A fatiguing journey up six long, winding flights of smoothly-waxed stairs carried me to the door of the room I occupied in the Place ——. But no matter for the name of the Place; no one, I am confident, will visit Paris for the express purpose of satisfying himself that I am to be depended upon, and that there is a house of so many stones in the Place Maubert. Here I lived, au premier au dessous du soleil, in the enjoyment of no end of fresh air, especially in winter, and a brilliant prospect up and down the street and over the roofs of the houses across the way, which reached from the Pantheon on the one side, to the peaked roofs and factory-like chimneys of the Tuileries on the other, the dome of the HÔtel des Invalides occupying the centre of the picture. I was studying painting at that time,—learning to paint the much-admired landscapes and figure-pieces which I produce with so much ease now and dispose of with so little,—and, as a general thing, was busy, (though I had my fits of abstraction, like other men of genius, during which I did nothing but lie on my bed and smoke pipes over French novels, or join parties of pleasure into the country or within the barriers,) through the day, and often till late in the evening, in the atelier of one or another of the most renowned artists of the city.
At the head of the last flight of stairs in this house was a narrow passage-way in which I was always obliged to stop and recover my breath, after finishing the one hundred and thirty-nine steps that led to my paradise, before I could get my key into its lock; and into this passage-way opened two doors, one of which, of course, belonged to my room, and the other to some one's else. But who this some one else was I was unable to find out. Was it—and how convenient a word is Ça in such a case!—male or female? I was persuaded it must be a woman, and as a woman I always used to think of her and speak of her, to myself,—and I thought and spoke of her often enough. Of course, I could have settled the question at once by knocking at her door and asking for a match, but I scorned resorting to such weak subterfuges. But how quiet she was! Occasionally, when, contrary to my usual custom, I took another nap after waking in the morning, instead of going out for exercise and a glimpse of early Paris street-life,—occasionally I used to hear her moving about on the other side of the thin partition which separated our rooms, as stealthily as though she feared she might disturb me. She would light her charcoal-stove, and perhaps glide softly by my door and down stairs, to return soon with the paper of coffee, the, bit of bread, and the egg or two which were to serve her for breakfast, and now and then she would sing to herself, but so gently that I never could hear the words of her song, nor scarcely the air. An evil spirit put gimlets into my head, but I shook them out like so much powder, and resolved to be honorable, if I was an artist. I found, however, that my curiosity was an abominable nuisance, that my morning walks were almost entirely neglected, and that I could not bear to leave my room until I had heard her go out and lock her door behind her. Every day, after her departure, I resolved that she should not go out again without being seen by me, and every time I attempted to follow her in such a way as to escape detection I lost sight of her. I nearly fell into the street as I attempted to reach far enough out of my window to see her as she came out at the street-door.
At last, one morning, when it happened, that, just as I had finished dressing myself and was ready to go out, she opened her door and ran down stairs without closing it behind her, carried away by my curiosity, I stepped out into the narrow passage-way and looked into her sanctuary. The room was a smaller one than mine,—but how much neater! The muslin curtains in her window were as white as snow; her wardrobe, which hung against the wall, was protected from the dust by a linen cloth; the floor shone like a mirror. Her canary hung in the window, and greeted me with a perfect whirlwind of roulades as I stepped into the room. Her fire was burning briskly under a pot of water, which was just coming to the boiling-point, and singing as gayly and almost as loudly as her bird. Over the back of a chair was thrown the work she had been busied with; and on the bed, almost hid by the curtains, was a pair of the prettiest little blue garters I ever saw, even in Paris,—span-new they were, and had evidently been bought no longer ago than the evening before,—and some other articles of feminine apparel, which I will not attempt to describe. I looked into her glass, I really believe, with the hope of finding there a faint reflection of her face and figure. She must have looked into it but a minute before going out. A book, like a Testament, lay on the table. I knew I should find her name on the fly-leaf, and was just on the point of satisfying myself with regard to that particular when I heard her feet upon the stairs; and, with a start which nearly carried away the curtains of her bed, I rushed from her room into my own.
How my heart beat, after I had gently closed my door and was sitting on the side of my bed, listening to the movements in the next room! It didn't seem to me as though I had been guilty of a high misdemeanor, and yet, though I had been prepared for her return, I was as much discomposed as though I had been caught peeping.
So far from being satisfied with this resolution of my doubts with regard to the sex of my neighbor, I now found myself more uneasy and curious than before. Was she young and pretty and good? and what did she do? and what was her name? My thoughts were perpetually running up those six flights and stopping baffled at her close-shut door. I drew ideal portraits of her, and introduced them into all my pictures as pertinaciously as Rubens did his wives, and would often finish out an accidental face in a study of rocks, much to my instructor's surprise and my fellow-students' amusement. It was very remarkable, however, that all these fancy sketches bore a striking resemblance to another acquaintance of mine, who will shortly be introduced, and in whom, until I moved into my now room, I had been exclusively interested,—so much so, in fact, that——But I will not anticipate.
Most of my days were spent on the opposite side of the Seine; and, as I crossed that river, by the Pont Royal, at about five o'clock, every evening, on my way to the Laiterie, at which I usually took what I called my dinner, I always stopped to buy a bunch of flowers, of violets in their season, of a charming little flower-girl, who had her stand, on the Quai Voltaire, and who, by the time my turn to be served came, had usually disposed of nearly her whole stock. Every one who looked at her bought of her. She possessed something that was more attractive even than her beauty; though I question, if, without her glossy brown hair, her soft, dark eyes, her glorious complexion, her round, dimpled cheek and chin, her gentle winning smile, and her exquisite taste in dress—I question, if, without all these, her quiet, modest demeanor and unaffected simplicity and propriety would have attracted quite as much attention as they always did.
I had not bought many bouquets of ThÉrÈse before she began to recognize me as I came up, and to greet me with a smile and a "Bon jour, Monsieur," sweeter in tone and accent than any I had ever heard before. What a voice hers was! Its tones were like those of a silver bell; and I found that she always had my bunch of violets or heliotrope ready for me by the time I reached her.
My frugal meal over, I was in the habit of visiting a neighboring cafÉ, where I read the papers, drank my evening cup of coffee, and, as I smoked my cigar or pipe and twirled my posies in my fingers or held them to my nose, would wonder who she was who sold them to me, if she ever thought of those who bought them of her, and if she distinguished me above her other customers. It seemed to me, that, if she had the same angelic smile and happy greeting for them as she always bestowed upon me, they must one and all be her slaves; and yet I couldn't decide whether I really loved her or was only touched by a passing fancy for her.
I looked forward, however, through the day, to my interview with her with a great deal of impatience, and found myself making short cuts in the long walk which led me to her. I used to arrange, on my way, well-turned sentences with which to please her, and by which I expected to startle her into some intimation of her feelings toward me. I was angry that she was obliged to stand in so public a place, exposed to the gaze and remarks of all who chose to stop and buy of her. In fine, I was jealous, or rather was piqued, that she should receive all others exactly as she received me, and almost flattered myself that necessity forced her to meet them with the same sweet smile inclination led her to bestow on me.
