steps towards the girl, but before they met, he fell headlong on the
ground. Those who had been standing around the grave now approached. The
girl sat holding his head, and chafing his temples with her hands. He
had fainted. The blood was slowly oozing from a wound by a rifle ball in
the right breast. It appeared to have bled considerably, for it had run
down even to his ankle, and the right leggin was deeply stained.
Tahattawa looked the very image of despair. Hope had been kindled in her
breast only to be destroyed, and her poor heart could hardly contain its
grief.
Shaomet ran to his tent, and brought a calabash full of water from the
river, and some being sprinkled on the face of the young warrior, he
slowly revived. Turning a melancholy glance on those around them, his
eye brightened for a moment, and the sternness of his features relaxed
as his look rested on the face of his betrothed.
“Tahattawa,” said he, in a feeble voice, “I am dying. Bury me—here—on
the island. I am going—to the—happy—hunting grounds. See!—the
spirit—of my father—calls me.—Ha! It grows dark—Tahattawa!”
The poor girl bent over him till her face rested on his bosom. When she
again raised her eyes, the spirit of the Nonotuck chief had departed,
and she looked on the cold, fixed features of the dead.
Another grave was dug close by the side of the one which had just been
filled. Some of the friends of the “pale-face” objected to the burial of
an Indian so near the body of their own kindred, but the sisters wished
it, and their feelings were regarded. He was buried, after the manner of
his people—his face towards the rising sun. His hunting weapons were
buried with him. There they lay—two fierce and haughty spirits. They
would not hold fellowship in life, but in _death_ they sleep side by
side.
From that hour the hearts of the two survivors were as one. Theirs had
been a sad and mournful fate. Their destinies were similar. They
lived—lived long—and as happily as two could live whose first dream of
bliss had been thus cruelly broken. They lived to atone for the faults
of those whom they had loved. They were never separated during their
lives, and nearly at the same time the summons came to both to go and
meet their Judge. They have long since passed away. Their clay has
“returned to earth as it was, and their spirits have gone to the God who
gave them.”
Unionville, Mass.
* * * * *
SHAKSPEARE.—No. II.
BY THEODORE S. FAY, AUTHOR OF “NORMAN LESLIE,” “THE COUNTESS IDA,” ETC.
HAMLET.
None of Shakspeare’s characters are insignificant. If I had been Garrick
or Mrs. Siddons, I should have tried sometimes, as an experiment, the
most apparently trifling of his personages. I believe they would give
room for striking development, only there is this objection—neither
Siddons nor Garrick, nor any other of the great actors _could_ take
parts promiscuously from the crowd. They are too unlike each other. They
are too essentially different identities to permit of being represented
by one. Garrick might take Macbeth in the play—and _Scrub_ in the
after-piece, and do them both well; but he could not play equally well
with two such opposite characters by Shakspeare. No actor has appeared
_capable_ of playing all his principal tragic _rôles_ well. It is
sufficient honor to attain to the height of illustrating one or two.
Kean, for example, was very great in Lear and Richard. He was fine, by
starts, in Othello, but not equally so. He wanted sustained simplicity
and calm grandeur. Othello was a hero of nature: he had the quiet self
respect of a long successful soldier. Kean did not satisfy me, as a
whole, in Othello. I like Forrest, in many respects, better. I saw
Forrest play the part at Drury Lane one night far beyond what I had ever
seen before; particularly the first half of the play was perfect; the
last I thought wanted, although in a slight degree, that mellowing and
chastening which time gives to a painting, and will, doubtless, perhaps
_has_ given, to this part of that dignified and impressive portraiture.
He carried with him a crowded and intellectual audience—and, at certain
points, profound and unbreathing silence—the highest
applause—indicated the grasp this distinguished tragedian had on the
minds of the people who have beheld the character so often and so
grandly given—and so often and ably criticised. Cassio’s drunken scene
was full of the thrilling strokes of a master.
