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A VENETIAN FESTIVAL.—C. HULK.
THE ALDINE,
A
TYPOGRAPHIC ART JOURNAL
"Il ne faut pas tant regarder ce qu'on
doit faire que ce qu'on peut faire."
VOLUME V.
NEW YORK:
JAMES SUTTON & COMPANY.
1873.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1872, by
JAMES SUTTON, JR., in the Office of the Librarian of Congress
at Washington, D. C.
"THE ALDINE PRESS."—JAMES SUTTON & Co.,
Printers, 58 Maiden Lane, New York.
CONTENTS
Abyssinia, A Peep at
Editorial
186
Adirondacks, The Heart of the
Editorial
194
After the Comet
W.L. Alden
136
A Great Master and His Greatest
Work
Editorial
83
Aldine Chromos for 1873
Editorial
228
Alpine World, The
Editorial
134
America, Home Life in
Editorial
76
American Robin, The
Gilbert Darling
327
Angling, A Few Words on
Henry Richards
155
Architecture
W. Von Humboldt
43
28
Artistic Evening, An
Editorial
248
Art-Musee in America, An
Erastus South
127
Art, Roman
Ottfreid Müller
32
At Rest. (Poem)
Julia C.R. Dorr
234
August in the Woods
W.W. Bailey
161
Ausable, Morning on the
Editorial
40
Authorship, Style in
Stewart
75
Autumn Rambles
W.W. Bailey
212
A Yarn
Uncle Bluejacket
216
Babes in the Wood, The
Editorial
223
Badger Hunting
Editorial
225
Barry Cornwall, To. (Poem)
A.C. Swinburne
50
Beauty, Of
Bacon.
107
Beside the Sea. (Poem)
Mary E. Bradley
161
Biography
Henry Richards
65
Bishop's Oak
Caroline Cheesebro'
172
Black Gnat, The
A.R.M.
34
Blood Money
Editorial
207
Blue-Birds
Gilbert Burling
163
Books, Borrowing
Leigh Hunt
36
"Bridge of Sighs," Hood's
Editorial
50
Bronte's (Charlotte) Brother and
Father
January Searle
111
Building of the Ship, The. (Poem)
Longfellow
89
Cedar Bird, The
Gilbert Burling
85
Celebration of the Passover, The
Editorial
64
Chase, After the
Editorial
227
Chet's, Miss, Club
Caroline Cheesbro'
59
Children, Loss of Little
Leigh Hunt
104
Chinese Stories
Henry Richards
215
Christmas Trees
W.W. Bailey
234
23
Editorial
12
Cosas de Espana
Editorial
86
Crown Diamonds and other Gems
S.F. Corkran
181
Daisies, Among The
A.S. Isaacs
23
December and May
Editorial
147
Death Chase, The
Editorial
236
Dogs, About
Henry Richards
175
Dogs, Education of
Henry Richards
234
Englishmen, Religion of
H. Taine
183
English Rhymes and Stories
Henry Richards
96
En Miniature. (From the German)
M.A.P. Humphreys
132
Exquisite Moment, An
Editorial
93
Fancie's Dream
Lolly ***'s Mother
34
Fancie's Farewell
Lolly ***'s Mother
114
Fawn Family, A Day with a
Editorial
107
Feast of the Tabernacles, The
Editorial
64
Fra Bartolomeo
Editorial
106
Forester's Happy Family, The
Editorial
167
Forester's Last Coming Home, The
Editorial
56
Fortune of The Hassans, The
C.F. Guernsey
123
Friendship of Poets, The
Editorial
50
J.L. Warren
11
Garden, In the
Betsy Drew
138
Gems, Colored
W.S. Ward
39
Going to the Volcano
T.M. Coan
245
Green River. (Poem)
W.C. Bryant
72
Gypsies, The
Editorial
166
Heart of Kosciusko, The
Editorial
113
Heartsease. (Poem)
Mary E. Bradley
43
Hello!
Editorial
193
Home and Exile
Editorial
237
House with the Hollyhocks, The
A.L. Noble
177
House Wrens
Gilbert Burling
105
How to Tame Pet Birds
January Searle
146
Hunt (Leigh), A Last Visit to
January Searle
192
Hunting Snails
T.M. Coan
156
Ideal, The
Theodore Parker
133
Il Beato. (From the German)
M.A.P. Humphrey
183
Ill Wind, An
Leslie Malbone
112
Inside the Door
Caroline Cheesebro'
30
Ireland, A Glimpse at
T.M. Coan
119
Island, On an
Caroline Cheesebro'
114
Jack and Gill
Editorial
223
King Baby. (Poem)
George Cooper
224
Kingfisher, The
Editorial
125
King's Rosebud, The. (Poem)
Julia C.R. Porr
107
Knowledge
Ethics of the Fathers
135
"Lais Corinthaica," Holbein's
Editorial
182
Lalalo--A Legend of Galicia. (From the
Spanish)
H.S. Conant
164
Lamp-Light
Julian Hawthorne
165
Lisbon, Loiterings around
Editorial
44
28, 47, 67, 88, 108, 128, 148, 168,
188, 208
Little Emily
Editorial
178
Liverworts. (Poem)
W.W. Bailey
70
Longfellow's House and Library
Geo. W. Greene
100
Love Aloft
Editorial
116
Love's Humility. (Poem)
B.G. Hosmer
141
From the French
19
Manifest Destiny. (Poem)
R.H. Stoddard
47
Man in Blue, The
R.B. Davey
50
Man in the Moon, The
Yule-tide Stories
120
Man's Unselfish Friend
Editorial
60
Married in a Snow-Storm. (From the
Russian)
Wm. Percival
152
Marsh and Pond Flowers
W.W. Bailey
126
Martinmas Goose, The
Editorial
243
Maximilian Morningdew's Advice,
Mr.
Julian Hawthorne
74
Editorial
10
Minster at Ulm, The
Editorial
158
Misers, About
Betsy Drew
99
20
Morning Dew
Editorial
76
Morning and Evening
Editorial
242
Mountain Land of Western North
Carolina
J.A. Oertel
52
Mountain Land of Western North
Carolina
J.A. Oertel
214
Editorial
16
Mouse Shoes
Lolly ***'s Mother
197
Music in the Alps
Editorial
33
Necessity of Believing Something
Jean Paul
31
Neighbor Over the Way, My. (Poem)
G.W. Scars
110
Geo. H. Boker
10
Niagara
Editorial
213
Noble Savage, The
110
16
Oblivion
Browne
120
October
W.W. Bailey
192
Kate F. Hill
26
Old Oaken Bucket, The
Editorial
152
Othello, How Rossini Wrote
L.C. Bullard
91
Out of the Deeps
Elizabeth Stoddard
94
Painted Boats on Painted Seas
Hiram Rich
201
Patriotism and Powder
Editorial
132
H.S. Conant
14
Pepito
Lucy Ellen Guernsey
212
Perkins, Granville
48
Peruvians, Among the
Editorial
24
Play for a Heart, A. (From the
German)
H.S. Conant
54
Pleasure-Seeking
Editorial
240
Poet's Rivers
Editorial
70
Portugal, Wanderings in
Editorial
224
Pottery, Ancient
S.F. Corkran
72
Prince and Peasant. (From the
German,)
H.S. Conant
196
Puddle Party, The
Lolly ***'s Mother
83
Punishment after Death. (From the
Danish)
James Watkins
218
*** Asleep
Henry Richards
143
Lolly ***'s Mother
27
Rainy Day, The. (Poem)
H.W. Longfellow
120
Raymondskill, The
E.C. Stedman
154
Julian Hawthorne
10
Ruse de Guerre. (Poem)
H.B. Bostwick
63
School-Children
Editorial
198
Scissor Family, The
Lolly ***'s Mother
144
Secret, A. (Poem)
Julia C.R. Dorr
212
September Reverie, A
Editorial
172
Serious Case, A
Editorial
203
Shadows
Julian Hawthorne
142
Shakspeare Celebrations
Editorial
90
Shakspeare Portraits
R.H. Stoddard
103
Shameful Death. (Poem)
Wm. Morris
83
Shrews
A.S. Isaacs
63
Simple Suggestion, A
Mary E. Bradley
216
Smallpox, Worse than
L.E. Guernsey
157
Snow-Bird, The
Gilbert Burling
207
Song Sparrow, The
Gilbert Burling
32
Song or Wood Thrush, The
Gilbert Burling
66
Sonnet
Alfred Tennyson
67
Sparrows' City, The. (Poem)
George Cooper
165
Stael, Baroness de, The Salon of. (From
the French)
43
Story of Coeho, The
R.B. Davey
71
Street Scene in Cairo, A
Editorial
239
Stuffing Birds
January Searle
246
Summer Fallacies
C.D. Shanly
176
Sunshine
Julian Hawthorne
92
Superstition
Bacon
56
Swift, Dean
Lady Mary Wortley
Montague
53
Temple of Canova, The
Editorial
203
Thievish Animals
Editorial
238
Thistle-Down. (Poem)
W.W. Bailey
145
Tired Mothers. (Poem)
Mrs. A. Smith
172
Montgomery
20
Trout Fishing
C.D. Shanly
141
Truants, The
40
Two
J.C.R. Dorr
152
Two Gazels of Hafiz
Henry Richards
145
Two Lives, The. (Poem)
S.W. Duffield
201
Two Queens in Westminster. (Poem)
H. Morford
132
Uncollected Poems
50
Uncollected Poems by Campbell.
Editorial
144
Uncollected Poems by "L.E.L."
Editorial
94
Uttmann, Barbara. (From the
German)
66
Editorial
13
Violins, About
J.D. Elwell
36
Virginia, On the Eastern Shore of
Mary E. Bradley
79
Water Ballad
S.T. Coleridge
67
Weber (Von), Karl Maria
Editorial
206
Joel Benton
27
Winter-Green. (Poem)
Mary E. Bradley
90
Editorial
14
Winter Scenes
Editorial
230
Wolf, Calf and Goat, The
Æsop, Junior
124
Woman in Art
E.B. Leonard
145
Woman's Eternity, A
E.B.L.
204
Woman's Place
Editorial
162
Wood or Summer Ducks
Editorial
187
Woods, In the. (Poem)
G.W. Sears
192
Woods Out in the. (Poem)
Mary E. Bradley
126
Wordsworth
Taine
33
Wyoming Valley
Editorial
36
Young Robin Hunter, The
Editorial
60
Zekle's Courtin'
Editorial
30
ILLUSTRATIONS
Adirondack Scenery
G.H. Smillie
97
Advance in Winter, The
236
After the Storm
Schenck
231
After the Storm a Calm. (I, II, III,
IV,)
244
Agnes
R.E. Piguet
112
Albai, View on the River
183
American Robin, The
Gilbert Burling
227
Artistic Evening, An
248
At Home
239
Ausable, Morning on the
G.H. Smillie
41
Babes in the Wood, The
John S. Davis
222
Badger Hunting
L. Beckmann
226
Blood Money
Victor Nehlig
190
Blowing Hot and Cold
John S. Davis
142
Blowing Rock
R.E. Piguet
57
Blue-Birds
Gilbert Burling
163
Bonnie Brook, near Rahway
R.E. Piguet
112
Bridal Veil
Granville Perkins
154
13
Bridge of Sighs (Hood's)
Georgie A. Davis
49
Building of the Ship, The
T. Beech
89
Capella Imperfeita, Archway in
the
44
Casa do Capitulo, The
224
Casa do Capitulo, Window in the
46
Castle of Meran, The.
(Frontispiece)
C. Heyn
Opp. 189
Caught At Last
238
Cedar Birds
Gilbert Burling
85
Chase, After the
David Neal
219
Christmas Visitors
*** Hammer
231
Vautier
12
Crossing the Moor
After F.F. Hill
228
December and May
W.H. Davenport
146
Death Chase, The
236
Deer Family, The
*** Hammer
106
Enjoyment
241
Evening
Paul Dixon
205
Evening
243
Evenings at Home
A.E. Emslie
77
Exquisite Moment, An
John S. Davis
93
24
Feast of the Passover, The
Oppenheim
64
Feast of the Tabernacles, The
Oppenheim
65
Fisherman's Family, The
239
Forester's Happy Family at Dinner,
The
*** Hammer
167
Forester's Last Coming Home, The
56
For the Master
Offterdinger (Opp.)
236
Garden, In the
Arthur Lumley
138
Gertrude of Wyoming
Victor Nehlig
117
Glen, The
F.T. Vance
194
God's Acre
232
Gondar, Emperor's Palace at
186
Good Bye, Sweetheart
233
Grandfather Mountain, N.C.
R.E. Piguet
215
Green River
August Will
69
Green River
R.E. Piguet
72
Green River
R.E. Piguet
73
Guide-Board, The
Knesing
230
Gypsy Girl at her Toilette
G. Dore
166
Happy Valley
R.E. Piguet
53
Heart of a Hero, The.
(Kosciusko's Monument)
113
Here. Chick! Chick!
240
Hollo!
John S. Davis
191
House Wrens
Gilbert Burling
105
How a Spaniard Drinks
Dore
86
Hudson at Hyde Park, The
G.H. Smillie
81
In-Doors
243
Infant Jesus, The
Copied by J.S. Davis
229
"Is the solace of age."
247
"It ofttimes happens that a
child"
245
Jack and Gill
John S. Davis
223
Kate
R.E. Piguet
112
Keeping House
John S. Davis (Opp.)
29
Kingfisher, The
L. Beckmann
125
King Witlaf's Drinking Horn
A. Kappes
131
Kwasind, the Strong Man
T. Moran
109
Lais Corinthaica
Holbein
182
Lake Henderson
F.T. Vance
195
25
Linville, On the
R.E. Piguet
52
Linville River, The
R.E. Piguet
53
Little Emily
John S. Davis
178
Little Mother, The
John S. Davis
80
Loffler Peak, Tyrol, The
135
Longfellow's House
A.C. Warren
100
Longfellow's Library
A.C. Warren
101
Longing Looks
J.W. Bolles
96
Love Aloft
Otto Gunther
116
Manifest Destiny
W.M. Cary
37
Man's Unselfish Friend
Chas. E. Townsend
61
Marston Moor, Before the Battle
of
121
25
Mill, in Wyoming Valley, An Old
F.T. Vance
36
Minster at Ulm, The
158
Monastery de Leca do Balio, The
225
Monk's Oak, The
(After Constantine
Schmidt)
33
Moonlight on the Hudson
Paul Dixon
170
Moose Hunting
232
Morganton, View in
R.E. Piguet
53
Morganton, View near
R.E. Piguet
214
Morning
242
Morning Dew. (Frontispiece)
Victor Nehlig. Opp.
69
Morning in the Meadow
R.E. Piguet
113
Deiker
20
16
Georgie A. Davis
9
Music in the Alps
Dore
33
Naughty Boy, The
John S. Davis (Opp.)
89
Navaja, Duel with the
Dore
86
New England, Hills of
Paul Dixon
204
Niagara
Jules Tavernier
211
(After Darley)
17
Old Oaken Bucket, The
John S. Davis
159
Ornamental, The
Deiker
234
Out of Doors
242
Patriotic Education
F. Beard
130
Penha Verde, Doorway and Oriel in
the
45
Perkins, Granville
48
24
25
Pets, The
241
Picking and Choosing
Beckmann
238
Pines of the Racquette, The
John A. Hows
121
Playing Sick
A.H. Thayer
174
Preston Ponds, From Bishop's
Knoll
.F.T. Vance
199
*** Asleep
C.E. Townsend
143
Rainy Day, The
John S. Davis
120
Raymondskill, Falls of The
Granville Perkins
150
Raymondskill, View on the
Granville Perkins
155
Raymondskill, The Main Fall
Granville Perkins
155
Scene on the Catawba River
R.E. Piguet
210
School Discipline
John S. Davis
198
Serious Case, A
Ernst Bosch
202
Shakspeare, Ward's
J.S. Davis
104
Shipwreck on the Coast of Dieppe,
A
T. Weber
139
Singing the War Song
187
Snow-Birds
Gilbert Burling
207
Song Sparrow, The
Gilbert Burling
32
Song or Wood Thrush, The
Gilbert Burling
66
South Mountain
R.E. Piguet
53
Spanish Postilion
Dore
87
Spanish Ladies
Dore
87
Sport
240
Squaw Pounding Cherries, Old
W.M. Cary
162
Standish, Miles, Courtship of
J.W. Bolles
151
Street Scene in Cairo, A
Opp.
229
Surenen Pass, Switzerland, View in
the
134
Temple of Canova
203
Then fare thee well, my country, lov'd
and lost!
237
"There's a Beautiful Spirit Breathing
Now"
218
Tight Place, In a
W.M. Cary
76
Granville Perkins
21
Truants, The
M.L. Stone
40
Useful, The
Deiker
235
Uttmann, Barbara
68
C. Hulk
Vischer's, Peter, Studio
84
Visconti, Princess
(After "Fra Bartolomeo")
108
Villa de Conde, Church at
215
Village Belle, The
After J.J. Hill
228
Waiting at the Stile
147
Watauga Falls
R.E. Piguet
53
Watering the Cattle
Peter Moran
171
Wayside Inn, The
(After Hill)
107
Weber, Von, Last Moments of
206
What Was That Knot Tied For?
(After I.E. Gaiser)
92
"Which in infancy lisped"
246
"Who Said Rats?"
A.H. Thayer
175
Winter Sketch, A. (Frontispiece)
George H. Smillie. Opp.
149
Wolf, Calf and Goat, The
H.L. Stephens
124
Wood or Summer Ducks
Gilbert Burling
179
"Ye limpid springs and floods,"
237
Young Robin Hunter, The
John S. Davis
60
Zekle's Courtin'
Frank Beard
29
The Aldine
VOL. V.
NEW YORK, JANUARY, 1872.
No. 1.
MAUD MÜLLER.—DRAWN BY GEORGIE A. DAVIS.
"MAUD MÜLLER looked and sighed: 'Ah, me!
That I the Judge's bride might be!
"'He would dress me up in silks so fine,
And praise and toast me at his wine.
"'My father should wear a broad-cloth coat:
My brother should sail a painted boat.'
"'I'd dress my mother so grand and gay,
And the baby should have a new toy each day.
"'And I'd feed the hungry and clothe the poor.
And all should bless me who left our door.
"The Judge looked back as he climbed the hill,
And saw Maud Müller standing still.
"'A form more fair, a face more sweet,
Ne'er hath it been my lot to meet.
"'And her modest answer and graceful air,
Show her wise and good as she is fair.
"'Would she were mine, and I to-day,
Like her a harvester of hay.'"
—Whittier's Maud
Müller.
THE ALDINE.
JAMES SUTTON & CO., Publishers
23 LIBERTY STREET, NEW YORK.
$5.00 per Annum (with chrono.)
Single Copies, 50 Cents.
I stand beside the sea once more;
Its measured murmur comes to me;
The breeze is low upon the shore,
And low upon the purple sea.
Across the bay the flat sand sweeps,
To where the helméd light-house
stands
Upon his post, and vigil keeps,
Far seaward marshaling all the lands.
The hollow surges rise and fall,
The ships steal up the quiet bay;
I scarcely hear or see at all,
My thoughts are flown so far away.
