You see in me, "the only living descendant of those Eastern Magi to whom
the stars revealed their mysteries, and spirits gave their power. Age
after age did sages add to that knowledge which, by bequeathing to their
posterity, they trusted would in time combat to conquer their mortality.
But the glorious race perished from the earth, till only my father was
left, and I his orphan child. Marvels and knowledge paid his life of
fasting and study. All the spirits of the elements bowed down before
him; but the future was still hidden from his eyes, and death was
omnipotent. His power of working evil had no bounds, but his power of
good was limited; and yet it was good that he desired. How dared he put
in motion those mighty changes, which seemed to promise such happiness
on earth, while he was ignorant of what their results might be? and of
what avail was the joy he might pour out on life, over whose next hour
the grave might close, and only make the parting breath more bitter
from the blessings which it was leaving behind?"
I was no unworthy daughter of such a sire; I advanced in these divine
studies even to his wish, and looked to the future with a hope which
many years had deadened in himself, but from which I caught an omen of
ultimate success. Alas! he mastered not his destiny: I have said before,
his ashes are in yonder urn. A few unwholesome dews on a summer night
were mightier than all his science. For a time I struggled not with
despair; but youth is buoyant, and habit is strong. Again I pored over
the mystic scroll--again I called on the spirits with spell and with
sign. Many a mystery was revealed, many a wonder grew familiar; but
still death remained at the end of all things, as before. One night
I was on the terrace of my tower. Above me was the deep, blue sky,
with its stars--worlds filled, perchance, with the intelligence which
I sought. On the desert below was the phantasm of a great city.
I looked on its small and miserable streets, where hunger and cold
reigned paramount, and man was as wretched as if flung but yesterday
on the earth, and there had been as yet no time for art to yield its
assistance, or labour to bring forth its fruit. I gazed next on scenes
of festivity, but they were not glad; for I looked from the wreath into
the head it encircled, and from the carcanet of gems to the heart which
beat beneath--and I saw envy, and hate, and repining, and remorse.
I turned my last glance on the palace within its walls; but there the
purple was spread as a pall, and the voice of sorrow and the cry of pain
were loud on the air. I bade the shadows roll away upon the winds, and
rose depressed and in sorrow. I was not alone: one of those glorious
spirits, whose sphere was far beyond the power of our science, whose
existence we rather surmised than knew; stood beside me.
From that hour a new existence opened before me. I loved, and I was
beloved--love, to which imagination gave poetry, and mind gave strength,
was the new element added to my being. Alas! how little do the miserable
race to which I belong know of such a feeling. They blend a moment's
vanity, a moment's gratification, into a temporary excitement, and they
call it love. Such are the many, and the many make the wretchedness of
earth. And yet your own heart, Leoni, and that of my gentle cousin, may
witness for my words, there are such things as truth, and tenderness,
and devotion in the world; and such redeem the darkness and degradation
of its lot. Nay, more, if ever the mystery of our destiny be unravelled,
and happiness be wrought out of wisdom, it will be the work of love.
It matters little to tell you of my blessedness; but my very heart was
filled with the light of those radiant eyes, which were to me what the
sun is to the world. Yet one dark shadow rested on my soul, beyond even
their influence. Death had been the awful conqueror with whom my race
had so often struggled, and to whom they had so often yielded. A mortal,
I loved an immortal, and the fear of separation was ever before me; yet
a long and happy time passed away before my fear found words.
It was one evening we were floating over the earth, and the crimson
cloud on which we lay was the one where the sun's last look had rested.
Its gleam fell on a small nook, while all around was fast melting
into shade. Still it was a sad spot which was thus brightened--it was
a new made grave. Over the others the long grass grew luxuriantly,
and speckled, too, by many small and fragrant flowers; but on this,
the dark-brown earth had been freshly turned up, and the red worm,
writhed restlessly about its disturbed habitation. Some roses had been
scattered, but they were withered; their sweet leaves were already damp
and discoloured. All wore the present and outward signs of our eternal
doom--to perish in corruption.
The shadows of the evening fell, deepening the gloom into darkness--the
one last, bright ray had long been past, when a youth came from the
adjacent valley. That grave but yesterday received one who was to have
been his bride--his betrothed from childhood, for whose sake he had been
to far lands and gathered much wealth, but who had pined in his absence
and died. He flung himself on the loathsome place, and the night-wind
bore around the ravings of his despair. Wo for that selfishness which
belonged to my mortality! I felt at that moment more of terror than of
pity! I thought of myself: Thus must I, with all my power, my science,
and loved by one into whose sphere death comes not, even thus must
I perish! True, the rich spices, the perfumed woods, the fragrant oils,
which would feed the sacred fire of my funeral pyre, would save my
mortal remains from that corruption which makes the disgust of death
even worse than its dread. A few odoriferous ashes alone would be
left for my urn. Yet not the less must I share the common doom of my
race--I must die!
