When the news of Fadrique’s death reached the castle of Estuniga, a profound grief visited its inmates. This last act of perfidious cruelty destroyed all the hopes that Blanche had founded upon Pedro’s better nature. To invite Fadrique to the capital, and then to meet him with death, was so infamous that she no longer even wished for a reunion with her husband. Her heart now told her that the throne of Spain was not the home for her, and she once more yearned for the land she had forsaken for a fate like hers, and a husband such as Pedro.
At this time Estuniga and the Lady Leonora were seriously disquieted, in consequence of a command which Pedro had sent to the knight, to treat his queenly guest as he himself had treated Fadrique, in other words, to put her to death. To execute such a command was for him impossible. Every principle and every feeling of his nature revolted from the slightest injustice, much more from a deed as fiendish as this. He sent back an indignant refusal, and saw the necessity of some energetic movement in order to secure Blanche’s safety.
Hearing that Alburquerque was at or near Toledo, still unpardoned by the king, he resolved to meet him, and with him concert, if possible, some feasible scheme for the escape of the queen. Leaving Blanche in care of his lady, to whom he gave command of the castle in his absence, he set forth with a promise to return within six days. Blanche knew not of the king’s message, nor of the purpose of the knight’s sudden journey.
But unfortunately Pedro’s distrustful and uneasy spirit could not rely on Estuniga’s fealty, and long ere his evil messenger had returned to Seville, he ordered Reboledo to add another to his list of crimes, and sent him with a force of troops to take Queen Blanche and murder her. This remorseless satellite, whose life reflected his master’s, was not apt to fail in the distasteful task.
On the second morning after the departure of the Knight of Estuniga, a goodly train was at the castle gate, and their herald claimed admittance for the troop. The Lady Leonora’s lieutenant, an aged warrior, who had been knighted by her father, recognized the pennon of Reboledo and advised her not to admit them, until she knew the object of the cold-blooded Diego. Accordingly he went down to the wicket, but soon returned to inform her that the purpose of the visit was to gain possession of the queen. Further information he could not gain, but Reboledo’s character and her well-founded suspicion that he had been an instrument of Fadrique’s death induced her to refuse admittance, and if he attacked the castle to defend it if possible until the return of her lord.
To her old knight, Roberto, she gave the necessary authority over all the force within the walls. Fortunately Estuniga had left the castle in the best state of defense of which it was capable, and though not adapted to a regular siege, could, it was thought, be defended against the light force of Reboledo.
Lady Leonora and the queen were not kept long in suspense, for Reboledo soon prepared for the attack. He had ascertained that the knight was absent, and not knowing when he might return, resolved to accomplish his purpose without delay. Roberto had divided his force between the only two points which were assailable by the enemy, the draw and the postern. The best marksmen were stationed at the draw, while above the postern he soon had a supply of melted lead and pitch, which were almost the only weapons there available. Several slight attacks were made during the morning, more for the purpose of ascertaining the force of the defenders than with the expectation of penetrating into the castle.
At noon Roberto observed preparations which satisfied him that the struggle was about to commence in earnest. A furious assault was made upon the draw, and while flights of arrows passed between the besiegers and the besieged, a band of sturdy axe-men endeavored to get at the drawbridge for the purpose of cutting it down. The vigilance of Roberto’s bow-men prevented their success, and they were repeatedly forced to retire. In the meantime, Reboledo supposing that the principal force was diverted from the postern, attacked that part of the castle. Having during the morning ascertained the means of defense in that quarter, he had hastily constructed a large shield capable of protecting several men from the arrows, lead, and pitch. Under the shield several axe-men advanced to the charge, while a party of bow-men strove to prevent the besieged from molesting them. Roberto was not so easily entrapped, and the assailants after a fruitless battering at the postern gate, were driven back with the loss of several men and their shield. The attack in front was now continued with nearly the entire force with but little better success. A number of the enemy were wounded, and several were killed, while but a few of Roberto’s men were injured.
In the wane of the afternoon another shield was constructed, and Reboledo, incensed to a fiendish bitterness by the unexpected vigor of the defense, after a desperate assault succeeded in injuring the postern gate ere being again driven off. A new attack was at once commenced in order to complete the work, and was supported by a heavy force of bow-men and mailed soldiers. In a few minutes the gate was open, and a fierce hand-to-hand fight took place in the archway. Roberto headed the defenders, who forced the assailants to give way, till Reboledo himself entered the vaulted passage, and with his herculean strength bore down all opposition. Roberto fell while gallantly stemming the torrent of success, and his men after a brave defense were overwhelmed. The castle was soon entirely in the power of the assailants, and Reboledo at once made all the necessary dispositions for defense, in case it should prove necessary.
After ordering the butler to furnish supper in the dining-hall, he sent the seneschal to deliver to the ladies a courteous and knightly invitation to appear at the evening repast.
During the siege the Lady Leonora had informed Blanche of Pedro’s intention and of the cause of Estuniga’s absence. Shocked at the fate which seemed to impend over her, and confident that Reboledo was the tool of the king, she at first resolved to refuse her presence in the hall; but her hostess showed the futility of the refusal, and the necessity of appearing to be friendly to the victor. They were indeed completely in his power, for though they had contrived to send two messengers away at the moment of defeat, there was no chance for them to escape. Leonora’s policy was to endeavor to retain Diego in his present position till her messengers should have apprised Estuniga of the aspect of affairs and he could recover the castle and the prisoners.
“Fair ladies,” said Reboledo, as the queen and her hostess entered the hall, “I am well aware that in ordinary courtesy I should have been the guest at this table, and therefore beg that you may so consider me.”
The Lady Leonora, though incensed at the covert sarcasm of this speech, true to her policy, answered it with a polite courtesy which surprised both her “guest” and the queen. No further reference was made to the events of the day, and Reboledo, who was in manners an accomplished cavalier, entertained the ladies with such gossip as was interesting and customary. Their own seneschal was in the hall but did not approach the table, and they observed that the two pages who attended them were strangers. As they were about to leave the table, the knight turned to the Lady Blanche, whom he had addressed by the title of “your grace,” and inquired when she would be ready to rejoin her royal consort. Surprised at such an unexpected question, she did not reply for a moment, but promised to answer him in the morning, “for,” she added, “I am not well to-night, and cannot say but I may be too ill to go to-morrow.”
