and is so highly valued for its medicinal properties, especially as a
topical application in inflammatory affections of the spleen, pleura,
and liver, that it fetches a dollar the ounce in the Valle del Cauca.
The leaves are described as resembling those of the _Chrysophyllum
cainito_, or broad-leaved star apple, springing from short petioles, ten
or twelve inches long, oblong, ovate, pointed, with alternate veins, and
ferruginous on the under surface. The locality of the Sande he does not
point out, but says that a third kind of milk tree, the juice of which
is potable, grows in the same forests, where it is known by the name of
Lyria. This he regards as identical with the cow tree of Caracas, of
which Humboldt has given so graphic a description.
[From the Illustrated London News.]
SONG OF THE SEASONS.
BY CHARLES MACKAY.
I heard the language of the trees,
In the noons of the early summer;
As the leaves were moved like rippling seas
By the wind--a constant comer.
It came and it went at its wanton will;
And evermore loved to dally,
With branch and flower, from the cope of the hill
To the warm depths of the valley.
The sunlight glow'd; the waters flow'd;
The birds their music chanted,
And the words of the trees on my senses fell--
By a spirit of Beauty haunted:--
Said each to each, in mystic speech:--
"The skies our branches nourish;--
The world is good,--the world is fair,--
Let us _enjoy_ and flourish!"
Again I heard the steadfast trees;
The wintry winds were blowing;
There seem'd a roar as of stormy seas,
And of ships to the depths down-going
And ever a moan through the woods were blown,
As the branches snapp'd asunder,
And the long boughs swung like the frantic arms
Of a crowd in affright and wonder.
Heavily rattled the driving hail!
And storm and flood combining,
Laid bare the roots of mighty oaks
Under the shingle twining.
Said tree to tree, "These tempests free
Our sap and strength shall nourish;
Though the world be hard, though the world be cold,
We can endure and flourish!"
[From Eliza Cook's Journal.]
THE WANE OF THE YEAR.
But autumn wanes, and with it fade the golden tints, and burning hues,
and the warm breezes; for winter, with chilling clasp and frosty breath,
hurries like a destroyer over the fields to bury their beauties in his
snow, and to blanch and wither up with his frozen breath, the remnants
of the blooming year. The harvests are gathered, the seeds are sown, the
meadow becomes once more green and velvet-like as in the days of spring:
the weeds and flowers run to seed, and stand laden with cups, and urns,
and bells, each containing the unborn germs of another summer's beauty,
and only waiting for the winter winds to scatter them, and the spring
sunshine to fall upon them, where they fall to break into bud and leaf
and flower, and to whisper to the passing wind that the soul of beauty
dies not. It is now upon the waning of the sunshine and the falling of
the leaf that the bleak winds rise angrily, and the gloom of the dying
year deepens in the woods and fields. We hear the plying of the constant
flail mingling with the clatter of the farm-yard; we are visited by fogs
and moving mists, and heavy rains that last for days together; upon the
hill the horn of the hunter is heard, and in the mountain solitudes the
eagle's scream; up among craggy rifts the red deer bound, and the
waterfall keeps up its peals of thunder; and although the autumn, having
ripened the fruits of summer, and gathered into the garnery the yellow
fruitage of the field, must hie away to sunbright shores and islands in
the glittering seas of fairy lands, she leaves the spirits of the
flowers to hover hither and thither amid the leafless bowers to bewail
in midnight dirges the loss of leaves and blossoms and the joyful tide
of song. It is one of these of whom the poet speaks; for he, having been
caught up by the divine ether into the regions of eternal beauty, has
seen, as mortals seldom see, the shadows of created things, and has
spoken with the angel spirits of the world:--
A spirit haunts the year's last hours,
Dwelling amid these yellowing bowers;
To himself he talks:
For at eventide, listening earnestly,
At his work you may hear him sob and sigh.
In the walks
Earthward he boweth the heavy stalks
Of the mouldering flowers,
Heavily hangs the broad sunflower
Over its grave i' the earth so chilly,
Heavily hangs the hollyhock,
Heavily hangs the tiger-lily.
The air is damp, and hush'd and close,
As a sick man's room when he taketh repose
An hour before death;
My very heart faints, and my whole soul grieves,
At the rich moist smell of the rotting leaves,
And the breath
Of the fading edges of box beneath,
And the year's last rose.
Heavily hangs the broad sunflower
Over its grave i' the earth so chilly,
Heavily hangs the hollyhock,
Heavily hangs the tiger-lily.--_Tennyson._
The black clouds are even now gathering upon the fringes of the sky, and
the mellow season of the fruitage ends. Thus all the changes of the
earth pass round, each imprinting its semblance on the brow of man, and
writing its lessons on his soul; that like the green earth beneath his
feet, he may, through cold and heat, through storm and sun, be ever
blossoming with fragrant flowers, and yielding refreshing fruit from the
inexhaustible soil of a regenerated heart.
[From Slack's Ministry of the Beautiful, just published by A. Hart,
Philadelphia.]
THE FOUNTAIN IN THE WOOD.
A little way apart from a great city was a fountain in a wood. The water
gushed from a rock and ran in a little crystal stream to a mossy basin
below; the wildflowers nodded their heads to catch its tiny spray; tall
trees overarched it; and through the interspaces of their moving leaves
the sunlight came and danced with rainbow feet upon its sparkling
surface.
There was a young girl who managed every day to escape a little while
from the turmoil of the city, and went like a pilgrim to the fountain in
the wood. The water was sparkling, the moss and fern looked very lovely
in the gentle moisture which the fountain cast upon them, and the trees
waved their branches and rustled their green leaves in happy concert
with the summer breeze. The girl loved the beauty of the scene and it
grew upon her. Every day the fountain had a fresh tale to tell, and the
whispering murmur of the leaves was ever new. By-and-by she came to know
something of the language in which the fountain, the ferns, the mosses,
and the trees held converse. She listened very patiently, full of wonder
and of love. She heard them often regret that man would not learn their
language, that they might tell him the beautiful things they had to say.
At last the maiden ventured to tell them that she knew their tongue, and
with what exquisite delight she heard them talk. The fountain flowed
faster, more sunbeams danced on its waters, the leaves sang a new song,
and the ferns and mosses grew greener before her eyes. They all told her
what joy thrilled through them at her words. Human beings had passed
them in abundance, they said, and as there was a tradition among the
flowers that men once spoke, they hoped one day to hear them do so
again. The maiden told them that all men spoke, at which they were
astonished, but said that making articulate noises was not speaking,
many such they had heard, but never till now real human speech; for
that, they said, could come alone from the mind and heart. It was the
voice of the body which men usually talked with, and that they did not
understand, but only the voice of the soul, which was rare to hear. Then
there was great joy through all the wood, and there went forth a report
that at length a maiden was found whose soul could speak, and who knew
the language of the flowers and the fountain. And the trees and the
stream said one to another, "Even so did our old prophets teach, and
now hath it been fulfilled." Then the maiden tried to tell her friends
in the city what she had heard at the fountain, but could explain very
little, for although they knew her words, they felt not her meaning. And
certain young men came and begged her to take them to the wood that they
might hear the voices. So she took one after another, but nothing came
of it, for to them the fountain and the trees were mute. Many thought
the maiden mad, and laughed at her belief, but they could not take the
sweet voices away from her. Now the maidens wished her to take them
also, and she did, but with little better success. A few thought they
heard something, but knew not what, and on their return to the city its
bustle obliterated the small remembrance they had carried away. At
length a young man begged the maiden to give him a trial, and she did
so. They went hand in hand to the fountain, and he heard the language,
although not so well as the maiden; but she helped him, and found that
when both heard the words together they were more beautiful than ever.
She let go his hand, and much of the beauty was gone; the fountain told
them to join hands and lips also, and they did it. Then arose sweeter
sounds than they had ever heard, and soft voices encompassed them
saying, "Henceforth be united; for the spirit of truth and beauty hath
made you one."
[From Dr. Marcy's Homeopathic Theory and Practice of Medicine.]
WEARING THE BEARD.
One great cause of the frequent occurrence of chronic bronchitis may be
found in the reprehensible fashion of shaving the beard. That this
ornament was given by the Creator for some useful purpose, there can be
no doubt, for in fashioning the human body, he gave nothing unbecoming a
perfect man, nothing useless, nothing superfluous. Hair being an
imperfect conductor of caloric, is admirably calculated to retain the
animal warmth of that part of the body which is so constantly and
necessarily exposed to the weather, and thus to protect this important
portion of the respiratory passage from the injurious effects of sudden
checks of perspiration.
When one exercises for hours his vocal organs, with the unremitted
activity of a public declamation, the pores of the skin in the vicinity
of the throat and chest become relaxed, so that when he enters the open
air, the whole force of the atmosphere bears upon these parts, and he
sooner or later contracts a bronchitis; while, had he the flowing beard
with which his Maker has endowed him, uncut, to protect these important
parts, he would escape any degree of exposure unharmed.
The fact that Jews and other people who wear the beard long, are but
rarely afflicted with bronchitis and analogous disorders, suggests a
powerful argument in support of these views.
[From "Ada Greville," by Peter Leicester.]
A VIEW OF BOMBAY.
They had soon reached the Apollo Bunder, where they were to land, and
where Ada's attention was promptly engaged by the bustle awaiting her
there; and where, from among numbers of carriages, and palanquins, and
carts in waiting--many of them of such extraordinary shapes--some moved
by horses, some by bullocks, and some by men, and all looking strange;
from their odd commixture, Mr. McGregor's phaeton promptly drew up, and
he placed the ladies in it, himself driving, and the two maids following
in a palanquin carriage. This latter amused Ada exceedingly; a
_vis-a-vis_, in fact, very long, and very low, drawn by bullocks, whose
ungainly and uneven paces were very unlike any other motion to which, so
far, her experience had been subjected; but they went well enough, and
quickly too, and Ada soon forgot their eccentricities in her surprise at
the many strange things she saw by the way. The airy appearance of the
houses, full of windows and doors, and all cased round by verandahs; the
native mud bazaars, so rude and uncouth in their shapes, and daubed over
with all kinds of glaring colours; with the women sitting in the open
verandahs, their broad brooms in hand, whisking off from their
food-wares the flies, myriads of which seem to contend with them for
ownership; the native women in the streets carrying water, in their
graceful dress, their scanty little jackets and short garments
exhibiting to advantage their beautiful limbs and elegant motion, the
very poorest of them covered with jewels--the wonted mode, indeed, in
which they keep what little property they have--the women, too, working
with the men, and undertaking all kinds of labor; the black, naked
coolies running here and there to snatch at any little employment that
would bring them but an _anna_. Contrasting with these, and mixed up
pell mell with them, the smart young officers cantering about, the
carriages of every shape and grade, from the pompous hackery, with its
gaudy, umbrella-like top, and no less pompous occupant, in his turban
and jewels, his bullocks covered with bells making more noise than the
jumbling vehicle itself, down to the meager bullock cart, at hire, for
the merest trifle. Here and there, too, some other great native, on his
sumptuously caparisoned horse, with arched neck and long flowing tail
sweeping the ground, and feeling as important as his rider; and the
popish priests, in their long, black gowns, and long beards; and the
civilians, of almost every rank, in their light, white jackets; and the
umbrellas; and the universal tomtoms, incessantly going; and above all,
the numbers of palanquins, each with its eight bearers, running here,
there, and everywhere; everything, indeed, so unlike dear old England;
everything, even did not the burning sun of itself tell the fact, too
sensibly to be mistaken, reminding the stranger that she was in the
Indian land.
From "The Memorial:"
[The most brilliant and altogether attractive gift-book of the season,
edited by Mrs. Hewitt, and published by Putnam.]
FRANCES SARGENT OSGOOD.
BY RUFUS WILMOT GRISWOLD.
From the beginning of our intellectual history women have done far more
than their share in both creation and construction. The worshipful Mrs.
