The second question is that of persons who do not understand the claims of music to the dignity of an art, whom pleasant old songs pleasantly lull to sleep after dinner; to whom comes no voice of the art separate from all things else, but which stands before him silent and veiled, while an interpreter converses. Often these songs are beautiful ballads, and so have a peculiar grace. If the music is appropriate and simple and melodious it is enough, and henceforth, to such, no artist who does not play tunes is more than a quack; and the complaint of the man who sat hearing Ole Bull for an hour, and then departed because he was so long tuning his fiddle, is the most general criticism upon his performance. But the old Scotch and Irish airs, which endear these songs to us, were doubtless, at some remote period, the wordless singings of maternal love over the rocking-cradle. They become readily united with words as a help to the memory, and as imparting facility of expression. Those who have heard "Auld Robin Gray," "Robin Adair," and the airs which Moore has gratefully accompanied with words, played on summer evenings, with flutes and horns, then realize that the impression lies in that which the words shadow. This fact is recognized in modern music by the introduction of songs without words—by the composition and performance, with more or less success, of Beethoven's symphonies, where most of all words are at fault. The pleasure of him to whom these profound compositions reveal a meaning is more private and enchanting than any he knows. He is very well content to be called enthusiastic, for his presence along justifies the performance of such works. When he meets at the concert-room those who are enraptured with Donizetti, yet who come to do homage to Beethoven, he is reminded that Beethoven would not see Rossini, holding him as one who debased the art; and it seems to him like Jesus calling upon the Jews to become as little children. Everybody reads Shakespeare, but few know what the word means. The theatre is crowded to hear Macready's "Hamlet," but it is to see Macready, not to study the drama. When he is gone the play remains; and though it is spoken by stupid men, their dulness cannot affect its profundity and strength. That is the test of art, that it transcends its instruments; and the artist at his piano realizes the soul, though not the effect of the symphony which has spoken to him so loudly from the orchestra.
The music written at this day is gymnastics for the instrument, rather than worthy offerings upon the altar of art. It is a perverse separation of the art and the science. It requires an accurate knowledge of the instrument that it may surprise, and so win applause for the performer; not that it may the better serve music, whether it has auditors or not. Few things could have more deeply pained a worthy musician than the last concert of Max Bohrer. Such profound knowledge of the power of the instrument, such utter ignorance of its intention. It seemed to groan in despair, that he, who knew its changes so well, could not awaken it to melody, but, with solemn conceit, show that he did know them, and gain approbation for that knowledge. Knoop, with the same exact science, showed a hearty reverence for art, and reverently withdrew himself and his violoncello. Castellan's voice was so full that her person was necessarily forgotten. One would not do injustice to the voice; that is frequently the instrument for which fine music is written; but in view of the art, it is an instrument only. Its deeper effect upon many minds springs from its humanity, from that part of it of which nothing can be said, and which the coal-man has as well as Malibran. This constitutes its occasional superiority of influence, but cannot impart to it the effect and artistic manifestation which instruments produce. When the full force of both is united, as in the symphony mentioned, the grandest musical expression appears.
The winter has been full of finer musical experience than we have yet had. With Ole Bull, Vieuxtemps, and Knoop, Castellan and Damoreau—the Beethoven symphonies and German overtures of the Philharmonic Society, the art has reached a point hitherto unattained. Yet this is partly deceptive. Most persons heard Ole Bull from curiosity, and the symphonies from fashion. Such music and such artists have no permanent hold of the heart here. The pianos are covered with the songs of Donizetti; and Max Bohrer takes, generally, a higher rank than Knoop. The student of art does not regard these noble artists and fine music as the dawning of the art among us, but as brighter stars flashing across the sky, while still the east is dark. Europe has made these artists and this music after many centuries. In the bosom of a church, full of profound spiritual experiences, this music has been nurtured, and artistic devotion has streamed upon these men. The necessity of this hoary antiquity to the development of art we cannot readily determine. Our painters and sculptors must flock to Italy, and lie down in the shadows of those old fanes, before they are willing to announce their claim to be servants of the art. Our poets sing in self-defence the majesty and grandeur of primeval America, and drink deeply at the stream of letters that flows from the Past. Had foreign literature been cut off from us, we should have had few writers of poetry, and Mr. Griswold's book had been a valuable duodecimo and not a heavy octavo. Our chief poets are cultivated men. Poetry with us is the recreation of elegant scholars. Mr. Percival announces that he writes poetry in more than a hundred ways; and the few young men who seem to advance first claims to the dignity of poets, by their fresh expression, need the overshadowing of Time to make them artists. How especially is this so with music. We have no native artists and few hearty students. The societies which introduce to us the finest music are German, our musical teachers are Germans and Italians, our opera is Italian. Of this no complaint is to be made. The nation is content with a foreign fragrance, as the individual students are content to live in Rome and send home to us the ideas of an old mythology wrought into statues. Art is the flower of life. The man will build his house, then he will have pictures and a piano. The claims of the interior life will surely be heard at last, and art will follow. Yankees and Wall Street govern now, Niagara by-and-by. The prophecies of our American literature, with which the literary anniversaries are annually eloquent, are sure. Contemplating the healthy seed which they represent, we need not fear for the flower. But the literature and art will be American only in respect of culture. The German music is an universal song, sung in a provincial dialect. The immortality of the classics is the universality of their truth. English and Italian art are the several ways that nations regard the same thing. The soul of music, as of painting and poetry, is always one. The foreigner is no longer a foreigner when he hears the music he loves; and silent under its spell, lovers, for the first time, meet. In the Louvre or the Vatican will not the traveller see his home?
Yet in our present backwoods life let me not omit to notice the wonderful artist whom we have recently seen. The genius of Ole Bull is so delicate and profound that we must speak of it modestly, but with certainty. It is not to be estimated by comparison. The height assures us of its loftiness, not by the inferior summits below it, but by the wide, full sunlight and the free winds that flow around it and rest upon it. The perception of genius is so sure that we need not attempt to define what it is. Every artist, full of its power, shows something more than the last. Like beauty, it will not be measured, but every beautiful person shames our analysis and philosophy of beauty. Yet the impression of genius is always the same, and its appearance in any one individual makes real to us all the rest. Until we heard Ole Bull, Paganini was a fabulous being of whom, as of Orpheus and Amphion, strange stories were told, which seemed rather prophecies of musical possibility than the history of actual accomplishment. Henceforth Paganini is a household god, and the old Pagans loom more distinctly through the misty centuries and wear something of the aspect of reality.
To us, children of a seventy years' nation, plucking the full blossom of European musical culture, the appearance of Ole Bull was like a new star in the sky. Few had predicted its shining. At most, there was a faint hope, in some minds, that we should yet see a worthy minister of art, in honoring whom we should fitly reverence the Masters. Yet it was a hope too faint and limited to inspire confidence in our manager to secure to himself a fair portion of the ample harvest nodding for so sharp a sickle. When he appeared, that wild Norwegian bravery, subdued by a reverence for art and deepened by commanding originality, the shouting theatre, the crowded tabernacle, the press for once speaking confidently in one tone, the silent joy of hearts to whom this was the first vision of genius—these announced a triumph. The ecstatic musical festivals of Europe, the pilgrimages of artists more royally surrounded than the progress of kings, we now understood.
