fall the river was open; but over the fall itself there
-was a thin coating of transparent ice, which clung
-to the perpendicular cliffs on each side of the narrow
-gap, forming a gauze-like veil. The towering cliffs
-around were covered with a frosting of ice; and
-from the stunted pines which clung to the barren
-rock, hung myriads of fantastic icicles. At the foot
-of the fall, the blue water rushed out, dashing the
-white foam many feet in the air; and through the
-thick woods which overhung the cascade, the sun
-cast his rays upon the gorgeous prospect, making
-every object throw forth a thousand brilliant shades,
-and the glittering ice which encircled the fall was so
-transparent, that the blue water could be seen beneath
-dashing furiously down, as if enraged at restraint.
-Not ten feet from the verge of the fall, on
-a rock in the centre of the river, stood the wounded
-Cariboo. The water around him was fearfully rapid—one
-false step would carry him under the ice, and
-down the fall. On the bank stood the dog: my first
-care was to secure him, as he appeared ready every
-instant to make a spring that must have been fatal.
-The Cariboo had chosen a most admirable place of
-retreat; nothing living could approach him with
-safety. On each side the perpendicular cliffs towered
-many feet over his head—before him the roaring
-torrent, and behind the ice-bound cataract. After
-feasting my eyes on this wild and romantic scene, I
-approached as near the fall as the rugged cliff would
-permit. The Cariboo saw me, and with glaring eye-balls
-he shook his branching antlers in impotent rage,
-presenting to my rifle his broad front, as in defiance.
-I am not ashamed to say I was happy when I glanced
-at the rapid water and rugged cliff between me and
-my devoted prey; for I have no doubt, had it been
-in his power he would have soon shortened the distance
-between us—and after what I had so lately
-witnessed, I had no very great desire (seeing I was
-not as yet a perfect harlequin on snow-shoes,) to play
-the same game over again with my friend on the
-rock. To put an end to his wishes and my fears, I
-presented. My ball took effect directly in his brain,
-and he quietly dropped into the stream, leaving me
-master of the <span class='it'>field</span>. The next moment I could see,
-through the transparent ice, his glossy hide gliding
-down the cascade.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Amiable reader, thus it was that “Meadows”
-slew his first Cariboo; and thus, pray for me, that I
-may kill mine, this very month. If I do, believe me,
-I will try to tell you how I did it, as well—better I
-may not tell you—as Meadows. And so, until next
-month, fare you well!</p>
-
-<hr class='tbk137'/>
-
-<div><h1><a id='fut'></a>A THOUGHT OF THE FUTURE.</h1></div>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Do we not <span class='it'>all</span>, sometimes, desire to look into the future, but is it not <span class='it'>well</span> for us, that it is <span class='it'>hidden from our
-view</span>? S. D. S.</p>
-
-
- <div class='poetry-container' style=''>
- <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' -->
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-<p class='line0'>Couldst thou have looked beyond the mist that veiled</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;The unseen Future from thy longing sight,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Would not thy courage in that hour have failed,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;To see the shadows of Death’s coming night?</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>Wouldst thou have grieved that nevermore for thee</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Would the clear waters gush, the sweet flowers bloom?</p>
-<p class='line0'>That more than one fond heart would homeless be,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;When thou wert gone in silence to the tomb?</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>What didst <span class='it'>dream</span> of? when the rose-lip smiled,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;And bade thee welcome to the social hearth,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Where voices low and sweet the hours beguiled—</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Were they not dear, those fireside hours of mirth?</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>What didst thou hope for? with thy kindling eye,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;And thoughtful brow, that wore the laurels well;</p>
-<p class='line0'>As thou wert climbing to the temple high,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Not hearing on the winds the passing knell!</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>Till ah! one morn, thy throbbing heart grew chill,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;And from thy pale lip faintly came the breath;</p>
-<p class='line0'>We saw thee slumbering beautiful and still,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;And knew it was the dreamless sleep of death!</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>Through the “dark valley,” and the “shadows” dim,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Thy Father’s “rod and staff” did comfort thee!</p>
-<p class='line0'>Meekly didst thou repose thy trust in Him,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;And launch thy frail bark on Eternity!</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>Could some bright spirit, from a distant sphere,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Bend down to listen to our feeble wail,</p>
-<p class='line0'>To our vain longings with a pitying ear,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;And for one moment raise the mystic veil!</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>That we might see, though rocking on the tide,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;If our frail barks would gain the port at last;</p>
-<p class='line0'>If sailing on Life’s ocean far and wide</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;We’d gain the haven when the storm was past.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>Oh! looking backward on our dreary way—</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Recalling all our dreams of love and truth,</p>
-<p class='line0'>And the “green spots” wherein we might not stay,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Far back upon the “fairy isle” of Youth—</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>And thinking of the hours of grief and pain,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Of all the bitter tears that we have shed,</p>
-<p class='line0'>That only ceased awhile, to flow again,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Above the loved, the beautiful, the dead!</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>Would we not close our eyes, nor dare the sight?</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;The many blighted hopes, the cares, the fears—</p>
-<p class='line0'>The fond eyes closed, that round us shed their light,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;The clouds that hang above our coming years?</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>Would not a fearful shriek then pierce the sky,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Sent up by thousands from this erring world</p>
-<p class='line0'>Would they not then for pardon wildly cry,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Ere in the whirlpool of Destruction hurled?</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>’Tis “hidden from our view,” and it is well!</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;But traveling through this vale of sin and strife,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Should not thy memory be to us a spell,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Thy pure and holy thoughts, thy blameless life?</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>They who above thy grave so sadly wept</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Shall change as other years roll swiftly by—</p>
-<p class='line0'>And look upon the tokens they have kept,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Scarce yielding thee the tribute of a sigh.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>Oh what is Life? We live a few short hours.</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Eternal joy or pain hang on a breath;</p>
-<p class='line0'>We pass from earth, as fade the summer flowers,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Wither and die away—and <span class='it'>this is Death</span>!</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;<span style='font-size:smaller'><span class='sc'>Cora</span></span></p>
-</div>
-</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend -->
-
-<hr class='tbk138'/>
-
-<div><h1><a id='was'></a>WAS THE WORLD MADE OUT OF NOTHING?</h1></div>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The idea of creation may be symbolically represented
-under a variety of images: under that of the
-evolution of numbers from an original unity; that of
-the eradiation of light from an original light; or that
-of an expression of syllables and tones, answered for
-aught we know to the contrary, <span class='it'>by an echo</span>. The
-Hebrews seem to have preferred this last symbol.
-“In the beginning God <span class='it'>created</span> (Heb. <span style='font-size:smaller'>BARA</span>, <span class='it'>brought
-forth</span>) the heavens and the earth.” In the verb
-<span class='it'>bara</span>, the meaning <span class='it'>create</span> and <span class='it'>cry</span> are identified: for
-this reason, it is eminently adapted to denote a creation
-capable of being symbolically represented by a
-vocal utterance.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“The primary sense of <span class='it'>create</span> and <span class='it'>cry</span>”—says
-Noah Webster, and we are careful to adduce in this
-place the testimony of a man whom no one will
-suppose to have been led astray by ontological
-speculations—“is the same, to throw, to drive out,
-to bring forth, precisely as in the Shemitic <span style='font-size:smaller'>BARA</span>.”
-The Hebrew text may indeed be correctly but inadequately
-rendered: “In the beginning God <span class='it'>bore</span>
-(or <span class='it'>bare</span>, preserving in the English word the radical
-letters of the original <span style='font-size:smaller'>BARA</span>) the heavens and the
-earth.” For the same lexicographer says in another
-place, “The verb <span class='it'>to bear</span>, I suppose to be
-radically the same as the Shemitic <span style='font-size:smaller'>BARA</span>, to produce:
-the primary sense is, to throw out, to bring
-forth, to thrust, to drive along.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The author of the epistle to the Hebrews says:
-“By faith we understand that the worlds were
-framed by the word of God, so that things which are
-seen were not made of things which do appear.”
-These things which <span class='it'>do not appear</span> are real existences;
-for the apostle says, “the things which are
-seen are temporal, but the things that are unseen
-(that is, which do not appear,) are eternal.” The
-text therefore does not affirm that the worlds were
-made out of nothing, but implies, on the contrary,
-that they were framed out of invisible (that is, virtual
-or potential) things. Plato says: “Let us lay
-down two classes of being, the seen and the unseen;
-the unseen, eternal in their relations; the seen, never
-the same but ever changing.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>A cause which creates from nothing as material
-on which to operate, must of necessity itself stand
-as substance to its own creature: in such a case, the
-creator and the creature must be consubstantial.
-The dogma therefore that the worlds are created
-absolutely out of nothing, is <span class='it'>Pantheism</span>. The
-statement that the worlds are created out of nothing
-is not found in Scripture, neither is it possible that
-it should be found there; for the idea is absurd in
-itself, since out of nothing, nothing can come, and a
-universe absolutely created out of nothing would be
-a mere prolongation of Supreme Power; and moreover,
-there is no Hebrew word, nor known collocation
-of Hebrew words, capable of expressing such an absolute
-creation. The verb <span style='font-size:smaller'>BARA</span>, as we have seen,
-signifies something quite different.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Fabre d’Olivet, who has endeavored to reconstruct
-the Hebrew language from its biliteral roots, translates
-the passage, “The earth was without <span class='it'>form and
-void</span> (Heb. <span class='it'>tho-hu va bo-hu</span>)” as follows: “The
-earth was a contingent potentiality of being, and in
-a potentiality of being.” He affirms that the term
-<span class='it'>hu</span> is derived from <span class='it'>hua</span> (<span class='it'>being</span>, that which <span class='it'>is</span>,) and
-that it is formed of <span class='it'>h</span>, the letter of life, taken in connection
-with one of the signs of manifestation. The
-signs of manifestation are these, <span class='it'>i</span>, <span class='it'>o</span>, <span class='it'>u</span>, and are used
-in this way: <span class='it'>u</span> represents latent or virtual manifestation,
-<span class='it'>i</span> represents the passage from potentiality
-into actuality, <span class='it'>o</span> represents manifestation in its intensity
-and actual realization. Thus <span class='it'>hu</span>, in tho-hu
-va bo-hu, is latent or virtual being, while <span class='it'>ho</span>, in Jehovah,
-is Being in the fullness of actual existence.
-The blinding of the vowel in <span class='it'>ho</span>, which gives <span class='it'>hu</span>,
-represents the retrocession of being from the fullness
-of actuality into mere invisibility or potentiality;
-while on the contrary, the opening of the vowel in
-<span class='it'>hu</span>, that is, the changing of <span class='it'>hu</span> into <span class='it'>ho</span>, represents
-the opposite process, or the procession of being from
-potentiality into actuality. This same root appears
-again in the same verse in the word <span class='it'>thehom</span>, translated
-in our version by the term “deep.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The Hebrew cosmogony is more scientific than
-that of India. The Hindoos tell us that the universe
-exists in two states, that it is sometimes visible and
-sometimes invisible; but they do not tell us by what
-process things come forth from the <span class='it'>thehom</span> or
-“deep,” and return again into the same. But in the
-Hebrew cosmogony all that is explained. According
-to the Hebrews, things are in this “deep” when they
-are not related to each other; and they come forth
-from this “deep” by coming into relations with
-each other. According to the Hebrews, things have
-no power in themselves to come into relations with
-each other, that is, to emerge from this “deep,” but
-must be brought into such relations by the Divine
-Energy: so it is the putting forth of the Divine
-Energy which causes this universe to appear, and
-the withdrawing of that Energy which causes it to
-disappear again. This may be illustrated. In order
-to the possibility of an act of vision, it is necessary
-not only that there should be some person capable
-of seeing and some object capable of being seen, but
-also that the light requisite in order that these two
-may be brought into relations should exist. Who
-can see in the dark? So long as there is no light,
-the seer and the seen exist to each other potentially
-only: but as soon as the light shines these two become
-related.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>In the Hebrew Scriptures, the Divine Powers,
-which bring finite existences into relations with each
-other, thus causing them to emerge from the <span class='it'>thehom</span>,
-or “deep,” are called—<span class='it'>the Spirit of God</span>. “Darkness
-was on the face of the deep, and the Spirit of
-God moved on the face of the waters.” This Divine
-Spirit, operating upon man in its ordinary measure,
-makes man to be what he is; operating beyond its
-ordinary measure, it becomes especial <span class='it'>inspiration</span>.
