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THE
CONTINENTAL MONTHLY:
DEVOTED TO
LITERATURE AND NATIONAL POLICY.
VOL. III.--APRIL, 1863.--No. IV.
THE WONDERS OF WORDS.
Every nation has its legend of a 'golden age'--when all was young and
fresh and fair--'_comme les couleurs primitives de la nature_'--even
before the existence of this gaunt shadow of Sorrow--_the shadow of
ourselves_--that ever stalks in company with us;--an epoch of Saturnian
rule, when gods held sweet converse with men, and man primeval bounded
with all the elasticity of god-given juvenility:
('Ah! remember,
This--all this--was in the olden
Time long ago.')
And even now, in spite of our atheism and our apathism, amid all the
overwhelming world-influences of this great 'living Present'--the ghost
of the dead Past will come rushing back upon us with its solemn voices
and its infinite wailings of pity: but soft and faint it comes; for the
wild jarrings of the Now almost prevent us from hearing its still, small
voices. It
'Is but a _dim-remembered_ story
Of the old time entombed.'
Besides, what is History but the story of the bygone? The elegy, too,
comes to us as the last lamenting, sadly solemn swan-song of that
glorious golden time. And, indeed, are not all poesies but various notes
of that mighty diapason of Thought and Feeling, that has, through the
ages, been singing itself in jubilee and wail?
So it is in the individual--(for is not the individual ever the
rudimental, formula-like expression of that awful problem which nations
and humanity itself are slowly and painfully working out?): in the
'moonlight of memory' these sorrowful mementos revisit every one of us;
and
----'But I am not _now_
That which I _have been_'--
and _vanitas vanitatum!_ are not only the satisfied croakings of _blase_
Childe Harolds, but our universal experience; while from childhood's
gushing glee even unto manhood's sad satiety, we feel that all are
nought but the phantasmagoria
'of a creature
_Moving about in worlds not realized_.'
Listen now to a snatch of melody:
'The rainbow comes and goes,
And lovely is the rose,
The moon doth with delight
Look round her when the heavens are bare;
Waters on a starry night
Are beautiful and fair;
The sunshine is a glorious birth;
But yet I know, wherever I go,
That there hath passed away a glory from the earth!'
So saith the mild Braminical Wordsworth. Now it will be remembered that
Wordsworth, in that glorious ode whence we extract the above, develops
the Platonic idea (shall we call Platonic that which has been
entertained by the wise and the _feeling_ of all times?) of a shadowy
recollection of past and eternal existence in the profundities of the
Divine Heart. 'It sounds forth here a mournful remembrance of a faded
world of gods and heroes--as the echoing plaint for the loss of man's
original, celestial state, and paradisiacal innocence.' And then we have
those transcendent lines that come to us like aromatic breezes blowing
from the Spice Islands:
'Hence in a season of calm weather,
Though inland far we be,
Our souls have sight of that immortal sea,
Which brought us hither,
Can in a moment travel thither,
And see the Children sport upon the shore,
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.'
But,
'descending
From these imaginative heights that yield
Far-stretching views into eternity,'--
what have the golden age and Platonic _dicta_ to do with our
word-ramble? A good deal. For we will endeavor to show that words, being
the very sign-manual of man's convictions, contain the elements of what
may throw light on both. To essay this:
Why is it that we generally speak of death as a 'return,' or a 'return
home'? And how is it that this same idea has so remarkably interwoven
itself with the very warp and woof of our language and poetry?--so that
in our fervency, we can sing:
'Jerusalem, my glorious _home_,' etc.
Does not the very idea (not to mention the composition of the word) of a
'return' involve a previously having been in the place? And we can
scarcely call that 'home' where we have never been before. So, that 'old
Hebrew book' sublimely tells us that 'the spirit of the man _returneth_
to God who gave it.'
Is it possible that these can be obscure intimations of that bygone time
when WE were rocked in the bosom of the Divine consciousness?
Perhaps.... And now if the reader will pardon a piece of moralizing, we
would say that these expressions teach us in the most emphatic way
that--'_This is not our rest_.' So that when we have dived into every
mine of knowledge and drunk from every fountain of pleasure; when, with
Dante, we arrive at the painful conclusion that
'Tutto l'oro, ch'e sotto la luna,
E che gia fu, di queste anime stanche
Non poterebbe farne posar una,'
(since, indeed, the Finite can never gain entire satisfaction in
itself)--we may not despair, but still the heart-throbbings, knowing
that He who has--for a season--enveloped us in the mantle of this
sleep-rounded life, and thrown around himself the drapery of the
universe--spangling it with stars--will again take us back to his
fatherly bosom.
Somewhat analogous to these, and arguing the eternity of our existence,
we have such words as 'decease,' which merely imports a _withdrawal_;
'demise,' implying also a laying down, a _removal_. By the way, it is
rather curious to observe the notions in the mind of mankind that have
given rise to the words expressing 'death.' Thus we have the Latin word
_mors_--allied, perhaps, to the Greek [Greek: moros] and [Greek:
moira],[1] from [Greek: meiromai]--to _portion out_, to _assign_. Even
this, however, there was a repulsion to using; and both the Greeks and
Romans were wont to slip clear of the employment of their [Greek:
thanatos], _mors_, etc., by such circumlocutions as _vitam suam mutare,
transire e seculo_; [Greek: koimesato chalkeon hypnon]--_he slept the
brazen sleep_ (Homer's Iliad, [Greek: Lamda], 241); [Greek: ton de
skotos oss' ekalypsen]--_and darkness covered his eyes_ (Iliad, [Greek:
Zeta], 11); or _he completeth the destiny of life_, etc. This reminds us
of the French aversion to uttering their _mort_. These expressions,
again, are suggestive of our 'fate,' with an application similar to the
Latin _fatum_, which, indeed, is none other than 'id quod _fatum est_ a
deis'--a God's word. So that in this sense we may all be considered
'fatalists,' and all things _fated_. Why not? However, in the following
from _Festus_, it is the 'deil' that makes the assertion:
'FESTUS. Forced on us.
LUCIFER. _All things are of necessity._
FESTUS. Then best.
But the good are never fatalists. The bad
Alone act by necessity, they say.
LUCIFER. It matters not what men assume to be;
Or good, or bad, they are but what they are.'
In which we may agree that his majesty was not so very far wrong.
Moreover, 'Why _should_ we mourn departed friends?'--since we know that
they are but lying in the [Greek: moimeterion] (cemetery)--the _sleeping
place_; or, as the vivid old Hebrew faith would have it, _the house of
the living_ (Bethaim). Is not this testimony for the soul's immortality
worth as much as all the rhapsody written thereon, from Plato to
Addison?
Some words are the very essence of poetry; redolent with all beauteous
phantasies; odoriferous as flowers in spring, or discoursing an awful
organ-melody, like to the re-bellowing of the hoarse-sounding sea. For
instance, those two noble old Saxon words 'main' and 'deep,' that we
apply to the ocean--what a music is there about them! The 'main' is the
_maegen_--the strength, the _strong one_; the great 'deep' is precisely
what the name imports. Our employment of 'deep' reminds of the Latin
_altum_, which, properly signifying high or lofty, is, by a familiar
species of metonymy, put for its opposite.
By the way, how exceedingly timid are our poets and poetasters generally
of the open sea--_la pleine mer_. They linger around the shores thereof,
in a vain attempt to sit snugly there _a leur aise_, while they 'call
spirits from the vasty deep'--that never did and never would come on
such conditions, though they grew hoarse over it. We all remember how
Sandy Smith labors with making abortive _grabs_ at its _amber tails_,
_main_, etc. (rather slippery articles on the whole)--but he is not
'A shepherd in the Hebrid Isles,
_Placed far amid the melancholy main!_'
Hail shade of Thomson! But hear how the exile sings it:
'La mer! partout la mer! des flots, des flots encor!
L'oiseau fatigue en vain son inegal essor.
Ici les flots, la-bas les ondes.
Toujours des flots sans fin par des flots repousses;
L'oeil ne voit que des flots dans l'abime entasses
Rouler sous les vaques profondes.'[2]
This we, for our part, would pronounce one of the very best open-sea
sketches we have ever met with; and if the reader will take even our
unequal rendering, he may think so too.
'The sea! all round, the sea! flood, flood o'er billow surges!
In vain the bird fatigued its faltering wing here urges.
Billows beneath, waves, waves around;
Ever the floods (no end!) by urging floods repulsed;
The eye sees but the waves, in an abyss engulphed,
Roll 'neath their lairs profound.'
'Aurora' comes to us as a remnant of that beautiful Grecian mythology
that deified and poetized everything; and even to us she is still the
'rosy-fingered daughter of the morn.' The 'Levant,' 'Orient,' and
'Occident' are all of them poetical, for they are all true translations
from nature. The 'Levant' is where the sun is _levant_, raising himself
up. 'Orient' will be recognized as the same figure from _orior_; while
'occident' is, of course, the opposite in signification, namely, the
declining, the 'setting' place.
'Lethe' is another classic myth. It is [Greek: ho tes lethes
potamos]--the river of forgetfulness, 'the oblivious pool.' Perhaps is
it that all of us, as well as the son of Thetis, had a dip therein.
There exists not a more poetic expression than 'Hyperborean,' _i. e._
[Greek: hyperboreos]--_beyond Boreas_; or, as a modern poet finely and
faithfully expands it:
'Beyond those regions cold
Where dwells the Spirit of the North-Wind,
Boreas old.'
Homer never manifested himself to be more of a poet than in the creation
of this word. By the way, the Hyperboreans were regarded by the ancients
as an extremely happy and pious people.
How few of those who use that very vague, grandiloquent word 'Ambrosial'
know that it has reference to the 'ambrosia' ([Greek: ambrotos],
_immortal_), the food of the gods! It has, however, a secondary
signification, namely, that of an unguent, or perfume, hence fragrant;
and this is probably the prevailing idea in our 'ambrosial': instance
Milton's 'ambrosial flowers.' It was, like the 'nectar' ([Greek:
nektar], an _elixir vitae_), considered a veritable elixir of
immortality, and consequently denied to men.
The Immortals, in their golden halls of 'many-topped Olympus,' seem to
have led a merry-enough life of it over their nectar and ambrosia, their
laughter and intrigues.
But not half as jolly were they as were Odin and the Iotun--dead drunk
in Valhalla over their mead and ale, from
'the ale-cellars of the Iotun,
Which is called Brimir.'
The daisy (Saxon _Daeges ege_) has often been cited as fragrant with
poesy. It is the _Day's Eye_: we remember Chaucer's affectionate lines:
'Of all the floures in the mede
Than love I most those floures of white and rede,
Such that men called _daisies_ in our toun,
To them I have so great affection.'
Nor is he alone in his love for the
_'Wee, modest, crimson-tipped flouer.'_
An odoriferous-enough (etymologic) bouquet could we cull from the names
of Flora's children. What a beauty is there in the 'primrose,' which is
just the _prime_-rose; in the 'Beauty of the Night' and the 'Morning
Glory,' except when a pompous scientific terminology, would convert it
into a _convolvulus_! So, too, the 'Anemone' ([Greek: anemos], the
wind-flower), into which it is fabled Venus changed her Adonis. What a
story of maiden's love does the 'Sweet William' tell; and how many
charming associations cluster around the 'Forget-me-not!' Again, is
there not poetry in calling a certain family of minute crustacea, whose
two eyes meet and form a single round spot in the centre of the head,
'Cyclops'--([Greek: kyklops], circular-eyed)?
And if any one thinketh that there cannot be poetry even in the dry
technicalities of science, let him take such an expression as 'coral,'
which, in the original Greek, [Greek: koralion], signifies a _sea
damsel_; or the chemical 'cobalt,' 'which,' remarks Webster, 'is said to
be the German _Kobold_, a goblin, the demon of the mines; so called by
miners, because cobalt was troublesome to miners, and at first its value
was not known.' Ah! but these terms were created before _Science_, in
its rigidity, had taught us the _truth_ in regard to these matters. Yes!
and fortunate is it for us that we still have words, and ideas
clustering around these words, that have not yet been chilled and
exanimated by the frigid touch of an empirical knowledge. For
'Still the heart doth need a language, still
Doth the old instinct bring back the old names.'
And may benign heaven deliver us from those buckram individuals who
imagine that Nature is as narrow and rigid as their own contracted
selves, and who would seek to array her in their own exquisite
bottle-green bifurcations and a _gilet a la mode_! These characters
always put us in mind of the statues of Louis XIV, in which he is
represented as Jupiter or Hercules, nude, with the exception of the
lion's hide thrown round him--_and the long, flowing peruke_ of the
times! O Jupiter _tonans_! let us have either the lion or the ass--only
let it be _veracious_!
To proceed: 'Auburn' is probably connected with _brennan_, and means
_sun-burned_, analogous, indeed, to 'Ethiopian' ([Greek: Aithiops]),
_one whom the sun has looked upon_.
How seldom do we think, in uttering 'adieu,' that we verily say, I
commend you _a Dieu_--to God; that the lightly-spoken _good-by_ means
_God be wi' you_,[3] or that the (if possible) still more frequent and
_unthinking_ 'thank you,' in reality assures the person addressed--_I
will think often of you_.
'Eld' is a word that has the poetic aroma about it, and is an example
(of which we might adduce additional cases from the domain of 'poetic
diction') of a word set aside from a prose use and devoted exclusively
to poetry. It is, as we know, Saxon, signifying _old_ or _old age_, and
was formerly in constant use in this sense; as, for instance, in
Chaucer's translation of _Boethius de Consolatione Philosophiae_, we find
thus:
'At laste no drede ne might overcame tho muses, that thei ne weren
fellowes, and foloweden my waie, that is to saie, when I was
exiled, thei that weren of my youth whilom welfull and grene,
comforten now sorrowfull weirdes of me olde man: for _elde_ is
comen unwarely upon me, hasted by the harmes that I have, and
sorowe hath commaunded his age to be in me.'
So in the _Knightes Tale_:
'As sooth in said _elde_ hath gret avantage;
In _elde_ is both wisdom and usage:
Men may the old out-renne but not out-rede.'
Oh! what an overflowing fulness of truth and beauty is there wrapped up
in the core of these articulations that we so heedlessly utter, would we
but make use of the wizard's wand wherewith to evoke them! What an
exhaustless wealth does there lie in even the humblest fruitage and
flowerage of language, and what a fecundity have even dry 'roots'!
'Thinkest thou there were no poets till Dan Chaucer?' asks our great
Thomas; 'no heart burning with a thought, which it could not hold, and
had no word for; and needed to shape and coin a word for--what thou
callest a metaphor, trope, or the like? For every word we have, there
was such a man and poet. The coldest word was once a glowing new
metaphor, and bold questionable originality. 'Thy very ATTENTION, does
it not mean an _attentio_, a STRETCHING-TO?' Fancy that act of the mind
which all were conscious of, which none had yet named--when this new
'poet' first felt bound and driven to name it! His questionable
originality and new glowing metaphor was found adoptible, intelligible;
and remains our name for it to this day.'[4]
This seems to be a pet etymology of Carlyle, as he makes Professor
Teufelsdroeckh give it to us also.
Nor less of a poet was that Grecian man who first named this beauteous
world--with its boundless unity in variety--the [Greek: kosmos],[5] the
_order_, the _adornment_. But
'Alas, for the rarity
Of Christian charity,'
and
'Ah! the inanity
Of frail humanity,'
that first induced some luckless mortal to give to certain mysterious
compounds the appellation of _cosmetics_! But here is an atonement; for
even in our unmythical, unbelieving days, the god 'Terminus' is made to
stand guard over every railway station! Again, how finely did the Roman
call his heroism his 'virtus'--his _vir_tue--his _manliness_. With the
Italians, however, it became quite a different thing; for his 'virtu' is
none other than his love of the fine arts (these being to him the only
subject of _manly_ occupation), a mere _objet de vertu_; and his
_virtuoso_ has no more virtuousness or manliness about him than what
appertains to being skilled in these same fine arts. With us, our
'virtue' is ... well, as soon as we can find out, we will tell you.
By the way, in what a _bathos_ of mystery are most of our terms
expressing the moral relations plunged! Some philosophers have declared
that truth lies at the bottom of a well;--the well in which the truth in
regard to these matters lies would seem to stretch far enough
down--reaching, in fact, almost to the kingdom of the Inane. The
beautiful simplicity of Bible truths has often become so perverted--so
overloaded by the vain works (and _words_) of man's device--as barely to
escape total extinction. Witness 'repentance'; in what a farrago of
endless absurdities and palpable contradictions has this word (and, more
unfortunately still, the thing itself along with it) been enveloped!
According to the 'divines,' what does it not signify? Its composition,
we very well know, gives us _poenitentia_, from _poenitere_, to _be
sorry_, to _regret_--and such is its true and _only_ meaning. 'This
design' (that of the analysis of language in its elementary forms), says
Wilkins, 'will likewise contribute much to the clearing of some of our
modern differences in religion; by unmasking many wild errors, that
shelter themselves under the disguise of affected phrases; which being
philosophically unfolded, and rendered according to the genuine and
natural importance of words, will appear to be inconsistencies and
absurdities.' Nor would he have gone very far astray had he put
_philosophy_ and _politics_ under the same category. Strip the gaudy
dress and trappings from an expression, and it will have a most marked
result. Analysis is a terrible humiliation to your mysticism and your
grandiloquence--and an awful bore to those who depend for effect on
either. We have something to say hereafter on those astonishingly
profound oracles whose only depth is in the terminology they employ. In
the mean time, expect not too much of words. Never, in all our
philologic researches, must we lose sight of the fact that _words are
but the daughters of earth, while things are the sons of heaven_. This
expecting too much of words has been the fruitful source of innumerable
errors. To resume:
Take a dozen words (to prove our generosity, we will let it be a baker's
dozen) illustrative of this same principle of metaphor that governs the
mechanism of language, and sheds a glory and a beauty around even our
every-day fireside words; so that even those that seem hackneyed, worn
out, and apparently tottering with the imbecility of old age--would we
but get into the core of them--will shine forth with all the expressive
meaning of their spring time--with the blush and bloom of poesy--
'All redolent with youth and flowers,'
and prove their very abusers--poets.
The 'halcyon' days! What a balmy serenity hovers around them--basking in
the sunlight of undisturbed tranquillity. This we feel; but how we
realize it after reading the little _family secret_ that it wraps up!
The [Greek: Halkyon] (halcyon)--_alcedo hispida_--was the name applied
by the Greeks to the _kingfisher_ (a name commonly derived from [Greek:
hals, kyo], i. e., _sea-conceiving_, from the fact of this bird's being
said to lay her eggs in rocks near the sea); and the [Greek: halkyonides
hemerai]--_halcyon days_--were those fourteen 'during the calm weather
about the winter solstice,' during which the bird was said to build her
nest and lay her eggs; hence, by an easy transition, perfect quietude in
general.
Those who have felt the bitter, biting effect of 'sarcasm,' will hardly
be disposed to consider it a metaphor even, should we trace it back to
the Greek [Greek: sarkazo]--_to tear off the flesh_ ([Greek: sarx]),
_literally_, to 'flay.' 'Satire,' again, has an arbitrary-enough origin;
it is _satira_, from _satur_, _mixed_; and the application is as
follows: each species of poetry had, among the Romans, its own special
kind of versification; thus the hexameter was used in the epic, the
iambic in the drama, etc. Ennius, however, the earliest Latin
'satirist,' first disregarded these conventionalities, and introduced a
_medley_ (satira) of all kinds of metres. It afterward, however, lost
this idea of a _melange_, and acquired the notion of a poem 'directed
against the vices and failings of men with a view to their correction.'
Perhaps we owe to reviewing the metaphorical applications of such terms
as 'caustic,' 'mordant,' 'piquant,' etc., in their _burning_, _biting_,
and _pricking_ senses.
But 'review,' itself, we are to regard as pure metaphor. Our friend
'Snooks,' at least, found _that_ out; for, instead of _re_-viewing--_i.
e._, viewing again and again his book, they pronounced it to be
decidedly bad without any examination whatever. A 'critic' we all
recognize in his character of _judge_ or _umpire_; but is it that he
always possesses discrimination--has he always _insight_ (for these are
the primary ideas attaching themselves to [Greek: krino], whence [Greek:
kritikos] comes)--does he divide between the merely arbitrary and
incidental, and see into the absolute and eternal Art-Soul that vivifies
a poem or a picture? If so, then is he a critic indeed.
How perfectly do 'invidiousness' and 'envy'[6] express the _looking over
against_ (_in-video_)--the _askance gaze_--the natural development of
that painful mental state which poor humanity is so subject to! So with
'obstinacy' (_ob-sto_), which, by the way, the phrenologists represent,
literally enough, by an ass in a position which assuredly Webster had in
his mind when he wrote his definition of this word; thus: ... '_in a
fixedness in opinion or resolution that cannot be shaken at all, or
without great difficulty_.'
Speaking of this reminds us of those very capital 'Illustrations of
Phrenology,' by Cruikshank, with which we all are familiar, and where,
for example, '_veneration_ is exemplified by a stout old gentleman, with
an ample paunch, gazing with admiring eyes and uplifted hands on the fat
side of an ox fed by Mr. Heavyside, and exhibited at the stall of a
butcher. In this way a Jew old-clothes man, holding his hand on his
breast with the utmost earnestness, while in the other he offers a coin
for a pair of slippers, two pairs of boots, three hats, and a large
bundle of clothes, to an old woman, who, evidently astonished all over,
exclaims, 'A shilling!' is an illustration of _conscientiousness_. A
dialogue of two fishwomen at Billingsgate illustrates _language_, and a
riot at Donnybrook Fair explains the phrenological doctrine of
_combativeness_.'
But peace to the 'bumps,' and pass we on. Could anything be more
completely metaphorical than such expressions as 'egregious' and
'fanatic?' 'Egregious' is chosen, _e-grex_--_out of the flock_, i. e.,
the best sheep, etc., selected from the rest, and set aside for sacred
purposes; hence, _distingue_. This word, though occupying at present
comparatively neutral ground, seems fast merging toward its worst
application. Can it be that an 'egregious' _rogue_ is an article of so
much more frequent occurrence than an 'egregiously' _honest_ man, that
incongruity seems to subsist between the latter? 'Fanatic,' again, is
just the Roman '_fanaticus_,' one addicted to the _fana_,[7] the temples
in which the 'fanatici' or fanatics were wont to spend an extraordinary
portion of their time. But besides this, their religious fervor used to
impel them to many extravagances, such as cutting themselves with
knives, etc., and hence an 'ultraist' (one who goes _beyond_ (ultra) the
notions of other people) in any sense. Whereupon it might be remarked
that though
'Coelum, non animum, mutant qui trans mare currunt,'
may, in certain applications, be true, it is surely not so in the case
of a good many words. Thus this very instance, 'fanatic,' which, among
the Romans, implied one who had an _extra share of devotion_, is, among
us--the better informed on this head--by a very curious and very
unfathomable figure (disfigure?) of speech or logic, applied to one who
has a peculiar _penchant_ for human liberty!
'In the most high and _palmy_ state of Rome,
A little ere the mighty Julius fell,
The graves stood tenantless, and the sheeted dead
Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets.'
We do not quote this for the sake of the making-the-hair-to-stand-on-end
tendencies of the last two lines, but through the voluptuous quiescence
of the first,
'In the most high and palmy state of Rome,'
to introduce the beautifully metaphorical expression, 'palmy.' It will,
of course, be immediately recognized as being from the 'palm' tree; that
is to say, _palm-abounding_. And what visions of orient splendor does it
bear with it, wafting on its wings the very aroma of the isles of the
blest--[Greek: makaron nesoi]--or
'Where the gorgeous East, with richest hand,
Showers on her kings barbaric pearl and gold!'
It bears us away with it, and we stand on that sun-kissed land
'Whose rivers wander over sands of gold,'
with a houri lurking in every 'bosky bourne,' and the beauteous palm,
waving its umbrageous head, at once food, shade, and shelter.
The palm being to the Oriental of such passing price, we can easily
imagine how he would so enhance its value as to make it the type of
everything that is prosperous and glorious and 'palmy,' the _beau-ideal_
of everything that is flourishing. Hear what Sir Walter Raleigh says on
this subject: 'Nothing better proveth the excellency of this soil than
the abundant growing of the _palm trees_ without labor of man. _This
tree alone giveth unto man whatsoever his life beggeth at nature's
hand._'
'Paradise,' too, is oriental in all its associations. It is [Greek:
paradeisos],[8] that is, a _park_ or _pleasure ground_, in which sense
it is constantly employed by Xenophon, as every weary youth who has
_parasanged_ it with him knows. By the LXX it was used in a metaphorical
sense for the garden of Eden:
'The glories we have known,
And that imperial palace whence we came;'
but a still loftier meaning did it acquire when the Christ employed it
as descriptive of the splendors of the 'better land'--of the glories and
beauties of the land Beulah.
But, look out, fellow strollers, for we are off in a tangent!
What a curiously humble origin has 'literature,' contrasted with the
magnitude of its present import. It is just 'litteral'--_letters_ in
their most primitive sense; and [Greek: grammata] is nought other. Nor
can even all the pomposity of the 'belles-lettres' carry us any farther
than the very fine 'letters' or _litteral_; while even Solomon So-so may
take courage when he reflects (provided Solomon be ever guilty of
reflecting) that the 'literati' have 'literally' nothing more profound
about them than the knowledge of their 'letters.' The Latins were
prolific in words of this kind; thus they had the _literatus_ and the
_literator_--making some such discrimination between them as we do
between 'philosopher' and 'philosophe.'
