'Not only 'mid the Greeks were faithful sons;Demetrius in our own times finds his peers.In thee, O Charles the Great, may we beholdSublime example and heroic deeds.For thou against injustice hast thy sireDefended; thy dear sire, whose virtues rareEfface the memories left by antique Greece.Be thou the father of thy country! Reign!Reign over us! Thy people all wilt love theeWith the love of a Demetrius.'
'Not only 'mid the Greeks were faithful sons;Demetrius in our own times finds his peers.In thee, O Charles the Great, may we beholdSublime example and heroic deeds.For thou against injustice hast thy sireDefended; thy dear sire, whose virtues rareEfface the memories left by antique Greece.Be thou the father of thy country! Reign!Reign over us! Thy people all wilt love theeWith the love of a Demetrius.'
One may see from this that the prince royal has devoted partisans; an interior conviction assures me that he will one day be king of Poland. I was deeply interested in the praise which the prince palatine bestowed upon him: if I am not mistaken, the hero of my dreams will one day be a great man; but I may be deceived in my previsions, or they may be rendered vain by the power of intrigue.
I judge of the generality by the diversity of opinion existing within our own little circle. The views of the princess palatine differ from those of her husband. She desires to see neither the prince royal nor Poniatowski king of the republic, but carries her wishes still elsewhere.... To whose prayers will God listen?
FOOTNOTE:
[B]A beautiful Polish lady, who was secretly married to the Prince Sigismund Augustus, afterward King of Poland. When he ascended the throne, at his father's death, he acknowledged his marriage, and Barbara reigned as queen until the year 1561, when she died, to the great sorrow of her husband and her people, to whom she had proved herself a real mother.—Translator's note.
[B]A beautiful Polish lady, who was secretly married to the Prince Sigismund Augustus, afterward King of Poland. When he ascended the throne, at his father's death, he acknowledged his marriage, and Barbara reigned as queen until the year 1561, when she died, to the great sorrow of her husband and her people, to whom she had proved herself a real mother.—Translator's note.
On the 22d of November, 1855, a small company of us—three gentlemen and two ladies—left New York harbor in the schooner Louisa Dyer, of 150 tons burden, bound to the island of Jamaica. By nightfall we had lost sight of the last faint trace of New Jersey soil. New Jersey is sometimes jocularly said to be out of the Union; but on that day the two of us who were leaving our native land for the first time, entertained no doubt of its solidarity with that country of which it afforded us the last glimpse. By morning we found our small and incommodious vessel fairly on her way through the stormy November Atlantic, toiling painfully over the broad convexity of the planet, like a plodding insect, toward the regions of the sun. After a voyage of fifteen days, wrestling with all manner of baffling winds, and with storms attended, I suppose, with some danger, though, from a happy incapacity of apprehending peril at sea till it is over, I suffered no disquiet from them, we came in sight of the two inlets which form the Turk's Island passage. A winter voyage, however unpleasant, has this advantage, that then only can you be sure of meeting with such a succession of storms as shall leave settled in the memory the sullen sublimity of that 'changing, restless mound' of disturbed ocean in which is embodied the mass of its gloomy might.
Very pleasant was it to us, nevertheless, when the softening airs and the steady set of the breeze showed us that we had come into the latitude of the trade winds. The inky blackness of the sea had gradually turned into translucent and then into transparent azure, which looked as if it could be quarried out into blocks of pure blue crystal. The flying fish, glancing in quick, short flights above the sunny waters, now gave the charm of happy, graceful life to our weary voyage out of the tempestuous north. And when at last we saw land, although it appeared only in the shape of the two small islands mentioned above, which seem to be little more than coral reefs covered with a scanty carpet of yellowish grass, yet the few distant cocoanut trees upon them threw even over their barrenness that tropical charm which to those who first feel it seems rather to belong to another planet than to this dull one upon which we were born.
Passing through the narrow channel between the two islands which formed thus the portal of our entrance into the Caribbean, we found ourselves fairly afloat upon the waters of that brilliant sea, which the Spaniards, three centuries and a half before, had traversed with greater astonishment, but not with more delight. Everything now conspired to raise our spirits. The soft air, reminding us by contrast of the winter we had left behind, the deep blue sky, answered by waves of an intenser blue below, whose gentle ripples, unlike the stormy Atlantic surges which we had escaped, only came up to bear us kindly on, and the knowledge that we were but two days' sail from the fair island to which some were returning, and which two of us were about to make our home for an indefinite future, all made us now a very different set from the dull, anxious, seasick group that the Atlantic had lately been boxing about at his pleasure.
Before making Jamaica, however, we came in sight of the negro empire of Hayti, and ran along for a day under its northern coast.
We saw swelling hills, covered on their tops with woods, and sloping down to the shore, but were too far distant to distinguish very plainly any sign of human habitation. By nightfall we had sunk the land, but were astonished in the morning to see looming through the air, at an immense distance, a mountain, which in height seemed more like one of the Andes than any summit that Hayti could afford. Its actual height, I presume, may not have been less than 8,000 feet, but in my memory it shows like Chimborazo.
It was now Saturday, the 8th of December. We held our way westward across the hundred miles of sea that separate Hayti from Jamaica. All eyes were now turned to discover the first glimpse of our expected island home. At last, about the middle of the afternoon, we remarked on the western horizon the distant blot of indigo that showed us where it lay. Another twenty-four hours would pass before we should land, but that distant patch of mountain blue seemed to have brought us to land already. Heavy rain clouds coming up, hid it from us again, but gave ample compensation in the sunset that followed, one of the two grand sunsets of my life. The other was in Andover, Mass., which, is justly celebrated for the beauty of its sunsets. There the banks of white cloud, lying along the west, glowed with an inner radiance, that led the eye and the mind back into the very depths of heaven. Here, on the other hand, an unimaginable wealth of color was poured out on the very face of the sky. The wholewestern heaven, to the zenith, was one mingled melting mass of gorgeous dyes, rendered the more magnificent by the heavy lead-colored rain clouds which occupied all the rest of the sky.
The inward, spiritual magnificence of that northern sunset, and the unreserved splendor of this southern one, were in correspondence with the different tone which runs throughout nature in each of the two regions.
