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_AT NEWPORT._
I stand beside the sea once more;
Its measured murmur comes to me;
The breeze is low upon the shore,
And low upon the purple sea.
Across the bay the flat sand sweeps,
To where the helméd light-house stands
Upon his post, and vigil keeps,
Far seaward marshaling all the lands.
The hollow surges rise and fall,
The ships steal up the quiet bay;
I scarcely hear or see at all,
My thoughts are flown so far away.
They follow on yon sea-bird's track.
Beyond the beacon's crystal dome;
They will not falter, nor come back,
Until they find my darkened home.
Ah, woe is me! 'tis scarce a year
Since, gazing o'er this moaning main,
My thoughts flew home without a fear.
And with content returned again.
To-day, alas! the fancies dark
That from my laden bosom flew,
Returning, came into the ark,
Not with the olive, with the yew.
The ships draw slowly towards the strand,
The watchers' hearts with hope beat high;
But ne'er again wilt thou touch land--
Lost, lost in yonder sapphire sky!
--_Geo. H. Boker._
_MILLERISM._
Toward the close of the last century there was born in New
England one William Miller, whose life, until he was past fifty,
was the life of the average American of his time. He drank, we
suppose, his share of New England rum, when a young man; married
a comely Yankee girl, and reared a family of chubby-cheeked
children; went about his business, whatever it was, on week
days, and when Sunday came, went to meeting with commendable
regularity. He certainly read the Old Testament, especially the
Book of Daniel, and of the New Testament at least the Book of
Revelation. Like many a wiser man before him, he was troubled at
what he read, filled as it was with mystical numbers and strange
beasts, and he sought to understand it, and to apply it to the
days in which he lived. He made the discovery that the world
was to be destroyed in 1843, and went to and fro in the land
preaching that comfortable doctrine. He had many followers--as
many as fifty thousand, it is said, who thought they were
prepared for the end of all things; some going so far as to lay
in a large stock of ascension robes. Though no writer himself, he
was the cause of a great deal of writing on the part of others,
who flooded the land with a special and curious literature--the
literature of Millerism. It is not of that, however, that we
would speak now.
But before this Miller arose--we proceed to say, if only to show
that we are familiar with other members of the family--there was
another, and very different Miller, who was born in old England,
about one hundred years earlier than our sadly, or gladly,
mistaken Second Adventist. His Christian name was Joseph, and he
was an actor of repute, celebrated for his excellence in some of
the comedies of Congreve. The characters which he played may have
been comic ones, but he was a serious man. Indeed, his gravity
was so well known in his lifetime that it was reckoned the height
of wit, when he was dead, to father off upon him a Jest Book!
This joke, bad as it was, was better than any joke in the book.
It made him famous, so famous that for the next hundred years
every little _bon mot_ was laid at his door, metaphorically
speaking, the puniest youngest brat of them being christened "Old
Joe."
After Joseph Miller had become what Mercutio calls "a grave man,"
his descendants went into literature largely, as any one may
see by turning to Allibone's very voluminous dictionary, where
upwards of seventy of the name are immortalized, the most noted
of whom are Thomas Miller, basket-maker and poet, and Hugh
Miller, the learned stone-mason of Cromarty, whose many works, we
confess with much humility, we have not read. To the sixty-eight
Millers in Allibone (if that be the exact number), must now be
added another--Mr. Joaquin Miller, who published, two or three
months since, a collection of poems entitled "Songs of the
Sierras." From which one of the Millers mentioned above his
ancestry is derived, we are not informed; but, it would seem,
from the one first-named. For clearly the end of all things
literary cannot be far off, if Mr. Miller is the "coming poet,"
for whom so many good people have been looking all their lives.
We are inclined to think that such is not the fact. We think,
on the whole, that it is to the other Miller--Joking Miller--his
genealogy is to be traced.
But who is Mr. Miller, and what has he done? A good many besides
ourselves put that question, less than a year ago, and nobody
could answer it. Nobody, that is, in America. In England he was a
great man. He went over to England, unheralded, it is stated,
and was soon discovered to be a poet. Swinburne took him up; the
Rossettis took him up; the critics took him up; he was taken up
by everybody in England, except the police, who, as a rule, fight
shy of poets. He went to fashionable parties in a red shirt, with
trowsers tucked into his boots, and instead of being shown to the
door by the powdered footman, was received with enthusiasm. It is
incredible, but it is true. A different state of society existed,
thirty or forty years ago, when another American poet went to
England; and we advise our readers, who have leisure at their
command, to compare it with the present social lawlessness of the
upper classes among the English. To do this, they have only
to turn to the late N.P. Willis's "Pencilings by the Way," and
contrast his descriptions of the fashionable life of London then,
with almost any journalistic account of the same kind of life
now. The contrast will be all the more striking if they will
only hunt up the portraits of Disraeli, with his long, dark locks
flowing on his shoulders, and the portrait of Bulwer, behind his
"stunning" waistcoat, and his cascade of neck-cloth, and then
imagine Mr. Miller standing beside them, in his red shirt and
high-topped California boots! Like Byron, Mr. Miller "woke up one
morning and found himself famous."
