SONG.

Where the wild hare and the crowWhiten in surrounding snow—

Where the wild hare and the crow

Whiten in surrounding snow—

the process may be accelerated by a century or so. But, till some philosopher gets his pair of blacks, and sits fairly down to see the experiment out, we shall be of opinion that, centuries would be necessary to counteract the slow workmanship of nature in this business; but certainly, that at the end of that time, the whole human type would have suffered a perfect change, conformable to the latitude and longitude—thelocus in quo. We repeat—those early effects of climate, tropical or boreal, were such as no elemental influence noted in modern times can give us any correct idea of. Ages and continents were the first premises and means, by and from which Nature stamped her human varieties in the first ages.

Coming from the physical and ethnical considerations, we see the influence of the material elements very perceptible, in the social, moral, and historical manifestations of the various races of the world. A consideration of the Asiatics, the Greeks, the Egyptians, and other nations of ancient or modern name, would make this evident. The Easterns inhabiting, in Central Asia, vast extents of level country, for the most part at a distance from the sea, were chiefly pastoral and nomadic. They had room to wander and grow, and be numbered by millions. Under such circumstances, they were naturally liable to be dominated by great commanders, to whom—seeing that their unsettled polity also included the principles of war and plunder—they would delegate the leadership; and who, on the broadplateaux, could make use of cavalry and chariots—those ready means of conquest and despotism in the old times. Hence the people fell numerously under the sway of a few kings, who used their power with the fierceness and irresponsibility of gods, and kept the soldiery and the masses in a state of slavery—whether following plunder, cultivating the soil, or making bricks from mud, and rearing with these, through sweating generations, those walls and towers of Central Asia—Nineveh, Babylon, and so forth—of which we have transmitted to us such vague and magnificent traditions, and of which Layard and others have been discovering some traces for us latterly.

It was the same way, nearly, in Egypt—that prominent historic feature of antiquity. The valley of the Nile was one level, isolated extent of unrivaled fertility—capable of supporting millions at the expense of no very heavy amount of agricultural toil. People necessarily multiplied there, and being of peaceful agrarian disposition, came, in time, to be subservient to the priests and Pharaohs of the land. The civilization of Egypt was a monstrous sort of thing, born of the sun and the sediment of the Nile, like the other monsters of that “Great river.” Relaxed and enervated by the heat of the climate, kept in ignorance, and employed in masses by the despotism of the country, the people became slavish laborers, husbandmen and manufacturers, living content, in a hot inland condition, unfreshened by any breeze of the civilizing sea, worshiping animals first used as hieroglyphical helps to language, and hating the idea of foreign invasion, ever associated in their minds and traditions with the revolution of the nomade shepherd kings. The stupendous architecture of Egypt, like that of Assyria, proved the numerical force, physical slavishness, and mental superstition of that people. Fattened by thelætas segetes—the exuberant harvests of the Nile—brute force and beaverism divided the nation between them—excepting what amount of esoteric knowledge the priests and kings made use of to keep the many-headed monster in order.

Let us now look at the aspects of Greece—a country, undoubtedly, peopled from the places and races of Central Asia. Greece is an irregular land of hills and valleys, broken by a thousand bays, and clasped, beneficently, in the serpent arms of the Midland Sea. In Greece are no broad levels on which a despot may deploy his horsemen and war-chariots. Marathon, to be sure, is a plateau, looked on by the mountains, and looking on the sea—

The mountains look on Marathon,And Marathon looks on the sea—

The mountains look on Marathon,

And Marathon looks on the sea—

but history tells us that the Persian cavalry found it far too rugged a place to charge upon. Neither had Hellas any fat, broad extent of soil on which maize, rice, and corn may grow, to feed millions in a supine content, and predispose them to be the instruments of some powerful despotism, kingly or priestly. The climate of Greece was varied by the inequalities of its surface and the nearness of the sea; and the inhabitants became a pastoral, agricultural, and commercial people. The soil brought forth, in reward of care and labor, corn, and wine, and oil, and vegetation of great beauty and grandeur. The climate was marked by those vicissitudes which the experience of the world proves to be most favorable to the condition of man, and the highest development of his powers. It had none of the inland andenervating characteristics of Middle Asia or Egypt. The Greek was obliged to wrestle with Nature for her blessings. Thence rose, in time, the illustrious polities, the immortal mythologies, and white theories of her fields and streams—all that memorable splendor of intellect and war which has had nothing comparable to it in antiquity.