After sunset hues and rain cloud had both given way to the brilliant night sky of that latitude, we seated ourselves, seven in number, captain and mate included, on the extensive quarter deck of not less than seven feet from cabin house to stern bulwarks, for a final game of 'Twenty Questions;' when our hitherto so amiable friend, the Caribbean, suddenly flung a spiteful wave right over the quarter upon us, and put a very unexpected extinguisher on our pastime. The ladies, who were reclining on the deck, came in for the chief share of the compliment, and were in some danger of an indiscriminate swash down the cabin gangway; but the mate gallantly picked up one, and her husband the other, and saved them from all mischief but the drenching. This sudden interruption of amicable relations with the powers of the wave was followed up by a night of unmerciful rocking, to which, as we had now come under the lee of the land, was added a sweltering heat. I can stand as much heat as any man, but for once I found the cabin too much of a blackhole even for me, and after tossing most of the night in alternate correspondence and contradiction to the pitching of the vessel, I got up and went on deck, to see if a nap were any more feasible there. I found most of our company already recumbent in this starry bedchamber. After awhile admiring the unaccustomed brilliancy of the old familiar constellations of our northern sky, augmented by the effulgent host which our approach to the equator had brought into view, among all which Venus shone like a young moon, I fell asleep also, and we slumbered in concert, until awakened by the streaks of dawn. Soon the sun rose with a serene magnificence, well according with the day of holy rest and cheerful expectation which lay before us. The white haze upon the sky rolled away from the blue, and gathered itself into fleecy masses, which stood like pillars around the seaward horizon, brightening with a cheerful tempered light, until, as the sun grew higher, they dissolved away. Meanwhile, on the landward side of our vessel—which had rounded Morant Point in the night, and was now gliding smoothly on—lay in near view the mountains of Jamaica. Coming from the southeast quarter of the island, we were passing under them where they are highest. They rose, seemingly almost from the water's edge, to the height of seven and eight thousand feet, their towering masses broken into gigantic wrinkles and corrugations, whose fantastic unevenness was subdued into harmony by the softening veil of yellowish green darkening above, which clothed them to their tops. Between their base and the sea actually lies one of the most richly cultivated districts of the island, the Plaintain Garden River district. But we were too far out to distinguish much of it; and what little we did see is in my memory absorbed in the image of the verdant giants which rose behind.
In the forenoon our pilot came on board, a comfortable, self-possessed black man, who toward sunset brought us off the Palisades. This is the name of the narrow spit of land which forms the outer wall of the magnificent harbor of Kingston. Upon it is situated the naval station of Port Royal, the principal rendezvous of the British fleet in the West Indies. Here is that exquisitely comfortable naval hospital, with its long ranges of green jalousies, excluding the blazing light and admitting the sea breeze, in which theofficers and crew of our ship Susquehanna were cared for with such generous hospitality a few years ago, when attacked by yellow fever. The heartburnings of the present may be somewhat lessened by reflecting on some of these mutual offices of kindness in the past.
Around the naval station clusters a poor village of perhaps fifteen hundred souls, the miserable remnant of the once splendid city of Port Royal, whose sudden fate I shall relate hereafter.
We rounded the point of the Palisades—which is marked by some unfortunate cocoanut trees, which, having vainly struggled with the sea breeze to maintain the elegant stateliness of their race, have long since given up the contest, and resigned themselves to being stunted and broken into the appearance of magnified splint brooms planted upside down—and found ourselves at last in our desired haven, Kingston harbor. It is a broad and sheltered basin, fully entitled, I understand, to the standard encomium of a harbor of the first rank, namely, that it will float the united navies of the world. Due provision has been made by three strong forts near the entrance that the navies aforesaid shall not enter until the time of such auspicious union. An intelligent correspondent of theHeraldstates his opinion that no ship and no number of ships could force an entrance under the converging fire of the forts, which bears upon the channel at a point where the least divergence would land a ship upon a dangerous shoal.
Kingston is on the inside of the harbor, six miles across from Port Royal. The city itself lies low, but as we approached it, just as the sun had set, the mountains which rise behind it, a few miles distant, to the height of three and five thousand feet, appeared to close around it in a sublime amphitheatre of massive verdure. High up on the side of the mountains we distinguished a white speck, which we were told was the military cantonment of Newcastle, situated 4,400 feet above the sea, chosen for the English soldiers on account of its salubrity. Formerly the annual mortality among European soldiers in the island was 130 in 1,000, but since the Government has been careful to quarter them as much as possible in these elevated sites, it has diminished to 34 in 1,000.
At last our vessel came to anchor at the wharf. We took a kind leave of the pleasant-tempered captain and crew, who had been shut up with us in the little craft during our seventeen days' tossing, and gave a farewell of especial warmth to the fatherly mate, whose rough exterior covered the warm heart of a seaman and the delicate feelings of a native gentleman.
When we landed, the short tropical twilight was fast fading into night, but light enough remained to show us into what a new world we had come. The gloomy, prisonlike warehouses, the long rows of verandas before the dwellings, the dusky throngs in the streets, the unintelligiblepatoisthat came to our ears on every side, occasional glimpses of strange vegetation, and, above all, the overpowering heat in December, all gave us to feel that we were at last in that tropical world, every aspect of which is so unlike our northern life.
After a hospitable reception from Mr. Whitehorne, the principal of the Nuco Institute, I went up to the rooms of the American Mission, and, ensconcing myself behind the mosquito curtains, proceeded to make critical observations upon the buzzings outside, to satisfy myself whether an insular range fed up these tormentors to the formidable vigor of their continental brethren. Concluding from their timid pipings that they were by no means an enemy so much to be dreaded—a conclusion which subsequent experience happily confirmed—I fell asleep.
Having satisfied myself, by a sound night's rest, that the laws of my physical constitution had undergone no essential revolution by a change to the torrid zone, I began in the morning to look curiously around to note what the differences might be in the outer world. The quaint old lodging house itself first drew my attention, with its thick walls and heavy brick arches on the ground floor, built to guard against earthquakes, of which few years pass without several shocks, though none especially memorable have taken place since the dreadful one of 1692. Cracks in the walls here and there, however, show that it is not useless to make provision against them.
While I was seated at a most comfortable breakfast of bread and butter and the excellent fish which abound in Kingston harbor, flanked by huge oranges of enticing sweetness, a shrivelled old negro woman, who was on her knees giving the uncarpeted floor its morning application of wax, and rubbing it into a polish with a cocoanut shell, suddenly rose to her feet and kissed her hand to me with a grace worthy of a duchess. Somewhat startled at this unexpected salutation from the fairer, or the softer sex—I am in some doubt as to the proper adjective in this case—I gazed rather blankly at her without replying; but she dropped on her knees again and went on with her work, satisfied doubtless that she at least knew the proprieties. It is this submissive respectfulness of the blacks that makes it pleasant living among them, notwithstanding all their faults and vices. At home we are no better than our neighbors, but here, if we only have a white complexion, we belong to the undisputed aristocracy, and carry our credentials in our faces. It is that which has bewitched so many Northern people living at the South with slavery. But what is wanted is not a community of slaves, but only a community of blacks.
