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THE
ATLANTIC MONTHLY.
A MAGAZINE OF
_Literature, Science, Art, and Politics_.
VOLUME XVII.
[Illustration]
BOSTON:
TICKNOR AND FIELDS,
124 TREMONT STREET.
LONDON: TRUeBNER AND COMPANY.
1866.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1866,
by TICKNOR AND FIELDS,
in the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the District of
Massachusetts.
UNIVERSITY PRESS:
ELECTROTYPED BY WELCH, BIGELOW, & CO.,
CAMBRIDGE.
CONTENTS.
Page
Amazonian Picnic, An _Mrs. Agassiz_ 313
Bad Symptoms _Edward Spenser_ 768
Beauty and the Beast _Bayard Taylor_ 13
Booth, Edwin _E. C. Stedman_ 585
Chimney-Corner for 1866, The.
I., II., III., IV., V., VI. _Mrs. H. B. Stowe_ 88, 214, 345,
490, 577, 737
Court-Cards _Charles J. Sprague_ 178
Communication with the Pacific _C. C. Coffin_ 333
Doctor Johns. XII., XIII., XIV., XV., XVI., XVII.
_Donald G. Mitchell_ 69, 204,
323, 466, 552, 707
English Opinion on the American War _W. M. Rossetti_ 129
Fenian "Idea," The _Frances Power Cobbe_ 572
Freedman's Story, The. I., II _William Parker_ 152, 276
Griffith Gaunt: or, Jealousy.
II., III., IV., V., VI., VII. _Charles Reade_ 100, 221, 365,
507, 596, 751
Gypsies, The Origin of the _G. W. Hosmer_ 167
Harmonists, The _Author of "Life in the Iron-Mills"_ 529
High Tide of December, The _Author of "Life in the Iron-Mills"_ 47
In the Hemlocks _John Burroughs_ 672
Kingdom Coming, The _Gail Hamilton_ 81
Landscape Painter, A _Henry W. James_ 182
Late Insurrection in Jamaica, The _G. Reynolds_ 480
Last Days of Walter Savage Landor.
I., II., III. _Kate Field_ 385, 540, 684
Lucy's Letters _Anne M. Brewster_ 64
Madam Waldoborough's Carriage _J. T. Trowbridge_ 407
Mephistophelean _Charles J. Sprague_ 632
Monuments, Question of _W. D. Howells_ 646
Nantucket _F. Sheldon_ 296
Passages from Hawthorne's Note-Books.
I., II., III., IV., V., VI. 1, 170, 257, 422, 565, 725
Pioneer Editor, A 743
Poor Chloe _Mrs. L. M. Child_ 352
President and Congress, The _E. P. Whipple_ 500
Quicksands _Mrs. C. A. Hopkinson_ 657
Ramble through the Market, A _B. W. Ball_ 268
Reconstructionists, Three Months
Among the _Sidney Andrews_ 237
Sainte-Beuve _John Foster Kirk_ 432
Snow-Walkers, The _John Burroughs_ 302
Struggle for Shelter, A _Caroline P. Hawes_ 456
Tied to a Rope _Charles J. Sprague_ 721
Were they Crickets? 397
What will it cost us? _E. H. Derby_ 621
Wilderness, The _J. T. Trowbridge_ 39
POETRY.
Abraham Davenport _John C. Whittier_ 539
Among the Laurels _Mrs. Akers_ 594
Bells of Lynn, The _H. W. Longfellow_ 47
Castles in the Air _W. C. Bryant_ 11
Dead Ship of Harpswell, The _John G. Whittier_ 705
De Spiridione Episcopo _C. G. Leland_ 454
Giotto's Tower _H. W. Longfellow_ 724
In the Sea _Hiram Rich_ 344
Killed at the Ford _H. W. Longfellow_ 479
Mountain, The _E. G. Stedman_ 734
Mr. Hosea Biglow's Speech in March Meeting _James Russell Lowell_ 635
My Annual _O. W. Holmes_ 395
Old Man's Idyl, An _Richard Realf_ 266
Riviera di Ponente _J. F. Clarke_ 202
Snow _T. B. Aldrich_ 364
To Hersa 311
To-morrow _H. W. Longfellow_ 552
Two Pictures _John G. Whittier_ 149
Wind the Clock _Hiram Rich_ 80
REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.
Andrews's South since the War 778
A Noble Life 650
Bigelow's Address on the Limits of Education 251
Bowles's Across the Continent 524
Brownson's American Republic 523
Clark's Mind in Nature 649
Croquet, Manuals of 772
Doolittle's Social Life of the Chinese 779
Foote's War of the Rebellion 653
Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates 779
Herman; or, Young Knighthood 246
Hittell's Resources of California 522
Holcombe's Literature in Letters 650
Jean Ingelow's Songs of Seven 122
Lecky's Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe 248
Life and Letters of Frederick W. Robertson 119
Life of Michael Angelo 124
Life and Times of Sir Joshua Reynolds 525
McGilchrist's Richard Cobden 253
Meta Lander's Esperance 525
Perry's Human Hair 255
Piatt's Poems 653
Savage's History of the Boston Watch and Police 122
Sarmiento's Vida de Abran. Lincoln 252
Smiles's Lives of Boulton and Watt 384
Taylor's Story of Kennett 775
Towle's History of Henry the Fifth 651
Tuckerman's Criterion 651
White's Poetry of the Civil War 724
Whittier's Snow-Bound 383
Winifred Bertram 384
Works of Edmund Burke, The 122
RECENT AMERICAN PUBLICATIONS 125, 256, 655
THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.
