  BaÏla felt her confidence vanish; a single revelation from the prisoner would be a decree of death to her, and concealing her paleness beneath the redoubled folds of her veil, she awaited the examination with a palpitating heart, fixing her curious gaze upon the prisoner. “Why did I risk my life to listen to a sermon from this mournful preacher?” she said to herself. “Why did they not kill him when I commanded? Why did he not fall beneath the blow of the guard?” Seeing him, however, with his body furrowed by “Christian,” said the pacha, “what motive brought thee hither?” “Her salvation,” replied the captive, turning his eyes for a moment to the sofa on which the odalisk was seated, and then letting them fall on Djezzar, he added, “and thine, perhaps.” “What, dog, and son of a dog, as thou art, didst thou think to make a vile Nazarene of me, and to convert me to the sect of the accursed, by taking advantage of my absence?” “I have said the truth,” replied the young man, “as true as that Jesus Christ is the redeemer of the world.” “Thou liest,” replied the pacha, “as true that there is no God but God, and that Mahomet is his prophet.” After this outbreak he appeared to endeavor to restrain his anger. He replaced himself more at his ease upon the knees of his favorite, passed his hand, as a motion of caress, through the mane of his lion, and when he had taken two or three whiffs of his batakie, resumed. “See that thou art sincere, and do not aggravate thy crime. Thou knowest well that a Mussulman cannot become a Christian, as a Christian cannot become a Jew. The law of Moses paved the way for that of Jesus; that of Jesus was but the precursor to that of Mahomet. On this ladder men never descend—they mount upward.” “I had hoped, at least,” said the captive, “to render thee more favorable to my brethren.” “Are, then, all those bands of rascals who gnaw each other—all those races of infidels, who are forgetful of their own law, thy brethren? Of what do they complain? Of some I have made good Christians by martyrdom; of others, good Musselmen by persuasion. Besides, art thou one of their priests? No, far from that. Thou art but one of those frivolous Europeans, who seek to propagate their impious usages among us. Lay aside trick and falsehood. Thou hast heard of the beauty of this slave, (turning his head toward BaÏla,) and thou hast desired to satiate thy eyes at the price of thy life. Is it not so?” The young man made a sign of negation; the pacha heeded it not, and proceeded. “Well, art thou satisfied? Thou shouldst be, for thou hast seen her. Are your women of Europe so to be disdained, that you must come among us to carry off ours? Until now you have coveted our horses only. How didst thou find means to correspond with her? Who was thy guide? How did she first see thee?” Like a tiger, which with eye and ear watches for the least cry, the least motion of the prey it is about to seize, Djezzar watched for a word of avowal—a denunciatory sign on the part of him whom he interrogated. He obtained none from him, but he felt the knees of BaÏla tremble. “Christian,” he resumed, “I repeat to thee, be sincere. Tell me what hope thou hast conceived; tell me who introduced thee into this place; name thy accomplice, and whatever may be thy fault I will place in the other scale thy youth and thy consular title, although thy presence in the midst of my harem at night gives me a right to forget it. But I will consider what thou hast already endured, and, like Allah, I will be merciful. Speak; I listen.” He inhaled again the odorous smoke of his pipe, and appeared to await a reply; but the captive remained silent and motionless. “Speak, Christian, speak! There is yet time. At this price alone canst thou purchase thy life—by abjuring thy idolatry, of course.” At this last sentence the young man raised his head—a noble blush mounted to his face. “To denounce and apostatize,” said he; “is such thy clemency, pacha? Have thy executioners forgotten to tell thee who I am? Art thou, who hast thyself honored me with the title of Christian, ignorant of the duties which this title enjoins? Dost thou think that the disciples of Christ care so much for this mortal life, as to plunge their souls twice into ineffaceable pollution?” and his eye sparkled, and his whole countenance assumed an expression of sublime beauty. “It is said,” said Djezzar, forming, from his apparent imperturbability, a fine contrast with the exaltation of the young Frank. “Thou wishest to die, and thou shalt die. But dost thou know for what an end I reserve thee?” “Be it what it may, I am ready,” replied the captive. “Then thou regrettest nothing of this mortal life?” and the pacha followed his look attentively, which he thought he would fix on BaÏla. “Nothing,” said the young man, with his eyes cast down, “but the not being assisted at my last moments by a priest of my religion.” Djezzar appeared to reflect; a slight smile then contracted his lips. “If thy wishes go no farther,” he said, “they shall be gratified.” The Mangrebian reappeared at his call. A few moments afterward an old man, with a bald head, a long white beard, and a severe countenance, entered. He trembled violently at the sight of the pacha, as if he thought his last hour was come. He was a poor Maronite monk, sent recently by the patriarch of Mount Libanus to replace the superior of the convent of Perkinik, who was dead. The pacha had, whilst passing on that day through this Catholic village, in the environs of Shivas, wished to make an exaction on this miserable convent, in which a few monks, covered with rags, lived by the labor of their hands, in the midst of a population as miserable as themselves. Djezzar, unable to extort the money which they had not, had carried off their superior with him, to detain him as a hostage until the sum demanded was paid. “The Christians of Libanus are exempt from them since the capitulation of the holy King Louis,” replied the unfortunate man, whose voice betrayed a violent emotion. “The Vice Roy Mehemet Ali regarded us as exempt.” “To hell with the old rascal!” “But the sultans themselves have recognized this law, your highness.” “There is no law here but my will,” replied the pacha. “What can I do to disarm thy severity,” blubbered out the old man, fixing his terrified look upon the lion crouched beside Djezzar, and of which he already considered himself the prey. “I have nothing in the world which thou canst take from me, but my life.” “Which I will do if thou dost not obey me at once.” “But, to acquit this impost—” “By the koran, who is now speaking to thee of imposts? Of Karadj and Miri I hold thee acquitted, thou and thine, forever, and thou art free, and shalt leave here carrying with thee more piastres than I demanded of thee; but before we separate thou must call down the curses of thy God on that dog there.” Then, turning to his other captive, he continued: “Yes, thou art about to die, and die accursed by a priest of thy religion. Inch Allah, wilt thou speak now?” With an heroic resignation Ferdinand, as his only reply, kneels and bows his head, devoted at once to the sabre and anathema, when he hears the old Cenobite of Libanus, raising his trembling hands above his head, say to him, in a soft voice, “If thou art a Christian, I bless thee, my son.” These holy words were scarcely pronounced when the old man fell, shot dead. BaÏla fell backward with a movement of horror, and the pacha, with unbounded impassibility, replaced his pistol in his belt. He interrupted this movement suddenly to restrain his lion by the mane, which, animated by the sight of blood, was about to spring with a roar on the body of the Maronite. “Carry off that corpse,” said Djezzar to the Mangrebian, “and leave us.” The dead body carried off, the Mangrebian gone, turning to the lion, which, with open mouth and thirsty and trembling lips, was uttering low growls and darting his brilliant glance toward the prey which was carried from him, Djezzar, restraining him by voice and gesture, said: “Be patient, HaÏder; thy part shalt soon come—thou shalt not lose by the exchange.” He then resumed his first position, and whilst the lion, restrained by him, continued its low roaring, with its eyes fixed on a large spot of blood on the carpet, and addressing BaÏla, without appearing to notice the emotions of terror by which she was agitated, said: “Yes, the giaour is for us three—for each a part. For me, his head; for the lion, his body; and for thee, my beautiful rose of Incour—my faithful, for thee, his heart. Has he not given thee that heart? Well, go take it.” BaÏla, undecided, troubled with horror, knew not what meaning to attach to his words. “Go, take it,” repeated Djezzar. “look, behold! powerless to defend himself, does he not appear himself to offer it to thee? Go, my soul, and if thy dagger is not enough for the work, use mine.” The odalisk bent toward him—“Thou art sporting with me, Ali—is it not so?” she murmured in his ear. “Dost thou not hear me, or art thou unwilling to understand me?” he replied, in a formidable tone. “This man dies—dies at once, by thy hand, or I shall believe thee to be his accomplice, and thy head shall fall before his. I swear it, by Mahomet and the four caliphs.” BaÏla, having to choose between inflicting or receiving death, felt an icy coldness in her veins; her forehead became lividly pale. “Thou hesitatest!” said the pacha. She carried a trembling hand to her dagger. “Take mine,” he said. The hand of BaÏla fell on the shoulder of Djezzar, and remained there as if paralyzed; her troubled eyes were raised furtively toward the young Frank, even on that very evening the object of her reveries of love; toward that young martyr, who by a word could destroy her, and who was about to die—to die for her, for being unwilling to pronounce that word. “Wilt thou obey?” said the executioner, with a gesture of impatient rage. The hand of BaÏla descended from the shoulder of Djezzar and played inquisitively among the arms which formed an arsenal at his belt. “Thou tremblest—thou art unwilling to do it? Thou lovest him then!” he exclaimed at last. “Yes, I love him,” replied the Mingrelian, and bounding suddenly forward she sheathed the blade of the yataghan full in the breast of the pacha. Though mortally wounded he still made an effort to seize his other pistol, but, at a gesture from BaÏla, the lion HaÏder, excited anew by the sight of the flowing blood, springing on his master did his part. Whilst Ferdinand, alarmed at what was passing, was closing his eyes, stretching out in terror his bound arms, the Mingrelian, endowed with wonderful presence of mind, gathered quickly into one corner of the saloon the light furniture and stuffs which were in it; she set them on fire, and seizing the young Frank, who was more dead than alive, by his bonds, led him toward a secret outlet, which conducted them to the sleeping chamber of the Abyssinian negress. The palace of Kizil-Ermak, which was of Turkish construction—that is, built of wood—was almost entirely consumed. On the next day the news mongers of Shivas endeavored to define the causes of this great event. Some said that the pacha had been strangled by his lion, and that, in the struggle between these two fierce beasts a torch was upset, which was the cause of the fire. Others, reasoning from the usage of the Twenty other versions were in circulation, almost all of which were repeated by the journals of Europe. Whilst in Shivas, Rocata, and other cities of the pachalick, they were thus indulging in explanations more or less truthful, BaÏla and Ferdinand, who had been enabled to escape in disguise from the palace, thanks to the confusion and the crowd, concealed themselves at first in the mountains to the south of Shivas, where some Kurdish brigands took them under their protection, exacting a very moderate ransom; they then found an asylum in a convent, then twenty others in the caverns or depths of the woods of Avanes, always, however, continuing their path steadily up the Red River. Having finally entered the dominions of the Shah of Persia, they returned to France in the train of the last embassy. In these wanderings Ferdinand lost some of his ardor for proselytising. He had traveled across mountains and valleys by day and by night, carrying temptation with him; BaÏla had really become to him the demon which he had fancied her. With the beautiful Mingrelian, his liberator, and the companion of his flight, walking at the same pace, in the same pathway, sleeping under the same shelter, cared for and watched over by her, it had been difficult for him to prevent his heart from beating under other inspirations than those of divine love. Ferdinand was twenty-five years old, and gratitude has great sway over a generous soul. Still in the first days of their common flight he had converted his schismatic companion, who, from her indifference to matters of religion, was easy to persuade; but it was said that in her turn she had soon converted him. What is positively known about it is, that the young man did not return to France alone, but that when his passport was exhibited at Marseilles, it provided for M. Ferdinand Laperre, consular cadet, traveling with his sister. My friend, the illustrious traveler, had already furnished me with all the details of the history I have recounted; but my curiosity was not yet fully satisfied. I wished to know the fate of the lovers after their arrival in France. I pressed him with questions on this point, and at first uselessly. We were breakfasting in the open air, on the lawn at the Butard, and my botanist, in an exultation difficult to describe, was fully occupied with a godsend he had found beneath the table we had used. It was a small plant with shaggy and lanceolate leaves, with flowers of pale yellow, marked with a violet spot at the base of their five petals. “Cistus guttatus! Helianthemum guttatum!” he exclaimed, with cries and gestures impossible to describe to any one who has not the heart of a botanist. “I thought it only existed in the mountains of Anti-Taurus, from whence I brought away so carefully an unique specimen. It was my finest vegetable conquest, and lo I find it here at the Butard at Luciennes, a suburb of Paris, beneath the table of a tavern. How can this be? Taurus and the Butard rivals in their productions? I am nonplussed! Do you believe in Asia Minor?” “But of Asia Minor?” said I, interrupting him with tenacity, with obstinacy; “you have related to me a story, the parties to which interest me strongly—I beseech you tell me more of them!” “They are perfectly well, I thank you,” he replied. “I do not inquire after their health, but their fate.” “Ah! what has become of them? Yes, I comprehend;” then looking at me with an air of mockery, and laughing loudly, he continued, “as they have, like us, a habit of chatting much when eating, they breakfast near by.” “How! What!” I exclaimed, “those people at the fountain of the priest?” “Truly. You now discover that you are no diviner. The alledged confectioner, the lemonade seller, is no other than my friend, Ferdinand Laperre, our Christian martyr; and his companion, by you so lightly qualified as a chambermaid, or a countess without prejudices, is BaÏla, the ex-favorite of Djezzar, the pacha of Shivas; BaÏla, the Mingrelian, the rose of Incour, the dove in the talons of the hawk.” After having inflicted this mockery upon me, which was doubtless well merited, my friend determined finally to finish the story. “Having arrived in Paris, events of a more vulgar nature than those which had signalized their sojourn in Shivas, proved the young Frenchman and the Mingrelian. Their money gave out. The ornaments, presents from Djezzar, which the odalisk had carried off in her flight, were, most of them, false. Pachas even are no longer to be trusted. Ferdinand must, above every thing, seek for a lucrative employment. He entered the royal printing office as a proof-reader of Oriental works. This resource being insufficient for the wants of the household, BaÏla sought also to be useful. Having never handled a needle, she could not become a seamstress or an embroideress, or a dressing-maid, or a female companion. She has a charming voice, and might, at a pinch, challenge all the Italian, French, and other singers, in warbling and trilling; but understanding none of the European languages, she could only sing Arabian mouals or Turkish gazels. Fortunately she dances also; and dancing is a language spoken and understood in all countries. She now figures in the ballet corps of the opera, where she is remarkable As my illustrious friend finished his recital, we saw Ferdinand Laperre and his handsome companion walking arm-in-arm toward the Butard. Now, better informed, I admired the rare beauty of the Mingrelian, and the wonderful and graceful suppleness of her figure. My eyes were directed curiously toward the lower extremities of the ex-consular cadet, to examine the form and dimensions of his feet, so as to verify one of the details of this history. I found them much as usual. He had doubtless confided to BaÏla the connection of friendship existing between him and my companion, for when we again met, she made him a slight wave of the hand, saying, “Bojour mocha.” “Salem-Alai-k,” replied my illustrious traveler. I saluted her profoundly.
|
| On his first arrival in Spain, Columbus asked for bread and water for his child, at the convent of La Rabida. |
V.—Columbus before the Council.
A silver lining to on ebon cloud;
A diamond flashing in Cimmerian cave;
A Lazarus, up-rising from the grave,
Bursting the cerements of the straitened shroud;
To all true men Columbus calls aloud.
He scans the past, with all its priestly lore,
But, Janus-like, beholds the future’s shore.
What glorious scenes, what teeming wonders crowd!
What though the church behold him with a frown!
What though the crosier point toward the rack,
When heresy is near, as to the track
Of precious gold the magic hazel leans?
He heedeth not the mitre, cowl, or gown;
A new creation on his spirit beams.
| Irving speaks of the ignorance of this body on all scientific subjects, causing the opinions of Columbus to be regarded as heretical. |
| Was I deceived, or did an ebon cloud Turn forth its silver lining on the night? Milton. |
VI.—Columbus at Court.
The crescent wanes within Granada’s walls;
The Moorish standard bows into the dust;
The hour hath come when proud Boabdil must
Yield to Castilian prowess. In the halls
Of the Alhambra hymns of praise and trust
Ascend to Heaven. On the glad ear there falls
A mighty shout of triumph. Each one calls
“Rejoice! the Cross hath conquered—ever just!”
Who cometh ’mid the throng? One who hath learned
To hope, when hope hath died within the breast;
Fainting, to hold right on, though scoffed and spurned—
Amid that jubilation he is blest.
Man’s eyes are holden, but proud Woman’s name
From that good hour shares the Discoverer’s fame.
VII.—The Embarkation.
Oh! sweet as is the voice of one most dear,
And balmy as the welcome breath of heaven
To the sick soul, long “cabined, cribbed, confined,”
Is the blessÉd wind, that on his high career
Now wafts the man to whose high trust is given
A world unknown, save to his mighty mind.
The last deep prayer is said—the mystic rite
Hath brought new strength unto his awe-struck heart,
He who long struggled with the diver’s might,
Who oft the waves of error did dispart,
And gasped for breath amid those shades of night,
Now with the aim unerring of a dart
Strikes for the pearl, bright gleaming to his eyes—
What mortal man e’er brought up such a prize!
VIII.—The Discovery.
The morning dawns, and to th’ enraptured eye
Appears a land, glorious beyond compare,
Save that the dreamer saw in vision fair,
When to the Holy City he drew nigh.
The long-drawn veil e’en now is rent in twain!
Well may he enter in, with grateful prayer,
And bathe, as ’twere in a diviner air.
Well may the tears flow down—a blessÉd rain!
And Spain’s broad banner proudly rise on high.
What scenes unknown—what beings from the sky,
May wait his coming, or his glory share,
And sing his praise in a celestial strain?
Methinks his soul might now depart in peace!
Well had it been had he then found release!
IX.—The Return to Spain.
Joy! for the Victor cometh! He hath won
A prouder triumph than the great of eld;
The tempest-tossed, within whose bosom swelled
Bright hopes, that changed to fears, now sees the sun
Shine on the fair and fertile land of Spain,
Which hails his name with proud enraptured strain.
All press to gaze on th’ anointed one,
Whom the Most High within his hand has held—
While peals again the long and loud refrain;
And for “Castile and Leon’s” chosen son,
A full-orbed glory shineth in the West.
Oh! if Life’s sands e’en then had ceased to run,
Bright visions of those “islands of the blest”
Had soothed him to his last and dreamless rest.
X.—Columbus in Chains.
In chains! in chains! homeward once more he came!
Life’s sky is veiled in midnight drear and dark;—
And this is his reward! They leave no mark
Those shameless fetters on his own fair fame.
The shaft may pierce his soul, but yet no shame
Bows that proud head; he is the victor still;
He triumphs in a stern, unconquered will.
His ’scutcheon fair was dimmed by breath of blame;
The stain is washed away by woman’s tears;
His patron-queen forbids his anxious fears—
Her gracious sweetness brings him to the dust.
The pledge of royal favor now he hears.—
But, oh! too long it waited—to be just;
While care and grief led on the lingering years.
XI.—Columbus proposes a new Crusade.
The evening sky is bright with blended hues;
A soft, mild radiance, borrowed from on high,
Seems, to our view, to bring e’en heaven nigh,
And its pure essence in our souls infuse.
Thus, to that noble heart, as from the sky,
There came a presence, in life’s slow decline;
He viewed it as a holy seal and sign—
The Cross must crown the city of the Jews!
Like the pure incense-flame he soars from earth;
In fancy sees the prophet’s page unroll,
And reads therein the presage of his birth,
The mighty mission of his single soul!
Life’s pathway bears for him a healing balm,
Which cheers his heart and nerves his fainting arm.
XII.—The Death of Columbus.
He cometh to the shore of that vast sea,
Whereon he never yet hath spread his sail;
His last, last voyage. Now every chart must fail,
Save that, our Father! he received of Thee!
With an unwavering trust he meets the wave,
Which bears him onward to the dread unknown;
From man’s injustice to that mighty Throne,
Supreme in power, Omnipotent to save.
Ah! ne’er from that far land shall he return!
His dust shall mingle with his mother-earth
In that fair isle to which his skill gave birth.
That mighty soul! where doth it “breathe and burn?”
What worlds hath it discerned beyond the tomb,
Which to our eyes are all enwrapped in gloom?
| “The shore Of that vast ocean we must sail so soon.” |
| The remains of Columbus were deposited in the convent of St. Francisco, but repeatedly removed, and, finally, on the 15th January, 1796, transferred, with almost regal pomp, to the island of Cuba. |
———
BY MISS L. VIRGINIA SMITH.
———
Go forth in beauty blushing to the one I love so well—
Let this dewy fragrance gushing to his spirit softly tell
How a secret, sweet revealing from a gentle kindred heart,
Far through his bosom stealing, comes to seek its nobler part.
Oh! there’s not a spell so glowing in this lovely world of ours,
As when Feeling’s tones are flowing through the voices of the flowers,
When Affection’s thoughts are wreathing in a murmured melody
Round their dewy petals breathing forth a music-mystery.
There are angel voices given in their delicate perfume,
Which will lead us up to Heaven where the fadeless roses bloom,
They have come unto us glowing with a beauty from the skies,
They are gifts of God’s bestowing, from a blessed Paradise.
Let a bright and lovely vision from our sunny Southern bowers,
A dream of joy elysian be awakened by these flowers,
For a wealth of bliss is filling all the loveliness they wear,
And their tiny leaves are thrilling with the messages they bear.
Where the velvet bud uncloses to the morning’s golden beam
Be thy life like summer roses floating o’er a summer stream,
And amid its sunny bowers may a gentle heart be thine,
To bring thee back the flowers which thou hast thrown o’er mine.
Yes—a gentle heart to bring them—leaves from out the distant past,
O’er thy path in life to fling them—all unfading to the last,
In itself the sweetest blossom which a “God of love” has given,
To be worn within thy bosom—and to bloom for aye in Heaven.
———
BY HENRY GILES.
———
The mere capacity in man of perceiving sound, renders the musical element a necessity in nature and in life. Discord, as a permanent state, is as inconceivable as a permanent state of chaos. The combinations of sounds, therefore, in the audible creation, if not all in detail musical, are pervaded by the musical element: No ear is insensible to the music of the air in the branches of a tree; to the groaning of it in the hollow cave—to its whistle in the grass, or to its spirit-voices in a stormy night around the dwelling. No ear is insensible to the trickling melody of the stream, to the deep song of the river—to the solemn anthem of the torrent, to the eternal harmonies of the ocean. Birds are peculiarly the musicians of the animal world. But how skillful and how rich their music is, we must learn, not from the printed page, but in the sunny grove. Though other creatures have not, as birds, the gift of song, yet are they not unmusical, and have their parts in the mighty orchestra of living nature. Musical sounds are grateful to the sense—and all beings that hear listen to them, enjoy them, and need them. In music man has a common medium of sympathy with his fellow animals. The charger prances to the sounds that swell the heart of his master—for he, too, has a heart which they can enter and dilate. A melody can soothe the lion’s rage. The elephant treads delighted to the measure of the band. The dog bays gladness to the shepherd’s flute. The cow stands in placid rapture while the milk-maid sings. Man is scarcely ever so rude as to be beyond the reach of music. It was a myth, containing as much truth as beauty, that feigned Apollo with his lyre as the early tamer of wild men. If music is the first influence which the race feels, it is also the first which the individual feels. The infant opens its intelligence and love to the mother’s song as much as to the mother’s face. The voice, even more than the look, is the primitive awakener of the intellect and heart. Every mother ought to sing. A song will outlive all sermons in the memory. Let memories that begin life have songs that last for life.
As a mere sensation, music has power. A little maid I have known, who would sit on her cricket by her father’s knee until he had read the whole of Christobel—of which she did not know the meaning of a line. It was melodious to her ear, and merely in its music there was fascination to her infant spirit. The songs which primitive people sing—in which they have their best social interchange, are frequently poor in diction and bald in sentiment. It is the music that gives the words a life; and this life can transfuse energetic inspiration into the meanest words. Early melodies are, of necessity, most simple. They are the instincts seeking to put themselves into measured sound—yet with little to fill the ear, and less to reach the mind. Nevertheless, they are good for the mind and pleasant to the ear. A rude musical sensation is of value; of how much more value is a refined musical sensation. But a musical sensation is of its very nature a refined one. It is among the purest of sensations. It may, indeed, be associated with coarse and base emotions. This, however, is not in itself. It is in the imagination or the word-music simply, as music presents nothing to the sense that is either coarse or base. The conception is from the mind to music, not from music to the mind. Speaking of music as a sensation, I speak relatively—for to man there is no music without soul. In music soul and sense both mingle—and become one in its inspired sound.
