“Stat contrà ratio, et secretam garrit in aurem,
Ne liceat facere id, quod quis vitiabit agendo.”
Reason opposes, and whispers in the secret ear,
That it is not lawful to do that which one will spoil by doing.
Only they who do not see how anything might be better done are forward
to try their hand on it. Even the master workman must be encouraged by
the reflection, that his awkwardness will be incompetent to do that
thing harm, to which his skill may fail to do justice. Here is no
apology for neglecting to do many things from a sense of our
incapacity,—for what deed does not fall maimed and imperfect from our
hands?—but only a warning to bungle less.
The satires of Persius are the furthest possible from inspired;
evidently a chosen, not imposed subject. Perhaps I have given him
credit for more earnestness than is apparent; but it is certain, that
that which alone we can call Persius, which is forever independent and
consistent, _was_ in earnest, and so sanctions the sober consideration
of all. The artist and his work are not to be separated. The most
wilfully foolish man cannot stand aloof from his folly, but the deed
and the doer together make ever one sober fact. There is but one stage
for the peasant and the actor. The buffoon cannot bribe you to laugh
always at his grimaces; they shall sculpture themselves in Egyptian
granite, to stand heavy as the pyramids on the ground of his character.
Suns rose and set and found us still on the dank forest path which
meanders up the Pemigewasset, now more like an otter’s or a marten’s
trail, or where a beaver had dragged his trap, than where the wheels of
travel raise a dust; where towns begin to serve as gores, only to hold
the earth together. The wild pigeon sat secure above our heads, high on
the dead limbs of naval pines, reduced to a robin’s size. The very
yards of our hostelries inclined upon the skirts of mountains, and, as
we passed, we looked up at a steep angle at the stems of maples waving
in the clouds.
Far up in the country,—for we would be faithful to our experience,—in
Thornton, perhaps, we met a soldier lad in the woods, going to muster
in full regimentals, and holding the middle of the road; deep in the
forest, with shouldered musket and military step, and thoughts of war
and glory all to himself. It was a sore trial to the youth, tougher
than many a battle, to get by us creditably and with soldierlike
bearing. Poor man! He actually shivered like a reed in his thin
military pants, and by the time we had got up with him, all the
sternness that becomes the soldier had forsaken his face, and he
skulked past as if he were driving his father’s sheep under a
sword-proof helmet. It was too much for him to carry any extra armor
then, who could not easily dispose of his natural arms. And for his
legs, they were like heavy artillery in boggy places; better to cut the
traces and forsake them. His greaves chafed and wrestled one with
another for want of other foes. But he did get by and get off with all
his munitions, and lived to fight another day; and I do not record this
as casting any suspicion on his honor and real bravery in the field.
Wandering on through notches which the streams had made, by the side
and over the brows of hoar hills and mountains, across the stumpy,
rocky, forested, and bepastured country, we at length crossed on
prostrate trees over the Amonoosuck, and breathed the free air of
Unappropriated Land. Thus, in fair days as well as foul, we had traced
up the river to which our native stream is a tributary, until from
Merrimack it became the Pemigewasset that leaped by our side, and when
we had passed its fountain-head, the Wild Amonoosuck, whose puny
channel was crossed at a stride, guiding us toward its distant source
among the mountains, and at length, without its guidance, we were
enabled to reach the summit of AGIOCOCHOOK.
“Sweet days, so cool, so calm, so bright,
The bridal of the earth and sky,
Sweet dews shall weep thy fall to-night,
For thou must die.”