  The daughter of the rich man was carried to her grave upon the shoulders of the rich, followed by a crowd of worshipers; and as the body was borne into the Chapel of the Departed, and the procession flowed in, and filled the aisles, the choristers chanted the Requiem for the dead. Dies irÆ, dies illa Solvet secium in favilla, Teste David cum Sybilla. “My daughter, oh! my daughter; why wouldst thou die?” Quantus tremor est futurus, Quando Judex est venturus, Cuncta stricte discussurus. “Return, oh! return, return again to me.” Tuba mirum spargens sonum Per sepulchra regionum, Coget omnes ante thronum! “and thou shalt make me what thou willest.” Mors stupebit, et natura, Cum resurget creatura, Judicanti responsura. “The shining gold is thine, and houses, and lands, and all the glory of life.” Liber scriptus proferetur, In quo totum continetur, Unde mundus judicetur. “My daughter, oh! my daughter, return again to me.” Judex ergo cum sedebit Quidquid latet apparebit, Nil inultum remanebit. “Thy suitors call thee; the music, the dance, the revelry of joy.” Quid sum miser tunc dicturus? Quem patronum rogaturus, Cum vix justus sit securus? “No voice, no word, no whisper for my ear.” Rex tremendÆ majestatis, Qui salvandos salvas gratis, Salva me, fons pietatis. “Cold, cold, cold in death!” Recordare, Jesu pie, Quod sum causa tuÆ viÆ, Ne me perdas illa die. “Strike up—louder—louder yet.” QuÆrens me sedisti lassus, Redemisti crucem passus, Tantus labor non sit cassus. “She loved the noise of trumpets, of sounds harmonious, the bustle of the earth.” Juste Judex ultionis, Donum fac remissionis, Ante diem rationis. “Louder, louder—no voice, no word, no whisper for my ear.” Ingemisco tamquam reus, Culpa rubet vultus meus: Supplicanti parce, Deus. “Gone, gone—thus runs the world away!” Qui Mariam absolvisti, Et latronem exaudisti, Mihi quoque spem dedisti. “Poor, poor, poor Anne!” Precos meÆ non sunt dignÆ, Sed tu, bonu, fac benigne, Ne perenni cremer igne. “In the grave is sleep and rest.” Inter oves locum prÆsta, Et ab hoedis me sequestra, Statuens in parte dextra. “Cold sleep, cold rest.” Confutatis maledictis, Flammis acribus addictis, Voca me cum benedictis. “Pass on, sweet spirit, to thy waking; if waking there may be.” Oro supplex, et acclinis; Cor contritum quasi cinis, Gere curam mei finis. “Our father, which art in heaven.” Lacrymosa dies illa Qua resurget ex favilla. “Hallowed be thy name.” Judicandus homo reus. Huic ergo parce Deus. “Amen.” We buried Anne, and upon the tablet which marks the place where she is laid I caused to be cut her last words—“We shall spring upward from the ground, winged, and with a power which will bear us swiftly to the throne which endureth forever and forever.”
|
| Nahant beach, the roar of which is distinctly heard in Salem on a still evening. |
———
BY EFFIE FITZGERALD.
———
“To roam o’er heaving waters bright,
By heaven’s own moonbeam’s made
To find our own a path of light,
Where all beside is shade.”
Fond babes of exile we here claim thine eye,
To cheer thy sadness in this exile drear;
We raise the veil of memory with a sigh,
And seek our welcome in a silent tear.
We fain would come with sunlight on our wings,
For our sweet embassy is one of love;
We hurl no stone from out our baby-slings,
Save that commission come, too, from above.
Souls sunk in ice-holes, or in gilded shine,
May call us wild, fantastic, if they will;
We know our birth-place was another clime—
We come a different mission to fulfill.
We dare the smoke-wreath on the crater’s verge;
We look, undaunted, on the lava-flame;
From the tornado’s whirl we safe emerge;
To thee we come, in gentle childhood’s name!
Enough of tempest—earthquake—has been thine;
Enough of grief has dimmed thy sky-ward eye;
We come to pour the fragrant oil and wine;
We come to bless, and be blest, ere we die.
Die? No! We take from thee an angel-wing;
We fly—we mount—away from earth we soar;
Keep thy gaze upward from the mountain-spring,
Wrapt in white mist-robes we move on before.
Or if despair thy strong-heart will assail,
Beneath the oaks, in the old wind-flower grove,
We light to kiss thy shadow, lone and pale.
And bid thee turn thy drooping eye above.
This our pure mission—babes of memory!
Give us thy blessing ere these lives depart;
These shadowy forms, all consecrate to thee—
That faintly breathe the incense of the heart.
We heed no danger in a path like this:
A Faith that with the Good was ne’er at war;
We know Earth’s sorrows pilot Heaven’s bliss—
Keep, then, thy gaze upon the cloud and star.
Illman & Sons
BEAUTY’S RETREAT.
Engraved expressly for Graham’s Magazine.
A LEGEND OF GRANADA.
[WITH A STEEL ENGRAVING.]
———
BY HENRY WILLIAM HERBERT.
———
It was the evening of a sultry summer’s day, while the sun was yet hanging suspended, as it were, in a wreath of lustrous, gauzy vapor scarce a hand’s-breadth above the horizon. The skies were perfectly cloudless; and, but for that rich, golden haze which floated in the west about the sloping day-star, there was not a speck of mist to be seen over the whole expanse of the firmament, which, glowing, as it was, with the warm light of that soft southern region, resembled more a vault of exquisitely shadowed gems than the unfathomable depths of ether. All to the westward, the horizon was deluged with a flood of golden glory, too soft to be called intense, yet so vivid that the eye could scarcely brook it; melting as it streamed upward toward the zenith, by imperceptible degrees, into the radiance of the living sapphire; and thence deepening, through the azure tints of the Lapis Lazuli, into the darkest cÆrulean blue to the eastward, against which rose distinct, glittering with the last reflected sunbeams, the distant summits of the Cordoran mountains. Above these, soaring slowly upward, and momently gathering fresh brilliancy as the sun faded in the west, the full, round moon had already risen, with the evening-star at her side, a diamond spark beside an orient pearl.
Nor was the earth below less gracious than the heaven above it; for the scene, over which that cloudless sun was setting so serenely, was no other than the lovely vegas of Granada, watered with its sparkling rivulets, tributaries to the broad and fair Xenil; waving with its almost tropical luxuriance of foliage, odorous with the sweets of ten thousand gardens—verily the paradise of earth surrounding, as with a girdle of immortal beauty, the loveliest of earthly cities, crowned by the wonder of wonders, the glorious Alhambra. So much has been already written in many tongues, both in prose and verse, of the glories of this inimitable spot—still inimitable, even under the indolent and careless culture of the Spaniard, yet how unlike to what it was under its Moorish masters—above all so eloquently has it been described by the graceful pen of Irving, that all the details of its scenery, nay! of its architecture and internal decorations, are, it may be presumed, as familiar to the mind of the reader, as many places which he has actually seen with his own eyes. To dwell longer, therefore, on the features of that sweet, mountain-girdled plain on which the sunbeams lingered, as though they loved it, would be superfluous at least, if not impertinent. Not so, to depict one who gazed across that plain under that lovely sunset, soft herself as the genial clime, serenely bright as the calm eventide—the Lady Ayesha, a princess of the unmixed race, a visitor from the distant walls of MequiÑez to the kindred royalty, which in the person of the unfortunate but as yet unconquered Boabdil, still sat sublime on the fairy towers of the Alhambra.
She sat alone in a small octagonal apartment in the very summit of one of the loftiest of the palace turrets, overlooking and commanding a view so extensive, that the eye swam dazzled or ere it reached the hills, which bounded it on every side. Walled, vaulted, floored with pure snow-white marble, all wrought and pierced with that exquisite arabesque tracery, which made the cold, hard stone resemble the finest and most delicate lace-work; lighted on each of its eight sides by a tall window, headed by the peculiar horse-shoe arch of Moorish architecture, and surrounded a little lower down the turret by a balcony, filled as a hanging garden with every loved and lovely plant and flower, no happier retreat could be devised for Southern beauty; none half so beautiful, half so luxurious, is dreamed of in her most voluptuous musings by the most famed fair one of our utilitarian days and country.
Notwithstanding the extreme height of the tower, which rose full a hundred feet above the inferior buildings of the royal residence, it yet possessed its fountain, fed from a reservoir in the roof, itself supplied by the aid of machinery from the sources of those silver rivulets of the Xenil and Darro, which might be seen glittering in the level plain almost a thousand feet below; and the constant merry plash of its sparkling waters, as they leaped and fell in a shower of diamonds into their alabaster basin, together with the waving of the broad, fan-like palm-leaves in light coming air around the open casements, and the rich clusters of clematis, passion-flower and jessamine which hung their blossoms around every traceried column, rendered it difficult to conceive that so great a distance intervened between that bower of beauty and the solid earth, with all the choicest charms of which it was environed and invested.
Half-seated, half-reclining on a broad, low step of marble, which ran all around the apartment, covered with rich cushions and foot-cloths of brocade, such as would now be cheaply purchased at its weight in gold, with her shoulders supported by the low parapet of the window immediately behind her, gazed the Lady Ayesha over the glimmering landscape, all as she untwined with the rosy, henna-tinted tips of her small, slender fingers the thick plaits of her luxuriant raven hair. For in truth, and for once, the epithet raven was not misapplied to those soft, silky, glistening masses, which were not of the cold and hueless black, but of that nameless and indescribable hue which is never seen but in the hair of women of Moorish or Irish blood—and in the latter probably as originated of the former—black indeed, but black warmed and glowing with a rich metallic purplish lustre, unlike any thing on earth but the changeful hues that dance on the dark plumage of several of the feathered tribes. But though her long, languid eyes of that perfect almond form, so much prized by the beauty-loving Moors, fringed with lashes so long and dark as to require no aid of that Arabian
As one gazed on her—had there been any there to gaze—it was impossible not to perceive that, within that fair form and under those impassive features, there was—what with Oriental women is not at all times the case—a sentient and intellectual soul, and that soul at this time engrossed in some deep and powerful strain of meditative thought.
And oh! how beautiful she was. The perfect oval of her regular face, the straight, Grecian outline of her chisseled features, the dark clearness of her pure, transparent complexion, through which, though ordinarily colorless, every transient motion of the blood mantled in crimson, the slender, yet exquisitely rounded figure, the soft curves of her plump and shapely arms, were all as nearly perfect as mortality can approach to perfection.
The dress, moreover, which she wore—as far removed as possible, by the way, from the ungraceful and hideous monstrosity which a set of crazy notoriety-mongers have been striving to introduce among us as the costume of Oriental ladies—set off her foreign-looking charms by its own foreign eccentricity, no less than by the barbaric splendor of its materials.
A low, flat Fezzan cap of rich crimson velvet, superbly embroidered in gold and pearls, was set lightly, a little on one side, upon her luxuriant black tresses, and from it depended a long tassel, exquisitely wrought of grains of native gold and seed-pearls, down to her left shoulder, contrasting in strong relief the glossy darkness of the hair, by the brilliancy of its white and gold. Immense pendants of pearl hung from the roseate tips of each small ear, and a string of the same inestimable gems, not one of them inferior in size to a large currant, formed four distinct necklaces upon her chest, beside a fifth and longer coil, which hung down almost to her waist. A jellick, as it was called, or, as we should term it now, a chemisette of the finest Indian muslin, wrought as its name indicates at Mosul on the Tigris, embroidered with threads of gold, alone covered her glowing bosom; but above it she wore an open, sleeveless Dymar of gorgeous green brocade, with hanging filigree buttons of gold; and shrouding all her lower limbs, to the very tips of the small, slippered feet, as she lay half-crouched on her divan, an under robe or tunic of blush-colored Persian silk with broad, perpendicular stripes of dead gold, the sleeves of which, close to the elbow, fell thence downward, open like those of the modern gown worn by bachelors of arts. No appearance of trowsers, no marked cutting line, nothing tight or definite or rigid, nothing harsh, stiff or masculine was to be discovered on the nearest scrutiny. A superb Cashmere shawl was wound about her waist at the junction of the under robe and chemisette, and its loose ends blended admirably with the floating draperies and harmonized with the wavy ease which was the principal characteristic of the dress, the attitude, the pose, the woman.
To complete the picture, a Moorish Bernoose, or mantle of scarlet woolen, almost as fine as gauze, with borders of golden lace, lay heaped behind her; and nestled in its folds, a filigree jewel-case with boxes and bottles of perfumes and cosmetics, and half-open drawers of glittering gems and ornaments befitting her high rank; while on the parapet, beside her head, stood a huge vase of superb porcelain filled with the dark, glossy leaves and snow-white blossoms of the gold-eyed lotus, the perfume of which would have been too strong for endurance but for the free circulation of the balmy air on every side, and the cool freshness of the dashing water, which mingled with its overpowering fragrance and dissipated its intensity.
Such was the Leila Ayesha, the daughter of the Sultan of MequiÑez, the great Muley Abderahman, the best and bravest of his race; who in this, almost the last extremity of his kinsman, Boabdil of Granada, had sent an embassy with compliments and splendid gifts, accompanying and conveying his fair child, the best loved of all his children, on her visit to the heroic mother of the last Moorish king of Granada.
By many, however, of those who might be supposed the best informed on state affairs, both of those at MequiÑez and those at Granada, it was whispered that, under the cover of a mere complimentary embassy and friendly visit something of deep policy, and that of the highest import to both sovereigns, was intended. Indeed it was the general opinion that the object of the Sultan of Morocco in thus sending his fair daughter—in whom it was well-known that wise and enlightened prince placed far more confidence than is usually extended to the sex among the Moors—was to bring about, should it be pleasing to the beautiful Ayesha, a union between the two royal houses, in which case he would himself come to the aid of Granada with such a force of Moslem, backed by such hordes of the wild Berbers as Ali Ibn Tarih himself never led to conquest—such, in a word, as should soon compel the proud and encroaching Ferdinand to look to the safety of his own throne and the integrity of his own dominions, rather than to the invading
Be this as it may, it was all a new world to the Leila Ayesha, for the Moors of Spain during their many centuries of occupation, aggrandisement and decline, had adopted many ideas, many customs from their Christian neighbors, at one time their foes, at another in long intervals of truce, their neighbors and almost their friends.
Nor had the Spaniards failed in the same degree to profit by the vicinity of the intellectual, polished and industrious Moors, until the bigotry of these and the fanaticism of those had given way to more rational and intelligent principles, and the two nations met, whether in war or peace, on a common ground of mutual self-respect and decorum.
Thus the Moors had not only laid aside long since their fanatical war-cry of “The Koran or the Sword!” but had adopted many of the usages of chivalry, no longer holding the Christians as dogs, and slaughtering them without quarter given or taken, but setting them at honorable ransom, and even treating them while prisoners on parole as guests on terms of equality, entertaining them at their boards, and holding sacred to them all the rights of hospitality.
In no respect, however, had a wider change occurred in the habits of the nation than in the treatment of their women, who, although not certainly admitted to the full liberty of Christian ladies, were by no means immured, as in their native land, in the precincts of the Harem, “to blush unseen, and waste their sweetness on the desert air,” but were permitted, still under the guardianship of duennas, and with their trains of Indian eunuchs, and further protected by their veils from the contamination of unholy glances, to be present at festivals, at tournaments, nay! even at banquets, when none but the members of the family or guests of high consideration were expected to be present.
It is not, by the way, a little singular that almost in exact proportion as the Moors enlarged the liberty of their women, by the example of the Spaniards, did the Spaniards contract that of their own bright-eyed ladies, by the example of the Moors; and for many years the rigor of the Spanish duenna was scarcely inferior to that of the Raid of a Moorish harem, or the ladies under charge of the one much more obvious to the gaze of the profane, than the beautiful slaves of the latter.
Did not, therefore, the beautiful Leila Ayesha rejoice and exult in the comparative freedom which she enjoyed among the liberal Moors of Spain, which as fitted to enjoy as the favorite child of a wise father, enlightened far beyond the prejudices of his nation or his time? In his own younger days he had been a traveler, had visited Venice and even Madrid, in both of which cities he had been a sojourner in the character of ambassador, and had thus, like the wily Ulysses, “seen the cities of many nations and learned their understandings.” Their languages he spoke fluently: he even read their works, and, although a sincere and faithful Mussulman, he had learned to prize many of the customs, to appreciate the principles, and in some instances to adopt in his heart at least the practices of the Christians.
Too wise openly to offend the prejudices of his people—and nothing would have done so, more decidedly or more dangerously than any infringement of the sanctity of the harem—he had not dared, absolute as he was, to grant to his daughter that full liberty founded upon the fullness of trust which he had learned to admire in Venice. Still he had done all that he could do without offending prejudices or awakening angry opposition. He had made Ayesha, from her earliest years, the companion of his leisure hours; he had educated her in all that he himself knew, he had consulted her as a friend, he had confided in her as a human soul, not treated her as the mere pet and plaything of an hour.
And now as she grew up from an engaging child to a fair marriageable maiden, accomplished, intellectual, thoughtful, not an irresponsible being, but a responsible human creature, with the beauty, the impulsive nature, the passionate heart of the Moorish girl, but with the reason, the intellect, the soul of the Spanish lady—Muley Abderrahman, who was waxing into years, began to doubt whether he had done wisely in training up the child of MequiÑez, the offspring of the desert, to the arts, the accomplishments, the hopes, and the aspirations of the free Venetian dama—began to look around him anxiously to see where he might bestow the hand of her whom he had learned to cherish and esteem even above his people or his power. He saw none, on that side
And was this a fate for the bright, the beloved, the beautiful, the sage Ayesha?