After fortifying myself against the sweltering heat of the December morning by copious draughts from the unglazed earthen coolers, which look so refreshing in this climate that you often see their coarse red pottery on handsomely laid tables, looking quite as well entitled to a place as anything else, I sallied out to see what daylight would show in the chief city of Jamaica, a city of nearly 30,000 people. I must say that for appearance' sake the best thing for Kingston would be to have perpetual moonlight. Under the flood of silver light which the full moon here pours down, even its forlorn shabbiness is softened into something of romantic indistinctness. But daylight is dreadfully disenchanting. The rows of tumble-down houses, the sandy, unpaved streets—through which you flounder as in the deserts of Sahara, unless you choose to try sidewalks that have as many ups and downs as a range of mountains, each man building to the height that pleases himself—the large parade, without armament or shade, a dreary common of sand, the crowds of noisy, slouching, dirty negroes, the burnt districts, filled with the rubbish of houses and with unwholesome vegetation growing up, do not combine to form a very engaging whole. One would think it impossible to exaggerate such a picture of comfortless neglect. Yet bad as it is in itself, Mr. Sewell has mercilessly exaggerated it. One would think from his description that there was not a decent house in the place, and that he had never seen the rows of excellent dwellings on North street and East street. Then he speaks of the inhabitants as being, 'takenen masse, steeped to the eyelids in immorality.'
Now, if he meant that the great numerical majority of the inhabitants bear this character, he spoke truly, inasmuch as the great numerical majority of the inhabitants are negroes, among the most depraved in the island. Kingston is like the slough of Despond, a place whither all the scum and filth of the negro population in the east end of the island do continually run, and make it a very sink of wickedness. But are thewhite families and the large number of thoroughly respectable colored families to be confounded with this mass of negro depravity, because they are fewer in number? It is true they are fewer in number, but they are so thoroughly distinct in standing and character that Mr. Sewell is justly chargeable with cruel recklessness in confounding them together as he does. It may concern the world little to distinguish among the people of Kingston, but it does very vitally concern the morality of authorship, that a traveller should not, by a careless and sweeping sentence, leave a cruel sting in the minds of hundreds of refined and virtuous women.
But I cannot vindicate Kingston society against the charge of surpassing dulness. In an insular colony, under the enervating influence of a tropical climate, the pulse of intellectual life beats very faintly, at its strongest. Still, if whatever of education and refinement there is in Kingston would cordially combine it might make a pleasant society. But it is divided into little cliques, each mortally afraid of the rest, and producing, in their division, a paradise of tediousness.
Kingston, however, resembles New York in one important particular—it is one of the worst-governed cities in Christendom. The Jews and the mulattoes divide municipal honors between them, and rival, not unworthily on a small scale, the united talents of Mozart and Tammany for misgovernment and jobbery.
The stores of Kingston are well supplied with excellent English goods at reasonable prices, and are served by numbers of fresh and fine-looking British clerks. But of these much the greater number, I fear, fall under the temptations of the prevailing immorality, and habits of drinking, not to be indulged with impunity in such a climate, hurry multitudes of them to speedy graves. What little sobriety and desire of improvement exists among the young men is chiefly confined, I am told, to the browns.
With the decline of exportations, the once flourishing trade of Kingston has, of course, decreased. But it marks the eagerness of some to turn everything to the discredit of emancipation, that this decline is commonly attributed entirely to that event, no notice being taken of the fact that Kingston was once the entrepot of a flourishing trade between Europe and the Spanish Main, which, having, in 1816, shipping to the amount of 199,894 tons, and having risen in 1828 to 254,290 tons, had in 1830, four years before the abolition of slavery, sunk to 130,747 tons. The growing use of steam, making direct shipment to Europe more convenient than transhipment, and changes in commercial relations, may account for this falling off; but dates show that emancipation has nothing to do with it. Of course the main cause of decline in the trade of the city has been the decline in the prosperity of the island, but such a change in the channels of trade as is indicated above was an independent cause.
The statistics of illegitimacy, of infant mortality, of ignorance and irreligion, and of destitution in Kingston, are shocking. Churches are numerous, and congregations flourishing, but the vast mass of the negroes are scarcely affected by them. This is very different from the state of things in the country, and nothing could be more preposterous than to judge of the rural population by Kingston. The Kingstonians themselves are laughably ignorant of the country parts. One of them assured a clergyman of my acquaintance, with all the gravity imaginable, that the country negroes lived principally upon fruits! No doubt he has had the chance of telling some American touching at the port the same story, who has been able to attest it at home on the authority of a 'Jamaica gentleman of great intelligence.' The Kingston people may be intelligent, but a good many of them know little more about the interior of their own island than they do about the interior of Africa.
But ignorant and depraved as the negroes of Kingston are, besides being three times as numerous as the trade of the place requires, I do not see that they particularly deserve the reproach of laziness. Mr. Sewell remarks that he was puzzled to know how they had incurred it when he saw them crowding around him, all wild for a job. The negro women certainly, who coal the vessels, appear anything but indolent as they go to and fro erect under their heavy burdens: if the men let them do more than their share of the heavy work, it is precisely as in Germany,[C]and for just the same reason, namely, that the common people of neither country are sufficiently civilized to treat women as much more than a superior sort of beasts of burden. That even the Kingston populace have felt the quickening benefit of freedom, is shown by a little fact related by a shipmaster who has traded to the port for many years. He says that now he can always get his ship loaded and unloaded in quicker time than he could then.
As to security of life and property, there are few cities where both are safer than in Kingston. I have gone long distances though its unlighted streets late at night, with as little sense of danger as in a New England country road. There is a good police of black men, whose appearance is quite picturesque in their suits of spotless white, and a force of black soldiers quartered in barracks in the heart of the town, besides a part of a white regiment a few miles distant. The conduct of the black troops, however, at an extensive fire some two years ago, which destroyed a large district in the business part of the town, was an illustration of what seems a curious peculiarity of the African character, namely, that while docile and amenable to discipline in the highest degree in common, the negroes are apt in critical moments to break out into uncontrollable license. On this occasion, the black men, soldiers and all, instead of assisting to put out the fire, broke into the liquor shops, and having maddened themselves by drinking, fell to indiscriminate plundering. If it had not been for the women, who, to their great credit, rendered energetic assistance in working the engines, the city might have been consumed.
The most curious feature in the life of a city where there are many blacks is the incessant chatter in the streets. Chaffering, quarrelling, joking, there seems to be no end to their volubility. In the country it is the same, and you will sometimes hear two shrews scolding each other from a couple of hilltops a quarter of a mile apart, with an energy and unction only equalled by an angry Irishwoman. Men and women fortunately quarrel so much that they fight very little. Notwithstanding the heroic deeds of valor performed by black soldiers, I incline to think that they are, what some one describes the Arabs as being, cowardly, or at least timid, as individuals, and brave only through discipline and number.
I know of no reminiscences connected with Kingston of any essential note, unless it be a horrible incident mentioned by Bryan Edwards, the distinguished historian of the West Indies, as witnessed by himself in 1760. This was the execution of two black men, native Africans, convicted of the murder of their master. They were exposed in the parade, in the centre of the town, in an iron frame, and starved to death! Free access was allowed to the crowds who wished to talk with them, and with whom they kept up conversation, apparently supremely indifferent to their fate. Mr. Edwards himself, after they had been exposed some days, addressedthem some questions, but could not understand their reply. At something he said, however, they both burst into a hearty laugh. On the morning of the ninth day one silently expired, and the other soon followed. Punishments so barbarous strike us with horror, but they are no gratuitous addition to slavery—they are one of its necessary features. A relation founded purely on force can be maintained only by terror. And where the proportion of whites is very small, as in most of the West Indies, they must compensate by the atrocity of their inflictions for the weakness of their numbers. On the 20th of April, 1856, there fell a rain of uncommon violence in the parish of St. Andrew, in which I was then residing. For six hours it seemed as if Niagara were rushing down upon our heads. The river Wagwater, which is commonly about knee deep, ran the next morning thirty feet high. The effect of this terrible visitation of nature was heightened by the disclosure through it of one of the monuments of ancient cruelty. At Halfway Tree, a few miles from Kingston, the seat of justice for the parish of St. Andrew, and the place of sepulture for many of the old aristocracy of the prouder days of the island, the rain washed up an iron cage, just of size to contain a human form, and so arranged with bars and spikes as to make it certain that the wretched victim could only stand in one long agony of torture. Along with it were found the bones of a woman, who had to appearance perished in this hideous apparatus. This dreadful revelation of the past struck horror throughout the island. The cage, with its sad contents, is still preserved in the collection of the Society of Arts.
The remarkable religious movement of 1861, which produced fruits so excellent in some parts of the island, in Kingston appears to have degenerated wholly into froth and noise. But there are some agencies of spiritual and temporal good working among the lower classes with happy effect. If they do not operate appreciably in changing the general character of the feculent mass, at least they rescue from it many who in the great day of account will call their authors blessed. I may mention particularly the charitable institutions of the excellent rector, Rev. Duncan Campbell, the reformatory for girls under the special patronage of the Rev. Mr. Watson, United Presbyterian, the vigorous efforts of Rev. William Gardner and his people, and many others less familiar to me, but doubtless not less worthy of mention. But Kingston offers such attractions to the very worst of the negro population, which, at the highest, has so much of barbarism and ignorance, that it will long continue a most forbidding and certainly a very unfair specimen of an emancipated race.
But, forlorn as Kingston is in itself, it is magnificently situated. Before it stretches for six miles in breadth the noble harbor, the sight of whose brilliant blue waters, sparkling in the sun, imparts a delicious refreshment as the eye catches a glimpse of them at the end of the long sandy streets. Inward stretches, sloping gently up to the mountains, the beautiful plain of Liguanea, about eight miles in breadth, scattered over with fine villas, and here and there a sugar estate. I remember with delight a view I once enjoyed just after sunset from St. Michael's church tower, toward the eastern end of the city. From that height the numerous trees planted in the yards, and which are not conspicuous from the streets, appeared in full view, and every mean and repulsive feature being hidden, the city seemed embowered in a paradise of verdure. On the right spread out the pleasant plain of Liguanea, bounded by the massive corrugations of the dark green mountains, while on the left the lines of cocoanut trees skirted the tranquil waters of the harbor, over which theevening star was shining. I wished that those foreigners who touch at Kingston, and, disgusted with its wretched squalor, go away and give an evil report of the goodly island, could be permitted to see the city from no other point than St. Michael's church tower.
FOOTNOTE:
[C]See J. Ross Browne's sparkling papers inHarper's Magazine.
[C]See J. Ross Browne's sparkling papers inHarper's Magazine.
The grave is deep and still,And fearful is its night;It hides, with darkened veil,TheUnknownfrom our sight.No song of nightingaleWithin its depths is heard;And only is its mossBy friendship's roses stirred.In vain their aching handsForsaken brides may wring;No answer from the graveThe cries of orphans bring:Yetis ittherealoneThe longed-for rest is found;Alone through these dark gatesMay pass thehomewardbound.The silent heart beneath,That pain and sorrow bore,Hath only found true peaceThere, where it beats no more.
The grave is deep and still,And fearful is its night;It hides, with darkened veil,TheUnknownfrom our sight.
No song of nightingaleWithin its depths is heard;And only is its mossBy friendship's roses stirred.
In vain their aching handsForsaken brides may wring;No answer from the graveThe cries of orphans bring:
Yetis ittherealoneThe longed-for rest is found;Alone through these dark gatesMay pass thehomewardbound.
The silent heart beneath,That pain and sorrow bore,Hath only found true peaceThere, where it beats no more.
No numbers can be conceived of but as a collection of unities; in adding unity, many, to itself, we only form a unity of a higher rank: it is in taking unities successively from these numbers that we return to the first unity. Thus variety or plurality, which at first seemed destructive of unity, actually rests upon it, admitting it as an elementary constituent of its very being. Thecollectiveidea of the world,infinite variety, collection of individualities, could not exist in us without the idea ofunity; and closely associated with the conception of unity, is the idea of Absolute Order.
Whatever may be the disturbances which we witness either in physical or moral nature, we always believe that Order will succeed the momentary interruption of law. Even when we see earth a prey to the most dreadful catastrophes, we always regard such a state of things as apassingcrisis, destined to return to the law of order. Surrounded as it is from the cradle to the grave by an infinite variety of phenomena, the human mind for their investigation devotes itself to the search of a small number of laws, which will link them all, persuaded there is no phenomenon or being so rebellious to a correct classification, that its proper place or role cannot be assigned it in the great system of Eternal Order. Even the savage believes in the periodic return, in the constant and regular recurrence of natural phenomena: such convictions must be based upon an instinctive belief in an Absolute and Universal Order.
If we turn our gaze upon the Author of all things at the time of the creation, we will perceive that He must have conceived the grand plan of the universe as a single or united thought; that He has distributed being to all that is in different degrees; that He has subjected them all to the immutable laws of His wisdom; and that the laws under which they are ranged to receive the Divine action are, in fact, the necessary conditions of their existence. The more distant the link in the chain of being is from God, the more are the laws multiplied, divided, ramified, so as to weave in their vast net that infinite variety which extends to the utmost limits of creation; but as we approach Him in thought, these innumerable laws form themselves into groups, these groups are again resolved into more general laws, until at last we arrive atonewhich embraces all the others, to which they are all attached as to a common centre, and from which they obtain force and direction.
Order is then the entire range of laws which presided at the creation, and which, linking variety to unity, change to immutability, cause the circulation of movement, of life, through all the pores of being. Thus nature and humanity are endowed with an expansive force almost without limits, and Absolute Order is developing in accordance with regular progression, in the bosom of which all partial imperfections vanish, and death itself becomes but a momentary phase of transformation, a mystic laboratory from which Life flows in a thousand new forms.
The True, the Beautiful, the Good, are only different faces of that Universal Order which is their common life. Everything in creation is gifted with its own degree of life, and yet depends upon that Universal Life; is in some way attached to it, presenting a diminished image of the Universal Order.
Malebranche asks: 'Why do men love beauty? because it is a visible representation of Order.' Order is at the same time an object of science, of art, and of popular faith. It is intuitively recognized, and although the people may not be able to syllable its abstract formula, yet as soon as they perceive the sensible sign of it, harmony, they at once pronounce beautiful the object which embodies it. In a last analysis it might be asserted that the True, the Beautiful, and the Good, considered with regard to their realization in this world, are but the representation of the pure Idea of Absolute Order. It must preside over the creation of every great work of art, whether measuring the columns and spanning the arches of architecture; modeling the forms of Apollos; picturing the graces of virgins and cherubs; charging the air with the electric and sublime grandeur of symphonies and requiems; or creating Juliets, Imogens, Ophelias, and Desdemonas. Absolute Order may be considered as the manifestation of the Divine wisdom—it must be typified and symbolized in art.
Need we apologize for presenting to the reader, in consequence of its relation with the subject under consideration, the following beautiful extract from the pages of Holy Writ?
'For in Wisdom is the spirit of understanding; holy, one, manifold, subtle, eloquent, active, undefiled, sure, sweet, loving that which is good, quick, which nothing hindereth, beneficent.'Gentle, kind, steadfast, assured, secure, having all power, overseeing all things and containing all Spirits, intelligible, pure, subtle:'For Wisdom is more active than all active things, and reacheth everywhere by reason of herpurity.'For she is the breath of the power of God, a pure influence flowing from the glory of the Almighty, therefore no defiled thing cometh into her.'For she is the brightness of the Eternal Light, the unspotted mirror of God's majesty.'And being butOne, she can do all things; and remaining in herself, she maketh all things new; and in all ages entering into holy souls, she maketh them friends of God and prophets.'For God loveth none but him who dwelleth with Wisdom.'For she is more beautiful than the sun, and above all the order of the stars; being compared with the light, she is found before it.'For after this cometh the night,—but no evil can overcome Wisdom.'
'For in Wisdom is the spirit of understanding; holy, one, manifold, subtle, eloquent, active, undefiled, sure, sweet, loving that which is good, quick, which nothing hindereth, beneficent.
'Gentle, kind, steadfast, assured, secure, having all power, overseeing all things and containing all Spirits, intelligible, pure, subtle:
'For Wisdom is more active than all active things, and reacheth everywhere by reason of herpurity.
'For she is the breath of the power of God, a pure influence flowing from the glory of the Almighty, therefore no defiled thing cometh into her.
'For she is the brightness of the Eternal Light, the unspotted mirror of God's majesty.
'And being butOne, she can do all things; and remaining in herself, she maketh all things new; and in all ages entering into holy souls, she maketh them friends of God and prophets.
'For God loveth none but him who dwelleth with Wisdom.
'For she is more beautiful than the sun, and above all the order of the stars; being compared with the light, she is found before it.
'For after this cometh the night,—but no evil can overcome Wisdom.'
Again:
'The Lord possessed me in the beginning of His ways, before He made anything from the beginning.'I was set up from Eternity, and of old before the earth was made.'The depths were not as yet, and I was already conceived; neither had the fountains of the waters as yet sprung out:'The mountains with their huge bulk had not yet been established; before the hills I was brought forth:'He had not yet made the earth, nor the rivers, nor the poles of the world.'When He prepared the heavens I was present; when with a certain law and compass He enclosed the depths:'When He established the sky above, and poised the fountains of waters:'When He compassed the sea with its bounds, and set a law to the waters that they should not pass their limits: when he weighed the foundations of the earth.'I was with Him forming all things: and was delighted every day, playing before Him at all times;'Playing in the world:and my delights were to be with the children of men.'—Proverbs.
'The Lord possessed me in the beginning of His ways, before He made anything from the beginning.
'I was set up from Eternity, and of old before the earth was made.
'The depths were not as yet, and I was already conceived; neither had the fountains of the waters as yet sprung out:
'The mountains with their huge bulk had not yet been established; before the hills I was brought forth:
'He had not yet made the earth, nor the rivers, nor the poles of the world.
'When He prepared the heavens I was present; when with a certain law and compass He enclosed the depths:
'When He established the sky above, and poised the fountains of waters:
'When He compassed the sea with its bounds, and set a law to the waters that they should not pass their limits: when he weighed the foundations of the earth.
'I was with Him forming all things: and was delighted every day, playing before Him at all times;
'Playing in the world:and my delights were to be with the children of men.'—Proverbs.
As Order has been considered the symbol of Divine Wisdom, Symmetry has been regarded as the type of Divine Justice. In all beautiful things there is found the opposition of one part to another, while a reciprocal balance must be obtained or suggested. In animals the balance is generally between opposite sides; in the vegetable world it is less distinct, as in the boughs on the opposite sides of trees; it often amounts only to a certain tendency toward a balance, as in the opposite sides of valleys and the alternate windings of streams. In things in which perfect symmetry is, from their nature, impossible or improper, a balance must be in some measure expressed before they can be contemplated with pleasure.Absolute equalityis not required, still lessabsolute similarity.
Symmetry must not be confounded with Proportion. Symmetry is the opposition ofequalquantities; proportion is the due connection ofunequalquantities with each other. A tree, in sending out equal boughs on opposite sides, is symmetrical; in sending out smaller boughs toward the top, proportional. In the human face its balance of opposite sides issymmetry; its division upward,proportion.
Symmetry is necessary to thedignityof every form. Orderly balance and arrangement are highly essential to the more perfect operation of the earnest and solemn qualities of the beautiful, being heavenly in their nature, and contrary to the violence and disorganization of sin. Minds which have been subjected to high moral influence generally delight in symmetry: witness the harmonious lines of Milton, and the works of the great religious painters. Where there is no symmetry, the effects of violence and passion are increased. Many works derive power from the want of it, but lose in proportion in the divine quality of beauty.
Want of moderation, extravagance, bombastic straining for effect, are destructive of beauty, whether in color, form, motion, language, or thought;—in color, they would be called glaring; in form, inelegant; in motion, ungraceful; in language, coarse; in thought, undisciplined; in all, unchastened: these qualities are always painful, because the signs of disobedient and irregular operation. In color, for example, it is not red, but rose color, which is the most beautiful; neither is it the brightest green, but such gray green as we see in the distant sky, in the clefts of the glacier, in the chrysophrase and sea foam; not but that the expression of feeling should be deep and full, but that to arrive at thatpassion of the soulexcited by the beautiful, there should be a solemn moderation in such fulness, a reference to the high harmonies by which humanity is governed, and an obedience to which is its glory. The following short quotations serve to illustrate this point:
'And now and then an ample tear trilled downHer delicate cheek; it seemed she was a queenOver her passion, which, most rebel-like,Sought to be king o'er her.''I found her on the floorIn all the storm of grief, yet beautiful;Pouring forth tears at such a lavish rate,That were the world on fire, they might have drownedThe wrath of heaven, and quenched the mighty ruin.'
'And now and then an ample tear trilled downHer delicate cheek; it seemed she was a queenOver her passion, which, most rebel-like,Sought to be king o'er her.'
'I found her on the floorIn all the storm of grief, yet beautiful;Pouring forth tears at such a lavish rate,That were the world on fire, they might have drownedThe wrath of heaven, and quenched the mighty ruin.'
Common writers are apt to forget that exaggerated expressions chill our sympathies; that passion becomes ignoble when entertained for ignoble objects; that when violent and unnatural, it is destructive of dignity. In the exaggeration of its outward signs, Passion is not exalted, but its reality is evaporized.
'The fire which mounts the liquor till it runs o'er,Inseemingto augment it,wastesit.'
'The fire which mounts the liquor till it runs o'er,Inseemingto augment it,wastesit.'
The use and value of passion is not as a subject of contemplation in itself, but as it breaks up the fountains of the great deep of the heart, or displays its might and ribbed majesty, as the stability of mountains is best seen with the restless mist quivering about them, and the changeful clouds floating above them.
We have thus naturally arrived at the fact that Truth, another of the Divine Attributes, must make part of all art that would interest humanity; that the soul rejects violence, or the falsehood of exaggerated description.
'Sanctify your soul like a temple,' says Madame De Staël, 'and the angel of noble thoughts will not disdain to occupy it.' If the rays of 'Wisdom' were reflected through the rainbow of artistic beauty by the devout artist, he would again be, as of old, the Prophet; and the arts would find, in typification of the Divine Attributes, ceaseless variety, marvellous unity. Then might he stand before his Maker as the anointed high priest of nature, winning entrance into her mysteries and holy symbols, using his glorious gifts to lead his brethren back to God; and the artistic human word might become, in its appropriate sphere, the humble and devout interpreter of the Word Eternal!
Last night, emerging from the glaring gaslight into the starlight beautiful and dim, there came, borne to me by the night wind, a gay young voice, blithely carolling the sweet strains of a well-remembered song, familiar to me long years ago in another and distant clime. It was a simple ballad, one heard most frequently in my youth, old when I was young; it was like a voice from the dead—a thought from the shrouded past appealing to my soul. There was something so solemn and strange, so mystically spiritual in the fact that a stranger in a strange land should possess the power to conjure up for me a world of saddest memories, that I half fancied at first (pardon an old man's dreaming) that one who had lived long ago, and died before her prime, seeing now as those see where the mists of pride and passion are dispelled forever by the light of unshadowed truth, conscious now of the deep and lasting wrong she had done herself and me, thatshe it was who was now singing to me through the lips of the lad, striving to cheer the loneliness she had caused, and comfort my desolate heart by telling me she was near me; and, obedient to the impulse given me by the wild fancy, I raised my tremulous voice, broken long ago, and quavered an accompaniment, and I and the unknown singer sang the last remaining stanza together.
I can never hear that song without tears. I never hear it, even though its half-forgotten strains, dreamily warbled, are oddly mingled with a widely different tune, in a bootless effort at remembrance; but my youth, with its golden promise, which maturer manhood but meagrely fulfilled, turns with the shadowed years veiling its brightness, and looks sorrowfully upon my old age in its solitude and desolation; but my life, with its wasted energies and flagging purpose, rises up before me, darkly and reproachfully reminding me of what I might have done, have been! O Heaven! what bitter years of suffering and crushing disappointment, years on which the tracks of time have left their blight and mildew, have passed since first I listened to the bird-like warbling of its simple strains. Then was the blissful May-time of my existence, when I was governed by youth's generous impulses, led captive by its sweet delusions, when I fondly dreamed that my life was destined to become a victory and a triumph, not the failure it has proved to be! I heard it first when the love that has lived unchanged through the mournful wastes of nearly half a century, was in the gray dawn of its immortal being.Shesang it to methen, sweet Jennie Grey, whom I wooed, but never won. Memory, faithful treasurer, points back with mystic finger, and looking through the long vista of intervening years, standing now almost where time shall merge into eternity, that vision illuminating like a star the surrounding gloom, I cansee the very night—I can seenowas clearly asthen—the round full moon lighting the dark waters with a long line of silvery brightness, crowning the tiny ripples with light as they broke upon the shore, and flooding the well-remembered room with its mellow radiance—see her, in her fresh young beauty, seated at the old instrument, the moonlight falling on her bright hair; the sweet eyes averted from my too admiring gaze, veiled beneath the drooping lashes, cast down with a coy pretence of studying the half-forgotten tune.
I can see myself, handsome, ardentYOUNG(so widely differentNOW, I can speak of my former self without vanity), seated near, with all the love that filled my soul for her looking from my eyes.
The bright remembrance of this is shining 'through the mists of years,' glowing and life-like as life's joyous spring time. I can see it all now, clearly, as if it were but yesterday. Oh, radiant picture of youth and beauty! Oh, life! life! If it be a truth, and I believe it to be such, that in all the vast and mighty universe there is but one nature perfectly and completely assimilated unto our own; one heart in which every pulse of feeling throbbing within our being, shall find a quick responsive echo; a second self, the same in thought, emotion, character, or with such slight shades of difference as shall make the blending more harmonious; one, and only one, to whom God has indissolubly joined us by the omnipotent law of a pure, immutable attraction—if this be an essential fact, then, as I sat drinking in the harmony of the song that night, this sublime truth in all its purity was revealed to me; and with the revelation came a purifying and exalting power, purifying my love from passion and every base and earthly alloy. For me, for a brief instant, the veil had parted that divides the earthly from the spiritual, and I had caught a dim, shadowy glimpse of how it would be with us, my idol and myself, in the great and mystic future that lay stretching far away before us; and through all my enraptured soul, filling it with sweetest melody, a voice was murmuring: 'She is thine, through all the countless years of thy immortality, lift up thine eyes and look upon thine own.' Then, with a deep reverence I had never felt for her before, with all my pure and passionate love, I raised the small hand, on which the moonlight fell white and cold, murmuring the while in solemn triumph: 'What God has joined together, let not man put asunder.' I had received the soul's highest and clearest intuition as a direct revelation from the Divine, and I relied upon it as such implicitly, undoubtingly. Oh, with what earnest faith, for a brief and fleeting season, I believed that the seal of the Omnipotent had been set upon our union, earthly as well as spiritual, and that no power on earth or in hell could prevail against its consummation! How I revelled in this sweet belief; how this blest and silent consciousness wrapped my soul in light, and hovered ever around me like a wordless blessing! This faith was the inspiration of my toil, the prompter to good deeds, the angel messenger which enabled me to overcome the evil of my wayward nature.