The geography of Greece forbade that deadly centralization which has so disastrously weighed upon most other civilizations. Nature divided the Hellenic land into states—fashioned the Greek group of peoples on the federal principle. The results were that the distinct races and families of men set about taking care of their own destinies—began to make their municipal arrangements, and lift up their ideas to the great argument of self-government. Each nationality was small enough to be within the ken and influence of all its citizens. Every man in the state—slaves excepted—had an intimate personal interest in its welfare—the people were all politicians or soldiers, and could be statesmen—if necessary. Their minds were thus nursed in independence—educated in the true school of civil liberty; and, even in monarchies as well as republics, the power, intelligence, and influence of the people, constituted the life and vigor of the state. The warlike and religious games of Greece perfected the strength and symmetry of the human body. Its climate and soil were eminently calculated to produce happy results on the minds of men so organized and educated; and the national character became reflected in the graceful arts and superstitions of the people. In the East and Egypt, the vague idea of some supreme divinity, which hovered over all nations from the beginning, and never seems to have been absent from the world, was degraded by the degraded souls of the people. Their notions of supernal things were monstrous, grotesque, and inhuman—gathered evidently from their experience of kings and crocodiles. To express them the slavish race accepted the shapes of birds and beasts—winged bulls, cows, cats, hawks, alligators, and so forth. How different the cheerful and eminently human mythologies of Greece, born of the elements of the clime—autochthonous of that immortal ground! The Orientals, Egyptians, etc., bowed down to brutal shapes, congenial with the gross conceptions of their own laborious ignorance. But the Greek looked up, with a dignified sense of things—admired his own splendid symmetry in the olympic festivals, and, with a glorious egotism, invested the many manifestations of the universal spirit with the finest forms of men that ran or fought naked in thepalestræ. Pan was no monstrous deity—he was a jolly rustic divinity—of the earth, earthy—a bucolicbizarrerie, coming naturally from the gay, gross genius of agrarianism; a littlecaper-footed, to be sure; but therefore only the more in character, and a very respectable divinity, indeed, for the country parts.

Berenger, the French poet, fables that it was Cyprus wine which first gave birth to the gods of Greece—stating that Hesiod had warmed his veins with the liquor before he began to embody his Olympian theories. But Hesiod, after all, only transcribed and touched up the popular belief; it was the bright, sensuous genius of Greece, transfiguring the happy elements of the clime, that brought forth the theogonies—peopled with immortal dwellers the

Elysian, windless, fortunate abodes,Beyond heaven’s constellated wilderness.

Elysian, windless, fortunate abodes,

Beyond heaven’s constellated wilderness.

The Greeks deified the best attributes of mankind, and adored the Supreme Spirit in the reflections of their own cheerful and elevated minds. In the vastness and power of the sea they saw Poseidon on his car, drawn by sea-horses, and girt by his conch-bearing Tritons, sounding in response to what the old Greek dramatist calls “the innumerable laughter of the waves”—anarithmon kymaton gelasma—Jupiter thundered from the acroceraunian top of Olympus,

Soaring all snow-clad through his native skyIn the wild pomp of mountain majesty;

Soaring all snow-clad through his native sky

In the wild pomp of mountain majesty;

Phœbus-Apollo and Diana, his sister, moved, beautiful unspeakably, in the sun and moon; gods blew in the four great winds and in the breeze; every fountain had its Naiad, and every oak its Hamadryad. Pan shouted on the mountains—especially whenever good came to Greece; and on the day of Marathon his mighty vociferations were heard at wonderful distances!—and the Fauns, Satyrs, Dryads, Oreads and so forth, his subjects and followers, wandered over every meadow, and were seen peeping from the glades and openings of every forest.

Much of the power and civilization of Greece grew from her commerce and maritime enterprise—from the sea. Dr. Arnold, the historian, says very truly, that the sea has always been one of the greatest agents of liberty and civilization. The supremacy of Athens over Sparta, then, and in the memory of all future time, was due to the port of the Piræus. The crowning glories of the Attic metropolis—her immortal sculptures and temples and her splendid philosophies—were owing to a refining intercourse with other peoples, and to the maritime exactions, somewhat tyrannically levied from those sea-born states that, from the waters and shores of the Mediterranean, looked to Athens as their mother city and protectress. Tyre, Carthage, Syracuse and other seaports—ancient and modern—have owed their wealth, celebrity and distinguishing character to their respective geographical positions.

If we follow the movements of the human family through Germany and up to the high latitudes of Europe, we find that the severe elements of the north and the peculiarities of soil were able to imbue the human mind with a portion of their own character. The life of the great Scandinavian race was necessarily divided between war and plunder; and the ideas which they entertained of the superior powers and a future state were reflected from their circumstances. These corsairs and kempions believed the Valhalla of departed spirits was a place where the happy warriors fought one another during the day, and feasted together at night, (eating flesh and drinking mead from deer’s horns) after Odin had miraculously put together the severed limbs andhealed all the wounds; till the morrow should once more renew these murdering beatitudes of the boreal heaven! Again—the iron hills of the Northern region helped to form the mythologies and superstitions originally so distinctive of the Scandinavian mind. The Lapps, Finns, and other peoples of the high latitudes, were in a great measure miners and smiths. Æschylus, we believe it is, who says that the sword is “the child of Scythia”—a saying not more figurative than matter-of-fact. Jornades, a Goth, says Scandinavia was the Forge of Mankind—humani generis officium—indicating the metallurgic nature of that influence exerted on the fate of the more Southern European nations. The men who mined, and who hammered into shape the swords of the Northmen, were small in their physical proportions, and usually had their stithies near the mouths of the mines among the hills. Hence the kobold-workers, the hill-folk, the goblins, trolls, dwarfs, wee men and so forth, of a superstition which has overflowed the rest of Europe, almost as extensively as the military migrations from the same places did, once upon a time. These little hyperboreandiablerieshave wandered all over the fields of the South and permanently tinged the currents of its various literature.

