GRAHAM’S MAGAZINE.

Vol. XL. April, 1852. No. 4.

Contents

[Transcriber’s Notes] can be found at the end of this eBook.

GRAHAM’S MAGAZINE.

Vol. XL. PHILADELPHIA, APRIL, 1852. No. 4.

THE FOREST FOUNTAIN.

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BY IGNATIUS L. DONNELLY.

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Here the sinking sun hath broken through a forest close as night;

Plashing all the deepened darkness with its thick and wine-like light.

Shivered lies the broad, red sunbeam slant athwart the withered leaf,

Laughing back the startled shadows from their high and holy grief;

Down yon dusk-pool, slant, obliquely, shoots a line like sparry splinter,

As the waking flush of spring-time lightens up the eyes in winter:

Dimming as it straineth downward melts the red light of the sun,

Darkling pool and piercing beamlet mingling whitely into one.

Fallen rays, like broken crystals, spangle thick the shadowy ground,

Ragged fragments, glorious gushes scattered richly, redly round.

Where the lazy lilies languish, one intruding sunbeam creeps;

In the arms of slumberous shadow, like a child it sinks and sleeps;

And the quiet leaves around it seem to think it all their own,

’Mid the grass and lightened lilies sleeping silent and alone.

Here the dew-damp lingers longest ’mid the plushy fountain moss;

Here the bergamot’s red blossom leans the stilly stream across;

Here the shade is darkly silent; here the breeze is liquid cool,

And the very air seems married to the freshness of that pool.

See, where down its depths pellucid, Nature’s purest waters well,

Breaking up in curving current, wimpled line and bubbly swell;

While in swift and noiseless beauty, through the deep and dewy grass,

O’er the rock and down the valley, see the hurrying waters pass.

Oh, how dreamy grow my senses, as I couch me ’mid the flowers,

Oh, how still the blue sky looketh, oh, how noteless creep the hours;

Oh, how wide the silence seemeth, not a sound disturbing comes,

Save a drowsy, sleepy buzzing, that around continuous hums;

And I seem to float out loosely on weak slumber’s languid breast,

With a kind of half reluctance that sinks gradually to rest.

Distant faces group around me, kindly eyes look in my own,

And I hear, though indistinctly, voices of the lost and gone:

His whose bark went down in tempest; his whose life and death were gloom;

His whose hopes and young ambitions fell and faded on the tomb;

Oh, again his earnest language breaks upon my dreaming ear,

And I catch the tones that waking I shall never, never hear.

LOVE.

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BY A. J. REQUIER.

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Oh, with more than the pilgrim of Mecca’s devotion,

When he looks on the shrine which his worship endears,

Is the glance which we cast at the young heart’s devotion,

Its first rose of summer—the last which it bears;

Bright as a halo of sunshine reposing

At break of the morn on a billowless stream,

Where the wavering shadows are fitfully moving,

Or blush of a Peri that smiles in a dream.

Thus, thus must thou dwell on each glance of affection,

Each token of love I have strewed at thy shrine,

When thy bosom first heaved at the fear of detection,

And its secret alone was imparted to mine;

It is linked with each thought that is born in thy waking,

It embosoms each fancy that softens thy sleep,

And, if e’er it be wild as the waves in their breaking,

’Tis the image of Heaven that breaks on the deep!

For vainly the bosom whose pulses have throbbed

To the beat of a heart it had warmed with its fire,

Seeks to freeze the remembrance of tears it has sobbed,

And to smother the anguish of pining desire;

The remembrance will live, the remembrance will cling.

As the ever-green ivy encircles the oak,

And the tempest may strike with its withering wing,

But together they bend and together are broke!

Bright star of my soul! thus united we stand,

Intermingled in being and blended in breath,

Come fate with her darkest, her gloomiest band,

We will bend, we will break undivided in death;

’Twas Heaven decreed it, ’twas Heaven that wove

The tie which has bound us in home and in heart,

And this only we know, we live on but to love,

And thus loving we never, oh, never can part!

MEMORY.

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BY LYDIA L. A. VERY.

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“ ’Tis in the morning that the church-yard of Memory gives up its dead.”

Let them rise from the heart’s tomb;

Spirits, not of sadness or gloom—

White-robed thoughts of Childhood’s truth,

Cherished hopes that filled our youth.

Let them rise a shining band

Coming from the Spirit-Land.

Let them rise! each well-known face,

Where so oft we loved to trace

Smiles that beamed for us alone,

Eyes o’er which Death’s veil is thrown—

Let them gather round our bed

All unheard their noiseless tread!

Let their eyes of love still speak,

Let their breath be on our cheek,

And their voice in our ear

Murmur words we loved to hear:

Let their spirits fair and bright

Visit us at morning light.

Death, who cometh thief-like, still

Taking Life’s bright gems at will;

With us early, with us late,

Making hearth-stones desolate—

Death, who visits all Life’s bowers.

Cannot gather Memory’s flowers!

THE LAST SONG.

FROM THE GERMAN.

“When will your bards be weary

Of rhyming on? How long

Ere it is sung and ended,

The old, eternal song?

“Is it not, long since, empty,

The horn of full supply;

And all the posies gathered,

And all the fountains dry?”

As long as the sun’s chariot

Yet keeps its azure track,

And but one human visage

Gives answering glances back;

As long as skies shall nourish

The thunderbolt and gale,

And, frightened at their fury,

One throbbing heart shall quail;

As long as after tempests

Shall spring one showery bow,

One breast with peaceful promise

And reconcilement glow;

As long as night the concave

Sows with its starry seed,

And but one man those letters

Of golden writ can read;

Long as a moonbeam glimmers,

Or bosom sighs a vow;

Long as the wood-leaves rustle

To cool a weary brow;

As long as roses blossom,

And earth is green in May;

As long as eyes shall sparkle,

And smile in pleasure’s ray;

As long as cypress shadows

The graves more mournful make,

Or one cheek’s wet with weeping,

Or one poor heart can break;—

So long on earth shall wander

The goddess Poesy,

And with her, one exulting

Her votarist to be.

And singing on, triumphing,

The old earth-mansion through,

Out marches the last minstrel;—

He is the last man too.

The Lord holds the creation

Forth in his hand meanwhile,

Like a fresh flower just opened,

And views it with a smile.

When once this Flower Giant

Begins to show decay,

And earths and suns are flying

Like blossom-dust away.

Then ask,—if of the question

Not weary yet,—“How long,

Ere it is sung and ended,

The old, eternal song?”

OPTICAL PHENOMENA.

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BY THOMAS MILNER, M. A.

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It is convenient to place an indefinite title at the head of this article, in order to notice various classes of independent phenomena which immediately address themselves to the eye; and which are either plain developments of electrical action, or simply atmospheric meteors, or appearances resulting from its reflecting and refractive properties, or of obscure origin, but manifested in the atmosphere. To the former class the lightning belongs, beautifully playing among the distant clouds, or flashing with blinding glare and tremendous effect near the surface of the earth, warning man and beast of the presence of an agency able to extinguish animal and vegetable life in a moment, and utterly inappreciable in its swiftness, subtility and power. At the close of a hot, sultry day, over a level country, the igneous meteor often exhibits itself, in rapidly succeeding, broad, noiseless, and imposing sheets of flame, lighting up the whole range of the horizon, revealing for the moment the contour of the distant landscape upon which the shadows of the night have gathered, and discovering the outline of the clouds in the dusky sky. These displays, however startling to “the poor Indian, whose untutored mind” is alarmed at the slightest deviation from the ordinary aspect of things, are always harmless, and invite by their innocuousness and fascination the cultivated races to watch the bounding coruscations of the elastic element, besides contributing to render the fields of corn ripe unto the harvest. But it is otherwise when heat has overcharged the atmosphere with vapors, becoming piled into clouds of gigantic dimensions and massive architecture, which are often propelled by antagonist currents, and in different electrical conditions. After an unusual calm of nature, oppressive to the animal system, during which not a movement of the air is perceptible, and the leaves hang motionless upon the trees, while the brute creation indicate some intelligence of an impending change by their restlessness, an explosion commences. The flash is seen, the thunder heard, and the clouds open their watery store-house, a few distant and heavy drops increasing into a cataract of rain. Flash rapidly follows flash, and the interval between each appearance and the accompanying thunder peal becomes less. The pale hue of the lightning is exchanged for a vivid glare, in which a deep yellow, red, or blue is the predominant color, a variety of aberrations marking its course, the zigzag form showing that the fearful agent is near terrestrial objects. In this manner, “the detraction that wasteth at noonday” is frequently exhibited, now striking man and beast to the earth, or rending asunder the mighty oak of the forest, or firing the vessel of the hapless seaman, or shivering “the cloud-capt towers and gorgeous palaces,” the fanes of religion and the fortresses of war. Man has then a solemn sense of his helplessness and danger; and almost every creature sympathizes with him. The eel is restless in his muddy bed—the horse trembles beneath his rider—the cattle gather lowing to a covert—the eagle nestles in the cleft of the rock with folded wings—the hart looks wild and anxious: only the poor seal seems to experience agreeable sensations, for he will come out of his hiding-place in the deep, at the call of the thunder, and repose upon some overhanging ledge, as if calmly enjoying the convulsion of the elements.

Since the month of June 1752, when Franklin performed the celebrated kite experiment, by which he became the modern Prometheus, bringing down the celestial fire to the earth, the identity of lightning and electricity has been universally known. The theory of the electric fluid, as it is called, is to be sought for in philosophical treatises, our province being to notice its distribution, phenomena, and effects. That subtle principle which the Greeks denominated electricity, from elektron, amber, because the property was first noticed in that substance, appears to be a universally diffused agent, its presence having been detected in connection with the clouds, with hail, rain and snow, with vegetation, animals, and the interior strata of the earth. But undue accumulation transpires—the electrical equilibrium is disturbed; and the resulting phenomena of equalization are lightning and thunder. Thus two clouds, or a cloud and the earth, unequally electrified, tend to return to a condition of equality through a conducting medium, a metallic or moist body having the preference as a conductor, the discharge of electricity appearing in the form of a spark or flash, accompanied by a loud detonation according to its violence, the peal rebounding in echoes from cloud to cloud, and from hill to hill. Some regions of the globe are peculiarly subject to accumulations of electricity. Mr. Hamilton, in his work on Asia Minor, observes—“One of the most remarkable phenomena which I observed in Angora, was the great degree of electricity which seemed to pervade every thing. I observed it particularly in silk handkerchiefs, linen and woollen stuffs. At times, when I went to bed in the dark, the sparks which were emitted from the blanket gave it the appearance of a sheet of fire; when I took up a silk handkerchief, the crackling noise would resemble that of breaking a handful of dried leaves or grass; and on one or two occasions I clearly felt my hands and fingers tingle from the electric fluid. I could only attribute it to the extreme dryness of the atmosphere, and momentary friction. I did not observe that it was at all influenced by wind; the phenomena were the same, whether by night or by day, in wind or calm. Not a cloud was visible during the whole of my stay.”

Similar striking indications of the prevalence of electric action have frequently been observed by travelers when near the summits of high mountains, as by Sir W. J. Hooker on Ben Nevis, Saussure on Mont Blanc, and Tupper on Mount Etna. The latter, descending a field of snow, a good conductor, felt a slight shock upon entering a cloud which seemed electric, with a sensation of pain in the back. The hair of his head stood erect, and upon moving the hand near the head, a humming sound proceeded from it, which arose from a succession of sparks. Though a situation of great danger, yet we have several instances of such clouds having been traversed with impunity, when in the act of electrical explosion. The Abbé Richard, in August 1778, passed through a thunder-cloud on the small mountain called Boyer, between Chalons and Tournus. Before he entered the cloud, the thunder sounded, as it is wont to do, with a prolonged reverberation; but when enveloped in it, only single peals were heard, with intervals of silence, without any roll; and after he had passed above the cloud, it reverberated as before, and the lightning flashed. The sister of M. Arago was a party to a similar occurrence between Estagel and Limoux, and some officers of engineers likewise, during a trigonometrical survey on the Pyrenees.

The energy of atmospheric electricity appears to decrease as we recede from the equator to the poles, thus sympathizing with light and heat; for it is in tropical countries that the most terrific flashes of lightning and the loudest bursts of heaven’s artillery occur. Awful as these manifestations are occasionally in our temperate climate, they are but as a skirmishing of outposts to the general engagement of armies, when compared with inter-tropical displays. In Hindustan, in the Indian Ocean, along the African coast off Cape St. Verde, and in Central America, there is often a scene exhibited, which seems a rehearsal of the day “when the heavens being on fire shall pass away with a great noise.” Humboldt, during his residence at Cumana, witnessed a coincident development of electrical action, peculiar atmospheric phenomena, and terrestrial disturbance, during what is called the winter of that region. From the 10th of October to the 3d of November, a reddish vapor rose in the evening, and in a few minutes covered the sky. The hygrometer gave no indication of humidity; the diurnal heat was from 82·4° to 89·6°. The vapor disappeared occasionally in the middle of the night, when brilliantly white clouds formed in the zenith, extending toward the horizon. They were sometimes so transparent that they did not conceal stars even of the fourth magnitude, and the lunar spots were clearly distinguishable through the veil. The clouds were arranged in masses at equal distances, and seemed to be at a prodigious elevation. From the 28th of October to the 3d of November, the fog was thicker than it had been before; and the heat at night was stifling, though the thermometer indicated only 78·8°. There was no evening breeze. The sky appeared as if on fire, and the ground was every where cracked and dusty. About two o’clock in the afternoon of November 4th, large clouds of extraordinary blackness enveloped the mountains of the Brigantine and Tataraqual, extending gradually to the zenith. About four, thunder was heard overhead, but at an immense height, and with a dull and often interrupted sound. At the moment of the strongest electric explosion, two shocks of an earthquake, separated by an interval of fifteen seconds, were felt. The people in the streets filled the air with their cries. Boupland, who was examining plants, was nearly thrown upon the floor, and Humboldt, who was lying in his hammock, felt the concussion strongly. A few minutes before the first, there was a violent gust of wind followed by large drops of rain. The sky remained cloudy, and the blast was succeeded by a dead calm, which continued all night. The sunset was a scene of great magnificence. The dark atmospheric shroud was rent asunder close to the horizon, and the sun appeared at 12° of altitude on an indigo ground, his disc enormously enlarged and distorted. The clouds were gilded on the edges, and bundles of rays reflecting the most brilliant prismatic colors extended over the heavens. About nine in the evening there was a third shock, which, though much slighter, was evidently attended with a subterranean noise. In the night between the 3d and 4th of November, the red vapor before mentioned had been so thick, that the place of the moon could only be distinguished by a beautiful halo 20° in diameter. The vapor ceased to appear on the 7th; the atmosphere then assumed its former purity; and the night of the 11th was cool and extremely lovely. This account, with similar details from other observers, seems to indicate a more intimate relation than is generally admitted between the interior of the earth and its external atmosphere.

Among the regions peculiarly subject to electric phenomena is the country around the estuary of the Rio Plata. In the year 1793, one of the most destructive thunder-storms perhaps on record, happened at Buenos Ayres, when thirty-seven places in the city were struck by the lightning, and nineteen of the inhabitants killed. It is an observation of Mr. Darwin, founded on statements in books of travels, that thunder-storms are very common near the mouths of great rivers; and he conjectures that this may arise from the mixture of large bodies of fresh and salt water disturbing the electrical equilibrium. “Even,” he remarks, “during our occasional visit to this part of South America, we heard of a ship, two churches and a house, having been struck. Both the church and the house I saw shortly afterward. Some of the effects were curious: the paper, for nearly a foot on each side of the line where the bell-wires had run, was blackened. The metal had been fused, and although the room was about fifteen feet high, the globules, dropping on the chairs and furniture, had drilled in them a chain of minute holes. A part of the wall was shattered as if by gunpowder, and the fragments had been blown off with force sufficient to indent the wall on the opposite side of the room. The frame of a looking-glass was blackened; the gilding must have been volatilized, for a smelling-bottle, which stood on the chimney-piece, was coated with bright metallic particles, which adhered as firmly as if they had been enameled.” Near the shores of the Rio Plata, in a broad band of sand hillocks, he found those singular specimens of electric architecture, a group of vitrified siliceous tubes, formed by the lightning striking into loose sand. These tubes had a glossy surface, and were about two inches in circumference, the thickness of the wall of each tube varying from the twentieth to the thirtieth part of an inch. Four sets were noticed, probably not produced by successive distinct charges, but by the lightning dividing itself into separate branches before entering the ground. Similar cylindrical formations have been noticed in other places. Dr. Priestley has described, in the Philosophical Transactions, some siliceous tubes, which were found in digging into the ground, under a tree, where a man had been killed by lightning; and at Drigg, in Cumberland, three were observed within an area of fifteen yards, one of which was traced to a depth of not less than thirty feet. In the temperate climates electrical phenomena are most common, and usually most energetic in the summer season, and the displays are grander and more formidable in mountainous than in level countries. As we approach the poles, they become less striking; thunder is rarely heard in high northern latitudes, and only as a feeble detonation; and though lightning is more common, it is seldom destructive. In Iceland, in the winter, it often plays in the impressive but harmless manner which the natives call laptelltur. This is a fluctuating appearance of the whole sky, as if on fire, accompanied by a strong wind and drifting snow, but inflicting no further damage than that arising from the terrified cattle falling over the rocks in their efforts to escape from the phenomenon.

The rapidity of lightning, as measured by means of the camera lucida, M. Halvig estimates at probably eight or ten miles in a second, or about forty times greater velocity than that of sound; and according to M. Gay-Lussac, a flash sometimes darts more than three miles at once in a straight direction. M. Arago distinguishes three classes of lightning: First, luminous discharges characterized by a long streak of light, very thin, and well defined at the edges, of a white, violet, or purple hue, moving in a straight line, or deviating into a zigzag track, frequently dividing into two or more streams in striking terrestrial objects, but invariably proceeding from a single point. Secondly, he notices expanded flashes spreading over a vast surface without having any apparent depth, of a red, blue, or violet color, not so active as the former class, and generally confined to the edges of the clouds from which they appear to proceed. Thirdly, he mentions concentrated masses of light, which he terms globular lightning, which seem to occupy time, to endure for several seconds, and to have a progressive motion. Mr. Hearder of Plymouth describes a discharge of lightning of this kind on the Dartmouth hills, very near to him. Several vivid flashes had occurred before the mass of clouds approached the hill on which he was standing; and before he had time to retreat from his dangerous position, a tremendous crash and explosion burst close to him. The spark had the appearance of a nucleus of intensely ignited matter, followed by a flood of light. It struck the path near him, and dashed with fearful brilliancy down its whole length to a rivulet at the foot of the hill, where it terminated. Analogous to the discharges described as globular lightning are the fire-balls so often noticed, about which there has been no little scepticism; but the evidence cannot reasonably be doubted, that displays of electrical light have repeatedly occurred, conveying the impression of balls of fire to the observer. An instance is given by Mr. Chalmers while on board the Montague, of seventy-four guns, bearing the flag of Admiral Chambers. In the account read to the Royal Society, he states, that “on November 4th, 1749, while taking an observation on the quarter-deck, one of the quarter-masters requested him to look to windward, upon which he observed a large ball of blue fire rolling along on the surface of the water, as large as a mill-stone, at about three miles distance. Before they could raise the main-tack, the ball had reached within forty yards of the main-chains, when it rose perpendicularly with a fearful explosion, and shattered the main-topmast to pieces.” In an account of the fatal effects of lightning in June 1826, on the Malvern Hills, when two ladies were struck dead, it is stated, that the electric discharge appeared as a mass of fire rolling along the hill toward the building in which the party had taken shelter.

Mr. Snow Harris remarks upon the difficulty of explaining these appearances on the principles applicable to the ordinary electric spark. The amazing rapidity of the latter, and the momentary duration of the light, render it impossible that they should be identical with it; but he conjectures that there may be a “glow discharge” preceding the main shock, some of the atmospheric particles yielding up their electricity by a gradual process before a discharge of the whole system takes place. In this view, the distinct balls of fire of sensible duration which have been perceived, are produced in a given point or points of a charged system previously to the more general and rapid union of the electrical forces—a supposition which will apply as well to the Mariner’s Lights, or St. Elmo’s Fire, observed during storms of thunder and lightning at sea. Pliny mentions lights noticed by the Roman mariners during tempests, flickering about their vessels, to which Seneca likewise makes allusion. By the superstitions of modern times they have been converted into indications of the guardian presence of St. Elmo, the patron saint of the sailor, hence called cuerpo sante by the Spanish mariners. During the second voyage of Columbus among the West India islands, a sudden gust of heavy wind came on in the night, and his crew considered themselves in great peril, until they beheld several of these lambent flames playing about the tops of the masts, and gliding along the rigging, which they hailed as an assurance of their supernatural protector being near. Fernando Columbus records the circumstance in a manner strongly characteristic of the age in which he lived. “On the same Saturday, in the night, was seen St. Elmo, with seven lighted tapers, at the topmast. There was much rain and great thunder. I mean to say that those lights were seen which mariners affirm to be the body of St. Elmo, on beholding which they chanted many litanies and orisons, holding it for certain, that in the tempest in which he appears, no one is in danger.” A similar mention is made of this nautical superstition in the voyage of Magellan. During several great storms the presence of the saint was welcomed, appearing at the topmast with a lighted candle, and sometimes with two, upon which the people shed tears of joy, received great consolation, and saluted him according to the custom of the Catholic seamen; but he ungraciously vanished, disappearing with a great flash of lightning which nearly blinded the crew.

Tower of St. Mark’s, Venice.

It is a striking instance of the triumph of mind, that by the introduction of lightning conductors into different civilized states, the power of this most energetic agent of nature is controled, and comparative security provided for life and property, otherwise in imminent jeopardy, when a severe thunder-storm occurs. Experience has taught the prime importance of furnishing exposed or elevated structures with a conducting apparatus, and has sufficiently shown that the immunity from danger enjoyed by many an unprotected building has been merely accidental; for when the teeming thunder-cloud has been wafted within reach of the edifice hitherto unscathed, the delusion has vanished that man may carelessly and with impunity thrust up his handiwork into the region of storms, as if daring the fury of the tempest, and inviting down its vengeance. The fine tower of St. Mark’s, at Venice, rising to the height of 360 feet, terminates in a pyramid which was severely injured in 1388. In 1417 the pyramid was again struck, and set on fire, having been constructed of wood. The same event happened in 1489, when it was entirely consumed. After being rebuilt of stone, the fell lightning renewed its destructive stroke in 1548, 1565, 1653 and 1745; and on the last occasion the whole tower was rent in thirty-seven places, and almost destroyed. It was again ravaged in 1761 and 1762, but in 1766 a lightning rod was put up, which has since protected it from damage. At Glogau, in Silesia, an interesting example of the value of conductors occurred in the year 1782. On the 8th of May, about eight o’clock in the evening, a thunder-storm from the west approached the powder magazine established in the Galgnuburg. An intensely vivid flash of lightning took place, accompanied instantly with such a tremendous peal of thunder, that the sentinel on duty was stupefied, and remained for awhile senseless, but no disaster occurred. Some laborers at a short distance from the magazine saw the lightning issue from the cloud and strike the point of the conductor, which conveyed it in safety by the combustible material. A different result took place with reference to a large quantity of unprotected ammunition, belonging to the republic of Venice, deposited in the vaults of the church of St. Nazaire, at Brescia. The church was struck with lightning in the month of August, 1767, and the electric fluid, descending to the vaults, exploded upward of 207,600 lbs. of powder, reducing nearly one-sixth of the fine city to ruins, and destroying about 3000 of the inhabitants. The Indians, whenever the sky wears a lowering aspect, so as to threaten a severe thunder-storm, are said to leave their pursuits and take refuge under the nearest beech-tree, considering it a complete protection, as it is affirmed that no instance has occurred of the beech having been struck by atmospheric electricity, when other trees of the American forests have been shivered into splinters in its neighborhood.

For ages the inhabitants of the globe have seen the lightning flash and heard the thunder rattle; and some writers upon the occult sciences of the ancients, as Salverte, have supposed that, tutored by experience, without any understanding of the theory of the subject, they possessed the secret of warding off from their buildings the thunderbolt by a conducting apparatus. It is certain that extraordinary intimations to this effect may be culled from their writings. Pliny states that Tullus Hostilius, practicing Numa’s art of bringing down fire from heaven, and performing it incorrectly, was struck with lightning—a fate which Professor Richman of St. Petersburg experienced, while performing incautiously the sublime experiment of Franklin, measuring the strength of the electricity brought down by a metallic rod in a thunder-storm, being instantly killed. Pliny likewise mentions the laurel as the only earthly production which lightning does not strike; hence, as a protection, these trees were planted around the temple of Apollo. Columella, however, mentions white vines surrounding the house of Tarchon, the Etruscan, for the same purpose. These expedients may provoke a smile without deserving one; for there can be no doubt that trees sufficiently high around a temple, or succulent plants covering a dwelling, will exercise to some extent a protective power, and act as a regular system of conductors. Salverte mentions several medals which appear to have reference to this subject, particularly one which represents the temple of Juno, the goddess of the air, the roof of which is armed with pointed rods. He quotes also Michaelis, upon the temple of Jerusalem, to show that the Jews were not unacquainted with the art of protecting their public buildings—a position grounded upon the following facts: “1. That there is nothing to indicate that the lightning ever struck the temple of Jerusalem during the lapse of a thousand years.” This, of course, does not make the fact certain; but when, as M. Arago justly remarks, we consider how carefully the ancient authors recorded the cases in which their public buildings were injured by lightning, we may accept the silence observed respecting the temple of Jerusalem, as proof that it was never struck. For three centuries the cathedral of Geneva, the most elevated in the city, has enjoyed a similar immunity, although inferior buildings have been repeatedly damaged. Saussure discovered the reason of this, in the tower being entirely covered with tinned iron plates, connected with different masses of metal on the roof, and again communicating with the ground by means of metallic pipes. “2. That according to the account of Josephus, a forest of spikes with golden or gilt points, and very sharp, covered the roof of this temple; a remarkable feature of resemblance with the temple of Juno represented on the Roman medals. 3. That this roof communicated with the caverns in the hill of the temple, by means of metallic tubes, placed in connection with the thick gilding that covered the whole exterior of the building; the points of the spikes there necessarily producing the effect of lightning-rods. How are we to suppose that it was only by chance they discharged so important a function; that the advantage received from it had not been calculated; that the spikes were erected in such great numbers only to prevent the birds from lodging upon and defiling the roof of the temple? Yet this is the sole utility which the historian Josephus attributes to them.” Upon a sober review of these facts, it is difficult to resist the conclusion that the ancient world had some proficiency in the art of guiding the electric fluid from the bosom of the clouds, conducting it in a prescribed course, and thus disarming it of its terrors.