_A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics._
VOL. XVII.--JANUARY, 1866.--NO. XCIX.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1865, by TICKNOR AND
FIELDS, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of
Massachusetts.
PASSAGES FROM HAWTHORNE'S NOTE-BOOKS.
I.
[Mr. Hawthorne's note-books, comprising several volumes of
closely written memoranda, were found in his study after his
decease. Extracts from these interesting pages will from
time to time be printed in this magazine, just as he left
them. They are the records of his every-day life, and as
such will be welcome to all who appreciate his genius and
love his memory.]
Salem, _June 15, 1835._--A walk down to the Juniper. The shore of the
coves strewn with bunches of sea-weed, driven in by recent winds.
Eel-grass, rolled and bundled up, and entangled with it,--large marine
vegetables, of an olive color, with round, slender, snake-like stalks,
four or five feet long, and nearly two feet broad: these are the herbage
of the deep sea. Shoals of fishes, at a little distance from the shore,
discernible by their fins out of water. Among the heaps of sea-weed
there were sometimes small pieces of painted wood, bark, and other
driftage. On the shore, with pebbles of granite, there were round or
oval pieces of brick, which the waves had rolled about, till they
resembled a natural mineral. Huge stones tossed about, in every variety
of confusion, some shagged all over with sea-weed, others only partly
covered, others bare. The old ten-gun battery, at the outer angle of the
Juniper, very verdant, and besprinkled with white-weed, clover, and
buttercups. The juniper-trees are very aged and decayed and moss-grown.
The grass about the hospital is rank, being trodden, probably, by nobody
but myself. There is a representation of a vessel under sail, cut with a
penknife, on the corner of the house.
Returning by the almshouse, I stopped a good while to look at the
pigs,--a great herd,--who seemed to be just finishing their suppers.
They certainly are types of unmitigated sensuality,--some standing in
the trough, in the midst of their own and others' victuals,--some
thrusting their noses deep into the food,--some rubbing their backs
against a post,--some huddled together between sleeping and waking,
breathing hard,--all wallowing about; a great boar swaggering round, and
a big sow waddling along with her huge paunch. Notwithstanding the
unspeakable defilement with which these strange sensualists spice all
their food, they seem to have a quick and delicate sense of smell. What
ridiculous-looking animals! Swift himself could not have imagined
anything nastier than what they practise by the mere impulse of natural
genius. Yet the Shakers keep their pigs very clean, and with great
advantage. The legion of devils in the herd of swine,--what a scene it
must have been!
Sunday evening, going by the jail, the setting sun kindled up the
windows most cheerfully; as if there were a bright, comfortable light
within its darksome stone wall.
* * * * *
_June 18._--A walk in North Salem in the decline of yesterday
afternoon,--beautiful weather, bright, sunny, with a western or
northwestern wind just cool enough, and a slight superfluity of heat.
The verdure, both of trees and grass, is now in its prime, the leaves
elastic, all life. The grass-fields are plenteously bestrewn with
white-weed, large spaces looking as white as a sheet of snow, at a
distance, yet with an indescribably warmer tinge than snow,--living
white, intermixed with living green. The hills and hollows beyond the
Cold Spring copiously shaded, principally with oaks of good growth, and
some walnut-trees, with the rich sun brightening in the midst of the
open spaces, and mellowing and fading into the shade,--and single trees,
with their cool spot of shade in the waste of sun: quite a picture of
beauty, gently picturesque. The surface of the land is so varied, with
woodland mingled, that the eye cannot reach far away, except now and
then in vistas perhaps across the river, showing houses, or a church and
surrounding village, in Upper Beverly. In one of the sunny bits of
pasture, walled irregularly in with oak-shade, I saw a gray mare
feeding, and, as I drew near, a colt sprang up from amid the grass,--a
very small colt. He looked me in the face, and I tried to startle him,
so as to make him gallop; but he stretched his long legs, one after
another, walked quietly to his mother, and began to suck,--just wetting
his lips, not being very hungry. Then he rubbed his head, alternately,
with each hind leg. He was a graceful little beast.
I bathed in the cove, overhung with maples and walnuts, the water cool
and thrilling. At a distance it sparkled bright and blue in the breeze
and sun. There were jelly-fish swimming about, and several left to melt
away on the shore. On the shore, sprouting amongst the sand and gravel,
I found samphire, growing somewhat like asparagus. It is an excellent
salad at this season, salt, yet with an herb-like vivacity, and very
tender. I strolled slowly through the pastures, watching my long shadow
making grave, fantastic gestures in the sun. It is a pretty sight to see
the sunshine brightening the entrance of a road which shortly becomes
deeply overshadowed by trees on both sides. At the Cold Spring, three
little girls, from six to nine, were seated on the stones in which the
fountain is set, and paddling in the water. It was a pretty picture, and
would have been prettier, if they had shown bare little legs, instead of
pantalets. Very large trees overhung them, and the sun was so nearly
gone down that a pleasant gloom made the spot sombre, in contrast with
these light and laughing little figures. On perceiving me, they rose up,
tittering among themselves. It seemed that there was a sort of playful
malice in those who first saw me; for they allowed the other to keep on
paddling, without warning her of my approach. I passed along, and heard
them come chattering behind.
