Ariel went dreaming on his way; nor sought to rival his brother at the
forge, nor questioned the right which he assumed to rule among his
fellow-men. He acknowledged his brother’s worth, and knew him to be the
completest man to meet the stern necessities of life—to lay deeply in
that new age a strong foundation upon which others were to build, for
good or ill, through many a revolving year, the politics of the earth.
To himself it was given to see the future in its action; and it passed
before him so distinct and bright, that Zella, sitting at his side, oft
turned away with fear, as his tongue grew eloquent over a tale of
greatness and of sorrow still hidden within the womb of time. Thrice
blessed is he who knows his work and does it; who learns in early youth
that the practical is the only good, nor chases phantoms, till, the
harvest past, he turns a poor gleaner upon another’s steps, and begs
from bounty what should be his of right. But Ariel had other hopes, not
willed, but given for a purpose, to which he was bound as the winged
chorister is bound to the melody which springs unbidden from its throat.
He lived in the ideal, and strove to grasp the mysterious laws by which
the world within acts upon the world without. The soul’s own greatness
to all of God’s labor a greatness gives, which lesser spirits never
know; and the soul’s beauty is poured upon all matter, as the setting
sun, in ripe October, pours a purple flood of departing light upon the
gorgeous landscapes of my native North. This Ariel knew; and when he
listened to the voices of the sea, of the wood, and of the lesser
herbage, growing; to the sighing of the air, and the creaking, and the
grating of bough on bough, rocked by the wind; he believed that all were
parts of one great hymn, whose interpreter was within, and, combined,
would a language give more perfect to express the soul’s griefs and
joys, the loveliness and magnitude of God’s labors, than that which
Adam, articulate, invented.