Apparently satisfied with the answer, he gracefully escorted the ladies to the door.
“I am ill, Lady Leonora, very ill,” said Blanche, breathing shortly and throwing herself upon a couch.
“Oh! a consuming fire flies through my veins. Give me some drink. How I thirst!”
The Lady Leonora, though skilled in the leech-craft of the time, was utterly at a loss, and what to do for Blanche she did not know. There was no leech or friar in the castle. For a few minutes she gave her wine and water to assuage her raging thirst, and bathed her burning temples.
Suddenly Blanche raised herself to a sitting position, and while her face was convulsed with agony, exclaimed—
“Beware Leonora, I am poisoned by——”
This world and all its sorrows had passed away from her, and her pure spirit, freed from the material fetters of this earthly life, had reached its eyrie, basked in the pure light, far above the storm and darkness of the valley.
LINES TO A BIRD,
WHICH SUNG AT MY WINDOW ONE MORNING IN LONDON.
———
BY THOMAS BUCHANAN READ.
———
Whence comest thou, oh wandering soul of song?
Round the celestial gates hast thou been winging,
And hearkening to the angels all night long
To brighten earth with somewhat of their singing?
Thou child of sunshine, spirit of the flowers!
Nature, through thee, with loving tongue rejoices,
Until these walls dissolve themselves to bowers,
And all the air is full of woodland voices.
The winds that slumbered in the fields of dew,
Float round me now with music on their pinions,
Such as I heard while yet my years were few,
By native streams, in boyhood’s lost dominions.
And with the breath of morning on my brow,
I hear the accents of the few who love me;
Sing on full heart! I am no exile now—
This is no foreign sky that smiles above me.
I hear the happy sounds of household glee,
The heart’s own music, floating here to bless me,
And little ones who smiled upon my knee
Now clap the dimpled hands that would caress me.
Oh! music sweeter than the sweetest chime
Of magic bells by fairies set a-swinging;
I am no pilgrim in a foreign clime,
With these blest visions ever round me clinging.
I hear a voice no melody can reach;
Dear lips, speak on in your accustomed measure,
And teach my heart what you so well can teach,
How only love is earth’s enduring pleasure.
Oh! music sweeter than the Arcadian’s tune,
Wooing the dryads from the woodlands haunted;
Or than beneath the mellow harvest moon,
Trembles at midnight over lakes enchanted!
Oh! sweeter than the herald of the morn,
The clarion lark, that wakes the drowsy peasant,
Is this which thrills my breast, so else forlorn,
And with the Past and distant fills the Present.
Thus, with the music ringing in my heart,
I may awhile forget an exile’s sorrow,
And, armed with courage, rise—and so depart;
But what sweet bird shall sing to me to-morrow?
CHATEAUBRIAND AND HIS CAREER.
———
BY FAYETTE ROBINSON.
———
FranÇois Auguste, Vicomte de Chateaubriand, was born in 1768, in the midst of that epoch which produced so many great men, Napoleon, Soult, Wellington and Walter Scott. Educated at the castle of Combourg near Saint-Malo, beyond all doubt as he wandered over the arid lands and desolate shores of Armorica, young Chateaubriand felt the development in his soul of that inclination and solitude which never abandoned him even in the turmoil of business and amid the gravest political affairs. Intended originally for the church, it was subsequently purposed to devote him to the army; he began at Dol and terminated at Rennes, an arduous course of study, which though it left his intense sensitiveness and that creative imagination which are the chief characteristics of his mind unaltered, enabled him to publish serious works on critical history, at an age when persons usually possess but vague notions of life and the principles which regulate the organization of society. In 1787, for the first time, young Chateaubriand went to Paris. He was at that time a second lieutenant in the regiment of Navarre, but so as to be enabled to ride in the king’s coaches, an honor to which from his old nobility, he was entitled, the rank of captain was necessary, he obtained by a fiction, not unusual at that time, the brevet of captain of cavalry; notwithstanding this however, he continued to do duty in the regiment of foot to which he belonged. The magnificence of the court of Versailles could not at all satisfy the vague desire, which, though he did not then understand its nature, tormented his soul. Adventure was a condition of his being; his life could not be objectless, and with delight he hailed the commencement of a career. One day as he looked over a map of the New World, he was struck with the possibility of discovering a passage to the northern Pole. From that hour sleep and repose were gone. Like Columbus, he went from door to door, to solicit means to realize the idea which animated him, and was compelled to submit to the ridicule of some, and the indifference of others. This idea, which then was esteemed insoluble, but a short time after was realized. It may be, had the government of Louis XVI, paid any attention to a question which had great significance in the points of view of commerce, politics and science, that passage, now known as McKenzie’s, would have borne the name Chateaubriand. Let this however, be as it may, the young second lieutenant, by ridicule and discouragement, resolved to accomplish his gigantic project without assistance, and in the spring of 1791, set out for America, with no other baggage than a letter of introduction to Washington. Yet imbued with the ideas of the old world, Chateaubriand had imagined the President of the United States, a king, surrounded by a brilliant court, with guards and chamberlains, crowding the portals of a palace of marble and gold. How great must his surprise have been, when he knocked at the door of a modest dwelling, which, in France, would have been esteemed scarcely fit for a private gentleman, and when a female opened the door, and without parade let him into the presence of one who had created a nation and declined a crown.
Washington received him with cordiality and kindness, but terrified beyond doubt at the dangers to which he was about to expose himself, attempted to dissuade the young adventurer from his enterprise. Chateaubriand, however, would not be persuaded, and soon after hired a guide and really began his journey, fancying that he had merely to go straight to the Pole, as he had gone from Saint Malo to Paris. He reached the limit of civilization, in what was then considered a short time, and with indescribable joy found himself amid the dark and mysterious forests of the new world, where it seemed to him, no human foot had ever been planted before. He thus describes his sensations, when his soul first became replete with astonishment and amazement at the magnificence of the scene.