-The Hebrews supposed this universe would continue
-in visible existence so long as the Spirit of God
-should breath upon it, but that it would fall back
-into the <span class='it'>the-hom</span> the moment that spirit should withdraw
-its vivifying power.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>We read in the speech of Elihu, reported in the
-book of Job:—</p>
-
-<div class='blockquote'>
-
-
- <div class='poetry-container' style=''>
- <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' -->
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>“There is a spirit in man:</p>
-<p class='line0'>And the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them understanding.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.</p>
-<p class='line0'>The Spirit of God hath made me,</p>
-<p class='line0'>And the breath of the Almighty hath given me life.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.</p>
-<p class='line0'>Who hath given unto God a charge over the earth?</p>
-<p class='line0'>Or who hath disposed the whole world?</p>
-<p class='line0'>If He set his heart upon man—</p>
-<p class='line0'><span class='it'>If He gather unto Himself his Spirit and his breath;</span></p>
-<p class='line0'><span class='it'>All flesh shall perish together.</span></p>
-<p class='line0'><span class='it'>And man shall turn again unto dust.</span>”</p>
-</div>
-</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend -->
-
-</div>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Also in the 104th Psalm:</p>
-
-<div class='blockquote'>
-
-
- <div class='poetry-container' style=''>
- <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' -->
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>“Thy creatures wait all upon thee;</p>
-<p class='line0'>That thou mayest give them their meat in due season.</p>
-<p class='line0'>That thou givest them, they gather:</p>
-<p class='line0'>Thou openest thine hand—they are filled with good.</p>
-<p class='line0'><span class='it'>Thou hidest thy face—they are troubled:</span></p>
-<p class='line0'><span class='it'>Thou takest away their breath—they die and return to their dust.</span></p>
-<p class='line0'><span class='it'>Thou sendest forth thy Spirit—they are (re-) created:</span></p>
-<p class='line0'><span class='it'>And thou renewest the face of the earth.</span>”</p>
-</div>
-</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend -->
-
-</div>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Inspiration, therefore, does not consist in an intensification
-of the soul’s being, in the implanting of
-a new principle, or springing source in the centre
-of its substance, but it consists in a leading forth of
-the soul to a greater intensity of <span class='it'>manifestation</span>—to
-a greater distance from the original chaos, <span class='it'>the-hom</span>,
-or “deep.”</p>
-
-<p class='line' style='text-align:right;margin-right:3em;margin-top:0.5em;'><span style='font-size:smaller'>BETH.</span></p>
-
-<hr class='tbk139'/>
-
-<div><h1><a id='lit'></a>A LITERARY GOSSIP WITH MISS MITFORD.<a id='r12'/><a href='#f12' style='text-decoration:none'><sup><span style='font-size:0.9em'>[12]</span></sup></a></h1></div>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Draw the curtains, stir the fire, make a semicircle
-round the rug, and now for a <span class='it'>causerie</span>. Mary Russell
-Mitford shall talk to us out of the three volumes
-of reminiscences she has just given to the world;
-and whatever we have to say about the sundry things
-she discourseth upon therein shall be said in a cordial,
-and, at the same time, perfectly frank spirit, as
-becometh an honest fireside.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>There she sits in the large chair, not quite so
-young as she was when she charmed all homesteads
-and hearth-stones with pictures of her own quiet
-Berkshire village, before railroads came to destroy
-the pretty wayside inns, where travelers used to be
-so snug and comfortable in tiny carpeted rooms with
-dimity curtains and glass cupboards full of antediluvian
-china: when little Red-riding-hoods were
-as plenty as blackberries, and the gipsies were never
-at a loss for secluded nooks and dells, where they
-could camp and cook, and tell stories under the
-hedge-rows, with a feeling of solitude and security
-they can never enjoy again in merry England. That
-was a long, long time ago; yet Mary Russell Mitford
-looks as ready as she was in her brightest days to
-enter with a relishing zest into the garden delights
-and book pleasures that have formed the occupation
-and happiness of her life, and made her name known
-and welcome wherever natural description and unaffected
-feeling are truly appreciated.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>There she sits, with as homely and good-humored
-an air as if, instead of writing books and holding correspondence
-with half the celebrities of her time, she
-had no other vocation in this world than to attend to
-domestic affairs, prune shrubs on the lawn, dispense
-flannels at Christmas to the poor, and look after a
-neighboring school. Beside her chair stands her
-constant companion, a remarkable stick, with an odd
-sort of a head to it; and to make her actual presence
-the more palpable she should be surrounded by her
-inseparable friends—Fanchon, her little dog, that
-might be crouched at her feet, with its sensitive ears
-lifting and falling at every sound; her neat maid,
-Nancy, watching her on a low stool, and her boy,
-Henry—(we hope he is still a boy,) and that he will
-contrive, for her sake, to continue so—standing behind
-her chair.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>That stick has a biography all to itself, and a very
-curious one it is. Sixty years ago it was a stick of
-quality, and belonged to some Dowager Duchess of
-Athol, who has no more reality for us than one of the
-embroidered ladies in an old piece of tapestry. So
-far as its original owner is concerned, the stick, for
-aught we know to the contrary, may be a phantom-stick,
-or a witch-stick; but, be that as it may, Miss
-Mitford’s father bought it at the sale of Berkshire
-House, where it was huddled by the auctioneer into
-a lot of old umbrellas, watering-pots, and flower-stands.
-It was then light, straight, and slender,
-nearly four feet high, polished, veined, and of a yellowish
-color, and of the order called a crook, such,
-says Miss Mitford, who is evidently very particular
-about it, as may be seen upon a chimney-piece figuring
-in the hand of some trim shepherdess of Dresden
-china. First, the housekeeper carried this stick—then,
-when the housekeeper died, Miss Mitford’s
-mother took possession of it; and from her it descended
-to Miss Mitford, herself, who, first out of
-whim, and afterward from habit and necessity, made
-it her trusty supporter on all occasions. The adventures
-of that stick are as full of perils and hair-breadth
-escapes as ever befell a South Sea whaler, or a Hudson’s
-bay trapper. Once it was lost in a fair, once
-forgotten in a marquee at a cricket match, and at another
-time stolen by a little boy, which cost its mistress
-a ten miles walk for its recovery. But the
-worst calamity that befell it was, when in the act of
-drawing down a rich branch of woodbine from the
-top of a hedge, its ivory crook came off, falling into
-a muddy ditch, and sinking so irretrievably that it
-was never recovered. The crook, it seems, was
-very handsome, and was bound with a silver rim,
-imparting a lady-like appearance to the stick, which
-at the first sight, gave you a hint of its aristocratic
-origin. In this extremity it was sent to a parasol
-shop to have a new crook put on, but the stupid people
-first docked many inches of its height, and
-then put on a bone umbrella-top, that fell off of its
-own accord in a few days. A good-natured friend
-remedied the second loss by fastening on an ebony
-top, which looks, after four or five years’ wear,
-a little graver, “and more fit for the poor old mistress,
-who having at first taken to a staff in sport, is
-now so lame as to be unable to walk without one.”
-The memoirs of a walking-stick may strike our
-readers as a mere waste of words and paper; but it
-is surprising what slight incidents rise into importance
-and interest in a country life, and how much
-the reality of its portraiture is indebted to trivial, but
-by no means unessential features. At all events,
-Miss Mitford’s stick is a stick of note, and should no
-more be passed over in silence than the ruff of
-Queen Elizabeth, or the flowing ringlets of Congreve.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Miss Mitford’s life seems to have opened upon her
-in that page of the old quarto edition of “Percy’s
-Reliques,” where the ballad of the “Children in the
-Wood” is to be found. It is the first book, almost
-the first event she remembers. They used to put
-her upon a table before she was three years old,
-when she was, as she says, only a sort of twin-sister
-to her own doll, to make her read leading articles
-out of the morning papers; and the reward for this
-terrible penance was to hear her mother recite the
-“Children in the Wood,” just as children are rewarded
-for taking nauseous things by a promise of a
-lump of sugar. At last, she got possession of the
-volumes themselves, and made acquaintance with
-the rest of the ballads, which possess as great a
-charm for her now as they did then; and she never
-looks upon the old books—the very same edition Dr.
-Johnson used to treat with a very learned and unwise
-superciliousness—that the days of her childhood,
-or doll-hood, do not come vividly back upon
-her.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>She still keeps to the Percy collection. She does
-not seem to care about the lore that has been dug up
-since, or the antiquarian research that has come to
-the illustration of our old English poetry. Even the
-first edition contents her—she will have no other—she
-has an affection for it—it is enough for her purpose—it
-recalls the happy time when its pages disclosed
-a new world of enchantments to her—and she
-holds it in reverence amongst her literary penates.
-There is nothing in her reminiscences to show that
-she troubles herself about Percy societies, or Shakspeare
-societies, that she has ever dipped into
-Notes and Queries, or would think herself obliged to
-the officious critic who should detect a flaw in her
-two precious quarto volumes. The faith and the
-enthusiasm of childhood still cling to the well-known
-book, and would be very much put out by being disturbed
-at their devotions. And this is the character
-of Miss Mitford’s mind. She would rather believe
-in an old tradition than have it dispelled by the detective
-police that go about exploring chronicles and
-ferreting out damaging facts. She thinks a pleasant
-delusion better than a disagreeable truth; and it is
-to this fondness for old books, and old places, and the
-old stories that have grown up into a popular creed
-about them, that we may trace the paramount charm
-of simplicity and trustfulness, the cheerful spirit and
-the teeming good-nature which abound in her
-writings.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>To us, we must acknowledge, this freshness of
-the heart and entire freedom of the imagination, is
-very delightful. Miss Mitford is not a critic; but
-she is something a great deal better and more agreeable.
-She is of too enjoyable a temperament for a
-critic; she has not a tinge of the malice or perversity
-of criticism in her genial nature. For this reason,
-her opinions are sometimes slightly heterodox, but it
-is always on the side of a good-will, and a hearty
-admiration of some gracious or gentle quality which
-she has been at the pains to discover, and which few
-people would take the trouble to look for. She
-speaks rapturously of Davis’ “Life of Curran;”
-has such innocent rural views of literature, that she
-thinks nobody reads Pope and Dryden now, and that
-George Darley is unknown as a poet to the English
-public; detects a close resemblance between the
-Irish novels of Banim and the romanticist creations
-of Victor Hugo, Sue, Dumas, and the rest of that
-school; thinks that few works are better worth
-reading than Moncton Milnes’ “Life of Keats,” not
-only for the sake of Keats, but of his “generous
-benefactors, Sir James Clarke and Mr. Severn;”
-regrets that certain works have fallen into oblivion,
-from which no effort of fashionable or literary patronage
-can redeem them; considers Willis, Lowell
-and Poe the great American poets; and hopes that
-Richardson’s novels and Walpole’s letters will never
-come to an end. Nobody’s judgment can suffer any
-damage from such amiable notions; and the world
-is always sure to derive benefit from the kindly spirit
-that overlooks a hundred defects and follies for the
-sake of a single virtue it finds hidden beneath them.
-We wish there were more Miss Mitfords, with her
-intellect, to set us so influential an example of toleration
-and a willingness to be pleased.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>She confesses that she was a spoilt child, and that
-papa spoilt her. It is evident, from what we have
-just said, that sudden and high as was the growth
-of her reputation, the public have not spoilt her.
-What the applause of critics and the admiration of
-her readers failed to do, papa did. “Not content
-with spoiling me in-doors, he spoilt me out. How
-well I remember his carrying me round the orchard
-on his shoulder, holding fast my little three-year-old
-feet, whilst the little hands hung on to his pig-tail,
-which I called my bridle—those were days of pig-tails—hung
-so fast, and lugged so heartily, that sometimes
-the ribbon would come off between my fingers,
-and send his hair floating, and the powder flying
-down his back.” The papa who thus made her first
-acquainted with the orchard, occupies a still more
-prominent space in her subsequent reminiscences.
-From him to whom she was indebted for her early
-love of nature, and the happy hours of childhood, she
-also derived the heaviest sorrow of her life. The
-story is strange and melancholy.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>A young physician, clever, handsome, gay, in a
-small town in Hampshire, Miss Mitford’s father won
-the hand of an heiress with a property of eight-and-twenty
-thousand pounds. With the exception of
-two hundred a year, settled on her as pin-money, the
-whole of this fortune was injudiciously placed at the
-free use of Dr. Mitford, who seems to have possessed
-every quality to make his wife happy—except prudence.
-Being an eager Whig, he plunged into election
-politics and made enemies; being very hospitable,
-he spent more money than he could afford;
-and, endeavoring to retrieve the waste by cards and
-speculation, he sank nearly the whole of his resources.
-In this extremity, he thought he would do
-better in a fresh place, and so the family removed to
-Lyme Regis, where they had a fine house, which
-twenty years before had been rented by the great
-Lord Chatham for the use of his sons. Here they
-led a very gay life for two or three seasons—balls,
-excursions, dinners; yet in the midst of it, Miss Mitford
-says, she felt a secret conviction that something
-was wrong—“such a foreshowing as makes the
-quicksilver in the barometer sink while the weather
-is still bright and clear.” Her father went ominously
-to London, and lost more money—she does not say
-how—all was now gone except the pin-money:
-friends departed one by one, and there was great
-hurry and confusion, and then everything was to be
-parted with, and everybody to be paid, and the family
-made a forced journey to London, part of which was
-performed in a tilted cart without springs, for lack
-of better conveyance.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Settled in a dingy, comfortless lodging in one of
-the suburbs beyond Westminster Bridge, Dr. Mitford’s
-constitutional vivacity returned. He used to take
-his little girl, then ten years old, in his hand about
-town to show her the sights; and one day they
-stopped at an Irish lottery-office, and showing her
-certain mysterious bits of paper with numbers on
-them, he desired her to choose one. She selected
-No. 2,224; but as this was only a quarter, and papa
-wanted to purchase a whole ticket, he desired her to
-choose again. But her heart was set on No. 2,224,
-because the numbers added together made up ten,
-and that day happened to be her tenth birth-day.
-Fortunately, the lottery-office man had the whole
-number in shares, and so the ticket was bought.
-She must relate the sequel in her own words.</p>
-
-<div class='blockquote'>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“The whole affair was a secret between us, and my
-father, whenever he got me to himself, talked over our
-future twenty thousand pounds, just like Almaschar over
-his basket of eggs.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Meanwhile time passed on, and one Sunday morning
-we were all preparing to go to church, when a face that
-I had forgotten, but my father had not, made its appearance.
-It was the clerk of the lottery-office. An express
-had just arrived from Dublin, announcing that No. 2,224
-had drawn a prize of twenty thousand pounds, and he
-had hastened to communicate the good news.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Ah, me! in less than twenty years what was left of
-the produce of the ticket so strangely chosen? What?
-except the Wedgwood dinner service that my father had
-had made to commemorate the event, with the Irish harp
-within the border on one side, and his family crest on the
-other. That fragile and perishable ware long outlasted
-the more perishable money!”</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Miss Mitford relates these painful recollections
-with a serenity and patience that yield a lesson from
-which her readers may profit as largely as from the
-example of extravagance and recklessness which
-made so severe a demand on her feelings and her
-philosophy; and it is pleasant, after all her vicissitudes
-and jolting over the rough ways of the world,
-to find her in a tranquil cottage, in the midst of the
-scenery she loves, with her dog and her maid, her
-stick and her pony, enjoying as much felicity as can
-be reasonably looked for in the sunset of a chequered
-life.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Scattered over the volumes without much heed of
-chronology or sequence, are many little personal
-scraps that will hereafter enter into her biography,
-from the light which they throw upon the cast and
-color of her training. The papa, who was so indifferent
-to money, who was addicted to such ruinous
-habits, and who in his general relations with society,
-seems to have sacrificed the comfort and repose of
-his home, was, nevertheless, the most devoted of
-fathers. From her earliest childhood to the last hour
-of his life, he treated her with an affectionate and
-caressing tenderness that, in spite of his manifest
-errors, leaves an amiable impression of his character
-behind. One of the incidents on which she dwells
-with the greatest satisfaction was her first visit to
-London; and the mode of it is not only illustrative
-of the comparatively primitive habits of the time,
-but of the simplicity of the man in his domestic life.
