heard it repeated, as if in derision, by the echoes of the cliffs. That
tremendous moment when doubt struggles against a dreadful certainty
passed by, and he knew that she was dead.
Pride, wealth, ambition, glory, what now are they to him? One word from
those pale lips, one ray of light from those darkened eyes were worth
them all.
The bodies were found the next morning on the spot where they had
fallen, but Antonio had disappeared. He was never seen again in his
native island. Life with him had ceased to have any attractions, and
he sought release from it in the most desperate engagements with the
enemies of Greece. He perished in battle, but not till he had obtained
the glad assurance that the cause in which he had suffered so much
would eventually triumph. As for Zara,
“She sleeps well,
By the sea-shore whereon she loved to dwell.”
STORY AND SENTIMENT,
OR, CONVERSATIONS WITH A MAN OF TASTE AND IMAGINATION.
No. 1.
‘His thoughts were not the thoughts of other men.’
In the spring of 18--, in consequence of ill health I betook me to
one of those lovely vallies on the Connecticut, where the traveler if
he has taste enough to look about him, may find grouped within the
circuit of half a mile, one of the loveliest villages in the world.
Its clear warm airs gently tempered by the winds of the ocean--the
freshness and verdure of the landscape sloping gradually backward from
the water side--the high hills which surround it, still covered with
dark and rolling forests, as when first the white man took possession
of them--and the thousand other natural beauties which are ever found
in quiet New England villages, made me bless the fate which carried me
thither, and the hour I made it my home.
My first want was a companion. From my boyhood, the book of nature was
familiar. I had loved to ramble by woods and streams--gather flowers
on meadow and hillside--and, with some favorite book, something to
pleasure me, while away the mornings in many a gay bewilderment of
fancy. But from the peculiarity of my disease, the bliss of solitary
thought was denied me; while my natural bent which was quiet and
meditative, it was thought might be indulged in to a degree, if shared
with some gentle and kindred spirit. This lack was supplied me. I had
been accustomed to observe in my rambles a pale thoughtful looking
man, whose peculiarly fine countenance made me wish his acquaintance.
This was brought about in some ordinary way, and would little interest
the reader--so I pass it at once; but the result of that acquaintance,
the knowledge I gained from it, the pleasure I derived from his
friendship, are things to be forgotten by me never; and it is with
reminiscences of my intercourse with this individual, that I intend to
supply myself with subject matter for these occasional papers. So much
was I delighted with him, that the first morning of our acquaintance
I committed to paper the results of our conversation; so I have but
little to do, save copying as from a register, such passages as I deem
will be entertaining--which thing I hope to do in an unostentatious
manner, at the same time throwing in such reflections as I think
apposite, and rambling backwards and forwards as suits the mood of my
mind. If I please, my time is well spent.
I must first give you a description of him, gentle reader, and the
place in which I found him, even if it take up my whole sheet. Conceive
yourself then on a little eminence about fifty yards removed from the
water side, the ground sloping gradually to the stream; and conceive a
small, low-roof’d farm house upon it with its windows facing the east,
and its white roof partly covered and quite shaded by a clump of tall
beech trees; and after you have looked at the creeper, and wild rose,
and honeysuckles that grow in profusion about the door, you may stand
and listen to the sound of the clearest, sweetest, sparkling little
rivulet, that ever gushed from its native bed, to go and mix its sweet
waters with the weltering waves of the ocean.
You may now stand with your back towards the farm-house, and look
down before you. The broad Connecticut sweeps majestically by, its
clear surface crinkled only by the sportings of some wanton fish as
it darts through it, dashing a shower of pearls into the sunbeams; or
perchance the form of a water fowl as it skims unwarily over it, gently
catching the liquid on its pinions to scatter it off again with the
next evolution. The soft piles of white clouds that sleep in the upper
heaven, are as moveless below you; and as the startled dor-hawk sweeps
out from the wood behind, and wends his course across to the distant
mountains, you may watch his small form on the water growing fainter
and fainter, till it becomes a speck and fades from the vision.
Now enter with me the dwelling. Is it not a scholar’s dwelling?
That finely stocked library, with its newly-dusted curtain of green
cotton-stuff--that row of antique busts over the mantel-piece--that
engraving of the fiery Byron--that fine one of Scott--and that
pleasing one of the gentle and melancholy Cowper--say, do you like
it? A table stands in the middle of the room, and on it are books of
a dozen languages--some thumbed and turned down as if they had seen
good service, and others uncut as fresh from the book-seller’s. Here’s
the antiquarian Homer. There’s the mellifluous Anachreon. This is the
shrewd Horace--and there’s the philosophic Seneca. How worn they all
are! No common one surely is the spirit of this place--But you shall
see him.