Thence was born the idea of the embassy to Boabdil. He knew the kings of Granada civilized and cultivated far before those of Tetuan or Tafilet, or even MequiÑez or Mecca—he knew that they had adopted, in many respects, the usages of the Christian cavaliers, and not least among these, their chivalrous courtesy and graceful respect for the fair sex—he knew them powerful and wealthy, and possessed of a land the fairest on the face of the earth, the glorious kingdom of Granada. At this time, although the war had commenced between Ferdinand and the Moorish princes, which was to terminate at no very distant day in the total overthrow of the Saracenic empire in Spain, it as yet lagged indecisively along, with no preponderance of this or the other force; nor could there be any doubt that a declaration on the part of the Sultan of MequiÑez, backed by the reinforcement of a Moorish and Berber, and an active naval warfare along the coasts of Spain, would not only secure Granada from any risk of dismemberment, but even wrest a permanent acknowledgment and durable peace from the Christian kings of the Spanish provinces.
Boabdil was at this time formally unwedded, although, like every other prince or magnate of his people, he had his wives, his concubines, his slaves innumerable. He was notoriously a leaner to the soft side of the heart, a fervent admirer of beauty, and was, moreover, a kind-hearted, gracious and accomplished prince. That he would be captivated by the charms of the incomparable Ayesha, even apart from the advantages which her union would bring to himself and to his people, could not be doubted; and should such an union be accomplished Muley Abderrahman felt well assured that he should have obtained for the darling of his heart all that he desired, freedom of life, a suitable partner, and security for her enjoyment of all her cherished tastes and respected privileges.
Still Muley Abderrahman, wiser than any Moslem father of that age, wiser than most Christian parents of any age, was not inclined to set down his own idea of what should be her good, with his absolute yea! as being her very good. He had, strange thing for a Moor! an idea that a woman has a soul—strange and unorthodox thing for a father! an idea that his daughter had a heart; and that it might not be such a bad thing after all for her ultimate happiness that her heart should be in some degree consulted.
She went, therefore, fancy free and untrammeled even by the knowledge of her father’s wishes, on a visit to her kinsfolk of Granada, entirely unsuspicious that any secret of state policy was connected with the visit to that land of romance and glory, of beauty and adventure, which was to her one long holyday. Of all her train, indeed, there was but one who was privy to the Sultan’s secret wishes old Hadj Abdallah Ibn Ali, the eldest of the sovereign’s councillors, like some, himself a traveler, and like himself, imbued with notions far more liberal than those of his time or country. To him it was entrusted, therefore, while seemingly inattentive to all that was passing, to observe strictly every shadow which might indicate whence the wind was about to blow—to take especial note of Boabdil’s conduct and wishes, and, above all, to omit no opportunity of discovering how the fair Ayesha might stand affected toward her royal cousin.
Gaily and happily had passed the days, the weeks, the months—it was still truce with the Spaniard, and days and nights were consumed in tilts, in tournaments, in hawking-parties on the beautiful green meadows of the Vega, beside the bright and brimful streams, adjuncts so necessary to that royal pastime, that it was known of old as the “Mystery of Rivers”—hunting-parties in the wild gorges of the Alpuxawa mountains, banquets at high noon, and festivals beneath the glimmering twilight, beneath the full-orbed moon, that life was, indeed, one long and joyous holyday. Boabdil was, in truth, of a man a right fair and goodly specimen—tall, finely formed, eminently handsome, graceful and affable in manners, kindly in heart and disposition, not untinctured with arts and letters, nor deficient in any essential which should become a gentle cavalier—as a monarch, when surrounded by his court, and seated in his place of state in the Hall of Lyons, of a truth he was a right royal king—as a warrior, in the tilt-yard his skill, his horsemanship, his management of all weapons, were the admiration of all beholders. In the field his gallantry and valor were incontestable. What, then, was wanting that Boabdil was not a perfect man, a real cavalier, a very king? Purpose, energy, will—will that must have its way, and cannot be denied, much less defeated.
A prince of a quiet realm, in tranquil times he had lived honored and happy, he had been gathered to his fathers among the tears of his people, he had lived in the memory of men as a good man, an admirable king, the father of his people.
Fallen upon evil times, thrust into an eminence for which he not only was, but felt himself to be unfit, unequally matched against such an enemy as Ferdinand, the one weak point outweighed all the fine qualities and noble virtues; and he lived, alas! to be that most miserable, most abject of all human things, a dethroned, exiled, despised king!
And did Ayesha, from beneath the screen of girlish levity, while seemingly steeped to the lips in the rapturous enjoyment of the liberty, the life of the present moment, did Ayesha see and foresee all this? At least, when Hadj Abdallah Ibn Ali wrote to his friend and patron the Sultan, and that but shortly after their arrival, that Boabdil was so evidently and obviously enamored of his mother’s lovely guest, that he would not only too eagerly court the alliance, backed as it was by advantages so kingly, but that he verily believed he would woo her to his throne, were she the merest peasant’s child. He wrote nothing of Ayesha!
Again he wrote that he could not doubt she had perceived her royal cousin’s love, and that her manner toward him was so frank, so free, so unrestrainedly joyous and confiding, that he was well assured that all went well, and that she returned the affection of Boabdil, and rejoiced in his love.
But Muley Abderrahman, shook his head and knit his brow, as he read the letter, and muttered through his thick moustache, “Ay! he is a good man—a good man is the Hadj Abdallah, and a wise one, but he knows nothing of a woman’s heart—how should he?”
When he sent the next dispatches to his old friend and counsellor, there was a brief private note attached. “Is the Leila Ayesha,” he asked, “never grave, never abstracted, never shy, and almost sad—does she never flee from the gayety of the festival, the tumult of the chase, into privacy and solitude—does she never fail to hear when addressed, to see when encountered—does she never weep nor sigh when alone—in a word, is she in nowise changed from what she was at MequiÑez?”
And the reply came, “Never. Wherefore should she? Is she not the apple of all eyes, the idol of all hearts? Her laugh is as the music of the soul, her eye-glance the sunbeam that enkindles every heart. She is the star of the Alhambra, the loadstone of the king’s soul. Wherefore should she weep or sigh? I have questioned her handmaids—never! Yes—the Leila Ayesha is changed. In MequiÑez, she was as a sunbeam thrown on still waters. Here in Granada, she is the sunbeam thrown on the dancing fountain, reflecting happy light on all around her. In MequiÑez, she was as a sweet song-bird, feeding her soul on her own harmonies in silence. Here in Granada she is as the sweet song-bird, enrapturing all within her sphere by the blithe outpourings of her joyous melodies. Yes—the Leila Ayesha is changed. My Lord Boabdil loves the Leila Ayesha; the Leila Ayesha knows it, and is glad.”
Then Muley Abderrahman shook his head, and pondered for a while, and muttered—
“She loves him not—She loves him not. The Hadj Abdallah is good and wise with the wisdom of men—but of the hearts of women, he knows nothing—how should he? for he never saw a woman.”
And the old king, far distant, saw more of what was passing in the fair girl’s heart than the wise councillor who was present—but he judged it best to tarry and abide the event—and he tarried, but not long.
Had he been present on that sultry summer’s evening, and looked upon his lovely child as she sat gazing out in such serenity of deep abstraction over the sunny Vega—over the fragrant orange groves and glowing vineyards, toward the glistening hill-tops of the Spaniards—his question would have answered itself, and at the first glance he would have seen that she loved.
The child had discovered that it had a heart—the creature had divined that it had an immortal soul—the child had become a woman—a very woman.
With all a woman’s smiles and tears,
And fearful hopes and hopeful fears,
And doubts and prayers for future years.
Leila Ayesha loved—but whom? At least not Boabdil! Happily, not Boabdil.
Even as she gazed, the orb of the gorgeous sun sank behind the distant hills, and at once—clear, shrill, and most melodious—up went the voice of the Muezzins, from every minaret throughout the gorgeous city, “To prayer, to prayer. There is no God but God, and Mahomet is his prophet. Faithful, to prayer, to prayer!”
And instant at the cry every sound ceased through the royal residence—every sound through the splendid city—every sound through the wide Vega. Every turbaned head was bowed in prayer, and a sabbath stillness seemed to consecrate the bridal of the earth and sky.
Ayesha rose from her divan, and while her lips murmured the words of devotion, and her fingers ran rapidly over the beads of her Comboloic or Moorish rosary, a strange, faltering flush ran over her fair brow. Her orisons ended, she caught some of the spray of the fountain in the palm of one of her fairy hands, and scattered it thrice over her long, dark tresses, on which it glistened in the soft moonbeams; for the moon now alone occupied the heavens, on the fragrant hills of the black hyacinth.
Again she resumed her attitude on the divan, but not her occupation; for the mood of her mind was altered, and for a while she hummed the burthen of an old, melancholy Moorish ballad—an old Moorish love-song, the words of which corresponded in no small degree to our own, “Oh! willow, willow”—since the proverb still holds good of burned Morocco or bright Spain, as of green, merry England—
“For aught that I did ever hear—
Did ever read in tale or history,
The course of true love never did run true.”
Ere long from the city gates far distant was heard the din of martial music—first, the deep clang of the kettle-drums and atabals alone, and the clear flourish of the silver trumpets which announced the presence of the king, and these only at intervals above or between the trampling of hoofs, the clash of armor, and the cheering of an excited multitude. Anon nearer and nearer came the sounds, with the clash of cymbals and the soft symphonies of lutes, and the clear, high notes of flutes and clarionets among the clangor of the trumpets, and the brazen rattling of the drums.
Nearer and nearer yet—and it is now at the Alhambra gates.
She started to her feet, and leaned far out of the embrasure commanding all the city, but her eye marked one object only, the royal train filing into the palace gates, from the royal sports on the Vega ended—and in that train, on but one person.
It was no turbaned head or caftaned form on which that ardent eye was fixed, now kindled into all a Moresca’s ecstacy of passion; it was on a tall Spanish crest and lofty plume. And, as if by a secret instinct, as her gaze was bent downward to the horse-shoe arch of the Alhambra gate, his glance soared upward to the airy turret’s top, and readily detected what would have escaped a less observant watcher, the dark eyes of his fair Ayesha gleaming through the palm-leaves and passion-flowers; their passionate fire half quenched by the tears of tenderness and hope.
His Ayesha—his—the Conde of Alarcos, proudest grandee of Spain—the favorite child of the Spaniard’s deadliest foe, the Sultan of Morocco.
The Hadj Abdallah Ibn Ali’s next dispatch contained much important tidings concerning a twenty years’ truce to be concluded between the King Boabdil, of Granada, and the King Ferdinand, of Spain—and much graver gossip of the noble Conde of Alarcos, Ferdinand’s ambassador; of his high feats of arms, and gentle feats of courtesy—of how all the court admired him, and how the Lady Ayesha shunned him, and how she was less frequent at the falconry, less frequent at the chase, less frequent at the festival, less frequent at the royal banquets—and how her hand-maidens reported that their mistress sighed all the time and often wept, and sat long hours gazing upon nothing, and played no more upon her lute, nor sung the songs of Islam—and how she was—he feared—ill at ease, and pining for her native land.
And when Muley Abderrahman read the letter he shook his head, and muttered—
“Ay, she loves now, but it is the wrong one—a Nazarene, a dog,” and he tore his beard and wept. That night a royal courier rode hard from MequiÑez to SaleÈ, and the next day a fleet galley scoured the way across the narrow seas to the fair shores of Granada.
The embassy should return at once to MequiÑez. Now hour of delay—too late.
The embassy had returned the preceding day, but it was the Spanish embassy: and it had returned, not to MequiÑez, but to Cordova. And ere his master’s mandate had stricken terror to the soul of the Hadj Abdallah, the Spanish bells were chiming for the wedding of a Moorish maiden, now a Christian bride; and the Leila Ayesha, of MequiÑez, was the wife of the noble Conde De Alarcos: nor have I ever heard that she rued either of the changes.
Again Muley Abderrahman tore his beard, and this time from the very roots. But his wonted philosophy still consoled him, and after a little while he muttered—
“Allah, assist me, that I thought myself so wise—yet know not the heart of a woman! How should I?”
———
BY GRENVILLE GREY.
———
Leave thou some light behind thee,
Some mark upon thine age;
Let not a false fate bind thee—
Write thou upon life’s page,
Some word of earnest meaning,
Some thought, or else some deed,
On which thy brother leaning,
Unto better may succeed.
For none may tell what beauty,
What endless good there lies,
In some little nameless duty,
Whose remembrance never dies.
Leave thou some light behind thee,
Some token of thy way;
Let not a false ease bind thee—
Thou art not wholly clay.
There is something noble in thee,
Let it speak and not be mute;
There is something that should win thee
From a kindred with the brute.
Thou art not, oh! my brother,
Wholly impotent for good;
Thou may’st win or warn another
From the wrongs thou hast withstood.
Leave thou some trace behind thee—
In life’s warfare, go, engage;
Let no more a false fate bind thee—
Write thou upon life’s page.
(FOUND UPON MY DESK.)
———
BY ESTELLE ANNA LEWIS.
———
I came upon these simple flowers
As something I revere;
They grew in Love’s enchanted bowers—
And love hath placed them here.
I kiss their cheeks of virgin bloom,
I press their dewy lips,
While my wrapt soul of their perfume,
Inebriated sips.
I look into their violet eyes,
And feel my heart grow calm,
And fancy I’m in Paradise,
Inhaling Eden’s balm.
There in ecstatic dreams I rove
Among celestial bowers,
Weaving a garland for my Love,
Of beatific flowers.
———
BY SAMUEL HENRY DICKSON, M. D.; PROFESSOR IN THE MEDICAL COLLEGE OF SOUTH CAROLINA.
———
As the word Life is employed in a double sense to denote the actions or phenomena by which it is developed, and the cause of these phenomena, so the old English word Death is used familiarly to express two or more meanings. The first of these is the transition from the living to the lifeless or inanimate state—the act, that is, of dying; the second, the condition of an organized body which has ceased to live, while organization yet remains, and symmetry still displays itself, and the admirable structure of its parts is not yet destroyed by decomposition, or resolved into the original and primary elements from which it was moulded,
“Before Decay’s effacing fingers
Have swept the lines
We occasionally speak of “dead matter” in the sense of inorganic; but this is merely a rhetorical or metaphorical phrase. That which has never lived cannot properly be said to be dead.
In the following essay, I shall use the word chiefly in the first of the senses above indicated. It will often be convenient to employ it in the second also; but in doing so, I will be careful so to designate its bearing as to avoid any confusion. The context will always prevent any misunderstanding on this point.
Death may be considered physiologically, pathologically, and psychologically. We are obliged to regard it and speak of it as the uniform correlative, and indeed the necessary consequence, or final result of life; the act of dying as the rounding off, or termination of the act of living. But it ought to be remarked that this conclusion is derived, not from any understanding or comprehension of the relevancy of the asserted connection, nor from any À priori reasoning applicable to the inquiry, but merely À posteriori as the result of universal experience. All that has lived has died; and, therefore, all that lives must die.
The solid rock on which we tread, and with which we rear our palaces and temples, what is it often when microscopically examined, but a congeries of the fossil remains of innumerable animal tribes! The soil from which, by tillage, we derive our vegetable food, is scarcely any thing more than a mere mixture of the decayed and decaying fragments of former organic being; the shells and exuviÆ, the skeletons and fibres and exsiccated juices of extinct life.
The earth itself, in its whole habitable surface, is little else than the mighty sepulchre of the past; and
“All that tread
The globe are but a handful to the tribes
That slumber in its bosom. Take the wings
Of morning, and the Barcan desert pierce,
Or lose thyself in the continuous woods
Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound
Save his own dashings—yet, the dead are there;
And millions in these solitudes, since first
The flight of years begun, have laid them down
In their last sleep: the dead reign there alone.”
Four millions of Egyptians cultivate the valley of the great river on whose banks, amidst the fertilizing dust of myriads of their progenitors, there are calculated still to exist, in a state of preservation, not less than from four hundred to five hundred millions of mummies. The “City of the Tombs” is far more populous than the neighboring streets even of crowded Constantinople; and the cemeteries of London and the catacombs of Paris are filled to overflowing. The trees which gave shade to our predecessors of a few generations back lie prostrate; and the dog and horse, the playmate and the servant of our childhood, are but dust. Death surrounds and sustains us. We derive our nourishment from the destruction of living organisms, and from this source alone.
And who is there among us that has reached the middle term of existence, that may not, in the touching phrase of Carlyle, “measure the various stages of his life-journey by the white tombs of his beloved ones, rising in the distance like pale, mournfully receding milestones?”
“When Wilkie was in the Escurial,” says Southey, “looking at Titian’s famous picture of the Last Supper in the refectory there, an old Jeronymite monk said to him, ‘I have sat daily in sight of that picture for now nearly threescore years; during that time my companions have dropped off one after another—all who were my seniors, all who were my cotemporaries, and many or most of those who were younger than myself; more than one generation has passed away, and there the figures in the picture have remained unchanged. I look at them, till I sometimes think that they are the realities, and we but shadows.’”