We compare the sudden famousness of Mr. Miller with the sudden
famousness of Byron, because the English critics have done so;
and because they are pleased to consider Mr. Miller as Byron's
successor! Byron, we are told, was the only poet whom he had
read, before he went to England; and is the only poet to whom he
bears a resemblance. How any of these critics could have
arrived at this conclusion, with the many glaring imitations
of Swinburne--at his worst--staring him in the face from Mr.
Miller's volume, is inconceivable. But, perhaps, they do not read
Swinburne. Do they read Byron?
There are, however, some points of resemblance between Byron and
Mr. Miller. Byron traveled, when young, in countries not much
visited by the English; Mr. Miller claims to have traveled, when
young, in countries not visited by the English at all. This was,
and is, an advantage to both Byron and Mr. Miller. But it was,
and is, a serious disadvantage to their readers, who cannot well
ascertain the truth, or falsehood, of the poets they admire. The
accuracy of Byron's descriptions of foreign lands has long
been admitted; the accuracy of Mr. Miller's descriptions is not
admitted, we believe, by those who are familiar with the ground
he professes to have gone over.
Another point of resemblance between Byron and Mr. Miller is,
that the underlying idea of their poetry is autobiographic. We
do not say that it was really so in Byron's case, although he, we
know, would have had us believe as much; nor do we say that it
is really so in Mr. Miller's case, although he, too, we suspect,
would have us believe as much.
Mr. Miller resembles Byron as his "Arizonian" resembles Byron's
"Lara." _Lara_ and _Arizonian_ are birds of the same dark
feather. They have journeyed in strange lands; they have had
strange experiences; they have returned to Civilization. Each, in
his way, is a Blighted Being! "Who is she?" we inquire with the
wise old Spanish Judge, for, certainly, _Woman_ is at the bottom
of it all. If our readers wish to know _what_ woman, we refer
them to "Arizonian:" they, of course, have read "Lara."
Byron was a great poet, but Byronism is dead. Mr. Miller is not a
great poet, and his spurious Byronism will not live. We shall all
see the end of Millerism.
_THE REAL ROMANCE._
The author laid down his pen, and leaned back in his big easy
chair. The last word had been written--Finis--and there was the
complete book, quite a tall pile of manuscript, only waiting for
the printer's hands to become immortal: so the author whispered
to himself. He had worked hard upon it; great pains had been
expended upon the delineations of character, and the tone and
play of incident; the plot, too, had been worked up with much
artistic force and skill; and, above all, everything was so
strikingly original; no one, in regarding the various characters
of the tale, could say: this is intended for so-and-so! No,
nothing precisely like the persons in his romance had ever
actually existed; of that the author was certain, and in that he
was very probably correct. To be sure, there was the character
of the country girl, Mary, which he had taken from his own
little waiting-maid: but that was a very subordinate element,
and although, on the whole, he rather regretted having introduced
anything so incongruous and unimaginative, he decided to let it
go. The romance, as a whole, was too great to be injured by one
little country girl, drawn from real life. "And by the way,"
murmured the author to himself, "I wish Mary would bring in my
tea."
He settled himself still more comfortably in his easy chair, and
thought, and looked at his manuscript; and the manuscript looked
back; but all _its_ thinking had been done for it. Neither
spoke--the author, because the book already knew all he had to
say; and the book, because its time to speak and be immortal had
not yet arrived. The fire had all the talking to itself, and it
cackled, and hummed, and skipped about so cheerfully that one
would have imagined it expected to be the very first to receive
a presentation copy of the work on the table. "How I would devour
its contents!" laughed the fire.
Perhaps the author did not comprehend the full force of the
fire's remark, but the voice was so cosy and soothing, the
fire itself so ruddy and genial, and the easy chair so softly
cushioned and hospitable, that he very soon fell into a condition
which enabled him to see, hear, and understand a great many
things which might seem remarkable, and, indeed, almost
incredible.
The manuscript on the table which had hitherto remained perfectly
quiet, now rustled its leaves nervously, and finally flung
itself wide open. A murmur then arose, as of several voices, and
presently there appeared (though whether stepping from between
the leaves of the book itself, or growing together from the
surrounding atmosphere, the author could not well make out)
a number of peculiar-looking individuals, at the first glance
appearing to be human beings, though a clear investigation
revealed in each some odd lack or exaggeration of gesture,
feature, or manner, which might create a doubt as to whether they
actually were, after all, what they purported to be, or only some
_lusus naturæ_. But the author was not slow to recognize them,
more especially as, happening to cast a glance at the manuscript,
he noticed that it was such no longer, but a collection of
unwritten sheets of paper, blank as when it lay in the drawer at
the stationer's--unwitting of the lofty destiny awaiting it.
Here, then, were the immortal creations which were soon to
astound the world, come, in person, to pay their respects to the
author of their being. He arose and made a profound obeisance to
the august company, which they one and all returned, though in
such a queer variety of ways, that the author, albeit aware that
every individual had the best of reasons for employing, under
certain special circumstances, his or her particular manner of
salute, could scarcely forbear smiling at the effect they all
together produced in his own unpretending study.