“I wandered from tree to tree, now turning to the right and then to the left, saying to myself, here there are no beaten paths, no restricted dwelling places; presidents, kings and oligarchies, have no power here. By way of exhibiting my freedom from all control, I committed countless wild pranks, which made the steady Dutchman, who was my guide, fancy me a fool.”
The young lieutenant, however, looked anxiously for one of those Indian villages, in which the children of nature, the men of the soil, might certainly be found. His first essay, however, by no means impressed him favorably in relation to the true Native Americans. After a journey of several days, he saw in the depth of a forest, compared with which, all France was but a park, a wigwam from which strange sounds issued, and which in that place must have astonished him indeed. He listened with attention, and heard a well known “chant populaire” of France, with an accompaniment wrung from a violin, which certainly, Stradivarius never made. The wanderer entered the hut, and amid a bevy of Indians, who danced as if Saint Vitus had touched them, he saw an old man of diminutive stature, with his hair “À l’oisseau royal,” with a green coat, a coarse vest, cut however, À l’agonie de Louis XV., ruffles and wristbands of coarse cotton, busy in teaching a dozen Iroquois to dance the cotillion and minuet de la cour. The teacher’s name was Violet, and strange to say, he was the progenitor of that individual of the same name, made so famous by the late Captain Marryatt. Violet had been a servant of the Count Rochambeau, and had been induced to establish himself on one of the little lakes in New York, amid the Iroquois.—French nature and human nature are however, different entirely, and the valet de chambre had begun to civilize North American Indians, from the point du dÉpart de la danse.
The young adventurer in a short time left his countryman and resumed his journey through the wilderness. He soon met with Indians far less civilised than the Corypheans of Violet. He was kindly received by various tribes which he visited, and participated in their councils and their wars. At this period of his career, he collected the variety of information, which was ultimately fused into Atala, RenÉ and the Natchez. It cannot but be regretted, that Chateaubriand never chanced to grasp the thread of that tradition, which connected the Natchez with the Aztecs, of whom beyond all doubt they were an abrasion. Had he done so, the light his meditative mind would have thrown on the traditions of that mysterious people, of whom now no remnant exists, and the memory of whom is forgotten, can scarcely be calculated. His poetical meditations did not, however, prevent him from keeping in view the original idea which had brought him to America, and he became more and more resolved to penetrate to the icy Pole. One day though, by a strange fancy, a fragment of a French paper, containing an account of the flight of Louis XVI, his arrest at Varennes, and the formation of the Army of CondÉ, beyond the Rhine, reached him. As he read this strange intelligence, the Breton gentleman, fancied that he heard the cry of honor calling him to defend that king for whom he had sworn to live and die. He then hastened, to cross the sea again, and within a few months, was a simple volunteer in the ranks of the royal and catholic army. It is well, here, to mention, that though Chateaubriand sought for the North Pole, he had from the lakes of New York, gone southward, and that the fragment of newspaper, which, in all probability, changed the tenor of his whole career, reached him in the depth of the lagoons of Florida. It is very certain that though his voyage to America, produced Atala and the Natches, he would not have occupied a high position among the great discoverers.
Having been wounded by the explosion of a shell, at Thionville, after undergoing the greatest vicissitudes, he contrived to reach England. The danger from which he had escaped on the Rhine, was, however, replaced only by penury, and the suffering of exile. In that country while expecting death, his physicians having told him, that he could live, under no possibility, more than two or three years, he wrote and published the “Essai historique, politique et moral, sur les rÉvolutions anciennes et modernes considÉrÉes dans leurs rapports avec la rÉvolution FranÇaise.” This is one of the strangest books ever published, the author succeeding in the most incomprehensible manner in drawing a parallel between Pisistratus and Robespierre, Marat and Harmodius, J. J. Rousseau and Heraclitus, Hanno and Fox, and Barca and Pitt, and finally discovering in Miltiades the type of Dumouriez.
Having on the 18th Brumaire returned to France, Chateaubriand became with Fontanes, his friend, a companion in exile, one of the proprietors of the Mercure, in which paper he published Atala, (so far back as this does the French feuilleton date.) The freshness of the ideas, the grandeur of sentiment, and exquisitely simple style of this book, were novel indeed, at a time when all things were innoculated with the pretence of the Directorate. The success of this prose-poem aptly prepared the public for the immense sensation subsequently created by le genie du Christianisme. It may safely be said that no work was ever better timed. The iron grasp of Napoleon had strangled all popular movements, order had succeeded anarchy, temples again were open for prayer, and ruined altars were rebuilt. All the world, weary of the fruitless worship of the personification of abstract and transcendental qualities and virtues, felt an innate longing for a less sterile and more poetical faith. Society hastened to resume that old creed, which had been the source of all the civilization which existed, not it may be true, because of conviction, but because the disgusting orgies at the feet of the statue of the so-called goddess of reason, had offended not only all sentiment but all decency. Never probably before were the fasts and feasts of Christianity so rigidly observed, and all France, by a rigid observance of Lent, sought to atone for and wipe out all remembrance of the reign of terror. With that wonderful sagacity which made Napoleon great in cabinet as he was on the battle-field, he did not neglect Chateaubriand’s book, and rewarded the author by the appointment of Secretary of Embassy to Rome, where the Cardinal Fesch was the French representative. Then, in the eternal city, amid the ruins of the coliseum, yet filled with the spirits of the ancient martyrs, the Christian poet formed a conception of the angelical CymodocrÉ and Eudoxe, and determined to visit the cradle of Christianity, the triumph and contests of which he resolved to celebrate, and to gather inspiration in the “city of desolation” by contemplating that one sepulchre which when time shall be no more will yield nothing to the great, grand judge.