Of the characters in these plays we may always speak as of historical
characters—as if they had lived—just as the poet drew them. Men always
do speak of them so. The _opinions_, even of these Shakspearian men and
women, have authority in the senate and the field—at the bar and in the
pulpit. Many a statesman—many an editor has struck at his antagonist
with a citation, not from _Shakspeare_, but from his men and women. By a
common consent of two centuries, Othello and Macbeth, Lear and
Coriolanus, have _lived_—they have been substantial beings—their real
historical individuality has passed into their dramatic being—and they
appeal to our minds from the scenes where Shakspeare left them. So with
all his vast crowd of people. A young man who has made himself really
acquainted with this assemblage, will have formed valuable friends and
advisers; and should he select properly the persons whose opinions he
means to act on, he will live a happier and a wiser life than he could
without them.
I have said there is no insignificant character in Shakspeare; so I may
say there is scarcely one which would not make the subject of an
interesting volume. As classes of men, scores of volumes might yet be
written on the kings, the queens, the generals, the rebels, the
usurpers—on the mothers, the children, the self-murderers, the
assassins—on the poor and the rich, the innocent and the guilty—on the
supernatural characters—on the noblemen and the peasants—on the fools
and drunkards—on the spirits—on justices and physicians, landlords and
servants—on sea captains, lawyers and executioners—on mobs and
fairies—on Spaniards, Italians, English and Frenchmen—on Romans, Jews,
shepherds, shepherdesses and wenches, courtiers, pages, etc., etc., etc.
Indeed, there is scarcely an end to the various relations in which his
characters may be considered; each one may be performed with effect.
Nature has made, or will make, some particular mortals gifted with a
distinct capacity to represent one of each of them—as Mrs. Siddons was
for Lady Macbeth, and Kean for Lear. The greatest actors seem but
prophets fitted to illustrate one or two of his creations. Some of them
have never yet been represented as they may be. Probably Lady Macbeth,
and Queen Catharine, in Henry VIII. will never be better given—as also
Richard, Lear, and several others; but I suspect many of the subordinate
_rôles_ are yet to be filled.
There really are many indications which bear out the praise of the
commentators, that this world was not _large_ enough for his genius. His
spirits, magicians, monsters, and ghosts, are evidences of it. Other
writers have resorted to these materials before him, but only as a mode
of acting on human feelings. It was reserved for Shakspeare to make us
as well acquainted with the secret heart of a _ghost_ as of a mortal.
Hamlet’s spectre not only frightens and startles us—he touches our
feelings. We see into that unearthly mind—that solitary, disembodied
being—revisiting the scene of its mortal life, but indicating,
fearfully, by its stealthy dim night walks—the solemn march with which
it goes slow and stately by—its allusions to things too frightful for
human ears—its guilty starting at the crowing of the cock, and its
hurrying back to its nameless and awful task—its anguish-stricken
bewailings over the earthly state of peace and happiness from which it
was so ruthlessly hurled—indicating by all these and many more
expressive tokens, the dark and sublime load of woe it bears, and
appealing to our sympathy with terrible power. Ulrici may have found, in
this scene, grounds for his theory.
The character of the unhappy exile from earth to the secret and
impenetrable abode of spirits, is drawn with as much reality as that of
Hamlet or the grave digger. There are two or three touches of
individuality which invest it with a singular attraction. It is not only
a ghost; it is _the_ ghost of a particular individual—of a majestic,
noble, benevolent, affectionate king, overwhelmed by a mighty calamity:
the victim of the most shameful lewdness—the blackest treachery that
ever was seen—and deploring, “in fire,” the “foul crimes” done in his
“days of nature.” We are not to presume he had been a peculiarly wicked
man, but he was _suddenly_ called to his account before he could
_prepare himself to die_.
What a sublime hint of Christianity is this, and how fraught with a
tremendous lesson to all mankind. Death itself is not the misfortune; it
is death to an unprepared spirit. That he was
“Sleeping, by a brother’s hand
Of life, of crown, of queen, at once despatched,”
is not so terrible as that he was cut off even in _the blossoms of his
sins_—
“Unhousel’d, disappointed, unaneal’d:
_No reckoning made_, but sent to my account
_With all my imperfections on my head_.”