Turning to Asia, we perceive how the relaxing heat of the climate led the mild and perspiring Hindoo to regard God as a being who sits still and reposes—a type of sublime steadfastness and languor. If Christianity had been born in the middle of Europe, the history of society would probably have wanted some of its most curious and remarkable features—monasteries and hermitages. In the East, enthusiasts, overpowered by the heat, naturally agreed that thinking and doing nothing would be a great help to devotional feeling. So the pious were led to go very much together into cool crypts, and, from the physical sensations of the East, gave rise to a philosophy which having passed into the colder climates, became naturally identified with more of penance and endurance. The Koran would not have been written—could not have done its work, in any Northern latitude. It is as much a part of the East—of south-western Asia—as if it was a date or a palm tree, and grew near a well in the desert. One of the sublimest religious duties among the Brahmins and Turks is said to be, to sit on the floor, with the eye of the mind fixed on the very centre of the midriff, and thus expect the growth and efflorescence of sanctity—a much pleasanter way of coming at the result, than by walking or taking any violent exercise, where the thermometer is usually up to 95 in the shade! It is also a part of religion in these hot latitudes to wash one’s self—a piece of piety which is good enough to be Christian. The Arab is free, because no one cares to dispute his sands with him; and hospitable, because without hospitality his dusty father-land would be nearly impassable or uninhabitable. Montesquieu says that poor and barbarous nations are most hospitable, and trading nations least so; for which moral effects there could be adduced very good geographical causes.

Regarding Asia, on the whole, we perceive its great inferiority to Europe in every thing which civilization boasts of. For the causes of this we must look to the circumstances of sun and soil—the latter, especially. Europe, unlike Asia, is broken into many distinct territories by mountain chains, seas, straits, rivers, etc. Nature, in laying out portions of her domain, as it were, prepared those divisions, segregations, and isolations which fostered national independence, and left to the European families of men leisure to entertain the more humanizing and elevating thoughts of life. Europe became crowded with nationalities in which the federal principle grew up, perilously shaken by blows, to be sure, and nourished with human gore, but still struggling forward; by degrees, into more assured vitality; while flowing around and through all, the civilizing sea with its breezes fanned into strength the warm blood in the arteries of enterprise, toil and progress. The Asian continent, on the contrary, is comparatively a vast, unwatered, sun-baked extent of solid ground, open, for the most part, to the wild winds and the wilder hordes of barbarians and semi-barbarians. If, by some convulsion of Nature, the Caspian Sea could have been widened and prolonged eastward for fifteen hundred miles or so, the history of Asia, and, perhaps, of the world, would certainly have been different from that we now peruse.

Freedom and national prosperity are hard to locate. They have never seemed to thrive, as yet, (we don’t know how it may be in the future) in the soft and sunny places of the world. They require hard conditions of the sun and soil to bring them to a valid and permanent state of existence. They seem to have succeeded best in presence of a difficulty—proving apparently, the truth of the saying, that the price of independence is eternal vigilance. The perfection of the human race belongs to the temperate zones and to the necessity of energy imposed by their elemental conditions. The civilization of warm, fertile, spontaneous countries is not that by which the progress of the world is accelerated. Switzerland has been kept free by her barren ground and her keen winds, which have invigorated the souls of her people; and they have also, probably, dissuaded the ambition of her neighbors. But it is certain that she has shown herself courageous and determined to be free. The Hollowland, south of the Baltic, lying half in the ocean, and subject to its overflows, was not very vehemently regarded by the rulers of men, and therefore, for a long time, served as a refuge for the peaceful and industrious. Labor built up their energies in that place, and their spirit of independence along with the dykes, and they at last learned to love and die for “their new-catched miles” taken from under the trident of Poseidon; and so they made that land the asylum of liberty, toleration, enlightenment and commercial prosperity. Venice, China, and other states in which labor and vigilance have been necessary to cope with certain difficulties of the soil or situation, are further proofs of this influence of climate on national character.

If we look to England—we think it could beshown that all she is—all that contrasts in her so strongly with the condition of other European nations, has been owing to her place on the map. Beneath a variable sky, the soil, which would yield little spontaneously, was still rich enough to reward cultivation; and so the Anglo-Saxons—not to go further back—became agricultural and accustomed to toil. Their tribes, occupying a series of independent localities, after a primitive fashion, were necessarily accustomed to look to their own plow-lands, hundreds, parishes and counties, and regulate them independently. The space of the island was too small to permit any nomade movements; and when it was brought to acknowledge a common ruler, the parish and county regulations were in customary force. The agricultural and household fixity of the people allowed them to form regular habits and ideas of policy. The circumstances of the island did not encourage any central despotism to grow up in it like that of Charlemagne over France and Europe. Girt by the waters of the four seas, the Saxon polity had time to grow hardened on the soil, so that the invasions of the Danes and the Normans had no power to do away with it. The Norman government, imposed for centuries on the island, grew-weak in time before the well-rooted Anglo-Saxonism of the land; the early county representatives flowered at last into the Parliament, and thefolkmotesof Egbert and the Confessor are, at this day, flourishing bravely and remarkably on wide-severed hemispheres of the globe.