The chief value of Ole Bull is that he introduces us more nearly to art. It is the prerogative of genius to illustrate that; therefore he stood before us as one who had in rapt hours pierced a little further into the mystery which envelops life like an atmosphere and came to recite his vision. He had detected some of those fine sunbeams that make the air golden and give it warmth, and painted them for us as well as he could. Yet in his music there was the same melancholy strain, varied by wonderful and wild freaks, like the hysterics of the gods, that hitherto so emphatically characterizes the works of genius. Throughout his compositions there was the want of unity which expressed aspiration not fulfilment, scattered stones of a fairer temple than men have seen, which also are all works of art hitherto, yet each so fair that for these the old shrines are deserted, and here men worship. One perceived that the performance was the least part of the man. It was not his height and limit, a faint beacon-light, rather, trembling over the waters, marking the shore of a wide land, with deep ravines and towering mountains and endless woods fringing depthless seas, and yet a light so bright that we thought the sun was rising. For the genius which enables one to illustrate art is universal power, whose expression is inadequate because thought is quicker than execution. Every work of art represents an era past. Only the whole character of the artist is the present flower of his life. It is no matter of surprise that Ole Bull practises little, that his compositions are unique. A deep rhythm, a subdued, infinite harmony pervades them. The rugged Norway shows in them its influence upon the artist. The rocks and glens and forests of his fatherland are not painted, but their spiritual significance floats through his music, modified and moulded by the individuality of the man. All this appears in his aspect. As he advances, the strong, composed grace of his appearance, deferential not to individuals but to the mind which shall receive the song of his inspiration, destroys conventional ideas of grace, as Mont Blanc might destroy them. His tall, compact figure well becomes a priest of art. Out of his eyes shines the reflection of the perpetual fire of which all artists are the ministers and which communicates energy and warmth to his action. With a slight, respectful motion of the head and violin-bow towards the orchestra, the respect of Olympian power, he draws from them the first notes of the symphony; then, leaning his head upon his instrument caressingly, as if he gratefully heard at once what he is about to unfold to the audience, he draws his bow. Then that violin expresses with intense passion the undefined yearnings that haunt the private heart. It entreats and restrains. Its wildness harmonizes with the deep unrest of a great aspiring soul. Its solemn movement is like the progress of a brave man to an unknown destiny, and as the last yet distinct cadence floats away into the stillness, it is as if a dove disappeared in heaven. At his second concert he played an adagio of Mozart. It was full of tender delicacy and the graceful imagination that makes all his music romance. All this the artist felt, and every tone that followed his bow was exquisite. Then was it seen how all genius meets. It was as if the composer lay in the violin and sang the song anew, as if Raphael recited one of Shakespeare's sonnets.
With what has been said about the man one who realizes the genius has little to do. The music was not false, and that is his language. There has been stern opposition and prejudice and ill-will; but so we must all bring our gifts to the altar, and they who have not gold gifts must tender swine.
Not the least of his offices is that he has enabled us to appreciate Vieuxtemps. They will not be compared by the reverent worshipper at the shrine of art. The plant needs the sunshine and the dew. It was pleasant to feel that genius abides in one man and realize that one star differeth from another in glory. Surely the firmament of art is wide enough and yet deep enough to contain many planets.
Yet the artists are but messengers whom we send before into the undiscovered country. They return and sing to us songs familiar in the Eldorado of our hope, yet of which we have learned no note. Afloat upon the depthless sea we loose doves and ravens, who bear back to us olive boughs and flowers which we cannot analyze, but whose form and fragrance make our homes beautiful. When the first shock of delighted wonder is past we receive great men as the present attainment of an illimitable Nature, as the Earth receives the light of stars, unnoticed save of wandering lovers, and sweeps undisturbed on its way. If sometimes we are warped from our sphere by the apparition of noble persons, wise men presently recover themselves and serve with a milder and firmer persistence their own nature. The way is made clearer by these bright lights, universal nature is fairer that there are so many single stars; but they must be only stars in our heaven and fires on our hearth, nor turn out the heart by inserting themselves in the bosom.
CONCORD,Friday evening, May 10th, 1844.
Since our arrival here I have been busy enough. From breakfast at 6 to dinner at 12-1/2, hard at work, and all the afternoon roaming over the country far and near. When we came the spring was just waking, now it is opening like a rose-bud, with continually deepening beauty. The apple-trees in full bloom, making the landscape so white, seem to present a synopsis of the future summer glory of the flower-world.
Our farm lies on one of the three hills of Concord. They call it Punkatassett. Before us, at the foot of the hill, is the river; and the slope between holds a large part of the Captain's orchard. Among the hills at one side we see the town, about a mile away; and a wide horizon all around, which Elizabeth Hoar tells me she has learned is the charm of Concord scenery. The summit of the hill on which we are is crowned with woods, and from a clearing commands a grand prospect. Wachusett rises alone upon the distance, and takes the place of the ocean in the landscape. There is a limitation in the prospect if one cannot see the sea or mountains. The Blue Hill, in a measure, supplies that want at West Roxbury. Otherwise the landscape is a garden which only pleases. We are much pleased with our host and his family. He is that Capt. Nathan Barrett to whom Messrs. Pratt and Brown came for seed, and who raises a good deal of seed for Ruggles, Nourse and Mason. We go into all work. The Captain turns us out with the oxen and plough, and we do our best. Already I have learned a good deal. The men are very courteous and generous.
Indeed, I am disposed to think it just the place we wanted. As yet I see no reason to doubt it. It is so still a life after the city, and after the family at Brook Farm. I am glad to be thrown so directly and almost alone into nature, and am more ready than ever to pay my debt in a human way by learning the names of her beautiful flowers and the places where they blossom. We study Botany daily, and have thus far kept pace with the season. I have found here the yellow violet, which I do not remember at West Roxbury. Already we have the rhodora and the columbine, which you have probably found. And with our afternoons surrendered to the meadows and hills, and our mornings to the fields, we find no heavy hours; but every Sunday surprises us. I am to bed at 9, and rise at 4-1/2 or 5. I practise the Orphic, which says: "Baptize thyself in pure water every morning when thou leavest thy couch," which I more concisely render, Wash betimes.
For the last three evenings I have been in the village, hearing Belinda Randall play and sing. With the smallest voice she sings so delicately, and understands her power so well, that I have been charmed. It was a beautiful crown to my day, not regal and majestic, like Frances O.'s in the ripe summer, but woven of spring flowers and buds. Last night I saw her at Mr. Hoar's, only herself and Miss E. Hoar, G.P. Bradford, Mr. and Mrs. Emerson, and myself and Mr. Hoar. She played Beethoven, sang the "Adelaide Serenade," "Fischer Madchen," "Amid this Green Wood." I walked home under the low, heavy, gray clouds; but the echo lingered about me like starlight.
We have a piano in the house, and a very good one. It was made by Currier, and is but a few years old. The evenings do not all pass without reminding me of the flute music of the last summer, and making me half long to hear it again. Yet I am too contented to wish to be back at the Farm. The country about us is wilder than there; but I need now this tender severity of nature and of friendship. With John Hosmer, Isaac, Geo. Bradford, and Burrill, I am not without some actual features of the Farm as I knew it. When I shall see you I cannot say. I shall not willingly break the circle of life here, though occasion will make me willing enough.