* * * * *
_June 22._--I rode to Boston in the afternoon with Mr. Proctor. It was a
coolish day, with clouds and intermitting sunshine, and a pretty fresh
breeze. We stopped about an hour at the Maverick House, in the sprouting
branch of the city, at East Boston,--a stylish house, with doors painted
in imitation of oak; a large bar; bells ringing; the bar-keeper calls
out, when a bell rings, "Number --"; then a waiter replies, "Number --
answered"; and scampers up stairs. A ticket is given by the hostler, on
taking the horse and chaise, which is returned to the bar-keeper when
the chaise is wanted. The landlord was fashionably dressed, with the
whitest of linen, neatly plaited, and as courteous as a Lord
Chamberlain. Visitors from Boston thronging the house,--some standing at
the bar, watching the process of preparing tumblers of punch,--others
sitting at the windows of different parlors,--some with faces flushed,
puffing cigars. The bill of fare for the day was stuck up beside the
bar. Opposite this principal hotel there was another, called "The
Mechanics," which seemed to be equally thronged. I suspect that the
company were about on a par in each; for at the Maverick House, though
well dressed, they seemed to be merely Sunday gentlemen,--mostly young
fellows,--clerks in dry-goods stores being the aristocracy of them. One,
very fashionable in appearance, with a handsome cane, happened to stop
by me and lift up his foot, and I noticed that the sole of his boot
(which was exquisitely polished) was all worn out. I apprehend that some
such minor deficiencies might have been detected in the general
showiness of most of them. There were girls, too, but not pretty ones,
nor, on the whole, such good imitations of gentility as the young men.
There were as many people as are usually collected at a muster, or on
similar occasions, lounging about, without any apparent enjoyment; but
the observation of this may serve me to make a sketch of the mode of
spending the Sabbath by the majority of unmarried, young, middling-class
people, near a great town. Most of the people had smart canes and
bosom-pins.
Crossing the ferry into Boston, we went to the City Tavern, where the
bar-room presented a Sabbath scene of repose,--stage-folk lounging in
chairs, half asleep, smoking cigars, generally with clean linen and
other niceties of apparel, to mark the day. The doors and blinds of an
oyster and refreshment shop across the street were closed, but I saw
people enter it. There were two owls in a back court, visible through a
window of the bar-room,--speckled-gray, with dark-blue eyes,--the
queerest-looking birds that exist,--so solemn and wise,--dozing away the
day, much like the rest of the people, only that they looked wiser than
any others. Their hooked beaks looked like hooked noses. A dull scene
this. A stranger, here and there, poring over a newspaper. Many of the
stage-folk sitting in chairs on the pavement, in front of the door.
We went to the top of the hill which formed part of Gardiner Greene's
estate, and which is now in the process of levelling, and pretty much
taken away, except the highest point, and a narrow path to ascend to it.
It gives an admirable view of the city, being almost as high as the
steeples and the dome of the State House, and overlooking the whole mass
of brick buildings and slated roofs, with glimpses of streets far below.
It was really a pity to take it down. I noticed the stump of a very
large elm, recently felled. No house in the city could have reared its
roof so high as the roots of that tree, if indeed the church-spires did
so.
On our drive home we passed through Charlestown. Stages in abundance
were passing the road, burdened with passengers inside and out; also
chaises and barouches, horsemen and footmen. We are a community of
Sabbath-breakers!
* * * * *
_August 31._--A drive to Nahant yesterday afternoon. Stopped at Rice's,
and afterwards walked down to the steamboat wharf to see the passengers
land. It is strange how few good faces there are in the world,
comparatively to the ugly ones. Scarcely a single comely one in all this
collection. Then to the hotel. Barouches at the doors, and gentlemen and
ladies going to drive, and gentlemen smoking round the piazza. The
bar-keeper had one of Benton's mint-drops for a bosom-brooch! It made a
very handsome one. I crossed the beach for home about sunset. The tide
was so far down as just to give me a passage on the hard sand, between
the sea and the loose gravel. The sea was calm and smooth, with only the
surf-waves whitening along the beach. Several ladies and gentlemen on
horseback were cantering and galloping before and behind me.
* * * * *
A hint of a story,--some incident which should bring on a general war;
and the chief actor in the incident to have something corresponding to
the mischief he had caused.
* * * * *
_1835, September 7._--A drive to Ipswich with B----. At the tavern was
an old, fat, country major, and another old fellow, laughing and playing
off jokes on each other,--one tying a ribbon upon the other's hat. One
had been a trumpeter to the major's troop. Walking about town, we
knocked, for a whim, at the door of a dark old house, and inquired if
Miss Hannah Lord lived there. A woman of about thirty came to the door,
with rather a confused smile, and a disorder about the bosom of her
dress, as if she had been disturbed while nursing her child. She
answered us with great kindness.
Entering the burial-ground, where some masons were building a tomb, we
found a good many old monuments, and several covered with slabs of red
freestone or slate, and with arms sculptured on the slab, or an inlaid
circle of slate. On one slate grave-stone, of the Rev. Nathl. Rogers,
there was a portrait of that worthy, about a third of the size of life,
carved in relief, with his cloak, band, and wig, in excellent
preservation, all the buttons of his waistcoat being cut with great
minuteness,--the minister's nose being on a level with his cheeks. It
was an upright grave-stone. Returning home, I held a colloquy with a
young girl about the right road. She had come out to feed a pig, and was
confused, and also a little suspicious that we were making fun of her,
yet answered us with a shy laugh and good-nature,--the pig all the time
squealing for his dinner.