This was the state of affairs at the time I moved into my new lodgings, before referred to, in the Place Maubert, and I was suffering these mental torments for ThÉrÈse's sake, when the appearance, or rather the non-appearance, of my mysterious neighbor aggravated and complicated the symptoms and converted my slow fever into an intermittent. I had called my fair unknown Hermine;—the pronoun she, as it applied equally to every individual of the female sex, and in the French language to many things besides, soon became insufficient, and I took the liberty of calling her Hermine. I was so ashamed of my foolish passion, that I could not make up my mind even to question the porter at the door with regard to her, nor to consult any of my better initiated acquaintances as to the proper course to be pursued, but lived out a wretched succession of days and nights of feverish anxiety and expectation,—of what I knew not.
I was on my way over the Pont Royal, one evening, at my usual hour, and was just coming in sight of my bewitching flower-merchant, when a sudden, and, as I believed, a happy thought occurred to me, and I resolved to put it into instant execution. I am sure I blushed and stammered wofully as I asked for two bunches of flowers instead of my usual one, and I was confident, that, as she handed them to me without a word, but with such a look, ThÉrÈse's brow was shaded by something more than the dark bands of her brown hair or the edge of her becoming cap, and that her lip quivered rather with a suppressed sigh than with her usual happy smile. I didn't stop to speak with her that night, but hurried away towards my room, conscious—for I did not dare to look behind me, or I am sure I should have relinquished my design—that her large, sorrowful eyes were full of the tears she had kept back while I had stood before her.
I reached my room as soon as possible, and, after assuring myself that my neighbor was still absent, carefully inserted my second nosegay into her keyhole, and rushed from the house as though I had committed burglary.
I was very young then, very romantic, and wholly wanting in assurance. I must have been, or I should never have regarded it as a crime, not against myself, but others, that I was making my days miserable and my nights sleepless on account of two young girls, one of whom I had never seen, and the other of whom was merely a flower-merchant.
When I clambered up to my room late that night, the flowers were no longer where I had put them. I had been torturing myself all the evening with the thought that Hermine might have felt offended, and that I should find them torn in pieces and thrown down at my door, or that she would be waiting for me with a severe reprimand for my boldness and impertinence. But I could find no trace of them, and went to sleep, soothed by the conviction that they had been carefully put by in a glass of water, or were occupying a place on her pillow by the side of her dainty cheek. I feared to meet ThÉrÈse's sorrowful face again the next night, and was troubled so much by the thought of it through the day, that I fairly deserted her that evening and bought my two bouquets elsewhere. With one of these, which I had taken care should be of a finer quality than before, I repeated my experiment of the preceding night and with the same gratifying result. But the day after, forgetting, until it was too late, that I had given ThÉrÈse fair cause to be seriously angry with me, habit carried me to my old resort again, though I had fully determined to reach home by another way, and to patronize, for the future, my new bouquetiÈre, who was not only old and ugly, but of the masculine gender. Habit—and perhaps wish had something to do with it—was too strong, however, and I found myself turning down the Quai Voltaire at the customary hour the next evening.
Much to my surprise, and somewhat to my mortification, ThÉrÈse greeted me with her old sunny smile. Her "Bon jour, Monsieur," was as cordial as ever; and it even seemed to me—and that didn't in the least tend to compose me—that her eyes sparkled with an archness which I had never seen in them before, and that her voice had in it a tinge of malice, as she held out to me two of her finest bunches, saying,—
"Est-ce que, Monsieur en desire deux encore ce soir?"
I was very angry with her for being in such good-humor, and believe I was anything but aimable or polite with her. Why did she not look hurt or offended and reproach me for my desertion, instead of almost disarming my senseless anger by her gentleness?
"It seems that Monsieur forgets his old friends, sometimes," she continued, as I took the flowers she had been holding towards me, and was fumbling in my pocket for the change.
"Forget!" I stammered; for the temper I found her in had so completely ruffled mine, that I was hardly sufficiently master of myself to be able to answer her at all,—"what makes you think I forget? Am I not here this evening, as usual?"
"This evening, yes,—but last night you did not come; or were you here too late to find me? I"——she paused, and, with her color a little heightened, as though she had narrowly escaped making a disclosure, looked another way,—"Monsieur must have bought his flowers elsewhere, yesterday. Were they as fresh and sweet as mine?"
"But how do you know, Mademoiselle,"—I answered, after I had given her a long opportunity to add what I had hoped would follow that long-drawn-out "I"; (she was going to say, I was sure, that she had waited for me to come as long as was possible;)—"How do you know that I bought my flowers elsewhere, or that I bought any? And where can I find finer ones than you give me?"
"Monsieur is kind enough to say so," she returned. "Can you excuse my indiscretion? I only thought, that, as you never miss carrying a bunch of flowers home with you, and sometimes two," she added, with a wicked twinkle in the corner of her mouth, "you must have found some better than mine, last night. But Monsieur will, of course, act his own pleasure."
ThÉrÈse had never appeared to me more charming than at that moment. I wondered afterwards how I had been able to tear myself away from her, and was almost angry that I had not thrown down my second bunch, had not vowed to her that I would never desert her again, and had not confessed that the pain I had suffered from my folly had more than equalled hers, since I was never so happy as when I could be near and see her and hear the music of her voice.
And this was my life, and these the pains I used to suffer. Two tender passions held alternate possession of my fickle heart, and a constant struggle was always waging between them for the mastery; and the impossibility of deciding in favor of either of them, which to accept and which deny, prevented my yielding to either. ThÉrÈse, however, whose real presence I could enjoy, upon whose delicious beauty I could feast my eyes whenever the fancy seized me, and whose voice I could hear, even when separated from her, possessed a fearful advantage over her invisible rival, who maintained her position in my interest only by preserving her incognito and maintaining my curiosity strained to the highest pitch. My acquaintance with ThÉrÈse became daily more intimate, and was soon upon such a footing as seemed to authorize my asking her to accompany me on a Sunday jaunt to one of the thousand resorts of Parisian pleasure-seekers just beyond the barriers of the city.
She accepted,—of course she did,—and the matter was finally arranged one Saturday evening for the next day. I was to find her at the house of her aunt, who lived in my neighborhood, and who, to my surprise, turned out to be the proprietress of the Laiterie I frequented. Here we were to breakfast, and afterwards take the proper conveyance to our destination, which I think was Belleville.
Sunday came, and with it came such weather as the gods seldom vouchsafe to mortals who contemplate visiting the country. It was one of those cloudless days in early June when all Nature, and yourself more than anything else in Nature, seems as though it had been taking Champagne,—not too warm, but sufficiently so to make out-of-door life a luxury, and an excursion like ours into the country almost a necessity.
ThÉrÈse, like everything else in Nature on that summer's day, was more gloriously beautiful, in my eyes, than ever before. Hermine's ideal beauty, and with it her chance of success, faded out from my memory like an unfixed photograph, before this charming reality, and ThÉrÈse ruled supreme. She had dressed herself with a taste which surprised even me, who had so long regarded her as irreproachable, as she was unapproachable, in that particular; and the joy she felt at the thought of a whole day's ramble in the country showed itself in every feature of her countenance, in every movement, and in every tone of her voice. There didn't live a prouder or a happier man than I was, as we made our way arm in arm towards the Place Dauphine, where we were to take the omnibus for Belleville.
We ran wild in the woods and fields all that day, we fed the fishes in the ponds, we made ourselves dizzy on the seesaws and merry-go-rounds, and at last, fairly tired out, and feeling desperately and most unromantically hungry, turned into the neatest and least frequented restaurant we could find and ordered our dinner.