Yet the least part of music is the mere sensation. It is not on the ear but on the heart that its finest spirit dwells. There are the living chords which it puts in motion, and in whose vibration it has the echoes of its tones. The heart, after all, is the instrument with which the true musician has to deal. He must understand that from its lowest note to the top of its compass. The true test of music is the amount of feeling it contains. The true criterion of a love for music is the capacity to appreciate feeling in music. Music properly is the language of emotion. It is the language of the heart. Its grammar, its rhetoric, its eloquence, its oratory, is of the heart. The evidence of its power is in the calm or the quivering pulsation. Feeling in music is a memory, a sympathy, or an impulse. Nothing can recall with such vividness as music can a past emotion—a departed state of mind. Words are but the history of a by-gone thought—music is its presence. All our profoundest feelings are in their nature lyrical. Whatever most deeply affects us, we do, in some way, link to tune, or they are by tune awakened. The feelings sing of themselves, and make an orchestra of the brain. Persons utterly incapable of putting the simplest combination of sounds musically together, will make melody in their hearts of the reminiscences that strongly move them. And these will commonly be sad, as all is that is connected with the Past—sad, however, with various degrees of intensity—some, but calm regrets—others, dirges and requiems. Therefore it is that the most affecting melodies belong to the Past—to the past in the life of a man—to the past in the life of a nation. Such melodies come not from prosperity or power. They come from those who have missed a history, or whose history is over. Such melodies are voices of sadness—the yearnings over what might have been but was not—the regret for what has been but will never be again. And thus, too, it is with the most affecting eloquence. That which agitates the
Largely are men indebted even to the music of ballads and of songs. Difficult it would be to measure the good which such music has done to mankind. To multitudes in days of yore songs were the only literature, and by the bards they had all their learning. Songs were their history; their romance; their tragedy; their comedy; their fire-side eloquence, giving utterance and perpetuity to sacred affections, and to noble thoughts—and keeping alive a spirit of humanity in both the vassal and the lord. Men have not yet ceased to need such influences, nor have such influences lost their power. They still add purer brightness to the joys of the young—and are a solace to the memory of age. They are still bonds of a generous communion. They banish strangeness from the rich man’s hall: they add refinement to the rich man’s banquet: they are joy in the poor man’s holyday, they express lovingness in the poor man’s feast. What so aids beneficent nature as such music does, to remove barbarism and to inspire kindness? How dear amidst all the toils of earth are the songs which were music to our infant ears—the songs of our hearth and of our home—the songs which were our childhood’s spells, a blessedness upon our mother’s lips, a rapture and delight! What solaces the exile, while it saddens him? What is it that from the ends of ocean turns him with wistful imagination to the star which overhangs his father-land? What is it that brings the tear to his eye, and the memory of other days, and the vision in the far-off west; that annihilates years and distance, and gives him back his country, and gives him back his youth? Song—inspired song—domestic song—national song—song that carries ideal enthusiasm into rudest places—with many a tale of marvel and magnanimity—of heroism in the soldier, and sanctity in the saint—of constancy in love, and of bravery in war.
Man is a social being. Unselfish society is the harmony of humanity: loving interchange is the music of life; the music which lifts the attuned soul above discordant passions and petty cares—and song is the voice in which that music breathes. These are the strains that have memories in them of all that true souls deem worthy of life or death—the purities of their homes, the sacredness of their altars, the hopes of their posterity—all for which martyrs suffer—all for which patriots bleed—all that give millions a single wish and a single will—all that make the cry of liberty as the trump of judgment, and the swords of freemen as the bolts of heaven. Glorious names, and glorious deeds, and honorable feelings, are always allied to the lyric spirit. The independence of a country may seem to be utterly lost: the ruin of a nation may appear decided: indeed,
Music is not exhausted in expressing feeling, though some persons are so constituted as not beyond this to understand or to enjoy it. But music of more profound combination is not, on this account, without meaning and without value. The higher forms of music, like the higher forms of poetry, must, of course, if tested by mere instinct, seem remote and complicated. Music, too, is susceptible of more multiplied combinations than poetry; and, without the restraints of arbitrary signs and definite ideas, can expatiate in the region of pure imagination. In the true sense of the word, it is infinite. Not bound to form, not bound to color, not bound to speech, it is as unlimited as the capacity of the soul to exist in undefinable states of emotional being. And into these it can throw the soul with inconceivable rapidity of change. The great master of even a single instrument appears, indeed, a wizard. He seems, in truth, to be the only artist to whom the designation of wizard can with any correctness be applied. Men of other genius may be creators, but the musician is the wizard. His instrument is a talisman. It is full of conjurations—out from it he draws his witchery; he puts his spell upon all around him; he chains them in the slavery of delight; and he is the only despot that rules over willing captives. No other power on the imagination is so complete—so uncontrollable. The fiction or the poem you can lay aside; the picture or statue moves you but calmly; the actor is at the mercy of an accident; the orator may fail, by reason of your opposition to his sentiments or opposition to his person; but the musician draws you from every thing which can counteract his charm, and once within his circle you have no escape from his power. Emotional conceptions—solemn, gay, pathetic, impassioned—are as souls in all his sounds. But in the case of an executive musician, the art seems incarnate in the artist. We associate the personality of the artist with the effects of his art. We are not yet within the limitless domain of imaginative music. The great instrumentalist is, indeed, a wizard—a cunning necromancer; but he is before us while he works his spells, and though we cannot resist the enchanter we behold him. In a great composer there is a higher potency, and it is one that is not seen. The action of his spirit on our spirits, though exercised by means of intermediate agents, is yet that of an invisible incantation. The great composer is an imperial magician—the sovereign of genii and the master of wizards. He is a Prospero, and Music is his Enchanted Island. The creative musician, and the region in which he dwells, can have no analogy more correct than that presented to us in Shakspeare’s extraordinary play of “The Tempest.” There we have the loud-resounding sea; at one moment the sun bright in the clear sky, at another hidden by the mist or breaking through the blood-red cloud; now the heavens are full of stars, and in an instant they are thick with gloom; the elements gather into masses, they clash together, and the thunder and the waves fill up the chorus. Then the day dawns softly, and the morning breaks into summer songs. Caves are there and pleasant dells; solitudes are there, dark and lonely; spots beautiful as well as terrible; barren and blasted heaths, where goblins hold their revels; and labyrinthian walks, where sweet-hearts, not unwilling, lose themselves and linger. The earth, the atmosphere, shore, stream, grove, are filled with preternatural movements, with sweet voices and strange sounds. There are Ariel-melodies, there are Caliban groanings; there are the murmurings of manly passions, and the whisperings of maiden-love; there are
And of Mozart! What shall we say of him—of Mozart, less only than Beethoven in those strains which linger amidst remote associations, but versatile beyond most composers in the romance and reality of the comic and the tragic in actual life. If ever a genius lived with which all its work was play, that genius was the genius of Mozart. Constantly he made the merest play of genius. At ten years old he could astonish the most critical of musical audiences in Paris, and before their rapture had approached within many
Music, it is sometimes said, is not an intellectual art. What does this mean? Does it mean that music employs no intellect in the artist, and excites none in the hearer? The assertion in both cases is untrue. Music, as a study, must, I think, be profoundly intellectual. In the oldest universities it has always had a place among the abstract sciences. But, considered as an enjoyment—considered in relation to the hearer—we should first need to settle what we understand by an intellectual enjoyment. To work a problem in algebra, or to examine a question of theology, may be each an intellectual pleasure; but the pleasure, it is manifest, is, in each case very different. These both, it is true, agree in taxing the reasoning faculty; but is nothing intellectual but that which formally taxes this faculty? Is nothing intellectual but that which involves syllogism—but that which implies demonstration or induction? Prayer is not intellectual, if we identify intellectuality with logic; and if we do this, it is not intellectual to feel the merits of a picture, but peculiarly so to understand the proportions of its frame. According to such a theory, it is intellectual to analyze with Aristotle, but it is not so to burn and to soar with Plato. To speculate with Jeremy Bentham is intellectual, but it is not so to be enraptured by the divine song of Milton. Assertions which lead to such conclusions must be radically false. Whatever puts man’s spiritual powers into action, is intellectual. The kind of action engaged will, of course, be ever according to the subject and the object. The intellectuality of a statesman is not that of a bard; the intellectuality which concocts an act of parliament, is not that which composes a “Song of the Bell.” Music is neither inductive nor raciotionative. It is an art; that is, it is an inward law realised in outward fact. Such is all art. In this music agrees with all arts, for all arts are but the outward realities of inward laws. But some of these are for utility, others for delight. Music is of those arts which spring from the desire for enjoyment and gratify it. It bears the soul away into the region of the infinite, and moves it with conceptions of exhaustless possibilities of beauty. If ideas, feelings, imaginations, are intellectual, then is music; if that which can excite, combine, modify, elevate—memories, feelings, imagination—is intellectual, then music is intellectual.
An art which, like music, is the offspring of passion and emotion, could not but take a dramatic form. The lyrical drama, secular and sacred, civilized humanity could not but produce. Nothing is more natural than that the gayety and grief of the heart should seek the intense and emphatic expression which music can afford. It would, indeed, be extraordinary if a creature like man—so covetous of excitement, so desirous of varying his sensations—did not press into his service, wherever it could be used, an art which has no other equal to it for excitement and variety. The opera, both comic and tragic, is a genuine production of this desire. The burlesque, the odd, the merry, the absurd, and, still more, pity, love, jealousy, vengeance, despair, have their music in the rudest states of society; it is only in the order of things that they should in cultivated states of society have a cultivated music. Such music, as a matter of course, would connect itself with a story, a plot, with incident, character, scenery, costume, and catastrophe. It would thus become dramatic. Thus it has become; and as such, it has a range as ample as that of human life, as deep as human passions, as versatile as the human fancy and the human will. Hence we have the opera. The opera is that form which the drama assumed among a people musically organized—among a people whose love of music was, therefore, intense, constitutional and expansive. But no art remains within the limits of its native space, and the opera is now as extensive as civilization; as extensive, certainly, as modern civilization. The ballad is the first comedy or tragedy. There are germs in the words of the ballet for the genius of Shakspeare—there are germs in the air of it for the genius of Rossini. Many object to the opera. First, they say, it is expensive. All our amusements are expensive—expensive as they ought not to be—expensive as they would not be with a higher and a purer social culture. Artistic amusements are expensive, especially, by the want of taste, which hinders the many from sharing in them—by the want of taste, which makes expense itself distinction. True taste coincides with true feeling; true feeling delights in beauty, as it delights in goodness, for its own sake; and true feeling being wide as nature and humanity, the more widely its delight is shared the greater its own enjoyment. Were there among the people a diffusive taste for elevated
The sacred lyrical drama, or oratorio, seems to be a remnant of the old mysteries. In those old mysteries a scriptural subject was exhibited to the people in a theatrical manner. The scriptural subject is all that remains of the old mystery in the modern oratorio. Stage, scenery, costume, have departed, and music takes their place. Music, therefore, in the oratorio, must, by its own power, indicate character, sentiment, passion; it must unite grandeur and diversity with unity of spirit; it must unite them with unity of expression. Yet even the oratorio has not escaped objection. But, if it has been wrongly attacked, it has been as unwisely defended. What, it is triumphantly asked, can inspire deeper devotion, more fervent piety, than the sacred composition of Handel? The mistake of the artiste on this side of the question, has its only measure in the mistake of the ascetic on the other. The strains, even of Handel, may be in unison with the highest and purest aspirations of the mind; but, in his divinest dramas, they are not of themselves—devotion. But, if high music confers a pleasure that harmonizes with the mind’s best faculties; if it prepares the mind’s best faculties for their best exercise; if by lifting the mind up into the sphere of great emotions from that of mean ones; if by withdrawing it from attention to selfish desires, it carries it into lofty thought, music exercises for the mind, even in the temple, a sacred power, though its power should yet only be artistic. No mind, for instance, can be in a low or degraded condition, while it is in sympathy with the pure and delectable genius of Haydn. No mind can have communed with him through his oratorio of the “Creation,” can have drunk in its liquid melodies—its gladdening hymns of praise—its soft and heart-soothing airs—its songs, which seem to sparkle with the light which they celebrate—with the dew that bathed first the flowers of Paradise—with its anthems of holy exultation, such as the sons of God might have shouted—with the whole breathing in every part as it does—with the young soul of goodness and beauty—no mind, I say, can be in such communion, and for the time be otherwise than transported beyond all that can belittle or defile. But Handel excites a profounder sentiment. He is not so cheerful as Haydn. He could not be; for this he is too massive and austere. He does not, like Haydn, lead the mind out to nature, he turns it in upon itself. Not loveliness, but mysteries make the spirit of his music. We find in Haydn the picturesqueness and the buoyancy of the Catholic worship; in Handel, the sombre, the inquiring, the meditative thoughtfulness of the Protestant faith. By Haydn’s “Creation” we are charmed and elated; by Handel’s “Messiah” we are moved with an overcoming sense of awe and power. Though nothing can surpass the sweetness of Handel’s melodies, yet interspersed amidst such masses of harmony, they seem like hymns amidst the billows of the ocean, or songs among the valleys of the Alps. Handel’s genius was made for a subject that placed him in the presence of eternity and the universe. His moods and movements are too vast for the moods and movements of common interests or the common heart. They require the spaces of the worlds. They require interests coincident with man’s destiny, and with man’s duration. Though Handel’s airs in the “Messiah” are of sweetest and gentlest melody, they have majesty in their sweetness and their gentleness. We can associate them with no event lower than that with which they are connected. In such tones we can conceive the Saviour’s birth celebrated in the song of angels; in such tones we can fancy the Redeemer welcomed in hosannas by those who ignorantly dragged him afterward to Calvary. And then the plaintiveness of Handel in the “Messiah,” has its true horizon only in that which girds the immortal. It is not simply plaintive, it is mysteriously awful. It is not a grief for earthly man, it is a grief for him who bore the griefs of all men—for Him who carried our sorrows—who was wounded for our transgressions—who was bruised for our iniquities, who was oppressed and afflicted, and who bore the chastisement of our peace. It is not a grief in which any common spirit dare complain. It is fit only for Him who had sorrows to which no man’s sorrows were like. It does not cause us to pity, but to tremble. It does not move us to weeping, because
The grandest office of music, however, is that in which, no doubt, it originated—that in which, early, it had its first culture; in which, latest, it has its best—I mean its office in religion. In the sanctuary it was born, and in the service of God it arose with a sublimity with which it could never have been inspired in the service of pleasure. More assimilated than any other art to the spiritual nature of man, it affords a medium of expression the most congenial to that nature. Compared with tones that breathe out from a profound, a spiritually musical soul, how poor is any allegory which painting can present, or that symbol can indicate. The soul is invisible; its emotions admit no more than itself of shape or limitation. The religious emotions cannot always have even verbal utterance. They often seek an utterance yet nearer to the infinite; and such they find in music. You cannot delineate a feeling—at most you can but suggest it by delineation. But in music you can by intonation directly give the feeling. Thus related to the unseen soul, music is a voice for faith, which is itself the realization of things not seen. And waiting as the soul is amidst troubles and toils, looking upward from the earth, and onward out of time, for a better world or a purer life, in its believing and glad expectancy, music is the voice of its hope. In the depression and despondency of conviction; in the struggles of repentance; in the consolations and rejoicing of forgiveness; in the wordless calm of internal peace, music answers to the mood, and soothingly breaks the dumbness of the heart. For every charity that can sanctify and bless humanity, music has its sacred measures; and well does goodness merit the richest harmony of sound, that is itself the richest harmony of heaven. Sorrow, also, has its consecrated melody. The wounded spirit and the broken heart are attempered and assuaged by the murmurings of divine song. A plaintive hymn soothes the departing soul. It mingles with weeping in the house of death. It befits the solemn ritual of the grave. The last supper was closed with a hymn, and many a martyr for Him who went from that supper to his agony, made their torture jubilant in songs of praise.
An essay equal to the subject on the vicissitudes and varieties of sacred music, would be one of the most interesting passages in the history of art. In their long wanderings to the land of promise, sacred music was among the hosts of Israel; and in that great temple of nature, floored by the desert, and roofed by the sky, they chanted the song of Miriam and of Moses. It was in their Sabbath meetings—it resounded with the rejoicings of their feasts, and with the gladness of their jubilees. When Solomon built a house to the Lord, it was consecrated with cymbals, and psalteries, and harps, with the sounds of trumpets, and the swell of voices. As long as the temple stood, music hallowed its services; and that music must have been supremely grand which suited the divine poetry of the inspired and kingly lyrist. Israel was scattered—the temple was no more. Silence and desolation dwelt in the place of the sanctuary. Zion heard no longer the anthems of her Levites. A new word that was spoken first in Jerusalem had gone forth among the nations; and that too had its music. At first it was a whisper among the
Music is an essential element in social life and social culture, and our times have few better movements than the increasing introduction of vocal music into popular education. The higher kinds of music might be included in all the higher kinds of education for men as well as for women. Milton so teaches in his great tractate; and so the Greeks practiced, in whose training no faculty was wasted or overlooked. The music which is now most wanted, however, is music for the common heart.
We have for the cultivated, music of rare powers and in great abundance; but we need a music for the people—and no music can be music for the people, but that which answers to simple and direct emotion. It is a most important need. The music of the opera, granting it were ever so pure, and had no resistance to encounter, can be had only in cities, and can never reach the scattered masses of the population. The music of the oratorio must have a limitation even still more restricted. Popular music must be domestic, social music. We have it not; therefore we are a silent people, and our writings have no lyrical inspirations. The finer and deeper elements of popular life have no true medium of exposition. These subtle, delicate, wordless idealities of the soul, which the rudest have, are without music; that alone, which can take them from the confining bosom, and give them to the vital air. Our rural life is gladdened by no song—is the subject of no song; and our social life is almost as silent as the rural. National music we have none: and our political songs are, generally, a shame to
’Neath their green and cool cathedrals,
In the garden lilies bloom,
Casting on the fresh spring zephyr
Peal on peal of sweet perfume;
Often have I, pausing near them
When the sunset flushed the sky,
Seen the coral bells vibrating
With their fragrant harmony.
But within my quiet dwelling
I have now a lily fair,
Whose young spirit’s sweet spring budding
Watch I with unfailing care.
God, in placing her beside me,
Made my being most complete,
And my heart keeps time forever
With the music of her feet.
I remember not whilst gazing
In her earnest eyes of blue,
That the earth holds aught of sorrow,
Aught less innocent and true.
And the restlessness and longing
Wakened by the cares of day,
With the burden and the tumult,
In her presence fall away.
Shield my Lily, Holy Father!
Shield her from the whirlwind’s might,
But protracted sunshine temper
With a soft and starry night;
’Neath the burning sun of summer
Scorched and shrunk the spring flower lies,
Human hearts contract when strangers
Long to clouds and tearful eyes.
Give her purpose strong and holy,
Faith and self-devotion high;
These Life’s common by-ways brighten,
Every hope intensify.
Teach her all the brave endurance
That the sons of earth require;
May she with a patient labor
To the great and good aspire.
Should some mighty grief oppress her
Heavier than she can bear,
Oh! sustain her by Thy presence,
Hear and answer Thou her prayer.
And whene’er the storms of winter
Round my precious Lily reign,
To a fairer clime transplant her
There to live and bloom again.
M. G. H.
———
BY R. H. STODDARD.
———
As one who walks with eyes upon the ground,
Arrested slow beside a dusty mound,
Where swarms of ants are bustling in the sand,
As if they had a Universe on hand,
Surveys their nothings with a quiet smile,
And stops to muse and meditate a while—
Even so the sage with philosophic mind
Looks down upon the earth and all mankind!
And yet withal this little orb is grand,
With its circumference of sea and land:
The Ocean girds it with a belt immense,
Heaving in billowy magnificence
Round Continents with all their subject lands,
A thousand sceptres in their giant hands!—
And mountains loom majestical on high,
And lift their foreheads in the blank of sky,
Bathed in its brightness, while their robes of snow
Trail o’er the tallest pines, and far below,
Poured from their urns, the streams divide the plain
And bear their tributes to the sounding main.
And the round hills and verdant solitudes
That slumber in the heart of trackless woods;
The broad champain, the hollow vale and mead,
And the green pastures where the cattle feed
Deep in the daisies; and the silver brooks,
And the long winding lanes, and grassy nooks,
All, all, are clothed in loveliness and light,
The various beauty of the day and night,
While the great Earth, as when its flight begun,
Wheels like a mighty eagle round the Sun!
Yes! Earth is beautiful in every phase,
Covered with glory and perpetual bays;—
What pomps and pageants fill the glowing east,
Hung like a palace on a bridal feast,
When clouds of purple standards are unrolled,
And morning lifts its diadem of gold!
What streams of radiance flood the azure field,
When the Noon marches with his shining shield
And scales the eternal steep of Heaven alone,
And looks o’er Nature from his burning throne!
What dreamy softness in the melting west
When Evening sinks in holiness to rest,
And the young crescent moon, an argent
Drifts up the starry ocean of the dark!
And how sublime the black tempestuous cloud,
Where thunders shout their prophecies aloud
With tongues of fire, that flash from sphere to sphere,
While congregated nations quake in fear!
How glorious all! how changeless and serene
Where generations vanish from the scene.
Yet what is Earth in Nature’s wondrous whole,
Which mirrors dimly its Creative Soul?
Less than ant-hill, even the smallest one,
Whose gates thrown back exclude the summer sun.
A single grain of sand from out the sea,
The deep of Chaos and Eternity,
Whose bubbles are The Ages dim and vast,
Melting into the dark abysmal Past!
A mote in the cerulean space of air,
One of the innumerous myriads floating there,
Wafted of old from God’s eternal seat,
Where stars and suns lie thick as dust around his feet!
———
BY MRS. I. W. MERCUR.
———
“Her friends had one after one departed, and in her mind continually rang the monotonous words, alone, alone!”
I am alone, oh God! alone—alone!
Yet thousands round me crowd life’s busy mart,
Whose ceaseless hum is as a deathless moan
Forever falling on my weary heart—
I am alone!
I am alone—around me press the gay,
The light of heart, they who have never known
The blight of sorrow, or the sure decay
Of every joy the spirit here has known—
I am alone!
I am alone—yet memory oft doth bring
Back the sweet visions of life’s sunny day,
Of friends unchanged, who in my early spring
With smiles of love illumed my joyous way—
I am alone!
I am alone—alas! stern death has won
Hearts that I cherished, and fond eyes of light;
Kind tones are hushed, and brows I gazed upon
In life’s full glory greet no more my sight—
I am alone!
Alone—alone!—for unto me no more
The living turn with thought or feeling’s flow.
And joy for me I feel on earth is o’er—
I never more shall love or friendship know—
I am alone!
Alone and weary, yet I strive to wear
Ever a look of calm, serene repose,
And smiling seek to hide each galling care
And burning sorrow which my spirit knows—
I am alone!
I am alone—and far, oh! far away
From where my home of happy childhood lies,
From scenes beloved where fountains murmuring play
And smile beneath my own, my native skies—
I am alone!
Alone—alone!—and my crushed heart doth bear
Cold and neglect from those for whom I pour
My full soul forth—whose images I wear
Forever shrined in memory’s sacred store—
I am alone!
I am alone, but in my fevered dreams
Friends throng around me—voices loved I hear.
Light once again upon my pathway beams,
But I awake!—no forms beloved are near—
I am alone!
Alone—alone!—no more the star I see
Of Hope which once illumed my cloudless sky.
And naught is left on this wide earth to me,
Save but to look on Nature’s face and die—
I am alone!
———
BY J. M. LEGARE.
———
(Continued from page 148.)
| Spain, and Tercera. | } |
| AD. 1583. | } |
Meanwhile, the Marquis of Santa-Cruz with a hundred sail was steering from Lisbon to Tercera, bent upon reaching that island before the French fleet, and moreover settling it in his own mind to hang the Viceroy de Torrevedros, (who was at that moment taking wine with De Chaste to their mutual longevity,) for sticking to the landless and luckless King Anthony of Portugal, in preference to his own master Philip the Second, sometimes called the Prudent, but by the Protestants, whom he roasted and otherwise ill-treated, the Demon of the South.
