Blessed are the shadows of porches and cloisters! Blessed the walls that
shut us out from the dusty, dazzling world, and shed upon us the repose
and consolation of our own serene humanity! We, harassed among the base
utilities of life, made weary and sore by the ceaseless struggles of
emulation and daily warfare, turn wistfully to the Peripatetic among the
shady groves of Athens,--dream of quiet Saracenic courts, echoing with
plashy fountains,--of hooded monks, pacing away their cloistered lives
beneath storied vaults and little patches of sky,--knowing, while we
dream, that out of these came of yore the happiness of the old _eurekas_
and the deep sweetness of ancient knowledge. And then, away from the
city of our toil, the tumult of our ambitions, we gratefully find
Vallombrosas of our own, where we walk not alone, but in the pleasant
companionship of elevated thoughts, and of old sages and masters, long
passed away, but still wise and gentle to those who approach them with
faith and simplicity. Here, like those chimes which wander unheeded over
the house-tops of the roaring town, till they drop down blessed dews of
Heaven into still, grass-grown courts and deserted by-ways, the great
universal human heart beats closer to our own, and our whole being
palpitates with almost ethereal sympathies. Voices of old minstrels,
wandering down to us on loving lips through the generations, murmur in
our ears the dear burden of human, affection for men and things; and
the same tale is poured abundantly into our hearts by all those great
masters who, through their Art, have become to us oracles of Beauty and
eloquent interpreters of the Love of God.
There are few persons so hardened in the practical life as not to have
recognized that in these moments of large and spiritual stillness all
the processes of the mind seem to be instinctively attuned to harmonies
almost celestial. Experience and memory present their pictures softened
and made gentle by some mysterious power. The imagination is swayed by
the sweetest impulses of humanity; and the whole man is changed. The
mere instincts of affinity are purified and deepened into tenderest
affection, and all the external relations of existence
"come apparelled in more precious habit,
More moving delicate and full of life,
Into the eye and prospect of the soul,"
than when they offered themselves to the ordinary waking senses. This is
a wonder and a mystery. I sometimes believe, thinking on these things,
that we have inherited from our father Adam a habit of day-dreaming;
that in this exile of coarse and work-day life our heated brows are
sometimes fanned with breezes from some half-remembered Araby the Blest,
and there instinctively come over us such visions of beatitude that the
Paradise we have lost is recalled to us, and we live once more among the
dreamy and grateful splendors of Eden. These moods come upon us so like
memories! But you, graybeard travellers in the Desert of Life, you are
not to be deceived by the trickery of the elements; you know the moist
_mirage_; you are not to be beguiled by it from your track; let the
unwary dream dreams of bubbling wellsprings and pleasant shade, of palmy
oases and tranquil repose; as for you, you must goad your camels and
press onward for Jerusalem.
But I like to chase phantoms; I hate the plodding of the caravans. I
turn aside and spread my own tent apart. Will you tarry awhile under its
shadow, O serious and gentle stranger, and listen to some poor words of
mine?
These memories of Eden! Let us cherish them, for they are not worthless
or deceitful. We, who, when we can, carry our hearts in our eyes, know
very well, and have often said it before, that Eden is not so many days'
journey away from our feet that we may not inhale its perfumes and press
our brows against its sod whenever we wish. It is not cant, I hope, to
say that Eden is not lost entirely. There stands no angel at its gates
with flaming sword; nor did it fade away with all its legendary beauties,
drop its leaves into the melancholy streams, leaving no trace behind of
its glades and winding alleys, its stretches of flowery mead, its sunny
hill-sides, and valleys of happiness and peace. But Eden still blooms
wherever Beauty is in Nature; and Beauty, we know, is everywhere. We
cannot escape from it, if we would. It is ever knocking at the door of
our hearts in sweet and unexpected missions of grace and tenderness. We
are haunted by it in our loneliest walks. Almost unconsciously, out of
flowers and trees, earth and sky, sunrises and sunsets,--out of mosses
under the feet, mosses and pebbles and grasses,--out of the loveliness
of moon and stars, their harmonies and changes,--out of sea-foam, and
what sea-foam reveals to us of the rich and strange things beneath the
waters far down,--out of sweet human eyes,--out of all these things
creeps into our spirits the knowledge that God is Love, and His
handiwork the expression of ineffable tenderness and affection. I
believe, indeed, that the principle of Beauty, philosophically speaking,
pervades all material objects, all motions and sounds in Nature,--that
it enters intimately into the very idea of Creation. But we, poor finite
beings, do not seek for it, as we do for gold and gems. We remain
content with those conventional manifestations of it which are
continually and instinctively touching our senses as we walk the earth.
Fearfully and wonderfully as we are made, there is no quality in our
being so blessed as this sensitiveness to Beauty. All the organs of our
life are attuned by it to that vast universal symphony which, in spite
of the warring elements of passion and prejudice, unites us in friendly
sympathies with all mankind. If
"the meanest flower that blows can bring
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears,"--
if it can so move some of us, who have cared to open the portals of our
hearts to receive and cherish the little waif,--why, verily, the simple
violet that blooms alike under every sky, the passing cloud that floats
changing ever over every land, gathering equal glories from the sunsets
of Italy and Labrador, are more potent missionaries of peace and
good-will to all the earth than the most persuasive accents of human
eloquence.