The subject of electrical agency is intimately connected with that of magnetism, to which this is the fittest place to glance—one of the most recondite points of physical science. The relation between the two is evident, from the notorious fact that lightning often renders steel magnetic, and disturbs the magnetism of the magnetised needle, so that in thunder-storms the compass needles of a ship have frequently been seriously injured. The magnetic agency, like electricity, has a general distribution over the earth, but the phenomena differ in different parts of the world, and are subject to periodical differences in the same place, the cause of which is very little understood. Every one is acquainted with the polarity of a freely suspended magnetic needle, or its tendency to lie parallel with the earth’s axis, pointing nearly north and south in every region of the globe. What is called the dip or inclination of the needle is its divergence from a perfectly horizontal position. Thus the north pole of the needle inclines downward in the latitude of London at an angle of 70°, but conveyed toward the equator, the dip diminishes, till no inclination at all appears. Transported farther toward the south, the dip again discovers itself, but in an opposite direction, the south pole of the needle inclining downward. “To understand the reason of this dip of the magnetic needle, and of its general direction, we have only to consider that the earth itself operates as a great magnet, the poles of which are situated beneath its surface. The directive property of the needle is owing to these poles; and when the needle is on the north side of the equator, the north pole of the earth having the greatest effect, the needle is attracted downward toward the north pole; hence exactly over the magnetic pole the needle would be vertical. Similar phenomena occur in the southern hemisphere; but here the south pole predominates, and of course depresses the corresponding pole of the needle; while at the magnetic equator, from the equal action of both poles, the needle will assume an exactly horizontal position.”

But neither the magnetic equator nor the magnetic poles coincide precisely with the geographical equator and poles, and this difference constitutes what is termed the variation of the needle. From calculation, the north magnetic pole had been fixed in latitude 70°, and longitude 98° 30′ west, a spot which Commander Ross approached within the distance of ten miles, in the year 1830, but was unable to verify the site, for want of the requisite instruments. Upon going through a long series of calculations afterward himself, he concluded the above position to have been erroneously assigned, and that the real point lay in latitude 70° 5′ 17″ north, and longitude 96° 46′ 45″ west, a spot on the western coast of Boothia, which he prepared to reach. On the first of June, 1831, at eight o’clock in the morning, he arrived at the site to which his calculations pointed, and found the same day the amount of the dip to be 89° 59′, only one minute less than 90°, the vertical position, which would have precisely indicated the polar station; and the horizontal needles, suspended in the most delicate manner possible, did not betray the slightest movement. The spot was an unattractive level site along the coast, rising into ridges from fifty to sixty feet high, about a mile inland. The wish expressed by the discoverer was natural, that a place so important had possessed more of mark or note, but Nature had erected no monument to denote the spot which she had chosen as the centre of one of her “great and dark powers.” A cairn of some magnitude was constructed by the adventurers, upon which the British flag was planted, and underneath, a canister was buried, containing a record of the interesting enterprise.

Aurora Borealis—Loch Leven.

The magnetic needle has frequently exhibited violent disturbance when the Aurora Borealis has appeared. This has led to the surmise that these brilliant lights are connected with the electric and magnetic properties of the earth, though in a manner which we cannot explain. It has been remarked that during the appearance of the aurora the electric fluid may often be readily collected from the air. If a current of electricity also be passed through an exhausted receiver, a very correct imitation of the auroral light will be produced, displaying the same variety of color and intensity, and the same undulating motions. It is highly probable, therefore, that the beautiful and fantastic meteoric display is connected with electricity; but great obscurity rests upon this department of meteorology.

Of all optical phenomena, the Aurora Borealis, or the northern day-break, is one of the most striking, especially in the regions where its full glory is revealed. The site of the appearance, in the north part of the heavens, and its close resemblance to the aspect of the sky before sunrise, have originated the name. The “Derwentwater Lights” was long the appellation common in the north of England, owing to their display on the night after the execution of the unfortunate earl of that name. The scene in the illustration is a picture of the auroral light, as observed from the neighborhood of Loch Leven—a scene in itself admirably calculated to exhibit the phenomenon; and to convey any adequate idea of its magical aspect, as seen in high latitudes, the painter’s hand and the poet’s art are needed. A native Russian, Lomonosov, thus refers to the spectacle:—

“Where are thy secret laws, O Nature, where?

Thy torch-lights dazzle in the wintry zone;

How dost thou light from ice thy torches there?

There has thy son some sacred, secret throne?

See in your frozen sea what glories have their birth;

Thence night leads forth the day t’ illuminate the earth.

“Come then, philosopher, whose privileged eye

Reads Nature’s hidden pages and decrees:

Come now, and tell us whence, and where, and why,

Earth’s icy regions glow with lights like these,

That fill our souls with awe; profound inquirer, say,

For thou dost count the stars, and trace the planet’s way.

“What fills with dazzling beams the illumined air?

What wakes the flames that light the firmament?

The lightning’s flash: there is no thunder there,

And earth and heaven with fiery sheets are blent;

The winter’s night now gleams with brighter, lovelier ray

Than ever yet adorned the golden summer’s day.

“Is there some vast, some hidden magazine,

Where the gross darkness flames of fire supplies?

Some phosphorous fabric, which the mountains screen,

Whose clouds of light above those mountains rise?

Where the winds rattle loud around the foaming sea,

And lift the waves to heaven in thundering revelry?”

The appearances exhibited by the aurora are so various as to render it impossible to comprehend every particular in a description that must be necessarily brief and general. A cloud, or haze, is commonly seen in the northern region of the heavens, but often bearing toward the east or west, assuming the form of an arc, seldom attaining a greater altitude than 40°, but varying in extent from 5° to 100°. The upper edge of the cloud is luminous, sometimes brilliant and irregular. The lower part is frequently dark and thick, with the clear sky appearing between it and the horizon. Streams of light shoot up in columnar forms from the upper part of the cloud, now extending but a few degrees, then as far as the zenith, and even beyond it. Instances occur in which the whole hemisphere is covered with these coruscations; but the brilliancy is the greatest, and the light the strongest, in the north, near the main body of the meteor. The streamers have in general a tremulous motion, and when close together present the appearance of waves, or sheets of light, following each other in rapid succession. But no rule obtains with reference to these streaks, which have acquired the name of “the merry dancers,” from their volatility, becoming more quick in their motions in stormy weather, as if sympathizing with the wildness of the blast. Such is the extraordinary aspect they present, that it is not surprising the rude Indians should gaze upon them as the spirits of their fathers roaming through the land of souls. They are variously white, pale red, or of a deep blood-color, and sometimes the appearance of the whole rainbow as to hue is presented. When several streamers emerging from different points unite at the zenith, a small and dense meteor is formed, which seems to burn with greater violence than the separate parts, and glows with a green, blue, or purple light. The display is over sometimes in a few minutes, or continues for hours, or through the whole night, and appears for several nights in succession. Captain Beechey remarked a sudden illumination to occur at one extremity of the auroral arch, the light passing along the belt with a tremulous hesitating movement toward the opposite end, exhibiting the colors of the rainbow; and as an illustration of this appearance, he refers to that presented by the rays of some molluscous animals in motion. Captain Parry notices the same effect as a common one with the aurora, and compares it, as far as its motion is concerned, to a person holding a long ribbon by one end, and giving it an undulatory movement through its whole length, though its general position remains the same. Captain Sabine likewise speaks of the arch being bent into convolutions, resembling those of a snake in motion. Both Parry, Franklin, and Beechey agree in the observation that no streamers were ever noticed shooting downward from the arch.

The preceding statement refers to aurora in high northern latitudes, where the full magnificence of the phenomenon is displayed. It forms a fine compensation for the long and dreary night to which these regions are subject, the gay and varying aspect of the heavens contrasting refreshingly with the repelling and monotonous appearance of the earth. We have already stated that the direction in which the aurora generally makes its first appearance, or the quarter in which the arch formed by this meteor is usually seen, is to the northward. But this does not hold good of very high latitudes, for by the expeditions which have wintered in the ice, it was almost always seen to the southward; while by Captain Beechey, in the Blossom, in Kotzerne Sound, 250 miles to the southward of the ice, it was always observed in a northern direction. It would appear, therefore, from this fact, that the margin of the region of packed ice is most favorable to the production of the meteor. The reports of the Greenland ships confirm this idea; for, according to their concurrent testimony, the meteoric display has a more brilliant aspect to vessels passing near the situation of the compact ice, than to others entered far within it. Instances, however, are not wanting, of the aurora appearing to the south of the zenith in comparatively low latitudes. Lieutenant Chappell, in his voyage to Hudson’s Bay, speaks of its forming in the zenith, in a shape resembling that of an umbrella, pouring down streams of light from all parts of its periphery, which fell vertically over the hemisphere in every direction. As we retire from the Pole, the phenomenon becomes a rarer occurrence, and is less perfectly and distinctly developed. In September, 1828, it was observed in England as a vast arch of silvery light, extending over nearly the whole of the heavens, transient gleams of light separating from the main body of the luminosity; but in September, 1827, its hues were red and brilliant. Dr. Dalton has furnished the following account of an aurora, as observed by him on the 15th of October, 1792:—“Attention,” he remarks, “was first excited by a remarkably red appearance of the clouds to the south, which afforded sufficient light to read by at 8 o’clock in the evening, though there was no moon nor light in the north. From half-past nine to ten there was a large, luminous, horizontal arch to the southward, and several faint concentric arches northward. It was particularly noticed that all the arches seemed exactly bisected by the plain of the magnetic meridian. At half-past ten o’clock streamers appeared, very low in the south-east, running to and fro from west to east. They increased in number, and began to approach the zenith apparently with an accelerated velocity, when all on a sudden the whole hemisphere was covered with them, and exhibited such an appearance as surpasses all description. The intensity of the light, the prodigious number and volatility of the beams, the grand intermixture of all the prismatic colors in their utmost splendor, variegating the glowing canopy with the most luxuriant and enchanting scenery, afforded an awful, but at the same time the most pleasing and sublime spectacle in nature. Every one gazed with astonishment, but the uncommon grandeur of the scene only lasted one minute. The variety of colors disappeared, and the beams lost their lateral motion, and were converted into the flashing radiations. The aurora continued for several hours.” A copious deposition of dew—hard gales in the English channel—and a sudden thaw after great cold in northern regions, are circumstances which have been frequently noticed in connection with auroral displays.

Aurora Borealis.

The sky of the southern hemisphere occasionally exhibits this strange and mysterious light, contrary to an old opinion upon the subject; and here it must be called Aurora Australis, the southern day-break. Its appearance, however, is far from being so common as in the northern zone, and is much less imposing. Don Antonio Ulloa, off Cape Horn, in the year 1745, witnessed the first appearance of the kind upon record in this region. Upon the clearing off of a thick mist, a light was observed in the southern horizon, extending to an elevation of about thirty degrees, sometimes of a reddish color, and sometimes like the light which precedes the rise of the moon, but occasionally more brilliant. Captain Cook, in the same latitudes, had more distinct views of the luminous streamers adorning the night-sky of the south. In the course of his second voyage he remarks, that on February the 17th, 1773, “a beautiful phenomenon was observed in the heavens. It consisted of long colors of a clear, white light, shooting up from the horizon, to the eastward, almost to the zenith, and spreading gradually over the whole southern part of the sky. These columns sometimes bent sideways at their upper extremity; and though in most respects similar to the northern lights, yet differed from them in being always of a whitish color, whereas ours assume various tints, especially those of a purple and fiery hue. The stars were sometimes hid by, and sometimes faintly to be seen through, the substance of these southern lights, Aurora Australis. The sky was generally clear when they appeared, and the air sharp and cold, the thermometer standing at the freezing point, the ship being in latitude 58° south.”

The history of auroral phenomena goes back to the time of Aristotle, who undoubtedly refers to the exhibition in his work on meteors, describing it as occurring on calm nights, having a resemblance to flame mingled with smoke, or to a distant view of burning stubble, purple, bright red, and blood-color, being the predominant hues. Notices of it are likewise found in many of the classical writers; and the accounts which occur in the chronicles of the middle ages, of surprising lights in the air, converted by the imagination of the vulgar into swords gleaming and armies fighting, are allusions to the play of the northern lights. There is strong reason to believe, though the fact is perfectly inscrutable, that the aurora has been much more common in the European region of the northern zone, during the last century and a half, than in former periods. A very brilliant appearance took place on the 6th of March, 1716, which forms the subject of a paper by Halley, who remarks, that nothing of the kind had occurred in England for more than eighty years, nor of the same magnitude since 1574, or about 140 years previous, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, when Cambden and Stow were eye-witnesses of it. The latter states in his Annals, that on November 14th, “were seen in the air strange impressions of fire and smoke to proceed forth from a black cloud in the north toward the south—that the next night the heavens from all parts did seem to burn marvelous ragingly, and over our heads the flames from the horizon round about rising did meet, and there double and roll one in another, as if it had been in a clear furnace.” The year following, 1575, it was twice repeated in Holland, but not observed in England; and as a specimen of the tone of thought respecting the aurora, the description of Cornelius Gemma, a professor in the university of Louvain, may be given. Referring to the second instance of the year, and speaking in the language of the times, he remarks: “The form of the Chasma of the 28th of September following, immediately after sunset, was indeed less dreadful, but still more confused and various; for in it were seen a great many bright arches, out of which gradually issued spears, cities with towers and men in battle array; after that, there were excursions of rays every way, waves of clouds and battles mutually pursued and fled, and wheeling round in a surprising manner.” This phenomenon was repeatedly observed in the last century in Sweden, as at present; but prior to the year 1716, the inhabitants of Upsal considered it as a great rarity. Nothing is more common now in Iceland than the northern lights, exhibited during the winter with imposing grandeur and brilliance; but Torfæus, the historian of Denmark, an Icelander, who wrote in 1706, records his remembrance of the time when the meteor was an object of terror in his native island. It deserves remark, that its more frequent occurrence in the Atlantic regions has been accompanied by its diminution in the eastern parts of Asia, as Baron Von Wrangel was assured by the natives there, who added, that formerly it was brighter than at present, and frequently presented the vivid coloring of the rainbow.

Halos.

The simplest form of the halo is that of a white concentric ring surrounding the sun or moon, a very common appearance in our climate in relation to the moon, occasioned by very thin vapor, or minute particles of ice and snow, diffused through the atmosphere deflecting the rays of light. Double rings are occasionally seen, displaying the brightest hues of the rainbow. The colored ring is produced by globules of visible vapor, the resulting halo exhibiting a character of density, and appearing contiguous to the luminous body, according as the atmosphere is surcharged with humidity. Hence a dense halo close to the moon is universally and justly regarded as an indication of coming rain. It has been stated as an approximation, that the globules which occasion the appearance of colored circles, vary from the 5000th to the 50,000th part of an inch in diameter. Though seldom apparent around the sun in our climate, yet it is only necessary to remove that glare of light which makes delicate colors appear white, to perceive segments of beautifully tinted halos on most days when light fleecy clouds are present. The illustration shows a nearly complete and slightly eliptical ring around the sun, the lower portion hidden by the horizon, which was distinctly observed during the past summer in the neighborhood of Ipswich, of an extremely pale pink and blue tint. When Humboldt was at Cumana, a large double halo around the moon fixed the attention of the inhabitants, who considered it as the presage of a violent earthquake. The hygrometer denoted great humidity, yet the vapors appeared so perfectly in solution, or rather so elastic and uniformly disseminated, that they did not alter the transparency of the atmosphere. The moon arose after a storm of rain behind the Castle of St. Antonio. As soon as she appeared on the horizon, two circles were distinguished, one large and whitish, 44° in diameter, the other smaller, displaying all the colors of the rainbow. The space between the two circles was of the deepest azure. At the altitude of 4° they disappeared, while the meteorological instruments indicated not the slightest change in the lower regions of the air. The phenomenon was chiefly remarkable for the great brilliancy of its colors, and for the circumstance that, according to the measures taken with Ramsden’s sextant, the lunar disc was not exactly in the centre of the halos. Humboldt mentions likewise having seen at Mexico, in extremely fine weather, large bands spread along the vault of the sky, converging toward the lunar disc, displaying beautiful prismatic colors; and he remarks, that within the torrid zone, similar appearances are the common phenomena of the night, sometimes vanishing and returning in the space of a few minutes, which he assigns to the superior currents of air changing the state of the floating vapors, by which the light is refracted. Between latitude 15° of the equator, he records having observed small tinted halos around the planet Venus, the purple, orange, and violet being distinctly perceptible, which was never the case with Sirius, Canopus, or Acherner. In the northern regions solar and lunar halos are very common appearances, owing to the abundance of minute and highly crystallized spicula of ice floating in the atmosphere. The Arctic adventurers frequently mention the fall of icy particles during a clear sky and a bright sun, so small as scarcely to be visible to the naked eye, and most readily detected by their melting upon the skin.

APRIL.

———

BY MRS. E. L. CUSHING.

———

Hark to the silvery sound

Of the soft April shower

Telleth it not a pleasant tale

Of bird, and bee, and flower?

See, as the bright drops fall,

How swell the tiny buds

That gem each bare and leafless bough,

Like polished agate studs.

The elder by the brook,

Stands in her tusseled pride

And the pale willow decketh her

As might beseem a bride.

And round the old oak’s foot,

Where in their wintry play,

The winds have swept the withered leaves—

See, the Hepatria!

Its brown and mossy buds

Greet the first breath of spring,

And to her shrine, its clustered flowers,

The earliest offering bring.

In rocky cleft secure,

The gaudy columbine

Shoots forth, ere wintry snows have fled

A floral wreath to twine.

And many a bud lies hid

Beneath the foliage pent,

Waiting spring’s warm and wooing breath

To deck the vernal year.

When lo! sweet April comes,

The wild bird hears her voice,

And through the grove on glancing wing

Carols, “rejoice! rejoice!”

Forth from her earthy nest

The timid wood-mouse steals,

And the blithe squirrel on the bough

Her genial influence feels.

The purple hue of life

Flushes the teeming earth,

Above, around, beneath the feet,

Joy, beauty, spring to birth!

But on the distant verge

Of the cerulean sky,

Old Winter stands with angry frown

And bids the syren fly.

He waves his banner dark

Raises his icy hand,

And a fierce storm of sleet and hail,

Obey his stern command.

She feareth not his wrath,

But hides her sunny face

Behind a soft cloud’s fleecy fold

For a brief instant’s space,

Then looketh gayly forth

With smile of magic power,

That changeth all his icy darts

To a bright diamond shower.

Capricious April, hail!

Herald of all things fair,

’Tis thine to loose the imprisoned streams,

The young buds are thy care.

To unobservant eye

Thy charms are few, I ween;

But he who roves the woodland paths

Where thy blithe step hath been,

Will trace thee by the tufts

Of fragrant early flowers,

That thy sweet breath hath waked, to deck

The dreary forest bowers;

And by the bursting buds,

That at thy touch unfold

To clothe the tall tree’s naked arms

With beauty all untold,

Will hear thy tuneful voice

In the glad leaping streams,

And catch thy bland, yet fitful smile

In showers and sunny gleams.

Then welcome April, fair!

Bright harbinger of May!

Month of blue skies and perfumed air—

The young year’s holyday!

AWAY.

———

B. B.

———

Floateth in upon my senses now the melody of brooks,

And the drip of fragrant waters, far in solitary nooks—

O avaunt! ye tedious tasks! O get ye gone! ye irksome books.

Why to linger pent and stifled in this chamber small and low,

Through the casement on my temples thus to feel the breezes blow,

Bidding me to come and follow where at liberty they go?

Why amid this noisy Babel mingle in the petty strife,

In the wearying din and discord with which every day is rife,

While the full, free life within me yearns to greet its kindred life?

O, those boundless breadths of forest unrestrained to wander through,

Where the lofty pine mounts upward to the firmament of blue,

Where the swarth and stalwart savage paddles in his birch canoe.

O, to hear my ringing shout of exultation echo clear

In the woodland, by the moose-tramp and the covert of the deer,

Or where stalk the stately bison who have never known to fear,

On the broad and blooming pampas, with their fat and teeming soil

Never marred by human culture, never by unwilling toil,

Where the wild herds roam uninjured, and the gleaming serpents coil.

Or where crawls the full-fed Ganges down into his sandy bed,

And the sluggish hippopotamus uprears his clumsy head,

Where the beauty-bringing cestus of the torrid zone is spread.

Where many a glowing river rolls along its wealth of tide

Through the tangled vines and palm-trees bending down on either side,

With the orange bloom and citron, and the tall acacia’s pride.

Where the scaly cayman basking on the yellow bank is laid,

And the brilliant-plumaged song-birds call in every spicy glade,

There to hunt the spotted leopard in the jungle’s depth of shade.

Or beyond the spreading oceans, in some distant Paynim land,

Swifter than the fiery simoom sweep across the plains of sand,

On a fleet and naked barb, and wield a keenly flashing brand.

O for days of careless gladness, days that evermore are gone,

When the spirit-thrilling summons of the silver bugle-horn

Roused the green-clad host of merry men at break of dewy morn.

—Cease thy prating, foolish Fancy, Fancy wayward, unconfined,

List the mighty music rushing on the pinions of the wind,

’Tis the onward tread of nations, ’tis the endless march of mind.

Bowdoin College.

SONG.

Each gentle word thy lip imparts,

Each glance of thy dear eye,

Is hidden in my heart of hearts

As in a treasury.

And, though but once in life we’ve met

And ne’er may meet again,

The memory of this hour, shall yet

Within my heart remain,

As the bright tinge of crimson dye,

When the red sun descends,

Long lingers in the western sky

And with the twilight blends.

Still let me cherish thoughts of thee

Till life’s sad hours are o’er;

Think of me, sometimes, tenderly—

I may not ask for more.

THE FIRST AGE.

———

BY H. DIDIMUS.

———

BOOK FIRST.

SECTION I.

The broad sun, red, and with softened beams, rose lazily upon the young earth. The wide sea, unruffled, heaved to and fro, mirroring in its depths the new-made canopy of azure and of gold spread by God’s hand, from limit to limit, over water and land, and all the stream of ocean. The herbage stood rank, thick, heavy, tall and motionless; and covered with vast shade mountain and valley and plain; for not yet had the revolving seasons, and storms, with falling rain abraded the soil, and bared rocks, and worn acclivities; nor the breath of heaven hastened in its course, circling the earth; nor the poles left their place to rise and fall, vibrating; but one unending spring ruled throughout the year. Rivers rolled—unvexed and noiseless—toward the bosom of their great mother; and the mountain stream scarce murmured as it fell, whitening, from sward to sward, to sleep in some still lake, happy with water-fowl. Herds of cattle—of horses and of deer, the elephant and the bison—wandered, uncared for, through fat pastures, beautiful with flowers; and the lion roamed at will, and crouched in every dingle, and in every glen, and took his prey. The air was vocal with the voice of birds, of birds innumerable, which saluted with morning hymn the growing day; and the hum of insects—which all night had drummed in the drowsy ear of silence—was hushed, and folding their wings, they slept. It is the primeval age.

SECTION II.

Chrr-oo-uh; chrr-oo-uh; chrr-oo-eh-uh; oo-ugh, oo-ugh; chrr-oo-uh—A white pigeon stood upon the lowest branch, heavy with foliage, of a noble oak, planted with creation, and arched his neck, and drooped his wings, and turned round and round, calling to his mate. Chrr-oo-uh; chrr-oo-uh; chrr-oo-eh-uh; oo-ugh; oo-ugh; chrr-oo-uh—And the white pigeon looked out upon the sea, which rolled inward with its new voice, deep and hoarse, as it rolls now, and broke softly upon the glittering strand, just beneath his feet; and back to the wooded mountains, which showed blue and misty through the air, capped with silvery clouds; and beneath the arms of the forest trees, where the land rose gently from the shore, carpeted with green and gold, and all colors of the sun woven into flowers. Chrr-oo-uh; chrr-oo-uh; chrr-oo-eh-uh; oo-ugh; oo-ugh; chrr-oo-uh—calling to his mate.

SECTION III.

From a deep, embowered grot—half-hidden within a grove of oranges, and trellised with the woodbine and the grape, clustering—came a sweet voice, singing; not with the musical cadence and alliteration, and returning rhyme of later days, when intellect refined to weaken, but with the promptings of the soul, gushing, unmeasured, finding speech as it might.