-Having occasion to come to London in the middle of
-July, he suddenly announced his intention of taking
-her up with him in his gig; and at this open fashion
-they started, stopping to dine at Crauford Bridge in a
-little inn—then a very famous posting-house—whose
-pretty garden and Portugal laurels she still remembers;
-and then on to Hatchett’s Hotel in Piccadilly,
-where she stood looking out of the window and wondering
-when the crowd would go by; and in the
-evening she was so unconscious of fatigue from this
-exciting journey that papa took her to the Haymarket
-to see a comedy—one of the comedies, she says,
-that George III. used to enjoy so heartily, although
-what sort of comedy it was we know not, unless,
-which we shrewdly suspect, it was a specimen of
-Colman the Younger, or of the Morton and Reynolds
-school. She had seen plays before in a barn—but
-never such a play as this. The whole description
-of this trip to London is as good in its way as anything
-Fielding himself could have done.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Dear papa,” in the pride of his heart, insisted
-upon making an accomplished musician of her, and
-would “stick her up” to the piano, although she had
-neither ear, taste, nor application. Her master was
-Hook, the father of the facetious Theodore, and she
-was taught in the schoolroom where Miss Landon
-passed the greater part of her life. Luckily they
-shut her up in a room to make her practise the harp,
-and as it was full of books she fell to reading, and
-under these auspicious circumstances made her first
-acquaintance with the plays of Voltaire and Molière.
-She was caught in the fact of laughing till the tears
-ran down her cheeks over that passage in the “Bourgeois
-Gentilhomme,” where the angry father apostrophises
-the galley, “Que diable alloit-il faire dans
-cette galère!” As her good stars had it, she was
-detected in her delinquency by the husband of the
-schoolmistress, who happened to be a Frenchman,
-an adorer of Molière, and a hater of music, and who,
-instead of chiding her for her neglect of the instrument,
-dismissed the harp-mistress, and made the
-young student a present of a cheap edition of Molière,
-for her own reading, which she has to this
-hour, in twelve unbound, foreign-looking, little volumes.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>After these scenes, we find her in a cottage, at
-Taplow—at this time a grown-up lady—looking over
-a garden of honeysuckles, lilies, and roses, making
-excursions to Windsor, to Gray’s Lawn at Stoke
-Poges, to Burke’s at Beaconsfield, and to the College
-at Chalfont, where Milton found a refuge during the
-plague. We always associate Miss Mitford with
-cottages. We cannot imagine her living in a slated
-house, three stories high, with a carriage sweep,
-and steps up to the door—we cannot suffer her in our
-imagination to have any of the comforts and solidity
-of a well-built mansion about her; it must be a cottage,
-with its ivy creepers, its portico and latticed
-windows, and everything round it looking as green
-and rural as a wilderness of trees and shrubs, growing
-up luxuriantly in a warm, languid climate can
-make it. In short, we must smother her in flowers,
-or she is not the Miss Mitford that we know so well
-in the pastoral books she has written.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Turning from the autobiographical passages which
-form so interesting a part of these volumes, there are a
-variety of literary sketches of an equally attractive
-kind. Miss Mitford runs over a wide field of books
-and recollections; and from her extensive acquaintance
-with literary people, and the desultory character
-of her reading, she supplies an abundant store of
-anecdote and remark.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The following is new, and certainly very curious.
-The scene is an old, wooden, picturesque house, at
-Cambridge, in America, once the head quarters of
-Washington, but now the residence of Longfellow,
-the poet.</p>
-
-<div class='blockquote'>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“One night the poet chanced to look out of his window,
-and saw by the vague starlight a figure riding
-slowly past the mansion. The face could not be distinguished;
-but the tall, erect person, the cocked hat, the
-traditional costume, the often-described white horse, all
-were present. Slowly he paced before the house, and
-then returned, and then again passed by, after which,
-neither horse nor rider were seen or heard of.”</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<p class='noindent'>Miss Mitford does not give us any authority for this
-anecdote; but the collectors of ghost stories are not
-very particular about authorities, and will be content
-to take it upon her own, as we do.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>There is a sketch of Elizabeth Barrett, and a little
-biography attached to it, which will be read with
-interest. Miss Mitford’s acquaintance with her commenced
-fifteen years ago.</p>
-
-<div class='blockquote'>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Of a slight, delicate figure, with a shower of dark
-curls falling on either side of a most expressive face
-large, tender eyes richly fringed by dark eye-lashes, a
-smile like a sunbeam, and such a look of youthfulness,
-that I had some difficulty in persuading a friend, in whose
-carriage we went together to Chiswick, that the translator
-of the ‘Prometheus of Æschylus,’ the authoress of
-the ‘Essay on Mind,’ was old enough to be introduced
-into company, or, in technical language, was <span class='it'>out</span>.”</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<p class='pindent'>It was in the following year that Miss Barrett
-broke a blood-vessel in the lungs, which consigned
-her to a long illness, during which she lost a favorite
-brother by one of those melancholy accidents which
-leave ineffaceable memories in the hearts of the survivors.
-He was drowned, with two companions, in
-sight of her windows at Torquay, whither she was
-ordered for change of air. This tragedy nearly killed
-her; and more than a year afterward, when she was
-removed to London by easy journeys, she told Miss
-Mitford that, “during that whole winter, the sound
-of the waves rang in her ears like the moans of one
-dying.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>William Cobbett was one of the notabilities to
-whom Miss Mitford was introduced by her father,
-whose intimacy with him was brought about through
-their mutual attachment to field sports. She describes
-him in his own house as a man of unfailing good
-humor and great heartiness; tall, stout and athletic,
-with a bright smile, and an air compounded of the
-soldier and the farmer, to which his habitual red
-waistcoat contributed not a little. His activity was
-something to be remembered, for he would begin the
-day by mowing his own lawn, a laborious pastime
-in which he beat his gardener, who was esteemed,
-except himself, the best mower in the parish.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Upon one occasion, Dr. Mitford and his daughter
-were invited to Cobbett’s to meet the wife and
-daughters of a certain Dr. Blamire; and as it appeared
-that Dr. Mitford had formerly flirted with
-Mrs. Blamire, some amusement was expected from
-seeing how they would meet after a lapse of twenty
-years, both of them having shaken off the old <span class='it'>liaison</span>,
-and married in the meanwhile.</p>
-
-<div class='blockquote'>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“The most diverting part of this scene, very amusing
-to a bystander, was, that my father, the only real culprit,
-was the only person who throughout maintained the appearance
-and demeanor of the most unconscious innocence.
-He complimented Mrs. Blamire on her daughters—two
-very fine girls—inquired after his old friend, the
-doctor, and laughed and talked over by-gone stories with
-the one lady, just as if he had not jilted her, and played
-the kind and attentive husband to the other, just as if he
-had never in all his days made love to anybody except
-his own dear wife.”</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Formerly, we frequently met with physicians who
-belonged to this class, and who were indebted for
-their professional success mainly to their social tactics
-and invincible pleasantry; but although you still
-occasionally fall in with a medical man who considers
-it as necessary to cultivate popularity amongst
-ladies as to attend to the practice of his art, the age
-of the flirt-physicians, we are happy to believe, has
-passed away.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Miss Mitford’s literary “recollections” bear rather
-more upon books than upon the authors of them.
-The book-gossip to which she invites us, traverses
-a considerable round of poets, novelists, and miscellaneous
-writers, and the specimens of their works
-over which she lingers with delight, make a body of
-extracts which enhance the value and variety of the
-publication. Her notes upon these selected passages
-discover a geniality and earnestness which will be
-grateful even to the reader who may sometimes have
-occasion to think that her praise is a little in excess,
-or who may doubt the judgment that has been shown
-in particular selections.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>This tendency to a good-natured estimate of her
-favorite authors, shows itself most conspicuously in
-her admiration of certain poets, whose merits the
-world has not hitherto rated so highly. We are not
-sorry, nevertheless, to meet snatches of such people
-as Mr. Spencer and Miss Catharine Fanshawe—whose
-chief claim to notice is, that she was the
-author of the Enigma on the letter H, which used
-to be ascribed to Byron—for, except through the
-flattering medium of books like these, we are not
-very likely to see the <span class='it'>vers de société</span> that were in
-such request some fifty years ago, disinterred for our
-special delectation. They are abundantly curious,
-and discover a certain verbal facility and gayety of
-the thinnest and airiest kind, which will at least
-amuse, if not instruct the reader, by setting him
-thinking of the extinct modes and tastes to which
-they were addressed, and out of which they extracted
-their fugitive popularity. But poetasters of this
-order, however cheerfully and successfully they help
-to shed a grace on private life, and to give a sort of
-intellectual vivacity to social intercourse, can never
-be made to survive their hour in print. They must
-perish with the occasion that gave them birth; and
-you might as well hope to procure for the acted
-charade, if it were taken down in short-hand and
-published, the same success in the closet that it received
-on its impromptu delivery, as to procure for
-the graceful trifles thrown off for the amusement of
-a <span class='it'>coterie</span>, the honors of a permanent place in the
-library. They never aimed at such a destiny, and can
-never achieve it; and it may be doubted whether
-their fragile existence should be risked in print at
-all.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Of all the neglected, forgotten, or unknown books
-Miss Mitford has brought to life again, the Autobiography
-of Holcroft is the most deserving of resuscitation.
-We know no memoir of its kind—excepting
-the only one forbidden book in French literature—that
-possesses its charm of frankness, truthfulness
-of detail, and quiet development of character. Unfortunately
-it is nothing more than a fragment, consisting
-of seventeen chapters, dictated by Holcroft—a
-prolific author and translator—in his last illness;
-stopping short at an interesting point in his career,
-and furnishing such evidences of clear-sighted judgment,
-and happy skill in relation and portraiture, as
-to leave an indelible regret upon the mind of the
-reader at finding himself cast upon the grander diction
-of Hazlitt for the continuation of the narrative. The
-contrast is painful. The brilliancy and paradoxical
-genius of Hazlitt, rendered him of all men the most
-unfit to follow up the unpretending strength and simplicity
-of Holcroft; and the transition is something like
-being transported from the fresh air and pastoral beauty
-of a natural landscape into a severe Italian garden.
-There was but one point in common between them—and
-that was the most contracted and least characteristic
-of all—their agreement in politics. Holcroft
-was a man of larger powers, and a wider range of
-tastes than might be predicated from that party martyrdom
-which gave him so distressing a notoriety in
-the latter days of his life, to the partial eclipse of his
-literary reputation. But the subject is not likely to
-be revived now, nor would it repay the labors of a
-more competent editor. Miss Mitford, however, has
-done well in drawing attention to Holcroft’s book,
-and the extracts she has given from it will be read
-with interest; but it is only from the memoir itself,
-as a whole, tracing the course of the self-educated
-boy from his origin upward, that an adequate notion
-can be formed of the enthralling charm of that singular
-narrative.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>We have exceeded our limits. A gossip, intended
-to occupy only five minutes or so, has already run
-over the brim of the measure which we proposed to
-fill up to the health of Miss Mitford. It is not the
-first time she has tempted us into an excess of this
-kind; but, if the reader will open her volumes over
-the fireside as we have done, we are mistaken if he
-do not find quite as much difficulty as we do now in
-shutting them up and putting them down again.</p>
-
-<hr class='footnotemark'/>
-
-<div class='footnote'>
-<table summary='footnote_12'>
-<colgroup>
-<col span='1' class='footnoteid'/>
-<col span='1'/>
-</colgroup>
-<tr><td style='vertical-align:top;'>
-<div class='footnote-id' id='f12'><a href='#r12'>[12]</a></div>
-</td><td>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Recollections of a Literary Life; or Books, Places,
-and People. By Mary Russell Mitford, Author of “Our
-Village,” etc. 3 vols.</p>
-
-</td></tr>
-</table>
-</div>
-
-<hr class='tbk140'/>
-
-<div><h1><a id='hun'></a>THE BLACK HUNTSMAN.</h1></div>
-
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;'>———</p>
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;font-size:0.8em;font-weight:bold;'>HORACE W. SMITH.</p>
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;margin-bottom:1.5em;'>———</p>
-
-
- <div class='poetry-container' style=''>
- <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' -->
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>Loud blew the wind at the midnight hour,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;With many a wintry blast,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Which fairly shook old Rodenstine’s tower,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;As the Wild Black Huntsman passed.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>The deer he sprang from his leafy bed,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;As he heard the piercing sounds,</p>
-<p class='line0'>And the oak boughs crashed to his antlered head,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;As he flew from the phantom hounds.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>The rite of the holy monk was stayed,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;And he trembling dropped his beads,</p>
-<p class='line0'>As he heard the tramp through the forest glades</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;And the neigh of the goblin steeds.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>From the revellers hand the wine-cup fell,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;At the forester’s festive board;</p>
-<p class='line0'>And a sudden charm came o’er the spell</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Of the minstrels tuneful chord.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>The old oak shook in its ancient hold,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;The abbey bell tolled to the blast;</p>
-<p class='line0'>And the cloud and the tempest onward rolled,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;As the Wild Black Huntsman passed.</p>
-</div>
-</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend -->
-
-<hr class='tbk141'/>
-
-<div class='figcenter'>
-<img src='images/i233.jpg' alt='' id='iid-0010' style='width:70%;height:auto;'/>
-<p class='caption'><span style='font-size:smaller'>J. Hayter</span> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<span style='font-size:smaller'>W.H. Mote</span><br/></p> <br/><span class='bold'>COQUETISH SEVENTEEN.</span><br/>Graham’s Magazine 1852
-</div>
-
-<hr class='tbk142'/>
-
-<div><h1><a id='two'></a>THE TWO ISABELS;</h1></div>
-
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;margin-bottom:1em;font-weight:bold;'>OR COQUETISH SEVENTEEN.</p>
-
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;margin-bottom:1em;'>[with a steel plate.]</p>
-
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;'>———</p>
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;font-size:0.8em;font-weight:bold;'>BY MRS. S. C. HALL.</p>
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;margin-bottom:1.5em;'>———</p>
-
-<div class='literal-container' style=''><div class='literal'> <!-- rend=';fs:0.9em;' -->
-<p class='line' style='font-size:0.9em;'>Oh love, love, love, love!—love is like a dizziness,</p>
-<p class='line' style='font-size:0.9em;'>It will not let a poor man go about his business.</p>
-<p class='line' style='text-align:right;margin-right:0em;margin-bottom:0.75em;font-size:0.9em;'><span class='sc'>Old Song.</span></p>
-</div></div> <!-- end rend -->
-
-<div class='literal-container' style=''><div class='literal'> <!-- rend=';fs:0.9em;' -->
-<p class='line' style='font-size:0.9em;'>And are those follies going,</p>
-<p class='line' style='font-size:0.9em;'>And is my proud heart growing</p>
-<p class='line' style='font-size:0.9em;'>Too cold, or wise, for woman’s eyes</p>
-<p class='line' style='font-size:0.9em;'>Again to set it glowing?</p>
-<p class='line' style='text-align:right;margin-right:0em;margin-bottom:1em;font-size:0.9em;'><span class='sc'>Moore.</span></p>
-</div></div> <!-- end rend -->
-
-<p class='pindent'>The General put on his spectacles, and looked
-steadfastly at Isabel for at least two minutes. “Turn
-your head,” he said, at last—“there, to the left.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Isabel Montford, although an acknowledged beauty,
-was as amiable as she was admired; she had also a
-keen appreciation of character; and, though somewhat
-piqued, was amused by the oddity of her aunt’s
-old lover. The General was a fine example of the
-well-preserved person and manners of the past century;
-beauty always recognizes beauty as a distinguished
-relative; and Isabel turned her head, to
-render it as attractive as it could be.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The General smiled, and after gazing for another
-minute with evident pleasure, he said—“Do me the
-favor to keep that attitude, and walk across the
-room.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Isabella did so with much dignity; she certainly
-was exceedingly handsome;—her step light, but
-firm; her figure, admirably poised; her head, well and
-gracefully placed; her features, finely formed; her
-eyes and smile, bright and confiding. She would
-have been more captivating had her dress been less
-studied; her taste was evidently Parisien rather than
-classic. The gentleman muttered something, in
-which the words, “charming,” and “to be regretted,”
-only met her ear; then he spoke distinctly:</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“You solicited my candor, young lady—you challenged
-comparison between you and your compeers,
-and the passing belles whom I have seen. Now, be so
-kind as to walk out of the room, re-enter, and curtsey.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Had Isabel Montford been an uneducated young
-lady, she might have flounced out of the <span class='it'>salon</span>, in obedience
-to her displeasure, which was very decided;
-but as it was, she drew herself to her full height, and
-swept through the folding-doors. The General took
-a very large pinch of snuff. “That is so perfectly a
-copy of her poor aunt!” he murmured;—“just so
-would she pass onward, like a ruffled swan; she went
-after that exact fashion into the ante-room, when she
-refused me, for the fourth time, thirty-five years
-ago.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The young Isabel re-entered, and curtseyed. The
-gentleman seated himself, leaned his clasped hands
-upon the head of his beautiful inlaid cane—which he
-carried rather for show than use—and said, “Young
-lady, you look a divinity! Your <span class='it'>tourneure</span> is perfection;
-but your curtsey is frightful! A dip, a bob, a
-bend, a shuffle, a slide, a canter—neither dignified,
-graceful, nor self-possessed! A curtsey is in grace
-what an <span class='it'>adagio</span> is in music;—only masters of the art
-can execute either the one or the other. Why, the
-beauty of the Duchess of Devonshire could not have
-saved her reputation as a graceful woman, if she had
-dared such a curtsey as that.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“I assure you, sir,” remonstrated the offended
-Isabel, “that Madame Micheau——”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“What do I care for the woman!” exclaimed the
-General, indignantly. “Have I not memory?”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Can you not teach me?” said Isabel, amused
-and interested by his earnestness.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“I teach you!—I! No; the curtseys which
-captivated thousands in my youth were more an inspiration
-than an art. The very queen of <span class='it'>ballet</span>, in
-the present day, cannot curtsey.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Could my aunt?” inquired Isabel, a little saucily.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Your aunt, Miss Montford, was grace itself. Ah!