Bradstreet, who two hundred years ago held her court of wit among the
classic groves of Harvard, was in her day--the day in which Spenser,
Shakspeare, and Milton sung--the finest poet of her sex whose verse was
in the English language; and there was little extravagance in the title
bestowed by her London admirers, when they printed her works as those
"of the Tenth Muse, recently sprung up in America." In the beginning of
the present century we had no bard to dispute the crown with Elizabeth
Townsend, whose "Ode to Liberty" commanded the applause of Southey and
Wordsworth in their best days; whose "Omnipresence of the Deity" is
declared by Dr. Cheever to be worthy of those great poets or of
Coleridge; and who still lives, beloved and reverenced, in venerable
years, the last of one of the most distinguished families of New
England.
More recently, Maria Brooks, called in "The Doctor" _Maria del
Occidente_, burst upon the world with "Zophiel," that splendid piece of
imagination and passion which stands, the vindication of the subtlety,
power and comprehension of the genius of woman, justifying by
comparison, the skepticism of Lamb when he suggested, to the author of
"The Excursion," whether the sex had "ever produced any thing so great."
Of our living and more strictly contemporary female poets, we mention
with unhesitating pride Mrs. Sigourney, Mrs. Oakes Smith, Mrs. Hewett,
Mrs. Whitman, Mrs. Welby, Alice Carey, "Edith May," Miss Lynch, and Miss
Clarke, as poets of a genuine inspiration, displaying native powers and
capacities in art such as in all periods have been held sufficient to
insure to their possessors lasting fame, and to the nations which they
adorned, the most desirable glory.
It is Longfellow who says,
----"What we admire in a woman,
Is her affection, not her intellect."
The sentiment is unworthy a poet, the mind as well as the heart claims
sympathy, and there is no sympathy but in equality; we need in woman the
completion of our own natures; that her finer, clearer, and purer vision
should pierce for us the mysteries that are hidden from our own senses,
strengthened, but dulled, in the rude shocks of the out-door world, from
which she is screened, by her pursuits, to be the minister of God to us:
to win us by the beautiful to whatever in the present life or the
immortal is deserving a great ambition. We care little for any of the
mathematicians, metaphysicians, or politicians, who, as shamelessly as
Helen, quit their sphere. Intellect in woman, so directed, we do not
admire, and of affection such women are incapable. There is something
divine in woman, and she whose true vocation it is to write, has some
sort of inspiration, which relieves her from the processes and accidents
of knowledge, to display only wisdom in all the range of gentleness, and
all the forms of grace. The equality of the sexes is one of the absurd
questions which have arisen from a denial of the _distinctions_ of their
faculties and duties--of the masculine energy from the feminine
refinement. The ruder sort of women cannot comprehend that there is a
distinction, not of dignity, but of kind; and so, casting aside their
own eminence, for which they are too base, and seeking after ours, for
which they are too weak, they are hermaphroditish disturbers of the
peace of both. In the main our American women are free from this
reproach; they have known their mission, and have carried on the threads
of civility through the years, so strained that they have been
melodiously vocal with every breath of passion from the common heart. We
turn from the jar of senates, from politics, theologies, philosophies,
and all forms of intellectual trial and conflict, to that portion of our
literature which they have given us, coming like dews and flowers after
glaciers and rocks, the hush of music after the tragedy, silence and
rest after turmoil of action. The home where love is refined and
elevated by intellect, and woman, by her separate and never-superfluous
or clashing mental activity, sustains her part in the life-harmony, is
the vestibule of heaven to us; and there we hear the poetesses repeat
the songs to which they have listened, when wandering nearer than we may
go to the world in which humanity shall be perfect again, by the union
in all of all power and goodness and beauty.
The finest intelligence that woman has in our time brought to the
ministry of the beautiful, is no longer with us. Frances Sargent Osgood
died in New-York, at fifteen minutes before three o'clock, in the
afternoon of Sunday, the twelfth of May, 1850. These words swept like a
surge of sadness wherever there was grace and gentleness, and sweet
affections. All that was in her life was womanly, "pure womanly," and so
is all in the undying words she left us. This is her distinction.
Mrs. Osgood was of a family of poets. Mrs. Anna Maria Wells, whose
abilities are illustrated in a volume of "Poems and Juvenile Sketches"
published in 1830, is a daughter of her mother; Mrs. E.D. Harrington,
the author of various graceful compositions in verse and prose, is her
youngest sister; and Mr. A.A. Locke, a brilliant and elegant writer, for
many years connected with the public journals, was her brother. She was
a native of Boston, where her father, Mr. Joseph Locke, was a highly
accomplished merchant. Her earlier life, however, was passed principally
in Hingham, a village of peculiar beauty, well calculated to arouse the
dormant poetry of the soul; and here, even in childhood, she became
noted for her poetical powers. In their exercise she was rather aided
than discouraged by her parents, who were proud of her genius and
sympathized with all her aspirations. The unusual merit of some of her
first productions attracted the notice of Mrs. Child, who was then
editing a Juvenile Miscellany, and who foresaw the reputation which her
young contributor afterwards acquired. Employing the _nomme de plume_ of
"Florence," she made it widely familiar by her numerous contributions in
the Miscellany, as well as, subsequently, for other periodicals.
In 1834, she became acquainted with Mr. S.S. Osgood, the painter--a man
of genius in his profession--whose life of various adventure is full of
romantic interest; and while, soon after, she was sitting for a
portrait, the artist told her his strange vicissitudes by sea and land;
how as a sailor-boy he had climbed the dizzy maintop in the storm; how,
in Europe he followed with his palette in the track of the flute-playing
Goldsmith: and among the
Antres vast and deserts idle,
Rough quarries, rocks, and hills whose heads touch heaven,
of South America, had found in pictures of the crucifixion, and of the
Liberator Bolivar--the rude productions of his untaught
pencil--passports to the hearts of the peasant, the partizan, and the
robber. She listened, like the fair Venetian; they were married, and
soon after went to London, where Mr. Osgood had sometime before been a
pupil of the Royal Academy.
During this residence in the Great Metropolis, which lasted four years,
Mr. Osgood was successful in his art--painting portraits of Lord
Lyndhurst, Thomas Campbell, Mrs. Norton, and many other distinguished
characters, which secured for him an enviable reputation--and Mrs.
Osgood made herself known by her contributions to the magazines, by a
miniature volume, entitled "The Casket of Fate," and by the collection
of her poems published by Edward Churton, in 1839, under the title of "A
Wreath of Wild Flowers from New England." She was now about twenty-seven
years of age, and this volume contained all her early compositions which
then met the approval of her judgment. Among them are many pieces of
grace and beauty, such as belong to joyous and hopeful girlhood, and
one, of a more ambitious character, under the name of "Elfrida"--a
dramatic poem, founded upon incidents in early English history--in which
there are signs of more strength and tenderness, and promise of greater
achievement, though it is without the unity and proportion necessary to
eminent success in this kind of writing.
Among her attached friends here--a circle that included the Hon. Mrs.
Norton, Mrs. Hofland, the Rev. Hobart Caunter, Archdeacon Wrangham, the
late W. Cooke Taylor, LL.D., and many others known in the various
departments of literature--was the most successful dramatist of the age,
James Sheridan Knowles, who was so much pleased with "Elfrida," and so
confident that her abilities in this line, if duly cultivated, would
enable her to win distinction, that he urged upon her the composition of
a comedy, promising himself to superintend its production on the stage.
She accordingly wrote "The Happy Release, or The Triumphs of Love," a
play in three acts, which was accepted, and was to have been brought out
as soon as she could change slightly one of the scenes, to suit the
views of the manager as to effect, when intelligence of the death of her
father suddenly recalled her to the United States, and thoughts of
writing for the stage were abandoned for new interests and new pursuits.
Mr. and Mrs. Osgood arrived in Boston early in 1840, and they soon after
came to New-York, where they afterward resided; though occasionally
absent, as the pursuit of his profession, or ill health, called Mr.
Osgood to other parts of the country. Mrs. Osgood was engaged in various
literary occupations. She edited, among other books, "The Poetry of
Flowers, and Flowers of Poetry," (New-York, 1841,) and "The Floral
Offering," (Philadelphia, 1847,) two richly embellished souvenirs; and
she was an industrious and very popular writer for the literary
magazines and other miscellanies.
She was always of a fragile constitution, easily acted upon by whatever
affects health, and in her latter years, except in the more genial
seasons of the spring and autumn, was frequently an invalid. In the
winter of 1847-8, she suffered more than ever previously, but the next
winter she was better, and her husband, who was advised by his
physicians to discontinue, for a while, the practice of his profession,
availed himself of the opportunity to go in pursuit of health and riches
to the mines of the Pacific. He left New-York on the fifth of February,
1849, and was absent one year. Mrs. Osgood's health was variable during
the summer, which she passed chiefly at Saratoga Springs, in the company
of a family of intimate friends; and as the colder months came on, her
strength decayed, so that before the close of November, she was confined
to her apartments. She bore her sufferings with resignation, and her
natural hopefulness cheered her all the while, with remembrances that
she had before come out with the flowers and the embracing airs, and
dreams that she would again be in the world with nature. Two or three
weeks before her death, her husband carried her in his arms, like a
child, to a new home, and she was happier than she had been for months,
in the excitement of selecting its furniture, brought in specimens or
patterns to her bedside. "_We shall be so happy!_" was her salutation to
the few friends who were admitted to see her; but they saw, and her
physicians saw, that her life was ebbing fast, and that she would never
never again see the brooks and greens fields for which she pined, nor
even any of the apartments but the one she occupied of her own house. I
wrote the terrible truth to her, in studiously gentle words, reminding
her that in heaven there is richer and more delicious beauty, that there
is no discord in the sweet sounds there, no poison in the perfume of the
flowers there, and that they know not any sorrow who are with Our
Father. She read the brief note almost to the end silently, and then
turned upon her pillow like a child, and wept the last tears that were
in a fountain which had flowed for every grief but hers she ever knew.
"I cannot leave my beautiful home," she said, looking about upon the
souvenirs of many an affectionate recollection; "and my noble husband,
and Lily and May!" These last are her children. But the sentence was
confirmed by other friends, and she resigned herself to the will of God.
The next evening but one, a young girl went to amuse her, by making
paper flowers for her, and teaching her to make them: and she wrote to
her these verses--her dying song:
You've woven roses round my way,
And gladdened all my being;
How much I thank you none can say
Save only the All-seeing....
_I'm going through the Eternal gates
Ere June's sweet roses blow;
Death's lovely angel leads me there--
And it is sweet to go._
May 7th, 1850.
At the end of five days, in the afternoon of Sunday, the twelfth of May,
as gently as one goes to sleep, she withdrew into a better world.
On Tuesday, her remains were removed to Boston, to be interred in the
cemetery of Mount Auburn. It was a beautiful day, in the fulness of the
spring, mild and calm, and clouded to a solemn shadow. In the morning,
as the company of the dead and living started, the birds were singing
what seemed to her friends a sadder song than they were wont to sing;
and, as the cars flew fast on the long way, the trees bowed their
luxuriant foliage, and the flowers in the verdant fields were swung
slowly on their stems, filling the air with the gentlest fragrance; and
the streams, it was fancied, checked their turbulent speed to move in
sympathy, as from the heart of Nature tears might flow for a dead
worshipper. God was thanked that all the elements were ordered so, that
sweetest incense, and such natural music, and reverent aspect of the
silent world, should wait upon her, as so many hearts did, in this last
journey. She slept all the while, nor waked when, in the evening, in her
native city, a few familiar faces bent above her, with difficult looks
through tears, and scarcely audible words, to bid farewell to her. On
Wednesday she was buried, with some dear ones who had gone before
her--beside her mother and her daughter--in that City of Rest, more
sacred now than all before had made it, to those whose spirits are
attuned to Beauty or to Sorrow--those twin sisters, so rarely parted,
until the last has led the first to Heaven.