“Call, call to your mate, happy bird, and she shall call to you again; but where is he who should call to me, in this day of joy? Erix, my Erix, rising like the sun in his strength, with broad shoulders, and a brow moulded by God! And the glory of his head, brighter than the beams of the morning; those curls which I, with merry fingers, have so often twisted, until they sprang from me with life and laughter, and clung about his neck, kissingly—why do they not dance before me, gladdening my sight? And those arms, like twisted vines, which hold and give every happiness—why are they not here to receive me? And those lips, which are so used to praise me, until I wonder at my own comeliness, and lose my breath in their thieving—why are they not here to bless me, with their music so subduing? And those eyes, so large and deep, those wells of passion, in which I live a double being, in which I see my own blushing—why are they not here, to kindle and to burn? Oh! Erix, my Erix, as flowers love the earth, as the earth loves the sun, as the sun loves its Maker, so is my love for thee, most beautiful and most excellent!”

SECTION IV.

And with the singing, came a fair maid, tripping into the outer air; large, lithe of limb, like the moon riding in mid-heaven, when seen in her full light, paling the stars. Her hair fell, unbound, even to her feet, covering half her shape; and about her waist was knit a robe of sables, which flowed downward, and concealed no excellence above the girdle. Her form was sister to the antelope, and her face, one, which Phidias would have chiseled for a Juno of giant make. Her glowing eyes, blue as the ether above them, rolled liquid as she sang, and bent the knee, and worshiped, extending her arms, which showed like wreaths of snow borne upon the wind, toward the mounting day—not ignorantly, for she was too near to God in time, to have forgotten him. Then rising, she also looked upon the sea, smiling in the sunlight, and loved it; for she was born upon its shores, and, with life, its roar filled her ears. She loved it—coming to her, from whence she knew not, from beyond the reach of space, which to her eye was bounded by the heavens, that bowed down and girdled the waters—and enticed, the robe of sables fell from her, and the glad brine received her, and mounting, laved all her beauty. Thus swimming, thus sporting, thus playing with young ocean, now floating, now dipping beneath his bosom heaving with great joy. The white pigeon left its perch, and sought a new rest, even the fair maid’s fair brow, rising from the wave, and arched its neck, and drooped its wings, and turned round and round, chrr-oo-uh; chrr-oo-uh; chrr-oo-eh uh; oo-ugh; oo-ugh; chrr-oo-uh; calling to its mate.

The white pigeon nestled in the grot, and knew its mistress, and her caress; and when the maid would have taken it tenderly in her hand, smoothing its ruffled feathers, it flew upward, cleaving the air in circles, and descending, lighted upon her wrist, and pecked at her taper fingers, roseate with health, and arched its neck, and drooped its wings, and turned round and round; chrr-oo-uh; chrr-oo-uh; chrr-oo-eh-uh; oo-ugh; oo-ugh; chrr-oo-uh; calling to its mate.

“Call, call to your mate, happy bird, and she shall call to you again; but, where is he who should call to me, in this my bridal hour? Erix, my love, my life, my soul’s sole hope!”

SECTION V.

The sound of merry horns, of laughter, and of shout, came leaping through the wood, and the fair maid started like a fawn, like a fawn tracked by the hunter, when it first scents its pursuer in the breeze; and hastening to the strand, she knit the robe of sables about her waist, and it fell down as before, concealing no excellence above the girdle. Fresh from the wave, she stood gazing, with hope and expectation her handmaids, who with nimble fingers adorned her, and covered her all over with tints from the blushing east. Her hair, long and damp, thick sown with pearly brine, showed gemmed; and parted lip, and flashing eye, the very tell-tales of passion, betrayed the beatings of her heart, her fears and her desire. When, in an after age, the poet wove this story into mythologic fable, he called her Venus, the Aphrodite, born of the foam of the sea; and the sculptor caught her as she stood, her feet like flocks of wool, the right advanced, the left raised at the heel, rushing, moving, white, and fair.

SECTION VI.

And now, far within the leafy vista, was seen approaching, descending toward the strand, a troop of maidens and young men. Crowned with chaplets of roses and the fruitful vine, they came on dancing, to shout and laughter, and the sound of merry horns; and he who led them was taller than the rest, herculean; and from his back hung a boar’s hide, and about his loins were girded the skins of foxes and of wolves, spoils of the chase. In his hand he held a bow, which he drew proudly at the sun; elated with the nearness of his supremest bliss. Child of the forest, greater than the sun, immortal, thou shall live when all of matter hath wholly passed away; draw then, thy bow, aspiring, if thou wilt; it is thy soul, conscious of its superiority, stirring within thee.

On, on; love gives fleetness to his feet. “Zella, Zella,” calling to his mate. And again the shout, the laughter, and the sound of merry horns; and again, “Zella, Zella,” calling to his mate.

But Zella called not to him again. Her heart was upon her tongue, and she could not speak; her strength had left her knees, and she stood transfixed; while “Zella, Zella,” sprang from every lip, echoed through the wood, and died afar off, amid the murmurs of the sea. Again, “Zella, Zella;” again the shout, the laughter, and the sound of merry horns; and Erix clasped the loved one to his breast.

“Zella!”

“Erix!”

“Now, may the ruler of the heavens and good earth so bless me, as I love thee, my soul’s choice! Closer, closer, my heart of hearts; thus twining, thus growing, no storm shall divide us; but, with equal step, we will move right onward through life, and beyond life, to gather new strength and a new glory, in a hereafter.”

SECTION VII.

The band of youths and fair maids danced around them, hand in hand, singing, “To the Mighty Giver of all good, praise. He sends the blossom and the fruit, praise. From Him come all our joys, praise. He made the day, and the night, with all her train of ever-burning fires, the fairest labor of His hand, praise. The sun is His servant, the moon His daughter, praise. He gave us the earth, with all its beauty of hill and valley, of water and of wood, praised be forever His holy name. Oh, happy, happy day! oh, happy, happy hour! Open, ye heavens! and let love from on high descend upon these two, brooding; that they may live, from generation to generation, renewed and renewing, to the end of time. Holy, holy, holy, is this compact instituted in the beginning. Now are ye of one flesh; hearts the same, wills the same, desires the same; of one body, of one mind. Praise Him, praise Him, praise the Mighty Giver of all good!”

Then hastening to the sea, they took up water, briny water, in shells, and poured it upon the lovers, and baptized them into a new life, and cast their chaplets upon them and covered them with flowers; still dancing, still singing: “The divided part has become old, put it off; the present is bright with every hope, enjoy it; the future shall be what you may make it, be not wanting; oh, happy, happy, happy pair! As ye are, so we would be; ever drinking draughts of pleasure through each revolving year.”

SECTION VIII.

And now came forth the aged of the tribe, slow descending from the wood, and embraced them and blessed them; “Be fruitful and multiply—swear.” And Erix and Zella stretched out their hands toward heaven and swore, by the light, and by the orbs of the air, and by the ocean, far-rounding, illimitable, infinite, and by the solid earth, and by Him who moved upon the face of the waters and begat this glory, to be forever one. “What you receive, I will receive; what you reject, I will reject; your breath is my breath, and even as we are now, so death shall find us; leaving all else to cleave unto each other.”

The dance, the shout, the sound of merry horns, pointed to the grot, and Erix and Zella led the way. He, with head erect and willing feet, proud of his victory; she, with downcast eyes and halting gait, irresolute, resolved, like a coy maid, half-refusing, like a wife, wholly trusting, while youth and maiden, paired, in a long line, came sweeping after. And now they sway, first to the right then to the left, with measured step, beating upon the glad earth the bridal-song.

“Receive, receive thy children, Paradise, garden new found, not lost to us forever.”

“Who are these that come, beautiful with joy?”

“Receive, receive thy children, Paradise, garden new found, not lost to us forever.”

“Who are these that knock, pressing to tread upon holy ground?”

“Thy children, father; thy children, mother; open wide the gates that they may enter in. Praised be thy name, oh Adam! praised be thy name, oh Eve! these are thy offspring, joined as ye were joined, by the hand of God; open wide the gates that they may enter in.”

The grot received them, echoing; and shout, and laughter, and the sound of many horns, held riot over a feast of fruit, and the chase, and water from the brook, till the day went out and night crept slowly in, and stars spotted the sky, and the white pigeon descended nestling, timidly, to its couch, and arched its neck, and drooped its wings, and turned round and round; chrr-oo-uh; chrr-oo-uh; chrr-oo-eh-uh; oo-ugh; oo-ugh; chrr-oo-uh; calling to its mate—and she, called to him again.

——

BOOK SECOND.

SECTION I.

Ten circles have passed; ten circles of the earth about the sun; what are ten circles to life before the flood! The night is just yielding to the day, and in the farthest east streaks of gray light lie floating, dividing the ocean from the sky. How quiet the earth is; and seems to breathe, long and deep, in its huge slumber, not yet awakened. The murmur of the sea is infinite, ceaseless, and breaks, and returns, and breaks, in regular cadence upon the shore; ever speaking the same words—eternity and power. The sea and silent stars, which look down, twinkling, from heaven’s pavement, alone are watchful. How quiet the earth is! The owl sits moping upon her perch in some tall pine, and the wolf, whose cry, whetted by hunger, pierced the shades of night, gorged and reeking, has hastened to his lair. The dew, like rain, is upon the grass and all herbage, and hangs, globular, from every leaf. An incense rises, the incense of the morning, and fills the air; now known only to the wise and the poor, beloved of God. Hour most sweet; when day salutes the night, and night kisses day, to part and meet again.

SECTION II.

At such an hour, Erix and Zella shook sleep from their eyelids and came forth, ready for the chase. Her hair no longer floated unbound, but, as became the matron, was twisted into a knot and confined with strings of coral, fashioned by the hand whose soft caress she returned with joys unspeakable. Upon her drooping shoulders, white and bare, rests a quiver well filled; and a belt of tiny sea-shells interwoven with fibres of the lichen, crosses transversely her breast, now full and rounded to completion. Sandals are upon her feet, and a tunic of shaggy hide covers her from the waist to the knee; all else, the morning air, invigorating, embraces. Thus seen, the poet of an after age, changed his story, and called her Dian, ruler of the night; and sang her praises in verse set to the babbling of brooks, the music of the wood, and sylvan sports. Erix, large, erect, perfect in manly beauty, with limbs well knit, proportional, combining activity and strength, was less incumbered than his mate, and carried, as his sole weapon, an ashen spear, charred and hardened at the point by fire. His was the front of Jove, the pagan, not yet won from mortality by intellect, or raised above mere matter, to express the soul’s labors and ambitions. And first, low bending, rose the morning prayer.

SECTION III.

“Hail Father, Creator; Thou who gavest into our hands the earth, with its fullness; all hail! Thy children, fashioned after thine own excellence, we stand, rejoicing. Greater than the earth are we; greater than the sea, that vast stream which compasses all land, forever proclaiming thy praises; greater than the orbs of day and night; greater than the elements, thy ministers; for thou didst speak unto our fathers, and didst promise to raise the seed of Adam higher than the angels. The thunder serves us, obedient to thy will; and the quick lightning; and the clouds, pregnant with rain. In the air we find thy mercies, and every tree, and every flower speaks of thee. Accept, accept our great gratitude; and keep us, even as thou keepest all else.”

Again low bending, and Erix and Zella, light of foot, passed onward to the chase.

SECTION IV.

They skirt the wood, and narrowly inspect the dewy grass, to find new foot-prints of beast or heavy bird, seeking, with returning light, their accustomed food. No fairy ring, no shape of naiad or of dryad, no gnome, no sprite, met their pure vision, to turn them from their way; for not yet had the mind of man built up a superstition unto itself, and peopled the clefts of the earth, the water, and the air, giving to nothingness forms innumerable. Truth was too near and palpable, to be lost in imagination; to be moulded and cast anew, so changed as not to know itself; and poetry, the juggler and soul’s cheat, lay hid in matter, where God placed it, to be drawn thence for other purposes than those of error. It was not until man forgot his origin, that he sought out a new creator, even Beauty, the prime element in all God’s works, and so wrought with it, as to give strange life to all that is, and is not.

The wily hunters, skilled in their life’s trade, turn on every side, observe the lower boughs, fresh cropped, imitate the call of birds, the cry of deer, peer through the thick underwood which stood here and there in clumps, and plunged into the forest upon a trail which promised success.

SECTION V.

The sylva before the flood! Huge, aspiring, with arms reaching outward many a rood, each monarch stood; the traveler and man of science, he whose name now fills the world, never found, in his many rounds in search of knowledge, even in southern climes, such offspring of earth, air, water, and the sun; and Australia, with its wondrous herbage, sometimes cloud-capped, stand dwarfed and small to the life with which God, in his first joy, clothed his work. The poet, too, and writer of the Comedies, whose soul was bitter hell, saw not in heaven, nor beneath, nor in the orb between, a wood so vast, so majestic, and so beautiful. Trees, the growth of many a revolving year, lay mouldering; not prostrated by the tornado, nor driven from their seat by floods of water and of rock, which leave their track seamed, as one might plough a furrow in the field, but fallen through age, and draped with moss of the liveliest green, softer to the touch than a woman’s lip. The vine crept from limb to limb, and threw out its tendrils joyously; now hanging in mid air, and now, a parasite, twisting about the trunk of some gnarled oak, adding to strength its sister loveliness; while flowers, broad and tall, with petals like masts, and of a hue more delicate than that which opens to the garish sun, spotted the ground as stars spot the sky. The air pressed heavy, damp, laden with aromatic odors, as to one standing beneath the swelling arches of some old temple, raised in the middle-age by hands whose labors Michelett has transferred to historic prose, more lasting than the stone which was to them a religion and a worship. No voice broke the general stillness, save the sound of distant water, floating upon the breathings of the wood, just reaching the ear, now heard and now lost, as a maid calling to her lover. Amid such excellence, the excellence of a primeval age, before man and the seasons had marred earth’s face, Erix and Zella hunted.

SECTION VI.

The two moved on, like gods, hastening to outrun the growing light, and to make their sport before high noon should steal its freshness from their path. So, long after, but less large, less strong, less fleet, and less beautiful, did the twin creations of pure intellect, Apollo and his mate, pursue the boar in Tempe; while the herdsman who sat afar off, upon some high rock, watching his wealth, veiled his face in wonder and in fear.

Thus were three full leagues passed over, through the windings of the wood; he, crushing the flowers beneath his feet, she, just bending their drooping heads, when Erix descried a noble stag standing upon the bank of a sweet pool, of narrow round, which, embosomed in the forest, slept peaceful, and mirrored in its face the moving foliage and the blue sky above. With head depressed, the deer had caught his own image in the water, and stood threatening with mimic war his shadowy antagonist, returning thrust for thrust. Poor beast! Now strain the nerve and put forth thy utmost speed, for no shadows threaten at thy back, but death, with feet swifter than the wind. With one loud shout the forest rang, and then, clear as the notes of bugle or of flute, played to the listening morn, burst forth the hunter’s song; for not yet had the gin and pit, and stealth cowardly creeping upon its prey, debased the chase, and dishonored with cheat and trick man’s highest sport; but room was given and a chance for life, to the course before the flood.

SECTION VII.

See, the east is glowing with golden-tinted light, and the morn calls to us with the breath of youth.

See, the incense rises from every dewy leaf; and the morn calls to us with the breath of youth.

The air floats, balmy, o’er hill, and wood, and lake; and the morn calls to us with the breath of youth.

The spear stands, impatient, by the wall; the bow, unstrung, lies mourning at the door; while the morn calls to us with the breath of youth.

Hark! The horn winds joy, and the echoes laugh, and leap, and dance—trr, trr, trr, trr, trrwhroo, trrwhroo—in circles of mad delight.

Awake, then, awake; for the horn winds joy, and the echoes laugh, and leap, and dance—trr, trr, trr, trr, trrwhroo, trrwhroo—in circles of mad delight; and the morn calls to us with the breath of youth.

Now press the foot, and watchful be the eye, for the spear is in the hand, and the arrow on the string, and the horn winds joy, and the echoes laugh, and leap, and dance—trr, trr, trr, trr, trrwhroo, trrwhroo—in circles of mad delight.

Away, and away, in a race against the sun; while the horn winds joy, and the echoes laugh, and leap, and dance—trr, trr, trr, trr, trrwhroo, trrwhroo—in circles of mad delight.

Of the strong, we are the strongest, and of the fleet, we are the fleetest; while the horn winds joy, and the echoes laugh, and leap, and dance—trr, trr, trr, trr, trrwhroo, trrwhroo—in circles of mad delight.

The game flies, scudding athwart the forest path, while the horn winds joy, and the echoes laugh, and leap, and dance—trr, trr, trr, trr, trrwhroo, trrwhroo—in circles of mad delight.

The wolf howls defiance, and hastens to his lair; the deer, suspicious, scents the coming storm; the lion’s deep growl comes rolling up the glen, while the horn winds joy, and the echoes laugh, and leap, and dance—trr, trr, trr, trr, trrwhroo, trrwhroo—in circles of mad delight.

Then press the foot, and watchful be the eye; for the spear is in the hand, and the arrow on the string; and the horn winds joy, and the echoes laugh, and leap, and dance—trr, trr, trr, trr, trrwhroo, trrwhroo—in circles of mad delight; and the morn calls to us with the breath of youth.

SECTION VIII.

With one bound the stag cleared the narrow pool, and with head erect, his branching antlers resting upon his back, fled onward; swifter than the wind that, in winter’s dreary reign, under the stars of cold December, drives fierce and cutting through the gorge which, in the farthest north, divides the granite hills sheer to their base, while the song poured thickening upon his rear—sounds of victory and pursuit. Thus, with nostrils wide distended and smoking flanks, he led his foes through many a double and straight reach, now holding to the cover of the wood, and with sure eye, passing beneath gnarled oaks, and through hanging vines, and boughs interlocked blacker than night, and now, seeking the open plain, where the sea rolled inward to find its limit. There the voice of his pursuers no longer urged him on, or was lost in that greater voice to which he had fled as to a refuge; and he rested, trembling, upon the rim of the ocean, his fetlocks laved by its flaky foam, and looking out upon it, sobbing, in search of a safety which the water as the land denied. So, in the race of life, the unfortunate, hunted by its ills, with hope crushed out, stand upon its utmost verge, gazing, and find no joy beyond, till death strikes them through, to perish and be forgotten.

Short time was given, for Erix and Zella, side by side, keeping ever, like fate, to their fixed end, soon issued from the wood, and with voice and gesture urged their prey to a new flight. The game, now driven to his last shift, stilled his coward heart, turned and stood at bay; but Zella, unwilling thus to close the morning’s sport, drew an arrow to its head, and sent the weapon whirring, to glance and fall far out at sea. Enraged with such acts, the stag sprang forward, striking on either side; and as Erix, yielding, strove to take him by the horns, leaped as far as Apollo’s horses leaped, in that great story told by the Greek whose song civilized the world. Like a bolt, winged, he sped through the whistling air, when Zella, quick turning, with a shaft more fleet, smote him, mid-way, quite through his bursting heart. Upon a scented bank, deep within the wood, mossy, curling over the stream which there, trickling, smooth, and quiet, hastened to kiss the sea, the poor beast fell, and groaned his life away; and the warm sun danced and flickered, as if in very joy of the beauty it had made, through the tall trees, and around the climbing vines, and across the green leaves, and upon the silent water, mocking at death, and laughing at the spoil which changes but to create again.

SECTION IX.

Erix took Zella’s hand in his and drew her toward him, nothing loth, till their lips met; then praised her skill: then pressed again her lips—then praised—then pressed—while Zella returned the pressure with many a toy beside. Thus rejoicing in a mutual love, they sought, with slow step and halting, the mossy bank, where lay in the sunlight, as if asleep, the game of late so fleet, and sat them down to rest, and drink new draughts of pleasure, and count over the endless good with which Heaven had blessed the earth.

“List, dearest, list! how softly upon the ear, in sweetest cadence, falls the song of the deep salt sea!” said Erix.

“And the air which hears it, glad to be thus freighted, floats inward, murmuring, to tell it to the hills,” said Zella.

“And the hills repeat it, whispering.”

“And the trees catch it; and through the live-long day, and through the night, over the whole broad land, play with it, and toss it from bough to bough, till it has become a language of its own,” said Zella.

“It is the voice of this earth.”

“It is the voice of its great joy.”

“And has praised from the beginning, and will praise unto the end, the hand which made it,” said Erix.

“The sunlight hears it, and moves merrily to the measure upon every quivering leaf, now leaping upward to gild the topmost twig, and now chasing shadows upon the ground beneath.”

“See, where it streams through the openings of the wood, and rests upon this water, smiling! Yes, the sunlight hears it, and grows brighter with each draught of a music so divine.”

“The flowers open to it; and there, upon that slope, bending gently toward our feet, proud of their colors penciled by the light, stand thick—”

“And wonder, and drink deep of the strains which extol their beauty and their glory, as they extol the beauty and the glory of all else,” said Erix. “Oh the song of the sea, of the deep, salt sea, with the air floating inward, and the hills beyond, and the trees, and the sunlight, and the flowers thick set upon the slope, gently bending downward toward our feet, and this mossy bank, and the pearly brook between—upon such a morn as this, in such a place as this, Adam found his Eve.”

“And upon such a morn as this, in such a place as this, Eve gave to Adam a love new-created, unknown to the courts trod by angels’ feet, and which has raised her daughters above cherub and seraph, to do and to suffer for their soul’s choice,” said Zella.

“Zella!”

“Erix!”

Now let the voice of the earth’s joy, the sun, and herbage speaking, the mossy bank, the flowery slope, and pearly brook between, bold revel, for a passion, blushing like the morn, pure as the marble which grew beneath the hands of Praxitiles, without stain or blemish, strong as the strongest, weak as the weakest, even love, is here present, and rules supreme.

SECTION X.

Erix and Zella, he bearing upon his broad shoulders a burden light—the noble game they had hunted to its death—returned homeward along the sounding beach, nor made deep foot-prints in the yielding sand. Unwearied, lithe, in sheer exuberance of life, they chased the retiring waves, then turning, fled to be themselves pursued; till young Ocean, pleased, shook his giant limbs, and like a lion by a child subdued, rolled at their feet, and roared, and beat, in his great heart, the measure to this hymn, which they, alternating, sang.

“Almighty Lord, Maker of the Earth, in loveliness beyond compare hast thou fashioned it.”

“Almighty Lord, the maker of our joys, in goodness beyond compare hast thou fashioned them.”

“Thou didst build the hills, and crown them with thy glory; and they praise forever thy holy name.”

“Thou didst fix the foundations, and form the running streams; and they praise forever thy holy name.”

“Thou didst plant the forests, and clothe them with thy beauty; and they praise forever thy holy name.”

“The plain is thine, with all its life, and, with voices infinite, praises forever thy holy name.”

“The air is thine, and within its bosom bears bounties innumerable, to praise forever thy holy name.”

“Praise in the pattering rain.”

“Praise in the gentle dew.”

“Perfume and color.”

“Form and motion.”

“All praise forever thy holy name.”

“Thine is the sea, and thou lov’st it.”

“And the sea loves thee, its Maker, in return.”

“The breezy morn.”

“The ruddy eve.”

“The strength of high noon.”

“The quietude of night.”

“All speak of thee, Almighty Lord, the furnisher of our joys.”

“And praise forever thy holy name.”

SECTION XI.

As Erix and Zella, thus singing, drew nigh unto the grot where first their joys commingled, to flow on through life in no divided stream, two boys, the offspring of their love, came forth to meet them. The elder, from beneath whose locks, curled and dancing, reddened with the sun, full many a wild-flower peeped, bore grapes, ripe, fresh-plucked, and clutching, pressed the vintage with his hands. The younger, marching with an uncertain step, just babbling his first words, caught the generous juice in his tiny palms, cup-shaped, and offered to his mother, whose lips sought his, and rested, well content to drink only of that bliss which God has planted in a mother’s kiss. Then Erix, casting off his load, took the elder-born to his arms, and recounted all the chase—the scent of the perfumed morn, the song, the flight, the pursuit through wood and open plain, the halt by the sounding sea, the leap, the fatal shaft, the crowning death, till the boy shouted, and every muscle worked in mimic struggle with the mimic game a-foot; and the white pigeon descended, hovering o’er the group, and lighted at Zella’s feet, and arched its neck, and drooped its wings, and turned round and round; chrr-oo-uh; chrr-oo-uh; chrr-oo-eh-uh; oo-ugh; oo-ugh; chrr-oo-uh; calling to its mate.

SECTION XII.

And now, sweet friend, who put me to this task, who won my love, not knowing how or why, come tread with me the inner-chambers of my house. This, the portal, is well passed, and other scenes, and other pictures far, wait eyes which kindle, though the fire be false, eyes which flow even with the current of a fictitious wo.

[To be continued.

SONG.

———

BY WILLIAM H. C. HOSMER.

———

(Air—“Homes of England.”)

The hallowed wells of Learning,

No wasting may they know,

But sparkle, fed by lucid streams,

Unceasing in their flow;

And may their waters catch no stain

Of deep and Stygian dye,

Though Error for an hour hold reign

Beneath a darkened sky.

The Sacred Bowers of Learning,

Be blight afar from them;

No tree grow up with serpent folds

Entwining round the stem;

No bud of precious promise feel

The frost of cold neglect,

And heard no solemn funeral peal

For Genius early wrecked.

The Stately Halls of Learning,

Forever may they stand,

And Truth walk down the sounding aisles

With Honor, hand in hand;

The columns that uphold the roof

Be men of noble mould,

And beauteous daughters, armed in proof,

Stern war with wrong to hold.

The Holy Shrines of Learning,

May no polluting flame

Be lighted on one altar-stone

By fiends who mock at shame,

But cloudless light be shed abroad

A guilty world to cheer,

And men forget to worship God

In superstitious fear.

IMPRESSIONS OF ENGLAND IN THE AUTUMN OF 1851.

———

BY FREDERIKA BREMER.