"Your welcome visit," said the author, addressing his guests
with all the geniality of which he was master (for they
seemed somewhat stiff and ill-at-ease), "gives me peculiar
gratification. I regret not having asked some of my friends, the
critics, up here to make your acquaintance. I am sure you would
all come to the best possible understanding directly."
"They cannot fathom _me_," exclaimed a strikingly handsome young
man, with pale lofty brow, and dark clustering locks, who was
leaning with proud grace against the mantel-piece. "They may
take my life, but they cannot read my soul." And he laughed,
scornfully, as he always did.
[Illustration: THE NOONING.--AFTER DARLEY.]
This was a passage from that famous ante-mortem soliloquy in
which the hero of the romance indulges in the last chapter but
one. The author, while, of course, he could not deny that the
elegance of the diction was only equaled by the originality of
the sentiment, yet felt a slight uneasiness that his hero should
adopt so defiant a tone with those who were indeed to be the
arbiters of his existence.
"I'm afraid there's not enough perception of the _comme il faut_
in him to suit the every-day world," muttered he. "To be sure,
he was not constructed for ordinary ends. Do you find yourself
at home in this life, madame?" he continued aloud, turning to a
young lady of matchless beauty, whose brief career of passionate
love and romantic misery the author had described in thrilling
chapters. She raised her luminous eyes to his, and murmured
reproachfully: "Why speak to me of Life? if it be not Love, it is
Life no longer!"
It was very beautiful, and the author recollected having thought,
at the time he wrote it down, that it was about the most forcible
sentence in that most powerful passage of his book. But it
was rather an exaggerated tone to adopt in the face of such
common-place surroundings. Had this exquisite creature, after
all, no better sense of the appropriate?
"No one can know better than I, my dear Constance," said the
author, in a fatherly tone, "what a beautiful, tender, and lofty
soul yours is; but would it not be well, once in a while, to
veil its lustre--to subdue it to a tint more in keeping with the
unvariegated hue of common circumstance?"
"Heartless and cruel!" sobbed Constance, falling upon the sofa,
"hast thou not made me what I am?"
This accusation, intended by the author to be leveled at the
traitor lover, quite took him aback when directed, with so much
aptness, too, at his respectable self. But whom but himself
could he blame, if, when common sense demanded only civility
and complaisance, she persisted in adhering to the tragic and
sentimental? He was provoked that he had not noticed this defect
in time to remedy it; yet he had once considered Constance as,
perhaps, the completest triumph of his genius! There seemed to
be something particularly disenchanting in the atmosphere of that
study.
"I'm afraid you're a failure, ma'am, after all," sighed the
author, eyeing her disconsolately. "You're so one-sided!"
At this heartless observation the lady gave a harrowing shriek,
thereby summoning to her side a broad-shouldered young fellow,
clad in soldier's garb, with a countenance betokening much
boldness and determination. He faced the author with an angry
frown, which the latter at once recognized as being that of
Constance's brother Sam.
"Now then, old bloke!" sang out that young gentleman, "what new
deviltry are you up to? Down on your knees and beg her pardon,
or, by George! I'll run you through the body!"
On this character the author had expended much thought and care.
He was the type of the hardy and bold adventurer, rough and
unpolished, perhaps, but of true and sterling metal, who, by dint
of his vigorous common sense and honest, energetic nature, should
at once clear and lighten whatever in the atmosphere of the story
was obscure and sombre; and, by the salutary contrast of his
fresh and rugged character with the delicate or morbid traits
of his fellow beings, lend a graceful symmetry to the whole. The
sentence Sam had just delivered with so much emphasis ought to
have been addressed to the traitor lover, when discovered in the
act of inconstancy, and, so given, would have been effective and
dramatic. But at a juncture like the present, the author felt it
to be simply ludicrous, and had he not been so mortified, would
have laughed outright!
"Don't make a fool of yourself, Sam," remonstrated he. "Reflect
whom you're addressing, and in what company you are, and do try
and talk like a civilized being."
"Come, come! no palaver," returned Sam, in a loud and boisterous
tone (to do him justice, he had never been taught any other);
"down on your marrow-bones at once, or here goes for your
gizzard!" and he drew his sword with a flourish.
So this was the rough diamond--the epitome of common sense! Why,
he was a half-witted, impertinent, overbearing booby, and his
author longed to get him across his knee, and correct him in the
good old way. But meantime the point of the young warrior's
sword was getting unpleasantly near the left breast-pocket of
the author's dressing gown (which he wore at the time), and the
latter happened to recollect, with a nervous thrill, that this
was the sword which mortally wounded the traitor lover (for whom
Sam evidently mistook him) during the stirring combat so vividly
described in the twenty-second chapter. Could he but have
foreseen the future, what a different ending that engagement
should have had! But again it was too late, and the author sprang
behind the big easy chair with astonishing agility, and from that
vantage ground endeavored to bring on a parley.
