Graham's Magazine, Vol. XX, No. 4, April 1842
Date: 2022-02-21T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Literature; Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; Literature -- Periodicals

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Graham's Magazine, Vol. XX, No. 4, April 1842

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Title: Graham's Magazine, Vol. XX, No. 4, April 1842

Author: Various

Editor: George R. Graham

Release date: February 21, 2022 [eBook #67456]
Most recently updated: October 18, 2024

Language: English

Original publication: United States: George R. Graham, 1842

Credits: Mardi Desjardins & the online Distributed Proofreaders Canada team at https://www.pgdpcanada.net, from page images generously made available by The Internet Archive

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GRAHAM'S MAGAZINE, VOL. XX, NO. 4, APRIL 1842 ***

GRAHAM’S MAGAZINE.

Vol. XX.     April, 1842     No. 4.

Contents

Fiction, Literature and Articles
The Wife |
Lowell’s Poems |
Life in Death |
The Miner’s Fate |
Recollections of West Point |
Dreams of the Land and Sea |
St. Agnes’ Eve—A Chit-Chat About Keats |
The Affair at Tattletown |
The Bachelor’s Experiment |
The Duel |
Harry Cavendish |
The Two Dukes |
Review of New Books |

Poetry and Music
Birth of Freedom |
Fragment |
Agathè.—A Necromaunt |
To a Spirit |
The Old Man Returned Home |
Stanzas from an Unpublished Poem |
Sweethearts and Wives |
Elegy on the Fate of Jane M’Crea |
Sonnets—Michael Angelo & Raffaello |
To Florence |
Return From Hawking |
There’s No Land Like Scotland |

Transcriber’s Notes can be found at the end of this eBook.

Painted by Prentice.        Engraved by H. S. Sadd, N.Y.

The Wife.

Engraved expressly for Graham’s Magazine

GRAHAM’S MAGAZINE.

Vol. XX.    PHILADELPHIA: APRIL, 1842.    No. 4.

THE WIFE.

———

BY AGNES PIERSOL.

———

It was the dead hour of the night. The room was a high wainscotted apartment, with furniture of a rich but antique pattern. The pale moonlight streaming through the curtained window, and struggling with the subdued light of a candle placed in a corner, disclosed the figure of a sick man extended on a bed, wrapped in an unquiet slumber. By his side sat a care-worn though still beautiful woman gazing anxiously on his face, and breathlessly awaiting the crisis of the fever—for it was now the ninth day since that strong man had been prostrated by the hand of disease, and during all that time he had raved in an incessant delirium. He had at length dropped into an unquiet slumber, broken at first by starts and moans, but during the last hour he had been less restless, and he now lay as still as a sculptured statue. His wife well knew that ere morning the crisis would be past, and she waited, with all a woman’s affection, breathlessly for the event. Aye! though few women have been wronged as Emily Walpole had been wronged, she still cherished her husband’s image, for he was, despite his errors, the lover of her youth.

Few girls had been more admired than Emily Severn. But it was not only the beauty of her features and the elegance of her form which drew around her a train of worshippers: her mind was one of no ordinary cast, and the sweetness of her temper lent an ineffable charm to all she did. No one was so eagerly sought for at a ball or a pic-nic as Emily Severn, and at her parental fireside she was the universal favorite. It was long before she loved. She was not to be misled by glitter or show. She could only bestow her affections where she thought they were deserved, and it was not until she met Edward Walpole that she learned to surrender her heart.

Edward Walpole, when he became the husband of Emily Severn, was apparently all that a woman could wish. He was warm hearted, of a noble soul, kind, gentle, and ever ready to waive his own selfish gratification at the call of duty. But, alas! he had one weakness, he did not act from principle. His generous deeds were the offspring of a warm heart rather than of a regulated intellect. As yet he had never been placed in circumstances which severely tried his principles. But, about a year after his marriage, he fell heir to the large property of a maiden aunt, and at once his whole style of life was altered. His accession of wealth brought him into contact with society in which hitherto he had never mingled, where the polish of factitious politeness often hides the most depraved morals. Above all, by abandoning his profession, he condemned himself to comparative idleness. He now began to be tortured by ennui, and sought any excitement to pass away the time. The harpies who infest society, and with the appearance of gentlemen have the hearts of fiends, now marked him for their prey; and his open and generous nature made him their victim in a comparatively short space of time. We shall not trace his downward progress. It is always a melancholy task to mark the lapse from virtue of a noble and generous character, and how much more so when the heart of a wife is to be broken by the dereliction from rectitude.

Emily saw the gradual aberration of her husband, and though she mourned the cause, no word of reproach escaped her lips, but by every gentle means she strove to bring back her husband to the paths of virtue. But a fatality seemed to have seized him. He was in a whirlpool from which he could not extricate himself. He still loved his wife, and more than once, when her looks cut him to the heart, he made an effort to break loose from his associates; but they always found means to bring him back ere long. Thus a year passed. His fortune began to give way, for he had learnt to gamble. As his losses became more frequent his thirst for cards became greater, until at length he grew sullen and desperate He was now a changed man. He no longer felt compunction at the wrongs he inflicted on his sweet wife, but if her sad looks touched his heart at all they only stung him into undeserved reproaches. He was become harsh and violent. Yet his poor wife endured all in silence. No recrimination passed her lips. But in the solitude of her chamber she shed many a bitter tear, and often, at the hour of midnight, when her husband was far away in some riotous company, her prayers were heard ascending for him.

Two years had now elapsed, and the last one had been a year of bitter sorrow to Emily. At length her husband came home one night an almost ruined man. He had been stripped at the gambling table, of every cent of his property, over which he had any control, and he was now in a state almost approaching to madness. Before morning he was in a high fever. For days he raved incessantly of his ruin, cursing the wretches by whom he had been plundered. Nine days had passed and now the crisis was at hand.

The clock struck twelve. As sound after sound rung out on the stillness and died away in echoes, reverberating through the house, the sick man moved in his sleep, until, when the last stroke was given, he opened his eyes and looked languidly and vacantly around. His gaze almost instantly met the face of his wife. For a moment his recollection could be seen struggling in his countenance, and at length an expression of deep mental suffering settled in his face. His wife had by this time risen and was now at his bedside. She saw that the crisis was past, and as she laid her hand in his, and felt the moisture of the skin, she knew that he would recover. Tears of joy gushed from her eyes and dropped on the sick man’s face.

“Heavenly father, I thank thee!” she murmured at length, when her emotion suffered her to speak, while the tears streamed faster and faster down her cheek, “he is safe. He will recover,” and though she ceased speaking, her lips still moved in silent prayer.

The sick man felt the tears on his face, he saw his wife’s grateful emotion, he knew that she was even now praying for him, and as he recalled to mind the wrongs which he had inflicted on that uncomplaining woman, his heart was melted within him. There is no chastener like sickness; the most stony bosom softens beneath it. He thought of the long days and nights during which he must have been ill, and when his insulted and abused wife had watched anxiously at his bedside. Oh! how he had crushed that noble heart; and now this was her return! She prayed for him who had wronged her. She shed tears of joy because her erring husband had been restored, as it were, to life. These things rushed through his bosom and the strong man’s eyes filled with tears.

“Emily—dear Emily,” he said, “I have been a villain, and can you forgive me? I deserve it not at your hands—but can you, will you forgive a wretch like me?”

“Oh! can I forgive you?” sobbed the grateful wife, “yes! yes! but too gladly. But it is not against me you have sinned, it is against a good and righteous God.”

“I know it—I know it,” said the repentant husband, “and to His mercy I look. I cannot pray for myself, but oh! Emily pray for me. He has saved me from the jaws of death. Pray for me, dear Emily.”

The wife knelt at the bedside, and while the husband, exhausted by his agitation, sank back with closed eyes on the pillow, she read the noble petition for the sick, from the book of Common Prayer. At times the sobs of Emily would almost choke her utterance, but the holy words she read had at length, a soothing effect both on her mind and that of her husband. When the prayer was over, she remained for several minutes kneeling, while her husband murmured at intervals his heart-felt responses. At length she rose from the bedside. Her husband would again have spoken, to beseech once more her forgiveness. But with a glad feeling at her heart—a feeling such as she had not had for years—she enjoined silence on him, and sat down again by his bedside to watch. At length he fell again into a calm slumber, while the now happy wife watched at his bedside until morning, breathing thanksgivings for her husband’s recovery, and shedding tears of joy the while.

When the sick man awoke at daybreak, he was a changed being. He was now convalescent, he was more, he was a repentant man. He wept on the bosom of his wife, and made resolutions of reformation which, after his recovery, through the blessing of God, he was enabled to fulfil.

The fortune of Walpole was mostly gone, but sufficient remained from its wrecks, to allow him the comforts, though not the luxuries of life. He soon settled his affairs and removed from his splendid mansion to a quiet cottage in a neighboring village. The only pang he felt was at leaving the home which for so many years had been the dwelling of the head of his family—the home where his uncle had died, and which had been lost only through his own folly.

Neither Walpole nor his wife ever regretted their loss of fortune; for both looked upon it as the means used by an over-ruling Providence to bring the husband back to the path of rectitude; and they referred to it therefore with feelings rather of gratitude than of repining. In their quiet cottage, on the wreck of their wealth, they enjoyed a happiness to which they had been strangers in the days of their opulence. A family of lovely children sprung up around them, and it was the daily task of the parents to educate these young minds in the path of duty and rectitude. Oh! the happy hours which they enjoyed in that white, vine-embowered cottage, with their children smiling around them, and the consciousness of a well regulated life, filling their hearts with peace.

Years rolled by and the hair of Walpole began to turn gray, while the brow of his sweet wife showed more than one wrinkle, but still their happiness remained undiminished.

LOWELL’S POEMS.[1]

A NEW SCHOOL OF POETRY AT HAND.

We shall never forget our emotions when we inhaled, for the first time after a lingering illness, the fresh breezes of a September morning. Oh! the visions of dewy meadows, rustling forest trees, and silvery brooks which the delicious air called up before us. This little book has awakened much the same emotions in our bosom. It reminds us of the breezy lawns where we played when a child; of the old mossy forest trees beneath which we loved to sit and muse; of the silent, stately Brandywine that glided along at our feet, its clear waters sliding over the rocks or rippling against the long willow leaves that trembled in its current. There is a freshness about Lowell’s Poems which bewitches our fancy. They display a genius that has startled us. They breathe a healthy, honest, good old Saxon spirit, that opens our heart to them as by a sign of brotherhood. We feel that he is kin of our kin and blood of our blood, and we take his book to our bosom without suffering it to plead the exquisite petition which he has put into its mouth, for “charity in Christ’s dear name.” Lowell is a man after our own heart. We have a word or two to say of him in connection with the poetry of the day.

Every one must have perceived that a new school of poetry is at hand. No one who has thought on the subject can have failed to see that the fever for Byron, like all fevers, is both wearing itself out and exhausting the patient. With the death of the noble lord began the decline of the school to which he gave such popularity, and though he has had many imitators since, the phrenzy respecting his poetry is nearly over. We do not mean to depreciate Byron. Every great poet should be spoken of with reverence; for they all alike discourse in the language of the gods; and Byron was not only a great poet, but the greatest poet of his school. That school, however, was a bad one—the fierce, unholy offspring of an incestuous age. It was a school in which the restlessness of passion seems to have forced its votaries into poetry. They had none of the calm, enduring enthusiasm of the great poets of the past; they did not speak with the majesty of Jove, but with the fury of a Delphin priestess. They were essentially the poets of a crowd, expressing the emotions of men in a state of high excitement, and consequently whirling away their hearers with them in a phrenzy for the time unconquerable, but destined to subside with the first calm in the public mind. But the truly great poets—Milton, Shakspeare and Spencer—sit far away on a mountain by themselves, singing in calm enthusiasm to the stars of heaven, and startling the dweller on the plain as well as the shepherd on the hill-side with a melody that seems a part of heaven. The school of Byron is that of a generation; the school of the old masters is that of eternity. The one is a lurid planet, that blazes fitfully amid storm and darkness; the others are fixed stars, that shine around Milton, the greatest of all, in undimmed and undying lustre.

Ὡς δ’ οτ’ εν ουρανω αστρα φαεινην αμφι σεληνην Φαινετ’ αριπρεπεα.

We have said that a new school of poetry is at hand, and the remark may, at first sight, appear extravagant when we consider the stagnation which has been exhibited for years. But betwixt the decline of one school and the rise of another, there is always a pause. When Milton wrote, a lustrum had elapsed since Shakspeare died. After the decay of Pope, a half a century of barrenness ensued before Cowper brought in a more masculine verse. The poetic soil, during these interregnums, seems to be worn out, and to require to lie fallow until it can recruit its energies. Only a few sparse flowers bloom upon the waste. But these, although insignificant in themselves, serve to betray the changes in the soil. They are premonitory of the coming harvest. They give us a clue to the character of the approaching school, and although often vague and contradictory, they afford us hints for which we would in vain seek elsewhere. We do not say that, from such hints, the nature of a school can be certainly predicted. The public taste, to use a phrase from the geologists, is in a transition state, and what the result may be, will, in a measure, puzzle the acutest mind. But we can still approximate to the truth. And even now we may hazard a conjecture respecting the characteristics of the school which will supersede that of Byron. It will resemble, in many particulars, that of the old poets. It will have the same calm, enduring enthusiasm. It will be marked by a like earnestness of purpose, by the same comprehensive love for “suffering, sad humanity.” It will have none of the jaundiced views of Byron, and little of the petit maître style of Pope. It will be intellectual, and, we fear, pedantic also. It threatens to be disgraced by conceits. Circumstances, it is true, may occur to give a different turn to the character of the new school, or a Messiah may arise to do away by a single dispensation with all former types; but, so far as we can foresee now, the Tennysons, Longfellows, and poets of that cast of mind, will give the tone to the coming change in the public taste. Indeed they are already bringing about a revolution. Men are first acted on singly and then in masses, and the masses have even now begun to feel the influence of Longfellow and Tennyson. Wordsworth, too, is not to be disregarded in this revolution, but his influence, though powerful so far as it goes, will never be general. He is the poet of the few, not of the many. He is the priest of the metaphysicians, the seer of the refiners of fine gold. He writes poems, but his followers write twaddle. He cannot found a school. He cannot do this aside from his peculiarities. We will explain.

It is a common error to attribute the formation of a school of poetry to the influence of some one great mind, and we are pointed to Byron, Pope, Shakspeare and others, as instances to prove this creed. The theory is false and illegitimate, the offspring of shallow minds and conceited pedants. A popular poet, we grant, may have many imitators of his verbal style; but the spirit of his school, like the prophet’s inspiration, dies with him. If we look to the poets of our own language we shall find that the great masters usually followed rather than preceded their respective schools; and if we look abroad we shall, with few exceptions, discover the same fact. The school of Byron, for instance, was born of the atheism, scorn and fury of the French Revolution, and we can see foreshadowings of the spirit of Childe Harold in most of the minor poems of that day. Byron carried the school up to its culminating point, and since his death, if not before, it has been on the decline. Pope was the last of a school that had its origin as far back as the exile of Charles the Second, and the French style and sickly effeminacy of this most finished of our poets began to decline while Walpole still sat at the Treasury, when Lady Mary played the wit at Richmond, while clouded canes and full-bottomed wigs yet figured in the Mall. Milton belonged to no school but his own; he stands alone in unapproachable glory; but his genius was deeply influenced by the commotions of the civil wars. Shakspeare had few followers, but many predecessors, and as he was the last so he was the greatest of his school; while Spencer, standing as he did above the grave of chivalry and allegorical romance, only gave vent, in his immortal poem, to a requiem for the departed great. All these men embodied the characteristics of their age, and left them as a heritage to posterity. They were types of their times: they spoke the universal mind of their cotemporaries. It is the cant of the day to talk of men as being in advance of their age; but there never was and never will be such a man. Even Bacon, the giant of the modern world, and the reputed author of the inductive philosophy, was only its great high-priest; for even before he had written his advancement of learning, twenty minds, in every quarter of Europe, were stumbling on the same truths. We are not waiting, therefore, for the advent of a seer to found a new poetic school, for the school must come first, and then we may expect the seer. It will require a dozen Tennysons to make a Spencer. The days of the years of the sons of the prophets are not yet numbered—when they shall be, a new Messiah will appear in our midst.

The tendency of the age to a new school in poetry is strikingly evinced by the genius of Lowell. He was educated in the school of the older poets until his whole soul has become imbued with their spirit. Of these writers Spencer is clearly his favorite. The allusions to this fine old poet are frequent in his poems, and we often meet with expressions and turns of thought, reminding us strikingly of the Faery Queen. We do not mean to charge Lowell with plagiarism: far from it. But he has read Spencer so thoroughly that he is often guilty of unconscious imitation. His fondness for this enchanting writer, is indeed the greatest peril which threatens his poetical career. There is such a thing as being beguiled by a syren until you become her slave. We tell him to beware. Let our young countryman shake himself loose from his bewitching fetters, and be, as he is partially and can be wholly, original. Let him be his own master. Aut Cæsar, aut nihil.

This language, when applied to some, would be a satire. But Lowell has evinced the possession of powers, nearly, if not altogether equal to those of any cotemporary poet; and when, in connexion with this, we consider his youth, we feel justified in assigning to him a genius of the first rank. Let us not be misunderstood. We do not say that Lowell has written better poems than any American, but only that he has evinced a capacity, which in time, may enable him to do so. Indeed this volume of poems, although possessing high merit, is rather a proof of what he may do than of what he has done. There is scarcely a poem in the book which a critic might not prove to be full of faults; but then there would be passages scattered through it which, to an honest man, would redeem the whole. And since the publication of this volume, Lowell has written other poems evincing a progressive excellence and establishing his genius beyond cavil. In one faculty he is certainly equal to any cotemporary, and that faculty is the highest one a poet can possess—we mean IDEALITY. The imagination of Lowell is of the loftiest character. No one can read a ballad published in this Magazine for October, 1841, or a poem entitled “Rosaline,” published for February, 1842, without awarding to our young countryman the gift of this enviable faculty. Whether he is capable of conceiving and executing an extended poem remains to be seen; and we would not advise him to attempt the task until time has matured his taste and refined his powers. But if the Lycidas of Milton, or the Venus and Adonis of Shakspeare were any evidence of the intellect of these two masters, then are some of the poems of Lowell evidence that he has the power, which if properly cultivated, will enable him to write a great poem. The young eagle that flutters its wings on the mountain top may not yet be able to breast the tempest, yet it is an eagle still, and he must be deaf indeed who cannot distinguish its cry. We say that Lowell has an ideality of the loftiest order, and that no one can read his poems without discovering this. We say that ideality is the highest quality of a poet’s mind. So far forth, therefore, Lowell is entitled to rank among the foremost of our poets.

But this is not all. A poet may have the intellect of a god, and yet want the heart to make him truly great; for all true greatness is based on nobility of mind, without which mere intellect is but a tinkling cymbal. All the great old poets eminently possessed this quality. Their hearts kept time, in a majestic march, to noble sentiments. They loved their race, and in their writings showed they were in earnest. This love for his fellows is one of the finest characteristics of Lowell, and contrasts strikingly with the frippery of Pope, and the sneering misanthropy of Byron. We adore this feeling. It is the good old Saxon spirit, the sentiment of universal brotherhood. We are all the children of one father, fitted for sympathy, companionship, affection. We are not born to scorn our fellows. We have not been created to seclude ourselves from society, to dwell in caves, and cells, and lonely hermitages. We are made for nobler purposes. Our mission, like that of him of Nazareth, is to go about doing good. Nor let any man hate his fellows, thinking them regardless of his sorrows. The most unfortunate of us are not without friends, often loving us unknown and in spite of our faults. We have seen the criminal at the bar, when all others shrunk from him, cheered by the affection of the very wife or mother he had wronged; and even the houseless old beggar by the way-side finds a friend in every honest heart that sees his grey hairs tossing in the wind. All over this wide world, in hut, or cottage, or lordly hall, millions of hearts are beating with love towards each other, so that the whole human race is, as it were, interwoven together by innumerable fine threads of sympathy and affection. A word, a deed, or a kind look may make us a friend of whom we little think: and it may be that even now, some one whom we have never seen, is yearning towards us, because something that we may have written has found an echo in his bosom. God be thanked for this, the brightest gift in a poet’s mission! How many hearts have sympathised with the blind old Milton, and how many more will sympathise with him to the end of all time. And thus it is with the good of every age. They live again in the memory of posterity. The dying words of Algernon Sidney will thrill the freeman’s heart through untold centuries. The apostolic charity of Fenelon, Latimer, Bunyan, Augustine, and of all holy men, will endear them to noble hearts as long as time endures. The only immortality worth having is an immortality like this; and it matters not whether our names are known to those who bless us or not. Men have written noble sentiments and died and been forgotten, yet posterity has still yearned towards the poet when it read his lines. What comfort may not an author thus bring upon his fellows! Go out into the country and enter that lowly cottage,—you will find perhaps some mother weeping over little Nell, and drawing consolation from traits in the character which remind her of a darling child now in heaven. Thus by ten thousand links does an author bind himself to the hearts of his fellows, until at length he comes to be loved as we would love a brother. And often the precepts he instils awaken the dormant good in other hearts. Lowell has finely expressed this in one of his earliest poems—

“Noble thoughts like thistle-seed,

Wing’d by nature, fall and breed

From their heedless parents far,

Where fit soil and culture are.”

This fellowship for his kind glows in every line of Lowell. Open his pages where you may, the eye lights on some kindly word, some noble thought, some sentiment overflowing with the milk of human kindness. There is a fine sonnet now before us which expresses the feeling of brotherhood in true Saxon words—

“Why should we ever weary of this life;

Our souls should widen ever, not contract,

Grow stronger, and not harder, in the strife,

Filling each moment with a noble act:

If we live thus, of vigor all compact,

Doing our duty to our fellow-men,

And striving rather to exalt our race

Than our poor selves, with earnest hand or pen,

We shall erect our names a dwelling-place

Which not all ages shall cast down agen;

Offspring of Time shall then be born each hour,

Which, as of old, earth lovingly shall guard,

To live forever in youth’s perfect flower,

And guide her future children Heavenward.”

And here is one, on the same theme, which many a brother poet would do well to emulate. How fitly this sonnet might have been read to Gray!

“Poet! who sittest in thy pleasant room,

Warming thy heart with idle thoughts of love,

And of a holy life that leads above,

Striving to keep life’s spring-flowers still in bloom,

And lingering to snuff their fresh perfume,—

O, there were other duties meant for thee,

Than to sit down in peacefulness and be!

O, there are brother hearts that dwell in gloom,

Souls loathsome, foul, and black with daily sin,

So crusted o’er with baseness, that no ray

Of Heaven’s blessed light may enter in!

Come down, then, to this hot and dusty way,

And lead them back to hope and peace again,—

For, save in Act, thy Love is all in vain.”

Here is the sentiment of our mission finely expressed—

“We were not meant to plod along the earth,

Strange to ourselves and to our fellows strange.

We were not meant to struggle from our birth

To skulk and creep, and in mean pathways range;

Act! with stern truth, large faith, and loving will!

Up and be doing! God is with us still.”

The following lines will cheer many a lonely heart in its sore distress:

“Be of good courage, bear up to the end,

And on thine after way rejoicing go!

We all must suffer, if we aught would know;

Life is a teacher stern, and wisdom’s crown

Is oft a crown of thorns, whence, trickling down,

Blood, mix’d with tears, blinding our eyes doth flow;

But Time, a gentle nurse, shall wipe away

This bloody sweat—”

Here are three lines which deserve to pass into a proverb:

“Be noble! and the nobleness that lies

In other men, sleeping but never dead

Will rise in majesty to meet thine own;”

Lowell has a passion, if we may use the word, for images of quiet beauty. He seems to worship nature; he is evidently a dreamer. We venture to predict that he has spent many a day loitering through the summer woods, or lingering by the side of some silvery stream. He is a close observer—as what genius is not? There is a freshness about his writings which convinces you that he has not drawn his notions of the country, like many even of our rural poets, from books. He writes freely and therefore gracefully. His images of nature come to us with a delicious freshness, reminding us of forest nooks, sylvan retreats, and the fragrance of new mown hay. He seems to be peculiarly fond of water, and of the music which its dropping or its flow occasions, Thus:

“Thy voice is like a fountain

Leaping up in still starlight,

And I never weary counting

Its clear droppings lone or single,

Or when in one full gush they mingle,

Shooting in melodious light!”

“And thy light laughter rang as clear

As water drops I loved to hear

In days of boyhood as they fell

Tinkling far down the dim, still well.”

“Weary never, still thou trillest

Spring-gladsome lays,

As of moss-rimmed water brooks

Murmuring through pebbly nooks

In quiet summer days.”

“And like a moonbeam was her hair

That falls where flowing ripples are,

In summer evening, Isabel!”

Many of the poems in this volume as well as several pieces since given to the world, are love-poems, and breathe all the delicacy and exquisite tenderness of a first affection. Lowell’s conception of the female character is noble, chivalrous, pure and elevating. No poet in our language has a loftier idea of a true woman. Mere personal beauty does not appear to awaken his adoration, but every feeling of his soul kindles at a sweet voice or a lovely mind. We like him for this. A sweet voice is a talisman, and we question whether any true poet could love a woman whose voice was not low and musical. There is a witchery in a soft melodious accent that no language can describe. It seems to dissolve itself into the soul and steal us away unconsciously to ourselves. A lovely mind is the highest charm a woman can possess. How exquisitely has Lowell pictured in the following verses, the purity of a young maiden:

“Early and late, at her soul’s gate

Sits chastity in warderwise,

No thought unchallenged, small or great,

Goes thence into her eyes.”

“She is so gentle and so good

The very flowers in the wood

Do bless her with their sympathy.”

“Thou mad’st me happy with thine eyes,—

And gentle feelings long forgot

Looked up and oped their eyes,

Like violets—when they see a spot

Of summer in the skies.”

“Peace sits within thy eyes,

With white hands crost in joyful rest,

While through thy lips and face arise

The melodies from out thy breast.

She sits and sings

With folded wings.”

The poems entitled “My Love,” “Ianthe,” and “The Lover,” are peculiarly fraught with these elevated sentiments, and we recommend them, apart from their poetic merit, to all who love to contemplate true beauty in woman. The sonnets of Lowell are equally full of those delicate touches. Those on names are very fine—the one entitled “Anne” particularly so. Many others may be instanced as exquisite poems, full of tenderness and beauty.

With all this ideality, this calm enthusiasm, this love for his fellow men, this freshness and delicacy, Lowell would be entitled to rank already among the first poets of the country, if it were not for an occasional affectation, and a comparative want of artistical knowledge. His affectation is the result of his extravagant fondness for Spencer, and partakes, in a great measure, of the peculiarities of that fine poet. The most usual forms in which this affectation developes itself in Lowell, is in a tendency to push his metaphors to the verge of allegory, and in a quaintness that is as much out of place as a tie-wig on a beau of the present generation. The want of artistical knowledge is only comparative, for Lowell understands the rules of his art better than nine-tenths of the craft. Indeed we question whether the slovenliness of many of his poems, does not arise from carelessness as much as from ignorance. The writings of few men betray such rapidity of composition, evincing clearly to our mind, that the thoughts of the poet are thrown upon the paper as fast as they bubble up from his heart. Lowell seems to scorn revision. He strikes off his poems at a white heat, disdaining to polish the steel when it has grown cool. Such neglect always leads to the disbelief in an author’s artistical skill. The public will never give him the credit of being a good workman, while he shows so great an indifference to the finish of his wares.

This carelessness is not only evinced in an occasional false measure, but in other ways more detrimental. One of the slovenly habits of our poet, is in the use of the accent to lengthen a short syllable. We constantly meet with such words as “poisèd” “inspirèd,” and others of like false quantity. Against such liberties we protest. It is no argument to tell us that other poets have been guilty of the practice. Twenty wrongs do not constitute a right, nor will volumes of false quantity make a poem. An author is to take the language as he finds it and evince his skill by adapting it to his purpose. If every writer is allowed to beat a short syllable into a long one, there will soon be as many varieties of accent in our language, as there are gods in the Chinese theology. If words may be twisted as we please there will be no end to the fools who write poems. It is time that men stood up for the purity of our tongue. The affectations of Hunt, Lamb, and Hazlit, might have been forgiven: but the barbarous jargon of Carlyle deserves to be damned in the first act. There is a saint in the Brahmin calendar whom a legion of devils has been tormenting for a thousand years; and the good old manly English tongue seems to be in much the same predicament. Every lustrum or two a new onset is made at its purity. Each successive generation witnesses a mania for some foreign, illegitimate, unholy alliance. The rage in the days of Pope was for the French school, in the days of Johnson for the Latin school, and just now it is for the German school. If we live many years longer we shall expect to see men affecting the negro jargon from Coromantee.

The false accentuation of his words is not the only sin of Lowell against the purity of our tongue. His poems are disfigured, on almost every page, by the use of compound words, which he seems to fabricate, like an editor makes news, to fill out. We have “dreamy-winged,” “long-agone,” “grass-hid,” “spring-gladsome,” “moss-rimmed,” “study-withered,” “over-live,” “maiden-wise,” “rosy-white,” “full-sailed,” “deep-glowing,” “earth-forgetting,” “down-gushing,” “cross-folded,” and a host of like mongrel expressions, which no pure writer would use, and for which not even the genius of Lowell can obtain currency. The only redeeming feature in his case is that his later poems evince a decided improvement in this respect. They betray comparatively little of this carelessness. They show a wider command of words, a more sonorous and elevated verse. They are less disfigured by affectations from Spencer and others of the quaint old writers. They begin to be worthy of the genius of Lowell.

We have attributed these faults to carelessness; but they may be the result of affectation. Much of the unique appearance of the poetry of Lowell, is to be assigned unquestionably to these very things which we have denounced as errors. But if intentional the faults are only the more reprehensible. It is a very different thing whether a man commits a murder ignorantly or with malice aforethought. If the first he may be pardoned; if the second he should be hanged.

The earlier poems of Lowell are apt to be as much overrated by one set of readers, as they are to be depreciated by another set. The use of obsolete words, of arbitrary accents, of metaphors that verge on allegory, commend these poems to a certain school which seems to caress quaintness with the infatuation of Queen Titania in kissing the long ears of Bottom. But there is another school, which, possessing an honest contempt for any thing like affectation, is in danger of transferring its dislike from the errors to the author himself—of questioning his genius because of the faults of his style. We condemn each of these schools—both that which exaggerates and that which depreciates the poet. Lowell has many of the elements of a great poet inherent in his nature; while his faults are manifestly acquired, and can be corrected. His ideality, his enthusiasm, his nobility of sentiment, would enable him to produce even a great poem, if to these were added the capacity to grasp a series of incidents in one vast comprehensive whole. This capacity, or at least the elements of it, we believe him to possess, and if he adheres to a rigid course of study, and awaits the mature development of his powers, he will be enabled to prove this to the world. By that time his taste will be ameliorated and his artistical skill improved. He now writes rather as his feelings dictate than after any sustained plan. We must be understood however, as using this language only comparatively; for as we have before said, Lowell is already equal in these respects to most of his cotemporaries. But there is an empyrean to which none of them have yet attained. To that region of eternal day we would have our young countryman aspire.

We have spoken with frankness, because we love with discretion. The genius of Lowell is surpassed by no cotemporary and he has only to be known in order to be understood; but his countrymen have a right to interpose and save him from the errors into which a false taste, a pedantic clique, or indiscriminate flattery may plunge him. He cannot wholly resist the peculiarities of the approaching school, but there is no reason why he should not soften their errors and elevate their style. He can display the taste of Coleridge without his absurdities, he can be as intellectual as Shelley without his mysticism, he can emulate the ideality of Tennyson and Keats without the affectation of the one, or the redundancy of the other. He has high genius, susceptible of improvement, but capable of perversion. He is in that critical period of a poet’s life when the intoxication of success may lead to idleness, when the misguided silence of his friends may confirm him in his worst faults. The improvement which his later poems evince, fill us with high hopes for the future; but his task is not yet done, as his powers are still in the process of development. If we were his bosom friend we should speak as we have written, using that noble sentence as our apology, “strike, but hear me.”

We look forward to the future career of Lowell, with hope, not unmingled, however, with fear and trembling. To his hands, we fondly trust, has been committed the task of achieving a great original American poem, a work that shall silence the sneers of foreigners, and write his own name amid the stars of heaven. He has the dormant intellect which if rightly disciplined, will enable him to fulfil this mission. But let him bide his time. Let him husband his powers, and yet not let them rust in idleness; but gird up his loins for the work that is before him, so that when the day of his translation shall arrive he may lift up his eyes for the chariot of fire. If he does his mission aright the hour of his rejoicing will surely come. No power will be able to avert it. Against the revilings of the envious, against the sneers of the unbelieving, against the persecution of hostile powers he can bear himself proudly up, for the sight of the fiery chariot will swim before his eyes and the sounds of celestial harmonies entrance his soul.

We take leave of Lowell with a single word. He must not be discouraged if his genius should at first be questioned. Few prophets have honor in their own country.

C.

[1]

“A Year’s Life”—by James Russell Lowell; 1 vol. C. C. Little & J. Brown, Boston: 1841.

LIFE IN DEATH.

———

BY EDGAR A. POE.

———

Egli è vivo e parlerebbe se non osservasse la rigola del silentio.

Inscription beneath an Italian picture of St. Bruno.