He sits by the table, writing. There’s a forehead for you, shaded
with fine dark hair--there’s an eye, deep, crystaline, full--there’s
a cheek, delicate, perhaps too delicate--and above a prominent chin,
there’s the pale thin lip of the scholar. His countenance is gentle,
but there’s something of severity about the small closed mouth, and in
the glitter of that eye--and yet all is calm, all is serenity, all is
gentleness. No dark passions have had commission to mark that noble
forehead--no feverish and fiery ambition have dared to light their
hectic taper on that cheek--all is natural. And his voice--that is
gentle too--woman would not wish softer. And now he smiles--how gentle!
There’s so much of peace in it, you _feel_ its gentleness.
Such was my friend. Alas! that he is not--that I have but the poor
satisfaction of poring over these few, brief-sketched passages of his
history.
HIS FIRST LOVE.
I found him one evening sad and solitary, seated by an open window with
a book in his hand, and gazing out into the moonlight. I addressed him,
but he answered me not. I took his hand and pressed it--he turned to
me, and to my surprise, his eyes were filled with tears.
I did not offer him my pity--his feelings were too holy. I let him weep.
‘My friend,’ said he, after a pause, ‘you are welcome.’
I ventured to ask if any thing had disturbed him.
‘There are moments,’ replied he, ‘in the life of every man, when,
whether he will or no, the simplest circumstance, such as a note of
music, a word, or a moonlight evening like this, will by the subtle law
of association call up a train of dead memories, and pour them in a
flood tide on the heart; and as these are pleasant or melancholy, will
his feelings take their coloring. Here is a little book of Sir Humphry
Davy’s, and it has set me weeping; for as I have followed him through
one and another of his foolish though beautiful theories, it has called
up passages of my life I would fain forget. They are sweet though--
‘Pleasant are the memories of days in the shades of Morven’--
and I know not but I thank the philosopher though he makes me womanish.’
My companion’s history was unknown to me--I had once or twice wished to
ask him--here was a chance. I delicately hinted as much.
‘You ask to your hurt I fear, my young friend,’ said he. ‘Little in my
life can interest another. It has seen little action. Feeling--strong,
continuous, deep feeling with small variation, is all it boasts; and
pleasant as it is to me, it may little please you.’
I was importunate.
‘I had a lovely cousin,’ began he, ‘a very lovely creature, and one
for whom I felt all that ardor of attachment, for the description and
stories of which, poets and novelists have been so much laughed at.
I shall not describe her to you. The graces of her mind only shall I
acquaint you with, and through them you must see her countenance. Her
parents were dead; and, taken into our house as one of the family,
our love went far back beyond our memories, even into childhood,
where if we love, it is by some subtle affinity which unconsciously
draws kindred spirits together--since at that age we seldom think to
dwell upon individual excellences of character. Our love as we knew
not when it began, so we knew not its force; yet it was pure, deep,
spiritual, and dreaming--that passion which instead of being modified,
modifies--instead of becoming assimilated, assimilates--belonging
not to the other power, but making those powers its own. Hence
our characters were alike. This unity softened down every unhappy
prepossession; and the result was, that our loves were like two
streams, which though they gush not from the same source, soon after
mingle and go quietly on together.
‘From what I have said, you will readily perceive we were dreamers. My
cousin was a dreamer--you would know it from the deep, full, swimming
eye, without any body’s telling it you; and we were wont to go of a
summer’s evening to the church yard, and seated on her mother’s grave,
drink in from the silence, and darkness, and solitude of the scene,
that witchery and madness which dreamers so much love. From such habits
it will easily be seen, that our characters must soon be sobered over
with the sad shapings of melancholy. Such habits cultivate this mood;
and persisted in, the sensibilities if naturally exquisite, become so
much the more so that they soon unfit us for every thing else, and win
us from the laughter-making and foolish.
‘We were seated one evening as I have mentioned, and our thoughts very
naturally turned upon spirits, their intercourse, and the laws which
govern them, and the conversation took such a tone as fastened it
forever in my memory.
‘I sometimes think,’ said she, clinging tenderly to me, and clasping my
hand firmly in both of hers--‘that when we are free from this world,
and disenthralled, are ushered into a new existence, we shall lose our
identity, and have to find out new sympathies and sources of enjoyment;
and the thought saddens me.’
‘Why saddens you?’
‘O! I would not forget this world. I would not forget its beauties--its
rocks, woodlands, wilds,
‘Its human and its natural beauties all.’--
I would not forget them. They _must_ be a source of felicity ever--ever
pleasant to be remembered--ever spots to which memory shall turn her
saddened eye, when the heart is sick with its melancholies.’
‘Fanny, think you the blessed weep?’
‘O! I know not--‘but I could not bear to forget this beautiful world,
and those I love in it.’
‘Think you’--said I--‘that he who made the spirit and knows its
capacities, will not find for it something more substantial than earth
proffers us? You know the aged tell us, there’s no bliss here; and we
see the young, and gay, and beautiful, fall around us like leaves in
Autumn-time. What matters it then if we take other minds, as distinct
as our own bodies?’