Soon after his return from Rome, the Vicomte de Chateaubriand, who continued to maintain as high a position as ever in the favor of Napoleon, was appointed plenipotentiary to the Valois. Just then a rumor, circulated beyond doubt by the partisans of the exiled dynasty, acquired some influence on the popular mind, many hoping and others fearing that the emperor was prepared to follow the example of Monk, and sought to replace the Bourbons on the throne of Saint Louis and Henri IV. Chateaubriand, perhaps more than any one else, under the influence of the chivalric ideas which always characterised him, flattered himself that this dream would soon be realised. At once, however, all Paris was amazed by the news that the Duke d’Enghien, the last of the CondÉs, had been shot at midnight, in the ditch of the castle of Vincennes. Thus Napoleon replied to the imprudent suggestions of the royalists. The reason of this terrible tragedy is even now unknown, the only man who possibly could have explained it, the emperor, having borne the secret with him to the grave. The whole party then known as the emigration, was however terrified, and under the influence of a generous indignation, on the very day that he heard the news Chateaubriand resigned his appointment. Independence was then a crime, but far from being offended, Napoleon conceived a yet more exalted esteem for Chateaubriand. Prayers, promises, every possible inducement were used in vain to retain him in the imperial service. Chateaubriand hurried the preparations for his pilgrimage and crossed the Alps. On his previous visit he had not studied closely enough the Italian, and after a careful tour the vicomte sailed for Greece. In the wilds of America, the poet had shaken himself free of all old-world ideas as he would from a burden which oppressed him, that his soul in vigor, and unrestrained, might hear every accent of the poetry of a young nature. In Greece, however, his conduct was precisely the reverse. He was in the holy land of poetry and art, and he sought to conjure up by the powerful magic of memory, the mighty dead who for almost twenty centuries have slumbered in unknown graves. Thrice, according to ancient usage, he made the echos of ThermopylÆ resound with the name of Leonidas, and in his pious wanderings across the ruins of Athens, he would ascend some fallen tribune, from which perhaps the voice of Demosthenes might have been heard moving the popular mind as the wind agitates the sea, and calling forth a new generation of warriors by the magic of the names of “those who died at Marathon.” If ever a man was instinct with the feeling of universal love, if ever any one idolized nature it was Chateaubriand, the piety of whom, however, was too intense to permit him ever to mistake the apparent for the great first cause. In the words of one of our own writers “he was filled with devotion to God and sympathized with all humanity.” Those now desolate regions he soon left, and the enthusiast went to seek in the dwelling-places of the once “people of God,” those spots over which Christ had passed during his pilgrimage from Bethlehem to the “place of the skull,” amid hordes of savage Bedweens and robber Arabs, he crossed the summits of Mount Liban and the waters of the sea of death. He prayed on the Mount of Olives, moistened his lip in the cool wave of the Jordan, and brought a portion of its waters, which, preserved with all the care of a pious superstition was subsequently used at the baptism of the Duke of Bordeaux. He finally knelt at the very tomb of Christ, the venerable guardians of which clasped on his heel the spur of Godfry de Bouillon, and made him a “Knight of the Holy Sepulchre.” The city of Alexandria and the capital of the Ptolemies were also visited by him, and ascending the Nile as far as Cairo, he sat at the foot of the pyramids, and gave himself up to meditation amid the Memphian ruins. He then re-embarked, and after undergoing imminent danger from shipwreck, landed at Tunis. Neglecting the living city, he visited that Carthage which twice became the rival of Rome, in war in the days of Hannibal, and in religion when St. Cyprian lived. From Africa Chateaubriand passed to Spain, that land of war and love, and as he wandered through the dilapidated halls of the Alhambra, and recalled Pelayo, Charlemagne and Boabdil, he formed the conception of the tender and chivalric legend of “The Last Abencerrages.”
On his return to Spain, in 1807, Chateaubriand, who had not yet ceased to feel an interest in Spain, published an analysis of Laborde’s book on that country. This book excited great curiosity, some of the pages containing allusions to which a malicious public gave a point. Napoleon was weak enough to take offense at a fancied parallel between himself and Nero; and after having stripped him of his ownership of the Mercure, went so far as to threaten to have him shot down in the Tuileries.
The independence of Chateaubriand is well known, and the despotism of Napoleon found an untiring enemy in him. All were, however, surprised to find in his Itinerary from Paris to Jerusalem, frequent eulogies of the imperial glory. The public was not aware of the fact, that a few days before its appearance, the publisher was notified that it would be suppressed unless praises of the emperor were inserted. Chateaubriand long protested against this edict, and yielded only to the prayers of the bookseller, who informed him that the suppression of the work would be his ruin. He had, however, something in reserve to gratify his self-respect, speaking only of the military glory, not of the statesman-like qualities of Napoleon.
Subsequently, in his peaceful hermitage of la vallÉe aux loups, Chateaubriand finished the great work, the plan of which he had conceived at Rome, and which he had meditated on during the whole of his pilgrimage in Greece, Judea, and Africa. The Martyrs at last appeared, and were all the pamphlets and books of every size which it called forth collected, a hall large as the Alexandrine Library would not suffice to contain them. It was a daring act, indeed, to personify, in a prose-poem, all the mysterious powers of Christianity. It was a poetical novel, the old gods of Greece and Rome playing a conspicuous part. In the introduction of the Pagan divinities, instead of Beelzebub and the powers of darkness, does this book greatly differ in general conception from the strange old book of the Puritan Bunyan. The genius of Christianity, however, demonstrates that there was inherent in Christianity, not less poetry than existed in the Heathen Olympus, and that the mysteries of Christianity opened as rich a field to the poet as did the Hesiodic theogony.
This was a great discovery in France, where at that time the Paradise Lost, and Klopstock’s great poem, were almost unknown. The attack and defense of this poem consequently created much excitement, and the reputation of Chateaubriand rapidly expanded. In 1811, a chair in the Academy having, by the death of Joseph Chenier, become vacant, public opinion designated Chateaubriand as the person most qualified to fill it. It is well known that custom requires the new member to eulogize his predecessor. Chateaubriand, however, in politics differed entirely from Chenier, and unwilling to submit to the usage, had prepared to attack him. The emperor having heard of his intention, forbade him to pronounce his address, seeing that this could not but be a dangerous precedent at a time when the judges of Louis XIV. occupied all the principal offices of state. From that time the emperor and Chateaubriand were irreconcilable.
