ELLA CORBYN.
Be it remembered that Roderick, in speaking to me on the Mount of Heidelberg Castle, said—“Her father was an Englishman.” It was true. He was the younger son of a noble English house, though Ella lived until her twentieth year unconscious of the fact. She knew he was an Englishman, she knew he had been a soldier, but of his family she knew nothing. Better far had it been for her had she remained forever in ignorance of every circumstance of her ancestral distinction, or had she had some other instructor than he who craftily sowed the seeds of pride and discontent, that he might reap a glowing harvest of the charms of a lovely woman, to her soul’s utter desolation. By night and by stealth, like the Evil One, did he sow tares among the richest grain, among a perfect luxuriance of womanly virtues; by day, too, like the husbandman when the time of the harvest comes, did he pluck up weed and fruit, did he trample on pride and virtue, and cast them forth together to wither under the scorching solstice of remorse and shame. He tore away the flower and left the stem to die. Poor, poor Ella! the only jewel of both soul’s and body’s inheritance was charmed away—what wonder then that both should droop in poverty, or that, making common friendship from common desolation, these mutual foes, the only ones religion ever made, should compromise to each other the loss of both health and principle, in fatal reconciliation and despair!
The father of Ella Corbyn, an officer in the British army, was disabled in action during the Peninsular war, and after the peace of 1815, retired to the continent, where he married the beautiful Katrina Klaus, supported himself and Katrina many years on his half-pay, until about the period of Ella’s birth, when he and the half-pay departed together. His daughter, of course, had no recollection of him, and never possessed more than the one single article of his property, a miniature on ivory, of a lady, young, but by no means beautiful. She never knew who it was; her mother could not tell her when she first gave it into little Ella’s tiny hands, but supposed it was some one of Mr. Corbyn’s family, probably a sister—and so the matter rested for the while. The neighbors could tell her scarcely any thing of her father; they had seen him when he first came into the neighborhood, but his marriage with his beautiful wife, and subsequent removal to a neighboring village, followed so quickly, that they could give no account of him, nor further description than that of his personal appearance. Of the circumstances attending his death all they knew was, that two strangers stopped one afternoon at the public-house, that Mr. Corbyn spent part of the evening with them and went home early; the next morning he was shot in a duel, but the old captain who stood his friend in the affair, thought it no business of his to inquire what the difficulty was about. He left no property of any value, and his widow supported herself and Ella on her little patrimony four years longer, when she, too, died and left the child a helpless orphan. This was the time for her uncle, the priest, to come to her assistance. He took her into his care and provided for her early education by consigning her to the Sisters of Charity in Cologne. Here she remained five years; and when her good uncle, deeming that he could, with better justice to his finances, superintend her further progress at home, took her back, she displayed so much ability and judgment that she soon reigned, a little queen, over his modest household.
Ella was in truth a lovely child. In her earlier days, when she played alone by the road-side, before the priest’s lawn, not a stranger passed but stopped to take a second look at that bright, spiritual little face, gazing half-smilingly, half-pensively, half-hidden beneath dark ribbons of straying locks. Her complexion was exceedingly fair, not blonde; her features, not classical, were petits and regular; her face sufficiently full, but playful every where—a pretty child: but from almost infancy the striking characteristic of her face was soul; never did it appear inanimate, never did it lack character—even in her sleep the marked corners of the softly-closed lips and little, dimpled brow, betokened self-possession; but when she smiled, a perfect sunshine of thought and feeling overspread her countenance, and she was irresistibly beautiful. As might be expected, the five years’ tuition she had enjoyed had developed the intellectuality of her beauty apace with the cultivation of her mind, and wherever and whenever a childish passion lay suppressed by growing religious principle, its disappearance gave place upon her countenance to the sublime, triumphant sentiment that crushed it. Mr. Klaus, or as he was termed by his parishioners, Father Klaus, was passably skilled in music; and under his systematic instruction Ella soon became the most accomplished vocalist in his country-choir. The old Count Reisach had, in church, frequently heard and appreciated the superior qualities of her voice, and after a few Sundays, called at the parsonage to pay his compliments in person to the young singer whom fame had already made so conspicuous. Little Ella, when summoned into the presence of the count, made her courtesy modestly but not diffidently, and he, charmed with the graces of her person and behavior, took pains immediately to win upon her confidence, so that she soon sang to him all her prettiest songs; whilst Father Klaus sat smiling by, perfectly happy in the joy of his triumph. When the old nobleman arose to depart, he stood with his hand upon the child’s glossy head, and declared he never saw such a singer; then, as he turned up to his gaze that little face so beaming with beauty and intelligence, he promised by the faith of his knighthood that next Sunday should see her talent well rewarded. Next Sunday afternoon arrived a large case for Ella. How she danced to see it opened! and when it was opened, how she danced and clapped her hands around one of the prettiest harps that ever was seen! This was an era in her life. Every day would see her and her uncle before the parlor window blundering over the harp-strings, often in vain attempts to puzzle out an accompaniment. It was a new instrument to him as well as to her. Time, however, and perseverance can conquer all things, and ere two months were past, Ella might be seen every evening seated beneath a linden that shaded the cottage door, gracefully sweeping her harp in accompaniment of the wildest songs of her Fatherland; anon would she lift her melting eyes to heaven as she touched the trembling chords to the softer melody of a Virgin’s evening hymn. The old priest would be absorbed in his breviary, as he paced the graveled walk; he had long since given up the race, and the little scholar had left him immeasurably behind. It was not wonderful that Ella became the admired of all the country around even at that early age: but she bore her honors so becomingly, with so much modesty and simplicity, that—wonderful to say—there was not one among her companions who did not love her. She was so gentle and so good.
In the Bower of Castle Mount, I said that Roderick told me that Father Klaus was aware of the growing attachment between him and Ella, almost as soon as themselves. In this, two circumstances may seem strange—first, that she, educated, accomplished, admired, courted, should fancy a poor, plain, hardy country-lad like Roderick; and secondly, that her uncle should approve and encourage her in such a fancy. Roderick’s family was very humble, scarcely above a peasant’s condition; but in this regard she placed herself upon a perfect equality with him, and never gave the matter much consideration. The truth is, she had loved him with a childish love before she knew that there existed any other. The first summer after she returned from Cologne, regularly every Saturday afternoon or festival eve, would he come to help her gather flowers for the altar. This office of decking the altar is only performed by the hands of virgins, and when one enters into the state of matrimony she no longer takes her place among the servants of the sanctuary. Our young pair (he was but four years older than she) would wander off to the woods together, and Roderick would climb the highest rocks for moss, or some stray flower blooming alone; and carry the heavy basket. At times he would strip off his shoes, and, Paul and Virginia-like, stagger with his beloved burden across the streams. When evening approached, he would mock the squirrels, the partridges, the wood-robins and the katy-dids, and put the whole forest in tune before its time, to Ella’s ineffable delight. Often, when he had doffed his jacket and thrown it down for her to sit upon, would he recline upon his arm, his hat drawn over his brow, pensive and melancholy; and sometimes a tear would trickle down, as the truth forced itself upon him, that, despite their intimacy, fortune, and fortune only, had placed an insurmountable barrier between him and the idol of his thoughts and dreams. He would beg her to love him, and she would readily answer that she did love him.
