A pleasing land of drowsy head it was
Of dreams that wave before the half shut eye,
And of gay castles in the clouds that pass
Forever flushing round a summer sky.
_Thomson_.
MR. WHITE,--It is a long time since I threw my mite into the treasury
of your book; Nugator's occupation's gone! was my ejaculation when
last I wrote to you. The same devouring element which has recently
plunged New York in misery and gloom, had just then triumphed over
much of my earthly possessions, but over none more foolishly prized
than sundry small wares which were intended for your market. As there
was no prospect of getting Congress to extend the time of the payment
of _my bonds_, to which one would think I was as justly entitled as
the rich merchant, I had to set to work as best I might to repair the
ravages of fire. In the midst of saws and hammers, of bricks and
mortar, my ideas have been so vulgarized, that you must not expect to
see a Phoenix rise from my ashes. From me you must never expect any
thing but trifles, as my signature portends; yet when I reflect that
this world is made up of small things as well as great, and that the
former are as essential to constitute a whole as the latter, and that
your book ought no more than the world to consist altogether of the
grand, but should sometimes admit the trifling, I am encouraged to
begin again, although already scorched by more fires than one, having
encountered the fire of some of your critics. As the mouse sets off to
greater advantage the bulk of the mammoth, the critics should rather
be pleased than otherwise, to see my wretched skeleton in contrast
with the vast proportions of some of your contributors,--but enough.
Romances and novels made my neighbor Castellanus a castle-builder;
nothing can be more dissimilar than the world he inhabits and that
ideal one in which he has always lived; like certain persons who shall
be nameless, he has been literally _in_ the world and _out_ of it at
the same time, and his experience therefore might justify a seeming
paradox. I think it was Godwin in his Fleetwood, who drew so beautiful
a contrast between our _night_ dreams and _day_ dreams. Castellanus
never could bear the former, attended by hag and night mare, where we
are forever struggling to attain some goal, which we can never reach;
he did not like to start affrighted out of sleep; to sink through
chasms yawning beneath his feet;
"Nor toss on shatter'd plank far out upon some deep."
No, I have heard him exclaim, "Give me the dreams of day; let me
recline upon some bank in summer shade, supine, where fancy fits her
wings for pleasant flight, and quickly ushers me into her radiant
halls. No hope defeated can there make me grieve; no cup untasted from
my lips be dashed; no light, receding ever, there can shine, but
whatsoever there be of joy or love to mortals known, is seized at once
and easily made my own." There are few persons, perhaps, who do not at
some period of life, construct these gay castles, yclept in air, and
well indeed is the appellation bestowed, for though more splendid far
than the works of old; more passing rare than all of which we
read;--Balbec's! Palmyra's!--none could excel them,--yet in a moment
they will topple down, nor leave one marble column, spared as if to
point to the scene of desolation and to mourn for its brethren,
broken, ruined, and overthrown. Such monuments are sometimes seen
standing amid that decay, produced by Goths and Vandals; and Goths and
Vandals still in modern times will break, _irruptive_, on the
castle-builder's chosen spot--misfortunes! griefs! pale care!
tormenting debt!--Then fancy, all thy revelry is forgotten;
reluctantly from our sweet couch, we rise and homeward frowning hie to
toil and writhe and fret. But such is the skill of the artist, that he
has but to ramble forth where all is still and wave his wand, when in
an instant, like the enchantment of old, his shining palaces will
upward climb. It is not so, alas! with those works barbarians
overturned; none know how to raise them to such sublime heights; lost
are those arts by which they towering rose, and we but gaze on them to
sigh and curse the hands which slew them.
This practice of castle-building had been the habit of Castellanus
from his boyhood. It gave him a strange unsocial turn and made him
shun the inmates of his father's house. He fled all company, and the
pleasures which others pursue were rarely pleasures to him. One
enjoyment he had which never palled. Some lonely seat beside a
"wimpling burn" or waterfall, where human sounds fell distantly; there
with book in hand, he drank in the lulling music with which such a
place is fraught; there would he draw forth, unseen, some old romance
with worn and dusky lid, of "haunted Priories" with bloody hand, or
dark "Udolpho" with its deep mysteries, its gliding ghosts, and secret
pannels. Then would fall the curtain on this mortal vale and all its
hateful realities, and his rapt soul would revel in the high wrought
tale of fancy. For him these fictions had an unspeakable
charm--gallant youths were his companions. He trod with them over Alps
and Appenines, where banditti lurked amid the dreary forests and
lights were seen to glance and disappear. Soft maidens, too, were
there, whose superhuman charms won every heart; encompassed by ten
thousand dangers, he could not leave them, until he saw them safely
locked in love's triumphant arms. Though a very ugly fellow, he had
deceived himself into the belief that he should one day or other marry
one of these delightful creatures, and had even settled that her name
should be Julia, and thought he should be one of the happiest fellows
upon earth; but, Mr. Editor, who do you think he now is? a
clodhopper!! aye a miserable clodhopper! The owner of land and
negroes!! In that one sentence, I sum up all of human misery--and what
do you think is his wife's name? Peggy! Phœbus what a name!