The isolation of England preserved her from the despotic influences of the continent. But for her separating sea, she would have been many times overrun by her neighbors. If she had touched the bounds of France or the Low Countries, she might have passed under the French crown in the reign of King John, or she would have been overrun by the terrible Spanish infantry—alandarmada—in the days of Philip; or would have had Napoleon, in 1804, dating his European decrees from the brick-built palace of St. James’. The ocean gods that have been the friends of Great Britain, have vindicated the truth of Dr. Arnold’s assertion—in fostering a maritime wealth and empire, of which no former example has at any time existed in the world, and which will only be exceeded when the Anglo-Saxonism which is the moral back-bone of this continent—obeying the unexpired old insular impulse of the slow gathering years long before the Mayflower floated—shall spread out a broader breadth of canvas to all the winds of Heaven—a more Briarean strength of arm over the seas and shores of the world.

It would be absurd to deny, we repeat, that other influences beside those of climate and soil operate upon peoples. Accidents, of conquests, great men, modes of government, religions—these mould the life and character of nations. But, as far as the world has yet gone, we must perceive the more radical and permanent power of the elemental and local influences. We see that nations keep their peculiar character, through the long period of progress, for a thousand years together. The Germans seem to be the same with those Teutonic tribes described by Cæsar and Tacitus. The former described the French of to-day in the Gauls of his own time. He says that nowhere were the common people more despised and kept down than in the country of the Gauls. The Italians of this century are certainly those of the ancient Roman days. If we desire to find a parallel for that general supineness and helplessness which, they exhibit just now, we shall find them under the emperors, from Augustus down, when the old warlike spirit of the people seemed to have entirely evaporated; and if we desire to find something like the heroism which drove Brennus back to the mountains and refused to despair after Cannae, we may discover it in the revolution and siege of Rome in 1848 and 1849. The “human plant” in Italy appears at all times to belong to the soil and the sun: capable of heroic things after “the high Roman fashion;” also wonderfully content with maccaroni and the baskingdolce far niente, which, being interpreted, is thepanem et circensisof those times when Rome was mistress of the world; and as handy with the stiletto as once, upon those historic Ides of March, when the blood of Cæsar

Came rushing out of doors to be resolvedIf Brutus so unkindly knocked or no.

Came rushing out of doors to be resolved

If Brutus so unkindly knocked or no.

In the same way could be traced old resemblances in the features of many other modern nations—surviving time and change, and, apparently, proving the truth of the autocthonous principle.

Coming to ourselves—we also exhibit the influence of climate on character. And first, as to physical character, in which this proposition seems least controvertible. The Americans, are found to be less robust than their European forefathers—English, Irish, German, French, Spanish, and others. The citizens of this republic are, generally speaking, a thinner and paler race than the peoples of the old world. This fact is the more striking, that the condition of immigrants is customarily improved on this soil—they eat and drink better, and have more of the physical comforts of life. Philosophers have been endeavoring to account for this. Some maintain there is something in the climate of America which will not permit organized beings to possess the fire and vigor of the animal creation of the other hemisphere. The dogs of this community are found not to have at all the ferocity of the European hounds: and the American cock does not keep up the high, military heart of his insular brother over the way. It has been considered that to the greater moisture of the British Isles (it is chiefly to these we confine our contrast—seeing they furnish us with the chief material for making it) is owing the superior freshness of complexion and roundness of form which distinguish the insulars. The air of this continent is far dryer than that of the United Kingdom. Another cause has been found in the astonishing haste in which Americans live and move and have their being—their incessant play of speculative thought: and especially the rapid way in which they furnish the microcosm with its necessary aliment—or, as Mr. Micawber would say, with a burst of confidence—bolt their victuals, in fact. Other causes have been found in the general use of stoves in houses, and the consumption of acidulating fruit in this country. Certainly the health of American women, in particular, suffers from these two causes in a very palpable manner. The stoves of anthracitic America, vitiating the air of close rooms and relaxing the powers of the human body, are calculated to produce a great difference of some sort or other between our people—the women especially—and those islanders who use bituminous coal and open grates. All these things, of course, produce their results; but we think the chief cause of this effect—“or of this defect; for this effect defective comes by cause,” as old Polonius would say—would seem to exist in the atmosphere; inasmuch as the lower animal creation on this continent is also found inferior to that of Europe in a certain amount of physical stamina.

As regards the mental and moral character of our people, it could be fairly shown that among all the influences affecting it, those of sun and soil are radically the most forcible. The vast and varied resources of our territory have made us a nation of energetic workers and traders. The lower faculties of our minds have been so excited by the prospects and opportunities which commerce has displayed and discovered to us, on all sides, that the rest of these faculties, in sight of such a wonderful business and the great ends to which it is tending, engage also in the excitement, and Science, Art, Poetry, Philosophy, Religion even, move down gladly to join the great and manifold march of our destinies. Whatever amount of social greatness, enterprise and far speculation distinguishes us from the other nations, is certainly owing to our continental place upon the surface of the globe—this moralpou sto, whence we may yet be enabled to move the whole world in a variety of ways. Our minds seem to grow to the measure of this territory, and to represent, in its capacities, the material resources of the empire in all their affluence and incompleteness.

Science and general intercourse will, doubtless, do a great deal in time, in the way of obliterating nations’ distinctives. But these can never wholly pass away before the moral advances of civilization. In the human economy, in fact, it would seem that the principle of variety which we find at work every where in the universe, is just as necessary and good as in the material scheme of things. Man must always, more or less, bear the character of those elements by which he is surrounded.

[1]

Natural History of the Human Species; by Lieut. Col. C. H. Smith. Reprint, Boston. Gould & Kendall.

———

BY WM. H. C. HOSMER.

———

Music; where soft voices die,Vibrates in the memory.Shelley.She knew me not, although her breastHad pillowed oft my head,And thought I long had been at restWith Ocean’s ghostly dead.Full on my wan and wasted faceShe fixed her melancholy gaze;But there, alas! she could not traceThe look of other days.She knew me not! the flight of timeAn iron form will bow,And bondage in a tropic climeHad darkened cheek and brow:I spoke of friends; with look cast down,Who shared her joy in better hours—Whom Death had added to his crownOf darkly folded flowers:—In vain! the mourning one no glanceOf love or welcome gave;She thought beneath the blue expanseOf ocean was my grave:I then sang airs that in the cellOf hoarding memory long had slept,And with a look tongue cannot tellShe clasped my neck and wept.

Music; where soft voices die,

Vibrates in the memory.Shelley.

She knew me not, although her breast

Had pillowed oft my head,

And thought I long had been at rest

With Ocean’s ghostly dead.

Full on my wan and wasted face

She fixed her melancholy gaze;

But there, alas! she could not trace

The look of other days.

She knew me not! the flight of time

An iron form will bow,

And bondage in a tropic clime

Had darkened cheek and brow:

I spoke of friends; with look cast down,

Who shared her joy in better hours—

Whom Death had added to his crown

Of darkly folded flowers:—

In vain! the mourning one no glance

Of love or welcome gave;

She thought beneath the blue expanse

Of ocean was my grave:

I then sang airs that in the cell

Of hoarding memory long had slept,

And with a look tongue cannot tell

She clasped my neck and wept.

———

BY WM. ALEXANDER.

———

Upon what deed of hazardous emprise,Bold Comet, dost thou come? From vistas deepOf space, thou hurriedly dost sweep,Self-shining, with thy trail athwart the skies,To greet the golden sun. Nor comest thouAlone—a myriad more press on thy track,In wild excursion; soon to measure backThe ebon distances. Come, tell us, now,Why unannounced, strange visitant! once more,So suddenly thou burstest on our sight,A terror at mid-day—a wonder of the night?Precursor of red war, then, dost thou soar,Or monitor of wo? Peculiar Fire!Thy presence can in us no confidence inspire.

Upon what deed of hazardous emprise,

Bold Comet, dost thou come? From vistas deep

Of space, thou hurriedly dost sweep,

Self-shining, with thy trail athwart the skies,

To greet the golden sun. Nor comest thou

Alone—a myriad more press on thy track,

In wild excursion; soon to measure back

The ebon distances. Come, tell us, now,

Why unannounced, strange visitant! once more,

So suddenly thou burstest on our sight,

A terror at mid-day—a wonder of the night?

Precursor of red war, then, dost thou soar,

Or monitor of wo? Peculiar Fire!

Thy presence can in us no confidence inspire.

FANCIES FROM A GARRET.

———

BY GEO. CANNING HILL.

———

And why not, pray, from aGarret?And from aCountry Garret, too?

And why not, pray, from aGarret?

And from aCountry Garret, too?

Though the sun doth not flood the crannies and crevices with its light—and though dangling webs from spiders’ looms swing from one huge beam to another—yet may there brood no Fancies there?—fancies, too, themselves radiant with sunshine, and fringed with a fine web of beauty?

Ay—it is not in smooth-shaven meadows alone, or beneath broad-reaching trees, or beside brawling brooks, that a man’s Fancies will disport themselves:—it is not in the woods only, that his inward nature will take airy wings, and revel among speculations far more real, after all, than the very realities about him:—but it is here—there—everywhere:—it is even beneath the rafters of a dim, dusty, and lumber-laden Garret.

I have got a little apartment in the south-east corner of one of these thought-peopled Garrets; none at all too spacious, to be sure; lighted by but a single window, and walled in on all sides by the weird and strange influences that haunt the place. To this retreat I am accustomed to betake myself occasionally, when I would indulge in that refreshing and genial siesta of the senses—a Reverie.

Here are no interruptions. Of a warm summer day, I open my door and suffer the cool wind to draw through the room. Sometimes, on entering at the window, it snatches hold of the corners of my manuscript sheets, whirls them rudely about to the floor, performs a rapidpirouette, and whisks out through the door. There it dances at its pleasure in the spacious and silent Garret-hall—piping its own soft music—and kicking up with its airy feet the venerable dust of years.

When the sunlight blazes upon the crisped shingles, it seems to me that it is night; and that I behold innumerable stars, where, the light streams through the hundred holes in the roof. The effect is singular enough. And I go groping about in the darkness and the dust—crouching beneath huge beams—crawling carefully into dim archways and quaint-looking angles—ransacking the lumber of years’ accumulation—and raising clouds of dust, which the slender lines of sunlight through the roof fashion into shining threads of gold.

All the influences here at times are sombre; yet they are not so sad as to depress me. I have a strange feeling of being momentarily out of the world. I do not feel lost: only isolated. Neither do I feel myself wholly lonely; for olden and strange associations come thronging to me, so that I may easily imagine myself surrounded with beings of life and thought.

I wander and grope about in this spacious garret, and lose myself sometimes in the varied play of my feelings. My eyes light on old bits of trumpery, that were vastly counted on fifty years ago. Here are children’s worn and faded playthings—the baubles and hobby-horses, that absorbed minds which are now impressing an influence upon the world. Here, still clasping an open beam, are the ends of the rope by which children swung themselves, full a half century ago; and the whole dusky beam seems circled round and round with rings of childish laughter. Here are dark corners, and cosy angles, and curious spaces, where each erected spacious playhouses, that might, in mimicry, have rivaled the establishments of the jealous Montagues and Capulets.

And I pick out from the rubbish, or take down from the edges of beams and rafters, remnants of ancient China sets, with their quaint devices shattered into other and stranger ones—all of them faithful souvenirs of the days and the habits of our godly grandmothers. And hidden away in the dusty lumber, are a few old and badly bedimmed portraits—coarsely enough done, but once probably sources of secret pride and gratification to their owners.

And then when I stand in the midst of these rare collections of time, and perceptibly feel the influence of the deep silence and the faded light, I say to my heart—Why should not a Garret be the place, of all others, the fullest of living Fancies?

—I had thrown myself into my arm-chair one day—it was in the latter part of a protracted and severe winter—and was gradually losing myself in the sweet and soothing play of feelings that always hover about me here. The wintry winds had bawled themselves hoarse over the snowy fields in the distance, and were charging in thick squadrons down the wooded road, to attack the first chance traveler. I could hear them piping shrilly at the crannies and beneath the eaves; and their whistling voices had, I confess, a secret charm for me. I knew they could not reach me with their frost-biting breath; and I unconsciously drew a bit nearer the fire, and wrapped myself more closely in the feeling of comfort that I had drawn about me.

It was already past mid-afternoon; and the pale and lifeless sun threw itself across my floor more like a veritable shadow, than like the cheerful sun it should have been.

I tried to lose myself entirely—to sleep; but that was only impossible. My thoughts would not wholly sleep. Yet they were, for all that, disposed to drowsiness.

Every thing I had ever heard, or read, seemed crowding back on my memory. Chance sayingsfrom lips that had not spoken in long years; and quaint lines from quaintest authors. Old books sifted out their piquancies into my lap, that I should pick them up and examine them over again, one at a time. My mind was, for the moment, converted into a crowded museum. Every thing was huddled together there; yet not so confusedly as that I could not lay my hand—so to say—on whatever I wanted.

By some unknown association, the line of Banquo, in his questioning of Macbeth respecting the three witches, came to me; and I know not if I repeated it aloud to myself or not, in the state of reverie into which my mind was lapsing:

“The earth has bubbles, as the water hath.”

At all events, the line kept running and spinning round in my brain—I all the while trying to deduce some hidden meaning from it. I had it over and over again; and in time, my thoughts began to weave themselves together somewhat after this wise:—

—Bubbles? Yes—and a plenty of them, too!

The baby blows them from the smooth bowl of a clay pipe; distending its little cheeks to their utmost, and staring at the gaudy tints that sail over their surfaces, with a delight that is almost uncontrollable.

The youth blows them, when he looks out from one of the windows of his lofty air-castle; and his eye swims with the pleasant prospect he sees through the golden mist that hangs before him.

The man of mature years blows them—big and round; but they are not always so gayly painted as those he inflated years ago. The colors are faded: they seem soiled: they are, in truth, wanting. Yet the bubbles are no less bubbles, albeit they look so vapory and dull.

—And so, thought I, we all keep blowing bubbles, from early babyhood till we lean upon the staff. It is only when the silvery snows of old age lie thickly upon the temples, and the clear eye has altogether lost its crystal lustre, that we leave off the occupation.

Early in life we call it a pleasant pastime; when we grow older, we make it a business. While we are children, we send the fragile creations up into the air; and we laugh and clap our hands, to see the winds play gently with them as with foot-balls. And when at last their thousand liquid threads snap in sunder, and only a glistening water-drop falls to the earth, our faces for a moment forget their smiles, and then—we straightway go to blowing more.

We get further on in years. We are sanguine, even to feverishness. We hope for every thing which our minds can conceive. We know no such chances as those of impossibility. Our blood is hot: it flies swiftly along our veins, and we do not know how to brook restraint. Life is all pleasure; or rather, a concentric series of pleasure—the outer circles seemingly quite as thickly crowded with happiness as those nearer the centre. We snatch quick glances at the future; and we see the years going round and round in these charmed circles, till our brain grows giddy. And then we give ourselves up to nothing but this single object and purpose—Pleasure.

We grow out of mere boyhood—that age of continual conflict betwixt pride and sense—that time wherein we experience more mortifications than during all the rest of our lives—and we feel the first flush of manhood on our brows. The limbs are lithe, and graceful, and strong. The senses take a secret pleasure at the very consciousness of their existence. The eye is quick, and clear, and far-sighted. The ear catches the slightest sounds. A sense of strength, and so of confidence, settles down upon the whole being. There are no feats—whether physical or intellectual—for which we do not seem to have abundant capacity.

And the hopes, too, are so high; and the ambition is so exalted; and the heart is so strong!

—Oh, how much it would take of trial, to crush the strength out of the heart now!

You are looking, with an eye full of hopeful expression, out upon the world’s highway. Crowded as it is, you have no fears of there being no room for you. You are so full of self-reliance—to give it no harsher name—that you even think the world will need your services—that it can ill do without them.

—Immature fellow! You might die; and a thousand more of equal promise and hope, might die along with you; and yet your loss would never be felt by the world. There would be enough left to perform all you had in your heart resolved upon.

You think, as you pass on, and as the days begin to lag and grow more tedious, that you will need the sympathy of another, from which, as from a never-failing fountain, to feed your own. You sometimes, even now, have moments of weariness and exhaustion, although they are as fleeting as fleecy clouds; yet they suggest to you fears of weariness and exhaustion, in the battle of coming years—and you secretly resolve not to be taken unawares.

At the first, this is but a thought of expediency; or of something that looks as much to safety as to any thing else. Then it slowly and gradually takes form. Then it thrusts its bursting grain-head above the heart-soil; and it instantly becomes an existence—a living reality. Then it shoots and germinates rapidly; drawing strongly on the life for sustenance; and sucking up almost all the invigorating juices from the heart.

You are thrown off your guard by the most trifling cause—nay, by no causes at all. Your nerves become shattered, unstrung, and sadly out of tune. Your head swims with the slightest pretexts. Your eyes grow wild, and at times glassy, even to ghastliness. Your heart feels never so sad and so lonely; never so deeply in want of another’s sympathy.

You have brothers?—No—no.

Sisters?—Ah—but even that will not do. Something nearer even than brother or sister, is what this heart-hunger craves now.

And all this time—silly fellow!—your eyes are tightly shut. You see nothing. You are willing to grope your way thus in the dark. Yet if you would but exercise a little of the reason you have laid by as of no present service, in what a straight-forward way would you go at your purpose!

The sight of a pale ribbon, flirting in the wind, throws you in a panic. The faintest smile from ruby lips, makes you fairly go mad. The sudden glance of a twinkling dark eye, only intoxicates you. How the hot blood rushes up to the eyes—and then slowly ebbs back upon the heart again!

—Ah! if you could but catch the sweet music of her voice!—

Well—well; and that time at length comes along. You have waited patiently and long. You have wrestled valiantly with your bashfulness—and, at last, you are the victor.

You speak to her, whose image has so long been haunting you. She replies to you. Her voice is like the low tones of a lute.

—Was there ever such joy?—

—Again. You just feel the slight weight of her hand upon your arm. Yet you think you cannot feel it, either. You wish she was heavier. You wish she was far more of a burden on your arm.

The lace-frills on either side of her face are snowy white; but not near so white as her face itself. Nothing could be whiter than that. You look hurriedly at it, and you greatly wonder while you fear.

Lean more on me for support! you say.

She throws up a grateful glance at you, but says nothing. Yet you read in that glance, as plainly as if it had been upon a printed page—

Thank you: I lean on you now all I can!—

But, how like a feather! How fearfully fragile! She leans on you with all her weight? Then is she scarce heavier than a shadow.—

You try cheering words. You tell her how balmy airs always refresh your senses; and timidly ask her if she is not already refreshed herself. The blushing red rose that has ambitiously climbed over the wall, you pluck hastily for her—heedless of either thorns or pain. You offer it to her. She lays it upon her lips.

Alas! how fearful the contrast with that blanched face. For the moment, yours is fully as white as her own.

You speak of flowers; but your lip quivers. You know that the flower you support on your arm is too white for a rose; too pale by far for a lily; too fragile altogether for an earth-flower: and you cannot keep it out of your mind, that she must soon bloom in another soil.

—Oh, God! How the rushing thoughts come now! All your ambition—that strong cord that bound you down to earth—is snapped like tow in a blaze! You could at once burn your books, and feel no regret; if by that means these cruel fears would release your heart from the clutch of their skinny fingers! You would give up your whole life-time, day by day, and year by year—if, by this devotion, you could crush the life out of these cruel spectres!

Then comes a long day: a dark day: a dismal day. No other such day could ever have been notched in the calendar. The sun is clear—but you do not see it. You are wholly in the darkness. The soft south winds blow upon your temples, and refresh your nostrils with the fragrance they have rifled from gardens full of flowers.

—Ifshecould but feel this refreshing fragrance in her nostrils!—

You behold many faces—and many strange ones, too. These are wild briars running all over the turf you are slowly treading on; but no roses on one of them; nothing but thorns. Your eye is glassy; and it runs round hurriedly on the ring of faces that are turned to your own. Your muscles are so very rigid—you think your face is of marble.

There is a dark throng all around you. Circles of young girls—but not a smile on the face of one of them. Their eyes are cast down; and you fancy their pale lips slightly quiver. You look closer; and your own tremble and shake in spite of you.

The dull tramp of feet has ceased. There is no voice—no sound. The silence is unbroken. It hangs over you—over those about you—over the whole dense throng, like a heavy pall. You would even put out your hand and raise it from before your eyes. You feel strange sensations, as of suffocation; and you would fain speak aloud, to satisfy yourself that you still possess your senses.

—How heavy!—how oppressive!—how appalling!—

By and by, a low, faint, scarce audible sound rises on the air. It is very near you, yet it seems as if it were a very great way off. Now louder—now higher—now nearer still to you. It is as if the air were filled with low wails!

It is only a dirge for the dead.

—How your flesh creeps, as the fearfully solemn tones fall on your ears. How icy cold is the blood in your veins—and yet the beaded drops of perspiration stand upon your temples, and in your palms! How stoutly you struggle to feel that you still have your senses; and yet, in your strong agony, you fiercely bite your lip through and through, and know it not.

Alas!—what wo!—what wo!—what untold wo! No heart now, from whose depths to draw refreshing sympathy. No open ear, into which to pour the torrent of your untold grief. You cannot move from your tracks. You would not move if you could. You would not speak—nor utter so much as a faint cry. You would for ever stand there, like a lifeless block of marble.

You wonder if all the rest feel as you do; and you try to lift your eyes, to meet the gaze which you feel is upon you.

Just then, another wail of song—and your dimmed eyes drop to the ground. They behold what has been spared you till now.

They fall into a gaping grave!

—And then comes blindness again, and a swift swimming of the brain; and a sickening of all the senses; and you fear for yourself, lest you may suddenly reel and pitch into the newly-dug grave.—

Oh, God!—you pray—if this cup would but have passed from me!

Four men stand near the dark cavity. Their feet are imbedded in the gravel that has been freshly thrown out, and it rattles back again into the grave, with an unearthly echo.

The men each hold on upon a strap. They let it slip—you can distinctly hear it—through their hands. Down—down—down!

The coffin has gone down beneath the edge of the grave. It grates, and rubs, and rumbles against the rough sides of its cell, and then sinks into the silence and darkness for ever.

You hear sobs—quick, convulsive, heart-rending sobs. They are full to bursting with distress. They come from the lips of her mother—her sister—her brother.

You cannot bear it yourself. Oh, for only a single tear! Oh, for but a single heaving of the breast!

—But no—but no. No one to whom to carry all your griefs now. They must flow back upon your heart again. They must scorch it with their boiling lava. They press even now so hard upon you, that you feel fearfully self-possessed. It is almost impossible to bear it all.

Young girls step timidly up to the edge of the dark grave—snatch a look at the coffin that holds all your own heart—and cautiously throw roses down upon it.

The sight goes to your very heart. But no tears yet. What a relief would they not be?

And now you clench your hands tightly together, and bite your lip in fresh agony. You spit blood already from your mouth.

Only a prayer—a slow, solemn prayer from the reverend man of God—and all is over. The dense throng begin to turn away.

They are nearly all gone: they wait for you only.

Some one touches you gently on your arm; but you are senseless as stone. Your eyes are fixed on that remorseless grave—the greedy grave, that has in a moment swallowed up all your hopes of earthly happiness.

You only wish you could lie down, and be buried there too!

—Then you think of her again—of the time when she was in the flush of health and beauty. You remember well the very first look she gave you. It will never, you think, pass out of your memory.

You call up her tender expressions; her genial thoughts; and her many arch and graceful sayings. You think how surpassingly beautiful she seemed to you, on a certain summer morning, when you were riding together along a road lined with ruddy apple-blossoms, and vocal with the bewildering music of birds. You think, too, of the time when she gently dropped her head upon your manly shoulder, and you felt your soul full to the brim with happiness.

And then to have the crushing thought fall again like a great weight upon you—that this is all that is left of her love; and that she is carefully laid away for the rioting worm!

—Oh, for but a hot—a scalding tear! How you pray that this mighty grief will break its bounds and overflow!

This time they pull harder at your arm, and call you by name. You look up—but you comprehend nothing. You hear your name spoken—but know not by whom.

They warn you to come away. You move on reluctantly after them; but your last look is on that grave. And you think you will come back again, when night steals over the place; and watch by the side of it till she comes and sits down beside you; and then you will weave fresh roses again into garlands together.

—You are back in your little office once more. You open a book—a huge book—and lay it out upon the table before you. The events of the day you desire to make into something more real; and you bring them into close proximity with your daily duties—with the very books you have handled so often, with the clear type on the page.

Alas!—in only a moment—they become far too real to you. They roll rapidly over your brain, like yeasty waves over a drowning man.

—No ambition now—no more hope—no high thoughts for the future. You care nothing for applauding voices. They are but faint whispers, in the storm of your roaring and deafening trouble.

You pace to and fro in your little room; but no consolation. All your castles, that you had builded with such nice care, have crumbled to the ground. All the domestic bliss you had thought soon to enter upon, has suddenly become a blank. The homefires you had thought to kindle so brightly on your hearth, are all smothered and smouldering. Only dry ashes before you: no blaze; no warmth. A vacant chair stands beside your own.

You seize your hat, and rush out to breathe out your still grief upon the winds—hoping, perchance, they may waft it to her ears.

—And this is your first disappointment—your first great grief. Would to God—you say—it may be your last!

—Bubbles—all bubbles, thought I, as the wind shrieked at the crevices of the Old Garret again. When do we stop blowing them?—and when do they stop bursting?

Now, I thought I knew what Banquo meant, when he said that the earth, like the water, had bubbles;—

“And this is of them!—”

I piled fresh logs upon my fire. I felt chilled, as with a searching wind.

My eyes wandered out at the window. The sick sun no longer lay across the floor. It had gone down behind the distant hills. The swart shadows were at the casement, and were slowly creeping in.

—They had come—thought I—to throw their dark shroud about the Fancies that were brooding here. And I gladly welcomed them, too.—

I buried my face in my hands; and a secret joy stole into my heart, that the Night had finally come.

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