ThÉrÈse was no gourmande, luckily. Her tastes were simple and harmonized admirably with my slender means. We dined, however, like princes, and drank a bottle of ChÂteau Margeaux, instead of the vin ordinaire, which was my ordinary wine. ThÉrÈse's gayety had fairly inoculated me, and, forgetting my usual reserve, we laughed and chatted as noisily as a couple of children.
"Upon my word," cried I, as I caught sight of a bouquet of flowers in the room we occupied, "what a couple of ninnies we have been! We have forgotten to get any flowers to carry home with us. But I suppose you see too many of them through the week to care for them to-day."
"Oh, no!" replied ThÉrÈse. "I could never see too much of flowers; and besides, you must have a bunch to carry home to Mademoiselle this evening. She will never forgive you, if you neglect her to-day. And what would she think or say, if she knew where you are now and whom you are with? She is very fond of flowers,—when they come from you, I mean."
"Well," I stammered, and my face burned like fire. "What Mademoiselle? And what makes you think that I make presents of the flowers I get of you? I only get them for myself, and as an excuse for seeing you."
"Ah! menteur!" cried ThÉrÈse, shaking her finger at me with mock solemnity. "Fi donc! c'est vilain. Do you think I have no eyes, or that you have none that speak as plainly as your mouth, and more truly? You try to deceive me, Monsieur!" and the little hypocrite assumed so injured and heart-broken an expression and tone, that I was almost wild with remorse, and cursed the wretch who had placed the flowers in the room, and myself for having noticed them. I should have been hurried into I don't know what expressions of attachment to her and of indifference towards every other individual of her sex, if she had not prevented me by the following startling remark.
"I know to whom you give the flowers you value so much as coming from me. It is to your next-door neighbor, who pleases you more than I do, and whom you have known, perhaps, longer than you have me. Why didn't you invite her, and not me, to come with you to-day? It would have been better."
"Ah!" cried I, "do you know her? She told you about it? Why doesn't she let me see her? Is her name Hermine?"
And almost before I knew it, I had told her the whole story of my passion for my invisible neighbor.
ThÉrÈse pouted, and turned her back. She put her handkerchief to her face, and called me all sorts of hard names for having brought her there to listen to the confession of my love for another; and turned a deaf ear, or I thought she did, to my expostulations and my protestations that I didn't really care for Hermine,—that it was only a passing fancy, more curiosity than anything else,—and that I really loved no one but her.
She began to relent at last, though I was half inclined to be sorry, for her resentment became her even better than her good-humor.
"Well," she said, finally, "it is too tiresome to quarrel, and I will forgive; for, although you say you have never seen Hermine,—(that is a prettier name than ThÉrÈse, isn't it?)—she has, perhaps, seen you, and may really love you "—
"But I don't love her," I cried. "I don't want to love her. I don't want to see her. Her name isn't Hermine, I know. I will never think of her again, nor make a fool of myself by putting nose-gays into her keyhole, if you will only not look so sober any more."
"She will be very sorry for that, I am sure," returned ThÉrÈse, with a smile I could not translate; "and she will miss them very much. I judge her by myself. I always find a bunch at my door when I go home at night"—
"You! You find flowers at your door? And who puts them there?" And I took my turn at being provoked. "You haven't used me fairly, ThÉrÈse, to make me understand all this time that you cared for no one but me. There is some one, then, whom you love and who loves you?"
"Oh, yes!" she answered, her whole face beaming with a pleasure which made me feel like committing a murder or a suicide; "oh, yes! I believe he does; he has almost told me so. And—and I know that I do. But he is so droll! He is my next-door neighbor, and has never seen me yet, and has never tried to, I believe; but he leaves a bunch of flowers at my door every evening, and calls me—Hermine."
"Hermine! You Hermine? Hurrah!"
And before she could prevent me, I held her in my arms, and, in spite of her struggles, had kissed her forehead, eyes, hair, nose, and lips before she could extricate herself, and then went round the room in a wild dance of perfect joy and relief.
"I knew I could love no one else, ThÉrÈse-Hermine, or Hermine-ThÉrÈse! I knew there must be some good and sufficient reason for the unaccountable attraction my neighbor was exercising over me. Why didn't you tell me sooner, mÉchante? I suppose you never would have done so at all, if we had not come out here to-day. Suppose I had not asked you to come with me?"
"Wouldn't you have asked me?" she answered, with so much winning grace and in such a pleading tone that I found myself obliged to repeat the operation of a few lines above. "Wouldn't you have asked me? I don't know what I should have done," she continued, sadly and thoughtfully. "Oh, yes!" she exclaimed, jumping up and clapping her hands, while her whole face was radiant with triumph. "Oh, yes! then I should have been Hermine, and you would have asked her."
Two happier young people than ThÉrÈse and myself never, I am confident, returned by rail from a day's excursion in the country. Our happy faces, our rapid talking, and our devotion to each other, which we took no pains to conceal, attracted the attention of all about us,—and I heard one father of a family, who was returning to Paris with a half score of cross, tired, and crying children, whisper to his wife, as he pointed towards us,—"That is a couple in their honey-moon, or else lovers; how happy they are!"
And that is the way in which I stumbled into wedlock. How many others, in their pursuit of what has seemed to them the substance, have failed to discover, perhaps too late, that they were following a flitting shadow,—while I, favored mortal, in my chase of a dream, stumbled upon the greatest real good of my whole life!
* * * * *
THROUGH THE FIELDS TO SAINT PETER'S.
There's a by-road to Saint Peter's. First you swing across the Tiber In a ferry-boat that floats you in a minute from the crowd; Then through high-hedged lanes you saunter; then by fields and sunny pastures; And beyond, the wondrous dome uprises like a golden cloud.
And this morning,—Easter morning,—while the streets were thronged with people, And all Rome moved toward the Apostle's temple by the usual way, I strolled by the fields and hedges,—stopping now to view the landscape, Now to sketch the lazy cattle in the April grass that lay.
Galaxies of buttercups and daisies ran along the meadows,— Rosy flushes of red clover,—blossoming shrubs and sprouting vines; Overhead the larks were singing, heeding not the bells a-ringing,— Little knew they of the Pasqua, or the proud Saint Peter's shrines.
Contadini, men and women, in their very best apparel, Trooping one behind another, chatted all along the roads; Boys were pitching quoits and coppers; old men in the sun were basking: In the festive smile of Heaven all laid aside their weary loads.
Underneath an ancient portal, soon I passed into the city; Entered San Pietro's Square, now thronged with upward crowding forms; Past the Cardinals' gilded coaches, and the gorgeous scarlet lackeys, And the flashing files of soldiers, and black priests in gloomy swarms.
All were moving to the temple. Push aside the ponderous curtain! Lo! the glorious heights of marble, melting in the golden dome, Where the grand mosaic pictures, veiled in warm and misty softness, Swim in faith's religious trances,—high above all heights of Rome.
Grand as Pergolesi chantings, lovely as a dream of Titian, Tones and tints and chastened splendors wreathed and grouped in sweet accord; While through nave and transept pealing, soar and sink the choral voices, Telling of the death and glorious resurrection of the Lord.
But, ah, fatal degradation for this temple of the nations! For the soul is never lifted by the accord of sights and sound; But yon priest in gold and satin, murmuring with his ghostly Latin, Drags it from its natural flights, and trails its plumage on the ground.