Yet how could he argue and expostulate against himself? How
arraign Sam of harboring murderous designs which he had himself
implanted in his bosom? How, indeed, expect him to comprehend
conversation so entirely foreign to his experience? It was an
awkward dilemma.
It was Sam who took it by the horns. Somebody, he felt, must be
mortally wounded; and finding himself defrauded of one subject,
he took up with the next he encountered, which chanced to be none
other than the venerable and white-haired gentleman who filled
the position, in the tale, of a wealthy and benevolent uncle. The
author, having always felt a sentiment of exceptional respect and
admiration for this reverend and patriarchal personage, who
by his gentle words and sage counsels, no less than his noble
generosity, had done so much to elevate and sweeten the tone
of his book, fell into an ecstasy of terror at witnessing the
approach of his seemingly inevitable destruction; especially as
he perceived that the poor old fellow (who never in his life had
met with aught but reverence and affection, and knew nothing
of the nature of deadly weapons and impulses) was, so far, from
attempting to defend himself, or even escape, actually opening
his arms to the widest extent of avuncular hospitality, and
preparing to take his assassin, sword and all, into his fond and
forgiving heart!
"You old fool!" shrieked the author, in the excess of his
irritation and despair; "he isn't your repentant nephew! Why
can't you keep your forgiveness until it's wanted?"
But Uncle Dudley having been created solely to forgive and
benefit, was naturally incapable of taking care of himself, and
would certainly have been run through the ample white waistcoat,
had not an unexpected and wholly unprecedented interruption
averted so awful a catastrophe.
A small, graceful figure, wearing a picturesque white cap, with
jaunty ribbons, and a short scarlet petticoat, from beneath which
peeped the prettiest feet and ancles ever seen, stepped suddenly
between the philanthropic victim and his would-be-murderer,
dealt the latter a vigorous blow across the face with a broom
she carried, thereby toppling him over ignominiously into the
coal-scuttle, and then, placing her plump hands saucily
akimbo, she exclaimed with enchanting _naivete_: "There! Mr.
Free-and-easy! take _that_ for your imperance."
This little incident caused the author to fall back into his easy
chair in a condition of profound emotion. It appeared to have
corrected a certain dimness or obliquity in his vision, of the
existence of which its cure rendered him for the first time
conscious. The appearance of the little country girl (whose very
introduction into the romance the author had looked upon with
misgivings) had afforded the first gleam of natural, refreshing,
wholesome interest--in fact, the only relief to all that was
vapid, irrational, and unreal--which the combined action of the
characters in his romance had succeeded in producing. But the
enchantress who had effected this, so far from being the most
unadulterated product of his own brain and genius, was the only
one of all his _dramatis personæ_ who was not in the slightest
degree indebted to him for her existence. She was nothing
more than an accurate copy of Mary the house-maid, while the
others--the mis-formed, ill-balanced, one-sided creations, who,
the moment they were placed beyond the pale of their written
instructions--put out of the regular and pre-arranged order of
their going--displayed in every word and gesture their utter
lack and want of comprehension of the simplest elements of human
nature: _these_ were the unaided offspring of the author's fancy.
And yet it was by help of such as these he had thought to push
his way to immortality! How the world would laugh at him! and,
as he thought this, a few bitter tears of shame and humiliation
trickled down the sides of the poor man's nose.
Presently he looked up. The warlike Sam remained sitting
disconsolately in the coal-hod; his instructions suggested no
means of extrication. Forsaken Constance lay fainting on the
sofa, waiting for some one to chafe her hands and bathe her
temples. The strikingly handsome betrayer leant in sullen and
gloomy silence against the mantel-piece, ready to treat all
advances with stern and defiant obduracy. The benevolent uncle
stood with open arms and bland smile, never doubting but
that everybody was preparing for a simultaneous rush to, and
participation in, his embrace; and, finally, the pretty little
country girl, with her arms akimbo and her nose in the air,
remained mistress of the situation. Her unheard of innovation, of
having done something timely, sensible, and decisive, even
though not put down in the book, seemed to have paralyzed all the
others. Ah! she was the only one there who was not less than a
shadow. The author felt his desolate heart yearn towards her, and
the next moment found himself on his knees at her feet.
"Mary," cried he, "you are my only reality. The others are empty
and soulless, but you have a heart. They are the children of a
conceited brain and visionary experience; you, only, have I drawn
simply and unaffectedly, as you actually existed. Except for
you, whom I slighted and despised, my whole romance had been an
unmitigated falsehood. To you I owe my preservation from worse
than folly, and my initiation into true wisdom. Mary--dear
Mary, in return I have but one thing to offer you--my heart! Can
you--_will_ you not love me?"--
To his intense surprise, Mary, instead of evincing a becoming
sense of her romantic situation, burst forth into a merry peal
of laughter, and, catching him by one shoulder, gave him a hearty
shake.
"La sakes! Mr. Author, do wake up! did ever anybody hear such a
man!"
There was his room, his fire, his chair, his table, and his
closely-written manuscript lying quietly upon it. There was
he himself on his knees on the carpet, and--there was Mary the
house-maid, one hand holding the brimming tea-pot, the other held
by the author against his lips, and laughing and blushing in a
tumult of surprise, amusement and, perhaps, something better than
either.