They follow on yon sea-bird's track.
Beyond the beacon's crystal dome;
They will not falter, nor come back,
Until they find my darkened home.
Ah, woe is me! 'tis scarce a year
Since, gazing o'er this moaning main,
My thoughts flew home without a fear.
And with content returned again.
To-day, alas! the fancies dark
That from my laden *** flew,
Returning, came into the ark,
Not with the olive, with the yew.
The ships draw slowly towards the strand,
The watchers' hearts with hope beat
high;
But ne'er again wilt thou touch land—
Lost, lost in yonder sapphire sky!
—Geo. H. Boker.
Toward the close of the last century there was born in New
England one William Miller, whose life, until he was past
fifty, was the life of the average American of his time. He
drank, we suppose, his share of New England rum, when a young
man; married a comely Yankee girl, and reared a family of
chubby-cheeked children; went about his business, whatever it
was, on week days, and when Sunday came, went to meeting with
commendable regularity. He certainly read the Old Testament,
especially the Book of Daniel, and of the New Testament at
least the Book of Revelation. Like many a wiser man before him,
he was troubled at what he read, filled as it was with mystical
numbers and strange beasts, and he sought to understand it, and
to apply it to the days in which he lived. He made the
discovery that the world was to be destroyed in 1843, and went
to and fro in the land preaching that comfortable doctrine. He
had many followers—as many as fifty thousand, it is said,
who thought they were prepared for the end of all things; some
going so far as to lay in a large stock of ascension robes.
Though no writer himself, he was the cause of a great deal of
writing on the part of others, who flooded the land with a
special and curious literature—the literature of
Millerism. It is not of that, however, that we would speak
now.
But before this Miller arose—we proceed to say, if
only to show that we are familiar with other members of the
family—there was another, and very different Miller, who
was born in old England, about one hundred years earlier than
our sadly, or gladly, mistaken Second Adventist. His Christian
name was Joseph, and he was an actor of repute, celebrated for
his excellence in some of the comedies of Congreve. The
characters which he played may have been comic ones, but he was
a serious man. Indeed, his gravity was so well known in his
lifetime that it was reckoned the height of wit, when he was
dead, to father off upon him a Jest Book! This joke, bad as it
was, was better than any joke in the book. It made him famous,
so famous that for the next hundred years every little bon
mot was laid at his door, metaphorically speaking, the
puniest youngest brat of them being christened "Old Joe."
After Joseph Miller had become what Mercutio calls "a grave
man," his descendants went into literature largely, as any one
may see by turning to Allibone's very voluminous dictionary,
where upwards of seventy of the name are immortalized, the most
noted of whom are Thomas Miller, basket-maker and poet, and
Hugh Miller, the learned stone-mason of Cromarty, whose many
works, we confess with much humility, we have not read. To the
sixty-eight Millers in Allibone (if that be the exact number),
must now be added another—Mr. Joaquin Miller, who
published, two or three months since, a collection of poems
entitled "Songs of the Sierras." From which one of the Millers
mentioned above his ancestry is derived, we are not informed;
but, it would seem, from the one first-named. For clearly the
end of all things literary cannot be far off, if Mr. Miller is
the "coming poet," for whom so many good people have been
looking all their lives. We are inclined to think that such is
not the fact. We think, on the whole, that it is to the other
Miller—Joking Miller—his genealogy is to be
traced.
But who is Mr. Miller, and what has he done? A good many
besides ourselves put that question, less than a year ago, and
nobody could answer it. Nobody, that is, in America. In England
he was a great man. He went over to England, unheralded, it is
stated, and was soon discovered to be a poet. Swinburne took
him up; the Rossettis took him up; the critics took him up; he
was taken up by everybody in England, except the police, who,
as a rule, fight shy of poets. He went to fashionable parties
in a red shirt, with trowsers tucked into his boots, and
instead of being shown to the door by the powdered footman, was
received with enthusiasm. It is incredible, but it is true. A
different state of society existed, thirty or forty years ago,
when another American poet went to England; and we advise our
readers, who have leisure at their command, to compare it with
the present social lawlessness of the upper classes among the
English. To do this, they have only to turn to the late N.P.
Willis's "Pencilings by the Way," and contrast his descriptions
of the fashionable life of London then, with almost any
journalistic account of the same kind of life now. The contrast
will be all the more striking if they will only hunt up the
portraits of Disraeli, with his long, dark locks flowing on his
shoulders, and the portrait of Bulwer, behind his "stunning"
waistcoat, and his cascade of neck-cloth, and then imagine Mr.
Miller standing beside them, in his red shirt and high-topped
California boots! Like Byron, Mr. Miller "woke up one morning
and found himself famous."
We compare the sudden famousness of Mr. Miller with the
sudden famousness of Byron, because the English critics have
done so; and because they are pleased to consider Mr. Miller as
Byron's successor! Byron, we are told, was the only poet whom
he had read, before he went to England; and is the only poet to
whom he bears a resemblance. How any of these critics could
have arrived at this conclusion, with the many glaring
imitations of Swinburne—at his worst—staring him in
the face from Mr. Miller's volume, is inconceivable. But,
perhaps, they do not read Swinburne. Do they read Byron?
There are, however, some points of resemblance between Byron
and Mr. Miller. Byron traveled, when young, in countries not
much visited by the English; Mr. Miller claims to have
traveled, when young, in countries not visited by the English
at all. This was, and is, an advantage to both Byron and Mr.
Miller. But it was, and is, a serious disadvantage to their
readers, who cannot well ascertain the truth, or falsehood, of
the poets they admire. The accuracy of Byron's descriptions of
foreign lands has long been admitted; the accuracy of Mr.
Miller's descriptions is not admitted, we believe, by those who
are familiar with the ground he professes to have gone
over.
Another point of resemblance between Byron and Mr. Miller
is, that the underlying idea of their poetry is autobiographic.
We do not say that it was really so in Byron's case, although
he, we know, would have had us believe as much; nor do we say
that it is really so in Mr. Miller's case, although he, too, we
suspect, would have us believe as much.
Mr. Miller resembles Byron as his "Arizonian" resembles
Byron's "Lara." Lara and Arizonian are birds of
the same dark feather. They have journeyed in strange lands;
they have had strange experiences; they have returned to
Civilization. Each, in his way, is a Blighted Being! "Who is
she?" we inquire with the wise old Spanish Judge, for,
certainly, Woman is at the bottom of it all. If our
readers wish to know what woman, we refer them to
"Arizonian:" they, of course, have read "Lara."
Byron was a great poet, but Byronism is dead. Mr. Miller is
not a great poet, and his spurious Byronism will not live. We
shall all see the end of Millerism.
The author laid down his pen, and leaned back in his big
easy chair. The last word had been
written—Finis—and there was the complete book,
quite a tall pile of manuscript, only waiting for the printer's
hands to become immortal: so the author whispered to himself.
He had worked hard upon it; great pains had been expended upon
the delineations of character, and the tone and play of
incident; the plot, too, had been worked up with much artistic
force and skill; and, above all, everything was so strikingly
original; no one, in regarding the various characters of the
tale, could say: this is intended for so-and-so! No, nothing
precisely like the persons in his romance had ever actually
existed; of that the author was certain, and in that he was
very probably correct. To be sure, there was the character of
the country girl, Mary, which he had taken from his own little
waiting-maid: but that was a very subordinate element, and
although, on the whole, he rather regretted having introduced
anything so incongruous and unimaginative, he decided to let it
go. The romance, as a whole, was too great to be injured by one
little country girl, drawn from real life. "And by the way,"
murmured the author to himself, "I wish Mary would bring in my
tea."
He settled himself still more comfortably in his easy chair,
and thought, and looked at his manuscript; and the manuscript
looked back; but all its thinking had been done for it.
Neither spoke—the author, because the book already knew
all he had to say; and the book, because its time to speak and
be immortal had not yet arrived. The fire had all the talking
to itself, and it cackled, and hummed, and skipped about so
cheerfully that one would have imagined it expected to be the
very first to receive a presentation copy of the work on the
table. "How I would devour its contents!" laughed the fire.
Perhaps the author did not comprehend the full force of the
fire's remark, but the voice was so cosy and soothing, the fire
itself so ruddy and genial, and the easy chair so softly
cushioned and hospitable, that he very soon fell into a
condition which enabled him to see, hear, and understand a
great many things which might seem remarkable, and, indeed,
almost incredible.
The manuscript on the table which had hitherto remained
perfectly quiet, now rustled its leaves nervously, and finally
flung itself wide open. A murmur then arose, as of several
voices, and presently there appeared (though whether stepping
from between the leaves of the book itself, or growing together
from the surrounding atmosphere, the author could not well make
out) a number of peculiar-looking individuals, at the first
glance appearing to be human beings, though a clear
investigation revealed in each some odd lack or exaggeration of
gesture, feature, or manner, which might create a doubt as to
whether they actually were, after all, what they purported to
be, or only some lusus naturæ. But the author was
not slow to recognize them, more especially as, happening to
cast a glance at the manuscript, he noticed that it was such no
longer, but a collection of unwritten sheets of paper, blank as
when it lay in the drawer at the stationer's—unwitting of
the lofty destiny awaiting it.
Here, then, were the immortal creations which were soon to
astound the world, come, in person, to pay their respects to
the author of their being. He arose and made a profound
obeisance to the august company, which they one and all
returned, though in such a *** variety of ways, that the
author, albeit aware that every individual had the best of
reasons for employing, under certain special circumstances, his
or her particular manner of salute, could scarcely forbear
smiling at the effect they all together produced in his own
unpretending study.
"Your welcome visit," said the author, addressing his guests
with all the geniality of which he was master (for they seemed
somewhat stiff and ill-at-ease), "gives me peculiar
gratification. I regret not having asked some of my friends,
the critics, up here to make your acquaintance. I am sure you
would all come to the best possible understanding
directly."
"They cannot fathom me," exclaimed a strikingly
handsome young man, with pale lofty brow, and dark clustering
locks, who was leaning with proud grace against the
mantel-piece. "They may take my life, but they cannot read my
soul." And he laughed, scornfully, as he always did.
THE NOONING.—AFTER DARLEY.
This was a passage from that famous ante-mortem soliloquy in
which the hero of the romance indulges in the last chapter but
one. The author, while, of course, he could not deny that the
elegance of the diction was only equaled by the originality of
the sentiment, yet felt a slight uneasiness that his hero
should adopt so defiant a tone with those who were indeed to be
the arbiters of his existence.
"I'm afraid there's not enough perception of the comme il
faut in him to suit the every-day world," muttered he. "To
be sure, he was not constructed for ordinary ends. Do you find
yourself at home in this life, madame?" he continued aloud,
turning to a young lady of matchless beauty, whose brief career
of passionate love and romantic misery the author had described
in thrilling chapters. She raised her luminous eyes to his, and
murmured reproachfully: "Why speak to me of Life? if it be not
Love, it is Life no longer!"
It was very beautiful, and the author recollected having
thought, at the time he wrote it down, that it was about the
most forcible sentence in that most powerful passage of his
book. But it was rather an exaggerated tone to adopt in the
face of such common-place surroundings. Had this exquisite
creature, after all, no better sense of the appropriate?
"No one can know better than I, my dear Constance," said the
author, in a fatherly tone, "what a beautiful, tender, and
lofty soul yours is; but would it not be well, once in a while,
to veil its lustre—to subdue it to a tint more in keeping
with the unvariegated hue of common circumstance?"
"Heartless and cruel!" sobbed Constance, falling upon the
sofa, "hast thou not made me what I am?"
This accusation, intended by the author to be leveled at the
traitor lover, quite took him aback when directed, with so much
aptness, too, at his respectable self. But whom but himself
could he blame, if, when common sense demanded only civility
and complaisance, she persisted in adhering to the tragic and
sentimental? He was provoked that he had not noticed this
defect in time to remedy it; yet he had once considered
Constance as, perhaps, the completest triumph of his genius!
There seemed to be something particularly disenchanting in the
atmosphere of that study.
"I'm afraid you're a failure, ma'am, after all," sighed the
author, eyeing her disconsolately. "You're so one-sided!"
At this heartless observation the lady gave a harrowing
shriek, thereby summoning to her side a broad-shouldered young
fellow, clad in soldier's garb, with a countenance betokening
much boldness and determination. He faced the author with an
angry frown, which the latter at once recognized as being that
of Constance's brother Sam.
"Now then, old bloke!" sang out that young gentleman, "what
new deviltry are you up to? Down on your knees and beg her
pardon, or, by George! I'll run you through the body!"
On this character the author had expended much thought and
care. He was the type of the hardy and bold adventurer, rough
and unpolished, perhaps, but of true and sterling metal, who,
by dint of his vigorous common sense and honest, energetic
nature, should at once clear and lighten whatever in the
atmosphere of the story was obscure and sombre; and, by the
salutary contrast of his fresh and rugged character with the
delicate or morbid traits of his fellow beings, lend a graceful
symmetry to the whole. The sentence Sam had just delivered with
so much emphasis ought to have been addressed to the traitor
lover, when discovered in the act of inconstancy, and, so
given, would have been effective and dramatic. But at a
juncture like the present, the author felt it to be simply
ludicrous, and had he not been so mortified, would have laughed
outright!
"Don't make a fool of yourself, Sam," remonstrated he.
"Reflect whom you're addressing, and in what company you are,
and do try and talk like a civilized being."
"Come, come! no palaver," returned Sam, in a loud and
boisterous tone (to do him justice, he had never been taught
any other); "down on your marrow-bones at once, or here goes
for your gizzard!" and he drew his sword with a flourish.
So this was the rough diamond—the epitome of common
sense! Why, he was a half-witted, impertinent, overbearing
***, and his author longed to get him across his knee, and
correct him in the good old way. But meantime the point of the
young warrior's sword was getting unpleasantly near the left
breast-pocket of the author's dressing gown (which he wore at
the time), and the latter happened to recollect, with a nervous
thrill, that this was the sword which mortally wounded the
traitor lover (for whom Sam evidently mistook him) during the
stirring combat so vividly described in the twenty-second
chapter. Could he but have foreseen the future, what a
different ending that engagement should have had! But again it
was too late, and the author sprang behind the big easy chair
with astonishing agility, and from that vantage ground
endeavored to bring on a parley.
Yet how could he argue and expostulate against himself? How
arraign Sam of harboring murderous designs which he had himself
implanted in his ***? How, indeed, expect him to comprehend
conversation so entirely foreign to his experience? It was an
awkward dilemma.
It was Sam who took it by the horns. Somebody, he felt, must
be mortally wounded; and finding himself defrauded of one
subject, he took up with the next he encountered, which chanced
to be none other than the venerable and white-haired gentleman
who filled the position, in the tale, of a wealthy and
benevolent uncle. The author, having always felt a sentiment of
exceptional respect and admiration for this reverend and
patriarchal personage, who by his gentle words and sage
counsels, no less than his noble generosity, had done so much
to elevate and sweeten the tone of his book, fell into an
ecstasy of terror at witnessing the approach of his seemingly
inevitable destruction; especially as he perceived that the
poor old fellow (who never in his life had met with aught but
reverence and affection, and knew nothing of the nature of
deadly weapons and impulses) was, so far, from attempting to
defend himself, or even escape, actually opening his arms to
the widest extent of avuncular hospitality, and preparing to
take his assassin, sword and all, into his fond and forgiving
heart!
"You old fool!" shrieked the author, in the excess of his
irritation and despair; "he isn't your repentant nephew! Why
can't you keep your forgiveness until it's wanted?"
But Uncle Dudley having been created solely to forgive and
benefit, was naturally incapable of taking care of himself, and
would certainly have been run through the ample white
waistcoat, had not an unexpected and wholly unprecedented
interruption averted so awful a catastrophe.
A small, graceful figure, wearing a picturesque white cap,
with jaunty ribbons, and a short scarlet petticoat, from
beneath which peeped the prettiest feet and ancles ever seen,
stepped suddenly between the philanthropic victim and his
would-be-murderer, dealt the latter a vigorous blow across the
face with a broom she carried, thereby toppling him over
ignominiously into the coal-scuttle, and then, placing her
plump hands saucily akimbo, she exclaimed with enchanting
naivete: "There! Mr. Free-and-easy! take that for
your imperance."
This little incident caused the author to fall back into his
easy chair in a condition of profound emotion. It appeared to
have corrected a certain dimness or obliquity in his vision, of
the existence of which its cure rendered him for the first time
conscious. The appearance of the little country girl (whose
very introduction into the romance the author had looked upon
with misgivings) had afforded the first gleam of natural,
refreshing, wholesome interest—in fact, the only relief
to all that was vapid, irrational, and unreal—which the
combined action of the characters in his romance had succeeded
in producing. But the enchantress who had effected this, so far
from being the most unadulterated product of his own brain and
genius, was the only one of all his dramatis
personæ who was not in the slightest degree indebted
to him for her existence. She was nothing more than an accurate
copy of Mary the house-maid, while the others—the
mis-formed, ill-balanced, one-sided creations, who, the moment
they were placed beyond the pale of their written
instructions—put out of the regular and pre-arranged
order of their going—displayed in every word and gesture
their utter lack and want of comprehension of the simplest
elements of human nature: these were the unaided
offspring of the author's fancy. And yet it was by help of such
as these he had thought to push his way to immortality! How the
world would laugh at him! and, as he thought this, a few bitter
tears of shame and humiliation trickled down the sides of the
poor man's nose.
Presently he looked up. The warlike Sam remained sitting
disconsolately in the coal-hod; his instructions suggested no
means of extrication. Forsaken Constance lay fainting on the
sofa, waiting for some one to chafe her hands and bathe her
temples. The strikingly handsome betrayer leant in sullen and
gloomy silence against the mantel-piece, ready to treat all
advances with stern and defiant obduracy. The benevolent uncle
stood with open arms and bland smile, never doubting but that
everybody was preparing for a simultaneous rush to, and
participation in, his embrace; and, finally, the pretty little
country girl, with her arms akimbo and her nose in the air,
remained mistress of the situation. Her unheard of innovation,
of having done something timely, sensible, and decisive, even
though not put down in the book, seemed to have paralyzed all
the others. Ah! she was the only one there who was not less
than a shadow. The author felt his desolate heart yearn towards
her, and the next moment found himself on his knees at her
feet.
"Mary," cried he, "you are my only reality. The others are
empty and soulless, but you have a heart. They are the children
of a conceited brain and visionary experience; you, only, have
I drawn simply and unaffectedly, as you actually existed.
Except for you, whom I slighted and despised, my whole romance
had been an unmitigated falsehood. To you I owe my preservation
from worse than folly, and my initiation into true wisdom.
Mary—dear Mary, in return I have but one thing to offer
you—my heart! Can you—will you not love
me?"—
To his intense surprise, Mary, instead of evincing a
becoming sense of her romantic situation, burst forth into a
merry peal of laughter, and, catching him by one shoulder, gave
him a hearty shake.
"La sakes! Mr. Author, do wake up! did ever anybody hear
such a man!"
There was his room, his fire, his chair, his table, and his
closely-written manuscript lying quietly upon it. There was he
himself on his knees on the carpet, and—there was Mary
the house-maid, one hand holding the brimming tea-pot, the
other held by the author against his lips, and laughing and
blushing in a tumult of surprise, amusement and, perhaps,
something better than either.