I have stated that there is no reason known to us why Death should always “round the sum of life.” Up to a certain point of their duration, varying in each separate set of instances, and in the comparison of extremes varying prodigiously, the vegetable and animal organisms not only sustain themselves, but expand and develop themselves, grow and increase, enjoying a better and better life, advancing and progressive. Wherefore is it that at this period all progress is completely arrested; that thenceforward they waste, deteriorate and fail? Why should they thus decline and decay with unerring uniformity upon their attaining their highest perfection, their most intense activity? This ultimate law is equally mysterious and inexorable. It is true the Sacred Writings tell us of Enoch, “whom God took and he was not;” and of Elijah, who was transported through the upper air in a chariot of fire; and of Melchisedek, the most extraordinary personage whose name is recorded, “without father, without mother, without descent: having neither beginning of days, nor end of life.” We read the history without conceiving the faintest hope from these exceptions to the universal rule. Yet our fancy has always exulted in visionary evasions of it, by forging for ourselves creations of immortal maturity, youth and beauty, residing in Elysian fields of unfading spring, amidst the fruition of perpetual vigor. We would drink, in imagination, of the sparkling fountain of rejuvenescence; nay, boldly dare the terror of Medea’s caldron. We echo, in every despairing heart, the ejaculation of the expiring Wolcott, “Bring back my youth!”
Reflection, however, cannot fail to reconcile us to our ruthless destiny. There is another law of our being, not less unrelenting, whose yoke is even harsher and more intolerable, from whose pressure Death alone can relieve us, and in comparison with which the absolute certainty of dying becomes a glorious blessing. Of whatever else we may remain ignorant, each of us, for himself, comes to feel, realize and know unequivocally that all his capacities, both of action and enjoyment, are transient and tend to pass away; and when our thirst is satiated, we turn disgusted from the bitter lees of the once fragrant and sparkling cup. I am aware of Parnell’s offered analogy—
“The tree of deepest root is found
Unwilling most to leave the ground;”
and of Rush’s notion, who imputes to the aged such an augmenting love of life that he is at a loss to account for it, and suggests, quaintly enough, that it may depend upon custom, the great moulder of our desires and propensities; and that the infirm and decrepit “love to live on because they have acquired a habit of living.” His assumption is wrong in point of fact. He loses sight of the important principle that Old Age is a relative term, and that one man may be more superannuated, farther advanced in natural decay at sixty, than another at one hundred years. Parr might well rejoice at being alive, and exult in the prospect of continuing to live, at one hundred and thirty, being capable, as is affirmed, even of the enjoyment of sexual life at that age; but he who has had his “three sufficient warnings,” who is deaf, lame and blind; who, like the monk of the Escurial, has lost all his cotemporaries, and is condemned to hopeless solitude, and oppressed with the consciousness of dependence and imbecility, must look on Death not as a curse, but a refuge. Of one hundred and thirty-three suicides occurring in Geneva from 1825 to 1834, more than half were above fifty years of age; thirty-four, from fifty to sixty; nineteen, from sixty to seventy; nine, from seventy to eighty; three, from eighty to ninety; in all sixty-five. The mean term of life in that city being about thirty-five to forty, this bears an immense proportion to the actual population above fifty, and exhibits forcibly an opposite condition of feeling to that alleged by Rush, a weariness of living, a desire to die, rather than an anxiety, or even willingness to live.
I once knew an old man of about one hundred and four who retained many of his faculties. He could read ordinary print without glasses, walked firmly, rode well, and could even leap with some agility. When I last parted with him, I wished him twenty years more; upon which he grasped my hand closely, and declared he would not let me go until I had retracted or reversed the prayer.
Strolling with my venerable and esteemed colleague, Prof. Stephen Elliott, one afternoon, through a field on the banks of the river Ashley, we came upon a negro basking in the sun, the most ancient-looking personage I have ever seen. Our attempts, with his aid, to calculate his age, were of course conjectural; but we were satisfied that he was far above one hundred. Bald, toothless, nearly blind, bent almost horizontally, and scarcely capable of locomotion, he was absolutely alone in the world, living by permission upon a place, from which the generation to which his master and fellow-servants belonged had long since disappeared. He expressed many an earnest wish for death, and declared, emphatically, that he “was afraid God Almighty had forgotten him.”
We cannot wonder, then, that the ancients should believe, “Whom the gods love, die young,” and are ready to say with Southey, himself, subsequently, like poor Swift, a melancholy example of the truth of his poetical exclamation,
“They who reach
Gray hairs die piecemeal.”
Sacred history informs us that, in the infancy of the world, the physiological tendency to death was far less urgently and early developed than it is now. When the change took place is not stated; if it occurred gradually, the downward progress has been long since arrested. All records make the journey of life from the time of Job and the early patriarchs, much the same as the pilgrim of to-day is destined to travel. Threescore and ten was, when Cheops built his pyramid, as it is now, a long life. Legends, antique and modern, do indeed tell us of tribes that, like Riley’s Arabs and the serfs of Middle Russia, and the Ashantees and other Africans, live two or three centuries, but these are travelers’ stories, unconfirmed. The various statistical tables that have been in modern times made up from materials more or less authentic, and the several inquiries into the general subject of longevity, seem to lead to the gratifying conclusion that there is rather an increase of the average or mean duration of civilized life. In 1806, Duvillard fixed the average duration of life in France at twenty-eight years; in 1846, Bousquet estimates it at thirty-three. Mallet calculated that the average life of the Genevese had extended ten years in three generations. In Farr’s fifth report (for 1844), the “probable duration,” the “expectation of life” in England, is placed above forty; a great improvement within half a century. It is curious, if it be true, that the extreme term seems to lessen as the average thus increases. Mallet is led to this opinion from the fact, among others, that in Geneva, coincident with the generally favorable change above mentioned, there has not been a single centenarian within twenty-seven years; such instances of longevity having been formerly no rarer there than elsewhere.
Birds and fishes are said to be the longest lived of animals. For the longevity of the latter, ascertained in fish-ponds, Bacon gives the whimsical reason that, in the moist element which surrounds them, they are protected from exsiccation of the vital juices, and thus preserved. This idea corresponds very well with the stories told of the uncalculated ages of some of the inhabitants of the bayous of Louisiana, and of the happy ignorance of that region, where a traveler once found a withered and antique corpse—so goes the tale—sitting propped in an arm-chair among his posterity, who could not comprehend why he slept so long and so soundly.
But the Hollanders and Burmese do not live especially long; and the Arab, always lean and wiry, leads a protracted life amidst his arid sands. Nor can we thus account for the lengthened age of the crow, the raven, and the eagle, which are affirmed to hold out for two or three centuries.
There is the same difference among shrubs and trees, of which some are annual, some of still more brief existence, and some almost eternal. The venerable oak bids defiance to the storms of a thousand winters; and the Indian baobab is set down as a contemporary at least of the Tower of Babel, having probably braved, like the more transient, though long-enduring olive, the very waters of the great deluge.
It will be delightful to know—will Science ever discover for us?—what constitutes the difference thus impressed upon the long and short-lived races of the organized creation. Why must the fragrant shrub or gorgeous flower-plant die immediately after performing its function of continuing the species, and the pretty ephemeron languish into non-existence just as it flutters through its genial hour of love, and grace, and enjoyment; while the banyan, and the chestnut, the tortoise, the vulture, and the carp, formed of the same primary material elements, and subsisting upon the very same resources of nutrition and supply, outlast them so indefinitely?
Death from old age, from natural decay—usually spoken of as death without disease—is most improperly termed by writers an euthanasia. Alas! how far otherwise is the truth! Old age itself is, with the rarest exceptions, exceptions which I have never had the good fortune to meet with anywhere—old age itself is a protracted and terrible disease.
During its whole progress, Death is making gradual encroachments upon the domain of life. Function after function undergoes impairment, and is less and less perfectly carried on, while organ after organ suffers atrophy and other changes, unfitting it for the performance of offices to which it was originally designed. I will not go over the gloomy detail of the observed modifications occurring in every part of the frame, now a noble ruin, majestic even in decay. The lungs admit and vivify less blood; the heart often diminishes in size and always acts more slowly, and the arteries frequently ossify; nutrition is impeded and assimilation deteriorated; senile marasmus follows, “and the seventh age falls into the lean and slippered pantaloon;” and, last and worst of all, the brain and indeed the whole nervous tissue shrink in size and weight, undergoing at the same time more or less change of structure and composition. As the skull cannot contract on its contents, the shrinking of the brain occasions a great increase of the fluid within the subarachnoid space. Communication with the outer world, now about to be cut off entirely, becomes limited and less intimate. The eyes grow dim; the ear loses its aptitude for harmony, and soon ceases to appreciate sound; odors yield no fragrance; flavors affect not the indifferent palate; and even the touch appreciates only harsh and coarse impressions. The locomotive power is lost; the capillaries refuse to circulate the dark, thick blood; the extremities retain no longer their vital warmth; the breathing slow and oppressed, more and more difficult, at last terminates forever with a deep expiration. This tedious process is rarely accomplished in the manner indicated without interruption; it is usually, nay, as far as my experience has gone, always brought to an abrupt close by the supervention of some positive malady. In our climate, this is, in the larger proportion, an affection of the respiratory apparatus, bronchitis, or pulmonitis. It will, of course, vary with the original or constitutional predisposition of the individual, and somewhat in relation to locality and season. Many aged persons die of apoplexy and its kindred cerebral maladies, not a few of diarrhoea; a winter epidemic of influenza is apt to be fatal to them in large numbers everywhere.
When we regard death pathologically, that is, as the result of violence and destructive disease, it is evident that the phenomena presented will vary relatively to the contingencies effective in producing it. It is obviously out of place here to recount them, forming as they do a vast collection of instructive facts, the basis indeed of an almost separate science, Morbid Anatomy.
There are many of the phenomena of death, however, that are common to all forms and modes of death, or are rarely wanting; these are highly interesting objects of study in themselves, and assume a still greater importance when we consider them in the light of signs or tokens of the extinction of life. It seems strange that it has been found difficult to agree upon any such signs short of molecular change or putrefactive decomposition, that shall be pronounced absolutely certain, and calculated entirely to relieve us from the horrible chance of premature interment of a body yet living. The flaccidity of the cornea is dwelt on by some; others trust rather to the rigor mortis, the rigid stiffness of the limbs and trunk supervening upon the cold relaxation which attends generally the last moments. This rigidity is not understood or explained satisfactorily. It is possible that, as Matteucci has proved, the changes in all the tissues, chiefly chemical or chemico-vital, are the source from whence is generated the “nervous force” during life; so, after death, the similar changes, now purely chemical, may, for a brief period, continue to generate the same or a similar force, which is destined to expend itself simply upon the muscular fibres in disposing them to contract. There is a vague analogy here with the effect of galvanism upon bodies recently dead, which derives some little force from the fact that the bodies least disposed to respond to the stimulus of galvanism are those which form the exceptions to the almost universal exhibition of rigidity—those, namely, which have been killed by lightning, and by blows on the pit of the stomach. Some poisons, too, leave the corpse quite flaccid and flexible.
The researches of Dr. Bennett Dowler, of New Orleans, have presented us with results profoundly impressive, startling, and instructive. He has, with almost unequalled zeal, availed himself of opportunities of performing autopsy at a period following death of unprecedented promptness, that is, within a few minutes after the last struggle, and employed them with an intelligent curiosity and to admirable purpose.
I have said that, in physiological death, the natural decay of advancing age, there is a gradual encroachment of death upon life; so here, in premature death from violent diseases, the contrasted analogy is offered of life maintaining its ground far amidst the destructive changes of death. Thus, in cholera asphyxia, the body, for an indefinite period after all other signs of life have ceased, is agitated by horrid spasms, and violently contorted. We learn from Dr. Dowler that it is not only in these frightful manifestations, and in the cold stiffness of the familiar rigor mortis, that we are to trace this tenacious muscular contraction as the last vital sign, but that in all, or almost all cases we shall find it lingering, not in the heart, anciently considered in its right ventricle the ultimum moriens, nor in any other internal fibres, but in the muscles of the limbs, the biceps most obstinately. This muscle will contract, even after the arm with the scapula has been torn from the trunk, upon receiving a sharp blow, so as to raise the forearm from the table, to a right angle with the upper arm.
We also learn from him the curious fact that the generation of animal heat, which physiologists have chosen to point out as a function most purely vital, does not cease upon the supervention of obvious or apparent death. There is, he tells us, a steady development for some time of what he terms “post-mortem caloricity,” by which the heat is carried not only above the natural or normal standard, but to a height rarely equalled in the most sthenic or inflammatory forms of disease. He has seen it reach 113° of Fahr., higher than Hunter ever met with it, in his experiments made for the purpose of exciting it; higher than it has been noted even in scarlatina, 112°, I think, being the ultimate limit observed in that disease of pungent external heat; and far beyond the natural heat of the central parts of the healthy body, which is 97° or 98°. Nor is it near the centre, or at the trunk, that the post-mortem warmth is greatest, but, for some unknown reason, at the inner part of the thigh, about the lower margin of its upper third. I scarcely know any fact in nature more incomprehensible or inexplicable than this. We were surprised when it was first told us that, in the Asiatic pestilence, the body of the livid victim was often colder before than after death; but this, I think, is easily understood. The profluvia of cholera, and its profound capillary stagnation, concur in carrying off all the heat generated, and in preventing or impeding the development of animal heat. No vital actions, no changes necessary to the production of caloric, can proceed without the minute circulation which has been checked by the asphyxiated condition of the subject, while the fluids leave the body through every outlet, and evaporation chills the whole exposed and relaxed surface. Yet the lingering influence of a scarcely perceptible vitality prevents the purely chemical changes of putrefactive decomposition, which commence instantly upon the extinction of this feeble resistance, and caloric is evolved by the processes of ordinary delay.
In the admirable liturgy of the churches of England and of Rome, there is a fervent prayer for protection against “battle, murder, and sudden death.” From death uncontemplated, unarranged, unprepared for, may Heaven in mercy deliver us! But if ever ready, as we should be for the inevitable event, the most kindly mode of infliction must surely be that which is most prompt and brief. To die unconsciously, as in sleep, or by apoplexy, or lightning, or overwhelming violence, as in the catastrophe of the Princeton, this is the true Euthanasia. “CÆsar,” says Suetonius, “finem vitÆ commodissimum, repentinum inopinatumque pretulerat.” Montaigne, who quotes this, renders it, “La moins prÉmÉditÉe et la plus courte.” “Mortes repentinÆ,” reasons Pliny, “hoc est summa vitÆ felicitas.” “Emori nolo,” exclaims Cicero, “sed me esse mortuum nihil estimo.”
Sufferers by various modes of execution were often, in the good old times of our merciless ancestors, denied as long as possible the privilege of dying, and the Indians of our continent utter a fiendish howl of disappointment when a victim thus prematurely escapes from their ingenious malignity. The coup de grace was a boon unspeakably desired by the poor wretch broken on the wheel, or stretched upon the accursed cross, and forced to linger on with mangled and bleeding limbs, amidst all the cruel torments of thirst and fever, through hours and even days that must have seemed interminable.
The progress of civilization, and a more enlightened humanity have put an end to all these atrocities, and substituted the gallows, the garrote, and the guillotine, which inflict deaths so sudden that many have questioned whether they necessarily imply any consciousness of physical suffering. These are, however, by no means the most instantaneous modes of putting an end to life and its manifestations. In the hanged, as in the drowned, and otherwise suffocated, there is a period of uncertainty, during which the subject is, as we know, recoverable; we dare not pronounce him insensible. He who has seen an ox “pithed” in the slaughter-house, or a game-cock in all the flush and excitement of battle “gaffed” in the occiput or back of the neck, will contrast the immediate stiffness and relaxation of the flaccid body with the prolonged and convulsive struggles of the decapitated bird, with a sort of curious anxiety to know how long and in what degree sensibility may linger in the head and in the trunk when severed by the sharp axe. The history of the guillotine offers many incidents calculated to throw a doubt on the subject, and the inquiries of Seguret and Sue seem to prove the existence of post-mortem passion and emotion.
Among the promptest modes of extinguishing life is the electric fluid. A flash of lightning will destroy the coagulability of the blood, as well as the contractility of the muscular fibre; the dead body remaining flexible. A blow on the epigastrium kills instantly with the same results. Soldiers fall sometimes in battle without a wound; the impulse of a cannon-ball passing near the pit of the stomach is here supposed to be the cause of death. The effect in these two last instances is ascribed by some to “a shock given to the semilunar ganglion, and the communication of the impression to the heart;” but this is insufficient to account either for the quickness of the occurrence, or the peculiar changes impressed upon the solids and fluids. Others are of opinion that the whole set of respiratory nerves is paralyzed through the violent shock given to the phrenic, “thus shutting up,” as one writer expresses it, “the fountain of all the sympathetic actions of the system.” This hypothesis is liable also to the objections urged above; and we must acknowledge the suddenness and character of the results described to be as yet unexplained, and in the present state of our knowledge inexplicable.