"Did I say I loved you, Mary?" enquired the author, in a state of
bewilderment. "Never mind! I say now that I love you with all my
heart and soul, and ten times as much when awake, as when I was
dreaming! Will you marry me?"
Mary only blushed rosier then ever. But she and the author always
thereafter took their tea cosily together.
As for the romance, the author took it and threw it into the
fire, which roared a genial acknowledgment, and in five minutes
had made itself thoroughly acquainted with every page. There
remained a bunch of black flakes, and in the center one soft
glowing spark, which lingered a long while ere finally taking
its flight up the chimney. It was the description of the little
country girl.
"The next book I write shall be all about you," the author used
to say to his wife, in after years, as they sat together before
the fire-place, and watched the bright blaze roar up the chimney.
--_Julian Hawthorne._
_A FROSTY DAY._
Grass afield wears silver thatch,
Palings all are edged with rime,
Frost-flowers pattern round the latch,
Cloud nor breeze dissolve the clime;
When the waves are solid floor,
And the clods are iron-bound,
And the boughs are crystall'd hoar,
And the red leaf nail'd aground.
When the fieldfare's flight is slow,
And a rosy vapor rim,
Now the sun is small and low,
Belts along the region dim.
When the ice-crack flies and flaws,
Shore to shore, with thunder shock,
Deeper than the evening daws,
Clearer than the village clock.
When the rusty blackbird strips,
Bunch by bunch, the coral thorn,
And the pale day-crescent dips,
New to heaven a slender horn.
--_John Leicester Warren._
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Those who come last seem to enter with advantage. They are
born to the wealth of antiquity. The materials for judging are
prepared, and the foundations of knowledge are laid to their
hands. Besides, if the point was tried by antiquity, antiquity
would lose it; for the present age is really the oldest, and has
the largest experience to plead.--_Jeremy Collier_.
[Illustration: COMING OUT OF SCHOOL.--VAUTIER.]
_COMING OUT OF SCHOOL._
If there be any happier event in the life of a child than coming
out of school, few children are wise enough to discover it. We do
not refer to children who go to school unwillingly--thoughtless
wights--whose heads are full of play, and whose hands are
prone to mischief:--that these should delight in escaping the
restraints of the school-room, and the eye of its watchful
master, is a matter of course. We refer to children generally,
the good and the bad, the studious and the idle, in short, to
all who belong to the _genus_ Boy. Perhaps we should include the
_genus_ Girl, also, but of that we are not certain; for, not
to dwell upon the fact that we have never been a girl, and are,
therefore, unable to enter into the feelings of girlhood, we hold
that girls are better than boys, as women are better than men,
and that, consequently, they take more kindly to school life.
What boys are we know, unless the breed has changed very much
since we were young, which is now upwards of--but our age
does not concern the reader. We did not take kindly to school,
although we were sadly in need of what we could only obtain in
school, viz., learning. We went to school with reluctance,
and remained with discomfort; for we were not as robust as the
children of our neighbors. We hated school. We did not dare to
play truant, however, like other boys whom we knew (we were not
courageous enough for that); so we kept on going, fretting, and
pining, and--learning.
Oh the long days (the hot days of summer, and the cold days of
winter), when we had to sit for hours on hard wooden benches,
before uncomfortable desks, bending over grimy slates and
ink-besprinkled "copy books," and poring over studies in which
we took no interest--geography, which we learned by rote;
arithmetic, which always evaded us, and grammar, which we never
could master. We could repeat the "rules," but we could not
"parse;" we could cipher, but our sums would not "prove;" we
could rattle off the productions of Italy--"corn, wine, silk and
oil"--but we could not "bound" the State in which we lived. We
were conscious of these defects, and deplored them. Our teachers
were also conscious of them, and flogged us! We had a morbid
dread of corporeal punishment, and strove to the uttermost to
avoid it; but it made no difference, it came all the same--came
as surely and swiftly to us as to the bad boys who played
"hookey," the worse boys who fought, and the worst boy who once
stoned his master in the street. With such a school record as
this, is it to be wondered at that we rejoiced when school was
out? And rejoiced still more when we were out of school?
The feeling which we had then appears to be shared by the
children in our illustration. Not for the same reasons, however;
for we question whether the most ignorant of their number does
not know more of grammar than we do to-day, and is not better
acquainted with the boundaries of Germany than we could ever
force ourselves to be. We like these little fellows for what they
are, and what they will probably be. And we like their master, a
grave, simple-hearted man, whose proper place would appear to be
the parish-pulpit. What his scholars learn will be worth knowing,
if it be not very profound. They will learn probity and goodness,
and it will not be ferruled into them either. Clearly, they do
not fear the master, or they would not be so unconstrained in his
presence. They would not make snow balls, as one has done, and
another is doing. Soon they will begin to pelt each other, and
the passers by will not mind the snow balls, if they will only
remember how they themselves felt, and behaved, after coming out
of school.