I have always thought this one of the sublimest and most terrible
reaches of our author’s genius. All earthly misfortunes, regarded in
their temporary consequences are, of course, unworthy to be placed in
comparison with the misfortune of the immortal disembodied soul. The
wreck of old Lear’s mind, the agonizing fall of Othello from bliss, the
banishment and murder of Coriolanus, the stern fate of the sweet Juliet
and her tender Romeo—all fall short of the horror of this spectral
lamentation, coming up from the central caves of the earth, or the yet
more unimaginable caverns of hell itself, and deploring in the “dead
waste and middle of the night,” the vast, dire and unnameable wo it
suffers from its unreflecting manner of living while yet a mortal tenant
of the globe, and when the means of _making its reckoning_ were yet
within its power, and had been so unwisely neglected. Had this unhappy
creature been a thinking and pious person, the sudden blow would not
have found it unprepared. It would not have been wasting the precious
hours of age in the _blossoms of its sin_. It would not have deferred
the imperative duty of making its peace with the creator, and of
endeavoring, (_before_ the condemnation “to fast in fire”) to purify
itself from earthliness—from the enervating and selfish tendencies of
luxury and royal power, and from the soils and weaknesses of youthful
passions, uncurbed, and the follies—perhaps we may also with justice
term them “foul crimes”—which all mortals commit in a greater or less
degree.
In these few words is a grave lesson to the men of the present living
world. Many of the most prominent characters in history have felt, in
time, the importance of the mighty truth which this “poor ghost” had
neglected—and, by withdrawing from active life, as old age came on, and
devoting themselves to reflection, to self-examination and
self-purification, to thoughts of death and communion with their Maker,
have endeavored to prepare themselves for the closing scene. Men require
this process. We are all heated with the cares and passions of life, and
cherish in our breasts flames which ought to be extinguished before we
enter the presence of our Maker. Some abandon themselves to such
unworthy wishes, to such mean, selfish and ridiculous opinions and
determinations, that the years of ordinary old age cannot be too long to
enable us to regain our balance, and to recover (or if we have never had
it, to acquire) the dignity of a moral being. What a picture is
presented to the imagination by the thought of a _miser_ standing before
the throne of God. How would a _profligate_ feel, restored, as he will
be by death, to a true estimation of himself, on being thrust suddenly
before the dread tribunal; or, what would be the sensations of an
arrogant, presumptuous man, going through life with no thought but
himself and his own greatness, on being, like the ghost of Hamlet, “cut
off” even in the blossoms of his sins, _no reckoning made_, “but sent to
his account” with all his imperfections on his head? What would be the
feelings of any mere worldly man—one who had been a cruel persecutor
and oppressor—who had taken the bread from the widow and orphan?
All men have not sinned equally, but all men have sinned. It is not
likely any one has gone through the world without having an opportunity
of feeling, with a most bitter humiliation, the innate depravity and
woful weakness of human nature, unless _sustained_ by the creating hand.
Trusted to themselves the stoutest will faint, the purest will be
soiled. The events of life act upon the heart with a kind of chemical
power, extracting from it baseness and weakness, as poison may be
extracted from flowers. Perhaps this is capable of being turned to good,
if read aright. For the heart which has looked in upon itself, with
distrust and shame, is wiser and purer than any other: it is stronger
also. To come to the feet of the Creator with a _true_ trust in him, is
almost impossible, till we have seen the shipwreck of self confidence,
and felt that by ourselves we are less than nothing.
After a life, then, of action, and of temptation, of false hopes, ill
placed affections, frivolous desires and enjoyments, and perhaps impious
and guilty occupations, how happy he who has the wisdom to break away
from them _himself_, before inexorable fate calls him, and who cleanses
and prepares his spirit for the great change it is destined to undergo.
I will not enter here upon the graver tenets of religion, but surely we
may believe that he who sees in time the nature of sin, and disentangles
himself from its snares—who spends the latter years of his life in a
sincere endeavor to become what he ought to be, and to release his
spirit from the world before his body is called away, if he cannot
wholly efface the traces of sin, may soften them.