My fever had been excessive and of long duration. All the remedies attainable in this wild Appennine region had been exhausted to no purpose. My valet and sole attendant in the lonely chateau, was too nervous and too grossly unskilful to venture upon letting blood—of which indeed I had already lost too much in the affray with the banditti. Neither could I safely permit him to leave me in search of assistance. At length I bethought me of a little pacquet of opium which lay with my tobacco in the hookah-case; for at Constantinople I had acquired the habit of smoking the weed with the drug. Pedro handed me the case. I sought and found the narcotic. But when about to cut off a portion I felt the necessity of hesitation. In smoking it was a matter of little importance how much was employed. Usually, I had half filled the bowl of the hookah with opium and tobacco cut and mingled intimately, half and half. Sometimes when I had used the whole of this mixture I experienced no very peculiar effects; at other times I would not have smoked the pipe more than two-thirds out, when symptoms of mental derangement, which were even alarming, warned me to desist. But the effect proceeded with an easy gradation which deprived the indulgence of all danger. Here, however, the case was different. I had never swallowed opium before. Laudanum and morphine I had occasionally used, and about them should have had no reason to hesitate. But the solid drug I had never seen employed. Pedro knew no more respecting the proper quantity to be taken, than myself—and thus, in the sad emergency, I was left altogether to conjecture. Still I felt no especial uneasiness; for I resolved to proceed by degrees. I would take a very small dose in the first instance. Should this prove impotent, I would repeat it; and so on, until I should find an abatement of the fever, or obtain that sleep which was so pressingly requisite, and with which my reeling senses had not been blessed for now more than a week. No doubt it was this very reeling of my senses—it was the dull delirium which already oppressed me—that prevented me from perceiving the incoherence of my reason—which blinded me to the folly of defining any thing as either large or small where I had no preconceived standard of comparison. I had not, at the moment, the faintest idea that what I conceived to be an exceedingly small dose of solid opium might, in fact, be an excessively large one. On the contrary I well remember that I judged confidently of the quantity to be taken by reference to the entire quantity of the lump in possession. The portion which, in conclusion, I swallowed, and swallowed without fear, was no doubt a very small proportion of the piece which I held in my hand.

The chateau into which Pedro had ventured to make forcible entrance rather than permit me, in my desperately wounded condition, to pass a night in the open air, was one of those fantastic piles of commingled gloom and grandeur which have so long frowned among the Appennines, not less in fact than in the fancy of Mrs. Radcliffe. To all appearance it had been temporarily and very lately abandoned. Day by day we expected the return of the family who tenanted it, when the misadventure which had befallen me would, no doubt, be received as sufficient apology for the intrusion. Meantime, that this intrusion might be taken in better part, we had established ourselves in one of the smallest and least sumptuously furnished apartments. It lay high in a remote turret of the building. Its decorations were rich, yet tattered and antique. Its walls were hung with tapestry and bedecked with manifold and multiform armorial trophies, together with an unusually great number of very spirited modern paintings in frames of rich golden arabesque. In these paintings, which depended from the walls not only in their main surfaces, but in very many nooks which the bizarre architecture of the chateau rendered necessary—in these paintings my incipient delirium, perhaps, had caused me to take deep interest; so that having swallowed the opium, as before told, I bade Pedro to close the heavy shutters of the room—since it was already night—to light the tongues of a tall candelabrum which stood by the head of my bed—and to throw open far and wide the fringed curtains of black velvet which enveloped the bed itself. I wished all this done that I might resign myself, if not to sleep, at least alternately to the contemplation of these pictures, and the perusal of a small volume which had been found upon the pillow, and which purported to criticise and describe them.

Long—long I read—and devoutly, devotedly I gazed. I felt meantime, the voluptuous narcotic stealing its way to my brain. I felt that in its magical influence lay much of the gorgeous richness and variety of the frames—much of the ethereal hue that gleamed from the canvas—and much of the wild interest of the book which I perused. Yet this consciousness rather strengthened than impaired the delight of the illusion, while it weakened the illusion itself. Rapidly and gloriously the hours flew by, and the deep midnight came. The position of the candelabrum displeased me, and outreaching my hand with difficulty, rather than disturb my slumbering valet, I so placed it as to throw its rays more fully upon the book.

But the action produced an effect altogether unanticipated. The rays of the numerous candles (for there were many) now fell within a niche of the room which had hitherto been thrown into deep shade by one of the bed-posts. I thus saw in vivid light a picture all unnoticed before. It was the portrait of a young girl just ripened into womanhood. I glanced at the painting hurriedly, and then closed my eyes. Why I did this was not at first apparent even to my own perception. But while my lids remained thus shut, I ran over in mind my reason for so shutting them. It was an impulsive movement to gain time for thought—to make sure that my vision had not deceived me—to calm and subdue my fancy for a more sober and more certain gaze. In a very few moments I again looked fixedly at the painting.

That I now saw aright I could not and would not doubt; for the first flashing of the candles upon that canvas had seemed to dissipate the dreamy stupor which was stealing over my senses, and to startle me into waking life as if with the shock of a galvanic battery.

The portrait, I have already said, was that of a young girl. It was a mere head and shoulders, done in what is technically termed a vignette manner; much in the style of the favorite heads of Sully. The arms, the bosom and even the ends of the radiant hair, melted imperceptibly into the vague yet deep shadow which formed the back-ground of the whole. The frame was oval, richly, yet fantastically gilded and filagreed. As a work of art nothing could be more admirable than the painting itself. The loveliness of the face surpassed that of the fabulous Houri. But it could have been neither the execution of the work, nor the immortal beauty of the countenance, which had so suddenly and so vehemently moved me. Least of all could it have been that my fancy, shaken from its half-slumber, had mistaken the head for that of a living person. I saw at once that the peculiarities of the design, of the vignetting and of the frame must have instantly dispelled such idea—must have prevented even its momentary entertainment. Thinking earnestly upon these points, I remained, for some hours perhaps, half sitting, half reclining, with my vision riveted upon the portrait. At length, satisfied of the true secret of its effect, I fell back within the bed. I had found the spell of the picture in a perfect life-likeliness of expression, which at first startling, finally confounded, subdued and appalled me. I could no longer support the sad meaning smile of the half-parted lips, nor the too real lustre of the wild eye. With a deep and reverent awe I replaced the candelabrum in its former position. The cause of my deep agitation being thus shut from view, I sought eagerly the volume which discussed the paintings and their histories. Turning to the number which designated the oval portrait, I there read the vague and quaint words which follow:

“She was a maiden of rarest beauty, and not more lovely than full of glee. And evil was the hour when she saw, and loved, and wedded the painter. He, passionate, studious, austere, and having already a bride in his Art: she a maiden of rarest beauty and not more lovely than full of glee: all light and smiles and frolicksome as the young fawn: loving and cherishing all things: hating only the Art which was her rival: dreading only the pallet and brushes and other untoward instruments which deprived her of the countenance of her lover. It was thus a terrible thing for this lady to hear the painter speak of his desire to portray even his young bride. But she was humble and obedient and sat meekly for many weeks in the dark high turret-chamber where the light dripped upon the pale canvas only from overhead. But he, the painter, took glory in his work, which went on from hour to hour and from day to day. And he was a passionate, and wild and moody man, who became lost in reveries; so that he would not see that the light which fell so ghastily in that lone turret withered the health and the spirits of his bride, who pined visibly to all but him. Yet she smiled on and still on, uncomplainingly, because she saw that the painter, (who had high renown,) took a fervid and burning pleasure in his task, and wrought day and night to depict her who so loved him, yet who grew daily more dispirited and weak. And in sooth some who beheld the portrait spoke of its resemblance in low words, as of a mighty marvel and a proof not less of the power of the painter than of his deep love for her whom he depicted so surpassingly well. But at length, as the labor drew nearer to its conclusion, there were admitted none into the turret; for the painter had grown wild with the ardor of his work, and turned his visage from the canvas rarely, even to regard the countenance of his wife. And he would not see that the tints which he spread upon the canvas were drawn from the cheeks of her who sate beside him. And when many weeks had passed, and but little remained to do, save one brush upon the mouth and one tint upon the eye, the spirit of the lady again flickered up as the flame within the socket of the lamp. And then the brush was given, and then the tint was placed; and, for one moment, the painter stood entranced before the work which he had wrought; but in the next, while yet he gazed, he grew tremulous and very pallid, and aghast, and crying with a loud voice ‘This is indeed Life itself!’ turned himself suddenly round to his beloved—who was dead. The painter then added—‘But is this indeed Death?’ ”

THE MINER’S FATE.

FROM THE PORT-FOLIO OF A RAMBLING ARTIST.

A bright fresh May morning smiled upon one of the loveliest landscapes in nature, and revealed to the eye of a wandering young artist a picture of such exceeding beauty, that he found it impossible to confine his attention to his canvas sufficiently long to produce the faintest semblance of the loveliness which reigned and revelled around him.

“What a grand effect is produced on that magnificent amphitheatre of hills by the sunrise purpling their rising mist as it ascends and imperceptibly mingles with the rose-colored clouds—while its base is wrapped in the cold blue tint which the stronger rays of the sun will presently disperse. If I could catch the hue of that many-tinted mist, and throw over it the soft dreamy haze which clothes the atmosphere, I should more than rival the mighty master, Claude Lorraine—one more trial; such a scene must inspire the humblest artist.”

He re-arranged a small easel as he spoke, and proceeded to cover his pallet with the choicest and most exquisite colors; but the glories of outre mêr and carmine seemed so pale and faded before the inexpressible radiance of earth and ether, that long before he had finished laying on the dead coloring of his picture, he threw it aside in despair.

“I must complete it,” he said, “at some other time when the majesty of nature may not mock my humble efforts.” He then arose, and re-packing his paint-box, deposited it safely among the mossy rocks, and sauntered slowly onward, to enjoy at least, if he could not imitate, the enchantments of nature. And truly he might well give up his heart to the passionate love of beauty which pervaded it; for the loveliness of that quiet valley was well calculated to gratify the intense desires of a mind thirsting for images of perfection. Not only did the mountain tops and mist gleam with the golden sunlight, but every flower at his feet, every blade of grass displayed each its wealth of gem-like dew glittering with unrivalled colors.

“The plumed insects swift and free,

Like golden boats on a sunny sea,”

filled the scented air, and shed their “music of many murmurings” upon his path; and he was inclined to fancy that no new feature could add beauty to the landscape around, when a sudden turn in the winding path convinced him of his error.

He had turned his back on the semi-circular range of hills, and emerged into a tract of country much more extensive, though still very broken. Huge masses of rock salt, covered with crystals whose prismatic forms lent them a startling brilliancy, gleamed upon his sight, and the green sweep of land between was diversified by many small cottages built of the gray rock which abounded throughout the country. The narrow path bordered with vines and wild roses lured him on, until the sweet accents of a female voice broke upon his ear, and he found that his path would lead him to trespass upon the enclosure of a cottage which appeared to be one of the neatest and best arranged among them. The painter paused, and his eye, (that morning destined to agreeable surprises,) readily discovered a group without the door, which immediately called out his pencil and pocket port-folio. A very bright-eyed child had thrown his chubby little arms around his father’s neck, and seemed resolved upon detaining him from his day’s labor; while the young wife, with eyes and lips scarcely less bright than those of the child, vainly endeavored to attract the infant with the most enticing toys. At length the father succeeded in unclasping the dimpled hands, and placing the baby on the floor; but the child still endeavored to detain him by holding the skirts of his coat.

“Philip seems determined that you shall not go to-day,” said the young woman; “perhaps there is a meaning in his warning.”

“If I listened to all your signs and warnings, I should very seldom leave you,” replied the husband. “I must go and that quickly, in spite of my persevering little pet.”

“But you will come back very soon?”

“I cannot even promise that,” replied the miner; for the husband was a laborer in the extensive salt mines, whose crystallizations produce so beautiful an effect in the distance. “We have a tremendous piece of work before us to-day, and there is no telling when it will be finished.”

“Would to God it were safely over.”

“Don’t look so pale and frightened, Mary; worse jobs are done every day—but they will call me sluggard if I loiter here—so good-bye, good-bye, darlings.”

“Heaven preserve you,” responded the wife; and she turned with feelings half of dread and half of hope to the cottage door.

“Just such a morning,” muttered an old woman who sat crouching in the chimney corner—“just such a morning, bright as this,—and a black night followed the bright day—a black, black night.”

“Now the saints save us!” exclaimed the young woman: “who ever heard Dame Ursula talking away at such a rate before? As sure as fate something unusual will happen. What is it you were saying grand-dame?” she added in a louder tone, approaching the thin, withered old hag who had crept slowly toward the door-step, and seating herself there, continued to mutter and mumble half indistinct words.

“Storms follow the sunshine—storms and tempests and thick darkness.”

The anxious wife followed and sat down beside her.

“Is there any evil hanging over us? for mercy sake tell me if you know,” she asked.

“Evil, did I say Evil! I spoke of the past, not the future—I spoke of the days of youth and hope and beauty.” Then as her wandering memory gradually linked together the chain of by-gone associations, her countenance brightened, and she poured into the ear of her astonished auditor the narrative of events which had taken place nearly a century before, and were generally forgotten,—treasured only in the heart of that desolate, and decrepid old creature.

“Youth and beauty, and love I said, and you marvelled at hearing such words from my lips; no wonder, for many a year has passed since these things have been aught to me save idle dreams. But the time has been, when I too was young—loving and loved—blessing and blessed. My brother, your grandfather, and myself were left, you know, in early life as orphans in the hands of strangers; and although we had no claim on them except that of helplessness, and could only repay their kindness by our exertions, we had no reason ever to complain of harshness or ill-treatment among our kind and simple people. I was older than my brother, and as I grew up to be a tall handsome lass, the young men of the village strove which could make themselves most agreeable to the light hearted and beautiful Ursula. I know it is folly in me to talk so now, and you can scarcely believe it, but eighty years hence, if you should live so long, your cheek may be wrinkled and your eye bleared like mine, so that your laughing boy will scarcely credit the tale of your former beauty.”

“Heaven forbid.”

“And if not,” resumed the crone, “the change may be far more fearful—but where was I? Oh—a merry romping lass of eighteen, with blue eyes, fair curling locks and red ripe lips—admired by all the village—but above all the favored choice of young Albert Wessenbery. The handsomest, bravest, noblest being! I wish you could have seen him, Mary, in all his pride of vast strength, and perfection of manly beauty. Words cannot express the love with which I loved him. A lifelong loneliness has proved it. Well, as I told you, I was his choice, and consequently the envy of all my acquaintances, for no one thought of denying that Albert Wessenbery was the pride of the village. So powerful, so stately, so devoted to me,—well, well! our wedding day was fixed, and the bridesmaids appointed. A week before—yes, just seven days before our wedding was to have taken place, I bade farewell to Albert for a day only, I believed. Just such a day as this, it was—and perhaps that is the reason why the soft clear sunshine, and the sweet sounds in the air have called up all these old memories so freshly. He pressed me in his arms and bade me farewell till evening. I dreaded his going out to work that day, for there was dangerous duty to be done; but he went in spite of my entreaties, and from that hour to this, I have never seen him return. I remember but dimly what followed. A stunning shock as if an avalanche had overwhelmed me. Death to him was worse than death to me. They told me he had perished in the mine. I know not whether they spoke truly. I have known nothing clearly since that time. I remember only that the light was removed from my path, and that the blackness of madness gathered round me for a while. How long this lasted I know not—when I arose from my bed of sickness, my heart and my flesh failed me, and I was as useless and decrepid as if years had passed over my head. Since that time I have struggled on through a long life of darkness and misery, dragging on a useless and tedious existence.”

“Oh say not useless my good friend; have you not while you had strength, given to others the happiness which fate denied you?”

“My brother gave me a home in his chimney corner, and here have I lived more years than I can count, and for what? God knows—perhaps I may yet live to see Albert return. I cannot fancy him altered as I am. I cannot help hoping to see him once more as he was of old. Vain as the hope may seem to you—that hope has been the only happiness I have known since he left me—the only hope. Of what other use am I in the world? why should I live? what other use? what other hope?” So speaking and shaking her palsied head, she relapsed into her former half unconscious state, occasionally muttering words to which her young companion listened with strained attention; but she could hear no more, neither did she succeed in again arousing the old woman from her apathy.

The Artist sauntered idly onward until he reached the mines; here finding that the reflection of the noon-tide brilliancy from the crystals was painful to the eyesight, he descended into one of the deepest excavations, where he found his acquaintance of the morning, and a fellow labourer at work. The day’s work was a heavy one, for they were opening a communication between the mines, and in heaving up the massive rocks there was great danger of being buried alive beneath their crumbling weight. Such things had often happened.

“Here is a mass which requires more strength than we can furnish,” said Philip, and he shouted for help. The desired assistance arrived, and after an hour’s severe labor, the huge rock was heaved upwards. This removal disclosed a solid stratum of the salt for which they were toiling; but the attainment of the object of their labor called forth no expression of pleasure from the beholders, for the attention of every one was riveted upon a strange and unlooked for apparition. Extended upon this singular couch, lay the form of a young man, apparently not more than twenty years of age; his limbs were exquisitely moulded, and he looked as if but yesterday he had been hushed in the deep sleep of death. It was evident to the minds of all, that many years must have elapsed since the being they had thus disinterred, had been overwhelmed with destruction in attempting to move that massive weight; for many years had passed since that portion of the mine had been worked upon. But was his destruction instantaneous? or did he linger on, day after day, in vain hope for the help which came not? how long had that crystalized rock been his mausoleum? who was he? where were his kindred? Here was a wide field for conjecture. Could no one remember that form which might have passed for a sculptured image of Antinous? But stranger than all this, the body seemed utterly untouched by the hand of time. The very pliability of the flesh remained! Destruction had passed harmlessly by that glorious form, and decomposition had not come near it. There he lay—he, whose existence none could remember—life-like, and beautiful—embalmed as it were in the solid rock. The sinewy, and rounded limbs told of the strength and beauty which had once been theirs, and the long black hair curled wildly over the clay cold face, and nerveless shoulders. He was in his ordinary mining dress, and by his spade and pickaxe beside him, gave evidence of his final and fatal occupation. The body was removed, and laid upon the thick green sward for further inspection, and perhaps recognition. The news spread rapidly, and the inhabitants quickly crowded around. None recollected him, although some of the oldest among them told stories of such an accident which had happened when they were little children; but none could remember the circumstances. After awhile a universal murmur broke from the crowd, for they beheld their oldest villager, Dame Ursula, approach with tottering and unsteady steps, leaning on the arm of a handsome young female. Not the exhumation of the life-like corpse itself, produced greater sensation among them, than the appearance of the living spectre—for such the old woman appeared, having never left her home for more than twenty years.

“Jesu, Maria—the Saints save us,” were echoed around her as the crowd respectfully made room for her to advance. She passed on slowly, and with difficulty, until she reached the stiff white figure of the dead miner. Then throwing herself upon the grass beside him, she passed her withered long fingers through his hair, and pressed it back from the pale brow.

“It is he, it is he—Albert Wessenbery,” she murmured; “and it was for this I have been spared through long years of loneliness, and wretchedness—long, long years—I knew not why I lived. It was for this, for this: that I might see him once more, once more in all his unearthly beauty, in his unmatched perfection: that I might see, and know that time has not marred, nor decay changed, nor the worm defiled the being I have idolized for nearly a century. Spared too to rejoice that my own Albert cannot behold the change which time, and life have wrought in a form he once loved so well. To him these withered arms and lips are welcome as if they yet retained all their former loveliness. He will not reject his early love for her age, and sickness, and unsightlessness. To him therefore I devote the remainder of my existence. Here will I fulfil the vows of love and constancy plighted in the spring time of life.”

She bent her head as she spoke and imprinted with bloodless lips a kiss upon his; her white hair streamed down, and mingled with his raven tresses, her long skinny fingers warm with life, pressed the cold marble hand of the dead! Strange union of youth and age—beauty and deformity—life and death! Seven days afterwards they were buried in the same grave, the superannuated woman, and her youthful lover. The constancy of a lifetime was rewarded, for she was permitted to rest her aged and hoary head, upon the manly, and unaltered breast of him she had loved so long and so well. Turf and flowers sprung up as greenly and freely above their grave as if they had been always young, and beautiful, and happy. Many a garland of young flowers, and the more lasting wreaths of the amaranth were hung upon that grave; and the names of Ursula and Albert, rudely sculptured on the grey stone which covered them, formed their only obituary, save the memory which survives in the hearts of the villagers.

BIRTH OF FREEDOM.

———

BY WM. WALLACE, AUTHOR OF “JERUSALEM,” “STAR LYRA,” ETC.

———

Yes, Freedom! Tyrants date thy splendid birth

With those uprisings in the bloody Past,

When all the lion-hearted of the earth

Unfurl’d their rebel-banners to the blast,

And from their limbs the dungeon-fetter cast;

But thou, Oh, idol of the brave! was’t born,

In full-grown majesty, upon that morn

When all the stars together sang, and forms

Of wondrous beauty, suns of dazzling light

Flamed from the bosom of those primal storms

Which lashed the rivers of chaotic night:

And some would drive thee from our gloomy sod;

Vainly they war with such blasphemous might;

Thy birth-place, Freedom! was the heart of God.

RECOLLECTIONS OF WEST POINT.

———

BY MISS LESLIE.

———

PART THE FIRST.

Among the numerous strangers that stop at West Point, in ascending or in coming down the Hudson, there are comparatively few who allow themselves sufficient time to become acquainted with even the half that is worthy of note, in that extraordinary place—giving but one day, or perhaps only a few hours, to a visit which ought at least to comprise a whole week. A large proportion of these travellers, after they have hurried through the rooms of the academy, walked round the camp, witnessed the parade, heard the band, or perhaps accomplished a hasty survey of the ruins of Fort Putnam, seem to believe that they are consequently familiar with all that both nature and art have done for one of the most beautiful and interesting spots on the American continent.

And beautiful indeed it is, from its romantic situation in the midst of the highlands, looking directly down on one of the finest rivers in the world—and from its picturesque combinations of mountain, valley and plain; woodland, rock, and water—scenery to which no painter has ever yet done justice. And how intensely interesting are its associations with the history of our revolutionary contest—when West Point commanded the passes of the highlands—at once opposing a barrier to the descent of the enemy from the lake country and to their ascent from the ocean. Also amid these hills lay the army of Washington, at the time it was so providentially saved by the discovery of Arnold’s treason.

And now, “when the storm of war is gone,” and the Gibraltar of America finds no farther occasion for its mountain fortresses, it has become the nucleus from whence the military science of our country radiates to its utmost boundaries; the nursery of a body of officers whose cultivated minds, polished manners, and high tone of moral feeling, have rendered them deservedly popular with their compatriots—also eliciting a favourable testimony even from the British tourists.

It is a common and, in most instances, a true remark, that first impressions are lasting: at least with regard to external objects. My own first impressions of West Point were received on a lovely summer evening that succeeded a stormy day. I had left the city of New York with my brother, at nine o’clock in the morning, in the slow and unpopular Richmond; the only boat that went up the river on that day, and the worst of the three steam-vessels which at that time comprised the establishment of what is now termed the old North River Company.

I need not say that it was during the period of the charter they had obtained for the exclusive steam-navigation of the Hudson. In those days, a voyage from New York to Albany frequently consumed twenty-four hours, and the fare was ten dollars.

I had anticipated the most extatic delight from my first view of the grand and romantic scenery of this noble river. But very soon after we left the city a heavy rain came on, and seemed to have set in for the whole day. I had recently recovered from a long illness, and could not venture to remain on the wet deck, even under the screen of an umbrella. The canvass awning was so perforated with holes from the chimney-sparks, that it afforded about as much shelter as a large sieve. There was no upper cabin, and I reluctantly compelled myself to quit admiring the Palisade Rocks and descend to the apartment appropriated to the ladies. It was very crowded and perfectly close. The berths were all occupied by females lying down in their clothes, and trying to sleep away the tedious hours. The numerous children were uncomfortable, fretful, and troublesome, as most children are when they are “cabin’d, crib’d, confin’d.” Seats were so scarce (when were they otherwise in a summer steam-boat) that many of us were glad to place ourselves on the wooden edges of the lower berths. In this extreme I could not agree with the old adage that “it is as cheap sitting as standing:” for if cheapness means convenience or agreeableness, as is generally supposed, I found it quite as convenient, and rather more agreeable, to stand leaning against something, than to sit on the perpendicular edge of a board. We had not even the pleasure of regaling our eyes with the handsome fittings-up that now when there is no monopoly and great rivalry, are deemed indispensable to the reputation of an American steam-boat. The old Richmond was furnished very plainly, alias meanly. Her cabins had common ingrain carpets of the ugliest possible patterns, pine tables painted red, and curtains of coarse dark calico. By the by, reader, never go to a boarding-house that professes a plain table; you will be almost sure to find it a mean one. Also, never engage a plain cook—you will be almost sure to find her no cook at all.

We were nearly all day in the boat, and it rained incessantly. It was very tantalizing on this, my first voyage up the Hudson, to obtain only an occasional glimpse of its beautiful shores through the small cabin windows, which windows were always monopolized by nurse-maids, seated on the transom with their babies; the babies taking no interest in the scenery, and their nurses still less.

When we came into the highlands, the storm had increased, and my first view of them was caught by ever-interrupted glances through a few inches of window-pane, and by peeping over the head of a girl whose eyes were all the time wandering among the people in the interior of the cabin. These sublime mountains loomed green and dimly through the rain-mist that veiled their rocky sides, and their towering heads were lost in the volumes of fantastic clouds that rolled around them. But it proved what is called the clearing up shower; and just as we were rounding that low projection of bare rock that runs far out into the river, and forms the extreme point of West Point, the clouds began to part in the zenith, and the blue sky appeared between them, and the sun suddenly broke out lighting up the western sides of the hills and pouring his full effulgence on the river. We landed just as the evening parade was about to commence, and I saw it from the front windows of an apartment that commanded a full view. It was a beautiful scene; on this spacious and level plain, elevated about a hundred and sixty feet above the river, which bounds it on the north and east, while on the south and west it is hemmed in by the mountains that rise directly from it. The numerous windows of the barracks were sparkling and burnishing in the setting sun that was beaming out below the retiring clouds, throwing a rosy tint on the white tents of the camp, and glittering on the bayonets of the long line of cadets drawn up for the exercise that, at a military post always concludes the day. The band was playing delightfully, and the effect of the whole was very striking at the moment when the drums rolled, the evening gun went off, the flag came down, and the officers all drew their swords and advanced to the front.

Many circumstances contributed to render my first visit to West Point peculiarly pleasant. I had never in my life spent three weeks so agreeably. Subsequently, I resided there nearly two years in the family of my brother. I have enjoyed the grand and lovely scenery of West Point under all the various aspects of the seasons. I have been there when the late, but rapid spring, with its balmy breathings, and its soft sun-light, suddenly awakens the long-slumbering vegetation of these high and northerly regions, when you can almost see the forming of the buds and their bursting into leaf; while patches of the last snow yet linger here and there about the cavities of the rocks, and in the hollows that lie among the roots of the trees, “on their cold and winter-shaded side.” At the same time, in the warmer recesses of the forests, the early flowers of the hepatica and the violet are finding their way up amid the dead leaves which the wild blasts of November have strewed thickly over the ground.

These mountains are wooded from the base to the summit, (except where a block of granite looks out from amid the trees,) and in the month of May they are variegated with all those countless and exquisite shades of green, that can only emanate from the hand of that Great Painter that colored the Universe. While some of these inimitable tints are dark almost to blackness, and some are of the richest olive, others present in endless variety, the numerous gradations of deep-green, blue-green, grass-green, apple-green, pea-green, and yellow-green; the catalpa and the locust, with their clusters of pencilled blossoms, and the dogwood with its milk-white flowers, supplying the bright lights of the picture. Then, in looking up the river, the long perspective is closed at the utmost verge of the horizon by the far-off Taghcanoke mountains: the snows that still rest on their cold and lonely summits extending in streaks of whiteness half-way down their dim blue sides.

To a stranger at West Point the commencement of a summer’s day has many circumstances of novelty and excitement that are almost lost upon those to whom custom has rendered them familiar. With the earliest blush of dawn, and at the third tap of the drum, the morning gun goes off, and when the wind is in a certain direction, I have heard its loud booming sound five times repeated by the mountain echoes, “fainter and fainter still”—but always distinctly audible. At the same moment the flag is run up, and flings out to the early breeze its waving folds of stars and stripes denoting that the place is United States’ ground, a military post, and under martial law. These ceremonies are immediately succeeded by the drums and fifes commencing the delightful réveillée, clear, sweet and exhilarating—the first notes of which seem so distinctly to express the words,

“The lark is up, the morn is gay,

The drums now beat the réveillée.”

followed by a medley of popular airs, each one concluding like a rondo, with—“The lark is up,” &c.

It is beautiful on a soft summer morning to look out upon these forest-cinctured mountains, when there has been a rain during the night, and to see the misty clouds veiling their summits and rolling off from their sides; breaking, as the sun ascends, into thin white wreaths that creep slowly about the glens, and gradually losing all distinctness of form and blending with the blue of ether. More beautiful still is the broad expanse of the Hudson, glittering with the golden sun-light, and reflecting the clear cerulean of the sky; while the white-sailed sloops seem to slumber on the calm surface of the water, as each “floats double, sloop and shadow,” and near the shore the dark mountains and the rocky precipices cast their deep masses of shade upon the liquid mirror below.

I was once at West Point when the dawn of our national anniversary was ushered in by the roar of artillery from amid the ruins of Fort Putnam, the guns having been previously conveyed up the mountain for that purpose. There is a history belonging to these guns. They were originally French; and are engraved with the name of the foundry at which they were cast; bearing also the three fleur de lis of the ancien regime, the cypher of Louis the Fourteenth, (who at that time, filled the throne of France) and the celebrated motto which he ordered to be inscribed on all his cannon—“Ultimo ratio regum.” The guns in question were sent to Quebec, and were taken by the English on the heights of Abraham, in that eventful battle, when both commanders fell in the same hour that transferred the dominion of Canada from France to England. Belonging afterwards to the army of Burgoyne, they became the property of America on the surrender at Saratoga, and finally were presented by Congress to the Military Academy. At the cadets annual ball I have seen these guns decorated with wreaths of laurel, and arranged as ornaments along a covered promenade, lighted up with lamps in front of the ball-room.

To the dwellers on the plain below, the effect on the aforesaid fourth of July was indescribably fine; the guns thundering and echoing in a region so far above us, their gleams of fire flashing out amid the clouds of white smoke that rolled their eddying volumes round the old dismantled ramparts. The salute was followed by a full burst of martial harmony from the band, who had also gone up into the ruins; all playing so admirably and in such perfect unison, that the whole of their various instruments sounded like one alone—but like one whose grand and exquisite tones seemed scarcely to belong to earth. The band had their fourth of July dinner within the dilapidated recesses of the moss-grown fortress, and frequently during the day, we heard their music. Sometimes the soft sweet warblings of the octave flute rose alone upon the air; then the clear melodious tones of Willis’s bugle seemed to “lap the soul in Elysium;” then came the clarionets deepened by the trombone; and finally the loud and thrilling notes of the bass-drum struck grandly in, and swelled the full tide of sound till the rocks seemed to tremble with its reverberations. Music, like painting, has its lights and shadows.

Nothing can be more lovely than the scenery about West Point when lighted up by the beams of the summer moon. While there, I was once on a water party, in a delightful evening towards the close of the “leafy month of June.” The gentlemen attached to the military academy had made arrangements for taking the ladies on a moonlight voyage through the highlands, in the boats belonging to the post. Of these boats I think there were eight. The first and largest was appropriated to the band—in the others followed the professors connected with the institution, the officers, and the ladies—with soldiers as oarsmen. We were rowed to the upper extremity of the highlands, beyond Butter Hill which, notwithstanding its homely name, is a magnificent mountain with a gradual slope on the land-side, but presenting to the water a perpendicular precipice in height sixteen hundred feet. In the clefts of this lofty rock tradition has asserted that the pirate Blackbeard deposited portions of his treasure more than a century ago. It is not many years since a gentleman who believed the story, was killed by losing his hold, and falling down backwards upon the stones below, in a desperate attempt to scale the precipice in quest of the rover’s gold.

As we embarked on our aquatic excursion “the moon arose curtained in clouds which her beams gradually dispelled.” When she climbed above them, as they “turned forth their silver linings to the night,” and her rays touched the top of the eastern hills, while their dark sides reposed in shadow, I thought of a song in the Carnival of Venice.

“And while the moon shines on the stream,

And while soft music breathes around,

The feathering oar returns the gleam

And dips in concert to the sound.”

Having ascended beyond the inner highlands, our boats were put about. The men resting on their oars we floated down with the tide nearly as far as the Dunderberg, and never did this picturesque and romantic region look more lovely.

In the course of our little voyage several steam-boats passed us: and all of them slackened their steam awhile, for the purpose of remaining longer in our vicinity that the passengers might enjoy the music. One of these boats, in stopping to hear us, lay directly on the broad line of moonlight that was dancing and glittering on the water, the red glare of her lanterns strangely mingling with the golden radiance beneath. Our band was just then playing the Hunter’s Chorus, that ever-charming composition which justly merits its universal popularity in every part of the world where music is known, and which would alone have been sufficient to entitle Weber to his tomb in Westminster Abbey.

Nothing can be finer than the atmospheric phenomena of these elevated regions. I remember one afternoon, when the sun was breaking out on the close of a summer shower, we seemed to find ourselves in the midst of an immense rain-bow which appeared to have descended upon the plain. The camp, the south barracks, the trees, and the eastern hills beyond the river were all brightly colored with its varied and beautiful tints, and looked as if seen through an immense prism.