"Did I say I loved you, Mary?" enquired the author, in a
state of bewilderment. "Never mind! I say now that I love you
with all my heart and soul, and ten times as much when awake,
as when I was dreaming! Will you marry me?"
Mary only blushed rosier then ever. But she and the author
always thereafter took their tea cosily together.
As for the romance, the author took it and threw it into the
fire, which roared a genial acknowledgment, and in five minutes
had made itself thoroughly acquainted with every page. There
remained a bunch of black flakes, and in the center one soft
glowing spark, which lingered a long while ere finally taking
its flight up the chimney. It was the description of the little
country girl.
"The next book I write shall be all about you," the author
used to say to his wife, in after years, as they sat together
before the fire-place, and watched the bright blaze roar up the
chimney.
—Julian Hawthorne.
Grass afield wears silver thatch,
Palings all are edged with rime,
Frost-flowers pattern round the latch,
Cloud nor breeze dissolve the clime;
When the waves are solid floor,
And the clods are iron-bound,
And the boughs are crystall'd ***,
And the red leaf nail'd aground.
When the fieldfare's flight is slow,
And a rosy vapor rim,
Now the sun is small and low,
Belts along the region dim.
When the ice-crack flies and flaws,
Shore to shore, with thunder shock,
Deeper than the evening daws,
Clearer than the village clock.
When the rusty blackbird strips,
Bunch by bunch, the coral thorn,
And the pale day-crescent dips,
New to heaven a slender horn.
—John Leicester Warren.
Those who come last seem to enter with advantage. They are
born to the wealth of antiquity. The materials for judging are
prepared, and the foundations of knowledge are laid to their
hands. Besides, if the point was tried by antiquity, antiquity
would lose it; for the present age is really the oldest, and
has the largest experience to plead.—Jeremy
Collier.
COMING OUT OF SCHOOL.—VAUTIER.
If there be any happier event in the life of a child than
coming out of school, few children are wise enough to discover
it. We do not refer to children who go to school
unwillingly—thoughtless wights—whose heads are full
of play, and whose hands are prone to mischief:—that
these should delight in escaping the restraints of the
school-room, and the eye of its watchful master, is a matter of
course. We refer to children generally, the good and the bad,
the studious and the idle, in short, to all who belong to the
genus Boy. Perhaps we should include the genus
Girl, also, but of that we are not certain; for, not to dwell
upon the fact that we have never been a girl, and are,
therefore, unable to enter into the feelings of girlhood, we
hold that girls are better than boys, as women are better than
men, and that, consequently, they take more kindly to school
life. What boys are we know, unless the breed has changed very
much since we were young, which is now upwards of—but our
age does not concern the reader. We did not take kindly to
school, although we were sadly in need of what we could only
obtain in school, viz., learning. We went to school with
reluctance, and remained with discomfort; for we were not as
robust as the children of our neighbors. We hated school. We
did not dare to play truant, however, like other boys whom we
knew (we were not courageous enough for that); so we kept on
going, fretting, and pining, and—learning.
Oh the long days (the hot days of summer, and the cold days
of winter), when we had to sit for hours on hard wooden
benches, before uncomfortable desks, bending over grimy slates
and ink-besprinkled "copy books," and poring over studies in
which we took no interest—geography, which we learned by
rote; arithmetic, which always evaded us, and grammar, which we
never could master. We could repeat the "rules," but we could
not "parse;" we could cipher, but our sums would not "prove;"
we could rattle off the productions of Italy—"corn, wine,
silk and oil"—but we could not "bound" the State in which
we lived. We were conscious of these defects, and deplored
them. Our teachers were also conscious of them, and flogged us!
We had a morbid dread of corporeal punishment, and strove to
the uttermost to avoid it; but it made no difference, it came
all the same—came as surely and swiftly to us as to the
bad boys who played "hookey," the worse boys who fought, and
the worst boy who once *** his master in the street. With
such a school record as this, is it to be wondered at that we
rejoiced when school was out? And rejoiced still more when we
were out of school?
The feeling which we had then appears to be shared by the
children in our illustration. Not for the same reasons,
however; for we question whether the most ignorant of their
number does not know more of grammar than we do to-day, and is
not better acquainted with the boundaries of Germany than we
could ever force ourselves to be. We like these little fellows
for what they are, and what they will probably be. And we like
their master, a grave, simple-hearted man, whose proper place
would appear to be the parish-pulpit. What his scholars learn
will be worth knowing, if it be not very profound. They will
learn probity and goodness, and it will not be ferruled into
them either. Clearly, they do not fear the master, or they
would not be so unconstrained in his presence. They would not
make snow balls, as one has done, and another is doing. Soon
they will begin to pelt each other, and the passers by will not
mind the snow balls, if they will only remember how they
themselves felt, and behaved, after coming out of school.
There is not much in a group of children coming out of
school. So one might say at first sight, but a little
reflection will show the fallacy of the remark. One would
naturally suppose that in every well-regulated State of
antiquity measures would have been taken to ensure the
education of all classes of the community, but such was not the
case. The Spartans under Lycurgus were educated, but their
education was mainly a physical one, and it did not reach the
lower orders. The education of Greece generally, even when the
Greek mind had attained its highest culture, was still largely
physical—philosophers, statesmen, and poets priding
themselves as much upon their athletic feats as upon their
intellectual endowments. The schools of Rome were private, and
were confined to the patricians. There was a change for the
better when Christianity became the established religion.
Public schools were recommended by a council in the sixth
century, but rather as a means of teaching the young the
rudiments of their faith, under the direction of the clergy,
than as a means of giving them general instruction. It was not
until the close of the twelfth century that a council ordained
the establishment of grammar schools in cathedrals for the
gratuitous instruction of the poor; and not until a century
later that the ordinance was carried into effect at Lyons.
Luther found time, amid his multitudinous labors, to interest
himself in popular education; and, in 1527, he drew up, with
the aid of Melanchthon, what is known as the Saxon School
System. The seed was sown, but the Thirty Years' War prevented
its coming to a speedy maturity. In the middle of the last
century several of the German States passed laws making it
compulsory upon parents to send their children to school at a
certain age; but these laws were not really obeyed until the
beginning of the present century. German schools are now open
to the poorest as well as the richest children. The only
people, except the Germans, who thought of common schools at an
early period are the Scotch.
It cost, we see, some centuries of mental blindness to
discover the need of, and some centuries of struggling to
establish schools.
The spell which Venice has cast over the English poets is as
powerful, in its way, as was the influence of Italian
literature upon the early literature of England. From Chaucer
down, the poets have turned to Italy for inspiration, and, what
is still better, have found it. It is not too much to say that
the "Canterbury Tales" could not have existed, in their present
form, if Boccaccio had not written the "Decameron;" and it is
to Boccaccio we are told that the writers of his time were
indebted for their first knowledge of Homer. Wyatt and Surrey
transplanted what they could of grace from Petrarch into the
rough England of Henry the Eighth. We know what the early
dramatists owe to the Italian storytellers. They went to their
novels for the plots of their plays, as the novelists of to-day
go to the criminal calendar for the plots of their stories.
Shakspeare appears so familiar with Italian life that Mr.
Charles Armitage Brown, the author of a very curious work on
Shakspeare's Sonnets, declares that he must have visited Italy,
basing this conclusion on the minute knowledge of certain
Italian localities shown in some of his later plays. At home in
Verona, Milan, Mantua, and Padua, Shakspeare is nowhere so much
so as in Venice.
It is impossible to think of Venice without remembering the
poets; and the poet who is first remembered is Byron. If our
thoughts are touched with gravity as they should be when we
dwell upon the sombre aspects of Venice—when we look, as
here, for example, on the Bridge of Sighs—we find
ourselves repeating:
"I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs."
If we are in a gayer mood, as we are likely to be after
looking at the brilliant carnival-scene which greets us at the
threshold of the present number of THE ALDINE, we recall
the opening passages of Byron's merry poem of "Beppo:"
"Of all the places where the Carnival
Was most facetious in the days of
yore,
For dance, and song, and serenade, and ball,
And masque, and mime, and mystery, and
more
Than I have time to tell now, or at all,
Venice the bell from every city
bore."
"And there are dresses splendid, but
fantastical,
Masks of all times, and nations, Turks
and Jews,
And harlequins and clowns, with feats
gymnastical,
Greeks, Romans, Yankee-doodles, and
Hindoos
All kinds of dress, except the ecclesiastical,
All people, as their fancies hit, may
choose,
But no one in these parts may quiz the clergy,
Therefore take heed, ye Freethinkers! I charge
ye."
The Bridge of Sighs (to return to prose) is a long covered
gallery, leading from the ducal palace to the old State prisons
of Venice. It was frequently traversed, we may be sure, in the
days of some of the Doges, to one of whom, our old friend, and
Byron's—Marino Faliero—the *** of the ducal
palace is sometimes falsely ascribed. Founded in the year 800,
A.D., the ducal palace was afterwards destroyed five times, and
each time arose from its ruins with increasing splendor until
it became, what it is now, a stately marble building of the
Saracenic style of architecture, with a grand staircase and
noble halls, adorned with pictures by Titian, Tintoretto, Paul
Veronese, and other famous masters.
It would be difficult to find gloomier dungeons, even in the
worst strongholds of despotism, than those in which the State
prisoners of Venice were confined. These "pozzi," or wells,
were sunk in the thick walls, under the flooring of the chamber
at the foot of the Bridge of Sighs. There were twelve of them
formerly, and they ran down three or four stories. The Venetian
of old time abhorred them as deeply as his descendants, who, on
the first arrival of the conquering French, attempted to block
or break up the lowest of them, but were not entirely
successful; for, when Byron was in Venice, it was not uncommon
for adventurous tourists to descend by a trap-door, and crawl
through holes, half choked by rubbish, to the depth of two
stories below the first range. So says the writer of the
Notes to the fourth canto of "Childe Harolde" (Byron's
friend Hobhouse, if our memory serves), who adds, "If you are
in want of consolation for the extinction of patrician power,
perhaps you may find it there. Scarcely a ray of light glimmers
into the narrow gallery which leads to the cells, and the
places of confinement themselves are totally dark. A little
hole in the wall admitted the damp air of the passages, and
served for the introduction of the prisoner's food. A wooden
pallet, about a foot or so from the ground, was the only
furniture. The conductors tell you a light was not allowed. The
cells are about five paces in length, two and a half in width,
and seven feet in height. They are directly beneath one
another, and respiration is somewhat difficult in the lower
holes. Only one prisoner was found when the Republicans
descended into these hideous recesses, and he is said to have
been confined sixteen years." When the prisoner's hour came he
was taken out and strangled in a cell upon the Bridge of
Sighs!
And this was in Venice! The grand old Republic which was
once the greatest Power of Eastern Europe; the home of great
artists and architects, renowned the world over for arts and
arms; the Venice of "blind old Dandolo," who led her galleys to
victory at the ripe old age of eighty; the Venice of Doge
Foscari, whose son she tortured, imprisoned and murdered, and
whose own paternal, patriotic, great heart she broke; the
Venice of gay gallants, and noble, beautiful ladies; the Venice
of mumming, masking, and the carnival; the bright, beautiful
Venice of Shakspeare, Otway, and Byron; joyous, loving Venice;
cruel, fatal Venice!
MODERN SATIRE.—A satire on everything is a satire on
nothing; it is mere absurdity. All contempt, all disrespect,
implies something respected, as a standard to which it is
referred; just as every valley implies a hill. The
persiflage of the French and of fashionable worldlings,
which turns into ridicule the exceptions and yet abjures the
rules, is like Trinculo's government—its latter end
forgets its beginning. Can there be a more mortal, poisonous
consumption and asphyxy of the mind than this decline and
extinction of all reverence?—Jean
Paul.
Although English Poetry abounds with pictures of the
seasons, its Winter pictures are neither numerous, nor among
its best. For one good snow-piece we can readily find twenty
delicate Spring pictures—twinkling with morning dew, and
odorous with the perfume of early flowers. It would be easy to
make a large gallery of Summer pictures; and another gallery,
equally large, which should contain only the misty skies, the
dark clouds, and the falling leaves of Autumn. Not so with
Winter scenes. Not that the English poets have not painted the
last, and painted them finely, but that as a rule they have not
taken kindly to the work. They prefer to do what Keats did in
one of his poems, viz., make Winter a point of departure from
which Fancy shall wing her way to brighter days:
"Fancy, high-commissioned; send her!
She has vassals to attend her,
She will bring, in spite of frost,
Beauties that the earth hath lost,
She will bring thee, all together,
All delights of summer weather."
But we must not let Keats come between us and the few among
his fellows who have sung of Winter for us. Above all, we must
not let him keep his and our master, Shakspeare, waiting:
"When icicles hang by the wall,
And *** the shepherd blows his nail,
And Tom bears logs into the hall,
And milk comes frozen home in pail,
When blood is nipped, and ways be foul,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
To-whoo;
To-whit, to-whoo, a merry note,
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.
"When all aloud the wind doth blow,
And coughing drowns the parson's saw,
And birds sit brooding in the snow,
And Marian's nose looks red and raw.
When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
To-whoo;
To-whit, to-whoo, a merry note,
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot."
From Shakspeare to Thomson is something of a descent, but we
must make it before we can find any Winter poetry worth
quoting. Here is a picture, ready-made, for Landseer to put
into form and color:
"There, warm together pressed, the trooping deer
Sleep on the new-fallen snows; and scarce his
head
Raised o'er the heapy wreath, the branching elk
Lies slumbering sullen in the white abyss.
The ruthless hunter wants nor dogs nor toils,
Nor with the dread of sounding bows he drives
The fearful flying race: with ponderous clubs,
As weak against the mountain-heaps they push
Their beating breast in vain, and piteous bray,
He lays them quivering on the ensanguined snows,
And with loud shouts rejoicing bears them home."
Cowper is superior to Thomson as a painter of Winter,
although it is doubtful whether he was by nature the better
poet. Here is one of his pictures:
"The cattle mourn in corners, where the fence
Screens them, and seem half petrified with sleep
In unrecumbent sadness. There they wait
Their wonted fodder; not like hungering man,
Fretful if unsupplied; but silent, meek,
And patient of the slow-paced swain's delay.
He, from the stack, carves out the accustomed
load,
Deep plunging, and again deep plunging oft,
The broad keen knife into the solid mass:
Smooth as a wall, the upright remnant stands,
With such undeviating and even force
He severs it away: no needless care,
Lest storms should overset the leaning pile
Deciduous, or its own unbalanced weight.
Forth goes the woodman, leaving, unconcerned,
The cheerful haunts of man, to wield the axe
And drive the wedge in yonder forest drear,
From morn to eve his solitary task.
Shaggy, and lean, and shrewd, with pointed ears
And tail cropped short, half lurcher and half
cur,
His dog attends him. Close behind his heel
Now creeps he slow; and now, with many a frisk,
Wide scampering, snatches up the drifted snow
With ivory teeth, or ploughs it with his snout;
Then shakes his powdered coat, and barks for
joy.
Heedless of all his pranks, the sturdy churl
Moves right toward the mark; nor stops for
aught,
But now and then, with pressure of his thumb
To adjust the fragrant charge of a short tube
That fumes beneath his nose: the trailing cloud
Streams far behind him, scenting all the air.
Now from the roost, or from the neighboring
pale,
Where, diligent to cast the first faint gleam
Of smiling day, they gossiped side by side,
Come trooping at the housewife's well-known call
The feathered tribes domestic. Half on wing,
And half on foot, they brush the fleecy flood,
Conscious and fearful of too deep a plunge.
The sparrows peep, and quit the sheltering
eaves,
To seize the fair occasion; well they eye
The scattered grain, and thievishly resolved
To escape the impending famine, often scared
As oft return, a pert voracious kind.
Clean riddance quickly made, one only care
Remains to each, the search of sunny nook,
Or shed impervious to the blast. Resigned
To sad necessity, the *** foregoes
His wonted strut; and, wading at their head,
With well-considered steps, seems to resent
His altered gait and stateliness retrenched."
The American poets have excelled their English brethren in
painting the outward aspects of Winter. Here is Mr. Emerson's
description of a snow storm:
"Announced by all the trumpets of the sky
Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields,
Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air
Hides hills and woods, the river, and the
heaven,
And veils the farm-house at the garden's end.
The sled and traveler stopped, the courier's
feet
Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates
sit
Around the radiant fire-place, enclosed
In a tumultuous privacy of storm.
Come see the north wind's masonry.
Out of an unseen quarry evermore
Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer
Curves his white bastions with projected roof
Round every windward stake, or tree, or door.
Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work
So fanciful, so savage, nought cares he
For number or proportion. Mockingly
On coop or kennel he hangs Parian wreaths;
A swan-like form invests the hidden thorn:
Fills up the farmer's lane from wall to wall,
Maugre the farmer's sighs, and at the gate
A tapering turret overtops the work.
And when his hours are numbered, and the world
Is all his own, retiring, as he were not,
Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art
To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone,
Built in an age, the mad wind's night-work,
The frolic architecture of the snow."
In Mr. Bryant's "Winter Piece" we have a brilliant
description of frost-work:
"Look! the massy trunks
Are cased in the pure crystal; each light spray
Nodding and tinkling in the breath of heaven,
Is studded with its trembling water-drops,
That glimmer with an amethystine light.
But round the parent stem the long low boughs
Bend, in a glittering ring, and arbors hide
The glassy floor. Oh! you might deem the spot
The spacious cavern of some *** mine,
Deep in the womb of earth—where the gems
grow,
And diamonds put forth radiant rods and bud
With amethyst and topaz—and the place
Lit up, most royally, with the pure beam
That dwells in them. Or haply the vast hall
Of fairy palace, that outlasts the night,
And fades not in the glory of the sun;—
Where crystal columns send forth slender shafts
And crossing arches; and fantastic aisles
Wind from the sight in brightness, and are lost,
Among the crowded pillars. Raise thine eye;
Thou seest no cavern roof, no palace vault;
There the blue sky and the white drifting cloud
Look in. Again the wildered fancy dreams
Of spouting fountains, frozen as they rose,
And fixed, with all their branching jets, in
air,
And all their sluices sealed. All, all is light;
Light without shade. But all shall pass away
With the next sun. From numberless vast trunks,
Loosened, the crashing ice shall make a sound
Like the far roar of rivers, and the eve
Shall close o'er the brown woods as it was
wont."
Winter, itself, has never been more happily impersonated
than by dear old Spenser. We meant to close with his portrait
of Winter, but, on second thoughts, we give, as more
seasonable, his description of January. The fourth line can
hardly fail to remind the reader of the second line of
Shakspeare's song, and to suggest the query—whether
Shakspeare borrowed from Spenser, Spenser from Shakspeare, or
both from Nature?
"Then came old January, wrapped well
In many weeds to keep the cold away;
Yet did he quake and quiver like to quell,
And blow his nayles to warme them if he may;
For they were numbed with holding all the day
An hatchet keene, with which he felled wood
And from the trees did lop the needlesse spray:
Upon an huge great earth-pot steane he stood,
From whose wide mouth there flowed forth the Romane
floud."