-there are no such women now a-days!”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>And, after the not very flattering observation, the
-General moved to the piano. Isabel’s brows contracted
-and her cheeks flushed; however, she glanced
-at the looking-glass, was comforted, and smiled. He
-raised the cover, placed the seat with the grave gallantry
-of an old courtier, and invited the young lady
-to play. She obeyed, to do her justice, with prompt
-politeness; she was not without hope that <span class='it'>there</span>, at
-least, the old gentleman would confess she was
-triumphant. Her white hands, gemmed with jewels,
-flew over the keys like winged seraphs; they bewildered
-the eye by the rapidity of their movements.
-The instrument thundered, but the thunder was so
-continuous that <span class='it'>there was no echo</span>! “The contrast
-will come by-and-by,” thought the disciple of the old
-school—“there must be some shadow to throw up
-the lights.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Thunder—crash—thunder—crash—drum—rattle—a
-confused, though eloquent, running backward and
-forward of sounds, the rings flashing like lightning!
-Another crash—louder—a great deal of crossing
-hands—violent strides from one end of the instrument
-to the other—prodigious displays of strength on
-the part of the fair performer—a terrific shake!
-“What desperate exertion!” thought the General;
-“and all to produce a soulless noise.” Then followed
-a fearful banditti of octaves—another crash,
-louder and more prolonged than the rest; and she
-looked up with a triumphant smile—a smile conveying
-the same idea as the pause of an opera-dancer
-after a most wonderful <span class='it'>pirouette</span>.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Do you keep a tuner in the house, my dear young
-lady?” inquired the General.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>If a look could have annihilated, he would have
-crumbled into ashes; but he only returned it with
-admiration, thinking, “How astonishingly like her
-aunt, when she refused me the second time!”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“And that is fashionable music, Miss Montford?
-I have lived so long out of England, only hearing the
-music of Beethoven, and Mozart, and Mendelssohn,
-I was not aware that noise was substituted for power,
-and that execution had banished expression. Dear
-me!—why, the piano is vibrating at this moment!
-Poor thing! How long does a piano last you, Miss
-Montford?”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Isabel was losing her temper, when fortunately
-her aunt—still Miss Vere—came to the rescue. The
-lovers of thirty years past, would have met any
-where else as strangers. The once rounded and
-queen-like form of the elder Isabel was shorn of its
-grace and beauty; of all her attributes, of all her attractions,
-dignity only remained; and it was that
-high-bred, innate dignity which can never be acquired,
-and is never forgotten. She had not lost the
-eighth of an inch of her height, and her gray hair
-was braided in full folds over her fair but wrinkled
-brow. Isabel Montford looked so exactly what
-Isabel Vere had been, that General Gordon was
-sorely perplexed; Isabel Vere, if truth must be told,
-had taken extra pains with her dress; her niece had
-met the General the night before, and her likeness to
-her aunt had so recalled the past, that his promised
-visit to his old sweetheart (as he still called her)
-had fluttered and agitated her more than she thought
-it possible an interview with <span class='it'>any man</span> could do; she
-quarreled with her beautiful gray hair, she cast off
-her black velvet dress disdainfully, and put on a blue
-<span class='it'>Moire antique</span>. (She remembered how much the
-Captain—no, the <span class='sc'>General</span>, once admired blue.) She
-was not a coquette; even gray hair at fifty-five does
-not cure coquetry where it has existed in all its
-strength; but, for the sake of her dear niece, she
-wished to look as well as possible. She wondered
-why she had so often refused “poor Gordon.” She
-had been all her life of too delicate a mind to be a
-husband-hunter, too well satisfied with her position
-to calculate how it could be improved, and yet, she
-did not hesitate to confess to herself that now, in the
-commencement of old age, however verdant it might
-be, she would have been happier, of more consequence,
-of more value, as a married woman. She
-had too much good sense, and good taste, to belong
-to the class of discontented females, consisting of
-husbandless and childless women, who seek to establish
-laws at war with the laws of the Almighty;
-so, if her heart did beat a little stiffly, and sundry
-passages passed through her brain in connection with
-her old adorer, and what the future might be—she
-may be forgiven, and will be, by those not strong-minded
-women who understand enough of the waywardness
-of human nature to know that, if <span class='it'>young</span>
-heads and <span class='it'>old</span> hearts are sometimes found together,
-so are young hearts and old heads. The young laugh
-to scorn the idea of Cupid and a crutch, but Cupid
-has strange vagaries, and at any moment can barb
-his crutch with the point of an arrow.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“The old people,” as Isabel Montford irreverently
-called them that evening, did not get on well together;
-they were in a great degree disappointed one
-with the other. They stood up to dance the <span class='it'>minuet
-de la cour</span>, and Isabel Vere languished and swam as
-she had never done before; but the General only
-wondered how stiff she had grown, and hoped that
-he was not as ill used by time as Mistress Isabel
-Vere had been. At first, Isabel Montford thought it
-“good fun” to see the antiquities bowing and curtseying,
-but she became interested in the lingering
-courtliness of the little scene, trembled lest her aunt
-should appear ridiculous, and then wondered how
-she could have refused such a man as General Gordon
-must have been.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Days and weeks flew fast; the General became a
-constant visitor in the square, and the heart of Isabel
-Vere had never beaten so loudly at twenty as it did
-at fifty-and-five; nothing, she thought, could be more
-natural than that the General should recall the days
-of his youth, and seek the friendship and companionship
-of her who had never married, while he—faithless
-man!—had been guilty of two wives during his
-“services in India.” It was impossible to tell which
-of the ladies he treated with the most attention.
-Isabel Montford took an especial delight in tormenting
-him, and he was cynical enough towards her at
-times. Although he frankly abused her piano-forte-playing,
-yet he evidently preferred it to the music
-Miss Vere practised so indefatigably to please him,
-or to the songs she sang, in a voice which from a high
-“soprano,” had been crushed by time into what might
-be considered a very singular “mezzo.” He somehow
-forgot how to find fault with Miss Montford’s
-dancing, and more than once became her partner in
-a quadrille. It was evident, that while the General
-was growing young, Miss Vere remained—“as she
-was!” Isabel Montford amused herself at his expense,
-but he did not—quick-sighted and man-of-the-world
-though he was—perceive it. At first he was
-remarkably fond of recalling and dating events, and
-dwelling upon the grace, and beauty, and interest,
-and advantage, of whatever was past and gone—much
-to the occasional pain of Isabel Vere, who, gentle-hearted
-as she was, would have consigned <span class='it'>dates</span> to
-the bottomless pit; latterly, however, he talked a
-good deal more of the present than of the past, and,
-greatly to the annoyance of younger men, fell into the
-duties of escort to both ladies,—accompanying them
-to places of public promenade and amusement.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>On such occasions, Miss Isabel Vere looked either
-earnest or bashful—yes, positively bashful; and Miss
-Isabel Montford, brimful of as much mischief as a
-lady could delight in. At times, the General laid
-aside his cynical observations, together with his
-cane, which was not even replaced by an umbrella;
-to confess the truth, he had experienced several
-symptoms of <span class='it'>heart disease</span>, which, though they
-made him restless and uncomfortable, brought hopes
-and aspirations of life, rather than fears of death.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>One morning, Isabel Montford and the General were
-alone in the <span class='it'>salon</span> where this little scene first opened:</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Our difference has never been settled yet,” she
-exclaimed, gaily; “you have never proved to me the
-superiority of the Old school over the New.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Simply because of your superiority to both,” he
-replied.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“I do not perceive the point of the answer,” said
-the young lady. “What has my superiority over
-<span class='it'>both</span> to do with the question?”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The General arose and shut the door. “Do you
-think you could listen to me seriously for five minutes?”
-he said.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Listening is always serious work,” she answered.
-He took her hand within his; she felt it was the hand
-of age; the bones and sinews pressed on her soft palm
-with an earnest pressure.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Isabel Montford—could you love an old man?”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>She raised her eyes to his, and wondered at the
-light which filled them:—</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Yes,” she answered, “I could love an old man
-dearly; I could confide to him the dearest secret of
-my heart.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“And your heart, your heart itself? Such things
-have been, sweet Isabel.” His hand was <span class='it'>very</span> hard,
-but she did not withdraw hers.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“No, not <span class='it'>that</span>, because—because I have not my
-heart to give.” She spoke rapidly, and with emotion.
-“I have it not to give, and I have so longed to tell
-you my secret! You have such influence with my
-aunt, you have been so affectionate, so like a father
-to me, that if you would only intercede with <span class='it'>her</span>, for
-<span style='font-size:smaller'>HIM</span> and me, I know she could not refuse. I have
-often——often thought of entreating this, and now it
-was so kind of you to ask, if I could love an old man,
-giving me the opportunity of showing that I do, by
-confiding in you, and asking your intercession.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The room became misty to the General’s eyes, and
-the rattle of a battle-field sounded in his ears, and
-beat upon his heart.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“And pray, Miss Montford,” he said, after a pause,
-“who may <span class='it'>him</span> be?”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Ah, <span class='it'>you</span> do not know him!—my aunt forbade
-the continuance of our acquaintance the day before I
-had the happiness to meet you. It was most fortunate
-I wooed you to call upon her, thinking—” (she
-looked up at his fine face, whose very wrinkles were
-aristocratic, and smiled her most bewitching smile)
-“thinking the presence of the only man she ever
-loved would soften her, and hoping that I should one
-day be privileged to address you as my friend, my
-uncle!” And she kissed his hand.—It really was
-hard to bear. “I have heard her say,” persisted the
-young lady, “that when prompted by evil counsel,
-she refused you, she loved you, and since your return
-she only lives in your presence.” The General
-wondered if this was true, and thought he would not
-give the young beauty a triumph. He was recovering
-his self-possession. “I remembered your admiration
-of <span class='it'>passing belles</span>, and felt how kindly you
-tolerated me, <span class='it'>for my aunt’s sake</span>; and surely you
-will aid me in a matter upon which my happiness,
-and the happiness of that poor dear fellow depends?”
-She bent her beautiful eyes on the ground.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“And who is the poor dear fellow?” inquired the
-General, in a singularly husky voice.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Henry Mandeville,” half-whispered Isabel. “Oh,
-is it not a beautiful name? the initials on those lovely
-handkerchiefs you gave me will still do; I shall still
-be I. M.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“A son of old Admiral Mandeville’s?”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“The <span class='it'>youngest</span> son,” she sighed, “that is my
-aunt’s objection; were he the <span class='it'>eldest</span>, she would have
-been too happy. Oh, sir, he is such a fine fellow—such
-a hero!—lost a leg at Cabool, and received I
-don’t know how many stabs from those horrid
-<a id='aff'></a>Affgauns.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Lost a leg!” repeated the General, with an approving
-glance at his own; “why he can never
-dance with you.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“No, but he can admire my dancing, and does not
-think my curtsey a dip, a shuffle, a bend, a bob, a
-slide, a canter! Ah! dear General, I was always
-perfection in his eyes.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“By the immortal duke,” thought the General,
-“the young divinity is laughing at me.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“My aunt only objects to his want of money;
-now I have abundance for both; and your recommendation,
-dear sir, at the Horse Guards, would at
-once place him in some position of honor and of
-profit; and even if it were abroad, I could leave my
-dear aunt with the consciousness that her happiness
-is secured by you, dear, guardian angel that you are.