Let me not remain unmentioned to my friends at Brook Farm and in the village; and when you canungroupyourself for an hour paint me a portrait of the life you lead.
Yr friend,
CONCORD,May 24th, '44.
My dear Friend,—I heard of you at Ole Bull's concert, and have sympathized with you in your delight. I was in Worcester that evening, and had hoped to have come down to Boston and heard him once more. But so many were listening with that pleasure which can come but once, and I knew so many must try in vain to hear, that I was content others should then express that admiration which lies so deeply in my heart. But who of all heard? Was it not as if he walked above the earth, and of his sublime conversation you heard now and then the notes? Did not the singular beauty of the man unite with his performance to make the completest musical festival you have had?
Indeed, I owe more to him than one can know, except as he feels the same debt; are you not that one?
To Belinda Randall, who has been here, as I told you, I was obliged for revealing Beethoven's tenderness. She is so soft and tender herself that she could not fail unconsciously to express it in her playing. I passed some fine evenings with her. Since I had been here I had heard no music, and felt that I needed to hear some as an adequate expression of all that I felt. When she came that demand was satisfied. Ole Bull satisfies the claim of the same nature which our whole life makes, and of itself creates, rather reveals newer and deeper demands, and so on, I suppose, until the celestial harmonies are heard by us.
I heard from a friend of the last Philharmonic in New York. It seems they have made Vieux-temps an honorary member, and he played for them. On the same evening they performed one of Beethoven's symphonies. It is one of those accounts whose beauty is their nakedness. To lovers of music a bare description is as an outline to a painter which he can readily fill up and supply with the shadows and sunlight. Yet not he so magnificently as sunlight and shadows sweep over this landscape. It seems to me that a century of splendor has been rushing by since I have been here.
The persons who make Concord famous I have hardly seen. The consciousness of their presence is like the feeling of lofty mountains whom the night and thick forests hide. Of one of them, E. Hoar, I need to say nothing to you. One evening I sat with her and Waldo Emerson and Geo. P. Bradford while Belinda Randall played and sang.
Isaac brings you this, and will himself best tell you of himself. Burrill is well, and unites with me in remembrance to all who remember.
Your friend,
CONCORD,June 26th, 1844.
These are Tophetic times. I doubt if the sturdy faith of those heroes, Shadrack and co., would carry them through this fervor unliquefied. Their much vaunted furnace was but a cool retreat where thoughts of great-coats were possible, compared with this. And if that nether region of whose fires so much is sung by poets and other men possessed, can offer hotter heats, let them be produced. Those Purgatorial ardencies for the gentle suggestion of torment to thin shades can have little in common with these perspiration-compelling torridities. Why does not some ingenious Yankee improve such times for the purchase, at a ruinous discount, of all thick clothes? I tremble lest some one should offer me an ice-cream for my best woollens! Is it human to resist such an offer? Does it not savor something of Devildom, and a too great familiarity with that lower Torrid Zone, to entertain such a proposition cool-ly? when such a word grows suddenly obsolete in such seasons? If I venture to move, such an atmosphere of heat is created immediately around my body that all cool breezes (if the imagination is competent to such a conception) are like arid airs when they reach my mouth. Perhaps we are tending to those final, fiery days of which Miller is a prophet. We are slowly sinking, perhaps, from heat to heat, until entire rarefication and evanishment in imperceptible vapor ensues; and so the great experiment of a world may end in smoke, as many minor ones have ended. If it were not so hot, I should love to think about these things.
June 28th. So far I had proceeded on the afternoon I returned to Concord. When I desisted I supposed I had inscribed my final manuscript, and that only a cinder would be found sitting over it when some one should enter. Yet by the providence of God I am preserved for the experience of greater heats. I did not know before what was the capacity of endurance of the human frame. I begin to suspect we are of nearer kin to the Salamander than our pride will allow; and since Devils only are admitted to nether fire, I begin to lapse into the credence of total depravity!! Reflect upon my deplorable condition! As Shelley's body, when lifeless, was caused to disappear in flames and smoke, so may mine before its tenant is departed. Was it not prophetic that on Sunday afternoon the following lines came to me while thinking of that poet?
A smoke that delicately curled to heaven,Mingling its blueness with the infinite blue,So to the air the faded form was given,So unto fame the gentle spirit grew.
And as Shelley and Keats are associated always together in my mind, immediately the Muse gave me this:
A youth did plight his troth to Poesy."Thee only," were the fervent words he said,Then sadly sailed across the foaming sea,And lay beneath the southern sunset dead.
I was glad that once I could express what I think about those men. These will show you, but you must write your own poem upon them before you will be satisfied. Is it not so always? We cannot speak much about poets until our thought of them sings itself.
The day I left you was very hot in Boston. Anna Shaw and Rose Russell passed me like beautiful spirits; one like a fresh morning, the other like an Oriental night. Then I did my business, and met James Sturgis, who carried me to see his head cut in cameo by Mr. King. It is quite good, though it gives him rather a finer head than he has; but that's a good failing. I went to the Athenaeum. There I saw one or two pictures, and much paint upon canvas. Those that I liked I saw belonged to the Athenaeum, and I suppose were old objects to those who are familiar with the gallery. A face of Ophelia interested me. It was very simple and sweet. But I was so warm that I could do little more than lay upon a bench and catch dreamy glimpses of the walls. The sculpture gallery, full of white marble heads, seemed quite cool.
My dear Friend, I shall melt and be mailed in this letter as a spot if I do not surcease. May you be blest with frigidity, a blessing far removed from my hope. Of course I must be warmly, nay,hotlyremembered to Charles.
Yrs ever,
CONCORD,August 7th, 1844.
My regret at not seeing you was only lessened by the beautiful day I passed with Mr. Hawthorne. His life is so harmonious with the antique repose of his house, and so redeemed into the present by his infant, that it is much better to sit an hour with him than hear the Rev. Barzillai Frost! His baby is the most serenely happy I ever saw. It is very beautiful, and lies amid such placid influences that it too may have a milk-white lamb as emblem; and Mrs. Hawthorne is so tenderly respectful towards her husband that all the romance we picture in a cottage of lovers dwells subdued and dignified with them. I see them very seldom. The people here who are worth knowing, I find, live very quietly and retired. In the country, friendship seems not to be of that consuming, absorbing character that city circumstances give it, but to be quite content to feel rather than hear or do; and that very independence which withdraws them into the privacy of their homes is the charm which draws thither.
Mr. Emerson read an address before the anti-slavery "friends" last Thursday. It was very fine. Not of that cold, clear, intellectual character which so many dislike, but ardent and strong. His recent reading of the history of the cause has given him new light and warmed a fine enthusiasm. It commenced with allusions to the day "which gives the immense fortification of a fact to a great principle," and then drew in strong, bold outline the progress of British emancipation. Thence to slavery in its influence upon the holders, to the remark that this event hushed the old slander about inferior natures in the negro, thence to the philosophy of slavery, and so through many detached thoughts to the end. It was nearly two hours long, but was very commanding. He looked genial and benevolent, as who should smilingly defy the world, the flesh, and the devil to ensnare him. The address will be published by the society; and he will probably write it more fully, and chisel it into fitter grace for the public criticism. He spoke of your unfortunate call, but said you bore the sulkiness very well. George Bradford was also very sorry; and it was bad that you should come so far, with the faces of friends for a hospitable city before you, and find a mirage only, or (begging Burrill's pardon) one house.
For the last six weeks I have been learning what hard work is. Afternoon leisure is now remembered with the holiday which Saturday brought to the school-boy. During the haying we have devoted all our time and faculty to the making of hay, leaving the body at night fit only to be devoted to sheets and pillows, and not to grave or even friendly epistolary intercourse. Oh friends! live upon faith, say I, as I pitch into bed with the ghosts of Sunday morning resolutions of letters tickling my sides or thumping my back, and then sink into dreams where every day seems a day in the valley of Ajalon, and innumerable Joshuas command the sun and moon to stay, and universal leisure spreads over the universe like a great wind. Then comes morning and wakefulness and boots and breakfast and scythes and heat and fatigue, and all my venerable Joshuas endeavor in vain to make oxen stand still, and I heartily wish them and I back in our valley ruling the heavens and not bending scythes over unseen hassocks which do sometimes bend the words of our mouths into shapes resembling oaths! those most crooked of all speech, but therefore best and fittest for the occasional crooks of life, particularly mowing. Yet I mow and sweat and get tired very heartily, for I want to drink this cup of farming to the bottom and taste not only the morning froth but the afternoon and evening strength of dregs and bitterness, if there be any. When haying is over, which event will take place on Saturday night of this week, fair weather being vouchsafed, I shall return to my moderation. Towards the latter part of the month I shall stray away towards Providence and Newport and sit down by the sea, and in it, too, probably. So I shall pass until harvest. Where the snows will fall upon me I cannot yet say.
Say to Charles that I was sorry not to have seen him; but if persons of consequence will travel without previous annunciation, they may chance to find even the humblest of their servants not at home. I know you will write when the time comes, so I say nothing but that I am your friend ever.
CONCORD,Sept. 23, 1844.
Shall we not see you on the day of the cattle-show? Certainly Brook Farm will be represented; and I think you may, by this time, be farmer enough to enjoy the cattle and the ploughing. Besides, as I remember a similar excursion last year at which I assisted, the splendor of the early morning, which was not yet awake when we came away from the Farm, will amply repay any extraordinary effort. And still another besides; I do not want the winter to build its white, impenetrable walls between us before I have heard your voice once more. I should hope to come and look at you for one day, at least, in West Roxbury; but our Captain has work, autumnal work, the end whereof is not comprehended by the unassisted human vision. Potato-digging, apple-picking, thrashing, the gathering of innumerable seeds, must be done before winter; and yet to-day is like a despatch from December to announce that snow and ice and wind are to be just as cold this winter as they were the last.
And I have had a long vacation, too. I think, on the very day after I wrote my last letter to you, as I was whetting my scythe for the last swath of the season, my hat half fell off, and suddenly raising my hand to catch it, I thrust it against the scythe and cut my thumb just upon the joint. It has healed, but I shall never find it quite as agile as formerly. I could not use the hand—my right hand—for more than a fortnight. It was like losing a sense to lose its use. After a week of inaction in Concord, I went to Rhode Island and remained three weeks, and am now at home a fortnight. I came back more charmed than ever with Concord, which hides under a quiet surface most precious scenes. I suppose we see more deeply into the spirit of a landscape where we have been happy. Then we behold the summer bloom. It is spring or autumn or winter to men generally.
We shall remain with Capt. Barrett through the winter. The spring will bring its own arrangements, or rather the conclusion of those which are formed during the winter. I suspect that our affections, like our bodies, have been transplanted to Massachusetts, and that our lives will grow in the new soil. Not at all ambitious of settling and becoming a citizen, I am very well content with the nomadic life until obedience to the law of things shall plant me in some home.
And are you still at home in the Farm? Rumors, whose faces I cannot fairly see, pass by me sometimes, breathing your name and others. But I have long ago turned rumor out-of-doors as an impostor and impertinent person, who apes the manners and appearance of its betters. I shall receive none as from you, however loudly they may shout your name, except they show your hand and seal.
Autumn has already begun to leave the traces of her golden fingers upon the brakes, and occasionally upon some tall nut-trees. It seems as if she were trying her skill before she comes like a wind over the landscape. She warbles a few glittering notes before the mournful, majestic Death-song.
Dear friend, why should I send you this chip of ore out of the mine of regard which is yours in my heart? Come and dig in it.
Your friend,
CONCORD,January 12, '45.
My dear Friend,—I have written Burrill to look at the Custom-house, and inquire about the method of warming by water. He replies that he has been there, but defers writing to you until he learns more about the matter. Through him I received a message from Isaac to tell you that he (I) can procure an edition of the Beethoven Sonatas (26, I believe) for about $10.
I think it highly probable that I shall pass some weeks in Providence next month, and so will defer my day with you at Brook Farm until that time, of which I will inform you.
Burrill has not yet returned, and leaves me still a hermit. I am well pleased with my solitude, nor do I care much to go out of the country during the winter; but domestic circumstances make it advisable to go to Providence. There I shall have a good library at hand, which I miss a good deal here. Indeed, I think it likely that every year while my home is in the country I may perform a pilgrimage to the city for two or three months for purposes of art and literature and affection, for, as there seems in the minds of divines to be some doubt of personal identity when this mortal coil is shuffled off, I am fain to embrace my friends' coils while they are yet palpable. This idea of city visits implies a very free life; but there seems now to be no hinderance to it. When the band of Phalanxes, proceeding into desert and free air, no more allow art to rendezvous in cities, I can take one of the nearest radiating railroads and rush from my solitude into the healthily-peopled and cityish-countrified Phalanx.
I am loath to forgive Fourier the unmitigated slander upon the moon. I began to suspect that was the only influence alive since the sun lights men to cheating and deviltry; and the moon recalls the sweetest remembrance and best hope. After our evening at Almira's it lighted me home with such forgiving splendor that I could have fallen on my knees in the snow and have prayed its pardon if it would not have chilled those members.
Almira I have not seen since Wednesday. She was then well, and went with me to hear Dr. Francis lecture upon Bishop Berkeley. He told the life, which is the most poetical and beautiful of any of his contemporary philosophers, and then suggested that the "limits of a lecture" did not permit an extended notice of his philosophy, and so gave none.
Among my holiday gifts was Miss Barrett's poems. She is a woman of vigorous thought, but not very poetical thought, and throwing herself into verse involuntarily becomes honied and ornate, so that her verse cloys. It is not natural, quite. Tennyson's world is purple, and all his thoughts. Therefore his poetry is so, and so naturally. Wordsworth lives in a clear atmosphere of thought, and his poetry is simple and natural, but no more than Tennyson's. Pardon these critical distinctions. I make them to have them expressed, for Burrill did not see why I called Miss Barrett purple. It was because her highly colored robe was not harmonious with her native style of thought. Ben Jonson, too, I have been reading. After him and Beaumont and Fletcher (who are imitators, rather, of Shakespeare), I feel that Shakespeare differed not in degree only but in kind from all others, his contemporaries and successors. In his peculiar path Jonson was unequalled, but Shakespeare includes that and so much more! He seems to be the only one to whom poets are content to be inferior.
Remember me to Charles Dana and my other compeers at Brook Farm, especially Charles Newcomb.
Yours sincerely,
My dear Friend,—If I should come to Brook Farm on Thursday evening will it be convenient, and shall you be at home? If all circumstances favor, I should like to remain with you until Saturday. On Thursday I shall go into Boston to hear what the Texas Convention is saying, and if I hear anything very eloquent or interesting may not see you until Friday.
I was very sorry to know nothing of your convention until it was over. I should have run down to have seen you.
On Saturday evening I was at the Academy, and on Sunday at the Handel and Haydn. I have by Burrill a letter from Cranch, and a book of German songs from Isaac. More anon.
Your friend ever,
G.W. Curtis.
CONCORD,January 28th, 1845.
PROVIDENCE,March 5th, '45.
My dear Friend,—I hope to see you at Brook Farm by Friday, intending to remain until Friday P.M. Here in Providence I have been having a quiet good time, though the weeks have flown faster than I thought weeks could fly. Mrs. Burges received aPhalanxfrom Miss Russell, in which we found a good deal of interesting matter. I hear from her that she will write by me to Miss Russell.
To-day it rains merrily, a warm southern April rain; and the weeks of mild weather hint that there must be ploughing and sowing very soon. I anticipate my summer work with a good deal of pleasure.
Yours truly and hastily,
G.W. Curtis.
CONCORD,March 13, '45.
My dear Friend,—The cold gray days at Brook Farm were the sunniest of the month. I wish I could step into the parlor when my heart is ready for music, and surrender to Beethoven and Mozart or, indeed, when I find men very selfish and mean, look in upon your kindliness and general sympathy. But while your intercourse at the Farm is so gentle and sweet you will not forget that it springs from the characters whose companions are still in outer darkness and civilization! I meet every day men of very tender characters under the roughest mien. Even in the midst of the world I constantly balance my ledger in favor of actual virtue, and enjoy intercourse, not so familiar but as sweet, as that I saw at Brook Farm. Is it not the tendency of a decided institution of reform to be unjust to the Barbarians? I do assure you the warm, tender south winds blow over us here in the unsocial state no less than the chilly east.
The snow on the ground belies the season. It is warm to-day and the birds sing. I should have enjoyed more my ride in the soft snow on Tuesday if conscience had not arrayed me against Mr. Billings. But I am most glad to see that I am withdrawing from the argumentative. I begin to enjoy more than ever the pure still characters which I meet. Intellect is not quite satisfying though so alluring. It is a scentless flower; but there is a purer summer pleasure in the sweet-brier than the dahlia, though one would have each in his garden. It is because Shakespeare is not solely intellectual, but equally developed, that his fame is universal. The old philosophers, the sheer intellects, lack as much fitness to life as a man without a hand or an eye. And because life is interpreted by sentiment, the higher the flight of the intellect the colder and sadder is the man. Plato and Emerson are called poets, but if they were so their audience would be as wide as the world. Milton's fame is limited because he lacked a subtlety and delicacy corresponding with his healthiness and strength. Milton fused in Keats would have formed a greater than Shakespeare. If Milton's piety had been Catholic and not Puritanical I do not see why he should not have been a greater poet.
I shall not have much work to do before we undertake our garden plot. We take care of the cattle daily, and that is about all. Yesterday in the sunlight I walked in the woods. It was a spectacle finer than the sleet—the flower of winter among the trees.
I forgot to take thePhalanxes. Geo. Bradford asked me for a half-dozen. If you will send them to me I will give them to him. Almira says that he is now in a Brook Farm way. It is a species of chills and fever with him, as you know.
Remember me to the Eaglets, Dolly and her friend, Mary especially; and tell Abby Foord I have already learned the Polonaise which she is practising. I sit and play it over and over, and think I shall never tire of it. It has a peculiar charm to me, as I have never heard it except in the Eyrie parlor. It will always float me back to that room. Will you say to Charles Newcomb that Burrill has destroyed all "the churchmen"? Remember me to your family and believe me, as always,
CONCORD,April 22d, 1845.
Will you forgive me if I flood you with letters now while the mood of writing lasts? It seems that I must so exhaust some of the added life which spring infuses into my veins. The gray herbage of winter fades so slowly, so imperceptibly into the spring greenness, that I watch it with the curious eyes of a lover who sees gradual developments of deeper beauty in the face of his mistress. Do you note how every spring, sliding down from heaven with such intense life, quenches or rather subdues the remembrance of all past springs as a great gem surrounded in the ring by many small ones? And as I stood to-day, as if hearing the throb of the new active life in nature, for winter is more like the unchanged dead face of an intellectual person, the contrast of this steaming and heating life was suggested to me as is always the case, and necessarily so to the perfection of the thought. The idea of day is not symmetrical except when night is implied in thought, for if one could paint a portrait of the day, it would be brightness against darkness.
Why are we so troubled or moved at death, elated or depressed? It cannot give anything, nor take. Every sphere satisfies its desires by its hopes, and so seems to show that life is only an effort at equilibrium. At least it does show that to this state. There is a perpetual balance in every experience, never a permanence, as night follows day, but never survives the sunrise. Plato nor Shakespeare have drunk all this beauty, and it seems not right to become cold and callous towards it, externally, as the dead are. If they see the soul of things, do they see the form of nature without the soul, as we do now? If death mark only a general expansion of life and nature, it is no more pleasant. With greater hopes greater desires; and, after all, it is only keeping a larger set of books. There is no standard of life, as there is none of character. A flower is sometimes as pure a satisfaction as a man or the thought of an archangel. It passes into a proverb that the beggar is happier than a king, and proverbs are only the homely disguises in which wisdom roams the world.
The "Polarity" which Emerson talks about is the nearest approximation to the universal form of life, but this is constantly marred by a stray thought of permanence and the confusing hint of the passive mind that we suppose the balance to be the law, and are glad to accept night with day, and cold with heat, because there is a blindness in the spiritual eye which will not let us see the riper spirits who are not sated but satisfied with permanency. For there, too, is a reason that we are so glad to hide in the equipoise as an eternal fact that we are surfeited with constancy. Drowning in the malmsey-butt is no better than the Thames. Enjoyment to-day is secured by the certain prospect of sorrow to-morrow, which is not wilful, but a lesson of life, and as we suppose, at last, of the central life, just as the creation at daybreak is supported and adorned in the mind by the prospective tenderness of twilight. And this balancing, so universal in this sphere, in outward if not in real life, is therefore a fact, and why not as profound as any, since there is no standard of life? Is there any law at last? Nature seems so general and yet so intensely individual. As fine harmony results from the accord of distinct tones, and each tone an infinite division of vibrations. At bottom no things are similar. Harmony is only unison, not identity. Nature is like the ocean, which bears whole forests hewn into ships laden with treasure; but no bottom is found to support all the weight, only a drop resting upon a drop forever. The elephant that bore the earth stood upon a tortoise, who fortunately could keep his feet in his shell, and so had no need to stand anywhere!
The spring day looks very inscrutably upon all such wandering fancies. Her beauty is very inexorable, yet fascinating beyond resistance. It is not regal and composing and self-finding as is the mellowed summer, but an alluring splendor. It is a bud in inner, as well as outer, expression, and not yet a satisfying flower. Yet in the young days of June is sometimes seen the sereneness of autumn. After the full summer it is quite plain. It is like a child with pale, consumptive hands. Yet this is a constant reference to unity, which just now seemed so far off. Beauty suggests what Truth only can answer and Goodness realize; and the whole circle of nature offers these three only, beauty, truth, and goodness, or, again, poetry, philosophy, religion, or, more subtly, tone, color, feeling. This lies beyond words, because they are an intellectual means. Music foreshadows their interpretation, but always faintly, as it does everything, because music is revealed only enough here that we may not be surprised hereafter in some sphere. This is an intellectual sphere, but music is sentiment, so it is here an accomplishment for women, and for men of finer natures. Music is the science of spiritual form; and poetry, which is the loftiest expression of the intellectual sphere, finds its profound distinction from prose, which is the language of the vulgar, in its spiritual and sensuous rhythm, and so is music applied to the intellectual state.
Nature answers questions by removing us out of inquisitiveness. It is wilfully that we are querulous in nature, and not naturally.
I just now went to the door, and the still beauty of the moonlight night makes me a little ashamed of my letter. If I had stayed all day in the woods, and seen you there, I should have been content to be silent; but removed from the immediate glow of nature, and sitting in a purely human society, surrounded by circumstances produced humanly, as the house and furniture, the mind is withdrawn into a separate chamber, like one who goes down from the house-top into a room and so looks towards the north or west or south, and does not see all around as before.
Good-night, good friend.
Yr. aff.
CONCORD,April 5th, 1845.
Judge, my unitary friend, how grateful was your letter, perfumed with flowers and moonlight, to an unfortunate up to his ears in manure and dish-water! For no happier is my plight at this moment. I snatch a moment out of the week wherein the significance of that fearful wordbusinesshas been revealed to me to send an echo, a reply to your good letter.
Since Monday we have been moving and manuring and fretting and fuming and rushing desperately up and down turnpikes with bundles and baskets, and have arrived at the end of the week barely in order. Yesterday, in the midst, while I was escorting a huge wagon of that invaluable farming wealth, I encountered Mrs. Pratt and family making their reappearance in civilization. All Brook Farm in the golden age seemed to be strapped to the rear of their wagon as baggage, for Mrs. Pratt was the first lady I saw at Brook Farm, where ladyhood blossomed so fairly. Ah! my minute is over, and I must leave you to lie in wait for another.
Evening. I have captured an evening instead, my first tolerably quiet evening in this new life, this new system of ours for a summer sojourn. The waves of my nomadic life drift me on strange shores, and sometimes, as I mount them, I dream of a home, quiet and beautiful, that home which allures all young minds and gradually fades into the sad features of such households as we see. In all my experience I think of three happy homes where the impression is uniform, for in all there are May Days and Thanksgivings; and yet to see a complete home would be to see that marriage which, if we may credit Miss Fuller, does not belong to an age when celibacy is the "great fact." As if the divine force could be extinguished! I must marry and spite her theory. You would be amused if you could see some of the letters which I receive, and which discourse of a wife with the same gravity as they do of washing clothes, as if each were a necessary, and that it would not do for me to settle upon a farm until I am married. There is some wisdom in the last advice. An old bachelor upon a farm, with a solitary old maid-servant, is not the most pleasing prospect for young one-and-twenty to contemplate. But I ignore farms and maids and prospects, saving always the natural one. Next year may find me the favored of all three.
How gladly I would be with you on Monday, you know; but what candidate for the plough and the broom should I be after the bewilderment of that scene! I remember too well the festivals which graced the younger days to trust myself within their sphere again, save in the midst of a boundless summer leisure. And when, after these chill, moist, April days, the perfect flower of summer shall bloom, I will be in its heart and breathe the enchanted air again. The word reminds me how glad I am that the flowers were so grateful. I committed my memory to delicate guardians, who, dying, did not suffer that to die. And the trinity of tone, color, and sentiment, though I knew not, like you, how to indicate it, is one of the most alluring of mysteries, so much so that I must leave it even unexpressed. Since so little may be known, I will not bring it into the melancholy purlieus of theory, but see it and hear it and feel it in echoes and glimpses. Yet all these rainbows which span the heaven of thought, finely woven of the tears of humility, one would sometimes grasp and crystallize forever. In that I find my satisfaction in what I know of Fourier; but to clutch at the rainbow! can it be crystallized?
Let not the spasm of infidelity mar my letter in your eyes or heart, and on your anniversary let one stream flow to the memory of your friend,
CONCORD,April 17th, 1845.
As a good friend, am I not bound to advise you how my new household works, here in the very bosom of terrible civilization, which yet keeps me very warm? A long wet day like this, when I have been gloriously imprisoned by dropping diamonds, tries well the power of my new solitary life to charm me. It has not failed. It is going away now through the dark, still midnight, but it bears the image of my smile. A long wet day, with my books and fire and Burrill for external, long thoughts for internal, company. After a morning service prolonged far beyond the hour of matins, led by the sweet and solemn Milton, I read Miss Martineau's last tale, founded upon the history of Toussaint L'Ouverture, in whom I have been interested. I have just read Victor Hugo's "Bug Jargal," his first novel, and also based upon the insurrection of St. Domingo. I feel that Miss Martineau's picture is highly colored, but the features must be correct. A strong, sad, long-suffering, far-seeing man, finally privately murdered by one who had been the idol of his manhood. The interest is individual throughout, which is necessary, yet fatal to the novel. I followed the Hero away from St. Domingo to his grave, and afterwards the thought of the remaining negroes came very faintly back. We read what Napoleon said of his own conduct in the matter; but with the abolitionist Miss Martineau on one side, and the doubtful Man of Destiny on the other, the pure fact grew very attenuated, and I am not now sure that I have seen it. The moment your curiosity is really aroused about an historical circumstance, the glasses through which you have been viewing so varied and wide a landscape become suddenly very opaque. History is a gallery of pictures so individually unexpressive that you must know the artist to know their meaning. Very few men relate with cold precision what occurs daily, so much are their feelings enlisted; and no less daily experiences are the recorded events of the past to the man whose days are devoted to them, and he too must infuse himself into them. He is a Guelph or a Ghibelline, not a judge of the struggle, wiser by five or six centuries of experience. In Carlyle's book "that shall be" the "Cromwell," I feel there will be so much stress laid upon the gravity and prompt, sturdy heroism of the man that much else will be shoved out of sight. It will be the history of Cromwell as a strong man, for Carlyle loves strong men; but if there are other things to be said, we shall not hear so much about them. So in Emerson's "Napoleon." He commences with saying that Napoleon is the Incarnate Democrat, the representative of the 19th century, and the lecture is an illustration of that position, but most comprehensive and eloquent.
Let history and great men fade from our sight. Lately I have grown to be a sad rhymer, and shall end my letter with hints of a life sweeter than these records of mine. More and more I feel that my wine of letters is poured by the poets, not handed as cold sherbet by the philosophers. Some day I may speak more fully upon these things. Meanwhile, secretly and constantly, I turn over pebble after pebble upon the shore, not uncheered by the hope that one day a pearl may glitter in my hands. Even this smacks of history, for Clio had claimed this page.