SeÑor Inique’s vessel was the Doblon, and our acquaintance Don Pedro’s the Pez-de-mar, but on the day designated, the two maÎtres-de-camp dined together in the Doblon, besides whom were at table some half dozen cavaliers of more or less note. At the close of the meal, Sir Pedro said—
“Gentlemen all, this is a day I never let pass without thought of the brave man whose head fell ten years ago this noon, at Brussels. I ask a pater of the company here present for the rest of his soul.”
“If you mean Count Egmont,” answered one, “there never was truer knight. I was near him at the time of his death, and believe him to have been as loyal as you or I.”
“A doubtful comparison,” cried another, laughing, “since you question the king’s justice.”
“By no means,” returned the Constable of Castile. “The king acknowledged as much himself. I was present when the news arrived, and he said with his usual smile, ‘These two salmon heads are better off than three-score heads of frogs!’”
“Yes, and the French ambassador wrote to court, ‘I have seen a head fall which has twice made France quake.’”
“Well,” said the constable, “I was but a stripling at the time, but I well remember how the count led his lances at St. Quentin. There was not a—hush! what’s that?” he stopped suddenly and asked.
“What?” demanded most of his audience, who had heard nothing but the breaking of Don Pedro’s glass upset by his elbow. Perhaps Don Pedro, sitting next, was the only other who heard the smothered cry from a partition behind their host, for Don Inique’s face was as usual inflexible as a mask, and Padilh, turning to the constable, said—
“I interrupted you. You were saying?”
“Count Egmont rode so gallantly, there was not a man in the army had seen the like before; it was a ballad of the campeador acted to the life. Even the king, when he came down from the Escurial, praised his bravery, and afterward presented him a sword, upon which was engraved ‘St. Quentin.’”
The constable may have repeated the last word to satisfy a doubt in his mind, but if so he was disappointed in his purpose, for no response came from the partition, although a momentary silence followed the close of the sentence. I mention this little incident because it was the prelude to a singular conversation between the two camp-masters, the next morning, on board the Pez-de-mar.
“I cannot be mistaken, Padilh,” said the other, in his starched way. “You heard the exclamation yesterday at table, and endeavored to drown it. You saved me, sir, a pang—for which I am grateful,” he added, with the air of a man compelled to acknowledge a service.
“I did my best and quickest to forestall curiosity,” answered Sir Pedro kindly. “The Constable of Castile is the only gentleman in the fleet who suspects the presence of your—your—son. And that only since yesterday; he told me as much last evening. For your precautions in Portugal have been effectual in keeping a knowledge of the matter even from most of our comrades at St. Quentin.”
“A curse fall on the name,” muttered Inique bitterly. “It is the only touchstone his memory has, and at its utterance nothing but force can stay his screams. God pity me: I act it all over in mind whenever the boy cries out as he did on the field.”
Padilh knew his associate well enough to disguise what
“Thus, seÑor, your secret is safe still; for as you may readily believe, the constable got as little information from my tongue as by his own at table.”
“Do you think he pronounced the name with design?” cried the maÎtre-de-camp, his brows contracting. “If I—”
“No,” returned honest Don Pedro decidedly, “the constable is a man of worth, and would pry into no one’s affairs systematically. But his chief defect is a tendency to say or do whatever comes into his head, and that he falls into difficulty less often is perhaps owing more to luck than consideration on his part. Don’t you remember hearing the answer he made his Holiness, while a mere lad?”
“No,” absently.
“Why,” persisted the knight, regardless of the doubtful attention of his auditor, and moved by a good-natured wish to lead away from the painful topic, “the brusquerie of the whole affair made it the talk at court; where were you that you failed to hear it? The constable was sent to congratulate his Holiness on his accession to St. Peter’s chair, but the Pope taking umbrage at the youth of the ambassador, exclaimed aloud—‘What! has the King of Spain no men in his dominions, that he sends us a
After a pause Inique said—(the capernian episode was evidently lost upon him)—
“I have no need of any mortal’s sympathy, Padilh, and the man that pities me openly must answer to my sword for it. You have done neither to my knowledge, yet you were not far off when I struck the boy,” (he dropped his voice here, as a weight on the conscience will make people do.) “If you choose to listen, the secret motives of a man who for fifteen years has had no thought for his second child, until moved to avenge her, because the first, an idiot, intervened, may startle your ears, Pedro Padilh.”
“The recital may ease your breast,” said our knight in some surprise.
“There is no likelihood of what you say,” answered Don Augustino, a shade of scorn crossing his moody face, “and I wish it otherwise. Why I choose you, a companion in arms, for confessor, you will learn in time; perhaps your long friendship and yesterday’s prompt action have their influence. These things you witnessed or know; the mad blows, their result, the measures I have taken to be constantly within reach of his voice? Why? have you, has any one, hesitated to give some cloak, some color, to so singular a course?”
Each of these interrogatories, rapidly put, Sir Pedro answered in turn by a slight token of assent; he was about to reply more fully to the last, when the other stopped him with a gesture.
“Never mind. I know what is said. That I hide away the living reminder of my crime from the world; that I am remorseful, or doing penance, or else crazed. Let them prate. Sir Pedro, by all the saints, the boy I struck is not my son!”
“Poor fellow!” thought the knight, compassionately; “his last plea is the right one.”
“Don Pedro Padilh, there was a man of good birth and great wealth, but little or no character, or care for character, whom I saved once from being hanged. He was grateful, after his headlong fashion, for the service, and in the end proposed to unite our infant children; he had one son, and I a son and daughter; and consolidate our joint estates. At first my soul revolted at the suggestion; an union between my own offspring and that of a redeemed felon, appeared to me monstrous. But while I debated the matter, difficulties softened. I knew better than any one the smallness of my fortune, which extravagance had reduced to the tatters of its former amplitude; but of this I said nothing, and the papers were signed in due form. That day was the last I could touch my breast proudly, and say, ‘Here is the abode of honor.’”
“And this is the soldier whose honor is held up to the world as a pattern!” Padilh mused.
“Still the degradation of such connection preyed upon my mind. I wanted the money to perpetuate the wealth of my house; but how be rid of the bad blood? And about this time my friend went abroad, leaving his boy in my charge. I confronted the temptation only to be overcome in the end; sent away my servants, and removing to the mountains chose others; and when these were assembled, I, myself, took occasion to call the names of the infants before them, that there might be no mistake—no mistake, you understand—as names may from what they have been. My own boy I called—”
“Speak, Sir Augustino!” ejaculated Padilh, sharply.
“Hilo de Ladron; the other—”
“Man, man!” cried the knight, rising and standing over against the speaker, “You have made an idiot of and imprison my own kin—the son of my half-brother. What reparation can you make?”
“Reparation! Look here, at these premature seams and wrinkles, grizzled hair and beard. Has that unsteady hand nothing to show of an iron temper shattered by sorrow?”
“Sir, your selfish sorrow blinds you. These are signs of retribution on you, not of reparation to the party injured. Don Augustino, I joined this expedition with the sole purpose of saving from ruin, if I might, a lad whom I despise for his vices; and do you think I will leave longer at your mercy the real Hilo, whom, in place of condemning, I can only pity.”
“That rests with me,” returned the maÎtre-de-camp, with a slight sneer. “But listen to me, Don Pedro; you judge my case before it is stated.”
“Finish, sir,” answered Padilh, moodily, resuming his seat; “and heaven grant your conscience proves clearer than it seems to me likely to do.”
Inique, without comment, took up the word where the interruption occurred.
“My reasoning took this shape. My daughter is a puny thing—there is no probability of her surviving to even girlhood. What does it matter if the baby is betrothed to her brother? As for De Ladron, if he ever returns from the new world, how is he to recognize his boy, grown out of remembrance, if the child does not die—he seems pining away rapidly—before that time. Hernan Ladron I never saw again; but his infant grew strong and healthy in our change of climate, and this vexed me hourly. I had felt sure the weakly thing could not live, or the exchange would not have been made; and now, he was growing up a quiet, mild boy—pah! it made me sick to think he believed himself my son, as did all the world beside. The sense of this contrast pushed from my brain all other concern. I cursed the grasping folly which had tempted me to barter a gallant fellow, like my own boy, for an estate and this whey-faced child. However, he should go to war with me, and be cured of his girlishness. But when, at St. Quentin, he fled before the first charge of the French, cowering at my stirrup, I was frantic with rage and shame. I had no love for the boy; his very existence was a daily threat of exposure, and I beat him, as you all saw, with my sword hilt,
“Don Augustino, you would have been less dishonored by confessing your dishonor,” cried our knight, here. “You proved yourself, in the sight of Heaven, a greater coward than your reputed son.”
“Sir,” replied the other, hotly, flushing red, “you forget I am your equal in point of rank, if not virtue, and wear a sword. You tax my forbearance heavily.”
“A horse in meadow neighs louder than a horse under saddle,” answered Padilh. “Overlook the reproach, Don Augustino, and pass on.”
“I set some value on your friendship, and will not consent to lose it for a hard word honestly spoken,” Inique said, not very contentedly.
“I altered my mind, but not altogether. I resolved not a fraction of his income should be used in the service of me or mine, and reduced the expenses of my household accordingly. Hilo, my real son, left to his own guidance at home, had become a ruinous spendthrift, and openly revolted at any curtailment of what he considered his rights. But against his wickedness I had, as a set off, the patience and affection of the supposititious son; the very qualities I had before despised now touched me most—his mildness of face and speech, and trustfulness in my protection—for the whole past seemed wiped out of his remembrance, and but a single word was capable of recalling any portion of it—the word the Constable of Castile spoke yesterday at table. Perhaps the cries and sounds of battle might recall my shame and his sorrow, but my care has hitherto proved successful in keeping such from his ears.”
“Yet there seems to me in all this, Don Augustino, no good reason for your becoming the boy’s jailor,” said Sir Pedro.
“Stay. If it was hard to resolve on publishing my infamy with my own mouth, was it easy to bear the thought that some day it must be realised in the growing likeness of my prisoner to his true father, Ladron? I watched this fast maturing resemblance with the anguish of one seeing his death warrant signed, understanding to the full how the crime which my voluntary confession might have softened in the eyes of the world, would grow in odium as time elapsed. I fancied it was only needful for you, or any one familiar with the father’s face, to catch a glimpse of the son’s to detect my secret; and I kept the sole evidence near my person, not because it was the safest, but the least harassing course it was possible to pursue.”
“The least harassing, Don Augustino,” the knight said, “would have been to acknowledge your criminality at first, and have made restitution openly as you did in private. Better do so now than never.”
“What! when the son of a felon in yonder ship must be disowned only to substitute a felon himself! No, sir; the most I can do is what I now purpose—to find this reckless youth and turn him from his vicious life by every means but that you propose. Only in the last extremity will I show him to be as penniless in the future as now, and that the girl he has exhausted his vileness to dishonor is his sister, and I the wretched father of both.”
“And only in such extremity will your words have weight with Hilo de Ladron, as I suppose, for your sake, he must yet be called, although I grudge him the name. But it seems to me, Don Augustino Inique, you prate more of dishonor than a man should who has committed felony to his own conscience and in God’s sight; and that the honor you esteem so highly is nothing better than the declamation of those who surround you.”
“A truce to your sarcasms,” cried Inique, pale with anger. “I am not here, Padilh, to listen to a sermon or be ordered a penance. If you will help me in this affair by your intervention, you will not find me ungrateful; and I know enough of my own nature, as you might, to feel assured that, left to my own resources, I may do that in the heat of passion which cannot be undone. What! am I so fallen in your eyes that you cannot afford me the time and occasion I need for amendment, or distrust my best designs?”
“No, by St. Jago,” cried our generous don, “that I will not, Inique. I have done you some wrong in thought, perhaps, but I will make amends by assisting you where I may with proper regard to my own views and affections. But, you understand, I annex a condition—the true Hilo must pass from your care into mine as soon as we effect a landing. As his nearest relative, I have a higher right to the charge of his person than the—than yourself, Don Augustino.”
“Don Pedro,” answered Inique, slowly, after a pause, “you have justice on your side, and I will not oppose the transfer if you insist. But I beg you earnestly to consider that I, from hating, have come to love the youth better—yes, better than my own children; and until the present adjustment succeeds or fails, you may do worse than leave him in my keeping, as before—only that the doors of his prison, as you seemed but now to consider it, are open to you from this hour. I pledge you my word, at all hazard or pain, to restore him to you at the close of this expedition.”
“Well, let it be so,” replied Don Pedro, surprised and pleased at the other’s words.
And the maÎtre-de-camp, with a breast somewhat less burdened, betook himself to his ship again.
A couple of days later the peaked and thickly-wooded shores of Tercera were first visible, and the armada coasting along, to the mortal terror of the Portuguese, who were parceled out in companies to defend the accessible points, and miserably ignorant where the Spaniards would make their descent, came to anchor off St. Catherine, where about fifty French and twice as many Portuguese were drawn up to oppose the landing.
“Frighten them!” cried that cavalier; “I can see, at this distance, the finery of some glittering in the sunshine, as if the wearers were shaking all over. Let us try if they are not too frightened to run.”
So the signal was given, and a general discharge of cannon followed from the fleet, doing no special harm. I believe the widow Jean’s son was decapitated, and that young fool, Allain, who must needs leave his pretty sweetheart Annette in FloillÉ to pick up a little glory, that his marriage might come off with more eclat than any in his village, lost a leg or arm; but these were trifles nobody minds in a skirmish.
However, it was before the balls came bumping along the sands—indeed, while they were disporting, like great whales, in the outer surf, and casting up jets of water at each ricochet, that the brave rear-guard took to their heels—a piece of prudence for which I beg the indulgence of those military young men who are suffered by their employers to sport moustachios in their shops and counting-houses, and whose chief motive for advocating, in strong language, a dissolution of the Union, is supposed to lie in the admirable opportunity to be afforded of winning undying laurels in civil warfare; for I would intimate, however reprehensible cowardice may be on any occasion, and on this in particular, that watching the lively skipping from wave to wave of such iron globes as a 42-pounder debouches, while chatting with the officer of artillery, who has just sighted the piece at a hogshead anchored in the bay, is quite a different thing from doing the same when serving as the hogshead yourself.
“Yonder go a brave enemy!” cried Padilh, with a laugh, to his colleague in the next barge, the two maÎtres-de-camp heading the flotilla with the landing party. “If any fall in your way hereafter, don’t forget they’re women; spare their lives, as you wear spurs, seÑor mine.”
To this Inique answered, standing erect in the stern and shading his eyes with his palm, quite another personage in voice and carriage from the penitent of two days back:
“But the line of the French has not a gap in it—yes, one, which they have just filled with a fresh man. There’ll be sharp work there, Padilh, although we are strong enough to surround and capture the whole detachment. Lay to your oars, men! Make prisoners of as many of the gallant fellows as you can.”
“What’s come over the master?” grumbled a sergeant to a crony. “Last time he marched against the French it was nothing but ‘keep your pikes level, my lads; the man that fails to spit his man, deserves to be cut over the head in return.’ And now
“Why, they say SeÑor Inique has a cousin, or a son-in-law, or something of the sort, who is no better than he should be, and at this moment in the French camp. Who knows if the seÑor hasn’t an idea of turning coat some day himself? It looks like it, don’t it, sergeant?”
“No; hang it, man, he wouldn’t do such a dirty thing. Why, don’t you know, you unbelieving Thomas, there ain’t a gentleman in all Spain with such a name for honor!”
“Well, may be; but I like to be sure of a thing of the sort. Honesty and uprightness is my motto.”
“Hey! what’s that Mig’s saying?” said a sailor who pulled the bow oar, with a grin, to his neighbor. “I lived near La MÉcha myself, egad! and I know there wa’n’t a lamb sure of being raised so long as he was about. May be he’s forgot my phiz, with the tip of my nose sliced off by that turbaned chap’s cim’tar.”
So the gossip was kept up until a volley of twenty or so arquebuses, as the fleet grounded in tolerable line, turned their thoughts too busily in another channel to leave time for such tattling; and the old campaigners of the later Moorish wars were out and formed in “battle” before Capt. Bourgignon poured in his reserve fire, and fell upon the invaders with the audacity of a hawk half as large as your hand pouncing upon a turkey a fourth as big as your body; only that the enemy was not in any respect like a turkey—more like a condor, I should say, in point of ferocity and collected action. He marched up from the submerged beach to the sands above high-water, with no more concern for the struggling handful in front than you or I would for the whiff of sleet blown in our faces on a windy day in the streets. To be sure, the smooth tablet left by the last tide, was written over with a heavy stylus, and dabbled with such ink as conquerors and others who leave their mark on the times in which they lived, employ; moreover, there were numerous unsightly blotches dropped about, which retained enough vitality sometimes to scream in a manner calculated to shock our fire-eating civilians into a wholesome distaste to civil collision and slaying. Of course, such things are necessities, like lightning and volcanic eruptions, despite the efforts of Mr. Burritt to show the contrary. The exception appears strongest when one of us loses a brother or a husband, with a bullet in the heart or head, as Amelia did George at Brussels, or more than one acquaintance of mine, now wearing premature widow’s-weeds, in the late Mexican war.
On the whole, there is something vastly fascinating in military display and glory; and I confess, when I call to mind the bray of trumpets, glint of steel harness, and gallant show of surcoats, paraded that July morning along the St. Catherine beach, I am tempted to drag my obliging reader into the thick of the fight, and recapitulate, with cannibal appetite, the shouts, groans, and extorted cries of agony, by which you could have told with shut eyes how the work advanced, and where this or that poor devil was left sprawling on the driftweed, with a saucer full of blood in a sea-shell, perhaps, just under his left side; to say nothing of those who enacted the
Three days before this the viceroy had sent word to the commander that the Spanish fleet could plainly be seen from the Peak; and riding along the coast, De Chaste heard the sentinels posted on the mountains ringing bells and firing their arquebuses, in token of the approach of the enemy, who were not long in arriving within gun-shot of the shore, and keeping the islanders in constant alarm, as before hinted, by cannon shots and the hovering of a cluster of galleys about every available landing. The French general had his hands full in following these last, encouraging his little garrisons, and endeavoring to find bread for his troops, whose dinners the Count de Torrevedros never troubled himself about. Indeed, that viceregal nobleman had enough to do to consider how best to ingratiate himself with the Marquis of Santa-Cruz, and for the present keep out of harm’s way. It was not only the count, however, who cared little for the landing of the Spaniards and ruin of the French, provided their persons and property remained secure—a tolerably universal wish being that their allies had gone to the bottom before reaching Tercera and dragging them into a siege, when all they wanted was safety and submission.
“Senhor Commandante,” said the Portuguese captain at La Praya, while the pair rode out, as usual, with a company or two at their heels, “you can now see for yourself, yonder, how little the number of the enemy has been magnified.”
“So much the better,” answered the commander, like the Wolf in Little Red Ridinghood; “we will have more to make prisoners.”
“O—h!” cried the Portuguese, the idea being new to him.
“Confound the man’s bragging,” he muttered to himself; “he talks as if they were children or savages he has to do with.”
Whereupon De Chaste added, with something like a smile on his hard face:
“You see at least, senhor captain, they are not afraid of us, if we are of them, for they pull within reach of our batteries; and here comes a ball to measure the distance between us.”
“St. Hubert! Are we to stand here to be shot without chance of drawing sword?” cried Captain Gaza, brushing the sand thrown over him from his holyday doublet. “It is madness, sir commander, madness; and I cannot expose my brave men to such needless danger.”
“As you like best; you will find a half mile up the beach out of cannon range,” indifferently rejoined the French knight, and spurred closer to the water’s edge, followed by his countrymen, many of whom, in passing, saluted the Portuguese ironically, while others, out of earshot of the conversation, wondered at the blanched visage of the captain, and his taking himself and company to the skirt of the wood a mile or more back.
“Duvict,” said De Chaste, presently, to that cavalier, whom he had called to his side, “you will ride over to-night to Angra, and tell the viceroy we all count it strange, that, with the enemy threatening the coast, he is no where to be seen; perhaps, if he is bent on shutting up himself, he will take this captain off our hands; the fewer such cowards in our ranks, the better chance will we have of successful defense. At all events, I insist on the withdrawal of this Gaza, even if his troop goes with him. Moreover, I demand in the queen’s name, an immediate supply of rations for our men here and elsewhere. Lose no time on your journey.”
“I am so well pleased with the errand, that I will set out this instant, monseigneur, if you consent. Why wait until our return to Porta Praya?” cried Duvict, cheerfully.
“Go, then,” answered the commander, nodding approval; “and if he is not to be met with at Angra, search the country till you find him.”
The viceroy was not at Angra, that city being too exposed to bombardment to suit his present fancy; but the Frenchman found him at his country-house among the hills, keeping a sharp look-out over the roads leading coastward.
“Tell the honorable commander,” replied Torrevedros, dissembling his annoyance at the ambassador’s blunt message, “I will surely join him as soon as I make certain levies, calculated to do him more service than five troop of horse. But I take it ill, he shows so little faith in my concern for his safety at the present extremity.”
“As for his safety,” answered Duvict, who was not much of a courtier, “our commandant can very well take care of that and ours. It is for your own honor, and the putting your people in good heart, which, by the three kings, they want mightily! Monseigneur troubles himself with your absence, M. le Viceroi. Meanwhile, it would not be amiss to give our soldiers something withal to fill their mouths, especially as we may be obliged to do most of the fighting before the new levies arrive.”
“You will soon have abundance for all,” the count made answer, smoothly. “Hasten down, and inform your commandant I will delay here not an hour beyond what is necessary, on the honor of a knight. You said truly, sir, we must have no cowards in our ranks, either French or Portuguese.”
“M. le Viceroi, your acquaintance with your own countrymen is indisputable,” Duvict here said superciliously, “but we French are taught in a different school.”
It was this new captain, John de Castros, who carried De Chaste a letter from the viceroy a day later, which that loyal nobleman had received from Santa Cruz by a Portuguese, caught off the coast, and forced to swim ashore with the dispatch tied about his neck—the French not suffering any boat to approach within hail.
The commandant tore the paper to fragments as soon as he saw the contents. “This Count of Torrevedros,” he said, with a short laugh, to his maÎtre-de-camp, who was present, “is either a fool, or doubts our honor. The Marquis of Santa Cruz offers him here his life, and abundant rewards, besides the freedom of his wife and children, now in Madrid, provided he surrenders the island, which he might well enough do as far as himself is concerned, but he wishes to be rid of us at the same time, and therefore risks being reckoned a traitor in hope of inducing us to accept the marquis’s conditions.”
“A traitor he is!” cried the lieutenant, indignantly. “And since he proves himself so in so many ways, why not return to France as we are, without further intermeddling between him and his lackland master.”
“You forget,” returned De Chaste, “all who have entered on this enterprise, are bound in honor to see it through with what success their energy may obtain. Still you, and other cavaliers who have joined of your free will, and not by the queen’s direct command, may do as you see proper, and leave us who remain to share the greater glory which must attend a defense against greater odds.”
“Sir commandant,” the lieutenant responded, simply hearing him through with some little mortification in his frank face, “you pain me by such permission, for neither I, nor any other French gentleman here, would leave you an instant without being compelled by your commands; and that I am sure you know.”
“I know it so well,” cried the commandant at this, “that I am not sure I spoke the truth in even hinting my distrust just now.”
And truly the lieutenant was as good as his word; for when the French crossed the neck of the promontory I have mentioned, and coming too late to reinforce Bourgignon, fell upon a strong party of the Spaniards, detailed to take possession of a spring near by, with a determination which brought about a general and very bloody battle; there was not one in the tremendous uproar of voices and of arms, smoke of arquebuses, blood spattered and welling, screams, shrieks, groans, and huzzas!—huzzas! ensuing—who did such execution with the sword, as that same lieutenant; it was he that killed the father of poor little Margueretta, who, for want of bread, the next year became what even famine must not excuse. And, perhaps, as he did his share of irreparable mischief with an easy conscience, and certainly to the best of his ability, when his corpse lay stark as the mail encasing it, that same afternoon, by the eminence to the left, where Hilo was seen aiming an arquebuse at one time of the fight, his spirit may have been regaling in Paradise with other performers of that much abused sentiment, duty.