-Ah! sir, at your time of life you can have no idea
-of our feelings.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Oh yes, I have!” sighed the General.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Bless you!” she exclaimed enthusiastically; “I
-thought you would recall the days of your youth and
-feel for us; and when you see my dear Harry”—</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“With a cork leg”—</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Ay, or with two cork legs—you will I know be
-convinced that my happiness is as secure as your
-own.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Women are riddles, one and all!” said the General,
-“and I should have known that before.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Oh! do not say such cruel things and disappoint
-me, depending as I have been on your kindness and
-affection. Hark!” she continued, “I hear my aunt’s
-footstep: now dear, <span class='it'>dear</span> General, reason coolly with
-her—my very existence depends on it. If you only
-knew him! Promise, do promise, that you will use
-your influence, all-powerful as it is, to save my life.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>She raised her beautiful eyes, swimming in unshed
-tears, to his; she called him her uncle, her dear noble-hearted
-friend; she rested her snowy hand lovingly,
-imploringly on his shoulder, and even murmured
-a hope that, her aunt’s consent once gained, it
-might not be impossible to have the two weddings
-<span class='it'>on the same day</span>.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The General may have dreaded the banter of sundry
-members of the “Senior United Service Club,”
-who had already jested much at his devotion to the
-two Isabels; he <span class='it'>may</span> have felt a generous desire to
-make two young people happy, and his good sense
-doubtless suggested that sixty-five and seventeen bear
-a strong affinity to January and May; he certainly
-did himself honor, by adopting the interests of a brave
-young officer as his own, and avoided the banter of
-“the club,” by pledging his thrice-told vows to his
-“old love,” the same bright morning that his “new
-love” gave her heart and hand to Henry Mandeville.</p>
-
-<hr class='tbk143'/>
-
-<div><h1><a id='rev'></a>REVIEW OF NEW BOOKS.</h1></div>
-
-<hr class='tbk144'/>
-
-<div class='blockquote'>
-
-<p class='hang'><span class='it'>The Works of Shakspeare: the Text Carefully Restored
-According to the First Editions; With Introductions,
-Notes, Original and Selected, and a Life of the Poet.
-By the Rev. H. N. Hudson, A. M. In Eleven Volumes.
-Boston: James Monroe &amp; Co. Vol. 3.</span></p>
-
-</div>
-
-<p class='pindent'>This beautiful edition of Shakspeare, a fac-simile of
-the celebrated Chiswick edition in type and paper, has
-now reached its third volume. It is edited by Mr.
-Hudson, well known all over the country as one of the
-most accomplished of Shakspeare’s critics and commentators,
-and who in his present labors has far surpassed
-the reputation he obtained by his lectures on the same
-subject. The present volume contains The Merchant of
-Venice, As You Like It, All’s Well that Ends Well,
-and The Taming of the Shrew. The text is very carefully
-revised, and the notes are clear, short, and full of
-matter, and flash the meaning of obscure phrases, remote
-allusions, and other difficulties of the text, at once upon
-the reader’s mind, without any parade of learning or
-paradox of interpretation. It is, however, in the introductory
-notices to the plays that the analytical and interpretative
-genius of the editor shines forth most resplendently.
-Every lover of Shakspeare should possess
-this edition, had it nothing to recommend it but these
-alone. They give the results of meditations, alike penetrating
-and profound, on the interior processes of Shakspeare’s
-mind in creating character and in forming plots;
-and the marvel of his genius, in its depth, delicacy, comprehension,
-fertility, and sweetness, is developed with
-the austerity of science and the geniality of a sympathizing
-spirit. These introductions are not only thus
-critical, but they include in a short space a large amount
-of antiquarian knowledge respecting the bibliography
-and sources of the plays; and the old tales which suggested
-or formed the basis of the plots, are re-told with
-much skill and simplicity of narration.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The masterpiece of the present volume is the introduction
-to The Merchant of Venice. It is exceedingly
-brilliant in style, but the brilliancy seems to come from
-an inward heat and fervor generated by an intense contemplation
-of the subject, so that the diction sparkles,
-as Ben Jonson would say, “like salt in fire.” The
-brilliancies are flashes, not of fancy, but of thought;
-and frequently are the result of vigorous condensation
-in statement, or of logic which gets on fire by the very
-rapidity of its movement. The finest elements of the
-style, however, are its subtleties of statement and representation,
-subtleties which follow the most intricate
-windings and enfoldings of complex thought, speeding
-on the fire track of an ideal allusion to the very limits
-of its course, and thoroughly mastering all the obstacles
-of expression in giving form to the most evanescent workings
-of the creative power.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Thus in speaking of the apparent heterogeneousness
-but real unity of the play, he remarks: “The persons
-naturally fall into three several groups, with each its
-several plot and action; yet the three are most skillfully
-complotted, each standing out clear and distinct in its
-place, yet concurring with the others in dramatic unity,
-so that every thing helps on every other thing, without
-either the slightest confusion or the slightest appearance
-of care to avoid it. Of these three groups it is hardly
-necessary to add that Antonio, Shylock and Portia are
-the respective centres; while the part of Lorenzo and
-Jessica, though strictly an episode, seems, nevertheless,
-to grow forth as an element of the original germ, <span class='it'>a sort
-of inherent superfluity</span>, and as such essential, not indeed
-to the being, but to the well-being of the work; in short,
-a fine romantic undertone accompaniment to the other
-parts, yet contemplated and provided for in the whole
-plan and structure of the piece; <span class='it'>itself</span> in harmony with
-all the rest, and therefore perfecting their harmony with
-one another.” We will put it to the consciousness of
-every reader of Shakspeare if this does not chime with
-his feeling of the matter; but to show the grounds of
-this instinctive taste, and exhibit it in its intellectual
-form, and justify it by the austerest principles of philosophical
-criticism, requires Mr. Hudson’s sharpness of
-eye and ready refinements of expression. The specimen
-we have given, as it is not the best which might be
-selected, so is it a very common and unobtrusive characteristic
-of his criticism.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>In commenting on the characters of the play, Mr.
-Hudson displays more than ordinary keenness and discrimination.
-We are acquainted with no student of
-Shakspeare who could read the analysis of Shylock,
-Antonio, Portia and Jessica, without receiving an addition
-to his knowledge. Even Launcelot Gobbo has
-his share of the critic’s acumen; his necessity, in the
-organism of the piece, is demonstrated; and the exquisite
-<span class='it'>non-sequiturism</span> of his whole personality is finely
-described. “A mixture, indeed, of conceit and drollery,
-and hugely wrapped up in self, yet he is by no means a
-commonplace buffoon, but stands firm and secure in the
-sufficiency of his original stock. His elaborate nonsense,
-his grasping at a pun without catching it, yet feeling
-just as grand as if he did, is both ludicrous and natural;
-his jokes, to be sure, are mostly failures; nevertheless
-they are laughable, because he dreams not but that they
-succeed.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>It is needless to say that the prominent feature in Mr.
-Hudson’s criticism is Shylock. The combination in him
-of the individual and the national, Shylock the Jew and
-the Jew Shylock, is indicated with a bold, firm hand.
-One paragraph is especially powerful. “Shylock,” he
-says, “is a true representative of his nation; wherein
-we have a pride which for ages never ceased to provoke
-hostility, but which no hostility could ever subdue;
-a thrift which still invited rapacity, but which no rapacity
-could ever exhaust; and a weakness, which,
-while it exposed the subjects to wrong, only deepened
-their hate, because it left them without the means or the
-hope of redress. Thus Shylock is a type of national
-sufferings, sympathies, and antipathies. Himself an
-object of bitter insult and scorn to those about him; surrounded
-by enemies whom he is too proud to conciliate
-and too weak to oppose; he can have no life among them
-but money; no hold upon them but interest; no indemnity
-out of them but revenge. Such being the case, what
-wonder that the elements of national greatness became
-congealed or petrified into malignity? As avarice was
-the passion in which he mainly lived, of course, the
-Christian virtues which thwarted this were the greatest
-wrong that could be done him. With these strong
-national traits are interwoven personal traits equally
-strong. Thoroughly and intensely Jewish, he is not
-more a Jew than he is Shylock. In his hard, icy intellectuality,
-and his ‘dry, mummy-like tenacity’ of purpose,
-with a dash now and then of biting sarcastic humor,
-we see the remains of a great and noble nature, out
-of which all the genial sap of humanity has been pressed
-by accumulated injuries. With as much elasticity of
-mind as stiffness of neck, every step he takes but the last
-is as firm as the earth he treads upon. Nothing can
-daunt, nothing disconcert him; remonstrance cannot
-move, ridicule cannot touch, obloquy cannot exasperate
-him; when he has not provoked, he has been forced to
-bear them; and now that he does provoke them, he is
-proof against them. In a word, he may be broken; he
-cannot be bent.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>We cannot refrain from picking out a sentence, here
-and there, in the critic’s admirable delineation of Portia.
-“Eminently practical in her tastes and turn of mind,
-full of native, home-bred sense and virtue, she unites
-therewith something of the ripeness and dignity of a
-sage, a rich, mellow eloquence, and a large, noble discourse,
-the whole being tempered with the best grace
-and sensibility of womanhood.&nbsp;.&nbsp;. Nothing can be more
-fitting and well-placed than her demeanor, now bracing
-her speech with grave maxims of moral and practical
-wisdom, now unbending her mind in playful sallies of
-wit, or innocent, roguish banter.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;. It is no drawback
-upon Portia’s strength and substantial dignity of character,
-that her nature is all overflowing with romance;
-rather, this it is that glorifies her and breathes enchantment
-about her; it adds that precious seeing to the eye
-which conducts her to such winning beauty and sweetness
-of deportment, and makes her the ‘rich-souled’
-creature that Schlegel describes her to be.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The introductions to All’s Well that Ends Well, and
-The Taming of the Shrew, are replete with shrewd remark
-and acute analysis, but both are inferior to the
-criticism of As You Like It. The woodland sweetness
-of this play tasks all the subtlety and all the enthusiasm
-of Mr. Hudson to do it justice. An exquisite ideal
-beauty casts its sweet and satisfying charm over the
-whole of this matchless comedy, and we envy Shakspeare’s
-delight in its composition more than Campbell
-envied his happiness in bodying forth A Midsummer Night’s
-Dream. Even Le Beau, the courtier of Frederic,
-is an ideal courtier; on inborn gentlemanliness, of the
-finest kind, stealing out from him in performing his most
-ungracious duties. This character is commonly performed
-on the stage by the worst actor the manager has
-in his company, but we have always noticed that the
-feeblest performer became lifted into dignity by simply
-pronouncing one golden sentence in the first act. It is
-where Le Beau expresses at once his loyal duty to Frederic
-and his admiration for Orlando’s brave and gentle
-qualities. As his master has chosen to be Orlando’s
-enemy, he cannot obey his impulse to be Orlando’s
-friend, and his parting words to the latter are touchingly
-noble:</p>
-
-<div class='blockquote'>
-
-
- <div class='poetry-container' style=''>
- <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' -->
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;“Sir, fare you well:</p>
-<p class='line0'>Hereafter in a better world than this,</p>
-<p class='line0'>I shall desire more love and knowledge of you.”</p>
-</div>
-</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend -->
-
-</div>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Mr. Hudson says very acutely of the characters of As
-You Like It, that, “diverted by fortune from all their
-cherished plans and purposes, they pass before us in just
-that <span class='it'>moral and intellectual dishabille</span>, which best reveals
-their indwelling graces of heart and mind.” This, it
-seems to us, touches the inmost secret of the delight all
-mankind have in this play. There is a complete absence
-of restraint upon expression, and the tongues of all run
-of their own sweet will, in a region of perfect freedom.
-It is whim exalted into poetry. Of Touchstone, our
-critic remarks, that though he never touches so deep a
-chord as the poor fool in Lear, that “he is the most entertaining
-of Shakspeare’s privileged characters.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;. It
-is curious to observe how the poet takes care to let us
-know from the first, that beneath the affectations of his
-calling some precious sentiments have been kept alive;
-that far within the fool <span class='it'>there is a secret reserve of the man</span>,
-ready to leap forth and combine with better influences as
-soon as the incrustations of art are thawed and broken
-up.” Passing over some keen observations on Jaques
-and the class of character to which he belongs, we come
-to Mr. Hudson’s exquisite description of Rosalind, the
-style of which would alone tempt one to extract it. The
-ideal merriment of Rosalind—and after listening to her
-for an hour, it seems a misuse of the word merriment to
-apply it to glee less graceful, light and lark-like than her
-own—has rarely been touched with so delicate an analysis.
-“For wit,” he says, “this strange, queer, lovely
-being is fully equal, perhaps superior to Beatrice, yet
-nowise resembling her. A soft, subtle, nimble essence,
-consisting in one knows not what, ‘and springing up
-one can hardly tell how,’ her wit neither stings nor
-burns, but plays briskly and airily over all things
-within its reach, enriching and adorning them, insomuch
-that one could ask no greater pleasure than to be the
-continual theme of it. In its irrepressible vivacity it
-waits not for occasion, but runs on forever, and we wish
-it to run on forever: we have a sort of faith that her
-dreams are made of cunning, quirkish, graceful fancies.
-And her heart seems a perennial fountain of affectionate
-cheerfulness; no trial can break, no sorrow chill her
-flow of spirits; even her deepest sighs are breathed forth
-in a wrappage of innocent mirth; an arch, roguish
-smile irradiates her saddest tears. Yet beneath all her
-playfulness we feel that there is a firm basis of thought
-and womanly dignity, so that she never laughs away
-our respect.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>An edition of Shakspeare, edited so admirably as this—so
-convenient in its form, so elegant in its execution,
-and so cheap in its price—will, we hope, have a circulation
-over the country corresponding to its great
-merits.</p>
-
-<hr class='tbk145'/>
-
-<div class='blockquote'>
-
-<p class='hang'><span class='it'>Utterance; or, Private Voices to the Public Heart. A
-Collection of Home Poems. By Caroline A. Briggs.