A thunder storm in these mountains is sublime beyond all that imagination can conceive. In looking up the river, while the sun is yet shining brightly, and the sky is blue above our heads, we see a dark cloud far off in the direction of Newburgh, whose white houses stand out in strong relief against the deep gloom that has gathered beyond; the coming vapor rises and spreads till it appears behind the Crow’s Nest, casting its deep shade upon the tops of the mountains, while on their sides still linger the last gleams of sunshine. As the clouds accumulate, and unite their forces, the darkness descends upon the river, whose blackening surface is seen ruffled with spots of white foam; the zig-zag lightning begins to quiver up from the gloom behind the hills; and then is heard the low murmur of the distant thunder; every flash becoming brighter, every peal sounding louder and nearer. At length, the wind rises, and the whole tempest rushes rapidly on. The trees writhe and bend to their roots, and are soon covered with the circling dust of the whirl-wind. The lightning glares out in one vast sheet, “flashing intolerable day” upon the night-like darkness that shrouds the river and its shores. At the same instant, the loud crash of the thunder rattles directly over head, and it continues throughout the storm its long and incessant roll, the echoes of one peal not subsiding before those of another have commenced. The lightning glances on the bayonets of the centinels that “walk their lonely rounds” on the skirts of the camp; and frequently the tents are blown over by the violence of the gust, and lie prostrate on the wet grass. These terrific thunder-claps seem to shake the everlasting hills; the firm-set granite buildings of the institution trembling to their foundations. Often the tremendous power delegated to “the volleying bolt of heaven” is attested by a riven and blasted tree, split in a moment from its topmost spray down to its roots in the earth; while, at the same instant, every leaf of its green and flourishing foliage becomes dead and yellow, the birds that built their nests among its branches lying lifeless at its foot.

I recommend to all visiters at the West Point hotel not to neglect ascending to the belvidere or skylight room on the top of that building. The view from thence is so vast and so magnificent that it rarely fails to call forth exclamations of delighted astonishment; particularly when autumn has colored the woods with its glowing and varied tints of scarlet, crimson, and purple, and with every shade of brown and yellow from the richest to the palest—such tints as, at this season, are to be found only in the foliage of America, and are most beautiful when seen through the gauzy haze of the Indian summer—that farewell smile of the departing year. Then the dilated disk of the sun looks round and red through its thin misty veil; the calm and slumbering river reflects a sky of the mildest blue; and near the shores its waters glow with the inverted beauties of the many-colored woods and hills. If viewed at evening, the splendor of the picture is increased by the glories of an autumnal sunset, when the clouds (such as are only seen in mountainous regions) assume the grandest forms and the most gorgeous hues.

Often after the last lingering beam has faded in the west, and all the stars have come out in the deep blue heaven, a dark mist appears behind the hills in the north, and from its dun recesses arise the ever-changing corruscations of the mysterious aurora borealis. Sometimes, its broad rays extend upwards nearly to the zenith, and diffuse a cold strange light upon the river and its western banks, rendering perfectly distinct the sloops on the water, and the trees and rocks on the shore. In the houses on the bank, the front-rooms are at times so well lighted by this incomprehensible phenomenon, that a newspaper may be read after the lamps or candles have been removed from the apartment. Then, perhaps in a few minutes, “the north’s dancing streamers relinquished their fire,” and faded dimly away into darkness. Suddenly they would again revive, darting upwards in renewed brightness their far-spreading rays, tinted with crimson and purple, and sometimes even with green and blue.

In a chamber that I once occupied at West Point there was a small knot-hole in the upper part of one of the shutters, by means of which, in cold weather, when the windows were closed fast, and the room consequently darkened, I frequently at early morning saw as in a camera obscura, a landscape depicted on the white wall above the mantel-piece. So that before I was up myself, I could observe the first gleams of the dawnlight, and the changing colors of the clouds as they brightened upon the blue sky, lending their glories to the hills beyond the river: and the first rays of the sun, when they “fired the proud tops of the eastern pines.” In this way, without opening the shutters to look out, I could always tell whether the morning was clear or cloudy.

The winter at West Point is long and cold; and (before the days of rail roads,) when the river was once closed, the ice fast, and the boats laid up for the season, the inhabitants of this insulated spot seemed nearly shut out from all communication with the rest of the world; and it may easily be guessed what interest was attached to the mails, after the difficulties of transportation caused them to arrive irregularly. We were very soon convinced of the fact that

“When cold and raw the wind doth blow

Bleak in the morning early,

When all the hills are cover’d with snow

Then it is winter fairly.”

I have known the snow so deep and so drifted, as to block up the parlor windows of the house we then inhabited, precluding all possibility of opening the shutters; and as to clear it away was no trifling task, we were more than once obliged to breakfast by candle-light at eight o’clock.

In the “blue serene” of the clear and intensely cold mornings, which usually succeeded a deep fall of snow, I have seen the whole atmosphere glittering with minute particles of ice: to breathe which must, in delicate lungs, have caused a sensation similar to laceration with a sharp knife. No one afflicted with pulmonary disease should live at West Point.

The scenery, in its winter aspect, looked somewhat like a panorama done in Indian ink, or rather like a great etching: except that the sky formed a blue background to the snowy mountains, on which the leafless branches of the denuded forest seemed pencilled in black and gray. We had our winter walks too: and I never felt a more pleasant glow from exercise than in climbing Mount Independence, through the snow, to visit Fort Putnam. In addition to the ordinary steepness of the road, it was now in many places rendered slippery by broad sheets of ice, beneath which we saw the living waters of a mountain brook gliding and murmuring along under their glassy coating. The snow had drifted high among the recesses of the old fortress, and lay white and thick along the broken and roofless edges of its dark gray walls, while here and there, amid the desolation, lingered the evergreen of a lonely cedar. Long bright icicles suspended their transparent and glittering fringes from the arches of the dismantled casements, whose entrances were now even less accessible than usual, being blocked up with mounds of snow that covered the heaps of fallen stones.

One of our favorite winter walks was to the cascade; and on entering the close woods that led thither, we always felt a sensible access of warmth in the atmosphere, which was very agreeable when compared to the unsheltered bleakness of the plain. In looking down from the heights, through the steeps of the forest, we saw glimpses of the river, as it lay far below us; its solid waters now of a bluish-white, shining beneath the wintry sun. Yet the cascade still poured its resistless torrent freely among the snow-covered rocks, roaring, frothing, and pitching from ledge to ledge. An old pine tree had thrown itself horizontally across the upper fall, its dark green foliage almost touching the water, and its rough trunk forming a bridge for the passage of the minks, foxes, ground squirrels, and other petty denizens of the wild. As the foaming torrent threw up its misty spray, this tree became incrusted with ice of the most brilliant transparency; looking like an immense chandelier, with multitudes of long crystal drops depending from its feathery branches.

The last winter I spent at West Point a funeral took place in the middle of December. It was that of a gentleman attached to the institution, and he died after a long and painful illness. The river had closed at a very early period, and the little world of West Point was locked up in ice and snow. Three o’clock was the time appointed for the melancholy procession to take up its line of march; the coffin, covered with a pall, having been previously carried into the chapel, and the funeral service performed over it by the chaplain.

It was a clear, cold afternoon, and the sun was already sinking behind the mountains, whose giant shadows, magnificently colored with crimson and purple, were projected far forward upon the frozen snow that covered the plain; as a range of painted windows cast down their glowing tints upon a white marble pavement.

When the funeral began to move from the chapel, the band (preceding the coffin) commenced one of the mournful airs that are usually appropriated to “the march of death.” The muffled drums were struck only at long intervals, and their heavy notes were deadened still more by the chillness of the atmosphere; while Willis’s bugle sounded almost like music from the world of spirits. Next came the soldiers, then the cadets, afterwards the officers, and lastly the commandant; all walking with their arms inverted. I saw the sad and lonely procession moving slowly through the snow, and directing its course to the cemetery, which is about a mile from the plain. Shaded with ancient trees, the grave yard occupies the summit of a promontory that impends above the river; and the Cadet’s Monument crowned by its military trophy in white marble, forms one of the land marks of the shore. I heard (and it always seems to me the most affecting part of the ceremonial) the volley which was fired over the grave, after that cold and narrow cell had been covered in with clods of frozen earth mingled with snow.

A very extraordinary circumstance connected with military funerals is the custom, that when all is over, and the procession is returning with recovered arms, and marching in quick time, the music always performs a lively air; frequently one that is designated in the army as, “So went the merry man home to his grave.” This revolting practice is said to have originated in the same principle that is set forth in the commencing lines of the well-known song, said to have been sung by General Wolfe at his supper table on the night before the battle in which he was killed:

“Why, soldiers why,

Should we be melancholy boys

Whose business ’tis to die.”

The horrors of every war are, and must be so terrible, that its practice admits of no palliation, except when the struggle is in defence of our native land. How ought we then to rejoice that in this our own favored country, no hecatombs of human victims can be immolated to swell the pride, to gratify the ambition, or to feed the rapacity of a few of their fellow men. Surely the people of another century will regard with amazement the tales of blood and carnage that defile the pages of history. They will wonder that rational beings could be found who were willing to engage in these atrocious contests, undertaken “for the glory of heroes, the splendor of thrones.” Where are now the Buonapartes and the Bourbons, for whose sake forty thousand lives were destroyed in the dreadful day of Waterloo, “on that tremendous harvest field where death swung the scythe.”

May we not hope that the war-times will pass away with the king-times.

(To be concluded.)

FRAGMENT.

———

BY ALBERT PIKE.

———

We are all mariners on this sea of life;

And they who climb above us up the shrouds,

Have only, in their over-topping place,

Gained a more dangerous station, and foothold

More insecure. The wind that passeth over

And harmeth not the humble crowd below,

Whistles amid the shrouds, and shaketh down

These overweening climbers of the ocean,

Into the great gigantic vase of death.

DREAMS OF THE LAND AND SEA.

A NIGHT SCENE AT SEA.

———

BY DR. REYNELL COATES.

———

Oh night,

And storm, and darkness, ye are wonderous strong,

Yet lovely in your strength—as is the light

Of a dark eye in woman!——

Byron.

But few among those who constitute the educated portion of society on shore, enjoy much opportunity of feeling the grandeur,—the awful variety of night. Women are necessarily debarred from the privilege of partaking freely of its mysterious but ennobling influence by the restraints unfortunately requisite for their protection; and, in order to reap the full advantage of such communion, we must be alone with the queen of the ebon wand and starry diadem. As for those of the bolder sex,—by them, the hours of shade are usually devoted to study, pleasure, or dissipation, and only the few possessing the poetic temperament become familiar with her changeful moods.

But, on the ocean, the closeness of the cabin drives the novice frequently on deck, even in stormy weather and at unseasonable hours; and when once this compulsory introduction has been effected, it is surprising how rapidly the traveller, of either sex, becomes enamored of solitude and night—of starlight and the storm.

The changes in the heavens,—and the waters too—are quite as numerous and far more impressive by night than by day.—There is no sameness in the sea for those who are blest with capacity to feel the beauties of Nature.

Let us lounge away an hour of this lovely evening here, by the companion-way. We are between the trades, and time would hang heavily on our hands but for the baffling winds and tempting cats-paws that keep us perpetually on the alert to gain or save a mile of southing.[2] At present, we are suffering all the tedium of a calm. How dark!—How absolutely black the sky appears, contrasted with the brightness of a tropical moon! And yon dazzling star, waving its long line of reflected rays athwart the glassy billows, rivalling the broad glare of the moonlight!—What diamond ever equalled it in lustre, or surpassed it in variety of hues, as its ray changes from red to yellow, and from yellow to the most delicate blue?

The sails are flapping against the mast and the ship rolls so gently that one might well suppose no gale had ever ruffled this smooth summer ocean. To see the sailors lolling on the watch, the observer would infer they lead the idlest lives that mortals could enjoy; but alas! such moments are like angel visits with the crew. Poor fellows! How rich to them is the delight of a single hour of freedom spent in spinning their “tough yarns” under the lea of the long-boat, in singing or in music! That clarionet is admirably played, for rough and tarry fingers:—and how softly the notes float on the damp night air! The mate, in his impatience, is whistling for a wind; and that “old salt,” in whom many years of service have implanted deeply all the superstitions of his class, is muttering to himself with discontented glances, “You’ll have a cap-full, and more than you want of it before long,—and in the wrong quarter too.—I never knew any good to come of this whistling for wind.”

And, in truth, to judge from appearances, the prophecy is likely, in this case, to be fulfilled. Already the moon begins to be encircled by a wide halo of vapor. It is almost imperceptible at present; but, even while we speak, it gathers, and thickens, and seems to become more palpable. Now it assumes the faint tints of the lunar rain-bow; and all around a silvery veil is falling over the face of the heavens.

Slight fleeces of denser mist are collecting in columns and squadrons across the sky, giving it a mottled aspect. They are still too thin materially to check the full-flooding of the moonlight; but, as they gradually enlarge themselves, a slow, gliding motion is perceived among them. They are wafted gently southward; but the breeze—if breeze there be to-night—will come from the opposite quarter; for the higher and lower currents of our atmosphere are almost invariably found thus at variance with each other. The signs of the weather augur nothing favorable to our success in speedily reaching the southern trades.

Mark! How the broad glare of the moon-beams on the water fades away as the vapors in the upper air increase in density! The starlight reflection has disappeared; and the bright little orb from which it was derived, still struggling hard to make itself conspicuous, shines on with fitful ray.—And now, it is extinct.—Even the waters have lost their azure hue, and all things above and below are rapidly becoming gray.

The swell is momentarily rising, though you discover no cause for the change. Though we feel not a puff of wind the sails flap less heavily against the mast, and occasionally they are buoyed up and bellied out for many seconds, as if lifted by the breath of some unseen spirit.

Listen to the voice of the waves!—For the sea has a voice as well as the winds—not only where it speaks in thunders, booming upon the level beach, or roars among the time-worn rocks of an iron-bound coast, but far off in its loneliness, also, where no barrier opposes its will. Who knows not the mild tone of the breeze of spring from the melancholy moan of the autumnal gale?—As different is the dull plash of the lazy billow in a settled calm from the threatening sound that precedes a storm.

But the steward is ringing his supper-bell. Let us go below, and if I mistake not, you will find all nature dressed in another garb when we return on deck.

An hour has passed,—and what a change!—The ship close hauled on a wind, no longer rolls listlessly over the swell; but, laboring slowly up each coming wave, she staggers and shivers from stem to stern, as the crest of the watery mountain dashes against the weather bow,—then, rushing down into the trough of the sea and plunging deep into the succeeding billow, she strains every shroud and back-stay with the sudden jerk of the masts, and sends a broad sheet of crackling foam to leeward from beneath the bows.

How different is this disagreeable motion from that which we enjoy when the wind is on the beam or the quarter!—Then, we glide gently over the sea-hills, and every wave seems playfully bent on urging us forward:—Now, we are opposed unceasingly by wind and swell, and must contest laboriously each foot of the battle-ground, till the strength of our enemies is exhausted—conscious the while, that every league we loose in this strange, fitful region, may cost us a week’s delay in the recovery.

This is “a young gale” that bids fair to prove precocious; for it is rapidly advancing towards maturity. But it cannot last. Nothing but a calm displays much tendency to permanence between the trades.

The heavens are dark as midnight:—no star or planet penetrates the gloom with a friendly ray:—yet the color of the overhanging vault is by no means uniform. Broad tracts or patches of intense obscurity cover the chief part of the field of view; but, at intervals, you may perceive long, moving, dusky lines dividing these heavy masses, made visible by a strange and unaccountable half illumination. As they sweep hurriedly by, on their northward course, seemingly almost within reach from the mast head, we are made painfully conscious that the wings of the tempest are hovering over us in dangerous proximity.

Except the lamps in the binnacle, there is no obvious source of light above or around us: yet the outlines of the vessel, with all the labyrinth of spars and rigging, are dimly traceable in the murky air. Whence do we derive this power of vision? you will naturally inquire.—A glance at the surface of the water will explain it.

Every wave, as it combs and breaks, bears on its summit a high crest of foam, visible at a great distance by its own moonlight, or soft silvery radiation. Each little ripple carries its tiny lantern. Wherever the sea is disturbed by the motion of the vessel, and especially at the bow, where the waters are rudely disparted, or in the wake, where they rush together violently as she shoots along, a gentle, milky light is broadly diffused; and here and there a brilliant spark is seen beneath the surface shining distinct and permanent, like a star submerged, or gleaming and disappearing alternately, like the fire-flies of June.

The phosphorescence of the sea is unusually feeble at present, but it is sufficient to prevent a total darkness, and by its aid we trace the dim forms of surrounding objects, while a slight reflection from the clouds betrays the threatening aspect of the weather.

Do you observe those singular luminous appearances resembling masses of pale fire, or torch lights, hurrying from place to place, turning and meandering in all directions, some feet beneath the waves, like comets liberated from their proper spheres, and wandering without rule in the abyss of waters? They are produced by fish that are playing about the vessel, and were we adepts in the sport we might chance to strike one with the grains by the glare of his own torch. But this requires the skill and long experience of many voyages. To strike a fish by day is difficult enough; for, even then, he is not to be found where he appears. When you look obliquely from the vessel’s side at any object in the water, refraction changes its apparent place to a much greater distance than the real one, and brings the image nearer to the surface. Success in reaching such an object requires your aim to be directed towards a point considerably below the spot at which your game is seen. At night the difficulty is much enhanced;—for it is not the fish itself that emits the light. The agitation produced by his rapid motions awakens the thousands of luminous animalcules swarming in every cubic foot of water, and, as they fire their little tapers in succession, they fall into the rear, while the fish darts onward under cover of the obscurity, leaving a brilliant wake which serves but to deceive, or sometimes to guide, his enemies, and to attract his prey.

But hark!—How the wind howls through the shrouds and whistles around the slender rigging!—The gale increases, and another change comes over the night scene. Do you observe how pitchy the gloom has grown to windward?—All traces of the clouds in that direction are lost.—Ha!—A flash of lightning!—Here it comes in earnest!—The pouring rain obscures even the phosphoric glimmering of the waves, and now we have “night and storm and darkness,” in all their terrible beauty! Who dares attempt to paint the scene in words!—On every hand,—above—around—within—all is confusion! The crew spring to their stations, while the loud command and the scarce audible response are mingled with the dash of waves, the roar of the blast, and the creaking of the wracked timbers in one discordant, unintelligible burst of sound.

You stand, or rather hang by the mizzen shrouds, the centre of an invisible world where the maddened elements and hardy men contend for life or conquest. You hear them, but you see them not,—save when the electric flash tinges sea and cloud with momentary brilliance. Your eye detects the foot of the nearest mast, but you endeavor in vain to trace the tall spar upwards towards the lofty perch of those brave fellows on the yard, whose shrill voices—heard as if from a mile in the distance, in answer to the trumpet of the captain,—just reach the ear amid the din of a thousand unearthly voices, and add to the wizard wildness of the scene.

The storm swells loud and more loudly; but the yielding ship has risen from the first awful impression of its force and now careers furiously before it. The brailed but unfurled topsails flap with a dull and hollow thunder, as they whirl and rebound under the restraint of the clue-lines and the iron hands of the desperate crew. See that ghastly ball of purple flame leaping from spar to spar, like the visible spirit of the tempest![3]—Now it is on the foremast head,—now it glares on the bowsprit,—and again, it springs to the mainyard and flashes full in the face of you startled reefer, casting the hue of death over his boyish features, rendered clearly visible for a moment in the demon torchlight.

The first flurry of the squall is passed;—we are again on a wind!—but still wave follows wave, rolling on with an angry roar;—and each in turn, as it reaches the vessel, strikes the bow with a resounding crash. Every plank in the firmly-bolted hull trembles beneath the blow, while the billow sweeps off under the lea, hissing and frothing in baffled rage to find the gallant bark invulnerable to its power.—Ever and anon the vivid lightning gilds the wide circle of a boiling sea, covered with broad streaks of foam driven onward for miles in narrow belts before the wind, while the sharp, sudden thunder follows on the instant, with a single detonation, like the discharge of an enormous cannon. Here are no hills and valleys to awake the long reverberating echoes—no solid earth to fling back the war-note of the storm in proud defiance to the clouds!

The binnacle lamps are shining on a portion of the quarter-deck, and light up the form of the helmsman at the wheel. Firm and unmoved amid the elemental jar, he stands like a guardian spirit in the centre of an illuminated sphere, contrasted so strongly with the palpable darkness around, that the imponderable air itself is made to appear material and tangible. On him depends our fate. One error!—one instance of momentary neglect, and the mountain swell might overtop our oaken bulwarks, leaving us a shattered and unmanagable wreck upon the desert waste of waters!

But listen!—what mean those indescribable sounds making themselves audible at intervals above the roar of the gale? Look out into the gloom, and strive to penetrate the mingled rain and spray!

Do you not see from time to time, those undefined and monstrous shapes,—blacker than night itself,—rising from the deep and giving utterance to noises like the puff of a steam engine combined with the snorting of some mammoth beast? Even here, while winds and waves are raging—in this chaos of air and ocean, where the barriers of heaven and earth seem broken down, and spray and foam—the sea—the rain—the clouds—are whirled together in one wide mass of inextricable confusion—even here, there are beings whose joy is in the tempest, sporting their ungainly gambols—fearless of the scathing bolt and glorying in the pealing thunder!

We are surrounded by an army of the grampus whales. Their breathing adds a fiend-like wildness to the voices of the night,—and their dusky forms looming through the obscurity as they thrust their misshapen backs above the surface of the sea, give an almost infernal aspect to the scene, if scene that may be called which is but half perceived in dimness that appears,

“Not light, but rather darkness visible.”

But come below!—We are happily exempt from the necessity of dangerous exposure, and the force of the salt spray that has been driven in our faces with stinging effect for the last half hour begins to weaken the impression of this magnificent display of Omnipotence. Man would find room for selfishness and vanity amid “the wreck of matter and the crush of worlds.”—Your complexion is in danger! So if you would avoid the hard looks of a weather-beaten tar, it is time to seek the shelter of the cabin. There I can amuse you with pictures of other night scenes by sea and land, until this short-lived tropical squall is over, or you feel inclined to retire to your state room. In another hour we shall probably be bounding along merrily, with all sail set, and the moon beams sparkling and playing hide-and-go-seek among the little rippling waves with which a six-knot breeze roughens a subsiding swell!

[2]

The scene of this sketch is laid in the tropical Atlantic, between the northern and southern trade-winds;—a region of calms and baffling winds.

[3]

The corposant, an electric ball or brush of light, sometimes witnessed during storms at sea.

AGATHÈ.—A NECROMAUNT.

IN THREE CHIMERAS.

———

BY LOUIS FITZGERALD TASISTRO.

———

Chimera III.

Another moon! And over the blue night

She bendeth, like a holy spirit bright,

Through stars that veil them in their wings of gold;

As on she floateth with her image cold

Enamell’d on the deep, a sail of cloud

Is to her left, majestically proud!

Trailing its silver drapery away

In thin and fairy webs, that are at play

Like stormless waves upon a summer sea,

Dragging their length of waters lazily.

Ay! to the rocks! and thou wilt see, I wist,

A lonely one, that bendeth in the mist

Of moonlight, with a wide and raven pall

Flung round him.—Is he mortal man at all?

For, by the meagre firelight that is under

Those eyelids, and the vision shade of wonder

Falling upon his features, I would guess

Of one that wanders out of blessedness!

Julio! raise thee! By the holy mass!

I wot not of the fearless one would pass

Thy wizard shadow. Where the raven hair

Was shorn before, in many a matted layer

It lieth now; and on a rock beside

The sea, like merman at the ebb of tide,

Feasting his wondrous vision on decay,

So art thou gazing over Agathè!

Ah me! but this is never the fair girl,

With brow of light, as lovely as a pearl,

That was as beautiful as is the form

Of sea-bird at the breaking of a storm.

The eye is open, with convulsive strain—

A most unfleshly orb! the stars that wane

Have nothing of its hue; for it is cast

With sickly blood, and terribly aghast!

And sunken in its socket like the light

Of a red taper in the lonely night!

And there is not a braid of her bright hair

But lieth floating in the moonlight air,

Like the long moss beside a silver spring,

In elfin tresses, sadly murmuring.

The worm hath ’gan to crawl upon her brow—

The living worm! and with a ripple now,

Like that upon the sea, are heard below

The slimy swarms all ravening as they go,

Amid the stagnate vitals, with a crush;

And one might hear them echoing the hush

Of Julio, as he watches by the side

Of the dead ladye, his betrothéd bride!

And ever and anon a yellow group

Was creeping on her bosom, like a troop

Of stars, far up amid the galaxy,

Pale, pale, as snowy showers, and two or three

Were mocking the cold finger, round and round

With likeness of a ring; and, as they wound

About its bony girth, they had the hue

Of pearly jewels glistening in the dew.

That deathly stare! it is an awful thing

To gaze upon; and sickly thoughts will spring

Before it to the heart: it telleth how

There must be waste where there is beauty now.

The chalk! the chalk! where was the virgin snow

Of that once heaving bosom? even so,

The cold, pale dewy chalk, with yellow shade

Amid the leprous hues; and o’er it play’d

The straggling moonlight and the merry breeze,

Like two fair elves that by the murmuring seas

Woo’d smilingly together; but there fell

No life-gleam on the brow, all terrible

Becoming, through its beauty, like a cloud

That waneth paler even than a shroud,

All gorgeous and all glorious before;

For waste, like to the wanton night, was o’er

Her virgin features, stealing them away—

Ah me! ah me! and this is Agathè?

“Enough! enough! oh God! but I have pray’d

To thee, in early daylight and in shade,

And the mad-curse is on me still—and still!

I cannot alter the eternal will—

But—but—I hate thee Agathè! I hate

What lunacy hath made me consecrate:

I am not mad!—not now!—I do not feel

That slumberous and blessed opiate steal

Up to my brain—oh! that it only would,

To people this eternal solitude

With fancies, and fair dreams, and summer-mirth,

Which is not now—and yet my mother earth

I would not love to lie above thee so

As Agathè lies there—Oh! no! no! no!

To have these clay worms feast upon my heart!

And all the light of being to depart

Into a dismal shadow! I could die

As the red lightnings, quenching amid sky

Their wild and wizard breath; I could away

Like a blue billow bursting into spray:

But never—never have corruption here

To feed her worms and let the sunlight jeer

Above me so. ’Tis thou! I owe thee, moon,

To-night’s fair worship; so be lifting soon

Thy veil of clouds, that I may kneel as one

That seeketh for thy virgin benison!”

He gathers the cold limpets as they creep

On the gray rocks beside the lonely deep,

And with a flint breaks through into the shell,

And feeds him—by the mass! he feasteth well.

And he hath lifted water in a clam

And tasted sweetly from a stream that swam

Down to the sea; and now is turn’d away

Again, again, to gaze on Agathè!

There is a cave upon that isle—a cave

Where dwelt a hermit-man: the winter wave

Roll’d to its entrance, casting a bright mound

Of snowy shells and fairy pebbles round;

And over were the solemn ridges strewn

Of a dark rock, that, like the wizard throne

Of some sea-monarch, stood, and from it hung

Wild thorn and bramble in confusion flung

Amid the startling crevices—like sky

Through gloom of clouds, that sweep in thunder by.

A cataract fell over, in a streak

Of silver, playing many a wanton freak;

Midway, and musical, with elfin glee

It bounded in its beauty to the sea,

Like dazzling angel vanishing away.

In sooth, ’twas pleasant in the moonlight gray

To see that fairy fountain leaping so,

Like one that knew not wickedness nor woe!

The hermit had his cross and rosary:

I ween like other hermits so was he,

A holy man and frugal, and at night

He prayed, or slept, or, sometimes, by the light

Of the fair moon went wandering beside

The lonely sea, to hear the silver tide

Rolling in gleesome music to the shore;

The more he heard he loved to hear the more.

And there he is, his hoary beard adrift

To the night winds, that sportingly do lift

Its snow-white tresses; and he leaneth on

A rugged staff, all weakly and alone,

A childless, friendless man!

He is beside

The ghastly Julio and his ghastlier bride.

’Twas wond’rous strange to gaze upon the two!

And the old hermit felt a throbbing through

His pulses—“Holy Virgin! save me, save!”

He deem’d of spectre from the midnight wave,

And cross’d him thrice, and pray’d and pray’d again:

“Hence! hence!” and Julio started as the strain

Of exorcisms fell faintly on his ear:

“I knew thee, father, that thou beest here

To gaze upon this girl, as I have been.

By yonder moon! it was a frantic sin

To worship so an image of the clay;

It was like beauty—but is now away—

What lived upon her features, like the light

On yonder cloud, all tender and all bright;

But it is faded as the other must,

And she that was all beauty is all dust.

“Father! thy hand upon this brow of mine

And tell me is it cold? But she will twine

No wreath upon these temples—never, never!

For there she lieth like a streamless river

That stagnates in its bed. Feel, feel me here,

If I be madly throbbing in the fear

For that cold slimy worm. Ay! look and see

How dotingly it feeds, how pleasantly!

And where it is have been the living hues

Of beauty, purer than the very dews.

So, father! seest thou that yonder moon

Will be on wane to-morrow, soon and soon?

And I, that feel my being wear away,

Shall droop beside to darkness: so, but say

A prayer for the dead, when I am gone

And let the azure tide that floweth on

Cover us lightly with its murmuring surf,

Like a green sward of melancholy turf;

Thou mayest, if thou wilt, thou mayest rear

A cenotaph on this lone island here,

Of some rude mossy stone, below a tree,

And carve an olden rhyme for her and me

Upon its brow.”

He bends, and gazes yet

Before his ghastly bride! the anchoret

Sate by him, and hath press’d a cross of wood

To his wan lips   *   *   *

*   *   *   *   *   *

*   *   *   *   *   *

“My son! look up and tell thy dismal tale.

Thou seemest cold, and sorrowful, and pale.

Alas! I fear that thou hast strangely been

A child of curse, and misery, and sin.

And this,—is she thy sister?”—“nay! my bride.”

“Anon! and thou?”—“True, true! but then she died,

And was a virgin, and is virgin still,

Chaste as the moon, that taketh her pure fill

Of light from the great sun. But now, go by,

And leave me to my madness, or to die!

This heart, this brain are sore.—Come, come, and fold

Me round, ye hydra billows! wrapt in gold,

That are so writhing your eternal gyres

Before the moon, which, with a myriad tiars

Is crowning you, as ye do fall and kiss

Her pearly feet, that glide in blessedness!

Let me be torture-eaten, ere I die!

Let me be mangled sore with agony!

And be so cursed; so stricken by the spell

Of my heart’s frenzy, that a living hell

Be burning there!—back! back if thou art mad—

Methought thou wast, but thou art only sad.

Is this thy child, old man? look, look, and see!

In truth it is a piteous thing for thee

To become childless—well a-well, go by!

Is there no grave? The quiet sea is nigh,

And I will bury her below the moon:

It may be but a trance or midnight swoon.

And she may wake. Wake, Ladye! ha! methought

It was like her.—Like her! and is it not?

My angel girl? my brain, my stricken brain!—

I know thee now!—I know myself again.”

He flings him on the ladye, and anon,

With loathly shudder, from that wither’d one

Hath torn him back. “Oh me! no more—no more!

Thou virgin mother! is the dream not o’er,

That I have dreamt, but I must dream again

For moons together, till this weary brain

Become distemper’d as the winter sea!

Good father! give me blessing; let it be

Upon me as the dew upon the moss.

Oh me! but I have made the holy cross

A curse; and not a blessing! let me kiss

The sacred symbol; for, by this—by this!

I sware, and sware again, as now I will—

Thou Heaven! if there be bounty in thee still,

If thou wilt hear, and minister, and bring

The light of comfort, on some angel wing

To one that lieth lone; do—do it now;

By all the stars that open on thy brow

Like silver flowers! and by the herald moon

That listeth to be forth at nightly noon,

Jousting the clouds, I swear! and be it true,

As I have perjured me, that I renew

Allegiance to thy God, and bind me o’er

To this same penance, I have done before!

That night and day I watch, as I have been

Long watching, o’er the partner of my sin!

That I taste never the delight of food,

But these wild shell-fish, that may make the mood

Of madness stronger, till it grapple death—

Despair—eternity!”

He saith, he saith,

And, on the jaundiced bosom of the corse,

Lieth all frenzied; one would see remorse,

And hopeless love, and hatred, struggling there,

And lunacy, that lightens up despair,

And makes a gladness out of agony.

Pale phantom! I would fear and worship thee,

That hast the soul at will, and givest it play,

Amid the wildest fancies far away;

That thronest reason, on some wizard throne

Of fairy land, within the milky zone,—

Some spectre star, that glittereth beyond

The glorious galaxies of diamond.

Beautiful lunacy! that shapest flight

For love to blessed bowers of delight,

And buildest holy monarchies within

The fancy, till the very heart is queen

Of all her golden wishes. Lunacy!

Thou empress of the passions! though they be,

A sister group of wild, unearthly forms,

Like lightnings playing in their home of storms!

I see thee, striking at the silver strings

Of the pure heart, and holy music springs

Before thy touch, in many a solemn strain,

Like that of sea-waves rolling from the main!

But say, is melancholy by thy side,

With tresses in a raven shower, that hide

Her pale and weeping features? Is she never

Flowing before thee, like a gloomy river,

The sister of thyself? But cold and chill,

And winter-born, and sorrowfully still,

And not like thee, that art in merry mood,

And frolicsome amid thy solitude?

Fair Lunacy! I see thee, with a crown

Of hawthorn and sweet daisies, bending down

To mirror thy young image in a spring:

And thou wilt kiss that shadow of a thing

As soulless as thyself. ’Tis tender, too,

The smile that meeteth thine! the holy hue

Of health! the pearly radiance of the brow!

All, all as tender,—beautiful as thou!

And wilt thou say, my sister, there is none

Will answer thee? Thou art—thou art alone,

A pure, pure being! but the God on high

Is with thee ever, as thou goest by.

Thou Poetess! that harpest to the moon,

And, in soft concert to the silver tune,

Of waters play’d on by the magic wind,

As he comes streaming, with his hair untwined,

Dost sing light strains of melody and mirth,—

I hear thee, hymning on thy holy birth,

How thou wert moulded of thy mother Love,

That came, like seraph, from the stars above.

And was so sadly wedded unto Sin,

That thou wert born, and Sorrow was thy twin.

Sorrow with mirthful Lunacy! that be

Together link’d for time, I deem of ye

That ye are worshipped as none others are,—

One as a lonely shadow,—one a star!

Is Julio glad, that bendeth, even now,

To his wild purpose, to his holy vow?