As long as you are engaged in the world, you must comply
with its maxims; because nothing is more unprofitable than the
wisdom of those persons who set up for reformers of the age.
'Tis a part a man can not act long, without offending his
friends, and rendering himself ridiculous.—St.
Gosemond.
From the French of Theophile Gautier.
In the province of Canton, several miles from the city,
there once lived two rich Chinese merchants, retired from
business. One of them was named Tou, the other Kouan. Both were
possessed of great riches, and were persons of much consequence
in the community.
Tou and Kouan were distant relatives, and from early youth
had lived and worked side by side. Bound by ties of great
affection, they had built their homes near together, and every
evening they met with a few select friends to pass the hours in
delightful intercourse. Both possessed of much talent, they
vied with each other in the production of exquisite Chinese
handiwork, and spent the evenings in tracing poetry and fancy
designs on rice-paper as they drank each other's success in
tiny glasses of delicate cordial. But their characters,
apparently so harmonious, as time went on grew more and more
apart; they were like an almond tree, growing as one stem,
until little by little the branches divide so that the topmost
twigs are far from each other—half sending their bitter
perfume through the whole garden, while the other half scatter
their snow-white flowers outside the garden wall.
From year to year Tou grew more serious; his figure
increased in dignity, even his double chin wore a solemn
expression, and he spent his whole time composing moral
inscriptions to hang over the doors of his pavilion.
Kouan, on the contrary, grew jolly as his years increased.
He sang more gaily than ever in praise of wine, flowers, and
birds. His spirit, unburdened by vulgar cares, was light like a
young man's, and he dreamed of nothing but pure enjoyment.
Little by little an intense hatred sprang up between the
friends. They could not meet without indulging in bitter
sarcasm. They were like two hedges of brambles, bristling with
sharp thorns. At last, things came to such a pass that they
could no longer endure each other's society, and each hung a
tablet by the door of his dwelling, stating that no person from
the neighboring house would be allowed to cross the threshold
on any pretext whatever.
They would have been glad to move their houses to different
parts of the country, but, unhappily, this was not possible.
Tou even tried to sell his property but he set such an
unreasonable price that no buyer appeared, and he was,
moreover, unwilling to leave all the treasures he had
accumulated there—the sculptured wainscotting, the
polished panels, like mirrors, the transparent windows, the
gilded lattice-work, the bamboo lounges, the vases of rare
porcelain, the red and black lacquered cabinets, and the cases
full of books of ancient poetry. It was hard to give up to
strangers the garden where he had planted shade and fruit trees
with his own hands, and where, each spring he had watched the
opening of the flowers; where in short, each object was bound
to his heart by ties delicate as the finest silk, but strong as
iron chains.
In the days of their friendship, Tou and Kouan had each
built a pavilion in his garden, on the shore of a lake, common
to both estates. It had been a great delight to sit in their
separate balconies and exchange friendly salutations while they
smoked *** in pipes of delicate porcelain. But after becoming
enemies they built a wall which divided the lake into two equal
portions. The water was so deep that the wall was supported on
a series of arches, through which the water flowed freely,
reflecting upon its placid surface the rival pavilions.
These pavilions were exquisite specimens of Chinese
architecture. The roofs, covered with tiling, round and
brilliant as the scales which glisten on the sides of a
gold-fish, were supported upon red and black pillars which
rested on a solid foundation, richly ornamented with porcelain
slabs bearing all manner of artistic designs. A railing ran all
around, formed by a graceful intermingling of branches and
flowers wrought in ivory. The interior was not less sumptuous.
On the walls were inscribed verses of celebrated Chinese poems,
elegantly written in perpendicular lines, with golden
characters on a lacquered background. Shades of delicately
carved ivory, softened the light to a faint opal tint, and all
around stood pots of orchis, peonies, and daisies, which filled
the air with delicious perfume. Curtains of rich silk were
draped over the entrance, and on the marble tables within were
scattered fans, tooth-picks, ebony pipes, and pencils with all
conveniences for writing.
All around the pavilions were picturesque grounds
of rock, among whose clefts
grew clumps of willows, their long green twigs swaying on
the surface of the water. Under the crystal waves sported
myriads of gold-fish, and ducks with gay plumage floated
among the broad, shining leaves of water-lilies. Except in
the very centre of the pool, where the depth of the water
prevented the growth of aquatic plants, the whole surface
was covered with these leaves, like a carpet of soft green
velvet.
Before the unsightly wall had been placed there by the
hostile owners, it was impossible to find a more picturesque
spot in the whole empire, and even now no philosopher would
have wished for a more retired and delicious retreat in which
to pass his days.
Both Tou and Kouan felt deeply the loss of the enchanting
prospect, and gazed sadly upon the barren wall which rose
before their eyes, but each consoled himself with the idea that
his neighbor was as badly off as himself.
Things went on in this way for several years. Grass and
weeds choked up the pathway between the two houses, and
brambles and branches of low shrubs intertwined across it, as
though they would bar all communication forever. It appeared as
if the plants understood the quarrel between the two old
friends, and took delight in perpetuating it.
Meanwhile the wives of both Tou and Kouan were both blessed
each with a child. Madame Tou became the mother of a charming
girl, and Madame Kouan of the handsomest boy in the world. Each
family was ignorant of the happy event which had brought joy
into the home of the other, for although their houses were so
near together the families were as far apart as if they had
been separated by the great wall of the empire, or the ocean
itself. What mutual friends they still possessed, never alluded
to the affairs of one in the house of the other; even the
servants had been forbidden to exchange words with each other,
under pain of death.
The boy was named Tchin-Sing, and the girl Ju-Kiouan, that
is to say, Jasper and Pearl. Their perfect beauty fully
justified the choice of their names. As they grew old enough to
take notice of their surroundings, the unsightly wall attracted
their attention, and each inquired of their parents why that
strange barrier was placed across the centre of such a charming
sheet of water, and to whom belonged the great trees of which
they could see the topmost boughs.
Each was told that on the farther side of the wall was the
habitation of a strange and wicked family, and that it had been
placed there as a protection against such disagreeable
neighbors.
This explanation was sufficient for the children. They grew
accustomed to the sight and thought no more about it.
Ju-Kiouan grew in grace and beauty. She was skilled in all
lady-like accomplishments. The butterflies which she
embroidered upon satin appeared to live and beat their wings,
and one could almost hear the song of the birds which grew
under her fingers, and smell the perfume of the flowers she
wrought upon canvas. She knew the "Book of Odes" by heart, and
could repeat the five rules of life without missing a word. Her
handwriting was perfection, and she composed in all the
different styles of Chinese poetry. Her poems were upon all
those delicate themes which would attract the mind of a pure
young girl; upon the return of the swallows, the daisies, the
weeping willows and similar topics, and were of such merit as
to win much praise from the wise men of the country.
Tchin-Sing was not less forward in his accomplishments, and
his name stood at the head of his class. Although he was very
young he had already gained the right to wear the black cap of
the wise men, and all the mothers in the country about wished
him for a son-in-law. But Tchin-Sing had but one answer to all
proposals; it was too soon, and he desired his liberty for some
time to come. He refused the hand of Hon-Giu, of Oma, and other
beautiful young girls. Never was a young man more courted and
more overwhelmed with sweets and flowers than he, but his heart
remained insensible to all attractions. Not on account of its
coldness, for he appeared full of longing for an object to
adore. His heart seemed fixed upon some memory, some dream,
perhaps, for whose realization he was waiting and hoping. It
was all in vain to tell him of beautiful tresses, languishing
eyes, and soft hands waiting for his acceptance. He listened
with a distracted air, as if thinking of other things.
Ju-Kiouan was not less difficult to please. She refused all
suitors for her hand. This did not salute her gracefully, that
was not dainty in his habits; one had a bad handwriting,
another composed poor verses; in short all had some defect. She
drew amusing caricatures of everyone, which made her parents
laugh, and show the door to the unlucky lover in the most
polite manner possible.
At last the parents of both young people became alarmed at
the continued refusal of their children to marry, and the
mothers commenced to follow the subject in their dreams. One
night Madame Kouan dreamed that she saw a pearl of wonderful
purity reposing on the breast of her son. On the other hand,
Madame Tou dreamed that on her daughter's forehead sparkled a
jasper of inestimable value. Much consultation was held as to
the significance of these dreams. Madame Kouan's was thought to
imply that her son would win the highest honors of the Imperial
Academy, while Madame Tou's might signify that her daughter
would find some untold treasure in the garden. These
interpretations, however, did not satisfy the two mothers,
whose whole minds were bent upon the happy marriage of their
children. Unfortunately both Tchin-Sing and Ju-Kiouan persisted
more obstinately than ever in their refusal to listen to the
subject.
As young people are not usually so averse to marriage, the
parents suspected some secret attachment, but a few days'
careful watching sufficed to prove that Tchin-Sing was paying
court to no young girl, and that no lover was to be seen under
the balcony of Ju-Kiouan.
At length both mothers decided to consult the bronze oracle
in the temple of Fo. After burning gilt paper and perfume
before the oracle, Madame Tou received the unsatisfactory
answer that, until the jasper appeared, the pearl would unite
with no one, and Madame Kouan was told the jasper would take
nothing to his *** but the pearl. Both women went sadly
homeward in deeper perplexity than ever.
One day Ju-Kiouan was leaning pensively on the balcony of
her pavilion, precisely at the same time when Tchin-Sing was
standing by his. The day was clear as crystal, and not a cloud
floated in the blue space above. There was not sufficient wind
to move the lightest twigs of the willows, and the surface of
the water was glistening and placid as a mirror, only
disturbed, here and there, when some tiny gold-fish leaped for
an instant into the sunshine. The trees and grassy banks were
reflected so distinctly that it was impossible to tell where
the real world left off, and the land of dreams began.
Ju-Kiouan was amusing herself watching the beauteous
water-picture when her eyes fell upon that portion of the lake,
near the wall, where, with all the clearness of reality, was
the reflection of the pavilion on the opposite shore.
She had never noticed it before, and what was her surprise
to behold an exact reproduction of the one where she was
standing, the gilded roof, the red and black pillars, and all
the beauteous drapery about the doors. She would have been able
to read the inscription upon the tablets, had they not been
reversed. But what surprised her more than all was to see,
leaning on the balcony, a figure which, if it had not come from
the other side of the lake, she would have taken for her own
reflection. It was the mirrored image of Tchin-Sing. At first
she took it for the reflection of a girl, as he was dressed in
robes according to the fashion of the time. As the heat was
intense, he had thrown off his student's cap, and his hair fell
about his fresh, beardless face. But soon Ju-Kiouan recognized,
from the violent beating of her heart, that the reflection in
the water was not that of a young girl.
Until then she had believed that the earth contained no
being created for her, and had often indulged in pensive revery
over her loneliness. Never, said she, shall I take my place as
a link between the past and future of my family, but I shall
enter among the shadows as a lonely shade.
But when she beheld the reflection in the water, she found
that her beauty had a sister, or, more properly speaking, a
brother. Far from being displeased to discover that her beauty
was not unrivaled, she was filled with intense joy. Her heart
was beating and throbbing with love for another, and in that
instant Ju-Kiouan's whole life was changed. It was foolish in
her to fall violently in love with a reflection, of whose
reality she knew nothing, but after all she was only acting
like nearly all young girls who take a husband for his white
teeth or his curly hair, knowing nothing whatever of his real
character.
Tchin-Sing had also perceived the charming reflection of the
young girl. "I am dreaming," he cried. "That beautiful image
upon the water is the combination of sunshine and the perfume
of many flowers. I recognize it well. It is the reflection of
the image within my own heart, the divine unknown whom I have
worshiped all my life."
Tchin-Sing was aroused from his monologue by the voice of
his father, who called him to come at once to the grand
saloon.
"My son," said he, "here is a very rich and very learned man
who seeks you as a husband for his daughter. The young girl has
imperial blood in her veins, is of a rare beauty, and possesses
all the qualities necessary to make her husband happy."
Tchin-Sing, whose heart was bursting with love for the
reflection seen from the pavilion, refused decidedly. His
father, carried away with passion, heaped upon him the most
violent imprecations.
"Undutiful child," said he, "if you persist in your
obstinacy, I will have you confined in one of the strongest
fortresses of the empire, where you will see nothing but the
sea beating against the rocks, and the mountains covered with
mist. There you will have leisure to reflect, and repent of
your wicked conduct."
These threats did not frighten Tchin-Sing in the least. He
quickly replied that he would accept for his wife the first
maiden who touched his heart, and until then he should listen
to no one.
The next day, at the same hour, he went to the pavilion on
the lake, and, leaning on the balcony, eagerly watched for the
beloved reflection. In a few moments he saw it glisten in the
water, beauteous as a boquet of submerged flowers.
A radiant smile broke over the face of the reflection, which
proved to Tchin-Sing that his presence was not unpleasant to
the lovely unknown. But as it was impossible to hold
communication with a reflection whose substance is invisible,
he made a sign that he would write, and vanished into the
interior of the pavilion. He soon reappeared, bearing in his
hand a silvered paper, upon which he had written a declaration
of love in seven-syllabled stanzas. He carefully folded his
verses and placed them in the cup of a white flower, which he
rolled in a leaf of the water-lily, and placed the whole
tenderly upon the surface of the lake.
A light breeze wafted the lover's message through the arches
of the wall, and it floated so near Ju-Kiouan that she had only
to stretch out her hand to receive it. Fearful of being seen
she returned to her private boudoir, where she read with great
delight the expressions of love written by Tchin-Sing. Her joy
was all the greater, as she recognized from the exquisite
hand-writing and choice versification that the writer was a man
of culture and talent. And when she read his signature, the
significance of which she perceived at once, remembering her
mother's dream, she felt that heaven had sent her the long
desired companion.
The next day the breeze blew in a different direction, so
that Ju-Kiouan was able to send an answer in verse by the same
subtle messenger, by which, notwithstanding her girlish
modesty, it was easy to see that she returned the love of
Tchin-Sing.
On reading the signature, Tchin-Sing could not repress an
exclamation of surprise and delight. "The pearl," said he,
"that is the precious jewel my mother saw glittering on my
***. I must at once entreat this young girl's hand of her
parents, for she is the wife appointed for me by the
oracle."
As he was preparing to go, he suddenly remembered the
dislike between the two families, and the prohibitions
inscribed upon the tablet over the entrance. Determined to win
his prize at any cost, he resolved to confide the whole history
to his mother. Ju-Kiouan had also told her love to Madame Tou.
The names of Pearl and Jasper troubled the good matrons so much
that, not daring to set themselves against what appeared to be
the will of the gods, they both went again to the temple of
Fo.
The bronze oracle replied that this marriage was in reality
the true interpretation of the dreams, and that to prevent it
would be to incur the eternal anger of the gods. Touched by the
entreaties of the mothers, and also by slight mutual advances,
the two fathers gave way and consented to a reconciliation of
the families. The two old friends, on meeting each other again,
were astonished to find what frivolous causes had separated
them for so many years, and mourned sincerely over all the
pleasure they had lost in being deprived of each other's
society. The marriage of the children was celebrated with much
rejoicing, and the Jasper and the Pearl were no longer obliged
to hold intercourse by means of a reflection on the water. The
wall was removed, and the wavelets rippled placidly between the
two pavilions on the lake.
—H.S.
Conant.
IN THE MOUNTAINS.
A line of Walter Savage Landor's, a poet for poets, was an
especial favorite with Southey, and, we believe, with Lamb. It
occurs in "Gebir," and drops from the lips of one of its
characters, who, being suddenly shown the sea, exclaims,
"Is this the mighty ocean?—is this all?"
The feeling which underlies this line is generally the first
emotion we have when brought face to face with the stupendous
forms of Nature. It is the feeling inspired by mountains, the
first sight of which is disappointing. They are grand, but not
quite what we were led to expect from pictures and books, and,
still more, from our own imaginations. The more we see
mountains, the more they grow upon us, until, finally, they are
clothed with a grandeur not, in all cases, belonging to
them—our Mount Washingtons over-topping the Alps, and the
Alps the Himmalayas. The poets assist us in thus magnifying
them.
The American poets have translated the mountains of their
native land into excellent verse. Everybody remembers Mr.
Bryant's "Monument Mountain," for its touching story, and its
clearly-defined descriptions of scenery.
Mr. Stedman has a mountain of his own, though perhaps only
in Dream-land; and Mr. Bayard Taylor has a whole range of them,
the sight of which once filled him with rapture:
"O deep, exulting freedom of the hills!
O summits vast, that to the climbing
view
In naked glory stand against the
blue!
O cold and buoyant air, whose crystal fills
Heaven's amethystine gaol! O speeding streams
That foam and thunder from the cliffs
below!
O slippery brinks and solitudes of
snow
And granite bleakness, where the vulture
screams!
O stormy pines, that wrestle with the breath
Of every tempest, sharp and icy horns
And hoary glaciers, sparkling in the
morns,
And broad dim wonders of the world beneath!
I summon ye, and mid the glare that fills
The noisy mart, my spirit walks the hills."
GLADNESS OF NATURE.—Midnight—when asleep so
still and silent—seems inspired with the joyous spirit of
the owls in their revelry—and answers to their mirth and
merriment through all her clouds. The moping owl,
indeed!—the boding owl, forsooth! the melancholy owl, you
blockhead! why, they are the most cheerful, joy-portending, and
exulting of God's creatures. Their flow of animal spirits is
incessant—crowing *** are a joke to them—blue
devils are to them unknown—not one hypochondriac in a
thousand barns—and the Man-in-the-Moon acknowledges that
he never heard one utter a complaint.
Mr. Darley's very characteristic picture on the opposite
page needs no description, it so thoroughly explains itself,
and realizes his intention. The following lines from Mary
Howitt seem very appropriate to the sketch:
"O golden fields of bending corn,
How beautiful they seem!
The reaper-folk, the piled up sheaves,
To me are like a dream;
The sunshine and the very air
Seem of old time, and take me there."
From the French of Auguste Vitu.
It was Saturday night, and the pavement sparkled with frost
diamonds under flashing lights and echoing steps in the opera
quarter. Tinkling carnival bells and wild singing resounded
from all the carriages dashing towards Rue Lepelletier; the
shops were only half shut, and Paris, wide awake, reveled in a
fairy-night frolic.
And yet, Felix d'Aubremel, one of the bright applauded
heroes of those ***, seemed in no mood to answer their mad
challenge. Plunged in a deep armchair, hands drooping and feet
on the fender, he was sunk in sombre revery. An open book lay
near him, and a letter was flung, furiously crumpled, on the
floor.
An orphan at the age of twelve, Felix had watched his
mother's slow death through ten years of suffering. The Marquis
Gratien d'Aubremel, ruined by reckless dissipation, and driven
by necessity, rather than love, into a marriage with an English
heiress, Margaret Malden, deserted her, like the wretch he was,
as soon as the last of her dowry melted away. A common story
enough, and ending in as common a close. D'Aubremel sailed for
the Indies to retrieve his fortune, and met death there by
yellow fever. So that the sad lessons of Felix's family life
stimulated to excess his innate leaning towards
misanthropy—if that name may define a resistless urgency
of belief in the appearances of evil, linked with a doubt of
the reality of good. Probably, at heart, he believed himself
incapable of a bad action, but he would take no oath to such a
conviction, since by his theory every man must yield under
certain circumstances, attacking powerfully his personal
interest, while threatening slight danger of failure or
detection. This style of thought, set off by a fair share of
witty expression and ever-ready impertinence, gave Felix a kind
of ascendancy in his circle of intimates—but naturally it
gained him no friends. Common reputation grows out of words
rather than actions, and Felix suffered the just penalty of his
sceptical fancies. They cost him more than they were worth, as
he had just learned by sad experience.
He had chanced to make the acquaintance of a rich
manufacturer, Montmorot by name, whose daughter Ernestine was
pleased with the devotion of a charming young fellow, who
mingled the rather reckless grace of French cleverness with a
reserved style and refined pride gained from the English blood
of the Maldens. For his part, Felix really loved the girl, and
had let his impatience, that very day, carry him into a step
that failed to move the elder Montmorot's inflexibility. He
refused absolutely to give his daughter to a man without
fortune or prospects. Felix was crushed, his hopes all
shattered at a blow, by this answer, though he had a thousand
reasons to expect it. And at what a moment! A half-unfolded red
ticket, stuffed with disgusting threats, peeped out from
between the wall and his sofa. The officers of justice had paid
him a little visit. He got into a passion with himself.
"Pshaw," he cried, "confound all scruples! If I had been
less in love I should be Ernestine's husband now. With a pretty
wife, one I am so fond of, too, I should have fortune,
position, and the luxury indispensable to my life—now, I
don't know where to lay my head to-morrow. To-morrow, at ten
o'clock, the sheriff will seize everything—everything,
from that Troyou sketch to that china monster, nodding his
frightful sneering head at me. They will carry off this casket
that was my father's—this locket, with the hair
of—of—what the deuce was her name? Poor girl! how
she loved me! And now all that is left of her
vanishes—even her name!
"What, nothing? no hope? Not even one of those silly
impulses that used to drive me out into the streets when
everybody else was abed, with the firm conviction that at some
crossing, in some gutter, some unknown deity must have dropped
a fat pocket-book, on purpose for me! I believed in something,
then—even in lost pocket-books. And now, now! I would
commit no such follies as that, but I believe I could be guilty
of even worse things, if crime, common, low, contemptible,
shameful crime, were not forbidden to the son of the Marquis
d'Aubremel and Margaret Malden.
"Oh, great genius!" he went on, taking up the open book near
him, "great philosopher, called a sophist by the
ignorant—how deep a truth you uttered in writing these
lines, that I never read over without a shudder: 'Imagine a
Chinese mandarin, living in a fabulous country three thousand
leagues away, whom you have never seen and shall never
see—imagine, moreover, that the death of this mandarin,
this man, almost a myth, would make you a millionaire, and that
you have but to lift your finger, at home, in France, to bring
about his death, without the possibility of ever being called
to account for it by any one; say, what would you do?'
"That fearful passage must have made many men
dream—and does not Bianchon, that great materialist, so
well painted by Balzac, confess that he has got as far as his
thirty-third mandarin? What a St. Bartholomew of mandarins, if
my philosopher's supposition could grow into a truth!"
Felix ceased his soliloquy, and bent his head to let the
storm raised in his soul by the atheist philosopher pass over.
His bad instincts, aroused, spoke louder at that instant than
reason, louder than reality. His glance fell on the
chimney-piece, where a porcelain figure, the grotesque chef
d'oeuvre of some great Chinese artist, leered at him with
its everlasting grin. The young man smiled. "Perhaps that is
the likeness of a mandarin—bulbous nose, hanging cheeks,
moustaches drooping like plumes, a peaked head, knotty
hands—a regular deformity. Reflecting on the ugliness of
that idiotic race, there is much to be urged by way of excuse
for people who kill mandarins."
Some persistent thought evidently haunted Felix's mind.
Again he drove it off, and again it beset him.
"Pshaw!" he exclaimed, after a last brief struggle, "I am
alone, and out of sorts. I will amuse myself with a carnival
freak, a mere theoretic and philosophic piece of nonsense. I
have tried many worse ones. It wants a quarter to twelve. I
give myself fifteen minutes to study my spells. Let me see,
what mandarin shall I ***? I don't know any, and I have no
peerage list of the Flowery Empire. Let me try the
newspapers."
It was in the height of the English war with China. On the
seventh column of the paper our hero found a proclamation
signed by the imperial commissioners, Lin, Lou, Lun, and
Li.
"Here goes for Li," he said to himself. "He is likely to be
the youngest."
The clock began to strike, announcing the hour. Felix placed
himself solemnly before the mirror, and said aloud, in a grave
tone: "If the death of Mandarin Li will make me rich and
powerful, whatever may come of it, I vote for the death of
Mandarin Li." He lifted his finger—at that instant the
porcelain figure rocked on its base, and fell in fragments at
Felix's feet. The glass reflected his startled face. He
thrilled for an instant with superstitious terror, but
recollecting that his finger had touched the fragile figure, he
accounted for it as an accident, and went to bed and to such
repose as a debtor can enjoy with an execution hanging over his
head.
Masks and dominos made the street merry under his window.
The opera ball was unusually brilliant, experts said, and
nothing made the Parisians aware that on the night of January
12th, 1840, Felix d'Aubremel had passed sentence of death on
Chinaman Li, son of Mung, son of Tseu, a literate mandarin of
the 114th class.
Nine months later Felix d'Aubremel was living in furnished
lodgings in an alley off the Rue St. Pierre, and living by
borrowing. The gentlemanly sceptic owed his landlady a good
deal of money; his clothes were aged past wearing, and his
tailor had long ago broken off all relations with him. The
Marquis d'Aubremel was within a hairsbreadth of that utterly
crushed state that ends in madness, or in suicide—which
is only a variety of madness.
One morning while sitting in the glass cage that leads to
the staircase of every lodging-house, waiting to beg another
respite from his landlady, he took up a newspaper, and the
following notice was lucky enough to catch his attention.
"Chiusang, 12th January, 1840. Hostilities have broken out
between England and the Celestial Empire. The sudden and
inexplicable death of Mandarin Li, the only member of the
council who opposed the violent and warlike projects of Lin,
led to unfortunate events. At the first attack the Chinese
fled, with the basest want of pluck, but in their retreat they
murdered several English merchants, and among them an old
resident, Richard Maiden, who leaves an estate of half a
million sterling. The heirs of the deceased are requested to
communicate with William Harrison, Solicitor, Lincoln's
Inn."
"My uncle!" cried Felix. "Alas, I have killed my uncle and
Mandarin Li."
He had not a penny to pay for his traveling expenses to
London; but, on producing his certificate of birth and the
newspaper article, his landlady easily negotiated for him with
an honest broker, who advanced him a thousand francs to arrange
his affairs, without interest, upon his note for a trifle of
eighteen hundred, payable in six weeks.
Eight days after reaching London, Felix, established in a
fashionable hotel, was awaiting with nervous eagerness the
first instalment of a million, the proceeds of a cargo of teas,
sold under the direction of Mr. Harrison. He was too restless
for thought, burning with impatience to take possession of his
property, to handle his wealth, and, as it were, to verify his
dream. Yet the fact was indisputable. Richard Malden's death,
and his own relationship to the intestate had been legally
proved and established. Felix d'Aubremel regularly and
assuredly inherited a fortune, and he had no doubts nor
scruples on that point.
A servant interrupted his reflections, announcing his
solicitor's clerk. "Why does not Mr. Harrison come himself?" he
was on the point of asking, but amazement at the clerk's
appearance took away his breath. He was a shriveled little
object, slight, bony, crooked and hideous, with a monstrous
head and round eyes, a bald skull, a flat nose, a mouth from
ear to ear, and a little jutting paunch that looked like a
sack.
"I bring the Marquis d'Aubremel the monies he is expecting,"
said the man, and his voice, shrill and silvery, like a musical
box or the bell of a clock, impressed Felix painfully. The
voice grated on the nerves. "I have drawn a receipt in regular
form," said Felix, extending his hand. But the solicitor's
clerk leaned his back against the door, without stirring a
step. "Well, sir," Felix exclaimed with a convulsive effort.
The man approached slowly, scarcely moving his feet, as if
sliding across the floor. His right hand was buried in his coat
pocket; he held his head bent down, and his lips moved
inaudibly. At last he pulled from his pocket a large bundle of
banknotes, bills and papers, drew near the window, and began to
count them carefully.
Felix was then struck by a strange phenomenon that might
well inspire undefined terror. Standing directly in front of
the window, the clerk's figure cast no shadow, though the sun's
rays fell full upon it, and through his human body, translucent
as rock crystal, Felix plainly saw the houses across the
street. Then his eyes seemed to be suddenly unsealed. The
clerk's black coat took colors, blue, green, and scarlet; it
lengthened out into the folds of a robe, and blazed with the
dazzling image of the fire-dragon, the son of Buddha; a lock of
stiff grayish hair sprouted like a short tuft out of his
yellowish skull; his round tawny eyes rolled with frightful
rapidity in their sockets.
Felix recognized Li, son of Mung, son of Tseu, the literate
mandarin of the 114th class. The murderer had never seen his
victim, but could not doubt his identity a moment, thanks to
the marvelous resemblance between the solicitor's clerk and the
china monster that dropped into bits at his feet the night of
January 12th, 1840.
Meantime the man had done counting his package, and held it
out to Felix, saying, in his grating, vibrating tones,
"Monsieur le Marquis, here are forty thousand pounds sterling;
please to give me your receipt." And Felix heard the voice say
in a shriller under-key, "Felix, here is an instalment of the
million, the price of your crime. Felix, my assassin, take this
money from my hand."
"From my hand," echoed a thousand fine voices, quivering all
through the air of the room.
"No, no," cried Felix, pushing the clerk away, "the money
would burn me! Begone with you!"
He dropped exhausted into a chair, half suffocated, with
drops of sweat rolling down his convulsed face. The man bowed
to the floor, and slowly moved away backwards. With every
gradual step Felix saw his natural shape return. The rays of
the autumn sun ceased to light up that mysterious apparition,
and only his attorney's humble clerk stood before Felix. With a
rush overpowering his will, Felix dashed after the old man,
already across the threshold, and overtook him on the
staircase.
"My papers!" he shouted imperiously. "Here they are, sir,"
said the old fellow quietly.
Felix regained his room, bolted the door, and counted the
immense sum contained in the pocket-book with excitement
bordering on frenzy. Then he bathed his burning head with cold
water, and threw an anxious look around the room.
"I must have had an attack of fever," he muttered.
A TROPIC FOREST.—GRANVILLE PERKINS
"Mandarins don't rise from the dead, and a man can't kill
another by simply lifting his finger. So my philosopher talked
like one who knows nothing of moral experience. If the fancy of
an unreal crime almost drove me mad, what must be the remorse
of an actual criminal?"
The same evening Felix ordered post horses and set out for
France.
Some months later, Monsieur Montmorot, chevalier of the
legion of honor, gave a grand dinner to celebrate his
daughter's betrothal with the Marquis Felix d'Aubremel, one of
the noblest names in France, as he styled it. The contract
settling a part of his fortune on his daughter Ernestine was
signed at nine in the evening. The Monday following the pair
presented themselves before the civil officials to solemnize
their marriage by due legal ceremonies.
Felix, a prey to the strange hallucination that incessantly
pursued him, saw a likeness between the official and the
Chinese figure he had awkwardly thrown down and broken one
night long ago. Presently his face darkened, and his eyes began
to burn. Behind the magistrate's blue spectacles he caught the
gleam and roll of the tawny eyes belonging to Mr. Harrison's
clerk, to Li, son of Mung, son of Tseu.
When at length the magistrate put the formal question,
"Felix Etienne d'Aubremel, do you take for your wife Ernestine
Juliette Montmorot," Felix heard a shrill ringing voice say,
"Felix, I give you your wife with my hand—my hand."
The official repeated the question more loudly. "With my
hand—my hand," whispered a thousand mocking little
voices.
"No!" Felix shouted rather than answered, and rushed away
from the spot like a lunatic.
Once more at home, he shut out everyone and flung himself on
his bed, in a state of stupor that weighed him down till
night—a sort of dull torpor of brain, with utter
exhaustion of physical strength—a misery of formless
thought. Towards evening one persistent idea aroused him from
this strange lethargy.
"I am a cowardly murderer," he groaned. "I wished for my
fellow-being's death. God punishes me—I will execute his
sentence." He stretched out his hand in the dark, groping for a
dagger that hung from the wall. Then a mild brightness filtered
through the curtains and irradiated the bed. Felix distinctly
saw the grotesque figure of Mandarin Li standing a few steps
away. The shadow of death darkened his face, and without
seeming movement of his lips, Felix heard these words, uttered
by that shrill ringing voice so hated, now mellowed into divine
music.
"Felix d'Aubremel, God does not will that you should die,
and I, his servant, am sent to tell you his decree. You have
been cruel and covetous—you have wished an innocent man's
death, and his death caused that of a multitude of victims to
the barbarous passions of a great western nation. Man's life
must be sacred for every man. God only can take what he gave.
Live, then, if you would not add a great crime to a great
error. And if forgiveness from one dead can restore in part
your strength and courage to endure, Felix, I forgive you."
The vision vanished.
Felix religiously obeyed the instructions of Li, and
consecrated his life by a vow to the relief of human misery
wherever he found it. He devoted Richard Malden's vast fortune
to founding charitable establishments. Ernestine Montmorot
would never consent to see him again.
Two years ago, yielding to an impulse easy to understand, he
requested the English consul at Chiusang to make inquiries as
to the family of Li, who might perhaps be suffering in poverty.
Nothing more could be discovered than that the gracious
sovereign of the Middle Kingdom had confiscated the property of
Li's family, that his wife had died of sorrow, in misery, and
that his son, Li, having taken the liberty to complain of the
glorious emperor's severity, suffered death by the bowstring,
as is proper and reasonable in all well-governed states.
MOTHER IS HERE!—DEIKER.
MOTHER IS HERE!—A little fawn in the clutches of a fox
bleats loudly for help. The mother appears quickly on the
scene, and Renard retires, foiled and chagrined at the loss of
his dinner. He stays not upon the order of his going, but goes
at once. The artist Deiker is a well-known German painter,
whose success with these pictures of animal life ranks him with
such men as Beckmann and Hammer, whose names are familiar to
the friends of THE ALDINE.
Trees lifted to the skies their stately heads,
Tufted with verdure, like depending plumage,
O'er stems unknotted, waving to the wind:
Of these in graceful form, and simple beauty,
The fruitful cocoa and the fragrant palm
Excelled the wilding daughters of the wood,
That stretched unwieldly their enormous arms,
Clad with luxuriant foliage, from the trunk,
Like the old eagle feathered to the heel;
While every fibre, from the lowest root
To the last leaf upon the topmost twig,
Was held by common sympathy, diffusing
Through all the complex frame unconscious life.
—Montgomery's Pelican Island.
What makes us like new acquaintances is not so much any
weariness of our old ones, or the pleasure of change, as
disgust at not being sufficiently admired by those who know us
too well, and the hope of being more so by those who do not
know so much of us.—La
Rochefoucauld.
AMONG THE DAISIES.
"Laud the first spring daisies—
Chant aloud their praises."—Ed.
Youl.
"When daisies pied and violets blue,
And lady-smocks all silver
white—
And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue,
Do paint the meadows with delight."
—Shakspeare.
"Belle et douce Marguerite, aimable soeur du roi Kingcup,"
enthusiastically exclaims genial Leigh Hunt, "we would tilt for
thee with a hundred pens against the stoutest poet that did not
find perfection in thy cheek." And yet, who would have the
heart to slander the daisy, or cause a blush of shame to tint
its whiteness? Tastes vary, and poets may value the flower
differently; but a rash, deliberate condemnation of the daisy
is as likely to become realized as is a harsh condemnation of
the innocence and simplicity of childhood. So the chivalric
Hunt need not fear being invoked from the silence of the grave
to take part in a lively tournament for "belle et douce
Marguerite."
Subjectively, the daisy is a theme upon which we love to
linger. In our natural state, when flesh and spirit are both
models of meekness, two objects are wont to throw us into a
kind of ecstasy: a row of nicely painted white railings, and a
bunch of fresh daisies. These waft us back along a vista of
years, peopled with scenes the most entrancing, and fancies the
most pleasing. They call up at once the old country home: the
honeysuckle clasping the thatched cottage, contrasting so
prettily with the white fence in front: the sloping fields of
green painted with daisies, through which, unshackled, the
buoyant breeze swept so peacefully. It was an invariable rule,
in those days, to troop through the meadows at early morn and,
like a young knight-errant, bear home in triumph "Marguerite,"
the peerless daisy, rescued from the clutches of unmentionable
dragons, and now to beam brightly on us for the rest of the day
from a neighboring mantel-piece. And it was with great
reluctance that we refrained from decapitating the whole field
of daisies at one fell sweep, when we were once allowed to
touch their upturned faces. A contract was then made on the
spot: we were permitted to pluck the daisies on condition that
we plucked but one every day. The field was not large, and long
before the blasts of autumn had hushed the voices of the
flowers, not a single daisy remained. Advancing spring threw
lavish handfuls once more on the grass, and on these we sported
anew with all the ardor of boyhood.
Our enthusiasm for the daisy then is only equaled by the
gratitude it now awakens. Too soon does the busy world, with
unwarrantable liberty, allure us from boyish scenes. Too soon
are the buoyant fancies of youth succeeded by the feverish
anxieties of age, happy innocence by the consciousness of evil,
confidence by doubt, faith by despair. We must chill our
demonstrativeness, restrain our affections, blunt our
sensibilities. We must cultivate conscience until we have too
much of it, and become monkish, savage and misanthropic. The
asceticism of manhood is apparent from the studied air with
which everybody is on his guard against his neighbor. In a
crowded car, men instinctively clutch their pockets, and fancy
a pickpocket in a benevolent-looking old gentleman opposite.
When we see men so distrustful, we shun them. They then call us
selfish when we feel only solitary. We protest against such
manhood as would lower golden ideals of youth to its own
contemptible Avernus. And now as our daisy, which is
blooming before us, sagely nods its white crest as it is swayed
by the passing breeze, it seems to bring back of itself decades
gone forever. We never intend to become a man. We keep our
boy's heart ever fresh and ever warm. We don't care if the
whole human race, from the Ascidians to Darwin himself, assail
us and fiercely thrust us once more into short jackets and
knickerbockers, provided they allow an indefinite vacation in a
daisy field. The joy of childhood is said to be vague. It was
all satisfying to us once, and we do not intend to allow it to
waste in unconscious effervescence among the gaudier though
less gratifying delights of manhood.
It is, however, of daisies among the poets we would speak at
more length. In fact, to the imaginative mind, the daisy in
poetry is as suggestive as the daisy in nature.
Philosophically, they are identical; in the absence of the one
you can commune with the other. Thus unconsciously the daisy
undergoes a metempsychosis; its soul is transferred at will
from meadow to book and from book to meadow, without losing a
particle of its vitality.
