OSMIR.
AN ORIGINAL ESSAY.
The predecessors of Osmir were ignoble and obscure. For a race of generations they wept the conflicts of indigence, nor could the toils of application crown their efforts with advantage, nor the utmost frugality secure their labours from distress; the importance of command never owned their authority, and the radiance of splendour never shone on their dwelling. They eat of the bread of industry, they drank the waters of perseverence, they lived unnoticed and undistinguished among the children of poverty, as one atom in the sun-beam is undistinguished from another, and as the ebullitions of a current which float for a moment on its surface and die, even so they disappeared and were remembered no more.
But the tempest of malediction began at length to subside, and the severity of fortune to abate her resentment. Malevolence was wearied with undeserved persecution, and prosperity beheld the cot of wretchedness with an auspicious smile, and determined to lavish upon Osmir what she had withheld from his ancestors. He was addicted to industry, to perseverance and toil; his principles were therefore the surest basis whereon time was to erect the superstructure of gilded affluence. In a few years Osmir contemplated the fruits of his application, which animated his endeavours to advance with more hasty strides in the road of progressive grandeur; riches were accumulated, possessions were established, his habitation surpassed the pomp of oriental magnificence, and the report of his opulence was the talk of every mouth, and wafted through every region on the pinions of fame. In order to subdue the murmurs of repining adversity, and establish a position, which though it was probable was yet untrue, that the bounties of Heaven were bestowed upon deserving virtue alone, he resolved to cover his imperfections with the mantle of devotion, by which more liberty was allowed to the passions which lay lurking in secret within the chambers of his heart. Confirmed in this disposition, he was impartial and correct in his dealings with all men; the venom of slander had no influence on his character; for he trod the paths of moral rectitude with exact scrupulosity. Was propitiation ordained to avert the wrath of omnipotence?—his head was covered with the ashes of Bethulia, and his loins were mortified with the sack-cloth of Ninevah; his piety refused the sustenance which human fragility demands for her functions, and thrice a day he fell prostrate at the shrine of the God of nature. Whenever Osmir walked the streets for the purpose of recreation, he was begirt with attendants who showered gold on the multitude, and whom he exhorted in their liberality to more extensive profusion. The widow and the orphan, the desolate and the indigent, all looked for succour from the bounty of his hand, and all felt the influence of his generous condescension. Not an act that was performed escaped the voice of applause, for if Osmir was liberal, compassionate or just, his merit was instantly registered in the chronicles of fame, who with her trump of seven thunders, blew a blast round the world which was echoed through the universe.
Such was the life of a mortal whom prosperity delighted to elevate; such was his journey through the vales of desolation, uninfested with the thorns of accident or bitterness, and perfumed with the fragrance of the rose-buds fortune scattered in his way. But whilst Osmir thus employed the happy tenor of his days, now feasting on delicacies at the banquet of plenty, now dancing to the song of happiness in the bowers of ease, the iron hand of time laid its pressure on his temples, the frost of old age was expanded through his veins, and the powers of animation hastened quick to decline. It was in vain to bribe with riches the dreaded minister of death; it was in vain to protract a moment the awful period of dissolution. Summoned at the report of sickness his friends assembled in his chamber, where stretched on the bed of sorrows, human nature was to be dignified, and human weakness was to be confirmed by an illustrious portrait of expiring virtue. But how great was the excess of disappointment and surprize, when, instead of the tranquility of hope, and ejaculations of charity, their ears were assaulted with the shrieks of despair, and their eyes were affrighted with terrific wretchedness. Osmir, whose visage was deformed with terrors, as the brow of heaven with a tempest, was long unable to hearken to the remonstrances of his friends; at length, however, collecting the feeble breath, which, like the flame of a midnight taper, sat quivering on his lips, he uttered these last accents with emphatic efforts, whilst every voice was suspended in silence, and every ear was attention.
“Ye, whom vanity has influenced in the operation of good works, and whom earthly approbation has taught to exult in their merit, let the example of dying disquietudes abate the security of your confidence. Like you, I have floated on the ocean of glory, I have felt my senses enraptured with the melody of praise, and suffered my heart to receive plaudits which my conscience condemned. Like you, I was liberal, because to be liberal was to be eminent, and like you also, I estimated the advantages of heaven by terrestial enjoyments. Prosperity shed around me the partial beams of her favour, nor harboured a doubt, nor hesitated to reflect, if the object of her veneration deserved contempt or esteem. Avarice and vain glory were raging passions of my soul, to heat the furnace of these desires was the sole object of my aim; by the one I was rendered odious to the great dispenser of gifts, and by the other detrimental to the sons and daughters of men. This, by the malignity of its turpitude, which withheld what it had received with the rapacious grasp of a vulture, effaced the character of the Deity imprinted by nature in my soul; and the other by a cruelty more inhuman than murder, has awakened passions in the breast of indigence, which had slept for ever undisturbed, and for the mercenary tribute of undeserved approbation has elevated for a moment to magnificence and state, only to plunge with keener anguish into the gulphs of despair, the wretch whose heart had never sickened for the splendours of pomp, and whose days had moved calm in inglorious obscurity. Yet weak-sighted mortals viewed my actions and admired, whilst the piercing eye of the everlasting beheld their motives and abhorred. Happy should I be to amend the past by the present, or to mitigate the fury of the indignation to come. But the scymetar of vengeance hangs suspended in my view, I hear the sentence of malediction which sounds as thunder in my ears, and I feel the last horrors of agonizing despair. Insulting vanities of a faithless world! why was my heart enamoured of the graces of thy deceit? Only to look with pleasure on thy allurements, is to assume the chains of thy bondage; to seek thy gratifications is to follow pain without profit, and to persevere in thy pursuits is reprobation without hope. A few moments space will evince the dreadful truth, for a few moments space and the life of Osmir is no more. Happy shall you be, my friends, whose errors are corrected by my fatal mistake, and whose minds shall be imprinted with this important remembrance, that no action however splendid can secure the favour of the Deity, unless it correspond with good designs, which can alone stamp its value, and that though you mislead the erring judgment of man by fallacious appearances, ’tis impossible to mislead the unerring judgment of God.”
The hand of the omnipotent sealed his lips at these words, and a convulsive agony announced the approach of dissolution; his eyes were averted with horror from the flying javelin of death, and expiring his last groan, he slept the sleep of his fathers in the tomb of Mahaleel.