There is not much in a group of children coming out of school. So
one might say at first sight, but a little reflection will show
the fallacy of the remark. One would naturally suppose that in
every well-regulated State of antiquity measures would have been
taken to ensure the education of all classes of the community,
but such was not the case. The Spartans under Lycurgus were
educated, but their education was mainly a physical one, and
it did not reach the lower orders. The education of Greece
generally, even when the Greek mind had attained its highest
culture, was still largely physical--philosophers, statesmen,
and poets priding themselves as much upon their athletic feats
as upon their intellectual endowments. The schools of Rome were
private, and were confined to the patricians. There was a change
for the better when Christianity became the established religion.
Public schools were recommended by a council in the sixth
century, but rather as a means of teaching the young the
rudiments of their faith, under the direction of the clergy, than
as a means of giving them general instruction. It was not until
the close of the twelfth century that a council ordained the
establishment of grammar schools in cathedrals for the gratuitous
instruction of the poor; and not until a century later that the
ordinance was carried into effect at Lyons. Luther found time,
amid his multitudinous labors, to interest himself in popular
education; and, in 1527, he drew up, with the aid of Melanchthon,
what is known as the Saxon School System. The seed was sown, but
the Thirty Years' War prevented its coming to a speedy maturity.
In the middle of the last century several of the German States
passed laws making it compulsory upon parents to send their
children to school at a certain age; but these laws were not
really obeyed until the beginning of the present century. German
schools are now open to the poorest as well as the richest
children. The only people, except the Germans, who thought of
common schools at an early period are the Scotch.
It cost, we see, some centuries of mental blindness to discover
the need of, and some centuries of struggling to establish
schools.
[Illustration: THE BRIDGE OF SIGHS.]
_A GLIMPSE OF VENICE._
The spell which Venice has cast over the English poets is as
powerful, in its way, as was the influence of Italian literature
upon the early literature of England. From Chaucer down, the
poets have turned to Italy for inspiration, and, what is still
better, have found it. It is not too much to say that the
"Canterbury Tales" could not have existed, in their present
form, if Boccaccio had not written the "Decameron;" and it is to
Boccaccio we are told that the writers of his time were indebted
for their first knowledge of Homer. Wyatt and Surrey transplanted
what they could of grace from Petrarch into the rough England of
Henry the Eighth. We know what the early dramatists owe to the
Italian storytellers. They went to their novels for the plots
of their plays, as the novelists of to-day go to the criminal
calendar for the plots of their stories. Shakspeare appears so
familiar with Italian life that Mr. Charles Armitage Brown, the
author of a very curious work on Shakspeare's Sonnets, declares
that he must have visited Italy, basing this conclusion on the
minute knowledge of certain Italian localities shown in some of
his later plays. At home in Verona, Milan, Mantua, and Padua,
Shakspeare is nowhere so much so as in Venice.
It is impossible to think of Venice without remembering the
poets; and the poet who is first remembered is Byron. If our
thoughts are touched with gravity as they should be when we dwell
upon the sombre aspects of Venice--when we look, as here, for
example, on the Bridge of Sighs--we find ourselves repeating:
"I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs."
If we are in a gayer mood, as we are likely to be after looking
at the brilliant carnival-scene which greets us at the threshold
of the present number of _THE ALDINE_, we recall the opening
passages of Byron's merry poem of "Beppo:"
"Of all the places where the Carnival
Was most facetious in the days of yore,
For dance, and song, and serenade, and ball,
And masque, and mime, and mystery, and more
Than I have time to tell now, or at all,
Venice the bell from every city bore."
* * * * *
"And there are dresses splendid, but fantastical,
Masks of all times, and nations, Turks and Jews,
And harlequins and clowns, with feats gymnastical,
Greeks, Romans, Yankee-doodles, and Hindoos
All kinds of dress, except the ecclesiastical,
All people, as their fancies hit, may choose,
But no one in these parts may quiz the clergy,
Therefore take heed, ye Freethinkers! I charge ye."
The Bridge of Sighs (to return to prose) is a long covered
gallery, leading from the ducal palace to the old State prisons
of Venice. It was frequently traversed, we may be sure, in the
days of some of the Doges, to one of whom, our old friend, and
Byron's--Marino Faliero--the erection of the ducal palace is
sometimes falsely ascribed. Founded in the year 800, A.D., the
ducal palace was afterwards destroyed five times, and each time
arose from its ruins with increasing splendor until it became,
what it is now, a stately marble building of the Saracenic style
of architecture, with a grand staircase and noble halls, adorned
with pictures by Titian, Tintoretto, Paul Veronese, and other
famous masters.
It would be difficult to find gloomier dungeons, even in the
worst strongholds of despotism, than those in which the State
prisoners of Venice were confined. These "pozzi," or wells, were
sunk in the thick walls, under the flooring of the chamber at the
foot of the Bridge of Sighs. There were twelve of them formerly,
and they ran down three or four stories. The Venetian of old time
abhorred them as deeply as his descendants, who, on the first
arrival of the conquering French, attempted to block or break up
the lowest of them, but were not entirely successful; for, when
Byron was in Venice, it was not uncommon for adventurous tourists
to descend by a trap-door, and crawl through holes, half choked
by rubbish, to the depth of two stories below the first range.