———

It is two years since I first found myself in England. When I was in England in the autumn of 1849, the cholera was there. A dense, oppressive atmosphere rested over its cities, as of a cloud pregnant with lightning. Hearses rolled through the streets. The towns were empty of people; for all who had the means of going had fled into the country; they who had not were compelled to remain. I saw shadowy figures, clad in black, stealing along the streets, more like ghosts than creatures of flesh and blood. Never before had I seen human wretchedness in such a form as I beheld it in Hull and in London. Wretchedness enough may be found, God knows, even in Stockholm, and it shows itself openly enough there in street and market. But it is there most frequently an undisguised, an unabashed wretchedness. It is not ashamed to beg, to show its rags, or its drunken countenance. It is a child of crime; and that is perhaps the most extreme wretchedness. But it is less painful to behold, because it seems to be suffering only its own deserts. One is more easily satisfied to turn one’s head aside and pass on. One thinks, “I cannot help that!”

In England, however, misery had another appearance; it was not so much that of degradation as of want, pallid want. It was meagre and retiring; it ventured not to look up, or it looked up with a glance of hopeless beseeching—so spirit-broken! It tried to look respectable. Those men with coats and hats brushed till the nap was gone; those pale women in scanty, washed-out, but yet decent clothes—it was a sight which one could hardly bear. In a solitary walk of ten minutes in the streets of Hull, I saw ten times more want than I had seen in a ten months’ residence in Denmark.

The sun shone joyously as I traveled through the manufacturing districts; saw their groups of towns and suburbs; saw their smoking pillars and pyramids towering up everywhere in the wide landscape—saw glowing gorges of fire open themselves in the earth, as if it were burning—a splendid and wonderfully picturesque spectacle, reminding one of fire-worshipers of ancient and modern time, and of their altars. But I heard the mournful cry of the children from the factories; the cry which the public voice has made audible to the world; the cry of the children, of the little ones who had been compelled by the lust of gain of their parents and the manufacturers, to sacrifice life, and joy, and health, in the workshops of machinery; the children who lie down in those beds which never are cold, the children who are driven and beaten till they sink insensibly into death or fatuity—that living death; I heard the wailing cry of the children, which Elizabeth Barrett interpreted in her affecting poem; and the wealthy manufacturing districts, with their towns, their fire-columns, their pyramids, seemed to me like an enormous temple of Moloch, in which the mammon-worshipers of England offered up even children to the burning arms of their god—children, the hope of the earth, and its most delicious and most beautiful joy!

I arrived in London. They told me there was nobody in London. It was not the season in which the higher classes were in London. Besides which, the cholera was there; and all well-to-do people, who were able, had fled from the infected city. And that indeed might be the reason why there seemed to me to be so many out of health—why that pale countenance of want was so visible. Certain it is, that it became to me as a Medusa’s head, which stood between me and every thing beautiful and great in that great capital, the rich life and physiognomy of which would otherwise have enchanted me. But as it was, the palaces, and the statues, and the noble parks, Hampstead and Piccadilly, and Belgravia and Westminster, and the Tower, and even the Thames itself, with all its ever-changing life, were no more than the decorations of a great tragedy. And when in St. Paul’s, I heard the great roar of the voice of London—that roar, which, as it is said, never is silent, but merely slumbers for an hour between three and four o’clock in the morning—when I heard that voice in that empty church, where there was no divine worship, and looked up into its beautiful cupola, which was filled by no song of praise, but only by that resounding, roaring voice, a dark chaotic roar, then seemed I to perceive the sound of the rivers of fate rolling onward through time over falling kingdoms and people, and bearing them onward down into an immeasurable grave! It was but for a moment, but it was a horrible dream!

One sight I beheld in London which made me look up with rejoicing, which made me think “that old Yggdrasil is still budding.” This was the so-called metropolitan buildings; a structure of many homes in one great mass of building, erected by a society of enlightened men for the use of the poorer working class, to provide respectable families of that class with excellent dwellings at a reasonable rate, where they might possess that which is of the most indispensable importance to the rich, as well as to the poor, if they are to enjoy health both of body and soul—light, air, and water, pure as God created them for the use of mankind. The sight of these homes, and of the families that inhabited them, as well as of the newly-erected extensive public baths and wash-houses for the same class, together with the assurance that these institutions already, in the second year of their establishment, returned more than full interest to their projectors, produced the happiest impression which I at this time received of England. These were to me as seed of the future, which gave the promise of verdant shoots in the old tree.—

Nevertheless, when I left the shores of England, and saw thick autumnal fog enveloping them, it was with a sorrowful feeling for the Old world; and with an inquiring glance of longing and hope, I turned myself to the New.

Two years passed on—a sun-bright, glowing dream, full of the vigor of life—it was again autumn, and I was again in England. Autumn met me there with cold, and rain, and tempest, with the most horrible weather that can be imagined, and such as I had never seen on the other side of the globe. But in social life, everywhere throughout the mental atmosphere, a different spirit prevailed. There I perceived with astonishment and joy, there it was that of spring.

The Crystal Palace was its full-blown, magnificent blossom—and like swarms of rejoicing bees flew the human throng upon the wings of steam, backward and forward, to the great world’s blossom; there all the nations met together, there all manufactures, there all industry, and every kind of product, unfolded their flowers for the observation and the joy of all; a Cactus grandiflora, such as the world had never till then seen.

I perceived more clearly every day of my stay in England, that this period is one of a general awakening to a new, fresh life. In the manufacturing districts, in Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, every where, I heard the same conversation among all classes; prosperity was universal and still advancing. That pale countenance of want, which had on my first visit appeared to me so appalling, I now no longer saw as formerly; and even where it was seen stealing along, like a gloomy shadow near to the tables of abundance, it appeared to me no longer as a cloud filled with the breath of cholera, darkening the face of heaven, but rather as one of those clouds over which the wind and sun have power, and which are swallowed up, which vanish in space, in the bright ether. . . .

The low price of grain, the consequence of free-trade, has produced this change: and it was universally acknowledged. The only objection I heard brought against the low price of corn was this, “The people are become proud and careless; I have seen great pieces of bread thrown out into the streets!”

Yet bread alone had not really done all this; a nobler bread is required for man in order that he may fully derive the benefit even of the outward material bread. Nor had free-trade alone done all this either; there is also another power besides this which has been operative in that general awakening, in that wholesome spirit which I perceived in England.

If this power were to be symbolized by art, it would present us with a female figure—a beautiful woman with the child at her breast, is the symbol which art makes use of, to express human love. And, perhaps, art is right in so doing. And perhaps it is the female principle in human nature, which, in the present new life in England, enables the man’s hand to accomplish the work; because from the most remote antiquity, has a male deity been chosen to represent trade, and navigation and mining, and all occupation of the earth. But, so says one of the oldest sagas of the world—when the divine life revealed itself on the earth, a divine pair came forth. In a lotus-flower which ascended from the waters of the Nile, were born at the same time Osiris and Isis, and together they went forth to bless the earth.

I saw the truth of this saga confirmed by what I beheld in England. But in speaking of this, I shall especially linger on the new proofs thereof, in the new Institutions which promise a more beautiful future to the human race; not upon the old and insufficient, however good they may be, but upon the new, because it is upon the new that my eye has been especially directed.

Let me linger, in the first place, on works of human love—the female figure with the child at her breast; because these are they which lay the foundation of all others.

In Liverpool, I visited the so-called Ragged-Schools—the schools where are collected from the streets, vagabond, neglected and begging children, who are here taught to read and so on—who here receive the first rudiments of instruction, even in singing. These schools are, some of them evening, others day schools, and in some of them, “the Industrial Ragged-Schools,” children are kept there altogether; receive food and clothing, and are taught trades. When the schools of this class were first established in Liverpool, the number of children who otherwise had no chance of receiving instruction, amounted to about twenty thousand. Right-minded, thinking men, saw that in these children were growing up in the streets, those “dangerous classes” of which so much has been said of late times; these men met together, obtained means to cover the most necessary outlay of expense, and then, according to the eloquent words of Lord Ashley, that “it is in childhood that evil habits are formed and take root; it is childhood which must be guarded from temptation to crime;” they opened these ragged-schools with the design of receiving the most friendless, the most wretched of society’s young generation—properly, “the children of rags, born in beggary, and for beggary.”

I visited the Industrial Ragged School for boys, intended for the lowest grade of these little children, without parents, or abandoned by them to the influences of crime. There, I saw the first class sitting in their rags, upon benches in a cold room, arranging with their little frost-bitten fingers bristles for the brush-maker. The faces of the boys were clean: many of them I remarked were handsome, and almost universally they had beautiful and bright eyes. Those little fingers moved with extraordinary rapidity, the boys were evidently wishful to do their best; they knew that they by that means should obtain better clothing, and would be removed to the upper room, and more amusing employment. I observed these “dangerous classes”—just gathered up from the lanes and the kennels, on their way to destruction; and was astonished when I thought that their countenances might have borne the stamp of crime. Bright glances of childhood, for that were you never designed by the Creator! “Suffer little children to come unto me.” These words, from the lips of heaven, are forever sounding on earth.

In the upper room a great number of boys were busy pasting paper-bags for various trades, confectioners, etc. who make use of such in the rapid sale of their wares; here, also, other boys were employed in printing upon the bags the names and residences of the various tradesmen who had ordered them. The work progressed rapidly, and seemed very amusing to the children. The establishment, for their residence and their beds, were poor; but all was neat and clean, the air was fresh, and the children were cheerful. The institution was, however, but yet in its infancy, and its means were small.

Half-a-dozen women in wretched clothes sat in the entrance-room with their boys, for whom they hoped to gain admittance into the school, and were now, therefore, waiting till the directors of the establishment made their appearance.

These gentlemen kindly invited me to be present at the examination of these mothers. The women were brought in one at a time, and one and all were made to tell her history and explain her circumstances. The examination was carried on with earnestness and precision. The result of all, however, was, that there was not one of the women now present who had a right to the assistance which they desired. On one or two occasions I could not help admiring the patience of the directors. Above all, it seemed to me, that these mothers needed to go to school even more than their children. When will people come to regard in all its full extent the influence of the mother upon the child? When will people come to reflect on the education of mothers in its higher sense? My conductor in Liverpool, Mr. B——, the noble and kind Home Missionary,[^[1]] recognized one of these women, and related to me the history of herself and her husband—a horrible history of drunkenness, which had almost ended in suicide.

Later in the day I visited the evening school for girls, also of the ragged class, and heard there a remarkably sweet and beautiful song. Later still I accompanied my friendly conductor to a temperance meeting, held in the same building, and which meets every Thursday, and where the Missionary was accustomed to meet and converse with the poorest brethren of his congregation. The wind blew and the rain poured down. I was astonished, however, to see when we entered, that the room was filled with people who evidently had not much to defend themselves with from the wind and rain. The benches were filled both with men and women. It became crowded and very hot. Mr. B—— opened the meeting with a speech about the dangers and consequences of drunkenness, and as he warmed in his subject he related, yet without mentioning any name, the history of the mother whom he had this day seen, beseeching that public charity would take charge of her son. The assembly, which during the moral treatise they had just heard had evidently become somewhat drowsy, woke up at once during the relation of that story, and when the narrator arrived at the catastrophe, in which the intoxicated woman, urged on by the madness of thirst, drank up half a bottle of oil of vitriol, a general expression of horror might have been heard, especially from the lips of the women.

When this relation, which was full of strong vitality, was ended, Mr. B—— read a poem written by a working man in praise of temperance, which had the effect of again lulling the auditors—and myself even—into an agreeable doze. We all woke up again, however, when Mr. B——, in a jocular manner, begged of Mr. J—— to stand up and tell us something about “that Great Exhibition in London,” which he had lately been to see. Mr. J—— did not however, stand up, because Mr. K—— wished to speak first. Accordingly, being encouraged to do so by Mr. B——, a stout-built man of about sixty came forward; he was dressed in coarse, but good clothes, and had an open countenance, over which played a smile of humor. He mounted the platform, and was greeted by the assembly with evident delight. He related his own history, simple, but full of the warmth of life, in that strong-grained, wit-interspersed style of popular eloquence, full of heart and humor at the same time, which our cultivated orators would do well to study, if they wish to make a living impression on the people. He related how he, in his younger years, never tasted brandy, but he became a seaman, and began to drink, that he might look manly among his fellows; how, by degrees, he acquired the power of swallowing more strong liquor than any of them all, fell into crime, misery and shame; how he became converted and again temperate, and how he had not now for fifteen years tasted spirits, and had ever since remained in good health and good circumstances.

This was the substance of his story; but how the narrative was interspersed with merry conceits, which excited universal amusement, and with energetic proverbs—to which Mr. B——, beyond any one else, gave the highest applause—how cleverly “Mr. Halcohol” was brought in, and how contemptuously “the long-necked gentleman, Mr. Halcohol in the bottle,” was treated, and with how much animation all this was done and received—must have been heard to have been fully imagined. The speech was concluded by recommending “total abstinence” as the only means for insuring a perfect change of life.

After this there entered a little throng of children with joyful faces, the same whom I had already heard sing in the upper room of the house; these children were the so-called “Band of Hope”—children who had taken the pledge to abstain from all strong drinks themselves, and to promote the advancement of temperance by all the means in their power, for which they received printed cards containing their pledge, together with symbolical devices, proverbs, etc. That little “Band of Hope” struck up with their clear voices, fresh as the morning, various songs, among which one in particular, “The Spindle and Shuttle,” was received with great delight, all present joining in the chorus. Hymns and patriotic songs were also sung by “The Band of Hope,” and now and then the company joined in with the children. Before the assembly separated this evening, several went forward and took the pledge. Among these was a man and his wife. They took each other by the hand. The woman with her other hand held her handkerchief over her left eye; it might be seen, nevertheless, that this eye was black, probably from the husband’s fist.

What had influenced them to this? What had operated upon these rude natures?—induced them to break loose from habits of drunkenness—to turn from the pleasures of hell to those of heaven? What was it that had operated on all here so awakeningly, so livingly? Could it be the discourse they had heard? could it be the poem in praise of temperance? Nothing of the kind. I saw them go to sleep during these. I became sleepy myself. No, that which operated here so livingly—was the life itself. It was that living narrative of the unhappy woman; it was the sailor’s history of his own life, his battles with “Mr. Halcohol;” it was the songs of the children, the pure, dewy-fresh voices of the little “Band of Hope.” All these it was which had operated upon, which had awakened their minds, had animated their brains, warmed their hearts; this it was which had impelled the husband and wife, hand in hand, to come forward and consecrate themselves to a new marriage, to a better life. Individual experience of suffering, of joy, of sin, of conversion, of love and happiness, must be told, if the relation is to have any power over the human heart; life itself must be called into action if we would awake the dead.

I could not but remark at this meeting, how cordial and familiar an understanding seemed to exist between the leader, Mr. B——, and the assembly, and which arose in part from his own peculiar character, and in part from his intimate acquaintance with his hearers. In the same way, his continual intercourse with those people, and his knowledge of their every-day life, is an excellent help to him in giving force to the sermons which he preaches among them. I shall not forget the effect produced by his story of the woman and the bottle of vitriol.

A few days later I visited, with the same friendly man, some different classes of poor people—namely, the wicked and the idle; they who had fallen into want through their own improvidence, but who had now raised themselves again; and the estimable, who had honorably combated with unavoidable poverty. In one certain quarter of Liverpool, it is that the first class is especially met with. Of this class of poor in their wretched rooms, with their low, brutalized expression, I will not speak; companion-pieces to this misery may be met with every where. Most of those whom I saw were Irish. It was a Sunday noon, after divine service. The ale-houses were already open in this part of the town, and young girls and men might be seen talking together before them, or sitting upon the steps.

Of the second class I call to mind, with especial pleasure, one little household. It was a mother and her son. Her means of support, a mangle, stood in the little room in which she had lived since she had raised herself up again. It was dinner-time. A table, neatly covered for two persons, stood in the room, and upon the iron stand before the fire was placed a dish of mashed potatoes, nicely browned, ready to be set on the table. The mother was waiting for her son, and the dinner was waiting for him. He was the organ-blower in a church during divine service, and he returned whilst I was still there. He was well dressed, but was a little, weakly man, and squinted; the mother’s eyes, however, regarded him with love. This son was her only one, and her all. And he, to whom mother Nature had acted as a stepmother, had a noble mother’s heart to warm himself with, which prepared for him an excellent home, a well-covered table, and a comfortable bed. That poor little home was not without its wealth.

As belonging to the third and highest class, I must mention two families, both of them shoemakers, and both of them inhabiting cellars. The one family consisted of old, the other of young people. The old shoemaker had to maintain his wife, who was lame and sick, from a fall in the street, and a daughter. The young one had a young wife, and five little children to provide for; but work was scanty and the mouths many. At this house, also, it was dinner-time, and I saw upon the table nothing but potatoes. The children were clean, and had remarkably agreeable faces; but—they were pale; so was also the father of the family. The young and pretty, but very pale mother, said, “Since I have come into this room I have never been well, and this I know—I shall not live long!” Her eyes filled with tears; and it was plain enough to see that this really delicate constitution could not long sustain the effects of the cold, damp room, into which no sunbeam entered. These two families, of the same trade, and alike poor, had become friends in need. When one of the fathers of the family wanted work, and was informed by the Home-Missionary who visited them that the other had it, the intelligence seemed a consolation to him. Gladdening sight of human sympathy, which keeps the head erect and the heart sound under the depressing struggle against competition! But little gladdening to me would have been the sight of these families in their cellar-homes, had I not at the same time been aware of the increase of those “Model Lodging-Houses,” which may be met with in many parts of England, and which will remove these inhabitants of cellars, they who sit in darkness, into the blessing of the light of life—which will provide worthy dwellings for worthy people. But of this I shall speak somewhat later, in connection with other new institutions for the advancement of the health, both of body and soul, of—all classes.

“For no one for himself doth live or suffer.”

For myself, I was well provided for by English hospitality, and enjoyed an excellent home in the house of the noble and popular preacher, J. M——. With him, and his wife (one of these beautiful, motherly natures, who through a peculiar geniality of heart is able to accomplish so much, and to render herself and every thing that is good twofold, in quite another manner to that of the multiplication-table, which merely makes two and two into four)—with them and their family I spent some beautiful days amid conversation and music. There, in the neighborhood of their house, I saw also one of those English parks, whose verdant, carefully-kept sward, and groups of shrubs and flowers, give so peculiar and so attractive a charm to the English landscape. Add to this a river-like sheet of water; swans, groups of beautiful children and ladies feeding them on the banks, the song of birds every where amongst the shrubs; scattered palaces, and handsome country-houses—and every thing looking so finished, so splendid, so beautiful and perfect, as if nothing out of condition, nothing in tatters or shabby was to be found in the world. Such was the impression produced by the Prince’s Park, which was laid out by a wealthy private gentleman, Mr. J——, on the birth of the Prince of Wales, the eldest son of Queen Victoria, and thrown open to the public with only this single admonition exhibited, in large letters, in various parts of the park, “it is hoped the public will protect that which is intended for the public enjoyment.”

But I must leave this enchanting Idyll, and hasten into the manufacturing districts; and, first of all, to Manchester:

In my imagination Manchester was like a colossal woman sitting at her spinning-wheel, with her enormous manufactories; her subject towns, suburbs, villages, factories, lying for many miles round, spinning, spinning, spinning clothes for all the people on the face of the earth. And there, as she sat, the queen of the spindle, with her masses of ugly houses and factories, enveloped in dense rain-clouds, as if in cobwebs, the effect she made upon me was gloomy and depressing. Yet even here, also, I was to breathe a more refreshing atmosphere of life; even here was I also to see light. Free-trade had brought hither her emancipating spirit. It was a time of remarkable activity and prosperity. The work-people were fully employed; wages were good, and food was cheap. Even here also had ragged-schools been established, together with many institutions for improving the condition of the poor working-classes. In one of these ragged-schools the boys had a perfectly organized band of music, in which they played and blew so that it was a pleasure—and sometimes a disadvantage, to hear them. The lamenting “cry of the children” was no longer heard from the factories. Government had put an end to the cruelties and oppressions formerly practiced on these little ones by the unscrupulous lust of gain. No child under ten years old can now be employed in the factories, and even such, when employed, must of necessity be allowed part of the day for school. Every large factory has now generally its own school, with a paid master for the children. The boys whom I saw in the great rooms of the factories and with whom I conversed, looked both healthy and cheerful.

Two ideas were impressed upon my mind at this place: how dangerous it is, even amid a high degree of social culture, to give one class of men unrestrained power over another; and how easily a free people, with a powerful public spirit, and accustomed to self-government, can raise themselves out of humiliating circumstances. This spirit has done much already in England, but it has yet more to do.

Upon one of those large, gloomy factories in Manchester, I read, inscribed in iron letters, “The Great Beehive;” and in truth, a good name for these enormous hives of human industrial toil, in which people have sometimes forgotten, and still forget, that man is any thing more than a working-bee, which lives to fill its cell in the hive, and die. I visited several of these huge beehives. In one of them, which employed twelve hundred work-people, I saw, in a large room, above three hundred women sitting in rows winding cotton on reels. The room was clean, and so also were all the women. It did not appear to be hard work; but the steadfastly-fixed attention with which these women pursued their labor seemed to me distressingly wearisome. They did not allow themselves to look up, still less to turn their heads or to talk. Their life seemed to depend upon the cotton thread.

In another of these great beehives, a long, low room, in which were six hundred power-looms, represented an extraordinary appearance. What a snatching to and fro, what a jingling, what an incessant stir, and what a moist atmosphere there was between floor and ceiling, as if the limbs of some absurd, unheard-of beast, with a thousand arms, had been galvanized! Around us, from three to four hundred operatives, women and men, stood among the rapid machinery watching and tending. The twelve o’clock bell rung, and now the whole throng of work-people would go forth to their various mid-day quarters; the greatest number to their respective dwellings in the neighborhood of the factory. I placed myself, together with my conductor, in the court outside the door of the room, which was on lower ground, in order that I might have a better view of the work-people as they came out.

Just as one sees bees coming out of a hive into the air, two, three, or four at a time—pause, as it were, a moment from the effects of open air and light, and then with a low hum, dart forth into space, each one his own way, so was it in this case. Thus came they forth, men and women, youths and girls. The greater number were well dressed, looked healthy, and full of spirit. In many, however, might be seen the expression of a rude life; they bore the traces of depravity about them.

As labor is now organized in the factories at Manchester, it cannot easily be otherwise. The master-manufacturer is not acquainted with his work-people. He hires spinners; and every spinner is master of a room, and he it is who hires the hands. He is the autocrat of the room, and not unfrequently is a severe and immoral one. The operatives live in their own houses, apart from every thing belonging to the master-manufacturer, with the exception of the raw material.

In the country it is otherwise; there the master-manufacturer may be, and often is, a fatherly friend and guardian of his people. And where he is so, it is in general fully acknowledged. The character which each manufacturer bears as an employer, even in Manchester, is perfectly well known. People mention with precision the good, the worthless, or the wicked master. I visited factories belonging to some of these various characters, but perceived a more marked difference in the manners and appearance of the masters themselves, than in the appearance and condition of the work-people. At the present moment the difference could not be very perceptible, because the general demand for hands causes the circumstances of the lower classes to be generally good. But, as before remarked, the patriarchal connection between master and servant, with its good, as well as its evil consequences, no longer exists in the manufacturing towns of England. Employer and employed stand beside each other, or rather opposed to each other, excepting through the requirements of labor. The whole end and aim of the Manchester manufacturer—when he is not subjected to machinery, and lives merely as a screw, or portion of it—is, to get out of Manchester. He spins and makes use of all means, good or bad, to lay by sufficient money to live independently, or to build himself a house at a distance from the smoky, restless town, away from the bustle—away from the throng of restless, striving work-people. His object is to arrive at quiet in the country, in a comfortable home; and having attained this object, he looks upon the noisy, laboring hive, out of which he has lately come, as a something with which he has no concern, and out of which he is glad to have escaped with a whole skin. Such is the case with many—God forbid that we should say, with all!

Two subjects of conversation occupied the people of Manchester very much at this time. The one was the question—a vital question for the whole of England—of popular education. The people of Manchester had begun to take the subject into serious consideration, and had come to the conclusion that there might at once be adopted a simple system of education by which, as in the United States, every one should receive in the people’s school practical and moral instruction, and that religious instruction should be left for the home or for the Sunday teaching. The willingness to thus act in concert which has been shown by the clergy of the Established Church in Manchester, is a good omen to the various religious sects united in this work. All things considered, it seems to me that there is at this moment in England the most decided movement toward a new development, a new life as well in theoretic as in practically popular respects; and it is more apparent in the Established Church than in any other religious body.

The second great subject of conversation, as well in Manchester as in Liverpool, was Queen Victoria’s expected visit. The Queen had announced her intention of visiting the great towns of the manufacturing districts, in company with Prince Albert, in the middle of the month, and they were accordingly expected in a few days. Several of these towns had never before seen a crowned head within their walls, and this, in connection with the great popularity of the Queen, and the liking and the love which the people have for her, had perfectly enchanted the inhabitants of Manchester. They were preparing to give a royal reception to their lofty guests. Nothing could be too magnificent or too costly in the eyes of the Manchester people which could testify their homage. The whole of the district, now that the Queen was expected, was said to be “brimful of loyalty,” and the whole of England was at this time, both in heart and soul, monarchical. Opposition against the royal family exists no longer in England; the former members of this opposition had become converted. On all hands there was but one voice of devotion and praise. Wonderful! yes, incomprehensible, thought I, when I was informed that the Queen had requested not long since to have a grant from Parliament of 72,000l. for the erection of new stables at her palace of Windsor, and the same year 30,000l., for Prince Albert to repair his dog-kennels, and now, again, just lately, 17,000l. for the erection of stables at a palace which the Queen has obtained for her eldest son, and of which he will take possession on attaining his majority. Thus 119,000l. for stables and dog-kennels.