On the field of battle, it has been observed that the countenances of those killed by gun-shot wounds are usually placid, while those who perish by the sword, bayonet, pike, or lance, offer visages distorted by pain, or by emotions of anger or impatience. Poisons differ much among themselves as to the amount and kind of suffering they occasion. We know of none which are absolutely free from the risk of inflicting severe distress. Prussic acid gives perhaps the briefest death which we have occasion to observe. I have seen it, as Taylor states, kill an animal, when applied to the tongue or the eye, almost before the hand which offered it could be removed. Yet in the case of Tawell, tried for the murder of Sarah Hart, by this means, there was abundant testimony that many, on taking it, had time to utter a loud and peculiar scream of anguish: and in a successful attempt at suicide made by a physician of New York city, we have a history of appalling suffering and violent convulsion. So I have seen in suicide with opium, which generally gives an easy and soporose death resembling that of apoplexy, one or two instances in which there were very great and long-protracted pain and sickness.
Medical writers have agreed, very generally, that “the death-struggle,” “the agony of death,” as it has long been termed is not what it appears, a stage of suffering. I am not satisfied—I say it reluctantly—I am not satisfied with these consolatory views, so ingeniously and plausibly advocated by Wilson Philip, and Symonds, Hufeland and Hoffman. I would they were true! But all the symptoms look like tokens or expressions of distress; we may hope that they are not always such in reality: but how can this be proved? Those who, having seemed to die, recovered afterward and declared that they had undergone no pain, do not convince me of the fact any more than the somnambulist, who upon awaking, assures me that he has not dreamed at all, after a whole night of action, and connected thought and effected purpose. His memory retains no traces of the questionable past; like that of the epileptic, who forgets the whole train of events, and is astonished after a horrible fit to find his tongue bitten, and his face and limbs bruised and swollen.
Nay, some have proceeded to the paradoxical extreme of suggesting that certain modes of death are attended with pleasurable sensations, as for instance, hanging; and a late reviewer, who regards this sombre topic with a most cheerful eye, gives us instances which he considers in point. I have seen many men hung, forty at least, a strangely large number. In all, there were evidences of suffering, as far as could be judged by external appearances. It once happened that a certain set were slowly executed, owing to a maladroit arrangement of the scaffold upon which they stood, which gave way only at one end. The struggles of such as were half supported were dreadful, and those of them who could speak earnestly begged that their agonies should be put an end to.
In former, nay, even in recent times, we are told that pirates and robbers have resorted to half-hanging, to extort confession as to hidden treasure. Is it possible that they can have so much mistaken the means they employ as thus to use pleasurable appliances for the purposes of torture?
The mistake of most reasoners on the subject, Winslow and Hufeland more especially, consists in this, that they fix their attention exclusively upon the final moments of dissolution. But the act of dying may be in disease, as we know it to be in many modes of violence, impalement, for example, or crucifixion, very variously protracted and progressive. “Insensibly as we enter life,” says Hufeland, “equally insensibly do we leave it. Man can have no sensation of dying.” Here the insensibility of death completed, that is, of the dead body, is strangely predicated of the moribund while still living. This transitive condition, to use the graphic language of the Southern writer whom we have already more than once quoted, is “a terra incognita, where vitality, extinguished in some tissues, smouldering in others, and disappearing gradually from all, resembles the region of a volcano, whose eruptions subsiding, leave the surface covered with cinders and ashes, concealing the rents and lesions which have on all sides scarred and disfigured the face of nature.”
Besides this, we have no right to assume, as Hufeland has here done, the insensibility of the child at birth. It is subject to disease before birth; as soon as it draws a breath, it utters loud cries and sobs. To pronounce all its actions “mechanical, instinctive, necessary, automatic,” in fact, is a very easy solution of the question; but I think neither rational nor conclusive. If you prick it or burn it, you regard its cries as proving sensibility to pain; but on the application of air to its delicate and hitherto protected skin, and the distension of its hitherto quiet lung, the same cry, you say, is mechanical and inexpressive. So Leibnitz explained, to his own satisfaction, the struggles and moans of the lower animals as automatic, being embarrassed with metaphysical and moral difficulties on the score of their intelligence and liability to suffering. But no one now espouses his theory, and we must accept, whether we can explain them or not, the facts that the lower animals are liable to pain during their entire existence, and that the heritage of their master is, from and during birth to the last moment of languishing vitality, a sad legacy of wo and suffering.
Unhappily we may appeal, in this discussion, directly to the evidence of our senses, to universal experience and observation. Who can doubt the tortures inflicted in tetanus? to alleviate which, indeed, I have more than once been solicited for poison. Does not every one know the grievous inflictions of cancer, lasting through months and years, and continuing, as I have myself seen, within a short hour of the absolute extinction of life, in spite of every effort to relieve it? The most painful of deaths apparently is that which closes the frightful tragedy of hydrophobia, and patients, to hurry it, often ask most urgently for any means of prompt destruction. But these more intense and acute pangs are not the only form of intolerable agony. Unquenchable thirst, a dreadfully progressive suffocation, confusion of the senses and of thought—these are inflictions that nature shudderingly recoils from, and these, or their manifestations, are scarcely ever wanting on the death-bed.
If any one should ask why I thus endeavor to prove what it is revolting to us all to believe or admit, I answer—first, that truth is always desirable to be known both for its own sake and because it is ever pregnant with ultimate benefit and utility. More than one moribund has expressed to me his surprise and horror—shall I say disappointment too? at finding the dark valley of the shadow of death so rough and gloomy and full of terrors. Is it not better that we should be as thoroughly and adequately prepared for the stern reality as may be, and that we should summon up all the patience and fortitude requisite to bear us through? When the last moment is actually at hand, we can safely assure our friends that they will soon reach a state of rest and unconsciousness, and that meanwhile, as they die more and more, they will less and less feel the pain of dying. Secondly, by appreciating properly the nature and amount of the pangs of death, we shall be led to a due estimate of the demand for their relief or palliation, and of the obligation incumbent on us to institute every proper effort for that purpose with zeal and assiduity. He who believes with Hufeland, that the moribund is insensible, is likely to do little to solace or comfort him.
There are doubtless instances of death entirely easy. “I wish,” said Doctor Black, “I could hold a pen; I would write how pleasant a thing it is to die.” Dr. George Fordyce desired his youngest daughter to read to him. When she had been reading some time, he called to her—“Stop; go out of the room; I am going to die.” She left him, and an attendant, entering immediately, found him dead. “Is it possible I am dying?” exclaimed a lady patient of mine; “I feel as if going into a sweet sleep.” “I am drowsy, had I better indulge myself?” asked Capt. G. On my giving him an affirmative answer, he turned, and sank into a slumber from which he awoke no more. It is indeed pleasant to know that examples occur of this unconscious and painless dissolution; but I fear they are comparatively rare exceptions to a natural rule; and I regard it as the duty of the medical profession to add to the number by the judicious employment of every means in our power.
And this leads me to a brief consideration of the question so often pressed upon us in one shape or another by the friends of our patients, and sometimes by our patients themselves: If the tendency of any medicinal or palliative agent be to shorten life, while it assuages pain, has the physician a right to resort to it? Even in the latter stages of some inflammatory affections, loss of blood, especially if carried to fainting, will arrest the sharp pangs, but the patient will probably die somewhat sooner: shall we bleed him? Large doses of opium will tranquilize him, or render him insensible; but he will probably sink somewhat earlier into the stupor of death. Shall we administer it, or shall we let him linger on in pain, merely that he may linger? Chloroform, ether, and other anÆsthetics in full dose inspired render us insensible to all forms of anguish, and make death as easy, to use the phrase of Hufeland, as being born! Shall we allow our agonized moribund to inhale them? Used in less amount, a degree of relief and palliation is procured, but at the risk of exhausting or prostrating more promptly the failing energies of the system. Shall we avail ourselves of their anÆsthetic influences, or are they forbidden us, either absolutely or partially?
These are by some moralists considered very delicate questions in ethics. Desgenettes has been highly applauded for the reply he made to Bonaparte’s suggestion, that it would be better for the miserable sick left by the French army at Jaffa to be drugged with opium: “It is my business to save life, not to destroy it.” But, in approving the physician, we must not harshly condemn the commanding officer. When we reflect on the condition of the men whom the fortune of war compelled him to abandon, and the certainty of a horrible death to each victim from wasting disease or Turkish cruelty, a rational philanthropist might well desire to smooth their passage to the grave.
During the employment of torture for the purposes of tyranny in Church and State, a physician or surgeon was at hand, whose whole duty it was to suspend the process whenever it became probable that nature would yield under its pressure, and the victim would escape through the opening, glad gates of death. It was then esteemed an act of mercy to give, or permit to be given by the executioner, a fatal blow, hence called emphatically and justly the coup de grace. In the terrible history of the invasion of Russia by Napoleon, we shudder to read that, after their expulsion from Moscow, the French soldiers, in repassing the fields of battles fought days and even weeks previously, found many of their comrades, there wounded and left, still dragging out a wretched and hopeless existence, amidst the corpses of those more fortunately slain outright, and perishing miserably and slowly of cold and hunger, and festering and gangrenous wounds. One need not surely offer a single argument to prove, all must feel and admit that the kindest office of humanity, under the circumstances, would have been to put an end to this indescribable mass of protracted wretchedness by the promptest means that could be used to extinguish so horrible a life.
A common case presents itself from time to time to every practitioner, in which all hope is avowedly extinct, and yet, in consonance with uniform custom, stimulants are assiduously prescribed to prolong existence in the midst of convulsive and delirious throes, not to be looked on without dismay. In some such contingencies, where the ultimate result was palpably certain, I have seen them at last abandoned as useless and worse, in order that nature, irritated and excited, lashed into factitious and transitory energy, might sink into repose; and have felt a melancholy satisfaction in witnessing the tranquillity, so soft and gentle, that soon ensued; the stormy agitation subsiding into a calm and peaceful decay.
Responsibility of the kind I am contemplating, often indeed more obvious and definite, presses upon the obstetrician, and is met unreservedly. In embryulcia, one life is sacrificed in the hope and with the reasonable prospect of saving another more valued: this is done too sometimes where there is an alternative presented, the CÆsarian section, which destroys neither of absolute necessity, but subjects the better life to very great risk.
Patients themselves frequently prefer the prompter and more lenient motives of death which our science refuses to inflict. In summing up the motives of suicide in one hundred and thirty-one cases, whose causes are supposed to be known, Prevost tells us that thirty-four, more than one-fourth of the whole number, committed self-murder to rid themselves of the oppressive burden of physical disease. Winslow gives us an analysis of thirteen hundred and thirty-three suicides from Pinel, Esquirol, Burrows, and others. Of these, there were but two hundred and fifty that did not present obvious appearances of bodily ailment; and although it is not stated how many of them sought death voluntarily as a refuge from physical suffering, it would be unreasonable to doubt that this was the purpose with a very large proportion. I am far from advocating the propriety of yielding to this desire or gratifying the propensity; nay, I would, on the other hand, earnestly endeavor to remove or repress it, as is now the admitted rule.
I hold fully, with Pascal, that, according to the principles of Christianity, which in this entirely oppose the false notions of paganism, a man “does not possess power over his own life.” I acknowledge and maintain that the obligation to perform unceasingly, and to the last and utmost of our ability, all the duties which appertain to our condition, renders absolutely incompatible the right supposed by some to belong to every one to dispose of himself at his own will. But I would present the question for the serious consideration of the profession, whether there does not, now and then, though very rarely, occur an exceptional case, in which they might, upon full and frank consultation, be justified before God and man in relieving, by the efficient use of anÆsthetics, at whatever risk, the ineffable and incurable anguish of a fellow-creature laboring under disease of organic destructiveness, or inevitably mortal; such, for example, as we are doomed to witness in hydrophobia, and even more clearly in some instances of cancerous and fungoid degeneration, and in the sphacelation of organs necessary to life, or parts so connected as to be indispensable, yet not allowing either of removal or restoration?
I have left myself scarcely time for a few remarks upon death, psychologically considered. How is the mind affected by the anticipation and actual approach of death? The answer will obviously depend upon and be influenced by a great diversity of contingencies, moral and physical. The love of life is an instinct implanted in us for wise purposes; so is the fear of pain. Apart from this, I do not believe, as many teach, that there is any instinctive fear of death. Education, which instills into us, when young, the fear of spectres; religious doctrines, which awake in us the terror of “something after death;” conscience, which, when instructed, “makes cowards of us all;” associations of a revolting character—
“The knell, the shroud, the mattock, and the grave—
The deep, damp vault, the darkness, and the worm;”
these startle and appal us.
“Man makes a death that nature never made,
Then on the point of his own fancy falls.
And feels a thousand deaths in fearing one.”
We sympathize duly with every instinct of nature; we all feel the love of life, and accord readily in the warmest expression of it; but we recoil from every strong exhibition of the fear of death as unreasonable and dastardly.
When Claudio reminds his noble sister that “death is a fearful thing,” she replies well—“and shamed life a hateful!” But when he rejoins—
“The weariest and most loathed worldly life
That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment
Can lay on nature, is a paradise
To what we fear of death;”
we anticipate her in bidding him “Perish! for a faithless coward, and a beast.”
In the same contemptible and shrinking spirit, MÆcenas, in a passage from Seneca—
“Vita, dum superest bene est
Hunc mihi vel acuta
Si sedeam cruce, sustine.”
Among hypochondriacs, we often meet with the seemingly paradoxical combination of an intense dread of death unassociated with any perceptible attachment to life; a morbid and most pitiable condition, which urges some to repeated, but ineffectual attempts at suicide. I know not a state of mind more utterly wretched.
Both these sentiments, whether instinctive or educational, are, we should observe, very strikingly influenced by circumstances. Occasionally, they seem to be obliterated, or nearly so; not only in individuals, but in large masses, nay, in whole communities; as during great social convulsions; through the reign of a devastating pestilence; under the shock of repeated disorders of the elements; as in earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, storms, and inundations; in protracted sieges, and in shipwrecks. The Reign of Terror produced this state of feeling in France, and thousands went to the scaffold indifferently, or with a jest. Boccacio and others have pictured the same state of undejected despair, if such a phrase be permitted, in which men succumb to fate, and say, with a sort of cheerful hardihood, “Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die,” losing thus all dread even of the plague. Pliny the younger, in his flight from Mycena, under the fatal shower of ashes from Vesuvius, heard, amidst the darkness, the prayers of wretches “who desired to die, that they might be released from the expectation of death.” And Byron, in his magnificent description of the shipwreck, in Don Juan, tells us—
“Some leaped overboard with dreadful yell,
As eager to anticipate the grave.”
Shakspeare’s Constance, in her grief, draws well the character of death, as—
“Misery’s love,
The hate and terror of prosperity.”
A woman who has lost her honor; a soldier convicted of poltroonery; a patriot who sees his country enslaved; a miser robbed; a speculator bankrupt; a poet unappreciated, or harshly criticized, as in poor Keats’s case—
“Strange that the soul, that very fiery particle,
Should let itself be snuffed out by an article”—
all these seem to loathe life, or, at any rate, lose much of their fondness for it. It is curious to remark, too, how little, as in the last-mentioned instance, will suffice to extinguish, abruptly or gradually, this usually tenacious instinct. A man in York cut his throat, because, as he left in writing, “he was tired of buttoning and unbuttoning.” The occurrence of a loathsome but very curable disease in a patient of mine, just when he was about to be married, induced him to plunge among the breakers off Sullivan’s Island, on one of the coldest days of our coldest winter. A Pole in New York wrote some verses just before the act of self-destruction, implying that he was so weary of uncertainty as to the truth of the various theories of the present and future life, that he “had set out on a journey to the other world to find out what he ought to believe in this.”
We are always interested in observing the conduct of brave men, who exhibit a strongly-marked love of life, with little or no fear of death. Danton, Camille Desmoulins, and Herault Sechelles, who commenced their revolutionary career as reckless as they seemed ferocious, having attained elevation, acquired wealth, and married beautiful women, became merciful and prudent. Hunted in their turn by the bloodhounds of the time, they made the most earnest endeavors to escape, but displayed a noble courage in meeting their fate when inevitable.
It is a trite but true remark, that men will boldly face one mode of death, and shrink timidly from another. A soldier, whom discipline will lead without flinching “up to the imminent deadly breach,” will cower before a sea-storm. Women, even in the act of suicide, dreading explosion and blood, prefer poison and drowning. Men very often choose firearms and cutting instruments, which habit has made familiar.
If the nervous or sensorial system escape lesion during the ravages of disease, the conduct of the last hour will be apt to be consistent with the previous character of the individual. Hobbes spoke gravely of death as “a leap in the dark.” Hume talked lightly of Charon and his ferry-boat. Voltaire made verses with his usual levity—
“Adieu, mes amis! adieu, la compagnie!
Dans deux heures d’ici, mon Âme aneantie
Sera ce que je fus deux heures avant ma vie.”
Keats murmured, poetically, “I feel the flowers growing on my grave.” Dr. Armstrong died prescribing for a patient; Lord Tenterden, uttering the words “Gentlemen of the Jury, you will find;” General Lord Hill, exclaiming “Horrid war!” Dr. Adams, of the Edinburgh High School, “It grows dark; the boys may dismiss!” The last words of La Place were, “Ce que nous connaissons est peu de chose; ce que nous ignorons, est immense!”
The history of suicide, of death in battle, and of executions, is full of such instances of consistent conduct and character. Madame Roland desired to have pen and paper accorded to her, at the “Place de la Guillotine,” that she might, as she phrased it, “set down the thoughts that were rising in her mind.” Sir Thomas More jested pleasantly as he mounted the scaffold. Thistlewood, the conspirator, a thoughtful man, remarked to one of his fellow-sufferers that, “in five minutes more, they would be in possession of the great secret.” When Madame de Joulanges and her sisters were executed, they chanted together the Veni Creator on their way from the prison to the fatal spot. Head after head fell under the axe, but the celestial strain was prolonged until the very last voice was hushed in the sudden silence of death.