-Boston: Phillips, Sampson &amp; Co. 1 vol. 12mo.</span></p>
-
-</div>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Our first impression of this volume we received from
-its title, and that impression was, of course, unfavorable,
-as the title certainly smacks of affectation. But
-it requires but a slight examination of the book to dissipate
-such a prejudice. It is a thoroughly genuine expression
-of a sensitive, thoughtful, artless, affectionate,
-and fanciful nature, and readily wins its way into the
-reader’s esteem. Even those passages which evince a
-sort of innocent ignorance of the conventions of society
-and letters, have a <span class='it'>naïveté</span> which charms while it
-amuses. The volume is a collection of short poems,
-ranged under the general titles of Voices of Affection,
-Voices of Grief, Voices of Cheer, Sacred Voices, and
-Voices of the Way, and one powerful Voice for the
-Poor, written in a measure whose movement has something
-of the fitful swiftness of the cold, wild wind,
-whose cruelty it deprecates. The following lines convey
-a vivid picture of desolation; the verse itself seeming to
-shudder in sympathy with the objects it holds up to
-pity:</p>
-
-<div class='blockquote'>
-
-
- <div class='poetry-container' style=''>
- <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' -->
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;Oh, the Poor!</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;The poor and old,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;On the moor</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;And on the wold—</p>
-<p class='line0'>How desolate they are to-night and cold!</p>
-<p class='line0'>—I peeped into the broken panes,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Where the snow, and sleet, and rains</p>
-<p class='line0'>Of many a weary year have stolen,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Till the sashes are smeared, and soaked and swollen.</p>
-<p class='line0'>Little children with tangled hair,</p>
-<p class='line0'>And lips awry and feet half bare,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Huddled around the smouldering fire,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Like beasts half crouching in their lair;</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;While each, the while, by stealth drew nigher,</p>
-<p class='line0'><span class='it'>Covetous of the other’s share.</span></p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Oh! ’twas a pitiful sight to see!</p>
-<p class='line0'>And mothers too were there,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;With infants shivering on their knee,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Or closer held with a mother’s care,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Or laid to rest with a hurried prayer,</p>
-<p class='line0'>A moan, half hope and half despair,</p>
-<p class='line0'>A muttered, “Pitiless Storm, forbear!”</p>
-</div>
-</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend -->
-
-</div>
-
-<p class='pindent'>When we say that there is in this volume some poems
-that an austere taste would have omitted, we merely say
-what we suspect is the truth, that the poetess is young,
-and that this is her first introduction to the public.
-We might object to a piece, here and there, that the
-feeling outruns the thought and fancy, and that commonplace
-lines occasionally glide stealthily in to meet the
-demands of the rhyme; but the faults which criticism
-might exhibit are few in comparison with the merits
-which shine forth of their own light on almost every
-page. The general impression which the whole book
-leaves on the memory is very pleasing. The defect
-of all young poets, that of expansiveness, is continually
-apparent; but it is a natural result of the movement
-of a nature so full of sensibility that it refuses to submit
-to the restraints of condensation, but pours itself
-out of its own sweet will. As a natural result of this
-extreme sensitiveness, the volume is comparatively destitute
-of those electric flashes of impassioned imagination,
-which come, swift, sure, and smiling from moods
-of the mind in which thought is condensed as well as
-animated by passion; but it still exhibits so genial a love
-of nature, a flow of feeling so kindly and sympathetic,
-so much beauty, and purity and sweetness of fancy, and
-withal so much richness of promise, and such a ready
-yielding of the mind to the poetical aspects of things,
-that we trust it will meet with the success due to its
-native excellencies of heart and brain.</p>
-
-<hr class='tbk146'/>
-
-<div class='blockquote'>
-
-<p class='hang'><span class='it'>The Snow-Image, and other Twice-Told Tales. By Nathaniel
-Hawthorne. Boston: Ticknor, Reed &amp; Fields.
-1 vol. 16mo.</span></p>
-
-</div>
-
-<p class='pindent'>This is a collection of Mr. Hawthorne’s Sketches and
-Stories which have not been included in any previous
-collection, and comprise his earliest and latest contributions
-to periodical literature. It can hardly add to his
-great reputation, though it fully sustains it. “The
-Snow-Image,” with which the volume commences, is
-one of those delicate creations which no imagination
-less etherial and less shaping than Hawthorne’s could
-body forth. “Main Street,” a sketch but little known,
-is an exquisite series of historical pictures, which bring
-the persons and events in the history of Salem, vividly
-home to the eye and the fancy. “Ethan Brand,” one of
-the most powerful of Hawthorne’s works, is a representation
-of a man, tormented with a desire to discover
-the unpardonable sin, and ending with finding it in his
-own breast. “The Great Stone Face,” a system of
-philosophy given in a series of characterizations, contains,
-among other forcible delineations, a full length of
-Daniel Webster. The volume contains a dozen other
-tales, some of them sunny in sentiment and subtle in
-humor, with touches as fine and keen as Addison’s or
-Steele’s: and others dark and fearful, as though the shadow
-of a thunder-cloud fell on the author’s page as he
-wrote. All are enveloped in the atmosphere, cheerful
-or sombre, of the mood of mind whence they proceeded,
-and all convey that unity of impression which indicates
-a firm hold on one strong conception. As stories, they
-arrest, fasten, fascinate attention; but, to the thoughtful
-reader they are not merely tales, but contributions to
-the philosophy of the human mind.</p>
-
-<hr class='tbk147'/>
-
-<div class='blockquote'>
-
-<p class='hang'><span class='it'>Memories of the Great Metropolis: or London from the
-Tower to the Crystal Palace. By F. Sanders. New
-York: Geo. P. Putnam. 1 vol. 12mo.</span></p>
-
-</div>
-
-<p class='pindent'>This elegant volume, sumptuous in its binding and
-finely printed and illustrated, meets a want both in the
-traveled and the untraveled public. The work of a gentleman
-who knows every nook and corner of the empire
-city by personal observation, and who, by his large acquaintance
-with English authors and English literary
-history, is enabled to point out all the localities consecrated
-by genius and heroism; it is full of interesting and
-attractive matter to all readers. As a guide to London,
-it will be found a genial as well as a knowing companion
-to the tourist. We have been especially pleased with
-those portions which describe the shops of the booksellers
-and the residences of the authors. The volume is
-exceedingly well written, and though crammed with
-facts, betrays neither the dryness nor confusion too often
-characteristic of similar books. The author’s “memories”
-are never dull, but sparkle with animation and
-point.</p>
-
-<hr class='tbk148'/>
-
-<div class='blockquote'>
-
-<p class='hang'><span class='it'>Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli. Boston: Phillips,
-Sampson &amp; Co. 2 vols. 12mo.</span></p>
-
-</div>
-
-<p class='pindent'>This biography is the work of three “eminent hands”—William
-H. Channing, James Freeman Clarke, and
-Ralph Waldo Emerson, each writing that portion of Margaret’s
-life most familiar to himself. The result is one
-of the most curious, attractive and stimulating books of
-the season. The impression it conveys of the subject of
-the memoirs, is of a woman “large in heart and brain,”
-of great vigor and depth of nature, accomplished in many
-literatures, with an understanding capacious and masculine,
-and with a sensibility somewhat irregular and
-chaotic, in which powerful passions, delicate emotions
-and vague aspirations, seem never to have been harmonized
-into unity. The character, however, in spite of
-many limitations and some petty traits, was generally
-large and noble, and its essential excellence is not only
-demonstrated by the private journals and correspondence
-contained in these volumes, but by the fact that she
-merited the esteem and admiration of three such men as
-her biographers. Her defects are promptly admitted by
-all three, but in the opinion of all three they were superficial
-in comparison with the real graces and powers of
-her mind. In all those letters and journals in which her
-soul finds adequate expression, in which her most secret
-thoughts and most genuine aspirations are revealed, she
-is invariably true and noble; egotism, satire and pique
-have in them no place.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Mr. Emerson’s portion of these memoirs is done with
-his usual felicity of phrase and sharpness of statement,
-and is as attractive as any of his essays. He writes in a
-kindly spirit, and is evidently a genuine admirer of his
-subject, but his friendship is unaccompanied with exaggeration,
-and is combined with his usual austere but
-graceful honesty in stating his whole opinion. Thus, he
-gives the first impression which Miss Fuller made on
-him in these unflattering words: “Her extreme plainness—a
-trick of incessantly opening and shutting her
-eyelids—the nasal tone of her voice—all repelled; and I
-said to myself we shall never get far. It is to be said
-that Margaret made a disagreeable first impression on
-most persons, including those who became afterward
-her best friends, to such an extreme that they did not
-wish to be in the same room with her. This was partly
-the effect of her manners, which expressed an overweening
-sense of power and slight esteem of others, and partly
-the prejudice of her fame. She had a dangerous reputation
-for satire, in addition to her great scholarship. The
-men thought she carried too many guns, and the women
-did not like one who despised them.” He also gives
-some amusing instances of her self-esteem. “Margaret
-at first astonished and repelled us by a complacency that
-seemed the most assured since the days of Scaliger.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.
-She occasionally let slip, with all the innocence imaginable,
-some phrase betraying the presence of a rather
-mountainous <span style='font-size:smaller'>ME</span>, in a way to surprise those who knew
-her good sense. She could say, as if she were stating a
-scientific fact, in enumerating the merits of somebody,
-‘He appreciates <span style='font-size:smaller'>ME</span>.’ ”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Mr. Emerson accounts for this egotism partly on the
-ground of hereditary organization, and partly on “an
-ebullient sense of power, which she felt to be in her, and
-which as yet had found no channels.” In further illustration
-of this he adds, that in conversation she seldom,
-“except as a special grace, admitted others upon an
-equal ground with herself.” She was exceedingly tender,
-when she pleased to be, and most cherishing in her influence;
-but to elicit this tenderness, it was necessary
-to submit first to her personally. When a person was
-overwhelmed by her and answered not a word, except
-‘Margaret, be merciful to me a sinner,’ then her love
-and tenderness would come like a seraph’s, and often an
-acknowledgment that she had been too harsh, and even
-a craving for pardon, with a humility—which, perhaps,
-she had caught from the other. But her instinct was not
-humility—that was an after thought.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>This peculiarity, so honestly stated by Mr. Emerson,
-probably made Margaret Fuller all her enemies; and it is
-a fault which every person is bound to resent, though it
-appeared in an angel or archangel. It cannot be justified
-though it may be accounted for; and by those who knew
-her best, it was explained on principle! which relieved
-it of positive offensiveness. Some of her intellectual dependents,
-persons who gloried in wearing her mental
-livery, and were delighted with the servitude she enforced,
-might say very naively, in explanation, that Margaret
-was the greatest woman that ever was, and that
-Margaret was very sincere, and that being sincere it was
-very proper that she should not conceal her knowledge
-even of her own greatness.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>In our opinion this egotism was the result of the vigor
-of her nature, which, in conversation, broke all conventional
-bounds, and came out in its whole wealth of
-thought and acquisition, eager for controversy or ravenous
-for sympathy, and communicating to her mind a
-bright and strong sense of individual power which at the
-time almost palliated its excesses. The excitement of
-her mind produced that effect which we often see in
-persons who are enraged—a condition in which expressions,
-regretted afterward for their extravagance, seem
-at the time too weak to convey the hot feeling of wrong
-which burns beneath them. In her journals, where she
-sharply scrutinises what she is and what she has produced,
-and where there is no excitement to stimulate
-her powers, she is sufficiently humble, acutely feels her
-imperfections, and the “mountainous me” dwindles into
-a mole-hill. She seems to have had the aspirations and
-the ambitions of great genius, had sufficient breadth of
-mind to take in the wide varieties of human power in
-history and literature, and had a corresponding scorn for
-the little and the common in mental effort; but she lacked
-a creative imagination, and was incapable of producing
-anything which at all realized the intimations of her nature.
-In conversation she rose instantly into sympathetic
-companionship with creative minds, and in the
-heat of the moment mistook it for a companionship and
-community in power. In this mood she might despise
-many who were her superiors in the shaping power of
-genius, though her inferiors in its loftiest aspirations.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>These volumes are full of instances of her sincerity,
-her geniality, her love of the beautiful in nature and art,
-her fine critical powers, her enthusiasm for great measures
-of reform in America and Europe, and the noble
-scale on which she conducted her mental and moral culture.
-Though many may take exception to the generosity
-of the praise which her biographers lavish on her
-various graces and gifts of mind, every one must acknowledge
-the extreme richness of the materials which
-are frankly exhibited, to enable the reader to judge for
-himself. We doubt if there is any other American biography
-in which the whole interior truth relating to the
-character of the subject is so completely set forth, or
-which presents to the curious in mental organization so
-interesting a study in psychology.</p>
-
-<hr class='tbk149'/>
-
-<div class='blockquote'>
-
-<p class='hang'><span class='it'>Ravenscliffe. By the author of “The Old Men’s Tales,”
-etc. etc. New York: Harper &amp; Brother.</span></p>
-
-</div>
-
-<p class='pindent'>In this novel the authoress puts forth her whole resources
-of passion and power in delineating hatred and
-revenge. The story sweeps on like a deep stream harrying
-to the sea, and the firm grasp of the writer on the
-reader’s arrested attention is not loosed for a moment.
-The influence of the same passion on the two characters
-of Randal Langford and Marcus Fitzroy, is exhibited
-with masterly skill. The motto of the book should have
-been taken from Shelley’s tremendous quatrain:</p>
-
-<div class='blockquote'>
-
-
- <div class='poetry-container' style=''>
- <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' -->
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>“Revenge and wrong bring forth their kind;</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;The foul cubs like their parents are;</p>
-<p class='line0'>Their den is in the human mind,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;And conscience feeds them with despair.”</p>
-</div>
-</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend -->
-
-</div>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The vice of the novel is its continuous intensity, a
-peculiarity which characterizes all of Mrs. Marsh’s
-novels. The characters are only seen in their passionate
-moods, and the leading quality of their natures is
-developed with the consistency of a logical deduction.