And to-day the Pope is heading his whole army of gay puppets, And the great machinery round us moving with an extra show: Genuflexions, censers, mitres, mystic motions, candle-lighters, And the juggling show of relics to the crowd that gapes below,
Till at last they show the Pontiff, a lay figure stuffed and tinselled; Under canopy and fan-plumes he is borne in splendor proud To a show-box of the temple overlooking the Piazza; There he gives his benediction to the long-expectant crowd.
Benediction! while the people, blighted, cursed by superstition, Steeped in ignorance and darkness, taxed and starved, looks up and begs For a little light and freedom, for a little law and justice,— That at least the cup so bitter it may drain not to the dregs!
Benediction! while old error keeps alive a nameless terror! Benediction! while the poison at each pore is entering deep, And the sap is slowly withered, and the wormy fruit is gathered, And a vampire sucks the life out while the soul is fanned asleep!
Oh, the splendor gluts the senses, while the spirit pines and dwindles! Mother Church is but a dry-nurse, singing while her infant moans; While anon a cake or rattle gives a little half-oblivion, And the sweetness and the glitter mingle with her drowsy tones.
But the infant moans and tosses with a nameless want and anguish, While, with coarse, unmeaning bushings, louder sings the hireling nurse,— Knows no better, in her dull and superannuated blindness,— Tries no potion,—seeks no nurture,—but consents to worse and worse.
If such be thy ultimation, Church of infinite pretension,— Such within thy chosen garden be the flowers and fruits you bear,— Oh, give me the book of Nature, open wide to every creature, And the unconsecrated thoughts that spring like daisies everywhere!
Send me to the woods and waters,—to the studio,—to the market! Give me simple conversation, books, arts, sports, and friends sincere! Let no priest be e'er my tutor! on my brow no label written! Coin or passport to salvation, rather none, than beg it here!
Give me air, and not a prison,—love for Heart, and light for Reason! Let me walk no slave or bigot,—God's untrammelled, fearless child! Yield me rights each soul is born to,—rights not given and not taken,— Free to Cardinals and Princes and Campagna shepherds wild.
Like these Roman fountains gushing clear and sweet in open spaces, Where the poorest beggar stoops to drink, and none can say him nay,— Let the Law, the Truth, be common, free to man and child and woman, Living waters for the souls that now in sickness waste away!
Therefore are these fields far sweeter than yon temple of Saint Peter; Through this grander dome of azure God looks down and blesses all; In these fields the birds sing clearer, to the Eternal Heart are nearer, Than the sad monastic chants that yonder on my ears did fall.
Never smiled Christ's holy Vicar on the heretic and sinner As this sun—true type of Godhead—smiles o'er all the peopled land! Sweeter smells this blowing clover than the perfume of the censer, And the touch of Spring is kinder than the Pontiff's jewelled hand!
is of pleasant imagery! It is "the silent finger" that points to heaven; it is an upward aspiration of the soul; a prayer from the depths of a troubled heart; a suspirium de profundis; a hymn of thanksgiving; a pure life, throwing of the worldly and approaching the ethereal; a finite mind searching, till lost in the vastness of the unknown and unapproachable; a beautiful attempt; a voice of praise sent up from the earth, till, like the soaring lark, it "becomes a sightless song." Indeed, our unbidden thoughts, that wild-ivy of the mind, are trained upward by the spire, till it is hung round with the tenderest associations and recollections of all that is sweet and softening in our natures. Thus, when the painter has represented on his canvas some wild phase of scenery, where the gadding vine, the tangled underwood, the troubled brook, the black, frowning rock, the untamed savage growth of the forest,
"Old plash of rains and refuse patched with moss,"
impress us with awe, and a sad, homeless feeling, as if we were lost children, how eloquent is that last touch of his pencil that shows us a simple spire peeping over the tree-tops! How it comforts us! How it brings us home again, and bestows an air
"Of sweet civility on rustic wilds"!
But even if we were not inclined to be sentimental on the subject, even if base utilities had crowded out from our hearts the blessed capacity of shedding rosy light on things about us, the coldest esteem could not but ripen into affection, when we reflected that the spire never adorned the shrine of a pagan god, never glorified the mosque of a false prophet, never, in purity, arose from any unconsecrated ground; but when, at last, the Church of Christ felt the "beauty of holiness," then it developed out of that beauty and pointed the way to God. It exhaled from the growing perfection of the Church, as fragrance from an opening flower. It is, therefore, peculiarly holy. It is a monitor of especial grace. "It marshals us the way that we are going," like the visionary dagger of Macbeth; but the knell that sounds beneath it summons only to heaven.
Practically, it is utterly useless; and this is its honor and its unspeakable dignity. We cannot even climb it, as we could a tower; for it is nearly as unapproachable as the Oracle of God, save to the innocent birds, who love to flock and wheel about it in the sunshine, and build their nests in its "coignes of vantage," or, in the night-time, to the troops of stars which touch it in their journey through the skies. It is as beautifully idle as the lilies of the field; and yet its expressiveness touches us so nearly, the propriety of its sentiment is so striking, that, when the great test question of this living age is applied to it, and we are asked, What is its use? what is it good for? the heart is shocked at the impiety of the question, and the feelings revolt, as against an insult. Upon the arches of Canterbury Minster is carved,
NON * NOBIS * DOMINE * NON * NOBIS * SED * NOMINI * TVO * DA * GLORIAM *
Nothing can be simpler than the composition of the pure spire. The aesthetics of its development and growth are characteristically natural and apparent. They are like the history of a flower from bud to bloom under a warm sun. Let us become botanists of Art for a while, and analyze those flowers of worship, as they opened "in that first garden of their simpleness."
Considering the growth of the spire from the tower-roof, it might naturally be supposed that the earliest forms would be square or round, in plan. But no sooner had the roof passed into this new sphere of existence, than the fine intelligence of the builders perceived that it needed refinement. They saw that in a square spire there was so coarse a distinction between the tapering mass of light and the tapering mass of shadow, that the delicacy and lightness necessary to express the sentiment they desired to convey did not exist in the new feature;—in a round spire, on the other hand, they found that this distinction of light and shade was too little marked; it was vapid and effeminate, and quite without that delicious crispiness of effect which they at once obtained by cutting off the corners of the square spire, and reducing it to an octagon. With very rare exceptions, as in the southwest spire of Chartres Cathedral, this form was always used. Now it will be seen that a difficulty arises in the beginning, how to unite the octagon of the spire with the square of the tower. There are four triangular spaces at the summit of the tower left uncovered by the superstructure; and how best to treat these, simple as the task may seem, constitutes what may be called the touchstone of architectural genius in spire-building. There are several general ways of effecting this, each of them subject to such modifications, in individual instances, as to give them an ever-varying character.
Perhaps the earliest method was simply to occupy those triangular spaces with pyramidal masses of masonry, sloping back against the adjacent faces of the tower,—an expedient which Nature herself might have suggested in the first snow-storm. Then they boldly cut the Gordian knot by shaving off the corners of the tower at the top, thus creating there an octagonal platform, to which the spire would exactly correspond. Still oftener they chamfered the spire upwards from the corners of the tower: in other words, they placed, as it were, a square spire on their tower, occupying the whole of its summit, and then obtained the necessary octangularity by shaving off the angles of the spire from the apex to a certain point near the base, where the cutting was continued obliquely to the corners of the tower. The latest method was to build pinnacles on the triangular territory. In such cases the spire usually stood wholly within the outer boundaries, and parapets assisted to conceal the first springing of the spire.