———
BY MRS. A. M. F. ANNAN.
———
O name most blessÉd, or most sorrowful, thou,
As from the Urim of Experience fall
The lights or shadows on thee; seeming now
Radiant as bliss upon an angel’s brow,
Then ghastly dim as Hope’s funereal pall!
Up to my vision thou dost ever call
Twin pictures—women—one with calm, meek eyes,
And soft form gently bent, and folded hands,
Brooding in dove-like peace o’er her sweet ties
Requited truthfully; the other stands
With sunken cheek by tears unheeded glazed,
Her wan feet bleeding, and her thin arms raised,
Knowing no help but from above the skies.
———
BY WM. ALEXANDER.
———
What sacred reminiscences dost thou
Awake within the breast, O olive-tree!
First did the silver-pinioned dove from thee
Pluck the sweet “Peace-branch”—it an olive-bough.
Fair evergreen! thoughts pure, devout, sublime,
Thou callest up, reminding us of Him,
The Man of Sorrows—Lord of Cherubim—
Who, erewhile, did, in distant Orient clime,
’Neath thy dark, solemn shade, once weep and pray
In woful agony; though now, above,
Seated on sapphire throne—the God of Love—
While round his head the covenant sign alway
Unfolds its rich and ever-living green,
Memento of Gethsemane’s affecting scene.
———
BY R. T. CONRAD.
———
“Sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon thee.”
Art thou young, yet hast not given
Dewy bud and bloom to Heaven?
Tarryest till life’s morn be o’er!
Pause, or ere the bolt be driven!
Sin no more!
Art thou aged? Seek’st thou power?
Rank or gold—of dust the dower!
Fame to wreathe thy wrinkles hoar?
Dotard! death hangs o’er thy hour!
Sin no more!
Art thou blest? False joys caress thee:
And the world’s embraces press thee
To its hot heart’s cankered core:
Waken! Heaven alone can bless thee.
Sin no more!
Art thou wretched? Hath each morrow
Sown its sin to reap its sorrow!
Turn to Heaven—repent—adore:
Hope new light from Faith can borrow;
Sin no more!
May a meek and rapt devotion
Fill thy heart, as waves the ocean,
Glassing Heaven from shore to shore!
Then wilt thou—calmed each emotion—
Sin no more.
———
BY JAMES T. FIELDS.
———
The grass hung wet on Rydal banks,
The golden day with pearls adorning,
When side by side with him we walked
To meet midway the summer morning.
The west wind took a softer breath,
The sun himself seemed brighter shining,
As through the porch the minstrel slept—
His eye sweet Nature’s look enshrining.
He passed along the dewy sward,
The blue-bird sang aloft “good-morrow!”
He plucked a bud, the flower awoke
And smiled without one pang of sorrow.
He spoke of all that graced the scene
In tones that fell like music round us,
We felt the charm descend, nor strove
To break the rapturous spell that bound us.
We listened with mysterious awe,
Strange feelings mingling with our pleasure;
We heard that day prophetic words,
High thoughts the heart must always treasure.
Great Nature’s Priest! thy calm career,
With that sweet morn, on earth has ended—
But who shall say thy mission died
When, winged for Heaven, thy soul ascended!
———
BY WM. P. BRANNAN.
———
What shall yield me inspiration,
What sweet spell entrance my thought,
Whilst I sing the adoration
By thy matchless beauty wrought?
Overcome with exultation
Which thy charming presence brought.
Incense-bearing breezes hover
Round my flushed and throbbing brow,
Minstrels in their shady cover
Chant divinest music now;
Nature, yield to nature’s lover
Language worthy of his vow!
Where she walks a richer splendor
Hallows all the earth and sky,
Unseen angels there attend her;
Heaven and love sleep in her eye—
Graces have no grace to lend her,
Zephyr breathes an envious sigh.
Thou thyself art inspiration!
Moving, breathing, blessing, blest;
The lily and the rose-carnation
Live upon thy cheek and breast,
Daring time and desolation,
Thrilling hearts with wild unrest!
———
BY ENNA DUVAL.
———
Learn to win a lady’s faith
Nobly, as the thing is high;
Bravely, as for life and death—
With a loyal gravity.
Lead her from the festive boards,
Point her to the starry skies,
Guard her by your truthful words,
Pure from courtship’s flatteries.
By your truth she shall be true—
Ever true as wives of yore—
And her Yes, once said to you,
Shall be Yes for evermore.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
It was a hot, sultry afternoon at —— ——, a fashionable summer resort at the sea side. The three great events of the day were accomplished—namely, the bath, dinner, and the arrival of the boat bringing the mail; the visiters, therefore, had nothing to do but to get rid of the afternoon in as noisy a manner as possible, keeping themselves as warm and uncomfortable as they could, in order to prove that they were enjoying themselves after the most approved fashion. Ladies could be seen in every direction, passing from one hotel to another, flitting in and out of cottages, dressed in the most incongruous style—in silks, mulls, and gauzes, fitted for a full-dress dinner or evening party; and surmounting this dressy costume was—the only really sensible article to be seen in this dominion of Folly—the prim, plain country sun-bonnet. Fashion had established that hats at the sea-side were vulgar, and accordingly, every belle mounted one of these useful, but exceedingly ugly head-dresses. Carriages and wagons of every description darted to and fro, from the funny little Jersey sand wagon, with horses of a Jersey match, gray and brown, or black and white, up to the well matched, well ordered establishment of the nouveau riche, who was willing to sacrifice his delicate town-bred horses, in order to exhibit his magnificence to the plebs. A fine establishment drew up in front of the entrance of one of the principal hotels, and the owner of it, Mr. Martin, a prosperous merchant, with his fussy, dressy, good-natured, fat little wife, entered it. As Mr. Martin handed his wife in, he asked,
“Where’s Edda?”
“Oh, let her alone, my dear,” replied his wife, “she will get over her moping after awhile. She’s fretted herself into a sick headache, and is lying down.”
“Confound the fellow,” muttered Mr. Martin, “I wish she had never seen him. If I had my way she should be divorced from him. What right has a man to a wife when he cannot support her? Now, as long as he lives, I suppose, our poor little darling will be down-hearted.”
“Oh,” said the wife, settling herself back comfortably in the luxurious carriage, after having carefully disposed the folds of her rich, silk gown and heavily embroidered mantle in a manner to crush them the least, “wait until he gets fairly settled out at the West, and the winter parties, and concerts, and operas commence, then Edda will cheer up.”
“I hope so, with all my heart,” ejaculated Mr. Martin, “and if money, amusements, and fine clothes can make her what she was two years ago, I shall be glad enough, for I hate a sad, gloomy face.”
While they were thus talking, their niece, the subject of their conversation, was lying in her bed-room, burying her throbbing, aching head in the pillows of the couch, wishing that an endless sleep would come to her, and deaden the painful sense of grief.
Poor Edda Murray! Two short years before, a happier, more free-from-care girl could not have been found. Then, she had never known a trouble. Her aunt and uncle, Mr. and Mrs. Martin, who were childless, and possessed ample means, had taken her at the time of her parents’ death, which had occurred during her infancy, and from that moment up to the present, she had been their spoiled pet and darling. They were good-natured, indolent people, caring for but little else than the amusements of the out-of-doors world. As Edda grew old enough to enter society, they took great pleasure in dressing her extravagantly, and accompanying her to every gay place of resort of the fashionable world. According to Mrs. Martin’s ideas, every girl should be married early; and when Edda was addressed by Mr. Murray, near the close of her first winter, and seemed pleased with his attentions, her aunt’s rapture knew no bounds. Mr. Martin was pleased also, for Murray, though a young man, was a rising merchant, and was steady and industrious.
How Ralph Murray ever happened to fancy Edda Martin, was a mystery to all those of his and her friends, who had observed but little of this marriage business of life. As a general rule, both men and women, especially when young, select the very companions that are the most unlike their ideals, and what is still stranger, the most unsuitable for them.
Ralph Murray was a reserved, dignified young man, rather stern for his years, with the most rigid
Edda was, indeed, a spoiled pet, full of caprice and whim, beautiful and graceful as a fairy, and as untamed and uncontrollable as an unwedded Undine. But, poor child, marriage brought no happy spirit to dwell in her household. How could it? For they had married under the influence of the maddest, wildest infatuation. Their love was beautiful while it lasted; but soon the husband grew exacting, the angel became a mere woman, and the darling, who had never obeyed any will but her own, discovered she had a lord and master, whose will was stronger and more unbending than even her own had ever been. Then Edda was extravagant and thriftless, and thoughtless, a real child-wife, like poor Dora, that English Undine creation of Dickens’s fancy, but with more spirit and temper than “Little Blossom.” Edda’s character had in it qualities which would have made her a fine woman, properly and gradually developed; but her husband placed her on the scale of his own model of perfection, and endeavored to drag her up to this idea of wifehood, without waiting for Nature to assist him. It was the old, sad story told over again—incompatibility of tempers, unreasonableness on his part, petulance, waywardness and temper on hers.
God sent them a little babe, but the child brought no tenderness to the heart of either parent for each other. Then trouble came upon Ralph Murray in his business—unfortunate speculations, bad failures in others he had trusted; but instead of going to his wife, and talking affectionately, but candidly, remembering all the while what a spoiled darling she had been, he considered himself aggrieved by her lavish expenditure, and told her haughtily that she was now the wife of a young merchant, and not the niece of a rich man, and ought to have sense enough to observe economy. Poor Edda was offended, bitter words passed between them, and they parted in anger. Her aunt found her in tears—happening to come in just as the irritated husband had left her. Edda turned to her thoughtless, childish aunt, for comfort, telling her the whole story of her wrongs; and Mrs. Martin pronounced Mr. Murray a brute, to treat her poor child so unkindly. Mr. Martin thought always as his wife did, and in the first flush of temper, they carried the weeping, angry wife, with her young babe, away from her husband’s roof; the exasperated uncle leaving for Mr. Murray an angrily worded note, in which he said that Edda had never ceased to be his niece, even if she had been so unfortunate as to become the wife of a parsimonious merchant, and an unkind husband. The following day Ralph Murray was a bankrupt.
The news of other heavy failures of houses indebted to him, brought his affairs to a crisis, and all his troubles seemed piled mountain high upon him at once. Poor Edda would have gone instantly to her husband when she heard of his trouble—for she had immediately repented of her hasty step—but she did not dare; she remembered his sternness, and dreaded a repulse which she felt she deserved. Then a new cause of anxiety displayed itself, her boy sickened, and, after a few hours’ illness, he died in her arms. Her husband was sent for, but he did not notice her; he stood beside the coffin of his child, pale, tearless, and with a countenance as unchanging as a statue of marble; he never looked at his sobbing wife, who, softened by her grief, would have willingly thrown herself into his arms, and asked pardon for the past, and forbearance for the future; but he coldly turned from her after the funeral, without speaking a word.
Two months passed by, and still Ralph Murray treated his wife with the same silent indifference. He never sought an interview nor an explanation; it seemed as if the death of their child, instead of softening him, had, to his mind, broken off all connection between them. Edda grieved incessantly, until at last her health became seriously affected. When the traveling season came, the physicians who had been called in to heal the poor breaking heart, recommended an instant departure for the sea-side. Fine apartments were procured, every elegance, every luxury surrounded her; but she looked more wretched, more unhappy every day.
She knew that their beautiful house belonged to another—every thing had been sold; that she no longer had a home with her husband; and the consciousness that she was a childless, lonely wife, became daily more insupportable. Poor girl! life seemed very dark and hopeless to her. Her trouble had lifted her spirit on almost a life time; all the childish, capricious waywardness of girlhood had disappeared; sorrow had done the work of years; and she was now a woman—but a suffering, loving woman, ready to make any sacrifice, perform any duty, to atone for the past. Her uncle and aunt caressed her, and sympathized with her, while they incessantly spoke of her husband with words of reproach and blame; and when she would check them, saying the greater part of the blame rested on herself, they would think her still more lovely and amiable, and lift their hands in surprise. How reproaching to her conscience was their sympathy! and she grew more and more despairing and hopeless.
At midnight she would pace her room, wringing her little hands with remorse for the past. Her husband’s stern face would rise before her, blended with the beautiful, loving expression his countenance
All her friends upheld her and blamed Mr. Murray. They called him stern, cold and heartless. The fashionable world thought her a lucky woman in possessing a rich old uncle to take care of her. Her quarrel with her cross husband had taken place in the very nick of time, they said; now she need not suffer from his mischances; when she would so willingly have borne the very heaviest burden poverty could impose. But what could she do but suffer idly?
Day after day passed by, still no message came from her husband. Her uncle had told her that the principal creditors had willingly and generously arranged matters; for, as every one said, the failure had resulted from misfortune, not from mismanagement, and that he had heard that a friend had offered Mr. Murray a situation in a commercial house out in the very farthest west, with a chance of becoming a partner in time. Then the next news that reached her was, that he was actually leaving for his new home. And would Ralph leave her without a word—a line? she asked herself over and again.
At last a letter came—a cold, stern, haughty letter, bidding her farewell, as if for ever. There were one or two tender passages in it; but the tone of the whole letter was so cold and unforgiving, that it crushed her to the earth. She had received it the day before our little sketch opens; and when her aunt urged her to drive out and shake off her trouble, she only buried her little head still deeper in the pillows and prayed still more agonizingly for death. The afternoon passed slowly enough to the poor sufferer. Then came the evening—the noisy, gay evening. As there was a ball in the saloon of the hotel, her thoughtless, butterfly aunt and uncle joined the merry crowd of triflers, after an earnest but unsuccessful persuasion of Edda to follow their example.
The merry music of the band sounded loudly in Edda’s lonely bed-room; but the lively dancing melodies seemed to her ears like the voices of taunting demons. She restlessly rose from her bed and walked into her little parlor, which opened on a balcony that swept around the house. She stepped out on this balcony, and listened to the pealing thunder of the ocean, which rolled unceasingly before her. Her agony increased, and a demon seemed to whisper in her ears:
“What is life but a torment? Death is an endless, dreamless sleep. Why suffer when you can so easily find relief?”
Shudderingly she put her little hands to her ears, and, closing her eyes, hastened into the room, fearing that in another instant she might be induced, by despair, to plunge headlong over the railings on the cliff beneath. For a while she laid on the lounge, as if stunned; but at last tears came to her relief, and she felt calmer. To avoid danger she closed the Venetian shutters of the door and window, but drew up under them the lounge, and threw herself on it, that the damp night air might cool her fevered, burning head. She had not been long there when she heard the sound of voices and laughter, but she was too weak to arise, and remained quiet—remembering that she could not be seen from the outside.
It was a little group of young girls, who were promenading after the dance, and who had concluded that the upper balcony commanded a finer view of the ocean. As chance would have it they selected that part of the balcony just under Edda’s window for their gossiping lounge. One, more sentimental than the others, pointed out the effect of the moon-beams which made the edges of the rolling, dashing waves shine like molten silver. But the beauty of the scene was quickly lost, even on this moon-struck damsel, for she, as well as the rest, were soon deeply interested in discussing a wedding that had lately taken place in the beau-monde.
“Oh, dear, there’s Mrs. Jones,” exclaimed one, “she just came from town yesterday, and can tell us all about it.”
The lady mentioned joined the group, and threw them into a state of perfect felicity by telling them she had actually been present at the wedding. Immediately she was called upon by a dozen eager voices to tell them “all about it.” Poor Edda, she was doomed to listen to the whole senseless detail, commencing at the bride’s India mull robe, and its heavy, elaborate embroidery, her “exquisite and graceful head-dress,” with the costly Honiton veil, the “rich splendid gifts” of the relatives, and ending with the list of bridemaids and their costume. How the whole description brought her own gorgeous wedding back to her thoughts! and she felt heart-sick.
“Poor things!” she murmured to herself with a sigh, “I hope they will be happier than Ralph and I have been.”
The conversation grew more bustling and detached; the lady who was the reporter-general was giving, for the fifth time, to some new comer, a description of the bride’s costume, which she did with a volubility so eloquent and untiring as to have reflected credit on a French modiste—expatiating largely on the beauty and costliness of the materials of which it was composed, and united to her minute details of the tucks, headed by rich rows of lace and embroidery, could be heard exclamations of the others, who had already listened to the description.
“Oh,” said one, in a tone of voice that told what delicious satisfaction costly articles of dress gave her, “it is too lovely to be married in an India robe, with heavy embroidery and rich Valenciennes berthÉ and trimming. If ever I’m married, I intend to make ma order one of Levy’s for me; it shall be imported especially for me.”
“Oh, yes,” said Mrs. Jones, stopping in the midst of her harangue, À la parenthesis, “Mr. Grugan received
“I don’t believe she knew a word about it. Mrs. Jones is always pretending she’s so intimate with every body,” said a young lady, sotto voce; but Mrs. Jones was too deeply engaged in the tucks, and lace trimming, and Honiton veil, to hear the doubt and charge. The conversation increased in animation, and Mrs. Jones’s clear, high voice was almost drowned.
“Ah,” exclaimed one, “
“Yes,” rejoined another, “and how delightful to go right off on a journey, and to Europe, too.”
“Oh, girls,” exclaimed one, “only think—
“Well,” said another, “her first bridemaid, Helen Howell, and Aubrey Hilton, are engaged, and Helen was in the same class with me. We all came out last fall together—you’re no worse off than I am.”
Some gentlemen joining the group, the conversation became too detached and confused to be heard, and there were so many little bursts of laughter as to make the whole affair quite a medley. Presently the scraping of the violins, preceded by a loud crash of the whole united band, announced that a waltz was about to be danced.
“Oh!” they exclaimed, simultaneously, “that delicious
Mrs. Howard and Mr. Morrison had heard part of the conversation about the wedding, and the first that reached Edda’s ears were Mr. Morrison’s severe, caustic remarks.
“Silly, senseless fools!” he exclaimed. “They talk as if life had but two points to attain; to get married in an India robe, in such a style as to produce a fine theatrical effect, and to go to Europe. What right have such idiots to get married at all? What do they know of the realities of married life—the holy, sacred obligations of marriage?”
“Very little, it is true,” answered his companion; “and this ignorance is wisely ordered! for I am afraid, Mr. Morrison, if these young, thoughtless creatures knew the one half of life’s stern realities, whether married or unmarried, they would sooner lie down and die than encounter them. Youth is as hopeless in trouble as it is thoughtless in prosperity.”
“Very true, madam, very true,” said the old gentleman; “but it seems to me that these frivolous creatures might be taught a little—enough to give them some ballast. What sort of wives will they make? Why, I declare it makes me shudder when I see these silly, thoughtless wretches entering into marriage as they would into a dance—not displaying half the anxiety that a man would on entering into a commercial engagement that can be dissolved at will after a certain season.”
“Well,” said the lady, with a sweet, low laugh, “from what we see on all sides, my dear sir, a great many of those who marry at the present day seem to regard marriage only as a mere partnership, to be dissolved at will.”
“I would pretty soon put an end to that divorce business, madam,” said Mr. Morrison, “if I had the power. Every couple that could not live happily together, and wished to be separated, should have their request granted, but on one condition—that both, particularly the woman, should go into some religious asylum, and spend the rest of their days in entire seclusion, employed constantly in the performance of strict religious duties and works of charity.”
“Oh!” exclaimed the lady, laughing outright, “I am very sure any husband and wife would prefer the most inharmonious intercourse to such an alternative.”
“Well, well,” said Mr. Morrison, “they could have their choice, and it would teach others to be more careful how they ‘married in haste to repent at leisure.’ This is becoming a curse to society; on all sides we see husbands and wives disagreeing. Now-a-days a wife must spend as much money as she pleases, lead a dissipated life—for going to parties and balls, and every other gay place, constantly is dissipation—entertain admirers, and her husband must not complain. He, poor devil—beg pardon, madam—must not express a wish for a quiet home and a companion, after the toil of the day and the wear and tear of exciting, perilous business. Oh, no! If he does madam will leave him in a huff, and he may whistle for a wife, and life is a wreck to him ever afterward.”
“Do these unhappy marriages always result from the thoughtlessness and selfishness of the wives, my dear sir?” asked Mrs. Howard. “I think there are as many wives with domestic tastes, who have the same complaint to make against their husbands.”
“Yes, yes,” answered Mr. Morrison, a little hesitatingly; “I suppose there is blame to be found on both sides; but generally speaking, with the married people of what is called ‘society,’ especially the young, the fault lies with the wife. Yesterday I bade good-bye to as fine a fellow as God ever created, whose whole happiness for life has been wrecked by one of these silly, heartless fools. You know him, my dear madam, and are, I believe, one of his few friends; for the whole world unite in condemning
“You are speaking of Ralph Murray, I am sure,” said Mrs. Howard, in a sad tone.
Poor Edda writhed, but she had not power to move; she felt spell-bound, and every word of the conversation fell on her ear with painful clearness.
“Yes, I mean Murray,” replied Mr. Morrison. “God help him, poor fellow! His haggard face haunts me like a ghost.”
“But,” said Mrs. Howard, “much as I love Ralph, much as I respect his high, honorable character, I cannot hold him blameless.”
“What!” exclaimed Mr. Morrison, in a tone of surprise, “you cannot hold him blameless? Why, what can you see wrong in any thing he has done?”
“He should not have married as he did,” replied Mrs. Howard; “or if determined to gratify his fancy at the expense of his judgment, by yielding to an infatuation, he should have had more patience with his wife. If he felt willing to trust his happiness in the hands of a petted, spoiled child, he should have remembered what she was, in the hour of trial, and not exacted of her the ability and judgment which are possessed only by a sensible, well-trained woman.”
“Yes, you are right,” answered Mr. Morrison, after a short pause; “he was wrong in the first place—he never should have married such an idiot. But, my God, madam,” he exclaimed, impatiently, “any woman who was lucky enough to get such a noble husband as Ralph Murray, should have been so proud of him as to have been willing to have made every sacrifice of whim and caprice for his comfort.”
“That’s true man’s reasoning,” said Mrs. Howard, good-naturedly. “But, Mr. Morrison, I think I am not mistaken when I say that if Ralph had managed his pretty, petted, capricious fairy of a wife patiently and properly, their happiness would not have been wrecked as it is.”
“Their happiness!” repeated Mr. Morrison, sneeringly. “Little she cares, while she has aunt to caress her and uncle’s money to spend.”
“Indeed you do her great injustice,” said Mrs. Howard. “To be sure, I do not know Mrs. Murray intimately, but I am certain if you were to see her pale, wretched face and frail figure, as I do daily in the corridor, when they bring her in, half fainting, from the bath, you would think as I do—that, let her husband’s sufferings be ever so great, the wife suffers quite as much. Oh, my dear Mr. Morrison, how I wish I were Edda Murray’s friend.”
“What would you do, my dear madam? Add another to her host of sympathizers?” said the old gentleman.
“No,” replied Mrs. Howard, mildly; “I would tell her to send for Ralph, to ask pardon for the past and patience for the future, and beg him to take me once more to his heart, and help me to be a good, faithful wife. This she must do, or never know peace in this life.”
“Ha, ha,” laughed Mr. Morrison; “why, my dear Mrs. Howard, if she had sense and feeling enough to act thus, she would never have behaved as she has done.”
“Edda Murray has acted willfully and selfishly, I admit,” said Mrs. Howard; “but we do not know what provocations she may have had. Ralph is a fine, noble fellow, but arbitrary and impatient—the very kind of man that I should fancy it would not be easy to make happy in domestic life, even if a judicious woman were to undertake the task. Think, then, how many excuses should be made for his impulsive, wayward little wife, who never in her life was subjected to control. I am certain this trouble has done her good, however, for a woman’s character is seldom properly developed in prosperity; like precious metals, it must pass through the fiery furnace of affliction—it must be purified in the crucible of sorrow, until it loses all recollection of self. There is a beautiful simile in the Bible, which compares the purification of the soul to the smelting of silver. Silver must be purged from all dross, until it is so clear and mirror-like that it will reflect the countenance of the refiner; thus the soul must be so pure, in so high a state of godliness, as to reflect only the will of the Creator. I cannot recall the passage exactly, but I often apply it to my own sex, whose characters, to be properly developed, must be purged from all selfish dross, in order to make them think only of the happiness of others—forgetful always of self; then, like silver seven times refined and purified, their spirits reflect only the countenance of the purifier, which is the will or command of God.”