‘Arthur! Arthur!--you pain me. Would you not know _me_ hereafter?’
‘Doubt it not--we _shall_ know each other.’
‘I would think so.’
‘From God’s benevolence we cannot prove it; for as benevolence leads
to giving the highest good, it may lead him to give us faculties above
those we now possess, and felicities in comparison with which all that
we have here shall instantly be forgotten. But it is seen from our
natures. Our faculties, in their aspirations for something higher,
by those very aspirations _evidence_ faculties, which earth puts not
in requisition. Few are the thinking minds who have not sometimes in
the calm of the evening, as they have sent their gaze away into the
heavens, and watched the stars come out to join the mighty sisterhood
of planets and rolling worlds, felt a thirst and a lifting up within
them as the pulsations of immortality. This _is_ immortality. The
world (not to speak poetically,) is forgotten. I myself have been so
far enrapt in this mystery, that I have as completely lost my mortal
consciousness as if I had never possessed any; at the same time I
have been partly conscious of the same powers as those I use when
admiring things around me. I was translated to another sphere--worlds
of light were rolling around me--I myself was a source of light and
magnificence, rolling on forever
‘Still quiring to the young eyed Cherubim!’
A state of purity was there. I admired it--but it was the same as my
love of virtue here, though incomparably higher; and I was conscious of
the same though more elevated communion, as the music of the spheres
‘Harping along their viewless boundaries,’
came floating about me. And these things prove that the same faculties
go with us from earth, though their reachings and exercises may be as
much nobler, as time is less than eternity.’
‘My sweet cousin was re-assured--and we soon betook us home.
‘This evening,’ continued he, ‘its stillness, its soft moonlight, and
this foolish little treasure of a book in my hand, have recalled that
evening, and that conversation--they have set me weeping. ’Tis seldom I
speak of the past, but your importunity stands apology.’
I quickly and firmly assured him, that so far from seeking apology, my
interest was unaccountable; and I begged the sequel in relation to his
cousin.
‘Ask it not--ask it not’--said he, with deep solemnity.
He spake no farther.
Such was a single evening’s intercourse with this mysterious being.
More I learned from him--which in good time the reader shall have from
me. Till then, adieu.
*
FANNY WILLOUGHBY.
“I love thee, Fanny Willoughby,
And that’s the why, ye see,
I woo thee, Fanny Willoughby,
And cannot let thee be,--
I sing for thee, I sigh for thee,
And O! you may depend on’t,
I’ll weep for thee, I’ll die for thee,
And that will be the end on’t.
“I love thy form so tall and straight,
To me it always seems,
As if it were the counterfeit
Of some I’ve seen in dreams,--
It makes me feel as if I had
An angel by my side,
And then I think I am so bad,
You will not be my bride.
“I love thy clear and hazel eye--
They say the blue is fairer,
And I confess that formerly
I thought the blue the rarer,--
But when I saw thine eye so clear,
Though perfectly at rest,
I did kneel down, and I did swear
The hazel was the best.
“I love thy hand so pale and soft,
The which, in days lang syne,
Ye innocent as trusting, oft
Would softly clasp in mine;
I thought it sure was chiseled out
Of marble by the geniuses,
The which the poets rant about,
The virgins and the Venuses.
“I love the sounds that from thy lip
Gush holily and free,
As rills that from their caverns slip,
And prattle to the sea;
The melody for aye doth steal
To hearts by sorrow riven,
And then I think, and then I _feel_
That music comes from Heaven.
“Now listen, Fanny Willoughby,
To what I cannot keep,
My days ye rob of happiness,
My nights ye rob of sleep;
And if ye don’t relent, why I
Believe you will me kill;
For passion must have vent, and I
Will kill myself I will.”
’Twas thus, when love had made me mad
For Fanny Willoughby,
I told my tale, half gay, half sad,
To Fanny Willoughby;
And Fanny look’d as maiden would
When love her heart did burn,
And Fanny sigh’d as maiden should,
And murmur’d a return.
And so I woo’d Fan Willoughby--
A maiden like a dove,
And so I won Fan Willoughby--
The maiden of my love;
And though sad years have pass’d since that,
And she is in the sky,
I never, never can forget
Sweet Fanny Willoughby.
*
CONFESSIONS OF A SENSITIVE MAN.
No. 1.
The first time I left Droneville, was for the purpose of joining the
Junior Class in Yale College. Having received letters of introduction
to Dr. ----, I was ushered by his misjudged kindness, with all my
awkwardness upon me, into the very center of fashionable life.