How the sweet thought of it grew and grew until it pervaded my entire being, making my whole life harmonious and beautiful as the song she sang to me—a sublime and glorious dream! I did not check this pure and fervid flow of happiness with doubts and fears. I did not rouse myself to inquire whether this great truth concerning us might not, owing to some peculiarity of my organization, be clearly and perfectly revealed tome, and mealone; so that the truth being but dimly and vaguely foreshadowed to her mind, the effect could not be as permanent and living as in mine. I did not ruffle my soul's serenity with dark forebodings and bootless queries.
Such revelations are certainly, in consequence of their greater spirituality, more frequently made to women than to men, and I rested upon this, not thinking the reverse might be the case in the present instance; and through the long days of that golden summer I dreamed on and on. The powerful attraction, whose nature was so plainly revealed to me that night, and faintly shadowed forth to her, now drew us together more and more, and for a time our companionship was almost constant. We read, we walked, we talked together; we wandered through summer groves in the twilight, or, seated on the mossy root of some old tree, watched the light dying in the west, and the stars come out one by one; or viewed the sun slowly and majestically disappearing beneath the horizon, gorgeous with clouds of purple and of gold; or marked the varied changes of the sky on the calm expanse of summer water, stretching far away before us. And when the light had disappeared, leaving but a dull leaden surface, we closed our eyes and listened to the wild, mysterious murmur of the waters as they touched the sounding shore. Oh, brief and fleeting dream of earthly joy! Oh, light, warmth, and sunshine! Happiness too spiritual; companionship too blest for earth! Mortal type of the immortal bliss that awaits me, which is drawing nearer to me day by day! I never shall believe that she did not love methen, unconsciously as it must have been, for it was not in a nature like hers to prove recreant to a holy impulse. Yes, I know she then loved me! It was this belief alone which upheld me in the chill night darkness that fell upon my soul after shutting out the warmth and light. I'm sure she loved methen. I could note the silent working of thegreat lawthat was unconsciously impressing her slowly, drawing her nearer to me day by day; mark the electric thrill which made the slender fingers tremulous when my hand lay near her own, an expressive and eloquent gesture, as if, all unconsciously, her hand was stretching forth in the sweet endeavor to clasp mine. The averted eyes, the beautiful color that flushed her cheeks, and, best and dearest sight of all, the perplexed, mystified, dimly conscious expression in the far-off distant gaze, as if the soul was vainly struggling to grasp and clearly comprehend a great truth but vaguely felt. I could see all this as I sat by her side, permitting the love I had not words to speak to betray me in every look, tone, and gesture. But even while I watched her thus, serenely awaiting the time when a full consciousness should pervade her spirit as it was pervading mine—now when the sun of my happiness was slowly approaching its zenith, there appeared above the horizon the little cloud doomed to overspread and darken the calm heaven of my joy. We were no longer entirely alone: a third person was added to the sweet enchanted number that first walked the groves of Eden, and the complete spirituality of our communion was gone! Other eyes gazed on what we gazed; other eyes looked into the blue depths of hers, and sought with mine their smiling approval, and the brightest charm of our intercourse had departed forever. The last time in which it still remained unbroken—the last sweet time that I could call her wholly mine, was on a placid autumn evening. We had strolled farther than usual, tempted by the tranquil beauty around us, and during that walk I had been strangely, wonderfully happy. Many times, as we walked silently side by side, a strong, an almost irresistible impulse seemed to force me to utter those three passionate words that have caused a flutter in the heart-beat of so many thousands since the world began; and as many times the reverence I felt for her, and the diffidence arising from it, held me back, and the words remained unspoken. Yet this contest of feeling had led me to venture moreupon outward expression: I had held her hand in mine, and twice or thrice had pressed it mutely and reverently to my lips; and she, seeing nothing of the ardor of a lover in this (the very excess of my emotion had made me outwardly calm), had allowed me to retain it, bestowed upon me her sunniest smile, calling me the while friend and brother. It was not the terms my heart most earnestly longed for; but I looked forward with a lover's eye, and was content. And thus we wandered slowly back again—back to meet one who possessed the power to change the aspect of both our lives; the power to darken mine on earth—and who was he? A mere boy—a lover of Jennie's, who impatiently awaited our return that very night. They had been playmates in childhood, but had not met since then.
Had I been less certain that her love would be mine in the future, I should have trembled when I looked upon this man; for he possessed those gifts in their richness and fulness that most easily win a woman's love. Then, too, he was her mother's guest—with Jennie, morning, noon, and night—invariably our companion in our frequent walks—always by her side, and with a mingling of tenderness and reverence proffering that devoted and delicate homage which most readily finds its way to the affections of an artless maiden.
I was too unused to the worldthento know it; but have deeply realized since how irresistibly she must have charmed one so accustomed to the heartless coquetry of fashionable flirts, by the timid, wondering, child-like simplicity with which she received all this homage.
I should have known how this would end; but my faith had made me blind. Indeed, I was even then conscious how infinitely he was my superior in all that pertained to outward things: he was rich, I poor; he possessed the varied information of the travelled man, the ease and grace of one familiar with the world, and I had all the awkwardness and abstracted reserve of an absorbed student. I was deeply, painfully conscious of this. Yet, while I felt she did not return his ardent, ever-increasing love, perhaps did not even comprehend it; while the spirituality of our communion still in some degree remained unbroken, I was content.
I could calmly watch his ever-varying moods from gay to grave, from grave to sad, striving by each in turn with finished art to touch the heart he felt he had not won—smiling securely, I would sometimes murmur in my happiness the while: 'Passion born of earth, not the true love that discerneth its own, impels thee. Thy soul's betrothed is perchance of another country; turn to seek thy own; Jennie ismine, notthine!' No need to tell how, at first all unconsciously to herself, he gained the priceless treasure of her love. No need to tell how he won her heart from mine. The memory of all this is very painful even now—enough, that after long and skilful trial he succeeded. The arrow at last struck its mark, and my boding heart then whispered how this would end. I saw the pitying tenderness of her artless nature, shining in her soft and dreamy eye, suffusing every speaking feature, making the sweet face still more lovely, until presently compassion grew into something yet more tender. Then her eyes would brighten at his coming, a deep crimson color her cheeks, a sweet and timid consciousness betray itself in every look and movement; and then, oh, anguish of spirit!I felt her soul gradually withdrawing itself from mine, and my heart torn from the loving one on which it rested. Then followed days and nights of extreme mental anguish, a time of suffering that I cannot dwell upon even now without a shudder, when I lost faith in God and man, and cursed the day when I beheld the light; when amid blackness, darkness, and tempest, my storm-tossed soulcried in vain for light, vainly seeking for peace amid its wrecks and desolations. A fiery furnace, through which I passed that I might come out purified.
They were to be married very soon. She told me this as we sat together one evening in the brief wintry twilight. The first wild transports of a newly found bliss had subsided into a calmer feeling of happiness in her heart, as with me had passed the first 'bitter bitterness' of a life-long grief, and I was enabled to receive her confidence with a show of brotherly regard.
Christmas was the time set for the ceremony, and the first fall of snow was even now lying on the ground.