The first of these methods is usually considered the most perfect and beautiful, on account of its simplicity and candor. This is called the broach; and it is the only form thus far spoken of wherein the tapering surfaces rise directly from the tower-cornice, without mutilating the tower or violating the pure outlines of the spire. The heavenward aspiration, as it were, ascends without effort from the solidity of the tower. It seems to typify a certain fitness and adaptability to heavenly things even in the gross and earthly nature of man. One cannot fail to admire its unaffected dignity, its harmonious balance, its graceful proportions.
It would be impossible within the limits of this article to give any idea of the wonderful diversity of treatment these simple generic forms received at the hands of the early builders. The changes of combination, proportion, and ornamentation were endless. For the mediaeval spirit was eminently earnest in its labor, and would not be content with copying an old shape merely because it was a good shape. It would not be satisfied with the cold repetition of a written litany of architectural forms; but its ardent piety, its thoughtful zeal, the life of its love, demanded an ever-varying expression in these visible prayers. Emerson himself might find nought to censure there, in the way of undue conformities and consistencies. Its language was written with the infinite alphabet of Nature.
We are speaking now especially of England; and we, her children, may well be proud that these divine enthusiasms of antiquity, which we thought so quaint, so rare, so far away from us, nowhere else found fairer demonstrations. The English spires bear especial witness to the zeal and aspiration of their builders. They belted them with bands of ornament, cut at first in imitation of tiles, and afterwards beautifully panelled with foliations. Moulded ribs began to run up the angles of the spires, and, when they met at the summit, would exultingly curl themselves together in the most precious cruciforms. Quaint spire-lights began to appear. Sometimes curious dormers would project from alternate sides; and the very ribs, as if, in this spring-time of Art, they felt, quickening along their lengths, the mysterious movements of a new life, sprouted out here and there with knots of leafage, timidly at first, and then with all the wealth and profusion of the harvest. The same impulse wreathed the crowning cross with a thousand midsummer fancies, till the circle of Eternity, or the triangle of Trinity, which often mingled with its arms, scarcely knew itself. The pinnacles, too, blossomed into crockets and bud-like finials, and began to gather more thickly about the roots of the spire, and from them often leaped flying-buttresses against it. During this time the spire itself was growing more and more acute, its lines becoming more and more eloquent. After the fourteenth century, the tower began to be crowned with intricate panelled tracery of parapets and battlements, from behind which the spire, an entirely separate structure, shot up into the sky. In this, the period of the perpendicular style, pinnacles, purfled to the last degree, crowded about the base of the spire, reminding one of the admiring throng gathered about the base of some old picture of the Ascension. But there is another English form which perhaps conveys this sentiment even more impressively: We refer to that whose prototype exists in the steeple of the Church of St. Nicholas at Newcastle-upon-Tyne. This, however, has four turrets, one on each angle, from which, with great lightness, leap towards each other four grand flying-buttresses, which join hands over an empty void and hold in the air a lantern and spirolet of great elegance. This is a very bold piece of construction. It has been imitated at St. Giles's, Edinburgh, at Linlithgow, in the college tower of Aberdeen, and it is especially made known to the world by Sir Christopher Wren's famous use of it in the steeple of St. Dunstan's-in-the-East, London.
The most famous spires of England and Normandy are St. Peter's at Caen, a very early specimen, St. Michael's at Coventry, Louth, that of the parochial church of Boston in Lincolnshire, that of Chichester Cathedral, the three that rise from the famous Lichfield Cathedral, and finally and especially the magnificent spire over the cross of Salisbury. In the judgment of most English connoisseurs, this is the finest in the world. It was probably erected during the reign of Edward III., a very florid period for architecture. It is the highest in England, its summit rising four hundred and four feet from the pavement of the church beneath. It is one of the earliest erected in stone, and is remarkable for skilful construction, the masonry in no part being more than seven inches thick. This spire is belted with three broad bands of panelled tracery, and there are eight pinnacles at its base, two on each corner of the tower. The ribs are fretted throughout the whole height with elegant crockets, thus imparting to the sky-line an appearance similar to the gusty spray on the borders of a rain-cloud. An admirer has said of it, "It seems as though it had drawn down the very angels to work over its grand and feeling simplicity the gems and embroidery of Paradise itself!" England once boasted the loftiest spire in the world, that of old St. Paul's, London, whose summit, five hundred and twenty feet from the ground, seemed to sail among the highest clouds; but the great fire of 1666 destroyed it, and Sir Christopher's stately metropolitan dome now rises in its place.
One could believe in the "merrie" days of Old England, were her abundant spires their only evidence. The ardent zeal that kindled so many thousand answering beacons throughout the length and breadth of the land is the best proof of that concord of souls which is true happiness. We know that the decision of the Council of Clermont about the Crusades was believed to have been instantly known through Christendom, and that the great cry, God willeth it! which shook the council-roof, was echoed from hill to hill, and at once struck awe and astonishment to the hearts of remotest lands. So in the birthplaces of our Pilgrim fathers, over these cherished spots,
"Where the kneeling hamlets drained The chalice of the grapes of God,"
arose the "star y-pointing" spire, like a voice of adoration; and then another would be raised in unison in some neighboring village, where they could see and communicate with each other in their silent language; and yet another close by among the hills; and presently, in full view from its summit, twenty more, perhaps,—till the good tidings were known through the whole country, and from hamlet to hamlet, over the streams and tree-tops, was thus echoed the great Te Deum of the land. For it was said among the people, in that antique spirit of worship, as Milton exhorted the birds in his Hymn of Thanksgiving,—
"Join voices, all ye living souls! ye spires, That singing up to heaven's gate ascend, Bear on your wings and in your notes His praise!"
It is a beautiful proof of the spirit of sacrifice which actuated the Masonic builder of the Middle Ages, that his fairest and most precious works were not confined to the great metropolitan churches and cathedrals, where they could be seen of men, but were frequently found in quiet and secluded villages, nestled among pastoral solitudes, far away from the gaze and admiration of the world. Though the spire of Salisbury was, perhaps, an epic in Masonic poetry, yet in humble hamlets of England, beyond her most distant hills, and amid many an unnamed "sunny spot of greenery," were idyls sung no less exquisite than this. Many a village-spire, of conception no less beautiful, arose above the tree-tops among the most untrodden ways. All day long its shadow lingers in the quiet churchyard, and points among the humble graves, as if, over this dial of human life, it loved to preach silent homilies on "the passing away," even to the simplest poor. It must be inexpressibly touching to meet with these beautiful forms in the lonely wilderness, where the ivy alone, as it throws its loving arms around them, appears to recognize their grace and all their tender significance. It is like the chance discovery of a good deed done in the darkness, or like a pure life spent in the sweet and serious retirement of a little hamlet, pointing the way to heaven for its scanty flock of cottagers.