During the hundred days Chateaubriand accompanied Louis XVIII. to Ghent, and after the restoration, was elevated to the dignity of a peer of France. At this crisis his opinions were ultra royalist. In his last work, de la Monarchie selon la Charte, he dared to define clearly the position of the king, according to the charter; he lost favor, Louis XVIII. being too shrewd to break with the liberal party. The order dismissing him is very significative, viz., “The Vicomte de Chateaubriand having in a printed book expressed doubt in relation to our personal will, made known in the decree of the 5th of September, the said Vicomte will, from to-day, cease to be one of our ministers of state.”
It is now scarcely worth while to follow Chateaubriand through all the phases of his political life. Dismissed and subsequently restored to royal favor, he was ambassador at both Berlin and London. He was also plenipotentiary at the Congress at Verona, again dismissed, and sent as minister to Rome. He again resigned on the coming into power of the ministry of Polignac, and even then foresaw the fall of the throne he had been so anxious to make secure. Having undergone proscription and exile, he had nothing more to undergo except imprisonment. He was yet doomed to taste of prison-fare, and it was reserved for the government of Louis Philippe to arraign the author of The Martyrs before the Court of Assizes.
Subsequent to the restoration, besides various political pamphlets, Chateaubriand published many works of a purely literary character. The first of these was The Natchez. The manuscript of this book, forgotten with many other similar things by the author, had been left at an inn in London, on the occasion of his return from emigration after the 18th Brumaire. Twenty years after it was strangely recovered in a cottage at an obscure village. The honesty of persons to whom he had confided it was the source of one of the happiest hours of the life of Chateaubriand, and secured to the world one of the chef-d’oeuvres of romance. Next came Moses, the Essay on English Poetry, the translation of Milton, the Congress of Verona, and the Life of RanÉe. The life of Chateaubriand, it will be seen, was eventful as the age in which he lived. Like Dante, Tasso, Cervantes, Camaeus, and Milton, persecution of every kind was heaped on him.
For many years he lived in an almost impenetrable retirement. Caring little for the convulsions of the world, or for courtly intrigues, he has consecrated his time to the publication of his Memoires d’Outre Tombe, the recent publication of which has suggested this notice.
This remarkable book he thus prefaces: “I have met almost all the men who, in my own days, have been conspicuous in my own or foreign countries—Washington and Napoleon, Louis XVIII. and Popes Alexander, Pius VII., and Gregory XVI., Fox, Pitt, Sheridan, Londonderry, Capo d’Istrias, Malesherbes, and Mirabeau, Nelson, Bolivar, Mehemet, the Pacha of Egypt, Suffren, Bougainville, Lapeyrouse, Moreau, and others. I was one of a triumverate which has no parallel in the history of the world; three poets of different views and interests having been almost at the same time ministers of foreign affairs—I, in France, Canning, in England, and Martinez de la Rosa, in Spain, I have lived through the uneventful years of my youth, the teeming era of the republic, the proud days of Buonaparte, and the reign of legitimacy. I have sailed over the seas of the Old and New World, and stood on the soils of four quarters of the globe. I have slept in the Indian wigwam, Arab tent, and Huron hut; amid the ruins of Athens, Jerusalem, Memphis, Carthage, and Grenada, with the Greek, Turk, and Moor, amid forests, and amid deserted cities. I have worn a bear-skin cap, and the Mameluke caftan; I have undergone hunger and thirst, and as an ambassador, covered with golden embroidery, and stars, and insignia of chivalry, have sat at the board of kings, princesses and ladies, and then have again become impoverished, and have languished in prison.”
For a long time the health of Chateaubriand had been the source of much uneasiness to his friends, but on his return from a trip to Dieppe, in 1847, the symptoms became absolutely alarming. He had resolved to visit Italy, but was attacked with pneumonia, in Paris, and died July 4, 1848, after an illness of five days. The body of the poet was taken to Saint Malo, his birth-place, and on a rocky promontory, where the waves of the Atlantic ceaselessly beat, one who was restless as they, found a final repose. Full of tender love for his childhood’s home, he himself selected his burial place, as the bird which perchance has girded the earth, returns to the nest whence it first winged its flight—to die.
TO J. F. H.
———
BY JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.
———
Nine years have slipped like hourglass-sand
From life’s fast-emptying globe away,
Since last, dear friend, I clasped your hand,
And lingered on the impoverished land,
Watching the steamer down the bay.
I held the keepsake which you gave,
Until the dim smoke-pennon curled
O’er the vague rim ’tween sky and wave,
And closed the distance like a grave,
Leaving me to the outer world;
The old worn world of hurry and heat,
The young, fresh world of thought and scope;
While you, where silent surges fleet
Tow’rd far sky-beaches still and sweet,
Sunk wavering down the ocean-slope;
Come back our ancient walks to tread,
Old haunts of lost or scattered friends,
Amid the Muses’ factories red,
Where song, and smoke, and laughter sped
The nights to proctor-haunted ends.
Our old familiars are not laid,
Though snapped our wands and sunk our books,
They beckon, not to be gainsaid,
Where, round broad meads which mowers wade,
Smooth Charles his steel-blue sickle crooks;
Where, as the cloudbergs eastward blow,
From glow to gloom the hill-side shifts
Its lakes of rye that surge and flow,
Its plumps of orchard-trees arow,
Its snowy white-weed’s summer drifts.
Or let us to Nantasket, there
To wander idly as we list,
Whether, on rocky hillocks bare,
Sharp cedar-points, like breakers, tear
The trailing fringes of gray mist,
Or whether, under skies clear-blown,
The heightening surfs with foamy din,
Their breeze-caught forelocks backward blown
Against old Neptune’s yellow zone,
Curl slow, and plunge forever in.
For years thrice three, wise Horace said,
A poem rare let silence bind;
And love may ripen in the shade,
Like ours, for nine long seasons laid
In crypts and arches of the mind.
That right Falernian friendship old
Will we, to grace our feast, call up,
And freely pour the juice of gold,
That keeps life’s pulses warm and bold,
Till Death shall break the empty cup.