So says the writer of the _Notes_ to the fourth canto of "Childe
Harolde" (Byron's friend Hobhouse, if our memory serves), who
adds, "If you are in want of consolation for the extinction of
patrician power, perhaps you may find it there. Scarcely a ray of
light glimmers into the narrow gallery which leads to the cells,
and the places of confinement themselves are totally dark. A
little hole in the wall admitted the damp air of the passages,
and served for the introduction of the prisoner's food. A
wooden pallet, about a foot or so from the ground, was the only
furniture. The conductors tell you a light was not allowed. The
cells are about five paces in length, two and a half in width,
and seven feet in height. They are directly beneath one another,
and respiration is somewhat difficult in the lower holes. Only
one prisoner was found when the Republicans descended into these
hideous recesses, and he is said to have been confined sixteen
years." When the prisoner's hour came he was taken out and
strangled in a cell upon the Bridge of Sighs!
And this was in Venice! The grand old Republic which was once the
greatest Power of Eastern Europe; the home of great artists and
architects, renowned the world over for arts and arms; the Venice
of "blind old Dandolo," who led her galleys to victory at the
ripe old age of eighty; the Venice of Doge Foscari, whose son
she tortured, imprisoned and murdered, and whose own paternal,
patriotic, great heart she broke; the Venice of gay gallants, and
noble, beautiful ladies; the Venice of mumming, masking, and the
carnival; the bright, beautiful Venice of Shakspeare, Otway, and
Byron; joyous, loving Venice; cruel, fatal Venice!
* * * * *
MODERN SATIRE.--A satire on everything is a satire on nothing;
it is mere absurdity. All contempt, all disrespect, implies
something respected, as a standard to which it is referred; just
as every valley implies a hill. The _persiflage_ of the French
and of fashionable worldlings, which turns into ridicule
the exceptions and yet abjures the rules, is like Trinculo's
government--its latter end forgets its beginning. Can there be a
more mortal, poisonous consumption and asphyxy of the mind than
this decline and extinction of all reverence?--_Jean Paul_.
_WINTER PICTURES FROM THE POETS._
Although English Poetry abounds with pictures of the seasons, its
Winter pictures are neither numerous, nor among its best. For
one good snow-piece we can readily find twenty delicate Spring
pictures--twinkling with morning dew, and odorous with the
perfume of early flowers. It would be easy to make a large
gallery of Summer pictures; and another gallery, equally large,
which should contain only the misty skies, the dark clouds, and
the falling leaves of Autumn. Not so with Winter scenes. Not that
the English poets have not painted the last, and painted them
finely, but that as a rule they have not taken kindly to the
work. They prefer to do what Keats did in one of his poems, viz.,
make Winter a point of departure from which Fancy shall wing her
way to brighter days:
"Fancy, high-commissioned; send her!
She has vassals to attend her,
She will bring, in spite of frost,
Beauties that the earth hath lost,
She will bring thee, all together,
All delights of summer weather."
But we must not let Keats come between us and the few among his
fellows who have sung of Winter for us. Above all, we must not
let him keep his and our master, Shakspeare, waiting:
"When icicles hang by the wall,
And Dick the shepherd blows his nail,
And Tom bears logs into the hall,
And milk comes frozen home in pail,
When blood is nipped, and ways be foul,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
To-whoo;
To-whit, to-whoo, a merry note,
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.
"When all aloud the wind doth blow,
And coughing drowns the parson's saw,
And birds sit brooding in the snow,
And Marian's nose looks red and raw.
When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
To-whoo;
To-whit, to-whoo, a merry note,
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot."
From Shakspeare to Thomson is something of a descent, but we must
make it before we can find any Winter poetry worth quoting.
Here is a picture, ready-made, for Landseer to put into form and
color:
"There, warm together pressed, the trooping deer
Sleep on the new-fallen snows; and scarce his head
Raised o'er the heapy wreath, the branching elk
Lies slumbering sullen in the white abyss.
The ruthless hunter wants nor dogs nor toils,
Nor with the dread of sounding bows he drives
The fearful flying race: with ponderous clubs,
As weak against the mountain-heaps they push
Their beating breast in vain, and piteous bray,
He lays them quivering on the ensanguined snows,
And with loud shouts rejoicing bears them home."
Cowper is superior to Thomson as a painter of Winter, although it
is doubtful whether he was by nature the better poet. Here is one
of his pictures:
"The cattle mourn in corners, where the fence
Screens them, and seem half petrified with sleep
In unrecumbent sadness. There they wait
Their wonted fodder; not like hungering man,
Fretful if unsupplied; but silent, meek,
And patient of the slow-paced swain's delay.
He, from the stack, carves out the accustomed load,
Deep plunging, and again deep plunging oft,
The broad keen knife into the solid mass:
Smooth as a wall, the upright remnant stands,
With such undeviating and even force
He severs it away: no needless care,
Lest storms should overset the leaning pile
Deciduous, or its own unbalanced weight.