* * * * *
Displayed along the walls, and suspended from the pillars of the
original King's Chapel, were coats-of-arms of the king, the successive
governors, and other distinguished men. In the pulpit there was an
hour-glass on a large and elaborate brass stand. The organ was
surmounted by a gilt crown in the centre, supported by a gilt mitre on
each side. The governor's pew had Corinthian pillars, and crimson damask
tapestry. In 1727 it was lined with china, probably tiles.
* * * * *
Saint Augustin, at mass, charged all that were accursed to go out of the
church. "Then a dead body arose, and went out of the church into the
churchyard, with a white cloth on its head, and stood there till mass
was over. It was a former lord of the manor, whom a curate had cursed
because he refused to pay his tithes. A justice also commanded the dead
curate to arise, and gave him a rod; and the dead lord, kneeling,
received penance thereby." He then ordered the lord to go again to his
grave, which he did, and fell immediately to ashes. Saint Augustin
offered to pray for the curate, that he might remain on earth to confirm
men in their belief; but the curate refused, because he was in the place
of rest.
* * * * *
A sketch to be given of a modern reformer,--a type of the extreme
doctrines on the subject of slaves, cold water, and other such topics.
He goes about the streets haranguing most eloquently, and is on the
point of making many converts, when his labors are suddenly interrupted
by the appearance of the keeper of a mad-house, whence he has escaped.
Much may be made of this idea.
* * * * *
The world is so sad and solemn, that things meant in jest are liable, by
an overpowering influence, to become dreadful earnest,--gayly dressed
fantasies turning to ghostly and black-clad images of themselves.
* * * * *
A story, the hero of which is to be represented as naturally capable of
deep and strong passion, and looking forward to the time when he shall
feel passionate love, which is to be the great event of his existence.
But it so chances that he never falls in love; and although he gives up
the expectation of so doing, and marries calmly, yet it is somewhat
sadly, with sentiments merely of esteem for his bride. The lady might be
one who had loved him early in life, but whom then, in his expectation
of passionate love, he had scorned.
* * * * *
The scene of a story or sketch to be laid within the light of a
street-lantern; the time, when the lamp is near going out; and the
catastrophe to be simultaneous with the last flickering gleam.
* * * * *
The peculiar weariness and depression of spirits which is felt after a
day wasted in turning over a magazine or other light miscellany,
different from the state of the mind after severe study; because there
has been no excitement, no difficulties to be overcome, but the spirits
have evaporated insensibly.
* * * * *
To represent the process by which sober truth gradually strips off all
the beautiful draperies with which imagination has enveloped a beloved
object, till from an angel she turns out to be a merely ordinary woman.
This to be done without caricature, perhaps with a quiet humor
interfused, but the prevailing impression to be a sad one. The story
might consist of the various alterations in the feelings of the absent
lover, caused by successive events that display the true character of
his mistress; and the catastrophe should take place at their meeting,
when he finds himself equally disappointed in her person; or the whole
spirit of the thing may here be reproduced.
* * * * *
Last evening from the opposite shore of the North River, a view of the
town mirrored in the water, which was as smooth as glass, with no
perceptible tide or agitation, except a trifling swell and reflux on the
sand, although the shadow of the moon danced in it. The picture of the
town perfect in the water,--towers of churches, houses, with here and
there a light gleaming near the shore above, and more faintly glimmering
under water,--all perfect, but somewhat more hazy and indistinct than
the reality. There were many clouds flitting about the sky; and the
picture of each could be traced in the water,--the ghost of what was
itself unsubstantial. The rattling of wheels heard long and far through
the town. Voices of people talking on the other side of the river, the
tones being so distinguishable in all their variations that it seemed as
if what was there said might be understood; but it was not so.
* * * * *
Two persons might be bitter enemies through life, and mutually cause the
ruin of one another, and of all that were dear to them. Finally, meeting
at the funeral of a grandchild, the offspring of a son and daughter
married without their consent,--and who, as well as the child, had been
the victims of their hatred,--they might discover that the supposed
ground of the quarrel was altogether a mistake, and then be wofully
reconciled.
* * * * *
Two persons, by mutual agreement, to make their wills in each other's
favor, then to wait impatiently for one another's death, and both to be
informed of the desired event at the same time. Both, in most joyous
sorrow, hasten to be present at the funeral, meet, and find themselves
both hoaxed.
* * * * *
The story of a man, cold and hard-hearted, and acknowledging no
brotherhood with mankind. At his death they might try to dig him a
grave, but, at a little space beneath the ground, strike upon a rock, as
if the earth refused to receive the unnatural son into her bosom. Then
they would put him into an old supulchre, where the coffins and corpses
were all turned to dust, and so he would be alone. Then the body would
petrify; and he having died in some characteristic act and expression,
he would seem, through endless ages of death, to repel society as in
life, and no one would be buried in that tomb forever.
* * * * *
Cannon transformed to church-bells.
* * * * *
A scold and a blockhead,--brimstone and wood,--a good match.
* * * * *
To make one's own reflection in a mirror the subject of a story.
* * * * *
In a dream to wander to some place where may be heard the complaints of
all the miserable on earth.
* * * * *
Some common quality or circumstance that should bring together people
the most unlike in all other respects, and make a brotherhood and
sisterhood of them,--the rich and the proud finding themselves in the
same category with the mean and the despised.
* * * * *
A person to consider himself as the prime mover of certain remarkable
events, but to discover that his actions have not contributed in the
least thereto. Another person to be the cause, without suspecting it.
* * * * *
_October 25, 1835._--A person or family long desires some particular
good. At last it comes in such profusion as to be the great pest of
their lives.