-Though this gives emphasis to the ethical intent of the
-authoress, she sacrifices to it some of the most important
-principles of the true method of characterization. Her
-persons are apt to slide into personified passions.</p>
-
-<hr class='tbk150'/>
-
-<div class='blockquote'>
-
-<p class='hang'><span class='it'>A Popular Account of Discoveries at Nineveh. By Austin
-Henry Layard, D. C. L. New York: Harper &amp;
-Brothers. 1 vol. 12mo.</span></p>
-
-</div>
-
-<p class='pindent'>This is an abridgment, by the author himself, of his
-larger work on Nineveh, which has obtained such extraordinary
-success. It is illustrated by a number of well
-executed wood-cuts, and is beautifully printed. The
-matter, it is needless to say, is full of interest and attractiveness,
-and will well repay all readers who may be
-repelled by the size of the original work.</p>
-
-<hr class='tbk151'/>
-
-<div class='blockquote'>
-
-<p class='hang'><span class='it'>Women of Christianity, Exemplary for Acts of Piety and
-Charity. By Julia Kavanagh, author of “Nathalie,”
-etc. New York: D. Appleton &amp; Co. 1 vol. 12mo.</span></p>
-
-</div>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Christian women of this and all past ages would seem
-to be under especial obligations to the Messrs. Appletons
-for bringing their virtues and heroism before the
-public. The Women of the Old and New Testament,
-the Women of Early Christianity, and now the Christian
-Women of all Ages, witness their chivalrous devotion
-to the very best examples of the sex. Miss Kavanagh’s
-book gives short but admirable sketches of a great number
-of eminent devotees, from the virgins of the primitive
-church to Hannah More and Elizabeth Fry. Though
-her space hardly allows her to do full justice to the subject,
-she uses her materials so skillfully, and writes her
-condensed biographies with such fervor and power, that
-she escapes the imputation of meagreness.</p>
-
-<hr class='tbk152'/>
-
-<div class='blockquote'>
-
-<p class='hang'><span class='it'>The Broken Bud; or, Reminiscences of a Bereaved
-Mother. New York: Robert Carter &amp; Brothers.
-1 vol. 16mo.</span></p>
-
-<p class='hang'><span class='it'>Blossoms of Childhood. Edited by the author of “The
-Broken Bud”. New York: Robert Carter &amp; Brothers.
-1 vol. 16mo.</span></p>
-
-</div>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The first of these little volumes is the record of a child,
-who died just as her mind was expanding into affection
-and intelligence; and it is the most notable book of the
-kind we have ever seen. As giving the psychology of a
-mother’s feelings, it is well worthy of attention. It is
-written close to the heart of the matter, and is full of
-examples of that searching pathos which calls up instinctive
-tears. Rarely have we read a work of more
-affectionate intensity, or one in which a mournful experience,
-tempered by religious faith, is expressed with
-such genuine simplicity and truth to inward emotion.
-There are passages whose eloquence is so identical with
-the things it celebrates, that the reader sees and feels
-with hardly the consciousness of the agency of words.
-The other volume is a collection of poetry relating to
-children, in which the mother’s heart, so constantly present
-in the previous volume, ranges over the whole field
-of poetry, hoarding the precious lyrics which bring consolation
-by inspiring religious trust. Both works are
-of a peculiar character, indicating the presiding influence
-of one overmastering feeling, and striking at
-the very sources of emotion.</p>
-
-<hr class='tbk153'/>
-
-<div class='blockquote'>
-
-<p class='hang'><span class='it'>The Standard Speaker; containing exercises in Prose
-and Poetry for Declamation in Schools, Academies,
-Lyceums, Colleges. Newly Translated or Compiled
-from Celebrated Orators, Authors, and Popular Debaters,
-Ancient and Modern. A Treatise on Oratory
-and Elocution. Notes Explanatory and Biographical.
-By Epes Sargent. 1 vol., large 12mo. 558 pages.
-Philadelphia: Thomas, Cowperthwait &amp; Co.</span></p>
-
-</div>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Mr. Sargent has here given us a “Speaker” far more
-comprehensive in design and elaborate in execution than
-any that has yet appeared. The great feature of the
-work is the completeness of the Senatorial Department,
-in which he has introduced not only passages of rare
-beauty and effect from Chatham, Burke, Grattan, Shell,
-Macaulay, and many others—all the passages of the right
-length for speaking—but has given some translations
-from Mirabeau, Victor Hugo, and other great speakers of
-France, which will become great favorites in Schools
-and Elocutionary Classes. The dramatic and poetical
-departments are also well filled, many new and striking
-pieces for Declamation and Recitation being introduced.
-No sectional favoritism seems to have been exercised in
-the compilation. All parts of the country, and indeed all
-countries are fairly represented in their contributions to
-all the forms of eloquence suitable for the purpose of the
-book. A great amount of original research and labor
-seems to have been expended on this volume, which—</p>
-
-<div class='blockquote'>
-
-
- <div class='poetry-container' style=''>
- <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' -->
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>“Is not the hasty product of a day,</p>
-<p class='line0'>But the well-ripened fruit of sage delay.”</p>
-</div>
-</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend -->
-
-</div>
-
-<p class='pindent'>In his position as Editor of a daily journal, the editor
-has had a more favorable opportunity than many enjoy to
-make collections for a work of this kind, and with what
-success he has availed himself of it, a cursory glance
-will show. While he has preserved all the old, indispensable
-masterpieces, he has placed side by side with
-them a majority of new ones, that promise to become
-equally celebrated. The work cannot fail to claim the
-prompt and favorable attention of Students and Teachers.
-It is issued in excellent style, by Messrs. Thomas,
-Cowperthwait &amp; Co.</p>
-
-<hr class='tbk154'/>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Bangs, Brother &amp; Co., New York, have sent us fine
-editions of “Gibbon’s Greece,” “Ancient History of
-Herodotus,” Randall’s “Sheep Husbandry,” and an
-excellent edition of the “Tatler and Guardian,” with
-biographical memoranda by Thomas Babington Macaulay,
-all of which we will notice in future numbers.</p>
-
-<hr class='tbk155'/>
-
-<p class='pindent'><span class='sc'>Pretty Strong.</span>—We do not charge Peterson any
-thing for the following as an advertisement. It is a
-better joke than has appeared in the Small-Talk:</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>It has been for years the cherished wish of the writer
-of this work, to make “THE TOWER OF LONDON,”
-the proudest monument of antiquity, (considered
-with reference to its historical associations,) <span class='it'>in the
-known world</span>—the groundwork of a Romance; and it is
-no slight satisfaction to him, that circumstances at
-length have enabled him to carry into effect his favorite
-project, in conjunction with the inimitable artist,
-whose <span class='it'>Ninety-eight Original Designs and Engravings
-of all the Principal Objects of Attraction and Interest</span> to
-the reader, accompany the work.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The author has exhibited in this work, the “Tower
-of London” in the light of a Palace, a Prison, and a Fortress,
-and he has also contrived such a series of incidents
-as to introduce every relic of the old pile—its Towers,
-Chapels, Halls, Chambers, Gateways, Arches and Drawbridges—so
-that no part of this, the most venerable and
-interesting building <span class='it'>in the known world</span>, should remain
-unillustrated to the reader.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>It is beyond all doubt one of the most interesting
-works ever published <span class='it'>in the known world</span>, and can be read
-and re-read with pleasure and satisfaction by every
-body. We advise all persons to get it and read it, for
-there is much to learn and valuable information to be
-gained from its pages, which cannot be obtained in any
-other work published <span class='it'>in the known world</span>. Published
-and for sale by</p>
-
-<p class='line' style='text-align:right;margin-right:3em;margin-top:0.5em;'>T. B. PETERSON.</p>
-
-<hr class='tbk156'/>
-
-<p class='pindent'>We shall look with great interest for Top’s first book
-from the <span class='it'>unknown</span> world, and have a right to expect
-something good. We only hope that the author will not
-“<span class='it'>contrive</span> such a series of incidents about Drawbridges,”
-as to let us down without fair warning.</p>
-
-<hr class='tbk157'/>
-
-<p class='pindent'><span class='sc'>Fitzgerald’s City Item.</span>—This is the name of a
-weekly paper, now in its fifth year, published in this
-city by Fitzgerald &amp; Co., at Two Dollars per annum.
-This journal enjoys the reputation of being undoubted
-authority upon all Literary, Musical, Fine Art, and
-Dramatic Matters. It has been conducted from the beginning
-by Mr. <span class='sc'>Fitzgerald</span>, and we have often admired
-his good-nature, his frankness, and his ability.
-Untiring industry has established <span class='sc'>The City Item</span> upon
-a firm basis. <span class='sc'>Fitzgerald &amp; Co.</span> offer as a premium
-to new subscribers, an admirable life-size portrait of the
-Hungarian patriot, <span class='sc'>Kossuth</span>. <span class='sc'>Graham’s Magazine</span>
-and <span class='sc'>The City Item</span> may be secured for Four Dollars.</p>
-
-<hr class='tbk158'/>
-
-<div><h1><a id='talk'></a>GRAHAM’S SMALL-TALK.</h1></div>
-
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;margin-bottom:1em;font-weight:bold;'>Held in his idle moments, with his Readers, Correspondents and Exchanges.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Our Small-Talk has afforded food for infinite jest to a
-few unfledged wits and cubs of critics, clever word-snappers,
-who keep reiterating the joke that the Small-Talk
-<span class='it'>is</span> small—<span class='it'>very</span>. Of course it is, goslings! it was
-so called and set down originally in the bills. So do not
-imagine that you are discoverers, and set yourselves off
-to the Polar regions in search of Sir John Franklin.
-The Small-Talk is more than <span class='it'>small</span>—it is pert, impudent,
-audacious, outrageous, insolent, and, cool. More than
-that, it is—“to be continued.”</p>
-
-<hr class='tbk159'/>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Ah! now, isn’t this delightful? We were wondering
-whether we should <span class='it'>ever</span> get another love-letter, when
-lo! in comes the mail, from which we extract the following
-delicious epistle from a young lady, who, we
-know, would love us, if we <span class='it'>were</span> only a bachelor:</p>
-
-<div class='blockquote'>
-
-
- <div class='poetry-container' style=''>
- <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' -->
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;“<span class='sc'>To Graham.</span></p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>“A ‘bachelor,’ thou sayest?—ha-ha—have a care—</p>
-<p class='line0'>A target too tempting—I bid thee beware!</p>
-<p class='line0'>Now stand and deliver, thou ‘knave of the heart!’</p>
-<p class='line0'>Thy ‘clubs’ shall not parry the aim of my dart.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>“Thy armor—thy pleading, and dodging is vain,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Wry faces uncalled for! ’tis hymenial chain</p>
-<p class='line0'>We wish to throw round thee—surrender! I bid—</p>
-<p class='line0'>All woven of roses, the thorns are quite hid.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>“A net-work of love shall enshroud thee forever—</p>
-<p class='line0'>(‘Enshroud’ is too icy, it makes Cupid shiver—</p>
-<p class='line0'><span class='it'>Imprison</span> is better—I like the word best—)</p>
-<p class='line0'>When the heart’s taken captive the spirit’s at rest.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>“Two short little weeks, out of fifty or more,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Is all we can claim—and one year out of four—</p>
-<p class='line0'>We must make up in speed, what we lack for in time,</p>
-<p class='line0'>And make a bold push or have no Valentine.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>“An abrupt, ringing laugh, from a friend standing near,</p>
-<p class='line0'>And—‘I read you it wrong!’ he says, ‘<span class='it'>Benedict</span>!’ do ye hear?</p>
-<p class='line0'>How <span class='it'>horrid provoking</span> to play me this game!</p>
-<p class='line0'>I don’t care, I will send it subscribed with my name.”</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;<span style='font-size:smaller'>H. H.</span></p>
-</div>
-</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend -->
-
-</div>
-
-<p class='pindent'>We wont give the name in full, or we should never
-receive another love token. But—what have we here?
-as we live—another Valentine! and with a sprig of geranium,
-too, pressed loving between the paper—and love
-verses! No—we will not print these, they are too confidingly
-tender and hardly “allowable” rhyme.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>But here comes one, with a full, round superscription,
-for all the world like the hand of a lady we used to love
-when we were a boy—adoringly, wildly, <span class='it'>most</span> insanely.
-She was <span class='it'>older</span> than we were, and didn’t take the matter
-so much to heart. Some other fellow took her off—a
-cadet, or something of that sort from West Point—and
-she never returned our love letter. But what <span class='it'>is</span> this?
-Ha! $3— there is something in this, that is a cure for the
-twinges of an old love wound:</p>
-
-<div class='blockquote'>
-
-<p class='line' style='text-align:right;margin-right:2em;margin-bottom:0.5em;'>“<span class='it'>Fort Meade, Florida, Feb. 10th, 1852.</span></p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“<span class='sc'>Dear Graham</span>—The February number of your Magazine
-has this day come to hand, and acting on the hint
-you give in your Small-Talk, <span class='it'>i. e.</span> ‘Money is worth 2
-per cent. a month,’ I herewith inclose the $3 for this
-year’s subscription to your book. I showed that portion
-of your Small-Talk(?) headed ‘That bill again,’ to my
-wife; and what do you think? Why, instead of calling
-you a good-for-nothing-impertinent man, she said, ‘Why
-<span class='it'>don’t</span> you give the man his money? Graham is a dear,
-good fellow and he deserves it,’ etc. Of course, I had
-to back down, and here is the tin.</p>
-
-<p class='line' style='text-align:right;margin-right:4em;margin-top:0.5em;'>“Truly yours,</p>
-<p class='line' style='text-align:right;margin-right:2em;'><span style='font-size:smaller'>G. D.</span>”</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Now we like that woman, and will bet she was just
-the girl that <span class='it'>would</span> go off with a soldier—full of all brave
-and good thoughts, and loving as a southern wind in an
-orange grove. If we ever do go to Florida, we shall
-stop at the Fort and see this lady, and shake hands all
-round with the G. D.’s.</p>
-
-<hr class='tbk160'/>
-
-<p class='pindent'><span class='sc'>Thanks.</span>—Our space is limited, in this number, although
-we have much to say to our friends and readers;
-but we shall take room enough to thank most sincerely
-and heartily, the many editors who have sent us clubs
-and single subscribers for the year 1852. We had intended
-to notice, by letter, the many kind expressions
-of regard for our business welfare, but so many and
-rapidly sent were these missives of good-will, that we
-abandoned the undertaking, and must here content ourself
-with saying—<span class='it'>to one and all</span>—<span class='it'>Thanks</span>!</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>We can get up no theatrical speech for the occasion,
-and can only promise to devote such abilities as we
-have been blessed with, be they poor or rich, to making
-“Graham”—what we hope it can be made, under our
-administration—“<span class='it'>the best Magazine in the country</span>.”
