It will be given. Look! how the rolling ground,
At every swell, nearer and still more near
Moves toward the father's outstretched arm his boy.
Once he has touched his garment:—how his eye
Lightens with love, and hope, and anxious fears!
Ha, see! he has him now!—he clasps him round;
Kisses his face; puts back the curling locks,
That shaded his fine brow; looks in his eyes;
Grasps in his own those little dimpled hands;
Then folds him to his breast, as he was wont
To lie when sleeping; and resigned, awaits
Undreaded death.
And death came soon and swift
And pangless. The huge pile sank down at once
Into the opening earth. Walls—arches—roof—
And deep foundation stones—all—mingling—fell!
NOTES.—Herculaneum and Pompeii were cities of Italy, which were destroyed by an eruption of Vesuvius in the year 79 A. D., being entirely buried under ashes and lava. During the last century they have been dug out to a considerable extent, and many of the streets, buildings, and utensils have been found in a state of perfect preservation.
CXVI. HOW MEN REASON. (405)
My friend, the Professor, whom I have mentioned to you once or twice, told me yesterday that somebody had been abusing him in some of the journals of his calling. I told him that I did n't doubt he deserved it; that I hoped he did deserve a little abuse occasionally, and would for a number of years to come; that nobody could do anything to make his neighbors wiser or better without being liable to abuse for it; especially that people hated to have their little mistakes made fun of, and perhaps he had been doing something of the kind. The Professor smiled.
Now, said I, hear what I am going to say. It will not take many years to bring you to the period of life when men, at least the majority of writing and talking men, do nothing but praise. Men, like peaches and pears, grow sweet a little while before they begin to decay. I don't know what it is,—whether a spontaneous change, mental or bodily, or whether it is through experience of the thanklessness of critical honesty,—but it is a fact, that most writers, except sour and unsuccessful ones, get tired of finding fault at about the time when they are beginning to grow old.
As a general thing, I would not give a great deal for the fair words of a critic, if he is himself an author, over fifty years of age. At thirty, we are all trying to cut our names in big letters upon the walls of this tenement of life; twenty years later, we have carved it, or shut up our jackknives. Then we are ready to help others, and care less to hinder any, because nobody's elbows are in our way. So I am glad you have a little life left; you will be saccharine enough in a few years.
Some of the softening effects of advancing age have struck me very much in what I have heard or seen here and elsewhere. I just now spoke of the sweetening process that authors undergo. Do you know that in the gradual passage from maturity to helplessness the harshest characters sometimes have a period in which they are gentle and placid as young children? I have heard it said, but I can not be sponsor for its truth, that the famous chieftain, Lochiel, was rocked in a cradle like a baby, in his old age. An old man, whose studies had been of the severest scholastic kind, used to love to hear little nursery stories read over and over to him. One who saw the Duke of Wellington in his last years describes him as very gentle in his aspect and demeanor. I remember a person of singularly stern and lofty bearing who became remarkably gracious and easy in all his ways in the later period of his life.
And that leads me to say that men often remind me of pears in their way of coming to maturity. Some are ripe at twenty, like human Jargonelles, and must be made the most of, for their day is soon over. Some come into their perfect condition late, like the autumn kinds, and they last better than the summer fruit. And some, that, like the Winter Nelis, have been hard and uninviting until all the rest have had their season, get their glow and perfume long after the frost and snow have done their worst with the orchards. Beware of rash criticisms; the rough and stringent fruit you condemn may be an autumn or a winter pear, and that which you picked up beneath the same bough in August may have been only its worm—eaten windfalls. Milton was a Saint Germain with a graft of the roseate Early Catherine. Rich, juicy, lively, fragrant, russet-skinned old Chaucer was an Easter Beurre'; the buds of a new summer were swelling when he ripened.
—Holmes.