What? 119,000l. for stables and dog-kennels; for the maintenance of fine horses and dogs, and that at a time when Ireland is perishing of hunger or emigrating in the deepest distress; when even in England so infinitely much remains to be done for humanity, so much untold good might be effected for the public with this sum. Queen Elizabeth was accustomed to say, that she considered her money best put out when it was in the pockets of her subjects, and she scorned to desire any great project for her own pleasure. Queen Victoria desires, year after year, immense grants for her stables and kennels; desires this of her people, and yet, for all this, is homage paid to her—is she loved and supported by the people in this extraordinary manner! Parliament grumbles, but consents to all that the Queen desires, fully consents without a murmur, because it loves her. Such projects would otherwise be dangerous to the power of the monarch. Such projects overturned the throne of Louis Philippe—have undermined many thrones. But the light foot of this Queen—a well-beloved little foot it ought to be—dances again and again on the brink of the dangerous abyss, and it gives not way. But how is this possible? What is it that makes this Queen so popular, so universally beloved by the people, spite of the desire for stables and dog-kennels, unnecessary articles of luxury, when hundred thousands of her subjects are in want even of the necessaries of life; want even the means to secure a home and daily bread?

Thus I asked, and thus they replied to me:

The English people wish that their royal family should live with a certain degree of state. They are fond of beautiful horses and dogs themselves, and it flatters the national pride that the royal personages should have such, and should have magnificent dwellings for them. The character of the Queen, her domestic and public virtues, and the influence of her example, which is of such high value to the nation, causes it to regard no sacrifice of money as too great for the possession of such a Queen. England is aware that under the protection of the throne, under the shadow of the sceptre of this Queen, and the stability which it gives to the affairs of the kingdom, she can in freedom and peace manage her own internal concerns, and advance forward on the path of democratic development and self-government, with a security which other nations do not possess.

Hence it is that the reigning family now upon the English throne presents a spectacle extraordinary upon this throne, or upon any throne in the world. The Queen and her husband stand before the people as the personation of every domestic and public virtue! The Queen is an excellent wife and mother; she attends to the education of her children, and fulfills her duties as sovereign, alike conscientiously. She is an early riser; is punctual and regular in great as well as in small things. She pays ready money for all that she purchases, and never is in debt to any one. Her court is remarkable for its good and beautiful morals. On their estates, she and Prince Albert carry every thing out in the best manner, establish schools and institutions for the good of the poor; these institutions and arrangements of theirs, serve as examples to every one. Their uprightness, kindness, generosity, and the tact which they under all circumstances display, win the heart of the nation. They show a warm sympathy for the great interests of the people, and by this very sympathy are they promoted. Of this, the successful carrying out of free-trade, and the Exhibition in the Crystal Palace, projected in the first instance by Prince Albert, and powerfully seconded by the Queen, furnish brilliant examples. The sympathies of the Queen are those of the heart as well as of the head. When that noble statesman, the great promoter of free-trade, Sir Robert Peel, died, the Queen shut herself in for several days, and wept for him as if she had lost a father. And whenever a warm sympathy is called forth, either in public or in private affairs, it is warmly and fully participated by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.

In confirmation of this opinion regarding Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, which I heard every where, and from all parties in England, a number of anecdotes of their life and actions were related to me, which fully bore it out.

This universal impression, universally produced by the sovereign, who, properly speaking, can govern nothing—because it is well known that the monarch of England is merely a nominal executor of the wishes of the people, a hand which subscribes that which the minister lays before it in the name of the people; this great power, in a Queen, is without any political power.

Monarchs and their people no longer bear the same relation to each other as in the time when, for example, Charles the Ninth put forth his demands, with the addition,—

“Do it, and be off with you!”

This injunction to do a thing, and then take themselves off, can no longer be given to the people by the King, but by reason. The people have arrived at years of discretion, and the monarch is the executor of their laws and their wishes. He is so in England, it is said.

From Manchester I traveled to Birmingham. I saw again the land of the fire-worshipers, their smoking altars, in tall columns and pyramids, towering above the green fields; saw again the burning gulfs yawning in the earth, and, saw them now with unmixed pleasure. I heard no longer, amid their boiling roar, the lamenting cry of the children; I heard and saw them now only as the organs of the public prosperity, and rejoiced over them as proofs of man’s power over fire and water, over all the powers of nature; the victory of the gods over the giants!

In Birmingham I visited a steel-pen manufactory, and followed from room to room the whole process of those small metal tongues which go abroad over all the world, and do so much—evil, and so much good; so much that is great, so much that is small; so much that is important, so much that is trivial. I saw four hundred young girls, sitting in large, light rooms, each with her little pen-stamp, employed in a dexterous and easy work, especially fitted for women. All were well dressed, seemed healthy and cheerful, many were pretty: upon the whole, it was a spectacle of prosperity which surpassed even that of the mill-girls in the celebrated factories of Lowell, in America.

Birmingham was at this time in a most flourishing condition, and had more orders for goods than it could supply, nor were there any male paupers to be found in the town; there was full employment for all.

In Birmingham I saw a large school of design. Not less than two hundred young female artists studied here in a magnificent hall or rotunda, abundantly supplied with models of all kinds, and during certain hours in the week, exclusively opened to these female votaries of art. A clever, respectable, old woman, the porter of the school-house, spoke of many of these with especial pleasure, as if she prided herself on them in some degree.

I saw in Birmingham a beautiful park, with hot-houses, in which were tropical plants, open to the public; saw also a large concert-room, where twice in the week “glees” were sung, and to which the public were admitted at a low price: all republican institutions, and which seem to prosper more in a monarchical realm than in republics themselves.

I met with a surprise in Birmingham; that is to say, I was all at once carried back fifteen centuries into the Syrian desert of Chalsis, and there lived a life so unlike Birmingham and Birmingham-life, that just for the sake of contrast, it was very refreshing. The thing was quite simple in itself, inasmuch as one evening I accompanied an amiable family, who resided in Birmingham, to a lecture, which was given by a young, gifted preacher, on the old Church-father, Saint Jerome (Hieronymus.)

The subject of the lecture, which was extempore, and delivered with much ease and perspicuity, was evidently not intended to recommend to his auditors, but rather to repel them from an ascetic and contemplative life. Saint Jerome was delineated as a noble fool, a curiosity in human nature, and was to be deplored as a sacrifice to perverted reason, by no means to be imitated. The true end of humanity was not to be attained by flying from city life, and burying one’s self in a desert for study and self-mortification; that end was rather to be attained in the busy city, than in the isolated existence of the wilderness; and so on. Such was the lecturer’s moral. But upon me his arguments made an impression considerably antithetical to that which he intended. I saw this warrior of the third century devoured by a burning thirst of light and knowledge, of purity for his whole being; saw him wander out, seeking the wells of life; saw him, separating from the agreeable circles of city existence, roam on amid catacombs and the tombs of martyrs; saw him seeing in Gaul, and on the Rhine, and there finding—Christianity. Saw him there, after being baptized, with his Bible under his arm, retire into the deserts of Syria, and there, in the burning sands of Chalsis, bury himself for a number of years, amid exegetic studies and severe deeds of penance. I heard him, even at the time that he, according to his own words, “watered his couch with his tears,” and while he was given over, and regarded as a fool by his friends, still reproach those friends for having chosen the worse part, that of the life of enjoyment in the city, and break forth in transport, “O! silent wildernesses, flower-strewn by Jesus Christ! O! wild solitudes, full of his spirit!”

I saw him, after his conflict was accomplished, go forth out of the desert with his Bible, enter Rome publicly, and unsparingly chastise the crimes of the proud city. I saw the haughty ladies of Rome first start, then bow themselves to the severe judgment of the teacher; saw Marulla and Paula renounce the dissipated life of Rome, and follow the preacher; found convents and Christian institutions in accordance with his views; saw him grow in the combat with the spirit of the age, till he stood as a founder of the greatest power on earth—that of the Christian Church. The fool, who had buried himself in the sands of Syria, and done battle with himself during solitary days and nights.

Ah! this fool, this glowing sun of the desert, as he now stood forth to view, through the veil of fifteen centuries, grew greater and greater in my eyes, till, finally, he expanded himself over the whole of Birmingham, with all its factories, workshops, steel-pens, and the like, as a colossus above an ant-hill.

Birmingham is almost entirely of the class of what are called Chartists; that is, advocates of universal suffrage. They are this, through good and through evil; and the resistance which their just desire to be more fully represented in the legislative body has met with from that body, has brought them more and more into collision with the power of the state, more and more to base their demands in opposition, even to the higher principles of justice; for they overlook the duty of rendering themselves worthy of the franchise by sound education. But the fault here, in the first place, was not theirs. Growing up amid machinery and the hum of labor, without schools, without religious or moral worth; hardened by hard labor, in continual fight with the difficulties of life, they have moulded themselves into a spirit little in harmony with life’s higher educational influences, the blessings of which they had never experienced. Atheism, radicalism, republicanism, socialism of all kinds will and must flourish here in concealment amongst the strong and daily augmenting masses of a population, restrained only by the fear of the still more mighty powers which may be turned against them, and by labor for their daily needs, so long as those powers are sufficing. And perhaps the Americans are right where they say, in reference to this condition of things;—“England lies at our feet—England cannot do without our cotton. If the manufactures of England must come to a stand, then has she a popular convulsion at her door.” Perhaps it may be so; for these hosts of manufacturing workmen, neglected in the beginning by society, neglected by church and state, look upon them merely as exacting and despotic powers; and in strict opposition to them, they have banded together, and established schools for their own children, where only the elements of practical science are admitted, and from which religious and moral instruction are strictly excluded. In truth, a volcanic foundation for society, and which now, for some time past, has powerfully arrested the attention of the most thinking men of England.

But into the midst of this menacing chaos light has already begun to penetrate with an organizing power; and over the dark profound hovers a spirit which can and will divide the darkness from the light, and prepare a new creation.

From Birmingham I traveled, on the morning of the 4th of October, by a railway to Leamington, and thence alone in a little carriage to Stratford-on-Avon.

OLIVER GOLDSMITH—HIS CHARACTER AND GENIUS.

———

BY A NEW CONTRIBUTOR.

———

In wit a man, simplicity a child.

Pope.

For over half a century after Goldsmith’s death, the world continued in a state of uncertainty concerning his writings and himself. The greater part of the task-work he had performed for the booksellers was unknown, and Oliver spoken of, in a traditionary sort of way, as the author of the Vicar of Wakefield and the Deserted Village, and a man of laughable eccentricities. The majority of his readers—and no poet had more of them or enjoyed a wider English popularity—never thought he was other than an Englishman; and those who knew the country of his birth differed about the place of it—some asserting he was born at Lissoy, in Westmeath, and others contending for other localities. Even Dr. Johnson, who has set down his native place—Pallas, in Longford—correctly in his epitaph, makes a mistake of three years in his age. All this is remarkable of the cotemporary of Johnson—one who ranked with that literary colossus in his time and was so closely connected with Burke, Reynolds, Percy and the other celebrities of that period. Resembling, in some measure, Butler, in the obscurity of his personal history and the popularity of his works, Goldsmith seemed to be vaguely merging into the Vicar of Wakefield, or the Good Natured Man—just as the poet of the Restoration had come to be confounded with his Roundhead hero—when Prior’s life of him, twenty years ago, first threw a fair light upon the past; indicated the great mass of his writings (poorly compensated, anonymous and plagiarized, in his life-time,) and cleared away a large amount of the misconceptions and fallacies that had been gathered about his fame.

There has hardly been any author in modern times, or perhaps in the ancient, whose personal character contrasts—is made to contrast—so much with the genuine celebrity he has achieved. He would seem to have been laughed at a good deal, and treated with a want of consideration and respect, even by those who loved him and wept at his death; and the impression generally conveyed is, that his manners were uncouth and his conversation ridiculous. Those who have helped to create such a character for Oliver, think they have compounded with their consciences when they have admitted he was a charming writer, and a simple, honest soul, who had no harm in him, and always meant well. Nevertheless, but one half of their portrait can be received. There were no such violent contrarieties in the elements that went to compose Oliver Goldsmith. His biographers—to make the most lenient estimate of them—knew him imperfectly and found it much easier to produce their effects by glaring contrasts than by the patient and loving discrimination due to the truth of every man’s character—especially that of a man like Goldsmith—so marked by peculiarities of education, and so severely tried by circumstances.

The literary character is sure to suffer, more or less, in contact with society. Men of letters who spend half their time with the dead are not exactly the people to be au fait of all the ways of the living; and have not always the good sense of Thomas Baker, who, for that very reason, refused, long ago, to be introduced to the Earl of Oxford and the polished people of his acquaintance. They generally offend against the conventions and are not pardoned in their biographies, which are sometimes writ by men of the world, and which, when even written by authors, who may be supposed capable of sympathizing more with the literary character, still show how the jealousies and prejudices of the craft will stand in the way of honest criticism. A man’s character depends very much on his historians—and Goldsmith, a literary adventurer, a bookseller’s hack, and an Irishman, was particularly—perhaps, necessarily—unfortunate in his.

There have been crowds of distinguished literary men whose peculiarities were almost as much ridiculed as those of Goldsmith, but who have found a more dignified appreciation, by virtue of fairer biographers. Socrates was laughed at more than any man in Athens. But his immortal pupil has rescued his fame from those wits and satirists who used to loiter about the porches, and go, of a morning, to applaud the Clouds of Aristophanes. Socrates was an ugly little man—in the midst of the fine-faced men of Attica—generally threadbare and slovenly; and even Plato has been obliged to allow that his honored master was like an apothecary’s gallipot, painted outside with grotesque figures, but containing balm within. He was as much laughed at as Goldsmith; but nobody can think Socrates a laughable old fellow. There was the Emperor Julian. When he sojourned at Antioch, he was ridiculed and lampooned by the citizens for his careless dress and beard, and his simple manners. Whereupon, instead of treating them as Sulla did those facetious Greeks who said “his face was a mulberry sprinkled with meal,” the philosophic apostate wrote a book against them, called “Misopogon,” in which he pleasantly satirized himself for his literary peculiarities, justified his critics, and happily admitted that he did not, indeed, resemble in any thing those witty and fashionable people who made merry at his expense. If these Antiochans were Julian’s biographers, he should cut but a silly figure in the eyes of posterity. As it is, he has hardly fared much better in another point of view. La Fontaine was voted intolerably stupid in society. The gay Parisians said he merely vegetated—and he was called the Fable Tree—bringing forth fables! Poor Burns complained that though, when he wished, he could make himself “beloved,” he could not make himself “respected.” He confessed that he wanted discretion—was prone to a lapsus linguæ, and very apt to offend the sense of the society he was in—in this, somewhat like Goldsmith. We could cite a score of instances showing that famous men have been barely tolerated in society and very much exposed to the ridicule of it. But their biographers have done their better qualities justice, and they are not remembered in any remarkable degree in connection with the peculiarities which excited the satire of their cotemporaries.

A great many things worked unfavorably for Goldsmith. His face was very plain-favored in expression, he spoke with a brogue and hesitated a little in his utterance. In his nature he was shy, and his manners in society had all the simplicity and unguarded impulse of his earlier years. Such a man, living in comparative retirement, might have passed through the world without any disparagements. But Goldsmith was thrown upon the great stage of London, and into the society of the most fastidious critics and gentlemen of the age. Here his ordeal was a severe one—as the result showed. Boswell, Hawkins, Cumberland, Northcote, Thrale and the rest of those who either wrote memoirs or furnished reminiscences of our author, have proved how little they could sympathize with the plain, blunt Irishman—who was only a simple child of nature and of genius.

Among those who have most contributed to lessen the prestige of Goldsmith’s name was James Boswell, Dr. Johnson’s literary henchman and biographer. In all that Boswell writes of Oliver he exhibits his desire to disparage him. It is true he sometimes expresses partiality for Goldsmith’s conversation. But he, doubtless, intends this as a show of frankness to obtain the more easy credence for his general opinions of the poet. One great cause of this feeling on Boswell’s part was his reverent attachment to the fame of Dr. Johnson, and his jealousy of any one who came or seemed to come into rivalry with that Ursa Major of the British literary firmament. Boswell had the little soul of a parasite, and always felt offense at any exhibition of independence toward Johnson—such having the effect of rebuking his own absurd obsequiousness. Goldsmith, though the easiest and kindliest of men, still kept up that frank, irrespective manliness of disposition which belongs to genius, and could not sympathize with Boswell’s extreme notions of worship. The poet must have felt the folly and impoliteness of trumpeting Johnson in season and out of season—often in presence of better men than the lexicographer—and must have been offended with it, too. On one occasion, indeed, he said to Boswell, with his usual point and good sense—“Sir, you are for making a monarchy of that which should be a republic.” He respected Dr. Johnson, but never bowed down to him, nor to any one else. And the son of a Scottish lord, who venerated on all-fours, could not forgive the poor Irish scholar for standing erect in presence of the grim idol—as Johnson too often was, in his austere moods. Along with all this, Boswell probably knew very well the opinion which Goldsmith had of himself. In conversation with some one who called Boswell a Scotch cur, Goldsmith remarked—“Not so—he is only a Scotch bur: Tom Davies (the publisher) threw him at Johnson and he sticks to him.” A saying which, of course, found its way to the bur’s ears. All these things are sufficient to account for the animus palpably exhibited against Goldsmith in Boswell’s Life of Johnson.

When his book appeared, he was sharply and universally condemned for his treatment of the dead writer. Lord Charlemont expressed his indignant astonishment how James Boswell could affect to undervalue a man of such genius and popularity. Burke said to Lady Crewe, on the subject—“What sympathy could you expect to find, my dear madam, between an Irish poet and a Scotch lawyer?” Wilkes swore two such characters were moral antipodes. Sir Joshua Reynolds, who knew Goldsmith like a brother, and who had heard from report how Boswell meant to depict the poet, remonstrated earnestly with him on the subject before the biography of Johnson came out. Bishop Percy, Mr. Stephens, Mr. Malone and others denied that Goldsmith was guilty of the fooleries and grimaces and unworthy feelings attributed to him by Boswell, and protested against the low estimate he had made of Oliver’s genius and character. And yet with all Boswell’s earnestness in the attempt to lessen Goldsmith, it is remarkable how little he is really able to injure him in the long run. He has created an unfavorable impression of the poet’s manners it is true; but this is wearing away; and the fact is, that, not only the silly Boswell himself, but the austere doctor whom he delighted to honor, and wrote every thing to glorify, seems to be more reflected on than Goldsmith, in most things that have been recorded to the disparagement of the latter in connection with Johnson.

One of Boswell’s first anecdotes of Johnson and Goldsmith will show the paltry, parasitical spirit in which he was in the habit of making his notes and comments. They three had been supping at the Mitre tavern, when Johnson got up to go home and take tea with his blind dependent, Miss Williams. “Dr. Goldsmith,” says Bozzy, “being a privileged man, got up to go with him, strutting away and calling to me, with an air of superiority, like that of an esoteric over an exoteric disciple of a sage of antiquity, ‘I go to Miss Williams.’ ” He says he envied this “mark of distinction,” but soon had the same honor himself! Boswell always betrays himself. For, without a grain of Oliver’s genius, he shows himself to be as thoughtless and absurd as he would have us think the poet to have been. If the latter did really exhibit any thing like exultation on the occasion alluded to—the canny Scot mistook it; he could not enter into the humorous vein of the author of the Citizen of the World, who never let any opportunity of pleasantry of any kind escape him, and who, doubtless, with a playful impulse, would, slily and aside, for Boswell’s behoof, put on a comic air of loftiness, at the idea of his own privilege. Such little traits were very characteristic of Oliver Goldsmith, at all periods of his life; and neither his own dignity nor that of any one else was much thought of, whenever his funny “Cynthias of the minute” came across him. With all his respect for Dr. Johnson, he had still—though Boswell does not seem to admit it—a very strong sense of what was odd, petulant and grandiose in the doctor’s manners, and could sport with it, too, to the bear’s face, with a rare and child-like temerity. For instance, once at Jack’s Coffee-house, where the pair were dining on rumps and kidneys, Johnson said—“These rumps are pretty things; but a man must eat a great number of them.” Goldsmith assented with pleasantry, and then, under the easy, unawed impulse of his nature, and carried away by the thought that he was not at his dreary desk, but at dinner with his friend, pushed on with—“But how many of them would go to the moon?” Johnson had, doubtless, said such small matters did not go far—a common expression, which would have provoked Oliver’s pun—though the story says nothing of this.

“To the moon?” replies Johnson; “I think that exceeds your calculation.”

“Not at all, sir,” cries Goldie—looking ludicrously prepense, at the terrible, grave face opposite—“I think I could tell.”

“Well, sir,” rejoined Ursa Major; whereupon the other comes out with:

“One, if it was long enough!”

Johnson growled angrily, and said he was a fool to provoke such an answer. Not a fool, however, but a solemn bear, whose very grimness, contrasted with the absurdity of the solution, was Goldsmith’s irresistible temptation. We must, in fact, justify Oliver’s fun—though we did not see Johnson’s face. The thing was laughter-compelling. Goldsmith had no undue feeling of deference in his nature at all, though he used certainly to go on all-fours to amuse the children. His irrespective and somewhat careless humor often irritated Johnson, who generally supped full of flattery.

“Doctor,” said Johnson one day, “I have not been quite idle; I lately made a line of poetry.”

Instead of holding up his hands reverently, Goldsmith cried out with his customary levity—“Come, sir, let us hear it; we will try and put a bad one to it.”

“No, sir,” replied the petted monster, drawing in; “I have forgotten it.”

Boswell’s attempts to depreciate Goldsmith are blunderingly made. He always admits enough to betray his own unfair spirit. Johnson having had in 1767, an interview with the king in the library of St. James’s Palace, the thing was greatly talked of. Boswell says, that once at the house of Sir Joshua Reynolds, the doctor was, by request (the henchman’s of course), induced to repeat the circumstances of the meeting, and that during the recital, Goldsmith was observed to be silent and inattentive. He says, the latter was envious of Johnson’s luck, but he goes on to state that at last the frankness and simplicity of his nature prevailed, he advanced to Johnson and told him, he acquitted himself admirably—that he (Goldsmith), “should have bowed and stammered through the whole of it.” No sign of any very deadly envy in all this, surely. Johnson himself, though he mostly made a point of defending Goldsmith against attacks, could not help feeling a little pique and jealousy toward the wit, who never refrained from arguing the matter with him, comically or keenly as he saw fit. Johnson was truculent at times, and would speak rudely to Goldsmith in company. One of the surly moralist’s formulas, whenever Goldsmith would say, “I don’t see that,” was—“Nay, my dear sir, why can you not see what everybody else sees?” On such occasions, Goldsmith’s independence, or want of tact was against him. Johnson at times, used to put him down in this way. During an argument, Goldsmith having been several times contradicted, “sat in restless agitation,” says the veracious Boswell, “from a wish to get in and shine.” No easy matter when Johnson was cloudy. “Finding himself excluded,” he goes on—“he had taken his hat to go away, but remained for some time with it in his hand. Once, when beginning again to speak, he was overpowered by the loud voice of Johnson, who was at the opposite end of the table, and did not notice the attempt. Thus disappointed, Goldsmith threw down his hat in a passion, and said—‘take it’—looking angrily at Johnson. Then Toplady was about to speak, Oliver hearing Johnson growl something, and thinking he was about to go on again, begged he would let Toplady proceed, as the latter had heard Johnson patiently for an hour. ‘Sir,’ roared Johnson, ‘I was not going to interrupt the gentleman. Sir, you are impertinent!’ Goldy said nothing, but continued in the company for some time. When they all met in the evening at the club, Johnson said aside to Boswell, ‘I’ll make Goldsmith forgive me:’ and then aloud—‘Doctor Goldsmith, something passed between us, where you and I dined: I ask your pardon.’ Goldsmith answered placidly, ‘It must be much from you, sir, that I take ill.’ After which,” says Boswell, “Goldsmith was himself again, and rattled away as usual.” All this exhibits the usual animus of Boswell, the coarse tyranny of Johnson, and the fine disposition of Oliver, in a fair light. Goldsmith knew Johnson intimately—intus et in cute—and used to say of him, with that happiness of thought and fancy which his bashfulness could, not entirely mar—“there is no arguing with Johnson; when his pistol misses fire, he knocks you down with the but-end of it.”

Johnson talked for victory—Goldsmith for enjoyment. The former came armed at all points into the argument—the latter was but too glad to fling off all lettered restraint, remove his harness as it were, and enjoy himself in the midst of what he loved so cordially, the sight of happy human faces. Johnson generally entered into conversation like an athlete or a bull into an arena. He once said to Boswell, after some literary reunion—“we had good talk to-night.” “Yes, sir,” returned the admiring disciple, “you tossed and gored several persons.” A pleasant affair, truly, one of those conversations on philosophy and polite literature must have been in the Johnsonian times. Poor Goldsmith was disposed to be light, discursive, and unaffected in genial society—or if affected at all, it was in the desire to contrast his own open pleasantry with the dread gravity of Johnson, and those who stood in awe of him. Oliver was out of his element, in fact, among the generality of those with whom he came into contact at the club and elsewhere. He should have lived in the days of the loud-laughing Jerrold, and Hunt, the old boy at all times, and the pun-elaborating Lamb; he should have known Moore, the gayest of wits, and Maginn, who also stammered forth “his logic and his wisdom and his wit.” The simplicity of his disposition, and the Irish impulses of his nature, led him to desire a hearty enjoyment of his social hours in the midst of his friends. He would have quips and cranks, and a spice of that happy frivolity which comes as easy to the finest geniuses as their more dignified inspirations. But such he was not to have at the Literary Club, where Jupiter-Johnson took the chair—or rather the field, and “glowering frae him,” kept himself perfectly ready to “toss and gore,” as usual.