Just then Mr. Howard and some others joined them, and after a little playful bantering about the flirtation of two such steady old persons, a remark or two on the fine night and the beauty of the ocean scene, the party moved off and Edda at last was alone.
That night, when Mr. and Mrs. Martin stopped at Edda’s room door, on their way to bed, they found her sitting at her desk writing. She kissed them, bade them good night, and thanked them for their affectionate inquiries, in a more cheerful manner than she had shown for months, which gladdened their silly, warm old hearts, and they went off comforting themselves with the hope that all now would be well.
“Yes, my dear,” said Mr. Martin, as he composed himself to sleep, “you were right—Edda is getting over it. She looked and talked more brightly than she has since poor little Martin’s death.”
And Edda really felt so, but for a reason her uncle little suspected. Mrs. Howard’s words had given form and impulse to her thoughts; she no longer wasted time in mere actionless grief; she saw her duty before her, and, hard as it was to perform, she nobly resolved to do it. A day or so afterward, as Ralph Murray was leaving town for his new western home—sad, lonely, and for the first time feeling that maybe in the past he had not been entirely free from blame, he received a letter, directed in the delicate, lady-like, hand-writing of his wife. With trembling hands he opened it, and thick, short sobs swelled up
“I am your wife, Ralph,” she wrote; “you must not leave me—you must take me with you. God joined us, and trouble—death has bound us still closer. Pardon my past waywardness, and take your penitent, suffering Edda back to your heart. Think what a reckless, thoughtless, uncontrolled child I was when you married me, and have patience with me. I cannot live without you, Ralph. I shall die broken-hearted if you treat my selfish, wayward conduct as it merits. God forgives the penitent—will you be more just than He is, my beloved? Come to me, and let me hear from your lips once more, ‘dear Edda.’ Do not tell me you are poor; I can live on any thing, submit to any privation, if blessed with your presence, your forgiveness, your love. You shall not find me in the future a thoughtless, extravagant child, but, with God’s help, a faithful good wife. Oh, Ralph, receive me once more, I pray you, and let me be again your own darling little wife Edda.”
The fashionable world at —— was thrown into a state of astonishment a few weeks afterward, by hearing that Mrs. Murray had actually gone out west with her cruel, good-for-nothing husband, and a thousand different stories were told about the matter, each one as far from the truth as the other.
Poor Mr. and Mrs. Martin made loud opposition when Edda told them her resolve, but she looked so bright and happy, and throwing her arms around her aunt and uncle, made them read the lover-like letter of her husband, in which he not only freely forgave the past, but took on himself all the blame.
“She’s right, my dear,” said Mr. Martin, to his wife; “but we must not let them go—we must make them as comfortable as we can with us. Thank Providence, I have enough for us all.”
But Ralph Murray steadily refused all offers of assistance from Mr. Martin. He knew it would be better for them, for a little while at least, to be away from all Edda’s old connections. Several years they spent “out west,” and not until they had nearly reached mid-life, did they return to their old home in ——; then, at the urgent request of Mr. and Mrs. Martin, who had grown old, infirm, and tired of society, and really needed Edda, they moved back. Edda was a lovely looking matron at the time of her return—she seemed so happy and contented. I well remember the pleasant effect it produced upon me when I saw her surrounded by her troop of noble boys, and leaning on her husband, who still retained his dignity, but blent with it was an air of loving softness that he had gained by intercourse with his gentle, “darling little wife.”
Her married life, even after their reconciliation, however, was not exempt from trials. There were times when her husband’s old moods of exaction and impatience would come over him, and her own willful, rebellious spirit would stand in the way, and torment her with demands, such as “what right has he more than I?” and the like—as if the gratification of rights, merely for justice sake, made up the happiness of home life, a happiness that is only gained, only insured, by love’s sweet yieldings. They both tried to struggle against these dark influences; but at such times life would be very dreary to her, and it needed all the strict discipline of her faith—all her hope and trust in Heaven, to make her victorious over self.
Their children, however, proved angel-blessings to them. They softened and humanized Ralph, and soothed and occupied Edda. Dear Edda! her spring season had been a wild, frolicksome one, bringing a stormy, cloudy summer; but her autumn yielded a rich harvest of happiness, and her little, throbbing heart thanked God hourly for his kindness and love to her in sustaining her through all her dark hours.
“Seven great boys, and not one daughter!” exclaimed our old friend, Mrs. Howard, to Edda, after her return to her old home—“what a pity!”
“Oh, no,” replied Edda, quickly; “I am always so thankful my children are all boys. I would not have the charge of a daughter’s happiness on me for a world.”
“Why!” asked Mrs. Howard with surprise.
“Because,” replied Edda, in a low tone, looking significantly at the good old lady, “a woman’s character seldom develops in prosperity—it requires, like precious metals, the fiery furnace of affliction—the crucible of sorrow.”
Mrs. Howard’s surprise was increased, for Edda’s blushing face and lips, trembling with emotion, told that she had a deeper meaning than the mere expression of an opinion; but Edda soon removed her wonder. She told her the whole history of the past—her struggle on that eventful night at the sea-side watering place years before, when the fearful temptation to self-destruction had assailed her; she caused the kind old lady’s eyes to grow dim with tears, when she described the beneficial effect produced by the overheard conversation between her and Mr. Morrison; and added, with tears and smiles of joy—
“Yes, dear Mrs. Howard, your blessed words taught me my duty. If I have any happiness in life, I owe it, through God, to you. But, happy wife and blessed mother, as I am, I thank God I have no daughter’s future resting on my heart. A woman’s lot in life is a dangerous one, either in prosperity or adversity, and to tread her life-path well she seems to require almost a special helping from God; to but few is this granted, and many there are who wrestle darkly and blindly with sorrow through life’s perilous journey unaided.”
“But,” replied Mrs. Howard, “does it not strike you that you are taking but a one-sided, narrow view of life, my dear? When you speak so sadly of woman’s lot, it seems as if you thought this life was all we had to expect, when I am sure you do not think so. The perils of life belong to both man and woman. But what matters all that we suffer in this state of existence, when compared with the glory of the sun-light of eternity—that sun which
“You are right, my dear madam,” said Edda, with a sweet look of meek thoughtfulness, “and I, of all other women, should not speak so hopelessly, for, after all my dark hours, light came at last; and so beautiful is life to me now, that I sometimes fancy to me is given a glimpse of Heaven’s dawning.”
ON PICTURES IN THE HUNTINGTON GALLERY.
———
BY MRS. ELIZABETH J. EAMES.
———
I.—ST. JOHN.
I stood within the glowing, graceful ring
Of pictures hung upon the gallery’s wall:—
The admiring murmur of the crowd did bring
My step to pause before a shape, in all
The thoughtful grace of artist-skill designed,
The sense of Beauty felt—but not defined.
Thou face, serene in solemn tenderness—
In the uplifting of those calm, deep eyes;
On the rapt brow of holy earnestness
The light of prophecy reflected lies.
The mystic vision of the Apocalypse
Thy pen of fire sublimely did record:
But most we love His lessons from thy lips—
John, thou beloved disciple of the Lord!
II.—MERCY’S DREAM.
Like thee to dream, by angel-wings unshaded!
The starry crown hangs o’er thy meek young head,
Flinging a glory round thee, like the braided
And brilliant tints by a rich sunset shed.
O loveliest vision of the painter’s thought—
Born in his happiest hour of inspiration,
How more than fair the exquisite creation
His genius-gifted pencil here hath wrought!
How wondrously is charmed the “Pilgrim” story
That made my childhood’s ever new delight:
Sweet Mercy! now, in tenderest grace and glory,
Thy pale, bright picture floats before my sight.
Thrice blessÉd! and thrice beautiful! might we
But in our dreams some guardian-angel see!
III.—THE MARYS AT THE SEPULCHRE.
The first faint crimson of the early morning
Dawned on the tomb where the loved Master lay;
And on the Marys, who for His adorning
Came bearing spices sweet, at break of day.
In meek, mute reverence, near the sepulchre
The mourners drew, as round a sacred shrine—
And gazing down for the dear form divine—
The unsealed stone—the white-robed messenger—
Met their affrighted view! In awe they fled,
And she, the Magdalen! the tidings spread,
“Christ is arisen!” O, woman! in that hour
Well might a solemn rapture fill thy mind—
Thou, earth’s poor outcast, honored with high power
To bear such joyful tidings to mankind.
IV.—PIETY.
Meek list’ner! on whose purely virgin brow
Is set the beauty of submissive thought:
Oh! blest beyond Earth’s favored ones art thou,
Whose earnest eyes so reverently caught
The Teacher’s look, with mild, grave wisdom fraught.
How was the awakened soul within thee stirred
To suppliant or adoring tones, as fell
The quickening power of the Eternal Word,
Like the winged seed, on thy young heart; to dwell
A germ not lost! A heavenly light serene,
Unclouded, sits on thy soft, spiritual mien—
I call thee Blest, for thou hast chosen well,
Daughter of Christ! O, happy to have given
The bloom of thy unblighted years to Heaven!
V.—FOLLY.
And this is Folly! Like a flaunting flower
Her red lips part half wanton, half in scorn:
Over the wreck of many a squandered hour
This poor frail child of Pleasure well might mourn.
But with the consciousness of beauty born,
Exulting in her youth’s superior brightness—
(Not yet the rose-leaves from her garland torn)—
She moves along to scenes of festal lightness.
The aged teacher’s solemn, sacred lesson
Is a dead letter to her worldly spirit—
The Word of Life—its Promise, and its Blessing,
The world’s gay votary cares not to inherit!
No claims upon a heritage divine—
This lot, O Folly! this sad lot is thine.
———
BY ELLIS MARTYN.
———
What though my way unblissful care
To weary solitudes incline!
I feel thy beauty everywhere;
Thy spirit brightens mine.
On all the dewy leaves that crowd
The moon-lit trees, I read thy name;
From every crimson morning cloud,
It flows through all my frame.
And when the spiritual eve advances,
To bathe the weary world in rest,
Thou comest near, with loving glances,
And leanest on my breast.
In all the ages, young or olden,
Was ever life so blest as mine!
Where’er I go the clime is golden,
And all the air divine!
THE LAST SURVIVOR OF THE CREW OF “THE BONHOMME RICHARD.”
———
BY THOMAS WYATT, A. M.
———
This venerable sailor is in the 92d year of his age; nearly sixty of which he has spent on the ocean, and thirty-five under the stars and stripes of his adopted country. Although almost helpless from age, his mind is clear and his memory retentive. He remembers distinctly many interesting incidents during his cruisings with that eccentric but intrepid officer, John Paul Jones, and narrates many of the daring exploits in which he was a participator under the direction of this extraordinary man.
Thomas Johnson is a Norwegian by birth, the son of a pilot at Mandal, a seaport on the coast of Norway, where he was born in the year 1758. Having been engaged in that occupation for nearly twenty years, he was consequently accustomed to a seafaring life; and in the absence of his father towed the first American vessel into the harbor of Mandal. This vessel was the Ranger, from Boston, carrying eighteen guns, under the command of Captain Jones. The sight of a ship from a country which was at this time struggling for independence, and of which they knew so little, caused no little sensation among the inhabitants of that town. After their arrival in port, Jones sent for the young pilot, and presenting him with a piece of gold, expressed his pleasure at his expert seamanship, which he had minutely watched during the towing of his ship into the harbor.
He also observed that he had made the port of Mandal, in order to enlarge his crew, not having sufficient men for the long cruise he was about to make; and added, that if the father of the young pilot would permit, he would be glad to engage him. Satisfactory arrangements were made, and Johnson was received as a seaman on board the Ranger. It will be remembered that Captain Jones had been cruising the last two years as first lieutenant of the Alfred flag ship, the first privateer fitted out by Congress to cruise against British commerce.
In this ship he hoisted with his own hands the American flag, the first time it was ever displayed on the ocean; its emblems were a pine-tree, with a rattle-snake coiled at its root, as if about to strike.
The Alfred was very successful, and had brought home
Resolved, “That Captain John Paul Jones be appointed to command the ship Ranger, and that William Whipple, Esq., member of Congress, and of the Marine Committee, John Langdon, Esq., continental agent, and the said John Paul Jones be authorized to appoint lieutenants and other officers and men necessary for the said ship; and that blank commissions and warrants be sent them to be filled up with the names of the persons they appoint, returns whereof to be made to the Navy Board in the eastern department.”
“Resolved, That the flag of the thirteen United States, henceforth be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; and the union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new constellation.”
Jones immediately commissioned the Ranger, and, singular to say, was the first to display the new flag of the republic, as he did the original one on board the Alfred, about two years previous. The Ranger was intended to carry twenty-six guns; but Jones begged to exercise his own judgment, believing that she would be more serviceable with only eighteen, and accordingly mounted that number, for which he had often occasion to congratulate himself on his judicious forethought; for the ship proved to be exceedingly crank, and with the whole number, would have been nearly useless.
His first cruise with his new ship was to the coast of France, and on his voyage there he chased a fleet of ten sail, under a strong convoy, took two prizes, and carried them safely into Nantes.
From thence he took a short cruise on the coast of Norway, and putting into the port of Mandal, as we before stated, engaged the services of Thomas Johnson, the subject of this sketch.
After completing his arrangement, Jones returned to Nantes, and from thence proceeded to Quiberon Bay, giving convoy to some American vessels which were desirous of joining the French fleet commanded by Admiral La Mott Piquet, who had been ordered to keep the coast of France clear of British cruisers. Writing to the Marine Committee on the 22d February, 1778, he says, “I am happy in having it in my power to congratulate you on seeing the American flag, for the first time, recognized in the fullest and most complete manner by the flag of France; and as it is my greatest desire to render useful services to the American cause, I would suggest that, as the field of cruising being thus extended, and the British navy, in numbers, so superior to ours, it would be well to surprise their defenceless places, and thereby divert their attention, and draw it from our coasts.” These suggestions contained the plan of annoyance which was eventually adopted in Paul Jones’s cruisings in the European seas. It was about the middle of April, 1778, so our hero relates, that they found themselves on the coast of Scotland, immediately in the vicinity of the birth-place of Jones, and in sight of the port of Whitehaven, upon which he had determined to make his first descent.
It was near the break of day, when Jones ordered two boats, and a plentiful supply of combustibles to be prepared, with thirty-one men, to leave the Ranger and make for the outer pier. Jones commanded the first boat himself, the other was under the command of Simpson, his first lieutenant, conveying the combustible matter, and charged with firing the vessels, about seventy in number, lying on the north side of the pier, while he undertook the rest. They found two batteries at Whitehaven, which Jones, with ten of his men, Johnson being one of the number, scaled, taking the soldiers prisoners, and spiking the guns. He then, with his party, started for the other battery, about a quarter of a mile distant, which he served in the same way.
On his return he met his lieutenant, with the remainder of the sailors, who stated that he had not done as he had requested him, having a reluctance to destroy the undefended property of poor people, he had hesitated until his candles had burned out, and then found it impossible to execute his orders.
Jones was exceedingly angry, and vented his rage in the most insulting language, saying at the same time, “that if the accomplished Lord Howe would commit deeds of burning, pillage, and slaughter, upon the persons and property of Americans, the right of retaliation belonged to us.” In making such hasty remarks, he forgot that this enterprise was one of an entirely different nature; the scheme, if it may be so called, was one of his own forming, the American government not being apprised of any thing of the kind, neither had he received any order to that effect. The whole affair must be allowed to be one of the most audacious of its kind, and will ever attach a lasting stain upon the memory of its originator.
It was now daylight and the frightened inhabitants were beginning to collect; still Jones was unwilling to depart without carrying any of his intended depredations into effect, after surmounting so many difficulties.
He posted to the nearest house and demanded a light, which, having obtained, he deliberately kindled a fire in the steerage of a large ship which was surrounded by others lying dry upon the shore, pouring a barrel of tar into the flames; during this operation, Johnson, with several other sailors, stood sentinel against any surprise he might receive from the inhabitants, who by this time were attracted by the flames, and had assembled to the pier in great numbers. On seeing them approach in such formidable numbers, he seized his pistols, one in each hand, and standing between them and the ship on fire, ordered them to retire to their homes, which they did with precipitation. At length he and his party entered their boats and rowed quietly to their ship, where, from the deck, he could see the panic-stricken inhabitants running in vast numbers to their forts, which was no little amusement to him, as he had spiked their guns.
Jones afterward ascertained, much to his chagrin, that only the ship which he himself had fired was destroyed, the surrounding ones were saved by the exertions of the people. He consoled himself by saying, “that he had done enough to show England that not all her boasted navy could protect her own coasts, and that the scenes of distress which she had caused the Americans to pass through, might soon be brought home to her own doors.” On his return to the Ranger, Jones informed his officers and men that he had not yet done with Scotland, that he had another project in his head, which he intended to carry into effect; that was, to obtain possession of the person of the Earl of Selkirk, a nobleman residing at Selkirk Abbey, on a beautiful promontory called St. Mary’s Isle, running out into the river Dee, and not more than two miles distant from where they then were.
Jones conceived that if he could obtain possession of this nobleman’s person, he could demand an exchange for some distinguished American prisoner. He remained in the bay of Kirkcudbright till the following morning, when he started with two boats and about twenty men, among whom was Johnson, who relates the particulars of this singular adventure. Johnson was in the first boat with Jones, who commanded it himself; the other was commanded by Simpson, his first lieutenant. They landed on
Her ladyship made no resistance, but sent the servant to collect the remainder of the plate, requesting that the teapot, which was then on the table, might be emptied and placed with it. After being collected, it was carefully packed in baskets, and the party, having performed their errand, withdrew to their boats, where Paul Jones met them. They soon regained their ship, when the prize they had made was safely repacked, and they set sail for the coast of France.
During their voyage from Scotland to France he fell in with an English vessel called the Drake; a sharp conflict ensued, which lasted more than an hour, when the Drake surrendered, and was towed in safety into Brest, a seaport of France. On the very day of his arrival at Brest, Jones wrote the following eccentric epistle to Lady Selkirk, which one of his biographers calls “the queerest piece of epistolary correspondence extant.”
“Madam,—It cannot be too much lamented, that in the profession of arms, the officer of fine feelings and real sensibility, should be under the necessity of winking at any action of persons under his command which his heart cannot approve; but the reflection is doubly severe, when he finds himself obliged, in appearance, to countenance such actions by his authority. This hard case was mine, when, on the 23d of April last, I landed on St. Mary’s Isle.
“Knowing Lord Selkirk’s interest with his king, and esteeming as I do his private character, I wished to make him the happy instrument of alleviating the horrors of hopeless captivity, when the brave are overpowered and made prisoners of war. It was, perhaps, fortunate for you, madam, that he was from home, for it was my intention to have taken him on board the Ranger, and detained him until, through his means, a general and fair exchange of prisoners, as well in Europe as in America, had been effected.
“When I was informed by some men whom I met at landing, that his lordship was absent, I walked back to my boat, determined to leave the island. By the way, however, some officers who were with me could not forbear expressing their discontent, observing that in America no delicacy was shown by the English, who took away all sorts of moveable property, setting fire not only to towns and to the houses of the rich, without distinction, but not even sparing the wretched hamlets and milch-cows of the poor and helpless, at the approach of an inclement winter.
“That party had been with me at Whitehaven; some complaisance, therefore, was their due. I had but a moment to think how I might gratify them, and at the same time do your ladyship the least injury. I charged the officers to permit none of the seamen to enter the house, or to hurt any thing about it; to treat you, madam, with the utmost respect; to accept of the plate which was offered, and to come away without making a search, or demanding any thing else. I am induced to believe that I was punctually obeyed, since I am informed that the plate which they brought away is far short of the quantity expressed in the inventory which accompanied it. I have gratified my men; and when the plate is sold, I shall become the purchaser, and will gratify my own feelings in restoring it, by such conveyance as you may please to direct.
“Had the earl been on board the Ranger the following evening, he would have seen the awful pomp and dreadful carnage of a sea engagement; both affording ample subject for the pencil as well as melancholy reflection for the contemplative mind. Humanity starts back from such scenes of horror, and cannot sufficiently execrate the vile promoters of this detestable war;
For they, ’twas they unsheathed the ruthless blade,
And Heaven shall ask the havoc it has made.
“The British ship of war Drake, mounting twenty guns, with more than her full complement of officers and men, was our opponent. The ships met, and the advantage was disputed with great fortitude on each side for an hour and four minutes, when the gallant commander of the Drake fell, and victory declared in favor of the Ranger. The amiable lieutenant lay mortally wounded, besides near forty of the inferior officers and crew killed and wounded; a melancholy demonstration of the uncertainty of human prospects, and of the sad reverses of fortune, which an hour can produce. I buried them in a spacious grave, with the honors due to the memory of the brave.
“Though I have drawn my sword in the present generous struggle for the rights of men, yet I am not in arms as an American, nor am I in pursuit of riches. My fortune is liberal, having no wife nor family, and having lived long enough to know that riches cannot secure happiness. I profess myself a citizen of the world, totally unfettered by the little, mean distinctions of climate or of country, which diminish the benevolence of the heart and set bounds to philanthropy. Before this war was begun, I had, at an early time of life, withdrawn from sea-service in favor of ‘calm contemplation and poetic ease.’ I have sacrificed not only my favorite scheme of life, but the softer affections of the heart, and my prospects of domestic happiness; and I am ready to sacrifice my life also with cheerfulness, if that forfeiture could restore peace among mankind.
“As the feelings of your gentle bosom cannot but be congenial with mine, let me entreat you, madam, to use your persuasive art with your husband, to endeavor to stop this cruel and destructive war, in which Britain can never succeed. Heaven can never countenance the barbarous and unmanly practice of Britons in America, which savages would blush at, and which, if not discontinued, will soon be retaliated on Britain by a justly enraged people.
“Should you fail in this, and I am persuaded you will attempt it, (and who can resist the power of such an advocate,) your endeavors to effect a general exchange of prisoners, will be an act of humanity, which will afford you golden feelings on your death-bed.
“I hope this cruel contest will soon be closed; but should it continue, I wage no war with the fair. I acknowledge their force, and bend before it with submission. Let not, therefore, the amiable Countess of Selkirk regard me as an enemy; I am ambitious of her esteem and friendship,
“The honor of a line from your fair hand, in answer to this, will lay me under singular obligation; and if I can render you any acceptable service in France or elsewhere, I hope you see into my character so far as to command me, without the least grain of reserve. I wish to know the exact behaviour of my people, as I am determined to punish them if they have exceeded their liberty.”
This vain, Quixotic, and inexplicable epistle, is a perfect illustration of the character of the writer; but with all its egotism and chivalry, it did not produce the wished for answer from the “fair hand of his amiable countess.”
It could not be for one moment supposed that Lady Selkirk would condescend to answer a letter couched in such terms of gross familiarity. The plate, after many difficulties and delays, was finally restored, some seven or eight years after it was taken. The French government being at this time on the eve of embracing the American cause, overwhelmed Jones with congratulations upon his late achievements. He received a letter from the French Minister, offering him the command of the Bonhomme Richard, with permission to choose his own cruising ground, either in the European or American seas, and to cruise under the flag of the United States. Jones accepted the offer, and accordingly prepared to form his crew by enlisting raw French peasants and volunteers, having only thirty Americans in the whole, these he transferred from the Ranger, with Johnson, our veteran sailor. He commenced his cruising on the coast of Norway, from thence to the west coast of Ireland, during which he made many valuable prizes.
He now determined to cruise around the English coasts, to intercept the colliers bound to London, many of which he destroyed. It was during this cruise that he was joined by the Alliance, the Pallas, and the Vengeance, these, with the Richard, formed the squadron of which he was commander. On the 23d of September the squadron was standing to the northward, toward Flamboro Head, with a light breeze, when they discovered a fleet of forty-one sail running down the coast, very close in with the land. Jones soon discovered that this was the Baltic fleet which he had been so anxious to encounter, but had never before had the chance. This fleet was under convoy of the Serapis, a new ship, mounting forty-four guns, and the Countess of Scarborough, of twenty guns. Early in the evening the Serapis was observed to haul round and place herself between her convoy and the Richard, as if preparing to engage her; she soon came within pistol-shot, when the captain of the Serapis demanded, “What ship is that?” and in reply, a shot was fired from the Richard. This was the commencement of a battle more famous for stubborn courage and heroic daring than perhaps the world ever knew. The biographers of this eccentric but gallant officer have so often described this triumphant conflict, that we shall content ourselves with a few incidents with which our veteran sailor was more immediately connected. He relates that the Richard suffered severely at the first of the battle, till Jones ordered his ship to be laid across the hawse of the enemy; in doing so the two ships swung broadside and broadside, the muzzles of the guns touching each other. Jones sent one of his men to lash the two ships together, and commenced with his own hand in making fast the jib-stay of the Serapis to the Richard’s mizenmast; when the sailors saw what he was about to do, Johnson, with two others, ran to his assistance, and soon performed the task. The firing continued from the starboard sides of both vessels for more than an hour, the effect of which was terrible to both ships. There was much skirmishing with pistols and pikes through the ports, but no effort was made from the Serapis to board the Richard, although they must have observed her crippled condition, she had begun to leak fast.
It was near ten o’clock when the Richard had sunk considerably from the water she had received through the shot-holes, which was now below the surface. Some of the subordinate officers believing that she was sinking, cried out lustily for “Quarter!” when Jones, in great anger, threw a pistol at one of them, which he had just discharged at the enemy, fractured the poor fellow’s skull, and sent him reeling down the hatchway. Jones ordered all the hands that could be spared to the pumps, and shortly after the Serapis surrendered. At this moment there was much confusion, as several of the crew, who were Englishmen, and near their homes, took advantage of the mÊlÉe to desert in a small boat toward Scarborough. Our hero well remembers seeing one of the lieutenants of the Richard appear on the deck and present several of the officers of the Serapis to Commodore Jones as prisoners.
The action had now ceased, all hands were ordered to assist in separating the two ships which had been so long in deadly embrace, and to extinguish the flames which were now raging in both vessels. It was daylight in the morning when the carpenters were ordered to examine the Richard. After a deliberate examination, they were of opinion that she could not be kept afloat sufficiently long to reach any port. Jones was not willing to abandon her till the last moment, and kept a lieutenant with a party of sailors at the pumps for twenty-four hours; Johnson says he worked for nine successive hours, and at last, when all hopes were extinguished, they commenced removing the wounded and the stores to the Serapis. They had not finished their operations more than half an hour, when she sunk to rise no more.
The next cruise was to the Texel, and from thence to Amsterdam, where they received great kindness from the Dutch. Jones still continued his cruising with satisfaction to the American government until the beginning of the year 1781, when he was sent with the ship Ariel to Philadelphia with stores for the army which had been waiting in France for more than a year, no suitable conveyance having been provided. They arrived in Philadelphia in February, 1781, the first time Johnson had seen the land of his adoption. Here he received his prize money, and having disengaged himself from the Ariel, determined to remain a short time in order to become master of the English language, of which at that time he knew but little.
At this time Congress was sitting in Philadelphia, and several of the members were about removing their families to that city. Application was made to Captain Jones to furnish a man to take charge of a sloop to Boston, to convey the furniture of John Adams to Philadelphia; he accordingly appointed Johnson, and he brought the furniture safely to that city.
This circumstance often brought Johnson in contact with Mr. Adams, who knew that he was one of the crew of Captain Jones, and consequently must have been in the conflict of the Serapis and Richard, which having occurred so recently, was a subject of general conversation. Many of the sailors frequented the hall of Congress, and Johnson became interested in listening and observing what was so new to him that he was a daily visiter. When the members found that the sailors were part of the crew of Captain Jones, they frequently left their seats, and came over to them to inquire the particulars of the recent engagement. Mr. Adams particularly engaged the attention of Johnson; to use the veteran’s own words, he says, “a nervous sensation seemed to pervade the patriot as he
During the time they remained in Philadelphia, General Washington arrived, and was presented to Congress; Johnson was present and listened to the introduction by President Hancock, and the reply by the general. Some days after, when the sailors were in the hall, Mr. Adams brought General Washington to them, who kindly shook each by the hand, calling them “Our gallant tars!” and asking them questions relative to the many successful adventures they had recently achieved.
Johnson soon after left the navy, and engaged in the merchant service for some years, but eventually returned to it again, where he remained till, near the end of his life’s voyage, age obliged him to ask repose and protection in that asylum provided for the grateful and worn-out mariner.
———
BY WM. ALBERT SUTLIFFE.
———
I heard a maiden by the tumid ocean—
The day had gone and night came on apace—
Chanting a hymn to the spray’s chiming motion,
Starlight and moonlight, and the sea’s dim face.
And, as the moon looked down, her song up-stealing
Fell thus upon my ear: “Hope of my hope,
Gone o’er the swelling waters, whence this feeling
That thou art dead? I give my fancy scope,
And see thee hideous, with Death’s image o’er
Those features I have loved, but know no more.
Hope of my hope, gone o’er the swelling ocean,
What cavern holds thy form—
Cast by the furious storm?
“Hope of my hope, gone o’er the swelling ocean!
I weep for thee when night is on the sea:
My bosom bursteth with its deep emotion—
My spirit stretcheth out its arms but finds not thee.
O misery! and then itself within itself retires,
And weeps away a night that has no morn;
And lights forever up fierce funeral pyres—
Dreaming of cypress wreaths, and things forlorn.
“What sea-nymph made thy bed
Beneath the briny waves?
Thetis with golden hair?
Panopea wondrous fair,
Lone virgin of the ocean’s deepest caves,
With filmy garments shred
About thy form,
Mock of the brumal storm?
Ho! mourn with me, ye nymphs, he is no more!
Go sound it, Triton, o’er the humid waters!
Go weep for him again, ye misty daughters!
Re-echo it, ye cliffs, along our shore!
And I myself will take the sad refrain
Of the elegiac strain,
And tune my lyre to a symphonious stream
Floating along with many a moony gleam,
Soft as an angel’s dream,
Over the foamy summit of each wave,
That rolleth o’er his grave.
“Well do I know the day
That bore him hence away!
I watched him from yon cliff, in joy departing:
I, with the tear-drops starting,
Wept that he thus should go.
He, hopeful of the future, saw not wo
In the dim cloud that gathered, and the spray
Leaped joyful up about his seaward way—
Leaped up the vessel’s sides with treacherous kiss;
Deceitful waves, that now in the abyss
Have whelmed my love’s proud form,
Play of the pitiless storm.
“I’ve wept until my tears
Have worn with furrows deep my pallid cheek;
Have gazed until my poor eyes, worn and weak,
Like age’s eyes, seem faded with long years.
Oh! the long, dreary nights I’ve passed alone!
Would Reason from her throne
Might flee, and bear with her this dim, dull grief—
This memory’s haunting tone!
Then might I have relief.
Receive me, ocean! lo, to thee I come!
I, too, will share thy home:
Our bridal bed shall be of pearls and diamonds,
First loved, last loved, and fondly loved forever.
No distance e’er shall sever—”
The voice was hushed; I sped me to the strand.
Only the moonlight fell; and o’er the sand
A fountain gushed, pure as our holiest dreams.
Perchance ’twas she, thus changed; how could I tell?
And gone, as Arethusa once, beneath the deep,
Had sought her lover in his quiet sleep.
For Love there’s no oblivion. I have cherished
An idol beautiful, but in this hour,
Hopes that had bloomed for years have wholly perished,
And left me but the fragrance of the flower:
But be the hopes of love like blossoms blighted,
Wherever in the temples of the heart
Hath stood an altar with their splendor lighted,
The glory will not utterly depart;
Still as we enter life’s forgetful haven,
And every form of beauty disappears,
The pictures on the memory engraven
Of early love, win our last smiles and tears;
The inspiration of the first endeavor
After the love of woman dwells forever.
GEORGE HERBERT.
———
BY JAMES W. WALL.
———
How few in our day have read the pious verses of George Herbert, “the sweet singer of The Temple,” as his biographer, old Walton, so loves to call him—verses overflowing with the sensibilities of a heart consecrated to pious uses, all aglow with love for humanity, and an ardent desire to bring it nearer to Him who so freely gave himself for it.
Sweet George Herbert! Who that has ever read the rich outpourings of your warm and pious spirit, but has felt how poor and cold in the comparison were the promptings of his own? Who that has ever pondered over your verse, radiant with the praises of that sanctuary in whose hallowed courts you so loved to tread, but has felt the full force of your own sweet words?
A verse may find him who a sermon flies,
And turn delight into a sacrifice.
George Herbert, the author of “The Temple,” a collection of sacred poems, was of a most noble, generous, and ancient family. His brother was the famous Edward Lord Herbert, of Cherbury, who was himself a poet, but attained higher distinction as a statesman and historian, having filled, during the reign of James I., the responsible posts of privy counselor, and ambassador to France; it was while engaged in the duties of this embassy that he composed his famous history of Henry the Eighth, so often quoted and referred to by the modern English historian.
The subject of our sketch was born at Montgomery Castle, in Wales, April 3, 1593. He was educated at Westminster school, and being a king’s scholar, was elected to Trinity College, Cambridge, about the year 1608. He took both degrees in the Arts, and became a Fellow in the college. In 1619 he was chosen orator for the University, which post he held eight years. This office he is said to have filled with great honor to himself and to the University. And this was no wonder, for, to use the quaint language of his biographer, old Izaak Walton, “he had acquired great learning, and was blessed with a high fancy, a civil and sharp wit, and with a natural elegance both in his behaviour, his tongue, and his pew.” When that royal pedant, King James, published his “Basilicon Doron,” he sent a copy to the University of Cambridge. Herbert, in his capacity as orator, was called upon to acknowledge its receipt on behalf of the institution, which he did in a most elegant manner, by a letter written in Latin, closing with the following lines:
Quid vaticanam
Unicus
The excellence of its Latinity, and the complimentary allusions plentifully sprinkled through it, so pleased the vanity of the king, that he inquired of the Earl of Pembroke if he knew the learned scholar who penned the epistle. His answer was, “That he knew him very well, and that he was his kinsman; but that he loved him more for his learning and virtue, than that he was of his name and family.” At which answer the king smiled, and asked the earl leave that he might love him too, for he took him to be the jewel of that University.
The complimentary remark of the king, coming to the ears of Herbert, no doubt first turned his thoughts toward court preferment; for about this time we find him applying himself to the study of the Italian, French, and Spanish languages, in which he is said to have attained great proficiency; and by means of the attainment of which, to use his own language, “he hoped to secure the place of Secretary of State, as his predecessor, Sir Francis Nethersole had done.” This, and the love of court conversation, with the laudable ambition to be something more than he then was, drew him often from Cambridge to attend his majesty, King James.
Shortly after this the king visited Cambridge in state, and was received on behalf of the University by Herbert, in a most elegant oration in Latin, stuffed full, as the manner of the time then was, of most fulsome adulation. In his progress he was attended by the great Sir Francis Bacon, Lord Verulam, and by the learned Dr. Andrews, Bishop of Winchester; and Herbert, by his learning and suavity, soon captivated these distinguished men. Bacon seems afterward to have put such value upon his judgment, that he usually desired his approbation before he would expose any of his books to be printed, and thought him so worthy of his friendship, that having translated many of the Prophet David’s Psalms into English verse, he made George Herbert his Patron, by a public dedication of them to him as the “best judge of divine poetry.” In 1620, the king gave Herbert a sinecure, formerly conferred upon Sir Philip Sydney by Queen Elizabeth, worth some twelve hundred pounds per annum.
His ambitious views of further court preferment seem never to have been realized. The character of his mind, perhaps, did not fit him for the responsible duties of a statesman, or he might have been deficient in those arts of the courtier, so necessary, and such ready aid to court preferment. It may be that he had too independent a spirit, and could not “crook the pregnant hinges of the knee, that thrift might follow fawning.” But be this as it may, we think, in the sentiment contained in some verses written by our poet about the period of his leaving the court and entering holy orders, we have a readier solution for the sudden relinquishment of his hopes of court preferment. These verses were written upon the famous saying of Cardinal Wolsey, uttered by that proud churchman when his spirit was crushed, and the fruits of his ambition had turned to ashes on his lips. “Oh, that I had served my God with half the zeal with which I have served my king, he would not thus, in my old age, have placed me in the power of mine enemies.”
No doubt the wholesome reflections inspired by the contemplation of those touching words, awakened the sensitive mind of our poet to a full appreciation of the vanity of all earthly ambition. He discovered in time, that pleasures springing from honor and grandeur of condition, are soon faded; that the mind nauseates, and soon begins to feel their emptiness. In the words of one of England’s most gifted divines, “Those who are so fond of public honor while they pursue it, how little do they taste it when they have it? Like lightning it only flashes on the face, and it is well if it do not hurt the man.”
Without further speculating as to the reasons that induced our poet to fly from the court circles into the quiet
I know the ways of Learning; both the head and pipes
That feed the press, and make it run;
What reason hath from nature borrowed,
Or of itself, like Housewife sheen.
I know the ways of Honor, what maintains
The quick returns of courtesy and wit;
The ways of favor, either party gains
And the best mode of oft retaining it.
I know the ways of pleasure, the sweet strains,
The lullings and the relishes of it;
The proposition of hot blood and brains;
What mirth and musick mean; what love and wit.
Yet through these labyrinths, not my grovelling wit,
But the silk twist let down from heaven to me,
Did both conduct and teach me, how by it
To climb to thee.
In 1630 he was admitted to the priestly office, and was immediately inducted to the Rectory of Bemerton, near Salisbury. And here it was, stripping from him the gaudy trappings of a fashionable court, he clothed himself in the better and more enduring robes of humility and meekness. It was here, amid the quiet shades of his peaceful parish, he prepared, for his own use and that of his brethren, a brief manual, entitled “The Country Parson”—the rich gatherings of his own experience, and the exemplification of his own ardor in the performance of the duties of the pastoral office. His sermons, delivered while at Bemerton, are practical in doctrine, forcible in illustration, and make directly to the heart. They are just such sermons as we should suppose the author of The Country Parson would preach. They are many of them explanatory of the forms and services of the Church of England, urging their importance and the necessity of their being truly understood.
He usually took his text from the gospel of the day appointed to be read, and did as consistently declare why the Church did appoint that portion of Scripture to be that day read; and he shortly made it appear to them (to use his own words) “that the whole service of the Church was a reasonable, and therefore an acceptable sacrifice to God—as, namely, we begin with confession of ourselves to be vile and miserable sinners; and we begin so because, until we have confessed ourselves to be such, we are not capable of that mercy which we so much need; but having in the prayer of our Lord begged pardon for those sins which we have confessed, and hoping by our public confession and real repentance we have obtained that pardon—then we dare and do proceed to beg of the Lord ‘to open our lips, that our mouth may show forth his praise;’ for till then we are not able and worthy to praise him.”
The church holydays and fasts, and the benefits to be derived from their observance, were most beautifully illustrated in Herbert’s discourses; and we venture to say that in the sermons of no clergyman of the Church of England, or the Episcopal Church of America, can there be found so practical and so beautiful an exemplification of the excellency of the Episcopal Church service. The simple parishioners of Bemerton learned to love the service of their church under the preachings of their sainted pastor, because its practical usefulness, and its adaptation to their every spiritual want, was brought forcibly home to the door of their hearts. The form, they were taught, was as nothing, save as the most fitting vehicle of their wants and spiritual aspirations. In our age, where the cold religion of formality is seen struggling for the mastery over that which is ardent and spiritual; when “the outward and visible sign” seems to be more thought of than “the inward and spiritual grace;” when the outward adornments of the sanctuary are held almost in as high value, and as necessary to salvation, as the inward adornment of the meek and pious spirit, it is refreshing to read such sermons as those of Herbert. He was a formalist only so far as form could be made a means to an end; a means to bring man to a closer contemplation of the love and the abounding mercies of his God; a means through which he could be made to praise him in holiness and truth. The form he looked upon as the fitting vehicle, “the silken twist,” to lead man’s thoughts in fit expression up to the throne of God. The summum bonum, the all in religion, he still believed, and so most earnestly taught, consisted in the free-will offering of the penitent and pious spirit.
In his essay on the duties of the Country Parson, he enjoins upon the pastor, “to be constant in every good work, setting such an example to his flock as they may be glad to follow; and by so doing, profit thereby to their souls’ good.”
And most diligently (if we are to believe the testimony of his contemporaries) did George Herbert conform himself to the character so beautifully sketched. In the functions of his humble office he is said to have led a most pious and blameless life.
The priests of the Levitical ministration, put on the humerus blazing with jewels, before they took the breastplate of righteousness and truth; thereby signifying that the priest must be a shining light, resplendent with good works, before he fed them with righteousness and truth, the legitimate milk of the word. And in the daily beauty of his blameless life; in the gentle, dove-like spirit that animated his every motive; in his daily charities, and his devout ministerings at the altar, Herbert most beautifully illustrated the doctrines that he preached. His life was “indeed, a shining light, resplendent with good works;” and the flock which he so faithfully tended, found through his guidance spiritual pastures. Quaint old Jeremy Taylor, alluding to the necessity of the Christian pastor exemplifying in his daily life the doctrines that he preaches, most beautifully remarks:
“Herod’s doves could never have invited so many strangers to their dovecots if they had not been besmeared with most fragrant ointment. As said Dydimus, make your pigeons smell sweet, and they will allure whole flocks. And, Christian pastor, if your life be excellent, your virtues, ‘like precious ointment, full of fragrance,’ you will soon invite your charges to run after your precious odors.”
Such, in all things, was the subject of our sketch; his virtues were the precious ointment, full of fragrance, alluring the quiet flock his Master had given him to feed.
We have said more of Herbert in his pastoral character than we first intended, although, perhaps, we have not
It was in the quiet village of Bemerton that Herbert composed his little volume of poems, styled “The Temple,” of which it was said by a contemporary, “There was in it the picture of a divine soul in every page, and the whole book was such a harmony of holy passions, as would enrich the world with pleasure and piety.”
We do not pretend to claim for these songs any great poetic merit. They abound with faults, such as were peculiar to most of the minor poets of that age. The versification is often rough and inharmonious, the words ill chosen for the rhyme, while conceits far-fetched and unnatural are most plentifully sprinkled through them. These, however, are faults peculiar to the versification of the time in which our poet flourished. The great merit of these songs, most undoubtedly, consists mainly in the pious ardor and genuine devotional feeling which characterize them. The reader is attracted at once by the deep and earnest piety they manifest. There seems to be a consistent effort in the poet’s mind to give utterance to his devotional feeling in words of earnestness and power, such words as shall not dishonor the high and noble theme he had chosen for his subject. It can readily be discovered that they give utterance to the language of his heart, and that the influence of that heart’s holiest affections was the happiest inspiration of his verse. If there is any truth in those sweet lines of Cowper,
The Poet’s lyre to fix his fame,
Should be the Poet’s heart;
Affection lights a brighter flame,
Than ever blazed by art.
then “sweet George Herbert” has made sure his claim to remembrance, and left something behind him which posterity will not willingly let die.
Wherever deep and holy love for sacred things is esteemed, there the verses of Herbert will find many ardent admirers. They are the pure and free-will offerings of a heart consecrated to pious uses, and attuned to sacred harmonies—the soft breathings of a devotional spirit, that seems too pure for earth.
When he sings of the church where he so loved to worship, it is with all the earnest enthusiasm, if not with the inspiration of that noble song of Solomon, commencing,
“Behold thou art fair, my love, behold thou art fair; thou hast dove’s eyes within thy locks, thy hair is as a flock of goats that appear from Mount Gilead. Thy lips are like a thread of scarlet, and thy speech is comely; thy temples are like a piece of pomegranate within thy locks, thou art all fair, my love, there is no spot within thee.”
And Herbert loved the church, because it was the fold where he could gather the flock that had been given him to tend. The church on earth was to him the emblem of the spiritual church “eternal in the heavens.” His gentle spirit seems all aglow with love, whenever he sings of its quiet retreats and the rich solemnities of its glorious worship.
The poems, styled “The Temple,” are preceded by a long poem as a preface, called “The Church Porch,” where he would have the reader linger before entering the sanctuary. And in the poem the poet takes occasion to give sage counsel and most excellent advice, the better to fit the mind for the contemplation of the sacredness of the sanctuary beyond the porch. He would purify the spirit from the dross of earthly vices, he would have it “purged of the contaminations of earth,” before entering the temple, where the divine presence loves to dwell.
And no one who will read the advice embodied in this introductory poem, but must rise from its perusal with the conviction that it contains a code of morality, enforced by most excellent precepts. Independent of its religious tone, it may be said to contain the very best of principles, enforced by illustrations that carry conviction to the mind at once. In the rude measure of the time, it holds up virtue in all its beauty to our approbation, and lays bare all the hideousness of vice. He seeks not for harmonious verse, as the vehicle of thought, he desires not to please, but to persuade; not to amuse, but to instruct.
Is lust within, polluting, corrupting, and withering the heart, his warning is,
Beware of lust; it doth pollute the soul
Whom God in baptism washed with his own blood,
It blots the lesson written in thy soul;
The holy words cannot be understood.
How dare those eyes upon a Bible look,
Much less toward God, “whose lust is all their book.”
Profanity he rebukes in lines like these:
Take not his name who made thy mouth, in vain.
It gets thee nothing, and has no excuse.
Lust and wine plead a pleasure, avarice gain;
But the cheap swearer, through his open sluice,
Lets his soul run for naught.
Remembering in whose sight “lying lips are an abomination,” and the sacredness of whose sanctuary is polluted by falsehood, he breaks forth with indignant tone,
Lie not, but let thy heart be true to God,
Thy mouth to it, thy actions to them both.
Cowards tell lies, and those that fear the rod.
The stormy working soul spits lies and froth;
Dare to be true—nothing can need a lie;
A fault which needs it most, grows two thereby.
Extravagance, which is the grateful mother of debt, penury, and want; which has desolated as many homes, withered as many hearts, and destroyed as many lives as the sword, he thus rebukes:
Never exceed thy income, youth may make
Even with the year; but age, if it will hit,
Shoots a bow short, and lessens still his stake
As the day lessens, and his life with it.
Thy children, kindred, friends upon thee call,
Before thy journey, fairly past with all.
The dangers that wait on suretyship, and the madness of yielding to its pressing importunities, are thus set forth:
Yet be not surety, if thou be a father;
Love is a personal debt. I cannot give
My children’s right, nor ought he take it, rather
Both friends should die, than hinder them to live.
Fathers first enter bonds to nature’s ends,
And are her sureties, ere they are friends.
The spirit in which we should enter the hallowed courts of the sanctuary, is set forth thus:
When once thy foot enters the church, believe
God is more there than thou, for thou art there
Only by his permission. Then beware,
And make thyself all reverence and fear.
Kneeling ne’er spoiled silk stockings; quit thy state,
All equal are within the church’s gate.
Space will not permit us to make further extracts from “The Porch.” Enough has been given to show its tone and character. The poems called “The Temple,” thus introduced, are a series of devotional songs upon sacred subjects, overflowing with ardent feeling, and manifesting the existence of a piety as fervent as it is rare.
In his verses on Prayer, we have an apt illustration of our author’s style and devotional ardor.
Prayer, the Church’s banquet, angels age,
God’s breath in man returning to his birth.
The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage,
The Christian’s plummet sounding heaven and earth.
The quiet stillness of the Sabbath morn, and the blessings that accompany it, call forth such verses as the following:
Oh, day most calm, most bright,
The fruit of this, the next world’s bud,
Th’ indorsement of supreme delight,
Writ by a friend, and with his blood;
The couch of time, care’s balm, and bay;
The week were dark, but for thy light,
Thy torch doth show the way.