"Cobblers! take warning by this cobbler's end."
Yes, ye castle-builders! look upon his undone condition and take
warning. Take warning, parents, and bring up your children to suit the
sphere in which they are to move. I shall not trouble you with the why
and the wherefore of his present condition, but suffice it to say that
such it is, and then picture to yourself the untold miseries he must
endure when I depict to you the sort of life he is leading, with such
passions as I have already described his ruling ones to be.
_Imprimis_: there is Peg--but I had better say as little as possible
of her, {156} out of respect for the ladies and out of regard for my
friend, because in truth like "Jerry Sneak," he has not eaten a "_bit
of under crust since he was married_," but follow me if you please
upon his farm, and let me introduce you to his plagues and tormentors.
Let us look for the overseer--we shall find him, if at home, which is
seldom the case, seated on a _stump_, with the symbol of his office
under his arm. There he is, you see, mounted on his throne lazily
looking at the laborers; working the land to death by injudicious
cultivation; extorting the last drop of vitality from it; a foe to
every species of improvement, and obstinately bent upon going on in
the jog trot of his predecessors. This is Castellanus' companion _ex
necessitate_. Shades of the Orvilles and Mortimers! pity him. What can
there be in common between them? What can they talk about? About
Evelina and Amanda?--cottages covered with woodbine and
honeysuckle?--landscapes and glorious sunsets?--the warbling of
birds?--Oh no, Suk and Sall, negro cabins or pig-styes, corn fields
and----yes, they _can_ talk of birds, but they are blackbirds and
crows, and devil take their warbling--of sunset, but only to lament
the shortness of the days. His (the overseer's) themes are rogues and
runaways--he is eloquent upon hog-stealing, and neither Simon
Sensitive nor Timothy Testy could recount more readily the miseries of
human life. His are the miseries of Geoponies. Rot--rust--weevil--fly
and cutworm, haunt his imagination and dwell upon his tongue.
Castellanus had rather be a dog and bay the moon than discuss such
subjects. But my friend's delight was once in horses; it was one of
the few pleasures he had. His fancy was early captivated by Alexander
mounting Bucephalus; a horse gaily caparisoned and mounted by a steel
clad knight, was a sight upon which his imagination feasted. The red
roan charger of Marmion at the battle of Flodden had thrilled his
every nerve,
"Blood shot his eyes--his nostril spread
The loose rein, dangling from his head
Housing and saddle bloody red."
Oh what a picture! and that I should be obliged to exhibit to your
view the counterfeit presentment. The ploughboys are just coming out
of the stable with their master's horses going to plough. Here, sir,
is Buck-e-fallus, as the negro boys call Bucephalus. There is no
difficulty in mounting _him_; they have knocked out one of his eyes;
he has a blind side and cannot see the shadow cast by the sun. If his
spirit was ever as high as his namesake's, he has lost it now--that
little ragged urchin can ride him with a grape-vine--raw-boned,
spavined and wind-galled! let him pass and let us see the next. This
is Smiler! "Lucus a non lucendo," I suppose; alas! _he_ never
smiles--he reminds one of Irving's wall eyed horse looking out of the
stable window on a rainy day. His look is disconsolate in the extreme;
from the imperturbable gravity of his manners, you perceive he is dead
to hope; melancholy has marked him for her own; bad feeding, constant
toil, and a lost currycomb, have made him "what thou well may'st
hate," although he once "set down" as "shapely a shank" as Burns' Auld
mare Maggie ever did. Do you see that long legged fellow, that
Brobdignag, mounted upon the little mare mule? His legs almost drag
the ground, and he ought in justice to _toat_ (aye, sir, _toat_, a
good word, an excellent word, and one upon which I mean to send you an
etymological essay some of these days,) the animal he bestrides. There
are some singular traits about that mule _Golliver_, as the boys by a
singular misnomer call her. She keeps fat "while other nags are poor;"
it is because she lives in the corn-field. She can open the
stable-door by some inscrutable means, some sort of open sessame;
gates are no impediments to her, and even ten rails and a rider cannot
arrest her progress. She seems to have a vow upon her never to leave
the plantation; she will go as far as the outer gate with her rider,
but if he attempt to pass that boundary his fate is sealed. He is
canted most unceremoniously over her head and made to bite the dust;
that gate is her _ultima Thule_; her ne plus ultra; the utmost bound
of her ambition. She has acquaintances enough, as Old Oliver says, and
wishes not to extend the circle. Her policy is Chinese, or perhaps
like Rasselas, she once escaped from her happy valley and was
disappointed in the world--"_one fatal remembrance_" perhaps casts its
"bleak shade" beyond that gate.--I know not in sooth, but heaven help
me! what am I doing? If I go on thus, with the whole _stud_ of my
neighbor, and write at large upon every thing which torments him, I
shall never have done. Suffice it then, that I give you a hasty,
panoramic sketch of what he has to encounter in his rides over his
farm. See him mounted on his little switch tailed grey, which has the
high sounding title of White Surrey, and whose tail is nearly cut off
at the root by the crupper--the mane in most admired disorder, and
fetlocks long and bushy. Now what does he behold? Barren
fields--broken fences--gates unhinged--starving cattle--ragged