“While all the clubbists trembled at his nod.”

A great deal of pedantry and paradox was mixed up with the literature of Goldsmith’s time; men’s minds were apt to be as stiff as their costumes, and authors were considered to have a certain professional dignity to support.

Oliver, as we have said, was out of his element in the midst of such circumstances; he did not admire the gravity which is too often a mysterious carriage of the body to cover the defects of the mind, but was disposed in company

“To rattle on exactly as he’d talk

To any body in a ride or walk.”

In mixed society he seemed very unequal. He very often sat silent, and the shyness of his disposition was thought to be an affectation of dignity. But when the occasion grew more festive, as at after-dinner times, and the poet’s temperament had received the stimulus of aliment and wine, he would overflow with pleasant paradoxes, jests and all sorts of unguarded hilarity, believing that those about him who were aware of the intrinsic wit and worth of his intellect, would justify him against any thought of ridicule or disparagement. In such moods, and before the most fastidious wits of the day, he would come out intrepidly with—“When I used to lodge among the beggars in Axe Lane.” The effect of this on his hearers (we believe it was spoken at one of Sir Joshua Reynold’s dinners) was something like that produced on the discomposed sovereigns sitting round the table at Tilsit, or Erfurth—we forget which—by Napoleon’s reminiscence, beginning—“When I was a lieutenant in the regiment of La Fere!” These sayings seem to show a kindred consciousness of something beyond the conventions of rank and name. Goldsmith was not to be laughed at for that sally—which Socrates or Zeno would have enjoyed very much. But the cankered and fastidious Walpole, who was present on some such occasion, and found the Irishman very blunt in his mode of argument, and very unconcerned at the rank or pretensions of Walpole himself, could not tolerate such franknesses, and with his usual affectation of point, called Oliver “an inspired idiot;” just as Chesterfield had called Johnson “a respectable Hottentot”—but indeed with greater justice; for the moralist’s manners at table, particularly his modes of eating, were rather savage.

Goldsmith was certainly apt to blunder. But it was when in the simple frankness of his nature he thought he was among friends and good fellows in such moods and moments. He put his trust in those whose conventionalities he would offend, and who must have felt the inferiority of their own powers when in contact with his. Disraeli, the elder, has made some just remarks on the wrong to which such men expose themselves very often in society. He says: “One peculiar trait in the conversation of men of genius which has often injured them when listeners are not acquainted with the men—are certain sports of a vacant mind; a sudden impulse to throw out opinions and take views of things in some humor of the moment. Extravagant paradoxes and false opinions are caught up by the humblest prosers: and the Philistines are thus enabled to triumph over the strong and gifted man, because in an hour of confidence and the abandonment of his mind, he laid his head in their lap and taught them how he might be shorn of his strength.” All this is extremely applicable to the case of Oliver Goldsmith.

Almost all the stories told of him to show his absurdity or jealousy are palpably false and must be looked on as failures. Northcote very gravely set down how the doctor was offended, when on his route to Paris, accompanied by Mrs. Horneck and her daughters, to find the young ladies receive more notice and admiration than he himself at a French hotel. This was a stupid misconception, to say the least of it—as Miss Horneck afterward stated, wondering at the same time how such could ever have arisen from the fact. Goldsmith, who was always ready to laugh at himself, for the pleasantry of the thing, in any of his playful moods, seeing his companions pleased by the admiration they excited, and wishing to amuse them, said, with an affectation of wounded self-love, that doubtless produced the effect he intended—“Very well, ladies; you may find somebody else in vogue, very shortly, as well as yourselves.” Such sallies furnish a key to most of those things cited to the ridicule of Goldsmith. Another story is told by Col. O’Moore. Burke and O’Moore going to the club to dine, saw Oliver among others looking at some foreign women in a balcony in Leicester Square. Arrived at the club, Burke affected to be offended with Goldsmith and being questioned, said he could hardly think of being friendly with a man who could say what the doctor had just uttered in the public street. Goldsmith eagerly asking to know what it was, was told he expressed surprise that the crowd should look at these women, while he, a man of genius, was passing by!

“Surely, I did not say so,” says Oliver.

“How should I know it then?” replies Burke.

“True,” admits Goldsmith, “I thought, indeed, something of the kind; but I did not think I uttered it.”

All this is merely clumsy and incredible—just the sort of anecdote for the colonel to tell. Just as preposterous was the story of Goldsmith asking Gibbon, who came into his room while he was writing the History of Greece, “What king was that who gave Alexander so much trouble in India?” and on being informed it was Montezuma, writing it down at once! Then, there is Beauclerc’s funny thing—how Goldsmith, being once conversing with Lord Shelburne (termed “Malagrida” by some political opponent,) told his lordship he wondered they called him Malagrida, for Malagrida was an honest man! Such were the false and stupid reminiscences that went to compose the memory of poor Goldsmith—a man of the finest perceptions and most excellent judgment.

Exaggerated stories are also told of his love of dress and his personal vanity in other matters. His peach-colored coat is thought to be a good jest. It is indeed true, that he was somewhat expensive in dress; but a man who frequented the politest society of the time was obliged to pay attention to his wardrobe. And if his taste in the matter of coats and cocked-hats was not so true as it ever was in literary matters, it may be stated that Aristotle also underwent the rebuke of Plato for his foppishness. A great deal is made of the fact that Goldsmith once attempted to leap from the bank to a little island in a pond, at Versailles, and fell into the water. This is all natural enough, if we refer it to his usual playfulness and the remembrance of the active habits of his youth. It amounts to no more than the gravest man may have to answer for, if all his doings were chronicled. Johnson, when quite an old man, used to make such heavy attempts to be lively. Mrs. Thrale (we believe) says that one day, approaching her house, the philosopher flung himself in sport over a gate that lay in his way, and was very much elated by his own agility.

With all his dignity and philosophy Johnson felt a little jealous of Goldsmith, at times, and used to express disparaging opinions of him. He said—“His genius is great, but his knowledge is small. As they say of a generous man—it is a pity he is not rich; so we may say of Goldsmith—it is a pity he is not knowing.” He also said no one was more foolish than Goldsmith when he had not a pen in his hand, or wiser when he had, thus parodying the saying applied to Charles the Second—

“Who never said a foolish thing,

And never did a wise one.”

In expressing these opinions, Dr. Johnson seems to forget what he himself has elsewhere said, very justly—to the effect that a great deal of the truth and correctness of a sentiment is sacrificed to the point of it. He also says, amusingly enough—“Goldsmith should not be always attempting to shine in conversation,” (certainly not—this would be a sort of contumacy in Johnson’s presence!) “he has not temper for it.” (Johnson’s own was of such a meek, philosophic stamp!) Even when the dignity of Goldsmith’s doings was more questionable than that of his sayings or writings, the doctor could not help entertaining some little pique. When Oliver had chastised Evans, the publisher, for printing some offensive observations, Johnson remarked to his fidus Achates: “Why, sir, this is the first time he has beaten; he may have been beaten before. This is a new pleasure to him.” He alluded to a white-bait dinner at Blackwall, where Goldsmith, denouncing obscene novels and the indelicacies of Tristram Shandy, created a warm argument among the feasters, whence they fell into personalities; then into an uproar, and thence to fisticuffs, in the midst of which, it is said, Oliver got a smart share of what was going—before they broke up this feast of reason—pretty fairly expressed by the Irish participles, bait, beating, beaten! The affair was very laughable, to be sure. But Johnson should have remembered that he himself had knocked his own publisher down—Osborne. He should have commented more leniently on poor Goldie. The old feuds between authors and publishers were as lively in those times as they were before or have been since. Goldsmith wrote a very dignified public letter, to justify the beating, and showed that there were certain rascalities which called for the imposition of violent hands upon them, and that the punishment of them was sanctioned by the sense of society, though against the letter of the law. But, as we were saying, Johnson permitted himself on many occasions to disparage Goldsmith. Still, in the main, he has stood up strongly for the fame of his friend—thereby showing that such opinions as the foregoing were not very just or generous. When his conscience got the better of his occasional feelings, as was usually the case—for his nature was intrinsically good (he “had nothing of the bear but the skin,” as Goldsmith used to say,) he would do Oliver justice. In this, to be sure, he had a consoling sense of the superiority and patronage which belong to such a championship; and, in maintaining the cause of his friend, he could argue vigorously for himself—for, their fortunes were very much alike. He could express his own feelings of scorn for the conventions or misconceptions of society, in defending the character of a man of genius. Be this as it may, he has left on record sentiments highly honorable to himself as well as to Goldsmith; and has had some of them graven in his epitaph on the poet, dramatist and historian

“Who ran

Through each mode of the pen and was master of all.”

Goldsmith, in society, was not the oddity he is represented to be by Boswell, Walpole and the others. There is no such contradictory monster as they would have us think him. The man who was “inspired” with such true genius—who drew the Vicar of Wakefield—could not have been the “idiot” that the artificial Walpole would depict him. Nor could any man who “wrote like an angel” ever come to “talk like poor Poll,” as Garrick says with such antithetical fallacy. The fact was, Oliver’s broad Westmeath accent, his stammering mode of speaking, and the careless impulses of his thoroughly Irish temperament gave his manners a strange, it may be said an intolerable originality, in an age of forms and observances in literature and life. It was only in a stiff, artificial age, like that in which his lot was cast, that Goldsmith would have been so rudely treated and ridiculed. It is felt that it was not Julian but the polished Antiochans which were ridiculous. We also know that though they laughed at Socrates he was not laughed at, as he himself expresses it. Absurdity was the cant word of Goldsmith’s day for the good-nature, generosity, originality and independence which he brought with him, along with that Shibboleth of his from the simple and honorable home of his childhood, and which he never lost in all the mazes and trials of the great metropolis.

His absurdities, as they termed them, did not, after all, prevent Goldsmith from being well received in the best society of London—a very strong proof, in itself, that the doctor was as much a gentleman in demeanor as he was by his birth and education, and could mingle with the polite and the fashionable on very easy terms and without any violence to his habits. His sayings in company—such as have been remembered—are full of point and pleasantry, and show that he could command, even with his shy utterance, much of the happy spirit of his written style. He was once explaining to a friend, in Johnson’s presence, that in fables where inferior creatures are interlocutors, these should be made to speak in character—that animals on land, for instance, should converse differently from little fishes. This idea, which is, after all, only that which Shakspeare has so beautifully realized, with a difference, in his elves of a Midsummer Night’s Dream, his Caliban and his Ariel, set Johnson a-chuckling at its childishness, which Goldsmith perceiving, he retorted very happily—laughing, too—“You may laugh, doctor, but if you had to make little fishes speak, they would talk like whales!” A palpable hit at the sesquipedalian moralist.

If we come to consider Goldsmith’s influence upon the literary character of his age, we will probably agree that it was second to that of no other author. Indeed, it must be considered superior to that of him who was supposed to sway most authoritatively the world of letters. Doctor Johnson’s style, to be sure, was very impressive, and created a host of imitators—the most remarkable of whom was Gibbon, who surpassed his model in a certain measured splendor of rhetoric—which is, nevertheless, very wearisome at times. But Goldsmith’s many modes of a very simple and lucid style produced then, and since, a more permanent effect. He wrote the best poem, the best comedy, the best novel, and the best history—at least, the best written history of the day. Johnson preferred his historic manner to that of Hume or Robertson. Though Goldsmith’s literature had not the marked effect of Doctor Johnson’s grand Latin idiom; yet being more varied, it reached the wider popularity, such as time has confirmed and increased. Goldsmith kept to the ancient ways of the vernacular, trod by Addison, Swift, Hume, etc.; and contributed not a little to neutralize the Johnsonian mode—which, after all, was recognized to be a corrupt rhetoric, and a weakening of the genius of the Anglo-Saxon tongue. Goldsmith’s, “racy of the soil,” was secured against fluctuations of taste, and the charm of it is as fresh to-day as it was eighty years ago. His comedies abolished the mawkish sentimentality which—derived partly from the Richardson school—dulled the spirit of the stage, and asserted, very happily, the old comic claim of setting audiences in a roar. The change was heartily welcomed; the Londoners crowded to the comedy to be merry, and a respected household tradition, now especially recalled for the sake of the dear old narrator of it, has more than once informed us how George the Third, his fresh-colored English face, full of merriment, and the plain, little cock-nosed Charlotte by his side, in the royal box, both joined in the hilarity of the audience during one of the first performances of “She Stoops to Conquer,” at Covent Garden Theatre; but, at the story of “Old Grouse in the Gun-room,” where everybody laughed on the stage, his majesty fairly chimed in with Mr. Hardcastle, and laughed as loud as any one in the house. Thus, in the words of Mr. Colman—

“Thus, cheered, at length, by Pleasantry’s bright ray,

Nature and mirth resumed their legal sway,

And Goldsmith’s genius basked in open day.”

Goldsmith’s prose is the sweetest and most harmonious in the language. His narrative and historical manner is easy and expressive—more so than Hume’s. And here, we may remark how odd it was to see a pair of provincials—an Irishman and a Scotchman, each with the brogue or the burr upon his tongue, and in his manner—vindicating the native purity of the Anglo-Saxon against the subversive genius of two of the foremost English writers—Johnson and Gibbon—and finally overcoming them on their own ground. Goldsmith, in short, as Johnson said very well, ornamented whatever he touched, and some of the dryest disquisitions become in his hands as interesting as a Persian tale. An honor of another kind belongs to Goldsmith.

Among the authors of England none did more than himself to support the dignity and independence of British authorship, the honor of which was so sadly smirched by the dedications of Dryden and Locke, as well as by others before and after them. Oliver instead of thinking of the high nobility, set a fine example to all writers—he dedicated “She Stoops to Conquer,” to Doctor Johnson; “The Deserted Village” to his other friend, Reynolds; and “The Traveler”—his first poem—to his brother, all exhibiting the affectionate manliness of his disposition. And with reference to his brother, we have a trait of Goldsmith’s character which is worth the Vicar of Wakefield. He was once invited to call on the Duke of Northumberland, when that nobleman was going to Ireland, as Lord Lieutenant. Sir John Hawkins, who was leaving the duke’s presence as Oliver was going in, tells the story with indignant reprobation of the poet’s fatal absurdity. His grace having complimented Goldsmith on his writings (he had just written Edwin and Angelina to amuse the duchess), said he was going to Ireland, and would be happy to promote the doctor’s interests in any way, etc. Whereupon the doctor told the duke that the publishers were treating him pretty well just then; but that he had a poor brother in Ireland, a curate on forty pounds a year, with a large family, and begged his grace to remember him, etc. “In this way,” groans Sir John Hawkins, “did Goldsmith dispose of his chance of patronage and fortune.”

As a poet, Goldsmith at once took the rank which posterity has almost unanimously confirmed. The finest critics in the language have honored the claims of the poet of Auburn. Lord Byron says, “where is the poetry of which one half is good? Is it Milton’s? Is it Dryden’s; or any one’s except Pope’s and Goldsmith’s, of which all is good?” There is no need at this time of day, to speak of the nature, pathos and elegance of Goldsmith’s muse. In stateliness he sometimes approaches Dryden; as in those noble verses which Johnson could not read without a tremor and tears of pride:—

“Stern o’er each bosom reason holds her state,

With daring aims, irregularly great:

Pride in their port, defiance in their eye,

I see the lords of human kind pass by.”

But there is one respect in which we think his poetry has not been appreciated as it ought.

The great change which has taken place in poetry from the classic rhythmus and Cæsural canons of Pope’s school, to the nature and fresher phraseology of our modern period has been commonly dated from the rise of Wordsworth and Coleridge—sometimes traced to the effect of Bishop Percy’s ballads. There is generally an incorrectness in any attempt to fix mutations of taste and fashions of style down to chronology. Instead of thinking the old poetic spirit of England was revived at the close of the eighteenth century, we believe it had not died at all; but had lived on, in exile, while a foreign influence bore sway—as the line of Edgar Atheling lived long ago; destined, however, in the fullness of time to be restored to its ancient supremacy. Bishop Percy’s ballads were a manifestation of that spirit, not a cause of it—though he might not have known it—a necessary reaction of the national mind. At the time of their appearance Goldsmith’s poetry was exhibiting the first tokens of the coming change. The theme of it was human nature, with its common feelings, hopes, and sufferings; and pouring the warmth, pathos and earnestness of his own heart into it, he rendered it attractive and popular. His verse had all the vernacular ease and grace of his prose, with a polish only inferior to Pope’s. In his original hands the heroic couplet was not “the clock-work tintinnabulum of rhyme” beaten by the Cawthornes, Darwins, and Hayleys of the day. In his prose criticisms he wrote against the cumbrous use of epithets, and discarded it in his own verse. He amused himself occasionally among his friends, by reciting the lines of several popular authors, with a dissyllable omitted. He would read the opening of Gray’s Elegy in this way:

The curfew tolls the knell of day,

The lowing herd winds o’er the lea:

The ploughman homeward plods his way

And leaves the world to gloom and me.

In this respect he must have been rather hard on Johnson, whose poetry in many respects is “the hubbub of words,” which Wordsworth so scornfully terms some of it. The first couplet of the doctor’s great satire has one superfluous line—

Let observation, with extended view,

Survey mankind from China to Peru—

The poem would have started better from “Survey.”

Johnson, indeed, used to ridicule the taste that came up with the Percy Ballads. They had “a false gallop of verses,” in his opinion, and he said he could go on making such stanzas for an hour together, thus:

As with my hat upon my head,

I walked along the Strand,

There I met another man

With his hat in his hand.

But in this, as in a great many other matters of literature, morals, and taste, Johnson did not prove himself an infallible doctor. Goldsmith’s taste, of a genuine vates, led him at once to appreciate the simple lyrics of Percy’s collection; and his charming ballad of the Hermit shows how he felt the fresh spirit of them. This excellent poem was written for the Countess of Northumberland. And here we may remark that three of the most attractive modern English poems were composed especially for ladies of high rank—or at their suggestion:—The Lay of the Last Minstrel, at the wish of Lady Anna Scott, daughter of the Duke of Buccleuch; The Sofa, for Lady Hesketh; and Goldsmith’s Ballad for the Countess.

Goldsmith certainly took the initiative in the change which was followed and aided by “the manly and idiomatic simplicity of Cowper”—before Wordsworth and Coleridge were heard of. He effected his share of the reform quietly; he wrote no doctrinal prefaces, but went and did what he meant. In teaching and practicing a new mode, he did not make the noise of a reformer. He was rather more favorable to the style of Dryden and Pope than to some of the ballad enthusiasts that talked and wrote in extremes. He reformed without any affectation of apostleship in the matter of words and syllables—was no literary red-republican. Thirty or forty years later Wordsworth cried, Heureka! as if something were then first done or found. He announced his theories in long didactic prefaces, laid down doctrines which the genius of Goldsmith and Cowper had already suggested or acted on, and fell into extravagancies which they never dreamed of—exhibiting his muse in a very sans culotte condition; the term (having a masculine reference) is somewhat inapplicable—or should be in a well-regulated state of society—though Mrs. Bloomer is of a contrary opinion. But, Wordsworth, in his love of unadorned Nature, used, in fact, to pull off her garments, along with her ornaments, as if he thought, with those other honest fanatics, the early Quakers, that a state of nudity was a state of grace! Coleridge and Southey were his disciples, but not such mighty prosers; and Coleridge was a far superior spirit to the two others, in all subtle thought and lofty expression, though some of Wordsworth’s lines are truly fine. As for Southey, we are disposed to justify Lord Byron in his contempt of the man and his poetry. He was of an overweening and splenetic nature; there was nothing in his character to neutralize the impression made by the “Vision of Judgment” and “Don Juan” respecting him. With regard to Oliver Goldsmith, Southey is convicted of a willful injustice to the memory of a more genuine poet and better man than himself. In his Life of Cowper, speaking of the poets that came after Pope, he never once alludes to the author of The Deserted Village! He says “the school of Pope was gradually losing its influence,” in proof of which, “almost every poem of any considerable length which obtained any celebrity, during the half century between Pope and Cowper, was writ in blank verse. With the single exception of Falconer’s Shipwreck, it would be in vain to look for any rhymed poem of that age, and of equal extent, which is held in equal estimation with the works of Young, Thompson, Glover, Somerville, Dyer, Akenside and Armstrong.” We all know that one cause, at least, of this studied omission of Goldsmith’s name, was Byron’s favorable opinion of his poetry. This deliberate wrong to the memory of a great departed poet, because of a vehement hatred of a living one, shows Southey’s disposition to be as ungenerous, we may say as contemptible, as his hexameters are coldly manufactured, and surely fated to be dry upon the popular palate to the end of time. He affects to rank Oliver among the followers of Pope and the imitators of his style. But there is as little resemblance between Pope’s terse and splendid rhetoric, and the graphic simplicity and nature of Goldsmith’s poetry, as between the blank verse of Wordsworth or Southey and the noble rhythmus of Paradise Lost. Goldsmith scorned as much to fashion his verse after the mode of Pope as he did to detract from the great merit of that author. He cultivated the elegance and rhyming periods of the classic school, and so identified these with his own original spirit, that he recommended anew what, in themselves, are genuine graces of English poetry. They truly belong to the genius of it—as his fine taste must have taught him—and must continue to do so, in spite of all the sprawling Thalaba hexameters of Southey. The heroic rhyming couplet is capable of as much force, flexibility, and beauty, as any other form of English verse, and is never monotonous in original hands—whether of Chaucer, Dryden, Crabbe, or Keats. Southey, in thus pretending to shut his eyes to the claims of the author of The Traveler, must have still felt (for he was not without a critical sense of the genuine in the Anglo-Saxon) that the great mass of his own poetry, so like a hortus siccus, with its elaborated fancies and exotic imagery, must mainly lie upon the shelves of libraries, while Goldsmith’s is fated to be found upon all book-stalls, and to go about to the households and hearts of the people—to be printed in innumerable editions, ornamented with costly engravings, and be found in all parts of the world where the English language is spoken—read by yet unborn generations on the banks of the Burrampooter, the Mississippi, or the Swan River, as freshly and as feelingly as it was, at first, and still continues to be, on those of the Thames and the Tweed and the Shannon. And so it is; and thus, as the clown in Twelfth Night says, “does the whirligig of time bring in his revenges.” Somebody, we forget who, says the praise of the people is a finer thing than the homage of the critics: and, in this way, the ghost of Oliver must be satisfied to see how posterity vindicates him against the early and the latter detractors. He was a true English poet with an Irish heart; and Sir Joshua Reynolds evinced the genuine prescience of genius (though the world said it was only friendship or flattery) when he gave the ugly face of Oliver that classic tournure which should best suit his destined rank in the peerage of Parnassus.

Goldsmith had left his mark upon the literature of his age, and plainly indicated the character of that which was to come, when he quitted his painful desk forever, in 1774, being then about forty-five years old. At that age Cowper was still unmentioned in the world of letters, but was preparing to carry out the salutary innovations which the other had begun. Goldsmith died £2000 in debt. The booksellers had advanced him money for works to be written. Everybody trusted him. “Was ever poet so trusted before?” says Dr. Johnson. Burke wept when he heard Oliver was dead. Such tears were as eloquent as Johnson’s epitaph. The eyes of the latter were moistened, too; and in a sonorous Greek tetrastich, he called on those who cared for Nature, for the charms of song, or the deeds of ancient days, to weep for the historian, the naturalist, and the poet. Poor Goldie died when he had a chance of liberating himself, in another way, from the task-work of publishers. “Every year he lived,” says Dr. Johnson, “he would have deserved Westminster Abbey more and more.” But Goldsmith’s true Westminster Abbey is the volitare per ora and the keeping of his honest memory by the oi polloi, at their firesides, along with the lares—when, as Macaulay would say, a traveler from the empire of Van Diemans Land may probably be sketching the ruins of that British Santa Croce from a broken arch of London Bridge:—

Nothing to them the sculptor’s art,

The funeral columns, wreaths or urns;

as Halleck so well says respecting Robert Burns, in one of the finest of his lyrics.

MONA LISA.

———

BY MRS. MARY G. HORSFORD.

———

Leonardo de Vinci is said to have been four years employed upon the portrait of Mona Lisa, a fair Florentine, without being able, after all, to come up to the idea of her beauty.

Artist! lay the brush aside,

Twilight gathers chill and gray;

Turn the picture to the wall—

Thou hast wrought in vain to-day.

Thrice twelve months have hastened by

Since thy canvas first grew bright

With that brow’s bewitching beauty,

And that dark eye’s melting light.

Yet the early sunbeam shineth

On thy tireless labors yet,

And the portrait stands before thee,

Till the evening sun has set.

Faultless is the robe that falleth

Round that form of matchless grace;

Faultless is the softened outline

Of the fair and oval face.

Thou hast caught the wondrous beauty

Of the round cheek’s roseate hue;

And the full red lips are smiling,

As this morn they smiled on you.

To that lady thou hast given

Immortality below,

Wherefore, then, with moody glances

Dost thou from thy labor go?

From the living face of beauty

Beams the soul’s expressive ray,

And, with all thy god-like genius,

This thou never canst portray!

Of the countless throng around me,

Each hath labors like to thine;

Each, methinks, some Mona Lisa

In his spirit’s inmost shrine.

Visions haunt us from our childhood

Of a love so pure, so true,

Seraphs unawares might envy

As their white wings fan the Blue;

Visions that elude forever,

As the silent years depart,

Some unhappy ones and weary—

Mona Lisas of the heart!

Dreams of a divine completeness

That we struggle to attain,

’Mid the doubts and toils harassing

Of our earthly life in vain;

Poet fancies we endeavor

To imprint upon the scroll,

Yet for worded utterance failing—

Mona Lisas of the soul!