It was the custom in those days, during the celebration of Mass, at the moment when the Host was raised, to ring a peculiar bell in the tower, in order that those not gathered beneath the consecrated roof might be made aware far and wide of the awful ceremony, and be reminded to offer up their devotion in unison. And we remember what Izaak Walton said of quaint George Herbert,—how "some of the meaner sort of his parish did so love and reverence Mr. Herbert, that they would let their plough rest when his saints'-bell rung to prayer, that they might also offer their devotion to God with him, and would then return back contented to their plough." Now it seems to us that the spire is a perpetual elevation of the Host, a never-ending lifting-up of the Symbol of Redemption, a consecrating presence to field and cottage, hillside and highway, ever ready to bless the accidental glance of wayfarer or laborer, and to make in the desert of his daily life a momentary oasis of sweet and hallowed thought. Its peaceful influence extends over the whole landscape and pierces to its remotest corners.
"A gentler life spreads round the holy spires; Where'er they rise, the sylvan waste retires, And aËry harvests crown the fertile lea."
It may be thought that St. Peter's cock, which so often answers the sunbeams from the spindly spire, and kindles and glitters there like a star, is rather empty of emblematic significance and soul-language. But what saith old Bishop Durandus?—"The cock at the summit of the church is a type of the preacher. For the cock, ever watchful, even in the depth of night, giveth notice how the hours pass, waketh the sleepers, predicteth the approach of day,—but first exciteth himself to crow by striking his sides with his wings. There is a mystery conveyed in each of these particulars: the night is the world; the sleepers are the children of this world, who are asleep in their sins; the cock is the preacher who preacheth boldly, and exciteth the sleepers to cast away the works of darkness, exclaiming, Woe to them that sleep! Awake, thou that sleepest! and then foretell the approach of day, when they speak of the Day of Judgment and the glory that shall be revealed, and, like prudent messengers, before they teach others, arouse themselves from the sleep of sin by mortifying their bodies; and as the weather-cock faces the wind, they turn themselves boldly to meet the rebellious by threats and arguments."
But it was on the Continent, especially in France, the Low Countries, and Germany, that the Gothic flower opened in fullest perfection; and it is here that we find the loftiest and most luxurious spire-forms. They were always the last part of the church completed, the finishing-touch, the last that was needed to perfection. The progress of the building of a cathedral thus embodied a beautiful symbolism. In most cases, the choir, or east end, the holiest part of the church, was the first erected, in order to sanctify and protect the high altar; and then, as the treasures of the church flowed in, after the expiration of years or centuries, the builders, tutored by a legendary science, and harmonized by a wonderful feeling of brotherhood, in the same spirit, perfected the designs of their predecessors, by leading out westward the long naves and attendant aisles, completing northward and southward the transepts, adding a chapel here and a porch there, glorifying the western front with the touches of divine genius; and when at last every niche was occupied with its statue of angel, saint, or pious benefactor, and the holy choir, with its apsis, had been re-adorned with the accumulated art of centuries, and glowed with the iris-light from painted windows,—when the mural monuments of bishops, warriors, and kings had thickened beneath the consecrated roof, and the whole structure had been hallowed by the prayers and chantings of generations,—then, at last, over the ancient tower arose the lofty spire; as if an angelic messenger had spread his wings at its base and mounted upward to heaven, shouting out the glad tidings of the completion of the House of God, and, as he arose, the voice grew fainter and fainter, till at length it melted into the sky!
The finest spires of Europe were erected as late as the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries, upon towers prepared for their reception, usually, in much earlier times. This confidence of the old builders in the final completion of their structures is remarkable. They drew without stint on the piety of after ages,—a resource which has not unfrequently proved too feeble to realize their generous expectations. There are few cities in Europe which do not bear sad marks of this misplaced confidence. This is especially witnessed in the unfinished steeples. And, indeed, when we find that not only one, but two, three, four, or even five spires were sometimes required to flame upward from the same building, as in Caen Cathedral, we do not wonder that the kindling spark is often wanting. It would seem as if another fire must come down from heaven, as of old it did upon the first offering of Moses and Aaron, to inflame these censers, rich in frankincense and naphtha.
Now let us see what were the distinguishing attributes of the Continental spires. We know not why it was, but in the gray old towns of Belgium and the Low Countries there existed such exuberance of imagination, such an unbounded luxuriousness of conception, as created more images of Gothic quaintness and intricacy than elsewhere can be seen. If any architecture ever expressed the average of human thought, that of these towns is especially eloquent in its indications that their inhabitants were very happy and contented. Look at a print of any old Belgian town or street, and you will at once see our meaning. What a joyous upspringing of pinnacles and pointed roofs and spires! of no more earthly use, indeed, than so much pleasant laughter. There is no tower without its spire, no turret or gable without its pinnacle, no oriel without its pointed roof, no dormer without some such playful leaping up into the air. Every salient point attacks the sky with its long iron spindle, wrought with strange device and bearing a hospitable cup where the bird makes his nest; and every spindle sings and shrieks with a shifting vane,—so that the wind never sweeps idly over a Belgian town. This innocent and happy people did not frown through the ages from grim battlements, and awe posterity with stern and massive walls. But they loved old childlike associations and fireside tales. They loved to build curious fountains in commemoration of pleasant legends. They loved, too, the huge, delicious-toned bells of their minster-towers, and the sweet changes of melodious, never-ceasing chimes. They carved their Lares and Penates on their house-fronts very curiously, with sun-dials and hatchments, sacred texts and legends of hospitality. The narrow streets of Ghent, Louvain, Liege, Mechlin, Antwerp, Ypres, Bruges are thus full of household memories and saintly traditions. So it is not strange that a people whose daily hours were counted out with the music of belfries were fond of fretting their towers with workmanship so precious and delicate that it has been called "the petrifaction of music."
But before we proceed to tell in how florid a manner the Low Countries interpreted the simpler forms of spires, we shall describe generically in what manner not only they, but all the other European kingdoms, were indebted to the old Rhineland towns for some of these forms. When the bell-tower, in about the seventh or eighth century, began to be used in Germany, it at once received certain very important modifications on the earlier Italian campanile. The upper terminations of these latter were horizontal, on account of their flat roofs. Now in more northern climates, where the snow falls, these flat roofs would be unsafe and inconvenient. So we find that the first church-towers that arose in such Rhenish places as Oberwesel, Gelnhausen, Bacharach, Coblentz, Cologne, Bingen, "sweet Bingen on the Rhine," no longer ended in these horizontal lines, but arose in pointed shapes. Indeed, the Germans, who were great rivals of the Italians in those days, not only in matters pertaining to architecture, but to literature also, in the same independent spirit which induced them alone, of all civilized peoples, to retain through all time the cramped, angular letters of monkish transcribers, in preference to the fair and square Roman forms, took particular pride in avoiding horizontal lines entirely at the tops of their towers, as they did at the tops of their letters. Wherever they so occur, they are insignificant,—rather ornamental than constructive. Not so with the English; they kept the square tops to their towers, and contented themselves with the pointed superstructure. Let us see how Teutonic stubbornness arranged the matter. Each separate face of their towers, whether these towers were square or octangular, ended above in a gable; and from these gables, in various ways, arose the octangular pointed roof or spire. This circumstance, more than any other, tended to give a peculiar character to German Gothic. The simplest type of the gabled spire was magnificently used in the spire of St. Peter's at Hamburg. This was the finest in North Germany; it was four hundred and sixteen feet high, and, if still standing, would be the third in height in the world. But it was destroyed by the great fire of 1842. Many a traveller can bear witness to the sweet melody of the chimes that used to sound beneath it every half-hour.