'Unlettered,' to be sure, is one who is unacquainted even with his
'letters;' but what is 'erudite?' It is merely E, _out of_, a RUDIS,
_rude_, _chaotic_, _ignorant_ state of things; and thus in itself
asserts nothing very tremendous, and makes no very prodigious
pretensions. Surely these words had their origin at an epoch when
'letters' stood higher in the scale of estimation than they do now; when
he who knew them possessed a spell that rendered him a potent character
among the 'unlettered.'
A 'spell' did we say? Perhaps that is not altogether fanciful; for
'spell' itself in the Saxon primarily imports a _word_; and we know that
the runes or Runic letters were long employed in this way. For instance,
Mr. Turner thus informs us ('History of the Anglo-Saxons,' vol. i, p.
169): 'It was the invariable policy of the Roman ecclesiastics to
discourage the use of the Runic characters, because they were of pagan
origin, and had been much connected with idolatrous superstitions.' And
if any one be incredulous, let him read this from Sir Thomas Brown:
'Some have delivered the polity of spirits, that they stand in awe of
charms, _spells_, and conjurations; _letters_, characters, notes, and
dashes.' And have not the [Greek: Alpha] and [Greek: Omega] something
mystic and cabalistic about them even to us?
While on this, let us note that 'spell' gives us the beautiful and
cheering expression 'gospel,' which is precisely _God's-spell_--the
'evangile,' the good God's-news!
To resume:
'Graphical' ([Greek: grapho]) is just what is well
delineated--_literally_, 'well written,' or, as our common expression
corroboratively has it, _like a book_!
'Style' and 'stiletto' would, from their significations, appear to be
radically very different words; and yet they are something more akin
than even cousins-german. 'Style' is known to be from the [Greek:
stylos], or _stylus_, which the Greeks and Romans employed in writing on
their waxen tablets; and, as they were both sharp and strong, they
became in the hands of scholars quite formidable instruments when used
against their schoolmasters. Afterward they came to be employed in all
the bloody relations and uses to which a 'bare bodkin' can be put, and
hence our acceptation of 'stiletto.' Caesar himself, it is supposed, got
his 'quietus' by means of a 'stylus;' nor is he the first or last
character whose 'style' has been his (_literary_, if not _literal_)
damnation.
'Volume,' too, how perfectly metaphorical is it in its present
reception! It is originally just a _volumen_, that is, a 'roll' of
parchment, papyrus, or whatever else the 'book' (i. e., the _bark_--the
'liber') might be composed of. Nor can we regard as aught other such
terms as 'leaf' or 'folio,' which is also 'leaf.' 'Stave,' too, is
suggestive of the _staff_ on which the runes were wont to be cut.
Indeed, old almanacs are sometimes to be met with consisting of these
long sticks or 'staves,' on which the days and months are represented by
the Runic letters.
'Charm,' 'enchant,' and 'incantation' all owe their origin to the time
when spells were in vogue. 'Charm' is just _carmen_, from the fact that
'a kind of Runic rhyme' was employed in _diablerie_ of this sort; so
'enchant' and 'incantation' are but a _singing to_--a true 'siren's
song;' while 'fascination' took its rise when the mystic terrors of the
_evil eye_ threw its withering blight over many a heart.
We are all familiar with the old fable of _The Town Mouse and the
Country Mouse_. We will vouch that the following read us as luminous a
comment thereon as may be desired: 'Polite,' 'urbane,' 'civil,'
'rustic,' 'villain,' 'savage,' 'pagan,' 'heathen.' Let us seek the
moral:
'Polite,' 'urbane,' and 'civil' we of course recognize as being
respectively from [Greek: polis], _urbs_, and _civis_, each denoting the
city or town--_la grande ville_. 'Polite' is _city-like_; while
'urbanity' and 'civility' carry nothing deeper with them than the
graces and the attentions that belong to the punctilious town. 'Rustic'
we note as implying nothing more uncultivated than a 'peasant,' which is
just _pays_-an, or, as we also say, a 'countryman.' 'Savage,' too, or,
as we ought to write it, _salvage_,[9] is nothing more grim or terrible
than one who dwells _in sylvis_, in the woods--a meaning we can
appreciate from our still comparatively pure application of the
adjective _sylvan_. A 'backwoodsman' is therefore the very best original
type of a _savage_! 'Savage' seems to be hesitating between its civil
and its ethical applications; 'villain,' 'pagan,' and 'heathen,'
however, have become quite absorbed in their moral sense--and this by a
contortion that would seem strange enough were we not constantly
accustomed to such transgressions. For we need not to be informed that
'villain' primarily and properly implies simply one who inhabits a ville
or _village_. In Chaucer, for example, we see it without at least any
moral signification attached thereto:
'But firste I praie you of your curtesie
That ye ne arette it not my _vilanie_.'
_Prologue to the Canterbury Tales._
So a 'pagan,' or _paganus_, is but a dweller in a _pagus_, or village;
precisely equivalent to the Greek [Greek: kometes], with no other idea
whatever attached thereto; while 'heathen' imported those who lived on
the _heaths_ or in the country, consequently far away from
_civilization_ or _town-like-ness_.
From all of which expressions we may learn the mere conventionality and
the utter arbitrariness of even our most important ethical terms. How
prodigiously _cheap_ is the application of any such epithets,
considering the terrible abuse they have undergone! And how poor is that
philosophy that can concentrate 'politeness' and 'civility' in the
frippery and heartlessness of mere external city-forms; and convert the
man who dwells in the woods or in the village into a _savage_ or a
_villain_! How fearful a lack do these numerous words and their so
prolific analogues manifest of acknowledgment of that glorious principle
which Burns has with fire-words given utterance to--and to which, would
we preserve the dignity of manhood, we must hold on--
'A man's a man for a' that!'
Ah! it is veritably enough to make us atrabiliar! Here we see words in
their weaknesses and their meannesses, as elsewhere in their glory and
beauty. And not so much _their_ meanness and weakness, as that of those
who have distorted these innocent servants of truth to become tools of
falsehood and the abject instruments of the extinction of all honesty
and nobleness.
The word 'health' wraps up in it--for, indeed, it is hardly
metaphorical--a whole world of thought and suggestion. It is that which
_healeth_ or maketh one to be _whole_, or, as the Scotch say, _hale_;
which _whole_ or _hale_ (for they are one word) may imply entireness or
unity; that is to say, perfect 'health' is that state of the system in
which there is no disorganization--no division of interest--but when it
is recognized as a perfect _one_ or whole; or, in other words, not
recognized at all. And this meaning is confirmed by our analogue
_sanity_, which, from _sanus_, and allied to [Greek: saos], has
underneath it a similar basis.
Every student of Carlyle will remember the very telling use to which he
puts the idea contained in this word--speaking of the manifold relations
of physical, psychal, and social health. Reference is made to his
employment of it in the 'Characteristics'--itself one of the most
authentic and veracious pieces of philosophy that it has been our lot to
meet with for a long time; yet wherein he proves the impossibility of
any, and the uselessness of all philosophies. Listen while he
discourses thereon: 'So long as the several elements of life, all fitly
adjusted, can pour forth their movement like harmonious tuned strings,
it is melody and unison: life, from its mysterious fountains, flows out
as in celestial music and diapason--which, also, like that other music
of the spheres, even because it is perennial and complete, without
interruption and without imperfection, might be fabled to escape the
ear. Thus, too, in some languages, is the state of health well denoted
by a term expressing unity; when we feel ourselves as we wish to be, we
say that we are _whole_.'
But our psychal and social wholeness or health, as well as our physical,
is yet, it would appear, in the future, in the good time _coming_--
'When man to man
Shall brothers be and a' that!'
Even that, however, is encouraging--that it is _in prospectu_. For we
know that _right before us_ lies this great promised land--this
_Future_, teeming with all the donations of infinite time, and bursting
with blessings. And for us, too, there are in waiting [Greek: makaron
nesoi], or Islands of the Blest, where all heroic doers and all heroic
sufferers shall enjoy rest forever!
In conclusion, take the benediction of serene old Miguel de Cervantes
Saavedra, in his preface to 'Don Quixote' (could we possibly have a
better?): 'And so God give you _health_, not forgetting me. Farewell!'
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: This alliance may be fanciful (though we observe some of
the best German lexicographers have it so); a better origin might,
perhaps, be found in the Sanscrit _mri_, etc.]
[Footnote 2: 'Les Orientals,' par VICTOR HUGO. _Le Feu du ciel._]
[Footnote 3: The 'by' may, however, have the force of going or passing,
equivalent to 'fare' in 'farewell,' or 'welfare,' _i. e._, may you have
a good passage or journey.]
[Footnote 4: 'Past and Present,' pp. 128, 129.]
[Footnote 5: Compare with this the Latin _mundus_, which is exactly
analogous in signification.]
[Footnote 6: En-voir.]
[Footnote 7: Perhaps nothing could better prove how profoundly
_religious_ were the Latins than a word compounded of the above; namely
'profane.' A 'fanatic' was one who devoted himself to the _fanum_ or
temple--'profane' is an object devoted to _anything else
'pro'_--_instead of_--the '_fanum_,' or fane.]
[Footnote 8: The word is more properly oriental than Greek, _e. g._,
Hebrew, _pardes_, and Sanscrit, _paradesa_.]
[Footnote 9: See the Italian _setvaggio_ and the Spanish _salvage_, in
which a more approximate orthography has been retained.]
THE CHECH.
"Chces li tajnou vec aneb pravdu vyzvedeti, blazen, dite, opily
clovek o tom umeji povedeti."
"Wouldst thou know a truth or mystery,
A drunkard, fool, or child may tell it thee."
_Bohemian Proverb._
And now I'll wrap my blanket o'er me,
And on the tavern floor I'll lie;
A double spirit-flask before me,
And watch the pipe clouds melting die.
They melt and die--but ever darken,
As night comes on and hides the day;
Till all is black;--then, brothers, hearken!
And if ye can, write down my lay!
In yon black loaf my knife is gleaming,
Like one long sail above the boat;--
--As once at Pesth I saw it beaming,
Half through a curst Croatian throat.
Now faster, faster whirls the ceiling,
And wilder, wilder turns my brain;
And still I'll drink--till, past all feeling,
The soul leaps forth to light again.
Whence come these white girls wreathing round me?
Baruska!--long I thought thee dead!
Kacenka!--when these arms last bound thee,
Thou laidst by Rajhrad cold as lead!
Now faster, faster whirls the ceiling,
And wilder, wilder turns my brain;
And from afar a star comes stealing,
Straight at me o'er the death-black plain.
Alas!--I sink--my spirits miss me,
I swim, I shoot from sky to shore!
Klara! thou golden sister--kiss me!
I rise--I'm safe--I'm strong once more.
And faster, faster whirls the ceiling,
And wilder, wilder turns my brain;
The star!--it strikes my soul, revealing
All life and light to me again.
* * * * *
Against the waves fresh waves are dashing,
Above the breeze fresh breezes blow;
Through seas of light new light is flashing,
And with them all I float and flow.
But round me rings of fire are gleaming:
Pale rings of fire--wild eyes of death!
Why haunt me thus awake or dreaming?
Methought I left ye with my breath.
Aye glare and stare with life increasing,
And leech-like eyebrows arching in;
Be, if ye must, my fate unceasing,
But never hope a fear to win.
He who knows all may haunt the haunting,
He who fears nought hath conquered fate;
Who bears in silence quells the daunting,
And sees his spoiler desolate.
Oh wondrous eyes of star-like lustre,
How ye have changed to guardian love!
Alas!--where stars in myriads cluster
Ye vanish in the heaven above.
* * * * *
I hear two bells so softly singing:
How sweet their silver voices roll!
The one on yonder hill is ringing,
The other peals within my soul.
I hear two maidens gently talking,
Bohemian maidens fair to see;
The one on yonder hill is walking,
The other maiden--where is she?
Where is she?--when the moonlight glistens
O'er silent lake or murm'ring stream,
I hear her call my soul which listens:
'Oh! wake no more--come, love, and dream!'
She came to earth-earth's loveliest creature;
She died--and then was born once more;
Changed was her race, and changed each feature,
But oh! I loved her as before.
We live--but still, when night has bound us
In golden dreams too sweet to last,
A wondrous light-blue world around us,
She comes, the loved one of the Past.
I know not which I love the dearest,
For both my loves are still the same;
The living to my heart is nearest,
The dead love feeds the living flame.
And when the moon, its rose-wine quaffing
Which flows across the Eastern deep,
Awakes us, Klara chides me laughing,
And says, 'We love too well in sleep!'
And though no more a Vojvod's daughter,
As when she lived on Earth before,
The love is still the same which sought her,
And she is true--what would you more?
* * * * *
Bright moonbeams on the sea are playing,
And starlight shines o'er vale and hill;
I should be gone--yet still delaying,
By thy loved side I linger still!
My gold is gone--my hopes have perished,
And nought remains save love for thee!
E'en that must fade, though once so cherished:
Farewell!--and think no more of me!
'Though gold be gone and hope departed,
And nought remain save love for me,
Thou ne'er shalt leave me broken-hearted,
For I will share my life with thee!
'Thou deem'st me but a wanton maiden,
The plaything of thy idle hours;
But laughing streams with gold are laden,
And sweets are hidden 'neath the flowers.
'E'en outcasts may have heart and feeling,
E'en such as I be fond and true;
And love, like light, in dungeons stealing,
Though bars be there, will still burst through.'
PICTURES FROM THE NORTH.
It is worth while to live in the city, that we may learn to love the
country; and it is not bad for many, that artificial life binds them
with bonds of silk or lace or rags or cobwebs, since, when they are rent
away, the Real gleams out in a beauty and with a zest which had not been
save for contrast.
Contrast is the salt of the beautiful. I wonder that the ancients, who
came so near it in so many ways, never made a goddess of Contrast. They
had something like it in ever-varying Future--something like it in
double-faced Janus, who was their real 'Angel of the Odd.' Perhaps it is
my ignorance which is at fault--if so, I pray you correct me. The subtle
Neo-Platonists _must_ have apotheosized such a savor to all aesthetic
bliss. Mostly do I feel its charm when there come before me pictures
true to life of far lands and lives, of valley and river, sea and shore.
Then I forget the narrow office and the shop-lined street, the rattling
cars and hurried hotel-lodgment, and think what it would be if nature,
in all her freshness and never-ending contrasts, could be my
ever-present.
I thought this yesterday, in glancing over an old manuscript in my
drawer, containing translations, by some hand to me unknown, of sketches
of Sweden by the fairy-story teller Hans Christian Andersen. Reader,
will they strike you as pleasantly as they did me? I know not. Let us
glance them over. They have at least the full flavor of the North, of
the healthy land of frost and pines, of fragrant birch and of sweeter
meadow-grass, and simpler, holier flowers than the rich South ever
showed, even in her simplest moods.
The first of these sketches sweeps us at once far away over the
Northland:
'WE JOURNEY.
'It is spring, fragrant spring, the birds are singing. You do not
understand their song? Then hear it in free translation:
''Seat thyself upon my back!' said the stork, the holy bird of our
green island. 'I will carry thee over the waves of the Sound.
Sweden also has its fresh, fragrant beechwoods, green meadows, and
fields of waving corn; in Schoonen, under the blooming apple trees
behind the peasant's house, thou wilt imagine thyself still in
Denmark!'
''Fly with me,' said the swallow. 'I fly over Hal-land's mountain
ridges, where the beeches cease. I soar farther toward the north
than the stork. I will show you where the arable land retires
before rocky valleys. You shall see friendly towns, old churches,
solitary court yards, within which it is cosy and pleasant to
dwell, where the family stands in circle around the table with the
smoking platters, and asks a blessing through the mouth of the
youngest child, and morning and evening sings a holy song. I have
heard it, I have seen it, when I was yet small, from my nest under
the roof.'
''Come! come!' cried the unsteady seagull, impatiently waiting, and
ever flying round in a circle. 'Follow me into the Scheeren, where
thousands of rocky islands, covered with pines and firs, lie along
the coasts like flower beds; where the fisherman draws full nets!'
''Let yourself down between our outspread wings!' sing the wild
swans. 'We will bear you to the great seas, to the ever-roaring,
arrow-quick mountain streams, where the oak does not thrive and the
birches are stunted; let yourself down between our outspread
wings,--we soar high over Sulitelma, the eye of the island, as the
mountain is called; we fly from the spring-green valley, over the
snow waves, up to the summit of the mountain, whence you may catch
a glimpse of the North Sea, beyond Norway. We fly toward Jamtland,
with its high blue mountains, where the waterfalls roar, where the
signal fires flame up as signs from coast to coast that they are
waiting for the ferry boat--up to the deep, cold, hurrying floods,
which do not see the sun set in midsummer, where twilight is dawn!'
'So sing the birds! Shall we hearken to their song--follow them, at
least a short way? We do not seat ourselves upon the wings of the
swan, nor upon the back of the stork; we stride forward with steam
and horses, sometimes upon our own feet, and glance, at the same
time, now and then, from the actual, over the hedge into the
kingdom of fancy, that is always our near neighborland, and pluck
flowers or leaves, which shall be placed together in the memorandum
book--they bud indeed on the flight of the journey. We fly, and we
sing: Sweden, thou glorious land! Sweden, whither holy gods came in
remote antiquity from the mountains of Asia; thou land that art yet
illumined by their glitter! It streams out of the flowers, with the
name of Linnaeus; it beams before thy knightly people from the
banner of Charles the Twelfth, it sounds out of the memorial stone
erected upon the field at Lutzen. Sweden! thou land of deep
feeling, of inward songs, home of the clear streams, where wild
swans sing in the northern light's glimmer! thou land, upon whose
deep, still seas the fairies of the North build their colonnades
and lead their struggling spirit-hosts over the ice mirror.
Glorious Sweden, with the perfume-breathing Linea, with Jenny's
soulful songs! To thee will we fly with the stork and the swallow,
with the unsteady seagull and the wild swan. Thy birchwood throws
out its perfume so refreshing and animating, under its hanging,
earnest boughs--on its white trunk shall the harp hang. Let the
summer wind of the North glide murmuring over its strings.'
There is true fatherland's love there. I doubt if there was ever yet
_real_ patriotism in a hot climate--the North is the only home of
unselfish and great union. Italy owes it to the cool breezes of her
Apennines that she cherishes unity; had it not been for her northern
mountains in a southern clime, she would have long ago forgotten to
think of _one_ country. But while the Alps are her backbone, she will
always be at least a vertebrate among nations, and one of the higher
order. Without the Alps she would soon be eaten up by the cancer of
states' rights. It is the North, too, which will supply the great
uniting power of America, and keep alive a love for the great national
name.
Very different is the rest--and yet it has too the domestic home-tone of
the North. In Sweden, in Germany, in America, in England, the family tie
is somewhat other than in the East or in any warm country. With us, old
age is not so ever-neglected and little honored as in softer climes.
Thank the fireside for that. The hearth, and the stove, and the long,
cold months which keep the grandsire and granddame in the easy chair by
the warm corner, make a home centre, where the children linger as long
as they may for stories, and where love lingers, kept alive by many a
cheerful, not to be easily told tie. And it lives--this love--lives in
the heart of the man after he has gone forth to business or to battle:
he will not tell you of it, but he remembers grandmother and
grandfather, as he saw them a boy--the centre of the group, which will
never form again save in heaven.
Let us turn to
'THE GRANDMOTHER.
'Grandmother is very old, has many wrinkles, and perfectly white
hair; but her eyes gleam like two stars, yes, much more beautiful;
they are so mild, it does one good to look into them! And then she
knows how to relate the most beautiful stories. And she has a dress
embroidered with great, great flowers; it is such a heavy silk
stuff that it rattles. Grandmother knows a great deal, because she
has lived much longer than father and mother; that is certain!
Grandmother has a hymn book with strong silver clasps, and she
reads very often in the book. In the midst of it lies a rose,
pressed and dry; it is not so beautiful as the rose which stands in
the glass, but yet she smiles upon it in the most friendly way;
indeed, it brings the tears to her eyes! Why does grandmother look
so at the faded flower in the old book? Do you know? Every time
that grandmother's tears fall upon the flower, the colors become
fresh again, the rose swells up and fills the whole room with its
fragrance, the walls disappear, as if they were only mist, and
round about her is the green, glorious wood, where the sun beams
through the leaves of the trees; and grandmother is young again; a
charming maiden, with full red cheeks, beautiful and innocent--no
rose is fresher; but the eyes, the mild, blessing eyes, still
belong to grandmother. At her side sits a young man, large and
powerful: he reaches her the rose, and she smiles--grandmother does
not smile so now! oh yes, look now!----But he has vanished: many
thoughts, many forms sweep past--the beautiful young man is gone,
the rose lies in the hymn book, and grandmother sits there again as
an old woman, and looks upon the faded rose which lies in the book.
'Now grandmother is dead. She sat in the armchair and related a
long, beautiful story; she said, 'Now the story is finished, and I
am tired;' and she leaned her head back, in order to sleep a
little. We could hear her breathing--she slept; but it became
stiller and stiller, her face was full of happiness and peace, it
was as if a sunbeam illumined her features; she smiled again, and
then the people said, 'She is dead.' She was placed in a black box;
there she lay covered with white linen; she was very beautiful, and
yet her eyes were closed, but every wrinkle had vanished; she lay
there with a smile about her mouth; her hair was silver white,
venerable, but it did not frighten one to look upon the corpse, for
it was indeed the dear, kind-hearted grandmother. The hymn book was
placed under her head--this she had herself desired; the rose lay
in the old book; and then they buried grandmother.
Upon the grave, close by the church wall, a rose tree was planted;
it was full of roses, and the nightingale flew singing over the
flowers and the grave. Within the church, there resounded from the
organ the most beautiful hymns, which were in the old book under
the head of the dead one. The moon shone down upon the grave, but
the dead was not there; each child could go there quietly by night
and pluck a rose from the peaceful courtyard wall. The dead know
more than all of us living ones; they are better than we. The earth
is heaped up over the coffin, even within the coffin there is
earth; the leaves of the hymn book are dust, and the rose, with all
its memories. But above bloom fresh roses; above, the nightingale
sings, and the organ tones forth; above, the memory of the old
grandmother lives, with her mild, ever young eyes. Eyes can never
die. Ours will one day see the grandmother again, young and
blooming as when she for the first time kissed the fresh red rose,
which is now dust in the grave.'
'THE CELL PRISON.
'By separation from other men, by loneliness, in continual silence
shall the criminal be punished and benefited; on this account cell
prisons are built. In Sweden there are many such, and new ones are
building. I visited for the first time one in Marienstadt. The
building lies in a beautiful landscape, close by the town, on a
small stream of water, like a great villa, white and smiling, with
window upon window. But one soon discovers that the stillness of
the grave rests over the place; it seems as if no one dwelt here,
or as if it were a dwelling forsaken during the plague. The gates
of these walls are locked; but one opened and the jailor received
us, with his bundle of keys in his hand. The court is empty and
clean; even the grass between the paving stones is weeded out. We
entered the 'reception room,' to which the prisoner is first taken;
then the bath room, whither he is carried next. We ascend a flight
of stairs, and find ourselves in a large hall, built the whole
length and height of the building. Several galleries, one over
another in the different stories, extend round the whole hall, and
in the midst of the hall is the chancel, from which, on Sundays,
the preacher delivers his sermon before an invisible audience. All
the doors of the cells, which lead upon the galleries, are half
opened, the prisoners hear the preacher, but they cannot see him,
nor he them. The whole is a well-built machine for a pressure of
the spirit. In the door of each cell there is a glass of the size
of an eye; a valve covers it on the outside, and through this may
the warden, unnoticed by the prisoners, observe all which is going
on within; but he must move with soft step, noiselessly, for the
hearing of the prisoner is wonderfully sharpened by solitude. I
removed the valve from the glass very softly, and looked into the
closed room--for a moment the glance of the prisoner met my eye. It
is airy, pure, and clean within, but the window is so high that it
is impossible to look out. The whole furniture consists of a high
bench, made fast to a kind of table, a berth, which can be fastened
with hooks to the ceiling, and around which there is a curtain.
Several cells were opened to us. In one there was a young, very
pretty maiden; she had lain down in her berth, but sprang out when
the door was opened, and her first movement disturbed the berth,
which it unclasped and rolled together. Upon the little table stood
the water cask, and near it lay the remains of hard black bread,
farther off the Bible, and a few spiritual songs. In another cell
sat an infanticide; I saw her only through the small glass of the
door, she had heard our steps, and our talking, but she sat still,
cowered together in the corner by the door, as if she wished to
conceal herself as much as she could; her back was bent, her head
sunk almost into her lap, and over it her hands were folded. The
unhappy one is very young, said they. In two different cells sat
two brothers; they were paying the penalty of horse-stealing; one
was yet a boy. In one cell sat a poor servant girl; they said she
had no relations, and was poor, and they placed her here. I thought
that I had misunderstood, repeated my question, Why is the maiden
here? and received the same answer. Yet still I prefer to believe
that I have misunderstood the remark. Without, in the clear, free
sunlight, is the busy rush of day; here within the stillness of
midnight always reigns. The spider, which spins along the wall, the
swallow, which rarely flies near the vaulted window there above,
even the tread of the stranger in the gallery, close by the door,
is an occurrence in this mute, solitary life, where the mind of the
prisoner revolves ever upon himself. One should read of the martyr
cells of the holy inquisition, of the unfortunates of the Bagnio
chained to each other, of the hot leaden chambers, and the dark wet
abyss of the pit of Venice, and shudder over those pictures, in
order to wander through the galleries of the cell prison with a
calmer heart; here is light, here is air, here it is more human.