* * * * *
A man, perhaps with a persuasion that he shall make his fortune by some
singular means, and with an eager longing so to do, while digging or
boring for water, to strike upon a salt-spring.
* * * * *
To have one event operate in several places,--as, for example, if a
man's head were to be cut off in one town, men's heads to drop off in
several towns.
* * * * *
Follow out the fantasy of a man taking his life by instalments, instead
of at one payment,--say ten years of life alternately with ten years of
suspended animation.
* * * * *
Sentiments in a foreign language, which merely convey the sentiment,
without retaining to the reader any graces of style or harmony of sound,
have somewhat of the charm of thoughts in one's own mind that have not
yet been put into words. No possible words that we might adapt to them
could realize the unshaped beauty that they appear to possess. This is
the reason that translations are never satisfactory,--and less so, I
should think, to one who cannot than to one who can pronounce the
language.
* * * * *
A person to be writing a tale, and to find that it shapes itself against
his intentions; that the characters act otherwise than he thought; that
unforeseen events occur; and a catastrophe comes which he strives in
vain to avert. It might shadow forth his own fate,--he having made
himself one of the personages.
* * * * *
It is a singular thing, that at the distance, say, of five feet, the
work of the greatest dunce looks just as well as that of the greatest
genius,--that little space being all the distance between genius and
stupidity.
* * * * *
Mrs. Sigourney says, after Coleridge, that "poetry has been its own
exceeding great reward." For the writing, perhaps; but would it be so
for the reading?
* * * * *
Four precepts: To break off customs; to shake off spirits ill-disposed;
to meditate on youth; to do nothing against one's genius.
* * * * *
_Salem, August 31, 1836._--A walk, yesterday, down to the shore, near
the hospital. Standing on the old grassy battery, that forms a
semicircle, and looking seaward. The sun not a great way above the
horizon, yet so far as to give a very golden brightness, when it shone
out. Clouds in the vicinity of the sun, and nearly all the rest of the
sky covered with clouds in masses, not a gray uniformity of cloud. A
fresh breeze blowing from land seaward. If it had been blowing from the
sea, it would have raised it in heavy billows, and caused it to dash
high against the rocks. But now its surface was not at all commoved with
billows; there was only roughness enough to take off the gleam, and give
it the aspect of iron after cooling. The clouds above added to the black
appearance. A few sea-birds were flitting over the water, only visible
at moments, when they turned their white bosoms towards me,--as if they
were then first created. The sunshine had a singular effect. The clouds
would interpose in such a manner that some objects were shaded from it,
while others were strongly illuminated. Some of the islands lay in the
shade, dark and gloomy, while others were bright and favored spots. The
white light-house sometimes very cheerfully marked. There was a schooner
about a mile from the shore, at anchor, laden apparently with lumber.
The sea all about her had the black, iron aspect which I have described;
but the vessel herself was alight. Hull, masts, and spars were all
gilded, and the rigging was made of golden threads. A small, white
streak of foam breaking around the bows, which were towards the wind.
The shadowiness of the clouds overhead made the effect of the sunlight
strange, where it fell.
* * * * *
_September._--The elm-trees have golden branches intermingled with their
green already, and so they had on the first of the month.
* * * * *
To picture the predicament of worldly people, if admitted to paradise.
* * * * *
As the architecture of a country always follows the earliest structures,
American architecture should be a refinement of the log-house. The
Egyptian is so of the cavern and mound; the Chinese, of the tent; the
Gothic, of overarching trees; the Greek, of a cabin.
* * * * *
"Though we speak nonsense, God will pick out the meaning of it,"--an
extempore prayer by a New England divine.
* * * * *
In old times it must have been much less customary than now to drink
pure water. Walker emphatically mentions, among the sufferings of a
clergyman's wife and family in the Great Rebellion, that they were
forced to drink water with crab-apples stamped in to relish it.
* * * * *
Mr. Kirby, author of a work on the History, Habits, and Instincts of
Animals, questions whether there may not be an abyss of waters within
the globe, communicating with the ocean, and whether the huge animals of
the Saurian tribe--great reptiles, supposed to be exclusively
antediluvian, and now extinct--may not be inhabitants of it. He quotes a
passage from Revelation, where the creatures under the earth are spoken
of as distinct from those of the sea, and speaks of a Saurian fossil
that has been found deep in the subterranean regions. He thinks, or
suggests, that these may be the dragons of Scripture.
* * * * *
The elephant is not particularly sagacious in the wild state, but
becomes so when tamed. The fox directly the contrary, and likewise the
wolf.
* * * * *
A modern Jewish adage,--"Let a man clothe himself beneath his ability,
his children according to his ability, and his wife above his ability."
* * * * *
It is said of the eagle, that, in however long a flight, he is never
seen to clap his wings to his sides. He seems to govern his movements by
the inclination of his wings and tail to the wind, as a ship is
propelled by the action of the wind on her sails.
* * * * *
In old country-houses in England, instead of glass for windows, they
used wicker, or fine strips of oak disposed checkerwise. Horn was also
used. The windows of princes and great noblemen of crystal; those of
Studley Castle, Holinshed says, of beryl. There were seldom chimneys;
and they cooked their meats by a fire made against an iron back in the
great hall. Houses, often of gentry, were built of a heavy timber frame,
filled up with lath and plaster. People slept on rough mats or straw
pallets, with a round log for a pillow; seldom better beds than a
mattress, with a sack of chaff for a pillow.