The delirium of the moribund exhibits itself in diversified and often contrasted manifestations. Symonds looks upon it as closely analogous to the condition of the mind in dreaming. A popular and ancient error deserves mention, only to be corrected; that the mind, at the near approach of dissolution, becomes unusually clear, vigorous, and active.
“The soul’s dark cottage, battered and decayed,
Lets in new light through chinks which Time has made.”
Excitement of the uncontrolled imagination, as in dreams, and other modes of delirium, is frequently mistaken for general mental energy; some suggested association arouses trains of thought that have made deep traces in the memory; scenes familiar in early childhood are vividly described, and incidents long past recalled with striking minuteness. All physicians know the difference familiarly presented in diseases, some of which specifically occasion despondency and dejection of spirits, while others render indifferent or even give rise to exhilaration. The former constitute a class unhappily numerous. Cholera, which at a distance excites terrors almost insane, is usually attended with a careless stolidity, when it has laid its icy hand upon its victim. The cheerful hopefulness of the consumptive patient is proverbial; and in many instances of yellow fever, we find the moribund patient confident of recovery. These are the exceptions, however; and we cannot too often repeat that the religious prejudice which argues unfavorably of the previous conduct and present character from the closing scene of an agitating and painful illness, or from the last words, uttered amidst bodily anguish and intellectual confusion, is cruel and unreasonable, and ought to be loudly denounced. We can well enough understand why an English Elizabeth, Virgin Queen, as history labels her, could not lie still for a moment, agitated as she must have been by a storm of remorseful recollections, nor restrain her shrieks of horror long enough even to listen to a prayer. But how often does it happen that “the wicked has no bands in his death;” and the awful example of deep despair in the Stainless One, who cried out in his agony that he was forsaken of God, should serve to deter us from the daily repeated and shocking rashness of the decisions against which I am now appealing.
Some minds have seemed firm enough, it is true, to maintain triumphantly this last terrible struggle, and resist in a measure at least the depressing influence of disease. Such instances cannot, however, be numerous; and we should be prepared rather to sympathize with and make all due allowance for human weakness. I have seen such moments of yielding as it was deeply painful to witness, at the bedside of many of the best of men, whose whole lives had been a course of consistent goodness and piety, when warned of impending death, and called on to make those preparations which custom has unfortunately led us to look upon as gloomy landmarks at the entrance of the dark valley.
One of these, from youth to age a most esteemed and valued member of one of our most fervent religious bodies, with sobs and tears, and loud wailing, threw the pen and paper from him, exclaiming, over and over again, “I will not—I cannot—I must not die.” Like the eccentric Salvini, of whom Spence tells us that he died, crying out in a great passion, “Je ne veux pas mourir, absolument;” and Lannes, the bravest of Bonaparte’s marshals, when mortally wounded, struggled angrily and fearfully, shouting with his last breath, “Save me, Napoleon!”
But I recoil from farther discussion of a topic so full of awe and solemn interest, and conclude this prosaic “Thanatopsis” with the Miltonian strain of Bryant, who terminates his noble poem, thus styled, in language worthy of the best age and brightest laurel of our tongue:—
“So live, that, when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan, that moves
To the pale realms of shade, where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not like the quarry slave at night,
Scourged to his dungeon; but, sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave,
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.”
| From Essays on Life, Sleep, Pain, etc., just published by Blanchard & Lea, Philadelphia. |
———
BY L——, OF EASTFORD HERMITAGE.
———
Time passes wearily with me
Since thou hast joined the spirit throng;
I miss thy laugh that rang with glee—
The music of thy voice and song;
And though each day I meet bright eyes,
That look with tenderness on mine,
And cheeks that with the coral vies,
And tones that seem almost divine,
Still they can wake no gentle chord
To vibrate deeply in the heart;
For each bright glance and gentle word,
Must fail to charm while we’re apart.
Then speed thee, Time, upon thy way.
Swift on thy fleeting pinions soar;
And hasten on that blissful day,
When we shall meet to part no more.
While other Art-Unions throughout the country are falling into disrepute, that of Philadelphia seems to be rising in favor.
This cannot be owing to the absence of discouragements. Like all similar institutions, it suffered severely from the pressure of the money-market during the last six months of the year 1851. It found, in common with others, that money was not forthcoming for the promotion of art, when it commanded from one to two per cent. a month on ’change—that men could not, or would not buy pictures, when they were obliged to strain every nerve to save themselves from bankruptcy.
Besides the serious loss of revenue arising from this source, the Philadelphia Art-Union lost by fire its two most valuable steel plates, just at the moment when it was about to reap from them a golden harvest. These splendid plates, “Mercy’s Dream,” and “Christiana and her Family,” which had cost the society several thousand dollars, and which were unquestionably among the most attractive prints ever issued in this country, were entirely destroyed in the conflagration of Hart’s buildings in this city.
It is not, therefore, mere good luck, nor the absence of discouraging circumstances, that has given the Philadelphia Art-Union its present condition of success. This success is based on the principles of its organization, which differ materially from those of other kindred associations.
In the first place, though located nominally in Philadelphia, and having its Board of Managers here, it is really an Art-Union for every place where it finds subscribers. Its prize-holders may select their prizes from any gallery in the United States, or may order a picture from any artist of their own selection. This puts it entirely out of the power of the Board of Managers, even if they had the inclination, to exercise favoritism toward any particular clique of artists, or to practice any kind of fraud or trickery either in the purchase or the valuation of pictures.
Secondly, and for the very reason just assigned, the Philadelphia Art-Union enjoys in a high degree the confidence of the artists themselves. They know by experience that its free gallery is the means of selling a large number of pictures, besides those which are ordered in consequence of the annual distributions. They know also that in order to sell their pictures, or to obtain orders for painting, they have not to cater to the fancies or caprices of a small clique of managers, but to appeal to the public at large, depending solely upon the general principles of their art. In other Art-Unions, the managers themselves select and buy the pictures that are to be distributed as prizes. Hence they are almost invariably regarded with jealousy by every artist who does not receive from them an order—that is, by at least nine-tenths of the whole body. The artist sees, however, that the Philadelphia Art-Union does not admit of any favoritism of this kind. Its very plan renders the thing impossible. If any particular artist finds that among the prize-holders, no order or purchase has come to his studio, he may see in it evidence perhaps that he has not pleased the public taste, but no evidence of partiality in the Board of Managers. So far as their operations are concerned, they give to all competitors “a fair field and no favor”—and this is all that the artist asks.
That this view of the subject is the true one, and that the artists themselves so view it, has been conclusively shown by their action on the occasion of the losses of the institution by the late fire. The artists of Philadelphia, on hearing of this disaster, called a meeting, of their own accord, and passed a series of resolutions, approving in the most unqualified manner both the plan and the management of the institution, and agreeing severally to paint a picture of the value of at least fifty dollars, and to present the same to the Art-Union. Several other gentlemen, amateurs and patrons of art, stimulated by this generosity, joined them in the enterprise, and already about fifty valuable prizes have been thus guarantied.
It is obvious that they have entered upon this matter in a generous spirit, with that animation and hearty good-will which spring naturally from the circumstances. Every one at all conversant with art or artists, knows how much the excellence of a picture, its very life and soul—all, in fact, that distinguishes it as a work of art, or raises it above a mere piece of mechanism—depends upon the feeling of the artist while creating it. The noble enthusiasm with which the artists have entered upon the present arrangement, is the best guaranty that the Art-Union will have from each painter one of the happiest efforts of his genius—something done under the direct influence of inspiration. Indeed, we happen to know that several of our most eminent artists intend to lay themselves out on this occasion—resolved to show what artists are, and what they can do, for an institution which commands their confidence.
Mr. Rothermel has signified his intention to paint a picture worth $500; Mr. Paul Weber a landscape worth $500; Mr. A. Woodside a picture worth $500; Mr. Scheussele a Scriptural subject worth $250; Mr. Sully a picture worth $100; Mr. Joshua Shaw a landscape worth $75; and several others have promised pictures at prices varying from $50 (the minimum) to $75, $100, $150, etc. The names of the other artists and amateurs who have offered original pictures of this description, are Rembrandt Peale, James Hamilton, Isaac L. Williams, Wm. A. K. Martin, Wm. F. Jones, Wm. E. Winner, Leo. Elliot, F. de Bourg Richards, George C. White, John Wiser, J. K. Trego, George W. Holmes, Geo. W. Conarroe, John Sartain, Alex. Lawrie, Jr., Samuel Sartain, G. R. Bonfield, S. B. Waugh, W. T. Richards, Aaron Stein, R. A Clarke, W. Sanford Mason, J. R. Lambdin, G. C. Lambdin, J. Wilson, May Stevenson, I. W. Moore, T. H. Glessing, W. H. Wilcox, Thomas A. Andrews, George F. Meeser, James S. Earle, Edward F. Dennison, George W. Dewey, James L. Claghorn. Others will, no doubt, be added to the list.
About fifty splendid original works of art, ranging in value from $50 to $500 each, have thus been placed absolutely at the disposal of the Board of Managers, and have been by them specifically pledged to the subscribers at the next distribution.
Besides this, Mr. Rothermel has just finished for the Art-Union a great historical painting of Patrick Henry making his celebrated revolutionary speech before the Virginia House of Burgesses. This picture is undoubtedly Mr. Rothermel’s master-piece. He has thrown into it all the fire of his genius, all the ardor of his patriotism, all the accumulations of his knowledge and skill as one of the practiced and leading historical painters of the day.
The historical scene which Mr. Rothermel has commemorated in this painting is the passage of Patrick Henry’s resolutions on the Stamp Act in the House of Burgesses, in the year 1765. The passage of these resolutions was the first bold note of defiance that was uttered on this side of the Atlantic. The manner in which they were carried through the House is thus described by his biographer:
“It was, indeed, the measure which raised him [Mr. Henry] to the zenith of his glory. He had never before had a subject which entirely matched his genius, and was capable of drawing out all the powers of his mind. It was remarked of him, throughout his life, that his talents never failed to rise with the occasion, and in proportion with the resistance which he had to encounter. The nicety of the vote, on the last resolution, proves that this was not a time to hold in reserve any part of his forces. It was, indeed, an Alpine passage, under circumstances even more unpropitious than those of Hannibal; for he had not only to fight, hand to hand, the powerful party who were already in possession of the heights, but at the same instant to cheer and animate the timid band of followers, that were trembling, and fainting, and drawing back below him. It was an occasion that called upon him to put forth all his strength; and he did put it forth, in such a manner as man never did before. The cords of argument with which his adversaries frequently flattered themselves that they had bound him fast, became packthreads in his hands. He burst them with as much ease as the unshorn Samson did the bands of the Philistines. He seized the pillars of the temple, shook them terribly, and seemed to threaten his opponents with ruin. It was an incessant storm of lightning and thunder, which struck them aghast. The faint-hearted gathered courage from his countenance, and cowards became heroes while they gazed upon his exploits. It was in the midst of this magnificent debate, while he was descanting on the tyranny of the obnoxious act, that he exclaimed in a voice of thunder, and with the look of a god, ‘CÆsar had his Brutus—Charles the First his Cromwell—and George the Third—’ ‘Treason!’ cried the Speaker. ‘Treason! treason!’ echoed from every part of the house. It was one of those trying moments which is decisive of character. Henry faltered not for an instant; but rising to a loftier attitude, and fixing on the Speaker an eye of the most determined fire, he finished his sentence with the firmest emphasis—‘may profit by their example. If this be treason—make the most of it!’”
The exact moment of time which Mr. Rothermel has seized for his painting, is when the last words which we have quoted, (“If this be treason—make the most of it!”) are dying away upon the ear. The impassioned orator stands erect and self-possessed, his open hand aloft, as though a thunder-bolt had just passed from his fingers, and his eye were quietly awaiting the issue, in the conscious strength of a Jupiter Tonans.
Foremost in the foregoing is Richard Henry Lee. Lee sees, by a sort of prophetic intuition, the full import of this inspired oratory. His very face, under the magic of Mr. Rothermel’s genius, is a long perspective of war, desolation, heroic deeds, and the thick-coming glories of ultimate civic and religious liberty.
Peyton Randolph, also in the foreground, is a most striking figure. So is Pendleton, so is Wythe, so is Speaker Robinson. Indeed, every inch of canvas tells its story. The spectator, who knew nothing of the scene or of its actors, would instantly and involuntarily become conscious that he was present at some great world-renowned action.
But in dwelling upon this fascinating topic, we have been unconsciously carried away from our main point. This great painting, which was executed by Mr. Rothermel for the Art-Union, at the price of one thousand dollars, but which, by its extraordinary excellence, has already acquired a market value far beyond that sum, is to be drawn for among the other prizes at the next annual distribution.
Every subscriber, moreover, secures for himself a copy of the engraving of this great picture, which the Managers have contracted for in a style of surpassing beauty. The picture itself, and the engraving of it, will form an era in the history of American art, as the subject itself did in the history of American Independence.
Besides this, all the money obtained from the subscribers, after paying for the engraving and other incidental expenses, is to be distributed, as heretofore, in money-prizes for the purchase of other works of art, at the option of the prize-holders.
Of the general beneficial influence of Art-Unions, at least of those conducted on the plan of that in Philadelphia, we have not the shadow of a doubt. We are happy, however, to quote a couple of passages quite in point. The first is from the North British Review.
“We believe that by a judicious distribution of engravings more may be done for the culture of the public taste than by any other means whatsoever. One thoroughly good engraving, fairly established and domiciled in a house, will do more for the inmates in this respect, than a hundred visits to a hundred galleries of pictures. It is a teacher of form, a lecturer on the beautiful, a continually present artistic influence. Nor do we see any reason why the same system should not be extended to casts, which might be taken either after the antique, or some thoroughly good modern sculptor, such as Thorwarldsen. If such a system were carried out, matters might soon be brought to a state in which there should scarcely be any family which did not possess within its own walls the means of forming a taste, and that a genuine and a high one, both in painting and sculpture.”
The second passage is still more to the point. It is from our contemporary, the Saturday Courier.
“This Institution, [The Philadelphia Art-Union,] by its Free Gallery, and by its being a centre of action for artists and amateurs, is continually operating in a silent but most perceptible manner upon public taste. Every visit to the Free Gallery, every picture sold from its walls, every picture which it is the means of calling into existence, every print which it sends abroad into the community, is so much done toward the promotion of a popular taste for what is refined and elegant, and a consequent distaste for what is coarse, illiberal, and depraved. Every man in the community has on interest—not merely a moral, but a pecuniary interest—in the promotion of a popular taste for the Fine Arts. It is a part of the moral education of society, which, like all other good popular education, adds at once to the value and the safety of every man’s property.”
Lectures on the History of France. By the Right Honorable Sir James Stephen, K. C. B., LL. D.; Professor of Modern History in the University of Cambridge. New York: Harper & Brother. 1 vol. 8vo.
Sir James Stephen is the writer of a number of essays in the Edinburgh Review, which, at the time they appeared, were mistaken by some readers as the productions of Macaulay. There were no real grounds for such a supposition, as Stephen’s mind has hardly a single quality in common with Macaulay’s, and the resemblance of his style to that of the historian of the Revolution is of a very superficial kind. Stephen, like Macaulay, is a writer of clear, clean, short, compact sentences, and deals largely in historical allusions, parallels and generalizations, but his diction has none of Macaulay’s rapid movement, and his knowledge betrays little of Macaulay’s “joyous memory.” Stephen’s mind is large and rich in acquired information, but it is deficient in passion, and its ordinary movement is languid, without any of Macaulay’s intellectual fierceness, eagerness and swift sweep of illustration and generalization, and without any of Macaulay’s bitterness, partizanship and scorn of amiable emotions. Stephen, indeed, if he be a mimic, mimics Mackintosh rather than Macaulay, and in charity, in intellectual conscientiousness, in courtesy to opponents, in all the benignities and amenities of scholarship, and also in a certain faint hold upon large acquisitions, he sometimes resembles without at all equaling him. The reader is continually impressed with his honesty and benevolence, with his continual clearness and occasional reach of view, and with his graceful mastery of the resources of expression; but to continuous vigor and vividness of conception and language he has no claim.
The present volume, a large octavo of some seven hundred pages, is evidently the work of much thought, research and time, though the author regrets that he was compelled to prepare his lectures without adequate preparation. They were delivered at the University of Cambridge, Stephen occupying in that institution the professorship of history. He succeeded, we believe, William Smythe, a dry, hard and pedantic, though well read professor, whose lectures on history and on the French Revolution are the most uninteresting of useful books. Stephen is almost his equal in historical knowledge, and his superior in the graces of style and in the power of making his knowledge attractive. His work, indeed, though it can hardly give him the reputation of a great historian, is altogether the best view of French history in the English language, and is an invaluable guide to all who wish to gain a thorough acquaintance with France in her historical development. It gives the causes of the decline and fall of the various dynasties of her government, the character of her feudal system, the steps by which her government became an absolute monarchy, and the differences between the absolute monarchy of Henry IV. and Louis XIV. The lectures on the anti-feudal influence of the municipalities, of the Eastern Crusades, of the Albigensian Crusades—the masterly view of the position occupied by the Parliaments, the Privileged Orders and the States General, in relation to the Monarchy of France—and the expositions of the sources and management of the revenues of the nation, are all eminently lucid and valuable, and without any of the ostentatious brilliancy and paradoxical generalization which are apt to characterize the French historical school, are really modest contributions to the philosophy of history.