"Nay, my beautiful!" said the voice, which was to me as the fiat of
life and of death, so utterly did it fill my existence: "why should
we thus yield to a vague terror? Listen, my beloved! I know where the
waters of the fountains of life roll their eternal waves--I know I can
bear you thither and bid you drink from their source, and over lips so
hallowed death hath no longer dominion. But, alas! I know not what may
be the punishment. Like yourselves, the knowledge of our race goes on
increasing, and our experience, like your own, hath its agonies. None
have dared what I am about to dare, and the future of my deed is even
to me a secret. But what may not be borne for that draught which makes
my loved one as immortal as my love!"
I gazed on the glorious hope which lighted up his radiant brow, and
I said to him, "Give me an immortality which must be thine." Worlds
rolling on worlds lay beneath our feet when we stood beside the waters
of life. A joyful pride swelled in my heart. I, the last and the weakest
of my race, had won that prize which its heroes and its sages had found
too mighty for their grasp. A sound, as of a storm rushing over ocean,
startled me when I stooped to drink, the troubled waves rose into
tumultuous eddies, their fiery billows parted, and from amid them
appeared the dark and terrible Spirit of Necessity. The cloud of his
awful face grew deeper as it turned on me. "Child of a sinful and a
fallen kind!" said he, and he spoke the language most familiar to my
ear, which yet sounded like that of another world, "who have ever
measured by their own small wisdom that which is infinite--drink, and be
immortal! Be immortal, without the wisdom or the power belonging unto
immortality. Drink!"
I shrunk from the starry waters as they rose to my lip, but a power
stronger than my will compelled me to their taste. The draught ran
through my veins like ice. Slowly I turned to where my once-worshipped
lover was leaning. The same change had passed over both. Our eyes met,
and each looked into the other's heart, and there dwelt hate--bitter,
loathing, and eternal hate. I had changed my nature; I was no longer the
gentle, up-looking mortal he had loved. I had changed my nature; he was
no longer to me the one glorious and adored being. We gazed on each
other with fear and abhorrence. The dark power, whose awful brow was
fixed upon us like Fate, again was shrouded in the kindling waters. By
an impulse neither could control, the Spirit and I flung ourselves down
the steep, blue air, but apart and each muttering, "Never! never!" And
that word "never" told our destiny. Never could either feel again that
sweet deceit of happiness, which, if it be a lie, is worth all truth.
Never more could each heart be the world of the other.
Our feelings are as little in our power as the bodily structure they
animate. My love had been sudden, uncontrollable, and born not of my own
will--and such was my hate. As little could I master the sick shudder
his image now called up, as I could the passionate beating of the heart
it had once excited. I stood alone in my solitary hall--I gazed on the
eternal fire burning over the tomb of my father, and I wished it were
burning over mine. For the first time I felt the limitations of
humanity. The desire of my race was in me accomplished--I was immortal!
and what was this immortality? A dark and measureless future. Alas! we
had mistaken life for felicity! What was my knowledge? it only served to
show its own vanity; what was my power, when its exercise only served to
work out the decrees of an inexorable necessity? I had parted myself
from my kind, but I had not acquired the nature of a spirit. I had lost
of humanity but its illusions, and they alone are what render it
supportable. The mystic scrolls over which I had once pored with such
intenseness, were now flung aside; what could they teach me? Time was to
me but one great vacancy; how could I fill it up, who had neither labour
nor excitement? I set me down mournfully, and thought of the past. Why,
when love is perished, should its memory remain? I had said to myself,
so long as I have life, one deep feeling must absorb my existence.
A change--and that too of my own earnest seeking--had passed over my
being; and the past, which had been so precious, was now as a frightful
phantasm. The love which alters, in its inconstancy may set up a
new idol, and worship again with a pleasant blindness; but the love
which leaves the heart with a full knowledge of its own vanity and
nothingness,--which saith, The object of my passion still remains, but
it is worthless in my sight--never more can I renew my early feeling--I
marvel how I ever could have loved--I loathe, I disdain the weakness of
my former self;--ah, the end of such love is indeed despair!
"Do you mark yonder black marble slab, which is spread as over a tomb?
It covers the most silvery fountain that ever mirrored the golden light
of noon, or caught the fall of the evening dew, in an element bright
as themselves. The radiant likeness of a spirit rests on those waters.
I bade him give duration to the shadow he flung upon the wave, that
I might gaze on it during his absence. The first act of my immortality
was to shut it from my sight. There must that black marble rest for
ever."
[By the way, the ancients are excellent judges of beauty. Socrates calls
beauty (we dare not use the contemptible _it_,) a short-lived
tyranny: Xenophon says "Fire burns only when we are near it; but a
beautiful face burns and inflames, though at a distance: Plato calls
beauty a privilege of nature: Theophrastus (arch fellow,) a silent
cheat: Theocritus, (cunning elf,) a delightful prejudice; Carneades, a
solitary kingdom, (which he doubtless would keep to himself): Domitian
says that nothing is more grateful, (not even killing flies); Aristotle
affirms that beauty is better than all the letters of recommendation in
the world: Homer, that it is a glorious gift of nature; and Ovid calls
beauty a favour bestowed by the gods, which this same Ovid shows the
gods to have been jealous of among mortals." Certainly the moderns do
not wage war for a beautiful woman, as did the ancients: we fear they
would rather fight for an old castle.
To conclude, if, as Steele tells us, "to make happy is the true empire
of beauty;" why, buy the Book of Beauty, to be sure.]
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