Meek violet of History! there flowsA modest fragrance from thy maiden fameTouched with the coolness of the chaste reposeWhich broods o'er Plato's name.
No Wanderer through the dimly arched hallWhich Time has reared between thy date and oursMeeting thy form, but sees that on its pallAre broidered Grecian flowers.
Thy shrinking virgin fame is wed with oneWhose calm celestial teaching was thy King;When sitting in that cloistered nook aloneThou heardst the rude shout ring.
To thee that rabble shout foretold a sceneOf tearful splendor faded in its birth—The melancholy mockery of a Queen—And virgin dust to earth.
Ah! Princess of that golden classic hoard,Thy need was other than an earthly crown;But ours was such, for else couldst thou have pouredThrough time thy pure renown?
For us thy blood was spilled; the whetted edgeOf that keen axe gave us one jewel more,As a stream-drifted lily by chance sedgeIs held beside the shore.
Good-night. Let the remembrance of theflowers still hold mine fast, and my solemn sweetMilton shall sing my vespers too.
May you "moveIn perfect Phalanx to the Dorian moodOf flutes and soft Recorders…."
Your aff.
CONCORD, _May 3, '45.
I am weary of these winds, which have blown so constantly through the spring; and would so gladly exchange their long wail to-night for some of your music. And yet they are musical, and when I feel vexed at their persistency they seem to fade and breathe against my face with a low sigh, like one who shouts a secret which I cannot understand, and then mourns softly that I cannot. In spite of the wind we went to a new pond near us (new to us) this afternoon. There we separated, and Burrill went roaming over the hills and along the shore; and I sat down with Bettine upon the margin. That is the best workbook that I know. I read it for the first time in the Brook Farm pine-woods on a still Sunday; but to-day, as I followed her vanishing steps through Fairyland, the wind that rustled and raged around was like the tone of her nature interpreting to my heart, rather than to my mind, what I read. She was intellectual, spiritual more than poetical. She was such a glancing, dancing, joyous, triumphant child. I imagine great dark eyes, sparkling to the centre, and heavy locks overhanging—pine-trees drooping over diamonds, deepest brilliancy, with splendor, and a low singing sadness like the wind again, for her position is sad. The ardent, bursting, seeking-ripe girl, and the calm old man, wise and cold, not harsh. A sense of singular unfitness, a sweet-brier and an oak, a feeling as if some string in the great harp had slipped from its harmony, always strikes me when I read Bettine. Will you say no youthful lover would have inspired such a gush of the tenderest and profoundest girlishness? But it was no more than the bursting out of an irrepressible fountain, and it would have flowed as clearly and sweetly through a new wood conduit of to-day as through the polished golden channel which lay there for it. She must love, and love the best, and if only the best had been younger, fitter! Would not the steady massiveness of Goethe's nature have been splendidly adorned by the arabesques and intricately graceful woof of Bettine's? Now it was spring flowers on an old brow, with all the sweetness, but not the freshness, of youth. The imperial Goethe, supreme in wisdom and age, smelling a violet! Ah! though the flowers and the laughter and the dance and the sparkle are for the child, but sadly serious autumnal wreaths for the old man; but the world does the best it knows how to do with the poets, so did Goethe with his young lover. Friendly, cool, gentle, never flattering, Bettine asks him half sadly, as if for once those world-roving eyes were still: Do I speak to you or only speak in your presence? She answered her question by asking it.
She speaks much of music. It is beauty impersonized to her; she pours out gems and flowers of words, and sketches grotesquely exquisite shapes dimly all over the landscape, coins all the beautiful fancies that crowd her brain, throws them to Goethe sparkling in the sunlight, and says: This is music, and finds at last that music is God. That is the most orthodox Pantheism.
The year has piloted us into the flowery haven of May, but I lay so languidly charmed with the beauty, and looking to see if I cannot this time see the goddess whose smiles I feel, that it will be June and summer before I know it. I treat the season as I do poetry. Sometimes I dissect a line which has fascinated me, or a poem, to expose the secret. But it folds and fades and changes under my glance as a cloud at twilight; and the beauty of the spring is as elusive as the foam upon a wave. In the midst of summer, the summer that we anticipated in January seems farther off. It sinks constantly into itself. The deep solitude of rest, the murmurous silence of woods at noon, these are as real in winter as when we are melting in June. The senses will have their share. It is melancholy that a man with the stomach-ache cannot enjoy Shakespeare; and that this wild, wayward, glowing, and glorious Bettine must disappear in the Frau von Arnim, wearing caps and taking snuff, and instead of these pine-trees, false curls, cut from the last criminal, perhaps, and then croaking and child-bearing and nursing and diapering! things so beautiful for many, but not for her. She is not yet a woman, but belongs to us and the woods and the waters and the midnight. A child singing wonderful songs in the starlight, serenading with tender, passionate love-songs the old man who waves his hand and breathes down a kiss which is chilled by the night air, and falls like a snow-flake into her hot bosom, not as a star upon her brow.
We had some May-baskets left for us by unknown hands upon May-day. The flowers drooped over the sides, as if they would not meet my eye to tell the secret; but a group of smiling girls next morning were not so inexorable, and I thanked nature for such almoners of her gifts. These beautiful tributes are touching if one is serious. They are hung upon our wall, which is adorned with the Urania and sketches from Michel Angelo, and one or two drawings of Burrill's.
Mrs. Brown (Mrs. Emerson's sister) wishes Charles Newcomb to return some letters he has about little Waldo's death. Will you speak to him and say that Mrs. Brown will like them by the first opportunity?
I hope my name is down as a subscriber to the Paper. When shall we see it?Mr. Emerson read us a part of your letter.
Here is another of the unconscionable epistles; not to mention answering, it is too audacious to demand that they shall be read.
Ever yr
CONCORD,May 31, '45, Saturday morning.
My dear Friend,—Mr. Hosmer just tells me that he is going to Brook Farm, and I must say a word of regret that I could not come at this time, as Mr. Ripley, whom I saw in Boston, asked me to do. I have no doubt that the essence of all good things which are said, I shall gather from you some day, somehow. I send my subscription to the Harbinger. Almira is well, and would send you love and flowers if she knew that Mr. Hosmer was going.
I am fairly launched in "Consuelo," which I must read as fast as I can, for Mr. Hedge is to take it to Maine. Already it interests me as a new life, and, if I could, I would have it developing all summer; but I must feed upon the remembrance.
Will you say to Mr. Keith, the postmaster at West Roxbury, that we have despatched sundry messages to Messrs. Greeley and McElrath to have ourTribunecome to Concord and not to West Roxbury, and that to-day, upon receipt of his note, we have written a very concise letter upon that subject to the publishers.
Tell Mrs. Ripley that she must not fail to come this summer; and how soon are you coming to have a vacation in civilization?—not a day or two in winter, but a week for summer rambles.
Give my love to the Eyrie, for I believe all my friends are there save Miss Russell; and forgiving me for using you so unsparingly with messages, believe me always,
If Geo. Wells is or shall be at Brook Farm, tell him that Almira and the rest of the Concordians are waiting to see him.
CONCORD,June 24th, 1845.
My dear Friend,—I finished "Consuelo" some time since, though I have not yet read the "Countess." I read what you said in theHarbinger, and am waiting for the promised continuation. Meanwhile you shall hear something of the impression she made upon me.
Consuelo is a natural, not a pious person. She lives in the world like a flower, not like a flame; and though you feel that nothing is beyond her, since beauty and fidelity comprehend all, yet she does not directly suggest those personal relations with the Invisible which a saint always does. She sings as a bird, with her whole soul; and though she consents to relinquish the profession if she marries Albert, you feel very well that it will not be so. Porhora constantly urges the art upon her attention, but she grows in that by instinct. She is always in that to which he exhorts her, and the difference between her life and singing is no more perceived than in the life and singing of a bird. She is one of the persons from whom the rules of the art are drawn, because in her they are so clearly but unconsciously expressed. It is a character which fuses everything which it attracts to itself, and in whose outline no seam or crevice is visible. She is entirely impulsive, and every impulse is an inspiration. She leaves the castle of the Giants as soon as it occurs to her to do so, and the perfect submission to her impulse indicates the power and depth of her nature. Therefore, too, though she seems always right, she is free from all self-discipline. In meeting her one should not feel especially that she was a good person. She is not virtuous, for she has no moral struggle; nor pious, for she is too impersonal; and even her love, at least to the end of "Consuelo," is not a life. Her regard for Anzoleto you feel will pass. It is a personal relation, necessary among the flowers and music and moonlight of Venice. It is not the sentiment which love is to such a nature, nor could Anzoleto ever awaken that. With Albert it is much the same in another way. The waters do not at once flow to a level. She is consolation to him, but he is not life and hope to her. Music is, but she is too human to be satisfied so. A character like hers is always seeking for its completeness the strengthening sympathy of love, although its relations are very far from personal. Thus she seems as if she ought to love Albert, and that she will at last. Her life is too self-poised and true to allow you a moment's anxiety. The waves of circumstance roll and break at her feet, and she walks queen-like over the waters. The characters are grouped around her as friends or courtiers; and so she preserves the unity of the book as the figures of Jesus in the old paintings. It is the memoirs of the court of Queen Consuelo.
As in life such a person would make every scene in which she was an actor impressive and graceful, so the strong conception of the character makes the book so. I was thirsting for music when I read it, and it satisfied me like a strain of the sweetest and best; like a beautiful picture or a flower, it left nothing to be asked, although suggesting a general and not an individual beauty and satisfaction like itself. The graceful Venetian life wrought of song and fragrance fades so suddenly into the sombre Bohemian forest where the careless girl who dabbles in the water with Anzoleto becomes the mistress of the destiny of the morbid Albert, and all shifts again into the clear, vigorous friendship with Hadyn and the sunny journey where the woman of the castle becomes a girl again, as cheerful but so much wiser than the Venetian girl, singing and saddening and sleeping in barns and leaping abbey walls, that it was like lying on a hillside under the shades and sunlight of the April sky. There is an indirect developing of the character throughout which is very fine as it makes the harmonies more intricate and profound. It is like the reflection of the moon in the water to one who has cast his eyes down from the sky, as where Hadyn silently conquers the love which she has inspired, because in her mien and tone he reads her love for another. That is a golden key to her character.
It was pleasant just after reading it to make a trip to Wachusett with Mr. Hawthorne and Mr. Bradford. We had soft, warm weather, and a beautiful country to pass. From the mountain the prospect was very grand. It is not too high to make the landscape indistinct, but enough so to throw the line of the level country on the east back into the misty horizon and so leave a sea-like impression. To the north was Monadnock, lonely and grim and cold. A solitary lover he seemed, of the rough Berserkir sort, of the round and virgin-delicate Wachusett. Towards the northwest the lower part of the Green mountain range built a misty wall beyond which we could not have seen had it been away. Nearer were smaller hills and ponds and woods. On the mountain we found the pink azalia and the whitePatenlila tridenta. It was a fine episode in the summer.
About the 12th of July Burrill and I mean to go into Berkshire, and if possible to reach the White Mountains before the autumn catches us. This last is doubtful. But I felt when I came down from Wachusett as if I should love to go on from mountain to mountain until winter stopped me.
Last Sunday Father Taylor preached here. All the heretics went to church. In the evening he preached temperance. After the afternoon service we tea'd with him at Mr. Emerson's. He is a noble man, truly the Christian apostle of this time. It is impossible to pin him anywhere. He is like the horizon, wide around, but impossible to seize. I know no man who thrills so with life to the very tips, nor is there any one whose eloquence is so thrilling to me. I have found that one of the best things of living in Concord is that we have here the types of classes of men and in society generally only the members of the class. The types are magnetic to each other and draw each into their vicinity.
The lonely life pleases as much as ever. If I sometimes say inwardly that such is not the natural state of man, I contrive to quiet myself by the assurance that such is the best state For bachelors. What disembodied comforter of Job suggests such things?
Yr friend,
P.S. If you loved some one ardently who wonderfully resembled personally some one you hated ardently what would you do? It is not my case, but a question some evil genius whispered to make me perspire in these torrid days.
CONCORD,Sept. 14, 1845.
My dear Friend,—I returned last week from a long and beautiful visit to the mountains, among which I had never been before. I went in the middle of July to Berkshire, and returned home for two or three days to set off for the White Hills, and back again through the length of Berkshire. In all about seven weeks. The garden served us very well. We had weeded so faithfully that weeds did not trouble us, and Burrill stayed in Concord a part of the time I was in New Hampshire.
When I first came towards the mountains it was twilight, and they looked very cold and grim; their outline traced against the sky, and seemingly made of some other material than earth or sky—too dense for the one and too ethereal for the other. But when I came to them in broad day, they had lost their terror, as any other night phantom would have done. When I could scale them with my eye, and stand upon their highest peak, I seemed to have subdued them. But as I retreated, and looked back, they resumed their twilight majesty; and I could not realize I had been so proud among them. Yet, after all, they did not command me as the sea does. The charm of that is not robbed by being in it or upon it. All night and all day its murmur sounds an infinite bass to all that is done and said; and in the night, when you awake, it holds you still in thrall. Like the song of the locust in a summer noon, which fills the air with music and intensifies the heat, so the sound of the sea constantly draws thought and life to its depth and sweetness. Among the hills I was haunted with the vague desire of some corresponding sound. They were like a dumb Apollo, a thunderless Jupiter.
In Berkshire they are less grand than in New Hampshire, but high enough to cease to be hills, and wooded quite to the summit. They give an endless variety to the landscape, and are full everywhere of beautiful places and commanding prospects through the openings. The aspect of the country and the character of the people were so different from the country and people near a city, that it seemed to be more recently created.
Frank Parley is there in Stockbridge, and seems to be very happy. At Williamstown, the northern town in the county, we saw George Wells. He has only changed to become more entirely a collegian, but retains the same cordiality and carelessness that made us love him at Brook Farm. I have so many things to say about my wanderings that I cannot write any more, for I mean to come to Brook Farm and see you some day during the autumn. In the late autumn we are going to New York to pass the winter.