For my part, although not an old man, I begin already to look upon human
life more as a spectator than an actor, and to feel myself within the
sublime and mysterious attraction of another world. I distrust the
effect upon me of the collisions, temptations and pleasures which I may
yet have to encounter—and I feel a hesitation even in wishing for
wealth or worldly honors. The idea of a hereafter—of the actual visible
presence of my Maker—is becoming every day less remote and more
familiar to me. It hushes the voice of indignation, and checks the
impulse of contempt—which, when I keep my eyes on this world alone, I
cannot always master. It teaches me that my mortal part, as far as
related to earthly things, is a brief, passing shadow—that the world is
but the reflection of one point in the career of the soul—that human
vice and folly are but mysteries of nature, and that human passions were
given us as our slaves—not our masters. No medicine—no magnetism can
have a more striking influence than this thought, upon the physical as
well as the moral part of me; and when I enter the chamber where a dead
man is lying, I feel all that is _bad_ within me so rebuked, silenced
and destroyed—and all that is good so awakened, so pure, sustaining and
holy, that I have little enthusiasm to search after the vain phantoms of
mere earthly philosophy, or earthly happiness. I see only the form of
religion, ever calm, ever young, standing above the wreck of the mortal
universe, and pointing to another and a better one.
What a powerful stroke of dramatic art is it then in our great poet to
throw this idea, not into the voice of a sage or a preacher, but to
announce it to startled generations from the dim faded lips of a
suffering spirit.
It has been a custom with many great characters, both of ancient and
modern times, to devote the latter part of their lives to this moral
preparation. It seems as if a kind Providence had conceived old age on
purpose for this process. If we have lived properly, our minds will then
have become cultivated in proportion as the body, that great tempter,
has been weakened; and we are called upon to retire from the active
world just when we are become unfit for it. Yet how many old men do we
see clinging to its gilded toys, empty hopes, and frivolous amusements,
without a thought of any thing beyond; or, how many a grey head is at
this moment working schemes which might better become the imagination of
the thoughtless school-boy, or the grovelling nature of the brute. In
how many a heart, which should be the altar only for the pure, silent,
undying flame of piety, do we see the unholy passions of earth burning
beneath a hand which ever feeds with the impurest food their vain fires.
How few are there among aged men who have thought of letting loose their
hold on earth, of slackening their pursuit after wealth or vain
distinctions, of turning their minds to the period (which to-morrow may
bring) when all things not connected with their future career shall seem
to them like infant toys.
I often think of that poor ghost’s touching lament, and hope that death
may not find me thus unprepared. I take a profound lesson from this
profoundest of mortal teachers, and learn to go through the earth like a
passing traveller, paying but a brief visit of curiosity and instruction
to its beautiful wonders, but who does not mean to build, even in the
fairest of its bowers, or by the most tempting of its streams—because
his home is in another country, to which all that he has and all that he
loves is either gone or going.
How deeply Shakspeare—even the laughter-loving, etherial, sunshiny
Shakspeare, was impressed with the same thought, you may gather from his
works. It is not the night-walking spirit alone who utters to mankind
this sublime truth, but the most high climbing and successful of his
living personages also proclaim it. _Prospero_, among others, in a
solemn and touching remark, betrays how full he is of the nothingness of
mere human life. After having given utterance to that most magnificent
of all the sublime breathings of a thoughtful mind—
“And like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this unsubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind.”
He invites his companions to his cell:
“Where you shall take your rest
For this one night; which (part of it) I’ll waste
With such discourse, as I no doubt, shall make it
Go quick away: the story of my life,
And the particular accidents gone by,
Since I came to this isle: and in the morn
I’ll bring you to your ship, and so to Naples,
Where I have hope to see the nuptial
Of these, our dear belov’d, solemnized;
And thence, _retire me to my Milan, where_
_Every third thought shall be my grave_.”
It is true this man has made himself a _magician_ for the purposes of
the poem; yet the reflection is that of a Christian turning away from
the most splendid paths of this world to prepare himself for the next.
Of the _Tempest_ it may be said, in passing, that over it hangs a
beautiful mystery which has not, that I am aware of, yet been explained.
There is some deeper meaning in the extraordinary contrast of
characters, in the delicate and harshly used Ariel—in the brutish and
diabolical Caliban,
“Which any print of goodness will not take,
Being capable of all ill;”
and yet, by a mysterious exercise of power, obliged to obey an art
sufficiently strong to control his “dam’s god Setebos.” I am so
accustomed, in the works of Shakspeare, as in those of nature, to look
for meaning where all seems most capricious, that I dwell with a kind of
delightful curiosity over the grand and not yet all explained lessons of
this fascinating creation. What a delightful amusement for an old age of
leisure to relieve its graver moments by a habitual study of Shakspeare!
