I lately met with some pretty English verses which I translated, after my fashion, with a thought of you, my best friend, who too often regret departing youth. These are the delightful lines:
Ist gleich die trübe Wange bleich,
Das Auge nicht mehr hell,
Und nahet schon das ernste Reich,
Wo Jugend fliehet schnell!
Doch lächelt Dir die Wange noch,
Das Auge kennt die Thräne noch,
Das Herz schlägt noch so warm und frei
Als in des Lebens grünstem Mai.
So denk’ denn nicht, dass nur die Jugend
Und Schönheit Segen leiht—
Zeit lehrt die Seele schönre Tugend,
In Jahren treuer Zärtlichkeit.
Und selbst wenn einst die Nacht von oben
Verdunkelnd Deine Brust umfängt,
Wird noch durch Liebeshand gehoben
Dein Haupt zur ew’gen Ruh’ gesenkt.
O, so auch blinkt der Abendstern,
Ist gleich dahin der Sonne Licht,
Noch sanft und warm aus hoher Fern’,
Und Tages-Glanz entbehrst Du nicht.—[24]
Yes, my beloved Julia, thus has time taught us, in years of tenderness, that nothing can have so genuine a value as that. We have now before us an evening star, whose mild light is far more delightful than that mid-day sun which often rather scorches than warms.
I drove home with L——, and we had a long conversation by the snug fireside on the affairs of our country. * * *
L—— is very kind to me, and I am doubly attached to him; first, for his own amiable and honourable character; secondly, for the sake of his excellent father, to whom we owe more real gratitude than to ——, though he had no other motive than his own impartial love of justice.
November 23d.
A strange custom in England is the continual intrusion of the newspapers into the affairs of private life. A man of any distinction not only sees the most absurd details concerning him dragged before the public,—such as where he dined, what evening party he attended, and so forth, (which many foreigners read with the greatest self-complacency,)—but if anything really worth telling happens to him, it is immediately made public without shame or scruple. Personal hostility has thus ‘beau jeu,’ as well as the desire of making profitable friends. Many use the newspapers for the publication of articles to their own advantage, which they send themselves. The foreign embassies cultivate this branch with great assiduity. It is easy to see what formidable weapons the press thus furnishes. Fortunately, however, the poison brings its antidote with it. This consists in the indifference with which the public receives such communications. An article in a newspaper after which a Continental would not show himself for three months, here excites at most a momentary laugh, and the next day is forgotten.
About a month ago the papers made themselves extremely merry about the duel of a noble lord here; who, according to their representation of the matter, had not cut a very heroic figure. They made the most offensive remarks, and drew the most mortifying inferences as to the calibre of his valour; and all this had not the smallest perceptible effect in disabling him from presenting himself in society with as much ease and unconcern as ever. They have tried to give me too a ‘coup fourré.’ * * *
But I have served under an old soldier, and learned from him always to have the first and loudest laugh at myself, and not to spare an inoffensive jest at myself and others. This is the only safe way of meeting ridicule in the world: if you appear sensitive or embarrassed, then indeed the poison works; otherwise it evaporates like cold water on a red-hot stone. This the English understand to perfection.
This evening I spent, true to my determination, in Drury Lane, where, to my infinite astonishment, old Braham appeared, still as first singer, with the same applause with which I saw him, even then an old man, perform the same part for his own benefit the day before my departure from England, twelve years ago. I found little difference in his singing, except that he shouted rather more violently, and made rather more ‘roulades’ in order to conceal the decline of his voice. He is a Jew, and I am firmly convinced the everlasting one,[25] for he does not seem to grow old at all. ‘Au reste,’ he is the genuine representative of the English style of singing, and, in popular songs especially, the enthusiastically adored idol of the public. One cannot deny to him great power of voice and rapidity of execution, and he is said to have a thorough knowledge of music: but a more abominable style it is impossible to conceive.