———
BY HENRY T. TUCKERMAN.
———
When cradled on thy placid breast,
In hushed content I loved to muse,
Too full the heart, too sweet the rest
For thought and speech to interfuse.
But now, when thou art shrined afar,
Like Nature’s chosen urn of peace,
Remembrance, like the evening star,
Begins a vigil ne’er to cease.
Each mossy rock, each fairy isle,
Inlets with thickets overhung,
The cloud’s rose-tint or fleecy pile,
And Echo’s wildly-frolic tongue;
The light and shade that o’er thee play,
The ripple of thy moonlit wave,
The long, calm, dreamy summer day,
The very stones thy waters lave;
The converse frank, the harmless jest,
The reverie without a sigh,
The hammock’s undulating rest,
With fond companions seated by;
Yet linger, as if near thee still,
I heard, upon the fitful breeze,
The locust and the whippoorwill,
Or rustle of the swaying trees.
Hills rise in graceful curves around,
Here dark with tangled forest shade,
There yellow with the harvest-ground,
Or emerald with the open glade;
Primeval chestnuts line the strand,
And hemlocks every mountain side,
While, by each passing zephyr fanned,
Azalin flowers kiss the tide.
We nestle in the gliding barge,
And turn from yon o’erarching sky,
To watch, along the bosky marge,
Its image in thy waters nigh.
Or, gently darting to and fro,
The insects on their face explore,
With speckled minnows poised below,
And tortoise on the pebbly floor.
Or turn the prow to some lone bay
Where thick the floating leaves are spread;
How bright and queen-like the array
Of lilies in their crystal bed!
Like chalices for beauty’s lip
Their snowy cones half open lie,
The dew-drops of the morn to sip,
But close to day’s intrusive eye.
And in their pure and stately grace,
Their shrinking from the noontide glare,
The charm they yield their dwelling-place,
How like the noblest of the fair!
To thy serene and balmy air,
Above life’s vain and common things,
Should gentle spirits oft repair,
And fondly plume their drooping wings.
O let me thence, in fancy, bear
The dreams of youth by thee renewed;
And hallow the domain of care
With visions born in solitude!
Drawn by G. Harvey Engraved by J. Smillie
Catskill Mountain House
From an original picture painted for Graham.
THISTLE-DOWN.
OR ROSALIE SHERWOOD’S DEBUT.
———
BY CAROLINE CHESEBRO’.
———
As, one by one, thy hopes depart
Be resolute and calm.
······
Oh fear not in a world like this,
And thou shalt know ere long—
Know how sublime a thing it is
To suffer and be strong.
Longfellow.
CHAPTER I.
Poor young creature, how perfectly wretched she looks as she sits in the bow-window, watching the fairy-like thistle-seed as it goes floating away up in the still air.
There is nothing like these clear September nights after sunset, for a reverie. If it is a calm evening, and an intense light fills the sky and glorifies it, and you sit where you can see the new moon, with the magnificent evening star beneath it, you must be a stupid affair indeed, if you cannot then dream the most heavenly dreams!
But Rosalie Sherwood is in no dreaming mood this lovely Sabbath night. Her heart is crushed in such an utter hopelessness of grief as leaves no room in it for hopes, her brain is too acutely sensitive just now for visions. The thistle-down in beautiful procession moves gently on and up before her eyes, and as she watches, the frail things assume a new interest to her; she feels a human sympathy with them—like the viewless winds they come, from whence she knows not—and go, whither none can tell. They are homeless and alone, and she is like them, but she is not, as they, purposeless!
If you could look into her mind now, you would see how she has nerved it up to a great determination—how, that mastering visions and hopes once cherished, she has gone forward now to a bleak and barren path, and stands there very resolute, yet, in the first moment of the resolve, miserable; no—she has not yet grown strong in the suffering—she cannot this night stand up beneath the burden, to bear it with a smile of triumph.
Rosalie Sherwood was an only child: the infant of an humble friend Mrs. Melville had known from her own girlhood. She, poor creature, had neither lived nor died a sinner,
“But, as love’s wild prayer dissolved in air,
Her woman’s heart gave way!——
And—the sin forgiven by Christ in heaven,
By man is cursed alway!”
On her death-bed Cecily Sherwood gave her unrecognized, nameless child, to the care of one who promised, in the sincerity of her compassion, to be a mother to the unfortunate infant. And during the eighteen years of that girl’s life, from the hour of her mother’s death, to the day when she was left without hope in the world, Rosalie had found a parent in the rigid but always just and kind, Mary Melville.
This widow lady had one son; he was four years old when her husband died, which was the very year that the little Rosalie was brought to Melville House. The boy’s father had been considered a man of large wealth, but when his affairs were settled after his decease, it was found that the debts of the estate being paid, little more than a competency remained for the widow. But the lady was fitted, by a life of self-discipline, even in her luxurious home, to calmly meet this emergency. With the remnant of a great fortune she retired to an humble residence, where in quiet retirement she gave her time to managing the household affairs, and to superintending the home-education of her children.
Her son Duncan, and the young Rosalie had grown up together—until the girl’s twelfth birth-day constant playmates and pupils in the same academy. No one, not even the busiest busy-body had ever been able to detect the slightest partiality in Mrs. Melville’s treatment of her children. And indeed it had been quite impossible that she should ever regard a child so winningly beautiful as Rosalie, with other than the tenderest affection. Under a light or careless rein, the child had been a difficult one to manage, for there was a light like fire oft-times in her eyes that told of strong will, and deep passions; and besides, her striking appearance had won sufficient admiration to have completely spoiled her, if a guardian the most vigilant, as well as most discerning, had not been ever at hand to speak the right word and do the right thing with her.
Mrs. Melville was a thoroughly religious woman, and deeply conscious of the responsibility she incurred in adopting the infant. She could not quiet her conscience with the reflection that she had done a wonderfully good thing in giving Rosalie a home and education—the deep pity she felt for the unfortunate child led her to exercise an uncommon care, that all tendency to evil should be eradicated in the heart of the brilliant girl while she was yet young—that a deep sense of right should be impressed on her tender mind. And her labor of love met with a return which might well have made the mother proud.