TO A CANARY BIRD.

———

BY WILLIAM GIBSON, U. S. NAVY.

———

Sweet little faery bird,

Gentle Canary bird,

Beats not thy tiny breast with one regret?

Is it enough for thee

Ever, as now, to be

Caged as a prisoner, kissed as a pet?

Gay is thy golden wing,

Careless thy caroling,

Thou art as happy as happy can be;

Singing so merrily,

Hast thou no memory

Of thy lost native isle o’er the sea?

Not the Hesperides,

Floating on fabled seas,

Nothing in Nature, and nothing in song,

Match with the magic smile,

Which, from thine own sweet isle,

Hushes the heaving wave all the year long.

Summer and youthful Spring,

Blooming and blossoming,

Hand-in-hand, sister-like, stray thro’ the clime;

There thou wert born, amid

Fruits colored like thee, hid

In the green groves of the orange and lime.

Then was the silver lute

Of the young maiden mute,

When, from the shade of her own cottage-eaves,

Rang first thy joyous trill,

While, with a gentle thrill,

Tho’ the breeze stirred them not, shivered the leaves.

Thou, like a spirit, come

From thy far island-home,

Seemest of spring-time and sunshine the voice.

Light-hearted is thy lay,

As, on the lemon spray,

Love, little singing bird, made thee rejoice.

For, from thy lady’s lip,

Oft is it thine to sip

Sweetness which dwells not in fruit or in flower;

And when her shaded eye

Rests on thee pensively,

Moonlight was ne’er so soft silv’ring thy bower.

Likest to thee is Love,

Never it cares to rove,

When its wild winglets feel Beauty’s control.

Would, little bird, that I

Might to thine island fly,

All, all alone with the girl of my soul!

There should’st thou sing to us,

Tender and tremulous,

Our hearts happy with love unexpressed.

Sweet little faery bird,

Gentle Canary bird,

How would’st thou be by that dear girl caressed.

A LIFE OF VICISSITUDES.

———

BY G. P. R. JAMES, ESQ.

———

[Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1852, by George Payne Rainsford James, in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States for the District of Massachusetts.]

(Continued from page 279.)

A STRUGGLE WITH THE WORLD.

A period of wandering and of danger, of flitting from place to place, and land to land, of difficulties and distresses, of almost daily peril, of constant uncertainty as to the future, would seem to furnish matter enough for memory; but yet the period immediately succeeding my separation from Father Bonneville, is very dim and obscure to remembrance. I staid so short a time in any place, one event trod so fast upon the heels of another, that neither scene nor event had time to fix itself firmly in memory, before, like the grass upon a public pathway, it was trodden down by passing feet.

At this time, I could speak three languages with almost equal facility: English, French, and German; but English perhaps, I understood most thoroughly—at all events, I know, I generally thought in that language. This facility was of very great advantage to me, and I notice it on that account, as I could pass wherever those tongues were spoken for a native of the country. It is true, I had not soon occasion to see France again; but I wandered through many parts of Switzerland, where French was in common use.

The terrible dissensions and frightful bloodshed that were going on in that once fair and peaceful land, soon drove me forth, however, though I anxiously continued my inquiries for Father Bonneville, as long as there seemed a chance of success. My steps were then turned toward the North of Germany, without object; and more directed by accidental circumstances, than by any predetermination of my own, I walked on foot the whole way; for the hundred louis afforded but small means, and I had learned the necessity, and the mode of economy. Fifty of those hundred louis I put by with the resolution never to touch them except in the last extremity; and no one can tell the amount of distress and privation I submitted to, rather than violate that resolution. Every thing I could part with, I disposed of before I set out: my beloved rifle amongst the rest. I had a good many little trinkets, which I had purchased in the foolish vanity of youth, but I got rid of them all, and only retained my watch, with a seal bearing a coat of arms attached to it, (which seal I had possessed as long as I could remember any thing) and the ring and little gold chain which had been given to me by Madame de Salins. My clothes were all compressed into a knapsack, and in my hunter’s garb, with thick, coarse shoes upon my feet, I plodded on my weary way, over mountain and moor, through field and forest, in the town and in the country, seeking wherever opportunity seemed to present itself, for some employment, but finding none. All I could offer to do was to teach, and the whole of Europe was so overloaded with persons in the same situation, who had been driven forth from France by the Revolution, that it was hardly possible to find any profitable occupation of that kind.

Often, often at peasant’s hut, or farmer’s house, I have begged a morsel of black bread, and a draught of water. Perhaps this was not very right, when I had actually money in my pocket, but yet it is a common custom in that country, and almost every artisan, before he becomes a master in his trade, spends some years in what is called fechting or in other words, begging his way from place to place. The assistance was almost always readily given, and sometimes the charity of woman would add a drink of milk, or a few kreutzers.

I was within sight of the town of Hamburgh before any chance of occupation presented itself, and then it came about in rather a singular manner. I was walking on at a quick pace, at about three miles from the city, on the same side of the Elbe, when I saw from a little garden gate, close by a small summer-house, an elderly gentleman come forth, of somewhat peculiar appearance. He was exceedingly thin, brisk and active-looking, with powdered hair and a thick queue, an enormous white cravat, a vast frill, and a bluish-gray cloak, somewhat threadbare. There was a keen, sharp look about his eyes and mouth, which was not very promising, and I walked on without taking much notion of him. His pace, however, was as fast as my own, and we kept nearly side by side for about half-a-mile, without speaking, till we came upon a long wooden bridge, which every one who has been in Hamburgh must recollect. He had eyed me, I perceived, with great attention, and at length he burst forth.

“Well, young man,” he said, “I think you might have given me good time of day, at least.”

“I do not know you,” I answered, “and do not like to take liberties with strangers.”

“Mighty modest,” rejoined he. “What’s your trade?”

I explained to him, that I was seeking employment as a teacher, having been driven out of my own country by Revolution. That seemed to touch him; for he had a great abhorrence of Revolutions, and he asked me what I could teach.

I told him that I was competent to give instruction in Latin, Greek, Mathematics, French, English and German.

“Hundert tausand!” he exclaimed, “the lad is an Encyclopædia. Let us see what you can do;” and immediately he poured forth a passage of Euripides, with which I was quite familiar. I rendered it at once into German, and he then made me give it him in French, which I did as well as I could, in that meagre tongue. He rubbed his hands all the time, saying—“Ha—ha.” He spoke to me in English, too, such as it was, and though his pronunciation would have made a dry salmon laugh, yet I found that he had a very thorough acquaintance with all the works of the best authors of England. The conversation soon became interesting to us both, and we went on chatting and discussing till we reached the gates of the town. There he suddenly paused, and looking at me from head to foot, exclaimed—

“So you want employment—you are poor, I dare say—very poor?”

I replied, that it was hardly possible to be poorer.

“Well, then, you must not lodge in dear inns,” he said.

I told him I did not know where to lodge, as I was a stranger in the town.

“I’ll tell you,” he answered, “I’ll tell you. You must lodge in the lower town—in the Hardt-Gasse—number five—with Widow Steinberger.” He repeated the direction over three times, and then added—“She should board you for two dollars a week—don’t give her more. Everybody asks too much, in expectation of being beaten down—a bad system, but universal.”

All this time he had been continually turning himself round upon his right leg, between each two or three words, as if intending to go away, and I perceived no inclination upon his part to help me to employment; but when he came to the end of his directions, he drew out a little note-book, wrote something in it with his usual rapidity, tore out the leaf, and gave it to me saying—

“Come to see me—come to see me. I’ll think of what can be done. We’ll find you employment, Polyglot,” and away he turned and left me. I then, with better hope than I had hitherto had, inquired my way to the street which he had indicated, without having curiosity enough to look at any thing but his name, which I found to be “Herman Haas.” I was a long time in finding the Hardt-Gasse, and before I did so, I plunged into many a dark and gloomy street of tall, old houses, and warehouses. At length, the end of a little lane was pointed out to me, the appearance of which was more in harmony with the state of my finances, than my desires. But I found, on walking up it, that the houses must, at one time, have been of some importance, judging by the size of the doors, and the ornaments which clustered round them. At number five, I stopped; and finding neither knocker or bell, opened the door and went in.

“Who’s there?” screamed a voice from the right, and entering a large, dim, old-fashioned room, I found myself in the presence of a stately dame, engaged in the dignified occupation of cooking, who instantly demanded what I wanted. I found that this was no other than Madame Steinberger, herself, but before she would enter into any negociations in regard to boarding and lodging me, she insisted upon knowing who had sent me there. When I showed her the paper, however, she exclaimed—“Professor Haas! Oh! that is another matter;” and our arrangements were soon effected. As the professor had anticipated, she asked more at first than she was inclined to take, but his dictum was all powerful with her, and I was soon installed in a comfortable little room, with the advantage of a large sitting-room besides, when I chose to use it, for which accommodation, with three meals in the day, I was to pay two dollars a week.

On the following morning, at the hour which my landlady told me would be most convenient, I went to call upon the professor, whom I found in his study; though how he contrived to study at all, I cannot make out; for he was in a state of continual movement—the most excitable German I ever saw. During the greater part of the time he was talking to me, he was taking down one book and putting up another, turning over papers upon the table, dipping a pen in the ink and wiping it again, with other operations to carry off his superfluous activity. He must have been quiet at some time; for he certainly was a very learned man; but I never could discover when it was. At length, after having asked a great number of questions, he said—“I have got one pupil for you, to make a beginning—Come, I’ll show her to you;” and leading me into another room, on the same floor, he presented me to a young lady, who sat there embroidering, as his daughter. “There,” he said, “teach her English, and any thing else you can. I have no time—she is a good girl, but slow.”

The young lady looked up in his face with a calm, placid smile, saying, “If there were two such quick people as you in the house, my father, they would always be running against each other.”

“True,” replied the old man, “true, and philosophical. Nature loves contrasts as well as harmonies. Opposing forces counteract each other. You, my Louise, are my vis inertiæ. Without you I should get on too fast. But come, young gentleman—what is your name?”

“Louis de Lacy,” I replied.

“I like that, I like that,” answered the old man “The De, speaks blood and good political principles—but come—we will settle the terms in my own room, and will try to get you something more to do by and bye.”

I found the good professor had as accurate a knowledge of making a bargain, as he had of Greek or Latin. He calculated the worth of my services to a pfennig, and, as I found afterward, if I had made the slightest opposition, would have beaten me down still lower; for he had a pleasure in such sort of triumphs. I let him arrange it all his own way, however, and left to his own generosity, he probably added a little to the sum which he had intended to give. It was agreed that I was to teach his daughter two hours during the day, and as soon as all this was settled, he pushed me by the shoulders toward the door, saying, “There, go, begin at once. You have three hours before dinner. I must go to my recitations.”

I found the way back to the room where Louise Haas was seated, and where I passed two hours of every day, for nearly nine months, and generally the greater part of every Sunday. She was a pretty creature, with small, well-shaped features, a very graceful form, though plump and rounded, and a bright, clear complexion, which varied a good deal under different emotions. Her mother had died, I found, some four or five years before, of that pest of northern countries, consumption. There was nobody in the house but herself, her father, and two women servants: hardly any society was admitted within the doors, but grave old professors, with long hair, not very well combed; and thus tutor and pupil, like Abelard and Heloise, were left alone together for many an hour—I having her father’s commands to teach her English, and any thing else I could. Father Bonneville’s good lessons, however, some knowledge of the world, and many hard experiences, together with other feelings, which I cannot well describe, prevented me from even thinking of taking any unfair advantage of my situation. It was natural, however, that in such circumstances, young acquaintance should speedily ripen into intimacy, and intimacy into friendship. Nay, it was not unnatural that little marks of kindness and tenderness should pass between us; for though very calm and gentle, she was of a loving and caressing disposition. I found her far from dull—a very apt scholar; but sometimes there were things she could not comprehend, and then she would look smiling in my face, and ask if she was not very stupid, and let her hand drop into mine and rest there, as a messenger sent to beseech forbearance.

We were both very young; she not more than eighteen, and I about twenty, and strange new feelings began to come over my heart toward her. I will not even now say that it was love; and then, I would not inquire what it was, at all. It was a tenderness—a feeling of gentle, quiet affection—a fondness for her society—a pleasure in seeing those soft eyes, look into mine, and a gratitude for the kindness she ever showed, and took every opportunity of showing. What she felt, I learned afterward; but let me turn once more to the course of my life in Hamburgh.

By the kind offices of the good old professor, I obtained several other pupils, and I had the great happiness of finding my income exceed my expenditure. I threw off my traveling garb; I brought out from my knapsack the clothing which I had so carefully saved: I gained admittance into some of the society of the town, and though I do not think I was ever very vain, whatever vanity I had, received some encouragement. But my favorite resort was still the professor’s house. He and his daughter were my first friends in the city, and I became more and more intimate with him every day. He was pleased with the progress his daughter made, and he was also pleased with the little assistance which I gave him, from time to time, in different works he was compiling. While I wrote for him, or looked out passages for him, he could fidget about the room at his case, and get into every corner of it in five minutes. At the end of a month, I had a general invitation to spend my evenings there whenever I pleased—and I did please very often. Then, after a while, I was sent with Louise to church; for she went regularly, although I can’t say that the professor ever wore out the steps of any religious edifice, and I took care not to allow my Roman Catholic education to prevent my joining a Protestant congregation, with my pretty little pupil. Indeed I was hanging at this time very slightly by the skirts of the garments of Rome. I had been reading the Bible a great deal lately. I read some Romanist books also, but I found that the two did not agree, and I liked the Bible best. Besides all this, as spring succeeded to winter, and days lengthened, and suns grew warm, there was every now and then a moment of very sweet, spring-like happiness, when after attending the church, Louise and I took a farther walk, till the hour of the good professor’s dinner. Sometimes we had another walk, too, in the evening, and sometimes he accompanied us to his little garden with the summer-house, near the gate of which I had first met him. It was all very delightful; and my ambition, which had once been strong and wide, had by this time shrunk to very small proportions. I could have been contented to linger on there, with every thing just as it was, for an indefinite period of time. But it must be remembered, that not one word, regarding love, ever passed between Louise and myself, except when it occurred in passages of books. I am afraid, however, that those passages, about this time, occurred very often. Louise was fond of them, and I turned them up easily for her.

Thus it went on—for I must not dwell upon details—for about eight months, when it so miserably happened that an aunt of the professor’s, somewhat younger than himself in years, but screwed up by ancient maidenhood to the sharpest and very highest tone of the human instrument, arrived. She was all eyes, ears and understanding. God knows, she might have heard every word that passed between Louise and myself, and seen all that we did too—if looks were excepted. But it so happened that at this time the influence which France exerted over Prussia was so great, that the Protectorate of the latter power over the northern circles became a mere tyranny exercised for the purposes of the French Republic, principally for the persecution of emigrants. The position of such persons as myself became very dangerous; and the necessity of my removal from Hamburgh was more than once talked of at the professor’s table, where I now dined frequently. It was even suggested that I should engage a passage in a vessel which was about to sail in a couple of months for the United States of America.

I could not help remarking that Louise turned very pale when these things formed the subject of conversation, and during six weeks of fluctuating anxiety, I saw with sincere apprehension that she lost health and spirits. I dared not, I could not venture to take the idea to my heart that that dear, amiable little creature suffered on my account; but still I did my best to cheer and comfort her, and perhaps became a little more tender in manner and fond in words, than I had ever dared to be before. It was now always, “dear Louis” and “dear Louise;” but I do not think we went any further than that. Often, often would she ask me questions regarding my past history, and as much was told her as I knew myself. She seemed to take a deep interest in it; but as it was a subject of deep interest to me, that I looked upon as natural. However, things had gone on in this way for some time, my pretty Louise still failing in health, not losing, but rather increasing her beauty by the daily walks which she now forced herself to take.

One day, at length, the explosion came. I met the old professor at the top of the stairs, and instead of turning me over at once to Louise, he beckoned me into his own study, and then in a very excited state flew from corner to corner of the room, glancing at me angrily, but saying nothing. This conduct, became so painful, that I at length broke silence, saying, “You wish to speak with me, Herr Haas.”

“Ay, sir, ay!” he replied with vivacious sharpness, “Have I not cause to speak?—have I not cause to feel anger? Here, I took you in as a beggar, and trusted you as a friend, and you have betrayed my trust by winning my daughter’s affections under the pretence of giving her instructions. Answer it how you may, sir, it is a bad case.”

“As to winning your daughter’s affections, my dear sir,” I replied, “I think you must be mistaken; for I can boldly appeal to her to say, whether I have once spoken on the subject of love toward her, or on any other to justify the imputation you cast upon me. I have always respected your hospitality, and owing you so much as I do, I should have conceived myself base indeed to seek her affection without your consent. We have been thrown much together and—”

But nothing would satisfy the old man. He interrupted me hastily, catching at my words, and saying, “that the only way of proving my sincerity was to quit Hamburgh at once; that his aunt, who inhabited a country-mansion, not many miles distant, had pointed out to him—in the course of a morning lecture which she gave him, before her departure that day—all that was going on between Louise and myself; that a ship would soon sail for America, and that if I really entertained the honorable sentiments I expressed, I would take my passage in her, and leave his household to recover its peace.” He asked me, in a taunting tone, if I knew that his daughter was his heiress, and ended by forbidding me the house.

I retired gloomy and desponding, and although he had said nothing to lead me to such a conclusion, I felt almost certain that he had spoken to Louise, before his conversation with myself. There was a sort of gloomy consolation in this conviction, and I hesitated as to whether I should quit Hamburgh, or remain in the hope of some change of feeling upon his part. There is such a thing as half-love, and I knew—I felt—that I could make the dear girl happy, and could be very happy with her myself. The remembrance, however, that I had nothing on earth—that I was an outcast—a beggar, in reality, and that she was probably rich, decided me. I went down to the wharf. I took my passage. I paid a part of my passage-money, but I learned—with a strange mixture of feelings—that the sailing of the packet was put off for a whole month, which made nearly seven weeks from that day. The master took pains to inform me, that this delay was occasioned by apprehension on the part of his owners, of the English cruisers, which, at that time, were behaving as ill to neutral vessels, as they were behaving well in combats with the enemy. I cared little for the reasons, however, but went away, not knowing whether to be pleased or sorry for this respite.

I could not quit Hamburgh without feelings of regret—I could not leave Louise without a bitter pang—I had done what was right—my conscience approved; and if accident kept me in the town, and fortune favored me with any change of circumstances, Hope might plume her wings without any self-reproach.

I little knew with how much anguish that period of delay was to be filled.

Good Madame Steinberger had evidently heard something of what had occurred at the professor’s house. She had been very kind to me, and was kind still; but her reverence for Professor Haas somewhat jostled with her regard for her young lodger. I would sit for hours in the evening, dreaming of the past, thinking of Louise, dwelling upon happy hours that were never to return. And then Madame Steinberger would come and attempt to comfort me, saying, that it was mere boy and girl’s love, and would soon pass away: that I and the young lady would both soon forget, and that she doubted not to see us both happy parents.

If she had taken up a red-hot skewer, and thrust it into my heart, she would not have produced more wretchedness than she did by her mode of consolation.

No consolation—no thought—no philosophy was of any avail. It was a period of intense bitterness, filled with many varied emotions, but all of them most painful. Had my love been more ardent, more vehement than it was, my condition would probably have been less sad. I should have striven—I should have resisted—but a dark and gloomy feeling took possession of my mind, that all who loved me, all who felt an interest in me were destined to be lost to me, almost as soon as I felt the blessing of their sympathy and kindness. I was more miserable than I can describe: there was nothing to stimulate: to spur on endeavor: to rouse up dormant energy. It was all dull, blank, monotonous, melancholy inactivity.

Three weeks had passed in this manner, when one evening, as I was sitting in the larger room, where good Frau Steinberger had kindled a fire, with my feet upon the andirons, my head leaning on my hand, and a book which I had vainly endeavored to read, fallen on the floor by my side, there was a step in the passage and the door opened. I took no notice: I cared for nothing: I was without hope or expectation: I was once more cast upon the world—the fragment of a wreck upon the wide ocean.

Suddenly a voice sounded near me, which I knew right well. “Louis,” it said. “Louis, can you forgive me? Louis, will you save me—will you save my child?”

I started up, and gazed upon the figure before me. I could hardly believe it was my old friend the professor, so pale, so worn, so sorrow-stricken was his look.

I instantly clasped his extended hand in mine. “My dear, good friend,” I said, “what have I to forgive? I never sought to bring sorrow or discomfort to your door—I would rather have died. That is all I have to say. Tell me what I have to do—tell me what you would wish, and I am ready to do it.”

“Come to Louise,” he said, wringing my hand hard. “Come to Louise—I have been a fool—a madman—a mercenary wretch. You only can save her—Come to her—come to her at once!”

I trembled violently, but I snatched up my hat, exclaiming, “let us go,” and rushed out of the house before him.

We flew along the streets, running against every body—seeing nobody—heeding nobody. I asked no questions. I knew there was something terrible; but I was going to Louise, and felt that I should soon know all. All houses stood upon the latch in Hamburgh in those days. I opened the door—I went in—I rushed up the stairs—I heard him cry “stop, stop”—but the trumpet of an angel would not have called me back. I entered her sitting-room. She was not there. I heeded not. I knew her bed-room lay beyond. I passed on and opened the door.

She was seated in a chair, with all the bright color gone from her cheek, except at one point. A physician stood beside her, with a glass in his hand. One old maid-servant was kneeling at her feet, wrapping them in flannel. A handkerchief, dyed with blood, was at her lips. Could I pause? No, had it killed both her and myself. In an instant I was across the room, at her feet, and my arms around her.

“Louise, my own Louise,” I cried.

She looked at me with surprise—then gazed beyond me to her father, who followed close—then cast her arms round my neck, and leaned her head upon my shoulder, saying in a faint voice, “Louis, dear Louis, you have saved me—I feel—I am sure, I shall live to be your wife.”

“Hush, hush,” said the physician. “You must not speak at all.”

“You shall be his wife; you shall be his wife!” cried her father eagerly.

“I am very happy,” said Louise.

“I must have perfect silence,” said the physician, “all will go well now; but every one must quit the room.”

“No one shall tend her but myself,” I said; “but I will be as still as night. She is mine—mine by the deepest and the holiest ties, and I will not leave her till this is staid.”

Nor did I; but through the live-long night, with the physician and the fond old servant, I remained silently watching, aiding, comforting, supporting her. From time to time the spitting of blood returned; but, at length, ice was thought of and procured. That checked it effectually. Two hours passed without the slightest return of that direful symptom, and lifting her in my arms, as a father might a child, I placed her in her bed. Then seating myself on a little footstool at the side, I laid my head upon the same pillow. I thought she would sleep more happily so. Her heavy eyes closed quietly; her breathing became calm and gentle; she slept; and ere many minutes had passed, I slept beside her.

——

THE FADING OF THE FLOWER.

The hemorrhage returned no more. Louise and I awoke at nearly the same moment, just as the morning light was streaming in through the windows, and she smiled sweetly to see me there, with my head upon her pillow, and the good old servant sitting fast asleep at the foot of her bed.

Poor girl, she fancied that all danger was passed; that she would soon be well, and that we should be very, very happy. But, alas! grief and disappointment too frequently shoot with poisoned arrows, and the venom remains in the wound, after the shaft has been extracted. She was not suffered to rise that day, and was forbidden to speak more than a monosyllable at a time. The good physician quoted the Bible to her, saying—“Let your communication be yea, yea, nay, nay, for of more cometh evil.” On the following day, however, she rose, and gradually was permitted to talk more and more, without any evil effect being produced. Then for a short time we were very happy. The good, old professor did all that he could to make up for his previous harshness, consented to any thing that we wished. Spontaneously promised two thousand dollars to set Louise and myself off in life, although we were to make our abode with him, and talked of obtaining a professorship for me in the university. Luckily his avocations kept him from home a good deal each day, otherwise his daughter’s health would have suffered more, from his continually running in and out of the room. She made some progress during the first week after I returned, regained strength in a certain degree, and I was full of hope for her, although she had an unpleasant cough, very frequent, though not violent. We talked of the coming days, and of our marriage, as soon as she was quite well, and I measured her finger for the ring, and kissed the little hand on which it was to be placed. Oh, they were very, very pleasant dreams, those; and I felt that I could be exceedingly happy with that dear, gentle girl—nay, I fancied that our happiness was quite assured; for when I looked into her eyes, they were so full of light and life, that one could hardly fancy they would ever be extinguished in death and darkness. Her bright color did not come back into the cheek indeed, except at night, and then it was not so generally diffused. Nevertheless, she felt herself so well—we all thought she was so well—that our wedding-day was fixed for about three weeks afterward. As the time approached, however, she was not quite so well again. The weather changed, and two or three days of cold, damp wind succeeded, which seemed to affect her very much. It was judged expedient that our marriage should be delayed for a fortnight; for she felt the least breath of air. Nevertheless, we kept up our spirits well for a little while, and she talked confidently of regaining health, and being just as well as ever. But as the days went on, I perceived with anxiety and alarm, that she grew weaker. I used to take her out whenever the air was soft, and the sun shone warmly, for a little walk, in the hope that it would restore her strength, and I soon found that she could not go so far, without fatigue, as at first; that to climb even the little slopes which exist in Hamburgh, rendered her breathing short, and increased her cough. Our walks became less and less, till, at length, she went out no more. A change, hardly perceptible in its progress, was gradually wrought in her. I saw little difference between one day and that which preceded; but when I looked back to a week or a fortnight before, and compared the present with the past, I could not close my eyes to the conviction that she was worse—much worse.

