"In gardens where the languid roses keep
Perpetual sweetness for the hearts that smile,
Perpetual sadness for the hearts that weep,
Lonely, unseen, I wander, to beguile
The day that only shines to show thee bright,
The night whose stars burn wan beside thy light,
Adelaïda!
"Adelaïda! all the birds are singing
Low, as thou passest, where in leaves they lie;
With timid chirp unto their soft mates clinging,
They greet that presence without which they die,—
Die, even with Nature's universal heart,
When thou, her queen, dost in thy pride depart,
Adelaïda!
"Depart! and dim her beauty evermore;
Go, from the shivering leaves and lily-flowers,
That, white as saints on the eternal shore,
Stand wavering, beckoning, in the moony bowers,—
Beckon me on where their moist feet are laid
In the dark mould, fast by the alder-shade,
Adelaïda!
"Adelaïda! 'tis the Grave or Love
Must fight for this great first, last mastery.
I feed in faith on spicy gales above,
Where all along that blue unchanging sky
Thy name is traced;—its sweetness never fails
To sound in streams of peace in spicy gales,
Adelaïda!
"Adelaïda! woe is me, woe, woe!
Not only in the sky, in starry gold,
I see thy name,—where peaceful rivers flow,
Not only hear its sweetness manifold;
On every white and purple flower 'tis written,
Its echo every aspen-quake hath smitten,
Adelaïda!
"Go farther! let me leave thee! I depart!—
Who whispered I would linger by thy side?
Who said it beat so warm, my feeble heart?
Who told, I dared to claim thee as my bride?
Who cried, I roamed without thee all the day
And clasped thee in my dreams? Away, away,
Adelaïda!
"I die, but thou shall live; in the loud noon
Thy feet shall crush the long grass o'er my head,
Not rudely, rudely,—gently, gently, soon
Shall tread me heavier down in that dark bed;
And thou shalt know not on whose head they pass,
Whose silent hands, whose frozen heart!—Alas,
Adelaïda!"
There are those who in "Charles Auchester," charmed by the simplicity and truth of that first part called "Choral Life," objected to the rest on the score of extravagance. But this book records the adoration of music, and in an age replete with the dilettanti of indifference may we not thank God for one enthusiast? Yet, indeed, everything about Mendelssohn was itself extravagant,—his childhood, his youth, his life, his beauty, his power: should the instrument, then, be tuned lower than such key-note? And again, to us who live a somewhat commonplace routine, the life of musical artists, especially abroad, must necessarily seem redundant; yet it is only that life, natural and actual, into which we are here inducted. The same is possible to no other class of artists: even the scholar, buried in his profound studies, must descend from his abstraction; the poet, the painter, cannot share it: for the latter, however much he clubs and cliques, is seldom sufficiently dispossessed of himself; and the other, though he strike out of his heat poems as immortal as stars, may yet live among clods and feel no thrill returning on himself. But the musician cannot dwell alone: his art requires that he should cluster, and the orchestra enforces it; therefore he acts and reacts like the vibrations ridged within a Stradivarius, he is kept in his art's atmosphere till it becomes his life, its aura bathes every trivial thing, and existence which might otherwise be meagre is raised and glorified. Thus yet more, when we recall that even were the musician's life not so, still it ought to be, and it is the right of the author to idealize, one can believe "Charles Auchester" to be but a faithful transcript. "In proportion to our appreciation of music is also our appreciation of what is not music," Sarona says; and so faithfully does this writer prove it, by her attention to minute and usual circumstances, that one might certainly allow her some exaltation when touching on one theme,—yet how this exaltation can be called in question by any who espouse Bettine von Arnim's sublime ravings the morning after entering Vienna is mysterious. Were the real condition of these natures—which certainly exist—bared to view, many from their phlegmatic experience might deem all the nerves to be in a state of excitation, when in fact they saw only normal and healthy play. It is true that the power of modulated tones arouses everything most ethereal and lofty in our composition, and it must therefore be wrong to charge with extravagance any description of a life in music, which is a life in the highest, because truly it cannot be extravagant enough, since all words fail before that of which it discourses,—while it gives you the sense of the universe and of the eternities, and is to the other arts what the soul is to the body. And is it not, moreover, the voice of Nature, the murmur of wind and tree, the thrill of all the dropping influences of the heavens, the medium of spiritual communication, the universal language in which all can exchange thought and feeling, and through which the whole world becomes one nation? Out of the spirit blossom spirits, Bettine tells us, and we subject ourselves to their power: "Ah, wonderful mediation of the ineffable, which oppresses the bosom! Ah, music!" To go further, there is certainly no exaggeration in Charles Auchester's treatment of his hero; for, reading the contemporaneous articles of musical journals, you will find them one and all speaking in even more unrestrained profligacy of praise, recognizing in the cloud of composers but nine worthy the name of Master, of whom Mendelssohn was one, and declaring that under his baton the orchestra was electrified. We all remember the solemnly pathetic and passionate beauty of Seraphael's burial by night, with the music winding up among the stars; but did it in reality exceed the actual progress of the dead Master's ashes from city to city, met in the twilight and the evening by music, gray-headed Capellmeisters receiving him with singing in the open midnight, and fresh songs being flung upon his coffin like wreaths with the sunrise?