* * * * *
_October 25, 1836._--A walk yesterday through Dark Lane, and home
through the village of Danvers. Landscape now wholly autumnal. Saw an
elderly man laden with two dry, yellow, rustling bundles of Indian
corn-stalks,--a good personification of Autumn. Another man hoeing up
potatoes. White rows of cabbages lay ripening. Fields of dry Indian
corn. The grass has still considerable greenness. Wild rose-bushes
devoid of leaves, with their deep, bright red seed-vessels.
Meeting-house in Danvers seen at a distance, with the sun shining
through the windows of its belfry. Barberry-bushes,--the leaves now of a
brown red, still juicy and healthy; very few berries remaining, mostly
frost-bitten and wilted. All among the yet green grass, dry stalks of
weeds. The down of thistles occasionally seen flying through the sunny
air.
* * * * *
In this dismal chamber FAME was won. (Salem, Union Street.)
* * * * *
Those who are very difficult in choosing wives seem as if they would
take none of Nature's ready-made works, but want a woman manufactured
particularly to their order.
* * * * *
A council of the passengers in a street: called by somebody to decide
upon some points important to him.
* * * * *
All sorts of persons, and every individual, has a place to fill in the
world, and is important in some respects, whether he chooses to be so or
not.
* * * * *
A Thanksgiving dinner. All the miserable on earth are to be invited,--as
the drunkard, the bereaved parent, the ruined merchant, the
broken-hearted lover, the poor widow, the old man and woman who have
outlived their generation, the disappointed author, the wounded, sick,
and broken soldier, the diseased person, the infidel, the man with an
evil conscience, little orphan children, or children of neglectful
parents, shall be admitted to the table, and many others. The giver of
the feast goes out to deliver his invitations. Some of the guests he
meets in the streets, some he knocks for at the doors of their houses.
The description must be rapid. But who must be the giver of the feast,
and what his claims to preside? A man who has never found out what he is
fit for, who has unsettled aims or objects in life, and whose mind gnaws
him, making him the sufferer of many kinds of misery. He should meet
some pious, old, sorrowful person, with more outward calamities than any
other, and invite him with a reflection that piety would make all that
miserable company truly thankful.
* * * * *
_Merry_, in merry England, does not mean mirthful; but is corrupted from
an old Teutonic word signifying famous or renowned.
* * * * *
In an old London newspaper, 1678, there is an advertisement, among other
goods at auction, of a black girl of about fifteen years old, to be
sold.
* * * * *
We sometimes congratulate ourselves at the moment of waking from a
troubled dream: it may be so the moment after death.
* * * * *
The race of mankind to be swept away, leaving all their cities and
works. Then another human pair to be placed in the world, with native
intelligence like Adam and Eve, but knowing nothing of their
predecessors or of their own nature and destiny. They, perhaps, to be
described as working out this knowledge by their sympathy with what they
saw, and by their own feelings.
* * * * *
Memorials of the family of Hawthorne in the church of the village of
Dundry, Somersetshire, England. The church is ancient and small, and has
a prodigiously high tower of more modern date, being erected in the time
of Edward IV. It serves as a landmark for an amazing extent of country.
* * * * *
A singular fact, that, when man is a brute, he is the most sensual and
loathsome of all brutes.
* * * * *
A snake, taken into a man's stomach and nourished there from fifteen
years to thirty-five, tormenting him most horribly. A type of envy or
some other evil passion.
* * * * *
A sketch illustrating the imperfect compensations which time makes for
its devastations on the person,--giving a wreath of laurel while it
causes baldness, honors for infirmities, wealth for a broken
constitution,--and at last, when a man has everything that seems
desirable, death seizes him. To contrast the man who has thus reached
the summit of ambition with the ambitious youth.
* * * * *
Walking along the track of the railroad, I observed a place where the
workmen had bored a hole through the solid rock, in order to blast it;
but striking a spring of water beneath the rock, it gushed up through
the hole. It looked as if the water were contained within the rock.
* * * * *
A Fancy Ball, in which the prominent American writers should appear,
dressed in character.
* * * * *
A lament for life's wasted sunshine.
* * * * *
A new classification, of society to be instituted. Instead of rich and
poor, high and low, they are to be classed,--First, by their sorrows:
for instance, whenever there are any, whether in fair mansion or hovel,
who are mourning the loss of relations and friends, and who wear black,
whether the cloth be coarse or superfine, they are to make one class.
Secondly, all who have the same maladies, whether they lie under damask
canopies or on straw pallets or in the wards of hospitals, they are to
form one class. Thirdly, all who are guilty of the same sins, whether
the world knows them or not; whether they languish in prison, looking
forward to the gallows, or walk honored among men, they also form a
class. Then proceed to generalize and classify the whole world together,
as none can claim utter exemption from either sorrow, sin, or disease;
and if they could, yet Death, like a great parent, comes and sweeps them
all through one darksome portal,--all his children.
* * * * *
Fortune to come like a peddler with his goods,--as wreaths of laurel,
diamonds, crowns; selling them, but asking for them the sacrifice of
health, of integrity, perhaps of life in the battle-field, and of the
real pleasures of existence. Who would buy, if the price were to be paid
down?
* * * * *
The dying exclamation of the Emperor Augustus, "Has it not been well
acted?" An essay on the misery of being always under a mask. A veil may
be needful, but never a mask. Instances of people who wear masks in all
classes of society, and never take them off even in the most familiar
moments, though sometimes they may chance to slip aside.
* * * * *
The various guises under which Ruin makes his approaches to his victims:
to the merchant, in the guise of a merchant offering speculations; to
the young heir, a jolly companion; to the maiden, a sighing,
sentimentalist lover.