To premise with the daisy historically: Among the Romans it
was called Bellis, or "pretty one;" in modern Greece, it
is star-flower. In France, Spain, and Italy, it was named
"Marguerita," or pearl, a term which, being of Greek origin,
doubtless was brought from Constantinople by the Franks. From
the word "Marguerita," poems in praise of the daisy were termed
"Bargerets." Warton calls them "Bergerets," or "songs du
Berger," that is, shepherd songs. These were pastorals, lauding
fair mistresses and maidens of the day under the familiar title
of the daisy. Froissart has written a characteristic Bargeret;
and Chaucer, in his "Flower and the Leaf," sings:
"And, at the last, there began, anone,
A lady for to sing right womanly,
A bargaret in praising the daisie;
For as methought among her notes sweet,
She said, 'Si douce est la Margarite."
Speght supposes that Chaucer here intends to pay a
compliment to Lady Margaret, King Edward's daughter, Countess
of Pembroke, one of his patronesses. But Warton hesitates to
express a decided opinion as to the reference. Chaucer shows
his love for the daisy in other places. In his "Prologue to the
Legend of Good Women," alluding to the power with which the
flowers drive him from his books, he says that
"all the floures in the mede,
Than love I most these floures white and rede,
Soch that men callen daisies in our toun
To hem I have so great affectioun,
As I sayd erst, whan comen is the May,
That in my bedde there daweth me no day,
That I nam up and walking in the mede,
To seen this floure agenst the Sunne sprede."
To see it early in the morn, the poet continues:
"That blissfull sight softeneth all my sorow,
So glad am I, whan that I have presence
Of it, to done it all reverence
As she that is of all floures the floure."
Chaucer says that to him it is ever fresh, that he will
cherish it till his heart dies; and then he describes himself
resting on the grass, gazing on the daisy:
"Adowne full softly I gan to sink,
And leaning on my elbow and my side,
The long day I shope me for to abide,
For nothing els, and I shall nat lie,
But for to looke upon the daisie,
That well by reason men it call may
The daisie, or els the eye of day."
Chaucer gives us the true etymology of the word in the last
line. Ben Jonson, to confirm it, writes with more force than
elegance,
"Days-eyes, and the lippes of cows;"
that is, cowslips; a "disentanglement of
compounds,"—Leigh Hunt says, in the style of the
parodists:
"Puddings of the plum
And fingers of the lady."
The poets abound in allusions to the daisy. It serves both
for a moral and for an epithet. The morality is adduced more by
our later poets, who have written whole poems in its honor. The
earlier poets content themselves generally with the daisy in
description, and leave the daisy in ethics to such a
philosophico-poetical Titan as Wordsworth. Douglas (1471), in
his description of the month of May, writes:
"The dasy did on crede (unbraid) hir crownet
smale."
And Lyndesay (1496), in the prologue to his "Dreme,"
describes June
"Weill bordowrit with dasyis of delyte."
The eccentric Skelton, who wrote about the close of the 15th
century, in a sonnet, says:
"Your colowre
Is lyke the daisy flowre
After the April showre."
Thomas Westwood, in an agreeable little madrigal, pictures
the daisies:
"All their white and pinky faces
Starring over the green places."
Thomas Nash (1592), in another of similar quality,
exclaims:
"The fields breathe sweet,
The daisies kiss our feet."
Suckling, in his famous "Wedding," in his description of the
bride, confesses:
"Her cheeks so rare a white was on
No daisy makes comparison."
Spenser, in his "Prothalamion," alludes to
"The little dazie that at evening closes."
George Wither speaks of the power of his imagination:
"By a daisy, whose leaves spread
Shut when Titan goes to bed;
Or a shady bush or tree,
She could more infuse in me
Than all Nature's beauties can
In some other wiser man."
Poor Chatterton, in his "Tragedy of Ella," refers to the
daisy in the line:
"In daiseyed mantells is the mountayne dyghte."
Hervey, in his "May," describes
"The daisy singing in the grass
As thro' the cloud the star."
And Hood, in his fanciful "Midsummer Fairies," sings of
"Daisy stars whose firmament is green."
Burns, whose "Ode to a Mountain Daisy" is so universally
admired, gives, besides, a few brief notices of the daisy:
"The lowly daisy sweetly blows—"
"The daisy's for simplicity and unaffected air."
Tennyson has made the daisy a subject of one of his most
unsatisfactory poems. In "Maud," he writes:
"Her feet have touched the meadows
And left the daisies rosy."
To Wordsworth, the poet of nature, the daisy seems perfectly
intelligible. Scattered throughout the lowly places, with
meekness it seems to shed beauty over its surroundings, and
compensate for gaudy vesture by cheerful contentment.
Wordsworth calls the daisy "the poet's darling," "a nun
demure," "a little Cyclops," "an unassuming commonplace of
nature," and sums up its excellences in a verse which may fitly
conclude our attempt to pluck a bouquet of fresh daisies from
the poets:
"Sweet flower! for by that name at last,
When all my reveries are past,
I call thee, and to that cleave fast;
Sweet silent creature!
That breath'st with me in sun and air,
Do thou, as thou art wont, repair
My heart with gladness, and a share
Of thy meek nature!"
—A.S. Isaacs.
SOMETHING CHILDISH BUT VERY NATURAL.
Written in Germany 1798-99.
If I had but two little wings,
And were a little feathery bird,
To you I'd fly, my dear!
But thoughts like these are idle things,
And I stay here.
But in my sleep to you I fly:
I'm always with you in my sleep!
The world is all one's own.
But then one wakes, and where am I?
All, all alone.
Sleep stays not, though a monarch bids,
So I love to wake ere break of day:
For though my sleep be gone,
Yet, while tis dark, one shuts one's lids,
And still dreams on.
Thus much for Coleridge. Now for his original:
"Were I a little bird,
Had I two wings of mine,
I'd fly to my dear;
But that can never be,
So I stay here.
"Though I am far from thee,
Sleeping I'm near to thee,
Talk with my dear;
When I awake again,
I am alone.
"Scarce there's an hour in the night
When sleep does not take its flight,
And I think of thee,
How many thousand times
Thou gav'st thy heart to me."
"This," says Mr. Bayard Taylor, in the Notes to his
translation of Faust, "this is an old song of the people
of Germany. Herder published it in his Volkslieder, in
1779, but it was no doubt familiar to Goethe in his childhood.
The original melody, to which it is still sung, is as simple
and sweet as the
words."
AMONG THE PERUVIANS.
The extremes of civilization and barbarism are nearer
together in those countries which the Spaniards have wrested
from their native inhabitants, than in any other portion of the
globe. Before other European races, aboriginal tribes, even the
fiercest, gradually disappear. They hold their own before the
descendants of the conquistadores, who conquered the New
World only to be conquered by it. Out of Spain the Spaniard
deteriorates, and nowhere so much as in South America. Of
course he is superior there to the best of the Indian tribes
with which he is thrown in contact; but we doubt whether he is
superior to the intelligent, but forgotten, races which peopled
the regions around him centuries before Pizzaro set foot
therein, and which built enormous cities whose ruins have long
been overgrown by forests. To compare the Spaniard of to-day,
in Peru, with its ancient Incas is to do him no honor. To be
sure, he is a good Catholic, which the Incas were not, but he
is indolent, enervated, and enslaved by his own passions. His
religion has not done much for him—at least in this
world, whatever it may do in the next. It has done still less,
if that be possible, for the aboriginal Peruvians.
"In all parts of Peru," says a recent traveler, "except
amongst the savage Indian tribes, Christianity, at least
nominally prevails. The aborigines, however, converted by the
sword in the old days of Spanish persecution, do not, as a
rule, seem to have more notion of that faith in the country
parts, than such as may be obtained from stray visits of some
errant, image-bearing friar, whose principal object is to
obtain sundry reals in consideration of prayers offered
to his little idols. These wandering ministers also distribute
execrably colored prints of various saints, besides having
indulgences for sale. As to the nature of the pious offerings
from their disciples, they are not at all particular. They go
upon the easy principle that all is fish that comes into their
net. If the ignorant and superstitious givers have not 'filthy
lucre' wherewithal to propitiate the ugly represented saints,
wax candles, silver ore, cacao, sugar, and any other
description of property is as readily received. Thus, it often
happens that these peripatetic friars have a long convoy of
heavily-laden mules with which to gladden the members of their
monastery when they return home.
FASHIONABLE
LOUNGERS OF LIMA.
"The priests in all parts of Peru dress in a very
extraordinary, not to say outlandish manner. One of the lower
grade wears a very capacious shovel hat, projecting as much in
front as behind, and looking very like a double-ended
coal-heaver's hat. A loose black serge robe covers him
all over, as with a funereal pall, and being fastened together
only at the neck, gives to his often obese figure an appearance
the very reverse of grave or serious: The superior of a
monastery, or the priest in charge of a parish, wears a more
stately clerical costume. His hat is of formidable
dimensions—a huge, flat, Chinese-umbrella-shaped sort of
a concern, which cannot be compared to anything else in
creation. He also affects ruffles and lace, a long cassock, and
a voluminous cloak like many of those of Geneva combined
together; black silk stockings and low shoes complete the
clerical array of the higher ecclesiastics."
RIDING AND FULL-DRESS COSTUME OF THE PERUVIAN LADIES.
Quite as odd, in their way, as these good padres, are the
Peruvian loungers, the "lions" of Lima—a long-haired,
becloaked, truculent-looking set of fellows, whose proper place
would seem to be among operatic banditti. A greater contrast
and disparity than exists between them and the beautiful
brunettes to whom they are fain to devote themselves, cannot
well be imagined. That the latter generally prefer European
gentlemen to these ill-favored beaux, follows as a matter of
course. That the discarded "lion" resents this preference of
his fair countrywomen, we have the testimony of the traveler
already quoted from.
"Instinctively, as it were, a feeling of dislike and rivalry
seemed to prevail between ourselves and such of these truculent
gentry as it was our fortune to come into contact with. They
were jealous, no doubt, of the wandering foreigners, whom they
chose contemptuously to term gringos, but who, they know
well enough, are infinitely preferred to themselves by their
handsome coquettish countrywomen. It is, indeed, notoriously
the fact, that any respectable man of European birth can marry
well, and even far above his own social position, amongst the
dark-eyed donnas of Peru. The men don't seem exactly to like
it. Judging by their appearance, we found but little difficulty
in believing the character which report had given
them—namely, their proneness to assassination, especially
in love affairs, either personally, or, more frequently, by
deputy. If the brilliant creole and half-caste women of this
warm, tropical country, are some of the most beautiful and
lovable of the sex, their sallow, sinister-looking, natural
protectors are just the very opposite. The singular difference
in the moral and physical characteristics of the two sexes is
something really remarkable, and I, for one, cannot
satisfactorily explain it to my own mind. That such is the case
I venture to affirm; the why and the wherefore I must fain
leave to wiser ethnological heads."
Not less curious, as regards costume, are the Peruvian
ladies. And, as they are equestriennes, we will describe
their riding-habits in the words of the same traveler:
"To commence at the top. This riding dress consisted of a
huge felt hat, both tall and broad, and generally ornamented
with a plume of three great feathers sticking up in front. Next
came an all-round sort of a cape, of no shape in particular,
with a wide collar, several rows of fringe, much needle-work
(and corresponding waste of time upon so hideous a garment),
and of a length sufficient to reach below the waist, and so
completely hide and spoil the wearer's generally fine figure.
Then came a short overskirt, extending a little below the
knees, and beneath which appeared the fair senora or senorita's
most unfeminine pantaloons, which, being carefully tied above
the ankle in a frill, were allowed to fully display that
treasure of treasures, that most valued of charms, the
beautiful little foot and ankle. In addition to this absurd
dress, which conceals the graceful form of perhaps the
handsomest race of women in the world, the fair creatures have
a style of riding which, to Europeans accustomed to the
side-saddle, certainly seems more
peculiar than elegant; that
is to say, they ride á la Duchesse de
Berri—Anglicè, like a man.
"The full dress, or evening costume, in the provinces,
seemed simply an exaggeration upon that of the towns—the
crinoline being more extensive, the petticoats shorter, and the
dressing of the hair still more wonderful and elaborate."
MIDDLE-AGED LIMENA.
YOUNG MESTIZO WOMAN.
Among the mestizos, half-castes, of white and Indian
origin the women are often very beautiful, especially when the
blood of the latter prevails. They are, we are told, the
best-looking of all the Peruvian women, possessing brilliantly
fair complexions, magnificent long black tresses, lithe and
graceful figures of exquisite proportions, regular and classic
features, and the most superb great black eyes.
"Though often glorious in youth, these dark-skinned,
passionate daughters of the sunny Pacific shore soon begin to
fade. Although their scant costume and the manto y
saya—the dress favored at night—serve only to
expose and display the charming contour of their youthful form,
as the years roll on and rob them of these alluring
attractions, the simple array becomes ugly and ridiculous.
Often did we laugh at the absurd figure presented by some
stout, middle-aged half-caste, or a good many more caste, lady,
clad in her manto y saya. Especially ludicrous did these
staid females appear when viewed from behind."
The Peruvian negress, of elderly years, compares not
unfavorably with her whiter Spanish sister of the same age.
Both display inordinate vanity, which consorts ill with the
brawny calves and large feet they cannot help showing on
account of their short though voluminous skirts, and both have
a womanly love of jewelry.
"They manifest a very apparent weakness for all sorts of
glittering ornaments, especially in the way of numerous rings,
huge ear-rings, and mighty necklaces. Indeed, it is not at all
uncommon to see pearls (their favorite gem) of great value,
rising and falling, and gleaming with incongruous lustre, upon
their bare, black, and massive bosoms; whilst ear-rings of
solid gold hang glittering from their large ears, in singular
contrast to their common and dirty clothing.
"Except for the occasional excitement of theatre,
***-fight, or bull-fight, and the regular attendance at mass
and vespers, the life of the higher class Limena is a dreamy
existence of languor, amidst siestas, cigarettes, agua-rica,
and jasmine perfumes, the tinkling of guitars, and the melody
of song. Alas! that I must record it; she is, too, a terrible
intriguante. The manto y saya, the bête
noir of many a poor jealous husband, seems a garment for
disguise, invented on purpose to oblige her. It is the very
thing for an intriguing dame; and, by a stringent custom, bears
a sacred inviolate right, for no man dare profane it by a
touch, although he may even suspect the bright black eye, it
may alone allow to be seen, to be that of his own wife! He can
follow, if he likes, the graceful, muffled up figure that he
dreads to be so familiar, but woe to the wretch who dares to
pull aside a fair Limena's manto! If seen, he would
surely experience the resentment of the crowd, and become a
regular laughing-stock to all who knew him."
But let us be just to the women of Peru, who, in the matter
of flirting and fondness for finery, are probably not worse
than the sex elsewhere. They love where they love with a fervor
unknown to the women of Europe, their Spanish sisters, perhaps,
excepted, and they are capable of profound patriotism.
PERUVIAN PRIESTS.
There is an element of real strength in the wild, stormy
nature of these beautiful and impassioned creatures: it is
their misfortune not to know how to hide their weaknesses as
well as their more sophisticated sisters. The tide of time
flows so smoothly with them, through such level summer
landscapes steeped in tropical repose, that the desire for
excitement naturally arises, and excitement itself becomes a
necessity. Lacking many of the indoor employments of the women
of colder climates, time hangs heavy on their hands, idleness
wearies, and they cast about for a way in which to amuse,
enjoy, and distract themselves. They find it in love. If no
European is near upon whom they can bestow their smiles and the
lustre of their magnificent eyes, they have to be content with
their own countrymen, who woo them after the fashion of their
Spanish ancestors, by serenades at night, in which the
strumming of guitars generally plays a more important part than
the words it accompanies.
While we are among the Peruvians, we must not entirely
overlook their country, and the features of its varied
landscapes. It is divided by the Andes into three different
lands, so to speak, La Costa, the region between the
coast and the Andes; La Sierra, the mountain region, and
La Montaña, or the wooded region east of the
Andes. La Costa, in which Lima is situated, at the
distance of about six miles from the sea, may be briefly
described as a sandy desert, interspersed with fertile valleys,
and watered by several rivers of no great magnitude. It seldom
or never rains there, but there are heavy dews at night which
freshen and preserve the vegetation. The magnificence of the
mountain region baffles all attempts at word-painting, as it
baffles the art of the painter. Church, the artist, gives us
what is, perhaps, the best representation we are ever likely to
have of it, but it is only a glimpse after all. Still more
indescribable, if that be possible, are the enormous
wildernesses which stretch from the Andes to the vast pampas to
the eastward. "Here everything is on Nature's great scale. The
whole country is one continuous forest, which, beginning at
very different heights, presents an undulating aspect. One
moves on his way with trees before, above, and beneath him, in
a deep abyss like the ocean. And in these woods, as on the
immensity of the waters, the mind is bewildered; whatever way
it directs the eye there it meets the majesty of the Infinite.
The marvels of Nature are in these regions so common that one
becomes accustomed to behold, without emotion, trees whose tops
exceed the height of 100 varas (290 English feet), with a
proportionate thickness, beyond the belief of such as never saw
them; and, supporting on their trunks a hundred different
plants, they, individually, present rather the appearance of a
small plantation than one great tree. It is only after you
leave the woods, and ordinary objects of comparison present
themselves to the mind, that you can realize in thought the
colossal stature of these samples of Montana vegetation."
Peru is a fitting theatre for the great dramas which have
been played upon its wild, mountainous stage. The dark
background of its past is haunted by the shadows of the unknown
race who built its ruined cities and temples. Then come the
beneficent, heavenly Incas, and the mild, pastoral people over
whom they rule. Last, the cruel, treacherous Spaniard,
slaughtering his friendly hosts with one hand, while the other
holds the Bible to their
lips!
I had been passing the summer on the banks of the
Hudson—in that charmed region which lies about what was
once the home of Diedrich Knickerbocker, with the enchanted
ground of Sleepy Hollow on the one hand, and the shrine of
Sunnyside on the other. In many happy morning walks and
peaceful twilight rambles, I had made the acquaintance of every
winding lane, every shaded avenue, every bosky dell and sunny
glade for miles around. I had wandered hither and thither,
through all the golden season, and fairly steeped my soul in
the beauty, the languor, the poetry of the "Irving country;"
and now, filled, as it were, with rare wine, content and happy,
I was ready to return to the town, and take up the
matter-of-fact habit of life again.
But even on the last day of my sojourn, when my trunks stood
packed and corded, and the loins of my spirit were girt for
departure on the morrow; as I stood at my window somewhat
pensively contemplating, for the last time, the peculiarly
delicious river-bit which it framed, the door opened suddenly,
and Nannette, my fidus Achates, and the companion of my
summer, ran in.
"Do you know," she cried, "I have just learned that we were
about to leave the place without visiting one of its greatest
curiosities? We have narrowly escaped going without having seen
the 'Old Maid's Village!'"
"The 'Old Maid's Village!'" I echoed, stupidly. "But what
village is not the peculiar property of the race?"
"Yes, I know; but this village is really built on an old
maid's property, and by her own hands. And there is the 'Cat's
Monument,' too. Come! don't stop to talk about it, but let us
go and see it. It will be just the thing for a last evening; in
memoriam, you know, and all that. Get on your hat, and come,
and we shall see the sunset meeting the moonrise on the river
once more, as we return."
