Twelve years of after-life cannot but weigh lighter in the balance of recollection than half that number in very early youth. I think this now, pondering upon the threshold of middle age with an enthusiasm fixed and deepened by every change; but I did not think so the day to which I shall defer my particular remembrances,—the day I had left Germany forever,—except in dreams. There were other things I might have left behind that now I carried to my home,—things themselves all dreams, yet containing in their reminiscences the symbols of my every reality. Eternity alone could contain the substance of those shadows; that shore we deem itself to shadow, alone contains the resolution into glory of all our longings, into peace of all our pain. Such feelings, engendered by loneliness, took me by the very hand and led me forwards that dreary December evening when I landed in England last, having obtained all that was absolutely necessary to be made my own abroad. I have not tormented my reader or two with the most insignificant mention of myself between this evening and a time some years before; it would have been impracticable, or, if practicable, impertinent, as I lived those after years entirely within and to myself. The sudden desertion which had stricken Cecilia of her hero lord, and that suspension of his presence which ensued, had no more power upon me than to call out what was, The very representative of music was no longer such to me; for when we came together after that fatal midsummer no sign was left of Anastase,—"a new king had arisen in Egypt, who knew not Joseph." To him I ought, perhaps, to confess that I owed a good deal, but I cannot believe it,—I am fain to think I should have done as well alone; but there was that in the association and habitude of the place, that in the knowledge of being still under the superintendence, however formal and abstracted, of its head, that I could not, and would not, have flung up the chances of its academical career. It was, however, no effort to disengage myself from the spot, for any notion of the presence of him I best loved was, alas! now, and had been long, entirely dissociated from it. Not one smile from those fair lips, not one ray from those awful eyes, had sunned the countenances of the ever-studious throng. A monastery could not have been more secluded from the incarnate presence of the Deity than were we in that quiet institution from its distant director. Let it not be imagined, at the same time, that we could have existed in ignorance of that influence which was streaming—an "eastern star"—through the country that contained him as a light of life, which in the few None could estimate—and, young as I yet was, I well knew it—the proportion of the renown his early works had gained in this strange country. The noblest attribute of race, the irresistible conception of the power of race, had scarcely then received a remote encouragement, though physiologists abounded; but, like our artists, they lacked an ideal, or, like our politicians, "a man." Still, whether people knew it or not, they insensibly worshipped the perfect beauty whose development was itself music, and whose organization, matchless and sublimated, was but the purest type of that human nature on which the Divine One placed his signet, and which he instituted by sharing, the nearest to his own. Those who did know it, denied it in the face of their rational conviction, because it was so hard to allow that to be a special privilege in which they can bear no earthly part; for all the races of the earth cannot tread down one step of that race, nor diminish in each millennium its spiritual approximation to an everlasting endurance. Or, perhaps, to do them justice, the very conviction was as dark to them as that of death, which all must hold, and so few care to remind themselves of. At all events, it was yet a whisper—and a whisper not so universally wafted as whispers in general are—that Seraphael was of unperverted Hebrew ancestry, both recognizant of the fact and auspicious in its entertainment. Many things affected me as changes when I landed at I cannot allude to any now, except the railway, which was the first I had seen, and whose line to our very town, almost to our very house, had been not six months completed. I shall never forget the effect, nor has it ever left me when I travel; I cannot find it monotonous, nor anything but marvel. It was certainly evening when I entered the stupendous terminus, and nothing could have so adapted itself to the architecture as the black-gray gloom, lamp-strung, streaming with gas-jets. Such gloom breathed deadly cold, presaging the white storm or the icing wind; and it was the long drear line itself that drew my spirit forth, as itself lonely to bask in loneliness, such weird, wild insecurity seemed hovering upon the darkened distance, such a dream of hopeless achievement seemed the space to be overpassed that awful evening. As I walked along the carriage-line I felt this, although the engine-fire glowed furiously, and it spit out sparks in bravery; but the murmur of exhaustless power prevented my feeling in full force what that power must really be. It was not until we rolled away and left the lamps in their ruddy sea behind us, had lost ourselves far out in the dark country, had begun to rush into the very arms of night, that I could even bear to remember how little people had told me of what steam-travelling by land would prove in my experience. It seemed to me as if I, too, ought to have changed, and to carry wings; the spirit pined for an enfranchisement of its own as peculiar, and recalled all painfully that its pinings were in vain. A thousand chapters have been expended upon the Long before I arrived in that familiar parlor a presence awaited me which had ever appeared to stand between my actual and my ideal world,—it was that of my brother and earliest friend, dear Lenhart Davy, who had walked out into the winter night expressly and entirely to meet me, and who was so completely unaged, unchanged, and unalloyed that I could but wonder at the freshness of the life within him, until I remembered the fountains where it fed. He was as bright, as earnest, as in the days of my infant faith; but there was little to be said until we arrived at home. Cold as was the season, and peculiarly susceptible as our family has ever been to cold, the street-door positively stood ajar! and hiding behind it was Margareth, oblivious of rheumatism and frost, to receive her nursling. When she had pronounced upon my growth her enchanted eulogy that I was taller than ever and more like myself, I was dragged into the parlor by Davy, and found them all, the bloom of the firelight restoring their faces exactly as I had left them. My mother, as I told her, looked younger than myself,—which might easily be the case, as I believe I was born grown up,—and Clo was very handsome in her fashion, wearing the old pictorial raiment. My sister Lydia had lately received preferment, and introduced me on the instant to her These worthies dismissed, I was at liberty to spend myself upon the most precious of the party. They were Millicent and her baby, which last I had never seen,—a lady of eighteen months, kept thus late out of her cradle that she, too, might greet her uncle. She was a delicious child,—I have never found her equal,—and had that indescribable rarity of appearance which belongs, or we imagine it to belong, to an only one. Carlotta—so they had christened her after unworthy me—was already calling upon my name, to the solemn ecstasy of Davy, and his wife's less sustained gratification. I have never really seen such a sight as that sister and brother of mine, with that only child of theirs. When we drew to the table, gloriously spread for supper, and my mother, in one of her old-fashioned agonies, implored for Carlotta to be taken upstairs, Davy, perfectly heedless, brought her along with him to his chair, placed on his knee and fed her, fostered her till she fell asleep and tumbled against his shoulder, when he opened his coat-breast for her and just let her sleep on,—calling no attention to her beauties in so many words, certainly, but paying very little attention to anything else; and at last, when we all retired, carrying her away with him upstairs, where I heard him walking up and down his room, with a hushing footstep, long after I had entered mine. It was not until the next morning that I was made For example, there was a room downstairs, built out, for the books, which had accumulated too many; and over this room had Davy designed a very sweet green-house, to be approached from the parlor itself. The same order overlaid everything; the same perfume of cleanliness permeated every corner; and it was just as well this was the case, so jammed and choked up with all sorts of treasures and curiosities were the little landing-place, the tiny drawing-room, the very bed-room and a half, as Davy called my own little closet, with the little carven bed's head. Everywhere his shadow, gliding and smiling silently, though at the proper time she had plenty to say too, came Millicent after him. Nor was the baby ever far behind; for at the utmost distance might be glimpsed a nest of basket-work, lined with blush-color, placed on a chair or two among the geraniums and myrtles, and in that basket the baby lay; while her mamma, who only kept one servant, made various useful and ornamental progresses through the house. While Davy was at home, however, Carlotta was never out of his arms, or, at least, off his lap; she had learned to lie quite quiescently across his knees while he wrote or read, making no more disturbance than a dove would have done. I believe he was half-jealous because when I took her she did not cry, but began to put her fingers into my eyes and to carry my own fingers to her mouth. This morning we had her between us when we "Well, Charles, you have told me nothing of your plans yet; I suppose they are hardly formed." "Oh, yes! quite formed,—at least as formed as they can be without your sanction. You know what you wrote to me about,—your last letter?" "You received that extemporaneous extravaganza, then, Charles,—which I afterwards desired I had burned?" "I take that as especially unkind on your part, as I could not but enter with the most eager interest into every line." "Not unkind, though I own it was a little cowardly. I felt rather awed in submitting my ideas to you when you were at the very midst of music in its most perfect exposition." "Oh! I did not quite discover that, Lenhart. There are imperfections everywhere, and will be, in such a mixed multitude as of those who press into the service of what is altogether perfect." "The old story, Charlie." "Rather the new one. I find it every day placed before me in a stronger light; but it has not long held even with me. How very little we can do, even at the utmost, and how very hard we must labor even to do that little!" "I am thankful to hear you say so, Charles, coming fresh from the severities of study; but we are some few of us in the same mind." "Then let us hold together; and this brings me to my purpose. I am not going to settle in London, Lenhart,—that is a mistake of yours. I will never leave you while I can be of any use." "Leave me, Charlie? Ah! would that I could cherish "I will never make my appearance anywhere, my dearest brother,—at least not as you intend. I could have no objection to play anywhere if I were wanted, and if any one cared to hear me; but I will never give up the actual hold I have on this place. As much may be done here as anywhere else, and more, I am certain, than in London. There is more room here,—less strain and stress; and, once more, I will not leave you." "But how, my Charlie,—in what sense?" "I will work along with you, and for you, while I work for myself. I am young, very young, and, I daresay, very presumptuous in believing myself equal to the task; but I should wish, besides being resident professor, to devote myself especially to the organization of that band of which you wrote, and which in your letter you gave me to understand it is your desire to amalgamate with your class. You do not see, Lenhart, that, young as I am, nothing could give me a position like this, and that if I fail, I can but return to a less ambitious course." "There is no course, Charles, that I do not consider you equal to; but I cannot reconcile it with my conscience to bind you to a service so signal for my own sake,—it is a mere sketch of a Spanish castle I had reared in an idle hour." "We will raise a sure fame on solid foundations, Lenhart, and I do not care about fame for its own sake. After all, you cannot, with your musical electicism, prefer me to become mixed up in the horrible struggle for precedence which, in London, degrades the very nature of art, and renders its pursuit a misnomer." "You have not given up one of your old prejudices, Charles." "No, Davy. I feel we can do more acting together than either separately, for the cause we love best and desire to serve. You know me well, and that, whatever I have learned in my life abroad, no taste is so dear to me as yours,—no judgment I should follow to the death so gladly. Besides all the rest, which is made up of a good deal more than one can say, I could never consent, as an instrumentalist, and as holding that instrument to be part of myself, to infect my style with whims and fashions which alone would render it generally acceptable. I must reserve what I musically believe as my musical expression, and nothing can satisfy me in that respect but the development of the orchestra." "Poor orchestra! it is a very germ, a winter-seed at present, my ever-sanguine Charlie." "I am not sanguine; on the contrary, I am disposed to suspect treachery everywhere, even in myself, and certainly in you, if you would have me go to London, take fashionable lodgings, and starve myself on popular precedents, among them that most magnificent one of lionizing musical professors. No, I could not bear that, and no one would care a whit for my playing as I feel. I should be starved out and out. If you can initiate me a little yourself into your proceedings, I think I shall be able to persuade you that I ought to be only where my impulse directs me to remain." Davy at this juncture deprived me of the baby, who had been munching my finger all the time we talked; and when he had placed her in her nest,—a portent of vast significance,—he enlightened me indeed to the full, and we informed Millicent when she came upstairs; for "No one can tell, Charles," said Millicent, among other things, "how heroically and patiently he has worked, rejecting all but the barest remuneration, to bring all forward as he has succeeded in doing, and has nobly done. You will say so when you hear, and you must hear, to-morrow evening." "I shall indeed feel strange, Millicent," I replied, "to sit at his feet once more, and to feel again all that went through me in the days when I learned of him alone. But I am very curious about another friend of mine. I suppose you can tell me just as well as he." "About Miss Benette, Charles?" "Yes, and also little Laura." "I know nothing; we know nothing of her or what she has been doing. But you must have heard of Clara?" "Not a word. I have been very quiet, I assure you." "So much the better for you, Charles. But she has not lost your good opinion?" "She would have that wherever she went." "I believe it. My husband has, of course, never lost sight of her; yet it was not until the other day, and quite by accident, that we heard of all she has become. A very old Italian stager, Stelli by name, called on Lenhart the other day at the class, and after hearing several of the pieces, asked him whether his pupil, Miss Benette, had not belonged to it once on a time. He said, Yes; and finding that the signor was acquainted with her, brought him home to dinner; and we were told a great deal that it is very difficult to tell, even to you, Charles. She must, however, be exactly what you always imagined." "I should not only imagine, but expect, she will remain unaltered. I do not believe such eyes could change, or the owner of such eyes." "He says just so,—he says that she is an angel; he continued to call her angela, angela, and could call her nothing else." "Is she singing in Italy just now?" "It is just that we asked him. You know she went to Italy for study, and no one heard a word about her; she did not omit to write, but never mentioned what she was doing. Only the third year she sent us news of her dÉbut. This was but last May. The news was in a paper, not in her letter. In her letter she only spoke of ourselves, and sent us a present for baby,—such a piece "That is rather what I should have expected. She had not an Italian touch about her; she would weary there." "I should scarcely think so, Charles, for Stelli described her beauty as something rose-like and healthful,—'fresher than your infant there,' he said, pointing to baby; and from her style of singing grand and sacred airs, she has been fancifully named, and is called everywhere, 'La Benetta benedetta.'"[7] "That strikes home to me very pleasantly, Millicent. She had something blessed and infantine in her very look. I admire that sobriquet; but those usually bestowed by the populace are most unmeaning. Her own name, however, suits her best,—it is limpid like the light in her eyes. There is no word so apt as 'clear' for the expression of her soul. And what, Millicent, of her voice and style?" "Something wonderful, no doubt, Charles, if she obtained an engagement in the midst of such an operatic pressure as there was this year. I hope she will do something for England too. We have not so many like her that we can afford to lose her altogether." "I know of not one, Millicent; and shall, if it be my "La Benetta benedetta!" I could not forget it; it haunted me like the words of some chosen song; I was ever singing it in my mind; it seemed the most fitting, and the only not irreverent homage with which one could have strewed the letters of her name,—a most successful hieroglyph. Nor the less was I reminded of her when, on the following evening, I accompanied my sister—who for once had allowed Clo to take charge of her baby—to the place, now so altered since I left it, where the vocal family united. We entered at the same door, we approached the same room; but none could again have known it unless, as in my case, he could have pointed out the exact spot on which he had been accustomed to sit. The roof was raised, the rafters were stained that favorite sylvan tint of Davy's, the windows lightly pencilled with it upon their ground-glass arches, the walls painted the softest shade of gray, harmonizing perfectly with the purple-crimson tone of the cloth that covered seats and platform. Alas! as I surveyed that platform I felt, with Davy, how much room there was for increased and novel yet necessary organism in the perfectibility of the system; for on that glowing void outspread, where his slight, dark form and white face and glancing hands alone shone out, I could but dream of beholding the whole array, in clustering companionship, of those mystic shapes that suggest to us, in their varied yet according forms, the sounds that creep, that wind, that pierce, that electrify, through parchment or brass or string. In a word, they wanted a band very much. It would not have signified whether they had one or not, had the class continued in its primitive position, and in which Delightful as was the task, and responsive to my inmost resolutions, the final result I scarcely dared anticipate; it was no more easy at first than to trace the source of such a river as the Nile. Many difficulties darkened the way before me; and my own musical knowledge seemed but as a light flung immediately out of my own soul, making the narrow circle of a radiance for my feet that was unavailable for any others. My position as Davy's brother-in-law gave me a certain hold After a month or two, however, dating from the first week of February, when, together with the outpeering of the first snowdrop from the frost, I assumed my dignities, I discovered that I had gained a certain standing, owing to the fact of my being aware what I was about, and always attending to the matter in hand. Of my senior pupils, one was immensely conversable, so conversable that until he had disgorged himself of a certain quantity of chat, it was impossible to induce him to take up his bow; another contemplative, so contemplative that I always had to unpack his instrument for him, and to send it after him when he was gone, in a general way; |