After a while, she took her breakfast in bed; but made an effort to rise as early as she could, in order to come and join me in the sitting-room. She ever spoke cheerfully, too, and seemed to have no thought of danger. But her father was in a terrible state; for he couldn’t close his eyes to her situation, and I do believe, that if the sacrifice of his life by the most painful kind of death would have purchased his child’s recovery, he would have made it without a hesitation. I deceived myself more than he did. I had heard of the effect of change of air, and I had talked to Louise so often about her recovering strength, and going with me for a short time, to some milder climate, that I had almost persuaded myself, against conviction, that it would be so. I fancied, too, that I could make her so happy, she must needs recover; for I knew what a blessed balm happiness is, and thought it must be all-effectual.

As she could no longer go to church, the good minister of the parish came several times to see her, and as he had a friendship for me, he would often talk with me afterward—not that I liked his conversation now as much as formerly; for it was very gloomy, and he strove evidently to fill my mind with the dark anticipations which occupied his own. The rays of religious hope, he endeavored to pour in too; but it was earthly hopes I then clung to, and I did not like to have them taken away.

One morning, after he had been with Louise, I found some tears upon her cheek, when I went in to see her; for by this time she did not rise till very late in the day, and all painful restraint being removed, I used to go and sit by her bedside, and read to her for some hours each morning. I was half angry with the old man for depressing her spirits; but she soon recovered her cheerfulness, and it was not till two days afterward, that I learned he had told her she must die.

I was sitting beside her, with my arm fondly cast round her, as she sat propped up by pillows, and I was indulging in those dreamy hopes of the future, which I still entertained, and thought she entertained likewise. I talked of our proposed journey to the South, and of escaping the cold, winter weather of Hamburgh, and of myself and her father—for he was to go with us in this dream—nursing her like a tender plant, till the bright summer came back again to restore her to perfect health.

She turned her sweet eyes upon me, with a gentle but melancholy smile.

“Do you know, dear Louis,” she said, “I begin to think that time will never be?”

I looked aghast, and laying her hand tenderly in mine, she added—

“Nay, more, love, I fear I shall never be your wife, unless—unless you can make up your mind to take me as I am now, and part with me very soon.”

“O, Louise, Louise!” I cried, pressing her to my heart, with the dreadful conviction first fully forced upon me, by words such as she had never used before. “Do not, do not entertain such sad fears. Be mine at once, dear girl, and let me take you away from this bleak place—by slow, easy journeys—by sea—any how.”

A single large tear rose in her eyes, and leaning her head upon my shoulder, she said in a low, hesitating voice—

“I will own, it would be very sweet to be your wife, were it but for a day—yet what right have I,” she added, “to ask you to make me so, in such a state as this—to leave you so soon, so young a widower?”

“Let not such thoughts stop you for a moment, Louise,” I answered. “It will be a blessing and a comfort to me. I can then be with you always—never leave you—nurse you by night and day, and if the fondest cure can save you, still keep my little jewel for my life’s happiness.”

She pressed her lips fondly upon my cheek, and asked—“Do you really feel so, Louis?”

“From my heart,” I answered. “There is no blessing—no comfort I desire so much. Let it be this very day—may I speak to your father?”

“If you will,” she answered with a bright smile, and I know not that I ever in life felt such satisfaction as in seeing the happiness and relief I had bestowed upon that dear girl.

The old professor was ready to grant every thing we could desire. He was now the complete slave of her will; but the marriage could not take place that day, for some few formalities had to be gone through and arrangements to be made. It was appointed for the next evening, however, and when Louise awoke upon her wedding-day, she sent the maid to tell me that she felt much better.

She knew what happiness that news would give me, and I was soon by her side to confirm the assurance with my own eyes.

She was better. She looked better. She had rested well, and she was able to rise an hour earlier than she had done before. The incorrigible liar, Hope, whispered her false promises in the ears of both, I believe, and the hours passed more brightly during that afternoon, than they had done for many a day before.

At eight o’clock the Protestant minister came, and with him a notary. The physician was the only other person present, except Louise, her father, and myself. The irrevocable words were soon spoken, the contract signed, and the ring upon her finger; but as I put it on, a cold, sad feeling came upon my heart. It had been somewhat tight when I first bought it, and now it was very loose. We were even obliged to wind some silk round it the next day, to prevent it from falling off.

For three days, happiness seemed to have all the effect that I had ever attributed to it in my brightest fancies. Louise was certainly better, and she looked so happy, so cheerful, walked up and down the passage hanging on my arm, with a step so much lightened, that even the old professor caught the infection of our hopes, and began to talk of future days.

The medicine soon lost its power over the invincible enemy. We had been married just six days, and during the three last, Louise had been feebler again, and very restless at night. The sixth day was a warm, sunny one. The light shone cheerfully into our room, and she talked to me of the sweet aspect of the summer, and made me open the window to let in the gentle air.

One room of the old professor’s house looked out upon the ramparts, planted with trees. It was a large room, seldom used; but Louise asked me to go in there, and open the windows before she rose, saying, that she should like to sit and look at the green leaves.

Her father came in before she was dressed, and when she was ready, we took her out of her room, with a hand resting on the arm of each, and led her into that saloon. I had placed an arm-chair for her near the window, and she approached feebly and seated herself in it. The air was very balmy: a clear, sparkling sunshine brightened the foliage: the sky beyond, was as deep and blue as her own eyes, and she gazed for an instant, with a look of intense thought upon the scene before her. Then looking up in my face as I stood beside her, she placed her hand in mine, and said—“Very beautiful!”

They were her last words. The next instant, a strange, vacant expression came into those deep thoughtful eyes, a slight shudder passed over her: she leaned more and more toward me; and I had just time to kneel by her side, and catch her head upon my shoulder. I felt one faint breath fan my cheek—and Louise was gone.

(End of part first.)

FADED AND GONE.

———

BY MISS S. J. C. WHITTLESEY.

———

Faded and gone are the Summer’s sweet flowers,

Strewn by the wintry winds o’er the dark mould!

Smilers, when sunlight stole through the soft hours,

Down from yon azure their leaves to unfold.

Bright were their beauties when breezes swept on

O’er the blue waters to gather perfume;

Whisperers lovely, now faded and gone!

Slumberers lonely ’mid dullness and gloom!

Oh! but the Spring-time will come o’er the plain

Wooing the whispering blossoms again,

With its soft tread o’er the emerald lawn—

Then we’ll not mourn for the faded and gone!

Faded and gone are the ones that we cherished,

Fondly and true, in our bosoms of yore!

Slumbering buds may awake o’er the perished,

Their faded hearts shall unfold here no more!

Sweet is the music that Memory flings

O’er the oasis of Life’s early love,

Where flew the Angel on fluttering wings,

Bearing our lost through the starlight above;

Oh! there’s a land where the perished ones bloom,

Where cometh never a shadow of gloom!

Fadeless and fair is that glorious dawn—

Then we’ll not mourn for the faded and gone!

Faded and gone are the sweet dreams of childhood,

When the young wings of the Spirit were free,

Folded or furled ’mid the shadowy wildwood—

Sweeping the surface of life’s sunny sea.

Time’s fading finger hath sullied the leaf,

Stainless and lovely in childhood’s pure years;

Pages of beauty once brilliant, yet brief,

Wear its deep impress of changes and tears!

Oh! but the blossoms of childhood will bloom

Brightly again, o’er the shadowy Tomb!

Infinite gladness flow endlessly on—

Then we’ll not murmur for the faded and gone!

THE BOWER OF CASTLE MOUNT.

A REMINISCENCE OF HEIDELBERG.

———

BY AELDRIC.

———

It was early in the June of 184-. I had been sitting in a German railroad-car since early morning, vainly trying to amuse myself in discovering a degree of singularity in some one of the many passengers that were picked up at the different stations between Kehl and Heidelberg. I had taken a seat in the third class car, expecting there to find a miscellaneous mingling of the busy classes of Germans; but, alas, for my entertainment! it was one class too high—I should have taken the fourth. After I had chosen a seat as near comfortable as the wooden benches would admit of, I perceived, to my disappointment, that I was surrounded by that class of people, neither high enough nor low enough to be interesting; every one seemed completely wrapped up in himself. There was scarcely any conversation, and each face soon settled in the repose of quiet German thoughtfulness. Meerschaums ere long made their appearance out of the depths of profound side-pockets; and, as far as dependence on my fellow-passengers was concerned, there was none, to beguile the tedium of a long journey. A long, heart-felt pull, a quiet wink of satisfaction thereat, a somewhat varied fingering of the pipe-bowl to press the ashes—that was all. Diagonally across the car and nearly facing me, sat a very pretty girl whom, from the timid wandering of her deep-blue eyes, I judged to be unmarried. I watched her some time to observe where she recognized a protector, but her eye rested nowhere particularly; it seemed uneasy, searching, and I concluded she was going but a short distance, and alone. Just as the train was moving, a handsome young man stepped in the door, looked around the car, was recognized by a calming of the uneasy eyes, and took his seat before them, in the middle row, turning his back toward me. As he bent toward her and whispered, she did not smile, her face seemed too thoughtful; she only gazed in his eyes and spoke not a word. Ha! thought I, I see how it is, and settled myself to enjoy a morsel of sentimentality. My gentleman soon finished his first course, and then leaned back in his seat to chew the cud at his leisure. I thought he relished it very much, for it was full twenty minutes before he made another motion; during all which time the young lady did little but gaze at him, it appeared to me, with perfect satisfaction. After a time the gaze of satisfaction changed to a look of concern, and finally of marked uneasiness. She leaned forward, spoke to him, yet he heeded her not. She arose suddenly, and I was so absorbed in anxiety that I almost arose with her. He started as from a lethargy, and darted to the vacated corner, whilst she quietly took his seat and I saw her face no more. I still saw the same blue eyes in the corner, “yet I saw them but a moment,” for the lids soon closed over them, and I knew that the kind sister had given up her corner for the lazy brother to sleep in. “Corn-cobs twist his hair,” said I, for I was doubly provoked, first, at his deception, and then, I saw the pretty face no more. I did not indulge in romance again, but turned my eyes and my thoughts to the outer world. The monotony of the company made me stupid; the prolonged, premeditated winks over the smoking bowls made me drowsy, and the flitting lights and shadows of the varied scenery seemed to beckon me to dreamy lands of wine and song and ghosts and chivalry. Beyond the green slopes to the eastward, the Black Forest stretched afar to an immeasurable distance; mysterious outlines swelled and dwindled in the darkness; a huge head peered over the tree-tops; another and another; the ghouls stared at us, it seemed to me, “more in sorrow than in anger.” I could not tell why, but their malignity seemed forgotten in fear and wonder. There was a scream, a terrific scream—of the locomotive—and pell-mell, helter-skelter, heels up, head down, away they darted like a squad of frogs before a bouncing poodle. I was fully awakened to the surprising loveliness of the landscape around me, but I had little time to enjoy it—another scream, a rumble, a series of jerks, and we were at the—terminus, in Heidelberg.

I was soon in the good care of mine host of the Hoff, who certainly possesses one of the most desirable locations and establishments for entertainment in the world. Close by the railroad depot, it is about a mile from the town, and a beautiful avenue leading all the way, is lined with elms and lindens on either side. On the ascent of a steep hill which rises abruptly from the town, and about mid-way to the summit, is the celebrated ruined castle of Heidelberg, whose lords once swayed the feudal sceptre over all the surrounding country. The gay conversation at the table d’hôte was in strong contrast with the, not moodiness but apathy, of the railroad car. A large musical-box, upon the plan of our pocket toy of that name, but as large as a good-sized wardrobe—discoursed sweet music the while. The company which I found introduction to, was sufficiently entertaining to withhold me from my contemplated walk toward the ruins that evening, and the beautiful promenades in front of the hotel were quite gay. Early next morning with an agreeable English party I set out for the castle. As we neared it along the straight avenue, we advanced farther and farther from a flank view. The front came slowly out with its red towers and crumbling battlements, and the vast structure grew in the majesty of its ruins. As we approached the foot of the mount, a road crossed the avenue, leading toward the river to the left, to the right leading up the mountain. We ascended a considerable time after having lost sight of the castle, and as yet, so early was the hour, we had seen no one astir. No habitation of any kind was along this road, which, before us, appeared to descend from the solitude of the hills. We clambered up, up, up, until at last, said one:

“We surely are as high as the castle, and I do believe we ought to have taken this left-hand road just below us.”

“No, no!” said another, “let us go on and trust to fortune; for in so beautiful and romantic a place we cannot go amiss—maybe that we shall make some grand discovery, too, and then we will jointly write a book to put it before the world.”

The conversation was cut short by a noise up the road; we looked, and there stood a man leaning against a tree by the road-side, waiting for his oxen and cart which were moving slowly down the road above him. He called to his cattle in a loud voice, and hummed an air as he leaned back against the tree again. Just at that moment the piping cry of a lark rang through the wood, and ere it died away he peeled forth in boisterous answer—

“Ho! for the deep where the sea-bird sings!

Ho! for the bowers where his merry voice rings!”

Here, as he perceived us, he halted in his strain and walked demurely by his cart. In a few words it was determined among us that we should inquire of him the road to the castle; but as each one declined the honor of gaining the information, upon the plea that perhaps his style of German might be unintelligible to the unpolite ears of the rustic, I volunteered the undertaking.

“Good morning, my friend?” I hailed him. “Be so good as to tell us the way to the castle.”

“Do you wish to see the castle?”

“That is what we have come especially for.”

“O, ’tis a magnificent sight!” (and he gazed fixedly on one of the ladies, a gay young beauty, as he spoke.) “O ’tis a magnificent sight! No one can tell better than I how beautiful it is. I have seen it in the morning when the sun was rising on it, making its red walls look like gold. I have seen it in the day, in the evening, and (I’ll tell you) I have seen it by the bright moonlight when—O, I have loved every old stone of it dearer than I do my life! But if you wish to see it, keep the right-hand road at the first fork, and follow it as far as you can, and when you come to the bower—Ah, I’ve seen it in the dark nights, too, curse it! curses on it!

“Ho! for the bowers where his merry voice rings!

Ho! for the billows where——”

Here I lost the words of the boisterous music as he swung off and hurried to overtake his cart, leaving us all not a little astonished.

“What an eccentric person!” whispered Miss Thornton to me, the lady who had attracted his gaze in so marked a manner, and the only lady in the company who understood German.

“Ah! I see,” said I, “that admiration is never lost upon a lady, no matter from how humble a source it come. He was put beside himself, poor fellow! no wonder he appeared eccentric.”

“It was not that,” she said. “Did you not see how he changed when he spoke of the arbor, as if some remembrance associated with it excited him? No—I think there is or was some one that I look like. I would like to see any one that looks like me, no matter who she be. It’s so unusual, is it not?”

“Vain puss!”

“Then how merry he got again,” she continued, unheeding me. “No, I don’t understand such sudden changes—without any cause, too. He’s remarkably fine-looking for one in his condition—I beg pardon, sir, I wonder what bower he can mean; I never heard of any on the way to the castle.”

“Nor I, but we shall surely find one; and when we do, I fear this little incident will engage my imagination more than the historic associations of the castle.”

We journeyed on higher and higher, until we came to the fork of the road. Here nearly all were inclined to bear away to the left, around the mountain, fully satisfied that we were high enough. I explained that the young German had been very precise in his directions to keep to the right, and all yielded to him, rather to banter fortune than from persuasion that we were going the right road. On we toiled, and the road at last came to an abrupt termination upon the very summit. A high-road bore off to the right, that we could trace a mile or two over the hills, and only a tangled path led toward the west. Leaving the company to await the result, I proceeded to explore the path, and soon came in view of the town lying in the plain below. I stood enchanted with the scene. A gently sloping country receded several miles to the Rhine; meandering all the way through fields and forests, the legend-consecrated Neckar glistened in the morning sun, and beyond, the vine-clad hills of France, the country of the Moselle, crowned the horizon. Far away to the south could be traced the winding Rhine almost to its native mountains, and to the north it was lost among the hills of the Odenwald, as it widened and straightened onward toward the plains of Holland. I hailed the party as it came up, all were amazed at the magnificent landscape, and each avowed he was well repaid for the toilsome journey. A few steps farther brought us to a rugged stair of broken stones, and some ten or twelve feet below, on a small natural terrace, was an over-grown bower.

“O, the bower! the bower!” exclaimed every one. There it was; and as we reached it, a full view of the dismantled towers and crumbled walls of the castle opened below us, almost beneath our feet. The German was right. He thought we wished to see the castle, not to go to it, and we had gained the finest view of the finest ruin in the North of Europe. It is not my intention that my pen shall wander among those most interesting testimonies of grandeur passed away. Suffice it to say, we returned home well sated with pleasure, to recruit our humanity by a very late breakfast at twelve o’clock. We had walked fasting from six.

From that day the bower became one of my favorite haunts during the few weeks of my stay in Heidelberg. One day, with a view to further exploration of the heights to the eastward of the bower, a region I had often tried to get a view of from the Castle Mount, I set out on horseback, and after reaching the summit, took the road that we had seen over the hills on our first visit to the castle. For two or three miles it was nothing but steep hills and narrow valleys. Not a sound was heard save the twittering of birds and the tumbling of waters; not a particle of verdure was to be seen but the dark, distant forests, and near, the quivering foliage of the vine as it climbed up, up to the very pinnacles of the terraced heights. Beyond, the country spread out into fields and meadows and grass and waving grain. Farm-houses and villages were clustered about. Vineyards lingered upon the knolls, and scarce ventured a distance down the sunny slopes. After a long day’s ride I was approaching the bower by another road: the sun was about setting; I was tired and thirsty; when I was tempted to dismount by a little streamlet that fell into and ran down the road-side. An orchard extended from a small cottage to the road, and the gate was only upon the other side of the way. I led my horse over, and after hitching him to the gate-post, was about reaching a harvest-apple that hung near me, when my attention was drawn by a small group in front of the cottage door. An old gray-haired man was sitting upon a bench watching a young child that was rolling on the grass, when my appearance put an end to his occupation. He looked at me with no expression of pleasure, evidently not relishing so unceremonious an attempt upon his orchard. I resigned my thieving intention, and covered the manœuvre by an advance straight up to the door. A young woman arose and picked up the child, and then resumed her seat upon the grass-plat.

“Good evening, my friend,” said I, for his silence was awkward—“I am very tired and warm with a long ride, and was tempted by that cool spring and your shady trees to dismount and take a moment’s rest. I am glad to take my rest in such good company.”

“You are welcome,” said he. “I perceive you are a stranger; an Englishman I suppose?”

“No, I am not an Englishman; I am come from a land much farther off than England, and have seen a great many Germans in my country. I am an American.”

“What’s that he says, Mary?” cried a voice from within the house. “Tell him Roderick is not at home; tell him he wont be at home till to-morrow.”

“Hush! do, mother! The gentleman has not come for Roderick.”

“O, yes he has. He knows Roderick has got money and wants to spend it. You know—”

“Do hush, mother! It’s a stranger, and what’s more, it’s an American.”

“What does he say about Karl? Ask him when Karl is coming back.”

The tears started to the young woman’s eyes; and as I saw her press her babe to her bosom, I knew who Karl was. She seemed to struggle with the question that rose to her lips:

“You said, sir, that you have seen many Germans in America: did you ever see anybody there from Heidelberg? Did you ever see Karl Wagner there?”

I told her, I never saw Karl Wagner there, and asked her if Karl might be her husband; which fact I knew, however, before I asked. She answered, that he was; that he was living at a place called Buffalo, and had lately sent her money to take her to another place called New York, where she would meet him. Her father was anxious that she should go, but her mother, who was now doating, would resent the very mention of it, and was always expecting Karl to come home. Her brother Roderick, she said, had been unfortunate, and was bent on going with her; but of this, her mother knew nothing. They were afraid to tell her, her reason was so weak that they feared she would sink into utter imbecility.

The sun was set, and night was drawing on. I arose to resume my journey, for I was anxious to reach the foot of the mount before dark; but the old man offered me a plate of the harvest-apples that had tempted me, and pressed me to take some supper with them. If I would only be so kind—they wished to ask me so many questions about America. I am not sure that I should have accepted their invitation had not my eye, as I arose, fallen upon a picture hanging against the opposite wall of the little room. A second glance showed the marked and benevolent features of the old man, looking out from the canvas.

“Ha—ha!” said he, “that is a fine picture. Step in the door, and you will see more of them.”

I did so, and to my surprise, beheld four others hanging wherever space enough could be found to contain them. One was the portrait of the old woman whom I now saw for the first time; another of Mary, and the remaining two were, a young man apparently thirty years of age, and a boy of sixteen. The old man followed me with his eyes.

“Ha—ha!” said he. “I see you admire them. Poor Roderick! There are few who can beat him in his art—but you would not think so to see him now. These are the last he ever made. He paid his last tribute to those he loved best.”

The old man spoke in a very sorrowful tone. I began to feel a deep interest in Roderick, whatever his misfortunes might be.

“Is not Roderick your son?” I asked, supposing that I must have made a mistake.

“Yes—that one I suppose you don’t know; that’s Karl Wagner, that’s Mary’s husband—a good son he is. And that’s Tommy, that’s our Tommy—sturdy Tommy, as they call him. That’s the last one Roderick ever made.” And the old man brushed his eyes with his shriveled hands as he spoke.

“Where does Roderick live?” I asked. “Is he married?”

“Hush—here!”

“Why is it, that a young man of such talent gives up a glorious art, when it opens a field to him to enable him to rise above his condition, to gain wealth, honor, fame?”

“Hush!”

“Go, ask Count Reisach!” cried the old woman, starting up. She was in a frenzy. Her eyes glared, her bent form trembled from head to foot, her hands were clenched, but hung dangling at her side, and she seemed to make superhuman efforts to raise them. They were paralyzed. Tears coursed each other down her cheeks as she cried—“Go ask Count Reisach! Go find him! Go ask poor Father Klaus! Go down and ask Almighty God why he let—oh!” she cried, sinking on her knees—her voice choked; sobs, spasms convulsed her frame; still her face was raised, it seemed to me in prayer, but her hands clasped not, they seemed to weigh her to the earth, as they hung lifeless beside her.

“Mein Got! O, mein Got!” cried the old man, as he took her in his arms. “O, my poor frau—would to God thy poor spark of reason would go out, that I might see this heavy burden off thy soul!”

He raised her tenderly as a child, repelling my assistance, and when he had placed her in her arm-chair, left her to Mary’s care, and came to resume his seat upon the bench, outside the door.

“She never grieved so for herself, and she has had her own troubles too. But she knows not all yet—O, mein Got! mein Got! who will tell her—for he must, he must, he must!”

He closed his eyes—as it were—to shut out so near a view of misery. A loud voice was heard approaching in the road, and as it became more distinct, I started as I recognized the words—

“Ho for the deep where the sea-bird sings!

Ho for the bowers where his merry voice rings,

Ho for the billows, the billows, the billows!”

Here the gate flew open, and my acquaintance of castle memory stalked up the path, followed by a sturdy lad.

“Father, it’s all arranged,” he bawled. “It’s all arranged. I’ve made up my mind. There are three in Heidelberg—”

“Ho for the billows where the storm-king dwells!”

“Stop, Roderick. You know your mother. See, too, here is a stranger.” He paused, saluted me as though he had never seen me before, and turned to the youth who followed him.

“Where are the cattle, Tommy? That’s right—you must be smart, you know; remember what’s on your shoulders!”

Tommy said he knew, and was going to be smart. Mary appeared at the door and invited us to supper. The mother was gone, and the old man seemed relieved when he missed her, for he looked around the room, and the cloud left his brow, ere he asked a blessing on his humble table. After supper he lighted his pipe; Tommy took his hat and disappeared, and Roderick touched my arm as he moved toward the door. His boisterous humor was gone, and he calmly and mannerly asked me to be seated.

“She is worse to-night,” he said. “They have sent Tommy for him.” After a moment, he continued; “I recognized you at first, and for my rudeness I must plead the state of mind I was in. The truth is, I have this day arranged my departure for America, to take my sister to her husband; and the relief from the burden of suspense I had long been in made me quite forgetful of myself.”

“I do not know,” said I, “that you are doing best in taking this course. You are an artist, and I must bear witness to the promise of success you make in your art; but, as I begin to feel a deep interest in yourself, your family, and—I think I may say with truth—in your sorrows, for some strange misfortune seems to brood over this house, I feel at liberty to remonstrate with you for abandoning what seems to me your duty to yourself, and your father’s family. I could not give you hope of better success where you purpose going than you would probably meet with here. The best of our own artists reside in Europe, for we have no models at home. Have you always lived here with your parents?”

“Until within the last few weeks I spent most of my time in the town; my occupation kept me very much from home. Of late, I have done nothing but assist my father here.”

“It seems to me that you might assist him more with your brush than with your ox-goad.”

“If I could use it perhaps I might; but I can paint no more here. I am going, and Tommy and I have trimmed his vines and sown his crops, and when Tommy shall be able to take care of the vines himself, I shall be gone.”

“That is where I cannot excuse you. You are not suffering from poverty; you are not driven to emigrate; and it is in leaving your infirm parents when they are bowed down by affliction that I think you do not do your duty by them. They both seem proud of you, and still—you appear to love them as you ought.”

“The affliction is mine! You were at the bower?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I could go there with you, and tell you a tale of sorrow that you would never forget. You cannot judge. I know that my father and my poor, fond mother grieve—it is for me; but what is their grief to mine? It is but the reflection of mine; it is like the cold, borrowed light of the moon—mine, the scorching sun. I am plunged from heaven into hell! This spot is to me, now, of all the world, like the deepest abyss of infernal misery; and, but for Father Klaus, our good old priest, this shadow of hell had, ere this, been bartered for the reality. He has kept alive a spark of reason in me, that I hope may yet guide me through the world. Here he is—I see they have sent Tommy for him. She always forgets her own sorrow, when she sees him.”