To return a moment to the spirit of Hamlet. The _human traces_ found in
this pale spectre are great heighteners of our interest in it, and of
the probabilities of its existence. The return to Elsinore, and to the
platform before the castle, in the night, when the sentinels are on
guard—its appearance first to the soldiers on the watch—then to
Horatio, who has been induced to watch by the report of it—its sudden
appearance, and equally abrupt disappearance—giving an idea of
capricious impulses and laws not within the reach of mortal
conjecture—its seeking out _its son_ as the confidant of the amazing
secret, are all ghost-like, and yet show the shadow of mortality. Its
dismal, half-breathed, mysterious revelations of what it is undergoing
in its new abode, are spectral to the last degree; but there is nothing
which elevates it to a higher and nobler place in our commiseration,
than the exquisitely tender allusion to the guilty queen. This is the
mortal, always majestic, superior, merciful and refined—but now
enlightened and subdued by the influences of its new state.
“But, how-so-ever thou pursu’st this act,
Taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive
Against thy mother aught; leave her to heaven,
And to those thorns that in her bosom lodge
To prick and sting her.”
And then the startled, reluctant, yet abrupt and compelled return.
“Fare thee well _at once_!
The glow-worm shows the matin to be near,
And ’gins to pale his uneffectual fire;
Adieu, adieu, adieu. Remember me.”
Again, in the scene where Hamlet kills Polonius, and reveals to his
mother his full knowledge of her crime, the spirit wo-stricken, and
bringing with it always the terrible cold breath of the other world—yet
still, with the fingerings of human affection, is touched with pity at
the terror and suffering of her whom it had once loved:
“But, look! amazement on thy mother sits:
Oh, step between her and her fighting soul;
Conceit in weakest bodies strongest works.
Speak to her Hamlet.”
* * * * *
BALLAD.
BY J. R. LOWELL.
Gloomily the river floweth,
Close by her bower door,
And drearily the nightwind bloweth
Across the barren moor.
It rustles through the withered leaves
Upon the poplars tall,
And mutters wildly ’neath the eaves
Of the unlighted hall.
The waning moon above the hill
Is rising strange and red,
And fills her soul, against her will,
With fancies lone and dread.
The stream all night will flow as drearful,
The wind will shriek forlorn,
She fears—she knows that something fearful
Is coming ere the morn.
The curtains in that lonely place
Wave like a heavy pall,
And her dead mother’s pale, pale face
Doth flicker on the wall.
And all the rising moon about
Her fear did shape the clouds,
And saw dead faces staring out
From coffins and from shrouds.
A screech-owl now, for three nights past,
Housed in some hollow tree,
Sends struggling up against the blast
His long shriek fearfully.
Strange shadows waver to and fro,
In the uncertain light,
And the scared dog hath howled below
All through the weary night.
She only feels that she is weak
And fears some ill unknown,
She longs, and yet she dreads to shriek
It is so very lone.
Her eyeballs in their sockets strain,
Till the nerves seem to snap,
When blasts against the window-pane
Like lean, dead fingers tap.
And still the river floweth by
With the same lonely sound,
And the gusts seem to sob and sigh,
And wring their hands around.
Is that a footstep on the stair,
And on the entry-floor?
What sound is that, like breathing, there?
There, close beside the door!
Hush! hark! that was a dreadful sigh!
So full of woe, so near!
It were an easier thing to die
Than feel this deadly fear.
One of her ancestors she knew
A bloody man had been,
They found him here, stabb’d through and through,
Murdered in all his sin.
The nurse had often silenced her,
With fearful tales of him—
God shield her! did not something stir
Within that corner dim?
A gleam across the chamber floor—
A white thing in the river—
One long, shrill, shivering scream, no more,
And all is still forever!
* * * * *
THE ROMAN BRIDE.
A TALE OF THE WESTERN EMPIRE.
BY THE AUTHOR OF “THE BROTHERS,” “CROMWELL,” “RINGWOOD THE ROVER,” ETC.