He seeth only in his ladye-bride

The image of the laughing girl, that died

A moon before—the same, the very same—

The Agathè that lisp’d her lover’s name,

To him and to her heart: that azure eye,

That shone through sunny tresses, waving by:

The brow, the cheek, that blush’d of fire and snow,

Both blending into one ethereal glow:

And the same breathing radiancy, that swam

Around her, like a pure and blessed calm

Around some halcyon bird. And, as he kiss’d

Her wormy lips, he felt that he was blest!

He felt her holy being stealing through

His own, like fountains of the azure dew,

That summer mingles with his golden light;

And he would clasp her, till the weary night,

Was worn away.

*   *   *   *   *   *

*   *   *   *   *   *

And morning rose in form

Of heavy clouds, that knitted into storm

The brow of Heaven, and through her lips the wind

Came rolling westward, with a tract behind

Of gloomy billows, bursting on the sea,

All rampant, like great lions terribly,

And gnashing on each other: and anon,

Julio heard them, rushing one by one,

And laugh’d and turn’d. The hermit was away

For he was old and weary, and he lay

Within his cave, and thought it was a dream,

A summer’s dream! and so the quiet stream

Of sleep came o’er his eyelids, and in truth

He dreamt of that strange ladye and the youth

That held a death-wake on her wasting form;

And so he slept and woke not till the storm

Was over.

But they came—the wind, and sea,

And rain and thunder, that in giant glee,

Sang o’er the lightnings pale, as to and fro

They writhed, like stricken angels!—white as snow

Roll’d billow after billow, and the tide

Came forward as an army deep and wide,

To charge with all its waters. There was heard

A murmur far and far, of those that stirr’d

Within the great encampment of the sea,

And dark they were, and lifted terribly

Their water-spouts like banners. It was grand

To see the black battalions, hand in hand

Striding to conflict, and their helmets bent

Below their foamy plumes magnificent!

And Julio heard and laugh’d. “Shall I be king

To your great hosts, that ye are murmuring

For one to bear you to your holy war?

There is no sun, or moon, or any star,

To guide your iron footsteps as ye go,

But I, your king, will marshal you to flow

From shore to shore. Then bring my car of shell,

That I may ride before you terrible;

And bring my sceptre of the amber weed,

And Agathè, my virgin bride, shall lead

Your summer hosts, when these are ambling low,

In azure and in ermine, to and fro.”

He said, and madly, with his wasted hand

Swept o’er the tuneless harp, and fast he spanned

The silver chords, until a rush of sound

Came from them, solemn—terrible—profound;

And then he dash’d the instrument away

Into the waters, and the giant play

Of billows threw it back unto the shore,

A shiver’d, stringless frame—its day of music o’er!

The tide, the rolling tide! the multitude

Of the sea surges, terrible and rude,

Tossing their chalky foam along the bed

Of thundering pebbles, that are shoring dread.

And fast retreating to the gloomy gorge

Of waters, sounding like a Titan forge!

It comes! it comes! the tide, the rolling tide!

But Julio is bending to his bride,

And making mirthful whispers to her ear,

A cataract! a cataract is near,

Of one stupendous billow, and it breaks

Terribly furious, with a myriad flakes

Of foam, that fly about the haggard twain;

And Julio started, with a sudden pain,

That shot into his heart; his reason flew

Back to her throne: he rose, and wildly threw

His matted tresses over on his brow.

Another billow came, and even now

Was dashing at his feet. There was no shade

Of terror, as the serpent waters play’d

Before him, but his eye was calm as death.

Another, yet another! and the breath

Of the weird wind was with it, like a rock

Unriveted it fell—a shroud of smoke

Pass’d over—there was heard, and died away,

The voice of one shrill-shrieking “Agathè!”

The sea-bird sitteth lonely by the side

Of the far waste of waters, flapping wide

His wet and weary wings; but he is gone,

The stricken Julio! a wave-swept stone

Stands there, on which he sat, and nakedly

It rises looking to the lonely sea;

But Julio is gone, and Agathè!

The waters swept them madly to their core—

The dead and living with a frantic roar!

And so he died, his bosom fondly set

On hers; and round her clay-cold waist were met

His bare and wither’d arms, and to her brow

His lips were press’d. Both, both are perish’d now!

He died upon her bosom in a swoon:

And fancied of the pale and silver moon,

That went before him in her hall of blue;

He died like golden insect in the dew,

Calm, calm and pure; and not a chord was wrung

In his deep heart—but love. He perish’d young,

But perish’d wasted by some fatal flame

That fed upon his vitals: and there came

Lunacy, sweeping lightly, like a stream,

Along his brain—he perish’d in a dream!

In sooth I marvel not

If death be only a mysterious thought,

That cometh on the heart and turns the brow

Brightless and chill, as Julio’s is now;

For only had the wasting struggle been

Of one wild feeling, till it rose within

Into the form of death, and nature felt

The light of the immortal being melt

Into its happier home beyond the sea,

And moon, and stars, into eternity!

The sun broke through his dungeon, long enthrall’d

By dismal clouds, and on the emerald

Of the great living sea was blazing down

To gift the lordly billows with a crown

Of diamond and silver. From his cave

The hermit came, and by the dying wave

Lone wander’d, and he found upon the sand,

Below a truss of sea-weed, with his hand

Around the silent waist of Agathè

The corse of Julio! Pale, pale, it lay

Beside the wasted girl. The fireless eye

Was open, and a jewell’d rosary

Flung round the neck; but it was gone—the cross

That Agathè had given.

Amid the moss

The hermit scoop’d a solitary grave

Below the pine-trees, and he sang a stave,

Or two, or three, of some old requiem

As in their narrow home he buried them;

And many a day before that blessed spot

He sate, in lone and melancholy thought,

Gazing upon the grave; and one had guess’d

Of some dark secret shadowing his breast.

And yet, to see him, with his silver hair

Adrift and floating in the sea-borne air,

And features chasten’d in the tears of woe,

In sooth, ’twas merely sad to see him so!

A wreck of nature floating far and fast,

Upon the stream of Time—to sink at last!

And he is wandering by the shore again,

Hard leaning on his staff; the azure main

Lies sleeping far before him, with his seas

Fast folded in the bosom of the breeze,

That like the angel Peace, hath dropt his wings

Around the warring waters. Sadly sings

To his own heart that lonely hermit-man,

A tale of other days when passion ran

Along his pulses like a troubled stream,

And glory was a splendor and a dream!

He stoop’d to gather up a shining gem

That lay amid the shells, as bright as them,

It was a cross, the cross that Agathè

Had given to her Julio; the play

Of the fierce sunbeams fell upon its face,

And on the glistening jewels—but the trace

Of some old thought came burning to the brain

Of the pale hermit, and he shrunk in pain

Before the holy symbol. It was not

Because of the eternal ransom wrought

In ages far away, or he had bent

In pure devotion, sad and reverent;

But now, he startled as he look’d upon

That jewell’d thing, and wildly he is gone

Back to the mossy grave, away, away:

“My child, my child! my own, own Agathè!”

It is her father,—he,—an alter’d man!

His quiet had been wounded, and the ban

Of misery came over him, and froze

The bright and holy tides, that fell and rose

In joy amid his heart. To think of her,

That he had injured so, and all so fair,

So fond, so like the chosen of his youth,—

It was a very dismal thought, in truth,

That he had left her hopelessly, for aye,

Within the cloister-wall to droop, and die!

And so he could not bear to have it be;

But sought for some lone island in the sea,

Where he might dwell in doleful solitude,

And do strange penance in his mirthful mood,

For this same crime, unnaturally wild,

That he had done unto his saintly child.

And ever he did think, when he had laid

These lovers in the grave, that, through the shade

Of ghostly features melting to decay,

He saw the image of his Agathè.

And now the truth had flash’d into his brain:

And he has fallen, with a shriek of pain,

Upon the lap of pale and yellow moss;

For long ago he gave that blessed cross

To his fair girl, and knew the relic still,

By many a thousand thoughts, that rose at will

Before it of the one that was not now,

But, like a dream, had floated from the brow

Of time, that seeth many a lovely thing

Fade by him, like a sea-wave murmuring.

The heart is burst!—the heart that stood in steel

To woman’s earnest tears, and bade her feel

The curse of virgin solitude,—a veil;

And saw the gladsome features growing pale

Unmoved: ’tis rent like some eternal tower

The sea hath shaken, and its stately power

Lies lonely, fallen, scatter’d on the shore;

’Tis rent like some great mountain, that before

The Deluge stood in glory and in might,

But now is lightning-riven, and the night

Is clambering up its sides, and chasms lie strewn,

Like coffins, here and there: ’tis rent! the throne

Where passions, in their awful anarchy,

Stood sceptred! There was heard an inward sigh,

That took the being, on its troubled wings,

Far to the land of deep imaginings!

All three are dead! that desolate green isle

Is only peopled by the passing smile

Of sun and moon, that surely have a sense,

They look so radiant with intelligence,—

So like the soul’s own element,—so fair!

The features of a God lie veiled there!

And mariners that have been toiling far

Upon the deep, and lost the polar star,

Have visited that island, and have seen

That lover’s grave: and many there have been

That sat upon the grey and crumbling stone,

And started as they saw a skeleton

Amid the long sad moss, that fondly grew

Through the white wasted ribs: but never knew

Of those who slept below, or of the tale

Of that brain-stricken man, that felt the pale

And wandering moonlight steal his soul away,—

Poor Julio, and the Ladye Agathè!

We found them,—children of toil and tears,

Their birth of beauty shaded;

We left them in their early years

Fallen and faded.

We found them, flowers of summer hue,

Their golden cups were lighted,

With sparkles of the pearly dew—

We left them blighted!

We found them,—like those fairy flowers

And the light of morn lay holy

Over their sad and sainted bowers—

We left them lonely.

We found them,—like twin stars, alone,

In brightness and in feeling;

We left them,—and the curse was on

Their beauty stealing.

They rest in quiet, where they are:

Their life time is the story

Of some fair flower—some silver star,

Faded in glory!

TO A SPIRIT.

———

BY JAMES ALDRICH.

———

Not the effulgent light

Of that bright realm where live the blest departed,

Nor the grave’s gloom, Oh! loved one, and true hearted,

Can hide thee from thy sight.

Thy sweet angelic smile

Beams on my sleep. I see thee, hear thy voice,

Thou say’st unto my fettered soul, “Rejoice!

Wait but a little while.”

Sometimes ’mid cloudlets bright,

The sunset splendors of a summer’s day,

An instant thou’lt appear, then pass away

From my entranced sight.

Up in the blue heavens clear

A never-setting star hast thou become,

Pouring a silvery ray, from thy far home,

Upon my pathway here.

Where tears ne’er dim the eyes,

Shall we not meet in some far blessed land?

Shall we not walk together, hand in hand,

In bowers of Paradise?

My soul, though chained and pent,

Sore of a future glorious career,

In all its God-appointed labor here,

Toils on in calm content.

ST. AGNES’ EVE.

A CHIT-CHAT ABOUT KEATS.

God bless you, Oliver, don’t think of such a thing! I join the temperance society!—why, you old curmudgeon, would you murder me outright? Not that temperance societies haven’t done good—many a poor wife and weeping mother have they made happy—but, then, ever since I read Anacreon at college and shot buffalos at the Black Hills, I’ve had a fellow feeling for the good things of this life, especially for beef-steaks and port wine. I’m an Epicurean, sir—you needn’t talk to me of glory—I despise the whole cant about posthumous renown. The great end of life is happiness, and happiness is best secured by gratifying our physical as well as our intellectual nature. I go in, sir, for enjoying existence, and when I was in my prime, I flatter myself that few could beat me at a dinner or had a more delicate way of making love to the girls. But alas! we have fallen on troublous times. The wine of these days—I say it with tears in my eyes—isn’t the wine of my youth; and the girls—here’s a health to the sweet angels—have sadly deteriorated from what their grandmothers were. Eheu! Eheu! The world is getting upside down, and I shouldn’t wonder if an earthquake or epidemic or some other calamity should overtake us yet to fill up the catalogue of our ills.

I have just been reading Keats—shame on the wretches who tortured him to death! He is a practical argument, sir, for my creed. Genius he had unquestionably, yet he never enjoyed a happy hour. Why was this? Born in humble life, he thirsted for distinction, and trusting to his genius to achieve renown, found himself assailed by hostile critics, who dragged his private life before the public eye, and sneered at his poetry with the bitter scorn of fiends. He was naturally of a delicate constitution—of a proud and aspiring character; but of a modesty as shrinking as the sensitive plant; and when he found himself slighted, abused, maligned—when he saw that he was thrust back at every attempt to elevate himself, his delicate nature gave way, and he died of a broken heart, requesting that his epitaph might be, “Here lies one whose name was writ on water.” The world, since then, has done tardy justice to his genius—but this did not soothe his sorrows, nor will it reach him in his silent grave. What to him is posthumous renown?—what the tears of this generation or the plaudits of the next? Had he been less sensitive, had he thirsted less after glory, he might still have been living, with matured powers, extorting even from his enemies deserved commendation. But he fell in his youthful prime, an eaglet pierced before it had learnt to soar. I have shed tears over his grave at Rome—let us drink to his memory in solemn silence.

Keats would have made a giant had he lived, sir. Everything he wrote evinced high genius. Each successive poem he published displayed increased merit. His sonnets remind me of Milton—his shorter pieces breathe of Lycidas or Venus and Adonis. He had little artistical skill, but then what an exuberant fancy! Few men had a finer perception of the beautiful, the το καλον of poetry. He is one of the most Grecian—if I may use the expression—of our poets. Shelley, perhaps, was more deeply imbued with the Attic spirit, but then, although his heart was always right, his intellect was always wrong, and thus it happens that his poetry is often mystic, obscure, and even confused. Keats was not so. He had this freshness without its mysticism. He delighted in themes drawn from classic fountains, in allusions breathing of Thessaly and the gods. There was in many of his poems a voluptuousness approaching to effeminacy, reminding one of the Aphrodite in her own fragrant bowers. In others of his poems there was an Arcadian sweetness. What is finer than his ode to the Grecian Urn? Do you remember the opening?

“Thou still unravished bride of quietness!

Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time,

Sylvan historian who canst thus express

A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:

What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape

Of deities, or mortals, or of both,

In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?

What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?

What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?

What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstacy?”

Delicious, is it not? You seem to be in classic Greece itself, amid the groves of Academus, by the fountain of Castaly, beneath the god-encircled Olympus. You can hear the Dorian flutes, you can see the daughters of Ionia. There are the priest and his assistants leading the flower-decked heifer to the altar—lo! a group of bacchantes singing and dancing through the vale. And high up yonder is the snowy temple of Jove—a picture for the gods!

You shake your head—you have no taste for classic allusions. Egad! I remember, you are a devotee of the German literature, and admire nothing which is not of the romantic school, Well, well—have you ever read “The Eve of St. Agnes?” It is—let me tell you—the poem for which Keats will be loved, and you ought to walk barefooted a thousand miles, like an ancient pilgrim to Loretto, for having neglected to peruse this poem. It is not so fine as Hyperion, but then the latter is a fragment. It is as superior to Endymion as a star to a satellite. It pleases me more than Lamia or Isabella. It has the glow of a landscape seen through a rosy glass—it is warm and blushing, yet pure as a maiden in her first exceeding beauty. As Burgundy is to other wines, as a bride blushing to her lover’s side is to other virgins, so is “The Eve of St. Agnes” to other poems. What luxuriance of fancy, what scope of language, what graphic power it displays! It is a love story, and right witchingly told. How exquisite the description of Madeline, her moonlit chamber, her awakening from her dream, and the delicious intoxicating emotions which break on her when she learns that she loves and is beloved. Ah! sir, we are old now, but I never read this poem without thinking of the time when I first pressed my own Mary to my side, and felt her little warm heart beating against my own. Egad, I will just skip over “The Eve of St. Agnes,” to pass the time away while we finish this bottle.

The poem opens with a graphic picture of a winter’s night. Draw closer to the grate, for—by my ancestry!—it is a freezing theme. I will read.

“St. Agnes’ eve—Ah, bitter chill it was!

The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold;

The hare limp’d trembling through the frozen grass,

And silent was the flock in woolly fold:

Numb were the Beadsman’s fingers, while he told

His rosary, and while his frosted breath,

Like pious incense from a censer old,

Seem’d taking flight for heaven, without a death,

Past the sweet Virgin’s picture, while his prayer he saith.”

The poet then proceeds to describe a festive scene, amid which is one fair lady, whose heart had throbbed all day on love, she having heard old dames tell that maidens might, on St. Agnes’ eve, behold their lovers in dreams, if they observed certain mystic ceremonies. The lovely Madeline has resolved to follow the old legend, and she sighs, amid her suitors, for midnight to arrive. Then goes the story thus:

“Meantime, across the moors,

Had come young Porphyro, with heart on fire

For Madeline. Beside the portal doors,

Buttress’d from moonlight, stands he, and implores

All saints to give him sight of Madeline,

But for one moment in the tedious hours,

That he might gaze and worship all unseen;

Perchance speak, kneel, touch, kiss—in sooth such things have been.”

In that vast mansion, amid all that gay party, young Porphyro has but one friend, an old beldame, for all the rest are athirst for his blood and that of his line. While watching thus, the beldame discovers him and beseeches him to fly. He refuses. In her garrulous entreaty she reveals to Porphyro that his mistress intends playing the conjurer to discover who shall be her lover. He eagerly makes a proposition, to which the old dame objects in horror, but after many protestations on his part and a rash declaration that otherwise he will reveal himself to his foes, she finally consents. And what was his proposition? Let the poet tell. It was

——“To lead him, in close secrecy,

Even to Madeline’s chamber, and there hide

Him in a closet, of such privacy

That he might see her beauty unespied,

And win perhaps that night a peerless bride,

While legion’d fairies paced the coverlet,

And pale enchantment held her sleepy-eyed.”

The old dame accordingly leads the lover, through many a dusky gallery, to the maiden’s chamber, and then, hurriedly hiding him in a closet, is feeling in the dark on the landing for the stair,

“When Madeline, St. Agnes’ charmed maid,

Rose, like a missioned spirit unaware:

With silver taper’s light, and pious care,

She turn’d, and down the aged gossip led

To a safe level matting.”

Ah! we have few Madelines now-a-days. I love her for that act, as I would love an only daughter. Well may the poet exultingly say after this—

“Now prepare,

Young Porphyro, for gazing on that bed;

She comes, she comes again, like ring-dove frayed and fled.”

The whole picture that follows is purity itself. We wish the wind would whistle less loudly without—there! it dies away as if in homage to this maiden soft. Shut your eyes and dream, while I read in whispers.

“Out went the taper as she hurried in;

Its little smoke, in pallid moonshine, died:

She closed the door, she panted, all akin

To spirits of the air, and visions wide:

No uttered syllable, or, woe betide!

But to her heart, her heart was voluble,

Paining with eloquence her balmy side;

As though a tongueless nightingale should swell

Her throat in vain, and die, heart-stifled, in her dell.

A casement high and triple-arched there was,

All garlanded with carven imageries

Of fruits, and flowers, and bunches of knot grass,

And diamonded with panes of quaint device,

Innumerable of stains and splendid dyes,

As are the tiger moth’s deep damask’d wings.

And in the midst, ’mong thousand heraldries,

And twilight saints, and dim emblazonings,

A shielded ’scutcheon blush’d with blood of queens and kings.

Full on this casement shone the wintry moon,

And threw warm gules on Madeline’s fair breast,

As down she knelt for heaven’s grace and boon:

Rose-bloom fell on her hands, together prest,

And on her silver cross soft amethyst,

And on her hair a glory like a saint:

She seemed a splendid angel, newly drest,

Save wings, for heaven:—Porphyro grew faint:

She knelt, so pure a thing, so free from mortal taint.

Anon his heart revives: her vespers done,

Of all its wreathed pearls her hair she frees;

Unclasps her warmed jewels one by one;

Loosens her fragrant boddice; by degrees

Her rich attire creeps rustling to her knees:

Half hidden, like a mermaid in sea-weed,

Pensive awhile she dreams awake, and sees,

In fancy, fair St. Agnes in her bed,

But dares not look behind, or all the charm is fled.

Soon, trembling in her soft and chilly nest,

In sort of wakeful swoon, perplex’d she lay,

Until the poppied warmth of sleep oppress’d

Her soothed limbs, and soul fatigued away;

Flown, like a thought, until the morrow-day;

Blissfully haven’d both from joy and pain;

Clasp’d like a missal where swart Paynims pray,

Blinded alike from sunshine and from rain,

As though a rose should shut, and be a rose again.”

And now, when the maiden is all asleep, her lover steals from his hiding place, and mixing a charm, kneels by her bedside, and while his warm unnerved arm sinks in her pillow, he whispers to her that he is her eremite, and beseeches her for sweet Agnes’ sake to open her eyes. But the maiden, lying there in her holy sleep, awakes not. At length he takes her lute, and kneeling by her ear, plays an ancient ditty. She utters a soft moan. He ceases—she pants quick—and suddenly her blue eyes open in affright, while her lover sinks again on his knees, pale as a sculptured statue. And Madeline awakening, and thinking that her blissful dream is over, begins to weep. At length she finds vent for her words, and are they not sweet as the complainings of a dove?

“Ah! Porphyro!” said she “but even now

Thy voice was at sweet tremble in mine ear,

Made tunable with every sweetest vow;

And those sad eyes were spiritual and clear:

How changed thou art! how pallid, chill, and drear!

Give me that voice again, my Porphyro,

Those looks immortal, those complainings dear!

O leave me not in this eternal woe,

For if thou diest, my love, I know not where to go.”

If you have ever been young, and heard, for the first time, the blushing confession of her you loved in doubt and danger, you can form some conception of the bewildering joy which seized Porphyro at this. Egad! sir, I would give ten years of my life—old as I am—to enjoy such rapture. But no tongue except that of the poet can even shadow forth his ecstacy. Ah! to be loved is bliss, but to be loved by a Madeline—!

“Beyond a mortal man impassioned far

At these voluptuous accents, he arose,

Ethereal, flush’d, and like a throbbing star

Seen ’mid the sapphire heaven’s deep repose;

Into her dream he melted, as the rose

Blendeth its odor with this violet,—

Solution sweet:”

You can see the end of all this as well as I can, for though never has other mortal than Porphyro breathed the language of love into the ears of one like Madeline, yet we have all pleaded more than once in the ears of angels only one remove less beautiful. Shut your eyes, and fancy you see the lover kneeling by the bedside of that white-armed one, fragrant and pure as a lily in the overshadowed brook—lovelier than an Imogen, whose very breath perfumes the chamber. Hear her low complainings when she fancies that her lover is about to desert her. Are they not more musical than the zephyrs sighing through the moonlit pines? And then how soothing is Porphyro, and how delicately he allays her fears. Ah! the moon is down, and the chamber is in darkness—and there, as I live, the rain-drops are pattering against the casement. Now is thy time, bold Porphyro—St. Agnes will befriend thee—urge, urge that sweet lady, with all thy eloquence, to seize the chance and fly amid the confusion. We know how it will end! Love ever wins the day—and is not Madeline yet all blushing with her dream? And so—and so—hear the rest!

“She hurried at the words, beset with fears,

For there were sleeping dragons all around,

At glaring watch, perhaps, with ready spears—

Down the wide stairs a darkling way they found,—

In all the house was heard no human sound.

A chain-dropp’d lamp was flickering by each door;

The arras, rich with horsemen, hawk, and hound,

Fluttered in the besieging wind’s uproar;

And the long carpets rose along the gusty floor.

They glide, like phantoms, into the wide hall;

Like phantoms to the iron porch they glide,

Where lay the Porter, in uneasy sprawl,

With a huge empty flagon by his side:

The wakeful bloodhound rose, and shook his hide,

But his sagacious eye an inmate owns:

By one, and one, the bolts full easy slide:—

The chains lie silent on the foot-worn stones;

The key turns, and the door upon its hinges groans.

And they are gone: ay, ages long ago

These lovers fled away into the storm.

That night the Baron dreamt of many a woe,

And all his warrior-guests, with shade and form

Of witch, and demon, and large coffin worm,

Were long be-nightmared. Angela the old

Died palsy-twitch’d, with meagre face deform;

The Beadsman, after thousand aves told,

For aye unsought-for slept among his ashes cold.”

Who, after that, will say that Keats was not a genius? But “Hyperion,” though less complete than this poem, evinces—let me tell you—even more of the “mens divinior.” “The Eve of St. Agnes” is warm, voluptuous, luxuriant, yet pure as a quiet pool with silver sand below—but “Hyperion” is bold, impassioned and colossal, Miltonic even in its grandeur, overpowering at times as a thunder-storm among the mountains. Would God that Keats had lived to finish it! With many faults, it evinces more genius than any poem since written in our language. Hear the speeches of the Titans!—read the description of Apollo!—drink in the intoxication of its less sublime but more beautiful passages! It often exhibits a redundant fancy—the style is at times affected, and the choice of words bad—the execution is careless, though less so than that of Endymion—and, above all, the plan of the poem, so far as it has been developed, bears an unhappy resemblance to Milton’s Paradise Lost. Yet it displays such extraordinary genius, that we will never forgive the Quarterly for having disheartened Keats from the completion of this poem. Ah! sir, what has the world lost?

I repeat it, I am an Epicurean. Fame!—immortality!—what are they? We wear out our lives for a bauble, and coin our souls away to purchase dross. We dig our own graves and call it GLORY. Away with such sophistry! Go over the melancholy list of unfortunate genius—White, Collins, Keats, Chatterton and the rest—and tell me what they reaped except thorns! Ah! sir, it melts my heart with pity—I must take a glass on it. But, I declare, the bottle’s out, and—by my halidome!—here is Oliver asleep.

J. S.

THE AFFAIR AT TATTLETOWN.

———

BY EPES SARGEANT.

———

It is very questionable whether the reader has ever heard a true and impartial account of the affair at Tattletown. So many exaggerated versions have been put forth—so many garbled and malicious reports in regard to it, have been propagated—that the world is likely to be either unduly prejudiced against one of the parties, or wholly in doubt as to the merits of both. It is with an emotion of pride, that I take up my pen with the consciousness of being able to throw light upon this interesting, but mysterious subject.

There have been many changes in Tattletown during the last twenty years. Of this fact I became assured the last summer, when, by the way of a parenthesis in a tour to the White Hills, I branched off from my prescribed route to visit the little village where I had spent so many pleasant days in boyhood. What a change! It used to be one of the quietest, greenest, most sequestered nooks in the world, with its single wide street, bordered by venerable elms, and its shady by-roads radiating in every direction, and dotted with white cottages embosomed in clouds of verdure.

And then its inn! its single, unpretending inn, with its simple flag-staff, its modest piazza, and its cool, clean parlor, with the vase of asparagus upon the freshly reddened hearth-stone! Its sleeping-rooms with their snow-white curtains and coverlets, and the rustling foliage against their windows—what a temptation it was to enter them of a warm summer afternoon! Now, forsooth, the respectable old tenement is replaced by a hotel. I beg pardon—a house, built after the style of the Parthenon, its sides painted very white, and its blinds very green. The bar-room is floored with tesselated squares of marble, and there is a white marble counter, behind which presides a spruce young man with long dark hair plastered over his right ear, and an emerald breast-pin on his shirt bosom. Nay, it is rumored that the landlord has serious designs of introducing a gong in the place of the good old-fashioned bell of our forefathers. What is the country coming to?

Within my remembrance, the people of Tattletown were the best natured, most industrious and contented people alive. Every evening in summer their patriarchs might be seen sitting in front of their woodbine-covered porches, smoking their pipes and talking over old times, while groups of ruddy, riotous children, flaxen-haired and blue-eyed, danced to the strains of some village Paganini. Poor, deluded, miserable Tattletonians! What a sight was it for the philanthropist to grieve at! Little knew they, of the errors and vices of the social system! They had not read Miss Martineau’s tracts; knew nothing of Owenism, nothing of Grahamism, nothing of transcendentalism, nothing of Fourierism, nothing of Mormonism. The “Society for the promotion of every thing,” had not established a branch among them. They were benighted, uninitiated; contented to live as their fathers had lived before them; to pluck the rose and leave the thorn behind; to keep their linen and their consciences clean, and to remain at peace with all mankind.

Then the belles of the village—how beautiful they were! how artless! how adorned with every sylvan grace! Now they all seem to have lost the heritage of loveliness. They look didactic, sedentary and precocious. There is not the same bloom on the cheek—the same sparkle in the eye—the same ruby mischief on the lip. Instead of cultivating their music and their flower-gardens, working flags for the Tattletown “Guardians of Liberty,” and teaching the children their catechisms on Sundays, they are meddling with matters that they have not the means of comprehending, establishing anti-everything societies, and fussing over phrenology and other newfangled heresies. Instead of a vase of freshly gathered flowers upon their shelves, you are now greeted by a vile plaster bust, with the skull phrenologically mapped out, and figured. I never encounter one of the odious things, without putting my fist in its face.

A religious revolution has, of course, been introduced among the other mutations. Instead of one well-filled church, where all the villagers may meet as members of one family, Tattletown can now boast of half a dozen sectarian societies, which are eternally at war with one another. Poor old Dr. Balmwell, who is still the meekest of God’s creatures, and whose annual salary would not equal the one night’s wages of a second-rate theatrical star, is denounced as a “haughty, over-fed prelate,” “the advocate of an established church,” and a “vile minion of the aristocracy.” Many a fair maiden is content to go with holes in her stockings, in order that she may contribute to the “society for the support of indigent young men intended for the ministry!”

“Dear smiling village! loveliest of the lawn!

Thy joys are fled, and all thy charms withdrawn.”

As for politics—but here I approach the subject which was uppermost in my mind at starting. All the world knows that there are, or rather used to be, two rival newspapers published at Tattletown, the editors of which manage to keep the poor people in a perpetual ferment. There is the Tattletown Independent American, edited by Mr. Snobb! and the Tattletown Free and Independent American, edited by Mr. Fobb. The former is the longer established of the two, and, as the public are well aware, is conservative in its tone. Fobb’s hebdomadal, on the contrary, is characterised by the spirit of innovation. If a doctrine be new, startling, incredible, abrupt, violating all preconceived notions and prejudices, it commends itself at once to Fobb’s acceptance. He will urge it with a boldness and pertinacity that confound the unthinking. To incur his opposition, it is only necessary that a principle should be old and well established. His morality would seem to resemble that of the tribe, with whom it is a custom to kill all their old men and women. Age is with him the worst of crimes, and the most penal. Novelty is the first of charms.

Strange as it may seem, Fobb has his devoted admirers and active supporters. As for Snobb, I am credibly informed, that, disgusted with the supineness of the Tattletonians, he had at one time resolved to relinquish the publication of the “Independent American,” when, unexpectedly, the field was invaded by Fobb with his “Free and Independent.” Then it was that the patriotism and disinterestedness of Snobb’s character shone conspicuous. He was, to use his own vigorous expression, determined to stand to his guns, and however great might be the pecuniary sacrifice, to remain in the village to combat the pernicious influence, which, “like the Bohon Upas,” I quote Snobb’s own words—“would spread poison and desolation among families and communities.” Snobb wound off his appeal, by calling upon all, who valued their liberty and their lives; who would save their country from intestine confusion and slaughter; who would keep unstained the altar of domestic felicity, and transmit unimpaired that glorious fabric of constitutional right, cemented by the blood of martyred ancestors—to rally round him and the Independent American. “Any person obtaining five subscribers,” said he in conclusion, “shall receive a sixth copy gratis.”

It is difficult to conceive of the degree of excitement produced in Tattletown by this fulmination, on the part of Snobb, and the subsequent establishment of the “Free and Independent American,” on the part of Fobb. Such a thing as neutrality could no longer exist. Great and vital principles were at stake; and from the squire to the tinman’s apprentice, it was necessary that every man should take one side or the other—should be either a Snobbite or a Fobbite. Both journals were benefited by this agitation. New subscribers poured in daily, and a fund was raised by the partisans of each establishment for the more effectual prosecution of the war. And what was the war about? To this day nobody can tell.

Personalities now began to be interchanged. Snobb gave Fobb the lie direct, and defied him to prove a statement which had appeared in the “Free and Independent,” accusing Snobb of highway robbery, arson and other little peccadilloes. Fobb treated Snobb’s defiance with an easy irony, which bewildered the good people of Tattletown, who began to think that Fobb must know a good deal more of Snobb than other people. The following answer appeared in the “Independent American:”

“We must apologise to our readers for again polluting our columns with an allusion to the reckless traducer, whose journal of yesterday came forth reeking with slanders against ourselves. It would be charitable, perhaps, to attribute to a diseased intellect, rather than a malicious temper, these ebullitions of mendacity, but the motive is too obviously bad. We can assure this poor creature, this beggarly reprobate and unwashed scribbler, that mere declamation is not proof, and that assertion carries no weight when unsustained by evidence. If he can keep sober long enough, let him reply to the question which we once more reiterate, ‘where are your proofs?’ ”

It was with intense anxiety that the citizens of Tattletown looked for the next number of the “Free and Independent.” Never before had Snobb been so severe, so savage. Fobb’s rejoinder excited public interest in the quarrel, to a painful degree. It was as follows:

“The guilty fugitive from justice, whom it is with shame we acknowledge as our contemporary, attempts to invalidate our charges by clamoring for proofs. We beg him to reflect a moment before he repeats his call. If he has sincerely striven to make reparation for past misdemeanors, by a life comparatively guiltless—if there be any hope or prospect of reformation in his case—most reluctantly would we be instrumental in re-consigning him to the States-prison or the gallows. Before, therefore, we come out with any statements, that shall be universally admitted as final and conclusive as to the character of this man, we will put a few questions which he will understand, however enigmatical they may be to others. Did Snobb ever make the acquaintance of Miss Amanda W——? Did he ever see a white crape scarf that used to belong to that ill-fated young lady? Does he remember the circumstance of an old pruning-knife being found beneath a cherry-tree? Has he still got that red silk hankerchief?”

