THE LAST HOUR OF SAPPHO.
———
BY E. ANNA LEWIS.
———
THE PROMONTORY OF LEUCADIA.
This is the spot—’tis here tradition says,
That hopeless love from this high towering rook
Leaped headlong to oblivion, or to death.
Oh, ’tis a giddy height! my dizzy head
Swims at the precipice!—’tis death to fall.
Southey.
My life is in its last hour . . . .
——————farewell, ye opening heavens!
Look not upon me thus reproachfully—
Ye were not meant for me—earth! take these atoms!
Manfred.
I.
The sun was sinking from soft Hella’s shore,
Yet lingering still, as if he loved to pour
His beams o’er towers and temples then sublime,
But mouldering now beneath the tooth of Time;
To kiss the sloping hills, and myrtle boughs,
And flowers, and streams, and Lesbian maiden’s brows,
As they were warbling ’long the sultry vale
Like blithesome birds, or lisping some love tale:
Slowly he sunk, while far the deep waves rolled
Beneath his fiery track, like molten gold;
The spire, and minaret from the distant dome,
And castle hoar, and fane, and royal home;
The olive grove, the dark majestic palm,
The cypress sadd’ning in the pensive calm,
And in the liquid distance many an isle
Gleamed in his yellow beams and parting smile;
And there the lowing herds adown the hill
Were winding to their homes by glade and rill;
The weary peasants by their cabin door
To their shrill pipes their simple idyls pour;
Maidens reclining ’neath the spreading trees,
Bathe their dark brows in the refreshing breeze,
Send their wild mirth along the vales afar,
And greet with glowing eyes the evening star—
O, who would deem at such soft twilight time
Sorrow could rear her throne in that delightful clime.
II.
High on Leucadia’s famed and jutting rock,
Whose rugged base doth scorn the fearful shock
Of ocean’s waves, half-veiled in evening shade,
Sat Lesbian Sappho all for death arrayed:
Around her beauteous form her tunic flung,
And her dark tresses long and flowing hung
Down to the rock, steeped in the briny dew,
And gently waving as the breezes blew
Along the lea. One small hand held her lute,
The other rested on its strings all mute
As they had never breathed one thrilling song
Of fervent love, or anguish cherished long.
Her swollen eyes, dejected, had not wept,
Though her past life in one dark tissue swept
Before her now—“I would sing one song more—
One wild, undying strain, ere life be o’er;
And I would gather in this latest theme
My sufferings—my heart’s benighted dream,
This fierce, consuming flame that racks my soul,
So that when Phaon glances o’er the scroll
I leave, my fate may flash upon his heart
Swift as from clouds the long pent lightnings start:—
Awake, my soul! nor yet within me die!
Draw back the veil from thy deep agony;
And chant but one song more—one sad farewell
To love and life:—oh! breathe in it thy knell!
Thy requiem—a dagger make each tone—
To pierce false Phaon’s heart when I am gone!”
She said; then swept its straining chords—but fleet
As struck, her lute fell shattered at her feet.
She gazed upon it as it quivering lay,
And felt that thus her hopes had ever passed away.
III.
Upon that melting scene, those glowing skies.
She cast around her sad and swimming eyes,
And to them breathed one silent, long farewell;
For in her earlier years they held a spell
Upon her lute, and she had of them sung
Ere darker passions had her bosom wrung.
Turning far thence, she gazed across the sea.
To where young Phaon dwelt—bright Sicily;
Then her heart swelled—to every wo awake.
And beat the narrow cage it could not break—
“Yes—yes—inconstant Phaon! thou art there
Rejoicing, heedless of my lone despair—
I see thee in the laurel-grove—thy noble form
Move on—a maiden hanging on thine arm,
And drinking thy sweet words, erst breathed to me—
Forsake me, reason—thought—and memory!—
I see thee in the gay Sicilian dance,
Bending upon the fair thy tender glance;
Where jewels gleam, and where soft beauty glows;
The song swells high, the crowned goblet flows;
Thy smile—my heart’s once light upon thy brow;
I see thee by a beauteous maiden now—
Love’s fickle vows—thy witching flatteries hear,
As thou dost breathe them in her willing ear.
O misery! why am I thus awake?
Sad heart of mine, oh! wilt thou never break?
There’s but one remedy far such deep wo;
A fearful antidote—but be it so!
And must I go?—from thee no farewell sigh;
No word to soothe my last keen agony;
No smile to cheer me in the hour of death?—
Oh! for some power, swift as the tempest’s breath,
To catch my dying shriek as I depart,
And ring it as a death-knell in thy heart.
And yet I would not chide thee, Phaon. No!
But I would wake thee to a sense of wo,
And all the misery that thou hast wrought,
And why a home beneath the waves I sought,
When thou wast far away: may peace be thine!
The gods preserve thee from a fate like mine!
The quick and fevered pulse, the tears that blind,
The heart’s dark void, the canker of the mind;
And if to ’parted spirits power be given,
To leave the high abode they hold in heaven,
Oh, I will guide thy footsteps from all wo,
Thy guardian angel be while lingering here below.
IV.
Phaon, thou wast the fond reality
Of my youth’s cherished dream—the phantasy
That hath beguiled me from my earliest days.
Luring me on—the theme of all my lays,
The pole-star of my heart in grief or joy.
The day-spring of my life, my Deity!
That I might win thy love, and make thee mine—
O dream too pure, too heavenly, too divine
For earth!—I’ve toiled through long and weary years,
In hours I stole from sleep and life’s dull cares,
And earned a laurel for my fading brow,
That will not wither like thy fragile vow;—
Yes, I have swept my lyre through Lesbian isles,
Till it has won from kings their softest smiles;
And royal dames have worshiped where I trod,
As there had been enshrined their favorite god;
The proud have sought my hand—the high of birth
Have knelt to me, as I were not of earth;
But these are nothing, since they fail to move
Thy heart, and gain for me thy constant love.
This was the die on which I staked my all.
And I, alas! have lost, and perish in thy thrall.
V.
And now, to thee, thou wild and mighty sea!
Terrific emblem of futurity!
That in thy restless might dost round me roll,
And chafe thyself like my own troubled soul;
Upon whose fickle bosom none can trace
The pathways of the dead unto their place
Of endless rest. From blighting storms of life,
From my own heart’s corroding fires and strife—
The flame that hath no sure relief but death,
I come to seek for peace, thy waves beneath.
Ope now thy breast, and hide forever there
My lifeless form—my fondness and despair!”
She said, then drew her robe around her close,
And calmly as reclining to repose
At eventide, from that tremendous height,
Headlong descended to eternal night,
On sea-weed beds to rest in slumbers sweet,
The boundless main her tomb, the waves her winding-sheet.
NINE O’CLOCK.
The night of the 30th of June, 1793, is memorable in the prison annals of Paris, as the last night in confinement of the leaders of the famous Girondin party in the first French Revolution. On the morning of the 31st, the twenty-one deputies, who represented the department of the Gironde, were guillotined, to make way for Robespierre and the Reign of Terror.
With these men fell the last revolutionists of that period, who shrank from founding a republic on massacre; who recoiled from substituting for a monarchy of corruption, a monarchy of bloodshed. The elements of their defeat lay as much in themselves, as in the events of their time. They were not, as a party, true to their own convictions; they temporised; they fatally attempted to take a middle course amid the terrible emergencies of a terrible epoch, and they fell—fell before worse men, because those men were in earnest.
Condemned to die, the Girondins submitted nobly to their fate; their great glory was the glory of their deaths. The speech of one of them, on hearing his sentence pronounced, was a prophecy of the future, fulfilled to the letter.
“I die,” he said to the Jacobin judges, the creatures of Robespierre, who tried him, “I die at a time when the people have lost their reason: you will die on the day when they recover it.”
