Thus, from the depths of the old cloister swells a love-song so clear and sweet, so humanly divine that it almost reconciles the ages. The times were out of joint in Spain, but I am glad that this mystical daughter of Sappho was not ordained, like poor little Charlotte Corday, another idealist, with the blood of a great poet in her veins, to try to set them right. I am glad that the doors of the convent were open to this spiritual young dreamer of beautiful dreams, who sings the “Swan Song of the Age of Faith.” You say the convent doors are open yet; yes, but in another way—perhaps a better way. Women enter to dedicate a broken life to all that is good. The peace is there, but the rapture is no more. We “cannot sing the old songs now nor dream those dreams again.”
No woman is fairer to muse upon than Marcela de Carpio. We get out of life what we put into it. From the repose of the cloister Sister Marcela contributes a dream. She is the poetess of the passionate reverence of the Age of Faith. In her verse “the tender grace of a day that is dead” is immortal. We must never for a moment overlook a Spanish lady’s pedigree. Senorita Marcela de Carpio was the grandniece of a Grand Inquisitor of Spain.
Stray Leaves From Old,
Old Books
A bibliophile is expected to enter with an apology,—he is generally called a bibliomaniac, but let your foreboded homage check your tongue; remember, if you prefer your mother’s Bible to the one left by the tract society, or the one left by the tract society to your mother’s (bibliophiles are liable to any preference), you are open to the infection and the mania is incurable.
But do not books become ours by what we, individually, get from them? What does it matter whether it lies in the cover or the text or between the lines? “Piece out our imperfection with your thought,” implores the greatest poet. Though it is dwelt upon with some truth that bibliophiles do not read their books (must we therefore infer that other people have the contents of their libraries at their tongue’s ends), they have their own attitude toward them—an attitude which has proved of the profoundest service to letters.
The professional critic enters the library in state, receiving and dismissing new books with sovereign assurance: so uniformly has he erred that the dictum has gone forth that no age can pass on its writers.
The gentle reader enters the library modestly; although he may read the new books that perish, he does not neglect the new books that live, as any one who makes a study of editions will discover; he buys the good works of his own day. The publisher of the first edition of Shakespeare remarked that purchase “best commends a book,” on the strength of which idea he collected the stray plays of the Bard of the Avon. The preface which he wrote for his edition stands forth as the modest advertisement of history; but absurdly condescending as it is, it shows that he foresaw a good, immediate sale; also that he foresaw no farther.