The character of Mrs. Osgood, to those who were admitted to its more
minute observance, illustrated the finest and highest qualities of
intelligence and virtue. In her manners, there was an almost infantile
gaiety and vivacity, with the utmost simplicity and gentleness, and an
unfailing and indefectable grace, that seemed an especial gift of
nature, unattainable, and possessed only by her and the creatures of our
imaginations whom we call the angels. The delicacy of her organization
was such that she had always the quick sensibility of childhood. The
magnetism of life was round about her, and her astonishingly impressible
faculties were vital in every part, with a polarity toward beauty, all
the various and changing rays of which entered into her consciousness,
and were refracted in her conversation and action. Though, from the
generosity of her nature, exquisitely sensible to applause, she had none
of those immoralities of the intellect, which impair the nobleness of
impulse--no unworthy pride, or vanity, or selfishness--nor was her will
ever swayed from the line of truth, except as the action of the judgment
may sometimes have been irregular from the feverish play of feeling. Her
friendships were quickly formed, but limited by the number of genial
hearts brought within the sphere of her knowledge and sympathy. Probably
there was never a woman of whom it might be said more truly that to her
own sex she was an object almost of worship. She was looked upon for her
simplicity, purity, and childlike want of worldly tact or feeling, with
involuntary affection; listened to, for her freshness, grace, and
brilliancy, with admiration; and remembered, for her unselfishness,
quick sympathy, devotedness, capacity of suffering, and high
aspirations, with a sentiment approaching reverence. This regard which
she inspired in women was not only shown by the most constant and
delicate attentions in society, where she was always the most loved and
honored guest, but it is recorded in the letters and other writings of
many of her most eminent contemporaries, who saw in her an angel, haply
in exile, the sweetness and natural wisdom of whose life elevated her
far above all jealousies, and made her the pride and boast and glory of
womanhood. Many pages might be filled with their tributes, which seem
surely the most heartfelt that mortal ever gave to mortal, but the
limits of this sketch of her will suffer only a few and very brief
quotations from her correspondence. Unquestionably one of the most
brilliant literary women of our time is Miss Clarke, so well known as
"Grace Greenwood." She wrote of Mrs. Osgood with no more earnestness
than others wrote of her, yet in a letter to the "Home Journal," in
1846, she says:
"And how are the critical Caesars, one after another, 'giving in' to
the graces, and fascinations, and soft enchantments of this
Cleopatra of song. She charms _lions_ to sleep, with her silver
lute, and then throws around them the delicate net-work of her
exquisite fancy, and lo! when they wake, they are well content in
their silken prison.
'From the tips of her pen a melody flows,
Sweet as the nightingale sings to the rose.'
"With her beautiful Italian soul--with her impulse, and wild
energy, and exuberant fancy, and glowing passionateness--and with
the wonderful facility with which, like an almond-tree casting off
its blossoms, she flings abroad her heart-tinted and love-perfumed
lays, she has, I must believe, more of the improvisatrice than has
yet been revealed by any of our gifted countrywomen now before the
people. Heaven bless her, and grant her ever, as now, to have
laurels on her brows, and to browse on her laurels! Were I the
President of these United States, I would immortalize my brief term
of office by the crowning of our Corinna, at the Capitol."
And about the same period, having been introduced to her, she referred
to the event:
"It seems like a 'pleasant vision of the night' that I have indeed
seen 'the idol of my early dreams,' that I have been within the
charmed circle of her real presence, sat by her very side, and
lovingly watched the shadow of each feeling that moved her soul,
glance o'er that radiant face!'"
And writing to her:
"Dear Mrs. Osgood, let me lay this sweet weight off my heart--look
down into my eyes--believe me--long, long before we met, I loved
you, with a strange, almost passionate love. You were my literary
idol: I repeated some of your poems so often, that their echo never
had time to die away; your earlier, bird-like warblings so chimed
in with the joyous beatings of my heart, that it seemed it could
not throb without them; and when you raised 'your lightning glance
to heaven,' and sang your loftiest song, the liquid notes fell upon
my soul like baptismal waters. With an 'intense and burning,'
almost unwomanly ambition, I have still joyed in _your_ success,
and gloried in your glory; and all because Love laid its reproving
finger on the lip of Envy. I cannot tell you how much this romantic
interest has deepened,
Now I have looked upon thy face,
Have felt thy twining arms' embrace,
Thy very bosom's swell;--
One moment leaned this brow of mine
On song's sweet source, and love's pure shrine,
And music's 'magic cell!"
Another friend of hers, Miss Hunter, whose pleasing contributions to our
literature are well known, probably on account of some misapprehension,
had not visited her for several months, but hearing of her illness she
wrote:
"Learning this, by chance, I have summoned courage once more to
address you--overcoming my fear of being intrusive, and offering as
my apology the simple assertion that it is my _heart_ prompts me.
Till to-day pride has checked me: but you are 'very ill,' and I can
no longer resist the impulse. With the assurance that I will never
again trouble you, that now I neither ask nor expect the slightest
response, suffer me thus to steal to your presence, to sit beside
your bed, and for the last time to speak of a love that has
followed you through months of separation, rejoicing when you have
rejoiced, and mourning when you have mourned. You know how, from
childhood, I have worshipped you, that since our first meeting you
have been my idol, the realization of my dreams; and do not suppose
that because I have failed to inspire you with a lasting interest,
I shall ever feel for you a less deep or less fervent devotion. The
blame or misfortune of our estrangement I have always regarded as
only mine. I know I have seemed indifferent when I panted for
expression. You have thought me unsympathizing when my every nerve
thrilled to your words. I have lived in comparative seclusion; I
have an unconquerable reserve, induced by such an experience; and
when I have been with you my soul has had no voice.
"The time has been when I could not bear the thought of never
regaining your friendship in this world--when I would say 'The
years! oh, the years of this earth-life, that must pass so slowly!'
And when I saw any new poem of yours, I experienced the most sad
emotions,--every word I read was so like you, it seemed as if you
had passed through the room, speaking to others near me kindly, but
regarding me coldly, or not seeing me. But one day I read in a book
by Miss Bremer, 'It is a sad experience, who can describe its
bitterness! when we see the friend, on whom we have built for
eternity, grow cold, and become lost to us. But believe it not,
thou loving, sorrowing soul--believe it not! continue thyself only,
and the moment will come when thy friend will return to thee. Yes,
_there_, where all delusions cease, thy friend will find thee gain,
in a higher light,--will acknowledge thee and unite herself to thee
forever.' And I took this assurance to my heart.... We may meet in
heaven, if not here. I shall not go see you, though my heart is
wrung by this intelligence of your illness. So good-bye, darling!
May good angels who have power to bless you, linger around your
pillow with as much love as I shall feel for you forever.
"March 6, 1850."
I have been permitted to transcribe this letter, and among Mrs. Osgood's
papers that have been confided to me are very many such, evincing a
devotion from women that could have been won only by the most angelic
qualities of intellect and feeling.
It was the custom in the last century, when there was among authors more
of the _esprit du corps_ than now, for poets to greet each other's
appearance in print with complimental verses, celebrating the qualities
for which the seeker after bays was most distinguished. Thus in 1729, we
find the _Omnium Opera_ of John Duke of Buckingham prefaced by
"testimonials of authors concerning His Grace and his writings;" and the
names of Garth, Roscommon, Dryden, and Prior, are among his endorsers.
There have been a few instances of the kind in this country, of which
the most noticeable is that of Cotton Mather, in whose _Magnalia_ there
is a curious display of erudition and poetical ingenuity, in gratulatory
odes. The literary journals of the last few years furnish many such
tributes to Mrs. Osgood, which are interesting to her friends for their
illustration of the personal regard in which she was held. I cannot
quote them here; they alone would fill a volume, as others might be
filled with the copies of verses privately addressed to her, all through
her life, from the period when, like a lovely vision, she first beamed
upon society, till that last season, in which the salutations in
assemblies she had frequented were followed by saddest inquiries for the
absent and dying poetess. They but repeat, with more or less felicity,
the graceful praise of Mrs. Hewitt, in a poem upon her portrait:
She dwells amid the world's dark ways
Pure as in childhood's hours;
And all her thoughts are poetry,
And all her words are flowers.
Or that of another, addressed to her:
Thou wouldst be loved? then let thy heart
From its present pathway part not!
Being everything, which now thou art,
Be nothing which thou art not.
So with the world thy gentle ways,
Thy grace, thy more than beauty,
Shall be an endless theme of praise,
And love--a simple duty.
Among men, generally, such gentleness and sweetness of temper, joined to
such grace and wit, could not fail of making her equally beloved and
admired. She was the keeper of secrets, the counsellor in difficulties,
the ever wise missionary and industrious toiler, for all her friends.
She would brave any privation to alleviate another's sufferings; she
never spoke ill of any one; and when others assailed, she was the most
prompt of all in generous argument. An eminent statesman having casually
met her in Philadelphia, afterward described her to a niece of his who
was visiting that city:
"If you have opportunity do not fail to become acquainted with Mrs.
Osgood. I have never known such a woman. She continually surprised
me by the strength and subtlety of her understanding, in which I
looked for only sportiveness and delicacy. She is entirely a child
of nature and Mrs. ----, who introduced me to her, and who has
known her many years I believe, very intimately, declares that she
is an angel. Persuade her to Washington, and promise her everything
you and all of us can do for her pleasure here."
For her natural gaiety, her want of a certain worldly tact, and other
reasons, the determinations she sometimes formed that she would be a
housekeeper, were regarded as fit occasions of jesting, and among the
letters sent to her when once she ventured upon the ambitious office, is
one by her early and always devoted friend, Governor ----, in which we
have glimpses of her domestic qualities:
"It is not often that I waste fine paper in writing to people who
do not think me worth answering. I generally reserve my 'ornamental
hand' for those who return two letters for my one. But you are an
exception to all rules,--and when I heard that you were about to
commence _housekeeping_, I could not forbear sending a word of
congratulation and encouragement. I have long thought that your
eminently _practical_ turn of mind, my dear friend, would find
congenial employment in superintending an 'establishment.' What a
house you will keep! nothing out of place, from garret to
cellar--dinner always on the table at the regular hour--everything
like clock-work--and wo to the servant who attempts to steal
anything from your store-room! wo to the butcher who attempts to
impose upon you a bad joint, or the grocer who attempts to cheat
you in the weight of sugar! Such things never will do with you!
When I first heard of your project, I thought it must be Ellen or
May going to play housekeeping with their baby-things, but on a
moment's reflection I was convinced that you knew more about
managing for a family than either of them--certainly more than May,
and I think, upon the whole, more than even Ellen! Let Mr. Osgood
paint you with a bunch of keys in your belt, and do send me a
daguerreotype of yourself the day after you are installed."
She was not indeed fitted for such cares, or for any routine, and ill
health and the desire of freedom prevented her again making such an
attempt until she finally entered "her own home" to die.
There was a very intimate relation between Mrs. Osgood's personal and
her literary characteristics. She has frequently failed of justice, from
critics but superficially acquainted with her works, because they have
not been able to understand how a mind capable of the sparkling and
graceful trifles, illustrating an exhaustless fancy and a natural melody
of language, with which she amused society in moments of half capricious
gaiety or tenderness, could produce a class of compositions which demand
imagination and passion. In considering this subject, it should not be
forgotten that these attributes are here to be regarded as in their
feminine development.
Mrs. Osgood was, perhaps, as deserving as any one of whom we read in
literary history, of the title of improvisatrice. Her beautiful songs,
displaying so truly the most delicate lights and shadows of woman's
heart, and surprising by their unity, completeness, and rhythmical
perfection, were written with almost the fluency of conversation. The
secret of this was in the wonderful sympathy between her emotions and
faculties, both of exquisite sensibility, and subject to the influences
of whatever has power upon the subtler and diviner qualities of human
nature. Her facility in invention, in the use of poetical language, and
in giving form to every airy dream or breath of passion, was
astonishing. It is most true of men, that no one has ever attained to
the highest reach of his capacities in any art--and least of all in
poetry--without labor--without the application of the "second thought,"
after the frenzy of the divine afflatus is passed--in giving polish and
shapely grace. The imagination is the servant of the reason; the
creative faculties present their triumphs to the constructive--and the
seal to the attainable is set, by every one, in repose and meditation.