Valaze was the only member of the condemned party who displayed a momentary weakness; he stabbed himself on hearing his sentence pronounced. But the blow was not mortal—he died on the scaffold, and died bravely with the rest.
On the night of the 30th, the Girondists held their famous banquet in the prison; celebrated, with the ferocious stoicism of the time, their last social meeting before, the morning on which they were to die. Other men, besides the twenty-one, were present at this supper of the condemned. They were prisoners who held Girondin opinions, but whose names were not illustrious enough for history to preserve. Though sentenced to confinement, they were not sentenced to death. Some of their number, who had protested most boldly against the condemnation of the deputies, were ordered to witness the execution on the morrow, as a timely example to terrify them into submission. More than this, Robespierre and his colleagues did not as yet venture to attempt: the Reign of Terror was a cautious reign at starting.
The supper-table of the prison was spread: the guests, twenty-one of their number stamped already with the seal of death, were congregated at the last Girondin banquet: toast followed toast; the Marseillaise was sung; the desperate triumph of the feast was rising fast to its climax, when a new and ominous subject of conversation was started at the lower end of the table, and spread electrically, almost in a moment, to the top.
This subject—by whom originated no one knew—was simply a question as to the hour in the morning at which the execution was to take place. Every one of the prisoners appeared to be in ignorance on this point; and the gaolers either could not, or would not enlighten them. Until the cart for the condemned rolled into the prison-yard, not one of the Girondins could tell whether he was to be called out to the guillotine soon after sunrise, or not till near noon.
This uncertainty was made a topic for discussion, or for jesting on all sides. It was eagerly seized on as a pretext for raising to the highest pitch the ghastly animation and hilarity of the evening. In some quarters, the recognized hour of former executions was quoted, as a precedent sure to be followed by the executioners of the morrow; in others, it was asserted that Robespierre and his party would purposely depart from established customs in this, as in previous instances. Dozens of wild schemes were suggested for guessing the hour, by fortune-telling rules on the cards; bets were offered and accepted among the prisoners who were not condemned to death, and witnessed in stoical mockery by the prisoners who were. Jests were exchanged about early rising and hurried toilets: in short, every man contributed an assertion, a contradiction, or a witticism to keep up the new topic of conversation, with one solitary exception. That exception was the Girondin Duprat, one of the deputies who was sentenced to die by the guillotine.
He was a younger man than the majority of his brethren, and was personally remarkable by his pale, handsome, melancholy face, and his reserved yet gentle manners. Throughout the evening he had spoken but rarely; there was something of the silence and serenity of a martyr in his demeanor. That he feared death as little as any of his companions was plainly visible in his bright steady eye; in his unchanging complexion; in his firm, calm voice, when he occasionally addressed those who happened to be near him. But he was evidently out of place at the banquet; his temperament was reflective, his disposition serious; feasts were at no time a sphere in which he was calculated to shine.
His taciturnity, while the hour of the execution was under discussion, had separated him from most of those with whom he sat, at the lower end of the table. They edged up toward the top, where the conversation was most general and most animated. One of his friends, however, still kept his place by Duprat’s side, and thus questioned him anxiously, but in low tones, on the cause of his immovable silence—
“Are you the only man of the company, Duprat, who has neither a guess nor a joke to make about the time of the execution?”
“I never joke, Marigny,” was the answer given, with a slight smile which had something of the sarcastic in it; “and as for guessing at the time of the execution, I never guess at things which I know.”
“Know! You know the hour of the execution? Then why not communicate your knowledge to your friends around you?”
“Because not one of them would believe what I said.”
“But, surely, you could prove it. Somebody must have told you?”
“Nobody has told me.”
“You have seen some private letter, then; or you have managed to get sight of the execution-order; or—”
“Spare your conjectures, Marigny. I have not read, as I have not been told, what is the hour at which we are to die to-morrow.”.
“Then how on earth can you possibly know it?”
“I do not know when the execution will begin, or when it will end—I only know that it will be going on at nine o’clock to-morrow morning. Out of the twenty-one who are to suffer death, one will be guillotined exactly at that hour. Whether he will be the first whose head falls, or the last, I cannot tell.”
“And pray who may this man be, who is to die exactly at nine o’clock? Of course, prophetically knowing so much, you know that?”
“I do know it. I am the man whose death by the guillotine will take place exactly at the hour I have mentioned.”
“You said just now, Duprat, that you never joked. Do you expect me to believe that what you have just spoken is spoken in earnest?”
“I repeat that I never joke, and I answer that I expect you to believe me. I know the hour at which my death will take place to-morrow, just as certainly as I know the fact of my own existence to-night.”
“But how? My dear friend, can you really lay claim to supernatural intuition, in this eighteenth century of the world, in this renowned Age of Reason?”
“No two men, Marigny, understand that word, supernatural, exactly in the same sense: you and I differ about its meaning; or, in other words, differ about the real distinction between the doubtful and the true. We will not discuss the subject: I wish to be understood, at the outset, as laying claim to no superior intuitions whatever; but I tell you, at the same time, that even in this Age of Reason, I have reason for what I have said. My father and my brother both died at nine o’clock in the morning, and were both warned very strangely of their deaths. I am the last of my family: I was warned last night, as they were warned; and I shall die by the guillotine, as they died in their beds, at the fatal hour of nine.”
“But, Duprat, why have I never heard of this before? As your eldest and, I am sure, your dearest friend, I thought you had long since trusted me with all your secrets?”
“And you shall know this secret: I only kept it from you till the time when I could be certain that my death would substantiate my words, to the very letter. Come—you are as bad supper-company as I am: let us slip away from the table unperceived, while our friends are all engaged in conversation. Yonder end of the hall is dark and quiet—we can speak there uninterruptedly, for some hours to come.”
He led the way from the supper-table, followed by Marigny. Arrived at one of the darkest and most retired corners of the great hall of the prison, Duprat spoke again—
“I believe, Marigny,” he said, “that you are one of those who have been ordered by our tyrants to witness my execution, and the execution of my brethren, as a warning spectacle for an enemy to the Jacobin cause?”
“My dear, dear friend, it is too true: I am ordered to witness the butchery which I cannot prevent—our last awful parting will be at the foot of the scaffold. I am among the victims who are spared—mercilessly spared—for a little while yet.”
“Say the martyrs! We die as martyrs—calmly, hopefully, innocently. When I am placed under the guillotine to-morrow morning, listen, my friend, for the striking of the church clocks—listen for the hour while you look your last on me! Until that time suspend your judgement on the strange chapter of family history which I am now about to relate.”
Marigny took his friend’s hand, and promised compliance with the request. Duprat then began as follows—
“You knew my brother Alfred when he was quite a youth, and you knew something of what people flippantly termed the eccentricities of his character. He was three years my junior; but, from childhood, he showed far less of a child’s innate levity and happiness than his elder brother. He was noted for his seriousness and thoughtfulness as a boy; showed little inclination for a boy’s usual lessons, and less still for a boy’s usual recreations—in short, he was considered by every body (my father included) as deficient in intellect; as a vacant dreamer, and an inveterate idler, whom it was hopeless to improve. Our tutor tried to lead him to various studies, and tried in vain. It was the same when the cultivation of his mind was given up, and the cultivation of his body was next attempted. The fencing-master could make nothing of him; and the dancing-master, after the first three lessons, resigned in despair. Seeing that it was useless to set others to teach him, my father made a virtue of necessity, and left him, if he chose, to teach himself.
“To the astonishment of every one, he had not been long consigned to his own guidance, when he was discovered in the library, reading every old treatise on astrology which he could lay his hands on. He had rejected all useful knowledge for the most obsolete of obsolete sciences—the old abandoned delusion of divination by the stars! My father laughed heartily over the strange study to which his idle son had at last applied himself, but made no attempt to oppose his new caprice, and sarcastically presented him with a telescope on his next birthday. I should remind you here, of what you may perhaps have forgotten, that my father was a philosopher of the Voltaire school, who believed that the summit of human wisdom was to arrive at the power of sneering at all enthusiasms, and doubting of all truths. Apart from his philosophy, he was a kind hearted, easy man, of quick rather than of profound intelligence. He could see nothing in my brother’s new occupation but the evidence of a new idleness; a fresh caprice, which would be abandoned in a few months. My father was not the man to appreciate those yearnings toward the poetical and the spiritual which were part of Alfred’s temperament, and which gave to his peculiar studies of the stars and their influences, a certain charm altogether unconnected with the more practical attractions of scientific investigation.
“This idle caprice of my brother’s, as my father insisted on terming it, had lasted more than a twelve-month, when there occurred the first of a series of mysterious and—as I consider them—supernatural events, with all of which Alfred was very remarkably connected. I was myself a witness of the strange circumstance which I am now about to relate to you.
“One day—my brother being then sixteen years of age—I happened to go into my father’s study during his absence, and found Alfred there, standing close to a window which looked into the garden. I walked up to him, and observed a curious expression of vacancy and rigidity in his face, especially in his eyes. Although I knew him to be subject to what are called fits of absence, I still thought it rather extraordinary that he never moved, and never noticed me when I was close to him. I took his hand, and asked if he was unwell. His flesh felt quite cold: neither my touch nor my voice produced the smallest sensation in him. Almost at the same moment, when I noticed this, I happened to be looking accidentally toward the garden. There was my father walking along one of the paths, and there by his side, walking with him, was another Alfred!—Another; yet exactly the same as the Alfred by whose side I was standing, whose hand I still held in mine!
“Thoroughly panic-stricken, I dropped his hand, and uttered a cry of terror. At the loud sound of my voice, the statue-like presence before me immediately began to show signs of animation. I looked round again at the garden. The figure of my brother which I had beheld there was gone, and I saw to my horror that my father was looking for it—looking in all directions for the companion (spectre or human being) of his walk.
“When I turned toward Alfred once more, he had (if I may so express it) come to life again, and was asking—with his usual gentleness of manner and kindness of voice—why I was looking so pale. I evaded the question by making some excuse, and in my turn inquired of him how long he had been in my father’s study.
“‘Surely you ought to know best,’ he answered, with a laugh, ‘for you must have been here before me. It is not many minutes ago since I was walking in the garden with—’
“Before he could complete the sentence my father entered the room.
“‘Oh! here you are, Master Alfred,’ said he. ‘May I ask for what purpose you took it into your wise head to vanish in that extraordinary manner? Why you slipped away from me in an instant, while I was picking a flower? On my word, sir, you’re a better player at hide-and-seek than your brother—he would only have run into the shrubbery, you have managed to run in here, though how you did it in the time passes my poor comprehension. I was not a moment picking the flower, yet in that moment you were gone!’
“Alfred glanced suddenly and searchingly at me: his face became deadly pale; and, without speaking a word, he hurried from the room.
“‘Can you explain this?’ said my father, looking very much astonished.
“I hesitated a moment, and then told him what I had seen. He took a pinch of snuff—a favorite habit with him when he was going to be sarcastic, in imitation of Voltaire.
“‘One visionary in a family is enough,’ said he: ‘I recommend you not to turn yourself into a bad imitation of your brother Alfred! Send your ghost after me, my good boy! I am going back into the garden, and should like to see him again.’
“Ridicule, even much sharper than this, would have had little effect on me. If I was certain of any thing in the world, I was certain that I had seen my brother in the study—nay, more, had touched him—and equally certain that I had seen his double—his exact similitude in the garden. As far as any man could know that he was in possession of his own senses, I knew myself to be in possession of mine. Left alone to think over what I had beheld, I felt a supernatural terror creeping through me—a terror which increased when I recollected that, on one or two occasions, friends had said they had seen Alfred out of doors, when we all knew him to be at home. These statements—which my father had laughed at, and had taught me to laugh at, either as a trick, or a delusion on the part of others—now recurred to my memory as startling corroborations of what I had just seen myself. The solitude of the study oppressed me in a manner which I cannot describe. I left the apartment to seek Alfred, determined to question him with all possible caution, on the subject of his strange trance, and his sensations at the moment when I had awakened him from it.
“I found him in his bed-room, still pale, and now very thoughtful. As the first words in reference to the scene in the study passed my lips, he started violently, and entreated me, with very unusual warmth of speech and manner, never to speak to him on that subject again—never, if I had any love or regard for him! Of course, I complied with his request. The mystery, however, was not destined to end here.
“About two months after the event which I have just related, we had arranged, one evening, to go to the theatre. My father had insisted that Alfred should be of the party, otherwise he would certainly have declined accompanying us; for he had no inclination whatever for public amusements of any kind. However, with his usual docility, he prepared to obey my father’s desire, by going up-stairs to put on his evening-dress. It was winter time, so he was obliged to take a candle with him.
“We waited in the drawing-room for his return a very long time, so long, that my father was on the point of sending up-stairs to remind him of the lateness of the hour, when Alfred reappeared without the candle which he had taken with him from the room. The ghastly alteration that had passed over his face—the hideous, death-look that distorted his features I shall never forget—I shall see it to-morrow on the scaffold!
“Before either my father or I could utter a word, my brother said—‘I have been taken suddenly ill; but I am better now. Do you still wish me to go to the theatre?’
“‘Certainly not, my dear Alfred,’ answered my father; ‘we must send for the doctor immediately.’
“‘Pray do not call in the doctor, sir; he would be of no use. I will tell you why, if you will let me speak to you alone.’
“My father, looking seriously alarmed, signed to me to leave the room. For more than half an hour I remained absent, suffering almost unendurable suspense and anxiety on my brother’s account. When I was recalled, I observed that Alfred was quite calm, though still deadly pale. My father’s manner displayed an agitation which I had never observed in it before. He rose from his chair when I re-entered the room, and left me alone with my brother.
“‘Promise me,’ said Alfred, in answer to my entreaties to know what had happened, ‘promise that you will not ask me to tell you more than my father has permitted me to tell. It is his desire that I should keep certain things a secret from you.’
“I gave the required promise, but gave it most unwillingly. Alfred then proceeded.
“‘When I left you to go and dress for the theatre, I felt a sense of oppression all over me, which I cannot describe. As soon as I was alone, it seemed as if some part of the life within me was slowly wasting away. I could hardly breathe the air around me, big drops of perspiration burst out on my forehead, and then a feeling of terror seized me which I was utterly unable to control. Some of those strange fancies of seeing my mother’s spirit, which used to influence me at the time of her death, came back again to my mind. I ascended the stairs slowly and painfully, not daring to look behind me, for I heard—yes, heard!—something following me. When I had got into my room, and had shut the door, I began to recover my self-possession a little. But the sense of oppression was still as heavy on me as ever, when I approached the wardrobe to get out my clothes. Just as I stretched forth my hand to turn the key, I saw, to my horror, the two doors of the wardrobe opening of themselves, opening slowly and silently: The candle went out at the same moment, and the whole inside of the wardrobe became to me like a great mirror, with a bright light shining in the middle of it. Out of that light there came a figure, the exact counterpart of myself. Over its breast hung an open scroll, and on that I read the warning of my own death, and a revelation of the destinies of my father and his race. Do not ask me what were the words on the scroll, I have given my promise not to tell you. I may only say that, as soon as I had read all, the room grew dark, and the vision disappeared.’
“Forgetful of my promise, I entreated Alfred to repeat to me the words on the scroll. He smiled sadly, and refused to speak on the subject any more. I next sought out my father, and begged him to divulge the secret. Still sceptical to the last, he answered that one diseased imagination in the family was enough, and that he would not permit me to run the risk of being injected by Alfred’s mental malady. I passed the whole of that day and the next in a state of agitation and alarm which nothing could tranquilize. The sight I had seen in the study gave a terrible significance to the little that my brother had told me. I was uneasy if he was a moment out of my sight. There was something in his expression—calm and even cheerful as it was—which made me dread the worst.
“On the morning of the third day after the occurrence I have just related, I rose very early, after a sleepless night, and went into Alfred’s bed-room. He was awake, and welcomed me with more than usual affection and kindness. As I drew a chair to his bedside, he asked me to get pen, ink and paper, and write down something from his dictation. I obeyed, and found to my terror and distress, that the idea of death was more present to his imagination than ever. He employed me in writing a statement of his wishes in regard to the disposal of all his own little possessions as keepsakes to be given, after he was no more, to my father, myself, the house-servants, and one or two of his most intimate friends. Over and over again I entreated him to tell me whether he really believed that his death was near. He invariably replied that I should soon know, and then led the conversation to indifferent topics. As the morning advanced, he asked to see my father, who came, accompanied by the doctor, the latter having been in attendance for the last two days.
“Alfred took my father’s hand, and begged his forgiveness of any offense, any disobedience of which he had ever been guilty. Then, reaching out his other hand, and taking mine, as I stood on the opposite side of the bed, he asked what the time was. A clock was placed on the mantel-piece of the room, but not in a position in which he could see it as he now lay. I turned round to look at the dial, and answered that it was just on the stroke of nine.
“‘Farewell!’ said Alfred, calmly; ‘in this world, farewell for ever!’
“The next instant the clock struck. I felt his fingers tremble in mine, then grow quite still. The doctor seized a hand-mirror that lay on the table, and held it over his lips. He was dead—dead, as the last chime of the hour echoed through the awful silence of the room!
“I pass over the first days of our affliction. You, who have suffered the loss of a beloved sister, can well imagine their misery. I pass over these days, and pause for a moment at the time when we could speak with some calmness and resignation on the subject of our bereavement. On the arrival of that period, I ventured, in conversation with my father, to refer to the vision which had been seen by our dear Alfred in his bed-room, and to the prophecy which he described himself as having read upon the supernatural scroll.
“Even yet my father persisted in his scepticism; but now, as it seemed to me, more because he was afraid, than because he was unwilling, to believe. I again recalled to his memory what I myself had seen in the study. I asked him to recollect how certain Alfred had been beforehand, and how fatally right, about the day and hour of his death. Still I could get but one answer; my brother had died of a nervous disorder (the doctor said so); his imagination had been diseased from his childhood; there was only one way of treating the vision which he described himself as having seen, and that was not to speak of it again between ourselves; never to speak of it at all to our friends.
“We were sitting in the study during this conversation. It was evening. As my father uttered the last words of his reply to me, I saw his eye turn suddenly and uneasily toward the farther end of the room. In dead silence, I looked in the same direction, and saw the door opening slowly of itself. The vacant space beyond was filled with a bright, steady glow, which hid all outer objects in the hall, and which I cannot describe to you by likening it to any light that we are accustomed to behold either by day or night. In my terror, I caught my father by the arm, and asked him, in a whisper, whether he did not see something extraordinary in the direction of the door-way?
“‘Yes,’ he answered, in tones as low as mine, ‘I see, or fancy I see, a strange light. The subject on which we have been speaking has impressed our feelings as it should not. Our nerves are still unstrung by the shock of the bereavement we have suffered: our senses are deluding us. Let us look away toward the garden.’
“‘But the opening of the door, father; remember the opening of the door!’
“‘Ours is not the first door which has accidentally flown open of itself.’
“‘Then why not shut it again?’
“‘Why not, indeed. I will close it at once.’ He rose, advanced a few paces, then stopped, and came back to his place. ‘It is a warm evening,’ he said, avoiding my eyes, which were eagerly fixed on him, ‘the room will be all the cooler if the door is suffered to remain open.’
“His face grew quite pale as he spoke. The light lasted for a few minutes longer, then suddenly disappeared. For the rest of the evening my father’s manner was very much altered. He was silent and thoughtful, and complained of a feeling of oppression and langor, which he tried to persuade himself was produced by the heat of the weather. At an unusually early hour he retired to his room.
“The next morning, when I got down stairs, I found, to my astonishment, that the servants were engaged in preparations for the departure of somebody from the house. I made inquiries of one of them who was hurriedly packing a trunk. ‘My master, sir, starts for Lyons the first thing this morning,’ was the reply. I immediately repaired to my father’s room, and found him there with an open letter in his hand, which he was reading. His face, as he looked up at me on my entrance, expressed the most violent emotions of apprehension and despair.
“‘I hardly know whether I am awake or dreaming; whether I am the dupe of a terrible delusion, or the victim of a supernatural reality more terrible still,’ he said, in low, awe-struck tones as I approached him. ‘One of the prophecies which Alfred told me in private that he had read upon the scroll, has come true! He predicted the loss of the bulk of my fortune—here is the letter, which informs me that the merchant at Lyons, in whose hands my money was placed, has become a bankrupt. Can the occurrence of this ruinous calamity be the chance fulfillment of a mere guess? Or was the doom of my family really revealed to my dead son? I go to Lyons immediately to know the truth: this letter may have been written under false information; it may be the work of an impostor. And yet, Alfred’s prediction—I shudder to think of it!’
“‘The light, father! I exclaimed; ‘the light we saw last night in the study!’
“‘Hush! don’t speak of it! Alfred said that I should be warned of the truth of the prophecy, and of its immediate fulfillment, by the shining of the same supernatural light that he had seen—I tried to disbelieve what I beheld last night—I hardly know whether I dare believe it even now! This prophecy is not the last; there are others yet to be fulfilled—but let us not speak, let us not think of them! I must start at once for Lyons; I must be on the spot, if this horrible news is true, to save what I can from the wreck. The letter—give me back the letter!—I must go directly!’
“He hurried from the room. I followed him; and, with some difficulty, obtained permission to be the companion of his momentous journey. When we arrived at Lyons, we found that the statement in the letter was true. My father’s fortune was gone: a mere pittance, derived from a small estate that had belonged to my mother, was all that was left to us.
“My father’s health gave way under this misfortune. He never referred again to Alfred’s prediction, and I was afraid to mention the subject; but I saw that it was affecting his mind quite as painfully as the loss of his property. Over, and over again, he checked himself very strangely when he was on the point of speaking to me about my brother. I saw that there was some secret pressing heavily on his mind, which he was afraid to disclose to me. It was useless to ask for his confidence. His temper had become irritable under disaster; perhaps, also, under the dread uncertainties which were now evidently tormenting him in secret. My situation was a very sad, and a very dreary one, at that time: I had no remembrances of the past that were not mournful and affrighting remembrances; I had no hopes for the future that were not darkened by a vague presentiment of troubles and perils to come; and I was expressly forbidden by my father to say a word about the terrible events which had cast an unnatural gloom over my youthful career, to any of the friends (yourself included) whose counsel and whose sympathy might have guided and sustained me in the day of trial.
“We returned to Paris; sold our house there, and retired to live on the small estate to which I have referred, as the last possession left us. We had not been many days in our new abode, when my father imprudently exposed himself to a heavy shower of rain, and suffered, in consequence, from a violent attack of cold. This temporary malady was not dreaded by the medical attendant; but it was soon aggravated by a fever, produced as much by the anxiety and distress of mind from which he continued to suffer, as by any other cause. Still the doctor gave hope; but still he grew daily worse—so much worse, that I removed my bed into his room, and never quitted him night or day.
“One night I had fallen asleep, overpowered by fatigue and anxiety, when I was awakened by a cry from my father. I instantly trimmed the light, and ran to his side. He was sitting up in bed, with his eyes fixed on the door, which had been left ajar to ventilate the room. I saw nothing in that direction, and asked what was the matter. He murmured some expressions of affection toward me, and begged me to sit by his bedside till the morning; but gave no definite answer to my question. Once or twice I thought he wandered a little; and I observed that he occasionally moved his hand under the pillow, as if searching for something there. However, when the morning came, he appeared to be quite calm and self-possessed. The doctor arrived; and pronouncing him to be better, retired to the dressing-room to write a prescription. The moment his back was turned, my father laid his weak hand on my arm, and whispered faintly:—‘Last night I saw the supernatural light again—the second prediction—true, true—my death this time—the same hour as Alfred’s—nine—nine o’clock, this morning.’ He paused a moment through weakness; then added:—‘Take that sealed paper—under the pillow—when I am dead, read it—now go into the dressing-room—my watch is there—I have heard the church clock strike eight; let me see how long it is now till nine—go—go quickly!’
“Horror-stricken, moving and acting like a man in a trance, I silently obeyed him. The doctor was still in the dressing-room: despair made me catch eagerly at any chance of saving my father; I told his medical attendant what I had just heard, and entreated advice and assistance without delay.
“‘He is a little delirious,’ said the doctor—‘don’t be alarmed: we can cheat him out of his dangerous idea, and so perhaps save his life. Where is the watch?’ (I produced it)—‘See: it is ten minutes to nine. I will put back the hands one hour; that will give good time for a composing draught to operate. There! take him the watch, and let him see the false time with his own eyes. He will be comfortably asleep before the hour-hand gets round again to nine.’
“I went back with the watch to my father’s bedside. ‘Too slow,’ he murmured, as he looked at the dial—‘too slow by an hour—the church clock—I counted eight.’
“‘Father! dear father! you are mistaken,’ I cried. ‘I counted also; it was only seven.’
“‘Only seven!’ he echoed faintly, ‘another hour, then—another hour to live!’ He evidently believed what I had said to him. In spite of the fatal experiences of the past, I now ventured to hope the best from our stratagem, as I resumed my place by his side.
“The doctor came in; but my father never noticed him. He kept his eyes fixed on the watch, which lay between us, on the coverlet. When the minute hand was within a few seconds of indicating the false hour of eight, he looked round at me, murmured very feebly and doubtingly, ‘another hour to live!’ and then gently closed his eyes. I looked at the watch, and saw that it was just eight o’clock, according to our alteration of the right time. At the same moment, I heard the doctor, whose hand had been on my father’s pulse, exclaim, ‘My God! it’s stopped! He has died at nine o’clock!’
“The fatality, which no human stratagem or human science could turn aside, was accomplished! I was alone in the world!
“In the solitude of our little cottage, on the day of my father’s burial, I opened the sealed letter, which he had told me to take from the pillow of his death-bed. In preparing to read it, I knew that I was preparing for the knowledge of my own doom; but I neither trembled nor wept. I was beyond all grief: despair, such as mine was then, is calm and self-possessed to the last.
“The letter ran thus;—‘After your father and your brother have fallen under the fatality that pursues our house, it is right, my dear son, that you should be warned how you are included in the last of the predictions which still remains unaccomplished. Know, then, that the final lines read by our dear Alfred on the scroll, prophesied that you should die, as we have died, at the fatal hour of nine; but by a bloody and violent death, the day of which was not foretold. My beloved boy! you know not, you never will know, what I suffered in the possession of this terrible secret, as the truth of the former prophecies forced itself more and more plainly on my mind! Even now, as I write, I hope against all hope; believe vainly and desperately against all experience, that this last, worst doom may be avoided. Be cautious; be patient; look well before you at each step of your career. The fatality by which you are threatened is terrible; but there is a Power above fatality; and before that Power my spirit and my child’s spirit now pray for you. Remember this when your heart is heavy, and your path through life grows dark. Remember that the better world is still before you, the world where we shall all meet! Farewell!’
“When I first read those lines, I read them with the gloomy, immovable resignation of the Eastern fatalists; and that resignation never left me afterward. Here, in this prison, I feel it, calm as ever. I bowed patiently to my doom, when it was only predicted: I bow to it as patiently now, when it is on the eve of accomplishment. You have often wondered, my friend, at the tranquil, equable sadness of my manner: after what I have just told you, can you wonder any longer?
“But let me return for a moment to the past. Though I had no hope of escaping the fatality which had overtaken my father and my brother, my life, after my double bereavement, was the existence of all others which might seem most likely to evade the accomplishment of my predicted doom. Yourself and one other friend excepted, I saw no society; my walks were limited to the cottage garden and the neighboring fields, and my every-day, unvarying occupation was confined to that hard and resolute course of study, by which alone I could hope to prevent my mind from dwelling on what I had suffered in the past, or on what I might still be condemned to suffer in the future. Never was there a life more quiet and more uneventful than mine!
“You know how I awoke to an ambition, which irresistibly impelled me to change this mode of existence. News from Paris penetrated even to my obscure retreat, and disturbed my self-imposed tranquillity. I heard of the last errors and weaknesses of Louis the Sixteenth; I heard of the assembling of the States-General; and I knew that the French Revolution had begun. The tremendous emergencies of that epoch drew men of all characters from private to public pursuits, and made politics the necessity rather than the choice of every Frenchman’s life. The great change preparing for the country acted universally on individuals, even to the humblest, and it acted on me.
“I was elected a deputy, more for the sake of the name I bore, than on account of any little influence which my acquirements and my character might have exercised in the neighborhood of my country abode. I removed to Paris, and took my seat in the Chamber, little thinking at that time, of the crime and the bloodshed to which our revolution, so moderate in its beginning, would lead; little thinking that I had taken the first, irretrievable step toward the bloody and the violent death which was lying in store for me.
“Need I go on? You know how warmly I joined the Girondin party; you know how we have been sacrificed; you know what the death is which I and my brethren are to suffer to-morrow. On now ending, I repeat what I said at the beginning:—Judge not of my narrative till you have seen with your own eyes what really takes place in the morning. I have carefully abstained from all comment, I have simply related events as they happened, forbearing to add my own views of their significance, my own ideas on the explanation of which they admit. You may believe us to have been a family of nervous visionaries, witnesses of certain remarkable contingencies; victims of curious, but not impossible chances, which we have fancifully and falsely interpreted into supernatural events. I leave you undisturbed in this conviction (if you really feel it;) to-morrow you will think differently; to-morrow you will be an altered man. In the meantime, remember what I now say, as you would remember my dying words:—Last night I saw the supernatural radiance which warned my father and my brother; and which warns me, that, whatever the time when the execution begins, whatever the order in which the twenty-one Girondins are chosen for death, I shall be the man who kneels under the guillotine, as the clock strikes nine!”
It was morning. Of the ghastly festivities of the night no sign remained. The prison-hall wore an altered look, as the twenty-one condemned men (followed by those who were ordered to witness their execution) were marched out to the carts appointed to take them from the dungeon to the scaffold.
The sky was cloudless, the sun warm and brilliant, as the Girondin leaders and their companions were drawn slowly through the streets to the place of execution. Duprat and Marigny were placed in separate vehicles: the contrast in their demeanor at that awful moment was strongly marked. The features of the doomed man still preserved their noble and melancholy repose; his glance was steady; his color never changed. The face of Marigny, on the contrary, displayed the strongest agitation; he was pale even to his lips. The terrible narrative he had heard, the anticipation of the final and appalling proof by which its truth was now to be tested, had robbed him, for the first time in his life, of all his self-possession. Duprat had predicted truly; the morrow had come, and he was an altered man already.
The carts drew up at the foot of the scaffold which was soon to be stained with the blood of twenty-one human beings. The condemned deputies mounted it; and ranged themselves at the end opposite the guillotine. The prisoners who were to behold the execution remained in their cart. Before Duprat ascended the steps, he took his friend’s hand for the last time: “Farewell!” he said, calmly. “Farewell! I go to my father and my brother! Remember my words of last night.”
With straining eyes, and bloodless cheeks, Marigny saw Duprat take his position in the middle row of his companions, who stood in three ranks of seven each. Then the awful spectacle of the execution began. After the first seven deputies had suffered there was a pause; the horrible traces of the judicial massacre were being removed. When the execution proceeded, Duprat was the third taken from the middle rank of the condemned. As he came forward, and stood for an instant erect under the guillotine, he looked with a smile on his friend, and repeated in a clear voice the word, “Remember!”—then bowed himself on the block. The blood stood still at Marigny’s heart, as he looked and listened, during the moment of silence that followed. That moment past, the church clock of Paris struck. He dropped down on the cart, and covered his face with his hands; for through the heavy beat of the hour he heard the fall of the fatal steel.
“Pray, sir, was it nine or ten that struck just now?” said one of Marigny’s fellow prisoners to an officer of the guard, who stood near the cart.
The person addressed referred to his watch, and answered—“Nine o’clock!”
VIRGINIA DARE.
———
BY MRS. L. H. SIGOURNEY.
———
[The first-born child of English parents in the Western World was the granddaughter of Governor White, who planted a short-lived colony at Roanoke, Virginia, in the year 1587.]
’Twas lovely in the deep greenwood
Of old Virginia’s glade,
Ere the sharp axe amid its boughs
A fearful chasm had made;
Long spikes of rich catalpa flowers
Hung pendent from the tree,
And the maqudia’s ample cup
O’erflowed with fragrance free;
And through the shades the antlered deer
Like fairy visions flew,
And mighty vines from tree to tree
Their wealth of clusters threw,
While wingéd odors from the hills
Reviving welcome bore,
To greet the stranger bands that come
From Albion’s distant shore.
Up rose their roofs in copse and dell,
Outpealed the laborer’s horn,
And graceful through the broken mould
Peered forth their tasseled corn:
While from one rose-encircled bower,
Hid in the nested grove,
Came, blending with the robin’s lay,
The lullaby of love.
There sang a mother to her babe—
A mother young and fair—
“No flower like thee adorns the vale,
O sweet Virginia Dare!
Thou art the lily of our love,
The forest’s sylph-like queen,
The first-born bud from Saxon stem
That this New World hath seen;
“Thy father’s axe in thicket rings,
To fell the kingly tree;
Thy grandsire sails o’er ocean-brine—
A gallant man is he!
And when once more, from England’s realm,
He comes with bounty rare,
A thousand gifts to thee he’ll bring,
Mine own Virginia Dare!”
As sweet that mother’s loving tones
Their warbled music shed,
As though in proud baronial hall,
O’er silken cradle-bed;
No more the pomps and gauds of life
Maintained their strong control,
For holy love’s new gift had shed
Fresh greenness o’er her soul.
And when the husband from his toil
Returned at closing day,
How dear to him the lowly home
Where all his treasures lay.
“O, Ellinor! ’tis naught to me,
The hardship or the storm,
While thus thy blessed smile I see,
And clasp our infant’s form.”
No secret sigh o’er pleasures lost
Convulsed their tranquil breast,
For where the pure affections dwell
The heart hath perfect rest.
So fled the Summer’s balmy prime,
The Autumn’s golden wing,
And Winter laid his hoary head
Upon the lap of Spring.
Yet oft, with wily, wary step,
The red-browed Indian crept
Close round his pale-faced neighbor’s home,
And listened while they slept;
But fierce Wingina, lofty chief,
Aloof, their movements eyed,
Nor courteous bowed his pluméd head,
Nor checked his haughty stride.
John White leaped from his vessel’s prow,
He had braved the boisterous sea,
And boldly rode the mountain-wave—
A stalwart man was he.
John White leaped from his vessel’s prow,
And joy was in his eye;
For his daughter’s smile had lured him on
Amid the stormiest sky.
Where were the roofs that flecked the green!
The smoke-wreaths curling high?
He calls—he shouts—the cherished names,
But Echo makes reply.
“Where art thou, Ellinor! my child!
And sweet Virginia Dare!
O, silver cloud, that cleaves the blue
Like angel’s wing—say where!
“Where is the glorious Saxon vine
We set so strong and fair?”
The stern gray rocks in mockery smiled,
And coldly answered “where!”
“Ho! flitting savage! stay thy step,
And tell—” but light as air
He vanished, and the falling stream
Responsive murmured—“where!”
So, o’er the ruined palisade,
The blackened threshold-stone,
The funeral of colonial hope,
That old man wept—alone!
And mournful rose his wild lament,
In accents of despair,
For the lost daughter of his love,
And young Virginia Dare.
REVIEW OF NEW BOOKS.
The Poetical Works of Fitz Greene Halleck. New Edition. Redfield: Clinton Hall, New York.
This is a new and very beautiful edition, the most beautiful that has ever been published, of one of the sweetest, most elaborately finished, most expressive and original poets of America. No one can read Halleck, without being at once impressed with the sense that he is a writer entirely sui generis and most peculiar; not merely imitating no one, but resembling no one, and—
“Si liceat magnis componere parva”—
Like the notorious Andrew Jackson Allen, himself alone.
Mr. Bryant we have never heard accused of imitation; yet it is notorious that his style, elaborate, didactic, stately, sometimes magniloquent, sometimes magnificent, always as brightly polished and always as cold as a Toledo rapier’s blade, always arousing admiration, and at times awe, but rarely awakening sympathy, but never calling forth a tear, closely resembles that of many English poets, none of them his inferior, the most remarkable of whom are Thompson of the Seasons, and Young of the Night Thoughts; and Wordsworth; and although I acquit him wholly of any premeditated design to follow in any of their footsteps, I still hold it as an undoubted truth, that unless those three great didacticians had written before him, Bryant would not have written, at least as he has written. Not that I design or desire to underrate his talent, or detract from his well-earned laurels; for I admire him as a grand, calm, pure, and at times almost sublime, English writer; but that no passage ever caused me a thrill in the veins, a tear in the eye, or a flush on the cheek; and that his want of honest human sympathies renders the report of his fame greater than the reality of his popularity.
Longfellow, again, principally I believe from mere base malignity on the part of his would-be critics, and vile envy of his superiority, has been falsely accused of plagiarism, and most unjustly charged with copying Keats, Shelley, and Tennyson, with the former two of whom he has nothing whatever in common, while he resembles the latter only in the perfect flow of his inimitable rhythm, and the really artificial, but most seemingly inartificial, structure of his smooth versification; in all of which he as far excels his supposed model, as he does in expression, simplicity and force, not of diction only but of thought, and in the fire of his quick and vivid fancy.
Of Halleck, on the contrary, though he alone has successfully followed Byron in the half-lyric, half-comic vein of Don Juan and Fanny; even as Byron alone followed that of Whistlecraft—though in the fineness of his fancy, in the neat finish and epigrammatic turn of his antithetical verses, in his playful wit, and felicitous turns of natural pathos, he rivals if not equals Moore—it has never been said, never could be said, that he resembles, much less copies, either Moore or Byron, or any other poet of ancient times or modern.
The most observable characteristics of Halleck are the exquisite grace with which he glides from the purest and sweetest sentiments into the most delicate, yet most pungent wit; in the playfulness of his fancy; the truth of his humanity; and the epigrammatic terseness of his smaller compositions. Such as—
Green be the turf above thee
Friend of my better days!
None knew thee but to love thee,
None named thee but to praise—
An elegy of which it can be truly said, as of how few persons through all time, that there is not one idea wanting, or one superfluous; not one word that could be altered without injuring the beauty and force of the ensemble.
The most frequently quoted of Mr. Halleck’s poems, are “The Death of Bozzaris,” and “Alnwick Castle,” the latter perhaps the most generally popular of all his writings. But, in my judgment, the best, beyond all doubt, is “The Field of the Grounded Arms;” which, because it is entirely beyond the low sphere of New York poetical criticism, as being writ in unrhymed lyric lines, has been little praised or noticed, in proportion to its real merits, which are of the highest.
The same exquisite power and felicity in the fitness of wording, noticed above, of the lines “On the Death of Joseph Rodman Drake,” and the terseness of phraseology, in which Mr. Halleck clearly surpasses every contemporaneous poet, native or foreign, is here most conspicuous; as is the perfect harmony, which causes unrhymed metric lines, which some wiseacres would doubtless call rhythmic prose, to read melodious and sonorous as the most perfect rhymed lyrics. My limits will not allow me to quote this beautiful poem, breathing the true fire of honest and impartial patriotism and love of country; and, as it is already long before the public, and known to all judicious readers, I prefer to pass on to a long extract from an unpublished poem on “Connecticut,” the poet’s birth-place and heart’s home, a portion of which is now for the first time suffered to see the light.
“Connecticut” is in our poet’s favorite measure, the decasyllabic stanza of eight lines, and in his favorite vein, the serio-humorous style of “Fanny.” I confess, for my own part, that I prefer the simple-serious to the semi-comic semi-sentimental strain; for a sweet fall of pathos melting into a dying close, and then abruptly terminated by a sarcasm or a sneer, rather strikes me with a jarring violence, like that arising from a musical discord, than charms me by the contrast it affords. Admiration, at the dexterity of the versifier, mingles too largely with vexation at the violence done to the harmony of beauty.
But of Mr. Halleck’s genial and various genius no component part is more clearly marked than his hearty pantagruelism, which finds something humorous in the deepest of sentiments, which must have its shot at every folly as it flies, and which must vent its sarcasm at the weak point, even in what it most admires; and never, it must be said, was wit of the most pointed less ill-natured, humor more fairy-like and fanciful, or sarcasm more softly veiled in dewy flowers of immortal verse.
His biting satires on the grim old Puritans, quaint and cruel, godly and greedy, forgiving any thing to no men except their own pet sins to themselves, most clamorous for tolerance to their own creed, most intolerant to that of all others, are most refreshing in this age of cant and fulsome section-adulation.
The following stanzas, in a bolder vein, following up his expedition of Mather’s mendacity, are as sublime as they are bold and independent—
XVII.
No: a born Poet at his cradle fire
The Muses nursed him as their bud unblown,
And gave him, as his mind grew high and higher,
Their ducal strawberry leaf’s unwreathed renown.
Alas! that mightiest masters of the lyre,
Whose pens above an eagle’s heart have grown,
In all the proud nobility of wing,
Should stoop to dip their points in passion’s poison spring.
XVIII.
For Milton, weary of his youth’s young wife,
To her, to king, to church, to law untrue,
Warred for divorce and discord to the knife,
And proudest wore his plume of darkest hue:
And Dante, when his Florence, in her strife,
Robbed him of office and his temper, threw
’Mongst friends and foes a bomb-shell of fierce rhymes,
Shivering their names and fames to all succeeding times.
The two closing stanzas of this fragment are so perfectly, chastely and inimitably beautiful, that they induce a strong hope that Mr. Halleck’s fastidious judgment—for it is neither indolence of habit, nor difficulty of composition, which keeps our poet for periods so long and tedious behind the curtain, but the severe taste and chariness of his muse, which causes him to reject as unworthy of his pen what most writers would rejoice to put forward as the cope-stone of their renown—will suffer him ere long to give us his “Connecticut” entire.
XXIV.
Beneath thy star, as one of the THIRTEEN,
Land of my lay! through many a battle’s night,
Thy gallant men stepped, steady and serene,
To that war-music’s stern and strong delight.
Where bayonets clenched above the trampled green,
Where sabres grappled in the ocean fight;
In siege, in storm, on deck or rampart, there
They hunted the wolf Danger to his lair,
And sought and won sweet peace, and wreaths for Honor’s hair.
XXV.
And with thy smiles, sweet Peace, came woman’s, bringing
The Eden sunshine of her welcome kiss,
And lover’s flutes, and children’s voices singing
The maiden’s promised, matron’s perfect bliss,
And heart and home-bells blending with their ringing
Thank-offerings borne to holier words than this,
And the proud Queen of Glory’s laurel leaves,
And gold, the gift to Peace, of Plenty’s summer sheaves.
Honor and health to Halleck, and may he speak to us in the high-hearted, honest music of his soul oftener than heretofore; and let him rest assured he cannot speak to us too often or too long. Valeto.
Mysteries; or Glimpses of the Supernatural. By Charles Wyllys Elliott. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1 vol. 12mo.
The publication of this volume is timely. It goes over the whole field appropriated to oracles, astrology, dreams, demons, ghosts, spectres, and the like, with long chapters on the Salem Witchcraft, the Cock-lane Ghost, the Rochester Knockings and the Stratford Mysteries. The rules of evidence in relation to such marvels are also clearly stated. Mr. Elliott’s style is somewhat affected, but his information gives evidence of research, and the circulation of his book may produce good. Every thing which will tend in the slightest degree to scare away the late importations of vulgar vagabonds from the “spiritual world,” ironically so called, is worthy of patronage. We are not, of course, so audaciously incredulous as to doubt the reality of “the spirits,” but we sincerely hope that the Maine Liquor Law, in its most stringent provisions, may be applied to them; for such a set of unfleshed drivelers and disembodied nuisances never before attempted to convey to mortal ears the gossip of ghost-land.
A curious story is related in Mr. Elliott’s book, on the authority of Southey. We cannot forbear quoting it as an illustration of the way that John Bull experiences supernatural fear. “In 1702 Whiston predicted that the comet would appear on Wednesday, 14th October, at five minutes after five in the morning, and that the world would be destroyed by fire on the Friday following. His reputation was high, and the comet appeared. A number of persons got into boats and barges on the Thames, thinking the water the safest place. South Sea and India stock fell. A captain of a Dutch ship threw all his powder into the river, that the ship might not be endangered. At noon, after the comet had appeared, it is said that more than one hundred clergymen were ferried over to Lambeth, to request that proper prayers might be prepared, there being none in the church service. People believed that the day of judgment was at hand, and some acted on this belief, as if some temporary evil was to be expected. On Thursday more than 7,000 kept mistresses were publicly married. There was a prodigious run kept on the bank; Sir Gilbert Heathcote, at that time head director, issued orders to all the fire offices in London, requiring them to keep a good look-out, and have a particular eye on the Bank of England.” The run on the bank, and the orders of Sir Gilbert, in view of the world’s being destroyed by fire, are touches of practical humor, which the most daring humorist would hardly have ventured to imagine.
The Works of Shakspeare: the Text Carefully Restored according to the First Editions; with Introductions, Notes Original and Selected, and a Life of the Poet. By the Rev. H. N. Hudson, A. M. Boston: James Monroe & Co. Vol. 5, 12mo.
The present volume of Mr. Hudson’s beautiful edition of Shakspeare contains King Richard II., the first and second parts of Henry IV., and Henry V. The introductions, especially those to Henry IV., are probably the ablest of the editor’s many able disquisitions. The analysis of Prince Henry, Hotspur, Glendower, and, above all, Falstaffe, are in Mr. Hudson’s most matured style, both of thought and expression. They are positive additions to critical literature. No editor of Shakspeare, no critic of character, has ever approached the masterly dissection of Falstaffe given in this volume. The fat knight’s great intellect has perfect justice done to it, while his humor is richly set forth. Mr. Hudson says very finely of him, that he has “all the intellectual qualities that enter into the composition of practical wisdom, without one of the moral.” Of his sensuality, it is remarked: “The animal susceptibilities of our nature are in him carried up to their highest pitch, and his several appetites hug their respective objects with exquisite gust. Moreover, his speech borrows additional flavor and effect from the thick foldings of flesh which it oozes through; therefore he glories in his much flesh, and cherishes it as being the procreant cradle of jests; if he be fat, it enables his tongue to drop fatness; and in the chambers of his brain all the pleasurable agitations that pervade the structure below are curiously wrought into mental delectation. With how keen and inexhaustible a relish does he pour down sack, as if he tasted it all over and through his body to the ends of his fingers and toes! Yet who does not see that he has far more pleasure in discoursing about it than in drinking it? And so it is through all the particulars of his enormous sensuality. And he makes the same use of his vices and infirmities; nay, he often exaggerates and caricatures those he has, and sometimes affects those he has not, that he may suck the same profit from them.”
The Book of Snobs. By William M. Thackeray. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1 vol. 18mo.
These biting and brilliant squibs were originally published in Punch. In their collected form they will take their place among the most characteristic of Thackeray’s works. This volume, in short, contains the philosophy of Snobbism, as Vanity Fair and Pendennis contain its illustrations in life. But while these sketches are philosophical, the philosophy teaches by example. We have city snobs—military, clerical and literary snobs—party-giving, dinner-giving, dining-out snobs—whig snobs, tory snobs, radical snobs—snobs in the country and snobs on the continent—university snobs, club snobs, and regal snobs. The result is that the author, in snobbing the race, at last becomes almost a snob himself—as it was said of Mr. Brownson, that he was so much of a protestant that he protested himself out of protestantism. Thackeray’s definition of a snob is “he who meanly admires mean things.”
The “Snob Royal” is one of the best essays in the volume. “In a country,” says Thackeray, “where snobs are in the majority, a prime one, surely, cannot be unfit to govern. With us they have succeeded to admiration. For instance, James I. was a snob, and a Scotch snob; than which the world contains no more offensive creature. He appears not to have had one of the good qualities of a man—neither courage, nor generosity, nor honesty, nor brains; but read what the great divines and doctors of England said about him! Charles II., his grandson, was a rogue, but not a snob; while Louis XIV., his old square-toes of a contemporary—the great worshiper of big-wiggery—has always struck me as a most undoubted and royal snob.” In George the Fourth he also finds a regal snob. “With the same humility with which the footmen at the King’s Arms gave way before the Plush Royal, the aristocracy of the English nation bent down and truckled before Georgius, and proclaimed him the first gentleman in Europe. And it’s a wonder to think what is the gentlefolks opinion of a gentleman when they gave Georgius such a title.”
Outlines of English Literature. By Thomas B. Shaw, B. A. A new American edition, with a Sketch of American Literature. By Henry T. Tuckerman. Philadelphia: Blanchard & Lea. 1 vol. 12mo.
This compact duodecimo volume is an admirable guide to English and American literature. Mr. Shaw’s work has been extensively circulated in England and America, and well deserves its reputation. It is well-written, evinces a well-trained study of the great English writers, and abounds in information and judicious criticism. It clearly conveys to the reader, uninformed in literary history, accurate ideas of the sliding-scale of English reputations. Mr. Tuckerman’s sketch of American literature occupies fifty closely-printed pages, and is a model of compactness of style and distinctness of judgment. From a few of his critical estimates we should feel inclined to dissent, and it would be strange, indeed, if any two persons could agree in opinion on the merits of the scores of authors coming within the scope of the editor’s plan; but, as a whole, the judgments evince a genial and catholic taste, unbiassed by prejudice, and combining both the disposition and the power to decide justly. The critic’s discrimination is exhibited equally in his criticisms on works of the understanding and works of the imagination. The style is remarkably condensed; every word tells; yet the sweet and fluent ease of Mr. Tuckerman’s diction gives no evidence of purchasing brevity at any sacrifice of grace. The book deserves an extensive circulation as the best and most available introduction to English and American literature.
Pierre; or The Ambiguities. By Herman Melville. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1 vol. 12mo.
This work is generally considered a failure. The cause of its ill-success is certainly not to be sought in its lack of power. None of Melville’s novels equals the present in force and subtlety of thinking and unity of purpose. Many of the scenes are wrought out with great splendor and vigor, and a capacity is evinced of holding with a firm grasp, and describing with a masterly distinctness, some of the most evanescent phenomena of morbid emotions. But the spirit pervading the whole book is intolerably unhealthy, and the most friendly reader is obliged at the end to protest against such a provoking perversion of talent and waste of power. The author has attempted seemingly to combine in it the peculiarities of Poe and Hawthorne, and has succeeded in producing nothing but a powerfully unpleasant caricature of morbid thought and passion. Pierre, we take it, is crazy, and the merit of the book is in clearly presenting the psychology of his madness; but the details of such a mental malady as that which afflicts Pierre are almost as disgusting as those of physical disease itself.
The Men of the Time, or Sketches of Living Notables. New York: Redfield. 1 vol. 12mo.
This is a thick duodecimo volume of some six hundred closely printed pages, devoted to clear and concise biographies of men whose names are now before the world. The number of notables is nearly nine hundred, and it contains almost every name of reputation in Europe or America. The labor of its compilation must have been great, as the editor has diligently explored the recondite as well as obvious sources of information. In most of the American biographies the information has been obtained at first hand. The collection comprises living authors, architects, artists, composers, demagogues, divines, dramatists, engineers, journalists, merchants, novelists, philanthropists, poets, politicians, savants, statesmen, travelers, voyagers and warriors. The biographies vary in length according to the importance of the subject, some of them being admirably and critically written, giving estimation of character as well as narratives of events. It is a book which should be in every house. The newspaper itself cannot be thoroughly understood without a reference to this volume.
Dombey and Son. By Charles Dickens. New York: Harper & Brothers. 2 vols. 12mo.
This is a cheap, elegant, and finely illustrated edition of Dickens’ celebrated novel, which we trust will be followed by an edition of his other works in the same form. “Dombey and Son,” though defective in plot, and with some blunders in characterization, is still brimful of the author’s genius, and contains many scenes and characters which cannot fade from the reader’s memory. Dombey, Carker, Major Bagstock and Edith, are apt to be bores when they are not caricatures, but Florence, little Paul, Captain “Ed’ard Cuttle,” Toots and Susan Nipper, are acquaintances which, once made, are a possession forever. As there is no complete American edition of Dickens’ works in a convenient readable form, we trust that the Harper’s will give us one modeled on the present volumes.
SIPS OF PUNCH.
Master Tom surprises the family by stating that he intends taking his ladies out on a fishing excursion.
“Please, Sir, did you want any body to keep order on these here Hustings on Polling Day?”
PITY THE SORROWS OF THE POOR POLICE.
“Lor, Soosan! How’s a Feller to eat Meat such Weather as this. Now, a bit o’ Pickled Salmon and Cowcumber, or a Lobster Salad might do.”
FASHION PLATE.
Illustration.—A charming morning dress is thus formed: a dress of barège, of silk pattern, with three volants trimmed with a small quilling à la vieille, and open in front, displaying a lace trimmed neckerchief, (Mechlin lace,) while two small volants finish the sleeves; the last surmounted by a quilling similar to that of the body of the dress.
The morning pardessus is also worn with a dress of percale, likewise embroidered; volant and sleeves in English embroidery; the front is trimmed in the same manner; the body is ornamented with a double plait in the stuff, and above the volant, and which replaces the braiding, generally placed on pardessus of tissue. Lastly, are models of sleeves trimmed with lace, one with two open volants; the other closed at the wrist, and trimmed with a manchette of lace.