* * * * *
What were the contents of the burden of Christian in the Pilgrim's
Progress? He must have been taken for a peddler travelling with his
pack.
* * * * *
To think, as the sun goes down, what events have happened in the course
of the day,--events of ordinary occurrence: as, the clocks have struck,
the dead have been buried.
* * * * *
Curious to imagine what murmurings and discontent would be excited, if
any of the great so-called calamities of human beings were to be
abolished,--as, for instance, death.
* * * * *
Trifles to one are matters of life and death to another. As, for
instance, a farmer desires a brisk breeze to winnow his grain; and
mariners, to blow them out of the reach of pirates.
* * * * *
A recluse, like myself, or a prisoner, to measure time by the progress
of sunshine through his chamber.
* * * * *
Would it not be wiser for people to rejoice at all that they now sorrow
for, and _vice versa_? To put on bridal garments at funerals, and
mourning at weddings? For their friends to condole with them when they
attained riches and honor, as only so much care added?
* * * * *
If in a village it were a custom to hang a funeral garland or other
token of death on a house where some one had died, and there to let it
remain till a death occurred elsewhere, and then to hang that same
garland over the other house, it would have, methinks, a strong effect.
* * * * *
No fountain so small but that Heaven may be imaged in its bosom.
* * * * *
Fame! Some very humble persons in a town may be said to possess it,--as,
the penny-post, the town-crier, the constable,--and they are known to
everybody: while many richer, more intellectual, worthier persons are
unknown by the majority of their fellow-citizens. Something analogous in
the world at large.
* * * * *
The ideas of people in general are not raised higher than the roofs of
the houses. All their interests extend over the earth's surface in a
layer of that thickness. The meeting-house steeple reaches out of their
sphere.
* * * * *
Nobody will use other people's experience, nor has any of his own till
it is too late to use it.
* * * * *
Two lovers to plan the building of a pleasure-house on a certain spot of
ground, but various seeming accidents prevent it. Once they find a group
of miserable children there; once it is the scene where crime is
plotted; at last the dead body of one of the lovers or of a dear friend
is found there; and instead of a pleasure-house, they build a marble
tomb. The moral,--that there is no place on earth fit for the site of a
pleasure-house, because there is no spot that may not have been saddened
by human grief, stained by crime, or hallowed by death. It might be
three friends who plan it, instead of two lovers; and the dearest one
dies.
* * * * *
Comfort for childless people. A married couple with ten children have
been the means of bringing about ten funerals.
* * * * *
A blind man, on a dark nights, carried a torch, in order that people
might see him and not run against him, and direct him how to avoid
dangers.
* * * * *
To picture a child's (one of four or five years old) reminiscences at
sunset of a long summer's day,--his first awakening, his studies, his
sports, his little fits of passion, perhaps a whipping, etc.
* * * * *
The blind man's walk.
* * * * *
To picture a virtuous family, the different members examples of virtuous
dispositions in their way; then introduce a vicious person, and trace
out the relations that arise between him and them, and the manner in
which all are affected.
* * * * *
A man to flatter himself with the idea that he would not be guilty of
some certain wickedness,--as, for instance, to yield to the personal
temptations of the Devil,--yet to find, ultimately, that he was at that
very time committing that same wickedness.
* * * * *
What would a man do, if he were compelled to live always in the sultry
heat of society, and could never bathe himself in cool solitude?
* * * * *
A girl's lover to be slain and buried in her flower-garden, and the
earth levelled over him. That particular spot, which she happens to
plant with some peculiar variety of flowers, produces them of admirable
splendor, beauty, and perfume; and she delights, with an indescribable
impulse, to wear them in her bosom, and scent her chamber with them.
Thus the classic fantasy would be realized, of dead people transformed
to flowers.
* * * * *
Objects seen by a magic-lantern reversed. A street, or other location,
might be presented, where there would be opportunity to bring forward
all objects of worldly interest, and thus much pleasant satire might be
the result.
CASTLES IN THE AIR.
FROM AN UNPUBLISHED POEM.
"But there is yet a region of the clouds
Unseen from the low earth. Beyond the veil
Of these dark volumes rolling through the sky,
Its mountain summits glisten in the sun,--
The realm of Castles in the Air. The foot
Of man hath never trod those shining streets;
But there his spirit, leaving the dull load
Of bodily organs, wanders with delight,
And builds its structures of the impalpable mist,
Glorious beyond the dream of architect,
And populous with forms of nobler mould
Than ever walked the earth." So said my guide,
And led me, wondering, to a headland height
That overlooked a fair broad vale shut in
By the great hills of Cloudland. "Now behold
The Castle-builders!" Then I looked; and, lo!
The vale was filled with shadowy forms, that bore
Each a white wand, with which they touched the banks
Of mist beside them, and at once arose,
Obedient to their wish, the walls and domes
Of stately palaces, Gothic or Greek,
Or such as in the land of Mahomet
Uplift the crescent, or, in forms more strange,
Border the ancient Indus, or behold
Their gilded friezes mirrored in the lakes
Of China,--yet of ampler majesty,
And gorgeously adorned. Tall porticos
Sprang from the ground; the eye pursued afar
Their colonnades, that lessened to a point
In the faint distance. Portals that swung back
On musical hinges showed the eye within
Vast halls with golden floors, and bright alcoves,
And walls of pearl, and sapphire vault besprent
With silver stars. Within the spacious rooms
Were banquets spread; and menials, beautiful
As wood-nymphs or as stripling Mercuries,
Ran to and fro, and laid the chalices,
And brought the brimming wine-jars. Enters now
The happy architect, and wanders on
From room to room, and glories in his work.