Sundays the pillars are
On which Heaven’s palace arched lies;
The other days fill up the spare
And hollow room with vanities;
They are the fruitful beds and borders
In God’s rich garden; that is base
Which parts their ranks and orders.
The Sundays of man’s life,
Threaded together on time’s string,
Make bracelets to adorn the wife
Of the eternal glorious king;
On Sundays Heaven’s door stands ope,
Blessings are plentiful and rife—
More plentiful than hope.
In his verses styled “The Odour,” we have an exemplification of the Poet’s love for his Divine Master, expressed with that fervency which betokens the sincerity of his adoration.
How sweetly doth my master sound! my master!
As
Unto the taster.
So do these words a sweet content,
An oriental fragrance—my master!
The poem entitled “Christmas,” has considerable merit, the versification is smoother, and the measure not so irregular as most of his poems, while at the same time it is characterized by the same warmth of devotional feeling, that is manifested in all.
The shepherds sing, and shall I silent be?
My God, no hymn for thee?
My soul’s a shepherd, too; a flock it feeds
Of thoughts, and words, and deeds.
The pasture is thy word, the streams thy grace,
Enriching all the place.
Shepherd and flock shall sing, and all my powers
Outsing the daylight hours.
The little poem entitled “Jesu,” although it has neither the merit of smoothness, or any poetical beauty, is strongly illustrative of the purely saint-like piety of its author. Dr. Sanderson was enraptured with this little production, and used to style it, “a gem of rare conceit.” We see nothing in it, however, to warrant such praise; it certainly has no poetic merit, and the conceit embodied in it, appears to be rude and far-fetched.
JESU.
Jesu is in my heart, his sacred name
Is deeply carved there, but th’ other week,
A great affliction broke the little frame,
Ev’n all to pieces; which I went to seek;
And first I found the corner where was I,
After where es, and next where u was graved.
When I had got these parcels, instantly
I sat me down to spell them, and perceived
That to my broken heart, he was I ease you,
And to my whole is Jesu.
Space will not permit us to make further extracts from these poems of Herbert’s. Those that we have given, illustrate the pious ardor of the subject of our sketch, while at the same time they give evidence of some claim to take position with the minor poets of his day. His prose compositions undoubtedly possess more merit than his poetical, and clearly entitle him to rank with the best of his contemporaries. The beautiful simplicity of the character of our poet, has never been surpassed in any age. His disposition was of the most sweet and engaging nature, adorned with all the graces of a most saint-like piety. “He lived like a saint,” says his enthusiastic biographer, old Walton, “and like a saint did he die.” The Sunday before his death, raising himself from his bed, he called for his instrument, and having tuned it, played and sung that verse from his poems, commencing,
The Sundays of man’s life
Threaded together on time’s string,
Make bracelets to adorn the wife
Of the eternal, glorious king.
Like the dying swan,
As death darkened his eye and unplumed his wings,
His sweetest song was the last he sings.
———
BY GEORGE D. PRENTICE.
———
I send thee, Mary, a sweet young rose,
That bright with the hues of the sunset glows;
Its beauty, alas! is frail and brief,
It will come to thee with a withered leaf,
But the fervent kiss that my earnest lips
Have left for thee on its crimson tips,
Will not from the fading flower depart,
But come all fresh to thy lip and heart;
For oh, ’tis a breath of the love and trust
That will live when our lips and our hearts are dust.
Mary, dear Mary, pray love this flower,
Let it have for thy heart a spell of power;
For I plucked it fresh from its lovely stalk,
On the blooming edge of that garden walk,
Where we strayed together so deeply blest,
When the sun was low in the golden west,
And murmured our loves in burning words,
With none to hear but the flowers and birds,
And lingered long on the dear, sweet spot,
While our warm hearts kissed, though our lips did not.
Mary, dear Mary, my thoughts still cleave
To each memory sweet of that blessed eve,
To each tone more dear than the sweetest lute,
To each vow we breathed when our lips were mute,
To the wild, deep thrill through each trembling frame,
From fingers warmed with a pulse of flame,
To each gentle tear, to each gentle sob,
To each sigh that told of the heart’s deep throb,
Aye, these memories dwell in this soul of mine—
Oh, Mary dear, do they live in thine?
Mary, dear Mary, I pray thee say,
Do the roses bloom where thy steps now stray?
Do they look at morn on the sky’s soft blue
Through the trembling tears of the early dew?
When I come to thee will they smile to greet
Thy lover’s steps with their perfume sweet?
Will they list at eve to our tender vows?
Will they weave their wreaths for our gentle brows?
And when at last we are doomed to part,
Will they breathe a sigh for each breaking heart?
Mary, dear Mary, I fain would know,
Do thy heart’s sweet flowers keep their fresh young glow?
Are their eyes yet turned on the skies above?
Do they glitter still with the dews of love?
Has no blighting frost, has no bitter blast
Cold, cold o’er their buds and their blossoms past?
If my name is said, are their leaves yet stirred
To the olden thrill at the cherished word?
And say, oh say, will those dear, heart flowers,
Still bloom for me in the Eden bowers?
Ballad.
WORDS BY
FITZGERALD.
MUSIC BY
BENKERT.
Published by permission of Edward L. Walker, 160 Chestnut Street.
Publisher and Importer of Music and Musical Instruments.
Ah! do not speak so coldly,
Cold words my heart will chill;
If I have lov’d too boldly,
Oh! let me worship still?
If
I have lov’d too boldly,
Oh! let me worship still?
The pure heart loves forever,
To its own likeness true;
And though fate bids us sever
I’ll love I’ll love but you,
And though fate bids us sever
I’ll love I’ll love but you.
SECOND VERSE.
The heart will throb in sorrow
If from its idol torn.
Nor elsewhere joy will borrow,
If love’s return be scorn.
Then do not speak so coldly,
Cold words my heart will chill;
E’en if I’ve lov’d too boldly,
Oh! let me worship still, &c.
———
BY HENRY WILLIAM HERBERT, AUTHOR OF FRANK FORESTER’S “FIELD SPORTS,” “FISH AND FISHING,” ETC.
———
THE GREEN-WINGED TEAL. (Anas Carolinensis.)
THE BLUE-WINGED TEAL. (Anas Discors.)
In this present month, the sport of duck-shooting on the inland streams, rivers, and lakelets, may be held to commence in earnest, as contrasted to the pursuit of the same tribes on the outer bays, estuaries, and surf-banks. About the end of September, and thenceforth through this and the next ensuing month, according to the variations of the seasons, and the longer or shorter endurance of that delicious time, the most delicious and most gorgeous of the whole American year, known throughout this continent as Indian Summer, the Mallard, and the two beautiful species which we have placed at the head of this article, begin to make their appearance on the little lakes of the interior, and in the various streams and rivers which fall into them, and thence downward to the Atlantic seaboard.
In the vast northern solitudes of the great lakes of the northwest, in all the streams of Upper Canada, even to the feeders of Lake Superior, and throughout the western country so far south as Texas, and northward to the Columbia and the fur countries, the Blue-Winged Teal breeds, literally by myriads. Throughout the great lakes, it is abundant in the early autumn, becoming excessively fat on the seed of the wild rice, with which the shallows of all those waters are overgrown, and being deservedly esteemed as one of the best, if not the very best, of the duck tribe. But it is the first of its race to remove from the wild, limpid waters, and wood-embosomed rivers of the great west, to the seaboard tide-waters, taking the inland water-courses on their route, rarely visiting the actual sea-shores, and proceeding on the occurrence of the first frosts, for they are singularly susceptible of cold, to the Southern States, where they swarm, especially in the inundated rice-fields of Georgia and South Carolina, during the winter months.
The Green-Winged Teal, which is the nearest congener, and frequently the associate of the Blue-Wing, has a far less extensive range, so far as regards its breeding-grounds, in as much as it never, so far as has been satisfactorily shown, has nidificated or produced its young south of the Great Lakes, nor even there in great numbers, its favorite haunts, for the purposes of reproduction, being the extreme northern swamps and wooded morasses almost up to the verge of the arctic circles. It does not come down on its southward migration, at nearly so early a period of the autumn as its congener, being less susceptible of cold, and tarrying on the Great Lakes till the frosts set in with sufficient severity to prevent its frequenting its favorite haunts with pleasure, or obtaining its food with facility. It is rarely or never seen in the Middle States during the summer, but is tolerably abundant during the autumn on
The commoner and, in our opinion—where these birds are abundant either along the courses of winding drains or streamlets, or in large reedy marshes, with wet soil and occasional pools or splashes—far the more exciting way of killing them is to go carefully and warily on foot, with a good medium-sized double-gun, say of eight to ten pounds weight, and a thoroughly well broke and steady spaniel, to retrieve and occasionally to flush the birds, which will sometimes, though rarely, lie very hard. A good sportsman will frequently, thus late in the autumn, when the mornings are sharp and biting, and the noons warm and hazy, but before the ice makes, pick up, on favorable ground, his eight or nine couple in a day’s walking, with a chance of picking up at the same time a few Snipe, Golden Plovers, Curlew, or Godwit; and this, in our mind, is equal to slaughtering a boat load by sneaking up in ambush to within twenty yards of a great company, whistling to make them lift their heads and ruffle up their loosened plumage, so as to give easy entrance to the shot, and then pouring into them at half point-blank range, a half pound of heavy shot.
In the southern States they are commonly taken, says Wilson, “in vast numbers, in traps placed on the small dry eminences that here and there rise above the water of the inundated rice fields. These places are strewed with rice, and by the common contrivance called a figure four, they are caught alive in hollow traps.” This we, of course, merely mention as illustrative of the habits of the bird; for, of course, no sportsman would dream of resorting to so worse than poacher-like a proceeding. The mode described by the eloquent pioneer of American natural history, is probably practised, for the most part, by the negroes for the supply of their masters’ table, and furnishing their own pockets with a little extra change, and is not used by the planters as a means of sport or amusement. It must be remembered, also, that Wilson, than whom there is no writer more to be relied on in matters which he relates of his own knowledge, and as occurring in his own days, must often be taken cum grano salis, as to the numbers of birds slain in this way or that within a certain time—things which he records, probably, on hearsay, and on which—we are sorry to say it—even good sportsmen, men who on any other subject would scorn to deviate one hair’s breadth from the truth, will not hesitate to draw a bow as long and as strong as Munchausen’s. Again, he writes of times when sporting was but little pursued, otherwise than as a method of procuring superior food for the table, or for the purpose of destroying noxious vermin and beasts of prey; when the rules of sportsmanship were little understood and as little regarded; and, lastly, when game abounded to a degree literally inconceivable in our day—although we have ourselves seen, with sorrow, the diminution, amounting in many regions around our large cities almost to extinction, of all birds and beasts—nay, but even fish of chase, within the last twenty years. We must be careful therefore not to charge exaggeration on a writer who, beyond a doubt, faithfully recorded that which he himself saw and enjoyed in his day; which we might see likewise and enjoy in our generation, and our children and grand-children after us, if it were not for the greedy, stupid, selfish, and brutal pot-hunting propensities of our population, alike rural of the country and mechanical of the cities, which seems resolutely and of set purpose bent on the utter annihilation of every species of game, whether of fur, fin or feather, which is yet found within our boundaries.
In my opinion, the common error of all American fowlers and duck shooters, lies, in the first place, in the overloading the gun altogether, causing it to recoil so much as to be exceedingly disagreeable and even painful, and in the same degree diminishing the effect of the discharge; for it must never be forgotten that when a gun recoils, whatever force is expended on the retrogressive motion of the breech, that same force is to be deducted from the propulsion of the charge. In the second place, he erroneously loads with extremely large and heavy shot, the result of which is, in two respects, inferior to that of a lighter and higher number. First, as there will be three or four pellets of No. 4 for every one pellet of A or B in a charge, and, consequently, as the load is thereby so much the more regularly distributed, and so much the more likely to strike the object, and that in several places more, in the ratio of three or four to one, than could be effected by A’s or B’s. Second, as the flesh will constantly close over the wound made by a small shot, so as to cause the bleeding to go on internally to the engorgement of the tissues and suffocation by hemorrhage; whereas the wound made by the large grain will relieve itself by copious bleeding, and the bird so injured will oftentimes
For my own use I invariably adopt for all the smaller species of duck—as the two varieties of Teal, the Summer Duck, the Golden Eye, and the Buffel-headed Duck, Anates, Carolinensis, Discors, Sponsa, and FuligulÆ, Clanguid, and Albeola—the same shot which is generally used for the various birds known on our shores and rivers as bay-snipe, viz: No. 4 or 5—the latter best for the Plovers, the former for duck, whether in large or small guns. In this relation I may observe that, on one occasion—the only one, by the way, on which I ever saw a green-winged teal in the summer season—I killed a couple of these beautiful birds, right and left, while woodcock shooting, in Orange County, New York, with No. 8 shot. They sprang quite unexpectedly from behind a willow bush, on the Wuwayanda creek, and I dropped them both quite dead, some what to my own astonishment, and to the utter astounding of Fat Tom, who witnessed it, into the middle of the stream, respectively at twenty and twenty-five yards distance. Until I recovered them I supposed that they were young wood ducks, but on examination they proved to be young green-winged teal, of that season, in their immature plumage. This must have been in the last week of July or the first of August—it was many years since, and as at that time I kept no shooting diary, I unfortunately am unable to verify the exact date. The birds must, I conclude, have been bred in that vicinity, by what means I cannot conjecture, unless that the parent birds might have been wounded in the spring, and disabled from completing their northern migration, and that this, as is some times the case with the minor birds of passage, might have superinduced their breeding in that, for them, far southern region. In corroboration of this I may add that, in the spring of 1846, a couple of these birds haunted a small reedy island in front of my house, on the Passaic, to so late a day in summer—the 29th, if I do not err, of May—that I sedulously avoided disturbing them, in the hope that they would breed there. This I yet think would have been the case but for the constant disturbance of that lovely river throughout the summer by gangs of ruffianly loafers, with whom the neighboring town of Newark abounds beyond any other town of its size in the known world, boating upon its silvery surface day and night, and rendering day and night equally hideous with their howls and blasphemies.
Before proceeding to the description of these birds it is well to observe that it will be found the better way, in approaching them, as indeed all wild fowl, to work, if possible, up wind to them; not that wild fowl have
The little cut at the head of this paper, for his spirited and faithful execution of which the author and artist must be permitted to return his acknowledgments to his friend, Mr. Brightly, represents a favorite feeding ground of the various tribes of water fowl, as is indicated by the large gaggle of geese passing over, from right to left, and the trip of green-wings alighting to the call of a clamorous drake in the background. On a rocky spur of the shore, in the right foreground, is a male Green-Winged Teal, in the act of springing, with his legs already gathered under him; and, still nearer to the front of the picture, on the right, a Blue-Winged Drake, swimming on the limpid water, soliciting his congener, with reverted neck, and the harsh gabble—whence his name—to take wing and greet the new-comers—it being the object of the draftsman to give an idea not merely of the markings and form of these two most beautiful and graceful of the duck tribe, but of their motions, the character of their flights, and the nature of their feeding grounds and habitations.
The head of the Green-Winged Teal is of moderate size and compressed; the bill nearly as long as the head, deeper than broad at the base, depressed at the tip; neck slender, of moderate length; body full and depressed; wings rather small, feet short and rather far back.
The plumage is short and blended; that of the hinder head and neck elongated into a soft filamentous drooping crest. The bill is black; iris hazel; feet light blue; head and upper part of neck bright chestnut brown; a broad band of shining rich bottle-green, narrowings from the eye backward and downward to the nape, margined below with black, anterior to which is a white line; chin dusky brown. Upper parts and flanks white, beautifully and closely undulated with narrow lines of deep gray. Anterior to the wings is a broad transverse lunated white bar—this alone distinguishing the American from the European bird. The wing coverts, scapulars and quills gray. The speculum bright green above, blue-black below, margined posteriorly with pure white. Tail brownish gray, margined with paler brown. Lower part of the neck undulated, like the back. Breast pale rufous, spotted and banded with black; white below. Abdomen white, barred with gray. A black patch under the tail; the lateral tail coverts tawny, the larger black, white-tipped and margined. Length of male bird, 14¾.24. Female, 13¾.22½.
The description and drawing of this bird are taken, by kind permission, which the writer gratefully acknowledges, from a fine specimen in the Academy of Natural Science of this city.
The Blue-Winged Teal is rather larger than the above, the male measuring 16.31½, the female 15.24.
The shape and proportions of this bird closely resemble those of the latter, but in plumage it widely differs from it. The bill is blueish black; iris dark hazel; feet dull yellow, webs dusky; upper part of the head black, a semilunar patch of pure white, margined with black anterior to the eye; the rest of the head and upper neck deep purplish gray, with changeable ruddy reflections. The lower hind neck, back, alula, and upper parts generally, rich chocolate brown, every feather margined with paler tints, from reddish buff to pale reddish gray, with black central markings, changing to metallic green in the centres. Upper wing coverts rich ultra-marine blue, with a metallic lustre; the lower parts pale reddish orange, shaded on the breast with purplish red, and thickly spotted with roundish or eliptical black spots; axillary feathers, lower wing coverts, and a patch on the side of the rump, pure white; lower tail coverts brownish black.
These, with the exception of the Buffel-Headed Duck, are the two smallest; with the exception of the Summer Duck, the two loveliest; with the exception of the Canvas-Back the two best of the duck tribe. Well met be they, whether on the board or in the field—shot be they with No. 4—eaten roast, underdone, with cayenne and a squeeze of a lemon, lubricated with red wine, quantum suff.
Amateur Concerts—Difference between Stage Singing and Chamber Singing—Effect produced by Stage Acting on the Manners and Conversation in Private—Origin of the modern florid style of singing—Conclusion.
Concerts are popular all over the Union, but in no other town are they so successful and popular as in Philadelphia. We have here all kinds of these entertainments, Ethiopian Concerts—Donation Concerts—Society Concerts, such as the Musical Fund and Philharmonic—and pre-eminent above all others, in point of fashion, Amateur Concerts.
A small, good Opera Troupe, it is true, would be of more service to our musical taste; for this hearing the works of great masters by bits, as it were, is not of much benefit; however, so that we have music in some manner is better than not to have it at all.
The concerts of the past winter were all well attended; but the Amateur Concerts were the favorites, and were, indeed, very successful. The amateurs, both ladies and gentlemen, surprised their audiences; and great praise is due to “Maestro Perelli.” We have heard some of them execute pieces in a manner that would have done credit to a professional singer. But while we admired, we felt a little disposed to remonstrate, for one or two old-fashioned reasons.
If they are really amateurs, and are training their voices for private singing, are they not running a risk of injuring their style by singing in public?
In the olden times of vocal training, there was always a marked difference made between public and private singing. So particular were the old masters that they divided singing into three classes—church singing, stage singing, and chamber singing.
Church singing required a more simple manner, a more pure and severe style, than stage singing; but the voice like that intended for the stage, had to be strong and full, with great volume and power, and the intonation clear and correct. There was not much difference between the voices of the church and stage singer; that is, it was not thought that either style injured the voice for the other, on the contrary, some of the finest voices the Italian school has produced, have been trained in church choirs, under the old chapel-masters.
But there was always a marked and decided difference made between stage singing and chamber singing. For the latter, it is necessary to have a plain, simple manner, a clear, pure intonation, good articulation, and great polish. The cadenzas and ornaments should be few, but of the most exquisite style and finish. Strength and volume of voice are not so much needed for the chamber singer, as delicacy of articulation and purity of tone.
Tone, in music as in painting, is mellowed by distance, and the singer who wishes to produce a pleasing effect in the drawing-room, should bear this in mind. It is as absurd to present in private a piece of music executed in the ornamented, operatic style, as it would be to hang in a cabinet or drawing-room, a large painting fitted for a church, a gallery, or a theatre; or, to make another comparison, for an orator, a public speaker, to entertain the guests of his drawing-room, with the same loud tone, earnest rhetorical manner, and volume of voice, that he used in the public assembly or town-meeting.
The habit of singing in public will give to the private singer, a manner and style which may sound very well in the concert-room, or on the stage where they are mellowed by distance, and softened by an orchestra, but this same manner and style will appear in private, coarse, violent, and theatrical. There should be a difference between public and private singing; both styles are beautiful, and equally effective in their way, but they should be kept separate.
It is well known that actors and actresses, in dressing for the stage, are apt to lose that nice, delicate eye for color, which is required to render a private costume pleasing; they become fond of strong contrasts, bright colors, and ornaments which appear glaring and wanting in harmony off the stage. Stage acting also affects the conversation, the tone of voice, and manner of expression. We were much amused once with the witty reply of a clever person, when asked why he did not admire a distinguished actress he had met with in private.
“She is too theatrical,” he said. “First she gives us a dash of tragedy À la Lady Macbeth, then comes a touch of genteel comedy À la Lady Teazle, which is very tiresome. One likes such exhibitions well enough on the stage, but they are quite out of place in one’s drawing-room.”
And thus it is with vocal music, to make it pleasing in society, or what is better, in one’s home circle, it should be like drawing-room, or home costume, home manner, conversation, reading—simple, pure, with few ornaments, and those well chosen.
Though these rules seem severe, they are not confining, for the chamber-singer is not limited. The music of the great masters can be produced in private, with great effect, in the same manner as all of us have, doubtless, heard a good reader give in private circles, scenes from Shakspeare and other dramatic poets. If the reader should present to us in his reading, all the starts, the loud tones and energetic manner required on the stage to produce an illusion, his reading would create disgust in us, and we would listen unwillingly; but if, on the contrary, he should read in a quiet manner, but with clear enunciation, and good emphasis, leaving our imaginations and recollections to make up the stage illusion, then, his reading would prove effective and pleasing.
Every vocalist knows that the graces and ornaments of a piece are entirely independent of the melody. The musical student who has studied the works of the old composers, will understand this better than the amateur who has been confined to modern compositions.
In the olden times more stress was laid upon the simple melody. Haydn used to say,
“Let your air be good, and your composition will be so likewise, and will assuredly please.”
But in the present day, the air is almost forgotten in the rich rifioramenti, and bewitching capricci of the Italian singer, the surprising vocalization of the French, and the graces, shakes, and turns of the English vocalist.
We do not object to these adornments; when properly used, they produce a pleasing effect—they break up the monotony of the melody; but any one will see how necessary it is to have these adornments different in different places. The graces, cadenzas, etc., which would be added to a piece sung on the stage, should not be used in the drawing-room or in the church, although the simple melody itself, may from its character do very well for either place, if sung with appropriate ornaments.
These elaborate, ornamental, vocal passages, which appear
We remember seeing, several years ago, some Italian copies and manuscripts of compositions by Durante, Trajetta,
“Ah!” replied Trajetta’s pupil, as wild an enthusiast as his master, “your taste has been spoiled and vitiated by modern music.”
The present taste for florid execution was caused, it is said, by the desire of the vocalists to rival the instrumental passages of the Opera. During the time of Metastasio, the musicians, especially those of the German school, so famous for instrumentation, overpowered the singers. The struggle of the singers for the lead, caused Metastasio to make a remark which would apply very well in this day—that the singers in an Opera made vocal concertos of their passages.
Agujari turned her voice into a flute, and the capricious, bewitching Gabrielli, the pet pupil of Porpora, astonished every one by her wonderful capricci and delicate chromatic passages.
A love for the wonderful displays itself constantly in mixed audiences, and they are more likely to applaud that which is surprising, rather than that which is strictly good. This approbation is apt to dull the taste of the singer who will forget or neglect good old rules, when by outraging them, they secure applause.
The taste for vocal gracing and adornment has increased to such a degree that it would be almost impossible to present a composition of an old master, or even of composers so late as Mozart, without adding to the adornments of the original composition. Rossini, whose vocal compositions in some places appear to consist only of connected phrases of ornaments and gracings, so completely is the melody hidden by the cadenzas, had two styles. His early style was chaste and simple; his greatest opera, Tancredi, was written in this style, and the reader, if familiar with Rossini’s works, has only to compare this beautiful opera with one of his last compositions, Semiramide, to see the strong contrast between the two styles of composition. His L’Italiani in Algeri and Il Turco in Italia, operas which contain some of his most exquisite melodies, belong also to this simple style; but his more popular operas, Il Barbiere, La Cenerentola, Otello, La Gazza Ladra, etc., are in his later style, which is florid, not only in the vocal parts, but also in the orchestral accompaniments; indeed, he seemed to have attained the extreme of this florid style, but the composers of the present time have gone far beyond him; for instance, Verdi, whose compositions appear to be entirely made up of rifioramenti, and while listening with amazement to the vocal feats his singers perform, in executing his compositions, a good old-fashioned lover of music is very apt to wonder if a melody really exists under all these embellishments.
There is an interesting account given in Stendhal’s Life of Rossini, relative to his adoption of the florid style in composition. In 1814 he went to Milan, to superintend the bringing out of his opera, L’Aureliano in Palmiro. The principal tenore, Velluti, a very handsome man, had a voice of great flexibility. At the first rehearsal, Velluti sung his part in a manner that delighted the composer; at the second rehearsal, the singer added some cadenzas, which Rossini applauded even rapturously; at the third rehearsal, the original melodies of some of the cavatinas seemed lost amid the luxurious profusion of vocal ornaments; but at the first public representation of the opera the singer added so many fiorituri, that Rossini exclaimed, “Non conosco piÙ la mia musica!”
We have digressed from the original subject, dear reader, in order to show that the rifioramenti of a piece are mere additions, and also to point out to the amateur the propriety of omitting startling and surprising stage points, when presenting in private fine operatic passages, and the nice, delicate taste that would be displayed in giving more of the original melody, avoiding embellishments, using them only where they seem absolutely necessary to break up the monotony of a continuous strain, and render it more effective.
We could give our other objection to this public singing of amateurs, which objection applies more particularly to lady amateurs; but we have chatted long enough already, and, moreover, our objection is decidedly too old-fashioned to be talked about in these days, “of rights of men, women and children;” therefore, we will suffer it to pass unmentioned, trusting to the force of the one already given to convince you, at least good reader.
Old ’76 and Young
Monument to Peel.—The proposal to erect a national monument to Sir Robert Peel, by subscriptions limited to one penny each person, will be entirely successful.
| “I don’t know my own music!” |
Elementary Sketches of Moral Philosophy: Delivered at the Royal Institution, in the years 1804, 1805 and 1806: By the late Rev. Sidney Smith, M. A. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1 vol. 12mo.
Sidney Smith appears, in this volume, as an ethical and metaphysical philosopher, and certainly ethics and metaphysics were never before made so clear and so entertaining. Sharp, shrewd, sensible, witty, humorous, eloquent, discriminating, the author goes on, from topic to topic, analyzing and laughing, condensing maxims into epigrams, embodying principles in sarcasms, eliciting jokes from abstractions; and after making his reader laugh tears into his eyes and pains into his sides, really leaves him in possession of more metaphysical knowledge than he would get from Dugald Stewart. The mind of Sidney Smith was so beautiful and brilliant, that men have done injustice to its depth and exactness. He was really an accomplished belles-lettres scholar, a close reasoner, a proficient in the philosophy of politics, morals and mind, as well as a wit and humorist; and in one of the rarest gifts of reason, justness and readiness in the conception of premises, he evinced equal force and fertility. Besides all this, he was an honest, courageous, uncanting, and disinterested man—loving and possessing goodness and virtue, hating and denouncing wickedness and vice. His goodness had not the weak diffusion which characterises the quality in the so-called “good people;” but will and intellect condensed it into lightning, and launched it at error and evil. It smiles sweetly, but it also smites sharply; and no man is more worthy of contemptuous pity than the bigot, dunce, libertine, professional rascal or knavish politician, who comes within word-shot of Sidney’s indignation.
There is no part of the present book which will not delight and instruct the general reader; but the most original portions are those devoted to practical remarks on mental diseases and to acute observations on minor topics of the great subject. To all who know Sidney Smith’s writings it is needless to add, that every idea in the volume is conceived and stated clearly, and that the author’s ignorance in the higher regions of his theme never seeks refuge in obscure terms, but is boldly, and some times exultingly, acknowledged. Many of the great philosophers, and especially the idealists and skeptics, are rather fleeringly disposed of. Common sense is Sydney’s test; but common sense is hardly able to grapple with Aristotle and Descartes, the greatest of metaphysicians; and they are, therefore, praised for their power and ridiculed for its perversion. The author’s peculiar felicity in making ludicrous statements which operate with the force of arguments, is displayed throughout the volume. “Bishop Berkeley,” he says, “destroyed this world in one volume octavo, and nothing remained after his time but mind; which experienced a similar fate from the hand of Mr. Hume, in 1737.” Nothing could be more felicitous than this statement, considered as a practical argument against the systems of the idealists and skeptics. Again he says: “A great philosopher may sit in his study, and deny the existence of matter; but if he take a walk into the streets he must take care to leave his theory behind him. Pyrrho said there was no such thing as pain; and he saw no proof that there were such things as carts and wagons; and he refused to get out of their way: but Pyrrho had, fortunately for him, three or four stout slaves, who followed their master without following his doctrine; and whenever they saw one of these ideal machines approaching, took him up by the arms and legs, and, without attempting to controvert his arguments, put him down in a place of safety.”
The passages on Aristotle are in a similar vein of pleasantry. “Some writers,” he remarks, “say he was a Jew; others that he got all his information from a Jew, that he kept an apothecary’s shop, and was an Atheist; others say, on the contrary, that he did not keep an apothecary’s shop and that he was a Trinitarian.” Further on he adds, that Aristotle’s philosophy “had an exclusive monopoly granted to it by the Parliament of Paris, who forbad the use of any other in France;” and he goes on to compare the great Stagarite with Bacon, to the manifest disadvantage of the former. After speaking of the triumphs of the Baconian method, and the indebtedness of mankind to the vast understanding of its author, he proceeds to remark, that to “the understanding of Aristotle, equally vast, perhaps, and equally original, we are indebted for fifteen hundred years of quibbling and ignorance; in which the earth fell under the tyranny of words, and philosophers quarreled with one another, like drunken men in dark rooms, who hate peace without knowing why they fight, or seeing how to take aim.” Zeno, the founder of the sect of the Stoics, is represented as a Cyprus merchant, who had studied the writings of the most eminent Socratic philosophers, and who, in the course of his mercantile pursuits, “freighted a ship for Athens, with a very valuable cargo of Phoenician purple, which he completely lost by shipwreck, on the coast near the
Among the best lectures of the volume, both for sense and brilliancy, are those on the “Conduct of the Understanding,” the “Faculties of Animals and Men,” “Habit,” and “Wit and Humor.” In these Sydney Smith exhibits both his power of rapid analysis and his power of clearly perceiving the essential points of the subjects he discusses. The lecture on the “Faculties of Animals and Men,” is a sort of humorous philosophical poem in prose, the beauty of the humor being as striking as its laughable quality. He commences with observing that he would do no injustice to the poor brutes, especially as they have “no professors to revenge their cause by lecturing on our faculties;” and he is so perfectly satisfied with the superiority of men to animals, that he sees no reason why he should not give the latter full credit for what “few fragments of soul and tatters of understanding they may really possess.” His settled opinion is, that baboons and blue
The general conclusion of Smith, with regard to insects and animals, is the common one, that their instincts and faculties all relate to this world, and that they have, properly speaking, no souls to be saved. But this position he states, illustrates and defends with more than ordinary metaphysical acuteness. If the discussion were not so sparklingly conducted, it would strike the reader as very able analysis and reasoning; but the mirthful fancy with which the whole is adorned, satisfies of itself, and seems to claim no additional praise for the argument it illustrates. The delicious sympathy of the humorist for all grades of being peeps out on every page, and no insect or animal is referred to without being lifted into the comic ideal. Thus he remarks that nature seems on some animals to have bestowed vast attention, “and to have sketched out others in a moment, and turned them adrift. The house-fly skims about, perches upon a window or a nose, breakfasts and sups with you, lays his eggs upon your white cotton stockings, runs into the first hole in the wall when it is cold, and perishes with as much unconcern as he lives.” Again, in speaking of that superiority of man over animals which comes from his longevity, he remarks: “I think it is Helvetius who says he is quite certain we only owe our superiority over the ourang-outangs to the greater length of life conceded to us; and that, if our life had been as short as theirs, they would have totally defeated us in the competition for nuts and ripe blackberries. I can hardly agree to this extravagant statement; but I think in a life of twenty years the efforts of the human mind would have been so considerably lowered, that we might probably have thought Helvetius a good philosopher, and admired his skeptical absurdities as some of the greatest efforts of the human understanding. Sir Richard Blackmore would have been our greatest poet, our wit would have been Dutch, our faith French, the Hottentots would have given us the model for manners, and the Turks for government.” He then adds that man’s gregarious nature is another cause of his superiority over all other animals. “A lion lies under a hole in the rock, and if any other lion happen to pass by they fight. Now, whoever gets a habit of lying under a hole in a rock, and fighting with every gentleman who passes near him, cannot possibly make any progress.”
The lecture on “Wit and Humor” is, perhaps, the most brilliant of all; but, though the definitions are keenly stated and the distinctions nicely drawn, we suppose that even Sidney Smith, fine wit and humorist as he is, has not settled the matter. It appears to us that the difficulty consists in considering wit and humor as distinct powers, instead of viewing them as modifications of other powers. The mental peculiarities which distinguish wit and humor are qualities equally of fancy and imagination. The difference is emotional, not intellectual; in sentiment, not in faculty. A man whose sentiment and feeling of the ludicrous is predominant, will naturally make his intellectual powers serve his mirthful tendencies. If he has a lively fancy he will be a wit; if he has a creative imagination he will be a humorist. We should say, generally, that wit was fancy and understanding, directed by the sentiment of mirth; and that humor was imagination and understanding, directed by the same sentiment. It will be found, we think, in all ingenious and creative minds, that their peculiar direction depends altogether on sentiment. Sometimes imagination is exercised in a department of thought or action so far removed from the fine arts, that we can hardly recognize the power in its direction. In metaphysics, in mathematics, in government, war and commerce, we often come in contact with thinkers of vast imaginations, who still may despise poets and artists, and be heartily despised by them. If a change in the form and purpose of imagination thus appears, to many minds, to change its qualities, and to demand new definitions, we need not wonder at the popular reluctance to admit wits and humorists into the band of poets, though fancy and imagination be equally their characteristics.
Although our notice of this delightful volume has extended beyond the space we can properly allow it, we take leave of its wise and witty pages with regret, heartily commending it to the leisure hours of every man who can relish vivid argument and brilliant good sense.
Confessions of an English Opium Eater, and Suspiria de Profundis. By Thomas De Quincy, Boston: Wm. D. Ticknor & Co. 1 vol. 12mo.
Thomas de Quincy has been well known during the last twenty years, not only as the author of “Confessions of an English Opium Eater”, but as a prominent contributor of able, thoughtful, and eloquent articles to Blackwood’s Magazine, and other British periodicals. The publishers of the present volume intend to follow it up with others, containing the best of his many remarkable historical, biographical, and critical papers. When completed, the series will constitute a body of thought which no student’s library can well be without, for the author’s learning extends over widely separated departments of literature and science, and in each he has proved himself capable of throwing out those suggestive thoughts which take root in the reader’s mind, and bear fruit. A resolute, inquisitive, and reflective student, richly dowered with understanding and imagination, and exercising great dominion over the harmonies and subtilties of expression, De Quincy has been prevented from producing little more than colossal fragments of thought, by the mastery obtained over his will by opium, and the contemptuousness of disposition which that habit provokes for calm, orderly, systematic works. He is dogmatic, negatively as well as positively. It is natural that a man who obtains glimpses of grand truths and magnificent systems, through artificial stimulants, should disdain the sober realizations of consecutive and industrious thought, wanting all that misty magnificence which clothes things viewed in the waking dreams of the opium eater. But egotist and dogmatist as he is, he is still a resolute thinker, whose mind, busy with all the
In the first part of the “Confessions” there is one passage, describing a dream inspired by opium, which we cannot resist the temptation to extract, as it is one of the sublimest in English prose. “The dream,” he says, “commenced with a music which now I often heard in dreams—a music of preparation and awakening suspense; a music like the opening of the Coronation Anthem, and which, like that, gave the feeling of a vast march, of infinite cavalcades filing off, and the tread of innumerable armies. The morning was come of a mighty day—a day of crisis and of final hope for human nature, then suffering some mysterious eclipse, and laboring in some dread extremity. Somewhere, I knew not where—somehow, I knew not how—by some beings, I knew not whom—a battle, a strife, an agony, was conducting—was evolved, like a great drama, or piece of music; with which my sympathy was the more insupportable from my confusion as to its place, its cause, its nature, and its possible issue. I, as is usual in dreams, (where we make ourselves central to every movement,) had the power, and yet had not the power, to decide it. I had the power, if I could raise myself, to will it; and yet again had not the power, for the weight of twenty Atlantics was upon me, or the oppression of inexpiable guilt. ‘Deeper than ever plummet sounded,’ I lay inactive. Then, like a chorus, the passion deepened. Some greater interest was at stake; some mightier cause than ever yet the sword had pleaded, or trumpet had proclaimed. Then came sudden alarms; hurryings to and fro; trepidations of innumerable fugitives. I knew not whether from the good cause or the bad, darkness and light, tempest and human faces, and at last with the sense that all was lost, female forms, and the features that were worth all the world to me, and but a moment allowed—and clasped hands, and heart-breaking partings, and then—everlasting farewells! and, with a sigh such as the caves of hell sighed when the incestuous mother uttered the abhorred name of death, the sound was reverberated—everlasting farewells! and again, and yet again reverberated—everlasting farewells!”
“Suspiria de Profundis,” the conclusion of the Confessions, occupies about as much space as the original work, and has now, for the first time, been connected with it in the same volume. The style of the conclusion is even more majestic, visionary and resounding than the first portion, and is full of thrilling pictures and Macbeth “sights.” We hope that this volume will meet with a success so marked, as to induce the publishers to issue the remaining volumes of De Quincey’s miscellanies in rapid succession.
Life and Letters of Thomas Campbell, Edited by William Beattie; M. D., one of his Executors, New York: Harper & Brothers, 2 vols. 12mo.
Dr. Beattie’s work cannot take a high place in biographical literature, as far as it is to be judged by his own power of thinking and writing. He has, properly speaking, no conception of Campbell’s character; and the passage from one of his statements to the letter or anecdote which he adduces in its support, will indicate this to the least reflecting reader. Were it not for the richness of his materials his work would not be worth reprinting; but it has great value and interest from the number and variety of the private letters it contains. Campbell’s correspondence, though it evinces much nervous weakness of mind and a sensitiveness of vanity easily elated or depressed, has a peculiar raciness which wins and rewards attention; and, in addition to its own excellent qualities of wit and fancy, which delight of
Mr. Irving has written a very pleasing introduction to these volumes, characteristic equally of his delicacy, his good nature and his discrimination, and embodying several new anecdotes of Campbell. He says that Beattie’s life “lays open the springs of all his actions and the causes of all his contrariety of conduct. We now see the real difficulties he had to contend with in the earlier part of his literary career; the worldly cares which pulled his spirit to the earth whenever it would wing its way to the skies; the domestic affections, tugging at his heart-strings even in his hours of genial intercourse, and converting his very smiles into spasms; the anxious days and sleepless nights preying upon his delicate organization, producing that morbid sensibility and nervous irritability which at times overlaid the real sweetness and amenity of his nature, and obscured the unbounded generosity of his heart.” This praise, of course, must be considered due to the “Letters” rather than the “Life” of Campbell.
Lord Jeffrey, in a letter to Campbell, on the subject of “Gertrude of Wyoming,” very felicitously indicates the prominent faults of that exquisite poem, and of Campbell’s general artistic method. “The most dangerous faults,” he says, “are your faults of diction. There is a good deal of obscurity in many passages—in others a strained and unnatural expression—an appearance of labor and hardness; you have hammered the metal in some places till it had lost all its ductility. These are not great faults, but they are blemishes; and as dunces will find them out—noodles will see them when they are pointed to. I wish you had courage to correct, or rather to avoid them, for with you they are faults of over-finishing, and not of negligence. I have another fault to charge you with in private—for which I am more angry with you than for all the rest. Your timidity, or fastidiousness, or some other knavish quality, will not let you give your conceptions glowing, and bold, and powerful, as they present themselves, but you must chasten, and refine, and soften them, forsooth, till half their nature and grandeur is chiseled away from them.”
An interesting feature in this biography is the number of poems it contains not included in any edition of Campbell’s works, and the original drafts it gives of many of Campbell’s well-known productions. The “Battle of the Baltic” originally contained twenty-seven stanzas, and in that shape was enclosed in a letter to Scott. We extract a specimen of the omitted verses:
Not such a mind possessed
England’s tar;
’Twas the love of nobler game
Set his oaken heart on flame,
For to him ’twas all the same,
Sport or war.
All hands and eyes on watch
As they keep;
By their motion light as wings,
By each step that haughty springs,
You might know them for the kings
Of the deep!
’Twas the Edgar first that smote
Denmark’s line;
As her flag the foremost soared,
Murray stamped his foot on board,
And a hundred cannons roared
At the sign!
This Life of Campbell, and the Life of Southey, now in course of publication by the same house, are the best literary biographies we have had since The Life of Mackintosh, edited by his Son. We wish the Harpers would reprint the latter, as there has been no complete American edition of it ever published. It contains more matter than any similar work since Moore’s Life of Byron.
The National Cook Book. By a Lady of Philadelphia, a
This is, on all sides, admitted to be the very best of the many cook books that have been issued by the press of late years. The editor, be she whom she may, understands the art of preparing a delicious meal, of any material, it seems, and our taste has passed favorable judgment upon a fruit cake of most inviting look, and of quality the best. A lady, in whose judgment we have the most unbounded confidence, pronounces this “the only cook book worthy of a housekeeper’s perusal.”
Next to the intellectual feast, which is spread before the reader of Graham each month, we suppose, will come a snug breakfast, a glorious good dinner, or a cozy, palate-inviting supper of birds, with mushrooms. Now, without Peterson’s Cook Book, the meal cannot be perfection. Of this we feel convinced.
The Gallery of Illustrious American Daguerreotypes by Brady. Engraved by D’Avignon. Edited by C. Edwards Lester, assisted by an Association of Literary men. 205 Broadway, New York.
We have received the sixth number of this truly national work—the first and second we have before this noticed. The third, fourth and fifth numbers the publishers have omitted to send us. As we have before stated, this is a publication of great merit, and cannot fail to attract a liberal encouragement both in this country and abroad. The portraits are executed with wonderful fidelity, and are the best specimens of the lithographic art we have ever seen. Mr. Brady deserves much praise for his exact and skillful daguerreotypes, from which D’Avignon has produced these masterly “counterfeit presentments” of our great national characters. The selection from our living worthies have been well made. The publishers have not confined themselves to the faces of our elder public men long familiar in the print shops, but they have well chosen alike from the old and the young—those who have been long famous by past services, and those whose genius and precocious merit have excited a keen interest and a just pride in the heart of every American. This number is adorned by a life-like portrait of Col. Fremont; and the editor, Mr. Lester, has in this, as he has in those numbers which have preceded it, and which have been sent to us, given a brief and pointed sketch of the marvelous youth whose adventures in the camp of science outstrips the wildest tales of romantic daring. A work like this must prosper.
The History of the Confessional. By John Henry Hopkins, D. D., Bishop of the Diocese of Vermont. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1 vol. 12mo.
Dr. Hopkins is already well known as an Episcopalian writer of much merit and erudition, and the present work will add considerably to his reputation. It is acute, learned, and clear, going patiently over the whole historical ground of the dispute between the Church of England and the Church of Rome, and singularly candid and dispassionate in its tone and in its substance. We rarely see, in a controversialist, such decided opinions, in connection with so much intellectual conscientiousness.
Doctor Johnson; His Religious Life and his Death. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1 vol. 12mo.
This volume is evidently the production of some individual whose ambition to write a book was far greater than his ability to write a good one; the result is a compilation from Boswell’s Life of Johnson, made up from its most valueless and uninteresting portions, without the addition of any thing of importance by the compiler. Dr. Johnson, in his own time, had no power of communicating any of his own intellectual or moral life to his mental sycophants; and, judging from the present volume, we should suppose that this power was still wanting in his writings.
The Pillars of Hercules; or a Narrative of Travels in Spain and Morocco, in 1848. By David Urquhart, Esq., M. P. New York: Harper & Brothers. 2 vols. 12mo.
Of all the volumes of travels lately issued, this appears to us the most independent and intelligent. The author gives a new view of the social condition of Spain, and states some facts and opinions calculated to make us re-examine the notions commonly held of Spanish affairs. He is an acute observer of men, a scholar, a politician versed in the practical details of legislation and government, and a man who sees, feels, and thinks for himself. To those who have read Barrow and Ford the work will have great attractions.
Edgar A. Poe.—We have on hand several articles, from leading writers of the country, upon the life and character of Edgar A. Poe, which we will find room for in the December number, in which we shall give an extra form, for the purpose of putting before the country these generous tributes to the dead poet and critic. The causticity of several of them will not be particularly relished by his immaculate defamers, who busy themselves in raking up his ashes to expose his defects to the gaze of the world.
A Deserved Honor.—We see that at the late commencement of the Miami University, Ohio, the degree of LL. D. was conferred upon Professor John S. Hart, of the Philadelphia High School. It is a compliment very properly bestowed, and from an Institution which renders the honor of value.
The Last Chance.—We desire to impress upon the attention of the subscribers to “Graham,” that if they desire our elegant Premium Plates, they should now remit either $3 for one year, or $5 for two years, or for two copies one year. In either case we furnish each subscriber thus sent, “Christ Blessing Little Children,” and “The First Prayer”—two beautiful engravings of large size.
After the first of November, the plate will be disposed of, and no premiums will thereafter be sent from this office.
Our Paris Fashions.—Every mail brings us congratulations upon the superior finish and beauty of our Paris Fashion Plates. Our friends have opened their eyes to the fact, that “Graham” is the only magazine in America that incurs the expense of original designs. All others are copies of the French plates, poorly done, and insufferably old. We should not mention the matter, but that efforts are made to deceive the magazine public by silly and unfounded boasting. The expense, which is several hundred dollars extra each month, we cheerfully incur for the liberal subscribers to this magazine, whose cultivated taste would soon detect the bold impositions practiced upon others.
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Archaic spellings and hyphenation have been retained as well as some spellings peculiar to Graham’s. Punctuation has 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 used for preparation of the ebook.
page 202, and geologial descriptions ==> and geological descriptions
page 203, amidst the minosas ==> amidst the mimosas
page 204, when a bark ascending ==> when a barque ascending
page 212, conquest of of Shivas ==> conquest of Shivas
page 215, His bark stranding ==> His barque stranding
page 216, safe and and sound ==> safe and sound
page 225, there are Bachinalian ==> there are Bacchanalian
page 225, genii and faries ==> genii and fairies
page 226, within many degress ==> within many degrees
page 228, among the lowley ==> among the lowly
page 228, The hundreth psalm ==> The hundredth psalm
page 229, shame to doggrel ==> shame to doggerel
page 230, an argent bark ==> an argent barque
page 231, what commisseration he ==> what commiseration he
page 234, And now its ==> And now it’s
page 236, added: [To be continued.
page 239, laughed and teazed ==> laughed and teased
page 241, its splendid to be ==> it’s splendid to be
page 241, Blanch Forrester went ==> Blanche Forrester went
page 241, delicious Scottische ==> delicious Schottische
page 250, vaticanam Bodleianamgue ==> vaticanam Bodleianamque
page 250, Onicus est nobis ==> Unicus est nobis
page 253, As ambegris leaves ==> As ambergris leaves
page 258, fowl have the the power ==> fowl have the power
page 260, Pasiello, and other ==> Paisiello, and other
page 260, Old ’76 and Young ’47. ==> Old ’76 and Young ’48.
page 261, near the Piraus ==> near the PirÆus
page 263, delight of themselvs ==> delight of themselves