I must leave it for some more graphic pen—to the author of “Jack Sheppard” or “Barnaby Rudge,” to depict the consternation and horror produced among the Tattletonians by this publication. Could it be that Tattletown harbored a murderer? What other interpretation could be put upon the diabolical insinuations in Fobb’s paper? For a week and more nothing was talked of but this article. At the post office—the tinman’s shop—the grocer’s—on the steps of the meeting-houses, no other topic was broached. With unprecedented eagerness the next number of Snobb’s paper was looked for and purchased. The only allusion it contained to Fobb’s ferocious attack was in these simple lines: “As we shall make the insinuations contained in the last number of the Tattletown Free and Independent the subject of a judicial investigation, it is quite unnecessary for us to bestow any farther notice upon the miserable calumniator, who is striving to get into notice by means of the attention he may provoke from ourselves.”

Tattletown was disappointed in this rejoinder, and began to entertain its suspicions as to the truth of Fobb’s intimations. The old women of the place began to shake their heads and look wise, when the subject was broached. “They must say they always thought there was something wrong—something not altogether easy about Mr. Snobb. They hoped for the best, but there were things—however murder will out.” The fate of the injured “Amanda” was a topic of endless speculation among the more youthful of the feminine inhabitants; and there was a delightful mystery about the “white crape scarf,” which afforded an exhaustless pabulum for curiosity. Snobb must certainly clear up his character. He must explain the circumstances in regard to that “ill-fated young lady.” He must tell the public what became of “that red silk handkerchief.” Above all, he must satisfactorily account for the horrible fact of the old pruning-knife being found under the cherry-tree.

In the meantime Fobb declared that he was daily and hourly environed with the perils of assassination. He was obliged to go armed, to protect himself from the minions of the culprit Snobb. His fearless devotion to the cause of truth and justice had “sharpened daggers that were thirsting for his blood—but what was life compared with the proud satisfaction of having maintained the cause of the people,

‘Unmoved by flattery and unbribed by gain?’ ”

In the midst of the excitement produced by this war of words, Tattletown was electrified one fine morning in December, by the report, that Snobb and Fobb had gone over to the neighboring village of Bungville to settle their differences by mortal combat. Two spruce young men from New York had arrived in the stage-coach the night before, and put up at the Tattletown house. They had brought guns with them; and early that morning the two editors, similarly armed and equipped, had started off with the strangers in a wagon belonging to the latter, in the direction of the village already named. As these facts became currently known among the Tattletonians the sensation was prodigious. A meeting of the “select men” was instantly called, and a committee of five, consisting of Mr. Fuzz, the retired “squire of the village,” Mr. Rattle, the tinman, Mr. Ponder, the celebrated lecturer on matters and things in general, Mr. Rumble the auctioneer, and Mr. Blister the apothecary, were appointed to proceed on horseback to Bungville, and prevent if possible the duel—or, if that had transpired, to arrest the survivor and the seconds.

Headed by Mr. Fuzz, the cavalcade started off in gallant style, followed by the prayers and anxious entreaties of the gentler sex to prevent if possible the “effusion of blood.” Miss Celestina Scragg, the poetess of the village, and the author of the celebrated ode to that beautiful stream, the Squamkeog, came very near being thrown under the hoofs of the squire’s horse, as she appealed to Mr. Fuzz, and besought him to rescue Albert, as she tenderly designated Mr. Fobb, or “perish in the attempt.”

After riding hard for about an hour, the committee approached the Bungville house, where they determined to make their first inquiries as to the fate of the editors and their seconds. Mr. Buzz, the landlord, was a brisk, officious little man, who always knew before you spoke what you were going to say, and rarely listened to more than the two first words of any question you might put to him. He was, moreover, a little deaf, so that the habit of anticipation was, perhaps, as much a matter of necessity as of choice.

“Have we arrived too late?” asked Fuzz.

“Oh, by more than an hour. It is all over,” replied Buzz, who supposed that the inquiry had reference to the dinner hour.

“It is all over, gentlemen,” said Fuzz, in a magisterial tone, turning to his awe-stricken companions. “Has any one been killed or wounded?” continued he, addressing the landlord.

“Killed, indeed? I guess you would think so,” exclaimed Buzz. “They have shot one fine, plump fellow.”

“It is probably Snobb. He is the plump one,” said Fuzz, contracting his lips, and looking sternly round at the members of the committee. “Did he fall dead on the spot?” he rejoined.

“Dead as Julius Cæsar—I may say very dead,” replied Buzz.

“Serious business this, gentlemen,” said Fuzz, dilating with importance.

Here Mr. Rattle, the tinman, was seen to mount his horse and gallop off in the direction of Tattletown. He was determined to be the first to communicate the news of the catastrophe.

“There will be no need of your services, Mr. Blister,” said Fuzz, bestowing a patronizing glance upon the apothecary. “Have the seconds escaped, Mr. Buzz?”

“Yes, the second one escaped, but with a bullet in his neck. They tracked him a mile or two by his blood.”

“Dreadful!” muttered Mr. Blister. “So Fobb is wounded! I will just ride back and inform Miss Scragg of the fact. She will go into hysterics, and I shall get a job.” And so saying, the apothecary mounted his horse, and followed in Rattle’s track.

“What have you done with the killed, Mr. Buzz?”

“Oh, we have skinned him, and hung him up to dry, to be sure. One of the gents would have a slice of him for dinner, but he found it rather tough eating I suspect; not quite equal to the ducks.”

“What!” exclaimed Fuzz, turning pale and starting back with horror. “Are they cannibals?”

“Yes, to be sure,” responded Buzz, who did not fully comprehend the question.

“Gentlemen, we must pursue the guilty fugitives,” said the squire. “What direction did they take, landlord? No equivocation, sir. The law will bear us out in adopting the most rigorous measures. Where are they?”

“Bless me, they are cosily seated at dinner in my little back parlor. I wouldn’t interrupt them now. It may make them mad.”

“Landlord! Lead us to them at once—at once, I say,” exclaimed Fuzz, turning very red about the gills.

“Well, squire, don’t talk so loud. I will show you the way, but mind that I say I shouldn’t wonder if they resented it.”

Buzz led the way through a long entry to a door, which he pointed out to the squire as communicating with the apartment where the “young gentlemen” were assembled. It needed not his words to convince Fuzz and his two remaining companions of this fact. A noise of uproarious mirth, mingled with the jingling of glasses, the clash of plates and the stamping of feet, plainly foretold the state of things within. Fuzz buttoned his coat, and tried to look undismayed.

“Now, gentlemen,” said he, “stand by me. Don’t flinch.”

He made a bold step forward, but as his palm approached the door-handle, an explosion of laughter, loud and long, made him recoil like a man who has barely saved himself from falling over a precipice. He looked at his associates, puffed out his cheeks, and seemed to be gathering energy for a renewed essay. Again he stopped suddenly, and assuming a look of unwonted sagacity, remarked that it was best to proceed gently and craftily about the business. Then motioning the bystanders to keep silence, he cautiously turned the handle of the door, and, opening it an inch or two, stealthily looked in upon the convivial party. It consisted of four nice young men. They were seated at a round table, which was plentifully covered with bottles, decanters, glasses, and the remains of a dessert. Two of the party were strangers to Fuzz, but the other two were, marvellous to behold, no other than Fobb and Snobb, not seamed with ghastly wounds, but quaffing champagne and clapping each other on the back with the affectionate familiarity of old friends.

At this spectacle, Fuzz was no less amazed than he would have been, had he seen one of the editors trussed, spitted and “done to a turn,” served up in a big dish on the table, while the other was flourishing his knife with the savory anticipation of making a meal of him. Cautiously shutting the door, Fuzz communicated the astounding fact to his brethren of the committee, and then reopening the door so that they might hear without seeing or being seen, they listened “with all their ears.”

“Yes, gentlemen,” said the voice of Fobb in tones of mock solemnity, “you behold in that abandoned individual, my unworthy brother Zeke Peabody, otherwise known as Simon Snobb—you behold in him, I repeat, the ruthless, unhung murderer of the unfortunate Amanda W——.”

Here a roar of obstreperous laughter, in which Snobb’s lungs seemed to crow like chanticleer, interrupted the speaker for a moment. He continued:

“If you ask me for proofs, consider for a moment the fact of the red silk handkerchief—the white crape scarf—the old pruning-knife that was found under the cherry-tree. If these circumstances be not enough to convict that cowering culprit—then pass along the champagne, and fill to my toast.”

“Fill to Fobb’s toast!” exclaimed three voices amid shouts of laughter.

“My toast,” said Fobb, “is one that cannot fail to be appreciated by this intelligent company. You, my dear Timms, will drink to it with a tear in your eye, for are you not the immortal inventor of the world-renowned Tricogrophpophphlogidion, that invaluable and never-to-be-sufficiently-commended preparation for the hair, by merely spreading which over a wig-block, you find there the next morning, a beautiful, curly wig, redundant and glossy? And you, O modest and retiring Jones, are not you the man that, by your grandfather’s celebrated pills, have rejuvenated suffering humanity? Have you not ‘floored consumption,’ and broken the back of dispepsia? Isn’t it a man’s own fault now if he is sick? Do not children cry for your incomparable lozenges? Are they not a blessing to mothers, and a curse to the doctors? Cannot a hand-cart-man, with your powerful ‘poor man’s plaster’ on his back, draw fifty times the weight that he could without it? Estimable, philanthropic Jones! Posterity will do you justice. And you, brother Zeke, in Tattletown known as Snobb, where shall we find an editor in the country who can fight windmills and make people think they are devouring despots with a better grace than yourself? My own accomplishments modesty forbids me to speak at length; but I flatter myself, that the story of Amanda W—— and the pruning-knife—and my eloquent denunciations of the monster, Snobb—are not unworthy specimens of those talents which entitle me to rank myself in your fraternity, and to participate in the emotions, which the sentiment I am now about to offer is calculated to excite. I will give you, gentlemen: Vive la humbug!”

Hardly had the peals of laughter consequent upon this prolonged sally subsided, when Fuzz, who was holding on to the door by the handle, being pressed upon from behind by his own companions, and two or three bar-room loungers, whom the sound of speech-making had attracted to the spot, suddenly let the handle slip from his grasp, whereupon the whole body of eaves-droppers, preceded by the squire, were precipitated into the room, where the two editors and their friends were at their revels. Imagining it to be a hostile invasion, the four friends, whose tempers had been pretty well primed with champagne, immediately “squared off,” and showed their “science.”

Fuzz was greeted by Timms with what the latter was pleased to call “a settler in his bread-basket,” which had the effect of lifting him from his feet, and spinning him into a corner of the room with a most unmagisterial celerity. Mr. Ponder, the “celebrated lecturer on matters and things in general,” was attended to in the most prompt manner by Jones, who, as he technically expressed himself, “punished him by a dig in his dice-box,” meaning that his blow took effect somewhere in the region of his teeth. As for Rumble, the auctioneer, he was knocked down by a bottle in the hand of Snobb, like an old remnant of goods disposed of under his own hammer. The rest of the invaders met with due attention from Fobb, who broke two chairs over as many heads.

The battle was speedily fought and won. The committee sent by the select men of Tattletown returned home that night in melancholy disarray, and imprecating vengeance upon their assailants. There was an immediate demand in the village for brown paper and vinegar, court plaster and lint. It was long before Mr. Ponder could deliver another lecture at the new Lyceum, owing to the disfigurement of his countenance. As for Snobb and Fobb, who were in fact the originators of the whole mischief, they issued no more numbers of their sprightly papers. The “Independent,” and the “Free and Independent” were abruptly stopped. The two brother editors were never more seen in Tattletown. The last I heard of them, one was lecturing on Animal Magnetism, while the other accompanied him as a subject for his experiments. Their wonderful feats in clairvoyance have been so trumpeted by the country press, that it is unnecessary for me to allude to them more minutely.

THE OLD MAN RETURNED HOME.

———

BY G. G. FOSTER.

———

The dews fall softly from the dropping skies,

And winds are dallying with the wanton flowers,

That like young maidens in their coy retreats

Unveil their beauties for the spirit stars

Alone to gaze on.—Age, they say, dries up

The fountain of enthusiasm, and the hues

That morning sunlight pictures in the wave,

Shrink like scared spirits away beneath the disc

Of noontide sun, or evening’s cheerless beam.

Now, I have seen old Time’s retreating tide

Leave its white froth upon me—aye, gray hairs

Have sprung from out the furrows of my brain,

As weeds will grow upon the o’erwrought soil,

To tell me that I’m old—bid me put off

The misty mantle of life’s morning dreams,

And plod in dull indifference to the grave.

Why, ’tis a lie! I feel the air as fresh—

I scent the fragrance of this beauteous eve

As gratefully—I watch the paling moon

Stealing to her magnificent repose

Behind the starry curtains of the west,

With as unchanged and vigorous delight

As when, a boy, beside my own dear lake

I lay, and saw the same moon kiss the wave

That in strange music murmured out its joy.

The whippoorwill amid the hazel boughs

Sings his old tunes unchanged—as are the leaves

And skies and waves that echo it. ’Tis man,

And not man’s real nature, which dims o’er

The gold of feeling with pernicious rust,

Drawn, like the poison of the asp, from flowers

Which spring forever, would he cherish them,

Within his heart of hearts.

What! I grow old?

I haven’t felt so young for forty years!

And, were it not my mother’s hair is white—

My father dead, and all that’s human, changed—

I’d deem the past but as a school-boy’s dream

Over an ill-conned lesson—and awake

To the reality of living joy.

STANZAS

FROM AN UNPUBLISHED POEM.

———

BY MRS. R. S. NICHOLS.

———

“I have a passion” for the budding Spring,

Who clasps the wanton Earth in her embrace,

For, like a glorious vision, she doth bring

Rich fruits and flowers, which the tropics grace;

And shining bands, that make our forests ring

With melodies so rich, that they efface

All thoughts of gloomy winter from my mind,

And leave my heart as free as is the summer wind!

“I have a passion” for the girdled mountain,

That rears its crowned head beneath the sky,

Which bends above it like a blue, sealed fountain,

Whose waters flow not in those realms on high!

Though many of these hours I cannot count on,

Yet when these glories meet mine eager eye,

I stand entranced upon the mount or lea,

For hours like these are years—are years of bliss to me!

But more than these, I love the restless sea,

The kingly element!—Its dark blue waves

Were ever like some gentle friends to me!

For oft, in dreams, I’ve wandered through its caves

Like some pale spirit of the dead, now free;

I’ve seen the bright, but tombless “place of graves,”

Where Ocean gathers all his dead to sleep,

The pale and shadowy sleep, which Death’s phantasms keep!

“I have a passion” for all lovely features

That deck fair nature’s ever glowing face;

Rocks, hills and waves to me seem glorious creatures,

Endowed with life, and majesty, and grace!

They are to us as everlasting teachers,

In whose revealings, truths divine we trace;

They bid us raise, when sad, our tearful eyes,

And seek perfection only ’mid the blissful skies.

THE BACHELOR’S EXPERIMENT.

———

BY MRS. EMMA C. EMBURY.

———

There are some persons in the world who seem born to evil fortune; they grow up under the shadow of care, and misfortune dogs their footsteps like a sleuth-hound eager for his prey. Reversing the old fable of King Midas, every thing they touch becomes valueless. Their best efforts are rewarded with disappointment,—their life is a perpetual struggle,—troubles come not in a host which might be confronted at once, but in slow and sure succession, one evil being overcome only to make room for another, until at length the energies of the worn spirit are all exhausted, and patient endurance is the only trace which still remains of the high capabilities with which it was originally gifted. But there are others who are decidedly born to good luck. (Poor Power! how do we check the career of laughter with a sigh, when some passing word recalls the inimitable skill with which he ruled the chords of mirth!) There are people to whom success is a sort of natural inheritance,—who never put forth a finger to beckon fortune onwards, and yet find her following in their track, dropping her golden favours in their way, and smoothing with obsequious care the asperities in their path of life. Such an one was the hero of the following sketch.

Mr. Simon D. Waldie, or rather S. De Courcy Waldie, (for thus he always wrote it; having rather a leaning towards aristocracy even in the trifling matter of names,) was the son of a highly respectable merchant, who, conscious of the defects in his own early education, determined to bestow on his child all the advantages of scholarship. As young De Courcy exhibited evidences of talent, and indeed was looked upon as a remarkably precocious boy ere he attained his fifth year, he was early banished from his paternal roof to the residence of a private tutor in the country. This plan was adopted in order to rescue him from the temptations to idleness which exist in large schools, and, so far, it was very judicious. But to a constitution naturally delicate and a temper exceedingly reserved, a public school offered some advantages which were not to be found in the home of a secluded student, and the want of which had no small influence on the future life of young De Courcy. Shut out from other companionship than that of his pedantic tutor, he devoted himself to study with most indefatigable zeal, and his close application was rewarded by the attainment of the highest honours, when called to pass through the ordeal of a collegiate examination.

Of course all those who were interested in his future welfare anticipated great results from this early development of mind. But in the education of the young student one most material point had been forgotten. He had been taught to labor but no object had been offered to his future attainment:—he had learned to delve the classic mine but he knew not how to coin the fine gold he there discovered:—he had been trained to run a race without having any fixed goal to direct his steps. His life was a perfectly aimless one,—he had no definite end in view. His father’s competent fortune placed him above the necessity of seeking a livelihood, and nothing short of absolute want seemed likely to drive the solitary student into the haunts of men. When desired to choose a profession he was utterly confounded. The various claims of Law, Gospel and Physic were placed before him in every possible light; but they were exhibited after his habits of desultory thought and profitless study had become too deeply rooted. At first he was inclined to adopt the law; but a few days attendance on court, (where he heard the finest powers of reasoning and the noblest gifts of eloquence exerted in behalf of one of the vilest criminals that ever stood before the bar of Justice,) sickened him of this profession. “I cannot spend some of the best years of my life,” said he, “in learning to make the worse appear the better reason.” The delight with which he sometimes listened to the gifted preacher, who spoke as if his lips had been ‘touched with a live coal from the altar,’ tempted him to the study of divinity. But his delicate sense of duty checked the impulse ere it became a wish, for he dared not assume the ‘form’ without the ‘spirit of godliness’ or enter into the ‘holy of holies’ with the soil of earth upon his garments’ hem. The study of medicine attracted him by the facilities which it afforded for relieving the sufferings of mortality; but the illness of a young friend showed him the darker side of the picture also. He beheld the weeping relatives looking up to the medical attendant as if he were an angel endowed with the power of life and death. He learned how fearful is the responsibility of him who ministers at the bed of sickness, and how deeply it is felt by the honest and conscientious physician. He was disgusted with the heartlessness of those (and there are such) who calculate a patient’s means of payment ere they enter his sick room; and he was intimidated by the remembrance of the wear and tear of feeling which is necessarily suffered by the man of science who puts heart and soul into his duties at the couch of suffering. Commerce, De Courcy abhorred, for the details of its busy scenes were little suited to his reserved habits and refined tastes. Viewed in its fairest light he recognised it as a noble calling, but those who pursued it were but too apt to wander with idolatry and bow down before the golden calf.

So the youth hesitated, and deferred his decision, passing his days amid his books in the seclusion of his study until his habits of reverie were rather rudely broken by the sudden death of his father. This startled him from his torpor and had he been then called to enter upon the active duties of life, might have aroused him more effectually. But the elder Mr. Waldie had been one of those careful bodies who trust nothing to chance. Every thing was in such perfect order, his business was so admirably arranged, and his will was so precise in its directions that De Courcy had nothing to do and little to reflect upon. The head clerk assumed the business and purchased the stock in trade,—the income of the property was bequeathed to mother and son during life with a reversion of the whole estate to the survivor, and after the legal forms had been properly attended to, every thing went on in its usual manner. The only perceptible difference was that when rents, or interests on bonds and mortgages became due the bold and flourishing signature of S. De Courcy Waldie was appended to the receipts instead of the cramped and queer hieroglyphics which were formerly presumed to designate the name of his parent.

There was something in the mode of life peculiarly calculated to cherish the secluded habits of De Courcy Waldie. Their abode was situated in one of those narrow gloomy streets, where the sun is only visible at noonday,—a street which formed, in old times, a portion of the ‘court-end’ of the city, but which is now occupied principally by elderly proprietors or decayed gentlewomen, who, compelled to live on a small income, yet unwilling to appear shorn of their former honors, haunt the scenes of their youthful gaiety, and affect to despise the upstart ‘nobodies’ of B—— Street and —— Place. The tall, dusky houses stand wedged in close array, looking upon their opposite neighbors like a row of their old time-worn spinsters in an old fashioned contra-dance; in one of these sleepy-looking mansions, resided the Waldie family. Every thing in the house bore evidences of Dutch neatness in housekeeping. The faded but unworn carpets were the same which had been the wonder of the neighborhood when the parents of our hero were first married; the carved chairs belonged to that perpendicular race now rarely to be found except in rubbish rooms; the narrow necked china jars on the high chimney-piece were relics of a by-gone age; and the tall clock, standing in the very spot where it had been placed thirty years before, rolled its Ethiop eyes, and ticked its monotonous warnings in a most drowsy and slumber-inducing voice. Dark heavy curtains in winter, and yellow Venitian half-blinds in summer, added to the gloomy appearance of apartments in which the sun never shone. The sound of the clock, the low purr of the cat as she stretched her overgrown body on the soft hearth-rug, and the dull clicking of Mrs. Waldie’s knitting-needles, which she plied with unceasing assiduity, alone broke the deep silence of the apartment, and the most sincere votary of indolence could scarcely have imagined a more comfortable sort of domestic “sleepy-hollow.”

Here would Mr. De Courcy Waldie sit hour after hour, pondering over some learned treatise, digging out Greek roots, exhausting his ingenuity in patching up some mutilated fragment of antiquity, and occasionally, by way of light reading, arousing himself with the Latin Poets, but never condescending to look into any thing which could not boast the musty flavor of past ages, except the daily newspapers. It is not strange that a man of such habits should soon learn to mistake reverie for reflection, and feasible projects for good resolutions. There was always something which he meant to do at some future time. He would tilt himself back in his chair, plant his feet against the chimney-piece, and, with a cigar in his mouth, indulge those vague and pleasant but idle dreams, which such men are apt to dignify with the name of thoughts. The household went on with a kind of mechanical regularity. The important affairs of indoor life were managed by two old servants, who, before the abolition of slavery in New York, had been the property of Mr. Waldie, and had been carefully trained in all the duties of their station, (a class, by the way, who make the very best domestics, but who are now almost extinct; thanks to the spirit of philanthropy, which has thrown them upon their own resources and left them to die by want, vice and intemperance.) Mrs. Waldie walked into the kitchen every morning, and gave, or fancied she gave directions for the day; but Dinah needed no such watchfulness,—she knew her business and went about it as regularly as if she were wound up like the clock every Saturday night.

In the early part of his life it had been suggested that De Courcy ought to look out for a wife. But the idea of returning into a throng of giddy giggling girls, was quite too trying to the poor youth’s feelings. He was sometimes conscious of an emotion of pleasure when, as he sat at the head of his pew in church, his eye fell upon the rosy cheek and bright eye of some fair damsel. Yet he only admired at a respectful distance, for a single word from a lady, or even the necessity of touching his hat to her in the street, would crimson his face with the painful blush of most officious modesty. If perchance he did venture to play the agreeable to some female less volatile than her companions, his constrained manner and pedantic compliments evinced a much more intimate acquaintance with the Daphnes and Chloes of antiquity, than with the luring, breathing, captivating beauties of the nineteenth century. By degrees all hope of taming the shy young student was relinquished. His female contemporaries married less intractable individuals, and long before he had made up his mind as to the propriety of assuming the responsibilities of wedlock, a second race of giggling girls was springing up around him. However he seemed quite contented with his celibacy. Perhaps some of my readers may consider this as a very integral portion of the good fortune which had fallen to his lot, and this I will not venture to dispute, for to a man of his dreamy temper and indolent habits, a wife would have been a positive annoyance—unless indeed, he could have found a sister to the inimitable “fat boy” of Pickwick.

Matters went on very smoothly with De Courcy Waldie until he had attained that awkward corner in man’s life, which must be turned, and the pathway from which leads rather down hill. Mr. De Courcy Waldie reached his forty-fifth birth-day, ere he had decided upon a profession or concluded to take a wife, but his time had glided away so calmly, that he scarcely noted its loss, till a second domestic bereavement aroused him. Quiet old ladies, who do not trouble themselves about their neighbors and never talk scandal, generally spin out life to its most attenuated thread, and thus Mrs. Waldie dozed away until she had completed her eighty-fourth year, when she fell into a sound sleep from which she never woke. It was not until the bustle attendant upon the funeral, had subsided, that the son had time to think of his loss, and then, when left to the utter solitude of his home—for the first time in his life he was sensible of actual profound grief. He did not know how essential his mother’s presence had become to him. He was so accustomed to see her in the warmest corner in winter, and by the recess of the window in summer, that the apartment seemed to have lost, not only one of its inmates, but part of its furniture. Her tiny work-table and easy chair still held their wonted place, but she who was almost a part of them, was gone forever, and a feeling of loneliness took possession of his heart. He knew not, until the form of that revered parent was hidden from his sight, how often his eye had wandered from the page of his favourite book, to rest on her placid face. He remembered how carefully she had studied his tastes, how scrupulously she had obeyed his wishes, how well she had adapted herself to his peculiar habits; and when he reflected upon the different degree of his grief at the loss of his father, he began to think that there was something in the nature of woman particularly calculated to make man happy. This thought was followed by regret at not having secured a continuance of womanly tenderness for his future life. In the natural order of events, he must long outlive his mother, and who would have supplied her place, like a devoted wife. Mr. De Courcy Waldie began to wish he was married.

The longer he dreamed over this new idea, however, the more his difficulties seemed to increase. He thought of the pretty delicate girls whom he had admired in his college days, but he recollected them now as fat comfortable matrons, or thin, withered spinsters; and he looked in his mirror as if to discover whether age had made the same havoc with his appearance. But the daily use of the said useful appendage of the toilet had rendered him so gradually habituated to time’s changes, that he could discern little difference in himself. He had never possessed much of the bloom of youth, and his face had early worn the pale student-like ‘cast of thought,’ which years had only traced in deeper characters. His dapper little figure, still trim and upright, was not spoiled by the obesity so much dreaded by elderly gentlemen; his teeth were still perfect—his incipient baldness—but this was an exceedingly delicate point—we will draw the veil of silence over his reflections on this painful subject. Suffice it to say that Mr. De Courcy Waldie came to the conclusion that he was yet young enough to think of matrimony.

It was necessary for him to proceed with great caution however, for he knew that he was reputed rich, and he heard that society contained such anomalies as mercenary young ladies. While thinking over his new project, he was one day called upon for a subscription to some benevolent association, by one of those charitable persons who relieve the real or fancied distresses of their fellow mortals, by a free expenditure of their own time and their neighbor’s money. With his usual generosity, Mr. Waldie handed her a liberal contribution, not sorry perhaps, to buy off her garrulity at such a price. But the lady dropped some words ere she departed, which set him off upon a new track. She had suggested the propriety of his adopting some orphan boy and educating him as his own. This was quite a new idea to him, but he viewed it in rather a different light from that which his visitor had intended. “Adopt a son,” said he to himself, in a tone that seemed strangely like disgust, “no indeed. I should go crazy with a rollicking boy ransacking the house, and turning every thing upside down. Besides, boys have always got dirty faces, and they are forever cutting their fingers with their penknives, breaking their heads against horse posts or cracking their skulls on skating ponds; then they always tear their trousers, lose their gloves, and stump their toes through their shoes. Faugh! I can’t endure great rude bearish boys. If she had said a daughter now, I might have thought better of it; there is certainly something very pleasant in a nice little quiet girl.”

The more he reflected upon this fancy, the better he liked it, but the idea of adopting a daughter soon gave place to a more eccentric scheme. He determined to make an experiment. He would ‘train up’ a child in the way she should go; he would educate a wife.

Whether it was the loss of his mother which had awakened him from his apathy, or whether the long latent affections of his nature were now only developing themselves, cannot be determined, but, certain it is, that before he had dreamed over his project three months, Mr. De Courcy Waldie actually applied to the managers of the Orphan Asylum for permission to adopt three of the female inmates. He engaged to educate them according to their different capacities, to furnish them with the means of obtaining a future livelihood, and to settle the sum of two thousand dollars on each, when she should either marry or attain her majority. His character for probity and honor, was as well known as his eccentricity, and as no doubt existed of the fulfilment of his promises, his proposition was accepted. He was allowed to select his three protégées, and however ignorant he might be of female character, he showed himself no mean judge of female beauty, for his choice fell on three of the loveliest children in the institution. He wished them to be about twelve years of age, and there was but the difference of a few months between them. They were poor, friendless orphans, destined to a life of hardship if not of want, and he knew that if his experiment terminated unsuccessfully, the girls would be better provided for by his means, than if they were apprenticed to some hard task-master. He determined to bestow on all the same care, to educate them after his own peculiar notions, and when they should have attained a proper age, to decide upon their individual claims to his affections.

The old servants shook their heads in ominous silence, when they learned the sudden increase of family. Old Dinah went so far as to hint that his mother’s death had touched Mr. Waldie’s brain, and indeed wiser folks than she came to something like the same conclusion. But your quiet people, who are so amazingly slow in waking up to any purpose, pursue it with wonderful perseverance, when once fairly placed on the track. Mr. Waldie engaged an elderly governess to take charge of his young wards, and an apartment in the upper part of the house was appropriated to her use as a schoolroom. It was agreed that the privacy of Mr. Waldie’s sitting room should never be violated by the intrusion of the females, except when he invited them to enter its hallowed precincts. His old-fashioned politeness regulated the etiquette of the table at their daily meals, and very soon the household assumed its usual regularity, notwithstanding the presence of three little girls. Mr. Waldie did not consider them old enough to deserve his particular attention for the present, and he therefore left them to the care of their very competent governess: only stipulating that they were never to be allowed to read poetry or fiction—never to wear any other dress than a calico frock, white apron and cottage bonnet,—and by no means, to form an acquaintance with other children. Having made these rules he returned to his former abstract studies, until such a time as he should deem it proper to undertake the instruction of his young protégées.

He had chosen the little girls rather on account of their personal beauty than with any regard to their mental gifts, for of these he determined to judge for himself, and it was not surprising, therefore, that he should discover great diversity in their characters. Fanny Morris, the elder of the three, possessed that regular and classical beauty which ever charms the eye in the remnants of Grecian art. Her features were perfect, her complexion exquisite, her form symmetry itself, but unfortunately, she seemed born to verify the oft-repeated criticism on that paragon of ideal beauty, the Venus de Medici, of whom it has been said that “if a woman exactly resembling her could be found in this breathing world, she would in all probability, (judging by the rules of physiognomy and phrenology) be an idiot.” Fanny’s small and beautifully shaped head was utterly destitute of brains—her soft dark eyes were never lighted up with any loftier expression than that of pleasure at sight of a box of sugar plums—and her lovely mouth gave utterance to none but the silliest of speeches. She could learn nothing, and after a year spent in fruitless attempts to impart more than the mere rudiments of knowledge, she was given up as incorrigible. But mindful of his promise Mr. Waldie gave her the choice of an avocation, and finding her only capable of the most mechanical employment, he apprenticed her to a fringe and fancy-button maker; at the same time he purchased, in her name, bank stock to the amount of two thousand dollars, as her future dowry. Fanny seemed to have as little heart as mind, and parted from her benefactor with no regret. As we shall not have occasion to allude to her again, it may be as well to satisfy the reader’s curiosity by stating that her beauty afterwards attracted the attention of a young artist, who wanted just such a model. Finding that her quiet stupidity rendered her a most untiring sitter, while her two thousand dollars added weight to her other attractions, the painter married her, and much of his present celebrity is owing to the matchless loveliness of his silly wife.

Of the two children who now remained under Mr. Waldie’s roof, Emily Rivers was by far the most strikingly beautiful. Her blonde hair fell in rich curls upon her fat, white shoulders, while her delicate features, and large clear blue eyes gave an infantile grace to her lovely countenance. There was a frank joyousness in her expression, which was very attractive, and, at that time, few would have hesitated in giving her the preference over her young companion. Celina Morley was one of those children whose personal characteristics develop very slowly. She was short in stature, and slightly inclined to stoop, while her gray eyes, whose hue was deepened almost into blackness by the shadow of the fringed lid, and a small mouth filled up with pearly teeth, formed her only claims to admiration. Her face appeared out of proportion—her forehead was so immensely high, her brows so thick and dark her cheeks so colorless, that her countenance seemed like some modern engravings, all black and white, without tints of light and shadow.

Nor was this difference in their personal appearance the only one which existed between the two girls. The shy, quiet demeanor of Celina, contrasted strongly with the frank, bold manner of her companion. Emily would run to meet Mr. Waldie with a gay laugh, and throwing herself on a footstool beside him, would beguile him with her merry prattle, without seeming to care whether he were annoyed by her intrusion. But Celina would stand timidly awaiting an encouraging word from her benefactor, and thus it often happened, in the little household as in the great world, that modest merit was overlooked in favor of obtrusive importunity, and Celina was forgotten for the more clamorous Emily. Yet it was Celina who brought the dressing-gown the very moment it was wanted, and drew the easy-chair into the accustomed corner—it was Celina who laid the slippers just where his feet would be sure to find them without giving the head trouble to think about them; it was Celina who, when he was confined to his bed by sickness, watched in his room through the long day, and listened at his door in the silent hours of the night. But the caresses of Emily had opened a fountain of tenderness in Mr. Waldie’s bosom, and after they had been inmates of his family for rather more than two years, he felt that the time had come when his course of instruction must commence. What that course was it is needless to specify; let it suffice to know that he destined them to pursue a series of studies which would have appalled the most zealous aspirant for college honors.