She did not impart this information with the coy and hesitating timidity usual to her; but thoughtfully, as she sat gazing out on the dull leaden sky, watching the snowflakes falling through the dreary air. There followed then a long, long pause, in which I had time to recover from the effect her words had produced, and to frame and stammer forth such congratulations as seemed required by the occasion. These she did not answer, or even seem to comprehend, but roused from her revery by the sound of my voice, she crossed the room and seated herself beside me, and took my hand within her own.
'Brother,' she murmured, in a dreamy, half-abstracted manner, 'there has been something solemn and strange in our intercourse, a mysterious something, which my mind has vainly striven to grasp and comprehend. I had thought the secret rested with you, andthrough youwould be revealed tome; but the time for such revelation is passed; God has willed it otherwise. Brother,' her voice sank to a solemn cadence; I hear the low tonesnow, as I heard themthen:'I am the better and purer for your affection; you have led me, by what process I know not, from the sensuous and the earthly, to the spiritual and the holy, and there is no epithet applied to mortals, reverently endearing enough to be coupled with your name. I would that my words were as eloquent as my feelings, that you might know what immeasurable gratitude I vainly strive to compress in the brief words: I thank you.'
She wept, and I laid my hand on the bowed head in mute and speechless blessing.
'O Father!' I cried, in my voiceless anguish, 'Omnipotent and good! is there nothing that can open her eyes even now, and give me the being thine own holy laws have made my own?' No! no! The wild hope that prompted the useless prayer died within my heart as I breathed it. Jealous of the brief interest that could draw his betrothed's attention from himself but for a moment,he, the boy lover, now entered, and there were no longer gentle looks nor solemn words. He loved her best in her moods of artless gayety, and she hurriedly brushed her tears away, and hastened to be merry. Brief as had been the glimpse she had given me of her inner nature, the knowledge proved my comforter in this my time of trial, and I thanked God for it humbly and gratefully.
I then had really led her from the earthly to the spiritual and holy. Her heart had unawares entertained an angel visitant; mine had unconsciously performed an angel's ministry; I, next to God and his messengers, had power to satisfy the deepest wants of her nature. Oh, solitary drop of consolation! The love cherished by her, and her heart's mistaken choice, was only of thisearth; there was no element of spirituality to render itimmortal. It was doomed to die with the passion that gave it birth, and from the grave there should be no resurrection.
Blessed be God forever!... Lo! The rustic church is trimmed with evergreen, and lighted for the marriage service. Curious lookers on are there; and with that perverse desire to testthe might of their endurance, common with those who suffer, I too, am there, though I know that her image, as she stands at the altar, where I shall see her for the last time, through the days and nights of anguish sure to followthis, will be ever present with me! Yet, with my face half hidden by the evergreens, I stand and wait her coming. They enter, bride and bridegroom; she leaning trustfully upon his arm. O Jennie!myJennie; thou who shouldst have been my bride! Great waves of tearless anguish rolled over my soul at the sight! Jennie, the priest who ministers at the altar before which thou standest, is idly repeating words whose holy meaning he does not comprehend: isseparating, notunitingthose whom God has joined together. O Jennie! companion of my spirit! is there no far-off, distant echo awakened in thy soul by the bitter waves of anguish surging over mine? Not now, in this thine hour of earthly love and triumph; not now. Even in spirit, 'lover and friend,' hast thou been put far from me. The low, measured tones of the minister fall on my ear; and I count the brief moments that give her to the keeping of another for all hermortallife, as the watcher counts the last moments of the dying and the loved. They kneel in prayer before the mockery of those last words is spoken, and I kneel too, crying to the Almighty: 'Wrest even now my treasure from him, or still the anguished throbbings of my heart forever! Let me die!' O Thou tempted in all points even as we, yet without sin, it was meet in this my hour of extremest suffering, that Thou shouldst send the promised comforter, not to bestow the earthly good I prayed for, but to raise me above earth and all of earthly good. Opening my inner vision to behold, far as the eye of the finite may behold, what is comprehended in the omniscient glance of the Infinite—removing the clouds brooding so darkly over my spirit, and filling it with holy joy, by imparting radiant glimpses of the soul's calmer and higher life in the land beyond—'the life that rights the wrongs, and reveals the mysteries of this,'—the words that were once my hope and the inspiration of my toil, came now, when that hope was dead, to soothe and comfort me—the spirit of prophecy, that cheered my spirit with the hopeful promise of good in the time to come, and stirring my soul to its depths, sounding through it like a song of solemn triumph.
What though thou beholdest her the bride of another, her own heart blinded so that she cannot see aright! She isthinethrough all the countless years of thy immortality! His but for a brief and fleeting season! He holds his treasure in a trembling, uncertain grasp. Change may separate her heart from his; death may wrest it from him; the grave cover her form forever from his sight; but neither Time, nor Change, nor Death—nothing in the present world, or in that which is to come, shall be able to separatetheefrom the soulthat was formed for thine! She is his by man's frail and perishing enactments; thine by the great law of attraction, by the immutable decrees of God. Seeing now, with the eye of the spirit, the frail uncertain nature of the happiness which he fondly dreamed was founded on a rock, sorrow and envy left me, and I could pity him as one deluded; and with a strange triumphant feeling, I pressed forward and imprinted the first kiss on the pure brow of my heart's chosen as the bride of another. Was she dimly, vaguely conscious for a moment of the nature of the attraction that bound our souls together, as she clung tearfully tomefor an instant, murmuring a loving farewell? It has given me comfort through all the long years that have passed since then, to think so. She leaned from the carriage, her sweet eyes meeting mine in a sad adieu. I looked my last then on the face of themortalJennie. But in a land of perpetual summer, lighted by the smile of God, robed in garments of everlasting light, faithful and true, there awaits meJennie the immortal!She knows it all now. Those bright seraphic eyes lighted with heaven-born love, have turned from celestial light to mark my gloomy wanderings. When she died, there was added to the band of ministering spirits the one whose silent influence was most powerful for good, most potent to aid me in overcoming evil. I have been better and purer since then. She possesses some mystic power to make mefeelher presence, and to draw me toward her.
Slowly, very slowly, the feeling of solitude and isolation departed from me, and I am not lonely now; bright unseen visitants soothe my solitude; their noiseless steps break not its solemn stillness; soft hands clasp mine; where'er I move, the spirit of loving companionship is with me. Ah! to the eyes and ears of the aged, whose material perceptions are closing forever on the sights and sounds of earth, there come, borne across the dark-waved river on whose brink they stand, sounds from the other side; and ever and anon the mist that broods there lifts and parts itself, revealing radiant but imperfect glimpses of the promised land beyond.
Ere long the shadow will pass from these dimmed eyes forever, and I shall look on what she looks in heaven.
I have lived the allotted time of man's probation. The days of the years of my pilgrimage are drawing to a close. It cannot belong now! A few months, it may be years, of patient endurance—
And then—Then!