Sir James Stephen, in the course of his narration and dissertations, furnishes us with some elaborate delineations of character. That of Cardinal Richelieu is especially good. After saying of him that he was not so much minister as dictator, not so much the agent as the depositary of the royal power, he adds that, “a king in all things but the name, he reigned with that exemption from hereditary and domestic influences which has so often imparted to the Papal monarchs a kind of preterhuman energy, and has so often taught the world to deprecate the celibacy of the throne.” His character, as a despotic innovator, is also finely sketched. “Richelieu was the heir of the designs of Henry IV. and ancestor to those of Louis XIV. But they courted, and were sustained by, the applause and the attachment of their subjects. He passed his life in one unintermitted struggle with each, in turn, of the powerful bodies over which he ruled. By a long series of well-directed blows, he crushed forever the political and military strength of the Huguenots. By his strong hand the sovereign courts were confined to their judicial duties, and their claims to participate in the government of the state were scattered to the winds. Trampling under foot all rules of judicial procedure and the clearest principles of justice, he brought to the scaffold one after another of the proudest nobles of France, by sentences dictated by himself to extraordinary judges of his own selection; thus teaching the doctrine of social equality by lessons too impressive to be misinterpreted or forgotten by any later generation. Both the privileges, in exchange for which the greater fiefs had exchanged their independence, and the franchises, the conquest of which the cities, in earlier times, had successfully contended, were alike swept away by this remorseless innovator. He exiled the mother, oppressed the wife, degraded the brother, banished the confessor, and put to death the kinsmen and favorites of the king, and compelled the king himself to be the instrument of these domestic severities. Though surrounded by enemies and by rivals, his power ended only with his life. Though beset by assassins, he died in the ordinary course of nature. Though he had waded to dominion through slaughter, cruelty and wrong, he passed to his great account amid the applause of the people and the benedictions of the church; and, as far as any human eye could see, in hope, in tranquillity and in peace. What, then, is the reason why so tumultuous a career reached at length so serene a close? The reason is, that amid all his conflicts Richelieu wisely and successfully maintained three powerful alliances. He cultivated the attachment of men of letters, the favor of the commons, and the sympathy of all French idolaters of the national glory.”
In some admirable lectures on the Power of the Pen in France, Stephen gives fine portraits of Rabelais, Montaigne, Calvin and Pascal. One remark about Calvin struck us as especially felicitous. Speaking of him as writing his great work in Geneva, he says—“The beautiful lake of that city, and the mountains which encircle it, lay before his eyes as he wrote; but they are said to have suggested to his fancy no images, and to have drawn from his pen not so much as one transient allusion. With his mental vision ever directed to that melancholy view of the state and prospects of our race which he had discovered in the Book of Life, it would, indeed, have been incongruous to have turned aside to depict any of those glorious aspects of the creative benignity which were spread around him in the Book of Nature.”
The most valuable chapters in the volume are perhaps those which relate to the character and government of Louis XIV. The absolute monarchy established by him is thoroughly analyzed. Among many curious illustrations of that tyranny and perfidy which this great master of king-craft systematized into a science, Stephen translates from his “Memoires Historiques” a series of maxims, addressed to the Dauphin, for his guidance whenever he should be called upon to wear the crown of France. Louis’s celebrated aphorism, “I am the state,” is in these precious morsels of absolutism expanded into a rule of conduct. We quote a few of them, as, to republican ears, they may have the effect of witticisms:
“It is the will of Heaven, who has given kings to man, that they should be revered as his vice-regents, he having reserved to himself alone the right to scrutinize their conduct.”
“It is the will of God that every subject should yield to his sovereign on implicit obedience.”
“The worst calamity which can befall any one of our rank is to be reduced to that subjection, in which the monarch is obliged to receive the law from his people.”
“It is the essential vice of the English monarchy that the king can make no extraordinary levies of men or money without the consent of the Parliament, nor convene the Parliament without impairing his own authority.”
“All property within our realm belongs to us in virtue of the same title. The funds actually deposited in our treasury, the funds in the hands of the revenue officers, and the funds which we allow our people to employ in their various occupations, are all equally subject to our control.”
“Be assured that kings are absolute lords, who may fitly and freely dispose of all property in the possession either of churchmen or of laymen, though they are bound always to employ it as faithful stewards.”
“Since the lives of his subjects belong to the prince, he is obliged to be solicitous for the preservation of them.”
“The first basis of all other reforms was the rendering my own will properly absolute.”
Some of his remarks on treaties, from the same volume, convey a fair impression of the king’s good faith to his allies. All mankind knows that he was in conduct a measureless liar and trickster, and that no treaty could hold him; but it is not perhaps generally known that he generalized perfidy into a principle, and had no conception that in so doing he was violating any moral or religious duty. He thus solemnly instructs the dauphin—
“In dispensing with the exact observance of treaties, we do not violate them; for the language of such instruments is not to be understood literally. We must employ in our treaties a conventional phraseology, just as we use complimentary expressions in society. They are indispensable in our intercourse with one another, but they always mean much less than they say. The more unusual, circumspect and reiterated were the clauses by which the Spaniards excluded me from assisting Portugal, the more evident it is that the Spaniards did not believe that I should really withhold such assistance.”
The Podesta’s Daughter, and other Miscellaneous Poems. By George H. Boker. Author of “Calaynos,” “Anne Boleyn,” “The Betrothal,” etc. Philadelphia: A. Hart.
Mr. Boker is ever a welcome visitant among the regions of literature. The present volume is understood to be composed of those lighter efforts of his muse which have engaged his attention at intervals between the composition of his larger works, “Calaynos,” “Anne Boleyn” and “The Betrothal.” Some of these minor poems have already seen the light, under the auspices of our leading magazines; but by far the greater part of the book is fresh, and all of it bears evidence of that genuine inspiration, and that high finish, without which the author never appears before the reading public.
“The Podesta’s Daughter” is an Italian tale or legend, thrown into that dramatic form for which Mr. Boker has shown such a remarkable gift. The story is very briefly this. A lowly maiden is loved and wooed by one far above her in life, a son of the neighboring duke. The father and brother of the maid, believing the high-born youth to be merely selfish and insidious in his offers of love and marriage, seek to rescue her from what appears to them a fatal snare, and persuade her to reject his addresses and even pretend to be affianced to another, a country hind in her own walk in life. The young and uncalculating noble, stung to the quick by her apparent preference of a rival so utterly unworthy of him and of her, suddenly abandoned his home and castle, and engaged during all the prime and meridian of his days in distant foreign wars. In the evening of life he returns, alone and almost a stranger, to the scenes of his youth. On approaching his castle, he falls in with an old man, the “Podesta,” by whom he is not recognized. In the dialogue between them, the Podesta, being questioned by the apparent stranger, tells the story of himself and family, and especially of his “daughter,” by whose untimely grave they are standing. She died of a broken heart, after the abrupt departure of the young duke, years ago. It is the old story. True love, not left to its native instincts, but thwarted and driven devious by the manoeuvres of the suspicious. Though Italian in manners, and dramatic in form, it is a true story of the heart. It is told with infinite skill, and must win for its author a bright addition to the chaplet which already surrounds his brow.
The first scene in the “Podesta’s Daughter,” is a good instance of the quiet ease with which Mr. Boker makes an actor bring out the points of a story, so that the reader is at once posted up to the very moment of action.
SCENE—Before and within the gate of an Italian Churchyard. Enter (as if from the wars,) Duke Odo, Vincenzo, and a train of men-at-arms.
Duke Odo (dismounting.)
Hark you, Vincenzo; here will I dismount.
Lead on Falcone to the castle. See
He lack no provender or barley-straw
To ease his battered sides. Poor war-worn horse!
When last we galloped past this church-yard gate,
He was a colt, gamesome and hot of blood,
Bearing against the bit until my arm
Ached with his humors. Mark the old jade now—
He knows we talk about him—a mere boy
Might ride him bare-back. Give my people note
Of my approach, and tell them, for yourself,
I will not look too strictly at my house:
An absent lord trains careless servitors.
I wish no bonfires lighted on the hills,
No peaceful cannon roused to mimic wrath;
Say, I have seen cities burn, and shouting ranks
Of solid steel-clad footmen melt away
Before a hundred pieces. Say I come for rest,
Not jollity; and all I seek
Is a calm welcome in their lighted eyes,
And quiet murmurs that appear to come
More from the heart than lips.
The manner in which the intimacy began between the young count and the Podesta’s daughter, Giulia, is described in a passage remarkable equally for its simplicity and its beauty. It is a good specimen also of the author’s power of nicely discriminating character.
Count Odo—mark the contrast—so we called,
Through ancient courtesy, the old duke’s son—
Came from the Roman breed of Italy.
A hundred CÆsars poured their royal blood
Through his full veins. He was both flint and fire;
Haughty and headlong, shy, imperious,
Tender, disdainful, tearful, full of frowns—
Cold as the ice on Ætna’s wintry brow,
And hotter than its flame. All these by turns.
A mystery to his tutors and to me—
Yet some have said his father fathomed him—
A mystery to my daughter, but a charm
Deeper than magic. Him my daughter loved.
. . . . . .
My functions drew me to the castle oft,
Thither sometimes my daughter went with me;
And I have noticed how young Odo’s eyes
Would light her up the stairway, lead her on
From room to room, through hall and corridor,
Showing her wonders, which were stale to him,
With a new strangeness: for familiar things,
Beneath her eyes, grew glorified to him,
And woke a strain of boyish eloquence,
Dressed with high thoughts and fluent images,
That sometimes made him wonder at himself,
Who had been blind so long to every charm
Which her admiring fancy gave his home.
Oft I have caught them standing rapt before
Some barbarous portrait, grim with early art—
A Gorgon, to a nicely balanced eye,
That scarcely hinted at humanity;
Yet they would crown it with the port of Jove,
Make every wrinkle a heroic scar,
And light that garbage of forgotten times
With such a legendary halo, as would add
Another lustre to the Golden Book.
At first the children pleased me; many a laugh,
That reddened them, I owed their young romance.
But the time sped, and Giulia ripened too,
Yet would not deem herself the less a child:
And when I clad me for the castle, she
Would deck herself in the most childish gear,
And lay her hand in mine, and tranquilly
Look for the kindness in my eyes. She called
Odo her playfellow—“The little boy who showed
The pictures and the blazoned hooks,
The glittering armor and the oaken screen,
Grotesque with wry-faced purgatorial shapes
Twisted through all its leaves and knotted vines;
And the grand, solemn window, rich with forms
Of showy saints in holyday array
Of green, gold, red, orange and violet,
With the pale Christ who towered above them all
Dropping a ruby splendor from his side.”
She told how “Odo—silly child! would try
To catch the window’s glare upon her neck,
Or her round arms,” and how “the flatterer vowed
The gleam upon her temple seemed to pale
Beside the native color of her cheek.”
Prattle like this enticed me to her wish,
Though cooler reason shook his threatening hand,
And counseled flat denial.
But by far the finest poem in this collection is the “Ivory Carver.” In the prologue to this poem,
Three Spirits, more than angels, met
By an Arabian well-side, set
Far in the wilderness, a place
Hallowed by legendary grace.
By this retired fountain the spirits enter into a discussion concerning the condition and prospects of their protÉgÉ man. Two of them are evidently croakers. To them the world seems, as to any moral progress, stationary, if not actually retrograding. They are almost indignant that the Lord does not consign the planet with its inhabitants at once to perdition. But the third spirit, a superior intelligence,
One, chief among the spirits three,
Grander than either, more sedate,
Wore yet a look of hope elate,
With higher knowledge, larger trust
In the long future; and the rust
Of week-day toil with earthly things
Stained and yet glorified his wings.
This superior angel maintains that man, though not capable of instantaneous acts or intuitive perceptions, equal to those of the higher orders of beings, is yet not the mere hopeless castaway the two other spirits would make him. Give him but time, and with pain and toil he will work out results worthy even of an angel’s regard. An angel, by direct intuition, may see at once in a shapeless lump of matter all the forms of beauty of which it is capable. Yet man, in process of time, slowly but surely, can bring forth those same wonderful forms. The illustration of this point in the celestial argument leads to the main story.
I, in thought,
Have seen the capability
Which lies within yon ivory:
This rough, black husk, charred by long age,
Unmarked by man since, in his rage,
A warring mammoth shed it: Lo!
Whiter than heaven-sifted snow
Enclosed within its ugly mask
Lies a world’s wonder: and the task
Of slow development shall be
Man’s labor and man’s glory. See!
His foot-tip touched it; the rude bone
Glowed through translucent, widely shone
A morning lustre on the palm
Which arched above it.
The angel then summons an attendant, and bids him bear this shapeless tusk to some mortal capable of bringing from it by slow pain and toil the glorious beauty which had shone forth instantaneously at the angelic touch.
Spirit, bear
This ivory to the soul that dare
Work out, through joy, and care, and pain,
The thought which lies within the grain,
Hid like a dim and clouded sun.
The prologue, which thus introduces us to the studio of the “Ivory Carver,” may be deemed by some far-fetched and metaphysical. To us it seems a most beautiful preparation for what follows. It attunes the mind to a just appreciation of that self-sacrificing devotion with which the artist, year by year, in silence, in want, toils away to work out of the solid ivory the divine thought which haunts him. The moral of the prologue, as we understand it, is to connect the inspirations of genius with their true source. It prepares us to look at the toiling “ivory carver,” not as he appeared to his family and neighbors, a madman or a fool, but as he might have appeared to some celestial visitant, who knew the secrets of his heaven-touched soul.
Silently sat the artist alone,
Carving a Christ from the ivory bone.
Little by little, with toil and pain,
He won his way through the sightless grain,
That held and yet hid the thing he sought,
Till the work stood up, a growing thought.
And all around him, unseen yet felt,
A mystic presence forever dwelt,
A formless spirit of subtle flame,
The light of whose being went and came
As the artist paused from work, or bent
His whole heart to it with firm intent.
. . . . . .
Husband, why sit you ever alone,
Carving your Christ from the ivory bone?
O, carve, I pray you, some fairy ships,
Or rings for the weaning infant’s lips,
Or toys for yon princely boy who stands
Knee-deep in the bloom of his father’s lands.
And waits for his idle thoughts to come;
Or carve the sword hilt, or merry drum,
Or the flaring edge of a curious can,
Fit for the lips of a bearded man:
With vines and grapes in a cunning wreath,
Where the peering satyrs wink beneath,
And catch around quaintly knotted stems
At flying nymphs by their garment hems.
. . . . . .
O carve you something of solid worth—
Leave heaven to heaven, come, earth to earth.
Carve that thy hearth-stone may glimmer bright,
And thy children laugh in dancing light.
Steadily answered the carver’s lips,
As he brushed from his brow the ivory chips;
While the presence grew with the rising sound,
Spurning in grandeur the hollow ground,
As if the breath on the carver’s tongue
Were fumes from some precious censer swung,
That lifted the spirit’s winged soul
To the heights where crystal planets roll
Their choral anthems, and heaven’s wide arch
Is thrilled with the music of their march;
And the faithless shades flew backward, dim
From the wondrous light that lived in him—
Thus spake the carver—his words were few,
Simple and meek, but he felt them true—
“I labor by day, I labor by night,
The Master ordered, the work is right:
Pray that He strengthen my feeble good;
For much must be conquered, much withstood.”
The artist labored, the labor sped,
But a corpse lay in his bridal bed.
But we must have done with quotations. Indeed, our limits warn us that we must abruptly close the volume. We have read every poem in it with the most lively pleasure. It has been in the belief that we could not otherwise minister so well to the gratification of our readers that we have quoted so freely and said so little. We will only add in conclusion, that every fresh production of Mr. Boker’s that we see furnishes additional evidence of his true calling as a poet. Should he never write another line, he has already, in the brief space of three years, done enough to make his name classical.
Margaret: A Tale of the Real and the Ideal, Blight and Bloom. By the author of “Philo,” etc. Boston: Phillips, Sampson & Co. 2 vols. 12mo.
This is a revised edition of a book which attracted, at the time it originally appeared, a great deal of attention from an intelligent but limited class of readers. We trust that it will have a more extended circulation now that it is in the hands of an enterprising publishing house, and is issued in a readable shape. It is the first and best of Mr. Judd’s works, and though it exhibits the ingrained defects of the author’s genius, it has freshness, originality and raciness enough to more than compensate for its occasional provoking defiance of taste and obedience to whim. The sketches of character are bold, true, powerful and life-like; the descriptions of New England scenery eminently vivid and clear; and an exquisite sense of moral beauty is accompanied by a sense no less genial and subtle for the humorous in life, character and manners. It is perhaps as thoroughly American as any romance in our literature.
Nicaragua; Its People, Scenery, Monuments, and the proposed Interoceanic Canal. With Numerous Original Maps and Illustrations. By E. G. Squier, late ChargÉ D’Affaires of the United States to the Republics of Central America. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 2 vols. 8vo.