Fashionable life! what a variety of blunders, of ludicrous mistakes,
of embarrassing scenes, rise up at the very phrase, mingled with the
uproarious laughter of young men, and the suppressed titter of young
ladies, the mere memory of which is sufficient to drive distracted a
sensitive man. To my miserable, rustic education, I am indebted for
a great share of my calamities. Before relating my experience in the
world of fashion, I will attempt to convey to my readers an idea of
some of the peculiarities of Droneville people.
In one of the western counties of Massachusetts, is situated the
village of Droneville--the Rip Van Winkle of the state--the very focus
of stupidity. Droneville people are a century behind the rest of the
world. One would imagine that old Time had pitched them out of his
car in 1700, while he has been driving on the rest of the world like
Jehu. Without the least scruple, they use those rank provincialisms,
which would make the most legitimate Yankee tongue of other parts,
feel “considerably streaked.” Droneville people are opposed to all
your modern refinements in education. “We are satisfied with the
language of our fathers, without bringing it to the test of any of
your grammar rules.” As a necessary consequence, the king’s English
is murdered by them without the least mercy. Double comparatives and
superlatives dance through their conversation in an intricate maze of
the sublimest obscurity. To Droneville people I was indebted for my
pure, classical dialect, which was so extremely pleasing that I never
addressed a polite speech to a young lady, without making her giggle
in spite of her most vigorous efforts. “Hisen” and “hern,” “yourn”
and “theirn,” and such phrases, might be expected as a matter of
course; but Droneville people are no common Yankees; they have words
and expressions which are perfectly unique. “Chirk” is a favorite of
theirs. If you enquire respecting some invalid who is convalescing,
the answer is, “he is more chirk.” A young Miss of Droneville, (for
whom, by the way, I always had a sneaking partiality,) once replied to
a question as to her mother’s health--an old bedridden dame of eighty,
“Why, she is not very _chirk_, but more _chirker_ than she has been;
all our folks appear more _chirker_ than they really feel, in order to
_chirk_ her up.” “Comper” is another of their expressions. Any fracas
or tumult, like the Calethump of Christmas eve memory, would be styled
by them a “comper.” Their language is certainly original:
“Mrs. Doublechin, what is the matter with your good man?”
“I don’t hardly know, ‘Squire, he seems to be _kinder fevery and kinder
aguery_.”
Droneville people are profound philosophers. You will not find them
chattering incessantly upon every topic under the sun; their ideas are
connected by none of your “obvious relations;” they are slow, but sure
thinkers, and when they _do_ speak, you may expect to hear something.
Catch Droneville people doing any thing in a rash, hasty manner?
catch a weasel asleep. They are equally considerate in their mental
and physical operations. If a man begins to build a house, without
reflecting upon it for some twenty years, Droneville people shake their
heads in a very significant manner, muttering something about not
“counting the cost.” A house is commenced by one generation, allowed to
“season” through another, and completed by the third. Droneville people
are not composed of any of your inflammable materials; you will not
find them acting under the influence of “excitement” or “passion.” They
like to “take things coolly”--to think deliberately.
Deacon Snuffle was informed that widow Switchtail had been _recently_
converted, and hastened to converse with her. “How long is it, Mrs.
Switchtail,” said he, “since you first began to see the error of your
ways?”
“Why, Deacon, it is as long ago as what we old folks call the _hard
winter_.” Deacon Snuffle made his exit with all imaginable speed,
exclaiming, “your religion, widow, is something like an old clock, in
considerable need of being wound up.”
A minister was “settled” among Droneville people, several years since,
who is about as ardent as they are phlegmatic, suggesting the image
of a spirited young steed, yoked to a contemplative ox. He exhorts,
preaches, frets, drives his flesh off in attempting to “rouse them
up;” but they take it “just as easy” as conceivable. What can be more
tantalizing! He appoints meetings upon week days, but Droneville people
are not so fond of meetings upon week days; it savors too much of
_driving_ people into religion. The parson consoles himself with the
thought that they will come to church upon the Sabbath, and prepares
for them a warm reception. And they _do_ come upon the Sabbath, and
sleep, yea, snore as loud as if they were in their beds. Miss Catnip, a
snappish old maid, once complained that “Deacon Snuffle’s wife snored
so loud that she couldn’t get the least bit of rest.” My Aunt Tabitha
is never absent from church. She has so constantly seated herself upon
the same bench, that she has fairly impressed her own proportions
there. She has one invariable reply to the parson’s oft repeated
exhortations, “young people may die, old people must die.”
The parson wishes to do great things for all the benevolent operations
of the day, but what do Droneville people know about benevolent
operations? Instruct them? “Droneville people ar’nt to be instructed;
they know a thing or two.” Besides, Droneville people are half inclined
to think that “charity begins at home.” Turn them? You may turn a mule,
when he has once “placed his foot down,” with a mule’s determination,
but there is no turning _them_. They are as obstinate and headstrong as
doctors of theology; coaxing and cuffs are equally unavailing.