Here, where the sunbeam throws in upon the prisoner its mild light,
here will an illuminating beam from God Himself sink into the
heart.'
Last we have
'SALA.
'Sweden's great king, Germany's deliverer, Gustavus Adolphus,
caused Sala to be built. The small enclosed wood in the vicinity of
the little town relates to us yet traditions of the youthful love
of the hero king, of his rendezvous with Ebba Brahe. The silver
shafts at Sala are the largest, the deepest and oldest in Sweden;
they reach down a hundred and seventy fathoms, almost as deep as
the Baltic. This is sufficient to awaken an interest in the little
town; how does it look now? 'Sala,' says the guide book, 'lies in a
valley, in a flat, and not very agreeable region.' And so it is
truly; in that direction was nothing beautiful, and the highway led
directly into the town, which has no character. It consists of a
single long street with a knot and a pair of ends: the knot is the
market; at the ends are two lanes which are attached to it. The
long street--it may be called long in such a short town--was
entirely empty. No one came out of the doors, no one looked out of
the windows. It was with no small joy that I saw a man, at last, in
a shop, in whose window hung a paper of pins, a red handkerchief,
and two tea cans, a solitary, sedate apprentice, who leaned over
the counter and looked out through the open house door. He
certainly wrote that evening in his journal, if he kept one;
'To-day a traveller went through the town; the dear God may know
him, I do not!' The apprentice's face appeared to me to say all
that, and he had an honest face.
'In the tavern in which I entered, the same deathlike stillness
reigned as upon the street. The door was indeed closed, but in the
interior of the house all the doors stood wide open; the house cock
stood in the midst of the sitting room, and crowed in order to give
information that there was some one in the house. As to the rest,
the house was entirely picturesque; it had an open balcony looking
out upon the court--upon the street would have been too lively. The
old sign hung over the door and creaked in the wind; it sounded as
if it were alive. I saw it from my window; I saw also how the grass
had overgrown the pavement of the street. The sun shone clear, but
as it shines in the sitting room of the solitary old bachelor and
upon the balsam in the pot of the old maid, it was still as on a
Scottish Sunday, and it was Tuesday! I felt myself drawn to study
Young's 'Night Thoughts.'
'I looked down from the balcony into the neighbor's court; no
living being was to be seen, but children had played there; they
had built a little garden out of perfectly dry twigs; these had
been stuck into the soft earth and watered; the potsherd, which
served as watering pot, lay there still; the twigs represented
roses and geranium. It had been a splendid garden--ah yes! We
great, grown-up men play just so, build us a garden with love's
roses and friendship's geranium, we water it with our tears and our
heart's blood--and yet they are and remain dry twigs without roots.
That was a gloomy thought--I felt it, and in order to transform the
dry twigs into a blossoming Aaron's-staff, I went out. I went out
into the ends and into the long thread, that is to say, into the
little lanes and into the great street, and here was more life, as
I might have expected; a herd of cows met me, who were coming home,
or going away, I know not--they had no leader. The apprentice was
still standing behind the counter; he bowed over it and greeted;
the stranger took off his hat in return; these were the events of
this day in Sala. Pardon me, thou still town, which Gustavus
Adolphus built, where his young heart glowed in its first love, and
where the silver rests in the deep shafts without the town, in a
flat and not very pleasant country. I knew no one in this town, no
one conducted me about, and so I went with the cows, and reached
the graveyard; the cows went on, I climbed over the fence, and
found myself between the graves, where the green grass grew, and
nearly all the tombstones lay with inscriptions blotted out; only
here and there, 'Anno' was still legible--what further? And who
rests here? Everything on the stone was effaced, as the earth life
of the one who was now earth within the earth. What drama have ye
dead ones played here in the still Sala? The setting sun threw its
beams over the graves, no leaf stirred on the tree; all was still,
deathly still, in the town of the silver mines, which for the
remembrance of the traveller is only a frame about the apprentice,
who bowed greeting over the counter.'
Silence, stillness, quiet, solitude, loneliness, far-away-ness; hushed,
calm, remote, out of the world, un-newspapered, operaless,
un-gossipped--was there ever a sketch which carried one so far from the
world as this of 'Sala'? That _one_ shopboy--those going or coming
cows--the tombs, with wornout dates, every point of time vanishing--a
living grave!
Contrast again, dear reader. Verily she is a goddess--and I adore her.
Lo! she brings me back again in Sala to the busy streets of this city,
and the office, and the 'exchanges,' and the rustling, bustling world,
and the hotel dinner--to be in time for which I am even now writing
against time--and I am thankful for it all. Sala has cured me. That
picture drives away longings. Verily, he who lives in America, and in
its great roaring current of events, needs but a glance at Sala to feel
that _here_ he is on a darting stream ever hurrying more gloriously into
the world and away from the dull inanity--which the merest sibilant of
aggravation will change to insanity.
Reader, our Andersen is an artist--as most children know. But I am glad
that he seldom gives us anything which is so _very_ much of a monochrome
as Sala.
I wonder if Sala was the native and surnaming town of that _other_ Sala
whose initials are G. A. S., and whose nature is 'ditto'? Did its
dulness drive him to liveliness, even as an 'orthodox' training is said
to drive youth to dissipation? It may be so. The one hath a deep mine of
silver--the other contains inexhaustible mines of brass--and the name of
the one as of the other, when read in Hebrew-wise gives us 'alas!'
But I am wandering from the Northern pictures and fresh nature, and must
close.
THE NEW RASSELAS.
... And Joseph, opening the drawing room, told me the postchaise was
ready. My mother and my sister threw themselves into my arms.
'It is still time,' said they, 'to abandon this scheme. Stay with us.'
'Mother, I am of noble birth, I am now twenty, I must have a name, I
must be talked about in the country, I must be getting a position in the
army or at court.'
'Oh! but, Bernard, when you have gone, what will become of me?'
'You will be happy and proud when you hear of your son's success.'
'But if you are killed in some battle?'
'What of that! What's life? Who thinks about being killed? When one is
twenty, and of noble lineage, he thinks of nothing but glory. And,
mother, in a few years you shall see me return to your side a colonel,
or a general, or with some rich office at Versailles.'
'Well, and what then?'
'Why, then I shall be respected and considered about here.'
'And then?'
'Why, everybody will take off their hat to me.'
'And then?'
'I'll marry Cousin Henrietta, and I'll marry off my young sisters, and
we'll all live together with you, tranquil and happy, on my estate in
Brittany.'
'Now, why can't you commence this tranquil and happy life to-day? Has
not your father left us the largest fortune of all the province? Is
there anywhere near us a richer estate or a finer chateau than that of
La Roche Bernard? Are you not considered by all your vassals? Doesn't
everybody take off their hat when they meet you? No, don't quit us, my
dear child; remain with your friends, with your sisters, with your old
mother, whom, at your return, perhaps you may not find alive; do not
expend in vain glory, nor abridge by cares and annoyances of every kind,
days which at the best pass away too rapidly: life is a pleasant thing,
my son, and Brittany's sun is genial!'
As she said this, she showed me from the drawing-room windows the
beautiful avenues of my park, the old horse-chestnuts in bloom, the
lilacs, the honeysuckles, whose fragrance filled the air, and whose
verdure glistened in the sun. In the antechamber was the gardener and
all his family, who, sad and silent, seemed also to say to me, 'Don't
go, young master, don't go.' Hortense, my eldest sister, pressed me in
her arms, and Amelie, my little sister, who was in a corner of the
drawing room looking at the pictures in a volume of La Fontaine, came up
to me, holding out the book:
'Read, read, brother,' said she, weeping....
She pointed to the fable of the Two Pigeons!... I suddenly got up, and
repelled them all. 'I am now twenty, I am of noble blood, I want glory
and honor.... Let me go.' And I ran toward the courtyard. I was about
getting into the postchaise, when a woman appeared on the staircase.
It was Henrietta! She did not weep ... she did not say a word ... but,
pale and trembling, it was with the utmost difficulty that she kept from
falling. She waved the white handkerchief she held in her hand, as a
last good-by, and she fell senseless on the floor. I ran and took her
up, I pressed her in my arms, I pledged my love to her for life; and as
she recovered consciousness, leaving her in the hands of my mother and
sister, I ran to my postchaise without stopping, and without turning my
head.
If I had looked at Henrietta, I should not have gone.
In a few moments afterward the postchaise was rattling along the
highway. For a long time my mind was completely absorbed by thoughts of
my sisters, of Henrietta, of my mother, and of all the happiness I left
behind me; but these ideas gradually quitted me as I lost sight of the
turrets of La Roche Bernard, and dreams of ambition and of glory took
the entire possession of my mind. What schemes! What castles in the air!
What noble actions I performed in my postchaise!! I denied myself
nothing: wealth, honors, dignities, success of every kind, I merited and
I awarded myself all; at the last, raising myself from grade to grade as
I advanced on my journey, by the time I reached my inn at night, I was
duke and peer, governor of a province, and marshal of France. The voice
of my servant, who called me modestly Monsieur le Chevalier, alone
forced me to remember who I was, and to abdicate all my dignities. The
next day, and the following days, I indulged in the same dreams, and
enjoyed the same intoxication, for my journey was long. I was going to a
chateau near Sedan the chateau of the Duke de C----, an old friend of my
father, and protector of my family. It was understood that he was to
carry me to Paris with him, where he was expected about the end of the
month; he promised to present me at Versailles, and to give me a company
of dragoons through the credit of his sister, the Marchioness de F----,
a charming young lady, designated by public opinion as Madame de
Pompadour's successor, whose title she claimed with the greater justice
as she had long filled its honorable functions. I reached Sedan at
night, and at too late an hour to go to the chateau of my protector. I
therefore postponed my visit until the nest day, and lay at the
'France's Arms,' the best hotel of the town, and the ordinary rendezvous
of all the officers; for Sedan is a garrison town, and is well
fortified; the streets have a warlike air, and even the shopkeepers have
a martial look, which seems to say to strangers, 'We are fellow
countrymen of the great Turenne!' I supped at the general table, and I
asked what road I should take in the morning to go to the chateau of the
Duke de C----, which is situated some three leagues out of the town.
'Anybody will show you,' I was told, 'for it is well known hereabouts:
Marshal Fabert, a great warrior and a celebrated man, died there.'
Thereupon the conversation turned about Marshal Fabert. Between young
soldiers, this was very natural; his battles, his exploits, his modesty,
which made him refuse the letters patent of nobility and the collar of
his orders offered him by Louis XIV, were all talked about; they dwelt
especially on the inconceivable fortune which had raised him from the
rank of a simple soldier to the rank of a marshal of France--him, who
was nothing at all, the son of a mere printer: it was the only example
of such a piece of fortune which could then be instanced, and which,
even during Fabert's life, had appeared so extraordinary, the vulgar
never feared to ascribe his elevation to supernatural causes. It was
said that from his youth he had busied himself with magic and sorcery,
and that he had made a league with the devil. Mine host, who, to the
stupidity inherent in all the natives of the province of Champagne,
added the credulity of our Brittany peasants, assured us with a great
deal of sangfroid, that when Fabert died in the chateau of the Duke de
C----, a black man, whom nobody knew, was seen to enter into the dead
man's room, and disappear, taking with him the marshal's soul, which he
had bought, and which belonged to him; and that even now, every May,
about the period of the death of Fabert, the people of the chateau saw
the black man about the house, bearing a small light. This story made
our dessert merry, and we drank a bottle of champagne to the demon of
Fabert, craving it to be good enough to take us also under its
protection, and enable us to win some battles like those of Collioure
and La Marfee.
I rose early the next morning, and went to the chateau of the Duke de
C----, an immense gothic manor-house, which perhaps at any other moment
I would not have noticed, but which I regarded, I acknowledge, with
curiosity mixed with emotion, as I recollected the story told us on the
preceding evening by the host of the 'France's Arms.' The servant to
whom I spoke, told me he did not know whether his master could receive
company, and whether he could receive me. I gave him my name, and he
went out, leaving me alone in a sort of armory, decorated with the
attributes of the chase and family portraits.
I waited some time, and no one came. 'The career of glory and of honor I
have dreamed commences by the antechamber,' said I to myself, and
impatience soon possessed the discontented solicitor. I had counted over
the family portraits and all the rafters of the ceiling some two or
three times, when I heard a slight noise in the wooden wainscoting. It
was caused by an ill-closed door the wind had forced open. I looked in,
and I perceived a very handsome boudoir, lighted by two large windows
and a glazed door opening on a magnificent park. I walked into this
room, and after I had gone a short distance, I was stopped by a scene
which I had not at first perceived. A man was lying on a sofa, with his
back turned to the door by which I came in. He got up, and without
perceiving me, ran abruptly to the window. Tears streamed down his
cheeks, and a profound despair was marked on his every feature. He
remained motionless for some time, keeping his face buried in his hands;
then he began striding rapidly about the room. I was then near him; he
perceived me, and trembled; I, too, was annoyed and confounded at my
indiscretion; I sought to retire, muttering some words of excuse.
'Who are you? What do you want?' he said to me in a loud voice, taking
hold of me by my arms.
'I am the Chevalier Bernard de la Roche Bernard, and I come from
Brittany.'...
'I know, I know,' said he; and he threw himself into my arms, made me
take a seat by his side, spoke to me warmly about my father and all my
family, whom he knew so well that I was persuaded I was talking with the
master of the chateau.
'You are Monsieur de C----?' I asked him.
He got up, looked at me wildly, and replied, 'I was he, I am he no
longer, I am nothing;' and seeing my astonishment, he exclaimed, 'Not a
word more, young man, don't question me!'
'I must, Monsieur; I have been the involuntary witness of your chagrin
and your grief, and if my attachment and my friendship may to some
degree alleviate'----
'You are right, you are right,' said he; 'you cannot change my fate, but
at the least you may receive my last wishes and my last injunctions ...
it is the only favor I ask of you.'
He shut the door, and again took his seat by my side; I was touched, and
tremblingly expected what he was going to say: he spoke with a grave and
solemn manner. His physiognomy had an expression I had never seen before
on any face. His forehead, which I attentively examined, seemed marked
by fatality; his face was pale; his black eyes sparkled, and
occasionally his features, although changed by pain, would contract in
an ironical and infernal smile. 'What I am going to tell you,' said he,
'will surprise you.' You will doubt me ... you will not believe me ...
even. I doubt it sometimes ... at the least, I would like to doubt it;
but I have got the proofs of it; and there is in everything around us,
in our very organization, a great many other mysteries which we are
obliged to undergo, without being able to understand.' He remained
silent for a moment, as if to collect his ideas, brushed his forehead
with his hand, and then proceeded:
'I was born in this chateau. I had two elder brothers, to whom the
honors and the estates of our house were to descend. I could hope
nothing above the cassock of an abbe, and yet dreams of ambition and of
glory fermented in my head, and quickened the beatings of my heart.
Discontented with my obscurity, eager for fame, I thought of nothing but
the means of acquiring it, and this idea made me insensible to all the
pleasures and all the joys of life. The present was nothing to me; I
existed only in the future; and that future lay before me robed in the
most sombre colors. I was nearly thirty years old, and had done nothing.
Then literary reputations arose from every side in Paris, and their
brilliancy was reflected even to our distant province. 'Ah!' I often
said to myself, 'if I could at the least command a name in the world of
letters! that at least would be fame, and fame is happiness.' The
confidant of my sorrow was an old servant, an aged negro, who had lived
in the chateau for years before I was born; he was the oldest person
about the house, for no one remembered when he came to live there; and
some of the country people said that he knew the Marshal Fabert, and had
been present at his death'--
My host saw me express the greatest surprise; he interrupted his
narrative to ask me what was the matter.
'Nothing,' said I; but I could not help thinking of the black man the
innkeeper had mentioned the evening before.
Monsieur de C---- went on with his story: 'One day, before Juba (such
was the negro's name), I loudly expressed my despair at my obscurity and
the uselessness of my life, and I exclaimed: '_I would give ten years of
my life_ to be placed in the first rank of our authors.' 'Ten years,' he
coldly replied to me, 'are a great deal; it's paying dearly for a
trifle; but that's nothing, I accept your ten years. I take them now;
remember your promises: I shall keep mine!' I cannot depict to you my
surprise at hearing him speak in this way. I thought years had weakened
his reason; I smiled, and he shrugged his shoulders, and in a few days
afterward I quitted the chateau to pay a visit to Paris. There I was
thrown a great deal in literary society. Their example encouraged me,
and I published several works, whose success I shall not weary you by
describing. All Paris applauded me; the newspapers proclaimed my
praises; the new name I had assumed became celebrated, and no later than
yesterday, you, yourself, my young friend, admired me.'
A new gesture of surprise again interrupted his narrative: 'What! you
are not the Duke de C----?' I exclaimed.
'No,' said he very coldly.
'And,' I said to myself, 'a celebrated literary man! Is it Marmontel? or
D'Alembert? or Voltaire?'
He sighed; a smile of regret and of contempt flitted over his lips, and
he resumed his story: 'This literary reputation I had desired soon
became insufficient for a soul as ardent as my own. I longed for nobler
success, and I said to Juba, who had followed me to Paris, and who now
remained with me: 'There is no real glory, no true fame, but that
acquired in the profession of arms. What is a literary man? A poet?
Nothing. But a great captain, a leader of an army! Ah! that's the
destiny I desire; and for a great military reputation, I would give
another ten years of my life.' 'I accept them,' Juba replied; 'I take
them now; don't forget it.''
At this part of his story he stopped again, and, observing the trouble
and hesitation visible in my every feature, he said:
'I warned you beforehand, young man, that you could not believe me; this
seems a dream, a chimera to you!... and to me, too!... and yet the
grades and the honors I obtained were no illusions; those soldiers I led
to the cannon's mouth, those redoubts stormed, those flags won, those
victories with which all France has rung ... all that was my work ...
all that glory was mine.'...
While he strode up and down the room, and spoke with this warmth and
enthusiasm, surprise chilled my blood, and I said to myself, 'Who can
this gentleman be?... Is he Coligny?... Richelieu?... the Marshal
Saxe?'...
From this state of excitement he had fallen into great depression, and
coming close to me, he said to me, with a sombre air:
'Juba spoke truly; and after a short time had passed away, disgusted
with this vain bubble of military glory, I longed for the only thing
real and satisfactory and permanent in this world; and when, at the cost
of five or six years of life, I desired gold and wealth, Juba gave them
too.... Yes, my young friend, yes, I have seen fortune surpass all my
desires; I became the lord of estates, of forests, of chateaux. Up to
this morning they were all mine; if you don't believe me, if you don't
believe Juba ... wait ... wait ... he is coming ... and you will see for
yourself, with your own eyes, that what confounds your reason and mine,
is unhappily but too real.'
He then walked toward the mantlepiece, looked at the clock, exhibited
great alarm, and said to me in a whisper:
'This morning at daybreak I felt so depressed and weak I could scarcely
get up. I rang for my servant. Juba came. 'What is the matter with me
this morning?' I asked him. 'Master, nothing more than natural. The hour
approaches, the moment draws near!' 'What hour? What moment?' 'Don't you
remember? Heaven allotted sixty years as the term of your existence. You
were thirty when I began to obey you!' 'Juba,' said I, seriously
alarmed, 'are you in earnest?' 'Yes, master; in five years you have
dissipated in glory twenty-five years of life. You gave them to me, they
belong to me; and those years you bartered away shall now be added to
the days I have to live.' 'What, was that the price of your services?'
'Others have paid more dearly for them. You have heard of Fabert: I
protected him.' 'Silence! silence!' I said to him; 'you lie! you lie!'
'As you please; but get ready, you have only half an hour to live.' 'You
are mocking me; you deceive me.' 'Not at all; make the calculation
yourself. You have really lived thirty-five years; you have lost
twenty-five years: total, sixty years.' He started to go out.... I felt
my strength diminishing; I felt my life waning away. 'Juba! Juba!' said
I, 'give me a few hours, only a few hours,' I screamed; 'oh! give me a
few hours longer!' 'No, no,' said he, 'that would be to diminish my own
life, and I know better than you the value of life. There is no treasure
in this world worth two hours' existence!' I could scarcely speak; my
eyes became obscured by a thick veil, the icy hand of death began to
freeze my veins. 'Oh!' said I, making an effort to speak, 'take back
those estates for which I have sacrificed everything. Give me four hours
longer, and I make you master of all my gold, of all my wealth, of all
that opulence of fortune I have so earnestly desired.' 'Agreed: you have
been a good master, and I am willing to do something for you; I consent
to your prayer.' I felt my strength return; and I exclaimed: 'Four hours
are so little ... oh! Juba! ... Juba ... oh! Juba! give me yet four
hours, and I renounce all my literary glory, all my works, everything
that has placed me so high in the opinion of the world.' 'Four hours of
life for that!' exclaimed the negro with contempt.... 'That's a great
deal; but never mind; you shan't say I refused your last dying request.'
'Oh! no! no! Juba, don't say my last dying request.... Juba! Juba! I beg
of you, give me until this evening, give me twelve hours, the whole day,
and may my exploits, my victories, my military fame, my whole career be
forever effaced from the memory of men!... may nothing whatever remain
of them!... if you will give me this day, only to-day, Juba; and I shall
be too well satisfied.' 'You abuse my generosity,' said he, 'and I am
making a fool's bargain. But never mind, I give you until sundown. After
that, ask me for nothing more. Don't forget, after sundown I shall come
for you!'
'He went away,' added my companion, with a tone of despair I can never
forget, 'and this is the last day of my life.' He then walked to the
glazed door looking out on the park (it was open), and he exclaimed:
'Oh God! I shall see no more this beautiful sky, these green lawns,
these sparkling waters; I shall never again breathe the balmy air of the
spring! Madman that I was! I might have enjoyed for twenty-five years to
come these blessings God has showered on all, blessings whose worth I
knew not, and of which I am beginning to know the value. I have worn out
my days, I have sacrificed my life for a vain chimera, for a sterile
glory, which has not made me happy, and which died before me.... See!
see there!' said he, pointing to some peasants plodding their weary way
homeward; 'what would I not give to share their labors and their
poverty!... But I have nothing to give, nothing to hope here below ...
nothing ... not even misfortune!'... At this moment a sunbeam, a May
sunbeam, lighted up his pale, haggard features; he took me by the arm
with a sort of delirium, and said to me:
'See! oh see! how splendid is the sun!... Oh! and I must leave all
this!... Oh! at the least let me enjoy it now.... Let me taste to the
full this pure and beautiful day ... whose morrow I shall never see!'
He leaped into the park, and, before I could well comprehend what he was
doing, he had disappeared down an alley. But, to speak truly, I could
not have restrained him, even if I would.... I had not now the strength;
I fell back on the sofa, confounded, stunned, bewildered by all I had
seen and heard. At length I arose and walked about the room to convince
myself that I was awake, that I was not dreaming, that....
At this moment the door of the boudoir opened, and a servant announced:
'My master, Monsieur le Duc de C----.'
A gentleman some sixty years old and of a very aristocratic appearance
came forward, and, taking me by the hand, begged my pardon for having
kept me so long waiting.
'I was not at the chateau,' said he. 'I have just come from the town,
where I have been to consult with the physicians about the health of the
Count de C----, my younger brother.'
'Is he dangerously ill?'
'No, monsieur, thank Heaven, he is not; but in his youth visions of
glory and of ambition had excited his imagination, and a grave fever,
from which he has just recovered, and which came near proving fatal, has
left his head in a state of delirium and insanity, which persuades him
that he has only one day longer to live. That's his madness.'
Everything was explained to me now!
'Come, my young friend, now let us talk over your business; tell me what
I can do for your advancement. We will go together to Versailles about
the end of this month. I will present you at court.'
'I know how kind you are to me, duke, and I have come here to thank you
for it.'
'What! have you renounced going to court, and to the advantages you may
reckon on having there?'
'Yes.'
'But recollect, that aided by me, you will make a rapid progress, and
that with a little assiduity and patience ... say in ten years.'
'They would be ten years lost!'
'What!' exclaimed the duke with astonishment, 'is that purchasing too
dearly glory, fortune, and fame?... Silence, my young friend, we will go
together to Versailles.'
'No, duke, I return to Brittany, and I beg you to accept my thanks and
those of my family for your kindness.'
'You are mad!' said the duke.
But thinking over what I had heard and seen, I said to myself: 'You are
the same!'
The next morning I turned my face homeward. With what pleasure I saw
again my fine chateau de la Roche Bernard, the old trees of my park, and
the beautiful sun of Brittany! I found again my vassals, my sisters, my
mother, and happiness, which has never quitted me since, for eight days
afterward I married Henrietta.
THE CHAINED RIVER.
Home I love, I now must leave thee! Home I love, I now must go
Far away, although it grieve me, through the valley, through the snow.
By the night and through the valley, though the hail against us flies,
Till we reach the frozen river--on its bank the foeman lies.
Frozen river, mighty river!--wilt thou e'er again be free
From the fountain through the mountain, from the mountain to the sea.
Yes; though Freedom's glorious river for a time be frozen fast,
Still it cannot hold forever--Winter's reign will soon be past.
Still it runs, although 'tis frozen--on beneath the icy plain,
From the mountain to the ocean--free as thought, though held in chain.
From the mountain to the ocean, from the ocean to the sky,
Then in rainy drops returning--lo the ice-chains burst and fly!