There had been no officious voice to whisper to Rosalie Sherwood the story of that doubtful position which she occupied in the world. She was an orphan, the adopted child of the lady whom she so devoutly loved, with all a daughter’s tenderness, this she knew, and it was all she knew—and Mrs. Melville was resolved that she should never know more.
The son of the widow had been educated for the ministry. He was now twenty-two years old, and was soon to be admitted to the priesthood. This was following out his own wish, and the dearest hope of his mother’s heart—and it seemed to all who knew the young man as though the Head of the Church had set His seal upon Duncan from his boyhood. He was so mild and so forbearing—so discreet and generous, and never deaf to any call of charity. Meek and holy of heart, was the thought of whosoever looked on his placid, youthful face. Yet he had besides his gentleness, that, without which his spirit might have subsided into puerile weakness, a firmness of purpose and a strict sense of right, like that which marked his mother among women. Duncan Melville’s abilities were of a high order, perhaps not of the highest—though, if his ambition would only equal his powers, they would surely seem so. His voice was of a sweet, persuasive tone, that was fitted to win souls to Christ, yet it could ring like a clarion when the grandeur of the themes he touched fired his own soul. He had moreover an earnest, impressive manner, even in private conversation, which characterized all his words and deeds. With the warmest hopes and deepest interest they who knew the difficulties and trials of the profession he had chosen looked on this young man.
Duncan and his adopted sister had long known the nature of the tie which bound them members of one family, and they never called themselves brother and sister after the youth came home, a graduate from college. For, from the time when absence empowered him to look, as a stranger would on Rosalie, from that time he saw her elegant, and accomplished, and bewitching as she was, and other than fraternal affection was in his heart for her.
And Rosalie, too, loved him—just as Duncan, had he spoken his passion and his hope, would have prayed her to love him. She had long ago made him the standard of all manly excellence, and when he came back after three years of absence, she was not inclined to revoke her early decision—therefore was she prepared to read the language of Duncan’s eyes, and she consecrated her heart to him.
During the years which followed his return from college, till he was prepared for ordination as a priest, he did not once speak to her of his love, which was growing all the while stronger and deeper, as the river-course, that, flowing to the ocean, receives every day fresh impetus and force from the many tiny springs that commingle with it. Duncan Melville never thought of wedding with another than Rosalie Sherwood.
It was, as I said, near the time appointed for his ordination, when he felt for the first time, as though he had a right to speak openly with her of all his hopes. He asked her then, what in soul-language he had long before asked, a question which she had as emphatically, in like language, answered—to be the partner of his life for weal or for wo.
He had tried to calmly consider Rosalie’s character, as a Christian minister should consider the character of her whom he would make the sharer of his peculiar lot, and setting every preference aside, Duncan felt that she was fitted to assist and to bear, with him. She was truthful as the day, strong-minded and generous, humane and charitable, and though no professor of religion, a woman full of reverence and veneration. He knew that it was only a fear that she should not adorn the Christian name that kept her back from the altar of the church, and he loved her for that spirit of humility, knowing that she was “on the Lord’s side,” and that grace ere long would be given her to proclaim it in the doing all His commandments.
It was certainly with a joyful and confident heart, after he had spoken with Rosalie, that Duncan sought his mother yesterday, to speak with her of the whole of that bright future which opened now before him.
How then was he overcome with surprise and grief, when Mrs. Melville told him that it was a union to which she could never consent! Then, for the first time in his life, the astonished young man heard of that stain which was on the name poor Rosalie bore. He heard the story to an end, and then with a decision and energy that would have settled the matter with almost any other person, he declared:
“Yet, mother—I will not give her up.”
“It could not be expected that you would fulfill the engagement; Rosalie herself would not allow it, if she knew the truth of the matter.”
“But she need not know it—there is no existing necessity. Is it not enough that she is good and precious to me? She is a noble woman, whose life has been, thanks to your guidance, beautiful and lofty.”
“God knows I have striven to do my duty by her—but I know not what I should have done, if I had thought you would ever wish to change your relations with her, Duncan.”
“The world has not her equal! It is cruel, it is wrong, mother, in you to oppose.”
“She is a lovely woman—she has well availed herself of the advantages given her—but, my son, there are myriads like her.”
“No, not one! Tell me, you will never breathe a word of this to her?”
“Never!”
“Oh, thank you! thank you! Mother, you could not wish another daughter?”
“But for that I have told you, Duncan, I could not wish another.”
“Then I say you must not work this great injustice on her and me. Rosalie loves me, she has promised to be mine. You will break my heart.”
“You are deluded and strangely excited, my son, or you never would speak so to me,” said the mother, persisting in that firmness with which the physician resorts to a desperate remedy for a desperate disease. Then she spoke to him of all the relations in life he might yet be called upon to assume, of the misery which very possibly might follow, though now unforeseen, in after days—hours passed on, and the conference was not ended until with a crushed heart and trembling voice Duncan arose abruptly, while his mother yet spoke, and he said,
“If the conclusion to which you have urged me is right in God’s sight, He will give me, He will give Rosalie, too, strength to abide by it. But I can never speak to her of this, and I must find another home than yours and hers. You must speak for me, mother—and oh let me charge you, do it gently. Do not tell her all. Let her think what she will—believe, as she must, that I am a wretch past pardon, but do not blight her peace by telling all.”
“I promise you, Duncan,” was the answer, spoken through many tears, and the young man did not wait to hear more.
An hour after he was on the way from the village, that he might spend the coming Sabbath in another town.
And after he was gone the mother sought her younger, her dearly-loved child. Rosalie heard that familiar step on the stairway—she had seen Duncan hurrying away from the house, and she knew the conference was over: but she had no fear for its result. So she hushed the glad, tumultuous beating of her heart, and tried to veil the brightness of her eyes, as she heard the gentle tapping at her door that announced the mother coming.
