Apple. “Because you are melancholy, and something light and trifling might—”
Tristo. “No, Apple, no! When I am sad, which is but too often, I find no relief from the ludicrous, or the gay. I should sooner look for an antidote to melancholy in the deep thought and earnest style of Coleridge, than in the levities of Swift, or the whimsicalities of Sterne. And an evening walk in the solemn starlight would quicker soothe me than a merry ramble among the green hills in the brightness of the morning. When the soul wanders through its airy chambers in solitary sadness, let it not flee for refuge to the comic page, to laughter, or the song. Let it dwell upon scenes and objects, more wretched than itself, till the sigh of sorrow burst into the tear of pity. The descriptions of Crabbe, so gloomy, so powerful, and so true, bear me away from sadness to solemnity, and the deep conceptions of Foster lift me from solemnity to a high and tender elevation.”
Apple. “Fool as I am, these bright spring mornings always make even me serious.”
Tristo. “Fools as we all are, there are times when the cup of pleasure is as nauseous to the soul, as is wine to the sated palate of the morning reveler. Why is it, Apple, why is it that the first gay breath of spring is so saddening in its influence? Nature seems then to burst from her winter’s sleep, like a resurrection from the grave. The jocund earth puts on her brightest robes, as if soon to celebrate her nuptials with heaven. The pulse of existence beats high with new-born vigor, and the warm, bright blood runs riot through the renovated veins. Alike in the open fields, and the crowded city, throughout the glorious works of God, and the petty creations of man, there is a newness of life, which, it would seem, must fill every heart with bounding ecstacy. And so it may be, for aught I know, with the busy and the riotous. But with the idle and the thoughtful, the approach of spring produces, I am persuaded, far different effects.”
Apple. “Physicians would tell us that the balmy breeze bears on its wings a subtle, penetrating fluid, which dampens the spirits and enfeebles the energies.”
Tristo. “No. While I allow that these early gales of spring, which breathe life and vigor into all the rest of animated nature, unbrace our nerves, and through those media of sensation, lower the tone, and lessen the elasticity of the feelings, yet, for the main cause would I look deeper—even in the mind. There are certain periods, as we all know, when we are forced to reflect. Such periods are, every serious change in the world without—the recurrence of a birth-day, or the revisiting of home; and sometimes the sight of a long-neglected volume, through whose pages I have strayed in pleasant intercourse with an absent, or a buried friend, has brought paleness to my lip, and sadness to my heart. And such an occasion, preeminently, are the early days of spring; for spring (as the Germans say) is the cradle-time of the year.”
Apple. “The calendar, though, says otherwise. But go on.”
Tristo. “Then are we summoned to look forward to another year, with hopes less wild and free than they were at the commencement of the last; and we look backward, also, with a longer and a sadder retrospect: and you know, Apple, that the memory of a student is but a shadowy maze, where the forms, which, in prospect, were gilded with glory, and girded with magnificence, to his backward gaze, seem airy nothings, or shapes, palpable, indeed, but unsightly—fiends, mocking at the vanity of his hopes, and the folly of his grief. And thus the bland breath of the reviving year becomes, through the mysterious principle of association, an instrument of keenest anguish to the sensitive mind. This annual birth of nature is a mile-stone, that notches our progress from the cradle to the grave: the figures are surrounded by bloom and greenness, but they are graven by the finger of Death.”
Apple. “I think such brilliant days make us feel too well.”
Tristo. “They do. They kindle sensations too delightful for continuance—our systems are too coarse, too frail—it seems as if an electric finger were laid invisibly upon each shrinking nerve—a balm circumfuses and permeates the heart, strange, ecstatic, overpowering. The change, too, is often so abrupt as to cause an unpleasant revulsion—the process (so far as regards the action of the mind) is not unlike that by which we pass from the stern winter of our existence here, to the bright and unending summer of the future life.”