“Better than all the other boys?”
“Yes, better than all the other boys.”
Still he was not satisfied. He felt that she did not mean the same kind of love that he did; he was doubtful even if she knew any thing about it. How should he ascertain? He could not ask her if she would marry him: no, that would be breaking the ice of a new and unfathomable current, and he might lose the tenure of the ground he then possessed; besides, he felt a secret, indefinable shame, and could not proffer the words. He looked very wo-begone. Ah! he had it at last.
He did not mean like, he meant, did she love him better than all the other boys?
Yes, she loved him better; she said so before.
The secret of his new discovery was burning; he blushed. At last it came.
Did she love him better than all the girls?
The poor boy was breathless.
Yes, she thought she loved him better than all the girls?
The mighty weight had turned out a feather; he knew no more than he did before. Many a time did the poor fellow try to hit the mark from afar off, but always with the same success. He persevered with the same affectionate devotion, her very slave; and it was not until several years after, when he became assured of more than one suitor’s rejection, that he summoned courage to address her plainly, and received an answer to his heart’s content.
That Father Klaus approved the betrothal of Roderick and his niece, may not seem wonderful. He knew him to be the son of pious parents, a boy of good principle and good capacity. He had often seen at his father’s house, pasteboard horses, cows, cottages, and even pencil sketches, that he amused himself with, when once recovering from a severe illness. When the boy recovered he frequently brought into request his newly-discovered capacity, and improved very much in his rough sketching. He had no idea of prosecuting his ability any further. All this was not lost on the priest, who felt assured that he could command the necessary influence to enter Roderick in the academy of Heidelberg, and enable him to become the master of an honorable and lucrative art. He knew that capacity is more unfailing, and possesses more resources than wealth; he knew Roderick’s substantial worth and undoubted probity, and felt that he had neither right nor inclination to thwart his niece’s predilection.
It was during one of these flower-hunting excursions that Roderick and Ella first conceived the idea of weaving the bower on the Castle Mount. They were accustomed frequently to extend their rambling to the ruined castle, in the old garden of which a variety of flowers were still cultivated by the guardian of the place; and by the time they had clambered up to the terrace on their return, were fain to sit down and repose awhile. They soon began to feel a partiality for the place; and no wonder, for there was not so fine a view, even to childhood’s eyes, to be found in the whole country. Their childish hands there twined the bower whose strange demolition I, in after years, witnessed. There they spent many of their happiest hours; there they first plighted their troth; there they renewed it over and over again; and there poor Roderick first saw the—beginning of the end.
It were useless to attempt to say how proud the poor boy was of his betrothed, and of her accomplishments. The fact that he never felt a pang of jealousy during four long years, frequently under most trying circumstances, that his trust in his beloved never for a moment wavered till his heart was wrung, and his brain was crazed that eventful evening at the bower, loudly testifies to his ingenuousness, and the priest’s correct estimate of the man. A neighboring Curé, who had in former years been a fellow-student of Father Klaus in Italy, frequently rode over to spend half a day. On such occasions Ella was entertained with metaphysical disquisitions, which, unknown to her entertainers, her deep, psychological nature eagerly drank in, in draughts as great as her capacity would admit. To their theological discussions she was a silent, attentive listener; subjects which her uncle never upon any other occasion spoke of in her presence, were argued with an earnestness that made him forgetful of the indirect injury they might work upon her mind. She began to propound questions to herself, and to attempt the solution of them, of herself. She remembered many delicate cases of morality determined by learned heads; pondered over the principles upon which those decisions were based; constructed new cases for the application of similar principles; in short, became a blundering casuist before she knew it. A new light was dawning upon her mind; she saw, for the first time, that laws can be stretched to very tension, and not broken. She did not reflect that principle is firm as a rock, and lasting and unchanging as eternity itself—that there is no going and returning there. She knew not that he who ranges about to strain the utmost limits of law, has wandered far from the moral centre of gravity—principle. She knew not that we do not always stand guiltless in the forum of our own conscience, though no other living being dare censure us, even in his inmost mind. The world may judge a man for what he does and dares; he alone, for what he does not fear. Ella was precisely in that unfortunate state of mind, in which one knows just too much or too little; in which a certain degree of knowledge necessarily requires more to prevent its running astray. There is a degree of pride which renders one ridiculous, contemptible; a greater degree checks its manifestation—governs it. One is vanity; the other despises vanity. Such a relation did Ella’s science bear to true philosophy as vanity does to pride;—and she played with it. One must, one will destroy the other. Had her uncle known her infatuation, one word would have dispelled every shadow of it.
Oftentimes the college friends would turn their conversation to days long past, to reminiscences of their sojourn in Italy. The lore of classic and romantic associations of that wonderful country; the graphic illustrations of life, and scenes, and elegance, and delights, in that delicious clime, enchanted their young listener. Dissertations on the political changes there enacting; surmises of changes impending, necessarily drew forth a detail of social, historic and scenic minutiæ, that expanded her young mind to poetic conceptions; distance lent its enchantment to the view, and her rich fancy glowed with the beauty of its imaginings. A longing, secret and subtle at first, then craving and irrepressible, to taste the sweets of forbidden fruit, took possession of her. She was betrothed at that time; she knew that with Roderick she could not enjoy those pleasures; she ought and did know that this longing would breed discontent;—hence the subtle manner of its entering on possession of her heart. Long she repelled it; principle forbade it; her reasonings were very nice; and lax as she may have become speculatively, she nourished a high-minded honor that would have done credit to any child of Adam. Soon she thought it no harm to enjoy the victory she had, with so great an effort, gained over herself; frequently she did so. Then her sophistry came to the attack; she might have regrets in secret, she thought, and they might not be at all detrimental to her husband’s happiness; hers would be the only loss, the only pain, if pain there were;—and she let her longing take its way. Still, she loved her betrothed as much as ever, none the less on that account; it is true she became a shade more thoughtful, not quite so light-hearted as she was, but she did not notice any change. If her heart lost any of its feeling, her harp did not. She took it more rarely; her touch was bolder, and still more delicate; a beautiful originality undulated more in her modulations, and she played more without the words than she ever did before. Her spirit was more self-dependent. There was something of the wild energy of insidious despair.