That, at least, was always worth seeing, I reflected; and
so, without more ado, I put on my wraps as I was bid, and
reported myself under marching orders.
How lovely, how indescribably lovely, the world was that
September afternoon, as we strolled along the shaded sidewalk
where the maples were already laying a mosaic of gold and
garnet, and looked off toward the river and the hills
beyond—the far blue hills—all veiled in tenderest
amber mist! The very air was full of soft, warm color; the
sunbeams, mild and level now, played with the shadows across
our path, and every now and then a leaf, flecked with orange or
crimson, fluttered to our feet. The blue-birds sang in the
goldening boughs, unaffrighted by the constant roll of elegant
equipages in which, at this hour, the residents of the stately
mansions on either side the road were taking the air; and the
crickets hopped about undisturbed in the crevices of the gray
stone walls.
We walked leisurely on, past one and another lofty gateway,
until presently reaching an entrance rather less assuming than
its neighbors, but, like them, hospitably open, Nannette said,
with promptness:
"This is the place, I am sure. Square white house; black
railing; next to the printing-press man's great gate. Come
right in; all are welcome, and not even thank you to pay, for
one never sees anyone to speak to here."
It seemed to my modesty rather an audacious proceeding, but
trusting to my companion's superior information, I followed her
in, and we walked up a circular carriage-drive through smooth
shaven lawns dotted with brilliant clumps of salvia and
gladiolus, towards the house—a square, solid structure,
white, and with broad verandas running across its front.
At its northern side, sloping towards the wall, was visible
what looked like an ordinary terrace, rather low, and
ornamented with small shrubs and grotto-work; but which, on
nearer approach, proved to be a veritable village in miniature,
constructed with a verisimilitude of design, and a fidelity to
detail, which was at once in the highest degree amazing and
amusing. As Nannette had been assured, no one appeared to
interfere with us in any way, and full of a curious wonder at
such a manifestation of eccentric ingenuity, we seated
ourselves upon a wooden box, evidently kept more for the
purpose of protecting the odd out-of-door plaything in bad
weather, and proceeded to give it the minute inspection which
it merited; the result of which I chronicle here for the
benefit of the like curious minded.
The terrace, which forms the site of this doll-baby city, is
low and semi-circular in shape, and separated from the graveled
drive by a close border of box. Within this protecting hedge
the ground is laid out in the most picturesque and fantastic
manner compatible with a scale of extreme minuteness. Winding
roads, shady bye-paths ending in rustic stiles, willow-bordered
ponds, streams with fairy bridges, rocky ravines and sunny
meadows, ferny dells, and steep hills clambered over with a
wilderness of tangled vines, and strewn with lichen-covered
stones—all are there, and all reproduced with the most
conscientious fidelity to nature, and with Lilliputian
diminutiveness. Regular streets, "macadamized" with a gray
cement which gives very much the effect of asphaltum, separate
one demesne from another; and each meadow, lawn, field, and
barn-yard has its own proper fence or wall, constructed in the
most workmanlike manner. The streets are bordered by trees,
principally evergreens, which, though rigidly kept down to the
height of mere shrubs, appear stately by the side of the
miniature mansions they overlook; and, in every dooryard, or
more pretentious greensward, tiny larches, pines yet in their
babyhood, and dwarfed cedars, cast a mimic shade, and bestow an
air of dignity and venerableness to the place.
The first object upon which the eye is apt to rest on
approaching this modern Lilliput is the squire's house, the
residence of the landed proprietor. This is a handsome edifice
of some eight by ten inches in breadth and height. It stands
upon an eminence in the midst of ornamented grounds, and with
its white walls, its lofty cupola, and high, square portico,
presents a properly imposing appearance. There are signs of
social life about the mansion befitting its own style of
conscious superiority. In the wide arched entrance hall stands
a high-born dame attired in gay Watteau
costume—red-heeled slippers, brocaded petticoat, and
bodice and train of puce-colored satin. She is receiving the
adieux of an elegant gentleman, hatted, booted, and spurred,
who, with whip in hand and dog by his side, is about to descend
the steps and mount his horse for a ride over his estate. A
bird-cage swings by an open window, and, on the lawn, a group
of children, in charge of their nurse, are engaged in the
time-honored game of "Ring-around-a-rosy." Winding walks,
bordered with shrubbery, disappear among fantastic mounds of
rock-work, moss-grown grottoes, and tiny dells of fern; and
under a ruined arch, gray with lichen and green with vines,
flows a placid streamlet, spanned by a rustic bridge. In the
meadow beyond, flocks of sheep are cropping the grass, and an
old *** is busily engaged in repairing a breach in the stone
wall.
Hard by this stately demesne is a humbler tenement, built of
wattled logs, but showing signs of comfort and thrift all about
it. The old grandsire sits in a high-backed chair, sunning
himself in front of the door; on a bench, at the side of the
house, stand rows of washtubs filled with soiled linen, and a
woman is busy wringing out clothes; while another, with a
bucket on her head, goes to the well to supply her with a fresh
thimbleful of water; and still a third milks a handsome
dapple-gray cow in the yard where the dairy stands. There is a
well-filled barn behind, with another cow and a horse, too, for
that matter, in the stable attached, and the farmer, who is
putting the last sheaf on his wheat-stack, looks contented
enough with his lot.
Just beyond the stream, on whose bank the fisherman sits
leisurely dropping his line, stands the village church; a
fac-simile of the old Dutch Church which has stood near the
entrance of Sleepy Hollow since long before the Revolution, and
is hallowed now not only by the pious associations of
centuries, but by the near vicinage of Irving's grave. In its
little twelve-inch counterpart, every point of the ancient
structure is preserved in exact detail. The dull red walls, the
beetling roof, the narrow pointed windows and low, arched door;
the quaint Dutch weathercock, and odd-shaped tower—aye,
even the bell within, no bigger than a doll's thimble—and
upon all a sentimental traveler in the person of a china figure
perhaps three inches in height, is gazing half pensively, half
curiously, as we suppose, at this relic of by-gone years!
On the other side of the stream the village school, likewise
an ancient and steeple-crowned edifice, stands out in the midst
of a bare and clean swept playground. It bears its signature
upon its front:
"DISTRICT SCHOOL, NO. 2,"
and its worshipful character is otherwise indicated by the
presence of the master, a venerable looking puppet in cocked
hat and knee-breeches, in the doorway, and sundry china
children playing rather stiffly about the stone steps.
Ascending by a steep, rocky path, one arrives at a rather
pretentious looking wind-mill, which spreads its wide white
arms protectingly over the cottages below. Barrels of flour and
sacks of meal, well filled and plentiful in number, attest its
thriving business, and the miller himself, in a properly dusty
coat, looks about him with contented air. At the foot of the
hill upon which the mill is perched, are several
dwellings—all showing signs of more or less prosperous
life, with the exception of one, which affords the orthodox
"haunted house" belonging to every well-regulated village. The
ruined walls of this old mansion, with lichen cropping out from
every crevice; the unhinged doors and broken windows; the
ladder rotting as it leans against the moss-grown roof, the
broken well-sweep and deserted barn, offer an aspect of
desolation and decay which should prove sufficient bait to
tempt any ghost of moderate demands.
In direct contrast to the gloom which surrounds this now
empty and forsaken home, one observes, in a shady grove
surmounting a ridge of hills which rise somewhat steeply here
from the roadway, a party of "pic-nickers" gaily attired and
disporting themselves after the time-honored manner of such
merry-makers; swinging, dancing, or, better still, strolling
off arm in arm, in search of cooler shades, and of that company
which is never a crowd.
At the base of this rocky ridge, the same stream which one
meets above flowing darkly under arch and bridge, winds
placidly along in sunshine and shadow until it loses itself in
a clump of alders and willows quite at the edge of the
box-bordered terrace; and here the village ends.
Not so my sketch: for I have purposely left it to the last
to make mention of the great central idea round which all the
rest is gathered, and which, doubtless, formed the germ of the
whole oddly-conceived, but most admirably-executed plan. This
is the "Cat's Monument" of which Nannette had made mention, and
which is a structure so original and imposing that it deserves
special and minute description.
About midway the terrace, and conspicuous from its size and
height, rises a mound of earth shaped into the semblance of an
urn or vase, crusted thickly with bits of rock, moss, and
pebbles, and overgrown with a tangle of tiny vines. Surmounting
this picturesque pedestal is an obelisk of black-veined marble
on a granite base, the whole rising some seven feet from the
ground. On the polished surface of this memorial pillar is
inscribed, in large black capitals, the following classic and
touching tribute to the venerable departed who sleeps in peace
below:
IN MEMORIAM
TOMMY
FELINI GENERIS
OPTIMUS.
DECESSIT A VITA
MENSE NOVEMBRIS
ANNO ÆTATIS 19.
Quid me ploras? Nonne decessi gravis senectute? Nonne
vivo amicorum ardentium memoria?
On the reverse side of the column appears an inscription
even more pathetic and poetic, to yet another departed
favorite, who seems, not like Tommy to have been gathered to
his fathers ripe in years and honors but to have been cut down
in the bloom of youth by some untimely and tragic fate. He is
all the more felin'ly lamented:
HIC JACET
***
SUI GENERIS
PULCHERRIMUS.
OCCISUS EST
MENSE APRILIS
ÆTAT. 9.
"Vixi, et quum dederat cursum fortuna, peregi. Felix! heu
nimium felix! si litora ista nunquam tetigissem!"
Thanks to certain by no means homoeopathic doses of the
Latin grammar in my early years, I was able to gather the
meaning of these elegiac effusions, and when the last stanza
embodying poor ***'s posthumous wail was discovered to be
none other than the despairing death-cry of the "infelix Dido"
as immortalized by Virgil—the one step from the sublime
to the ridiculous seemed to have been passed.
I looked at Nannette, and Nannette looked at me, and we
burst into silent but irrepressible laughter. Nannette was the
first to recover herself.
"We ought to be ashamed of ourselves," said she
severely: "Honest grief is
always respectable; and a fitting tribute to departed worth,
no more than what is due from the survivors. I have no doubt
but that Tommy and *** were most esteemed members of
society, and that their loss has left an aching void in the
family of which they were the youngest and most petted
darlings. I have heard the history of this monument, and the
village that has grown up around it, and if you will comport
yourself more as a Christian being should in the presence of
a solemn memorial, I will relate to you the interesting
facts in my possession."
I immediately signified a due contrition and full purpose of
amendment; when Nannette continued, still speaking with the
gravity befitting the subject.
"This estate then, this large and respectable mansion, and
these pleasant grounds in which we now sit, are the property in
common of three most estimable ladies, all past their first
youth, and all possessed of sufficient good sense and strength
of mind to remain their own mistresses, which has procured for
the very remarkable specimen of ingenuity now before us, from
some ignorant townspeople, the sobriquet of the 'Old Maid's
Village.'
"There is only one of the ladies, however, I am informed,
who interests herself in the construction of these most
ingenious toys. Possessed of ample means, and more than ample
leisure, she amuses herself in hours which might otherwise be
devoted to gossip and tea, in putting together these various
models of buildings, all differing in style, and of most
singular materials. The church, for instance, is built of
fragments of clinker, gathered from stove and grate, and held
firmly together by cement. Nothing could have reproduced so
exactly the rough reddish stone of which the old Sleepy Hollow
Church is built. The window-glass is represented by carefully
framed pieces of tin foil; the gray stone of the gate-posts is
imitated by sand rubbed on wooden pillars with a coating of
cement. The streets are paved in much the same clever fashion.
The well, the pond, the stream, are filled with water each day
by the chatelaine's own careful hands. Many of the mimic
creatures, human and otherwise, are automata, manufactured to
order; the others are wooden or china figures selected with
extreme care as to their fitness for their purpose. So rare and
so exceedingly pretty are some of these little figures, that
they have become objects of unlawful desire to certain soulless
curiosity-mongers, who have rewarded an open and confiding
hospitality with base attempts at spoliation; and now a person
is employed to live in the cottage just beyond us, and do
little else than take care of these unique possessions.
"No, you need not start. The woman is probably there at her
post, and surveying our operations from time to time. But we
have behaved like decent people. We are taking away nothing but
a remembrance of a singularly interesting hour, and an admiring
impression of the originality, the ingenuity, the industry, and
the independence of one of our own sex.
"Is it not so, my friend? And now, by the length of those
cedar shadows, it is time for us to rise up and be gone. Else
the moonlight will have met and parted with the sunset ere we
reach home."
There was nothing to be said; the tale had been told, and
with one last, lingering glance, one parting smile, half
amused, half touched, I rose, and together we walked home in
somewhat pensive mood. Was it not our last day in
Fairyland?—Kate J. Hill.
Translated from the Persian of Mirtsa Schaffy.
The lover may be shy—
His bashfulness goes by
When first he kisses.
The bibber, though so staid,
Gets bravely unafraid
When wine his bliss is.
Yet he who, in his youth,
No wine nor kiss hath tasted.
Will some day think, in truth,
That half his joys were wasted.
—Joel Benton.
I have heard it asked why we speak of the dead with
unqualified praise: of the living, always with certain
reservations. It may be answered, because we have nothing to
fear from the former, while the latter may stand in our way: so
impure is our boasted solicitude for the memory of the dead. If
it were the sacred and earnest feeling we pretend, it would
strengthen and animate our intercourse with the
living.—Goethe.
Did anybody ever see a fairy in the city? Was a glimpse ever
caught of Fairyland there? I say No. But I was in the
country this summer where a great number of mushrooms grew, and
one day when I was walking in a grassy lane I met a little, old
queen, who was fanning herself with the leaf of the
poor-man's-weather-glass; she had taken off her crown, and it
was lying on the top of a lovely red mushroom. I poked the
mushroom with my parasol, and instantly felt on my face a faint
puff of air, and heard a hum no louder than the buzz of an
angry fly.
I sat down on the grass, and then my eyes fell on the
queen.
"You have let my crown fall in the dirt," she said, tossing
a wisp of hair from her forehead; "but you great, insensible
beings are always in mischief when you are in the country. Why
don't you stay at home, in your brick cages that stand on heaps
of flat stones? You are watched there all the time by creatures
with clubs in their leather belts, so you cannot tear and crush
things to pieces as you do here."
"Oh, I am so sorry, madam," I answered; "if you knew how
unhappy I felt this morning when I started on my last walk, you
would pity me. I must go home at once, and my home is in the
city—shut in by houses before and behind it. If I look
out of the window, I only see a strip of sky above me, where
neither sun nor moon passes on its journey round the world; and
below me, only the stone pavement over which goes an endless
procession of men and women, upon a hundred errands I never
guess at."
The queen tapped her head with a white stick like a peeled
twig, and made such a noise that I examined it, and saw an
ivory ***, which reminded me of the budding horns of a young
deer. As if in answer to my thought, she said:
"It drops off every year. In the fairy-nature all elements
are united. We partake of the animal and vegetable kingdoms,
and add our own; this makes us what we are. We do not suffer,
but we experience, without suffering, of course; our long lives
glide along like dreams. As you are in sleep, so are we awake.
If you love the country, which contains our kingdom, as the
filbert-shell contains the kernel, I will endow you with power.
I will give you something to take back with you."
What do you think she gave me? A little closet with shelves;
on each shelf were laid away all my remembrances of the summer,
for me to unfold at leisure. When she gave me the key, which
looked exactly like a steel pen, she said: "When you turn the
key you will understand my power. All things will be alive,
will know as much, and talk as fast as you do. The closet, in
short, is but a wee corner of my kingdom, where to-day and
to-morrow are the same—past and present one. A
maid-of-honor wishes to go to town. I'll send her in the
closet. My slave, the geometrical spider, must spin her a warm
cobweb—and when you open the closet, be sure and not
disturb my little Fancie."
Some way Queen Imagin disappeared then. To any person less
knowing than myself, it would have seemed as if a dandelion
ball was floating in the air; but I knew better, and I watched
her sailing, sailing away till lost behind the trees. The crown
was gone, too; I discovered nothing in the neighborhood of the
red mushroom, except a tiny yellow blossom already wilted by
the heat of the sun.
Well, I am at home. I sit down this misty autumn morning in
my lonely room, and wish for some work or if not that, for
something to play with. I am too old for dolls, but very young
in the way of amusement. Ah—the closet! I'll unlock that;
the key is at hand—in my writing-desk.
Open Sesame! On the top shelf sits little Fancie, her eyes
shining like diamonds in her soft, dusky cobweb. She nods, so
do I, and we are in Greenside again—on a summer evening.
How the crickets sing; and the tree-toads harp in the trees as
if they were a picket guard entirely surrounding us. Hueston's
big dog barks in the lane at just the right distance. What
security I used to feel when I was a little child, tucked away
in my bed, and heard a dog bark a mile away; too far off ever
to come up and bite, and yet near enough to frighten prowling
robbers!
"When in the breeze the distant watch-dog bayed," I was
about to say; but Polly, who is at Greenside with me, calls,
"Just hear the mosquitoes."
The blinds must be closed. What a delicious smell comes in!
The dew wetting all the shrubs and flowers distils sweet odors.
What a family of moths have rushed in; this big, brown one,
with white and red markings, is very enterprising. He has
voyaged twice down the lamp chimney, as if it were the funnel
of a steamship.
Get out, moth!
"Sho," she answers in a husky voice, as if very dry, "It is
my nature to; that's all you know, turning us to moral
purposes, and making us a tiresome metaphor. We are much like
you human creatures—only we don't compare ourselves
continually with others. We just scorch ourselves as we please.
My cousin, Noctilia Glow-worm, who is out late o' nights on the
grass-bank in poor company—the Katydids, who board for
the season with the widow Poplar—a two-sided, deceitful
woman—she does not care where I go, and never shrieks
out, 'A burnt moth dreads the lamp chimney.' If she sees me
wingless, she coughs, and throws out a green light, but says
nothing. Don't mind me; there's more coming."
It can't be moths making such a noise on the second shelf.
It is Tom, who calls out to us, from his room, to come, and
help him catch a bat.
"Now air is hushed, save where the weak-eyed bat
With short shrill shriek flits by on leathern
wings."
"Always mouthing something," somebody mutters. But we rush
into Tom's room, and behold him in the middle of the floor,
flopping north and south, east and west, with a towel. No bat
is to be seen. I hear a pretty singing, however, and declare it
to be from a young swallow fallen down the chimney; but as
there is no fire-place in the room, my opinion goes for
nothing. Tom maintains that it is a bat; that it flew in by the
window; and that it is behind the bureau. He is right, for the
bat whirrs up to the ceiling and from that height accosts us in
a squeaking voice:
"I am weak-eyed, am I? and my wings are leathery? Catch me,
and you will find my wings are like down, my eyes as bright as
diamonds. How much you know, writing yourselves down in books
as Naturalists! My name is Vespertila; my family are from
Servia, at your service. Could you offer me a fly, or a beetle?
I was chasing Judge Blue Bottle, or I should not have been
trapped. Go to sleep, dears, and leave me to fan you. When you
are asleep, I'll bite a hole in your ear, and sup bountifully
on your red blood."