The true character of the two girls began now to be exhibited. They were approaching their fifteenth year, and the fresh, glowing beauty of Emily Rivers had already excited the notice of strangers. She had observed the stolen glance of admiration, she had even heard the sudden exclamation of delight, as some ardent youth peeped under the close cottage bonnet, while she walked demurely beside her benefactor or her governess, in their daily promenades, and the latent vanity of her nature had been fully aroused. The calico dress and white apron annoyed her sadly. She was full of projects for making Mr. Waldie sensible of the folly of his restrictions, and while he was busied in teaching them to solve algebraic problems, she was as busy in devising schemes for eluding his vigilance. She had no taste for study, but she had tact and quickness of comprehension and thus it often happened that her adroitness stood her in the stead of application and industry. While Celina devoted herself to the performance of her required tasks, Emily exerted her ingenuity in evading them, or in skilfully applying to her own use, the industry and talent of her young companion. But Emily had a most decided love for dress. She was wonderfully tasteful in trimming bonnets and furbelowing dresses and debarred from any such pleasures for her own account, she amused her leisure hours by furbishing up old Dinah (who was particularly fond of a fine spreading knot of ribbons) and regarnishing the head gear of all the dingy dame’s dressy acquaintances.

At length her vanity would no longer be controlled. The girls received a regular allowance of pocket-money, which it was expected they would spend in charity, and this sum Emily hoarded up until she was enabled to purchase some of the long-coveted finery. Determined to try the strength of Mr. Waldie’s rules, she came down to the parlor one Sunday morning, prepared to accompany him to church, clad in her new attire. For a few minutes he looked at her in stern silence, while, with a beating heart but resolute spirit, she awaited his reproaches. The little cottage bonnet had given place to a tawdry pink silk hat, flaunting with streamers of lace and ribbons, and instead of her simple white cape her shoulders were now covered with a bright yellow gauze scarf. She had certainly not improved her appearance by her new display, but she wished to try the effect of a little rebellion, and she was fully satisfied. Mr. Waldie quietly desired her to change her dress,—she remonstrated,—he insisted,—she grew angry and exhibited a degree of fiery passion, which, though by no means strange to the other members of the family, had hitherto been carefully concealed from him; until at length, irritated by her vehement opposition, he led her to her apartment and locked her in. There were three faults which Mr. Waldie regarded with peculiar abhorrence in the female character, and these were a passionate temper, a love of dress, and a determined will. He was perfectly horror-stricken, therefore, at the sudden discovery of all these most dreaded attributes in the beautiful Emily. Nor was his disgust much diminished, when, on his return from church, he proceeded to her apartment to receive, as he hoped, an humble confession of her fault. He found her leaning from the window engaged in an interesting conversation with a beardless young gentleman who resided in the adjoining house, and who was now standing on the top of a ladder placed against the garden wall, in order to be within whispering or rather murmuring distance of the young lady, with whom he had for some months carried on a flirtation by means of billets tied to pebbles and flung into her window. This of course decided the matter. Emily was desired by her benefactor to make choice of some trade, and, as she fancied it must be perfectly delightful to live among finery, she decided upon adopting the profession of a milliner. Accordingly, Latin and Geometry were exchanged for frippery and folly. Emily soon became a most skilful artiste, and, by exhibiting their effect on her beautiful face, which nothing could spoil, was the means of selling so many ugly bonnets and turbans, that she was quite a prize to her employer. At the age of eighteen she married a fashionable draper and tailor, when she received her promised dowry from the hand of Mr. Waldie. As the business of both husband and wife was one which ministered to the master spirit of vanity, they made a large fortune in a few years, and I have heard—but I will not vouch for the truth of the story—that after their retirement, Colonel Fitwell and his beautiful wife made quite a figure in the saloons of Paris, where she could boast of the honor of having been noticed by royalty; his majesty having been heard to ask the name of that very large woman with blonde hair! What an honor for a simple republican!

Celina Morley was now left alone, and the punishment inflicted on her companion, for such to her sensitive nature it seemed, rather tended to increase her timid reserve. But she possessed high intellectual gifts and a great love for study, so that her progress in learning equalled her eccentric benefactor’s highest anticipations. I am afraid she would have been deemed a blue-stocking in the circles of fashion, for she was a fine Latin scholar, read Greek with great ease, had not even been delayed on the Pons Asinorum in her mathematical career, and in short, when she had attained her eighteenth year, knew considerably more than most collegians when they take their degree. Do not think this is an over-estimate of the attainments of our heroine, gentle reader. Let an intelligent woman be endowed with industry, perseverance and a love for study, then give her a powerful motive, such as love or gratitude, to stimulate her, and all the boasted intellect of man will hardly outstrip her in the race of learning.

The person of Celina had developed as fully as her mind. Her swarthy complexion had cleared into a fine brunette, her dark hair parted smoothly on her high forehead, added feminine grace to a rather masculine feature, while the intellectual expression which beamed in her fine eyes, lighted up her whole face with positive beauty. Her form had become tall and majestic, scarcely rounded enough for perfect symmetry, but just such a figure as expands with queenly grace in later life. In short, Celina had become a stately, beautiful, and gifted woman. But while all these things had been going on, Mr. Waldie had become some six or seven years older, and already passed his fiftieth year; yet some how or other, he did not seem to be very impatient to change his condition. It is true, Celina had attained the age which he had originally destined to be the period of marriage, but he felt so very comfortable and was so much the creature of habit, that he seemed rather to dread any innovation. He had taken the precaution to keep his wards in ignorance of his final intentions, and therefore, Celina loved him with truly filial affection, without dreaming that she might be called upon to cherish any warmer emotion. As she grew up to the stature of womanhood, Mr. Waldie had been induced, by the remonstrance of the governess, to withdraw some of his restrictions in female attire; and though he still insisted on a rigid proscription of bows, feathers, flowers and lace, he allowed Celina to assume a garb somewhat in accordance with the prevailing fashion. But he had forbidden her to acquire any feminine accomplishment except sewing and knitting. The first act he found very necessary to his own comfort, as strings would break, and buttons would come off, which evils no one could repair with such neat-handed rapidity as Celina; while the second mystery he looked upon as essential to every well-trained woman, because it had been the sole occupation of his mother for the last twenty years of her life. But sad to tell! the young victim of theory could neither dance, nor play on the piano, nor sketch in crayons, nor paint velvet, nor make filigree boxes, nor work worsted:—in short, she was utterly unskilled in the thousand lady-like arts of idle industry.

Yet nature had made her beautiful and good, education had made her a fine scholar, and her innate tact (without which talent and learning are often but useless gifts) had taught her womanly duties and womanly tastes. Indeed she had rather too much feminine delicacy to suit the peculiar notions of Mr. Waldie. He had an idea that the want of physical courage, which characterizes the sex, was simply an error in female education, and, not content with the passive endurance and moral strength which make woman a heroine in the chamber of pestilence, he determined that Celina should possess some share of masculine boldness. Accordingly, he practised various fantastic experiments to habituate her to pain and terror. He dropped hot sealing-wax on her bare arms, fired pistols within six inches of her head, and practised various feats of a similar nature, until, after having thrice set fire to her dress by accident, and once shocked her into a fit of sickness, he gave up his attempt in despair of ever bringing her to the required point of courage. Mr. Waldie was a little disappointed. Celina did not quite realize his ideal of the partner of his life. She bore little resemblance to the dull, drowsy, quiet creature, who, soon after his mother’s death, seemed to fulfil his notions of wifely excellence, and neither was she that most unfeminine of all females—a plodding and slovenly book-worm. She was simply a gentle, lovely, intellectual woman, whom profound learning had failed to make either a pedant or a metaphysician. Do not listen to your prejudices, friend reader, and fancy that I am portraying an immaterial character: such women are to be found—sometimes in the saloons of gaiety but more frequently in the shades of private life, and the fire on the domestic hearth may still burn brightly and cheerfully even when lighted by the torch of wisdom.

A year or two more passed on. Mr. Waldie seemed to linger long on the threshold of celibacy ere he could summon courage to cross it, and in the meantime he was spared all future anxiety about the matter. Among the few, who still kept up their acquaintance with the eccentric Mr. Waldie, was the head-clerk of his deceased father, who, grateful for the liberal treatment which he had received at the settlement of the estate, was always ready to do a kindness for the heir. Unpunctual tenants and troublesome debtors were peculiar objects of his watchfulness, and Mr. Waldie was saved from many a loss and many a vexation by his honest friend. The son of this gentleman, after receiving a liberal education, had devoted himself to the church, and, as Mr. Waldie’s extensive library furnished a great variety of polemical works, he had gladly accepted the bachelor’s kind invitation to visit it at all times, without restraint. At first young Willington Merwyn came rarely, and taking some dusty volume of controversial divinity would retire to his own quiet study. By degrees he learned to linger longer, and ponderous tomes which he formerly sought were often forgotten when he took his departure. He came frequently and staid late, while Mr. Waldie, absorbed in his own speculative philosophy, always greeted the presence of the clergyman as a tribute to the value of his intellectual stores, or a compliment to his own scholarship. He fancied, good man, that the long metaphysical discussions and ingenious theories, in which he took so much delight, were the young man’s chief attraction, and never dreamed that even the presence of philosophy herself,

“Attired in all

The star-gemmed robes of speculative truth”

would have awakened far less emotion in the bosom of Willington Merwyn than did the beauty and gentleness of Celina. But the lady herself had some little inkling of the truth, for women seem to have a sort of intuitive knowledge of the heart’s love. There were looks and tones and casual words which needed no interpreter, or if they did, she soon found one in her own feelings. She discovered that the visits of the clergyman were only recurring pleasures to her, and she reflected upon the matter till she came to the very natural conclusion, that, considering the warm regard manifested by her benefactor to his young friend, it probably was his wish that they should obey the command of the apostle to “love one another.” Not long after she had arrived at this conclusion, one of those lucky chances, which always favor lovers, revealed to her the fact that Mr. Merwyn had precisely the same opinion. In short, if the commandment already quoted had contained the sum of Christian duty, they would certainly have been regarded as eminently excellent young persons.

Of course the elder Mr. Merwyn was soon made acquainted with his son’s passion for Celina, and, following the honest old-fashioned mode of transacting such affairs, he thought it best to be sure of his friend’s approbation. Now it so happened that Mr. Waldie was at length coming to a decision on the momentous subject which had so long occupied his thoughts. He had made up his mind that, however reluctant he might feel to assume the responsible duties of matrimony, a further delay would be an act of cruel injustice to Celina. He thought over all her good qualities, and, though he did not quite like her cowardice, he determined that, rather than doom her to a life of celibacy, he would celebrate his fifty-fifth birth-day by a wedding. It cost him some effort to make this decision; for, in addition to his natural indolence which led him to dread any change in his mode of life, Mr. Waldie had one secret which he could not bear to betray. It was one of his weak points—nobody knew it, and he dreaded lest the familiar intercourse of married life should reveal it. Nothing but a sense of duty towards his ward could have induced him to overcome this last objection which seemed to have gained new force with the progress of time. It was just at this moment, when his heroic self-devotion had carried him to the verge of an explanation with Celina, that Mr. Merwyn, with sundry nods, and winks, and dry jokes, disclosed to him the wishes of the young people. Mr. Waldie was thunder-struck. It seemed to him too preposterous for belief, but it was sufficiently startling to determine him to judge for himself. He shook off his abstraction long enough to discover that his old friend was not very far wrong, and once assured of the fact, he fell into his usual reverie before coming to any definite decision. He had sufficient practical wisdom to keep his own counsel about his original plan, and he reflected upon Celina’s incorrigible timidity—the many little troubles which matrimony is apt to bring around one—his own bachelor comforts—and, above all, his inviolable SECRET, until he was quite disposed to believe that it was “all for the best.”

Mr. Waldie’s fifty-fifth birth-day was celebrated by a wedding; but Mr. Waldie still enjoyed his celibacy and his secret. Celina became the wife of Willington Merwyn. At the request of the eccentric but kind bachelor, the happy pair took up their abode with him. He probably did not gain much in the way of quiet by this arrangement, for in the course of a few years a certain little rosy-cheeked De Courcy and his chubby sister started the decorous echoes of the old house with the sounds of baby-grief and baby-joy. However, there is a wonderful power of adaptation in the human mind, and Mr. Waldie learned, after a while, to allow them free ingress to his student’s den, while he often neglected his speculative theories for practical illustrations of kindly affections. Celina made quite as good a wife as if she had been brought up in the usual lady-like ignorance of science. She shaped and sewed her children’s garments, concocted puddings and pies, directed the mechanism of her household, and was quite as useful in her sphere as the most vehement declaimer against learned women could have deemed necessary to vindicate her character. Mr. Waldie never regretted the result of his experiment. He lived in perfect harmony and peace with his now enlarged family, and it was not until Celina had become a comely matron and her children had grown up to love and reverence him, that the old man was gathered to his fathers. But his secret had been discovered long before his death, for he gradually lost his little personal vanity as soon as he finally concluded to remain a bachelor, and he did not find any decrease in Celina’s affection even when she learned that he wore A WIG.

SWEETHEARTS AND WIVES.

Though the ever-heaving ocean

Bear us from our forest-land,

Through the rising waves’ commotion,

To a far and foreign strand;

Still the heart, all space unheeding,

Firmly ’gainst our progress strives,

Leaves us, and with haste is speeding

To our sweethearts and our wives.

Ye may bind the eagle’s pinion,—

Check the deer’s impetuous course,—

Curb the steed to your dominion,—

Quell the torrent’s headlong force,—

But the spirit, fetters spurning

As our proud ship onward drives,

Leaves us, in its joy returning

To our sweethearts and our wives.

Noah’s freed and wand’ring raven

Toward the ark for safety flew;

Backward, to the spotless heaven,

Springs, at morn, the vesper dew.

Thus affection’s fond devotion,

Balm and solace of our lives;

Flies, like incense, o’er the ocean,

To our sweethearts and our wives.

P. E.

THE DUEL.

———

BY E. S. GOULD, ESQ. OF NEW YORK.

———

Harry Bradford sat musing by the window and was apparently lost in thought, when a sudden knock at his door aroused him; but before he could bid the applicant enter, Fred Stanley burst into the room.

“It’s all arranged, Harry,” said he with a glee in which, however, his companion did not seem at all to participate.

“So I supposed,” replied Harry, quietly; “such an affair is not likely to remain long unfinished in your hands.”

“And why should it, pray?” inquired Stanley, a little nettled at his friend’s want of enthusiasm.

“Oh, it should not, of course,” said Harry; “such matters, after all, are best done when soonest done. Where do we meet?”

“On the old battle-ground—Weehawken,” said Stanley; “no place like it.”

“No, none like it, indeed! What time have you appointed?” asked Harry.

“To-morrow, at sunrise,” replied Stanley.

“That’s rather prompt, too,” said Harry, “if one has to take leave of his friends and make his peace with God.”

“Bah!” said Stanley, slightingly, “we must not think too much of these things.”

“I must not, certainly,” replied Harry, “if I would just now retain my self-possession. We use pistols, I presume?”

“Yes, at ten paces;” said Stanley.

“A fearful proximity for men of approved courage and skill who are bent on taking each other’s life!” rejoined Harry; then after a pause, he added, “Wilson persists in his challenge, Fred?”

“Good G—!” exclaimed Stanley in dismay at what appeared to him a prospect of losing his expected sport, “you are not afraid to meet him Harry?”

“No, Stanley,” said Harry, “not in your sense of the word. So long as consequences are limited to myself, I have little thought of fear. But,” he continued—and he spoke in a low tone and with unwonted rapidity, lest some tremulousness of the voice might betray his emotion—“there are other interests, other fears, other considerations—”

“Forget them for heaven’s sake, until after to-morrow,” said Stanley, interrupting him, “or you will never acquit yourself with honor. If you have any little affairs to despatch, set about them at once, and don’t fail to be abed and asleep before ten, or you won’t be up in season. I would not have Wilson on the ground before us for the world. Good-bye; I must prepare my pistols, for I see you will never give them a thought;” and away went Fred Stanley as full of bravery, as solicitous for his friend’s honor, and as indifferent about his friend’s distress of mind—as seconds are wont to be.

Harry did not move for some minutes after Stanley left him; and when at length he raised his eyes from the floor, his countenance bore an expression of unutterable wo.

It was no wonder. He was the only child of a widowed mother, and the affianced lover of the sweetest maid in the land. If he should fall, as he well might, what would become of that mother and of Kate Birney?

He at length aroused himself saying—“I dare not see my mother: but Kate—dearest, loveliest Kate! I promised to call on her at five; and it’s five now; and, by heaven, there she stands at her parlor window beckoning me to hasten; yes! and she holds up that bouquet of flowers. It was but yesterday I gathered them for her—and what has not happened since yesterday!” Here he paused, as if too much overcome by fond recollections to proceed: he then added in a different tone—“these follies come upon us, with both cause and consequences, as suddenly, as fatally as the inevitable casualties of life! A day of promise is changed to a life of mourning by the event of a moment; the act of an instant destroys the happiness and poisons the memory of years! Those flowers were gathered in hope; and before they—frail, perishing mementos—can wither, he who bound them and she who wears them may be lost in despair!”

With a heavy heart Harry repaired to his love’s rendezvous, where, full of beauty and tenderness, Kate awaited him. They were to be married in a week; and these interviews of the lovers now possessed an additional witchery from the fact that their communings, as lovers, were so soon to terminate forever.

The romance of passion is a bright episode in our youth. The hymenæal sun, while he yet clambers toward the “misty mountain-tops” on the morning of a wedding-day, spreads his promise over the broad firmament in a thousand fantastical images of crimson and gold. We watch the accumulating splendors of the sky and say, exultingly, if the dawn be so gorgeous what will not the day bring forth? But as we gaze, the sun heaves his broad disk above the horizon—the ephemeral imagery of vapor disappears—and the calm, steady sunlight of every day-life succeeds to the beautiful vision.

To Kate, this glowing blazonry of heaven was now at its culminating point; but Harry felt, as he almost reluctantly approached her, that a cloud—the more terrible from his uncertainty as to its dimensions and progress—was gathering on that glorious sky.

As he approached, his lovely mistress hailed him with an arch reproof for his delay; but when she reached out her hand to welcome him, she saw that his face was flushed and his eye disturbed; and, changing her tone of censure to one of solicitude, she inquired anxiously:

“Are you ill, Harry?”

The pressure of the hand—the eager look of inquiry—the tremulous tone of affection which accompanied these few words startled Harry from his self-possession; and he replied—

“No—no—not at all ill; I—I—”

“Harry! dear Harry!” exclaimed Kate with passionate earnestness, “what has happened? Tell me, Harry! tell me all!”

It was instantly obvious to the young man that his engagement for the morning—which he held himself bound in honor to fulfil—would in some way certainly be interfered with by his mistress, if he allowed her to be informed of it; for, whatever might be his notions of chivalric obligations, and however imperiously he might demand her acquiescence in them, he still knew that a dread of personal danger to himself would overbear, in her mind, all other considerations. He, therefore, felt it necessary to equivocate and deceive her. This train of argument, which of course went through his mind in far less time than is required to note it down, resulted in his saying promptly—

“For heaven’s sake, Kate, don’t alarm yourself in this manner! Nothing has happened.”

It is not to be supposed that this reply was altogether satisfactory, but as Harry, in his attempt to mislead Kate had broken the spell of his own forebodings, he was now able to regain his self command; and he then soon succeeded in making a jest of her fears.

After an interview such as lovers know how to protract and no one knows how to describe, they parted; Kate inspired with bright visions of happiness, and Harry, in a state of wretchedness, the nature, but not the extent, of which may be readily conceived. He hurried to his room and without any preparation for the morrow cast himself on the bed where his agony found poor relief in a fit of uncontrollable weeping.

In this condition, he fell asleep.

It often happens, by some strange contrariety of nature, that our dreams have relation to the subjects not nearest our hearts: what has occupied our thoughts during the day usually gives place, in sleep, to something of more remote interest—as if the soul, when momentarily disencumbered of the cares of life, shook off its dependence on the body and pursued the bent of its own fancy, regardless of the wants and woes of this tabernacle of day to which it is ordinarily held in subjection. But Harry’s experience did not, at this time, conform to the rule.

After he had slept awhile, he dreamed that he was hurrying, stealthily and alone, to the scene of mortal strife. A little in advance of him was an old man whom he had several times tried to avoid by changing his route, but the stranger, without appearing to be conscious of Harry’s motions, happened so exactly to regulate his course by that which Harry took, that the impatient youth found it necessary to brush past him, at the risk of being interrupted, if he would reach his destination in due season.

He had just overtaken the old man, and was rapidly striding onward, when the latter, with a promptness and vigor not to be expected in one of his years, grasped Harry’s arm, saying—

“Hold a moment, young man; you are Harry Bradford, I believe?”

“That is my name, old gentleman,” replied Harry, with a stare of astonishment, “but as I have not the pleasure of knowing you, I must beg you to defer your civilities. I am in haste.”

“Stay a moment, nevertheless,” continued the stranger, “or,”—seeing Harry about to move on in spite of him—“if you will not, at least walk slower, that I may accompany you. I knew your father, Harry, and I can surely claim of his son the privilege of a parting word just as he is about to rush unbidden into eternity.”

“Who are you, then, and what would you say?” exclaimed Harry, not a little startled to find that his purpose as well as his name was known to the stranger.

“I am your friend,” replied the old man, “and my name is Common Sense. Why are you determined to throw away your life?”

“Sir,” said Harry, “I am engaged in an affair of honor—a matter with which, I fancy, you can have no concern.”

“I have little to do with honor as young men understand it; but I am desirous to serve you. Tell me, therefore, what is your predicament?”

“A quondam friend and rival lover, jealous of my success with a lady, insinuated something to her prejudice in the presence of gentlemen. I struck him. He challenged me; and I am bound to fight him.”

“Why?”

“The laws of honor accord full satisfaction to an injured person.”

“Is he injured?”

“No, not in fact: he merely received a just chastisement for a wanton insult.”

“Who says, then, that he is injured?”

“He says so.”

“And is it one of the articles of your code of honor that a party to a quarrel is entitled, also, to be a judge of his own case?”

“That is immaterial. If a man chooses to consider himself aggrieved, he can demand an apology, or, personal satisfaction. The apology being refused—as in my case it must be—the challenge ensues: and to question his right to issue it, provided he is recognised as a gentleman, is, equally with a refusal to fight, equivalent to an admission of cowardice.”

“An admission of one’s own cowardice is, truly, no alluring alternative. But let us understand each other: what sort of cowardice do you mean?”

“I know of but one.”

“Indeed! Cowardice, speaking generally, is fear: what fear does a man betray who declines to accept a challenge?”

“The fear—eh—that is—the fear of being shot.”

“Death, young gentleman, to one who believes in a future state of reward and punishment, is a solemn event; and I apprehend that a brave man, or a good man (to say nothing of a bad man) may fear to meet it without suffering the imputation of cowardice: so that, thus far, your position is none of the strongest. Does this cowardice comprehend nothing else than the fear of death?”

“Nothing else.”

“Then we have all the argument on that side of the question. Let us look a moment at the other. What induces a man to accept a challenge?”

“The fear of dishonor.”

“Ay? then fear operates on both horns of the dilemma: and, for my own part, if I were forced to act under the dictation of fear, I would choose that course which promised the least disastrous result. But here, again, we do not perhaps understand each other. What kind of dishonor is this?”

“Disgrace, in an intolerable form! A man thus degraded would be driven from society, branded with the stigma of cowardice, and blasted with the scorn of all honorable men.”

“That, truly, were a fate to be deprecated; though a man of sober judgment might urge that even such a fate is nothing compared to what awaits those who throw themselves, uncalled and unprepared, into the presence of their Maker. But is what you say true? Does such dishonor involve such consequences?”

“Unquestionably it does!”

“Stop a moment. Let us consider this. You say the man would be driven from society: tell me, by whom?”

“By public opinion.”

“And the same agent would brand him a coward and blast him with universal scorn?”

“Even so.”

“This public opinion, I take it, is the united opinion of that class whom you designate by the phrase all honorable men?”

“It is.”

“Very well. I wish now to ascertain the practical operation of public opinion. Supposing you were this dishonored individual: who, as the Scripture hath it, would cast the first stone at you? Who would take the initiative in banishing, branding and scorning you—would your father have done it?”

“No, certainly not.”

“Would your mother?”

“No.”

“Would the lady you love—or any lady on the face of the earth?”

“No.”

“Would any of the old respectable inhabitants—your father’s companions and equals?”

“No.”

“Would any of those who, by common consent, form the respectable and estimable portion of the community?”

“No.”

“Would not, rather, all these to whom I have referred, applaud you for refusing deliberately to give or receive a death-wound in a quarrel; and honor you for daring to practice what every sensible man has preached since the world began?”

“Perhaps they might.”

“Then will you tell me, identically, who would inflict on you the penalties of this imaginary dishonor? Who would pronounce you disgraced and point at you as a coward?”

“Why, Wilson, and Fred Stanly, and Jack Smith, and Jim Brown, and every body.”

“What are they?”

“Gentlemen.”

“What is a gentleman?”

“One who has, or had, or expects to have a plenty of cash—who has no particular vocation—who carries a rattan, wears long hair, and goes to all the fashionable parties.”

“I have but two questions more to ask: supposing you are killed in this duel: what would be the consequences to others?”

“My mother would die of a broken heart; and Kate—God knows what would become of her!”

“Supposing, on the contrary, you should kill your antagonist?”

“If I were not arrested and hanged according to law, I should be obliged to quit the country and bear, ever, in my bosom the remorse and on my brow the mark of a murderer.”

“One thing more: are you not heartily ashamed of your present purpose?”

Before Harry could reply, Stanley stood at his side and awakened him by saying:

“Come, Harry, you will be too late!”

The brotherly, disinterested zeal of a second is worthy of all admiration. How dispassionately he tries the flint! How coolly he squints along the barrel to ascertain if the sight is in order! How carefully he graduates the powder, and with what a touching connoisseurship he chooses a ball! Observe, too, with what a stately air he paces off the ground—from the pride of his step you might imagine he was a prince or a conqueror marching to receive the reward of his greatness!—God in heaven! is that man arranging the ground where his friend is to be shot—shot in cold blood—and he, a silent, premeditating witness of the deed?

At the hour designated, the parties were all in attendance: the ground was measured and the pistols were loaded.

Harry now interrupted the proceedings saying:

“Gentlemen this affair has gone far enough.”

“It is too late now, sir!” said Wilson’s second, haughtily: “my friend refuses to accept an apology.”

“He had better wait,” said Harry, “until I offer it. I accepted his challenge under a misapprehension of my obligations to my friends, to society, and to what are called the laws of honor. I now retract that acceptance. He insulted me and I struck him; the reckoning of revenge was thus closed as soon as it was opened. If he dares to repeat the offence, I shall repeat the punishment; without holding myself liable to be shot at like a wild beast of the forest. You are all welcome to put your own interpretation on my refusal to fight. My conduct will justify itself to all those whose opinions are truly worthy of regard; and as for the bullying denunciation of those few miscreants whose highest ambition is to be known as the lamp-lighters and candle-snuffers of mortal combats—combats which the laws of God and man pronounce to be murder—as for their denunciation, my now wishing you a good morning shows how thoroughly I despise it.”

Was Harry Bradford a sensible man or a fool? Did he, in after years, regret his refusal to fight a duel? And will anyone who reads this have the good sense and manliness to do likewise?

ELEGY ON THE FATE OF JANE M’CREA.

———

BY THOMAS G. SPEAR.

———

When Genius, Valor, Worth, too soon decays,

The world sings vocal with posthumous praise,

And o’er the love that fate has sorely tried,

Oft have the hearts of pitying mortals sigh’d.

What then to thee, oh, hapless maid! is due,

Whose form was lovely as thy soul was true?

Who fell ere life hope’s promise could impart,

Or love’s fruition cheer thy constant heart?

As some sweet bird that leaves its nest to fly,

With sportive wings along the alluring sky,

’Midst greener scenes and groves of happier song,

To wake its wild notes with its kindred throng,

Feels the quick shot its gushing bosom smite,

Just when it seeks to ease its tiring flight,

And ere its glance can tell the ball is sped,

Finds the cold sod its blood-encrimson’d bed.

Ah, sad for thee! when life’s frail thread was shorn,

Few near thee wept, though many liv’d to mourn.

No arm was there to stay the savage deed,

That left thy form with gory wounds to bleed.

No mystic rites from holy tongues were thine,

In death’s cold sleep thy beauty to resign—

No hearse-drawn train, with mournful steps and slow,

Was nigh to yield the accustomed signs of woe,

But Peace was priestess o’er the virgin clay,

When Nature’s arms embrac’d thee in decay,

While duteous there a remnant of the brave,

Bent o’er thy dust, and form’d thy humble grave,

And ’neath the pine-tree’s unfrequented shade,

Lone and compos’d thy blood-stain’d relics laid,

Where from the boughs the wild-bird chim’d its song,

And gurgling leap’d the fountain’s stream along—

In earth’s green breast by warrior hands enshrin’d,—

Beauty in earth by Valor’s side reclined!

But unforgetful Grief her debt hath paid,

In sad remembrance of thy lovely shade;

And friendly hands have op’d this cell of sleep,

Thy dust to honor, and thy fall to weep,

And maiden trains from village hamlets nigh,

Have borne thy relics thence to where they lie,

There rear’d the slab that tells thy joyless doom,

Points to the skies, and shows thy hallow’d tomb.

Ne’er shall thy fate around thee fail to draw,

Hearts ever true to Nature’s kindliest law—

To trace the spot whereon thy bosom bled,

Where Guilt to Death Life’s sinless semblance wed—

Where startling shrieks in savage madness rose,

That rous’d the panther from his lair’s repose—

Where stood dismay’d the feeble hand that bore

Thy form where savage hands thy ringlets tore—

Where flows the fount, and still the pine-tree stands,

Notch’d by the bird’s beak, and the stranger’s hands,

Rocking its wide boughs to the shivering gale,

The time-worn witness of thy chilling tale.

Now shall the feet of pensive wanderers turn,

With heedless steps from thy more classic urn;

But sadly tread the village grave-yard round,

’Midst tombs defac’d, and many a mouldering mound,

And pause and ponder where, embower’d in green,

Thy marble crowns the fair surrounding scene—

Where gentle gales their flowery fragrance strew,

And morn and eve thy lowly turf bedew—

Where the fresh sward and trembling tree-leaves wave,

While night-winds sing their dirges round thy grave—

And slow-wing’d warblers on their airy way,

Breathe their sad wails o’er Murder’s beauteous prey.

Fair maid belov’d! whose vows were kept in heav’n,

By angels welcom’d ere pronounc’d forgiven—

’Tis not alone that thou didst early die,

That rain thee tears from every manly eye—

Not that thy love’s unanswer’d wish was pure,

Does the touch’d heart remember and deplore;

But that thy form a savage hand should doom,

In bridal robes to share a nuptial tomb—

Just as hope held life’s blissful prize in view,

That death should prove it mockery and untrue,

And make thee share, who sought the plighted brave,

A lover’s anguish and a martyr’s grave!

But vain for thee may roll the tuneful line,

Since praises breath’d from every tongue are thine—

In vain may song its mournful strain bestow,

Since grief to feel is but thy fate to know—

In vain may sorrow her sad dirge impart,

For Pity’s throb is thine from every heart—

In vain thy tale these thoughtful numbers chime,

Since trac’d in blood upon the scroll of time.

Cease then the song, and drop the tear instead,

O’er the still slumbers of the lovely dead—

Heave from the breast the unaffected sigh,

Where spreads her name, and where her ashes lie.

For when from art the world shall cease to know,

Afflicted Beauty’s all-surviving woe—

When poet’s verse and sculptor’s shaft decay,

Time o’er the wreck the story shall display,

And simple truth, with tragic power relate

The love that perish’d from the wrongs of fate,

While Pity melts, and listening Fear turns pale,

With each stern horror of the harrowing tale.

HARRY CAVENDISH.

———

BY THE AUTHOR OF “CRUIZING IN THE LAST WAR,” “THE REEFER OF ’76,” ETC. ETC.

———

THE PIRATE.

It was a tropical night. The moon had gone down, but the stars shone clear and lustrous, with a brilliancy unknown to more temperate climes, painting a myriad of silvery lines along the smooth swell of the sleeping ocean. A light breeze was murmuring across the waters, now and then rippling the waves in the starlight, and flapping the reef-points occasionally against the sails. A heavy dew was falling, bringing with it, from the island that lay far up to windward, a thousand spicy odors mingled into one delicious perfume. On the extreme verge of the horizon hung a misty veil, shrouding the sea-board in obscurity. Up to windward the same delicate gauze-like vapor was perceptible, and the position of the island which we had made at twilight, was only to be told from the denser masses of mist, that had gathered in one particular spot on the horizon in that quarter.

It was the morning watch and I was standing, wrapped up in my monkey jacket, looking out dreamingly on the ripples that played under our side in the starlight, when the bluff voice of the boatswain addressed me, at the same time that the old fellow wrung an enormous piece of tobacco from a still larger mass that he held in his brawny hand.

“A still night, Mr. Cavendish,” began Hinton—“it looks as if the old salt-lake was dreaming, and had drawn around her that fog as a sort of curtain to keep herself quiet, as I’ve heard King George and other big folks do when they go to sleep. For my part I’ve no notion of such sort of sleeping, for I’d stifle to death if I had to be wrapt in every night like the Egyptian mummies that I’ve seen up the straits. Give me a hammock for sleeping comfortable like in—I never slept out of one since I went to sea but once, and then I’d as lief have slept head downwards, for I didn’t get a wink all night.”

“You mean to say that you tried to sleep,” said I smiling.