And the ice makes great the river. Breast the spring-flood if you dare!
Rivers run though ice be o'er them--GOD and Freedom everywhere!
HOW THE WAR AFFECTS AMERICANS.
At the outbreak of the present terrible civil war, the condition of the
American people was apparently enviable beyond that of any other nation.
We say apparently, because the seeds of the rebellion had long been
germinating; and, to a philosophic eye, the great change destined to
follow the rebellion was inevitable, though it was then impossible for
human foresight to predict the steps by which that change would come.
Unconscious of impending calamity, we were proud of our position and
character as American citizens. We were free from oppressive taxation,
and enjoyed unbounded liberty of speech and action. Revelling in the
fertility of a virgin continent, unexampled in modern times for the
facilities of cultivation and the richness of its return to human labor,
it was a national characteristic to felicitate ourselves upon the
general prosperity, and boastingly to compare our growing resources and
our unlimited and almost spontaneous abundance, with the hard-earned and
dearly purchased productions of other and more exhausted countries. Our
population, swollen by streams of immigration from the crowded
continents of the old world, has spread over the boundless plains of
this, with amazing rapidity; and the physical improvements which have
followed our wonderful expansion have been truly magical in their
results, as shown by the decennial exhibits of the census, or presented
in still more palpable form to the eye of the thoughtful and observant
traveller. Since the fall of the Roman empire, no single government has
possessed so magnificent a domain in the temperate regions of the globe;
and certainly, no other people so numerous, intelligent, and powerful,
has ever in any age of the world enjoyed the same unrestricted freedom
in the pursuit of happiness: accordingly, none has ever exhibited the
same extraordinary activity in enterprise, or equal success in the
creation and accumulation of wealth. It was unfortunately true that our
mighty energies were mostly employed in the production of physical
results; and although our youthful, vigorous, and unrestricted efforts
made these results truly marvellous, yet the moral and intellectual
basis on which we built was not sufficiently broad and stable to sustain
the vast superstructure of our prosperity. The foundations having been
seriously disturbed, it becomes indispensable to look to their permanent
security, whatever may be the temporary inconvenience arising from the
necessary destruction of portions of the old fabric.
When the war began, the South was supplying the world with cotton--a
staple which in modern times has become intimately connected with the
physical well-being of the whole civilized world. At the same time, the
Northwest was furnishing to all nations immense quantities of grain and
animal food, her teeming fields presenting a sure resource against the
uncertainty of seasons in those regions of the earth in which capital
must supply the fertility which is still inexhaustible here. While such
were the occupations of the South and the West, the North and East were
advancing in the path of mechanical and commercial improvement, with a
rapidity beyond all former example. Agricultural and manufacturing
inventions were springing up, full grown, out of the teeming brain of
the Yankees, and were fast altering the face of the world. New
combinations of natural forces were appearing as the agents of the human
will, and were multiplying the physical capacity of man in a ratio that
seemed to know no bounds. Commercial enterprise kept pace with these
magnificent creations, and never failed, with liberal and enlightened
spirit, to avail itself of all the resources which industry produced or
genius invented. Our tonnage surpassed that of the greatest nations; the
skill of our shipbuilders was unsurpassed; and the courage, industry,
and perseverance of our seamen were renowned all over the world. On
every ocean and in every important harbor of the earth were daily
visible the emblems of our national power and the evidences of our
individual prosperity. But in one fatal moment, from a cause which was
inherent in our moral and political condition, all this prodigious
activity of thought and work was brought to a complete stand. Such a
shock was never before experienced, because such a social and material
momentum had never before been acquired by any nation, and then been
arrested by so gigantic a calamity. It was as if the earth had been
suddenly stopped on its axis, and all things on its surface had felt the
destructive impulse of the centrifugal force.
War itself is, unhappily, no uncommon condition of mankind. Wars on a
gigantic scale have often heretofore raged among the great nations, or
even between sundered parts of the same people. It is not the magnitude
of the present contest which constitutes its greatest peculiarity. It is
rather the magnitude and importance of the interests it involves and the
relations it sunders, which give it the tremendous significance it bears
in the eyes of the world. Never has any war found the contending parties
engaged in works of such world-wide and absorbing interest, as those
which occupied both sections of our people at the commencement of this
rebellion. No two people, connected by so many ties, enjoying such
unlimited freedom of intercourse, so mutually dependent each upon the
other, and occupying a country so utterly incapable of natural
divisions, have ever been known to struggle with each other in so
sanguinary a conflict. All the circumstances of the case have been
unexampled in history. Accordingly the influence of the contest upon
affairs on this continent, and indeed upon human affairs generally, has
been great and disastrous in proportion to the magnitude of the peaceful
works which have been suspended by it, and to the closeness of those
brotherly relations which have heretofore existed between the contending
parties, now violently broken, and perhaps forever destroyed.
Almost the entire industry and commerce of the United States have been
diverted into new and unaccustomed channels. The most active and
enterprising people in the world, in the midst of their varied
occupations, suddenly find all the accustomed channels of business
blocked up and the stream of their productions flowing back upon them in
a disastrous flood, and stagnating in their workshops and storehouses.
They are compelled to find new issues for their enterprise and to make a
complete change in their habits and works. It is not merely in the
cessation of all intercourse between the two vast sections, North and
South, that this mighty transformation has taken place; but an equal
alteration has been suddenly effected in the character of the business
and the nature of the occupations which the people have heretofore
pursued in the loyal States of the Union. Great branches of business,
employing millions of capital, have been utterly annihilated or
indefinitely suspended. Vast amounts of capital have been sunk and
utterly lost in the deep gulf of separation which temporarily divides
the States; or if they are ever to be recovered, it will be only after
the storm shall have completely subsided, when some portions of the
wrecks, which have been scattered in the fearful commotion, may be
thrown safely on to the shores of reunion. It was anticipated,
especially by the rebels themselves, that these incalculable losses,
these tremendous shocks and sudden changes, would utterly overwhelm the
North with ruin and tear her to pieces with faction and disorder. But
this anticipation of accumulated disasters, in which the wish was father
to the thought, has not been realized to any appreciable extent. The
pecuniary losses have been in a great measure compensated by the immense
demands of the war; and when faction has attempted to raise its head, it
has been compelled to retire before the patriotic rebuke of the people.
And although the vast expenditures of the war give present relief; by
drawing largely on the resources of the future, yet the strength we
acquire is none the less real or less effectual in overthrowing the
rebellion.
But this sudden and grand emergency, with all its appalling concomitants
of lives sacrificed, property destroyed, commercial disaster, and social
derangement, has given a rare opportunity for the testing of our
national character, and of our ability to meet and overcome the most
tremendous difficulties and dangers. Perhaps the versatility of American
genius and its ready adaptation to the new circumstances, are even more
wonderful than any other exhibition made by our people in this great
national crisis. There has never been any good reason to doubt the
capacity of any portion of American citizens for warlike occupations,
nor their possession of the moral qualities necessary to make them good
soldiers. The long period of peace which has blessed our country, with
the industrial, educational, and moral improvement produced by it, has
rendered war justly distasteful to the Free States of the Union. They
were slow to recognize the necessity for it; and nothing but the most
solemn convictions of duty would have aroused them to the stern and
unanimous determination with which they have entered on the present
struggle. Swift would have been our degeneration, if the spirit of our
fathers had already died out among us. But our history of less than a
century since the Revolutionary war has fully maintained the
self-reliant character of Americans and demonstrated their military
abilities; and if the commercial and manufacturing populations of
particular sections were supposed to have become somewhat enervated by
long exemption from the labors and perils of war, it was certain that
our large agricultural regions and especially our frontier settlements
were peopled with men inured to toil and familiar with danger,
constituting the best material for armies to be found in any country.
Nor was it in fact true that any considerable portion of our people,
even those drawn from the stores and workshops of the cities, had become
so far deteriorated in vigor of body, or demoralized in spirit, as to be
unfit for military service. The Southern leaders looked with scorn upon
our volunteer army only until they encountered it in battle. They were
then compelled to alter their preconceived opinions of the Yankee
character, and to change their contempt, real or pretended, into
respect, if not admiration. Even when superior numbers or better
strategy enabled them to beat us, they have seldom failed to bear
honorable testimony to the unflinching courage and endurance of our
troops. Nor do we need the admissions of the enemy to establish this
character for us; our own triumphs, on many glorious fields, are the
best evidences of our ability in war, and of themselves sufficiently
attest the valor and energy of our noble volunteers. In this aspect of
the matter, we must not forget the peculiar character and constitution
of our vast army. It is indeed worthy to be called the wonder of the
world. It is virtually a voluntary association of the people for the
purpose of putting down a gigantic rebellion and saving their own
government from destruction. This is a social phenomenon never before
known in history on a scale approaching the magnitude of our
combinations--a phenomenon which could only take place in a popular
government, where the unrestricted freedom of individual action promotes
the virtues of personal independence, self-respect, and manly courage.
Even the Southern people, fighting on their own soil, in a war which,
though actually commenced by them, they now affect to consider wholly
defensive--even they, with all their boasted unanimity, and with the
fierce passions engendered by slavery, have been compelled to maintain
their armies by a conscription of the most unexampled severity; while
the loyal States, fighting solely for union and nationality--interests
of the most general nature, and offering little of mere personal
inducement--have so far escaped that necessity, and are now just
preparing to resort to it. After all, it must be acknowledged by every
just and generous mind, whether that of friend or foe, that there is a
substratum of noble sentiment and manly impulses at the foundation of
the Yankee character. The vast movements of the Northern people plainly
show it. Their contributions for the support of soldiers' families and
for the relief of the wounded and disabled, are upon a gigantic scale.
They raise immense sums for the payment of bounties to volunteers, and
thus, in every way, the burdens of the war are voluntarily assumed by
the people, and to some extent distributed among them, so that every one
may participate in the patriotic work. Nor is this large-hearted
liberality confined solely to our own country. The sufferers in other
lands, who have felt the disastrous effects of our great civil war, have
not been forgotten. In the midst of a life-and-death struggle among
ourselves, we have found time and means to assist in relieving their
wants--an exhibition of liberality peculiar, and truly American in
character.
Nor are these the only interesting features in the bearing of the
American people at the present crisis. Perhaps a still more remarkable
one is the entire devotion of the national energies--of intellect not
less than of heart, of skill, not less than of capital--to the great
purposes of the war. This was the necessary result of our free
institutions; of our untrammelled pursuits; the mobility of our means
and agencies of production; and the plastic character of all our
creations. The amount of thought expended on this subject has been
prodigious and incalculable. It would be difficult, if not impossible,
to enumerate the ten thousand inventions and devices of all kinds which
have been presented for the purpose of increasing the efficiency of
weapons and of all the appliances of war, as well as for adding to the
comfort and securing the health of the soldier. Every imaginable
instrument of usefulness in any of the operations of the camp, or the
march, or the field of battle, has been the subject of tentative
ingenuity, such as none but Yankees could display. The musket, the
carbine, the pistol, have been constructed upon numberless plans,
apparently with every possible modification. The cartridge has been
covered with copper, impervious to water, instead of paper, and has its
own fulminate attached in various modes. Cannon shot and shells have
been made in many new forms; and cannons themselves have been increased
in calibre to an extraordinary size with proportionate efficiency, and
have been constructed in various modes and forms never before conceived.
The tent, the cot, the chest, the chair, the knife and fork, the stove
and bakeoven, each and every one of them, have been touched by the
transforming hand of homely genius, and have assumed a thousand
unimaginable forms of usefulness and convenience. India rubber and every
other available material have been made to perform new and appropriate
parts in the general work. The result of all this unexampled activity
and ingenuity has not yet been fully eliminated. It would require years
of experience in war in order to bring American genius, as at present
developed, to bear with all its extraordinary force on the mechanical
details of the military art. Beyond doubt, numberless devices, among
those presented, will prove to be utterly worthless; but many of them
will certainly stand the test of experience, will be ultimately approved
and adopted, and will remain as monuments of the enterprise and
ingenuity aroused by the necessities of the country in this hour of its
sad calamity.
It would be a curious and interesting employment to estimate the number
and character of these inventions, due wholly to the existing civil
strife. Only then should we be able to form some adequate conception of
the immense stimulus which has been applied to the national intellect,
and which has caused it to embrace within the boundless range of its
investigations, the highest moral and political problems, alike with the
minutest questions of mechanical and economical convenience. But we
should be greatly disappointed in not finding this phenomenon even
partially comprehended by the powers that be. It is truly a melancholy
thing to meet in the highest quarters so little sympathy with the
noblest efforts of the popular mind, and to witness the cold neglect and
even disdainful suspicion with which the most useful and valuable
devices are often received, or rather, we should say, haughtily
disregarded and rejected. Seldom or never do we find these inventions
appreciated according to their merits. The Government is proverbially
slow to adopt improvements of any kind; and the army and navy, like all
similar professional bodies, are averse to every important change, and
wedded to the instruments and processes in the use of which they have
been educated and trained. This peculiar indisposition to progressive
movements, in all the established institutions and organizations of
society, has frequently been the subject of remark and of regret. It is,
however, only an exaggeration of the conservative principle, which, when
confined within proper limits, is wise and beneficial. Indeed, the
actual progress of society in any period, is neither more nor less than
the result of the conflict between the opposite tendencies, of
retrogradation and advancement--a disposition to adhere to the old,
which has been tried and approved, and a tendency toward the new, which,
however promising and alluring, may yet disappoint and mislead. In the
long run, however, the latter prevails, and the progressive movement,
more or less rapid, goes on continually. Improvements gradually force
themselves upon the attention of the most prejudiced minds, and
eventually conquer opposition in spite of professional immobility and
aversion to change. Observation has shown that the most important steps
of progress usually originate outside of the professions, and are only
adopted when they can no longer be resisted with safety to the
conservative body. To the volunteer officer and soldier, or to those
educated soldiers who have long been in civil life, will probably be due
the greater part of that accessibility to new ideas which will result in
important advances in the art of war. This assertion may seem to be
paradoxical; but all experience proves that ignorance of old processes
is most favorable to the introduction of new ones. And though in a
thousand instances such ignorance may be disastrous, occasionally it
finds the unprejudiced intellect illuminated by flashes of original
genius, and open to the entrance of valuable ideas which would have been
utterly excluded by all the old and established rules.
But the actual work of the unexampled mental activity of the present
day, will not be fully known and estimated until after the close of the
war. Until then there will be neither time nor opportunity to weigh and
test the creations of the national ingenuity. In the midst of campaigns
and battles, with the absorbing interest of the great struggle, the
instruments of warfare cannot be easily changed, however important may
be the improvement presented. The emergency which arouses genius and
brings forth valuable inventions, is by no means favorable to their
adoption and general use. On the contrary, by a sort of fatality which
seems to be a law of their existence, they are doomed to struggle with
adversity and fierce opposition, and they are left by the occasion which
gave them birth as its repudiated offspring--a legacy to the future
emergency which will cherish and perfect them, make them available, and
enjoy the full benefit to be derived from them.
The navy has always justly been the pride of our country; and it was to
be expected that it would first feel the impulse of inventive genius.
Confident in our strength and resources, we had long remained
comparatively sluggish, and regardless of those interesting experiments
which other great maritime powers had been carefully making with a view
to render ships invulnerable. We looked on quietly, observed the
results, and waited for the occasion when we should be required to put
forth our strength in this direction. When the war commenced, we had not
a single iron-clad vessel of any description. It became necessary that
the immense Southern coast of our country should be subjected to the
strictest blockade. This was a work of vast magnitude, and a very large
and sudden increase of the navy was demanded by the extraordinary
emergency. Cities were to be taken, and strong fortresses to be
attacked. The rebels had managed to save some of the vessels intended to
be destroyed at Norfolk, and had converted the Merrimack into a
formidable monster, which in due time displayed her destructive powers
upon our unfortunate fleet in Hampton Roads, in that ever-memorable
contest in which the Monitor first made her timely appearance. The chief
result of the vast effort demanded by the perilous situation of our
country, was the class of vessels of which the partially successful but
ill-fated Monitor was the type. These structures are certainly very far
from being perfect as ships of war; nevertheless, they constitute an
interesting and valuable experiment, and mark an advance in naval
warfare of the very first importance. They establish the form in which
defensive armor may perhaps be most effectively disposed for the
protection of men on board ships; but at the same time, it must be
conceded that they utterly fail in all the other requisites for
men-of-war and sea-going vessels. They are deficient in buoyancy and
speed. In truth they are nothing more than floating batteries, useful in
the defence of harbors or the attack of forts. The melancholy end of the
Monitor shows too plainly that vessels of her character cannot be safely
trusted to the fury of the open sea. They may do well in favorable
weather, or may escape on a single expedition; but a repetition of long
voyages will be almost certain to result in their loss.
We want lighter and swifter vessels to be equally formidable in
ordnance, and alike invulnerable to the attacks of any adversary. To
combine all these requisites is not beyond the ingenuity of American
constructors. Most assuredly such vessels will soon make their
appearance on the ocean. Some new arrangement of the propelling
apparatus, and lighter and more powerful machinery, will accomplish this
important end. And then, too, with greatly increased speed, and with a
construction suitable to the new function, the principle of the ram will
be perfected; so that the projectile thrown by the most powerful
ordnance now existing or even conceived will be insignificant compared
with the momentum of a large steamer, going at the rate of thirty or
forty miles an hour, and herself becoming the direct instrument of
destruction to her adversary. Ordnance may possibly be devised which
will throw shot or shell weighing each a thousand pounds; but by the new
principle, which is evidently growing in practicability and favor, the
weight of thousands of tons will be precipitated against vessels of war,
and naval combats will become a conflict of gigantic forces, in
comparison with which the discharge of guns and the momentum of cannon
balls will be little more than the bursting of bubbles.
The exploits of the rebel steamer Alabama, so destructive to our
commerce and so humiliating to our pride as a great naval power,
sufficiently attest the vital importance of the element of speed in
ships of war. Her capacity under steam is beyond that of our best
vessels, and she therefore becomes, at her pleasure, utterly
inaccessible to anything we may send to pursue her. We have built our
steamers strong and heavy; but proportionately slow and clumsy. The
Alabama could not safely encounter any one of them entitled to the name
of a regular cruiser; but she does not intend to risk such a contest,
and, most unfortunately for us, she cannot be compelled to meet it. Of
what real use are all the costly structures of our navy with the
tremendous ordnance which they carry, if this comparatively
insignificant craft can go and come when and where she will, and sail
through and around our fleets without the possibility of being
interrupted? They are perfectly well suited to remain stationary and aid
us in blockading the Southern ports; but the frequent escape of fast
steamers running the blockade, serves still further to demonstrate the
great and palpable deficiency in the speed of our ships of war. We may
start a hundred of our best steamers on the track of the Alabama, and,
without an accident, they can never overtake her. The only alternative
is to accept the lesson which her example teaches, and to surpass her in
those qualities which constitute her efficiency and make her formidable
as a foe. This we must do, or we must quietly surrender our commerce to
her infamous depredations, and acknowledge ourselves beaten on the seas
by the rebel confederacy without an open port, and without anything
worthy to be called a navy. The ability of our naval heroes, and their
skill and valor, so nobly illustrated on several occasions during the
present war, will be utterly unavailing against superior celerity of
motion. Their just pride must be humbled, and their patriotic hearts
must chafe with vexation, so long as the terrible rebel rover continues
to command the seas, as she will not fail to do so long as we are unable
to cope with her in activity and speed. Nor is it certain we have yet
known the worst. Ominous appearances abroad, and thick-coming rumors
brought by every arrival, indicate the construction in England of
numerous other ships like the Alabama, destined to run the blockade and
afterward to join that renowned cruiser in her work of destruction.
Stores of cotton held in Southern ports offer a temptation to the
cupidity of foreign adventurers which will command capital to any
amount, and the best skill of English engineers and builders will be
enlisted to make the enterprise successful--a skill not embarrassed by
bureaucratic inertia and stolidity.
Let the genius of American constructors and engineers be brought to bear
on the subject, and the important problem will be solved in sixty days.
Indeed, there are plans in existence, at this very hour, by which the
desired end could be at once accomplished. But the inertia of official
authority, and especially of the bureaus in the Navy Department, is such
that any novel idea, however demonstrably good and valuable, is usually
doomed to battle for years against opposition of all kinds before it can
hope to secure an introduction. In all probability, the war will have
been ended before anything of great importance ever can be accomplished
through those channels. The adoption of the Monitor principle was not
due to the skill and intelligence found in official quarters; it was
forced upon the Navy Department from the outside. And like the boa
constrictor, after having swallowed its prey, the Department must
sluggishly repose until that meal is digested before another can be
taken. One idea, of the magnitude of this, is enough for the present
crisis. We shall not have another, if the stubborn resistance and fixity
of ideas in the bureaus can prevent it. The invulnerability of the
Monitors, and the peculiar arrangement by which this important end is
obtained, are but one of the items necessary to make up the complete
efficiency of war steamers. They are only one half what is required.
They accomplish one of the great desiderata in armaments afloat; but
they leave another equally important demand utterly unsatisfied. There
is a counterpart to this achievement--its complement, equally
indispensable to the efficiency of the navy, and waiting to be placed by
the side of the recent improvement. It must and will be brought forth,
whether the naval authorities assist or oppose. American genius, only
give it fair play, is equal to all emergencies.
The immense activity of thought and ingenuity elicited by the war, and
extending to all the departments of enterprise appropriate to the great
crisis, is a phenomenon peculiar to the American people. It could be
exhibited nowhere else, to the same extent, among civilized nations,
because nowhere else is the same stimulus applied with equal directness
to the popular masses. The operation of this peculiar cause is
conspicuously plain. The Government of the United States is the people's
Government; the war is emphatically the people's war. Every man feels
that he has a personal interest in it. He understands, more or less
clearly, the whole question involved, and has fixed opinions, and
perhaps strong feelings, in regard to it. His friends and neighbors and
brothers are in the army, and they have gone thither voluntarily,
perhaps impelled by enlightened and conscientious convictions of duty.
His sympathies follow them; he ardently prays for their success; and he
is stimulated to provide, as well as he can, for their comfort. All
other business being greatly interrupted, if not wholly suspended, he
thinks continuously of the mighty operations of the war. He dwells on
them night and day, and in the laboratory of his active mind, excited by
the mighty stimulus of personal and patriotic feeling natural to the
occasion, he produces those extraordinary combinations which distinguish
the present era.
In addition to these impulses which operate so generally, there is the
still more universal and all-pervading love of gain which stimulates his
inventive faculties, and causes them to operate in the direction in
which his hopes and sympathies are turned. Aroused by motives of all
kinds, the whole mind and heart of the country is absorbed in the great
contest, and all its energies are applied in every conceivable way to
the work of war. The man who carries the gun and uses it on the battle
field is not more earnestly engaged in this work than he who racks his
brain and sifts his teeming ideas for the purpose of making the
instrument more destructive. Even the victims who fall in the deadly
strife and give their mangled bodies to their country, are not more
truly martyrs to a glorious cause than the inventors who sometimes
sacrifice themselves in the course of their perilous experiments, or by
the slower process of mental and physical exhaustion during the long
years of 'hope deferred,' while vainly seeking to make known the value
of their devices. A great power is at work, operating on the character
and capacity of each individual, and affecting each according to the
infinite diversity which prevails among men. A common enthusiasm, or,
at least, a common excitement pervades the whole community to its
profoundest depths, and arouses all its energy and all its intellect,
whatever that energy and intellect may be capable of doing. It carries
multitudes into the army full of patriotic ardor; it inspires others
with grand ideas, which they seek to embody in combinations of power,
useful and effective in the great work which is the task of the nation,
and for the accomplishment of which all noble hearts are laboring
earnestly and incessantly.
But in this tempestuous hour, as in more peaceful times, good and bad
ideas, valuable and worthless devices, noble and generous as well as
sinister and mercenary purposes are mingled in the vast multitude of
projects which are presented for acceptance and adoption. The power of
the nation is magnified by the impulse which arouses it; but in its
exaltation it still retains its errors and defects. It is the same
people, with all their characteristic faults and virtues, stimulated to
mighty exertions in a sacred cause, who have been so often engaged in
petty partisan contests, swayed by dishonest leaders, and carried astray
by the base intrigues of ambition and selfishness. Yet, as the masses,
at all times, have had no interest but that of the nation which they
chiefly constitute, and have sought nothing but what they at least
considered to be the public good, so even now, in these mad and perilous
times, the predominating sentiment and purpose of the people, in
whatever sphere they move, are, on the whole, good and worthy of
approval. Every one must at least pretend to be controlled by honest and
patriotic motives; and in such an emergency hypocrisy cannot possibly be
universal or even predominant. Although men may seek chiefly their own
interest and profit, they must do so through some effort of public
usefulness. They must commend themselves, their works, and ideas, as of
superior importance to the cause of the country; and in this universal
struggle and competition--this mighty effervescence of popular thought
and action, it would be strange and unexampled, if some great, new
conceptions should not dawn upon us. The very condition, physical,
social, and moral, of our twenty millions of people in the loyal States
is unlike all that has ever preceded it. Their general intelligence, the
result of universal education, makes available their unlimited freedom,
and establishes their capacity for great achievements. The present
momentous occasion makes an imperative demand upon all their highest
faculties, and they cannot fail to respond in a manner which will
satisfy every just expectation.
What the Government has undertaken in this crisis is worthy of a great
people and springs from the large ideas habitual to Americans. The
blockade of the whole Southern coast, with its vast shore line, and its
intricate network of inlets, harbors, and rivers; the controlling of the
mighty Mississippi from Cairo to the gulf; the campaigns in Virginia,
Tennessee, and Arkansas; and the pending attacks on Charleston and
Savannah--these gigantic and tremendous operations have something of
that grandeur which is familiar to our thoughts--which, indeed,
constitutes the staple of the ordinary American speech, apparently
having all the characteristics of exaggerated jesting and idle boast. We
frequently hear our enthusiastic countrymen talk of anchoring Great
Britain in one of our northern lakes. They speak contemptuously of the
petty jurisdictions of European powers contrasted with the magnificent
domain of our States, and they sneer at the rivers of the old continent
as mere rills by the side of the mighty 'father of waters.' The men
whose very jests are on a scale of such magnitude, do not seem to find
the extensive military operations too large for their serious thoughts.
No American considers them beyond our power, or for one moment hesitates
to admit their ultimate success. No difficulties discourage us, no
disasters appal. We move on with indomitable will and determination,
looking through all the obstacles to the grand result as already
accomplished. Does slavery stand in the way, and cotton seek to usurp
the throne of universal empire, dictating terms to twenty millions of
freemen, and demanding the acquiescence of the world? The first is
annihilated by a word proclaiming universal liberation; the second is
blockaded in his ports, surrounded by a wall of fire, suffocated and
strangled, and dragged helpless and insensible from his imaginary
throne. A proud and desperate aristocracy, rich and powerful, and
correspondingly confident, undertake to measure strength with the
democratic millions whom they despise. These Northern people, scorned
and detested, have ideas--grand and magnificent as well as practical
ideas, nurtured by universal education and unlimited freedom of thought
and act. The fierce and relentless aristocracy rave in their very
madness, and defy the people whom they seek to destroy; but these bear
down upon the haughty enemy, slowly and deliberately--awkwardly and
blunderingly, it may be, at first, but learning by experience, and
moving on, through all vicissitudes, with the certainty and solemnity of
destiny to the hour of final and complete success. The confidence in
this grand result dominates every other thought. All ideas and all
purposes revolve around it as a centre. It is the internal fire which
warms the patriotism, strengthens the purpose, stimulates the invention,
sustains the courage, and feeds the undying confidence of the nation, in
this, the hour of its desperate struggle for existence.
PROMOTED!
'_You_ will not bid me stay!' he said,
'She calls for me--my native land!
And _stay_? ah, better to be dead!
A _coward_ dare not ask your hand!
'My crimson sash you'll tie for me,
My belted sword you'll fasten, love!
I swear to both I'll faithful be,
To these below! to God above!
'And if, perchance, my sword shall win
A laurel wreath to crown _your_ name,
He will not count it as my sin,
That I for _you_ have prayed for fame!'
* * * * *
His name rings thro' his native land,
His sword has won the hero's prize;
Why comes he not to ask her hand?
Dead on the battle field he lies.
HENRIETTA AND VULCAN.
Time, O well beloved, floweth by like a river; sweepeth on by turreted
castles and dainty boat-houses, great old forests and ruined cities.
Tender, cool-eyed lilies fringe its rippling shores, straggling arms of
longing seaweeds are unceasingly wooing and losing its flying waves; and
on its purple bosom by night, linger merrily hosts of dancing stars.
Bright under its limpid waters gleam the towers of many a 'sunken city.'
Strong and clear through the night-silence of eager listening, ring the
chimes of their far-off bells, the echoes of joyous laughter: and to
waiting, yearning ones come, ever and anon, deep glances from gleaming
eyes, warm graspings from outstretched hands. And well windeth the river
into grim old caves, and even the merriest boat that King Cole ever
launched flitteth by the dark doors, intent only on the brilliant
_chateaux_, that shimmer above in the gorgeous sunlight of a brave
_Espagne_. But laughing imps, with flying feet, venture singly into
these realms of the Unknown. Bright streameth the light there from
carbuncles and glowing rubies; but of the melodies that there bewilder
them, no returning voice ever speaketh, for are they not Eleusinian
mysteries? But when thou meetest, O brother, sailing down the stream
under gay flags and rounding sails, some Hogarth or some Sterne, who
playeth _rouge et noir_ with keen old Pharaohs, and battledore with
Charlie Buff; who singeth brave _Libiamos_, and despiseth not the
Christmas plums of Johnny Horner; who payeth graceful court to the great
and learned, and warmeth the pale hearts of the shivering poor with his
kind cheer and gentle words; who sitteth with Socrates and Pericles at
the feet of an ever-lovely Aspasia, and whispereth _capricios_ to Anna
Maria at the opera; know then, O beloved, if thou hast ever trodden the
mystic halls, that this man is the brother of thy soul! Selah!
But the bravest stream that ever was born on a mountain side has its
shoals and quicksands, and far out in the sounding sea rise slowly coral
reefs. Now, if on every green, growing isle newly rising to the
sunlight, the glorious jealousy of some Jove should toss a Vulcan, how
would our Venuses be suddenly charmed by the beauties of a South Sea
Scheme! how would their tiny shallops dot the curling waves, and what
new flowers would spring upon the smiling shores to greet their rosy
feet!
'And why a Vulcan?' says the elegant Narcissus Hare, with a shiver; 'a
great, grim, solemn, limping monster, that Brummel would have spurned in
disgust! And he to win our ladies with their delicate loveliness! Faugh,
sir! are you a Cyclops yourself?'
Alas! my Tinkler, do you remember that Salmasius began his vituperations
of Milton with gratuitous speculations upon his supposed ugliness, and
that great was his grief when he was assured that he contended with an
ideal of beauty. Have you forgotten that the Antinoeus won the
distinguished favor of his merry, courteous queen Christina, and that
the satirist and man of 'taste' died of obscurity in a year? Beware, my
little Narcissus, lest the next autumn flowers bloom above your grave in
Greenwood, and your fair Luline be accepting bouquets and _bonbons_ from
me.
You, Roland, are pale from the very contemplation of such a catastrophe,
such an unprecedented _haegira_ of dames! It is as if from every gay
watering place, some softly tinkling bell should summon the fair
mermaids. Beplaided and betrowsered, with their little gypsy hats, would
they float out beyond the breakers, waving aside with farewell, airy
kisses, the patent life boats and the magical preservers, and pressing
on, like Gebers, with their rosy faces and great, hopeful eyes ever
laughingly, merrily turned to the golden east--their _Morgen Land_!
Ah! but--have we no Vulcans among us? 'Fair Bertha, Beatrice, Alys,'
come out of the Christmas ecstatics of the dear old year that has just
streamed out like a meteor among the stars;--_you_ know, fair ones, that
the stars are only years, and the planets grave old centuries; lock away
the jewels and the lace sets--charming, I know--the glove boxes and the
statuettes, the cream-leaved books, and the fragile, graceful
_babioles_; pull up the cushions, and group your bright selves around
the register--it's very cold to-day, you roses--and let us settle the
question--have we a Vulcan among us?
Magnificent essayists, O dearly beloved, have handled 'Our Husbands,'
'Our Wives,' 'Our Sons' and 'Our Daughters' in a masterly style. Very
praiseworthy, no doubt, but so unromantic! Why, there's not a green leaf
in the whole collection! The style is decidedly Egyptian, solid and
expressive, but dreadfully compact. No arabesques, those offshoots of
lazy, dreamy hours and pleasantly disconnected thoughts, disgrace the
solemnly even tenor of these fathers of 'Ephemeral Literature,' as some
'rude Iconoclast' has irreverently styled the butterfly journeyings of
our magazine age. But we, O merry souls and brave, are still young and
frivolous: we still look at pictures with as much zest as before our
dimly remembered teens; and we belong to that happy branch of the
Scribbleri family, that prefer the sympathy of bright eyes and gay
laughter, to the approving shake of any D'Orsay's 'ambrosial curls,' or
the most unqualified smile from the grimmest old champion who even now
votes in his secret heart against the New Tariff, or charges with
unparalleled bravery imaginary or windmill giants on the floor of a
Platform or of a Legislature.
But this, our paper, purporteth to be, in some wise, a disquisition on
Beaux, and, by our faith, we had well-nigh forgotten it. _Retournons a
nos moutons_, as the ancient lawyers used to say (and many a tyro, in
the interim, hath said the same) when they grew so entangled in the
mazes of Jack Shepherd cases that they lost sight of their original
designs. And lest I should grow wearisomely prosaic, and see the yawn
behind your white hand, _belle_ Beatrice, let me make my disquisition a
half story, and point my moral, not as fairies do, with a pinch, but
with the shadow of a tale.
And here, _signorina_, though in courage I am a Caesar, here I shrink.
The birdseye view I would take of a few leaves of beau-dom, should be
from the standing point of your own unquiet, peering eyes; and if even
Cupid is blindfold, how may I, to whom you are all tormentingly
delicious enigmas, hope in my own unaided strength to enter the charmed
citadel of your experiences? Oh, no! But happy is the man, who, with an
inquiring mind, has also a sister! Thrice happy he whose sisters have
just now flitted down the staircase, from their own inner sanctuaries,
into the little library, bearing with them in noisy triumph the Harry of
all Goodfellows, the truant Henrietta Ruyter! Ah! she is the key that
will unlock for me those treasures of thought and observation that I
will shortly lay before you, O readers!
And now to you, O much-traduced star, that presided at my _debut_ into
this vale of tears, may the most glorious rocket ascend that Jackson
ever said or sung, one that shall break out in paeans of brilliant
stars!--_for_, when I entered the charmed presence, the very ball that I
had been wishing to roll was upon the carpet. But of this I was
unconscious as I admired Fanny's new dress, the mysterious earrings of
our stately Bertha, and ventured upon a slight compliment to Henrietta,
who lounged upon the divan. With admirable dexterity, the young lady
caught the _fleurette_ upon her crochet needle, reviewed it carelessly,
and finally decided to accept it; an event that I had undoubtedly
foreseen, for the compliment was a graceful and artistic one. But
brothers, as you, Gustav, my boy, have long since discovered, are not
events, and I was presently consigned to the 'elephant chair' in the
corner, with a portfolio of sketches that Henrietta had brought from
over the sea--and the dames continued, in charming obliviousness of my
presence.
'Girls,' said Henrietta, having deposited my compliment snugly in her
little workbasket, whence it may issue to the delectation of some future
young lady group, 'how are you going to entertain me? Such a Wandering
Jew as I am! A perfect Ahasuerus! _What_ a novelty it will be that will
interest _me_!' and with a most laughingly wearied air, the pretty
eyebrows were raised, and waves of weariness floated over the golden
hair in its scarlet net.
Fanny looked concerned. 'We may have a week of opera.'
'I've been--in--Milan,' returned Henrietta, with a well-counterfeited
air of the disdain with which Mrs. De Lancy Stevens views all republican
institutions since her year in Europe. Bertha laughed.
'You have grown literary, astronomical perhaps, with your star gazing,
and Len has become such a Mitchellite of late, that two shelves of his
bookcase are filled with works on the heavenly bodies. What a rapture
you will be in at the sight!'
'Quite an Aquinas,' said Henrietta, with gravity.
'How so, Harry,' asked Fanny, after a pause, during which she had been
deciding that her friend meant--Galileo!
'Oh, he wrote about angels, you know; said these heavenly bodies were
made of thick clouds, and some other nonsense, of which I remember
nothing.'
I, in my corner, was devoutly thankful that angels now assume more
tangible shapes, which chivalric sentiment, finding expression only in
my eyes, was recognized but by Henrietta, who rewarded me with a
lightning smile.
'Bertha, my queen,' continued she, as that lady's serene countenance
beamed upon her in apparently immovable calmness, '_does_ anything ever
arouse you? Have you forgotten, my impenetrable spirit, the sad days of
yore, when we sobbed out grand _arias_ to the wretched accompaniment of
Professor Tirili, blistered our young fingers on guitar strings, waded
unprofitably in oceans of Locke and Bacon, and were oftener at the apex
of a triangle than its comfortable base? And you always as calm as
though 'sailing over summer seas!' Come--I am absolutely blue;' and the
half-fretful belle, who had really exhausted her strength and amiability
by a grand pedestrian tour in the Central Park that morning, stretched
out demurely her gaiter boots, and drew with an invisible pencil on
imaginary paper, the outline of her boldly arched instep.
'If Landon would only come,' sighed Fanny, musingly, counting the beads
for the eye of the Polyphemus she was embroidering on a cushion for that
gentleman's sofa meditations, 'he would entertain you, as well as
the--one--two--three--witches in Macbeth.'
'No doubt of it,' said Henrietta.
'Five blues and two blacks,' said Fanny, not heeding the reply. 'See,
girls,' and she held up the glittering orb, 'what a lovely eye!'
The enthusiasm of her audience was delirious but subdued. I caught an
occasional '_Such_ a love!' 'How sweet--how fierce!'
'Now,' said Henrietta, decidedly, 'if Medusa had but one eye, and this
dear creature two, I should die as miserably as the lady who loved the
Apollo Belvidere. I have had _oceans_ of knights errant--but _such_! I
think of writing a natural history like--Cuvier.'
'Yes,' said Bertha, quietly, 'or Peter Parley.'
'Suppose I read you the advance sheets some morning?'
'Charming,' said Fanny, with a little shrug of approaching delight.
'Mr. Landon Snowe, Miss Fanny,' said a crusty voice, and from under a
tower of white turban, Sibyl's face looked out--at the door.
'We will see him here, Sibyl,' said Fanny, brightly; 'and oh, Sibyl, ask
Mott to make a macaroon custard for dinner, for Miss Ruyter.'
'Excellent,' said that lady, again with the De Lancy Stevens air, 'I
ate--those--in--Paris. They actually flavor them there with _Haut
Brion!_ and they are delicious!' and Henrietta's lips fairly quivered at
the remembrance, that was by no means a recollection of the long-ago
enjoyed dainties.
'Such extravagance!' said Fanny, opening her eyes, and arranging sundry
little points in her attitude that were intended to be very piercing
indeed to the gentleman, whose step was now heard in the hall. 'Such
extravagance, Harry! Your father, I suppose. You'll get nothing better
than Port here. Good morning, Mr. Snowe.'
'Talking of ports, ladies,' said that gentleman, airily, after he had
prostrated himself, figuratively as well as disfiguratively, before Miss
Henrietta, bowed over Bertha's hand, and drew his chair to Fanny's
sewing stand, for the triple purpose of confusing her zephyrs, flirting
at a side table, and ascertaining whether Henrietta had fulfilled the
luxuriant promise of her earlier youth. Snowe was, womanly speaking, as
you will see, 'a perfect love of a man.' 'Newport, for example, and
charming drives? Williamsport and the Susquehanna, Miss Fanny?'
Very statesmanly, O Landon G. Snowe, Esq., both the glance beneath which
my poor little sister's eyes fell, and the allusions twain to the scenes
of many a pleasure past. But Fanny, though not mistress of her blushes,
can, at least, control her words.
'You are not a very good Oedipus, Mr. Snowe; we were discussing
imports.'
'Such as laces and silks?'--
'And punch,' suggested Henrietta.
Mr. Snowe's eyeglass was here freshly adjusted, and his attention
bestowed upon the young lady who talked of punch, a thing unheard of in
society! The prospect was refreshing. Henrietta was stylish, piquant,
and pretty. Fanny was uncertain, indifferent, but, for the moment,
divine. He magnanimously sacrificed himself to the impulse of the
moment, and the courtesies of hospitality, and walked courageously over
to Henrietta, under cover of a huge book.
'They were views from the White Mountains, he believed. Had Miss Ruyter
seen them? Allow him;' and he wheeled her sofa nearer the table, and
unfurled the book. Henrietta was charmed.
'The Schwartz Mountains? She had not understood. These are glaciers? How
they glisten! And these little flowers below are violets? Such pretty,
modest, ladylike flowers. Had Mr. Snowe a favorite among flowers?'
Mr. Snowe was prepared. He had answered the question exactly five
hundred and ten times. To Cecilia Lanner, who was almost a _religieuse_,
and who wore her diamond cross from principle, he was the very poet of a
passion flower, such holy mysteries as its opening petals disclosed to
him! To Lucy Grey, who wore pensive curls, and had a sweet voice, he
presented constantly fragrant little sprays of mignonette, cunning moss
baskets with a suspicion of heliotrope peeping out, and crushed myrtle
blossoms between the leaves of her most exquisitely bound books. To Katy
Lessing, who rowed a small green boat somewhere up the Hudson in the
summer, he confided the fact that water lilies were his admiration: he
loved the limpid water; its restless waves were like heart throbbings
(this nearly overwhelmed poor Katy). All great and noble souls loved the
water;--he forgot the sacred fakirs, and the noble lord who preferred
Malmsey wine! He had repeatedly assured Regina Ward that the camelia was
_his_ flower, so proudly beautiful! His soul was 'permeated with
loveliness,' and asked no fragrance. Regina is a great white creature,
lovely to behold, and, perfectly conscious of her perfection, no more
actively charming than the Ino of Foley. He won Milly White's favor by
applauding her love for wild flowers, declaring that a field of
buttercups reminded him of the 'spangled heavens,' and that on summer
days he was constantly envying the cool little Jacks in their green
pulpits.
A pretended Lavater--and there have been such--would have convicted
Snowe at once of the most artful penetration, could he have seen the
lowering curve of his brows as he watched the nervous fluttering of
Henrietta's hands over the pictures, and the decided but softly pleasant
rounding of her white chin. But it was the general unconsciously
powerful indifference of manner, that advised him to prefer, in reply to
her question:
'The snapdragon, yes, beyond the shadow of a doubt. I have an odd
fashion (very odd, Gustav!), Miss Ruyter, of associating ladies with
flowers, and that gorgeous three-bird snapdragon always looks to me like
some brilliant belle, who holds her glittering sceptre and wields it,
capriciously perhaps, but always charmingly.'
'A sort of Helen,' observed Henrietta, calmly.
'A witching, arbitrary, lovely Helen,' promptly returned Snowe, who had
a vague idea of Greek helmets and golden apples, wooden horses, a great
war, and 'all for love.'
Henrietta heard the magnificent vagueness, and became so intently
interested in a view, that Snowe came softly over to my window, and
looked into the garden. Lilly Brennan coming in just then, the
conversation became general, and presently Snowe accompanied her down
the street.
'Fanny,' said Henrietta, with an inquisitorial air, after the girls had
decided that the slides on the bows of Lilly's dress were too small, and
that her 'Bird of Paradise' was lovely enough to fly away with them all,
'Fanny, are you the 'bright, particular star' of that man?'
'I believe so,' said Fanny, with a stare.
'Do you intend to beam on him for any length of time?' persisted
Henrietta.
'I haven't decided,' said Fan, honestly. 'I love beauty, and Landon
Snowe is magnificent.'
'So is the Venus de Medicis,' said Henrietta, fiercely; 'but look at her
spine! What sort of a brain do you think _could_ flourish at the top of
such a spine? Not that I suppose that man to have the least fragment of
one; don't suspect such a thing! Don't you observe his weak, disjointed
way of carrying his head, and the Pisan appearance of his sentences? I
should dread an earthquake for such a man as Mr. Snowe--you'd have
nothing but remnants to remember him by, Fanny.'
'But earthquakes _are_ phenomena,' said Fanny, stoutly, 'and I'm not in
the least like one. As long as Landon never fails except spiritually, I
am contented--and even in that light _I_ never knew him to trip,' and
the child was as indignant as her indolent nature would permit.
'Trip! of course not,' echoed Henrietta, 'when he's buried like a
delicate Sphinx up to his shoulders in the sands of your good opinion,
and the mummy cloths of his own conceit; but just remove these, and
you'll see a downfall. My dear FRANCESCA, this man is your CECCO, and
he'd far better retire into a monastery than hope to win you. Why, I'd
rather marry you myself, FRANCESCA! Such charms!' and Henrietta, with
her own delicate perception and enjoyment of the beautiful, kissed my
sister's deprecatingly extended hand, and, as the dinner bell rang,
waltzed her out of the room.
'It's perfectly bewildering the interest some people take in music,' she
resumed later, building a little tent on the side of her plate with the
_debris_ of fish. 'There's Bartlett Browning, telling me the other
evening a melancholy story of some melodious fishes, off the coast
of--_Weiss nicht wo_; oysters, I suppose; conceive of it! the most
phlegmatic of creatures. I suppose some poor fisherman heard a merlady
singing in her green halls, and fancied it the death song of some of his
shells. But that's nothing to some of Bartlett Browning's musical tales.
The man's a perfect B flat himself!'
'Well,' said Nelly, Phil's little girl, who had come around to show her
new velvet basque, 'but shells _do_ sing, for I've often listened to
mamma's, and Bessy gives it to me at night to put me to sleep. _You_
know, Aunt Bertie, for you once made me learn what it said:
'Oh, sweet and far, from cliff and scar,
The horns of Elfland faintly blowing!'
'Fish-land, my beauty,' said Henrietta, playfully; 'let us hear _your_
song, fishlet,' and she held a little gleaming shrimp by his tail, and
looked expectantly at his silent mouth. And here I remember, with a
smile of amusement and some astonishment, that Herman Melville, in
nervous fear of ridicule, apologized, most gracefully, of course, for
his beauteous Fayaway's primitive mode of carving a fish; but I fancy I
hear myself, or you either, sir, begging the community to shut its dear
eyes, while Harry's little victim, all unconscious of his fate,
disappeared behind the walls, coral and white, of her lips and teeth.
Oh, isn't it perfectly delicious to meet a real, frank, merry, wise sort
of a girl, who doesn't wear spectacles or blue stockings, nor disdain
the Lancers or a new frock with nineteen flounces? Just fancy it,
Gustav, my dear fellow, chatting with the Venus of Milo, in a New York
dining room, and she all done up in blue poplin, with cords and tassels
and all that, with that lovely hair tumbling about in a scarlet net, and
such a splendid enjoyment of her own great grace, and royal claiming of
homage! Eating mashed potatoes too, and celery, and roast beef, to keep
up that magnificent physique of hers! Oh, it's rare!
But Henrietta couldn't forget Snowe, any more than Snowe could forget
himself; so, after she had gazed with delight at the red veins of wine
that threaded the jelly-like custard, with its imprisoned macaroons,
looking like gold fish asleep in a globe of sun-dyed water, she went on,
as if the conversation had not been interrupted:
'Do you know, Fan, that he reminds me constantly of champagne. If
there's anything on earth or in a cellar that I do detest, its
champagne; such smiling, brilliant-looking impudence, that comes out
fizz--bang! and that's the end of it; there's not so much as the quaver
of an echo. You drink it, and instead of seeing cool vineyards and
purple waters and cataracts of icicles in your glass, you find a pale,
gaunt spectre, or a poor, half-drowned Bacchus, staring at you. It's
just so with your Landon Snowe. You, and other people, too, have a
_habit_ of admiring him, a great creature with eyes of milky blue, who
goes about disbursing his small coin like some old Aladdin! Why, my dear
children, the man, I don't doubt, is this moment congratulating himself,
in his solitude at Delmonico's, upon his great penetration. Didn't you
see him studying me with a great flourish of deference, and throwing
his old, three-birded snapdragons into my White Mountains? If he had
been as ugly as a Scarron, now, and had known what he said, I could have
loved him for that, for, of all things, I do delight in dragons! Such
sieges as I have had at zoological gardens and menageries, from Dan to
Beersheba, just to see one; and ugly old lizards have been pointed out
to me, and scorpions, and every imaginable object but a dragon. But one
day I dug a splendid old manuscript--a perfect fossil--out of some old
library in Spezia, and opening it, by the merest chance came upon a most
lovely, illuminated, full-grown dragon, the very one, I suppose, that
Confucius couldn't find! I gazed in raptures, my dearest; he perfectly
sparkled with emeralds; his eyes were the most luminous opals. Dear,
happy old Indians, who had their dragons at the four corners of the
earth, and could go and look over at the lordly creatures whenever they
felt melancholy. And besides, I have a little private system of
dragonology of my own, that approaches the equator more nearly. I've
always worn opals since that day on every possible occasion; I mean to
be married in them.'
Hurra! _belle Henriette!_ thou hast a weakness. At the end of a long
aisle, shrouded in sumptuously colored perfumed light, stands an altar,
and white surplices gleam through the effulgence.--Thou queen! and that
thy crowning!
'Len,' said Fanny the next morning, as I sat, after breakfast, over the
paper, 'don't you think Harry is a little, just a little, satirical,
and--well--not _perfectly_ ladylike and kind, to talk so dreadfully of
one's friends?'
'Satirical!? Bless your little, tender heart, not the least mite in the
world; she's quite too straightforward for that. Unladylike! Why, my
dear Fanny, don't you know 'the wounds of a friend'? Did you never
think, little sister, that some girls are sent into the world to perform
the office of crumb-scrapers for your serene highnesses, and themselves
as well?'
'Like a lady, who gives a dinner party, jumping up and brushing off her
own table,' said Fanny with an amused laugh.
'Just so, dear; and as they go wandering about, not a fragment can be
omitted. Now, a little dwarf of a thing like you couldn't do that with
any grace; but Harry _could_, you know, and make everybody think it was
charming. So, if fragments of poor Snowe fall under her unsparing hand,
and she brushes them off carelessly, don't let anybody's tears go
rolling after, don't let anybody's heart ache, for such a trifle; think
of the dessert, Fanny, that is sure to follow.'
'Then you too, Len, you _want_ me to give up Landon?'
'Yes, my dear, let Landon--slide.'
Fanny here boxed my ears with emphasis, and retreated, with an
expression of great disgust on her pretty face.