In later times, between the Germans and the French, was invented the lantern,—a feature so often and so superbly used, not only on the Continent, but more lately in England, that we must needs glance at it. This consisted in a tall, perpendicular, octangular structure, placed upon the tower, quite light and open, and pierced with long windows. Here they used to swing the bells, and the place was called the lantern or louvre; thence the octangular spire arose easily and naturally. Now, notwithstanding this device, those troublesome triangular spaces still remained unoccupied at the top of the square tower. The manner in which this difficulty was remedied was exceedingly ingenious and beautiful. It was by building on them very delicate pinnacles or turrets, peopled, perhaps, as at Freiburg, with a silent and serene concourse of saints in rich niches, or inclosing, as at Strasburg, spiral open-work stairs. These structures accompanied the tall lantern through its whole height; thus rendering the entire group a memory, as it were, of the square tower below, while, at the same time, it beautifully foreshadowed the octangular character of the sky-seeking spire above,—a significant symbolism.
Now, when the Belgians and their neighbors received the spire thus from the fatherland, they at once began to express in it the joy of their worship by all the embroidery and tender imagery and grotesque conceits it was capable of receiving. They varied as many changes on it as they did on their bells. They concealed the first springing of their spires behind clustering pinnacles, flying-buttresses, canopied niches with gigantic statues, galleries with battlements and parapets pierced and mantled in lacework of flamboyant tracery, pointed gables alive with crockets and finials, and long, quaint dormers,—all with a bewildering intricacy of enrichment. And they inherited from the Germans a love for the gargoyle, which haunted the springing of the spire at the corners with visions of very hideous diablerie. It may well be believed that these florid builders did not suffer the spire to arise serious and serene from the midst of this delicious tangle of architecture. They tricked it out with all the frostwork of Gothic genius. Not only did they use in its decoration spire-lights, crockets, ribs and cinctures, bands of gablets, and masses of reticulated relief, but, with wonderful skill, they pierced each face from base to apex in foliated patterns of great richness, so that the whole spire became a web of delicate open-work, through which the light was sprinkled in beautiful shapes, varying with every movement of the beholder. Their plainer spires of wood they were fond of covering with glazed tiles of various tints arranged in quaint taste. And they would vary the outline by making it curve inward, giving a fine sweep thus from the base to an apex of great slenderness. Sometimes they would give it, with exaggerated refinement, the entasis of the Greek column. There are instances of this last treatment both in France and England.
But it was not only in exuberance of enrichment and quaintness of form that these enthusiastic workmen uttered their inspirations. They built their spires to a most amazing height. Indeed, the loftiest steeples in the world arose in level tracts of country, where they could be seen at immense distances, as not only in Belgium and thereabout, but on the flat margins of the upper and lower Rhine, as at Strasburg and Cologne. In these countries, and about the North of France, there was a generous rivalry as to which city should lift up highest the cross of God. But as soon as the sacred passion for spire-building was corrupted by this new element of human emulation, some strange things happened. The people of Beauvais, for instance, desiring to beat the people of Amiens, set to work, we are told, to build a tower on their cathedral as high as they possibly could. The same thing had been done once before on the plains of Shinar. One foresees the result, of course; "it fell, for it was founded upon the sand, and great was the fall thereof." And so with the good people of Louvain. They built three spires to their cathedral, of which the central one reached the unparalleled height of five hundred and thirty-three feet, according to Hope, and the side-towers four hundred and thirty feet. This tremendous group, however, fell, or, threatening destruction, was taken down, in 1604. We remember what the Wanderer said so finely in the "Excursion":—
"We must needs confess That 'tis a thing impossible to frame Conceptions equal to the soul's desire; And the most difficult of tasks to keep Heights which the soul is competent to gain."
But we find that ecclesiastical edifices were not the only ones which were adorned with this high building; for town-halls were not infrequently distinguished by immensely lofty spires, as at Brussels. It is curious to see, however, how easily the less exalted impulses which erected them may be discovered. They do not soar, they climb up panting into the sky, like the famous passage up through Chaos, in Milton, "with difficulty and labor hard." They have not the light, airy gliding upward of the religious spire, whose feeling George Herbert had in his mind, when he sang of prayer:—
"Of what an easy, quick accesse, My blessed Lord, art thou! how suddenly May our requests thine eare invade!"
Not so; but it is all human rivalry, a succession of diminishing towers, steps piled one above another, where the mind every now and then may stop to breathe, and then fight its way onward again;—not an Ascension, like that from Bethany; rather the toil of a very human, though very laudable ambition.
Unfinished spires were in Europe very common legacies from generation to generation. Descendants were called upon to embody the great conceptions of their forefathers. But the ancestral spirit too often failed in the land, the wing of aspiration was broken, the crane rotted in its place, the great conceptions were forgotten, or lived only as vague and dreamy inheritances; and the half-completed spires stood like Sphinxes, and none knew their riddles! They are very melancholy memorials. Like the broken columns over the graves of the departed, fallen short of their natural uses, they seem only the funeral monuments of a race that is dead. The empty air is stilled over them in expectation, and the imagination makes vain pictures, and fills out their crescent of splendid purposes. They have been called "broken promises to God." Too often, perhaps, they were rather monuments of the feebleness of those who would scale heaven with anything but adoration upon their lips. There were Ulm, indeed, and Cologne, and Mechlin, as artistic intentions, eminently grand and beautiful; and in the early part of the sixteenth century Belgium was famous for designs of open-work spires, which, if erected, would have surpassed in height and richness all hitherto existing. But it is worthy of note that at this period the purity of the Church had become so sullied with priestcraft and the plenitude of Papal power, that it no longer possessed within its violated bosom those sacred impulses of piety which whilom sent up the simple spire, like a pure messenger, to whisper the aspirations of men to the stars. "Gay religions, full of pomp and gold," could neither feel nor utter the grave tenderness of the early inspirations. And so, when the German monk affixed his ninety-five theses to the door of Wittenberg Church, the spire had ceased to be an utterance of prayerful aspiration. It had lost its peculiar significance as an involuntary expression of worship, and had become liable to all the accidents and contingencies that attend the efforts of a merely human ambition. The whole story is an architectural version of the parable of the Pharisee and the Publican who went down to the temple to pray.
Of the finished spires, the loftiest in the world are, first, that of Strasburg Minster, 474 feet; second, that of St. Stephens at Vienna, 469 feet; third, that of Notre Dame at Antwerp, 466 feet; then that of Salisbury, 404 feet; Freiburg in the Breisgau, 380-1/2 feet; and then follow the distinguished heights of Landshut, Utrecht, Rouen, Chartres, Brugrels, Soissons, and others. The highest spire in our own country is that of Trinity Church, New York, 284 feet. We do not "sweep the cobwebs from the sky" so effectually as when men built according to the scale of spiritual exaltation rather than that of practical feet and inches,—after the stature of the soul, rather than that of the man.
The architects of the revival of classic architecture, with the learned language of the five orders, with pediments and attics, consoles and urns, labored to express the childlike sentiment of the spire. But even the great Sir Christopher Wren, with his sixty steeple-towers, and all his followers to this day, have not succeeded in a translation so unnatural. Spirituality and the artless grace of inspiration are wanting to the spires of the Renaissance, and so they struggle up painfully into the sky. And it is very rare to find those who have gone back even to Gothic models building a spire which touches our affections, or claims affinity with any of our nobler emotions; so sensitive is this unique structure to the approach of any element foreign to the early conditions of its existence.