This is perhaps the most valuable book of travels which any American has contributed to literature since Stephens relinquished his pen; and, if we may believe Mr. Squier, his subject-matter is of the greatest importance to every patriot. According to him, the future eminence of our country depends on the policy which the United States now adopts in regard to the affairs of Central America; and his visions of the material prosperity which will result from the bold, firm and intelligent action of our government in the matter, are gorgeous as Sir Epicure Mammon’s. And it must be admitted that he sustains his positions by facts and arguments which every American should be familiar with, and which cannot be obtained any where in a more compact form than in Mr. Squier’s own work, which contains a complete geographical and topographical account of Nicaragua, and of the other States of Central America, with observations on their climate, agriculture and mineral productions and general resources; a narrative of his own residence in Nicaragua, giving the results of his personal explorations of its aboriginal monuments, and his observations on its scenery and people; notes on the aborigines of the country, with such full information regarding “their geographical distributions and relations, languages, institutions, customs and religion, as shall serve to define their ethnical position in respect to the other semi-civilized aboriginal nations of this continent;” an outline of the political history of Central America since it threw off the dominion of Spain, and above all, a very elaborate view of the geography and topography of Nicaragua, as connected with the proposed interoceanic canal. Mr. Squier writes on all these subjects from personal knowledge and investigation, and with the freshness and power of a man who has got all his information at first hand. The work is profusely illustrated with appropriate engravings from drawings made on the spot, and is also well supplied with accurate maps. Bating some redundancies of style proceeding from a mania for fine writing, these volumes are, from their intrinsic and permanent value, worthy of more general attention than almost any work of the season.
Wesley and Methodism. By Isaac Taylor. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1 vol. 12 mo.
The author of this valuable and thoughtful volume is extensively known both in England and the United States as a philosophic writer on the great themes and great exponents of Christian faith. As in a former volume he considered Jesuitism in Loyola, its founder, so in this he views Methodism in Wesley. His penetrative and meditative mind, equally acute and sympathetic, readily discovers the connection between opinions and character, principles and persons; and by viewing sects and systems psychologically and historically in the characters and lives of their founders, he gives the interest of biography to the discussion of the most metaphysical questions of theology. His present work is eminently original and suggestive, evincing on every page the movement of a deep and earnest nature, and an intellect at once critical and interpretative. His own religious nature is too profound to allow his indulgence in any of those phrases of sarcasm, contempt, or pity, which it used to be fashionable to speak of Methodism and Methodists; but though he considers the religious movement which he analyses and represents as a genuine development of the principal elements of Christianity, and as second only to the Reformation in importance among the providential modes of vitalizing and diffusing the faith, he is still calm, reasonable and austerely just in his judgments. His criticism of the prominent Methodists is an example. He sees clearly that they were not great men mentally. “Let it be confessed,” he says, “that this company does not include one mind of that amplitude and grandeur, the contemplation of which, as a natural object—a sample of humanity—excites a pleasurable awe, and swells the bosom with a vague ambition, or with a noble emulation. Not one of the founders of Methodism can claim to stand on any such high level; nor was one of them gifted with the philosophic faculty—the abstractive and analytic power. More than one was a shrewd and exact logician, but none a master of the higher reason. Not one was erudite in more than an ordinary degree; not one was an accomplished scholar; yet while several were fairly learned, few were illiterate, and none showed themselves to be imbued with the fanaticism of ignorance.” In his sketches of Charles Wesley, Whitfield, Fletcher, Coke, and Lady Huntingdon, we have the truth given of those remarkable persons, unmixed with the exaggeration either of admiration or contempt. The volume as a whole, is the most comprehensive and accurate work on Methodism which we have ever seen.
Young Americans Abroad; or Vacation in Europe. Travels in England, France, Holland, Belgium, Prussia, and Switzerland. With Illustrations. Boston: Gould & Lincoln. 1 vol. 16mo.
This volume is a truly original book of travels, not so much because it describes new scenes, but because it describes them from a different point of view. It consists of letters written by three boys, whose respective ages are twelve, fourteen and sixteen, traveling in Europe under the care of their instructor, the Rev. Dr. Choules. Quick to see and eager to enjoy, fresh in mind and heart, these boys seem to write because they have much to say, and because their heads are so full of enchanting objects that a discharge of ink is absolutely necessary to preserve them from mental apoplexy. And we must admit that they have made a book which in interest, raciness and in the power of communicating their own delight to the reader, fairly excels many a volume of more pretension. The presiding spirit of the whole correspondence is, of course, the kindly and accomplished editor, a person who combines in an extraordinary degree, the joyous and elastic soul of youth with the large knowledge and experience of manhood. His own letters in the volume are very characteristic epistles, and add much to its value.
Adrian; or the Clouds of the Mind. By G. P. R. James and Mansell B. Field. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1 vol. 12 mo.
The authors of this American romance have produced a literary curiosity—a volume, every page of which is the product of two minds, without any apparent jarring of style or sentiment. In the conduct of the story, it is true, a little uncertainty is visible, but that appears to arise as much from the nature of the plot as from the presence of two hands in moving it forward. It is well written, has some capital descriptions of scenery and some very exciting incidents, and, in idea and sentiment, is a combination of English and American modes of thought and feeling. The scene in the Medical College is the most powerful in the volume.
Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Thomas Chalmers, D. D., LL. D. By his Son-in-Law, the Rev. William Hanna, LL. D. New York: Harper & Brothers. Vol. 3.
The present volume does not, as was contemplated, bring this interesting biography to a close. The Doctor is left at the end of it, full of energy and combativeness, instead of reposing in his coffin. The volume is full of attractive matter, being devoted to that portion of Chalmers’ life, between 1824 and 1835, when some of his most important works were written, and when his communications with men eminent in politics and letters were most frequent. Brougham, Peel, Melbourne, Mackintosh, Irving, Coleridge, and many other celebrities, appear in these pages. Among the letters in the volume, we should select those to his daughter as the most pleasing.
Home and Social Philosophy. From Household Words. Edited by Charles Dickens, First Series. New York: Geo. P. Putnam. 1 vol. 16mo.
The indefatigable publisher whose name is on this title-page, commences with this delightful collection of essays, a new “Semi-Monthly Library, for Travelers and the Fireside.” The present volume contains some two hundred And fifty well printed pages, and is placed at the low price of twenty-five cents. It is to be followed by a series of works, combining entertainment with usefulness, and intended in the end, to form one of the cheapest and most elegant “libraries” that an intelligent reading public could desire.
Essays on Life, Sleep, Pain, etc. By Samuel Henry Dickson, M. D., Philadelphia: Blanchard & Lea. 1 vol. 12mo.
These essays, a specimen of which we furnish our readers in the present number, are the production of a mind singularly acute and tenacious, and are marked as the productions of a scholar and a profound thinker.
United States Monthly Law Magazine and Examiner. New York: John Livingston, 157 Broadway.
We have received this creditable periodical, and examined it with great interest. We are happy to say that it is still conducted with ability and learning. The editor deserves high praise for his industry and liberality. He provides the profession with well selected cases from the English law journals and reports, as well as from our own adjudicatories. We are well pleased to see the manly independence with which he adopts and advocates the reform of law and equity so urgently called for in this country and England. The periodical prospers—and it merits prosperity.
The Historical Society.—We have received a copy of the address delivered before the Historical Society of this State, at Chester, in November last, and have barely room to say that it is marked by the fine finish and lucid reasoning which distinguish all the efforts of Mr. Armstrong, whether as a writer or speaker. We shall refer to it again.
Held in his idle moments, with his Readers, Correspondents and Exchanges.
Eminent Young Men.—We purpose, occasionally, to give to our readers, in our own off-hand way, sketches of such of the young men of our acquaintance as have risen to position and distinction by the force of their own indomitable purpose and efforts. These papers will be plain, unpretending, and without any effort at literary display—but if such examples as have passed under our own observation, fairly put, shall awaken even one young man among our readers from inglorious sloth, to energetic endeavors to accomplish something for himself and his generation, we shall think our time has been most profitably spent.
America has but one recognizable stamp of nobility. No line of descent in the blood of kings, can ennoble here. The stagnant pool which has lost its vitality for ages in the veins of a scurvy nobility, reflects no honor—enriches no name. That which makes Manhood Great—is Energy—Will—nobly directed—that quality which Kossuth proclaims to be the conqueror of impossibilities. It is this quality, largely possessed by the Anglo-Saxon, and the free field open for its exercise in America, that have made her what she is—
“The day-star among the nations.”
It is the noble hopes and manly aspirations in the breast of her sons—the far-reaching, the attainable grasp of future fortune, the birth-right of the humblest—the unconquerable purpose to do, to achieve, to conquer, that exalt us to “giants in these days.” We have the highest manifestation of manhood, in a fair field, with all the favor that God grants to mortals to carve out their own destinies. He who sinks here, goes down with supineness, slothfulness, idleness, and their attendant vices clinging to his neck with more than mill-stone weight. With high health and a perfect use of his faculties, no man here has a right to be ignoble. “The longer I live,” says Goethe, “the more certain I am that the great difference between men, the great and significant, is energy—invincible determination—an honest purpose once fixed and then, victory. That quality will do anything that can by done in the world; and no talents, no circumstances, no opportunity will make a man without it.”
Benjamin H. Brewster, Esq., an eminent young lawyer of Philadelphia, the author of the very excellent paper on Milton, in this number, will be the subject of our first sketch, in the next issue; and we shall take the privilege of an intimate acquaintanceship, and a friendship endured by a thousand ties, to use a free pencil upon him, and if Mr. Brewster does not like it, he has his action for such damages as the liberal jury who read “Graham” may think he deserves.
Cost of Glory.—We have received from a Naval Officer a tart assault upon Upham’s figures in relation to the expenses of the Army and Navy of the United States, which we shall publish and reply to. He makes the cost “about twenty-five per cent. of the whole revenue.” We shall see! The article is by some very young Middy, who thinks that “navy blue” means getting tipsy on shore, and that figures are symbolical only of important gentlemen, buttoned up to the throat, who walk the Quarter-Deck of Uncle Sam’s 74’s.
Reader—“Graham” makes his best bow to you in this number, and stands, cap in hand, waiting a friendly return to his salutation. He has prepared himself with some care for this call, and if you do not like his rig, don’t turn up your nose disdainfully, but suggest any proper alteration in his costume, and when he comes again you may like him better. The critics! Well! who cares for the critics? Not Graham! He is a critic himself, and can carve you a poet to a nicety—slicing off his wings with one sweep of his steel. But Graham is tender to poets—for they are a good-hearted race, albeit a little irritable—apt to be dealt unjustly with, too, considering that each one is imbued with more than a Shaksperian genius, and people wont believe it. It is enough to make anybody mad—and a mad poet is of all enraged animals the most vehemently disposed to slaughter somebody. So, having disposed in brief of critics and poets, and of lawyers and briefs in the body of the work, we feel heavenly-minded toward the rest of creation—and in this mood we turn to “the gentlemen of the press.”
If our exchanges believe all that is told them by some of the Magazine publishers, they will soon begin to fancy that “the moon is a green cheese,” and will wake up some fine night finding themselves cutting slices for an imaginary breakfast.
One chap has the audacity to set himself up as the sole patron of American arts and letters, and has spent unheard of amounts on artists and writers. We fear to inquire into this business too closely, lest it should turn out like the charity of the lady who was “collecting for a poor woman.” It was charity—for it “began at home,” and ended there!
Now “Graham” you may rely upon—there is a certain don’t care for anybody air about him that you can understand. If any fellow wishes to blow up his Magazine, Graham asks him—nay, commands him to “blaze away”—if he don’t like the painted fashions, which cost $945, lo! Graham goes to the enormous expense of $2 and gives him his “own peculiar” in wood—Bloomer and all, fresh from the newspapers, and not credited to Paris either—if the small-talk don’t suit—Graham suggests something else, and invites him to read some of the other Magazines, where the editor “talks big,” and swells in imaginary dignity until a turkey is rather cast into the shade by overblown dignity—if he don’t like the stories he may read the essays—if neither, the poetry is before him—and if literature has no charms for him, he may admire Art in the engravings: “if none of these things move him,” let him admire Nature by looking at himself in a mirror, and imagine his ears wonderfully grown, and his voice a lion’s. Graham is as easily pleased as a young girl at her first ball, and thinks the world is moving round to the timing of music—and though he is as poor as Job’s—ah! that reminds us of the turkeys we sent to editors.
The Turkey Ovation.—Never, we suppose, since the day the Romans overran the world, has there been such terrible bloodshed and sanguinary goings on, as was consequent upon Graham’s royal edict about Turkey. The crimson
This sort of thing will go on. A revolution in newspaper presses will be the consequence, and quiet, sedate people, who read over the paper, and complain of the type—of the quality of the paper—of the long editorials—of the short editorials—of the light reading—of the heavy reading—of the political matter—of the want of political news and facts—of the poetry—of the advertisements—of the mails—of the carrier—of the publisher, the editor, and the “devil”—will be shocked at having a bill to pay. Turkey must be paid for, as well as slaughtered. There is no community of goods in Turkey. Every landholder expects the pay for corn that feeds and fattens turkey—and subscribers must expect to—“PAY UP.” Graham will get the blame—but the revolution will go on! People who grumble—and, some of them—swear! about their papers, must pay for the luxury. No man has a right to be stupid—nor can expect editors to eat turkeys and publish newspapers on air.
“Mr. ——, do you know that your subscription is overdue to The ——?”
“No?”
“We thought so. Well, take Graham’s advice, and take $2, ‘pay up,’ and take a receipt at once. You have no idea how it will clear your conscience, and your eye-sight, too, as to the merits of the paper.”
Snow-Balling in the South.—Our Southern friends seem to have been taken by surprise by Jack Frost, and to have had some difficulty in acknowledging his acquaintance. At New Orleans we see, that Sambo was out early in the morning, and came rushing back to his master exclaiming—“Oh, Monsieur! regardez donc! la cour est pleine de sucre blanc!” “Oh, sir, look: the yard is full of white sugar!” “The oldest inhabitants,” says the Delta, “stared with amazement. It snowed all night, and in the morning the earth was entirely invisible; a white carpet, to the depth of eight inches, covered its entire surface. Our population were all agog, and snow-balls flew as thick and as fast as bullets at Buena Vista. The hats of peaceable citizens were knocked into corners; eyes and mouths were filled with conglomerated masses of snow, and ears were stopped.” In Florida, according to the News, “There was no record nor tradition of such an event in the history of East Florida. Some of the oldest inhabitants recollect, on one or two occasions, having seen a slight sprinkle of snow, but not enough to whiten the ground, and it passed off like a dream. But on this occasion we had an opportunity of enjoying the delightful amusement of “snow-balling;” and ladies, as fair as the snow itself, joined heartily in an amusement, the opportunity for which presents itself only once in a century.” Mrs. Neal, in her very sprightly and delightful letters from Charleston, S. C., gives an animated picture of the scene in Palmettodom: “Even in Philadelphia, where snow is by no means an every day affair, you cannot credit the excitement it gave rise to. The children, many of whom had never seen ‘the white rain,’ clapped their hands as the roofs and the ground were covered with the pure mantle—and when evening came, and the strange visitor seemed to like its Southern quarters, and resolved to settle for the night, men and boys went forth to the novel enjoyment of snow-balling, and some even attempted a sleigh-ride. Grave, grown up men were startled into an involuntary participation of the sport, and I was told, and it is too good a story not to be true, that one gentleman was seen indulging in the unusual pastime accompanied by a negro carrying his ‘spare balls’—all ready moulded in a box! Snow-balling under circumstances of ‘elegant leisure.’
“The next morning’s sun seemed to have little effect upon it, the cold still continuing intense; and about the middle of the day a party, a regular duel it seemed, ascended to the top of the Charleston hotel and the Hague street stores, pelting each other with great vigor, the plazza upon which we stood affording a fine view of the sport. The children were for the first time indulged with snow-building, and many a youthful Powers made his first effort at sculpture on the frozen countenance of a ‘snow-man.’ It was more curious still that they considered it in the light of a confection, and ate it with salt, as they would a hard boiled egg, esteeming it much nicer than any candy. ‘It was fun to them—but death to the servants’—to borrow from the fable of the boys and the frogs. The poor negroes, wilted and shriveled up into ‘dumb waiters’—burning over the fire, with a deprecating glance at the snow covered ground that was really piteous, but every consideration was paid to them, and as little out-door work as possible assigned.”
We cannot refrain from adding the following delicious little bit of character-painting, from the same pen, though not germaine to the theme: “If there is one thing that distinguishes the Southern negro above all others, it is deliberation. We had a fair example of this the morning of our arrival. There was not a soul on the wharf to take the rope of the steamer which some thoughtful person had thrown on shore without looking to see what was to be done with it. There were the passengers with eager, expectant faces, grouped upon the deck, baggage already looked over, and piled up for the carriages—every thing ready to land, and we just so far from the shore that a plank could not be thrown across. Presently a negro appeared on the next wharf, walking toward us with the utmost calmness. In vain were the calls of the Northern gentlemen in tartan shawls, or the impatient gestures of one of the officers of the boat. A New York wharf lounger would have had the rope secured in the time this venerable Ned took to put one foot before the other. And when he finally arrived amid the cheers of the passengers, who by this time thought it as well to laugh as fret, one of them called out as he bent over to the rope thrown once more—‘Uncle—I say—hadn’t you better wipe it first?’—a finale which could not have been more deliberate than his previous movements.”