Not long his glorying: for a chill north wind
Breathes through the structure, and the massive walls
Are folded up; the proud domes roll away
In mist-wreaths; pinnacle and turret lean
Forward, like birds prepared for flight, and stream,
In trains of vapor, through the empty air.
Meantime the astonished builder, dispossessed,
Stands 'mid the drifting rack. A brief despair
Seizes him; but the wand is in his hand,
And soon he turns him to his task again.
"Behold," said the fair being at my side,
"How one has made himself a diadem
Out of the bright skirts of a cloud that lay
Steeped in the golden sunshine, and has bound
The bauble on his forehead! See, again,
How from these vapors he calls up a host
With arms and banners! A great multitude
Gather and bow before him with bare heads.
To the four winds his messengers go forth,
And bring him back earth's homage. From the ground
Another calls a winged image, such
As poets give to Fame, who, to her mouth
Putting a silver trumpet, blows abroad
A loud, harmonious summons to the world,
And all the listening nations shout his name.
Another yet, apart from all the rest,
Casting a fearful glance from side to side,
Touches the ground by stealth. Beneath his wand
A glittering pile grows up, ingots and bars
Of massive gold, and coins on which earth's kings
Have stamped their symbols." As these words were said,
The north wind blew again across the vale,
And, lo! the beamy crown flew off in mist;
The host of armed men became a scud
Torn by the angry blast; the form of Fame
Tossed its long arms in air, and rode the wind,
A jagged cloud; the glittering pile of gold
Grew pale and flowed in a gray reek away.
Then there were sobs and tears from those whose work
The wind had scattered: some had flung themselves
Upon the ground in grief; and some stood fixed
In blank bewilderment; and some looked on
Unmoved, as at a pageant of the stage
Suddenly hidden by the curtain's fall.
"Take thou this wand," my bright companion said.
I took it from her hand, and with it touched
The knolls of snow-white mist, and they grew green
With soft, thick herbage. At another touch,
A brook leaped forth, and dashed and sparkled by;
And shady walks through shrubberies cool and close
Wandered; and where, upon the open grounds,
The peaceful sunshine lay, a vineyard nursed
Its pouting clusters; and from boughs that drooped
Beneath their load an orchard shed its fruit;
And gardens, set with many a pleasant herb
And many a glorious flower, made sweet the air.
I looked, and I exulted; yet I longed
For Nature's grander aspects, and I plied
The slender rod again; and then arose
Woods tall and wide, of odorous pine and fir,
And every noble tree that casts the leaf
In autumn. Paths that wound between their stems
Led through the solemn shade to twilight glens,
To thundering torrents and white waterfalls,
And edge of lonely lakes, and chasms between
The mountain-cliffs. Above the trees were seen
Gray pinnacles and walls of splintered rock.
But near the forest margin, in the vale,
Nestled a dwelling half embowered by trees,
Where, through the open window, shelves were seen
Filled with old volumes, and a glimpse was given
Of canvas, here and there along the walls,
On which the hands of mighty men of art
Had flung their fancies. On the portico
Old friends, with smiling faces and frank eyes,
Talked with each other: some had passed from life
Long since, yet dearly were remembered still.
My heart yearned toward them, and the quick, warm tears
Stood in my eyes. Forward I sprang to grasp
The hands that once so kindly met my own,--
I sprang, but met them not: the withering wind
Was there before me. Dwelling, field, and brook,
Dark wood, and flowery garden, and blue lake,
And beetling cliff, and noble human forms,
All, all had melted into that pale sea
Of billowy vapor rolling round my feet.
BEAUTY AND THE BEAST.
A STORY OF OLD RUSSIA.
I.
We are about to relate a story of mingled fact and fancy. The facts are
borrowed from the Russian author, Petjerski; the fancy is our own. Our
task will chiefly be to soften the outlines of incidents almost too
sharp and rugged for literary use, to supply them with the necessary
coloring and sentiment, and to give a coherent and proportioned shape to
the irregular fragments of an old chronicle. We know something, from
other sources, of the customs described; something of the character of
the people from personal observation, and may therefore the more freely
take such liberties as we choose with the rude, vigorous sketches of the
Russian original. One who happens to have read the work of Villebois can
easily comprehend the existence of a state of society, on the banks of
the Volga, a hundred years ago, which is now impossible, and will soon
become incredible. What is strangest in our narrative has been declared
to be true.
II.
We are in Kinesma, a small town on the Volga, between Kostroma and
Nijni-Novgorod. The time is about the middle of the last century, and
the month October.
There was trouble, one day, in the palace of Prince Alexis, of Kinesma.
This edifice, with its massive white walls, and its pyramidal roofs of
green copper, stood upon a gentle mound to the eastward of the town,
overlooking it, a broad stretch of the Volga, and the opposite shore. On
a similar hill, to the westward, stood the church, glittering with its
dozen bulging, golden domes. These two establishments divided the
sovereignty of Kinesma between them. Prince Alexis owned the bodies of
the inhabitants, (with the exception of a few merchants and tradesmen,)
and the Archimandrite Sergius owned their souls. But the shadow of the
former stretched also over other villages, far beyond the ring of the
wooded horizon. The number of his serfs was ten thousand, and his rule
over them was even less disputed than theirs over their domestic
animals.