There is a wonderful strength exhibited in the sketch of Seraphael from first to last: not to mention the happiness of the name, of which this is by no means a single instance, and the fact of his having no pramomen, both of which so insignificant atoms in themselves lift him at once a line above the level in the reader's sympathy,—it was a most difficult thing to present such delicacy and lightness, and yet to preserve "the awful greatness of his lonely genius," as somewhere else she calls it; but all must confess that it is done, and perfectly. It is not alone in Seraphael that this strength is shown; a new mould of character in fiction is given us,—masculine characters which, though light and airy, are yet brilliant and strong, most sweet, and surcharged with loveliness. It is this perfect sweetness that constitutes half the charm of her books,—for in the only one where it is deficient, "Beatrice Reynolds," the whole fails. One feels sure that it was never deficient in herself, that her own heart must have been overflowing with warm and cordial tenderness,—and if any testimony were wanting, we should have it in her evident love of children. It is only by love that understanding comes, and no one ever understood children better or painted them half so well: they are no mites of puny perfection, no angels astray, no Psyches in all the agonies of the bursting chrysalis, but real little flesh-and-blood people in pinafores, approached by nobody's hand so nearly as George Eliot's. They are flawless: the boy who, having swung himself giddy, felt "the world turning round, as papa says it does, nurse,"—the other boy, who, immured in studies and dreams, found all life to be "a fairy-tale book with half the leaves uncut,"—the charming little snow-drop of a Carlotta, "who would sit next him, would stick her tiny fork into his face, with a morsel of turkey at the end of it, would poke crumbs into his mouth with her finger, would put up her lips to kiss him, would say, every moment, 'I like you much,—much!' with all Davy's earnestness, though with just so much of her mother's modesty as made her turn pink and shy, and put herself completely over the chair into Seraphael's lap when we laughed at her." And Philippa, and Philippa's conversation, capers, and cat! an impossibility to those who have never experienced her whirlwinds of exuberance,—and to those who have, a reproduction of the drollest days of their existence. Never was there a personage so perfectly drawn, never such a grotesque storm of noisy health,—the matchless Philippa! After reading Miss Sheppard's juveniles, you feel that you have been in most good and innocent company all day; and since it is necessary for an author to become for the moment that nature of which he writes, this author must have been something very good and innocent in herself in order to uphold this strain so long. Of those accessible, the best is that entitled, "Round the Fire,"—a series of tales purporting to be told by little girls, and each of extraordinary interest; but the one she herself preferred is yet with four others in the hands of an Edinburgh publisher, and perhaps yet in manuscript,—the name of this being "Prince Gentil, Prince Joujou, and Prince Bonbon, or the Children's Cities." This reminds one that cities, in the abstract, seem to have been with her a subject of unceasing wonder and pleasure,—from Venice, with its shadowy, slippery, silent water-ways to X, that ideal city of the North; and where is there anything to excel the Picture of Paris, drawn minutely and colored, his prison-prophecy, Paris as it was to be created, rather than restored, by Louis Napoleon? "Then he took from his pocket a strong magnifying-glass, and put it gently into Rodomant's hand. Rodomant grasped it, and through it gazed long and eagerly. And from that hieroglyphic mist there started, sudden and distinct as morn without a cloud, a brilliant bird's-eye view of a superb and stupendous city, a dream of imaginative architecture, almost in itself a poem. Each house of each street, each lamp and fountain, each line of road and pavement, marked as vividly as the glorious domes, the pointing pillars, grand gates and arches, proud palaces in inclosures of solemn leafage, the bridges traced like webs of shadow, the stately terraces and dim cathedrals. Green groves and avenues and vivid gardens interlaced and divided the city within the walls; and without, masses of delicate shrubbery, as perfectly defined, were studded with fair villas of every varied form, melting gradually and peacefully, as it seemed, to a bright champaign embroidered with fence and hedge-row…. A sort of visionary pageant unrolled to him, partly memorial, in part prophetic. He knew he had seen something like it,—but when and where? What planet boasted that star of cities for strength and lustre that must surpass new London and old Thebes? For Rodomant had the mathematical gift of all the highest harmonists, and his brain could magnify and actualize the elfin-sized images under his eye to their just and proper proportion in the real." It must have been like heaven, this city so stilly and so fair,—for, you see, there were no people there.
Miss Sheppard's plots are not conspicuous, for her characters make circumstance and are their own fate; still her capacity in that line is finely exhibited by the plot of the opera of "Alarcos." In mere filling up, having excepted the incident,—always original and delightful,—the lofty imagination, and the descriptions of wind and weather,—one of her best points will be found to be costume, a minor thing, but then there are few who excel in modern millinery. "Salome was beautiful. Her splendid delicate dress, all rosy folds, skirt over skirt of drapery falling softly into each other, made her clear skin dazzle in the midst of them; and the masses of vivid geraniums here and there without their leaves were not too gorgeous for her bearing,—nor for her hair, in whose rich darkness geraniums also glowed, long wreaths curling down into her neck." Rose in white, with wreaths of rubies weighing down her slender arms;—Adelaïda, with her lace robe like woven light on satin like woven moon-beams, and large water-lilies in her golden hair;—my Lady Barres, whose dress "consisted almost always of levantine, with demi-train and under-petticoat of white brocaded silk peeping through its open front; the hair showing the shape of the head, and confined by a narrow band of black velvet across the brow, fastened in the morning with onyx or agate, in the evening with a brilliant only; she always wore upon her wrists delicate bands of cambric embroidered with seed-pearl so minutely that it seemed a pattern wrought out of the threads of the stuff, and little pearl tassels drooped there scarcely eclipsing her hands in fairness."