sheep--and jades so galled that they make _him_ wince--hogs that eat
their own pigs and devastate his crops--mares that sometimes cripple
their own colts--cows on the contrary which have so much of the milk
of _vaccine kindness_, that they suffer their offspring to suck after
being broken to the cart--bulls even, that suck--rams, so pugnacious,
that they butt his mules down, as the aforesaid Gulliver can attest,
for often have I seen her knocked down as fast as she could rise--upon
my life it's true, Mr. Editor, and you need not add with Major
Longbow, what will you lay it's a lie? It was amusing to see the ram,
with head erect and fixed eye, moving round in a small circle and
watching his opportunity to plant his blows, with all the pugilistic
dexterity of Crib or Molyneux. I once knew my unfortunate neighbor to
have a fine blooded colt, foaled in the pasture with his mules. These
vicious devils had no sooner perceived that the colt was without those
long ears which characterize their species, than they set to work with
one accord to demolish the _monstrous_ production, and in spite of all
the efforts of the mother, which fought with a desperation worthy of
some old Roman, beset by a host of foes, succeeded in trampling to
death her beautiful offspring. What a picture this is of some
political zealots and envenomed critics, who no sooner perceive that a
man has not _asses ears_, like themselves, than they commence a
senseless outcry against him and compass his destruction. I have
somewhere read of a madman, and perhaps he was right, who, when
confined, protested he was not mad; that all mankind were madder than
he, and that they were envious of his superior intellect and therefore
wished to put him out of the way. Castellanus goes to ride out with
Cecilia, Camilla, the {157} Children of the Abbey, or some such book
in his pocket, and so engrossed is his mind with the elegance and
refinement of those personages, that he can scarcely bear to go where
his overseer is. He shuns him as much as Lovel did Captain Mirvan, or
old Mr. Delville Mr. Briggs. He turns with horror from the pictures of
desolation and mismanagement around him, and hastens home to find
consolation in the bosom of his heroines, not of his Peggy, for he
cannot yet say "_Non clamosa mea mulier jam percutit aures_"[1]--and
in truth that virtuous lady has a tongue, and with it can ring such a
peal about the above mentioned unproductive state of things, that he
had rather hear the "grating on a scrannel-reed of wretched
straw;"--or, to be less poetical, and to come back to what he hears
every day, he had rather listen to the music of his own cart-wheels,
which grate so harshly and scream so loudly that they may be heard a
mile off. The inevitable result of all I have told you, Mr. Editor,
is, that my neighbor is actually sinking three or four per cent. upon
his capital every year, and must come to beggary unless you can arouse
him from his ridiculous castle-building and novel reading. I wish you
could see the style in which he moves with his _cara sposa_ to church;
they have _come down_, as we say, to an old gig, which cannot be quite
as old as Noah's ark, because no two of the kind were ever seen in
this world, and therefore could not have been preserved at the time of
the Deluge, although the brass mountings on the muddy and
rain-stiffened harness are of so antique a fashion, that we might well
suppose the ingenuity of that celebrated artificer in brass, Tubal
Cain, was employed in their construction. This crazy vehicle is drawn
by the overseer's horse, which is borrowed for the "nonce,"--because
neither Buck-e-fallus nor Smiler, nor any of the stud are _fit to go_,
and Gulliver, besides being a mule, has declined, as I have already
shewn, having any thing to do with our "external relations;" and
furthermore, because this is the only conceivable mode in which my
neighbor can obtain a return for that unlimited control which the said
horse exercises over the corn in his corn-house. The contrast between
the long lean figure, and rueful and cadaverous countenance of
Castellanus, and the short figure resembling "_the fat squab upon a
Chinese fan_," and the ruddy countenance of Mrs. Castellanus, is very
striking;
They sit, side by side, in the gig, sir, as solemn
As Marriage and Death in a newspaper column.
How they ever came together, except by the fortuitous concourse of
atoms, I cannot divine, for certainly without disrespect, I may say,
that however charming Mrs. Castellanus may be, she is not
A beauty ripe as harvest,
Whose skin is whiter than a swan all over,
Than silver, snow, or lilies--
nor has she
--------------------a soft lip
Would tempt you to eternity of kissing,
And flesh that melteth in the touch to blood.
But we may cease to wonder at their union, when we reflect on the
couples we see every day,--so totally dissimilar in taste and external
appearance, that we may almost believe with St. Pierre that we love
only those who form a contrast to ourselves. "Love," he says, "results
only from contrasts, and the greater they are, the more powerful is
its energy. I could easily demonstrate this by the evidence of a
thousand historical facts. It is well known, for example, to what mad
excess of passion that tall and clumsy soldier, Mark Anthony, loved
and was beloved by Cleopatra; not the person whom our sculptors
represent of a tall, portly, Sabine figure, but the Cleopatra whom
historians paint as little, lively and sprightly, carried in disguise
about the streets of Alexandria, in the night time, packed up in a
parcel of goods on the shoulders of Apollodorus, to keep an
assignation with Julius Cæsar."