As for the great Strasburg example, that Jungfrau of all spires, German traditions have very properly babbled many strange stories about the erection of it. These constitute an episode so characteristic in the history of spire-building, that this essay would be incomplete, were they not briefly told here.
In the legendary days of yore, nothing was more common than to meet that personage known as the Devil walking up and down the earth, in innocent guise, but ripe for all sorts of mischief, especially where the people were building up mighty monuments to the glory of the good God. Very naturally, the sacred spire was a special object of his aversion; and, for some reason or other, that of Strasburg was honored with peculiar marks of his hatred. Two ancient churches, which stood on the site of the present minster, had been successively destroyed by fire; and although, in the one case, this had been kindled by the torch of an invading army, and in the other by a thunderbolt, yet the infernal agency, in both cases, nobody ever thought of doubting. So it was the effort of Bishop Werner to combat these evil influences; and he accordingly inflamed the pride and indignation of the people to such a degree, that throughout the land all concerted to defeat the wicked designs of the Adversary. In two centuries and a half the whole cathedral was completed, save the tower, the corner-stone of which was forthwith laid with great pomp by Bishop Conrad of Lichtenberg, on the 25th of May, 1277. Doubtless the Arch-Fiend laid many cunning schemes to entrap the illustrious architect, Erwin of Steinbach; but, unlike his brother in the craft at Cologne, he came out unscathed; so we must believe that throughout the whole work he was actuated by the most unselfish spirit of devotion, infernal machinations to the contrary notwithstanding. Now it must be confessed that the Enemy had a hard time of it, since we read that the good Bishop Conrad fought against him with all the powers of the Church, and granted absolution for all sins, past, present, and future, for forty thousand years, to whatever person should contribute to the building of the spire by money, material, or labor. Owing to the scarcity of parchment, these grants of absolution were made out on asses' skins; and it will be seen, that, in the great struggle, these instruments retained in a very eminent degree that quality of stubborn resistance which had cost them in their original state many a beating from the driver's staff. The greatest enthusiasm was kindled among rich and poor; year after year, thousands of pilgrims flocked hither from all Germany to offer their aid, without reward or recompense, to the building of the tower; and out of the farthest boundaries, even from Austria, came wagons loaded with building-materials, the gratuitous offerings of the pious. Rich legacies were left to the work, and many a cloister devoted a fourth part of its yearly revenues to the same object So much for asses' skins!
Meanwhile the Devil was not idle. In the night-winds he and his legions would shriek and yell and rattle among the scaffolding and cranes in vain. In the latter part of the thirteenth century, he shook the structure with a frightful earthquake, which terrified all Alsatia, and, although whole streets were thrown down in Strasburg, yet the foundations of the Wunderbau, as the Germans love to call it, were not loosened, and no stone was moved from its place. A few years afterward, in 1289, he once more made use of his favorite element, and laid in ashes the market-place of Strasburg all around the minster. More fortunate than its great compeers, St. Paul's of London, and St. Peter's of Hamburg, it miraculously experienced but trifling damage.
Well, the great Erwin died at last, when he had built the tower as high as the roof-ridge of the nave. His son succeeded him, finished the tower to the platform, when he, too, was gathered to his fathers in 1339. John HÜltz followed as master; and finally his nephew, HÜltz II., in 1439, finished the grand pyramid, fixed the colossal cross in its place, and crowned the whole with a gigantic statue of the Virgin. Thus, from the laying of the foundation-stone till all was completed, were one hundred and sixty years; yet throughout this time the work was never discontinued, and five successive generations labored upon its walls.
But the wrath of the Arch-Enemy, as may well be believed, waxed greater as this prodigious structure gradually developed itself in all its lordliness and strength, and was not at all appeased at its triumphant completion. Ever since then he has visited its stately height with especial marks of his malice. The most furious tempests have raged about it, and more than sixty times has it been struck by lightning, and five times have earthquakes shaken its foundations. But in vain. "The Golden Legend" tells us how Lucifer and the Powers of the Air stormed about the spire, and how he cried,—
"Hasten! hasten! O ye spirits! From its station drag the ponderous Cross of iron that to mock us Is uplifted high in air!"
and how the voices replied,—
"Oh, we cannot! For around it All the Saints and Guardian Angels Throng in legions to protect it; They defeat us everywhere!"
At one point, however, the evil spirits were successful; the colossal statue of the Virgin, which crowned the dizzy summit, and was familiar with the secrets of the upper air, and which, like its dread Enemy,
"above the rest, In shape and gesture proudly eminent, Stood like a tower,"—
after having for fifty years borne the insults of these airy powers, till it had lost all its original brightness, and its face
"Deep scars of thunder had intrenched,"—
was taken down, and the present cross put in its place. And there it stands to this day, high up in the silence of midair, where the voices of the city below are rendered small and thin by the distance,—four hundred and seventy-four feet above the heads of the populace, who, in their littleness, crawl about and traffic at its base. This amazing summit, "moulded in colossal calm," in its unapproachable grandeur, seems to forget the city from which it rises, and to hold communion only with that vast circle of "crowded farms and lessening towers" which it surveys. It is a worthy companionship; on the one hand, the great Vosgian chain, the closed gates of France,—on the other, afar off, the hills of the Black Forest, and, more near, Father Rhine, winding his silver thread among the villages and vineyards of Germany.
There is (or was) an enormous key suspended just beneath the cross of Strasburg Cathedral, its use, and why it was placed there, having passed away from the memory of man. If it were not to open the gates of heaven for those who built this ladder of light and those who worship in its shadow, it remains a riddle and a blank. Let us accept the interpretation, and, made mild-eyed by the lens of tender memories, we shall behold in every spire a means of grace and a hope of glory.
d, having listened with an amused face. "Loveliest amber that ever the sorrowing sea-birds have wept," he hummed. "There! isn't that kind of stuff enough to make a man detest it?"
"Yes."
"And you are quite as bad in another way."
"Oh!"
"Just because, when we hold it in our hands, we hold also that furious epoch where rioted all monsters and poisons,—where death fecundated and life destroyed,—where superabundance demanded such existences, no souls, but fiercest animal fire;—just for that I hate it."
"Why, then, is it fitted for me?"
He laughed again, but replied,—"The hues harmonize,—the substances; you both are accidents; it suits your beauty."
So, then, it seemed I had beauty, after all.
"You mean that it harmonizes with me, because I am a symbol of its period. If there had been women then, they would have been like me,—a great creature without a soul, a"——
"Pray, don't finish the sentence. I can imagine that there is something rich and voluptuous and sating about amber, its color, and its lustre, and its scent; but for others, not for me. Yea, you have beauty, after all," turning suddenly, and withering me with his eye,—"beauty, after all, as you didn't say just now.—Mr. Willoughby is in the garden. I must go before he comes in, or he'll make me stay. There are some to whom you can't say, No."
He stopped a minute, and now, without looking,—indeed, he looked everywhere but at me, while we talked,—made a bow as if just seating me from a waltz, and, with his eyes and his smile on Louise all the way down the room, went out. Did you ever know such insolence?