As for Mrs. Melville—her heart quite failed her when she went into the pleasant room and sat down close by Rosalie. Despite all the strengthening thoughts of duty she had taken with her as a support in that interview, she was now at a sore loss, for it was a bitter grief to her kind heart that she must even for a day make those young creatures unhappy. How then could she endure to take away their life’s best joy, their richest hope? It was a hard thing—and many moments passed before she could nerve that strong spirit to utter the first word; and Rosalie, anxious, and impatient too, but unsuspecting, at last exclaimed—
“What can it be that so much troubles you, mother?”
Then Mary Melville spoke, but in a voice so soft and sad, and so faint with emotion, that it seemed not at all her voice—she said,
“I want you to consider that what I say to you, dear child, has given me more pain even to think of, than I have ever felt before. Duncan has told me of your engagement to marry with him. And it has been my duty, my most sorrowful duty, oh believe me! to tell him that such a tie can never unite you. He can never be your husband, you can never be his wife.”
She paused, exhausted by her emotion—she could not utter another syllable. Rosalie who had watched her with a fixed astonishment as she listened to the words, was the first to speak again, and she tried to say calmly,
“Of course you have a reason for saying so. It is but just that I should know it.”
“It cannot be known. If I had ever in my life deceived you, Rosalie, you might doubt me now when I assure you, that an impediment which cannot be named, exists to the marriage. Have I not been a mother to you always?” she asked appealingly, imploringly, “I love you as I love Duncan—and it cuts me to the heart to grieve you.”
“Has Duncan given you an answer?”
“Yes, Rosalie.”
“And it?”
“He has trusted to his mother,” she said, almost proudly.
“Rather than me,” quickly interrupted Rosalie.
“Rather than do that which is wrong; which might prove the misery of you both hereafter, my child.”
“Where is he? Why does he not come himself to tell me this? If the thing is really true, his lips should have spoken it and not another’s.”
“He could not do it. I believe his heart is broken. Oh, Rosalie, do not look so upon me. Is it not enough that I bitterly regret, that I shall always deplore having not foreseen the result of your companionship. Say only that you do believe I have striven to do the best for you always, so far as I knew how.”
“Heaven knows that I believe it, mother. When will Duncan come home again?”
“Monday, not before.”
When Monday morning came, on the desk in Rosalie’s room this letter was found.
“I cannot leave you forever, Duncan, I cannot go from your protecting care, mother, without saying all that is in my heart. I have no strength to look on you, my brother, again—mother, the union I had thought between us life-lasting, is broken. I cannot any longer be your daughter. I would have done so, I would have remained in any capacity, as a slave even, in your service, for I was bound by gratitude for all you have done for me, to be with you always, at least, so long as you should wish. If you had unveiled the mystery, and suffered me to stand before you, recognizing myself as you knew me, I would have stayed—I would have been to you, Duncan, as in childhood, a proud, yet humble sister, rejoicing in your triumphs—and a sharer in your sorrows. I would have put fetters on my heart, and calmed my voice, and veiled my eyes, the spirit dwelling in me should have been henceforth a stranger to you. I would have borne to see another made your wife—but in a mistaken kindness you put this utterly beyond my power. Too much has been required—and, I am found—wanting! If even the most miserable fate that can befall an innocent woman, if the curse of illegitimacy were upon me, I could bear that thought even, and acknowledge the justice and wisdom that did not consider me fit to associate with those, whose birth is recognized by a parent’s pride and fondness. But—I must be cognizant of the relation, whatever it is, that I bear you. I cannot, I will not consent to appear nominally your daughter, when you scorn to receive me as such.
“Mother—in my dead mother’s name I thank you for the generous love you have ever shown me—for the generous care with which you have attended to the development of the talents God gave me. For I am fitted thus to labor for myself. I thank you for that watchful providence that has made me what I am, a woman self-reliant, and strong in spirit. I thank you for it all, from a heart that has learned only to love and honor you in the past eighteen years. And I call down the blessing of the Infinite God upon you, as I depart. Hereafter, always it will be the endeavor of my life to live worthily of you—to be all that you have in your charity capacitated me to be. Duncan, you will not forget me—I do not ask it. But, pray for me, and live up to the fullness of your heart and your intellect. There is a happy future for you. I have no word of counsel, no feeble utterance of encouragement to leave you—you will not need such from me. God bless and strengthen you in every good word and work—it shall be the constant hope of the sister who loves you. Mother, fare you well.”
This letter was written on that Sabbath-eve, on which our story opens—written in a perfect passion, yes, of grief, and of despair. The anger that Rosalie may at first have felt, gave way to the wildest sorrow now, but her resolution was taken, and her heart was really strung to bear the resolution out.
After her sudden and most unlooked-for disappearance, the mother and son sought long, and I cannot tell, you must imagine how anxiously, for the young girl. But their search was in vain, and at last, as time passed on, she became to the villagers as one who had never been. But never by the widow was Rosalie forgotten. And oh! there was in the world one heart at least that sorrowed with a constant sorrow, that hoped with a constant hope for her.
He had lost her—and Duncan sought for no other love among women. When all his searching for Rosalie was proved to be unavailing, the minister applied himself with constant industry to his profession—he forgot ease and comfort, and personal enjoyment, in the works of his calling. And verily, he met here with his reward, for as he was a blessing to the people of his parish, in turn they almost adored him. He was a spiritual physician, whom God empowered to heal many a wounded, stricken heart; but there was a cross of suffering, that he bore himself, which could not be removed: It was his glory, that he bore it with martyr-like patience; that he never uttered a reproachful word to her, through whom he bore it. As years passed away, the gifted preacher’s impassioned eloquence and stirring words, bowed many a proud and impenitent soul, with another love than that which he wished to inspire, but he still sought not among any companionship, or close friendship; they said at last, considering his life spent in the most rigid performance of duty, that “he was too high church to marry;” that he did not believe such union consonant with the duties of a minister of the cross!—But, the mother knew better than this; she knew a name that was never spoken now, in Rosalie’s old home, that was dearer than life to the heart of her son—and desolate and lonely as she was, she never dared ask him to give to her a daughter—to take unto himself a wife!
——