'Come back here, my child,' I said, pulling her down on my knee, 'and
let me reason with you.'
Such an oracle as I am with the girls! There's nothing like it, Gustav;
for every fan or bracelet you give your sisters, you'll be amply
rewarded by revelations and love; and it's something to have a dear,
white, undulating wreath of a girl in your arms, and rosy lips on yours,
even if it is your sister. Bless the sweet creatures!
'What do you want to marry Snowe for?'
'Well, you see, Len, it's so grand to have such a great beauty always at
one's hand, and the girls are all dying for him; and, you know, Len, the
truth is,' (very low,) 'he loves me, as you see, and--we girls are such
silly creatures--and I suppose the compliment pleases me,' and the
frank, darling face crimsoned, and tears stood in the blue eyes. I
kissed them both, and laid her hands on my shoulders.
'Pet,' I said, earnestly, 'you are worth a gross of Landon Snowes. He
loves you, of course--he'd have been an icicle to have failed in so
obvious a duty; but it's only a matter of pure admiration, scarcely of
any complicated feelings. Besides, dear, these whitewashed, sinewless,
variable fellows fade like the winter sun, without any twilight; their
features go wandering off in search of becoming expressions, and they
would want a wife like a chameleon to satiate their variety-loving
natures. No, dear; give Landon to Henrietta, and when Napoleon comes
back, I will enter no protest, even Harry will be silent, and'--
'Oh, Len, what nonsense! couldn't you recommend me to the man in the
moon, through a telescope?'
Fanny laughed, and we went again into the library, where Harry, as
usual, was tapping her rings with the carved handle of the crotchet
needle, that was as ornamental, and about as useful, as Cleopatra's.
'I am going to live in a new country,' said she, gravely, as we entered
the room; 'I would go sailing off like a squirrel on a piece of bark. I
begin to have intense yearnings after my double. _Where_ do you suppose
I'm to find him, the gorgeous, tropical anomaly?'
'In Pompeii, or the Cities of the Plain?' I suggested.
'Fanny,' she continued, laughingly, 'is very grave about her vanishing
Snowe-flakes; but for poor me, who have been persecuted by the most
distressing men, she has no pity. Girls, I promised you an inventory of
these treasures.'
'Oh yes,' said Fan, gleefully; 'go out, Len, or you will never be able
to endure Harry afterward, for your counterpart will be peeping out, and
then woe to your pride!'
'No danger,' said Henrietta, '_that's_ perfectly invulnerable. Lenox may
remain; it will be a wholesome discipline for him--a warning, you know,
my hero; although, girls, Lenox is tolerably faultless,
'Little _he_ loves but a Frau or a feast,
Little he fears but a protest or priest.'
Praed altered. Sit down, disciple, at my feet if you will; I am in the
oratorical mood to-day. Hypatia, if you please, _not_ Grace the Less.'
There was a pretty picture of the _Immaculee Conception_ over the sofa,
one of those lithographs that you see in every bookstore, that Bertha
fancied because it was 'sweet.' The Virgin, a woman with a child-angel's
face, and the mezzo-luna beneath her feet. That artist knew what he was
about, sir. I'd give more for a picture with a good, deep idea, boldly
launched forth, than for a thousand of your smiling, proper, natural
'studies,' and Bridal Scenes, and Dramatic or Historical Snatches. If
artists, now, were all poets and scholars, as they should be, it would
be the work and delirious rapture of a life to go through a gallery as
large as our Dusseldorf. Men would go there to write novels and
histories, and women to learn to be good and beautiful--that is, to
learn to think. Oh, what a school for great and small! But when is this
new era of the real and the true in art to begin? You boy artists, who
are just opening glad eyes to the glorious light, the great world looks
to _you_ to inaugurate the new, to pour ancient lore and mystic symbols
and grand old art into the waiting crucible, and melt the whole, with
your burning, creative genius, into forms and conceptions before which,
hearts shall be silent in very rapture. But the time is not yet. One
here and there cannot change the Iron to a Golden Age, and it is to
thoughts rather than their great embodiments that earnest
art-worshippers now bow. And yet men fancy they are artists, dream of a
fame glorious as that of Phidias! Why there's young Acajou, who
chiselled a very respectable hound out of a stray lump of marble,
stealthily, by a candle, or more probably a spirit lamp, in his father's
cellar--was discovered and straightway heroized. I don't say the boy
hasn't talent, genius if you will; but it isn't the genius that will
overflow his soul and etherealize his whole nature. Yet already he
'progresses like a giantess,' has attracted some attention in the
Academy, and will directly be sent to Rome. But the idea! I know him too
well! The other night I heard him criticizing Michael Angelo! and when I
gave him an engraving of that delicious Psyche of Theed's to admire, the
creature talked as if she were a manikin or a robed skeleton! Is there
nothing due to the idea, Acajou? 'The idea!' dear me, why he didn't
exactly know what the _idea_ was! So he'll go trolling about the Louvre
and the Luxembourg gallery, the Pitti palace and all Rome, and his mind
will be as full of elbows and collar bones as the catacombs; he'll talk
to you of the Grecian line of beauty and of 'pose,' and sketch you such
a glorious arm or ankle that you, fair lady, wouldn't know it from your
own! But do you see a single softened line in his own face? Has he ever
drunk deep draughts from old fountains of poesy? Has he ever thought of
the Vatican library--even though to long is all he may do? Oh no! He
says mythology is a wornout dream, and insulting to a Christian age;
that it's all well enough to know Jupiter and Bacchus (Silenus too?) and
Venus and the head men back there, but this century wants originality,
progress! Oh, pshaw!
Oh, but I was saying that Our Lady stood over the half moon, and
Henrietta sat below it, with that soft cashmere morning dress, fighting
all around her to see which fold should cling most lovingly to her
graceful form. It was all a delicious poem to me, and if I were Horace,
you would have had a splendid ode. Oh, well!
'Why, what a Joseph he is!' said Henrietta, waking me out of this
reverie.
'Oh,' said I, starting, 'how did you know that?'
'Only conjecture, my dear friend; but when we see a man with his eyes
fixed in that ghostly way, and his mustaches and all in perfect repose,
we reasonably imagine that he's seeing visions; and I suppose you'll
come flaming out presently with some dreams that shall have, for remote
consequences, a throne in some Eastern paradise, and a princess,
perhaps--who knows?'
'Who knows?' echoed I; 'but go on, Hypatia.'
'Oh yes! where shall I begin? Oh! there is Penhurst Lane, girls, you
remember?'
'The raven?' said Bertha.
'No,' said Fanny, 'that is Mr. Rawdon. Penhurst Lane is an idealist.'
'A _very_ idealist, just so,' returned Harry. 'Well, the way I've been a
martyr to that man's caprice is perfectly heart-rending. He came of some
gorgeous family in the middle of Pennsylvania, where all the tribes,
like leaning towers, incline toward Germany. To be sure, you'd never
dream it from his looks, for he is a perfect Mark Antony in that
respect. You needn't laugh. Didn't he have _bonnes fortunes_ as well as
Alcibiades? Not that Penhurst had _bonnes fortunes_, or ever dreamed of
such things; but he always had such a proclivity toward any one who
would listen to his harangues; and I must say, just _inter nos_ (the
only bit of Latin I know, Lenox, I got it from the English 'Don
Giovanni'), that I have quite a talent for listening well. But I'd as
lief encounter a West India hurricane or a simoom. I used to feel him
coming an hour beforehand. Then I would read a little in Blair, take a
peep at Sir Charles Grandison, swallow half a page of Cowper's 'Task,'
and look over the Grecian and Roman heroes; then I was fortified. 'Why
didn't I take Shelley?' Oh my! why, he couldn't endure Shelley, said he
was a poor, weak creature, _all gone to imagination_! Then I would
assume a Sontag and thick boots, if the weather was cold, to appear
sensible, you know, and await his coming; that is, if I didn't become
exasperated before that stage, and rush in to see Lil Brennan to avoid
him. And his opinions, such an unfolding! You never caught him looking
with admiration, oh no! I might have laid a wilderness of charms on the
floor, at his very feet, and he would have brushed them all away with
indifference. His mind revolved around a weightier theme than any 'lady
of fashion;' like a newly discovered moon, he flew around the earth, and
with miraculous speed. He stopped in China to say 'Confucius;' in India,
to say 'Brahma;' in Persia, to say 'Ormuzd;' and so on around. My dear
Lenox, if you had asked him whether Ormuzd was at peace with all the
world, he would have retired into himself, for he hadn't the faintest
idea. As for music, or any fine art, he never approached it but once,
when he led me to the piano, begging for some native American melody,
and not a German romance. Well, I played him 'God save the Queen,' with
extravagant variations, which he took for 'Yankee Doodle.' No matter! I
made a mistake when I spoke of his opinions; he hadn't any. He was what
some call 'well read,' that is, he had a distant desire to 'improve his
mind,' but his magnificent self so filled his little vision, that his
great desire was obscured and distorted. Like my beloved Jean Paul, he
had once said to himself, _Ich bin ein Ich_ (I am a ME), and the noble
consciousness overwhelmed him, and excluded all after thoughts on any
minor subject. He never heard Grisi, never saw Rachel; they were
triflers, 'life was too grave, too short;' but he escorted me
occasionally to lectures and orations. I remember two or three of these.
A lecture on the 'Fossils of Humanity and Primeval Formations,' which
was unintelligible, consequently to him 'sublime;' one on 'the Exalted,'
that soared out of sight and beyond the empire of gravity, and one on
'Architecture,' by Dr. Vinton, a splendid production, the fruit and
evidence of years of study and rare talent, that sent me home with
longings and unaccustomed reverence for the Great in every form, and
with grief that my own ignorance rendered it only a half-enjoyed
pleasure to me; while Penhurst talked as if it were only the echo of his
own thoughts; pretended to say it was very 'sensible!' But you've had
enough of Mr. Lane, who was never known to laugh except at his own wit,
who patronized me because I was a 'solid' young lady, and not given to
flights. You may readily imagine that our interviews were generally
_tete-a-tetes_, for general society was to him a thing 'stale, flat, and
unprofitable.' Of course you know I only endured his visits because
among the girls it was considered a compliment to receive them, and they
were all dying of envy. Besides and principally, it is neither politic
nor pleasant to offend any one, and I could not have denied myself to
him, without doing this; so'--
'But, Harry, he is married now.'
'Ah me! yes. He saw me in a cap and bells once with you, Lenox, and not
many weeks afterward married a damsel who reveres him as a Solon, this
man, who said:
----'The wanderings
Of this most intricate Universe
Teach me the nothingness of things.
Yet could not all creation pierce
Beyond the bottom of his eye.'
'_Are_ you done, Harry?'
'Yes, Lenox.'
'Then sing us Beranger's _Grace a la feve, je suis roi_.'
She has such a delicious voice.
'And while I am on tiresome people, who think only of themselves, let me
recall P. George Rawdon; the Raven, Bertha; I always believed his first
name was Pluto, because of the shades around him. They say every one has
a text book; his was neither the Bible, the Prayer Book, Thomas a
Kempis, _La Nouvelle Heloise_, or 'Queechy,' but Mrs. Crowe's 'Night
Side of Nature.' Talk of having a skeleton in the house! the most
distressing ones that ever preceded Douglas and Sherwood's were nothing
to him! he reminded one constantly of an Egyptian feast. He looked
sadly at children, and gave little Henry Parsons, his godchild, a
miniature dagger with a jewelled handle, with which the child nearly
destroyed his right hand. When poor Mary was married, he walked
mournfully up to the altar, and stared during the ceremony unmistakably
at an imaginary coffin, hanging, like Mohammed's, midway between the
ceiling and the floor. Poor man, it's really curious, but he contrives
to be always in mourning, and everybody knows that he goes only to see
tragedies, and has the dyspepsia, like Regina and her diamond cross,
from principle. He composes epitaphs for all the ladies of his
acquaintance, and presents them, like newspaper-carrier addresses, on
New Year's days. I have one in my writing desk in a very secret drawer;
a _soul_-cheering effusion, but not particularly agreeable to the
physical humanity. This I intend to bequeath to the British museum,
where it will be in future ages as great a treat to the antiquary as the
Elgin marbles. What a doleful subject--pass him by!'
'Don't forget Leon Channing,' suggested Fanny, who was listening with
great interest, and from a natural dread of ghosts and vampires was glad
to see that Mr. Rawdon had come to a crisis.
'Dear me, no!' said Henrietta, cheerily, 'it's quite refreshing to come
to an individual who creates a smile. I never was born for tears and
lamentations, Bertha, any more than a lily was made to be merry; and if
it were not for Len Channing, I don't suppose I should ever have been
sharpened to such a dangerous degree; it's this constant friction, you
know; well, as some darling of a cosmopolite has said, 'We must allow
for friction in the most perfect machinery--yes, be glad to find it--for
a certain degree of resistance is essential to strength. I like Leon
very well. No one is more safe in a parlor engagement, always in the
right place at the right tune, never embarrassed, never _de trop_; but
then the queer consciousness, when he's giving you a meringue or an ice,
that if you were a 'real pretty,' graceful, conversible fawn or dove he
would be doing it with the same interest! _Why?_ Oh, because he says
women belong to a lower order in the animal creation! Yes, veil your
face, Mr. Lenox Raleigh, and be mournful that you are a man! 'A lower
order of humanity!' Well, of course, I'm always quarrelling with him. To
be sure he's a shallow kind of a philosopher, one of your rationalists;
thinks Boston is the linchpin of the whole universe; has autograph
letters from Emerson and Longfellow, and all that sort of thing. Now, I
dare say it's very fine for a Schelling or a Hegel once in a while to
beam over the earth, but it always seems inharmonious to me to see
little jets of philosophers popping up in your face and then down again,
all the time, thinking themselves great things. That's the way with
Leon. Let me tell you what happened when I saw him last; and that was in
Cologne, more than a year ago. I was sitting in our room with a great
folio of Retzsch's engravings before me, and father writing horrible
notes in his journal at the table, and wishing the eleven thousand
virgins and all Cologne in the bottom of the Rhine, when I looked up,
and somehow there was Leon. Of course we were rejoiced to see him, it's
always so pleasant to meet friends abroad. After some talk, father went
out to take another look at the cathedral, and indulge in speculations
and legends, and left Leon and me in the window. It's as queer and
horrible an old town, girls, as you ever dreamed of, and, as there was
nothing external very fascinating, Leon soon turned his gaze inward,
and, after twanging several minor strings, began to harp on his endless
'inferiority of woman.' I plied him, you may know; I gave him Zenobias
and Didos and de Staels and de Medicis--in an emergency Pope Joan, and
finally the Boston Margaret Fuller. Leon only stroked his beard and
smiled.
''Miss Henrietta,' said he, at last, when I stopped in exultation, 'do
you grant the Africans the vigor or variety of intellect of the
Europeans?'
''No,' said I.
''Yet you concede that there may be instances among them, where
education and culture have developed great results.'
''Yes,' I thought, 'there might be.'
''Just as I, bewildered by Miss Henrietta's keen shafts and graceful
manoeuvres, yield that a woman is, once in a century, gifted with a
man's depth of thought and her sex's loveliness.' The comparison was
odious. What did I do? Oh, I (the swarthy Ethiop) only rose from my
faded arm chair, saluted Mr. Channing (the lordly European) as if I were
his partner in a quadrille, and brought out my cameos and mosaics to
show him. In about half an hour the beauty of his reasoning and
comparison reached his brain, but mine was impenetrable to his most
honeyed apologies; as I very sweetly assured him, 'I couldn't
understand, didn't see the drift, couldn't connect the links.' Leon says
ancient history is a fable, and Herodotus a myth, and all because a
_woman_ sat upon the tripod at Delphi, and because a _woman_ wore the
helmet and carried the shield of wisdom.'
'What's the matter, Harry?' asked Fanny, compassionately, as her small
fingers were stretched like infant grid-irons before her eyes, and a
silence ensued.
'My new bonnet, Fanny dear, I am wondering what it shall be; we must go
down this very morning and decide.'
Did you ever think, Narcissus, and you, Gustav, and all of you boys,
when you are engaged in your small diplomacies and _coups de main_, and
feeling like giants in intellect beside the dear little girls who play
polkas for you of evenings and sing sweet ballads, that _pour bien juger
les grands, il faut les approcher_? I thought so that morning, as I
heard the animated discussion that succeeded Henrietta's monologue; a
discussion into which all sorts of delicate conceits of lace and flowers
entered largely, and which savored about as much of the preceding
elements as last night's Charlotte Russe of this morning's coffee.
Since Henrietta's oration, I am more than ever afraid of a Vulcan. It is
very plain that our most fashionably cut suits and most delicately
perfumed billets are not all powerful,--that the dear creatures are
either waking or we have been asleep. _Reveillons!_
'_Aux armes, citoyens!_'
Now, while I was writing that last word, a heavy hand was laid on my
shoulder, and looking up, I saw--Nap. I love Nap. I have a girlish
weakness (let some lady arraign me for this hereafter) for him; so I
shouted out and grasped his hands.
'How are the boys?'
'Flourishing. Come to stay?
'Yes, old fellow.'
'Stocks up?'
'To the sky.'
'The governor?'
'All right.'
_I_ haven't any governor. Nap has; and one that saw fit to persecute him
from twenty to thirty, because he declined to take 'orders.' _Per
Bacco!_ Never mind, a fit of paralysis has shaken the opposition out of
the old gentleman at last, and Nap is in sunshine in consequence, and
rushes around Wall street like a veteran.
But I didn't promise to tell you about Nap, or the girls either; it was
only a few rays of light I had to dash over 'our beaux;' so where is
your mother, belle Beatrice? I must make my adieux.
What say you, little one? You like Henrietta; you want to see her again?
You pull me back with your wee white hands; I will talk to you for an
hour longer, if I may hold the little kittens in my own. I may? And kiss
each finger afterward? Ah! you dear child! Well, then--
'Are you going to Van Wyck's to-night, Lenox?' asked Bertha of me, as we
rose from dinner, a month afterward.
'Yes, after the opera. And you? I fancy--yes--from your eyes.'
Bertha did not answer, and I strolled up stairs into the little back
drawing room. From the library above I could hear Fanny's merry voice
and the ring of Nap's cheery replies. Such a comfort as it was to me to
see those two so fond of each other. You see I am, in a way, Fanny's
father, and took no very great credit to myself when she half laid her
hand in the extended one of Snowe. How curiously that witch Harry
managed the thing, though! Dear little Fan; she stood in more than one
twilight by the garden window, and whispered over: '_Addio_, FRANCESCA!
_addio_, CECCO!' and Snowe faded in the returning spring of her heart,
and into the blooming vista of their separation, hopefully walked Nap,
and was welcomed with many smiles.
This afternoon, I walked over to the garden window, and there was Harry,
scrawling an old, bearded hermit on the glass with her diamond ring. We
both looked out--nothing much to see--a New York garden, thirty feet
square, with the usual gorgeousness of our winter flowers!
'You are thinking of Shiraz, Harry.'
'Yes,' said she, dreamily, 'I am thinking of Shiraz!'
She didn't say it, but don't you suppose I knew just as well that she
was wishing for her Vulcan and a great rose garden? I began to sing the
'Last Man,' but didn't succeed admirably; then I lighted my pipe--Harry
didn't mind, you know, indeed she only looked at it wishfully.
'In my rose garden,' said she, with a laugh, 'I shall smoke to kill the
rosebugs.'
'Don't wait,' said I, taking down a dainty _ecume de mer_ (the back
drawing room was my peculiar 'study,' and the repository of several
gentlemanly 'improprieties'), and I adjusted the amber mouth piece to
the cherry stem, 'Don't wait for Persia, make your rose garden here.'
Harry shook her head: 'You know, Len,' she said, 'that my roses would
grow like so many witches in a Puritan soil. I always thought that story
of the Norwegians' taking rosebuds for bulbs of fire, and being
terrified, was a very delicate and poetical satire upon _all_
superstition.'
'Are you going to wash away _all_ superstition?' I asked hastily.
'No,' said she, with a smile at my fierceness; 'no, I like to see the
sun shine on the dew drops that the webs catch and swing between the
tops of the grasses.'
I looked at her as she laid her head back against the curtains. My
nonchalance was as striking as hers, and--as genuine! We were no
children to be awkward in any event. I took her hand; it was a glowing
pulse--and mine? She wore one of those curious little cabal rings; there
were the Hebrew characters for Faith, traced as with a gold pen dipped
in melted pearls on black enamel. My seal was an emerald, Faith also,
impaled. I snatched it up and laid it by the ring on her hand. She
smiled--such a smile! intensest sympathy, deepest! Could it be? to love
the same old symbols, the same weird music? I caught her close, and bent
over her lips. The gold hair waved over my shoulder; the great,
glittering eyes foamed into mine, then melted and swam into deep,
quivering seas of dreams. I whispered, '_Zoe mou!_' Oh, the quick,
golden whisper, the flash of genial heartiness, the daring--oh, _how_
tender! '_Sas agapo._' I held her off, radiant, glowing, fragrant, and
Bertha's dress rustled up the stairs.
Henrietta stooped to pick up the seal, which had fallen; she balanced it
on the tip of her finger--the nervy Titan queen! and drew Bertha down by
her side on the sofa. It was growing dark.
'I must be off, girls, and get your camelias. What will you have,
Bertha? a red or a white, you've a moment to decide?'
'Neither, Len; I do not go.'
'Why, Bertha? Oh! I remember, it is your anniversary,' and I kissed her.
'And you, princess!' I turned to Henrietta.
'Only roses, good my liege.'
What was the opera that night? Pshaw! what a rhetorical affectation this
question! as if I could ever forget! _Die Zauberfloete_, and it rang pure
and clear through my thrilled heart. It followed me around to Van
Wyck's, where I found Henrietta and Fanny. A compliment to madame, a
German with mademoiselle, and home again. A great light streamed out of
the drawing room. I pushed the door open. With a cry of joy, Fan rushed
into the arms of the grave, fair man who put Bertha off his knee to
welcome her. Nap, who had followed us in, for a moment stood transfixed,
and Henrietta, more quiet, stood by their side, saying: 'Here is Harry,
Fred, when you choose to see her.' And he did choose, her own brother,
whom she had not seen for three years!
'Come in, Nap,' I said. 'Fred Ruyter.'
'Nap and Fanny,' I whispered; Fred smiled invisibly.
And Bertha? Oh, you know, of course, that she's Bertha Ruyter, and that
Fred is her husband, just home from six months in Rio, and exactly a
year from his wedding night! Oh, Lionardo! what mellow, transparent,
flowing shades drowned us all that night!
'Harry,' I said, the next morning, before I went down town, as I lounged
over her sofa, 'you have my emerald?'
'Yes!' and her bright face turned up to mine.
'You will keep it, and take me also, dear?'
'_Ma foi! oui_,' was the sweet, smiling reply.
'I'm not quite ugly enough for a Vulcan, I know; but after a while, if
you are patient, who knows? What sayest thou, Venus?'
'I will try you, _bon camarade_.'
'Your hand upon it, Harry.'
She gave it; I kissed the gold hair that waved against my lips. Fanny
rushed impetuously upon us, with half-opened eyes, and stifled us with
caresses.
'Such a proposal,' said she musingly, after she had returned to her
wools and beads, '14 deg. above zero!'
'And the Polyphemus, Fanny?'
'Is for Nap,' and Fanny blushed and laughed. She was wondering if that
great event, an 'engagement,' always came about in so prosaic a way. But
looking at Bertha, I caught the bright, long, gravely humorous gleam
from her dark eyes, and walked upon it all the way down to Exchange
Place.
Adieu, little Beatrice; my story hath at last an ending. Keep the little
hands and little heart warm for somebody brave by and by. Go shining
about and dancing, and smiling, Hummingbird; may sweetest flowers always
bloom around you; may you dwell in a fragrant rose garden of your own,
_mignonne_! Adieu.
ETHEL.
FITZ FASHION'S WIFE.
Take the diamonds from my forehead--their chill weight but frets my brow!
How they glitter! radiant, faultless--but they give no pleasure now.
Once they might have saved a Poet, o'er whose bed the violet waves:
Now their lustre chills my spirit, like the light from new-made graves.
Quick! unbind the braided tresses of my coroneted hair!
Let it fall in single ringlets such as I was wont to wear.
Take that wreath of dewy violets, twine it round their golden flow;
Let the perfumed purple blossoms fall upon my brow of snow!
Simple flowers, ye gently lead me back into the sunny years,
Ere I wore proud chains of diamonds, forged of bitter, frozen tears!
Bring the silver mirror to me! I am changed since those bright days,
When I lived with my sweet mother, and a Poet sang my praise.
My blue eyes are larger, dimmer; thicker lashes veil their light;
Upon my cheek the crimson rose fast is fading to the white.
I am taller, statelier, slighter, than I was in days of yore:--
If his eyes in heaven behold me, does he praise me as before?
Proudly swells the silken rustle--all around is wealth and state,--
Dearer far the early roses twining round the wicker gate,
Where my mother came at evening with the saint-like forehead pale,
And the Poet sat beside her, conning o'er his rhythmed tale.
As he read the linked lines over, she would sanction, disapprove:
Soft and musical the pages, but he never sang of love.
I had lived through sixteen summers, he was only twenty-one,
And we three still sat together at the hour of setting sun.
Lowly was the forest cottage, but the sweetbrier wreathed it well;
'Mid its violets and roses, bees and robins loved to dwell.
Wilder forms of larch and hemlock climbed the mountain at its side;
Fairy-like a rill came leaping where the quivering harebells sighed.
Glittering, bounding, singing, dancing, ferns and mosses loved its track;
Lower in it dipped the willows, as to kiss the cloudland's rack.
Soon there came a stately lover,--praised my beauty, softly smiled:
'He would make my mother happy,'--I was but a silly child!
Came a dream of sudden power--fairest visions o'er me glide--
Wider spheres would open for me;--dazzled, I became a bride:
Fondly deemed my lonely mother would be freed from sordid care;
Splendor I might pour around her, every joy with her might share.
Then the Poet, who had never breathed one word of love to me,--
We might shape his life-course for him, give him culture wide and free.
How I longed to turn the pages, with a husband's hand as guide,
Of the long-past golden ages, art and science at my side!
To my simple fancy seemed it almost everything he knew--
Ah! he might have won affection, faithful, fervent, trusting, true!
I was happy, never dreaming wealth congeals the human soul,
Freezing all its generous impulse--I but saw its wide control.
Years have passed--a larger culture poured strange knowledge through
my mind--
I have learned to read man's nature: better I were ever blind!
How can I take upon me what I look upon with scorn,
Or learn to brook my own contempt, or trample the forlorn?
I cannot live by rote and rule; I was not born a slave
To narrow fancies; I must feel, although a husband rave!
I cannot choose my friends because I know them rich, or great;
My heart elects the noble,--what cares love for wealth or state?
Very lovely are my pictures, saints and angels throng my hall--
But with shame my cheek is flushing, and my quivering lashes fall:
Can I gaze on pictured actions, daring deeds, and emprise high,
And not feel my degradation while these fetters round me lie?
Once the Poet came to see me, but it gave me nought but pain;
I was glad to see the Gifted go, ne'er to return again.
For my husband scorning told me: 'True, his lines were very sweet,
But his clothes, so worn and seedy--scarce for me acquaintance meet!
Artists, poets, men of genius, truly should be better paid,
But not holding our position, cannot be our friends,' he said.
'As gentlemen to meet them were a very curious thing;
They were happier in their garrets--there let them sigh or sing.
There were Travers and De Courcy--could he ask them home to dine,
At the risk of meeting truly such strange fellows o'er their wine?'
Then he said, 'My cheeks were peachy, lips were coral, curls were gold,
But he liked them braided crown-like, and with pearls and diamonds
rolled.
I was once a little peasant; now I stood a jewelled queen--
Fitter that a calmer presence in his stately wife were seen!'
Then he gave a gorgeous card-case; set with rubies, Roman gold,
Handed me a paper with it, strands of pearls around it rolled;
Names of all his wife should visit I would find upon the roll:--
Found I none I loved within it--not one friend upon the scroll!
And my mother, God forgive me! I was glad to see her go,
Ere the current of her loving heart had turned like mine to snow.
Must I still seem fair and stately, choking down my bosom's strife,
Because 'all deep emotions were unseemly in his wife'?
Must I gasp 'neath diamonds' glitter--walk in lustrous silken sheen--
Leaving those I love in anguish while I play some haughty scene?
I am choking! closer round me crowds convention's stifling vault--
Every meanness's called a virtue--every virtue deemed a fault!
Every generous thought is scandal; every noble deed is crime;
Every feeling's wrapped in fiction, and truth only lives in rhyme!
No;--I am not fashion's minion,--I am not convention's slave!
If 'obedience is for woman,' still she has a soul to save.
Must I share their haughty falsehood, take my part in social guile,
Cut my dearest friends, and stab them with a false, deceitful smile?
Creeping like a serpent through me, faint, I feel a deadly chill,
Freezing all the good within me, icy fetters chain my will.
Do I grow like those around me? will I learn to bear my part
In this glittering world of fashion, taming down a woman's heart?
Must I lower to my husband? is it duty to abate
All the higher instincts in me, till I grow his fitting mate?
Shall I muse on noble pictures, turn the poet's stirring page,
And grow base and mean in action, petty with a petty age?
I am heart-sick, weary, weary! tell me not that this life,
Where all that's truly living must be pruned by fashion's knife!--
I can make my own existence--spurn his gifts, and use my hands,
Though the senseless world of fashion for the deed my memory brands.
Quick! unbraid the heavy tresses of my coroneted hair--
Let its gold fall in _free_ ringlets such as I was wont to wear.
I am going back to nature. I no more will school my heart
To stifle its best feelings, play an idle puppet's part.
I will seek my banished mother, nestle closely on her breast;
Noble, faithful, kind, and loving, there the tortured one may rest.
We will turn the Poets' pages, learn the noblest deeds to act,
Till the fictions in their beauty shall be lived as simple fact.
I will mould a living statue, make it generous, strong, and high,
Humble, meek, self-abnegating, formed to meet the Master's eye.
Oh, the glow of earnest culture! Oh, the joy of sacrifice!
The delight to help another! o'er all selfish thoughts to rise!
Farewell, cold and haughty splendor--how you chilled me when a bride!
Hollow all your mental efforts; meanness all your dazzling pride!
Put the diamonds in their caskets! pearls and rubies, place them there!
I shall never sigh to wear them with the violets in my hair.
Freedom! with no eye upon me freezing all my fiery soul;
Free to follow nature's dictates; free from all save God's control.
I am going to the cottage, with its windows small and low,
Where the sweetbrier twines its roses and the Guelder rose its snow.
I will climb the thymy mountains where the pines in sturdy might
Follow nature's holy bidding, growing ever to the light;
Tracking down the leaping streamlet till the willows on it rise,
Watch its broad and faithful bosom strive to mirror back the skies.
Through the wicker gate at evening with my mother I will come,
With a little book, the Poet's, to read low at set of sun.
'Tis a gloomy, broken record of a love poured forth in death,
Generous, holy, and devoted, sung with panting, dying breath.
By the grassy mound we'll read it where he calmly sleeps in God,--
My gushing tears may stream above--they cannot pierce the sod!
Hand in hand we'll sit together by the lowly mossy grave--
Oh, God! I blazed with jewels, but the noble dared not save!
I am going to the cottage, there to sculpture my own soul,
Till it fill the high ideal of the Poet's glowing roll.
* * * * *
Stay, lovely dream! I waken! hear the clanking of my chain!
Feel a hopeless vow is on me--I can ne'er be free again!
His wife! I've sworn it truly! I must bear his freezing eye,
Feel his blighting breath upon me while all nobler instincts die!
Feel the Evil gain upon me as the weary moments glide,
Till I hiss, a jewelled serpent, fit companion, at his side.
Vain is struggle--vain is writhing--vain are sobs and stifled gasps--
I must wear my brilliant fetters though my life-blood stain their clasps!
Hark! he calls! tear out the violets! quick! the diamonds in my hair!
There's a ball to-night at Travers'--'tis his will I should be there.
Splendid victim in his pageant, though my tortured head should ache,
Yet I must be brilliant, joyous, if my throbbing heart should break!
I shudder! quick! my dress of rose, my tunic of point lace--
If fine enough, he will not read the anguish in my face!
I know one place he dare not look--it is so still and deep--
He dare not lift the winding sheet that veils my last, long sleep!
He dreads the dead! the coffin lid will shield me from his breath--
His eye no more will torture----Joy! I shall be free in death!
Free to rest beside the Poet. He will shun the lowly grave:
There my mother soon will join us, and the violets o'er us wave.
THE SKEPTICS OF THE WAVERLEY NOVELS.
It is remarkable that while, in a republic, which is the mildest form of
government, respect for law and order are most highly developed, there
is in an aristocracy (which is always the most deeply based form of
tyranny) a constant revolt against all law. Puritanism in England,
Pietism in Germany, and Huguenotism in France, were all directly and
strongly republican and law-abiding in their social relations; while for
an example of the contrary we need only glance at our own South.
Aristocracy--a regularly ordered system of society into ranks--is the
dream of the slaveholder, and experience is showing us how extremely
difficult it is to uproot the power of a very few wicked men who have
fairly mudsilled the majority; and yet, despite this strength, there was
never yet a country claiming to be civilized, in which the wild caprices
and armed outrages of the individual were regarded with such toleration.
_Republicanism is Christian._ When will the world see this tremendous
truth as it should, and realize that as there is a present and a future,
so did the Saviour lay down one law whereby man might progress in this
life, and another for the attainment of happiness in the next, and that
the two are mutually sustaining? There was no real republicanism before
the Gospels, and there has been no real addition to the doctrine since.
The instant that religion or any great law of truth falls into the hands
of a high caste, and puts on its livery, it becomes--ridiculous. What
think you of a shepherd's crook of gold blazing with diamonds?
It is interesting to trace an excellent illustration of the natural
affinity between the fondness for feudalism and the love of law-breaking
in Sir WALTER SCOTT. Whatever his head and his natural common sense
dictated (and as he was a canny Scot and a shrewd observer, they
dictated many wise truths), his heart was always with the men of bow and
brand; with dashing robbers, moss troopers, duellists, wild-eagle
barons, wild-wolf borderers, and the whole farrago of autocratic
scoundrelism. With his soul devoted to dreams of feudalism, his fond
love of its romance was principally based on the constant infractions of
law and order to which a state of society must always be subject in
which certain men acquire power out of proportion to their integrity.
The result of this always is a lurking sympathy with rascality, a secret
relish for bold selfishness, which is in every community the deadliest
poison of the rights of the poor, and all the disinherited by fortune.
It is very remarkable that Walter Scott, a Tory to the soul, should, by
his apparently contradictory yet still most consistent love of the
_outre_, have had a keen amateur sympathy for outlaws. It is much more
remarkable, however, that, still retaining his faith in king and nobles,
Church and State, he should have pushed his appreciation of such men to
the degree of marvellously comprehending--nay, enjoying--certain types
of skepticism which sprang up in fiercest opposition to authority; urged
into existence by its abuses, as germs of plants have been thought to be
electrified into life by sharp blows. And it is most remarkable of all,
that he did this at a time when none among his English readers seem to
have had any comprehension whatever of these characters, or to have
surmised the fact that to merely understand and depict them, the writer
must have ventured into fearful depths of reflection and of study. In
treating these characters, Walter Scott seems to become positively
_subjective_--and I will venture to say that it is the only instance of
the slightest approach to anything of the kind to be found in all his
writings. Unlike Byron, who was painfully conscious, not of the nature
of his want in this respect, but of _something_ wanting, Scott nowhere
else betrays the slightest consciousness of his continual life under
limitations, when, _plump!_ we find him making a headlong leap right
into the very centre of that terrible pool whose waters feed the
forbidden-fruit tree of good and of evil.
The characters to which I particularly refer in Sir Walter Scott's
novels are those of the Templar, Brian de Bois Guilbert, in 'Ivanhoe;'
of the gypsy Hayraddin Maugrabin in 'Quentin Durward;' of Dryfesdale,
the steward, in 'The Abbot;' and of the 'leech' Henbane Dwining, in 'The
Fair Maid of Perth.' There are several others which more or less
resemble these, as, for instance, Ranald Mac Eagh, the Child of the
Mist, in 'Montrose,' and Rashleigh, in 'Rob Roy;' but the latter,
considered by themselves, are only partly developed. In fact, if Scott
had given to the world only _one_ of these outlaws of faith, there would
have been but little ground for inferring that his mind had ever taken
so daring a range as I venture to claim for him. It is in his constant,
wistful return, in one form or the other, to that terrible type of
humanity--the man who, as a matter of intensely sincere faith, has freed
himself from all adherence to the laws of man or GOD--that we find the
clue to the _real_ nature of the author's extraordinary sympathy for the
most daring, yet most subtle example of the law-breaker. In comparing
these characters carefully, we find that each by contrast appears far
more perfect than when separate--as the bone, which, however excellent
its state of preservation may be, never seems to the eye of the
physiologist so complete as when in its place in the complete skeleton.
And through this contrast we learn that Scott, having by sympathy and
historical-romantic study, comprehended the lost secret of all
_illuminee_ mysteries--that of human dependence on nought save the laws
of a mysterious and terrible Nature--could not refrain from ever and
anon whispering the royal secret, though it were only to the rustling
reeds and rushes of fashionable novels. Having learned, though in an
illegitimate way, that the friend of PAN, the great king of the golden
touch, had ass's ears, he _must_ tell it again, though in murmurs and
whispers:
'Qui cum ne prodere visum
Dedecus auderet, cupiens efferre sub auras,
Nec posset reticere tamen, secedit, humumque
Effodit: et domini quales aspexerit aures,
Vox refert parva; terraeque immurmurat haustae.'[10]
It is to be remarked, in studying collectively these outlaws as set
forth by Scott, that while the same characteristic lies at the basis of
each, there is very great variety in its development, and that the
author seems to have striven to present it in as many widely differing
phases as he was capable of doing. When we reflect that Scott himself
could not be fairly said to be perfectly _at home_ in more than half a
dozen departments of history, and yet that he has taken pains to set
forth as many historical varieties of minds absolutely emancipated from
all faith, and finally, when we recall that at the time when he wrote,
the great proportion of the characteristics of these _dramatis personae_
were utterly unappreciated, and that by even the learned they were
simply reviewed as 'infidels,' we cannot but smile at the care with
which (like the sculptor in the old story) he carved his images, and
buried them to be dug up at a future day by men who, as he possibly
hoped, would appreciate more fully than did his contemporaries his own
degree of forbidden knowledge. I certainly do not exaggerate the
importance of these characters when speaking in this manner. They could
not have been conceived without a very great expenditure of study and of
reflection. They are, as I said, subjective, and such portraits of
humanity always involve a vastly greater amount of penetrative and
long-continued thought, than do the mere historical and social
photographs which constitute the bulk of Scott's, as of all novels, and
form the favorites of the mass of readers for entertainment.
First among these characters, and most important as indicating direct
historical familiarity with the obscure subject of the Oriental heresies
of the Middle Ages in Europe, I would place that of the Templar, Brian
de Bois Guilbert, who is generally regarded by readers as simply 'a
horrid creature,' who chased 'that darling Rebecca' out of the window to
the verge of the parapet; or at best as a knightly ruffian, who, like
most ruffianly sinners, quieted conscience by stifling it with doubt.
Very different, however, did the Templar appear to Scott himself, who,
notwithstanding the poetic justice meted to the knight, evidently
sympathized in secret more warmly with him than with any other character
in the gorgeous company of 'Ivanhoe.' Among them all he is the only one
who fully and fairly appreciates the intellect of Rebecca, and, seen
from the stand-point of rigid historical probability which Scott would
not violate, _all allowance being made for what the Templar was_, he
appears by far the noblest and most intelligent of all the knightly
throng. I say that though a favorite, Scott would not to favor him,
violate historical probability. Why should he? It formed no part of his
plan to give the public of his day lessons in _illuminee_-ism. Had he
done so he would have failed like 'George Sand' in 'Consuelo;' but a
very small proportion indeed of whose readers retain a recollection of
the doctrines which it is the main object of the book to set forth. I
trust there is no slander in the remark, but I _must_ believe it to be
true until I see that the majority of the readers of that work have also
taken to zealously investigating the sources of that most forbidden
lore, which has most certainly this peculiarity, that no one can
_comprehend_ it ever so little without experiencing an insatiable,
never-resting desire to exhaust it, like everything which is prohibited.
There is no such thing as knowing it a little. As one of its sages said
of old, its knowledge rushes forth into infinite lands.
It was, I believe, some time before 'Ivanhoe' appeared, that Baron von
Hammer Purgstall had published his theory that the Knights Templars
were, although most unjustly treated, still guilty, in a certain sense,
of the extraordinary charges brought against them. It seems at least to
be tolerably certain that during their long residence in the East they
had acquired the Oriental secrets of initiation into societies which
taught the old serpent-lore of _eritis sicut Deus_, and positive
knowledge; the ultimate secret, being the absolute nothingness of all
faith, creeds, laws, ties, or rules to him who is capable of rising
above them and of drawing from Nature by an 'enlightened' study of her
laws the principles of action, of harmony with fellow men, and of
unlimited earthly enjoyment. Such had been for ages the last lessons of
all the 'mysteries' of the East--mysteries which it was the peculiar
destiny of the Hebrew race to resist through ages of struggle. It was
through the teaching of such mysteries of pantheistic naturalism that,
as the unflinching Jewish deists and anthropomorphists believed, man
fell, and their belief was set forth in their very first religious
tradition--the history of the apple, the serpent, and the Fall. And it
is to the very extraordinary nature of the Hebrew race, by which they
presented for the first time in history the spectacle of a people
resisting nature-worship, that they owe their claim to be a peculiar
people.
The Templars, under the glowing skies of the East, among its thousand
temptations, those of superior knowledge not being the least; in an age
when the absurdities of the Roman church were, to an enlightened mind,
at their absurdest pitch, fell readily into 'illumination.' Whether they
literally _worshipped_ the Oriental Baphomet, a figure with two heads,
male and female, girt with a serpent, typifying the completest
abnegation of all moral relations, and the rights of knowledge, no one
can say now--it is, however, significant that this symbol, which they
undoubtedly used, actually found its way under the freemasons into the
Christian churches of the West, as a type of 'prudence' among the
representations of Christian virtues. When we remember that the Gnostics
taught that _prudence_ alone was virtue,[11] we have here a coincidence
which sufficiently explains the meaning of this emblem of 'the baptism
of mind.'
Nothing is more likely than that a portion of the Knights Templars were
initiated in the mysteries of such Oriental sects as those of the _House
of Wisdom_ of Al Hakem, the seventh and last degree of which at first
'inculcated the vanity of all religion, and the indifference of actions
which are neither visited with recompense nor chastisement here or
hereafter.' At a later age, when the doctrines of this society had
permeated all Islam, it seems to have labored very zealously to teach
both women and men gratuitously all learning, and give them the freest
use of books. At this time it was in the ninth degree that the initiate
'learnt the grand secret of atheism, and a code of morals, which may be
summed up in a few words, as believing nothing and daring
everything.'[12]
Bearing this in mind, Walter Scott may be presumed to have studied with
shrewd appreciation the character of the Templars, and to have
conjectured with strange wisdom their great ambition, when we find Brian
de Bois Guilbert declaring to Rebecca that his Order threatened the
thrones of Europe, and hinting at tremendous changes in society--'hopes
more extended than can be viewed from the throne of a monarch.' For it
was indeed the hope--it _must_ have been--for the proud and powerful
brotherhood of the Temple to extend their secret doctrines over Europe,
regenerate society, and overthrow all existing powers, substituting for
them its own crude and impossible socialism, and for Christianity the
lore of the serpent. How plainly is this expressed in the speech of Bois
Guilbert to Rebecca:
'Such a swelling flood is that powerful league. Of this mighty
Order I am no mean member, but already one of the Chief Commanders,
and may well aspire one day to hold the baton of Grand Master. The
poor soldiers of the Temple will not alone place their foot upon
the necks of Kings--a hemp-sandall'd monk can do that. Our mailed
step shall ascend their throne--our gauntlet shall wrench the
sceptre from their gripe. Not the reign of your vainly expected
Messiah offers such power to your dispersed tribes as my ambition
may aim at. I have sought but a kindred spirit to share it, and I
have found such in thee.'
'Sayest thou this to one of my people?' answered Rebecca. 'Bethink
thee'--
'Answer me not,' said the Templar, 'by urging the difference of our
creeds; within our secret conclaves we hold these nursery tales in
derision. Think not we long remain blind to the idiotic folly of
our founders, who forswore every delight of life for the pleasures
of dying martyrs by hunger, by thirst, and by pestilence, and by
the swords of savages, while they vainly strove to defend a barren
desert, valuable only in the eyes of superstition. Our Order soon
adopted bolder and wider views, and found out a better
indemnification for our sacrifices. Our immense possessions in
every kingdom of Europe, our high military fame, which brings
within our circle the flower of chivalry from every Christian
clime--these are dedicated to ends of which our pious founders
little dreamed, and which are equally concealed from such weak
spirits as embrace our Order on the ancient principles, and whose
superstition makes them our passive tools. But I will not further
withdraw the veil of our mysteries.'
We may well pause for an instant to wonder what would have been the
present state of the now civilized world had this order with its
Oriental illumineeism actually succeeded in undermining feudal society
and in overthrowing thrones. That it was jointly dreaded by Church and
State appears from the excessive, implacable zeal with which it was
broken up by Philip the Fair and Pope Clement the Fifth--a zeal quite
inexplicable from the motives of avarice usually attributed to them by
the modern freemasonic defenders of the Knights of the Temple. I may
well say modern, since in a freemasonic document bearing date 1766,
reprinted in a rare work,[13] we find the most earnest protest and
denial that freemasonry had anything in common with the Templars. But
the Order did not die unavenged. It is by no means improbable that the
secret heresies which, bearing unmistakable marks of Eastern origin,
continually sprang up in Europe, and finally led the way to Huss and the
Reformation, were in their origin encouraged by the Templars.
Certain it is that the character of Bois Guilbert as drawn by Scott--his
habitual oath 'by earth and sea and sky!' his scorn of 'the doting
scruples which fetter our free-born reason,' and his atheistic faith
that to die is to be 'dispersed to the elements of which our strange
forms are so mystically composed,' are all wonderful indications of
insight into a type of mind differing inconceivably from the mere
infidel villain of modern novels, and which could never have been
attributed to a knight of the superstitious Middle Ages without a strong
basis of historical research. Very striking indeed is his fierce love
for Rebecca--his intense appreciation of her great courage and firmness,
which he at once recognizes as congenial to his own daring, and believes
will form for him in her a fit mate. There is a spirit of reality in
this which transcends ordinary conceptions of what is called genius. To
deem a woman requisite aid in such intellectual labor--for so we may
well call the system of the Templars--would at that era have been
incomprehensibly absurd to any save the worshippers of the bi-sexed
Baphomet and the disciples of the House of Wisdom, with whom the equal
culture of the sexes was a leading aim. The extraordinary tact with
which Scott has contrived to make Bois Guilbert repulsive to the mass of
readers, while at the same time he really--for himself--makes him
undergo every sacrifice of which the Templar's nature is _consistently_
capable, is perhaps the most elaborately artistic effort in his works.
To have made Bois Guilbert sensible to the laws of love and of chivalry,
which in his mystical freedom he despised, to rescue her simply from
death, which in his view had no terrors beyond short-lived pain, would
not have agreed with his character as Scott very truly understood it.
Himself a sacrifice to fate, he was willing that she, whom he regarded
as a second self, should also perish. This reserving the true
comprehension of a certain character to one's self by a writer is not, I
believe, an uncommon thing in romance writing. 'Blifil' was the favorite
child of his literary parent, and was (it is to be hoped) seen by him
from a stand-point undreamed of by nearly all readers.
Closely allied in the one main point of character to Bois Guilbert, and
to a certain degree having his Oriental origin, yet differing in every
other detail, we have Hayraddin Maugrabin, the gypsy, in 'Quentin
Durward.'
When Walter Scott drew the outlines of this singular subordinate actor
in one of the world's greatest mediaeval romances, so little was known of
the real condition of the 'Rommany,' that the author was supposed to
have introduced an exaggerated and most improbable character among
historical portraits which were true to life. The more recent researches
of George Borrow and others have shown that, judged by the gypsy of the
present day, Hayraddin is extremely well drawn in certain particulars,
but improbable in other respects. He has, amid all his villany, a
certain firmness or greatness which is peculiar to men who can sustain
positions of rank--a marked Oriental 'leadership,' which Scott might be
presumed to have guessed at. Yet all of this corresponds closely to the
historical account of the first of these wanderers, who in 1427 came to
Europe, 'well mounted,' and claiming to be men of the highest rank, and
to the condition and character of certain men among them in the
Slavonian countries of the present day. If we study carefully all that
is accessible both of the present and the past relative to this singular
race, we shall find that Scott, partly from knowledge and partly by
poetic intuition, has in this gypsy produced one of his most marvellous
and deeply interesting studies.
Like Bois Guilbert, Hayraddin is a man without a God, and the
peculiarity of his character lies in a constant realization of the fact
that he is absolutely _free_ from every form or principle of faith,
every conventional tie, every duty founded on aught save the most
natural instincts. He revels in this freedom; it is to him like magic
armor, making him invulnerable to shafts which reach all around
him--nay, which render him supremely indifferent to death itself.
Whether this extreme of philosophical skepticism and stoicism could be
consistently and correctly attributed to a gypsy of the fifteenth
century, will be presently considered. Let me first quote those passages
in which the character is best set forth. The first is that in which
Hayraddin, in reply to the queries of Quentin Durward, asserts that he
has no country, is not a Christian, and is altogether lawless:
'You are then,' said the wondering querist, 'destitute of all that
other men are combined by--you have no law, no leader, no settled
means of subsistence, no house or home. You have, may Heaven
compassionate you, no country--and, may Heaven enlighten and
forgive you, you have no God! What is it that remains to you,
deprived of government, domestic happiness, and religion?'
'I have liberty,' said the Bohemian--'I crouch to no one--obey no
one--respect no one.--I go where I will--live as I can--and die
when my day comes.'
'But you are subject to instant execution at the pleasure of the
Judge?'
'Be it so,' returned the Bohemian; 'I can but die so much the
sooner.'
'And to imprisonment also,' said the Scot; 'and where then is your
boasted freedom?'
'In my thoughts,' said the Bohemian, 'which no chains can bind;
while yours, even when your limbs are free, remain fettered by your
laws and your superstitions, your dreams of local attachment, and
your fantastic visions of civil policy. Such as I are free in
spirit when our limbs are chained. You are imprisoned in mind, even
when your limbs are most at freedom.'
[14]'Yet the freedom of your thoughts,' said the Scot, 'relieves
not the pressure of the gyves on your limbs.'
'For a brief time that may be endured,' answered the vagrant, 'and
if within that period I cannot extricate myself, and fail of relief
from my comrades, I can always die, and death is the most perfect
freedom of all.'
Again, when asked in his last hour what are his hopes for the future,
the gypsy, after denying the existence of the soul, declares that his
anticipations are:
'To be resolved into the elements. * * * My hope and trust and
expectation is, that the mysterious frame of humanity shall melt
into the general mass of nature, to be recompounded in the other
forms with which she daily supplies those which daily disappear,
and return under different forms,--the watery particles to streams
and showers, the earthy parts to enrich their mother earth, the
airy portions to wanton in the breeze, and those of fire to supply
the blaze of Aldebaran and his brethren. In this faith I have
lived, and will die in it. Hence! begone!--disturb me no further! I
have spoken the last word that mortal ears shall listen to!'
That such a strain as this would be absurd from 'Mr. Petulengro,' or any
other of the race as portrayed by Borrow, is evident enough. Whether it
is inappropriate, however, in the mouth of one of the first corners of
the people in Europe, of direct Hindustanee blood, is another question.
Let us examine it.
In his notes to 'Quentin Durward,' Scott declares his belief that there
can be little doubt that the first gypsies consisted originally of
Hindus, who left their native land when it was invaded by Timur or
Tamerlane, and that their language is a dialect of Hindustanee. That the
gypsies were Hindus, and outcast Hindus or Pariahs at that, could be no
secret to Scott. That he should have made Hayraddin in his doctrines
marvellously true to the very life to certain of this class, indicates a
degree either of knowledge or of intuition (it may have been either)
which is at least remarkable.
The reader has probably learned to consider the Hindu Pariah as a merely
wretched outcast, ignorant, vulgar, and oppressed. Such is not, however,
exactly their _status_. Whatever their social rank may be, the
Pariahs--the undoubted ancestors of the gypsies--are the authors in
India of a great mass of philosophy and literature, embracing nearly all
that land has ever produced which is tinctured with independence or wit.
In confirmation of which I beg leave to cite the following passages from
that extremely entertaining, well-edited, and elegantly published little
work, the 'Strange Surprising Adventures of the Venerable Goroo Simple
and his Five Disciples':
'The literature of the Hindoos owes but little to the hereditary
claimants to the sole possession of divine light and knowledge. On
the contrary, with the many things which the Brahmins are forbidden
to touch, all science, if left to them alone, would soon stagnate,
and clever men, whose genius cannot be held in trammels, therefore
soon become outcasts and swell the number of _Pariars_ in
consequence of their very pursuit of knowledge. * * * To the
writings of the _Poorrachchameiyans_, a sect of _Pariars_ odious in
the eyes of a Brahman, the Tamuls owe the greater part of works on
science. * * * To the _Vallooran_ sect of Pariars, particularly
shunned by the Brahmans, Hindoo literature is indebted almost
exclusively for the many moral poems and books of aphorisms which
are its chief pride.
'This class of literature' (satiric humor and fables) 'emanated
chiefly from those despised outcasts, the Pariars, the very men who
(using keener spectacles than Dr. Robertson, our historian of
Ancient India, did, who singularly became the panegyrist of Gentoo
subdivisions) saw that to bind human intellect and human energy
within the wire fences of Hindoo castes is as impossible as to shut
up the winds of heaven in a temple built by man's hand, and boldly
thought for themselves.'
Of the literary _Vallooran_ Pariah outcasts and scientific
Poorrachchameiyans, we know from the best authority--Father Beschi--that
they form society of six degrees or sects, the fifth of which, when five
Fridays occur in a month, celebrate it _avec de grandes abominations_,
while the sixth 'admits the real existence of nothing--except,
_perhaps_, GOD.' This last is a mere guess on the part of the good
father. It is beyond conjecture that we have here another of those
strange Oriental sects, 'atheistic' in its highest school and identical
in its nature with that of the House of Wisdom of Cairo, and with the
Templars; and if Scott's gypsy Hayraddin Maugrabin is to be supposed one
of that type of Hindu outcasts, which were of all others most hateful to
the orthodox Moslem invader, we cannot sufficiently admire the
appropriateness with which doctrines which were actually held by the
most deeply initiated among the Pariahs were put into his mouth. To have
made a merely vulgar, nothing-believing, and as little reflecting gypsy,
as philosophical as the wanderer in 'Quentin Durward,' would have been
absurd. There is a vigor, an earnestness in his creed, which betrays
culture and thought, and which is marvellously appropriate if we regard
him as a wandering scion of the outcast Pariah illuminati of India.
Did our author owe this insight to erudition or to poetic intuition? In
either case we discover a depth which few would have surmised. It was
once said of Scott, that he was a millionaire of genius whose wealth was
all in small change--that his scenes and characters were all massed from
a vast collection of little details. This would be equivalent to
declaring that he was a great novelist without a great idea. Perhaps
this is true, but the clairvoyance of genius which _seems_ to manifest
itself in the two characters which I have already examined, and the
cautious manner in which he has treated them, would appear to prove that
he possessed a rarer gift than that of 'great ideas'--the power of
controlling them. Such ideas may make reformers, critics, politicians,
essayists--but they generally ruin a novelist--and Scott knew it.
A third character belonging to the class under consideration, is Henbane
Dwining, the 'pottingar,' apothecary or 'leech,' in the novel of 'The
Fair Maid of Perth.'
This man is rather developed by his deeds than his words, and these are
prompted by two motives, terrible vindictiveness and the pride of
superior knowledge. He is vile from the former, and yet almost heroic
from the latter, for it is briefly impossible to make any man intensely
self-reliant, and base this self-reliance on great learning in men and
books, without displaying in him some elements of superiority. He is so
radically bad that by contrast one of the greatest villains in Scottish
history, Sir John Ramorney, appears rather gray than black; and yet we
dislike him less than the knight, possibly because we know that men of
the Dwining stamp, when they have had the control of nations, often do
good simply from the dictates of superior wisdom--the wisdom of the
serpent--which, no Ramorney ever did. The skill with which the crawling,
paltry leech controls his fierce lord; the contempt for his power and
pride shown in Dwining's adroit sneers, and above all, the ease with
which the latter casts into the shade Ramorney's fancied superiority in
wickedness, is well set forth--and such a character could only have been
conceived by deep study of the motives and agencies which formed it. To
do so, Scott had recourse to the same Oriental source--the same fearful
school of atheism which in another and higher form gave birth to the
Templar and the gypsy. 'I have studied,' says Dwining, 'among the sages
of Granada, where the fiery-souled Moor lifts high his deadly dagger as
it drops with his enemy's blood, and avows the doctrine which the pallid
Christian practises, though, coward-like, he dare not name it.' His
sneers at the existence of a devil, at all 'prejudices,' at religion,
above all, at brute strength and every power save that of intellect, are
perfectly Oriental--not however of the Oriental Sufi, or of the
initiated in the House of Wisdom, whose pantheistic Idealism went hand
in hand with a faith in benefiting mankind, and which taught
forgiveness, equality, and love, but rather that corrupted Asiatic
vanity of wisdom which abounded among the disciples of Aristotle and of
Averroes in Spain, and which was entirely material. I err, strictly
speaking, therefore, when I speak of this as the _same_ Oriental school,
though in a certain sense it had a common origin--that of believing in
the infinite power of human wisdom. Both are embraced indeed in the
beguiling _eritis sicut Deus_, 'ye shall be as GOD,' uttered by the
serpent to Eve.
Quite subordinate as regards its position among the actors of the novel,
yet extremely interesting in a historical point of view, is the
character of Jasper Dryfesdale the steward of the Douglas family, in
'The Abbot.' In this man Scott has happily combined the sentiment of
absolute feudal devotion to his superiors with a gloomy fatalism learned
'among the fierce sectaries of Lower Germany.' If carefully studied,
Dryfesdale will be found to be, on the whole, the most morally
instructive character in the entire range of Scott's writings. In the
first place, he illustrates the fact, so little noted by the advocates
of loyalty, aristocracy, 'devoted retainers,' and 'faithful vassals,'
that all such fidelity carried beyond the balance of a harmony of
interests, results in an insensibility to moral accountability. Thus in
the Southern States, masters often refer with pride to the fact that a
certain negro, who will freely pillage in other quarters, will 'never
steal at home.' History shows that the man who surrenders himself
entirely to the will of another begins at once to cast on his superior
all responsibility for his own acts. Such dependence and evasion is of
itself far worse than the bold unbelief which is to the last degree
self-reliant; which seeks no substitute, dreads no labor, scorns all
mastery, and aims at the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the
truth. Such unbelief may possibly end in finding religious truth after
its devious errors, but what shall be said of those who would have men
sin as _slaves_?
Singularly and appropriately allied to a resignation of moral
accountability from feudal attachment, is the contemptible and cowardly
doctrine of fatalism, which Dryfesdale also professes. It is not with
him the philosophic doctrine of the concurring impulses of circumstance,
or of natural laws, but rather the stupendously nonsensical notion of
the Arabian _kismet_, that from the beginning of time every event was
fore-arranged as in a fairy tale, and that all which _is_, is simply the
acting out of a libretto written before the play began--a belief revived
in the last century by readers of Leibnitz, who were truer than the
great German himself to the consequences of his doctrine, which he
simply evaded.[15] In coupling this humiliating and superstitious means
of evading moral accountability with the same principle as derived from
feudal devotion, Scott, consciously or unconsciously, displayed genius,
and at the same time indirectly attacked that system of society to which
he was specially devoted. So true is it that genius instinctively tends
to set forth the _truth_, be the predilections of its possessor what
they may. And indeed, as Scott nowhere shows in any way that _he_, for
his part, regarded the blind fidelity of the steward as other than
admirable, it may be that he was guided rather by instinct than will, in
thus pointing out the great evil resulting from a formally aristocratic
state of society. Such as it is, it is well worth studying in these
times, when the principles of republicanism and aristocracy are brought
face to face at war among us, firstly in the contest between the South
and the North, and secondly in the rapidly growing division between the
friends of the Union, and the treasonable 'Copperheads,' who consist of
men of selfish, aristocratic tendencies, and their natural allies, the
refuse of the population.
It is very unfortunate that the term 'Anabaptists' should have ever been
applied to the ferocious fanatics led by John of Leyden, Knipperdolling,
and Rothmann, since it has brought discredit on a large sect bearing the
same name with which it had in reality even less in common than the
historians of the latter imagine. It is not a difficult matter for the
mind familiar with the undoubted Oriental origin of the 'heresies' of
the middle ages, to trace in the origin at least of the fierce and
licentious socialists of Muenster the same secret influence which,
flowing from Gnostic, Manichaean, or Templar sources, founded the
Waldense and Albigense sects, and was afterward perceptible in a branch
of the Hussites. At the time of the Reformation their ancient doctrines
had subsided into Biblical fanaticism; but the old leaven of revolt
against the church, and against all compulsion--keenly sharpened by
their experiences, in the recent Peasant's War--was as hot as ever among
them. They had no great or high philosophy, but were in all respects
chaotic, contradictory, and stormy. Unable to rise to the cultivated and
philanthropic feelings which accompanied the skepticism of their remote
founders, they based their denial of moral accountability--as narrow and
vulgar minds naturally do--on a predestination, which is as insulting to
GOD as to man, since it is consistently comprehensible only by supposing
HIM a slave to destiny. Among such vassals to a worse than earthly
tyranny, the man who as 'a Scottish servant regarded not his own life or
that of any other save his master,' would find doctrines congenial
enough to his grovelling nature. So he was willing to believe that 'that
which was written of me a million years before I saw the light must be
executed by me.' 'I am well taught, and strong in belief,' he says,
'that man does nought for himself; he is but the foam on the billow,
which rises, bubbles, and bursts, not by its own effort, but by the
mightier impulse of fate which urges him.' And the combination of his
two wretched doctrines is well set forth in the passage wherein he tells
his mistress that she had no choice as regarded accepting his criminal
services. 'You might not choose, lady,' answered the steward. 'Long ere
this castle was builded--ay, long ere the islet which sustains it reared
its head above the blue water--I was destined to be your faithful slave,
and you to be my ungrateful mistress.'
Freethinkers, infidels, and atheists abound in novels, but it is to the
credit of Sir Walter Scott that wherever he has introduced a _sincere_
character of this description, he has gone to the very origin for his
facts, and then given us the result without pedantry. The four which I
have examined are each a curious subject for study, and indicate,
collectively and compared, a train of thought which I believe that few
have suspected in Scott, notwithstanding his well-known great love for
the curious and occult in literature. That he perfectly understood that
absurd and vain character, the so-called 'infidel,' whose philosophy is
limited to abusing Christianity, and whose real object is to be odd and
peculiar, and astonish humble individuals with his wickedness, is most
amusingly shown in 'Bletson,' one of the three Commissioners of Cromwell
introduced into 'Woodstock.' Scott has drawn this very subordinate
character in remarkable detail, having devoted nearly seven pages to its
description,[16] evidently being for once carried away by the desire of
rendering the personality as clearly as possible, or of gratifying his
own fancy. And while no effort is ever made to cast even a shadow of
ridicule on the Knight Templar, on Dryfesdale, on the gypsy, or even on
the crawling Dwining, he manifestly takes great pains to render as
contemptible and laughably absurd as possible this type of the very
great majority of modern infidels, who disavow religion because they
fear it, and ridicule Christianity from sheer, shallow ignorance. Our
own country at present abounds in 'Bletsons,' in conceited, ignorant
'infidel' scribblers of many descriptions, in of all whom we can still
trace the cant and drawl of the old-fashioned fanaticism to which they
are in reality nearly allied, while they appear to oppose it. For the
truth is, that popular infidelity--to borrow Mr. Caudle's simile of
tyrants--is only Puritanism turned inside out. We see this, even when it
is masked in French flippancy and the Shibboleth of the current
accomplishments of literature--it betrays itself by its vindictiveness
and conceit, by its cruelty, sarcasms, and meanness--with the infidel as
with the bigot. The sincere seeker for truth, whether he wander through
the paths of unbelief or of faith, never forgets to love, never courts
notoriety, and is neither a satirical court-fool nor a would-be
Mephistopheles.
In reflecting on these characters, I am irresistibly reminded of an
anecdote illustrating their nature. A friend of mine who had employed a
rather ignorant fellow to guide him through some ruins in England, was
astonished, as he entered a gloomy dungeon, at the sudden remark, in the
hollow voice of one imparting a dire confidence, of: 'I doan't believe
in hany GOD!' 'Don't you, indeed?' was the placid reply. 'Noa,' answered
the guide; '_H'I'm a_ HINFIDEL!' 'Well, I hope you feel easy after it,'
quoth my friend.
There is yet another skeptic set forth by Scott, whose peculiarities may
be deemed worthy of examination. I refer to Agelastes, the treacherous
and hypocritical sage of 'Count Robert of Paris.' In this man we have,
however, rather the refined sensualist and elegant scholar who amuses
himself with the subtleties of the old Greek philosophy, than a sincere
seeker for truth, or even a sincere doubter. His views are fully given
in a short lecture of the countess:
'Daughter,' said Agelastes, approaching nearer to the lady, 'it is
with pain I see you bewildered in errors which a little calm
reflection might remove. We may flatter ourselves, and human vanity
usually does so, that beings infinitely more powerful than those
belonging to mere humanity are employed daily in measuring out the
good and evil of this world, the termination of combats or the fate
of empires, according to their own ideas of what is right or wrong,
or more properly, according to what we ourselves conceive to be
such. The Greek heathens, renowned for their wisdom, and glorious
for their actions, explained to men of ordinary minds the supposed
existence of Jupiter and his Pantheon, where various deities
presided over various virtues and vices, and regulated the temporal
fortune and future happiness of such as practised them. The more
learned and wise of the ancients rejected such the vulgar
interpretation, and wisely, although affecting a deference to the
public faith, denied before their disciples in private, the gross
fallacies of Tartarus and Olympus, the vain doctrines concerning
the gods themselves, and the extravagant expectations which the
vulgar entertained of an immortality supposed to be possessed by
creatures who were in every respect mortal, both in the
conformation of their bodies, and in the internal belief of their
souls. Of these wise and good men some granted the existence of the
supposed deities, but denied that they cared about the actions of
mankind any more than those of the inferior animals. A merry,
jovial, careless life, such as the followers of Epicurus would
choose for themselves, was what they assigned for those gods whose
being they admitted. Others, more bold or more consistent, entirely
denied the existence of deities who apparently had no proper object
or purpose, and believed that such of them, whose being and
attributes were proved to us by no supernatural appearances, had in
reality no existence whatever.'
In all this, and indeed in all the character of Agelastes, there is
nothing more than shallow scholarship, such as may be found in many of
'the learned' in all ages, whose learning is worn as a fine garment,
perhaps as one of comfort, but _not_ as the armor in which to earnestly
do battle for life. A contempt for the vulgar, or at best a selfish
rendering of life agreeable to themselves, is all that is gathered from
such systems of doubt--and this was in all ages the reproach of all
Greek philosophy. It was not meant for the multitude nor for the
barbarian. It embraced no hope of benefiting all mankind, no scheme for
even freeing them from superstition. Such ideas were only cherished by
the Orientals, and (though mingled with errors) subsequently and _fully_
by the early Christians. It was in the East that the glorious doctrine
of love for _all_ beings, not only for enemies, but for the very fiends
themselves, was first proclaimed as essential to perfect the soul--as
shown in the beautiful Hindu poem of 'The Buddha's Victory,'[17] in
which the demon Wassywart, that horror of horrors, whose eyes are clots
of blood, whose voice outroars the thunder, who plucks up the sun from
its socket the sky, defies the great saint-god to battle:
'The unarmed Buddha mildly gazed at him,
And said in peace: 'Poor fiend, _even thee I love_.'
Before great Wassywart the world grew dim;
His bulk enormous dwindled to a dove. * * *
--Celestial beauty sat on Buddhas face,
While sweetly sang the metamorphosed dove:
'Swords, rocks, lies, fiends, must yield to moveless love,
And nothing can withstand the Buddha's grace.'
And again, in 'The Secret of Piety'--the secret 'of all the lore which
angelic bosoms swell'--we have the same pure faith:
'Whoso would careless tread one worm that crawls the sod,
That cruel man is darkly alienate from God;
But he that lives embracing all that is in _love_,
To dwell with him God bursts all bounds, below, above.'
The Greek philosophy knew nothing of all this, and the result is that
even in the atheism which sprang from the East, and in its harshest and
lowest 'tinctures,' we find a something nobler and less selfish than is
to be found in the school of Plato himself. And however this may be, the
reader will admit, in examining the six skeptics set forth by Scott,
that each is a character firmly based in historical truth; that all,
with the exception of 'Bletson,' are sketched with remarkable brevity;
and that a careful comparative analysis of the whole gives us a deeper
insight into the secret tendencies of the author's mind, and at the same
time into the springs of his genius, than the world has been wont to
take. And the study of the subject is finally interesting, since we may
learn from it that even in the works of one who is a standard poetic
authority among those who would, if possible, subject all men to
feudalism, we may learn lessons of that highest social
truth--republicanism.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 10: OVID. _Metamorphoseon_, lib. xi. v. 183.]
[Footnote 11: Haec autem erat Gnosticorum doctrina ethica, quod omnem
virtutem in prudentia sitim esse credebant, quam Ophitae per _Metem_
(Sophiam) et Serpentem exprimebant, desumpto iterum ex Evangelii
praecepto; _estote prudentes ut serpentes_,--ob innatem hujus animalis
astutiam?--VON HAMMER, _Fundgruben des Orients_, tom. vi. p. 85.]
[Footnote 12: _New Curiosities of Literature._ By GEO. SOANE, London,
1849.]
[Footnote 13: _Developpement des Abus introduits dans la Franc
Maconnerie._ Ecossois de Saint ANDRE d'Ecosse, &c., &c. Paris, 1780.]
[Footnote 14: London. Truebner &. Co., No. 60 Paternoster Row. 1861.]
[Footnote 15: 'Tota haec humanae vitae fabula, quae universitatem naturae et
generis humani historiam constituit tota prius in intellectu divino
praeconcepta fuit cum infinitis aliis.'--LEIBNITZ, _Theodicaea_, part 11,
p. 149.]
[Footnote 16: Tickner and Fields' edition of Waverley Novels, Boston,
1858.]
[Footnote 17: _The Poetry of the East._ By WILLIAM ROUNSEVILLE ALGER.
Boston. Whittemore, Niles & Hall, 1856.]
A CHORD OF WOOD.
Well, New York, you've made your pile
Of Wood, and, if you like, may smile:
Laugh, if you will, to split your sides,
But in that Wood pile a nigger hides,
With a double face beneath his hood:
Don't hurra till you're out of your Wood.
A MERCHANT'S STORY.
'All of which I saw, and part of which I was.'
CHAPTER XIX.
The moon and the stars were out, and the tall, dark pines cast long,
gloomy shadows over the little rows of negro houses which formed the
rearguard to Preston's mansion. They were nearly deserted. Not a
solitary fire slumbered on the bare clay hearths, and not a single darky
stood sentry over the loose pork and neglected hoecakes, or kept at bay
the army of huge rats and prowling opossums which beleaguered the
quarters. Silence--death's music--was over and around them. The noisy
revelry of the dancers had died away in the distance, and even the
hoarse song of the great trees had sunk to a low moan as they stood,
motionless and abashed, in the presence of the grim giant who knocks
alike at the palace and the cottage gate.
A stray light glimmered through the logs of a low hut, far off in the
woods, and, making our way to it, we entered. A bright fire lit up the
interior, and on a rude cot, in one corner, lay the old preacher. His
eyes were closed; a cold, clammy sweat was on his forehead--he was
dying. One of his skeleton hands rested on the tattered coverlet, and
his weazened face was half buried in a dilapidated pillow, whose ragged
casing and protruding plumage bespoke it a relic of some departed white
sleeper.
An old negress, with gray hair and haggard visage, sat at the foot of
the bed, wailing piteously; and Joe and half a dozen aged saints stood
around, singing a hymn, doleful enough to have made even a sinner weep.
Not heeding our entrance, Joe took the dying man by the hand, and, in a
slow, solemn voice, said:
'Brudder Jack, you'm dyin'; you'm gwine ter dat lan' whence no trabeller
returns; you'm settin' out fur dat country which'm lit by de smile ob de
Lord; whar dar ain't no sickness, no pain, no sorrer, no dyin'; fur dat
kingdom whar de Lord reigns; whar trufh flows on like a riber; whar
righteousness springs up like de grass, an' lub draps down like de dew,
an' cobers de face ob de groun'; whar you woan't gwo 'bout wid no
crutch; whar you woan't lib in no ole cabin like dis, an' eat hoecake
an' salt pork in sorrer an' heabiness ob soul; but whar you'll run an'
not be weary, an' walk an' not be faint; whar you'll hab a hous'n
builded ob de Lord, an' sit at His table--you' meat an' drink de bread
an' de water ob life!
'I knows you's a sinner, Jack; I knows you's lub'd de hot water too
much, an' dat it make you forgit you' duty sometime, an' set a bad
'zample ter dem as looked up ter you fur better tings; but dar am mercy
wid de Lord, Jack; dar am forgibness wid Him; an' I hopes you'm ready
an' willin' ter gwo.'
Old Jack opened his eyes, and, in a low, peevish tone, said:
'Joe, none ob you' nonsense ter me! I'se h'ard you talk dis way afore.
_You_ can't preach--you neber could. You jess knows I ain't fit ter
trabble, an' I ain't willin' ter gwo, nowhar.'
Joe mildly rebuked him, and again commenced expatiating on the 'upper
kingdom,' and on the glories of 'the house not made with hands, eternal
in the heavens;' but the old darky cut him short, with--
'Shet up, Joe! no more ob dat. I doan't want no oder hous'n but dis--dis
ole cabin am good 'nuff fur me.'
Joe was about to reply, when Preston stepped to the bedside, and, taking
the aged preacher's hand, said:
'My good Jack, master Robert has come to see you.'
The dying man turned his eyes toward his master, and, in a weak,
tremulous voice, exclaimed:
'Oh! massa Robert, has _you_ come? has you come ter see ole Jack? Bress
you, massa Robert, bress you! Jack know'd you'd neber leab him yere ter
die alone.'
'No, my good Jack; I would save you if I could.'
'But you can't sabe me, massa Robert; I'se b'yond dat. I'se dyin', massa
Robert. I'se gwine ter de good missus. She tell'd me ter get ready ter
foller har, an' I is. I'se gwine ter har now, massa Robert!'
'I know you are, Jack. I feel _sure_ you are.'
'Tank you, massa Robert--tank you fur sayin' dat. An' woan't you pray
fur me, massa Robert--jess a little pray? De good man's prayer am h'ard,
you knows, massa Robert.'
All kneeling down on the rough floor, Preston prayed--a short, simple,
fervent prayer. At its close, he rose, and, bending over the old negro,
said:
'The Lord is good, Jack; His mercy is everlasting.'
'I knows dat; I feels dat,' gasped the dying man. 'I lubs you, massa
Robert; I allers lub'd you; but I'se gwine ter leab you now. Bress you!
de Lord bress you, massa Robert' I'll tell de good missus'--
He clutched convulsively at his master's hand; a wild light came out of
his eyes; a sudden spasm passed over his face, and--he was 'gone whar de
good darkies go.'