-We can only say, that our whole time and thought are
-freely bestowed upon the work—that we have no other
-avocation, similar, or adverse, to distract our attention,
-and if we fail to realize our aim, in the opinion of our
-readers and friends, that our ability comes short of our
-ambition. So said—<span class='it'>so done</span>. This number is a fair sample
-of what we can do; and we think we can do better,
-and shall <span class='it'>try</span>.</p>
-
-<hr class='tbk161'/>
-
-<p class='pindent'><span class='sc'>The Saturday Gazette.</span>—This well-known Family
-Paper is now under the charge of Alexander Cummings
-and Mrs. Joseph C. Neal, and has been, both in
-typographical execution and in literary excellence, much
-improved. Mrs. Neal’s delightful Letters from the
-South, are a very decided addition to the intellectual
-attractions of the Gazette—the Foreign Correspondence
-is more complete than ever, and the Stories and Essays
-to be found in its ample pages are of the very highest
-order.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>A prospectus of the paper, setting forth in detail the
-advantages of the Gazette, will be found upon the third
-page of our cover, and a specimen copy of the paper will
-be sent to such of our readers as desire to see it, upon
-application to A. Cummings &amp; Co.</p>
-
-<hr class='tbk162'/>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The News-Letter, at Galesburg, gives us a notice of
-a column, full of all sorts of hits and good things. The
-Cynthiana News and the Rifle must buck up or they
-will lose the stakes. Although the metal of Rifle is
-good, and the bore perfect, we can beat the editor with
-pistols, at ten paces, <span class='it'>for a Turkey</span>! We send Atkinson
-of the News a sheet—Wilcox will supply and suit you—cash
-or approved paper—samples forwarded. We
-accept the Sandy Hill Herald’s invitation! said shall look
-at those “acres” until our heart aches.</p>
-
-<hr class='tbk163'/>
-
-<h2 class='nobreak'><span style='font-size:larger'><span class='bold'>TEMPERANCE.</span></span></h2>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Shall the Maine question now be put?” is the great
-inquiry that agitates the country, and stirs, in all true
-hearts, a lively affirmative. The <span class='it'>people</span> are “ready for
-the question.” Graham himself is ready, and having in
-times past been a good judge of the various brands, he believes
-that one and all corrupt and destroy the brain and
-conscience. So he is down upon King Alcohol and his
-cohorts. We do not propose to give a temperance <span class='it'>lecture</span>
-upon the present “interesting occasion”—but if any body
-can read the following ode by Brown—the accomplished
-translator of Spanish literature, and feel no misgiving
-about Rum, his sensibilities are fire-proof. “The English
-language contains nothing more forcibly and terribly eloquent
-than this unique lexicon of horrors.”</p>
-
-<hr class='tbk164'/>
-
-<h2 class='nobreak'><span style='font-size:larger'><span class='bold'>ODE TO RUM.</span></span></h2>
-
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;'>———</p>
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;font-size:0.8em;font-weight:bold;'>BY WILLIAM C. BROWN.</p>
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;margin-bottom:1.5em;'>———</p>
-
-<div class='blockquote'>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Oh, thou invisible spirit of <span class='sc'>Rum</span>! if thou hadst no
-name by which to know thee, we would call thee—devil.”—<span class='sc'>Shakspeare</span>.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-
- <div class='poetry-container' style=''>
- <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' -->
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>Let thy devotee extol thee,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;And thy wondrous virtues sum;</p>
-<p class='line0'>But the worst of names I’ll call thee,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;O, thou hydra monster, Rum!</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>Pimple-maker, visage-bloater,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Health-corrupter, idler’s mate;</p>
-<p class='line0'>Mischief breeder, vice promoter,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Credit spoiler, devil’s bait.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>Almshouse builder, pauper maker,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Trust betrayer, sorrow’s source;</p>
-<p class='line0'>Pocket emptier, Sabbath breaker,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Conscience stiller, guilt’s resource.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>Nerve enfeebler, system shatterer,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Thirst increaser, vagrant thief;</p>
-<p class='line0'>Cough producer, treacherous flatterer,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Mud bedauber, mock relief.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>Business hinderer, spleen instiller,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Wo begetter, friendship’s bane;</p>
-<p class='line0'>Anger heater, Bridewell filler,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Debt involver, toper’s chain.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>Memory drowner, honor wrecker,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Judgment warper, blue-faced quack;</p>
-<p class='line0'>Feud beginner, rags bedecker,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Strife enkindler, fortune’s wreck.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>Summer’s cooler, winter’s warmer,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Blood polluter, specious snare;</p>
-<p class='line0'>Mob collector, man transformer,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Bond undoer, gambler’s fare.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>Speech bewrangler, headlong bringer,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Vitals burner, deadly fire;</p>
-<p class='line0'>Riot mover, firebrand flinger,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Discord kindler, misery’s sire.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>Sinews robber, worth depriver,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Strength subduer, hideous foe;</p>
-<p class='line0'>Reason thwarter, fraud contriver,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Money waster, nations’ wo.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>Vile seducer, joy dispeller,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Peace disturber, blackguard guest;</p>
-<p class='line0'>Sloth implanter, liver sweller,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Brain distracter, hateful pest.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>Wit destroyer, joy impairer,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Scandal dealer, foul-mouthed scourge;</p>
-<p class='line0'>Senses blunter, youth ensnarer,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Crime inventor, ruin’s verge.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>Virtue blaster, base deceiver,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Spite displayer, sot’s delight;</p>
-<p class='line0'>Noise exciter, stomach heaver,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Falsehood spreader, scorpion’s bite.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>Quarrel plotter, rage discharger,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Giant conqueror, wasteful sway;</p>
-<p class='line0'>Chin carbuncler, tongue enlarger,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Malice venter, death’s broadway.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>Household scatterer, high-hope dasher,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Death’s forerunner, hell’s dire brink;</p>
-<p class='line0'>Ravenous murderer, windpipe slasher,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;<span class='it'>Drunkard’s lodging, meat and drink</span>!</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend -->
-
-<p class='pindent'>Well—what are the arguments of the opponents of the
-“Maine Law!” We have heard them—having been present
-at the grand gathering of Distillers, Rum-sellers, and
-Drinkers at Tripler Hall, on Friday evening, the 27th of
-February. About as precious a set of “jolly fellows” as
-we ever saw in all our life, were there assembled to listen
-to the advantages of dying by slow poison. We give a
-picture, which sets forth the point and moral of the
-matter.</p>
-
-<div class='figcenter'>
-<img src='images/i253.jpg' alt='' id='iid-0011' style='width:70%;height:auto;'/>
-<p class='caption'>Arguments of the opponents of the Maine law—<span class='it'>illustrated</span>.</p>
-</div>
-
-<p class='pindent'>This was the pith and marrow of the whole affair.
-“Rum was”—Well, what? Why—“Rum!” Every
-body was enlightened and saw clearly. There was not a
-shadow of doubt about the matter. Its character was not
-in the least altered—it was the same devil, only painted a
-little red—not at all improved either, by the artists—in
-fact, Mr. Camp made him rather more hideous by attempting
-to make him a facetious, jolly sort of a devil, without
-any evil quality, but much given to poetry, philosophy,
-and particularly, mechanics. His <span class='it'>inventive</span> powers, however,
-were not brought out quite as clearly as Mr. Camp’s
-own, who, with a fine delivery and sonorous ring of voice,
-did all that it was possible for man to do in a bad cause—still
-he did not <span class='it'>do</span>—at least, not the majority there assembled.
-The whole affair was a horrible jest—it was—Yes!
-it was a <span class='sc'>Rum</span>-joke—and nothing else.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>No one was hardy enough to attempt to <span class='it'>prove</span>, that
-Rum ever made a great man greater—or improved the
-mental calibre of a small one. Ever warmed the heart
-of a miser to do an unrepented act of generosity—or
-enlarged the soul to permanent and consistent acts of
-lofty heroism for the welfare of mankind. Ever filled
-the cottage with smiling faces and happy hearts, permanently—shed
-plenty upon the tables of the poor, or
-made a wife happier or children more respected—ever, in
-short, carried any thing but a concealed curse in its bright
-bubbles and brilliant hues.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>We came away with no change of opinion as to the
-deleterious effects of Rum as a beverage. Taken either
-at the social board, with jolly good fellows, or among
-wits, poets and philosophers—it carries the same horror
-on its front, the same death in its smile. Even the
-sounding-boards, from which the notes of Jenny Lind
-floated out, almost divinely, gave no music to the
-voice of Rum’s advocate—the best joke had a croak—and
-the laughter a horribly consumptive sound.</p>
-
-<hr class='tbk165'/>
-
-<h2 class='nobreak'><span style='font-size:larger'><span class='bold'>“THE SOCIAL GLASS.”</span></span></h2>
-
-<div class='figcenter'>
-<img src='images/i255a.jpg' alt='' id='iid-0012' style='width:70%;height:auto;'/>
-<p class='caption'>“A little tipple will do us no harm.”</p>
-</div>
-
-<hr class='tbk166'/>
-
-<h2 class='nobreak'><span class='bold'>“JOLLY GOOD FELLOWS.”</span></h2>
-
-<div class='figcenter'>
-<img src='images/i255b.jpg' alt='' id='iid-0013' style='width:70%;height:auto;'/>
-</div>
-
-<div class='literal-container' style=''><div class='literal'> <!-- rend=';fs:0.9em;' -->
-<p class='line' style='font-size:0.9em;'>“We wont go home till morning,</p>
-<p class='line' style='font-size:0.9em;'>&ensp;We wont go home till morning,</p>
-<p class='line' style='font-size:0.9em;'>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;Till daylight doth appear.”</p>
-</div></div> <!-- end rend -->
-
-<hr class='tbk167'/>
-
-<h2 class='nobreak'><span style='font-size:larger'><span class='bold'>“A SPIRIT-KNOCKER.”</span></span></h2>
-
-<div class='figcenter'>
-<img src='images/i255c.jpg' alt='' id='iid-0014' style='width:70%;height:auto;'/>
-<p class='caption'>A very sudden call by a very ugly customer.</p>
-</div>
-
-<hr class='tbk168'/>
-
-<div><h1><a id='isle'></a>SWEET SUNNY ISLE.</h1></div>
-
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;margin-bottom:1em;font-weight:bold;'>OR “MY BOYHOOD’S HOME.”</p>
-
-<div class='figcenter'>
-<img src='images/i256a.jpg' alt='' id='iid-0015' style='width:90%;height:auto;'/>
-</div>
-
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;margin-bottom:1em;font-size:1.2em;'>COMPOSED BY JOHN H. TAYLOR.—DEDICATED TO MISS ELIZABETH TAYLOR, BARBADOES, W. I.</p>
-
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;margin-bottom:1em;'>Published by permission of LEE &amp; WALKER, 188 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia,</p>
-
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;margin-bottom:1em;'><span class='it'>Publishers and Importers of Music and Musical Instruments</span>.</p>
-
-<div class='figcenter'>
-<img src='images/i256b.jpg' alt='' id='iid-0016' style='width:85%;height:auto;'/>
-</div>
-
-
- <div class='poetry-container' style=''>
- <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' -->
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>Sweet sunny Isle! my native land!</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;How dear thou art to me,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Were all the world at</p>
-</div>
-</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend -->
-
-<div class='figcenter'>
-<img src='images/i257.jpg' alt='' id='iid-0017' style='width:85%;height:auto;'/>
-</div>
-
-
- <div class='poetry-container' style=''>
- <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' -->
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>my command,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;I still would cling to thee.</p>
-<p class='line0'>My boyhood’s home could I forget?</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Though I might be forgot;</p>
-<p class='line0'>For those I love are living yet,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;In that dear cherish’d spot.</p>
-<p class='line0'>For those I love are living yet</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;In that dear cherish’d spot.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>Sweet sunny Isle! though now a man,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Wherever I may roam,</p>
-<p class='line0'>My heart I know it never can</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Forget my boyhood’s home.</p>
-<p class='line0'>One only hope one only care</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Next that of Heaven above,</p>
-<p class='line0'>That I might once again be there—</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Once more with those I love.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-</div>
-<div class='stanza-outer'>
-<p class='line0'>Those kindred hearts, those loving friends,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;And all my boyish pets,</p>
-<p class='line0'>Would welcome me and make amends</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;For all long past regrets.</p>
-<p class='line0'>But ah! I fear ’twill never prove</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;Again my happy lot;</p>
-<p class='line0'>Then all I ask of those I love,</p>
-<p class='line0'>&ensp;&ensp;One thought—“Forget me not.”</p>
-</div>
-</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend -->
-
-<hr class='tbk169'/>
-
-<p class='line' style='margin-top:2em;font-size:1.1em;font-weight:bold;'><a id='notes'></a>Transcriber’s Notes:</p>
-
-<p class='noindent'>Table of Contents has been added for reader convenience. Archaic spellings and
-hyphenation have been retained. Obvious typesetting and punctuation errors have been corrected
-without note. Other errors have been corrected as noted below. For
-illustrations, some caption text may be missing or incomplete due to condition of
-the originals available for preparation of the eBook.</p>
-
-<div class='lgl' style=''> <!-- rend=';' -->
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-<p class='line'>page 364, children where the ==> children <a href='#were'>were</a> the</p>
-<p class='line'>page 372, and author’s were ==> and <a href='#auth'>authors</a> were</p>
-<p class='line'>page 404, read in Saronis’ Musical ==> read in <a href='#sar'>Saroni’s</a> Musical</p>
-<p class='line'>page 405, Rappresentatione del Animo e del ==> Rappresentatione <a href='#del'>di Anima e di</a></p>
-<p class='line'>page 405, Cavaliere, of Rome, ==> <a href='#cav1'>Cavalieri</a>, of Rome,</p>
-<p class='line'>page 405, title “<span class='it'>Dell Animo e del</span> ==> title “<span class='it'>Dell</span> <a href='#anima'><span class='it'>Anima e di</span></a></p>
-<p class='line'>page 405, of Cavaliere. But it ==> of <a href='#cav2'>Cavalieri</a>. But it</p>
-<p class='line'>page 414, feet, are not ==> <a href='#they'>feet, they are</a> not</p>
-<p class='line'>page 440, those horrid Affgaun’s ==> those horrid <a href='#aff'>Affgauns</a></p>
-</div> <!-- end rend -->
-
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-
-<p class='noindent'>[End of Graham’s Magazine, Vol. XL, No. 4, April 1852]</p>
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-<pre>
-
-
-
-
-
-End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Graham's Magazine, Vol. XL, No. 4,
-April 1852, by Various
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-</pre>
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