“Exactly—I’m no scollard, and none the worse for that I think. Them as is born to live by head work ought to be sent to ’cademies and colleges and such high places,—but them as have to get a living by their hands had better leave book-larnin’ alone, for—take my word for it—it only ends in making them rascals; and there’s other ways of killing a dog without choking him to death with bread and butter. Them’s my sentiments, and so when I’ve got to speak, instead of skulking about the business in search of big words, like the cook in the galley, I come out at once in the plain style my fathers taught me. The devil fly away with them that can’t speak without shaking in their shoes lest they make a mistake. What’s not to be expected of them can’t be, and big words don’t make an honest man much less a good boatswain—the proof of the pudding is in the chewing,” and the old fellow paused and looked in my face for a reply. He had scarcely done so when he started, looked around and turned as pale as ashes. A low melancholy strain, seeming to pervade the air, and coming now from above and now from some other quarter, could be distinctly heard rising solemnly across the night. The phenomenon baffled even myself, but on Hinton it had an extraordinary effect. Sailors are at all times superstitious, and the bluff boatswain possessed a large share of this faculty. These singular sounds, therefore, appealed to one of the strongest feelings in his bosom. He looked at me doubtingly, turned around on tip-toe, and listened attentively a moment in every direction. His scrutiny did not satisfy him, but rather increased his wonder. There could be no doubt that the sounds existed in reality, for although they died away for a moment now and then, they would almost instantly be heard again, apparently coming from a different quarter of the horizon. The burden of the strain could not indeed be distinguished, but I fancied I could recognize human voices in it, although I was forced to confess that I had never heard from mortal lips such exquisite melody, for as the strain rose and fell across the night, now swelling out clear and full as if sung almost at our ears, and then melting away in the distance until it died off like the faintest breathing of a wind-harp, I was tempted almost to attribute the music to angelic visitants. The old boatswain seemed to assign the sounds to the same cause, for drawing nearer to my side, he ran his eye cautiously and as if in awe, up to the mast-head; and then looked with a blank and puzzled gaze, in which, perhaps, some supernatural fear might be detected, into my face.

My own astonishment, however, was but momentary. Hastily scanning the horizon, I had noticed that the mist in the direction of the island had been, during the fifteen minutes that I had been idly looking over the ship’s side, slowly creeping up towards us, although in every other direction, except down in the extreme distance, the sky was as clear as before. At first moreover my imagination had yielded to the impression that, as the strain died away on the night, it came out again from a different quarter of the horizon; but when, divesting myself of the momentary influence of my fancy, I began to analyze the causes of this phenomenon I became satisfied that the sounds in reality arose out of the bank of clouds, to windward, and the illusion had been produced by the rising and falling of the strain upon the night. When therefore, the old boatswain turned to me with his baffled look, I had made up my mind as to the real causes of that which puzzled the veteran seaman.

“There is a craft up yonder in that fog,” I said, pointing to windward, “and there are women on board, for the voices we hear are too sweet for those of men.”

I said this with a calm smile, which at once dissipated the fear of my companion, for after thinking a moment in silence, the puzzled expression of his face gradually cleared away, and he replied with a low laugh, which I thought, notwithstanding, a little forced.

“You are right—and that’s a reason for book-larnin I never thought of before. Here have I sailed for a matter of forty years or so, and yet I couldn’t exactly come at the cause of them same sounds, when you, who havn’t been ten years on the water,—though you’re a smart sailor, I must say, for your years—can tell at once all about it, just because you’ve had a riggilar eddication. Book-larnin ain’t to be despised arter all,” he continued shaking his head, “even for a boatswain, and, by the blessing of God, I’ll borrow the good book of the parson, to-morrow, and go at it myself; for when I was a youngster I could spell, I calculate, at the rate of a ten knot breeze. But mayhap,” he continued, his thoughts suddenly changing, “that craft up yonder may turn out a fat prize—we could soon overhaul her if the wind would only breeze up a little.”

The wind, however, had now fallen to a dead calm and the sails hung idly from the masts, while the ship rolled with a scarce perceptible motion upon the quiet sea. A current was setting in however, to the island, and we were thus gradually borne nearer to the unseen craft. This soon became evident from the greater distinctness of the sounds, and at length I thought I could distinguish a few of the words sung, which seemed to be those of a Spanish air. As the night advanced the music ceased; but the silence did not long continue. Suddenly a shriek was heard rising fearfully on the air, followed by a strange mixture of noises, as if oaths, groans and entreaties, and even sounds of mortal strife were all mingled in one fearful discord. The shriek was now repeated, with even more fearful vehemence; and then came the report of a pistol across the darkness. Our hearts beat with strange feelings. What nefarious deeds were being done on board the unseen craft? Hitherto the captain, who had strolled on deck to enjoy the music, had said that he should await the dawn, or at least the appearance of a breeze, before overhauling the stranger, but now he came to the determination of ordering out the boats, and learning the cause of those fearful outcries.

“Some hellish work, I fear,” he said, “is going on yonder; perhaps a piratical boat has boarded the craft, for the villains infest these islands. Board her at every risk, and then no mercy to the fiends if they are really at their work.”

The boats were hastily lowered, manned and shoved off from the side of the ship. The second lieutenant commanded one of the boats, and to me was deputed the charge of the other. We proceeded rapidly and as noiselessly as possible, into the bank of clouds and soon lost sight of The Arrow, although long after her hull and spars had disappeared in the obscurity, her top-light was to be seen like a red baneful star, floating in the firmament. Our guide meanwhile, was the sounds of strife on board the invisible craft, but as we proceeded, the uproar died away, and for a few moments a profound silence reigned. Then came a few sullen plunges in the water which we were at no loss to understand. The men sprung to their oars with renewed vigor at the sounds. A perfect stillness reigned once more, but we knew, from the distinctness with which we had heard the plunges, that we were close on to the craft. Steering in the direction therefore, from which the sounds had come, we glided along the smooth surface of the sea with almost incredible velocity. Not a word was spoken, but the oarsmen strained their sinews to the utmost, while the officers gazed intently into the gloom ahead. Each moment seemed an age. Scarcely a dozen more strokes of the oar had been given, however, when the outlines of a brig shot up, as if by magic, out of the mist ahead, and almost instantaneously a voice from the stranger hailed us in the Spanish tongue.

“Keep her to it my lads—pull with a will,” I said, as the boat commanded by the lieutenant dashed on without heeding the hail.

“Boats ahoy!” shouted another voice from the brig, and this time the words were in English, “lay on your oars or we’ll fire into you,” and at the same time a score of heads was faintly seen crowding the bulwarks of the vessel.

“Dash into her my brave lads!” exclaimed the lieutenant, standing up in the stern-sheets and waving his sword aloft, “another pull and we are up to them.”

The men cheered in reply, and, with a jerk that made the ash blades bend like willow wands, we shot up to the sides of the brig. But not unopposed; for almost before the lieutenant had ceased speaking, the dark villains crowding the sides of the brig poured in a rattling fire on us that would have checked men in the pursuit of a less holy object. But the character of the assassins who had taken the brig had now become apparent, and every man of our crew, remembering that agonizing shriek, thirsted to avenge the sufferer. The volley of the pirates was not, however, as deadly as it might have been had they not been taken partially by surprise; and been in consequence, without that preparation to meet us which they otherwise would have shown. Their discharge however—God knows!—was deadly enough. The stroke oarsman, but a few feet in advance of me, fell dead across the thwart. But the other boat, being in advance, suffered far more, for I saw several of the men stagger in their places,—while the lieutenant, springing up like a deer, tumbled headlong into the stern-sheets. He had been shot through the heart. The impetus, however, which the last gigantic stroke of the men had given to the boats sent them onwards to the brig, and we struck her side almost instantaneously with the fall of my superior.

“Vengeance,” I shouted, “vengeance my lads! follow me,” and springing into the forechains of the brig, I leaped from thence upon her deck, and found myself, the next moment almost unsupported amidst a circle of desperate foes. But it was only for a moment that I was left without aid. I had scarcely exchanged the first parry with a brawny desperado who met me at the bulwark, when my gallant fellows came pouring in after me, inflamed to double fury by the loss we had suffered, and betokening by their stern determined looks that the approaching conflict was to be one of extermination or death. The pirates, seemingly aware of their situation, glared on us with the fury of wild-beasts, and sprang with curses and yells to repel the boarders. This left me, for the instant, almost alone with my stalwart opponent, and had my cause been less righteous, or my skill at my weapon not a proverb, I should have trembled for my life. Barely indeed have I seen a finer looking or more muscular man than my opponent on that fatal night. He was a tall sinewy Spaniard, of the pure olive complexion, with a dark, glittering, fearful eye, and a huge black mustache such as I never saw on a man before or since. His head was bare, with the exception of a red scarf which was bound around it in the form of a turban, the ends of which depended on the left side, as I have sometimes seen them fancifully arranged by the creole girls of the islands. His shirt collar was thrown open, displaying a broad and brawny chest that would have served as a model for that of an athlete. His arms were bared to above the elbow, and in his hand he held a common cutlass; but a brace of huge silver mounted pistols, and a dagger with a splendidly ornamented hilt were thrust into the scarf he wore around his waist. I forgot to mention that a small cross, the jewels of which sparkled even in the comparative darkness, depended by a rich gold chain from his neck.

I am able to give this description of him, because when we found ourselves left almost alone, we paused a moment, as men engaged in a deadly single combat will often do, before commencing our strife. I suspected at once that I was opposed to the leader of the pirates, and he seemed to feel that I held the same office among the assailants, for he gazed at me a moment, with a kind of proud satisfaction, which, however, settled down, as his eye took in my comparatively slight proportions, to an expression of sneering scorn. Our pause, although sufficiently long for me to observe all this, endured but for an instant, for the momentary admiration of my foe faded before that sneering expression, and making a blow at him with my cutlass, which he dexterously repelled, we were soon engaged in mortal combat. At first my opponent underrated my powers, but a wound, which I gave him in the arm, seemed to convince him that victory would cost him an effort, and he became more wary. For several moments the conflict was only a rapid exchange of passes, during which our blades rattled and flashed incessantly; for neither of us could obtain the slightest advantage over the other. How the combatants progressed during this interval I neither knew nor cared to ascertain, for so intensely was I engrossed in my duel with the pirate-leader that I heard nothing but the ringing of our blades, and saw only the glittering eye of my opponent. Those only who have been engaged in a deadly strife can understand the feelings of one in such a situation. Every faculty is engrossed in the struggle—the very heart seems to stand still, awaiting the end. The hand involuntarily follows the impulse of the mind, and the eye never loses sight of that of its destined victim. The combat had continued for several minutes, when I saw that the pirate was beginning to grow chafed, for the calm, collected expression of his eye gave place gradually to one of fury, and his lunges were made with inconceivable rapidity, and with a daring amounting to rashness. It took all my skill to protect myself, and I was forced at length to give ground. The eye of the pirate glared at his success like that of a wild beast already sure of its prey, and, becoming even more venturesome, he pressed forward and made a pass at me which I avoided with difficulty, and then only partially, for the keen blade, although averted from my heart, glanced sideways, and penetrating my arm inflicted a fearful wound. But at the time I was insensible of the injury. I felt the wound no more than if a pin had pierced me. Every thought and feeling was engrossed by the now defenceless front of my antagonist, for, as he lunged forward with his blade, he lost his defence and his bosom lay unguarded before me. Quick as lightning I shortened my blade and prepared to plunge it into the heart of the pirate. He saw his error and made an attempt to grasp a pistol with his left hand, to ward off the blow with his sword arm. But it was in vain. With one desperate effort I drove my blade inwards—it cut through and through his half opposed defence—and with a dull heavy sound went to his very heart. His eyes glared an instant more wildly than ever—his lips opened, but the faint cry was stifled ere it was half uttered—a quick, shuddering, convulsive movement passed over his face and through his frame, and, as I drew out the glittering blade, now red with the life blood of one who, a moment before, had been in full existence, the pirate fell back dead upon the deck. At the same moment I heard a hearty cheer, and looking around, I saw that our brave fellows had gained a footing on the deck, and were driving the pirates backwards towards the stern of the vessel. I now, for the first time, felt the pain of my wound. But hastily snatching the scarf from the body of my late opponent, I managed to bandage my arm so as partially to stop the blood, and hurried to head my gallant tars.

All this had not occupied three minutes, so rapid are the events of a mortal combat. I had at first thought that we had been forgotten in the excitement of the strife, but I had not been wholly unobserved, for as I stooped to snatch the scarf of the pirate, one of his followers who had seen him fall, levelled a pistol at me with a curse, but the missile was struck up by one of my men, just as it was discharged, and the ball lodged itself harmlessly in the bulwark beside me. In another instant I was again in the midst of the fight. The red scarf which I wore however, reminding the pirates of the death of their leader, called down on me their revenge, and my appearance in the strife was a signal for a general rush upon me.

“Down with him,” roared a tall swarthy assassin, who, from his tone of authority, I judged to be the second in command, “cut him down—revenge! revenge!”

I was at that moment surrounded on two sides by the pirates, but springing back while my gallant tars raised their blades in an arch over me, I escaped the cutlasses of the foe.

“Hurl the hell-hounds to perdition,” growled a veteran fore-top-man, as he dashed at the piratical lieutenant.

“Stand fast, all—life or death—that for your vengeance,” was the response of the foe as he levelled a pistol at the breast of the gallant seaman. The ball sped on its errand, and the top man fell at my feet.

My men were now infuriated beyond all control. They dashed forward, like a torrent, sweeping every thing before them. The pirates, headed by their leader, made one or two desperate efforts to maintain their ground, but the impetuosity of their antagonists was irresistable, and the desperadoes, at first sullenly giving way, at length were forced into an indiscriminate retreat. A few of the most daring of the freebooters, however, refused to yield an inch and were cut down; while others, after flying a few paces, turned and died at bay; but with the mass the love of immediate life triumphed over the fear of an ultimate ignominious death, and they retreated to the fore-hatch, down which they were driven. A few attempted to regain the long crank boat in which they had attacked the brig from the island, but their design was anticipated by one of our fellows who hove a brace of shot through her bottom.

I now bethought me of the female whose shriek had first alarmed us; and, advancing to the cabin, I descended with a trembling heart, anxious and yet fearing to learn the truth. I have faced death in a hundred forms—in storm, in battle, and amidst epidemics, but my nerves never trembled before or since as they did when I opened the door into the cabin. What a sight was there! Extended on the floor lay a white-haired old man, with a huge gash in his forehead, and his long silvery locks dabbled in his own gore. At his side, in a state of grief approaching to stupefaction, sat, or rather knelt, a lovely young creature who might be about seventeen, her long golden tresses dishevelled on her snowy shoulders, and her blue eyes gazing with a dry, stony look upon the face of her dead parent. Both the daughter and the father were attired with an elegance which bespoke wealth if not rank. Around her were several female slaves, filling the cabin with their lamentations, and, at intervals, vainly endeavoring to comfort their young mistress. Several books and a guitar were scattered about, and the whole apartment, though only the cabin of a common merchant brig, had an air of feminine grace and neatness. The sight of the instruments of music almost brought the tears into my eyes. Alas! little had that lovely girl imagined, when singing her artless songs, in what misery another hour would find her.

My entrance, however, partially aroused the desolate girl. She looked up with alarm in every feature, gazed at me irresolutely a moment, and then frantically clasping the body of her murdered parent, shrunk from my approach. The negro women clustered around her, their lamentations stilled by their fears.

“You are free—thank God!” said I in a voice husky with emotion, “the murderers of your parent are avenged!”

The terrified girl looked at me with an expression which I shall never forget—an expression in which agony, joy and doubt were all mingled into one—and then, pressing the cold body of that old man close to her bosom, she burst into a flood of tears; while her slaves, reassured by my words, resumed their noisy grief. I knew that the tears of the agonised daughter would relieve her grief, and respecting the sacredness of her sorrow, I withdrew to the deck.

Meantime, one of the crew of the brig who had managed to secrete himself from the pirates, and had thus escaped the massacre which befell indiscriminately his messmates, had come forth from his hiding place, and related the story of their capture. I will give it, adding other matters in their place, as I learnt them subsequently from the inmates of the cabin. The brig was a coaster, and had left the Havanna a few days before, having for passengers an English gentleman of large fortune with his daughter and her personal slaves. They had been becalmed the preceding evening under the lee of the neighboring island, and, as the night was a fine one, their passengers had remained on deck until a late hour, the daughter of Mr. Neville amusing herself with singing on her own guitar, or listening to the ruder but yet dulcet music of her slaves. At length they had descended to the cabin, but, within a few minutes of their retirement, a large crank boat, pulled by some twenty armed piratical ruffians, had been seen coming towards the brig. Escape was impossible, and defence was useless. The feeble though desperate resistance made by the crew of a half dozen men, was soon overcome. Mr. Neville had headed the combat, and, when the ruffians gained possession of the deck, had retreated to the cabin, barricading the entrance on the inside. But the pirates, headed by their leader, although baffled for a while, had eventually broke through this defence and poured into the cabin; but not until several of their number had been wounded by the desperate parent, who, fighting like a lion at bay, had even fired through the door on his assailants, after they had shattered it and before it was finally broken in. At length the ruffians had gained an entrance; and a dozen swords were levelled at Mr. Neville, who still endeavored to shield his daughter. He fell—and God knows what would have been the fate of that innocent girl, if we had not at the instant reached the brig. The ruffian leader was forced to leave his prey and hasten on deck. The reader knows the rest.

When morning dawned we were still abreast of the island. By this time, however, a light breeze had sprung up and the schooner had been brought to under the quarter of The Arrow. My superior heard with emotion of the death of his lieutenant, and expressed his determination of carrying the pirates into the neighboring port at once, and delivering them up for trial. He gave up his own cabin temporarily to the afflicted daughter, and sympathized with her sorrow as if she had been his own child. The remains of her parent were not consigned to the deep, but allotted, on the following day, a place in consecrated ground. But I pass over the events immediately succeeding the capture of the pirates. Suffice it to say that, after a delay of three or four days in port, we found it would be impossible to have the pirates brought to trial by the tardy authorities under a month. As my presence was deemed necessary on that event, and as my superior was unwilling to delay his cruise for so long a period, it was determined then that The Arrow should pursue her voyage, calling again at the port to take me up in the course of a month or six weeks. The next day, after this arrangement, she sailed.

SONNETS.

———

BY W. W. STORY.

———

MICHAEL ANGELO.

Fixed, as if nothing ever could o’erthrow

Its infinite faith, and firm as it had stood,

Stemming life-long misfortune’s sapping flood,

Is the brave head of Michael Angelo.

No smile, no fear, that noble face doth show:

A sublime purpose o’er it seems to brood,

In which no mean thought ever did intrude,

No busy interest hurry to and fro—

A will so stern, that nothing can abate,

Fastens the mouth. The anxious abstract eye,

Beyond earth’s gloomy shadow’s lowering nigh,

Beholds great angels in the distance wait—

And on those features, seamed with many a line,

Love seems like sunlight on rude cliffs to shine.

RAFFAELLO.

Thou wouldst seem sorrowful, but that we knew

That mild, fair brow, that serious seeking eye,

Where the pale lightnings of emotion lie,

Were caught from earnest striving to look through

These shadows that obscure the mortal view—

This hazy distance of humanity,

Far dawnings of the Beautiful and True,

And those divine thoughts that can never die.

Thy mouth, so tender and so sensitive—

Full and unrigid—formed as if to part

With each emotion—seemeth tuned by Art,

Like harp-strings, with each wandering breath to live;

And that same apostolic light is thine

Which made thy Christ and Mother so divine.

TO FLORENCE.

———

BY PARK BENJAMIN.

———

Dear Florence! young and fair thou art,

Thy cheeks are like the rose’s heart—

The sweet, red rose, that’s newly born,

When from the faintly dappled sky,

Looks out the laughing glance of morn.

Alas! dear one, I can but sigh

To think how many years divide

Thy happy turn of life and mine!

A river rolleth deep and wide

Between my destined path and thine.

Still unto thee my fancy flies,

With thee my thoughts and visions dwell,

And from thy soft, celestial eyes

Comes sunshine to my hermit-cell.

I love thee! nay—turn not away!

I dare not hope—’twere worse than vain

To cherish in my heart a ray

Of feeling fraught with grief and pain.

All but thy image I resign;

With that I cannot part—it glows

With hues so lovely, so divine.

That though upon my head the snows

Of Age were cast, I yet should trace

The lines of thy enchanting face;

Still would thy form, instinct with grace,

Before me rise, and I should see,

In all things bright some types of thee!

THE TWO DUKES.

———

BY ANN S. STEPHENS.

———

(Continued from page 144.)

A still more important scene than that which we have described in Lady Jane Seymour’s chamber was passing in the Lord Protector’s closet. A portion of those noblemen forming his council had been hastily summoned to assist in the examination of Lord Dudley, who was brought up from his prison in the new and damp rooms, near the Strand, where he had spent a night of discomfort, which by no means reconciled his proud spirit to the degradation heaped upon it. Though a member, and most powerful one, of his own council, the Lord Protector had neglected to summon the Earl of Warwick to the examination of his son, and Dudley was far too anxious for a good understanding between his own father and the family of his betrothed, to solicit his interference, or even send news of his arrest to the haughty earl. He dreaded the fiery indignation with which the intelligence might be received, and even felt a sensation of relief when he found his father’s seat vacant at the tribunal before which he was so ignominiously arraigned. He was sensible that the Earl of Warwick, as well as the duke, was willing to avail himself of any excuse which might terminate the contract existing between himself and the Lady Jane. His affection for the sweet girl was both sincere and ardent, and though he felt the insult offered by her father with the irritation of a proud, sensitive spirit, he suffered still more deeply from a consciousness that she was a sharer in his trouble, and that the proceedings to which he was an unwilling party were not only a degradation to his manhood but liable to separate him from the object of his affections forever.

With these indignant and conflicting feelings the young nobleman presented himself before the Lord Protector and the few councillors whom he had gathered to his assistance—men who seemed but ill at ease in the position which they held, and were in truth far more anxious to appease the duke than to join him in rash measures against a family which had already rendered itself fearful throughout the kingdom by the might of its power. The artisan was there, craven and abject, yet with something of insolence in his manner; but whether he was brought forward as a witness or a prisoner the proud young man did not deign to inquire; under any circumstances to be so associated was a cruel insult which made the blood tingle in his veins. It was with a firm lip and an eye darkling with subdued excitement that Lord Dudley placed himself before the council table to be questioned like a criminal by the man he had loved almost as a father. The duke seemed touched by some regretful feelings, and a flush came up to his forehead as he encountered the proud glance which was bent upon him by the prisoner. At another time he would have shrunk from mingling the pure name of his child with an investigation so strange in its nature—with questions which might even endanger the honor of his name, but this consideration was lost in his dislike of the Earl of Warwick—a man whom he feared and hated almost as much as he could fear and hate mortal being. Ambition was the leading characteristic of both—such ambition as at last rendered their strife for power like the struggle of two gladiators in mortal combat. They were bold combatants, and hitherto the strife had been a quiet and subtle one. Now a kingdom was looking on. Somerset had sprung into the arena, struck the first blow, and he was well aware that his station and power depended on the victory which he was contending for—that Warwick must be driven from the council of the nation or himself from the protectorship. He little knew how still and subtle had been the windings of his enemy, and with how deep a triumph he received the news of his son’s arrest. We have said that Dudley had caught one glimpse of his betrothed on his way to the council, and for her sake he condescended to answer, with haughty calmness, the questions propounded by her father. His account of the share he had taken in the St. Margaret’s riot was simple, and given in few words.

He had sallied forth, as usual, on his morning ride with the ordinary number of attendants and without the most remote suspicion that any disturbance was threatened. He described the manner in which he had become entangled with the crowd, but avoided all mention of the Lady Jane till called upon by her father to state how she came under his protection. He explained all about the condition in which he had found her—the struggle with which she was conducted through the crowd—their entrance to the church and every thing that transpired till the poor girl was exposed to public outrage by the violence of her own parent. There was truth and dignity in the young man’s statement, which, against his will, convinced the duke of his injustice. But he had already proceeded too far, and he felt that to leave the charge against his prisoner unsubstantiated was to make himself still more unpopular with the people, and fling a fearful power into the hands of his rival. Family affection, his daughter, everything was forgotten in the strife to maintain his tottering power, and though his eye quailed and his brow crimsoned as he perpetrated the insult, that cringing artisan was called forward to disprove the solemn statement of a high born and honorable man.

Lord Dudley turned very pale and drew back with a stern brow and folded arms as the wretch gave his infamous story. The artisan had enough of low born cunning to see that any statement, calculated to implicate the noble youth, would be received as an atonement for the base fraud which he had committed, and persisted in the assertions that he had previously made. When the jewels and the ring were produced he turned, like a coward hound, from the stern glance fixed on him by the young noble, but still in a tone of low bravado, asserted that the ring had been given by the Lady Jane, and that Lord Dudley had rewarded his exertions in bringing them together with the emeralds.

Lord Dudley shut his teeth hard and folded his arms more tightly, as if to repress an impulse to smite the worm where he stood, but turning his flashing eyes from the miscreant to the Duke of Somerset he once more forced himself to composure. The artisan proceeded to substantiate his evidence by assertions regarding the manner and words of the lady, and was going on adding falsehood to falsehood, when the gentle girl, whom he so cruelly aspersed, opened the door and glided into the room. She moved forward to a chair which stood directly in front of the wretch, and grasping the back with her hand, stood regarding him with a look of calm and almost solemn indignation. So noiseless was her entrance that she had been more than a minute in the room before those assembled there became conscious of her presence. As the perjured man lifted his eyes in uttering a sentence, they met the rebuke of that calm glance and quailed beneath it. He faltered in what he was saying and shrunk back to avoid the frown of her innocent presence. When the duke saw his child standing before him, her robe hastily girt round her person, her hair wound in a heavy web over her head, and her sweet face bearing upon each feature evidence of late and bitter suffering, he started to his feet with an exclamation of displeasure and would have demanded the cause of her intrusion, but the change which had fallen upon her was so great that he stood gazing upon her face, lost in a degree of astonishment that had something of awe in it. He could scarcely believe that the face so calm, so pale and resolute, was that of his quiet and child-like daughter. The fountains of a resolute and noble heart had been troubled for the first time, and their overflow left upon her face an expression that never left it again—the impress of such thoughts and feelings as exalt and strengthen the heart they wring. The Lady Jane had become suddenly capable of acting for herself.

“Father,” she said, turning her large eyes from the perjurer to his judge, “Father, I have heard enough to prove how base a thing may be dared even in the presence of a parent; that man has spoken falsely, the ring which you hold was taken from my finger when I lay helpless, and so terrified that I was almost unconscious of the loss, and only remember now as in a dream that a strange grasp was on my hand, a wrench that pained me; then I fainted and forgot all till my mother spoke of the ring a few moments since in my chamber. The emeralds my Lord Duke—” she hesitated a moment and her eyes filled as if with regret that she had uttered so cold a tittle, “the emeralds—my father, were not Lord Dudley’s but my mother’s gift, and I bound my hair with them yesterday morning when I went forth according to your command to take the air; they must have broken loose from my head, for behold here is a proof that they were my own and not Lord Dudley’s.”

As she spoke the Lady Jane unbound the rich masses of her hair, which had not been smoothed since the previous day, and disentangled a fragment of the emerald band which still sparkled within it. They were broad smooth gems linked together with its delicate chain work of gold, and each with a fanciful device cut upon its surface. One of those which the duke held, still remained firm in its setting, a link or two of the chain adhered to it, and those links corresponded in size and workmanship with the fragment which Lady Jane had taken from her hair.

“Still,” said the Duke of Somerset, willing to exculpate his daughter, but determined at all hazards to make good his charge against Dudley, “still does this in no way clear the prisoner from his participation in the riot. We saw him with our own eyes amid the mob, we—”

The duke broke off suddenly, for as the last words left his lips, the closet door was flung open and a tall man, almost regally arrayed, and of imperious presence, entered the room. He cast one quick glance at the Lord Protector, from under his eyebrows, and moving tranquilly to a chair by the council table sat down.

“Go on, my lord duke; I am rather late, but do not let my entrance disturb these august proceedings,” he said, blandly, though there was a slight trembling of the voice which told how tumultuous were the passions concealed beneath all that elaborate and courteous display of words.

The Duke bowed stiffly, and his face was crimson to the temples. Lord Dudley grew pale and red by turns, half disposed to approach his father, and as yet uncertain that he was aware of the position in which he was placed before the council. The Lady Jane trembled visibly and grasped the chair against which she stood for support, while the councillors looked in each other’s faces confused and at a loss how to act.

All this time Warwick sat with his elbow resting on the table, supporting his chin with the palm of his bent hand, and gazing with a doubtful smile, quietly into the duke’s face, as if they had been the best friends on earth.

“Go on, my lord duke, go on,” he said slightly waving his right hand, “Pray do not allow my late and abrupt entrance to interrupt the flow of your grace’s eloquence.”

“Excuse me,” replied the duke, rising from his seat, “this subject must be a painful one, alike to your Lordship and myself. We scarcely expected the Earl of Warwick would choose to meet us in council this morning.”

“And therefore did not summon him to the examination of his son and heir. It was kindly managed, my lord duke, very kindly; be assured the earl of Warwick will not forget this delicacy. Nor will the king, whom I left but now, so deeply impressed with the generous care which your grace bestows on the honor of my humble house, that he has summoned such noblemen of your council as were deemed worthy of the generous silence with which your grace has honored me, to meet him at Somerset House, where, with permission, I will have the pleasure of conducting my son.”

There was cool and cutting irony in this speech which would have lashed the exciteable protector to fury, but for the startling intelligence which it conveyed, regarding the young king. This so over-powered him that he sat pale and with gleaming eyes gazing on the composed and smiling features of the earl, speechless and for a moment bereft of all presence of mind.

Without seeming to notice the effect his speech had made on the protector, Warwick arose, threw back his velvet cloak with a careless toss that exposed the sable facings, and smoothing the folds over his shoulder with elaborate care, as if no deeper thought than that of personal appearance entered his mind, approached Lord Dudley and taking his arm seemed about to conduct him from the room without further ceremony.

“My Lord of Warwick,” exclaimed Somerset starting to his feet and suddenly finding voice, “that young man is a prisoner under arrest for treason, and shall not leave this presence save with a guard of armed men.”

“This young man is my prisoner, under the king’s warrant, and he not only leaves this room without other guard than his father’s arm, but denies the right of any man here, to question or retain him.”

The Earl of Warwick turned as he spoke, and for the first time that day, all the haughty fire of his soul burst into the usually quiet but fine black eyes, which dwelt upon the Lord Protector’s face.

“What—what means this? am I to be braved at my own council table? I—”

The Earl of Somerset broke off, for so intense was his rage, that words were denied him, and specks of foam rushed up to his white lips in their place.

“No, my lord duke,” replied Warwick, once more recovering the composure which he seldom lost, even in moments of the deepest excitement, “not at your own council table; that no longer exists. The council of this nation is sitting now at Somerset House, and I preside there by a choice of the majority, and by desire of King Edward.”

The Duke of Somerset fell back in his chair as if a sudden blow had stunned him, and shading his pale face with his scarcely less pallid hand, remained motionless and silent. The Lady Jane sprang to his side, flung her arm around his neck, and as Lord Dudley broke from the hold which Warwick placed on his arm, she put him calmly away with her disengaged hand. Then lifting her face to the earl, she said, “Your work is done. Leave my father to those who love him.” For one moment a shade of feeling swept over Warwick’s face, but it was instantly banished, and a courteous inclination of the head was all the reply he made. After a moment he turned to the few councillors still retaining their seats in silent consternation, and invited them in the name of King Edward and their colleagues, sitting at Somerset House, to join himself and son there.

There was a brief and whispered consultation around the board; then all, save one man arose, casting furtive glances at the fallen protector, as if they were anxious to escape from his presence unnoticed. The duke lifted his head, and a smile of mingled bitterness and pain passed over his pale features as he saw this movement of his friends. The Lady Jane too, blanched a little whiter and lifted her large clear eyes with an expression of painful astonishment, as if her generous nature could scarcely force itself to believe the selfishness with which she was surrounded.

With cringing and noiseless steps, those men whom Somerset had deemed his true and tried friends, those that would cling to him through good and through evil report—had glided from his presence and stood in the corridor, consulting together in whispers and waiting anxiously for Warwick to come forth, that they might offer him their support unchecked by the presence of the fallen noble to whom, in his prosperity, they had cringed with servile spirits, ready to kneel at any shrine which possessed stepping stones for their own ambition.

One man there was, a gray-haired and frank old nobleman, poor and proud, of a high name, but dignified in his poverty, who had never cringed to the protector or flattered him in the plenitude of his power, but who put away the hand which his antagonist extended as he passed round the table and knelt down by the fallen duke, with a true homage which had more of feeling in its silence than hours of protestation could have conveyed. The duke had leaned forward to the table, and one hand was pressed over his eyes, the other hung nervelessly by his side, and the quivering lips of that brave old man—for he was braver in his moral strength than a thousand battle heroes, went to his heart. One large tear forced itself through his fingers, and dashing it away, the Duke of Somerset arose a more dignified man in his adversity than he had ever been in prosperity.

“My Lord of Warwick,” he said, “this is your hour of triumph—how obtained your own heart can best reply.”

“No, your grace’s rashness is my answer,” interrupted Warwick, with a bland and courteous inclination, “but I have no time for cavil and recrimination. The king is waiting, and methinks there has been enough of high words for a lady’s presence. Lady Jane, we should all crave pardon for discussing state affairs in so gentle a presence. Permit my son to lead you from the room.”

The young girl looked up and hesitated, then drawing nearer to the duke, she said very mildly—

“My father will permit me to stay. That which concerns him cannot be improper for his daughter to witness.”

The earl seemed embarrassed by her refusal, but after a moment resumed his usual composed manner.

“Forgive me,” he said, “if I am compelled to perform the first duty of my office in a manner which might have been avoided,” and stepping to the door, the Earl of Warwick beckoned with his hand to some persons in the corridor. Instantly three men, whom Somerset knew, entered the closet, and there at his own council table, and in the presence of his child, arrested him for treason.

A death-like stillness reigned throughout the room for the duration of a minute after the warrant was read. Until this moment Dudley had remained inactive, confused and uncertain how to interfere in a scene which seemed passing before him like a wild dream, but now he stepped forward firmly and with the air of a man resolved to act from his own honest impulses at all hazards.