Small.—There is something smaller in the world than Graham’s small-talk, and that is, a soul in a pill-box. We know several that are just in that way imprisoned—and they belong to fellows who are afraid to notice a rival publication, for fear people will believe them.
Cable, the editor of the Ohio Picayune, is a man to hold on. Here is what he says—
“We would not do without this Magazine for treble its price; and as we consider ourself as having some taste in this matter, we warmly recommend Graham to the lovers of chaste and classical literature.”
Our friend of the Picayune will be glad to know that there are 30,000 people of his mind, who cling to Graham always. Then, there is a “floating population” of 20,000 more, who don’t know their own minds, but shift about to all points of the compass and come back again to Graham, grumbling at others, when the fault is their own for having left Graham at all. These wanderers are coming in, in flocks, for ’52, but we don’t count on them, any more than upon a roost of wild pigeons—they will go to Godey—to Harper, to somebody in a year or two, and then come back again mad at every body. These folks are nobodies.
The very beautiful poem, “Bless the Homestead Law,” from the pen of our correspondent, L. Virginia Smith, adds another laurel to the wreath which clusters already around the young brow of that child of genius. Memphis may well be proud of her, as the Inquirer of that city is. The editor says of this poem, which was written for him—
“We have the satisfaction of presenting to-day one of the most eloquent appeals in behalf of the Homestead Exemption Law, which it has been our fortune to meet with. It is from the pen of the gifted one our city is proud to call its own poetess. We commend this appeal to the hearts of the members of the Legislature, upon whose votes hangs the fate of this most just and beneficent measure.”
A Leap Year Love Letter.—We have received a very delightful leap year love letter from a very beautiful young lady living in Maine—we wont tell in what post-town—but we know she is beautiful from the very elegant epistle she writes, and that she is a lady of discernment from the very handsome things she says of “Graham”—and that she is smart from the very way she edges in her proposal to be our second in case we are married already.
We are happy to say that we are a Benedict, and as Kossuth has prudently introduced no Turkish notions into his addresses to the ladies, we have great doubts about indulging in any dreams as to “pluralities.” But still, we may safely say, as we do “by permission,” that the young lady who sends “Graham” the largest club for 1852, shall receive the favor of our most distinguished consideration.
“Graham” may now be considered in the market for “proposals,” and if all the handsome things the press say of him are read and pondered over—as they ought to be—he will receive a perfect shower of adoration in the agreeable form of attached and worshiping subscribers. “Graham” holds the King of clubs and Knave of hearts, now—so every young lady knows the lead.
Advertising.—Business is business and must be pressed home. Now we have a business secret for your ear, reader! one which we charge you nothing for; but which comes charged with weighty and important meaning. Do you ever advertise? No! Why there is nothing like advertising to make a fortune! Nearly all the men about here, who never advertised, have taken in their signs, shut up shop, been taken in themselves and have gone to California—the dupes of the very advertising in the newspapers, which they scorned while fortune was all around them. You must take hold of this lever that moves the business world. Advertise in your local papers—if your business is local—let your neighbors know that you have something to sell—that you wish to buy something—or, that you are ready to trade. Wake up! and wake up your neighbors! We should never be able to publish Graham with 112 pages per month, if we did not let the world know that we are wide awake, and ready to supply any quantity of numbers for 1852, having stereotyped the book purposely. Now, drowsy head! do you suppose that if you are a storekeeper you would not sell more goods by advertising? Or if a mechanic, that it will do you any harm to be known far and near as an active, enterprising business man ready for customers? Or, if a farmer, with a lot of extra corn or potatoes to sell, that you could not make a market? Do you suppose, that you can put your hands into your pockets and whistle a fortune into them, too? If you do, advertise that, and be immortal.
Our Stories.—We have adopted the plan of giving our readers one long story complete, in each number—say from twelve to twenty pages. In the January number we gave “The Rich Man’s Whims,” which was universally praised by the press and by the readers of this Magazine. “Anna Temple,” which appeared in the February number, we think, was a better story, and so say many critics competent to judge. “The Democrat,” at Ballston, N. Y., says, in noticing the last number—“Graham now contains, and will continue to contain, during this year, more reading matter monthly than any similar work published in the country. The story, “Anna Temple,” in the February number, is one of the finest tales we have ever read, and is alone worth more than the year’s subscription to the Magazine.” And this is but one, of scores of such notices.
In the present number our readers will find a gem called “The Miser and His Daughter,” written by a gentleman of New Orleans—the author of the story of “The Little Family,” which appeared in the November number of “Graham”—a tale which was more widely read and praised than any article in the last volume. We have received the first part of an article by this writer, which we shall give in future numbers, and we do not hesitate to say, for the benefit of those who worship British ability only, that no article equal to it has appeared in Blackwood or Frazer for years. It is called “The First Age.”
Caution.—“My goodness,” says a cautious and gouty old gentleman, who is one of Graham’s friends, “aint you afraid to talk at your subscribers and exchanges the way you do?” No! not a bit of it—Graham will tell “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,” to every body who reads his editorial chit-chat. If people don’t like it, they need not read it. In 112 pages there is room and verge enough to dodge around sharp corners and escape the dilemma of reading the few pages in which Graham, kicking off his boots, goes at people with his slippers on. Every body, in 1852, will get more than a full return for what is paid for the book, without counting “The Small-Talk”—and if any editor don’t like it, let him let it alone. “The whole boundless continent is not ours,” but the small-talk is—and being monarch sole and absolute in these dominions, we shall submit to no impertinence, but will have our own will and way—and the way is straight and plain. We do not expect to get a decent notice from the Saturday Evening Post, for all this—and we don’t care if we don’t—nor if we do.
Graham on Dreams.—Did you ever dream you were rich? Is it not delightful!—while it lasts. A prize in the lottery—dreaming of numbers innumerable, is one of the tricks of Morpheus—and of people wide awake, too, sometimes. Then the visions of defunct grand-uncles, beyond the seas, who hearing of our great worth and deservings, die on purpose to make us happy, and bequeath vast estates and lots of three per cents. in the funds. It is glorious! And then, too, ponderous mails coming to you, in which each subscriber, who is in debt, sends you the money—and dozens—dozens?—hats full, of letters inclosing the long delayed $3, come like blessings in troops—the notes all new, too, and 6’s instead of 3’s sent by the overjoyed subscriber—not in a mistake either—for he says “the work is worth double the money, and being an honest man, I intend to pay the fair value.” Ah! this is grand! We like to do business with people who know something.
“John, John!—Call Mr. Graham, and tell him the printer wants copy—and paper too!” Pshaw!
Look here! We hate to be deceived. Somebody make our “dream come true.”
Fine Ink.—We take pleasure in calling the attention of printers to the very superior quality of the ink used in the printing of our wood-cut forms. It is from the establishment of Messrs. Romig, Lay & Co., 51 South Fourth street, Philadelphia. They are prepared to furnish different qualities at various prices to the trade. Letters addressed to them will be promptly attended to.
The Dollar Newspaper, which is edited by a Sailor, who has been to Egypt—you see—and a long Lane—who has denied the proverb, and done us a good “turn,” has sent us a spanking club by Hudley, its ever attentive and active clerk. The Dollar is a great paper—worth any day more than its silver namesake—which goes now at about 102½—but where it goes to, puzzles the bankers. The Newspaper has the advantage in this, for nobody knows where it don’t go. In all of the 17,000 post-towns in which Graham is loved and cherished, we find our young and vigorous brother. Graham and the lively Dollar, are the pride of good printers and pretty girls. Intellect, and Beauty, and Dollars and Graham’s!—what a consummation!
The truth is, Graham’s modesty is sorely tried just now, when a shout is going up from every town and hamlet of the country on his behalf; and were it not that the subscriptions usually keep pace with the praise, he would not be able to exist at all.
Saucy and True.—We shall exchange next year with no fellow who notices “Graham” in the same line with another work and says, he “don’t know which is the best.” If a man has not courage enough to say that Graham is the worst, or the best, or the equal of any other magazine, as the fact may be, we don’t want his company. So boys, if you like the conditions, observe them. We ask no man to publish our prospectus—but we do ask that “Graham” shall not be bundled in with any body who happens to be traveling the same road at the same time—as there are a good many shabby looking fellows about whose room is better than their company—at any rate their room shan’t be ours—that’s plump.
The Saturday Courier has been—or is, at this writing—publishing a most powerful story called Marcus Warland, from the pen of its old and valued correspondent, Caroline Lee Hentz. The stories purchased and selected by Mr. McMakin evince a fine taste and just discrimination, and we often wonder where he lays his hands upon them. The secret is partly disclosed by an announcement in his paper that “Mrs. Hentz refused the sum of $400 offered her by a New York bookseller,” for the story of Marcus Warland. The new volume of the Courier commences in March; and looking over the storehouse of good things McMakin has, for his readers, we say they are to be envied for ’52.
Winchester (Tenn.) Independent of the 16th January, comes to us with its head all topsy turvy, as if the editor had been on a batter. Wigg’s is the publisher, and of course has a right to ship his scalp occasionally—but we don’t believe that the name of his town is spelt as follows:
though an independent fellow, in this free country, may take a spell in that way, if he likes.
The Essex Freeman is a good paper, but has in its advertising columns some “shocking bad” wood-cuts. The editor says “American wood-engravings are apt to be bad,” but admits an exception in favor of Devereux’s fine pictures in our February number. Porter and Streeter are funny dogs, but can’t take a joke. Wonder what ails Porter!
The Central New Yorker, came to us with a new year’s address with the “pictur” of the editor at the head. He is a rising man—but he had better let the girls alone. The following appears in the address:
THE BLOOMER COSTUME.
Bloomer Costumes rule the day,
Ladies wear the new apparel,
Corsets now are thrown away,
Hour-glass changes to a barrel.
Ladies now may street yarn spin,
As they have to take less stitches,
Now they put their fair forms in
Sack coats and big Turkey breeches.
We hope Mr. Editor Rising has no allusion, in this, to Graham’s Christmas Turkeys—that would be a breach of decorum.
The Knickerbocker.—Our old friend Clark, the very prince of genial natures and royal good fellows, disdains to talk any longer, solely, to the dull and heavy folks of “Upper Tendom;” so, showing no quarters, he comes down to “a quarter,” and pitches his tent in the field of the many—throwing his banner to the gale, without getting upon one himself. If Clark does not print and sell 50,000 copies “the fools are not all dead,” but maintain a very decided majority among the “peoples.” If any body wishes “Old Knick” and young Graham together, they can accomplish their benevolent desire by sending us $5. “The Old Gentleman” and the Young ’un are celebrities of “this enlightened nineteenth century,” and cannot be had for less.
“The Old Colony Memorial,” published at Plymouth, Mass., says Graham for February, was “the best looking number of this popular monthly we have ever seen. Of the literary contents we can speak highly.” Its editor, who does not like fun of any kind, has the following satisfactory
Conundrum.—Why is Church-membership like Charity? Guess once all round. Answer next week.
Our friend of “the olden time,” Samuel C. Atkinson, is making a capital paper of The Burlington N. J. Gazette, and shows that years do not impair his energy, nor extinguish his genial appreciation of all things beautiful and true.
Exploded Proverb.—“Figures cannot lie,” says the proverb. Graham says—it depends upon who makes ’em.
Plain Preaching.—We have upon our books a list of names, the owners of which are ALL well to do, and the most of whom go to church every Sunday and say their prayers—as Christians ought to do—and yet these same men will pass our office day after day, and never think of stopping to pay up, and if called upon, think it a hard case; haint got the change handy; aint used to being dunned.—Plaindealer, Roslyn, N. Y.
Why, Mr. Plaindealer, the sooner you get rid of these chaps the better—they intend to cheat you anyhow—even if it be but out of the interest of your money, and your peace of mind—which last is worth more than dollars.
If publishers would only form a “Mutual Protection Society,” and placard all such fellows as a warning, we should all do better. We have about fifty that we intend to cut—giving them the Kentucky benediction. A fellow, who will neither notice your letter nor your bill, is a rogue in grain—rely upon it. It is a good rule to go by.
TIPSY MYNHEER.
“Moon, ’tis a very queer figure you cut;
One eye is staring while t’other is shut.
Tipsy, I see; and you’re greatly to blame;
Old as you are ’tis a terrible shame.”
Southern Literary Papers.—Godman writes us that his new Southern Literary Journal, “The Family Friend,” is “going off like hot cakes.” We are heartily glad of this for two reasons; First, because we like Godman for his energy of character and his splendid genius, which blazes out in every line he writes, pure as a vestal lamp amid the surrounding debasement of the minds of many writers of romance. Secondly, because the South ought to maintain one or more first rate literary papers, and the North should help her do it with cordial good-will. She has been liberal, to us of the North, in her support, for years of our literary magazines and gazettes—let us now return the compliment with earnestness and kindliness.
Some of Godman’s best articles have enriched and will continue to enrich our pages, and as he has started manfully, in competition with Northern periodicals, Graham says—to his friends—Stand by your banner, boys!—let there be a brotherhood in letters at least, and let us leave the quarreling to ambitious politicians. So, Godman! Graham wishes you “God speed,” and 100,000 subscribers! Any fellow who cannot respond to the sentiment—whether he lives north or south of the Potomac—had better button his soul in his vest pocket carefully, or he will not be able to find it, when it is called for.
An Experienced Shot.—You’re a pretty dog!—now aint you? See what you’ve gun-un done?
Mr. Thos. Bristow, the Writing-Master, has finished and intends to present a very fine fac simile letter of Washington’s Farewell Address to the United States Government. The whole design and execution is such as to reflect the highest credit upon Mr. Bristow as a teacher of “the Chirographic art.”
Fashions.—“Three full-length Figures.”
Determined not to be outdone in generosity, and to meet the views of the critics fully, we present “the latest styles” as reported by Mrs. Bloomer “expressly” for her own paper—and give you Dodworth’s “dancing style” as we find them reported in “The Clerk’s Journal.”
Our Paris Fashions cost us $945 per month, for designing, engraving, printing and coloring the edition of Graham’s Magazine, and many sage and sapient critics said they liked “the wood-cut style.” Well, now you have got them—how do you like them? They cost the almost unmentionable sum of $2, but are as good as the biggest. It may be as well to mention, by way of description, that the Bloomer is going to church—as soon as she can get off from this dancing-party.
“Oh Share My Cottage.”
COMPOSED BY R. C. SHRIVAL.
Published by permission of F. D. BENTEEN & Co., No. 181 Baltimore Street, Baltimore.
Oh, share my cottage, gentle maid,
It only waits for thee,
To
give a sweetness to its shade,
And happiness, happiness to me,
Here from the splendid gay parade,
Of noise and folly free,
No sorrows can my peace invade,
If only blest with thee.
Then share my cottage, gentle maid,
It only waits for thee,
To give a sweetness to its shade,
And happiness, happiness to me.
SECOND VERSE.
The hawthorn with the woodbine ’twin’d
Presents their sweets to thee,
And every balmy breath of wind
Is filled with harmony:
A truly fond and faithful heart
Is all I offer thee,
And must I from your face depart,
A prey to misery.
Then share my cottage, gentle maid,
It only waits for thee,
To add fresh sweetness to its shade,
And happiness to me.
“STARS OF THE SUMMER NIGHT.”
WORDS BY LONGFELLOW,
MUSIC BY H. KLEBER.
Published by permission of LEE & WALKER, 188 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia,
Publishers and Importers of Music and Musical Instruments.
Stars of the summer night,
Far, far in your azure
deeps;
Hide, hide your golden light,
She sleeps, my lady sleeps.
Moon of the summer night,
Far, down yon western steeps,
Sink, sink in silver light,
She sleeps, my lady sleeps, my lady sleeps.
SECOND VERSE.
Wind of the summer night,
Where yonder woodbine creeps,
Fold, fold thy pinions light,
She sleeps, my lady sleeps.
Dreams of the summer night,
Tell her, her lover keeps watch,
While in slumbers bright
She sleeps, my lady sleeps.
Table of Contents has been added for reader convenience. Archaic spellings and hyphenation have been retained. Obvious typesetting and punctuation errors have been corrected without note. Other errors have been corrected as noted below. For illustrations, some caption text may be missing or incomplete due to condition of the originals available for preparation of the eBook. Brief descriptions of illustrations without caption have been provided in the plain text version of this ebook.
page 232, hearts the poets tale ==> hearts the poet’s tale
page 239, there were the mole ==> there where the mole
page 250, If your are willing to ==> If you are willing to
page 273, Valenciennes and CondÈ ==> Valenciennes and CondÉ
page 273, defection of Dumuoriez ==> defection of Dumouriez
page 273, skill of Dumuoriez ==> skill of Dumouriez
page 273, Dumuoriez’s more generous ==> Dumouriez’s more generous
page 282, wrote his Eikonoklases ==> wrote his Eikonoklastes
page 282, books, the Eikonoklases ==> books, the Eikonoklastes
page 285, his Eikonoklases, and ==> his Eikonoklastes, and
page 286, “Telemachus” of Fenelon ==> “Telemachus” of FÉnelon
page 311, Arabian die to set ==> Arabian dye to set
page 312, the invading the ==> the invading of the
page 312, on that side the ==> on that side of the
page 317, the lines were beauty ==> the lines where beauty
page 332, The crimson die was ==> The crimson dye was
[End of Graham’s Magazine, Vol. XL, No. 3, March 1852]