Forth goes the woodman, leaving, unconcerned,
The cheerful haunts of man, to wield the axe
And drive the wedge in yonder forest drear,
From morn to eve his solitary task.
Shaggy, and lean, and shrewd, with pointed ears
And tail cropped short, half lurcher and half cur,
His dog attends him. Close behind his heel
Now creeps he slow; and now, with many a frisk,
Wide scampering, snatches up the drifted snow
With ivory teeth, or ploughs it with his snout;
Then shakes his powdered coat, and barks for joy.
Heedless of all his pranks, the sturdy churl
Moves right toward the mark; nor stops for aught,
But now and then, with pressure of his thumb
To adjust the fragrant charge of a short tube
That fumes beneath his nose: the trailing cloud
Streams far behind him, scenting all the air.
Now from the roost, or from the neighboring pale,
Where, diligent to cast the first faint gleam
Of smiling day, they gossiped side by side,
Come trooping at the housewife's well-known call
The feathered tribes domestic. Half on wing,
And half on foot, they brush the fleecy flood,
Conscious and fearful of too deep a plunge.
The sparrows peep, and quit the sheltering eaves,
To seize the fair occasion; well they eye
The scattered grain, and thievishly resolved
To escape the impending famine, often scared
As oft return, a pert voracious kind.
Clean riddance quickly made, one only care
Remains to each, the search of sunny nook,
Or shed impervious to the blast. Resigned
To sad necessity, the cock foregoes
His wonted strut; and, wading at their head,
With well-considered steps, seems to resent
His altered gait and stateliness retrenched."
The American poets have excelled their English brethren in
painting the outward aspects of Winter. Here is Mr. Emerson's
description of a snow storm:
"Announced by all the trumpets of the sky
Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields,
Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air
Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven,
And veils the farm-house at the garden's end.
The sled and traveler stopped, the courier's feet
Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit
Around the radiant fire-place, enclosed
In a tumultuous privacy of storm.
Come see the north wind's masonry.
Out of an unseen quarry evermore
Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer
Curves his white bastions with projected roof
Round every windward stake, or tree, or door.
Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work
So fanciful, so savage, nought cares he
For number or proportion. Mockingly
On coop or kennel he hangs Parian wreaths;
A swan-like form invests the hidden thorn:
Fills up the farmer's lane from wall to wall,
Maugre the farmer's sighs, and at the gate
A tapering turret overtops the work.
And when his hours are numbered, and the world
Is all his own, retiring, as he were not,
Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art
To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone,
Built in an age, the mad wind's night-work,
The frolic architecture of the snow."
In Mr. Bryant's "Winter Piece" we have a brilliant description of
frost-work:
"Look! the massy trunks
Are cased in the pure crystal; each light spray
Nodding and tinkling in the breath of heaven,
Is studded with its trembling water-drops,
That glimmer with an amethystine light.
But round the parent stem the long low boughs
Bend, in a glittering ring, and arbors hide
The glassy floor. Oh! you might deem the spot
The spacious cavern of some virgin mine,
Deep in the womb of earth--where the gems grow,
And diamonds put forth radiant rods and bud
With amethyst and topaz--and the place
Lit up, most royally, with the pure beam
That dwells in them. Or haply the vast hall
Of fairy palace, that outlasts the night,
And fades not in the glory of the sun;--
Where crystal columns send forth slender shafts
And crossing arches; and fantastic aisles
Wind from the sight in brightness, and are lost,
Among the crowded pillars. Raise thine eye;
Thou seest no cavern roof, no palace vault;
There the blue sky and the white drifting cloud
Look in. Again the wildered fancy dreams
Of spouting fountains, frozen as they rose,
And fixed, with all their branching jets, in air,
And all their sluices sealed. All, all is light;
Light without shade. But all shall pass away
With the next sun. From numberless vast trunks,
Loosened, the crashing ice shall make a sound
Like the far roar of rivers, and the eve
Shall close o'er the brown woods as it was wont."
Winter, itself, has never been more happily impersonated than by
dear old Spenser. We meant to close with his portrait of Winter,
but, on second thoughts, we give, as more seasonable, his
description of January. The fourth line can hardly fail to
remind the reader of the second line of Shakspeare's song, and
to suggest the query--whether Shakspeare borrowed from Spenser,
Spenser from Shakspeare, or both from Nature?
"Then came old January, wrapped well
In many weeds to keep the cold away;
Yet did he quake and quiver like to quell,
And blow his nayles to warme them if he may;
For they were numbed with holding all the day
An hatchet keene, with which he felled wood
And from the trees did lop the needlesse spray:
Upon an huge great earth-pot steane he stood,
From whose wide mouth there flowed forth the Romane floud."
* * * * *
As long as you are engaged in the world, you must comply with its
maxims; because nothing is more unprofitable than the wisdom of
those persons who set up for reformers of the age. 'Tis a part
a man can not act long, without offending his friends, and
rendering himself ridiculous.--_St. Gosemond_.
_THE PAVILIONS ON THE LAKE._