“My lord,” he said, addressing his father, “you will not proceed to such extremities against an old friend.”

Warwick looked in his son’s face, and a slight sneer curled his lip as he muttered, “old friends, indeed—well.”

“I am certain,” resumed Dudley, “your own honorable heart must revolt at an act so cruel. If the Duke of Somerset has offended the king let his majesty find some other person than the Earl of Warwick to proceed against him, lest those who deem that there is little of friendly feeling between the houses of Somerset and Warwick, may impute other motives than a love of justice to the prosecution.”

Dudley spoke in a low voice, but every tone fell upon the anxious ear of Lady Jane, and a flash of gratified affection, half pride and half tenderness filled her eyes. For she knew how deep was the reverence he rendered to the earl, and how much of moral courage was in the heart which could have the displeasure of a man so imperative and haughty, but who had even preserved the affections as well as the fear of his family.

“Very prettily argued, my clerkly son,” replied Warwick, lightly—“but pray can you tell me what the good people of England may think of the nobleman, who took advantage of his power to cast a son, and heir of that same ‘old friend’ whom you prate of into a damp hole in his palace, to herd him with a cur like that, and drag him before a picked number of councillors to be examined, on a question which touched his honor and life itself? Love is a question to amuse the people more than any act of mine. If His Grace of Somerset has seen fit to tread upon a serpent’s nest, the world will not marvel that his foot is stung where it would have crushed.

“No, Dudley, no—the king has rightly decided, and he who would have heaped ignominy on my son shall drain the cup he has drugged! Even as he forced the heir to my house to this closet in base contact with a wretch like that cringing cur yonder, shall he go forth and in like company.”

Dudley heard his father out with habitual reverence, but still opened his lips to expostulate once more against the course he was pursuing, but Warwick turned impatiently away.

“Tush man,” he said with a quick wave of the hand, “have done with this and meet me at Somerset House within the hour. The king desires it. If your grace is ready,” he added, turning to Somerset as if extending the most trifling invitation on earth, “we will proceed at once to the council.”

Somerset arose, folded a cloak about him, and though his face was very pale, moved toward the door without speaking a word. The guard closed in around him, and he left the closet like one in a bewildering dream. He had entered that room but an hour before, arrogant in the consciousness of power, second to none in the kingdom; he left it a prisoner and a ruined man.

Warwick gave a sign that the artisan should be secured and followed the fallen duke. The old councillor kept by the side of his friend, and on their way through the corridor the Duchess of Somerset came through a side door and approached her husband, but seeing how pale he was, and that many persons were around him, she drew back disappointed in the womanly impulse which had induced her to seek an interview before he went from the palace, that the cause of her child might be justly understood.

PAINTED BY R. LANDSEER.        ENGRAVED BY J. SARTAIN.

Return from Hawking.

Engraved expressly for Graham’s Magazine

RETURN FROM HAWKING.

ON A PICTURE BY LANDSEER.

They form a picture that appears of Eld—

The beauteous mother and the husband bold,

And smiling infant like a rose-bud held

Upon the parent-stem, but half unrolled

Yet blushing brightly in each crimson fold.

The household steed, in quiet sympathy,

Looks silent on and seems to share their glee.

The shaggy dog that wakes the forest old

With joyous echoes as he bounds along,

Starting the heron from his reedy lair—

These, while the morning sunbeams slant along

Through that old portal, massy, grim and bare,

Stand, grouped together,—emblems fit, I ween,

Of many another quiet household scene!

E.

THERE’S NO LAND LIKE SCOTLAND.

BALLAD.

SUNG BY MR. DEMPSTER.

COMPOSED BY

EDWARD J. LODER.

———

Philadelphia: John F. Nunns, 184 Chesnut Street.

———

There’s no land like Scotland within the wide sea,

There’s no land like Scotland,

The fearless and free,

With her fair glens and mountains,

Her fair locks and fountains,

Her wild springing heather and modest blue bell,

No place in the world do I love half so well,

No place in the world do I love half so well,

Oh! sleepin’ or wakin’, where e’er I may be,

My thoughts aye are turning dear Scotland to thee,

Bright gem of the northern wave,

Home of the free and brave,

While life endures thou canst never depart,

Ah! while life endures thou canst never depart,

Dear pride of the north from thy throne in my heart.

REVIEW OF NEW BOOKS.

Ballads and Other Poems. By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Author of “Voices of the Night,” “Hyperion,” &c. Second Edition. John Owen: Cambridge.

In our last number we had some hasty observations on these “Ballads”—observations which we now propose, in some measure, to amplify and explain.

It may be remembered that, among other points, we demurred to Mr. Longfellow’s themes, or rather to their general character. We found fault with the too obtrusive nature of their didacticism. Some years ago we urged a similar objection to one or two of the longer pieces of Bryant; and neither time nor reflection has sufficed to modify, in the slightest particular, our convictions upon this topic.

We have said that Mr. Longfellow’s conception of the aims of poesy is erroneous; and that thus, laboring at a disadvantage, he does violent wrong to his own high powers; and now the question is, what are his ideas of the aims of the Muse, as we gather these ideas from the general tendency of his poems? It will be at once evident that, imbued with the peculiar spirit of German song (a pure conventionality) he regards the inculcation of a moral as essential. Here we find it necessary to repeat that we have reference only to the general tendency of his compositions; for there are some magnificent exceptions, where, as if by accident, he has permitted his genius to get the better of his conventional prejudice. But didacticism is the prevalent tone of his song. His invention, his imagery, his all, is made subservient to the elucidation of some one or more points (but rarely of more than one) which he looks upon as truth. And that this mode of procedure will find stern defenders should never excite surprise, so long as the world is full to overflowing with cant and conventicles. There are men who will scramble on all fours through the muddiest sloughs of vice to pick up a single apple of virtue. There are things called men who, so long as the sun rolls, will greet with snuffling huzzas every figure that takes upon itself the semblance of truth, even although the figure, in itself only a “stuffed Paddy,” be as much out of place as a toga on the statue of Washington, or out of season as rabbits in the days of the dog-star.

Now with as deep a reverence for “the true” as ever inspired the bosom of mortal man, we would limit, in many respects, its modes of inculcation. We would limit to enforce them. We would not render them impotent by dissipation. The demands of truth are severe. She has no sympathy with the myrtles. All that is indispensible in song is all with which she has nothing to do. To deck her in gay robes is to render her a harlot. It is but making her a flaunting paradox to wreathe her in gems and flowers. Even in stating this our present proposition, we verify our own words—we feel the necessity, in enforcing this truth, of descending from metaphor. Let us then be simple and distinct. To convey “the true” we are required to dismiss from the attention all inessentials. We must be perspicuous, precise, terse. We need concentration rather than expansion of mind. We must be calm, unimpassioned, unexcited—in a word, we must be in that peculiar mood which, as nearly as possible, is the exact converse of the poetical. He must be blind indeed who cannot perceive the radical and chasmal difference between the truthful and the poetical modes of inculcation. He must be grossly wedded to conventionalisms who, in spite of this difference, shall still attempt to reconcile the obstinate oils and waters of Poetry and Truth.

Dividing the world of mind into its most obvious and immediately recognisable distinctions, we have the pure intellect, taste, and the moral sense. We place taste between the intellect and the moral sense, because it is just this intermediate space which, in the mind, it occupies. It is the connecting link in the triple chain. It serves to sustain a mutual intelligence between the extremes. It appertains, in strict appreciation, to the former, but is distinguished from the latter by so faint a difference, that Aristotle has not hesitated to class some of its operations among the Virtues themselves. But the offices of the trio are broadly marked. Just as conscience, or the moral sense, recognises duty; just as the intellect deals with truth; so is it the part of taste alone to inform us of BEAUTY. And Poesy is the handmaiden but of Taste. Yet we would not be misunderstood. This handmaiden is not forbidden to moralise—in her own fashion. She is not forbidden to depict—but to reason and preach, of virtue. As, of this latter, conscience recognises the obligation, so intellect leaches the expediency, while taste contents herself with displaying the beauty: waging war with vice merely on the ground of its inconsistency with fitness, harmony, proportion—in a word with το καλον.

An important condition of man’s immortal nature is thus, plainly, the sense of the Beautiful. This it is which ministers to his delight in the manifold forms and colors and sounds and sentiments amid which he exists. And, just as the eyes of Amaryllis are repeated in the mirror, or the living lily in the lake, so is the mere record of these forms and colors and sounds and sentiments—so is their mere oral or written repetition a duplicate source of delight. But this repetition is not Poesy. He who shall merely sing with whatever rapture, in however harmonious strains, or with however vivid a truth of imitation, of the sights and sounds which greet him in common with all mankind—he, we say, has yet failed to prove his divine title. There is still a longing unsatisfied, which he has been impotent to fulfil. There is still a thirst unquenchable, which to allay he has shown us no crystal springs. This burning thirst belongs to the immortal essence of man’s nature. It is equally a consequence and an indication of his perennial life. It is the desire of the moth for the star. It is not the mere appreciation of the beauty before us. It is a wild effort to reach the beauty above. It is a forethought of the loveliness to come. It is a passion to be satiated by no sublunary sights, or sounds, or sentiments, and the soul thus athirst strives to allay its fever in futile efforts at creation. Inspired with a prescient ecstasy of the beauty beyond the grave, it struggles by multiform novelty of combination among the things and thoughts of Time, to anticipate some portion of that loveliness whose very elements, perhaps, appertain solely to Eternity. And the result of such effort, on the part of souls fittingly constituted, is alone what mankind have agreed to denominate Poetry.

We say this with little fear of contradiction. Yet the spirit of our assertion must be more heeded than the letter. Mankind have seemed to define Poesy in a thousand, and in a thousand conflicting definitions. But the war is one only of words. Induction is as well applicable to this subject as to the most palpable and utilitarian; and by its sober processes we find that, in respect to compositions which have been really received as poems, the imaginative, or, more popularly, the creative portions alone have ensured them to be so received. Yet these works, on account of these portions, having once been so received and so named, it has happened, naturally and inevitably, that other portions totally unpoetic have not only come to be regarded by the popular voice as poetic, but have been made to serve as false standards of perfection, in the adjustment of other poetical claims. Whatever has been found in whatever has been received as a poem, has been blindly regarded as ex statû poetic. And this is a species of gross error which scarcely could have made its way into any less intangible topic. In fact that license which appertains to the Muse herself, it has been thought decorous, if not sagacious to indulge, in all examination of her character.

Poesy is thus seen to be a response—unsatisfactory it is true—but still in some measure a response, to a natural and irrepressible demand. Man being what he is, the time could never have been in which Poesy was not. Its first element is the thirst for supernal Beauty—a beauty which is not afforded the soul by any existing collocation of earth’s forms—a beauty which, perhaps, no possible combination of these forms would fully produce. Its second element is the attempt to satisfy this thirst by novel combinations among those forms of beauty which already exist—or by novel combinations of those combinations which our predecessors, toiling in chase of the same phantom, have already set in order. We thus clearly deduce the novelty, the originality, the invention, the imagination, or lastly the creation of BEAUTY, (for the terms as here employed are synonymous) as the essence of all Poesy. Nor is this idea so much at variance with ordinary opinion as, at first sight, it may appear. A multitude of antique dogmas on this topic will be found, when divested of extrinsic speculation, to be easily resoluble into the definition now proposed. We do nothing more than present tangibly the vague clouds of the world’s idea. We recognize the idea itself floating, unsettled, indefinite, in every attempt which has yet been made to circumscribe the conception of “Poesy” in words. A striking instance of this is observable in the fact that no definition exists, in which either “the beautiful,” or some one of those qualities which we have above designated synonymously with “creation,” has not been pointed out as the chief attribute of the Muse. “Invention,” however, or “imagination,” is by far more commonly insisted upon. The word ποιησις itself (creation) speaks volumes upon this point. Neither will it be amiss here to mention Count Bielfeld’s definition of poetry as “L’art d’exprimer les pensées par la fiction.” With this definition (of which the philosophy is profound to a certain extent) the German terms Dichtkunst, the art of fiction, and Dichten, to feign, which are used for “poetry” and “to make verses,” are in full and remarkable accordance. It is, nevertheless, in the combination of the two omni-prevalent ideas that the novelty and, we believe, the force of our own proposition is to be found.

So far, we have spoken of Poesy as of an abstraction alone. As such, it is obvious that it may be applicable in various moods. The sentiment may develop itself in Sculpture, in Painting, in Music, or otherwise. But our present business is with its development in words—that development to which, in practical acceptation, the world has agreed to limit the term. And at this point there is one consideration which induces us to pause. We cannot make up our minds to admit (as some have admitted) the inessentiality of rhythm. On the contrary, the universality of its use in the earliest poetical efforts of all mankind would be sufficient to assure us, not merely of its congeniality with the Muse, or of its adaptation to her purposes, but of its elementary and indispensible importance. But here we must, perforce, content ourselves with mere suggestion; for this topic is of a character which would lead us too far. We have already spoken of Music as one of the moods of poetical development. It is in Music, perhaps, that the soul most nearly attains that end upon which we have commented—the creation of supernal beauty. It may be, indeed, that this august aim is here even partially or imperfectly attained, in fact. The elements of that beauty which is felt in sound, may be the mutual or common heritage of Earth and Heaven. In the soul’s struggles at combination it is thus not impossible that a harp may strike notes not unfamiliar to the angels. And in this view the wonder may well be less that all attempts at defining the character or sentiment of the deeper musical impressions, has been found absolutely futile. Contenting ourselves, therefore, with the firm conviction, that music (in its modifications of rhythm and rhyme) is of so vast a moment in Poesy, as never to be neglected by him who is truly poetical—is of so mighty a force in furthering the great aim intended that he is mad who rejects its assistance—content with this idea we shall not pause to maintain its absolute essentiality, for the mere sake of rounding a definition. We will but add, at this point, that the highest possible development of the Poetical Sentiment is to be found in the union of song with music, in its popular sense. The old Bards and Minnesingers possessed, in the fullest perfection, the finest and truest elements of Poesy; and Thomas Moore, singing his own ballads, is but putting the final touch to their completion as poems.

To recapitulate, then, we would define in brief the Poetry of words as the Rhythmical Creation of Beauty. Beyond the limits of Beauty its province does not extend. Its sole arbiter is Taste. With the Intellect or with the Conscience it has only collateral relations. It has no dependence, unless incidentally, upon either Duty or Truth. That our definition will necessarily exclude much of what, through a supine toleration, has been hitherto ranked as poetical, is a matter which affords us not even momentary concern. We address but the thoughtful, and heed only their approval—with our own. If our suggestions are truthful, then “after many days” shall they be understood as truth, even though found in contradiction of all that has been hitherto so understood. If false shall we not be the first to bid them die?

We would reject, of course, all such matters as “Armstrong on Health,” a revolting production; Pope’s “Essay on Man,” which may well be content with the title of an “Essay in Rhyme;” “Hudibras” and other merely humorous pieces. We do not gainsay the peculiar merits of either of these latter compositions—but deny them the position held. In a notice, month before last, of Brainard’s Poems, we took occasion to show that the common use of a certain instrument, (rhythm) had tended, more than aught else, to confound humorous verse with poetry. The observation is now recalled to corroborate what we have just said in respect to the vast effect or force of melody in itself—an effect which could elevate into even momentary confusion with the highest efforts of mind, compositions such as are the greater number of satires or burlesques.

Of the poets who have appeared most fully instinct with the principles now developed, we may mention Keats as the most remarkable. He is the sole British poet who has never erred in his themes. Beauty is always his aim.

We have thus shown our ground of objection to the general themes of Professor Longfellow. In common with all who claim the sacred title of poet, he should limit his endeavors to the creation of novel moods of beauty, in form, in color, in sound, in sentiment; for over all this wide range has the poetry of words dominion. To what the world terms prose may be safely and properly left all else. The artist who doubts of his thesis, may always resolve his doubt by the single question—“might not this matter be as well or better handled in prose?” If it may, then is it no subject for the Muse. In the general acceptation of the term Beauty we are content to rest; being careful only to suggest that, in our peculiar views, it must be understood as inclusive of the sublime.

Of the pieces which constitute the present volume, there are not more than one or two thoroughly fulfilling the idea above proposed; although the volume as a whole is by no means so chargeable with didacticism as Mr. Longfellow’s previous book. We would mention as poems nearly true, “The Village Blacksmith;” “The Wreck of the Hesperus” and especially “The Skeleton in Armor.” In the first-mentioned we have the beauty of simple-mindedness as a genuine thesis; and this thesis is inimitably handled until the concluding stanza, where the spirit of legitimate poesy is aggrieved in the pointed antithetical deduction of a moral from what has gone before. In “The Wreck of the Hesperus” we have the beauty of child-like confidence and innocence, with that of the father’s stern courage and affection. But, with slight exception, those particulars of the storm here detailed are not poetic subjects. Their thrilling horror belongs to prose, in which it could be far more effectively discussed, as Professor Longfellow may assure himself at any moment by experiment. There are points of a tempest which afford the loftiest and truest poetical themes—points in which pure beauty is found, or, better still, beauty heightened into the sublime, by terror. But when we read, among other similar things, that

The salt sea was frozen on her breast,

The salt tears in her eyes,

we feel, if not positive disgust, at least a chilling sense of the inappropriate. In the “Skeleton in Armor” we find a pure and perfect thesis artistically treated. We find the beauty of bold courage and self-confidence, of love and maiden devotion, of reckless adventure, and finally of life-contemning grief. Combined with all this we have numerous points of beauty apparently insulated, but all aiding the main effect or impression. The heart is stirred, and the mind does not lament its mal-instruction. The metre is simple, sonorous, well-balanced and fully adapted to the subject. Upon the whole, there are fewer truer poems than this. It has but one defection—an important one. The prose remarks prefacing the narrative are really necessary. But every work of art should contain within itself all that is requisite for its own comprehension. And this remark is especially true of the ballad. In poems of magnitude the mind of the reader is not, at all times, enabled to include, in one comprehensive survey, the proportions and proper adjustment of the whole. He is pleased, if at all, with particular passages; and the sum of his pleasure is compounded of the sums of the pleasurable sentiments inspired by these individual passages in the progress of perusal. But, in pieces of less extent, the pleasure is unique, in the proper acceptation of this term—the understanding is employed, without difficulty, in the contemplation of the picture as a whole; and thus its effect will depend, in great measure, upon the perfection of its finish, upon the nice adaptation of its constituent parts, and especially, upon what is rightly termed by Schlegel the unity or totality of interest. But the practice of prefixing explanatory passages is utterly at variance with such unity. By the prefix, we are either put in possession of the subject of the poem; or some hint, historic fact, or suggestion, is thereby afforded, not included in the body of the piece, which, without the hint, is incomprehensible. In the latter case, while perusing the poem, the reader must revert, in mind at least, to the prefix, for the necessary explanation. In the former, the poem being a mere paraphrase of the prefix, the interest is divided between the prefix and the paraphrase. In either instance the totality of effect is destroyed.

Of the other original poems in the volume before us, there is none in which the aim of instruction, or truth, has not been too obviously substituted for the legitimate aim, beauty. In our last number, we took occasion to say that a didactic moral might be happily made the under-current of a poetical theme, and, in “Burton’s Magazine,” some two years since, we treated this point at length, in a review of Moore’s “Alciphron;” but the moral thus conveyed is invariably an ill effect when obtruding beyond the upper current of the thesis itself. Perhaps the worst specimen of this obtrusion is given us by our poet in “Blind Bartimeus” and the “Goblet of Life,” where, it will be observed that the sole interest of the upper current of meaning depends upon its relation or reference to the under. What we read upon the surface would be vox et preterea nihil in default of the moral beneath. The Greek finales of “Blind Bartimeus” are an affectation altogether inexcusable. What the small, second-hand, Gibbon-ish pedantry of Byron introduced, is unworthy the imitation of Longfellow.

Of the translations we scarcely think it necessary to speak at all. We regret that our poet will persist in busying himself about such matters. His time might be better employed in original conception. Most of these versions are marked with the error upon which we have commented. This error is in fact, essentially Germanic. “The Luck of Edenhall,” however, is a truly beautiful poem; and we say this with all that deference which the opinion of the “Democratic Review” demands. This composition appears to us one of the very finest. It has all the free, hearty, obvious movement of the true ballad-legend. The greatest force of language is combined in it with the richest imagination, acting in its most legitimate province. Upon the whole, we prefer it even to the “Sword-Song” of Körner. The pointed moral with which it terminates is so exceedingly natural—so perfectly fluent from the incidents—that we have hardly heart to pronounce it in ill taste. We may observe of this ballad, in conclusion, that its subject is more physical than is usual in Germany. Its images are rich rather in physical than in moral beauty. And this tendency, in Song, is the true one. It is chiefly, if we are not mistaken—it is chiefly amid forms of physical loveliness (we use the word forms in its widest sense as embracing modifications of sound and color) that the soul seeks the realization of its dreams of Beauty. It is to her demand in this sense especially, that the poet, who is wise, will most frequently and most earnestly respond.

“The Children of the Lord’s Supper” is, beyond doubt, a true and most beautiful poem in great part, while, in some particulars, it is too metaphysical to have any pretension to the name. In our last number, we objected, briefly, to its metre—the ordinary Latin or Greek Hexameter—dactyls and spondees at random, with a spondee in conclusion. We maintain that the Hexameter can never be introduced into our language, from the nature of that language itself. This rhythm demands, for English ears, a preponderance of natural spondees. Our tongue has few. Not only does the Latin and Greek, with the Swedish, and some others, abound in them; but the Greek and Roman ear had become reconciled (why or how is unknown) to the reception of artificial spondees—that is to say, spondaic words formed partly of one word and partly of another, or from an excised part of one word. In short the ancients were content to read as they scanned, or nearly so. It may be safely prophesied that we shall never do this; and thus we shall never admit English Hexameters. The attempt to introduce them, after the repeated failures of Sir Philip Sidney, and others, is, perhaps, somewhat discreditable to the scholarship of Professor Longfellow. The “Democratic Review,” in saying that he has triumphed over difficulties in this rhythm, has been deceived, it is evident, by the facility with which some of these verses may be read. In glancing over the poem, we do not observe a single verse which can be read, to English ears, as a Greek Hexameter. There are many, however, which can be well read as mere English dactylic verses; such, for example, as the well known lines of Byron, commencing

Know ye the | land where the | cypress and | myrtle.

These lines (although full of irregularities) are, in their perfection, formed of three dactyls and a cæsura—just as if we should cut short the initial verse of the Bucolics thus—

Tityre | tu patu | læ recu | bans—

The “myrtle,” at the close of Byron’s line, is a double rhyme, and must be understood as one syllable.

Now a great number of Professor Longfellow’s Hexameters are merely these dactylic lines, continued for two feet. For example—

Whispered the | race of the | flowers and | merry on |

balancing | branches.

In this example, also, “branches,” which is a double ending, must be regarded as the cæsura, or one syllable, of which alone it has the force.

As we have already alluded, in one or two regards, to a notice of these poems which appeared in the “Democratic Review,” we may as well here proceed with some few further comments upon the article in question—with whose general tenor we are happy to agree.

The Review speaks of “Maidenhood” as a poem, “not to be understood but at the expense of more time and trouble than a song can justly claim.” We are scarcely less surprised at this opinion from Mr. Langtree than we were at the condemnation of “The Luck of Edenhall.”

“Maidenhood” is faulty, it appears to us, only on the score of its theme, which is somewhat didactic. Its meaning seems simplicity itself. A maiden on the verge of womanhood, hesitating to enjoy life (for which she has a strong appetite) through a false idea of duty, is bidden to fear nothing, having purity of heart as her lion of Una.

What Mr. Langtree styles “an unfortunate peculiarity” in Mr. Longfellow, resulting from “adherence to a false system” has really been always regarded by us as one of his idiosyncratic merits. “In each poem,” says the critic, “he has but one idea which, in the progress of his song is gradually unfolded, and at last reaches its full development in the concluding lines; this singleness of thought might lead a harsh critic to suspect intellectual barrenness.” It leads us, individually, only to a full sense of the artistical power and knowledge of the poet. We confess that now, for the first time, we hear unity of conception objected to as a defect. But Mr. Langtree seems to have fallen into the singular error of supposing the poet to have absolutely but one idea in each of his ballads. Yet how “one idea” can be “gradually unfolded” without other ideas, is, to us, a mystery of mysteries. Mr. Longfellow, very properly, has but one leading idea which forms the basis of his poem; but to the aid and development of this one there are innumerable others, of which the rare excellence is, that all are in keeping, that none could be well omitted, that each tends to the one general effect. It is unnecessary to say another word upon this topic.

In speaking of “Excelsior,” Mr. Langtree (are we wrong in attributing the notice to his very forcible pen?) seems to labor under some similar misconception. “It carries along with it,” says he, “a false moral which greatly diminishes its merit in our eyes. The great merit of a picture, whether made with the pencil or pen, is its truth; and this merit does not belong to Mr. Longfellow’s sketch. Men of genius may and probably do, meet with greater difficulties in their struggles with the world than their fellow-men who are less highly gifted; but their power of overcoming obstacles is proportionably greater, and the result of their laborious suffering is not death but immortality.”

That the chief merit of a picture is its truth, is an assertion deplorably erroneous. Even in Painting which is, more essentially than Poetry, a mimetic art, the proposition cannot be sustained. Truth is not even the aim. Indeed it is curious to observe how very slight a degree of truth is sufficient to satisfy the mind, which acquiesces in the absence of numerous essentials in the thing depicted. An outline frequently stirs the spirit more pleasantly than the most elaborate picture. We need only refer to the compositions of Flaxman and of Retzch. Here all details are omitted—nothing can be farther from truth. Without even color the most thrilling effects are produced. In statues we are rather pleased than disgusted with the want of the eyeball. The hair of the Venus de Medicis was gilded. Truth indeed! The grapes of Zeuxis as well as the curtain of Parrhasius were received as indisputable evidence of the truthful ability of these artists—but they were not even classed among their pictures. If truth is the highest aim of either Painting or Poesy, then Jan Steen was a greater artist than Angelo, and Crabbe is a more noble poet than Milton.

But we have not quoted the observation of Mr. Langtree to deny its philosophy; our design was simply to show that he has misunderstood the poet. “Excelsior” has not even a remote tendency to the interpretation assigned it by the critic. It depicts the earnest upward impulse of the soul—an impulse not to be subdued even in Death. Despising danger, resisting pleasure, the youth, bearing the banner inscribed “Excelsior!” (higher still!) struggles through all difficulties to an Alpine summit. Warned to be content with the elevation attained, his cry is still “Excelsior!” And, even in falling dead on the highest pinnacle, his cry is still “Excelsior!” There is yet an immortal height to be surmounted—an ascent in Eternity. The poet holds in view the idea of never-ending progress. That he is misunderstood is rather the misfortune of Mr. Langtree than the fault of Mr. Longfellow. There is an old adage about the difficulty of one’s furnishing an auditor both with matter to be comprehended and brains for its comprehension.

Ideals and other Poems, by Algernon. Henry Perkins: Philadelphia.

Externally, this is a beautiful little volume, in which Mr. Longfellow’s “Ballads” just noticed are imitated with close precision. Internally, no two publications could be more different. A tripping prettiness, in thought and expression, is all to which the author of “Ideals” may lay claim. There is much poetry in his book, but none of a lofty order. The piece which gives name to the volume, is an unimpressive production of two pages and a half. The longest article is a tame translation of a portion of Göthe’s “Torquato Tasso.” The best, is entitled “Preaching in the Woods,” and this would bear comparison at some points with many of our most noted American poems. There are also twelve lines, seemingly intended as a sonnet, and prefacing the book—twelve lines of a sweet and quaint simplicity. The general air of the whole is nevertheless commonplace. It has nothing, except its mechanical execution, to distinguish it from the multitudinous ephemera with which our national poetical press is now groaning.

As regards the minor morals of the Muse, the author is either uninformed or affected. He is especially fond of unusual accents; and this, at least, is a point in which novelty produces no good or admissible effect. He has constantly such words as “accord” and “resource”—utter abominations. He is endeavoring too, and very literally, to render confusion worse confounded by the introduction into poetry of Carlyle’s hyper-ridiculous ellisions in prose. Here, for example, where the pronoun “he” is left to be understood:

Now the fervent preacher rises,

And his theme is heavenly love,

Tells how once the blessed Saviour

Left his throne above.

His roughness is frequently reprehensible. We meet every where, or at least far too often, with lines such as this—

Its clustered stars beneath Spring’s footsteps meets

in which the consonants are more sadly clustered than the stars. The poet who would bring uninterruptedly together such letters as t h s p and r, has either no ear at all, or two unusually long ones. The word “footsteps,” moreover, should never be used in verse. To read the line quoted, one must mouth like Forrest and hiss like a serpent.

Twice-Told Tales. By Nathaniel Hawthorne. James Monroe & Co.: Boston.

We have always regarded the Tale (using this word in its popular acceptation) as affording the best prose opportunity for display of the highest talent. It has peculiar advantages which the novel does not admit. It is, of course, a far finer field than the essay. It has even points of superiority over the poem. An accident has deprived us, this month, of our customary space for review; and thus nipped in the bud a design long cherished of treating this subject in detail, taking Mr. Hawthorne’s volumes as a text. In May we shall endeavor to carry out our intention. At present we are forced to be brief.

With rare exception—in the case of Mr. Irving’s “Tales of a Traveller” and a few other works of a like cast—we have had no American tales of high merit. We have had no skilful compositions—nothing which could bear examination as works of art. Of twattle called tale-writing we have had, perhaps, more than enough. We have had a superabundance of the Rosa-Matilda effusions—gilt-edged paper all couleur de rose: a full allowance of cut-and-thrust blue-blazing melodramaticisms; a nauseating surfeit of low miniature copying of low life, much in the manner, and with about half the merit, of the Dutch herrings and decayed cheeses of Van Tuyssel—of all this, eheu jam satis!

Mr. Hawthorne’s volumes appear to us misnamed in two respects. In the first place they should not have been called “Twice-Told Tales”—for this is a title which will not bear repetition. If in the first collected edition they were twice-told, of course now they are thrice-told.—May we live to hear them told a hundred times! In the second place, these compositions are by no means all “Tales.” The most of them are essays properly so called. It would have been wise in their author to have modified his title, so as to have had reference to all included. This point could have been easily arranged.

But under whatever titular blunders we receive the book, it is most cordially welcome. We have seen no prose composition by any American which can compare with some of these articles in the higher merits, or indeed in the lower; while there is not a single piece which would do dishonor to the best of the British essayists.

“The Rill from the Town Pump” which, through the ad captandum nature of its title, has attracted more of public notice than any one other of Mr. Hawthorne’s compositions, is perhaps, the least meritorious. Among his best, we may briefly mention “The Hollow of the Three Hills;” “The Minister’s Black Veil;” “Wakefield;” “Mr. Higginbotham’s Catastrophe;” “Fancy’s Show-Box;” “Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment;” “David Swan;” “The Wedding Knell;” and; “The White Old Maid.” It is remarkable that all these, with one exception, are from the first volume.

The style of Mr. Hawthorne is purity itself. His tone is singularly effective—wild, plaintive, thoughtful, and in full accordance with his themes. We have only to object that there is insufficient diversity in these themes themselves, or rather in their character. His originality both of incident and of reflection is very remarkable; and this trait alone would ensure him at least our warmest regard and commendation. We speak here chiefly of the tales; the essays are not so markedly novel. Upon the whole we look upon him as one of the few men of indisputable genius to whom our country has as yet given birth. As such, it will be our delight to do him honor; and lest, in these undigested and cursory remarks, without proof and without explanation, we should appear to do him more honor than is his due, we postpone all farther comment until a more favorable opportunity.

A Translation of Jacobs’ Greek Reader, (adapted to all the editions printed in America) for the use of Schools, Academies, Colleges, and Private Learners; with Copious Notes, Critical and Explanatory: illustrated with numerous Parallel Passages and Apposite Quotations from the Greek, Latin, French, English, Spanish, and Italian Languages: and a Complete Parsing Index; Elucidated by References to the most Popular Greek Grammars Extant: By Patrick S. Casserly, author of “A New Literal Translation of Longinus” &c. W. E. Dean: New York.

We give this title in full, as affording the best possible idea of the character of the work. Nothing is left for us to say, except that we highly approve the use of literal translations. In spite of all care, these will be employed by students, and thus it is surely an object to furnish reputable versions. Mr. Casserly is, perhaps, chargeable with inflation and Johnsonism as regards his own style—a defect from which we have never known one of his profession free. The merit of his translations, however, is unquestionable.

Transcriber’s Notes:

Table of Contents has been added for reader convenience. Archaic spellings and hyphenation have been retained. Obvious punctuation and typesetting errors have been corrected without note. Greek phrases in this ebook contain characters which may not display in some devices due to the fonts and character sets available in the device.

A cover has been created for this eBook and is placed in the public domain.

[End of Graham’s Magazine, Vol. XX, No. 4, April 1842, George R. Graham, Editor]

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Table of Contents

- THE WIFE.

- LOWELL’S POEMS.[1]

- LIFE IN DEATH.

- THE MINER’S FATE.

- BIRTH OF FREEDOM.

- RECOLLECTIONS OF WEST POINT.

- PART THE FIRST.

- FRAGMENT.

- DREAMS OF THE LAND AND SEA.

- AGATHÈ.—A NECROMAUNT.

- TO A SPIRIT.

- ST. AGNES’ EVE.

- THE AFFAIR AT TATTLETOWN.

- THE OLD MAN RETURNED HOME.

- STANZAS

- THE BACHELOR’S EXPERIMENT.

- SWEETHEARTS AND WIVES.

- THE DUEL.

- ELEGY ON THE FATE OF JANE M’CREA.

- HARRY CAVENDISH.

- THE PIRATE.

- SONNETS.

- TO FLORENCE.

- THE TWO DUKES.

- RETURN FROM HAWKING.

- THERE’S NO LAND LIKE SCOTLAND.

- REVIEW OF NEW BOOKS.

- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE