Another view is on the sea-shore of Africa. You see ships in the far distance. In the foreground a palm-grove slopes down to the clear stream, where a boat is lying at anchor, in which a negro is sleeping—but in what a fearful situation! A gigantic boa-constrictor has issued from the wood, and, while its tail rests in the thicket, has twined itself in a loose ring around the sleeper, it now rears its head aloft hissing with rage at his companions, who are hastening with their axes to his assistance. One of them has just fortunately succeeded in scotching it, and has thus saved the negro, who wakes, and stares in wild terror on the serpent. It is said that as soon as the muscles of the back of the boa are divided in any part it loses all its power. The picture is taken from an incident which really occurred in the year 1792.
We are still in a distant part of the globe, but in more remote ages. A wondrously beautiful moonlight gleams and glitters on the Bay of Alexandria. Majestic monuments and temples of Egyptian art lie in the strongly contrasted light and shadow; and from the steps of a hall of noble architecture, Cleopatra, surrounded by all the luxury and pomp of the East, is descending to the golden bark which is to bear her to Antony. The most beautiful boys and girls strew flowers under her feet, and a chorus of old men with snowy beards and clad in purple, are seated on the sea-shore, singing a farewell song to their golden harps.
Have you not enough of this yet, dear Julia? Well then, look at the Travelled Monkey, who returns to his brethren in the woods, in the dress of a modern ‘exclusive.’ They throng around him in amazement; one pulls at his watch chain, another at his well starched cravat. At length, one whose jealousy is excited by his finery gives him a box on the ear: this is a signal for an universal pillage. In a few minutes he will be reduced to appear once more ‘in naturalibus.’
Here I close my exhibition. Dear Julia, confess that if you were the editor of the ‘Morgen Blatt,’ you could not have a more indefatigable correspondent. Whether I be well or ill, merry or sad, I always fulfil my duty. Just now I am by no means at my best: I am ill, and I have lost a great deal of money at whist. It is really extraordinary how soon one comes to regard a pound as a ‘thaler.’ Though I know the difference full well, and often find it not very agreeable, yet the physical effect of the ‘sovereign’ here, is constantly the same upon me as that of the ‘thaler’ at home, for which I often laugh at myself. I wish fate would make a similar mistake, and convert our ‘thalers’ into pounds. I, for one, should certainly not bury mine. Yet we should put our gains to good interest; for when one tries to make a beautified living creation out of dead money, as we have done, and at the same time to increase the comfort of those around one,—as I did by employing them, and you by the more direct means of bounty,—surely one has gained usurious interest.
Prudence, however, is not our ‘forte,’ and if you have shown rather more than I, it is only because you are a woman, and have therefore the habit of being on the defensive. Prudence is far more a weapon of defence than of attack.
You have now a good opportunity for the exercise of it in the S—— society, and I already see you in thought taming the refractory, and speaking the words of peace with dignified serenity. Here is your portrait on the margin, ‘à la Sir Thomas Lawrence.’ You will doubtless recognize that strong bent for art which the Gallite discovered on my cranium. The surrounding caricatures you must ascribe to my somewhat sulky humour.
As a mind in this flat depressed tone is little fertile in thoughts, permit me to supply the place of them by some passages out of a singular book I have met with. You will think that it must have flowed not only from my pen but from my most inmost soul.
“It is incalculable,” says the author, “what an influence the objects which surround our childhood exercise over the whole formation of our character in after life. In the dark forests of the land of my birth, in my continual solitary wanderings where nature wears so romantic an aspect, arose my early love for my own meditations, and, when I was afterwards thrown among numbers of my own age at school, rendered it impossible to my disposition of mind, to form any intimate companionships, except those which I first began to discover in myself.
“In the day my great pleasure was lonely wandering in the country:—in the evening, the reading of romantic fictions, which I connected in my mind with the scenes I was so familiar with; and whether I sat in winter in the chimney corner poring over my book, or in summer lay stretched in luxurious indolence under a tree, my hours were equally filled with all those misty and voluptuous dreams which were perhaps the essence of poetry, but which I was not gifted with the genius to embody. Such a temper is not made for intercourse with men. One while I pursued an object with restless activity,—another I lived in perfectly supine meditation. Nothing came up to my wishes or my imaginings, and my whole being was at last profoundly imbued with that bitter, melancholy philosophy, which taught me, like Faust, that knowledge is but useless stuff, that hope is but a cheat; and laid a curse upon me, like that which hangs on him who, amid all the joys of youth and the allurements of pleasure, feels the presence of a spirit of darkness ever around him.
“The experience of longer and bitterer years makes me doubt whether this earth can ever bring forth a living form which can realize the visions of him who has dwelt too long absorbed in the creations of his own fancy.”