But this is scarcely a law of the feminine intelligence, which, when
really endowed with genius, is apt to move spontaneously, and at once,
with its greatest perfection. Certainly, Mrs. Osgood disclaimed the
wrestling of thought with expression. For the most part her poems cost
her as little effort or reflection, as the epigram or touching sentiment
that summoned laughter or tears to the group about her in the
drawing-room.
She was indifferent to fame; she sung simply in conformity to a law of
her existence; and perhaps this want of interest was the cause not only
of the most striking faults in her compositions, but likewise of the
common ignorance of their variety and extent. Accustomed from childhood
to the use of the pen--resorting to it through a life continually
exposed to the excitements of gaiety and change, or the depressions of
affliction and care, she strewed along her way with a prodigality almost
unexampled the choicest flowers of feeling: left them unconsidered and
unclaimed in the repositories of friendship, or under fanciful names,
which she herself had forgotten, in newspapers and magazines,--in which
they were sure to be recognised by some one, and so the purpose of their
creation fulfilled. It was therefore very difficult to make any such
collection of her works as justly to display her powers and their
activity; and the more so, that those effusions of hers which were
likely to be most characteristic, and of the rarest excellence, were
least liable to exposure in printed forms, by the friends, widely
scattered in Europe and America, for whom they were written. But
notwithstanding these disadvantages, the works of Mrs. Osgood with which
we are acquainted, are more voluminous than those of Mrs. Hemans or Mrs.
Norton.[8] Besides the "Wreath of Wild Flowers from New England," which
appeared during her residence in London, a collection of her poems in
one volume was published in New York in 1846; and in 1849, Mr. Hart, of
Philadelphia, gave to the public, in a large octavo illustrated by our
best artists and equalling or surpassing in its tasteful and costly
style any work before issued from the press of this country, the most
complete and judiciously edited collection of them that has appeared.
This edition, however, contains less than half of her printed pieces
which she acknowledged; and among those which are omitted are a tragedy,
a comedy, a great number of piquant and ingenious _vers de societe_, and
several sacred pieces, which strike us as among the best writings of
their kind in our literature, which in this department, we may admit, is
more distinguishable for the profusion than for the quality of its
fruits.
[8: Besides the books by her which have been referred to, she
published _The Language of Gems_, (London); _The Snow Drop_,
(Providence); _Puss in Boots_, (New York); _Cries of New York_,
(New York); _The Flower Alphabet_, (Boston); _The Rose: Sketches in
Verse_, (Providence); _A Letter About the Lions, addressed to Mabel
in the Country_, (New York). The following list of her prose tales,
sketches, and essays, is probably very incomplete: A Day in New
England; A Crumpled Rose Leaf; Florence Howard; Ida Gray; Florence
Errington; A Match for the Matchmaker; Mary Evelyn; Once More;
Athenais; The Wife; The Little Lost Shoe; The Magic Lute; Feeling
_vs._ Beauty; The Doom; The Flower and Gem; The Coquette; The Soul
Awakened; Glimpses of a Soul, (in three parts); Lizzie Lincoln;
Dora's Reward; Waste Paper; Newport Tableaux; Daguerreotype
Pictures; Carry Carlisle; Valentine's Day; The Lady's Shadow;
Truth; Virginia; The Waltz and the Wager; The Poet's Metamorphosis;
Pride and Penitence; Mabel; Pictures from a Painter's Life;
Georgiana Hazleton; A Sketch; Kate Melbourne; Life in New York;
Leonora L'Estrange; The Magic Mirror; The Blue Belle; and Letters
of Kate Carol, (a series of sketches of men, women and books;)
contributed for the most part to Mr. Labree's _Illustrated
Magazine_.]
Mrs. Osgood's definition of poetry, that it is the rhythmical creation
of beauty, is as old as Sydney; and though on some grounds
objectionable, it is, perhaps, on the whole, as just as any that the
critics have given us. An intelligent examination, in the light of this
principle, of what she accomplished, will, it is believed, show that she
was, in the general, of the first rank of female poets; while in her
special domain, of the Poetry of the Affections, she had scarcely a
rival among women or men. As Pinckney said,
Affections were as thoughts to her, the measure of her hours--
Her feelings had the fragrancy and freshness of young flowers.
Of love, she sung with tenderness and delicacy, a wonderful richness of
fancy, and rhythms that echo all the cadences of feeling. From the arch
mockery of the triumphant and careless conqueror, to the most passionate
prayer of the despairing, every variety and height and depth of hope and
fear and bliss and pain is sounded, in words that move us to a solitary
lute or a full orchestra of a thousand voices; and with an _abandon_, as
suggestive of genuineness as that which sometimes made the elder Kean
seem "every inch a king." It is not to be supposed that all these
caprices are illustrations of the experiences of the artist, in the case
of the poet any more than in that of the actor: by an effort of the
will, they pass with the liberties of genius into their selected realms,
assume their guises, and discourse their language. If ever there were
--Depths of tenderness which showed when woke,
That _woman_ there as well as angel spoke,
they are not to be looked for in the printed specimens of woman's
genius. Mrs. Osgood guarded herself against such criticism, by a
statement in her preface, that many of her songs and other verses were
written to appear in prose sketches and stories, and were expressions of
feeling suitable to the persons and incidents with which they were at
first connected.
In this last edition, to which only reference will be made in these
paragraphs, her works are arranged under the divisions of _Miscellaneous
Poems_--embracing, with such as do not readily admit another
classification, her most ambitious and sustained compositions; _Sacred
Poems_--among which, "The Daughter of Herodias," the longest, is
remarkable for melodious versification and distinct painting: _Tales and
Ballads_--all distinguished for a happy play of fancy, and two or three
for the fruits of such creative energy as belongs to the first order of
poetical intelligences; _Floral Fancies_--which display a gaiety and
grace, an ingenuity of allegory, and elegant refinement of language,
that illustrate her fairy-like delicacy of mind and purity of feeling;
and _Songs_--of which we shall offer some particular observations in
their appropriate order. Scattered through the book we have a few poems
for children, so perfect in their way as to induce regret that she gave
so little attention to a kind of writing in which few are really
successful, and in which she is scarcely equalled.
The volume opens with a brief voluntary, which is followed by a
beautiful and touching address to The Spirit of Poetry, displaying the
perfection of her powers, and her consciousness that they had been too
much neglected while ministering more than all things else to her
happiness. If ever from her heart she poured a passionate song, it was
this, and these concluding lines of it admit us to the sacredest
experiences of her life:
Leave me not yet! Leave me not cold and lonely,
Thou star of promise o'er my clouded path!
Leave not the life that borrows from thee only
All of delight and beauty that it hath!
Thou that, when others knew not how to love me,
Nor cared to fathom half my yearning soul,
Didst wreathe thy flowers of light around, above me,
To woo and win me from my grief's control:
By all my dreams, the passionate and holy,
When thou hast sung love's lullaby to me,
By all the childlike worship, fond and lowly,
Which I have lavish'd upon thine and thee:
By all the lays my simple lute was learning
To echo from thy voice, stay with me still!
Once flown--alas! for thee there's no returning!
The charm will die o'er valley, wood and hill.
Tell me not Time, whose wing my brow has shaded,
Has wither'd Spring's sweet bloom within my heart;
Ah, no! the rose of love is yet unfaded,
Though hope and joy, its sister flowers, depart.
Well do I know that I have wrong'd thine altar,
With the light offerings of an idler's mind,
And thus, with shame, my pleading prayer I falter,
Leave me not, spirit! deaf, and dumb, and blind!
Deaf to the mystic harmony of nature,
Blind to the beauty of her stars and flowers;
Leave me not, heavenly yet human teacher,
Lonely and lost in this cold world of ours;
Heaven knows I need thy music and thy beauty
Still to beguile me on my dreary way,
To lighten to my soul the cares of duty,
And bless with radiant dreams the darken'd day;
To charm my wild heart in the worldly revel,
Lest I, too, join the aimless, false and vain.
Let me not lower to the soulless level
Of those whom now I pity and disdain!
Leave me not yet!--Leave me not cold and pining,
Thou bird of Paradise, whose plumes of light,
Where'er they rested, left a glory shining--
Fly not to heaven, or let me share thy flight!
After this comes one of her most poetical compositions, "Ermengarde's
Awakening," in which, with even more than her usual felicity of diction,
she has invested with mortal passion a group from the Pantheon. It is
too long to be quoted here, but as an example of her manner upon a
similar subject, and in the same rhythm, we copy the poem of "Eurydice:"
With heart that thrill'd to every earnest line,
I had been reading o'er that antique story,
Wherein the youth, half human, half divine,
Of all love-lore the Eidolon and glory,
Child of the Sun, with music's pleading spell,
In Pluto's palace swept, for love, his golden shell!
And in the wild, sweet legend, dimly traced,
My own heart's history unfolded seem'd;
Ah! lost one! by thy lover-minstrel graced
With homage pure as ever woman dreamed,
Too fondly worshipp'd, since such fate befell,
Was it not sweet to die--because beloved too well!
The scene is round me! Throned amid the gloom,
As a flower smiles on Etna's fatal breast,
Young Proserpine beside her lord doth bloom;
And near--of Orpheus' soul, oh, idol blest!--
While low for thee he tunes his lyre of light,
I see _thy_ meek, fair form dawn through that lurid night!
I see the glorious boy--his dark locks wreathing
Wildly the wan and spiritual brow;
His sweet, curved lip the soul of music breathing;
His blue Greek eyes, that speak Love's loyal vow;
I see him bend on _thee_ that eloquent glance,
The while those wondrous notes the realm of terror trance.
I see his face with more than mortal beauty
Kindling, as, armed with that sweet lyre alone,
Pledged to a holy and heroic duty,
He stands serene before the awful throne,
And looks on Hades' horrors with clear eye,
Since thou, his own adored Eurydice, art nigh.
Now soft and low a prelude sweet uprings,
As if a prison'd angel--pleading there
For life and love--were fetter'd 'neath the strings,
And poured his passionate soul upon the air!
Anon it clangs with wild, exulting swell,
Till the full paean peals triumphantly through Hell.
And thou, thy pale hands meekly lock'd before thee,
Thy sad eyes drinking _life_ from _his_ dear gaze,
Thy lips apart, thy hair a halo o'er thee
Trailing around thy throat its golden maze;
Thus, with all words in passionate silence dying,
Within thy _soul_ I hear Love's eager voice replying:
"Play on, mine Orpheus! Lo! while these are gazing,
Charm'd into statues by the god-taught strain,
I, I alone--to thy dear face upraising
My tearful glance--the life of life regain!
For every tone that steals into my heart
Doth to its worn weak pulse a mighty power impart.
"Play on, mine Orpheus! while thy music floats
Through the dread realm, divine with truth and grace,
See, dear one! how the chain of linked notes
Has fetter'd every spirit in its place!
Even Death, beside me, still and helpless lies,
And strives in vain to chill my frame with his cold eyes.
"Still, my own Orpheus, sweep the golden lyre!
Ah! dost thou mark how gentle Proserpine,
With clasped hands and eyes whose azure fire
Gleams thro' quick tears, thrilled by thy lay, doth lean
Her graceful head upon her stern lord's breast,
Like an o'erwearied child, whom music lulls to rest!
"Play, my proud minstrel! strike the chords again!
Lo, Victory crowns at last thy heavenly skill!
For Pluto turns relenting to the strain--
He waves his hand--he speaks his awful will!
My glorious Greek, lead on! but ah, _still_ lend
Thy soul to thy sweet lyre, lest yet thou lose thy friend!
"Think not of me! Think rather of the time,
When, moved by thy resistless melody
To the strange magic of a song sublime,
Thy argo grandly glided to the sea;
And in the majesty Minerva gave,
The graceful galley swept, with joy, the sounding wave.
"Or see, in Fancy's dream, thy Thracian trees,
Their proud heads bent submissive to the sound,
Sway'd by a tuneful and enchanted breeze,
March to slow music o'er the astonished ground;
Grove after grove descending from the hills,
While round thee weave their dance, the glad harmonious rills.
"Think not of me! Ha! by thy mighty sire,
My lord, my king, recall the dread behest!
Turn not, ah! turn not back those eyes of fire!
Oh! lost, forever lost! undone! unblest!
I faint, I die!--the serpent's fang once more
Is here!--nay, grieve not thus! Life, but _not Love_, is o'er!"
This is a noble poem, with too many interjections, and occasional
redundancies of imagery and epithet, betraying the author's customary
haste: but with unquestionable signs of that genuineness which is the
best attraction of the literature of sentiment. The longest and more
sustained of Mrs. Osgood's compositions is one entitled "Fragments of an
Unfinished Story" in which she has exhibited such a skill in blank
verse--frequently regarded as the easiest, but really the most difficult
of any--as induces regret that she so seldom made use of it. We have
here a masterly contrast of character in the equally natural expressions
of feeling by the two principal persons, both of whom are women: the
haughty Ida, and the impulsive child of passion, Imogen. It displays in
eminent perfection, that dramatic faculty which Sheridan Knowles and the
late William Cooke Taylor recognised as the most striking in the
composition of her genius. She had long meditated, and in her mind had
perfectly arranged, a more extended poem than she has left to us, upon
Music. It was to be in this measure, except some lyrical interludes, and
she was so confident of succeeding in it, that she deemed all she had
written of comparatively little worth. "These," she said to me one day,
pointing to the proof-leaves of the new edition of her poems, "these are
my 'Miscellaneous Verses:' let us get them out of the way, and never
think of them again, as the public never will when they have MY POEM!"
And her friends who heard the splendid scheme of her imagination, did
not doubt that when it should be clothed with the rich tissues of her
fancy, it would be all she dreamed of, and vindicate all that they
themselves were fond of saying of her powers. It was while her life was
fading; and no one else can grasp the shining threads, or weave them
into song, such as she heard lips, touched with divinest fire, far along
in the ages, repeating with her name. This was not vanity, or a low
ambition. She lingered, with subdued and tearful joy, when all the
living and the present seemed to fail her, upon the pages of the elect
of genius, and was happiest when she thought some words of hers might
lift a sad soul from a sea of sorrow.
It was perhaps the key-note of that unwritten poem, which she sounded in
these verses upon its subject, composed while the design most occupied
her attention:
The Father spake! In grand reverberations
Through space roll'd on the mighty music-tide,
While to its low, majestic modulations,
The clouds of chaos slowly swept aside.
The Father spake: a dream that had been lying
Hush'd, from eternity, in silence there,
Heard the pure melody, and low replying,
Grew to that music in the wondering air--
Grew to that music--slowly, grandly waking--
Till, bathed in beauty, it became a world!
Led by his voice, its spheric pathway taking,
While glorious clouds their wings around it furl'd.
Nor yet has ceased that sound, his love revealing,
Though, in response, a universe moves by;
Throughout eternity its echo pealing,
World after world awakes in glad reply.
And wheresoever, in his grand creation,
Sweet music breathes--in wave, or bird, or soul--
'Tis but the faint and far reverberation
Of that great tune to which the planets roll.
Mrs. Osgood produced something in almost every form of poetical
composition, but the necessary limits of this article permit but few
illustrations of the variety or perfectness of her capacities. The
examples given here, even if familiar, will possess a new interest now;
and no one will read them without a feeling of sadness that she who
wrote them died so young, just as the fairest flowers of her genius were
unfolding. One of the most exquisite pieces she had written in the last
few years, is entitled "Calumny," and we know not where to turn for
anything more delicately beautiful than the manner in which the subject
is treated.
A whisper woke the air,
A soft, light tone, and low,
Yet barbed with shame and wo.
Ah! might it only perish there,
Nor farther go!
But no! a quick and eager ear
Caught up the little, meaning sound;
Another voice has breathed it clear;
And so it wandered round
From ear to lip, and lip to ear,
Until it reached a gentle heart
That throbbed from all the world apart,
And that--it broke!
It was the only _heart_ it found,
The only heart 't was meant to find,
When first its accents woke.
It reached that gentle heart at last,
And that--it broke!
Low as it seemed to other ears,
It came a thunder-crash to _hers_--
That fragile girl, so fair and gay.
'Tis said a lovely humming bird,
That dreaming in a lily lay,
Was killed but by the gun's _report_
Some idle boy had fired in sport--
So exquisitely frail its frame,
The very _sound_ a death-blow came--
And thus her heart, unused to shame,
Shrined in _its_ lily too,
(For who the maid that knew,
But owned the delicate, flower-like grace
Of her young form and face!)--
Her light and happy heart, that beat
With love and hope so fast and sweet,
When first that cruel word it heard,
It fluttered like a frightened bird--
Then shut its wings and sighed,
And, with a silent shudder, died!
In some countries this would, perhaps, be the most frequently quoted of
the author's effusions; but here, the terse and forcible piece under the
title of "Laborare est Orare," will be admitted to all collections of
poetical specimens; and it deserves such popularity, for a combination
as rare as it is successful of common sense with the form and spirit of
poetry:
Pause not to dream of the future before us;
Pause not to weep the wild cares that come o'er us;
Hark, how Creation's deep musical chorus,
Unintermitting, goes up into heaven!
Never the ocean-wave falters in flowing;
Never the little seed stops in its growing;
More and more richly the rose-heart keeps glowing,
Till from its nourishing stem it is riven.
"Labor is worship!"--the robin is singing;
"Labor is worship!"--the wild bee is ringing;
Listen! that eloquent whisper upspringing
Speaks to thy soul from out nature's great heart.
From the dark cloud flows the life-giving shower;
From the rough sod blows the soft-breathing flower;
From the small insect, the rich coral bower;
Only man, in the plan, shrinks from his part.
Labor is life! 'Tis the still water faileth;
Idleness ever despaireth, bewaileth;
Keep the watch wound, for the dark rust assaileth;
Flowers droop and die in the stillness of noon.
Labor is glory!--the flying cloud lightens;
Only the waving wing changes and brightens;
Idle hearts only the dark future frightens;
Play the sweet keys, wouldst thou keep them in tune!
Labor is rest--from the sorrows that greet us;
Rest from all petty vexations that meet us,
Rest from sin-promptings that ever entreat us,
Rest from world-syrens that lure us to ill.
Work--and pure slumbers shall wait on thy pillow;
Work--thou shalt ride over Care's coming billow;
Lie not down wearied 'neath Woe's weeping willow;
Work with a stout heart and resolute will!
Labor is health! Lo! the husbandman reaping,
How through his veins goes the life current leaping!
How his strong arm, in its stalwart pride sweeping,
True as a sunbeam the swift sickle guides.
Labor is wealth--in the sea the pearl groweth;
Rich the queen's robe from the frail cocoon floweth;
From the fine acorn the strong forest bloweth;
Temple and statue the marble block hides.
Droop not, tho' shame, sin, and anguish are round thee!
Bravely fling off the cold chain that hath bound thee;
Look to yon pure heaven smiling beyond thee;
Rest not content in they darkness--a clod!
Work--for some good, be it ever so slowly;
Cherish some flower, be it ever so lowly;
Labor!--all labor is noble and holy;
Let thy great deeds be thy prayer to thy God.
In fine contrast with this is the description of a "Dancing Girl,"
written in a longer poem, addressed to her sister soon after her arrival
in London, in the autumn of 1834. It is as graceful as the vision it
brings so magically before us:
She comes--the spirit of the dance!
And but for those large, eloquent eyes,
Where passion speaks in every glance,
She'd seem a wanderer from the skies.
So light that, gazing breathless there,
Lest the celestial dream should go,
You'd think the music in the air
Waved the fair vision to and fro!
Or that the melody's sweet flow
Within the radiant creature play'd
And those soft wreathing arms of snow
And white sylph feet the music made.
Now gliding slow with dreamy grace,
Her eyes beneath their lashes lost;
Now motionless, with lifted face,
And small hands on her bosom cross'd.
And now with flashing eyes she springs,
Her whole bright figure raised in air,
As if her soul had spread its wings
And poised her one wild instant there!
She spoke not; but, so richly fraught
With language are her glance and smile,
That, when the curtain fell, I thought
She had been talking all the while.
In illustration of what we have said of Mrs. Osgood's delineations of
refined sentiment, we refer to the poems from pages one hundred and
eleven to one hundred and thirty-one, willing to rest upon them our
praises of her genius. It may be accidental, but they seem to have an
epic relation, and to constitute one continuous history, finished with
uncommon elegance and glowing with a beauty which has its inspiration in
a deeper profound than was ever penetrated by messengers of the brain.
The third of these glimpses of heart-life--all having the same air of
sad reality--exhibits, with a fidelity and a peculiar power which is
never attained in such descriptions by men, the struggle of a pure and
passionate nature with a hopeless affection:
Had we but met in life's delicious spring,
When young romance made Eden of the world;
When bird-like Hope was ever on the wing,
(In _thy_ dear breast how soon had it been furled!)
Had we but met when both our hearts were beating
With the wild joy, the guileless love of youth--
Thou a proud boy, with frank and ardent greeting,
And I a timid girl, all trust and truth!--
Ere yet my pulse's light, elastic play
Had learn'd the weary weight of grief to know,
Ere from these eyes had passed the morning ray,
And from my cheek the early rose's glow;--
Had we but met in life's delicious spring,
Ere wrong and falsehood taught me doubt and fear,
Ere Hope came back with worn and wounded wing,
To die upon the heart it could not cheer;
Ere I love's precious pearl had vainly lavish'd,
Pledging an idol deaf to my despair;
Ere one by one the buds and blooms were ravish'd
From life's rich garland by the clasp of Care.
Ah! had we _then_ but met!--I dare not listen
To the wild whispers of my fancy now!
My full heart beats--my sad, droop'd lashes glisten--
I hear the music of thy _boyhood's_ vow!
I see thy dark eyes lustrous with love's meaning,
I feel thy dear hand softly clasp mine own--
Thy noble form is fondly o'er me leaning--
It is too much--but ah! the dream has flown.
How had I pour'd this passionate heart's devotion
In voiceless rapture on thy manly breast!
How had I hush'd each sorrowful emotion,
Lull'd by thy love to sweet, untroubled rest.
How had I knelt hour after hour beside thee,
When from thy lips the rare scholastic lore
Fell on the soul that all but deified thee,
While at each pause I, childlike, pray'd for more.
How had I watch'd the shadow of each feeling,
That mov'd thy soul-glance o'er that radiant face,
"Taming my wild heart" to that dear revealing,
And glorifying in thy genius and thy grace!
Then hadst thou loved me with a love abiding,
And I had now been less unworthy thee,
For I was generous, guileless, and confiding,
A frank enthusiast, buoyant, fresh, and free!
But _now_--my loftiest aspirations perish'd,
My holiest hopes a jest for lips profane,
The tenderest yearnings of my soul uncherish'd,
A soul-worn slave in Custom's iron chain:
Check'd by these ties that make my lightest sigh,
My faintest blush, at thought of thee, a crime--
How must I still my heart, and school my eye,
And count in vain the slow dull steps of Time!
Wilt thou come back? Ah! what avails to ask thee
Since honor, faith, forbid thee to return!
Yet to forgetfulness I dare not task thee,
Lest thou too soon that _easy lesson_ learn!
Ah! come not back, love! even through Memory's ear
Thy tone's melodious murmur thrills my heart--
Come not with that fond smile, so frank, so dear;
While yet we may, let us for ever part!
The passages commencing, "Thank God, I glory in thy love;" "Ah, let our
love be still a folded flower;" "Believe me, 'tis no pang of jealous
pride;" "We part forever: silent be our parting;" are in the same
measure, and in perfect keeping, but evince a still deeper emotion and
greater pathos and power. We copy the closing cantatas, "To Sleep," and
"A Weed"--a prayer and a prophecy--in which the profoundest sorrow is
displayed with touching simplicity and unaffected earnestness. First, to
Death's gentle sister:
Come to me, angel of the weary hearted;
Since they, my loved ones, breathed upon by thee,
Unto thy realms unreal have departed,
I, too, may rest--even I; ah! haste to me.
I dare not bid thy darker, colder brother
With his more welcome offering, appear,
For these sweet lips, at morn, will murmur, "Mother,"
And who shall soothe them if I be not near?
Bring me no dream, dear Sleep, though visions glowing
With hues of heaven thy wand enchanted shows;
I ask no glorious boon of thy bestowing,
Save that most true, most beautiful--repose.
I have no heart to rove in realms of Faery--
To follow Fancy at her elfin call;
I am too wretched--too soul-worn and weary;
Give me but rest, for rest to me is all.
Paint not the future to my fainting spirit,
Though it were starr'd with glory like the skies;
There is no gift that mortals may inherit
That could rekindle hope in these cold eyes.
And for the Past--the fearful Past--ah! never
Be Memory's downcast gaze unveil'd by thee;
Would thou couldst bring oblivion forever
Of all that is, that has been, and will be!
And more mournful still, the dream of the after days:
When from our northern woods pale summer flying,
Breathes her last fragrant sigh--her low farewell--
While her sad wild flowers' dewy eyes, in dying,
Plead for her stay, in every nook and dell.
A heart that loved too tenderly and truly,
Will break at last; and in some dim, sweet shade,
They'll smooth the sod o'er her you prized unduly,
And leave her to the rest for which she pray'd.
Ah! trustfully, not mournfully, they'll leave her,
Assured that deep repose is welcomed well;
The pure, glad breeze can whisper naught to grieve her;
The brook's low voice no wrongful tale can tell.
They'll hide her where no false one's footsteps, stealing,
Can mar the chasten'd meekness of her sleep;
Only to Love and Grief her grave revealing,
And they will hush their chiding _then_--to weep!
And some, (for though too oft she err'd, too blindly,
She was beloved--how fondly and how well!)--
Some few, with faltering feet, will linger kindly,
And plant dear flowers within that silent dell.
I know whose fragile hand will bring the bloom
Best loved by both--the violet's--to that bower;
And one will bid white lilies bless the gloom;
And one, perchance, will plant the passion flower;
Then do _thou_ come, when all the rest have parted--
Thou, who alone dost know her soul's deep gloom!
And wreathe above the lost, the broken-hearted,
Some idle _weed_, that _knew not how to bloom_.
We pass from these painful but exquisitely beautiful displays of
sensitive feeling and romantic fancy, to pieces exhibiting Mrs. Osgood's
more habitual spirit of arch playfulness and graceful invention,
scattered through the volume, and constituting a class of compositions
in which she is scarcely approachable. The "Lover's List," is one of her
shorter ballads:
"Come sit on this bank so shady,
Sweet Evelyn, sit with me!
And count me your loves, fair lady--
How many may they be?"
The maiden smiled on her lover,
And traced with her dimpled hand,
Of names a dozen and over
Down in the shining sand.
"And now," said Evelyn, rising,
"Sir Knight! your own, if you please;
And if there be no disguising,
The list will outnumber these;
"Then count me them truly, rover!"
And the noble knight obeyed;
And of names a dozen and over
He traced within the shade.
Fair Evelyn pouted proudly;
She sighed "Will he never have done?"
And at last she murmur'd loudly,
"I thought he would write but _one_!"
"Now read," said the gay youth, rising;
"The scroll--it is fair and free;
In truth, there is no disguising
That list is the world to me!"
She read it with joy and wonder,
For the first was her own sweet name;
And again and again written under,
It was still--it was still the same!
It began with--"My Evelyn fairest!"
It ended with--"Evelyn best!"
And epithets fondest and dearest
Were lavished between on the rest.
There were tears in the eyes of the lady
As she swept with her delicate hand,
On the river-bank cool and shady,
The list she had traced in the sand.
There were smiles on the lip of the maiden
As she turned to her knight once more,
And the heart was with joy o'erladen
That was heavy with doubt before!
And for its lively movement and buoyant feeling--equally characteristic
of her genius--the following song, upon "Lady Jane," a favorite horse:
Oh! saw ye e'er creature so queenly, so fine,
As this dainty, aerial darling of mine!
With a toss of her mane, that is glossy as jet,
With a dance and a prance, and a frolic curvet,
She is off! she is stepping superbly away!
Her dark, speaking eye full of pride and of play.
Oh! she spurns the dull earth with a graceful disdain,
My fearless, my peerless, my loved Lady Jane!
Her silken ears lifted when danger is nigh,
How kindles the night in her resolute eye!
Now stately she paces, as if to the sound
Of a proud, martial melody playing around,
Now pauses at once, 'mid a light caracole,
To turn her mild glance on me beaming with soul;
Now fleet as a fairy, she speeds o'er the plain,
My darling, my treasure, my own Lady Jane!
Give her rein! let her go! Like a shaft from a bow,
Like a bird on the wing, she is speeding, I trow--
Light of heart, lithe of limb, with a spirit all fire,
Yet sway'd and subdued by my idlest desire--
Though daring, yet docile, and sportive but true,
Her nature's the noblest that ever I knew.
How she flings back her head, in her dainty disdain!
My beauty, my graceful, my gay Lady Jane!
It is among the one hundred and thirteen songs, of which this is one,
and which form the last division of her poems, that we have the greatest
varieties of rhythm, cadence, and expression; and it is here too that we
have, perhaps, the most clear and natural exhibitions of that class of
emotions which she conceives with such wonderful truth. The prevailing
characteristic of these pieces is a native and delicate raillery,
piquant by wit, and poetical by the freshest and gracefullest fancies;
but they are frequently marked by much tenderness of sentiment, and by
boldness and beauty of imagination. They are in some instances without
that singleness of purpose, that unity and completeness, which ought
invariably to distinguish this sort of compositions, but upon the whole
it must be considered that Mrs. Osgood was remarkably successful in the
song. The fulness of our extracts from other parts of the volume will
prevent that liberal illustration of her excellence in this which would
be as gratifying to the reader as to us; and we shall transcribe but a
few specimens, which, by various felicities of language, and a pleasing
delicacy of sentiment, will detain the admiration:
Oh! would I were only a spirit of song,
I'd float forever around, above you:
If I were a spirit, it wouldn't be wrong,
It couldn't be wrong, to love you!
I'd hide in the light of a moonbeam bright,
I'd sing Love's lullaby softly o'er you,
I'd bring rare visions of pure delight
From the land of dreams before you.
Oh! if I were only a spirit of song,
I'd float forever around, above you,
For a musical spirit could never do wrong,
And it wouldn't be wrong to love you!
The next, an exquisitely beautiful song, suggests its own music:
She loves him yet!
I know by the blush that rises
Beneath the curls
That shadow her soul-lit cheek;
She loves him yet!
Through all Love's sweet disguises
In timid girls,
A blush will be sure to speak.
But deeper signs
Than the radiant blush of beauty,
The maiden finds,
Whenever his name is heard;
Her young heart thrills,
Forgetting herself--her duty--
Her dark eye fills,
And her pulse with hope is stirr'd.
She loves him yet!--
The flower the false one gave her,
When last he came,
Is still with her wild tears wet.
She'll ne'er forget,
Howe'er his faith may waver,
Through grief and shame,
Believe it--she loves him yet.
His favorite songs
She will sing--she heeds no other;
With all her wrongs
Her life on his love is set.
Oh! doubt no more!
She never can wed another;
Till life be o'er,
She loves--she will love him yet!
And this is not less remarkable for a happy adaptation of sentiment to
the sound:
Low, my lute--breathe low!--She sleeps!--
Eulalie!
While his watch her lover keeps,
Soft and dewy slumber steeps
Golden tress and fringed lid
With the blue heaven 'neath it hid--
Eulalie!
Low my lute--breathe low!--She sleeps!--
Eulalie!
Let thy music, light and low,
Through her pure dream come and go.
Lute on Love! with silver flow,
All my passion, all my wo,
Speak for me!
Ask her in her balmy rest
Whom her holy heart loves best!
Ask her if she thinks of me!--
Eulalie!
Low, my lute!--breathe low!--She sleeps!--
Eulalie!
Slumber while thy lover keeps
Fondest watch and ward for thee,
Eulalie!
The following evinces a deeper feeling, and has a corresponding force
and dignity in its elegance:--
Yes, "lower to the level"
Of those who laud thee now!
Go, join the joyous revel,
And pledge the heartless vow!
Go, dim the soul-born beauty
That lights that lofty brow!
Fill, fill the bowl! let burning wine
Drown in thy soul Love's dream divine!
Yet when the laugh is lightest,
When wildest goes the jest,
When gleams the goblet brightest,
And proudest heaves thy breast,
And thou art madly pledging
Each gay and jovial guest--
A ghost shall glide amid the flowers--
The shade of Love's departed hours!
And thou shalt shrink in sadness
From all the splendor there,
And curse the revel's gladness,
And hate the banquet's glare;
And pine, 'mid Passion's madness
For true love's purer air,
And feel thou'dst give their wildest glee
For one unsullied sigh from me!
Yet deem not this my prayer, love,
Ah! no, if I could keep
Thy alter'd heart from care, love,
And charm its griefs to sleep,
Mine only should despair, love,
I--I alone would weep!
I--I alone would mourn the flowers
That fade in Love's deserted bowers!
Among her poems are many which admit us to the sacredest recesses of the
mother's heart: "To a Child Playing with a Watch," "To Little May
Vincent," "To Ellen, Learning to Walk," and many others, show the almost
wild tenderness with which she loved her two surviving daughters--one
thirteen, and the other eleven years of age now;--and a "Prayer in
Illness," in which she besought God to "take them first," and suffer her
to lie at their feet in death, lest, deprived of her love, they should
be subjected to all the sorrow she herself had known in the world, is
exquisitely beautiful and touching. Her parents, her brothers, her
sisters, her husband, her children, were the deities of her tranquil and
spiritual worship, and she turned to them in every vicissitude of
feeling, for hope and strength and repose. "Lilly" and "May," were
objects of a devotion too sacred for any idols beyond the threshold, and
we witness it not as something obtruded upon the outer world, but as a
display of beautified and dignified humanity which is among the
ministries appointed to be received for the elevation of our natures.
With these holy and beautiful songs is intertwined one, which under the
title of "Ashes of Roses," breathes the solemnest requiem that ever was
sung for a child, and in reading it we feel that in the subject was
removed into the Unknown a portion of the mother's heart and life. The
poems of Mrs. Osgood are not a laborious balancing of syllables, but a
spontaneous gushing of thoughts, fancies and feelings, which fall
naturally into harmonious measures; and so perfectly is the sense echoed
in the sound, that it seems as if many of her compositions might be
intelligibly written in the characters of music. It is a pervading
excellence of her works, whether in prose or verse, that they are
graceful beyond those of any other author who has written in this
country; and the delicacy of her taste was such that it would probably
be impossible to find in all of them a fancy, a thought, or a word
offensive to that fine instinct in its highest cultivation or subtlest
sensibility. It is one of her great merits that she attempted nothing
foreign to her own affluent but not various genius.
There is a stilted ambition, common lately to literary women, which is
among the fatalest diseases to reputation. She was never betrayed into
it; she was always simple and natural, singing in no falsetto key, even
when she entered the temples of old mythologies. With an extraordinary
susceptibility of impressions, she had not only the finest and quickest
discernment of those peculiarities of character which give variety to
the surface of society, but of certain kinds and conditions of life she
perceived the slightest undulations and the deepest movements. She had
no need to travel beyond the legitimate sphere of woman's observation,
to seize upon the upturnings and overthrows which serve best for
rounding periods in the senate or in courts of criminal justice--trying
everything to see if poetry could be made of it. Nor did she ever demand
audience for rude or ignoble passion, or admit the moral shade beyond
the degree in which it must appear in all pictures of life. She lingered
with her keen insight and quick sensibilities among the associations,
influences, the fine sense, brave perseverance, earnest
affectionateness, and unfailing truth, which, when seen from the
romantic point of view, are suggestive of all the poetry which it is
within the province of woman to write.
I have not chosen to dwell upon the faults in her works; such labor is
more fit for other hands, and other days; and so many who attempt
criticism seem to think the whole art lies in the detection of
blemishes, that one may sometimes be pardoned for lingering as fondly as
I have done, upon an author's finer qualities. It must be confessed,
that in her poems there is evinced a too unrestrained partiality for
particular forms of expression, and that--it could scarcely be otherwise
in a collection so composed--thoughts and fancies are occasionally
repeated. In some instances too, her verse is diffuse, but generally,
where this objection is made, it will be found that what seems most
careless and redundant is only delicate shading: she but turns her
diamonds to the various rays; she rings no changes till they are not
music; she addresses an eye more sensitive to beauty and a finer ear
than belong to her critics. The collection of her works is one of the
most charming volumes that woman has contributed to literature; of all
that we are acquainted with the most womanly; and destined, for that it
addresses with truest sympathy and most natural eloquence the commonest
and noblest affections, to be always among the most fondly cherished
Books of the Heart.
Reluctantly I bring to a close these paragraphs--a hasty and imperfect
tribute, from my feelings and my judgment, to one whom many will
remember long as an impersonation of the rarest intellectual and moral
endowments, as one of the loveliest characters in literary or social
history. Hereafter, unless the office fall to some one worthier, I may
attempt from the records of our friendship, and my own and others'
recollections, to do such justice to her life and nature, that a larger
audience and other times shall feel how much of beauty with her spirit
left us.
This requiem she wrote for another, little thinking that her friends
would so soon sing it with hearts saddened for her own departure.
The hand that swept the sounding lyre
With more than mortal skill,
The lightning eye, the heart of fire,
The fervent lip are still:
No more in rapture or in wo,
With melody to thrill,
Ah! nevermore!
Oh! bring the flowers she cherish'd so,
With eager child-like care:
For o'er her grave they'll love to grow,
And sigh their sorrow there;
Ah me! no more their balmy glow
May soothe her heart's despair,
No! nevermore!
But angel hands shall bring her balm
For every grief she knew,
And Heaven's soft harps her soul shall calm
With music sweet and true;
And teach to her the holy charm
Of Israfel anew.
For evermore!
Love's silver lyre she played so well,
Lies shattered on her tomb;
But still in air its music-spell
Floats on through light and gloom,
And in the hearts where soft they fell,
Her words of beauty bloom
For evermore!
Recent Deaths.
SAMUEL YOUNG.
The Hon. Samuel Young, long one of the most eminent politicians of the
democratic party in the State of New-York, died of apoplexy, at his home
at Ballston Spa, on the night of the third of November. Col. Young was
born in Berkshire county, Massachusetts, in 1778. Soon after he
completed his legal studies he emigrated to Ballston Spa, in this State.
The following facts respecting his subsequent career are condensed from
the _Tribune_.
"He was first chosen to the Legislature in 1814, and was reelected next
year on a split ticket, which for a time clouded his prospects. In 1824,
he was again in the Assembly, was Speaker of the House in that memorable
year, and helped remove De Witt Clinton from the office of Canal
Commissioner. The Fall Election found him a candidate for Governor on
the 'Caucus' interest opposed to the 'People's' demand that the choice
of Presidential Electors be relinquished by the Legislature to the
Voters of the State. Col. Young professed to be personally a 'Peoples'
man, and in favor of Henry Clay for President; the 'Caucus' candidate
being Wm. H. Crawford. De Witt Clinton was the opposing candidate for
Governor, and was elected by 16,000 majority. Col. Young's political
fortunes never recovered from the blow thus inflicted. He had already
been chosen a Canal Commissioner by the Legislature, and he continued to
hold the office till the Political revolution of 1838-9, when he was
superseded by a Whig. He was afterwards twice a State Senator for four
years, and for three years Secretary of State. He carried into all the
stations he has filled signal ability and unquestioned rectitude. He was
a man of strong prejudices, violent temper and implacable resentments,
but a Patriot and a determined foe of time-serving, corruption,
prodigality, and debt. He was a warm friend of Educational Improvement,
and did the cause good service while Secretary of State. For the last
three years he has held no office, but lived in that peaceful retirement
to which his years and his services fairly entitled him. He leaves
behind him many who have attained more exalted positions on a smaller
capital of talent and aptitude for public service. We have passed
lightly over his vehement denunciations of the Internal Improvement
policy during the latter years of his public life. We attribute the
earnestness of his hostility to a temper soured by disappointment, and
especially to his great defeat in '24, at the hands of the illustrious
champion of the Canals. But, though his vision was jaundiced, his
purpose was honest. He thought he was struggling to save the State from
imminent bankruptcy and ruin."
* * * * *
Henry T. Robinson, for many years an active maker of political and other
caricatures, by which he made a fortune, here and in Washington, and of
nude and other indecent prints, by the seizure of a large quantity of
which, with other causes, he was impoverished, died at Newark,
New-Jersey, on the third of November. He was born on Bethnal Common in
England, in 1785, and about 1810 emigrated to this country, where he was
one of the first to practise lithography.
* * * * *
Joseph Hardy died a few weeks ago at Rathmines, aged ninety-three years.
When twenty years old he invented a machine for doubling and twisting
cotton yarn, for which the Dublin Society awarded him a premium of
twenty guineas. Four years after he invented a scribbling machine for
carding wool, to be worked by horse or water power, for which the same
society awarded him one hundred guineas. He next invented a machine for
measuring and sealing linen, and was in consequence appointed by the
linen board seals-master for all the linen markets in the county of
Derry, but the slightest benefit from this he never derived, as the
rebellion of '98 broke out about the time he had all his machines
completed, and political opponents having represented by memorials to
the board that by giving so much to one man, hundreds who then were
employed would be thrown out of work, the board changed the seal from
the spinning wheel to the harp and crown, thereby rendering his seals
useless, merely giving him 100_l._ by way of remuneration for his loss.
About the year 1810 he demonstrated by an apparatus attached to one of
the boats of the Grand Canal Company at Portobello the practicability of
propelling vessels on the water by paddle wheels; but having placed the
paddles on the bow of the boat, the action of the backwater on the boat
was so great as to prevent its movement at a higher speed than three
miles per hour. This appearing not to answer, without further experiment
he broke up the machinery, and allowed others to profit by the ideas he
gave on the subject, and to complete on the open sea what he had
attempted within the narrow limits of a canal. He also invented a
machine for sawing timber; but the result of all his inventions during a
long life was very considerable loss of time and property without the
slightest recompense from Government, or the country benefited by his
talents.
* * * * *
Major-General Slessor died at Sidmouth, Devonshire, on the 11th October,
aged seventy-three. He entered the army in 1794, and served in Ireland
during the rebellion, and subsequently against the French force
commanded by General Humbert, on which last occasion he was wounded. In
1806 he accompanied his regiment (the 35th) to Sicily, and the next year
he served in the second expedition to Egypt, and was wounded in the
retreat from Rosetta to Alexandria. He then served with Sir J. Oswald
against the Greek Islands, and was employed in the Mediterranean. He
also served in the Austrian army, under Count Nugent, and in the
Waterloo campaign.
* * * * *
Joseph Signay, Roman Catholic Archbishop of the Ecclesiastical Province
of Quebec, died on the 3d of October. He was born at Quebec November 8,
1778, appointed Coadjutor of Quebec and Bishop of Fussala the 15th of
December, 1826, and was consecrated under that title the 20th of May,
1827. He succeeded to the See of Quebec the 19th of February, 1833, and
was elevated to the dignity of Archbishop by His Holiness Pope Gregory
XVI., on the 12th of July, 1844, and received the "Pallium" during the
ensuing month.
* * * * *
Dr. Fouquier, one of the most celebrated physicians of Paris, who was
_le medecin_ of the ex-king Louis Philippe, and Professor of _clinique
interne_ at the Academy, died on the 1st of October. His loss is much
felt among the _savants_.
* * * * *
Lieut.-Colonel Cross, K.H., a distinguished Peninsular officer, died
near London on the 27th of October. He served in the Peninsular war from
1808 until its close in 1814, and was at the battle of Waterloo, where
he received a severe contusion.
* * * * *
Thomas Amyot, F.R.S., &c.--whose life, extended to the age of
seventy-six, was passed in close intercourse with the literary and
antiquarian circles of London, participating in their pursuits and
aiding their exertions--died on the 28th of September. He was an active
and respected member of almost every metropolitan association which had
for its object the advancement of literature. He was a constant and
valuable contributor to the _Archaeologia_, the private secretary of Mr.
Windham, the editor of Windham's speeches, and for many years treasurer
to the Society of Antiquaries of London, and a director of the Camden
Society. He was a native of Norwich, and obtained the friendship and
patronage of Windham while actively engaged in canvassing in favor of an
opponent of that gentleman for the representation of Norwich in the
House of Commons. A Life of Windham was one of his long-promised and
long-looked-for contributions to the biographies of English statesmen;
but no such work has been published, and there is reason to believe that
very little, if indeed any portion of it, was ever completed for
publication. The journals of Mr. Windham were in the possession of Mr.
Amyot; and if we may judge of the whole by the account of Johnson's
conversation and last illness, printed by Croker in his edition of
Boswell, we may assert that whenever they may be published they will
constitute a work of real value in illustration of political events and
private character,--a model in respect of fullness and yet succinctness,
which future journalists may copy with advantage. Whatever Windham
preserved of Johnson's conversation well merited preservation. Mr.
Amyot's most valuable literary production is, his refutation of Mr.
Tytler's supposition that Richard the Second was alive and in Scotland
in the reign of Henry the Fourth.
* * * * *
Madame Branchu, so famous in the opera in the last century, is dead. The
first distinct idea which many have entertained respecting the _Grande
Opera_ of Paris may have been derived from a note in Moore's _Fudge
Family_ in which the "shrill screams of Madame Branchu" were mentioned.
She retired from the theater in 1826, after twenty-five years of _prima
donna_ship--having succeeded to the scepter and crown of Mdlle. Maillard
and Madame St. Huberty. She died at Passy, having almost entirely passed
out of the memory of the present opera-going generation. She must have
been a forcible and impassioned rather than an elegant or irreproachable
vocalist--and will be best remembered perhaps as the original _Julia_ in
"La Vestale" of Spontini.
* * * * *
Major-General Wingrove, of the Royal Marines, died on the 7th October,
aged seventy years. He entered the Royal Marines in 1793, served at the
surrender of the Cape of Good Hope in 1795, the battle of Trafalgar, the
taking of Genoa in 1814, was on board the Boyne when that ship singly
engaged three French ships of the line and three frigates, off Toulon,
in 1814, and on board the Hercules in a single action, off Cape Nichola
Mole. In 1841 he was promoted to the rank of a major-general.
* * * * *
The Duke of Palmella, long eminent in the affairs of Portugal, died at
Lisbon on the 12th of October. He was born on the 8th of May, 1781, and
had, consequently, completed his sixty ninth year. A very considerable
part of his life was dedicated to the diplomatic service of Portugal,
which he represented at the Congress of Vienna, in 1814; and he was one
of the General Committee of the eight powers who signed the Peace of
Paris. When the debate respecting the slave-trade took place in the
Congress, he warmly opposed the immediate abolition by Portugal, which
had been demanded by Lord Castlereagh. He was also one of the foreign
ministers who signed the declaration of the 13th of March, 1815, against
Napoleon; immediately after which he was nominated representative of
Portugal at the British Court. In 1816, however, he was recalled to fill
the office of Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in Brazil. In
February, 1818, he visited Paris, for the purpose of making some
arrangements relative to Monte Video, with the Spanish Ambassador, Count
Fernan Nunez. After the Portuguese Revolution, he retired for a time
from active life. He was next selected to attend at the coronation of
Queen Victoria; and his great wealth enabled him to vie, on that
occasion, with the representatives of the other courts of Europe. He was
several times called to preside over the councils of his Sovereign, but
only held office for a limited period. Though a member of the ancient
nobility, all his titles were honorably acquired by his own exertions,
and were the rewards of distinguished abilities and meritorious
services. No Portuguese statesman acquired greater celebrity abroad, and
no man acted a more consistent part in all the political vicissitudes of
the last thirty years, throughout which he was a most prominent
character. It is related of the Duke, when Count de Palmella, that
during the contest in Spain and Portugal, Napoleon one day hastily
addressed him with--"Well, are you Portuguese willing to become
Spanish?" "No," replied the Count, in a firm tone. Far from being
displeased with this frank and laconic reply, Napoleon said next day to
one of his officers, "The Count de Palmella gave me yesterday a noble
'No.'"
* * * * *
Carl Rottmann, the distinguished Bavarian artist and painter to the
King, died near the end of October. He had been sent by King Ludwig to
Italy and to Greece to depict the scenery and monuments of those
countries. His pictures of the Temple of Juno Lucina, Girgenti, the
theater of Taormina, &c., have never been excelled, and the king had
characterized them by illustrative poems. The Grecian monuments which
Rottmann sketched in 1835 and 1836 are destined for the new Pinakothek;
and the Battle-Field of Marathon is spoken of as a wonderful
composition. The frescoes of Herr Rottmann adorn the ceiling of the
upper story of the palace at Munich.
* * * * *
Francois de Villeneuve-Bargemont, Marquis de Trans, a member of the
French Academy of Inscriptions of Belles-Lettres, and author, amongst
other works, of the Histories of King Rene of Anjou, of St. Louis, and
of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, is named in the late Paris
obituaries.
* * * * *
The _Augsburg Gazette_ announces the death of the celebrated Bavarian
painter Ch. Schorn, Professor at the Academy of Fine Arts at Munich, on
the 7th October, aged forty-seven.
* * * * *
Richard M. Johnson, Ex-Vice-President of the United States, died at
Frankfort, Ky., on the morning of November 19, having for some time been
deprived of his reason. He was about seventy years of age. In 1807 he
was chosen a member of the House of Representatives, which post he held
twelve years. In 1813 he raised 1,000 men, to fight the British and
Indians in the North-west. In the campaign which followed he served
gallantly under Gen. Harrison as Colonel of his regiment. At the battle
of the Thames he distinguished himself by breaking the line of the
British infantry. The fame of killing Tecumseh, in this battle, has been
given to Colonel J., but the act has other claimants. In 1819 he was
transferred from the House of Representatives to the Senate, to serve
out an unexpired term. When that expired he was re-chosen, and thus
remained in the Senate till 1829. Then, another re-election being
impossible, he went back into the House, where he remained till 1839,
when he became Vice-President under Mr. Van Buren. In 1829 the Sunday
Mail agitation being brought before the House, he, as Chairman of the
Committee on Post-Offices and Post-Roads, presented a report against the
suspension of mails on Sunday. It was able, though its ability was much
exaggerated; it disposed of the subject, and Col. J. received what never
belonged to him, the credit of having written it. From 1837 to 1841 he
presided over the Senate. From that time he did not hold any office.
* * * * *
William Blacker, Esq., the distinguished agricultural writer and
economist, died on the 20th of October, at his residence in Armagh, in
the seventy-fifth year of his age. Engaged extensively, in early life,
in mercantile pursuits, he devoted himself at a maturer period to the
development of the agricultural and economic resources of Ireland. By
his popularly-written "Hints to Small Farmers," annual reports of
experimental results, essays, &c. he managed to spread, not only a
spirit of inquiry into matters of such vital importance to his country,
but to point out and urge into the best and most advantageous course of
action, the well-inclined and the energetic.
* * * * *
Mrs. Bell Martin, the author of a very clever novel, lately reprinted by
the Harpers, entitled "Julia Howard" and originally published under the
name of Mrs. Martin Bell, died in this city on the 7th of November. Mrs.
Martin was the daughter of one of the wealthiest commoners of England.
She came to this country it is said entirely for purposes connected with
literature. She was the author of several other works, most of which
were written in French.
* * * * *
The _Patria_, of Corfu mentions the death by cholera of Signor Niccolo
Delviniotti Baptistide, a distinguished literary character, and author
of several very interesting works.
* * * * *
General du Chastel, one of the remains of the French Imperial Army, died
at Saumur, in October, in the seventy-eighth year of his age.
* * * * *
Among the other recent deaths in Europe, we notice that of Mr. Watkyns,
the son-in-law and biographer of Ebenezer Elliot; Dr. Medicus, Professor
of Botany at Munich, and a member of the Academy of Sciences in that
capital; M. Ferdinand Laloue, a dramatic author of some reputation in
Paris; and Dr. C.F. Becker, eminent for his philosophical works on
grammar and the structure of language.
[Illustration]
NICHOLAS WISEMAN, D.D., LL.D., CARDINAL ARCHBISHOP OF WESTMINSTER.
The topic of the month in Europe has been the public and formal
resumption of jurisdiction by the Pope in England, and the appointment
of the ablest and most illustrious person in the Catholic Church to be
Archbishop of Westminster. Dr. Wiseman is known and respected by all
Christian scholars for his abilities, and their devotion to the
vindication of our common faith. His admirable work on _The Connection
between Science and Revealed Religion_ is a text-book in Protestant as
well as in Roman Catholic seminaries. Cardinal Wiseman is now in his
forty-ninth year, having been born at Seville, on the second of August,
1802. He is descended from an Irish family, long settled in Spain. At an
early age he was carried to England, and sent for his education to St.
Cuthbert's Catholic College, near Durham. Thence he was removed to the
English College at Rome, where he distinguished himself by an
extraordinary attachment to learning. At eighteen he published in Latin
a work on the Oriental languages; and he bore off the gold medal at
every competition of the colleges of Rome. His merit recommended him to
his superiors; he obtained several honors, was ordained a priest, and
made a Doctor of Divinity. He was several years a Professor in the Roman
University, and then Rector of the English College, where he achieved
his earliest success. He went to England in 1835, and immediately became
a conspicuous teacher and writer on the side of the Catholics. In 1836
he vindicated in a course of lectures the doctrines of the Catholic
Church, and gave so much satisfaction to his party that they presented
him with a gold medal, to express their esteem and gratitude. He
returned to Rome, and seems to have been instrumental in inducing Pope
Gregory XVI. to increase the vicars apostolic in England. The number was
doubled, and Dr. Wiseman went back as coadjutor to Bishop Walsh, of the
Midland district. He was appointed President of St. Mary's College,
Oscott, and contributed, by his teaching, his preaching, and his
writings, very much to promote the spread of Catholicism in England. He
was a contributor to the _Dublin Review_, and the author of some
controversial pamphlets. In 1847 he again repaired to Rome on the
affairs of the Catholics, and no doubt prepared the way for the present
change. His second visit to Rome led to further preferment. He was made
Pro-Vicar Apostolic of the London district; subsequently appointed
coadjutor to Dr. Walsh, and in 1849, on the death of Dr. Walsh, Vicar
Apostolic of the London district. Last August he went again to Rome,
"not expecting," as he says, "to return;" but "delighted to be
commissioned to come back" clothed in his new dignity. In a Consistory
held September 30, Nicholas Wiseman was elected to the dignity of
Cardinal, by the title of Saint Prudentiani, and appointed Archbishop of
Westminster. Under the Pope, he is the head of the Roman Catholic Church
in England, and a Prince of the Church of Rome.
[Illustration]
Ladies' Fashions for December.
Fig. I. _Promenade Costume._--Robe of striped silk: the ground a richly
shaded brown, and the stripes of the same color, but of darker hue. The
skirt of the dress is quite plain, the corsage high, and the sleeves not
very wide at the ends, showing white under-sleeves of very moderate
size. Mantle of dark green satin. The upper part or body is shaped like
a pardessus, with a small basque at the back. Attached to this body is a
double skirt, both the upper and lower parts of which are set on in
slight fullness, and nearly meeting in front. The body of the mantle, as
well as the two skirts, is edged with quilling of satin ribbon of the
color of the cloak. Loose Chinese sleeves, edged with the same trimming.
Drawn bonnet of brown velvet; under trimming small red flowers; strings
of brown therry velvet ribbon.
Fig. II.--Back view of dress of claret-colored broche silk; the pattern
large detached sprigs. Cloak of rich black satin. The upper part is a
deep cape, cut so as to fit closely to the figure, and pointed at the
back. By being fastened down at each side of the arms, this cape
presents the effect of sleeves. Round the back, and on that part which
falls over the arms, the cape is edged with a very broad and rich
fringe, composed of twisted silk chenille, and headed by passementerie.
The skirt of the cloak is cut bias way and nearly circular, so that it
hangs round the figure in easy fullness. The fronts are trimmed with
ornaments of passementerie in the form of large flowers. The bonnet is
of green therry velvet, trimmed with black lace, two rows of which are
laid across the front. Under trimming of pale pink roses.
[Transcriber's Notes:
Page vi: Transcribed "Bronte" as "Bronte". As originally printed:
"Bronte and her Sisters".
Transcribed "in" as "on". As originally printed: "Herr Kielhau, in
Geology".
Pages vi & 142: Transcribed "Charles Rottman" as "Carl Rottmann".
Page vii: Transcribed "this" as "his". As originally printed: "Swift,
Dean, and this Amours."
Page 13: Supplied "from" in the following phrase (shown here in
brackets): "It caused Richard Steele to be expelled [from] the House of
Commons".
Page 13: Transcribed "colleague's" as "colleagues". As originally
printed: "triumphed over his colleague's".
Page 16: Transcribed "Smollet" as "Smollett". As originally printed:
"the best productions of Mendoza, Smollet, or Dickens" (presumably,
Tobias Smollett).
Page 20: Transcribed "Uniersberg" as "Untersberg". As originally
printed: "Charlemagne in the Uniersberg at Salzburg".
Pages 18-22: Alternate spellings of Leipzig/Leipzic have been left as
printed in the original publication.
Page 24: A closing quotation is missing in the original publication for
material commencing: "we shall see him as he was, both adventurous and
patient....
Page 27: Transcribed "Cosmo" as "Cosimo". As originally printed: "but of
Cosmo de Medici, Lorenzo his great descendant".
Page 28: Transcribed "Eoratii" as "Horatii". As originally printed: "The
Eoratii, one of the master pieces of David".
Page 73: Transcribed "bonhommie" as "bonhomie". As originally printed:
"the Visconte, with equal _bonhommie_".
Page 113: Transcribed "vacilliating" as "vacillating". As originally
printed: "made a blind vacilliating attack".
Page 127: A closing quotation is missing in the original publication for
material commencing: "I have sometimes thought that if you were to stop
a hundred men....
Transcribed "habitues" as "habitues". As originally printed: "the more
experienced _habitues_ of office".
Page 128: Transcribed "Choco and Popayan" as "Choco and Popayan". As
originally printed: "deep and humid woods of the provinces of Choco and
Popayan".
Transcribed "Caraccas" as "Caracas". As originally printed: "as
identical with the cow tree of Caraccas".
Page 129: "garnery" in "gathered into the garnery" has been left as
printed in the original publication. Likely misspelling of "granary".
Page 136: Transcribed "paen" as "paean". As originally printed: "Till the
full paen".
Page 139: Transcribed "singleness that of purpose" as "that singleness
of purpose". As originally printed: "They are in some instances without
singleness that of purpose".
Transcribed "waiver" as "waver". As originally printed: "Howe'er his
faith may waiver".
Page 142: Transcribed "Pinakotheka" as "Pinakothek". As originally
printed: "destined for the new Pinakotheka".
Transcribed "Francois de Villenueve-Bargemont" as "Francois de
Villeneuve-Bargemont".]