Flop went our towels, and down went Miss Vespertila behind
the bed crying. Polly crept up to her; and caught her in a
towel. What black beads of eyes had Miss Vespertila from
Servia, where her grandfather, General Vampire, still commands
a brigade of rascals! Her teeth were sharp, and white as
pearls. Polly held her up, and she cunningly combed her furry
wings with her hind feet, and said:
"Polly, dear, I itch dreadfully; do you mind plain speaking?
I am full of bat lice. Ariel caught them, and the folks say
that Queen Mab often buys fine combs—"
"Slanderer!" cried Polly, "fly to your witch home!"
She shook the towel out of the window, and the bat soared
away.
"What's coming next?" we all asked. "There are the rabbits
to hear from, the pigeons, the sparrows, the mole, and the
striped snake who lives by the garden gate?"
Slap, ***! Fancie has pulled the door to. The cunning Queen
Imagin placed her in the closet, perhaps for this purpose. But
I have the key. I shall unlock it to-morrow, for I must have
the picnic over again, under the beech tree, where the brown
thrush built her nest, and reared her young ones, who ate our
crumbs, and chirped merrily when we laughed.—Lolly
***'s Mother.
Doth a man reproach thee for being proud or ill-natured,
envious or conceited, ignorant or detractive, consider with
thyself whether his reproaches be true. If they are not,
consider that thou art not the person whom he reproaches, but
that he reviles an imaginary being, and perhaps loves what thou
really art, although he hates what thou appearest to be. If his
reproaches are true, if thou art the envious, ill-natured man
he takes thee for, give thyself another turn, become mild,
affable and obliging, and his reproaches of thee naturally
cease. His reproaches may indeed continue, but thou art no
longer the person he
reproaches.—Epictetus.
"Of the making of many books there is no end," said the Wise
Man of old. Of the making of good books there is frequently an
end, say we. The good books of one year may be counted on the
fingers of one hand. Among those of the present year none ranks
higher than Taine's "Art in Greece," a translation of which, by
Mr. John Durand, is published by Messrs. Holt & Williams.
The French are a nation of critics, and Taine is the critic of
the French. This could not have been said with truth during the
lifetime of Sainte-Beuve, but since his death it is true. There
is nothing, apparently, which Taine is not competent to
criticise, so subtle is his intellect, and so wide the range of
his studies, but what he is most competent to criticise is Art.
We have heard great things of a History of English Literature
by him, but as it has not yet appeared in an English dress
(although Messrs. Holt & Williams have a translation of it
in press) we shall reserve our decision until it appears. Art,
it seems to us, is the specialty to which Taine has devoted
himself, with the enthusiasm peculiar to his countrymen, and a
thoroughness peculiar to himself. Others may have accumulated
greater stores of art-knowledge—the knowledge
indispensable to the historian of Art, and the biographer of
artists—but none has so saturated himself with the spirit
of Art as Taine. We may not always agree with him, but he is
always worth listening to, and what he says is worthy of our
serious consideration. We think he is too philosophical
sometimes, but then the fault may be in us. It may be that we
are so accustomed to the materialism of the English critics
that we fail, at first, to apprehend the spirituality of this
most refined and refining of Frenchmen. No English critic could
have written his "Art in Greece," because no English critic
could put himself in his place. We know what the English think
of Greek Art, or may, with a little reading: what Taine thinks
of it is—that it is what it is, simply because the Greeks
were what they were. Before he tells us what Greek Art is, he
tells us what the Greeks were. Nor does he stop here, but goes
on to tell us, or rather begins by telling us, what kind of a
country it was in which they dwelt, what skies shone over them,
what mountains looked down upon them, in the shadow of what
trees they walked within sight of the wine-dark sea. He begins
at the beginning, as the children say. Whether he succeeds in
convincing us that it was Greece alone which made the Greeks
what they were, depends somewhat upon the cast of our minds,
and somewhat upon our power to resist his eloquence. We think,
ourselves, that he lays too much stress upon the mere outward
environment of the Grecian people. The influence exercised over
their lives, by the Institutions which grew up out of these
lives—the influence, in short, of their purely physical
culture—is admirably described, as is also the difference
between this culture and ours:
"Modern people are Christian, and Christianity is a
religion of second growth which opposes natural instinct.
We may liken it to a violent contraction which has
inflected the primitive attitude of the human mind. It
proclaims, in effect, that the world is sinful, and that
man is depraved—which certainly is indisputable in
the century in which it was born. According to it, man must
change his ways. Life here below is simply an exile; let us
turn our eyes upward to our celestial home. Our natural
character is vicious; let us stifle natural desires and
mortify the flesh. The experience of our senses and the
knowledge of the wise are inadequate and delusive; let us
accept the light of revelation, faith and divine
illumination. Through penitence, renunciation and
meditation let us develop within ourselves the spiritual
man; let our life be an ardent awaiting of deliverance, a
constant sacrifice of will, an undying yearning for God, a
revery of sublime love, occasionally rewarded with ecstasy
and a vision of the infinite. For fourteen centuries the
ideal of this life was the anchorite or monk. If you would
estimate the power of such a conception and the grandeur of
the transformation it imposes on human faculties and
habits, read, in turn, the great Christian poem and the
great pagan poem, one the 'Divine Comedy' and the other the
'Odyssey' and the 'Iliad.' Dante has a vision and is
transported out of our little ephemeral sphere into eternal
regions; he beholds its tortures, its expiations and its
felicities; he is affected by superhuman anguish and
horror; all that the infuriate and subtle imagination of
the lover of justice and the executioner can conceive of he
sees, suffers and sinks under. He then ascends into light;
his body loses its gravity; he floats involuntarily, led by
the smile of a radiant woman; he listens to souls in the
shape of voices and to passing melodies; he sees choirs of
angels, a vast rose of living brightness representing the
virtues and the celestial powers; sacred utterances and the
dogmas of truth reverberate in ethereal space. At this
fervid height, where reason melts like wax, both symbol and
apparition, one effacing the other, merge into mystic
bewilderment, the entire poem, infernal or divine, being a
dream which begins with horrors and ends in ravishment. How
much more natural and healthy is the spectacle which Homer
presents! We have the Troad, the isle of Ithica and the
coasts of Greece; still at the present day we follow in his
track; we recognize the forms of mountains, the color of
the sea; the jutting fountains, the cypress and the alders
in which the sea-birds perched; he copied a steadfast and
persistent nature: with him throughout we plant our feet on
the firm ground of truth. His book is a historical
document; the manners and customs of his contemporaries
were such as he describes; his Olympus itself is a Greek
family."
The manifest inferiority of our mixed languages to their one
simple language is stated in the following paragraph, with
which we must leave Taine for the present:
"Almost the whole of our philosophic and scientific
vocabulary is foreign; we are obliged to know Greek and
Latin to make use of it properly, and, most frequently,
employ it badly. Innumerable terms find their way out of
this technical vocabulary into common conversation and
literary style, and hence it is that we now speak and think
with words cumbersome and difficult to manage. We adopt
them ready made and conjoined, we repeat them according to
routine; we make use of them without considering their
scope and without a nice appreciation of their sense; we
only approximate to that which we would like to express.
Fifteen years are necessary for an author to learn to
write, not with genius, for that is not to be acquired, but
with clearness, sequence, propriety and precision. He finds
himself obliged to weigh and investigate ten or twelve
thousand words and diverse expressions, to note their
origin, filiation and relationships, to rebuild on an
original plan, his ideas and his whole intellect. If he has
not done it, and he wishes to reason on rights, duties, the
beautiful, the State or any other of man's important
interests, he gropes about and stumbles; he gets entangled
in long, vague phrases, in sonorous common-places, in
crabbed and abstract formulas. Look at the newspapers and
the speeches of our popular orators. It is especially the
case with workmen who are intelligent but who have had no
classical education; they are not masters of words, and,
consequently, of ideas; they use a refined language which
is not natural to them; it is a perplexity to them and
consequently confuses their minds; they have had no time to
filter it drop by drop. This is an enormous disadvantage,
from which the Greeks were exempt. There was no break with
them between the language of concrete facts and that of
abstract reasoning, between the language spoken by the
people and that of the learned; the one was a counterpart
of the other; there was no term in any of Plato's dialogues
which a youth, leaving his gymnasia, could not comprehend;
there is not a phrase in any of Demosthenes' harangues
which did not readily find a lodging-place in the brain of
an Athenian peasant or blacksmith. Attempt to translate
into Greek one of Pitt's or Mirabeau's discourses, or an
extract from Addison or Nicole, and you will be obliged to
recast and transpose the thought; you will be led to find
for the same thoughts, expressions more akin to facts and
to concrete experience; a flood of light will heighten the
prominence of all the truths and of all the errors; that
which you were wont to call natural and clear will seem to
you affected and semi-obscure, and you will perceive by
force of contrast why, among the Greeks, the instrument of
thought being more simple, it did its office better and
with less effort."
Among the good books of the year, two belong to a special
walk of letters in which we have not hitherto excelled the
English Translation. There are periods in the history of
English Poetry when translation has played an important part.
Such a period occurred just before the Shakspearean era, and it
was noted for translations from the Latin poets. Chapman was
the first English writer to perceive the greatness of the Greek
poets, and, like the poet that he was, he attempted to
translate the father of poets, Homer. Chapman's Homer is a
noble work, with all its faults; but it is not what Homer
should be in English. It was followed by other translations
mostly of the Latin poets, the best, perhaps, being Dryden's
Virgil, until, finally, the English mind returned to Homer, or
supposed it did, in the pretty, musical numbers of Pope. Who
will may read Pope's Homer. We cannot. Nor Cowper's either,
although it contains some good, manly writing. We can read Lord
Derby's Homer, or could, until Mr. Bryant published his
translation of the "Iliad," when the necessity no longer
existed. No English translation of Homer will compare with Mr.
Bryant's; and we are glad that we are soon to have the whole of
the "Odyssey," as we already have the whole of the "Iliad." The
first volume of Mr. Bryant's translation of the "Odyssey" (J.R.
Osgood & Co.) fully sustains the reputation of the writer.
It is so admirably done, that, if we did not know to the
contrary, we should think we were reading an original poem. The
stiffness which generally inheres in translations is wanting;
nowhere is there any sense of restraint, but everywhere a
delightful sense of ease—the freedom of one great poet
shining through the freedom of another great poet, as the sun
shines through the sky. It is the ideal English translation of
Homer; and we congratulate Mr. Bryant upon having finished it
(for we believe he has); and congratulate ourselves that it is
the work of an American poet.
We offer the like congratulation to Mr. Bayard Taylor for
his translation of "Faust," which occupies the same place, as
regards German Poetry, that Mr. Bryant's translation of Homer
does to Greek Poetry. The difficulty of the task which Mr.
Taylor set himself, the task of rendering the original in the
measures of the original, was never met before by any English
translator of "Faust"—never even attempted, we
believe—and, to say that he has accomplished it, is to
say that Mr. Taylor is a very skilful poet—how skilful we
never knew before, highly as we have always valued his poetical
powers. He enables us to understand the Intention of
Goethe in "Faust," as no one besides himself has done; and,
among the obligations that we owe him for the enjoyment he has
given us, we must not forget the obligation we are under to him
for his Notes. They are scholarly, and to the point.
There is not one too many, not one which we could afford to
lose, now that we have it. What might have been written,
under the pretense of Notes—what another
translator might not have been able to resist writing—is
fearful to think of—Life is so short, and Goethe's Art so
long!
The year has been fertile in American verse. How much Poetry
it has produced is a question into which we do not care to
enter. It has witnessed the publication of two volumes by Mr.
Bret Harte; of one volume by Mr. John Hay; and of one volume by
Mr. William Winter. The title of Mr. Winter's volume, "My
Witness," (J.R. Osgood & Co.) is a happy one. It is not
every American writer who can afford to place his verse on the
stand as his witness; and it is not every American writer whose
verse will substantiate what he is so desirous of proving,
viz., that he is an American poet.
Mr. Winter is not without faults—what American writer
is?—but he endeavors to write simply. The virtue of
simplicity—always a rare one, and never so rare as at
present—he possesses. We have Tennyson, who is not
simple; we have Browning, who is not simple; we have Swinburne,
who is not simple; and we have Mr. Joaquin Miller, who is not
simple.
Mr. Winter's book has its defects—among which we
observe an occasional lapse into Latinity—but with all
its defects it is a very poetical book. Mr. Winter
reminds us, more than any recent American poet, of the English
poets of the reigns of Charles the First and Second. He has, at
his best, all their graces of style, and he has, at all times,
the grace of Purity, to which they laid no claim. With the
exception of Carew (whom, we dare say, he has never read), Mr.
Winter is the daintiest and sweetest of amatory poets. He has
the fancy of Carew, without his artificiality; he has Carew's
sweetness, without his grossness of suggestion.
There is a tinge of sadness in some of Mr. Winter's poems,
and the critics, we suppose, will censure him for it. If so,
they will be in the wrong. The poet has the right to express
his moods, sad or merry, and he is no more to be judged by his
sad moods than his merry ones. He is to be judged by both, and
the sum of both—if the critic is able to add it
up—is the poet. As far as he is revealed in his book,
that is, but no further. There is such a thing as Dramatic
Poetry, as some critics are aware, and there is such a thing as
Representative Poetry, as few critics are aware. The former
deals with the passions, the latter with those shadowy and
evanescent sensations which we call feelings. Mr. Winter is not
a dramatic poet, but he is, in his own way, a representative
poet. His poem "Lethe" represents one set of feelings; "The
White Flag" another; and "Love's Queen" another. We like the
last best. For, while we believe the others to be equally
genuine, they do not impress us as being the best expression of
his genius. What we feel most after finishing his volume, what
seems to us most characteristic of his poetry, is
loveliness—the tender loveliness that lingers in the mind
after we have seen the sun-set of a quiet summer evening, or
after we have heard music on a dreamy summer night. If this
poetic melancholy be treason, the critics may make the most of
it. Mr. Winter has nothing to fear. He has the authority of the
greatest poets with which to defend himself, and confute the
critics.
THE PRODIGAL SON, BY EDOUARD DUBUFE.
The sublime lesson of forgiveness, inculcated by the story
of the Prodigal Son, is among the earliest and most familiar in
the memories of a nation of Bible readers like our own. Every
one of us, perhaps unconsciously, carries in mind a simple,
straight-forward conception of this subject, formed in early
childhood—a time when the imagination rarely goes beyond
an attempt to realize the unlooked for forgiveness of the once
deserted parent, or the captivating visions of adventure
suggested by the changing fortunes of the wanderer during his
absence in a "far country."
With the painter the picture is his vision, and the panels
are the realities. As a man of a different order of thought
would have chosen another incident of the story for
illustration, so also would a painter of a less independent
school have permitted himself to be bound down by the
historical facts of the architectural and costume fashions of
the time of narration. Dubufe has so far discarded the unities
of time and place, if any can really be said to
exist—as no date was fixed in the relation of the parable
by Christ—that he has adopted the mingled costumes of
Europe and the East, which obtained in the fifteenth century,
and has placed his figures in a Corinthian porch under the
light of Italian skies. Apart from the conception and the
"telling of the story," about which there will be various
opinions, this picture may be justly regarded as a magnificent
work of art.
The great David, a pupil of whose pupil Edouard Dubufe was,
and Horace Vernet, appear to have been the guides selected by
him, rather than the greatest of his masters—Paul
Delaroche. The influence of both is to be traced in this work,
although it may be said to take rank above any production of
either of them. In drawing, color, and composition, rendering
of textures, and the exhibition of the resources of the
palette, now better known to French painters than ever before,
the picture leaves nothing to be desired. The faces of the
principal figures are full of that "expression to the life" in
which the English are justly considered to excel, while the
admirable focus of the groups, the color, and interest, are as
un-English as excellent. Fault-finding in more than one or two
unimportant details would be hypercriticism where so much is
perfect, and it becomes our happy privilege, in this notice, to
commend and to point out, to "lay" readers about Art, the
manifold beauties of its technical execution. A critical
examination will show that the composition is on the pyramidal
principle, and the arrangement of groups principally in threes.
In the central portion of the canvas, where the marble pillars
of the porch fall off in perspective, the Profligate stands
holding up a golden cup in his right hand, as in the act of
proposing a toast. His red costume and commanding figure
attract the eye, and the attention falls at once and equally on
him and on the magnificent woman whose arms embrace his neck,
and whose eyes, as her chin rests close on his breast, gaze
with dangerous fascination into his face. Her dress is of rich
white satin, and, with the delicate green and gold sheen of her
rival's robe—she with whom the Prodigal's right hand toys
in caress—makes up a wonderfully brilliant prismatic
chord, having the effect of focusing the richer, but not less
gorgeous, pigments spread everywhere on the canvas. The faces
of the women are very beautiful, and are made voluptuous by a
subtle art which, through all their beauty, tells a story of
unrestrained lives of passion and pleasure.
The face of the magnificent creature at the Prodigal's left
hand is a wondrous piece of drawing. It is thrown back against
him and from the spectator, in order that she may look up into
his face—at the moment a dissipated, spiritless face,
without even the flush of the wine which dyes her's so
rosily—a face at once weak and weary, and yet revealing a
possible intensity, indeed, the face of a French woman who "has
lived," rather than that of a man.
Up to this centre leads the other groups. Below, and seated
on the rich rugs which cover the marble pavement, musicians and
singers pause to listen to impassioned words from a
laurel-crowned poet, while further on a sort of orchestra plays
time for the sensuous dance of lithe-bodied Oriental
dancers—each woman of them more ravishing than the other.
Minor incidents, like dice-play and love-making, give interest
to the remaining space, and keep up the revel.
Throughout, the drawing is true, and good, and graceful. The
hands of the figures demand especial mention. The hand of one
of the women, near the central group, grasped by her lover at
the wrist as he kisses her shoulder, is particularly exquisite
in form and color; the more remarkable, perhaps, because the
position of it is so trying in nature and so difficult to
draw.
The type of feature chosen for the women, the dancing girls
excepted, is essentially Gallic. As remarked before, the face
of the Prodigal, also, is French; but the musicians and the
poet have faces of their own which seem to belong to the
university of genius. The mere revelers, curiously enough, have
a likeness to the figures in some old Italian pictures; one of
them looks like a copy of Judas Iscariot, made younger.
A distant city and mountains fill up the background, and, on
the extreme right of the near middle distance, flights of
marble steps ascend to a grand doorway, where servants are seen
loitering within easy call of their masters.
It was by a sublime inspiration that Dubufe painted the
accessory panels in monotone. In that on the right, a dismal
sky, filled with rolling clouds and sad presaging ravens
flying, over-shadows the outcast, seated on a rock in an
attitude of listless dejection, with the swine feeding at his
feet. In the panel on the left he is seen in the close embrace
of his merciful parent. His head is bowed in humility, and, in
an agony of remorse and shame, while the old house-dog sniffs
at him for an obtrusive mendicant who has no business with such
affectionate welcome.
Let us congratulate ourselves that this picture has come to
our country, as yet so barren of great works, and pray that the
noble school of art of which this is so admirable an exponent,
may find favor, not only with our painters, but with those who
call themselves connoisseurs, in preference to unmeaning works
of microscopic finish, or slick examples of boudoir and
millinery painting.
"THE ALDINE PRESS."—JAMES SUTTON & CO.,
Printers and Publishers, 23 Liberty St., N.Y.