About this time the younger Reisach was summoned from England to attend his father, who was very ill. Soon the good old count died, and his heir entered upon the title and estates, in a manner so becoming and consistent with filial affliction, that every one said the young count was quite equal to the old one. The rougher field sports he had been accustomed to in England were now abandoned, and he lent his mind to the more quiet and refined German tastes. Study, poetry, music, painting, sculpture, divided his attention; he aimed at conciliating and winning all, the little as well as the great, and no undue ostentation had place in the details of his establishment. Regular and attentive at church, he gained the confidence and esteem of pastor as well as flock. Refined and delicate in his speech, no virtuous peasant-girl shrunk from his attention whenever he thought proper to bestow it. To the reunions at the mansion the Curé had a standing invitation; and in return, the young nobleman strolled out upon many a welcome call at the parsonage. It would be harsh, it would be unjust, to say that Count Frederick commenced his attentions there with any deliberate design of wrong. Ella’s harp and voice were frequently brought into request for his passing entertainment, and he was not sparing of his eulogiums upon them. He soon began to experience deeper and more lasting sensations than the momentary pleasure she intended; no one could do otherwise. In his presence Ella conversed little, but that little was full of refinement, of thought and taste. He felt it difficult to smother his feelings or restrain them; and although he strictly maintained the distinction in their conditions, in his intercourse with her, and knew that a violent death must await all his more tender sentiments toward her, still he was unwilling to deprive himself of the pleasure he enjoyed in her presence. He was deeply in love with her, and he knew it; yet supposed that, like many other impressions he had experienced, it would soon pass away, that he might as well enjoy it whilst it lasted;—no one would ever be the wiser in the end.
It was before, and about this time, that Roderick and Ella were accustomed to spend their hours, and almost days together, at the bower. She had grown into womanhood, had entered into her twentieth year; and it was on her last birth-day, that she and Roderick had knelt before her uncle, to receive his blessing on their betrothal. Roderick had finished his course in the academy, and had already acquired his quota, both of fame and money, in painting. Ella sincerely loved him; and despite the admiration she felt for the young count, would have been supremely happy could she have been promised the realization of her imaginary enjoyments by his side. She loved him more when in his presence than when away. Absence threw no enchantment around him; it was in the sunshine of his tenderness and devotion that she felt the full glow of her affection for him; at other times she would feel the chilly mingling of her regrets. Had they been married then, they would have been very happy.
I said, Count Frederick deemed his love for Ella to be harmless, and that he felt no scruples in giving full play to it. It was only when, in his frequent rides, he caught a glimpse of the lovers enjoying their honest happiness under their own vine and fig-tree, as one might say, that the demon of envy, then of jealousy, took possession of him. There are few who can look unmoved on the unalloyed happiness of others, nor feel one pang of envy; that can see the appropriation by another of a secretly-coveted object, even an object one has no right or title to, or expectation of, and feel no sting of jealousy. Thus was it with Count Frederick: from the window of a mansion he frequently visited in Heidelberg, he could look right up to the bower. In the recess of that window he frequently sat; and with glass in hand, following with his eye every movement of the doomed pair, he conjured up a host of demons to torment him. He knew that her faith was given to another; he was aware and resolved that he could not marry her; yet, the long and constant dwelling of his thoughts upon her, the enlistment of his feelings and affections for her, seemed, in his disordered mind, to invest him with an indefinable title; he felt the outrage done to it, and casting full rein to both anger and passion, vowed to wreak his vengeance on what he thenceforward dreamed to be his mistress, and her lover.
Alone, and in secret, did he plot his plans to circumvent them. Lost now to every feeling of shame and honor, he repelled no scheme, however base, that presented itself; and though the better and more manly exercise of his faculties drooped and withered under his scorching passion, a deeper, deadlier cunning than he ever knew before, sweltered and forged unceasingly the most crafty implements for his hellish purpose. He would trust not an iota to the assistance of other hands, but assumed the whole burden of contriving and executing upon himself. Not a breath did he breathe of his infamous design to human ears. His demeanor in public possessed all the semblance of urbanity and good feeling that he once felt; but his interior Vulcan reposed not from his craft. Every piece of information that he could unsuspectingly acquire concerning either poor Roderick or Ella, he stored up and revolved in his aristocratic mind, digesting it with his moral venom, as a viper would revolve and masticate with poison its loath-some morsel. He learned from many sources, partially from herself, the particulars of Ella’s history, as far as was known; and contrasting several portions with certain circumstances that had fallen under his observation when in England, was astonished at the result of his machinations, which now doubled upon himself, to involve him too in their fatal entanglement. Thus far he had stood apart, aloof, as it were, upon a height above his contemplated victims. His baser passions had thrown aside the drapery of virtue and honor which once veiled the lovely woman from the gaze of rude thought, and he could look down upon her very graces as an object of his intended prey; but when the artful interlocking of his web and woof turned up to his astonished eyes, in gathered forms, the whole and real picture of his contemplated deed; when his study brought to light the astounding fact that Ella could claim close kindred with the proudest titles of the British peerage, his craven spirit of profligacy slunk away, for the time awed, but not quelled, by the air of reverence, and veneration that breathed upon it. At its return, elevated, softened, warmed, but not purified, by its admixture of romance, he felt his sternest anger giving way, his haughtiest pride tottering, his very soul melting into admiration and love; he reeled from his position aloof, and writhed a whole burnt offering among the other victims to his passion. His subtle ingenuity soon brought to the crucible the extraordinary change in his sentiments toward the unconscious girl, and the analysis did not dispel the new charm that enveloped her. He saw it was perfectly natural, and the only fruit of his discovery was a resolution to bring the charm to operate upon her own mind—it would open the avenue to a secret discontent with her present position, unfold a vast and snare-beset field to the vagaries of a romantic imagination, and bring her feelings to a sympathetic appreciation of the fellowship of caste that existed between her and himself.
Full of this dark resolve, Count Frederick went forth alone one afternoon. He had designedly employed the unsuspecting Roderick to restore some old paintings that had accumulated the dust of ages. They were in a studio in town. There Roderick had labored busily all the day, and when evening drew near he was still detained by some management of the count, in order to give his lordship the opportunity for his coveted interview with Ella. He had learned at what hour she would probably be at the appointed rendezvous, and timed his evening excursion accordingly. It was a beautiful afternoon in April. From the castle heights, the sun was seen slowly creeping down the skies of France, and the changing tints of the glittering clouds, were gorgeously reflected by the distant waters of the Rhine, and the intermediate mirrors of the Neckar. Villages, hamlets, cottages, spread over the plain, rolled their black smoke in heavy volumes against the green mountains, about whose feet the lights and shadows already had begun to sketch fantastic tableaux. How naturally did the words of the Mantuan poet’s pastoral seem to spring to Count Frederick’s lips, as he stood within a few paces of the bower, gazing abroad upon the scene, observed by the startled inmate, and feigning not to observe again. Ella understood perfectly well the words of the text, and as they were feelingly and eloquently poured forth, as though spontaneously, by the handsome youth, as he threw himself upon the turf, lost her surprise in the appropriate beauty of the poet’s effusion—
Hic tamen hac mecum poteris requiescere nocte,
Frondes super virides; sunt nobis mitia poma,
Castaneæque molles, et pressi copia lactis.
Et jam summa procul villarum culmina fumant,
Majoresque codunt altis de montibus umbrae.
The last two lines he rapturously repeated several times, then turning his eyes, as though perchance toward the bower, he hastily arose, and in a moment stood blandly before Ella, apologizing for his intrusion, and in the same breath requesting the favor of one of her pastoral songs. She challenged him for a repetition of the verses, and he uttered them in so off-hand, theatrical a way, that they both burst into a laugh. The ice was broken. Never before had he so far descended from his dignity in her presence. There and alone with him, she felt the charm of this novelty, and bandied words with him willingly, for she supposed that Roderick would soon come, and she thought it would be fine to pique his jealousy a little, only to reward it the better afterward with the sweetness of perfect tranquillity. He gradually drew forth from her own lips what little she knew of her father’s history and family, and artfully beguiled away the key to her enjoyments and her regrets. He had been intimate, very intimate, he told her, with a nobleman in England, whom he now knew must be her uncle. The identity of her father’s history, even to his fall in a duel, with that of a brother of Lord B.; the same name, even a perceptible resemblance of Ella to him, rendered his assurance doubly sure. Then followed many particulars which completely set Ella’s willing mind at rest in regard to the nobility of her parentage.
So far, all was well. As he anticipated, the disclosure was to her astounding and pleasing at the same time. The shadows of incredulity that for a moment hovered before the citadel of her happiness, flitted away before the march of pleasurable emotions. Her first feelings were those of gratitude, and in the liveliness of her satisfaction, as he poured into her ears the minuter details of her family history, she could have smiled almost any thing, looked almost any reward for him who bore her the welcome tidings. She divined the emotion that quivered on his lip, fathomed the eloquence that sparkled in his eye, suffusing his whole face with its light, and trembled, trembled like an aspen, with momentary terror: but, as his glowing speech expatiated on the time-honored and world-worshiped glory and privileges of the noblesse, the spirit of high-toned chivalry that begot, that chose, that ever ornamented the knightly order of Christendom, her terrors flew to the winds, and left her trembling frame a play-thing in the frenzied hands of wilder discord than her bosom had ever known. She no longer shunned his gaze; their eyes met again and again; a shadow, as of a dream, passed over her faculties; phantoms of law and duty and religion sprang up, to clamor for their rights; hastily she breathed an acquiescence, and then spurned them away as phantoms, as disturbers of the serenity of her soul. For the first time in all her life she felt the thrill of passion; the sorcerer beheld it, and closer and closer did he wind his web around them both, until, convulsed by the mighty battery within, he leaped from his seat, folded her resistless form in her arms, imprinted one passionate kiss upon her lips, and disappeared down the precipice.
When she recovered a little self-possession, her mind soon comprehended all; she felt and knew that passion had taken possession of her, and that love was gone; but never for a moment did she advert to any fault of her own. If conscience arose, she hastily repressed it, and despite what she inmostly felt, declared in her own mind that she could not see, measuring by laws of right and possession, wherein she had transgressed. Then stepped in pride. She transgressed! Oh! that one idea condemns the cause. She, who never had sinned, even in thought, against womanly decorum! yet, though her face burned with indignation at the thought, it was her own unerring conscience that accused, and against which she turned in so virtuous a scorn. Poor Ella! the great sin was already done. The loose rein she had given to her ideas, had permitted the birth, the growth, the manifestation of what she felt, consequently the encouragement of Count Frederick’s excited passion. What would strict principle have done? Trembled, and crushed the serpent in the egg. It had glided in and twined itself around her bosom so gently and unconsciously that she scarcely felt its presence; so brilliant and changing were its deadly eyes in their repose, so yielding its soft and graceful neck, that, trusting to its tameness, she nursed its strength and venom there. At once she felt a tightening of the coils. Who, but one willfully deceived, would not have felt death! She did not; she saw no death, but felt she could not cast her visitant aside, felt that she might have to struggle on and bear her burden triumphantly along. What harm if no positive evil came of it? It was her own burden; might she not bear it if she could? Thus she beguiled her better reason; she did not reflect that whosoever loveth danger shall perish in it.
The reaction from the state of excitement she had been in, was powerful, and she was just recovering from it, when Roderick came and found her at the bower, “pensive and melancholy,” as he termed it; and, since they could not enjoy the evening together, tenderly and affectionately led her home. This was the first night of Roderick’s grief and Ella’s unhappiness. One great effort would then have shaken off her enemy forever, and restored the serenity of her mind; but she did not see the necessity, the obligation; it could be done at any time. Her pillow was bedewed with her tears, but she attributed them to the agitation of her feelings. All night, that one moment of delirium was prolonged to hours in rapturous dreams. She awoke weary and pale. She was not responsible for her dreams, she reasoned; probably she was not; but I would not answer for the pleasure of them, for whenever her broken slumbers were dispelled by consciousness, through the night, she acknowledged the unlawfulness of dwelling upon that pleasure then, and she courted sleep as a means to enjoyment in irresponsibility. Her harp lay untouched all day. Her daylight reveries were but shadows of her midnight dreams; more she did not dare. To her uncle’s somewhat anxious inquiries she replied, that she had perspired so, all night;—it was true. The next evening was quite as charming as the preceding one. There was no reason why she should not take her accustomed stroll to the bower; it was her castle, as it were; she had built it, and it was her almost daily haunt; she saw no obligation to discontinue her visits there; if any one came, it would be his intrusion, not hers. Besides, if she did not meet Roderick there, he would be hurt, and probably suspect her of growing indifference. Step by step had she advanced so far in blinding herself, as to be deceived by such a transparency; in the days of her innocence it would have shocked her. Her very duty to her betrothed she converted into a pretext to betray him. Still, call her not traitress. Like one who begins to believe his oft-told lie to be the truth, a penalty for his deceit, she more than half trusted her shallow sophistry. No human power now, no stand of honor or pride, can save her now; she has let the enemy within the citadel to parley, and whilst she prates in whispered, cowering tones, of future peace or victory, he quietly possesses himself of every avenue and stronghold, and nothing less than power divine can lend the least effective aid. Will she ask it? Well would she wish to do so, but the mighty effort of instantaneous renunciation (the only condition for God’s help) is too great; and with an ungrounded, forlorn, despairing hope, she still thinks some impossibility may come to pass, to save her soul. She went earlier than usual, and long sat trembling in her accustomed seat. When at last Count Frederick appeared, she was not surprised; but an unaccountable dread seized her, and she would have fled, had he not gently detained her. She stopped; he saw all at a glance, he knew every thought that was agitating her mind; he understood her sudden impulse, that it was a last effort of expiring virtue, and he understood, too, that he possessed the power to overrule it. He knew it was an issue of life or death, and that either way, he held the hat in his hand. Neither spoke. He stood, holding the unresisting arm, gazed on her shrinking form, her imploring eyes, her lips parted in sudden terror, upon her every feature yielding in despair to the agony of a struggle for her very soul; the loud beating of her heart struck upon his ear with unearthly sound; he thought of the affrighted lamb before the altar, felt that in his hand gleamed the keen knife his beautiful victim shrank from; his eyes drank in her exceeding loveliness, his heart melted, and he burst into tears. He sat upon the bench, half turned from her, his elbow resting on the trellis, and his face buried in his handkerchief, overcome by the storm of his feelings. At this moment, the better nature in both, had a strong game. There is something fearful to behold when a strong man bends his head to tears. When a woman weeps, it is the drops from a fleeting cloud, an April shower, or, at times, the ceaseless pouring of a settled rain—a deluge; but there is the flash, and the storm, and the fitful blast that groans and yaws, and bursts through all control. No woman can pass on and not feel the cloak of her human sympathy draw close around her, as if to impel her to go forth and pour the unction of her tenderness upon the troubled heart. And there Ella stood beside him; one hand lay gently on his quivering shoulder, whilst the other pushed back the scattered curls from his noble brow. Oh, what a powerful language there is in the human heart, without words! In all this interview, since first they met, neither had spoken a word. It was a pantomime in real life; yet, what terrible converse they had held! Neither had ever, in all their lives, spoken to the other one word of love; and such a scene!
“I intended,” said he, at length, as he pressed her hand to his lips; “I intended to beg your forgiveness for my extreme rudeness on yesterday. I was overcome, beside myself; and now, when I would utter the words of my supplication, they stick in my throat. I am tossed like a leaf, before you; and here I sit trembling like a child, beneath your touch. I feel in my inmost heart the sweetness of your sympathy. I go, and but for the treasure of that sweetness my heart would wither in its desolation. I dare not speak to you of love, for your troth is another’s. At least, in mercy, vouchsafe to me one glimpse of the Elysium denied me!” He folded her once more to his heart; indistinctly she heard in spasmodic whispers: life—soul—dearest—and he was gone. The nobler nature was triumphant; and Ella, overcome by his generosity and her now unquenchable love, wept long and bitterly. She turned from side to side in her loneliness, gazed into the heavens, upon the wide landscape, until the tears blinded her. Then she bent her head upon the trellis where he had leaned; her dark hair hung in loose locks upon the branching vines, and she moaned in very bitterness.
That night she thought of Roderick, and for a moment compared him with Count Frederick. What a contrast! His very name, his only inheritance from his forefathers, was essentially plebeian, rustic. Ackerman! Roderick Ackerman, the husbandman! She had never thought of that before! She, the daughter of a noble house, could never bear that name! Her dreams were not those of pleasure only, for Roderick stood all night, a horrid phantom, between her impatient love and its unlawful object. Next morning she did not quiet her mind with the reflection, that she was not responsible for her dreams; and her midnight dreams, pleasure and displeasure, were her daylight reveries.
Roderick’s society still possessed a singular charm for her. In his presence she became more like her former self. She still loved him with a calm, settled love, which nothing on earth could ever destroy. When he turned his mournful gaze toward her, there was so much of tenderness and truth, so much of ill-concealed anxiety and trust, that tears of anguish and of pity would gather upon her eyelids, and she would turn her head, to brush them away unseen. There was no selfishness in her love for him; it was virtuous and sincere, unshaken; yet, in his absence her thoughts continually recurred to the all-absorbing passion that possessed her. Day after day would she go to the bower, but she found no pretext now, in duty to Roderick, for she always returned before it was time for him to be there, and he never knew she went. He said to me on the mount, when relating this portion of his history—“She never went to the bower any more.” Count Frederick did not come again. He secluded himself at home more closely than ever—and let us not trespass upon the sanctuary of a penitent heart. Poor Ella might have been seen day after day, as evening drew near, wandering alone over the hill, watching, with intense anxiety, the path which Count Frederick would take in case he should go out upon his evening walk. A mournful, restless spirit of solitude she seemed, ever wending her silent way among the evening shadows, never venturing upon the sun-lit green. At last her daring steps would turn toward the manor, and she would take its circuit, on her way to the bower. Once she passed, muffled and trembling, through the very lawn. O! could she have seen herself as others would have seen her, she would have sunk into the earth for very shame. How strange—that he who had been the ruthless tempter, in heart and mind the fell destroyer, should now, whilst retiring in virtuous seclusion, become the tempted! How strange, how passing strange—that she, poor victim, should become tempter, persecutor! Yet so it was: and such is man.—And such is woman—when she falls.
One day, from his chamber window he beheld her retreating form slowly disappearing in a little copse near the manor. The whole truth flashed like lightning on his mind: that he was not the only tempter; that not with him lay the damning guilt he had supposed; that he was sought; that she could be gained. The whirlwind of passion came again. The reflection that he had too unjustly accused himself, stifled every breath of remorse; and he went forth, in heart a demon, worse than ever. He soon gained her, and heaven-attesting vows were exchanged of never-dying love. All that was honorable and fair for man to do he promised. Their interviews thenceforward were frequent and clandestine; her health was failing in a perpetual struggle, and matters were drawing to a crisis. She never told her uncle what was done; she feared, she felt in her own heart, that it was not honest love. Count Frederick, I said, had promised all that was honorable for man to do; that promise he did not intend to keep. The more he thought over it, the more fully was he persuaded that she was not sanguine of its observance. After a lengthy consideration his plot was laid, and he appointed a time with Ella for an interview at the bower. It was Roderick’s eventful evening, the one he alluded to when he said: “I could not resist a moment’s visit to the bower, for, since pleasure there seemed henceforth to be forbidden fruit to me, I longed for a moment, even of its pain.” They were both punctual to the appointment. Count Frederick was paler than usual; she noticed his agitation, and he, to cover it, took out his Virgil and read her several beautiful passages. He turned to the Æneiad, and wrought upon her mind and her sympathies with the loves and sorrows, the struggles and the fall, of the queenly Dido. She caught the incendium, and as he repeated over and over, with increasing gusto, the more inflammatory passages, in the words of the poet, like Dido herself she sat “pendesque iterum narrantis ab ore.” At last, as he closed the book, he gazed intently on her, trembling with the very burden of his task. He took her hand; she smiled.
“Ella,” said he, “dost thou love me?”
She took the book, and marked a passage with her pencil. He read:
“Est mollis flamma medullas,
Interea et tacitum vivit sub pectore vulnus.”
The glow of her features attested the truth. He continued:
“Wouldst thou be happy to wander the wide world over by my side, to revel in the gayeties of Paris, to stand amid the awful ruins of Athens and Palmyra, to tread the hallowed spots of Palestine, and bask in the sunny skies of Italy?”
“With thee and honor, anywhere.”
“Ella, thou hast a picture; let me see it? Who gave it thee?”
“My mother.”
“When?—dost thou remember?”
“Yes, when I was a tiny child. She gave it in my hands and said it was all I had from my dear father but his name.”
“Thou hast his name. Dost thou know, Ella, who this is?”
“I never knew.”
“I know. I have seen her: she is living yet, and bears but a slight resemblance now to this young face.”
“Tell me of her; is she my father’s sister?”
“No; but wouldst thou know indeed?”
“Tell me.”
“Listen then—thy father’s wife.”
She sat stupefied; her bosom heaved convulsively.
“Couldst thou marry Roderick, now?”
She started to her feet. “Fiend! I understand you,” she shouted. Her eyes flashed, her form dilated, her outstretched arm quivered with the strength of her indignation; whilst her melodious voice raised in tones of inspiration, rang through the evening stillness with the poet’s terrible imprecation:
“Sed mihi vel tellus optem prius ima dehiscat,
Vel Pater Omnipotens adigat me fulmine ad umbras,
Pallentes umbras Erebi, noctemque profundam”—
she turned away, and sinking upon one knee, raised her clasped hands and streaming eyes—
“Ante pudor quam te violem, aut-tua-jura re-solvam.”
And she fell lifeless upon the ground. A step was heard. The count launched himself down the precipice. Roderick came, saw, and flew off on the wings of the wind, with a crushed heart and raving brain.
Ella’s first act of returning consciousness was to recognize herself reclining in the arms of Count Frederick. The swaying to and fro, the heavy lurch, the crackling stones, the dashing tramp, soon brought home to her mind the terrible certainty that she had departed from Heidelberg forever. How far she was away, whither she was going she knew not: she only knew that she was lost beyond redemption. Her body and her mind were powerless, paralyzed in utter imbecility: she could not, would not will: but as the reality of the world and her existence in it stole on her awakening senses, every power of her soul rushed to the view of her prostration; her heart struggled in very anguish, her reason staggered from side to side in the mazes of a darksome labyrinth; night had gathered around, and heavy dews swept through the carriage windows; terrors, strange and indefinable, fell like a death chill on her sickened soul, and she clung with frenzied grasp to the form beside her. Words of love, of courage, of hope, breathed into her ears another life, and she abandoned her whole being to the power of its inspiration. Ere morning dawned they were far away, and the second nightfall beheld them in Cologne.
Before I proceed any further, let me make a little necessary explanation concerning Ella’s picture. What Count Frederick said concerning her “father’s wife,” he knew to be utterly false. The miniature was that of a lady Mr. Corbyn had been affianced to in England, and whom he forsook for another, more to his liking. As the engagement had become notorious, and he felt the extent of the injury he was indicting upon her and her family, he retired into as great obscurity as possible, on the continent, and married Katrina. Ere many years he was discovered in his retreat, and the arrival of the strangers in his village, his fall in a duel with a brother of his former betrothed, were consequent upon that discovery. Ella’s birth was honorable as birth could be. The mystery which hung about the picture had prepared her mind to become the easy dupe of a well-told lie.
Many days Ella lay consuming beneath the fire of a raging fever, whilst a sad and anxious watcher, night and day, moved ever silently about the darkened chamber. This was the most trying period of Count Frederick’s life. Ever and anon the low murmuring of troubled dreams would fall like heavy curses on his cowering heart; and as he would gently move aside the curtains and bend his ear to feel the parching breath, words fraught with the odor of youthful innocence would ascend. Now the light of childhood’s golden hours would beam softly on her mind, and smiles of love and tenderness and purity would gently play about her mouth, dimpling her beautiful features with holy pleasure as she would whisper: “Yes, dear mother, Ella knows, listen—‘God keep little Ella from all sin.’ ” Then there would be some uneasy motion, some momentary contortion, as from a sudden pang, and then a low, trembling sigh, scarce rising with its burden of despair. O, how he shook in very agony! Then all was still. Her degradation, though she was unconscious of its existence, seemed, like an unknown and unfelt medicinal application, to extend, by some inappreciable virtue of its own, its subtle influence unceasingly through the system. Soon, names most familiar in her joyous girlhood, brief snatches of song or hymn that none but ecstatic moods of happiness or devotion ever called forth from her stores of melody; even the name of Roderick, accompanied with a tender relaxation and softened whisper, rose up like threatening spectres in Count Frederick’s night of mental darkness. He gazed and gazed on her pallid loveliness, watched every quiver of her parted lips, and could have rejoiced in the life of their occasional smile or tranquillity; but, that the hidden, lightless eyes, and the ever “chill, changeless brow”—for it never changed in all her emotions—appalled with the coldness of some fearful death: and he turned away. He would have prayed, if he could, for that poor being, but his heart was void; it was his brain that ached, for he knew that all that melancholy ruins had fallen from a sublime structure by his fell utterance of a lie.
It behooves me now to hasten this lengthy history to a close. As soon as possible our wanderers hastened off to Paris, to restore their sunken spirits amid the pleasures and gayeties of the beau monde. There it was I saw them, as they took their evening airing along the Champs Elysées. They had been there several months, and poor Ella’s looks and manner both told the inefficiency of worldly pleasure, to lighten the heavy burden of a guilty soul. The gayety of France was like the smart of sparkling wine on an ulcerated sore, and away they wandered into distant lands. The still, death-like aspect of the Grecian shores seemed like the languor of cold sympathy with her own silent sorrow; and as the startling semblance rose up before her, and she viewed in every phase and feature that all that was elevating and life-giving was passed away, she shuddered at her own kindred desolation. She would venture upon the rocky cliffs and gaze into the troubled sea, where—as now in her own mind—the lights of Heaven were pictured in flitting and uncertain forms; she would look abroad upon the unspotted blue, where not a coming or departing sail broke the distinct horizon, and she would reflect how the powers of her soul were mouldered away, and brought no more back to her enjoyment the riches and the fruits of other climes, the luxuries from nature’s and religion’s overflowing bounty. Then she would wander upon the lonely strand, and the splashing of the journeyed waters, whose tempest roar was spent in low, last murmurs at her feet, reëchoed the wild moanings of a dying spirit. Oh! how she sat and cried. Had her tears been those of repentance and return, they would have hallowed for ever a spot that was only classic, and her groans would have lifted the vault of Heaven; but the bitter drops, wrung by degradation and despair, were swept away by the encroaching wavelets—and the sighs were borne afar by the winds, to swell that everlasting ROMOR of anguish that never reaches God.
In the Roman Colosseum, the blood-stained arena of the martyrs seemed to burn her very feet, and she looked not upon a stone, nor an herb, in that sanctuary of Christendom but returned a look of withering reproach, as if by express command of Heaven. There was no peace. Like Jonah, had she tried to flee from the wrath of God, and find ease and security in sin; and now that she found it not, she longed for death—but dared not court it—as the oblivion of all her being.
Again our fugitives sought the resources of Paris. Ella was fast failing in health, and both knew that she must soon die. She possessed no longer any gayety, and Count Frederick secretly rejoiced in her decline, as the only means of ridding himself of a burden now become almost insupportable. Still, her death would not have occurred without inflicting upon him one severe pang; for her intellect, increasing in beauty and brilliancy as the body faded, held him in a spell that seemed to involve his very life. A short time after their arrival in Paris, the revolution of February put all Europe in a commotion. It was a God-send to Count Frederick, for a field now opened to him for the employment of his faculties; something at last, if not repose, at least a breathing spell to ease him in his tired struggle with a sleepless, unflagging remorse. He plunged into the under-revolutionary current, heedless of whence it flowed or where it came to light. All manner of impure ultraïsm gathering in its way, formed the nuclei of innumerable vortices that eddied and whirled at every turn of his onward progress, hurling him along with strange fits of semi-delirium, until the following June, when the whole concentrated power bubbled in red volumes to the surface, and the streets of Paris ran with human blood. Count Frederick became a willing tool in crafty hands, and shrank not from offices of most imminent danger. All night and all day did he lend his wealth, his influence and his labor to the construction of barricades for the defense of the populace: he became a leading spirit, and on several occasions his sword was foremost in the fray. His attire, his repose, his ordinary food, all was forgotten. Once he stood tired and worn, within a new barricade not far from the barrière St. Martin; his hat and coat were thrown aside, his dress all torn and begrimed with sweat and dirt; in one hand he held a naked sword, whilst the other grasped the stock of a pistol that was still unmoved from his leathern belt. Upon this arm hung poor Ella, still clinging through toil and danger to him she could not but love. Her bonnet was thrown aside; a soiled cambric handkerchief tied beneath the chin, had kept in check her unbound hair, but it was now in places loose and disheveled; one dark lock swung around her neck, and as it reposed upon her bosom, the curled, purple extremity appeared in fearful contrast with the snowy field it lay upon. Woman to the last, she bore upon her person many a mark of blood, and many dying lips within the last few hours, had breathed a blessing upon the unknown and beautiful angel of mercy that bent above them. Upon a stove, that had been carried into the middle of the street, stood a popular demagogue, gesticulating wildly, and thundering anathemas against the provisional government, that were horrible for ears to listen to; whilst around him stood some hundreds of the armed and excited populace, venting, at almost every gesture of the frantic orator, vows of eternal vengeance on what they deemed the recreant soldiery. Some one had just arrived to announce that the military, in force, were marching upon them. The shadow of the hand of death seemed already to rest upon the multitude, and not an eye was there that did not dwell upon eternity. Soon the military, in serried ranks and with bristling bayonets, wheeled into view far down the street, and then commenced the steady advance upon the barricade. The orator grew wilder and wilder, and every heart in that vast multitude quivered in awful expectation. The street was cleared, not a soul moved upon the side-walks; and the measured tread of the soldiers, with now and then a groan or shriek from out some chamber, was all that broke the silence as they marched along. Soon the note of death sounded in the rear, then the noise of changing muskets, at the word of command—and immediately was heard from out the barricade, trembling in solemn melody, low sounds as of some unearthly dirge; and the words, “Mourir pour la patrie”—arose with many a mingled yell. With the gallop of the words—“c’est la mort la plus belle,” all rushed to action, and when the first great burst of the murderous fire was past, the last words of the death-song still rang o’er piles of bleeding men.
The attack on this barricade was long and bloody. At the second discharge, Count Frederick rolled from the mound of curb-stones upon which he had leaped to replace a fallen red-republican ensign, and was borne into a neighboring house; there all assistance ceased. As he lay bleeding upon the floor, in a state of almost insensibility, Ella knelt beside him, striving to staunch with her handkerchief, her dress, her hair, the exhaustless spring of blood that welled up from a bullet wound in his chest. Not a word escaped her lips, not a tear fell from her eye, but she bent all the faculties of her mind to the faithful accomplishment of her stupendous task. His breathing became weak and weaker; she heeded it not. The veil of eternity was settling upon him, and the dim vision of mortality was being illumined under its shadow; the heinousness of his damning crime shone out in perfect distinctness; but one reparation, he thought, and that a slight one, remained; but how could he ever summon courage to speak it there? She seemed to him, in truth, an angel, as he turned his glazing eyes toward her; she would not yield to despair. He made the sacrifice; collected all his strength of body and of mind, and told to the wretched girl the story of his deception. It fell upon her like a thunderbolt. For the first time she became aware of the stupendous depth of her fall. Her only stay, her only consolation, her only anchor of future hope, upon her troubled sea, had rested on the excuse of natal degradation: now that was taken away. She sunk upon the floor; but in a moment, with frantic energy she bounded to her feet, and seizing the flag-staff from the dying hand, rushed into the street. The combat still raged; leaping over the dead and dying, with a bound she reached the breast-work.
The French journals, in describing the assault upon, and the carrying of this barricade, illustrated the enthusiastic patriotism of the insurgents, with the story of a young and beautiful girl, who, in the hottest of the fight, leaped upon the ramparts, flag in hand, and waving it gallantly above her head, shouting—liberté—fell, pierced by a hundred bullets, outside the barricade. It was Ella Corbyn.
SONG OF THE SPIRIT OF THE NORTH.
———
BY WILLIAM ALBERT SUTLIFFE.
———
Midnight was brooding o’er the Arctic highlands
Midnight, the dim, and faint, and strangely cold;
When on an iceberg, ’mid the icy islands,
Sat the chill Northern Spirit, weird, and cold.
Her floating tresses hung,
Wailing unto the blast;
Her vapory vestment swung
As the wind hurried past:
And ever and anon she moaned, and sung,
With tremulous voice, such as the tempest leaf
In piny woods, and then again she flung
Her slender fingers o’er a harp, and wept,
And wailed unearthly music, as when grieves
And sings a fallen angel, then it slept
A moment in the rude arms of the blast—
The snowy-footed madly rushing past—
And then sprung up again, as when o’erleap
Rich showers of harmony Heaven’s rampart steep,
And, star-like, from on high
Far-trailing down the sky,
Strike mortals mad, or wild:
So the pale Boreal Child
Sang to the soul of Naught, that brooded o’er
Lone semi-annual nights, and days as long,
An icy ocean, with an icy shore,
And icy islands, sparsely thrown among
A yest of icy waves; and all was ice,
By sempiternal Winter wrought
To many a quaint device.
And then again, when the cold North-wind kissed
Her pallid lips, up to the amethyst
Of the far heaven she raised her spirit eyes,
Then beat, and wept, while ever grim Surprise
Wondered that she should weep, and then she played
A prelude to her harp, then sung, then paused,
While symphonies filled up the gaps she made,
And Echo woke applause.
Wondrous the sadness of her floating strain!
The icebergs thrilled unto their heart of hearts,
And Ocean’s breast rose with convulsive starts;
While from her eyes the tearful-beaded rain
Froze into gems upon her vapory dress,
Embroidered loveliness.
O Loneliness, O Nothingness, O Death!
O Dreariness around me, I must weep!
Would that my very soul were tears to steep
The wind with, that, at every breath,
With weeping, I might spend my soul so fast
My agony’s last throb would soon be past.
O Desolation, wild, and gaunt, and grim!
O hopeless absence of all glad and bright!
O horrid shapes fantastical, what hymn
Of mine, alas! can tell such shapes aright
Would ye but strike me mad,
I should indeed be glad,
I now can pass the dark hours but in weeping;
And could my soul but freeze,
Like the breast of the seas,
How rapturous would be my silent sleeping.
Thou cold and icy moon,
Thou dost not pity me!
Six long months hast thou seen
My weary soul, each year,
Since Earth began, nor wept.
Away, thou’rt hateful now!
Away, for I am mad!
And Earth, detested orb,
How long must thou exist?
Each throb of thy vast pulse
Strikes keenest agony
Into this soul of mine.
If thou hast loveliness,
It ne’er was shown to me.
Come, let us die together!
Hurry thy steeds, O Time!
Bear us into the dark
Of that Eternity,
Whose shadows are so deep
We cannot pierce them yet.
Ye icebergs, that have seen
My wildest misery,
Do ye know sympathy?
Then melt ye down in tears,
And in a sea of grief
Flow round me with sweet sound!
They feel not, know not, aught!
My misery is full!
I must unto my bower—
My bower of chillest ice—
Would that it were my tomb
Ye smile on me in scorn,
Ye that do see my grief!
Then spreading out her wings,
Toward the extremest North
She took her liquid way.
The moon withdrew, and wept;
The stars died out with grief;
The icebergs thrilled again
Unto their icy hearts.
All things were sad for her,
Saddened by her wild song.
SONNET.—ART.
———
BY WM. ALEXANDER.
———
Art! what were mankind destitute of thee?
Religion’s handmaid oft do we thee find,
As to thy polished car seek’st thou to bind
True elegance with sweet utility—
Long, wide, extensive is thy magic sway,
O’er matter all inanimate and mind,
E’en savage man thou teachest to be kind,
And charmest his rude soul with thy harmony;
Cross seas the ship by thy good guidance goes;
Fields arable, rich gardens, sacred grove,
Town, temple, feel the influence of thy love;
Thy sacred power the mind immortal knows,
Nor can thy empire, universal, end
Till Nature’s forces all in sweet subjection bend.
A REPLY TO DWIGHT’S ARTICLE ON MOZART’S DON GIOVANNI.
This is the title of a long and prominent article in Graham’s February number: the writer is but a wordy plagiarist. He has received many rebukes already for his cool appropriation of the ideas of others, but Aristabulus Bragg fashion, he still goes on, in the calmest, most approved style, perfectly unblushing. A year or eighteen months ago an article of his in Sartain’s Magazine was pointed out to us as containing some clever thoughts on a very original idea, “the Musical Trinity.” Oh, we exclaimed, this is not original, the whole idea is stolen from the German; then we turned to Goethe’s correspondence with a child, Bettina von Arnheim, and found several passages on the same subject in conversations with Beethoven and Schlosser. Some time after we read in Saroni’s Musical Times that the editor had also detected the plagiarism in this article, and pointed out another author, book and page; saying with great good-nature that he would not have noticed it, had Mr. Dwight only written his article as clearly and concisely as the original; “but to rob an author first and then murder him,” says the editor, “is more than we can bear.” The author alluded to by Mr. Saroni, is the German Marx, and he tells us that the fourth paragraph in Sartain’s article is an almost literal translation of a paragraph in Marx’s “Komposition-shlere,” second edition, p. 24.
We have waded through this last article of Mr. Dwight’s on Don Giovanni, partly from curiosity, partly for amusement. We wanted to see the extent to which he would go: and then it amused us to detect the little pilfered thoughts, trigged out in the Boston transcendental clothing until their parents would have scarcely recognized them.
It opens with quite a flourish, trying to decorate the story and hero as the German Hoffman did long ago, but though the whole of the first part is a spun-out translation of the German critic’s description, it is so mingled with his own crude, half-educated thoughts, as to require some little skill in separating Hoffman from Dwight. He has made an attempt to improve upon the German, and we can not say we admire the Boston imitation. Judge for yourself by the following comparison: