A DRIVE THROUGH THE COUNTRY NEAR BOSTON.
Aglauron and Laurie are two of the pleasantest men I know. Laurie combines, with the external advantages of a beautiful person and easy address, all the charm which quick perceptions and intelligent sympathy give to the intercourse of daily life. He has an extensive, though not a deep, knowledge of men and books,—his naturally fine taste has been more refined by observation, both at home and abroad, than is usual in this busy country; and, though not himself a thinker, he follows with care and delight the flights of a rapid and inventive mind. He is one of those rare persons who, without being servile or vacillating, present on no side any barrier to the free action of another mind. Yes, he is really an agreeable companion. I do not remember ever to have been wearied or chilled in his company.
Aglauron is a person of far greater depth and force than his friend and cousin, but by no means as agreeable. His mind is ardent and powerful, rather than brilliant and ready,—neither does he with ease adapt himself to the course of another. But, when he is once kindled, the blaze of light casts every object on which it falls into a bold relief, and gives every scene a lustre unknown before. He is not, perhaps, strictly original in his thoughts; but the severe truth of his character, and the searching force of his attention, give the charm of originality to what he says. Accordingly, another cannot, by repetition, do it justice. I have never any doubt when I write down or tell what Laurie says, but Aglauron must write for himself.
Yet I almost always take notes of what has passed, for the amusement of a distant friend, who is learning, amidst the western prairies, patience, and an appreciation of the poor benefits of our imperfectly civilized state. And those I took this day, seemed not unworthy of a more general circulation. The sparkle of talk, the free breeze that swelled its current, are always fled when you write it down; but there is a gentle flow, and truth to the moment, rarely attained in more elaborate compositions.
My two friends called to ask if I would drive with them into the country, and I gladly consented. It was a beautiful afternoon of the last week in May. Nature seemed most desirous to make up for the time she had lost, in an uncommonly cold and wet spring. The leaves were bursting from their sheaths with such rapidity that the trees seemed actually to greet you as you passed along. The vestal choirs of snow-drops and violets were chanting their gentle hopes from every bank, the orchards were white with blossoms, and the birds singing in almost tumultuous glee.
We drove for some time in silence, perhaps fearful to disturb the universal song by less melodious accents, when Aglauron said:
“How entirely are we new-born today! How are all the post cold skies and hostile breezes vanished before this single breath of sweetness! How consoling is the truth thus indicated!”
Laurie. It is indeed the dearest fact of our consciousness, that, in every moment of joy, pain is annihilated. There is no past, and the future is only the sunlight streaming into the far valley.
Aglauron. Yet it was the night that taught us to prize the day.
Laurie. Even so. And I, you know, object to none of the “dark masters.”
Aglauron. Nor I,—because I am sure that whatever is, is good; and to find out the why is all our employment here. But one feels so at home in such a day as this!
Laurie. As this, indeed! I never heard so many birds, nor saw so many flowers. Do you not like these yellow flowers?
Aglauron. They gleam upon the fields as if to express the bridal kiss of the sun. He seems most happy, if not most wealthy, when first he is wed to the earth.
Laurie. I believe I have some such feeling about these golden flowers. When I did not know what was the Asphodel, so celebrated by the poets, I thought it was a golden flower; yet this yellow is so ridiculed as vulgar.
Aglauron. It is because our vulgar luxury depreciates objects not fitted to adorn our dwellings. These yellow flowers will not bear being token out of their places and brought home to the centre-table. But, when enamelling the ground, the cowslip, the king-cup,—nay, the marigold and dandelion even,—are resplendently beautiful.
Laurie. They are the poor man’s gold. See that dark, unpointed house, with its lilac shrubbery. As it stands, undivided from the road to which the green bank slopes down from the door, is not the effect of that enamel of gold dandelions beautiful?
Aglauron. It seems as if a stream of peace had flowed from the door-step down to the very dust, in waves of light, to greet the passer-by. That is, indeed, a quiet house. It looks as if somebody’s grandfather lived there still.
Laurie. It is most refreshing to see the dark boards amid those houses of staring white. Strange that, in the extreme heat of summer, aching eyes don’t teach the people better.
Aglauron. We are still, in fact, uncivilized, for all our knowledge of what is done “in foreign parts” cannot make us otherwise. Civilization must be homogeneous,—must be a natural growth. This glistening white paint was long preferred because the most expensive; just as in the West, I understand, they paint houses red to make them resemble the hideous red brick. And the eye, thus spoiled by excitement, prefers red or white to the stone-color, or the browns, which would harmonize with other hues.
Laurie. I should think the eye could never be spoiled so far as to like these white palings. These bars of glare amid the foliage are unbearable.
Myself. What color should they be?
Laurie. An invisible green, as in all civilized parts of the globe. Then your eye would rest on the shrubbery undisturbed.
Myself. Your vaunted Italy has its palaces of white stucco and buildings of brick.
Laurie. Ay,—but the stucco is by the atmosphere soon mellowed into cream-color, the brick into rich brown.
Myself. I have heard a connoisseur admire our own red brick in the afternoon sun, above all other colors.
Laurie. There are some who delight too much in the stimulus of color to be judges of harmony of coloring. It is so, often, with the Italians. No color is too keen for the eye of the Neapolitan. He thinks, with little Riding-hood, there is no color like red. I have seen one of the most beautiful new palaces paved with tiles of a brilliant red. But this, too, is barbarism.
Myself. You are pleased to call it so, because you make the English your arbiters in point of taste; but I do not think they, on your own principle, are our proper models. With their ever-weeping skies, and seven-piled velvet of verdure, they are no rule for us, whose eyes are accustomed to the keen blue and brilliant clouds of our own realm, and who see the earth wholly green scarce two months in the year. No white is more glistening than our January snows; no house here hurts my eye more than the fields of white-weed will, a fortnight hence.
Laurie. True refinement of taste would bid the eye seek repose the more. But, even admitting what you say, there is no harmony. The architecture is borrowed from England; why not the rest?
Aglauron. But, my friend, surely these piazzas and pipe-stem pillars are all American.
Laurie. But the cottage to which they belong is English. The inhabitants, suffocating in small rooms, and beneath sloping roofs, because the house is too low to admit any circulation of air, are in need, we must admit, of the piazza, for elsewhere they must suffer all the torments of Mons. Chaubert in his first experience of the oven. But I do not assail the piazzas, at any rate; they are most desirable, in these hot summers of ours, were they but in proportion with the house, and their pillars with one another. But I do object to houses which are desirable neither as summer nor winter residences here. The shingle palaces, celebrated by Irving’s wit, were far more appropriate, for they, at least, gave free course to the winds of heaven, when the thermometer stood at ninety-five degrees in the shade.
Aglauron. Pity that American wit nipped in the bud those early attempts at an American architecture. Here in the East, alas! the case is become hopeless. But in the West the log-cabin still promises a proper basis.
Laurie. You laugh at me. But so it is. I am not so silly as to insist upon American architecture, American art, in the 4th of July style, merely for the gratification of national vanity. But a building, to be beautiful, should harmonize exactly with the uses to which it is to be put, and be an index to the climate and habits of the people. There is no objection to borrowing good thoughts from other nations, if we adopt the new style because we find it will serve our convenience, and not merely because it looks pretty outside.
Aglauron. I agree with you that here, as well as in manners and in literature, there is too ready access to the old stock, and, though I said it in jest, my hope is, in truth, the log-cabin. This the settler will enlarge, as his riches and his family increase; he will beautify as his character refines, and as his eye becomes accustomed to observe objects around him for their loveliness as well as for their utility. He will borrow from Nature the forms and coloring most in harmony with the scene in which his dwelling is placed. Might growth here be but slow enough! Might not a greediness for gain and show cheat men of all the real advantages of their experience!
(Here a carriage passed.)
Laurie. Who is that beautiful lady to whom you bowed?
Aglauron. Beautiful do you think her? At this distance, and with the freshness which the open air gives to her complexion, she certainly does look so, and was so still, five years ago, when I knew her abroad. It is Mrs. V——.
Laurie. I remember with what interest you mentioned her in your letters. And you promised to tell me her true story.
Aglauron. I was much interested, then, both in her and her story, But, last winter, when I met her at the South, she had altered, and seemed so much less attractive than before, that the bright colors of the picture are well-nigh effaced.
Laurie. The pleasure of telling the story will revive them again. Let us fasten our horses and go into this little wood. There is a seat near the lake which is pretty enough to tell a story upon.
Aglauron. In all the idyls I ever read, they were told in caves, or beside a trickling fountain.
Laurie. That was in the last century. We will innovate. Let us begin that American originality we were talking about, and make the bank of a lake answer our purpose.
We dismounted accordingly, but, on reaching the spot, Aglauron at first insisted on lying on the grass, and gazing up at the clouds in a most uncitizen-like fashion, and it was some time before we could get the promised story. At last,—
I first saw Mrs. V—— at the opera in Vienna. Abroad, I scarcely cared for anything in comparison with music. In many respects the Old World disappointed my hopes; Society was, in essentials, no better, nor worse, than at home, and I too easily saw through the varnish of conventional refinement. Lions, seen near, were scarcely more interesting than tamer cattle, and much more annoying in their gambols and caprices. Parks and ornamental grounds pleased me less than the native forests and wide-rolling rivers of my own land. But in the Arts, and most of all in Music, I found all my wishes more than realized. I found the soul of man uttering itself with the swiftness, the freedom and the beauty, for which I had always pined. I easily conceived how foreigners, once acquainted with this diverse language, pass their lives without a wish for pleasure or employment beyond hearing the great works of the masters. It seemed to me that here was wealth to feed the thoughts for ages. This lady fixed my attention by the rapturous devotion with which she listened. I saw that she too had here found her proper home. Every shade of thought and feeling expressed in the music was mirrored in her beautiful countenance. Her rapture of attention, during some passages, was enough of itself to make you hold your breath; and a sudden stroke of genius lit her face into a very heaven with its lightning. It seemed to me that in her I should find one who would truly sympathize with me, one who looked on the art not as a connoisseur, but a votary.
I took the speediest opportunity of being introduced to her at her own house by a common friend.
But what a difference! At home I scarcely knew her. Still she was beautiful; but the sweetness, the elevated expression, which the satisfaction of an hour had given her, were entirely fled. Her eye was restless, her cheek pale and thin, her whole expression perturbed and sorrowful. Every gesture spoke the sickliness of a spirit long an outcast from its natural home, bereft of happiness, and hopeless of good.
I perceived, at first sight of her every-day face, that it was not unknown to me. Three or four years earlier, staying in the country-house of one of her friends, I had seen her picture. The house was very dull,—as dull as placid content with the mere material enjoyments of life, and an inert gentleness of nature, could make its inhabitants. They were people to be loved, but loved without a thought. Their wings had never grown, nor their eyes coveted a wider prospect than could be seen from the parent nest. The friendly visitant could not discompose them by a remark indicating any expansion of mind or life. Much as I enjoyed the beauty of the country around, when out in the free air, my hours within the house would have been dull enough but for the contemplation of this picture. While the round of common-place songs was going on, and the whist-players were at their work, I used to sit and wonder how this being, so sovereign in the fire of her nature, so proud in her untamed loveliness, could ever have come of their blood. Her eye, from the canvas, even, seemed to annihilate all things low or little, and able to command all creation in search of the object of its desires. She had not found it, though; I felt this on seeing her now. She, the queenly woman, the Boadicea of a forlorn hope, as she seemed born to be, the only woman whose face, to my eye, had ever given promise of a prodigality of nature sufficient for the entertainment of a poet’s soul, was—I saw it at a glance—a captive in her life, and a beggar in her affections.
Laurie. A dangerous object to the traveller’s eye, methinks!
Aglauron. Not to mine! The picture had been so; but, seeing her now, I felt that the glorious promise of her youthful prime had failed. She had missed her course; and the beauty, whose charm to the imagination had been that it seemed invincible, was now subdued and mixed with earth.
Laurie. I can never comprehend the cruelty in your way of viewing human beings, Aglauron. To err, to suffer, is their lot; all who have feeling and energy of character must share it; and I could not endure a woman who at six-and-twenty bore no trace of the past.
Aglauron. Such women and such men are the companions of everyday life. But the angels of our thoughts are those moulds of pure beauty which must break with a fall. The common air must not touch them, for they make their own atmosphere. I admit that such are not for the tenderness of daily life; their influence must be high, distant, starlike, to be pure.
Such was this woman to me before I knew her; one whose splendid beauty drew on my thoughts to their future home. In knowing her, I lost the happiness I had enjoyed in knowing what she should have been. At first the disappointment was severe, but I have learnt to pardon her, as others who get mutilated or worn in life, and show the royal impress only in their virgin courage. But this subject would detain me too long. Let me rather tell you of Mrs. V——‘s sad history.
A friend of mine has said that beautiful persons seem rarely born to their proper family, but amidst persons so rough and uncongenial that their presence commands like that of a reproving angel, or pains like that of some poor prince changed at nurse, and bound for life to the society of churls.
So it was with Emily. Her father was sordid, her mother weak; persons of great wealth and greater selfishness. She was the youngest by many years, and left alone in her father’s house. Notwithstanding the want of intelligent sympathy while she was growing up, and the want of all intelligent culture, she was not an unhappy child. The unbounded and foolish indulgence with which she was treated did not have an obviously bad effect upon her then; it did not make her selfish, sensual, or vain. Her character was too powerful to dwell upon such boons as those nearest her could bestow. She negligently received them all as her due. It was later that the pernicious effects of the absence of all discipline showed themselves; but in early years she was happy in her lavish feelings, and in beautiful nature, on which she could pour them, and in her own pursuits. Music was her passion; in it she found food, and an answer for feelings destined to become so fatal to her peace, but which then glowed so sweetly in her youthful form as to enchant the most ordinary observer.
When she was not more than fifteen, and expanding like a flower in each sunny day, it was her misfortune that her first husband saw and loved her. Emily, though pleased by his handsome person and gay manners, never bestowed a serious thought on him. If she had, it would have been the first ever disengaged from her life of pleasurable sensation. But when he did plead his cause with all the ardor of youth, and the flourishes which have been by usage set apart for such occasions, she listened with delight; for all his talk of boundless love, undying faith, etc., seemed her native tongue. It was like the most glowing sunset sky. It swelled upon the ear like music. It was the only way she ever wished to be addressed, and she now saw plainly why all talk of everyday people had fallen unheeded on her ear. She could have listened all day. But when, emboldened by the beaming eye and ready smile with which she heard, he pressed his suit more seriously, and talked of marriage, she drew back astonished. Marry yet?—impossible! She had never thought of it; and as she thought now of marriages, such as she had seen them, there was nothing in marriage to attract. But L—— was not so easily repelled; he made her every promise of pleasure, as one would to a child. He would take her away to journey through scenes more beautiful than she had ever dreamed of; he would take her to a city where, in the fairest home, she should hear the finest music, and he himself, in every scene, would be her devoted slave, too happy if for every now pleasure he received one of those smiles which had become his life.
He saw her yielding, and hastened to secure her. Her father was delighted, as fathers are strangely wont to be, that he was likely to be deprived of his child, his pet, his pride. The mother was threefold delighted that she would have a daughter married so young,—at least three years younger than any of her elder sisters were married. Both lent their influence; and Emily, accustomed to rely on them against all peril, and annoyance, till she scarcely knew there was pain or evil in the world, gave her consent, as she would have given it to a pleasure-party for a day or a week.
The marriage was hurried on; L—— intent on gaining his object, as men of strong will and no sentiment are wont to be, the parents thinking of the éclat of the match. Emily was amused by the preparations for the festivity, and full of excitement about the new chapter which was to be opened in her life. Yet so little idea had she of the true business of life, and the importance of its ties, that perhaps there was no figure in the future that occupied her less than that of her bridegroom, a handsome man, with a sweet voice, her captive, her adorer. She neither thought nor saw further, lulled by the pictures of bliss and adventure which were floating before her fancy, the more enchanting because so vague.
It was at this time that the picture that so charmed me was taken. The exquisite rose had not yet opened its leaves so as to show its heart; but its fragrance and blushful pride were there in perfection.
Poor Emily! She had the promised journeys, the splendid home. Amid the former her mind, opened by new scenes, already learned that something she seemed to possess was wanting in the too constant companion of her days. In the splendid home she received not only musicians, but other visitants, who taught her strange things.
Four little months after her leaving home, her parents were astonished by receiving a letter in which she told them they had parted with her too soon; that she was not happy with Mr. L——, as he had promised she should be, and that she wished to have her marriage broken. She urged her father to make haste about it, as she had particular reasons for impatience. You may easily conceive of the astonishment of the good folks at home. Her mother wondered and cried. Her father immediately ordered his horses, and went to her.
He was received with rapturous delight, and almost at the first moment thanked for his speedy compliance with her request. But when she found that he opposed her desire of having her marriage broken, and when she urged him with vehemence and those marks of caressing fondness she had been used to find all-powerful, and he told her at last it could not be done, she gave way to a paroxysm of passion; she declared that she could not and would not live with Mr. L——; that, so soon as she saw anything of the world, she saw many men that she infinitely preferred to him; and that, since her father and mother, instead of guarding her, so mere a child as she was, so entirely inexperienced, against a hasty choice, had persuaded and urged her to it, it was their duty to break the match when they found it did not make her happy.
“My child, you are entirely unreasonable.”
“It is not a time to be patient; and I was too yielding before. I am not seventeen. Is the happiness of my whole life to be sacrificed?”
“Emily, you terrify me! Do you love anybody else?”
“Not yet; but I am sure shall find some one to love, now I know what it is. I have seen already many whom I prefer to Mr. L——.”
“Is he not kind to you?”
“Kind! yes; but he is perfectly uninteresting. I hate to be with him. I do not wish his kindness, nor to remain in his house.”
In vain her father argued; she insisted that she could never be happy as she was; that it was impossible the law could be so cruel as to bind her to a vow she had taken when so mere a child; that she would go home with her father now, and they would see what could be done. She added that she had already told her husband her resolution.
“And how did he bear it?”
“He was very angry; but it is better for him to be angry once than unhappy always, as I should certainly make him did I remain here.”
After long and fruitless attempts to reason her into a different state of mind, the father went in search of the husband. He found him irritated and mortified. He loved his wife, in his way, for her personal beauty. He was very proud of her; he was piqued to the last degree by her frankness. He could not but acknowledge the truth of what she said, that she had been persuaded into the match when but a child; for she seemed a very infant now, in wilfulness and ignorance of the world. But I believe neither he nor her father had one compunctious misgiving as to their having profaned the holiness of marriage by such an union. Their minds had never been opened to the true meaning of life, and, though they thought themselves so much wiser, they were in truth much less so than the poor, passionate Emily,—for her heart, at least, spoke clearly, if her mind lay in darkness.
They could do nothing with her, and her father was at length compelled to take her home, hoping that her mother might be able to induce her to see things in a different light. But father, mother, uncles, brothers, all reasoned with her in vain. Totally unused to disappointment, she could not for a long time believe that she was forever bound by a bond that sat uneasily on her untamed spirit. When at last convinced of the truth, her despair was terrible.
“Am I his? his forever? Must I never then love? Never marry one whom I could really love? Mother! it is too cruel. I cannot, will not believe it. You always wished me to belong to him. You do not now wish to aid me, or you are afraid! O, you would not be so, could you but know what I feel!”
At last convinced, she then declared that if she could not be legally separated from L——, but must consent to bear his name, and never give herself to another, she would at least live with him no more. She would not again leave her father’s house. Here she was deaf to all argument, and only force could have driven her away. Her indifference to L—— had become hatred, in the course of these thoughts and conversations. She regarded herself as his victim, and him as her betrayer, since, she said, he was old enough to know the importance of the step to which he led her. Her mind, naturally noble, though now in this wild state, refused to admit his love as an excuse. “Had he loved me,” she said, “he would have wished to teach me to love him, before securing me as his property. He is as selfish as he is dull and uninteresting. No! I will drag on my miserable years here alone, but I will not pretend to love him nor gratify him by the sight of his slave!”
A year and more passed, and found the unhappy Emily inflexible. Her husband at last sought employment abroad, to hide his mortification.
After his departure, Emily relaxed once from the severe coldness she had shown since her return home. She had passed her time there with her music, in reading poetry, in solitary walks. But as the person who had been, however unintentionally, the means of making her so miserable, was further removed from her, she showed willingness to mingle again with the family, and see one or two young friends.
One of these, Almeria, effected what all the armament of praying and threatening friends had been unable to do. She devoted herself to Emily. She shared her employments and her walks; she sympathized with all her feelings, even the morbid ones which she saw to be sincerity, tenderness and delicacy gone astray,—perverted and soured by the foolish indulgence of her education, and the severity of her destiny made known suddenly to a mind quite unprepared. At last, having won the confidence and esteem of Emily, by the wise and gentle cheek her justice and clear perceptions gave to all extravagance, Almeria ventured on representing to Emily her conduct as the world saw it.
To this she found her quite insensible. “What is the world to me?” she said. “I am forbidden to seek there all it can offer of value to Woman—sympathy and a home.”
“It is full of beauty still,” said Almeria, looking out into the golden and perfumed glories of a June day.
“Not to the prisoner and the slave,” said Emily.
“All are such, whom God hath not made free;” and Almeria gently ventured to explain the hopes of larger span which enable the soul that can soar upon their wings to disregard the limitations of seventy years.
Emily listened with profound attention. The words were familiar to her, but the tone was not; it was that which rises from the depths of a purified spirit,—purified by pain, softened into peace.
“Have you made any use of these thoughts in your life, Almeria?”
The lovely preacher hesitated not to reveal a tale before unknown except to her own heart, of woe, renunciation, and repeated blows from a hostile fate.
Emily heard it in silence, but she understood. The great illusions of youth vanished. She did not suffer alone; her lot was not peculiar. Another, perhaps many, were forbidden the bliss of sympathy and a congenial environment. And what had Almeria done? Revenged herself? Tormented all around her? Clung with wild passion to a selfish resolve? Not at all. She had made the best of a wreck of life, and deserved a blessing on a new voyage. She had sought consolation in disinterested tenderness for her fellow-sufferers, and she deserved to cease to suffer.
The lesson was taken home, and gradually leavened the whole being of this spoiled but naturally noble child.
A few weeks afterwards, she asked her father when Mr. L—— was expected to return.
“In about three months,” he replied, much surprised.
“I should like to have you write to him for me.”
“What now absurdity?” said the father, who, long mortified and harassed, had ceased to be a fond father to his once adored Emily.
“Say that my views are unchanged as to his soliciting a marriage with me when too childish to know my own mind on that or any other subject; but I have now seen enough of the world to know that he meant no ill, if no good, and was no more heedless in this great matter than many others are. He is not born to know what one constituted like me must feel, in a home where I found no rest for my heart. I have now read, seen and thought, what has made me a woman. I can be what you call reasonable, though not perhaps in your way. I see that my misfortune is irreparable. I heed not the world’s opinion, and would, for myself, rather remain here, and keep up no semblance of a connection which my matured mind disclaims. But that scandalizes you and my mother, and makes your house a scene of pain and mortification in your old age. I know you, too, did not neglect the charge of me, in your own eyes. I owe you gratitude for your affectionate intentions at least.
“L—— too is as miserable as mortification can make one like him. Write, and ask him if he wishes my presence in his house on my own terms. He must not expect from me the affection, or marks of affection, of a wife. I should never have been his wife had I waited till I understood life or myself. But I will be his attentive and friendly companion, the mistress of his house, if he pleases. To the world it will seem enough,—he will be more comfortable there,—and what he wished of me was, in a great measure, to show me to the world. I saw that, as soon as we were in it, I could not give him happiness if I would, for we have not a thought nor employment in common. But if we can agree on the way, we may live together without any one being very miserable except myself, and I have made up my mind.”
The astonishment of the father may be conceived, and his cavils; L——‘s also.
To cut the story short, it was settled in Emily’s way, for she was one of the sultana kind, dread and dangerous. L—— hardly wished her to love him now, for he half hated her for all she had done; yet he was glad to have her back, as she had judged, for the sake of appearances. All was smoothed over by a plausible story. People, indeed, knew the truth as to the fair one’s outrageous conduct perfectly, but Mr. L—— was rich, his wife beautiful, and gave good parties; so society, as such, bowed and smiled, while individuals scandalized the pair.
They had been living on this footing for several years, when I saw Emily at the opera. She was a much altered being. Debarred of happiness in her affections, she had turned for solace to the intellectual life, and her naturally powerful and brilliant mind had matured into a splendor which had never been dreamed of by those who had seen her amid the freaks end day-dreams of her early youth.
Yet, as I said before, she was not captivating to me, as her picture had been. She was, in a different way, as beautiful in feature and coloring as in her spring-time. Her beauty, all moulded and mellowed by feeling, was far more eloquent; but it had none of the virgin magnificence, the untouched tropical luxuriance, which had fired my fancy. The false position in which she lived had shaded her expression with a painful restlessness; and her eye proclaimed that the conflicts of her mind had strengthened, had deepened, but had not yet hallowed, her character.
She was, however, interesting, deeply so; one of those rare beings who fill your eye in every mood. Her passion for music, and the great excellence she had attained as a performer, drew us together. I was her daily visitor; but, if my admiration ever softened into tenderness, it was the tenderness of pity for her unsatisfied heart, and cold, false life.
But there was one who saw with very different eyes. V—— had been intimate with Emily some time before my arrival, and every day saw him more deeply enamored.
Laurie. And pray where was the husband all this time?
Aglauron. L—— had sought consolation in ambition. He was a man of much practical dexterity, but of little thought, and less heart. He had at first been jealous of Emily for his honor’s sake,—not for any reality,—for she treated him with great attention as to the comforts of daily life; but otherwise, with polite, steady coldness. Finding that she received the court, which many were disposed to pay her, with grace and affability, but at heart with imperial indifference, he ceased to disturb himself; for, as she rightly thought, he was incapable of understanding her. A coquette he could have interpreted; but a romantic character like hers, born for a grand passion, or no love at all, he could not. Nor did he see that V—— was likely to be more to her than any of her admirers.
Laurie. I am afraid I should have shamed his obtuseness. V—— has nothing to recommend him that I know of, except his beauty, and that is the beauty of a petit-maitre—effeminate, without character, and very unlikely, I should judge, to attract such a woman as you give me the idea of.
Aglauron. You speak like a man, Laurie; but have you never heard tales of youthful minstrels and pages being preferred by princesses, in the land of chivalry, to stalwart knights, who were riding all over the land, doing their devoirs maugre scars and starvation? And why? One want of a woman’s heart is to admire and be protected; but another is to be understood in all her delicate feelings, and have an object who shall know how to receive all the marks of her inventive and bounteous affection. V—— is such an one; a being of infinite grace and tenderness, and an equal capacity for prizing the same in another.
Effeminate, say you? Lovely, rather, and lovable. He was not, indeed, made to grow old; but I never saw a fairer spring-time than shone in his eye when life, and thought, and love, opened on him all together.
He was to Emily like the soft breathing of a flute in some solitary valley; indeed, the delicacy of his nature made a solitude around him in the world. So delicate was he, and Emily for a long time so unconscious, that nobody except myself divined how strong was the attraction which, as it drew them nearer together, invested both with a lustre and a sweetness which charmed all around them.
But I see the sun is declining, and warns me to cut short a tale which would keep us here till dawn if I were to detail it as I should like to do in my own memories. The progress of this affair interested me deeply; for, like all persons whose perceptions are more lively than their hopes, I delight to live from day to day in the more ardent experiments of others. I looked on with curiosity, with sympathy, with fear. How could it end? What would become of them, unhappy lovers? One too noble, the other too delicate, ever to find happiness in an unsanctioned tie.
I had, however, no right to interfere, and did not, even by a look, until one evening, when the occasion was forced upon me.
There was a summer fête given at L——‘s. I had mingled for a while with the guests in the brilliant apartments; but the heat oppressed, the conversation failed to interest me. An open window tempted me to the garden, whose flowers and tufted lawns lay bathed in moonlight. I went out alone; but the music of a superb band followed my steps, and gave impulse to my thoughts. A dreaming state, pensive though not absolutely sorrowful, came upon me,—one of those gentle moods when thoughts flow through the mind amber-clear and soft, noiseless, because unimpeded. I sat down in an arbor to enjoy it, and probably stayed much longer than I could have imagined; for when I re?ntered the large saloon it was deserted. The lights, however, were not extinguished, and, hearing voices in the inner room, I supposed some guests still remained; and, as I had not spoken with Emily that evening, I ventured in to bid her good-night. I started, repentant, on finding her alone with V——, and in a situation that announced their feelings to be no longer concealed from each other. She, leaning back on the sofa, was weeping bitterly, while V——, seated at her feet, holding her hands within his own, was pouring forth his passionate words with a fervency which prevented him from perceiving my entrance. But Emily perceived me at once, and starting up, motioned me not to go, as I had intended. I obeyed, and sat down. A pause ensued, awkward for me and for V——, who sat with his eyes cast down and blushing like a young girl detected in a burst of feeling long kept secret. Emily sat buried in thought, the tears yet undried upon her cheeks. She was pale, but nobly beautiful, as I had never yet seen her.
After a few moments I broke the silence, and attempted to tell why I had returned so late. She interrupted me: “No matter, Aglauron, how it happened; whatever the chance, it promises to give both V—— and myself, what we greatly need, a calm friend and adviser. You are the only person among these crowds of men whom I could consult; for I have read friendship in your eye, and I know you have truth and honor. V—— thinks of you as I do, and he too is, or should be, glad to have some counsellor beside his own wishes.”
V—— did not raise his eyes; neither did he contradict her. After a moment he said, “I believe Aglauron to be as free from prejudice as any man, and most true and honorable; yet who can judge in this matter but ourselves?”
“No one shall judge,” said Emily; “but I want counsel. God help me! I feel there is a right and wrong; but how can my mind, which has never been trained to discern between them, be confident of its power at this important moment? Aglauron, what remains to me of happiness,—if anything do remain; perhaps the hope of heaven, if, indeed, there be a heaven,—is at stake! Father and brother have failed their trust. I have no friend able to understand, wise enough to counsel me. The only one whose words ever came true to my thoughts, and of whom you have often reminded me, is distant. Will you, this hour, take her place?”
“To the best of my ability,” I replied without hesitation, struck by the dignity of her manner.
“You know,” she said, “all my past history; all do so here, though they do not talk loudly of it. You and all others have probably blamed me. You know not, you cannot guess, the anguish, the struggles of my childish mind when it first opened to the meaning of those words, Love, Marriage, Life. When I was bound to Mr. L——, by a vow which from my heedless lips was mockery of all thought, all holiness, I had never known a duty, I had never felt the pressure of a tie. Life had been, so far, a sweet, voluptuous dream, and I thought of this seemingly so kind and amiable person as a new and devoted ministrant to me of its pleasures. But I was scarcely in his power when I awoke. I perceived the unfitness of the tie; its closeness revolted me.
“I had no timidity; I had always been accustomed to indulge my feelings, and I displayed them now. L——, irritated, averted his mastery; this drove me wild; I soon hated him, and despised too his insensibility to all which I thought most beautiful. From all his faults, and the imperfection of our relation, grew up in my mind the knowledge of what the true might be to me. It is astonishing how the thought grow upon me day by day. I had not been married more than three months before I knew what it would be to love, and I longed to be free to do so. I had never known what it was to be resisted, and the thought never came to me that I could now, and for all my life, be bound by so early a mistake. I thought only of expressing my resolve to be free.
“How I was repulsed, how disappointed, you know, or could divine if you did not know; for all but me have been trained to bear the burden from their youth up, and accustomed to have the individual will fettered for the advantage of society. For the same reason, you cannot guess the silent fury that filled my mind when I at last found that I had struggled in vain, and that I must remain in the bondage that I had ignorantly put on.
“My affections were totally alienated from my family, for I felt they had known what I had not, and had neither put me on my guard, nor warned me against precipitation whose consequences must be fatal. I saw, indeed, that they did not look on life as I did, and could be content without being happy; but this observation was far from making me love them more. I felt alone, bitterly, contemptuously alone. I hated men who had made the laws that bound me. I did not believe in God; for why had He permitted the dart to enter so unprepared a breast? I determined never to submit, though I disdained to struggle, since struggle was in vain. In passive, lonely wretchedness I would pass my days. I would not feign what I did not feel, nor take the hand which had poisoned for me the cup of life before I had sipped the first drops.
“A friend—the only one I have ever known—taught me other thoughts. She taught me that others, perhaps all others, were victims, as much as myself. She taught me that if all the wrecked submitted to be drowned, the world would be a desert. She taught me to pity others, even those I myself was paining; for she showed me that they had sinned in ignorance, and that I had no right to make them suffer so long as I myself did, merely because they were the authors of my suffering.
“She showed me, by her own pure example, what were Duty and Benevolence and Employment to the soul, even when baffled and sickened in its dearest wishes. That example was not wholly lost: I freed my parents, at least, from their pain, and, without falsehood, became less cruel and more calm.
“Yet the kindness, the calmness, have never gone deep. I have been forced to live out of myself; and life, busy or idle, is still most bitter to the homeless heart. I cannot be like Almeria; I am more ardent; and, Aglauron, you see now I might be happy,”
She looked towards V——. I followed her eye, and was well-nigh melted too by the beauty of his gaze.
“The question in my mind is,” she resumed, “have I not a right to fly? To leave this vacant life, and a tie which, but for worldly circumstances, presses as heavily on L—— as on myself. I shall mortify him; but that is a trifle compared with actual misery. I shall grieve my parents; but, were they truly such, would they not grieve still more that I must reject the life of mutual love? I have already sacrificed enough; shall I sacrifice the happiness of one I could really bless for those who do not know one native heart-beat of my life?”
V—— kissed her hand.
“And yet,” said she, sighing, “it does not always look so. We must, in that case, leave the world; it will not tolerate us. Can I make V—— happy in solitude? And what would Almeria think? Often it seems that she would feel that now I do love, and could make a green spot in the desert of life over which she mourned, she would rejoice to have me do so. Then, again, something whispers she might have objections to make; and I wish—O, I long to know them! For I feel that this is the great crisis of my life, and that if I do not act wisely, now that I have thought and felt, it will be unpardonable. In my first error I was ignorant what I wished, but now I know, and ought not to be weak or deluded.”
I said, “Have you no religious scruples? Do you never think of your vow as sacred?”
“Never!” she replied, with flashing eyes. “Shall the woman be bound by the folly of the child? No!—have never once considered myself as L——‘s wife. If I have lived in his house, it was to make the best of what was left, as Almeria advised. But what I feel he knows perfectly. I have never deceived him. But O! I hazard all! all! and should I be again ignorant, again deceived”——
V—— here poured forth all that can be imagined.
I rose: “Emily, this case seems to me so extraordinary that I must have time to think. You shall hear from me. I shall certainly give you my best advice, and I trust you will not over-value it.”
“I am sure,” she said, “it will be of use to me, and will enable me to decide what I shall do. V——, now go away with Aglauron; it is too late for you to stay here.”
I do not know if I have made obvious, in this account, what struck me most in the interview,—a certain savage force in the character of this beautiful woman, quite independent of the reasoning power. I saw that, as she could give no account of the past, except that she saw it was fit, or saw it was not, so she must be dealt with now by a strong instalment made by another from his own point of view, which she would accept or not, as suited her.
There are some such characters, which, like plants, stretch upwards to the light; they accept what nourishes, they reject what injures them. They die if wounded,—blossom if fortunate; but never learn to analyze all this, or find its reasons; but, if they tell their story, it is in Emily’s way;—“it was so;” “I found it so.”
I talked with V——, and found him, as I expected, not the peer of her he loved, except in love. His passion was at its height. Better acquainted with the world than Emily,—not because he had seen it more, but because he had the elements of the citizen in him,—he had been at first equally emboldened and surprised by the ease with which he won her to listen to his suit. But he was soon still more surprised to find that she would only listen. She had no regard for her position in society as a married woman,—none for her vow. She frankly confessed her love, so far as it went, but doubted as to whether it was her whole love, and doubted still more her right to leave L——, since she had returned to him, and could not break the bond so entirely as to give them firm foot-hold in the world.
“I may make you unhappy,” she said, “and then be unhappy myself; these laws, this society, are so strange, I can make nothing of them. In music I am at home. Why is not all life music? We instantly know when we are going wrong there. Convince me it is for the best, and I will go with you at once. But now it seems wrong, unwise, scarcely better than to stay as we are. We must go secretly, must live obscurely in a corner. That I cannot bear,—all is wrong yet. Why am I not at liberty to declare unblushingly to all men that I will leave the man whom I do not love, and go with him I do love? That is the only way that would suit me,—I cannot see clearly to take any other course.”
I found V—— had no scruples of conscience, any more than herself. He was wholly absorbed in his passion, and his only wish was to persuade her to elope, that a divorce might follow, and she be all his own.
I took my part. I wrote next day to Emily. I told her that my view must differ from hers in this: that I had, from early impressions, a feeling of the sanctity of the marriage vow. It was not to me a measure intended merely to insure the happiness of two individuals, but a solemn obligation, which, whether it led to happiness or not, was a means of bringing home to the mind the great idea of Duty, the understanding of which, and not happiness, seemed to be the end of life. Life looked not clear to me otherwise. I entreated her to separate herself from V—— for a year, before doing anything decisive; she could then look at the subject from other points of view, and see the bearing on mankind as well as on herself alone. If she still found that happiness and V—— were her chief objects, she might be more sure of herself after such a trial. I was careful not to add one word of persuasion or exhortation, except that I recommended her to the enlightening love of the Father of our spirits.
Laurie. With or without persuasion, your advice had small chance, I fear, of being followed.
Aglauron. You err. Next day V—— departed. Emily, with a calm brow and earnest eyes, devoted herself to thought, and such reading as I suggested.
Laurie. And the result?
Aglauron. I grieve not to be able to point my tale with the expected moral, though perhaps the true denouement may lead to one as valuable. L—— died within the year, and she married V——.
Laurie. And the result?
Aglauron. Is for the present utter disappointment in him. She was infinitely blest, for a time, in his devotion, but presently her strong nature found him too much hers, and too little his own. He satisfied her as little as L—— had done, though always lovely and dear. She saw with keen anguish, though this time without bitterness, that we are never wise enough to be sure any measure will fulfil our expectations.
But—I know not how it is—Emily does not yet command the changes of destiny which she feels so keenly and faces so boldly. Born to be happy only in the clear light of religious thought, she still seeks happiness elsewhere. She is now a mother, and all other thoughts are merged in that. But she will not long be permitted to abide there. One more pang, and I look to see her find her central point, from which all the paths she has taken lead. She loves truth so ardently, though as yet only in detail, that she will yet know truth as a whole. She will see that she does not live for Emily, or for V——, or for her child, but as one link in a divine purpose. Her large nature must at last serve knowingly.
Myself. I cannot understand you, Aglauron; I do not guess the scope of your story, nor sympathize with your feeling about this lady. She is a strange, and, I think, very unattractive person. I think her beauty must have fascinated you. Her character seems very inconsistent.
Aglauron. Because I have drawn from life.
Myself. But, surely, there should be a harmony somewhere.
Aglauron. Could we but get the right point of view.
Laurie. And where is that?
He pointed to the sun, just sinking behind the pine grove. We mounted and rode home without a word more. But I do not understand Aglauron yet, nor what he expects from this Emily. Yet her character, though almost featureless at first, gains distinctness as I think of it more. Perhaps in this life I shall find its key.
The Wrongs of American Women. The Duty of American Women.
The same day brought us a copy of Mr. Burdett’s little book,—in which the sufferings and difficulties that beset the large class of women who must earn their subsistence in a city like New York, are delineated with so much simplicity, feeling, and exact adherence to the facts,—and a printed circular, containing proposals for immediate practical adoption of the plan wore fully described in a book published some weeks since, under the title, “The Duty of American Women to their Country,” which was ascribed alternately to Mrs. Stowe and Miss Catharine Beecher. The two matters seemed linked to one another by natural parity. Full acquaintance with the wrong must call forth all manner of inventions for its redress.
The circular, in showing the vast want that already exists of good means for instructing the children of this nation, especially in the West, states also the belief that among women, as being less immersed in other cares and toils, from the preparation it gives for their task as mothers, and from the necessity in which a great proportion stand of earning a subsistence somehow, at least during the years which precede marriage, if they do marry, must the number of teachers wanted be found, which is estimated already at sixty thousand.
We cordially sympathize with these views.
Much has been written about woman’s keeping within her sphere, which is defined as the domestic sphere. As a little girl she is to learn the lighter family duties, while she acquires that limited acquaintance with the realm of literature and science that will enable her to superintend the instruction of children in their earliest years. It is not generally proposed that she should be sufficiently instructed and developed to understand the pursuits or aims of her future husband; she is not to be a help-meet to him in the way of companionship and counsel, except in the care of his house and children. Her youth is to be passed partly in learning to keep house and the use of the needle, partly in the social circle, where her manners may be formed, ornamental accomplishments perfected and displayed, and the husband found who shall give her the domestic sphere for which she is exclusively to be prepared.
Were the destiny of Woman thus exactly marked out; did she invariably retain the shelter of a parent’s or guardian’s roof till she married; did marriage give her a sure home and protector; were she never liable to remain a widow, or, if so, sure of finding immediate protection from a brother or new husband, so that she might never be forced to stand alone one moment; and were her mind given for this world only, with no faculties capable of eternal growth and infinite improvement; we would still demand for her a for wider and more generous culture, than is proposed by those who so anxiously define her sphere. We would demand it that she might not ignorantly or frivolously thwart the designs of her husband; that she might be the respected friend of her sons, not less than of her daughters; that she might give more refinement, elevation and attraction, to the society which is needed to give the characters of men polish and plasticity,—no less so than to save them from vicious and sensual habits. But the most fastidious critic on the departure of Woman from her sphere can scarcely fail to see, at present, that a vast proportion of the sex, if not the better half, do not, cannot have this domestic sphere. Thousands and scores of thousands in this country, no less than in Europe, are obliged to maintain themselves alone. Far greater numbers divide with their husbands the care of earning a support for the family. In England, now, the progress of society has reached so admirable a pitch, that the position of the sexes is frequently reversed, and the husband is obliged to stay at home and “mind the house and bairns,” while the wife goes forth to the employment she alone can secure.
We readily admit that the picture of this is most painful;—that Nature made an entirely opposite distribution of functions between the sexes. We believe the natural order to be the best, and that, if it could be followed in an enlightened spirit, it would bring to Woman all she wants, no less for her immortal than her mortal destiny. We are not surprised that men who do not look deeply and carefully at causes and tendencies, should be led, by disgust at the hardened, hackneyed characters which the present state of things too often produces in women, to such conclusions as they are. We, no more than they, delight in the picture of the poor woman digging in the mines in her husband’s clothes. We, no more than they, delight to hear their voices shrilly raised in the market-place, whether of apples, or of celebrity. But we see that at present they must do as they do for bread. Hundreds and thousands must step out of that hallowed domestic sphere, with no choice but to work or steal, or belong to men, not as wives, but as the wretched slaves of sensuality.
And this transition state, with all its revolting features, indicates, we do believe, an approach of a nobler era than the world has yet known. We trust that by the stress and emergencies of the present and coming time the minds of women will be formed to more reflection and higher purposes than heretofore; their latent powers developed, their characters strengthened and eventually beautified and harmonized. Should the state of society then be such that each may remain, as Nature seems to have intended, Woman the tutelary genius of home, while Man manages the outdoor business of life, both may be done with a wisdom, a mutual understanding and respect, unknown at present. Men will be no less gainers by this than women, finding in pure and more religious marriages the joys of friendship and love combined,—in their mothers and daughters better instruction, sweeter and nobler companionship, and in society at large, an excitement to their finer powers and feelings unknown at present, except in the region of the fine arts.
Blest be the generous, the wise, who seek to forward hopes like these, instead of struggling, against the fiat of Providence and the march of Fate, to bind down rushing life to the standard of the past! Such efforts are vain, but those who make them are unhappy and unwise.
It is not, however, to such that we address ourselves, but to those who seek to make the best of things as they are, while they also strive to make them better. Such persons will have seen enough of the state of things in London, Paris, New York, and manufacturing regions everywhere, to feel that there is an imperative necessity for opening more avenues of employment to women, and fitting them better to enter them, rather than keeping them back.
Women have invaded many of the trades and some of the professions. Sewing, to the present killing extent, they cannot long bear. Factories seem likely to afford them permanent employment. In the culture of fruit, flowers, and vegetables, even in the sale of them, we rejoice to see them engaged. In domestic service they will be aided, but can never be supplanted, by machinery. As much room as there is here for Woman’s mind and Woman’s labor, will always be filled. A few have usurped the martial province, but these must always be few; the nature of Woman is opposed to war. It is natural enough to see “female physicians,” and we believe that the lace cap and work-bag are as much at home here as the wig and gold-headed cane. In the priesthood, they have, from all time, shared more or less—in many eras more than at the present. We believe there has been no female lawyer, and probably will be none. The pen, many of the fine arts, they have made their own; and in the more refined countries of the world, as writers, as musicians, as painters, as actors, women occupy as advantageous ground as men. Writing and music may be esteemed professions for them more than any other.
But there are two others—where the demand must invariably be immense, and for which they are naturally better fitted than men—for which we should like to see them better prepared and better rewarded than they are. These are the professions of nurse to the sick, and of the teacher. The first of these professions we have warmly desired to see dignified. It is a noble one, now most unjustly regarded in the light of menial service. It is one which no menial, no servile nature can fitly occupy. We were rejoiced when an intelligent lady of Massachusetts made the refined heroine of a little romance select this calling. This lady (Mrs. George Lee) has looked on society with unusual largeness of spirit and healthiness of temper. She is well acquainted with the world of conventions, but sees beneath it the world of nature. She is a generous writer, and unpretending as the generous are wont to be. We do not recall the name of the tale, but the circumstance above mentioned marks its temper. We hope to see the time when the refined and cultivated will choose this profession, and learn it, not only through experience and under the direction of the doctor, but by acquainting themselves with the laws of matter and of mind, so that all they do shall be intelligently done, and afford them the means of developing intelligence, as well as the nobler, tenderer feelings of humanity; for even this last part of the benefit they cannot receive if their work be done in a selfish or mercenary spirit.
The other profession is that of teacher, for which women are peculiarly adapted by their nature, superiority in tact, quickness of sympathy, gentleness, patience, and a clear and animated manner in narration or description. To form a good teacher, should be added to this, sincere modesty combined with firmness, liberal views, with a power and will to liberalize them still further, a good method, and habits of exact and thorough investigation. In the two last requisites women are generally deficient, but there are now many shining examples to prove that if they are immethodical and superficial as teachers, it is because it is the custom so to teach them, and that when aware of these faults, they can and will correct them.
The profession is of itself an excellent one for the improvement of the teacher during that interim between youth and maturity when the mind needs testing, tempering, and to review and rearrange the knowledge it has acquired. The natural method of doing this for one’s self, is to attempt teaching others; those years also are the best of the practical teacher. The teacher should be near the pupil, both in years and feelings; no oracle, but the eldest brother or sister of the pupil. More experience and years form the lecturer and director of studies, but injure the powers as to familiar teaching.
These are just the years of leisure in the lives even of those women who are to enter the domestic sphere, and this calling most of all compatible with a constant progress as to qualifications for that.
Viewing the matter thus, it may well be seen that we should hail with joy the assurance that sixty thousand female teachers are wanted, and more likely to be, and that a plan is projected which looks wise, liberal and generous, to afford the means, to those whose hearts answer to this high calling, of obeying their dictates.
The plan is to have Cincinnati as a central point, where teachers shall be for a short time received, examined, and prepared for their duties. By mutual agreement and cooperation of the various sects, funds are to be raised, and teachers provided, according to the wants and tendencies of the various locations now destitute. What is to be done for them centrally, is for suitable persons to examine into the various kinds of fitness, communicate some general views whose value has been tested, and counsel adapted to the difficulties and advantages of their new positions. The central committee are to have the charge of raising funds, and finding teachers, and places where teachers are wanted.
The passage of thoughts, teachers and funds, will be from East to West—the course of sunlight upon this earth.
The plan is offered as the most extensive and pliant means of doing a good and preventing ill to this nation, by means of a national education; whose normal school shall have an invariable object in the search after truth, and the diffusion of the means of knowledge, while its form shall be plastic according to the wants of the time. This normal school promises to have good effects, for it proposes worthy aims through simple means, and the motive for its formation and support seems to be disinterested philanthropy.
It promises to eschew the bitter spirit of sectarianism and proselytism, else we, for one party, could have nothing to do with it. Men, no doubt, have oftentimes been kept from absolute famine by the wheat with which such tares are mingled; but we believe the time is come when a purer and more generous food is to be offered to the people at large. We believe the aim of all education to be to rouse the mind to action, show it the means of discipline and of information; then leave it free, with God, Conscience, and the love of Truth, for its guardians and teachers. Woe be to those who sacrifice these aims of universal and eternal value to the propagation of a set of opinions! We can accept such doctrine as is offered by Rev. Colvin E. Stowe, one of the committee, in the following passage:
“In judicious practice, I am persuaded there will seldom be any very great difficulty, especially if there be excited in the community anything like a whole-hearted and enlightened sincerity in the cause of public instruction.
“It is all right for people to suit their own taste and convictions in respect to sect; and by fair means, and at proper times, to teach their children and those under their influence to prefer the denominations which they prefer; but further than this no one has any right to go. It is all wrong to hazard the well-being of the soul, to jeopardize great public interests for the sake of advancing the interests of a sect. People must learn to practise some self-denial, on Christian principles, in respect to their denominational prejudices as well as in respect to other things, before pure religion can ever gain a complete victory over every form of human selfishness.”
The persons who propose themselves to the examination and instruction of the teachers at Cincinnati, till the plan shall be sufficiently under way to provide regularly for the office, are Mrs. Stowe and Miss Catharine Beecher, ladies well known to fame, as possessing unusual qualifications for the task.
As to finding abundance of teachers, who that reads this little book of Mr. Burdett’s, or the account of the compensation of female labor in New York, and the hopeless, comfortless, useless, pernicious lives of those who have even the advantage of getting work must lead, with the sufferings and almost inevitable degradation to which those who cannot are exposed, but must long to snatch such as are capable of this better profession (and among the multitude there must be many who are or could be made so) from their present toils, and make them free, and the means of freedom and growth in others?
To many books on such subjects—among others to “Woman in the Nineteenth Century”—the objection has been made, that they exhibit ills without specifying any practical means for their remedy. The writer of the last-named essay does indeed think that it contains one great rule which, if laid to heart, would prove a practical remedy for many ills, and of such daily and hourly efficacy in the conduct of life, that any extensive observance of it for a single year would perceptibly raise the tone of thought, feeling and conduct, throughout the civilized world. But to those who ask not only such a principle, but an external method for immediate use, we say that here is one proposed which looks noble and promising; the proposers offer themselves to the work with heart and hand, with time and purse. Go ye and do likewise.
George Sand.
When I first knew George Sand, I thought to have found tried the experiment I wanted. I did not value Bettine so much. She had not pride enough for me. Only now, when I am sure of myself, can I pour out my soul at the feet of another. In the assured soul it is kingly prodigality; in one which cannot forbear it is mere babyhood. I love “abandon” only when natures are capable of the extreme reverse. I know Bettine would end in nothing; when I read her book I knew she could not outlive her love.
But in “Les Sept Cordes de la Lyre,” which I read first, I saw the knowledge of the passions and of social institutions, with the celestial choice which rose above them. I loved Helène, who could hear so well the terrene voices, yet keep her eye fixed on the stars. That would be my wish also,—to know all, and then choose. I even revered her, for I was not sure that I could have resisted the call of the now; could have left the spirit and gone to God; and at a more ambitious age I could not have refused the philosopher. But I hoped much from her steadfastness, and I thought I heard the last tones of a purified life. Gretchen, in the golden cloud, is raised above all past delusions, worthy to redeem and upbear the wise man who stumbled into the pit of error while searching for truth.
Still, in “André” and “Jacques,” I trace the same high morality of one who had tried the liberty of circumstance only to learn to appreciate the liberty of law;—to know that license is the foe of freedom; and, though the sophistry of Passion in these books disgusted me, flowers of purest hue seemed to grow upon the dark and dirty ground. I thought she had cast aside the slough of her past life, and begun a new existence beneath the sun of a new ideal.
But here, in the “Lettres d’un Voyageur,” what do I see? An unfortunate, wailing her loneliness, wailing her mistakes, writing for money! She has genius, and a manly grasp of mind, but not a manly heart. Will there never be a being to combine a man’s mind and a woman’s heart, and who yet finds life too rich to weep over? Never?
When I read in “Leon Leoni” the account of the jeweller’s daughter’s life with her mother, passed in dressing, and learning to be looked at when dressed, “avec un front impassible,” it reminded me of —— and her mother. What a heroine she would be for Sand! She has the same fearless softness with Juliet, and a sportive na?veté a mixture of bird and kitten, unknown to the dupe of Leoni.
If I were a man, and wished a wife, as many do, merely as an ornament, a silken toy, I would take —— as soon as any I know. Her fantastic, impassioned and mutable nature would yield an inexhaustible amusement. She is capable of the most romantic actions,—wild as the falcon, voluptuous as the tuberose; yet she has not in her the elements of romance, like a deeper or less susceptible nature. My cold and reasoning ——, with her one love lying, perhaps never to be unfolded, beneath such sheaths of pride and reserve, would make a far better heroine.
—— and her mother differ from Juliet and her mother by the impulse a single strong character gave them. Even at this distance of time there is a light but perceptible taste of iron in the water.
George Sand disappoints me, as almost all beings do, especially since I have been brought close to her person by the “Lettres d’un Voyageur.” Her remarks on Lavater seem really shallow, à la mode du genre feminin. No self-ruling Aspasia she, but a frail woman, mourning over her lot. Any peculiarity in her destiny seems accidental; she is forced to this and to that to earn her bread, forsooth!
Yet her style—with what a deeply smouldering fire it burns! Not vehement, but intense, like Jean Jacques.
From a Notice of George Sand.
It is probably known to a great proportion of readers that this writer is a woman, who writes under the name, and frequently assumes the dress and manners, of a man. It is also known that she has not only broken the marriage-bond, and, since that, formed other connections, independent of the civil and ecclesiastical sanction, but that she first rose into notice through works which systematically assailed the present institution of marriage, and the social bonds which are connected with it.
No facts are more adapted to startle every feeling of our community; but, since the works of Sand are read here, notwithstanding, and cannot fail to be so while they exert so important an influence abroad, it would be well they should be read intelligently, as to the circumstances of their birth and their tendency.
George Sand we esteem to be a person of strong passions, but of original nobleness and a love of right sufficient to guide them all to the service of worthy aims. But she fell upon evil times. She was given in marriage, according to the fashion of the old régime; she was taken from a convent, where she had heard a great deal about the law of God and the example of Jesus, into a society where no vice was proscribed, if it would only wear the cloak of hypocrisy. She found herself impatient of deception, and loudly appealed to by passion; she yielded, but she could not do so, as others did, sinning against what she owned to be the rule of right and the will of Heaven. She protested, she examined, she “hacked into the roots of things,” and the bold sound of her axe called around her every foe that finds a home amid the growths of civilization. Still she persisted. “If it be real,” thought she, “it cannot be destroyed; as to what is false, the sooner it goes the better; and I, for one, would rather perish by its fall, than wither in its shade.”
Schiller puts into the mouth of Mary Stuart these words, as her only plea: “The world knows the worst of me, and I may boast that, though I have erred, I am better than my reputation.” Sand may say the same. All is open, noble; the free descriptions, the sophistry of passion, are, at least, redeemed by a desire for truth as strong as ever beat in any heart. To the weak or unthinking, the reading of such books may not be desirable, for only those who take exercise as men can digest strong meat. But to any one able to understand the position and circumstances, we believe this reading cannot fail of bringing good impulses, valuable suggestions; and it is quite free from that subtle miasma which taints so large a portion of French literature, not less since the Revolution than before. This we say to the foreign reader. To her own country, Sand is a boon precious and prized, both as a warning and a leader, for which none there can be ungrateful. She has dared to probe its festering wounds; and if they be not past all surgery, she is one who, most of any, helps towards a cure.
Would, indeed, the surgeon had come with quite clean hands! A woman of Sand’s genius—as free, as bold, and pure from even the suspicion of error—might have filled an apostolic station among her people with what force had come her cry, “If it be false, give it up; but if it be true, keep to it,— one or the other!”
But we have read all we wish to say upon this subject lately uttered just from the quarter we could wish. It is such a woman, so unblemished in character, so high in aim, so pure in soul, that should address this other, as noble in nature, but clouded by error, and struggling with circumstances. It is such women that will do such others justice. They are not afraid to look for virtue, and reply to aspiration, among those who have not dwelt “in decencies forever.” It is a source of pride and happiness to read this address from the heart of Elizabeth Barrett:—
To George Sand.
A DESIRE.
Thou large-brained woman and large-hearted man,
Self-called George Sand! whose soul amid the lions
Of thy tumultuous senses moans defiance,
And answers roar for roar, as spirits can,—
I would some wild, miraculous thunder ran
Above the applauding circus, in appliance
Of thine own nobler nature’s strength and science,
Drawing two pinions, white as wings of swan,
From the strong shoulders, to amaze the place
With holier light! That thou, to woman’s claim,
And man’s, might join, beside, the angel’s grace
Of a pure genius, sanctified from blame,
Till child and maiden pressed to thine embrace,
To kiss upon thy lips a stainless fame!
To the Same.
A RECOGNITION.
True genius, but true woman! dost deny
Thy woman’s nature with a manly scorn,
And break away the gauds and armlets worn
By weaker woman in captivity?
Ah, vain denial! that revolted cry
Is sobbed in by a woman’s voice forlorn:—
Thy woman’s hair, my sister! all unshorn,
Floats back dishevelled strength in agony,
Disproving thy man’s name; and while before
The world thou burnest in a poet-fire,
We see thy woman-heart beat evermore
Through the large flame. Beat purer, heart! and higher,
Till God unsex thee on the spirit-shore,
To which, alone unsexing, purely aspire!
This last sonnet seems to have been written after seeing the picture of Sand, which represents her in a man’s dress, but with long, loose hair, and an eye whose mournful fire is impressive, even in the caricatures.
For some years Sand has quitted her post of assailant. She has seen that it is better to seek some form of life worthy to supersede the old, than rudely to destroy it, heedless of the future. Her force is bending towards philanthropic measures. She does not appear to possess much of the constructive faculty; and, though her writings command a great pecuniary compensation, and have a wide sway, it is rather for their tendency than for their thought. She has reached no commanding point of view from which she may give orders to the advanced corps. She is still at work with others in the breach, though she works with more force than almost any.
In power, indeed, Sand bears the palm above all other French novelists. She is vigorous in conception, often great in the apprehension and the contrast of characters. She knows passion, as has been hinted, at a white heat, when all the lower particles are remoulded by its power. Her descriptive talent is very great, and her poetic feeling exquisite. She wants but little of being a poet, but that little is indispensable. Yet she keeps us always hovering on the borders of enchanted fields. She has, to a signal degree, that power of exact transcript from her own mind, in which almost all writers fail. There is no veil, no half-plastic integument between us and the thought; we vibrate perfectly with it.
This is her chief charm, and next to it is one in which we know no French writer that resembles her, except Rousseau, though he, indeed, is vastly her superior in it; that is, of concentrated glow. Her nature glows beneath the words, like fire beneath ashes,—deep, deep!
Her best works are unequal; in many parts written hastily, or carelessly, or with flagging spirits. They all promise far more than they can perform; the work is not done masterly; she has not reached that point where a writer sits at the helm of his own genius.
Sometimes she plies the oar,—sometimes she drifts. But what greatness she has is genuine; there is no tinsel of any kind, no drapery carefully adjusted, no chosen gesture about her. May Heaven lead her, at last, to the full possession of her best self, in harmony with the higher laws of life!
We are not acquainted with all her works, but among those we know, mention ”La Roche Maupart,” ”André,” ”Jacques,” ”Les Sept Cordes de la Lyre,” and ”Les Maitres Mosaistes,” as representing her higher inspirations, her sincerity in expression, and her dramatic powers. They are full of faults; still they show her scope and aim with some fairness, which such of her readers as chance first on such of her books as ”Leone Leoni“ may fail to find; or even such as ”Simon,” and ”Spiridion,” though into the imperfect web of these are woven threads of pure gold. Such is the first impression made by the girl Fiamma, so noble, as she appears before us with the words ”E l’onore;” such the thought in Spiridion of making the apparition the reward of virtue.
The work she is now publishing, ”Consuelo“ with its sequel, ”Baroness de Rudolstadt,” exhibits her genius poised on a firmer pedestal, breathing a serener air. Still it is faulty in conduct, and shows some obliquity of vision. She has not reached the Interpreter’s house yet. But when she does, she will have clues to guide many a pilgrim, whom one less tried, less tempted than herself could not help on the way.
From a Criticism on “Consuelo.”
* * * * *. The work itself cannot fail of innumerable readers, and a great influence, for it counts many of the most significant pulse-beats of the tune. Apart from its range of character and fine descriptions, it records some of the mystical apparitions, and attempts to solve some of the problems of the time. How to combine the benefits of the religious life with those of the artist-life in an existence more simple, more full, more human in short, than either of the two hitherto known by these names has been,—this problem is but poorly solved in the “Countess of Rudolstadt,” the sequel to Consuelo. It is true, as the English reviewer says, that George Sand is a far better poet than philosopher, and that the chief use she can be of in these matters is, by her great range of observation and fine intuitions, to help to develop the thoughts of the time a little way further. But the sincerity, the reality of all he can obtain from this writer will be highly valued by the earnest man.
In one respect the book is entirely successful—in showing how inward purity and honor may preserve a woman from bewilderment and danger, and secure her a genuine independence. Whoever aims at this is still considered, by unthinking or prejudiced minds, as wishing to despoil the female character of its natural and peculiar loveliness. It is supposed that delicacy must imply weakness, and that only an Amazon can stand upright, and have sufficient command of her faculties to confront the shock of adversity, or resist the allurements of tenderness. Miss Bremer, Dumas, and the northern novelist, Andersen, make women who have a tendency to the intellectual life of an artist fail, and suffer the penalties of arrogant presumption, in the very first steps of a career to which an inward vocation called them in preference to the usual home duties. Yet nothing is more obvious than that the circumstances of the time do, more and more frequently, call women to such lives, and that, if guardianship is absolutely necessary to women, many must perish for want of it. There is, then, reason to hope that God may be a sufficient guardian to those who dare rely on him; and if the heroines of the novelists we have named ended as they did, it was for the want of the purity of ambition and simplicity of character which do not permit such as Consuelo to be either unseated and depraved, or unresisting victims and breaking reeds, if left alone in the storm and crowd of life. To many women this picture will prove a true Consuelo (consolation), and we think even very prejudiced men will not read it without being charmed with the expansion, sweetness and genuine force, of a female character, such as they have not met, but must, when painted, recognize as possible, and may be led to review their opinions, and perhaps to elevate and enlarge their hopes, as to “Woman’s sphere” and “Woman’s mission.” If such insist on what they have heard of the private life of this writer, and refuse to believe that any good thing can come out of Nazareth, we reply that we do not know the true facts as to the history of George Sand. There has been no memoir or notice of her published on which any one can rely, and we have seen too much of life to accept the monsters of gossip in reference to any one. But we know, through her works, that, whatever the stains on her life and reputation may have been, there is in her a soul so capable of goodness and honor as to depict them most successfully in her ideal forms. It is her works, and not her private life, that we are considering. Of her works we have means of judging; of herself, not. But among those who have passed unblamed through the walks of life, we have not often found a nobleness of purpose and feeling, a sincere religious hope, to be compared with the spirit that breathes through the pages of Consuelo.
The experiences of the artist-life, the grand and penetrating remarks upon music, make the book a precious acquisition to all whose hearts are fashioned to understand such things.
We suppose that we receive here not only the mind of the writer, but of Liszt, with whom she has publicly corresponded in the ”Lettres d’un Voyageur.” None could more avail us, for “in him also is a spark of the divine fire,” as Beethoven said of Ichubert. We may thus consider that we have in this book the benefit of the most electric nature, the finest sensibility, and the boldest spirit of investigation combined, expressing themselves in a little world of beautiful or picturesque forms.
Although there are grave problems discussed, and sad and searching experiences described in this work, yet its spirit is, in the main, hopeful, serene, almost glad. It is the spirit inspired from a near acquaintance with the higher life of art. Seeing there something really achieved and completed, corresponding with the soul’s desires, faith is enlivened as to the eventual fulfilment of those desires, and we feel a certainty that the existence which looks at present so marred and fragmentary shall yet end in harmony. The shuttle is at work, and the threads are gradually added that shall bring out the pattern, and prove that what seems at present confusion is really the way and means to order and beauty.
Jenny Lind,
THE “CONSUELO” OF GEORGE SAND.
Jenny Lind, the prima donna of Stockholm, is among the most distinguished of those geniuses who have been invited to welcome the queen to Germany. Her name has been unknown among us, as she is still young, and has not wandered much from the scene of her first triumphs; but many may have seen, last winter, in the foreign papers, an account of her entrance into Stockholm after an absence of some length. The people received her with loud cries of homage, took the horses from her carriage and drew her home; a tribute of respect often paid to conquerors and statesmen, but seldom, or, as far as we know, never to the priesthood of the muses, who have conferred the higher benefit of raising, refining and exhilarating, the popular mind.
An accomplished Swede, now in this country, communicated to a friend particulars of Jenny Lind’s career, which suggested the thought that she might have given the hint for the principal figure in Sand’s late famous novel, “Consuelo.”
This work is at present in process of translation in “The Harbinger,” a periodical published at Brook Farm, Mass.; but, as this translation has proceeded but a little way, and the book in its native tongue is not generally, though it has been extensively, circulated here, we will give a slight sketch of its plan.
It has been a work of deepest interest to those who have looked upon Sand for some years back, as one of the best exponents of the difficulties, the errors, the aspirations, the weaknesses, and the regenerative powers of the present epoch. The struggle in her mind and the experiments of her life have been laid bare to the eyes of her fellow-creatures with fearless openness—fearless, not shameless. Let no man confound the bold unreserve of Sand with that of those who have lost the feeling of beauty and the love of good. With a bleeding heart and bewildered feet she sought the truth, and if she lost the way, returned as soon as convinced she had done so; but she would never hide the fact that she had lost it. “What God knows, I dare avow to man,” seems to be her motto. It is impossible not to see in her, not only the distress and doubts of the intellect, but the temptations of a sensual nature; but we see too the courage of a hero and a deep capacity for religion. This mixed nature, too, fits her peculiarly to speak to men so diseased as men are at present. They feel she knows their ailment, and if she find a cure, it will really be by a specific remedy.
An upward tendency and growing light are observable in all her works for several years past, till now, in the present, she has expressed such conclusions as forty years of the most varied experience have brought to one who had shrunk from no kind of discipline, yet still cried to God amid it all; one who, whatever you may say against her, you must feel has never accepted a word for a thing, or worn one moment the veil of hypocrisy; and this person one of the most powerful nature, both as to passion and action, and of an ardent, glowing genius. These conclusions are sadly incomplete. There is an amazing alloy in the last product of her crucible, but there is also so much of pure gold that the book is truly a cordial, as its name of Consuelo (consolation) promises.
The young Consuelo lives as a child the life of a beggar. Her youth is passed in the lowest circumstances of the streets of Venice. She brings the more pertinacious fire of Spanish blood to be fostered by the cheerful airs of Italy. A vague sense of the benefits to be derived, from such mingling of various influences, in the formation of a character, is to be discerned in several works of art now, when men are really wishing to become citizens of the world, though old habits still interfere on every side with so noble a development.
Nothing can be more charming than the first volume, which describes the young girl amid the common life of Venice. It is sunny, open, and romantic as the place. The beauty of her voice, when a little singing-girl in the streets, arrested the attention of a really great and severe master, Porpora, who educated her to music. In this she finds the vent and the echo for her higher self. Her affections are fixed on a young companion, an unworthy object, but she does not know him to be so. She judges from her own candid soul, that all must be good, and derives from the tie, for a while, the fostering influences which love alone has for genius. Clear perception follows quickly upon her first triumphs in art. They have given her a rival, and a mean rival, in her betrothed, whose talent, though great, is of an inferior grade to hers; who is vain, every way impure. Her master, Porpora, tries to avail himself of this disappointment to convince her that the artist ought to devote himself to art alone; that private ties must interfere with his perfection and his glory. But the nature of Consuelo revolts against this doctrine, as it would against the seclusion of a convent. She feels that genius requires manifold experience for its development, and that the mind, concentrated on a single object, is likely to pay by a loss of vital energy for the economy of thoughts and time.
Driven by these circumstances into Germany, she is brought into contact with the old noblesse, a very different, but far less charming, atmosphere than that of the gondoliers of Venice. But here, too, the strong, simple character of our Consuelo is unconstrained, if not at home, and when her heart swells and needs expansion, she can sing.
Here the Count de Rudolstadt, Albert, loves Consuelo, which seems, in the conduct of the relation, a type of a religious democracy in love with the spirit of art. We do not mean that any such cold abstraction is consciously intended, but all that is said means this. It shadows forth one of the greatest desires which convulse our age.
A most noble meaning is couched in the history of Albert, and though the writer breaks down under such great attempts, and the religion and philosophy of the book are clumsily embodied compared with its poesy and rhetoric, yet great and still growing thoughts are expressed with sufficient force to make the book a companion of rare value to one in the same phase of mind.
Albert is the aristocratic democrat, such as Alfieri was; one who, in his keen perception of beauty, shares the good of that culture which ages have bestowed on the more fortunate classes, but in his large heart loves and longs for the good of all men, as if he had himself suffered in the lowest pits of human misery. He is all this and more in his transmigration, real or fancied, of soul, through many forms of heroic effort and bloody error; in his incompetency to act at the present time, his need of long silences, of the company of the dead and of fools, and eventually of a separation from all habitual ties, is expressed a great idea, which is still only in the throes of birth, yet the nature of whose life we begin to prognosticate with some clearness.
Consuelo’s escape from the castle, and even from Albert, her admiration of him, and her incapacity to love him till her own character be more advanced, are told with great naturalness. Her travels with Joseph Haydn, are again as charmingly told as the Venetian life. Here the author speaks from her habitual existence, and far more masterly than of those deep places of thought where she is less at home. She has lived much, discerned much, felt great need of great thoughts, but not been able to think a great way for herself. She fearlessly accompanies the spirit of the age, but she never surpasses it; that is the office of the great thinker.
At Vienna Consuelo is brought fully into connection with the great world as an artist. She finds that its realities, so far from being less, are even more harsh and sordid for the artist than for any other; and that with avarice, envy and falsehood, she must prepare for the fearful combat which awaits noble souls in any kind of arena, with the pain of disgust when they cannot raise themselves to patience—with the almost equal pain, when they can, of pity for those who know not what they do.
Albert is on the verge of the grave; and Consuelo, who, not being able to feel for him sufficient love to find in it compensation for the loss of that artist-life to which she feels Nature has destined her, had hitherto resisted the entreaties of his aged father, and the pleadings of her own reverential and tender sympathy with the wants of his soul, becomes his wife just before he dies.
The sequel, therefore, of this history is given under the title of Countess of Rudolstadt. Consuelo is still on the stage; she is at the Prussian court. The well-known features of this society, as given in the memoirs of the time, are put together with much grace and wit. The sketch of Frederic is excellent.
The rest of the book is devoted to expression of the author’s ideas on the subject of reform, and especially of association as a means thereto. As her thoughts are yet in a very crude state, the execution of this part is equally bungling and clumsy. Worse: she falsifies the characters of both Consuelo and Albert,—who is revived again by subterfuge of trance,—and stains her best arrangements by the mixture of falsehood and intrigue.
Yet she proceeds towards, if she walks not by, the light of a great idea; and sincere democracy, universal religion, scatter from afar many seeds upon the page for a future time. The book should be, and will be, universally read. Those especially who have witnessed all Sand’s doubts and sorrows on the subject of marriage, will rejoice in the clearer, purer ray which dawns upon her now. The most natural and deep part of the book, though not her main object, is what relates to the struggle between the claims of art and life, as to whether it be better for the world and one’s self to develop to perfection a talent which Heaven seemed to have assigned as a special gift and vocation, or sacrifice it whenever the character seems to require this for its general development. The character of Consuelo is, throughout the first part, strong, delicate, simple, bold, and pure. The fair lines of this picture are a good deal broken in the second part; but we must remain true to the impression originally made upon us by this charming and noble creation of the soul of Sand.
It is in reference to our Consuelo that a correspondent 25 writes, as to Jenny Lind; and we are rejoiced to find that so many hints were, or might have been, furnished for the picture from real life. If Jenny Lind did not suggest it, yet she must also be, in her own sphere, a Consuelo.
“Jenny Lind must have been born about 1822 or 1828. When a young child, she was observed, playing about and singing in the streets of Stockholm, by Mr. Berg, master of singing for the royal opera. Pleased and astonished at the purity and suavity of her voice, he inquired instantly for her family, and found her father, a poor innkeeper, willing and glad to give up his daughter to his care, on the promise to protect her and give her an excellent musical education. He was always very careful of her, never permitting her to sing except in his presence, and never letting her appear on the stage, unless as a mute figure in some ballet, such, for instance, as Cupid and the Graces, till she was sixteen, when she at once executed her part in ‘Der Freyschutz,’ to the full satisfaction and surprise of the public of Stockholm. From that time she gradually became the favorite of every one. Without beauty, she seems, from her innocent and gracious manners, beautiful on the stage and charming in society. She is one of the few actresses whom no evil tongue can ever injure, and is respected and welcomed in any and all societies.
“The circumstances that reminded me of Consuelo were these: that she was a poor child, taken up by this singing-master, and educated thoroughly and severely by him; that she loved his son, who was a good-for-nothing fellow, like Anzoleto, and at last discarded him; that she refused the son of an English earl, and, when he fell sick, his father condescended to entreat for him, just as the Count of Rudolstadt did for his son; that, though plain and low in stature, when singing her best parts she appears beautiful, and awakens enthusiastic admiration; that she is rigidly correct in her demeanor towards her numerous admirers, having even returned a present sent her by the crown-prince, Oscar, in a manner that she deemed equivocal. This last circumstance being noised abroad, the next time she appeared on the stage she was greeted with more enthusiastic plaudits than ever, and thicker showers of flowers fell upon her from the hands of her true friends, the public. She was more fortunate than Consuelo in not being compelled to sing to a public of Prussian corporals.”
Indeed, the picture of Frederic’s opera-audience, with the pit full of his tall grenadiers with their wives on their shoulders, never daring to applaud except when he gave the order, as if by tap of drum, opposed to the tender and expansive nature of the artist, is one of the best tragicomedies extant. In Russia, too, all is military; as soon as a new musician arrives, he is invested with a rank in the army. Even in the church Nicholas has lately done the same. It seems as if he could not believe a man to be alive, except in the army; could not believe the human heart could beat, except by beat of drum. But we believe in Russia there is at least a mask of gayety thrown over the chilling truth. The great Frederic wished no disguise; everywhere he was chief corporal, and trampled with his everlasting boots the fair flowers of poesy into the dust.
The North has been generous to us of late; she has sent us Ole Bull. She is about to send Frederika Bremer. May she add JENNY LIND!
25 We do not know how accurate is this correspondent’s statement of facts. The narrative is certainly interesting.—Ed.
Caroline.
The other evening I heard a gentle voice reading aloud the story of Maurice, a boy who, deprived of the use of his limbs by paralysis, was sustained in comfort, and almost in cheerfulness, by the exertions of his twin sister. Left with him in orphanage, her affections were centred upon him, and, amid the difficulties his misfortunes brought upon them, grew to a fire intense and pure enough to animate her with angelic impulses and powers. As he could not move about, she drew him everywhere in a little cart; and when at last they heard that sea-bathing might accomplish his cure, conveyed him, in this way, hundreds of miles to the sea-shore. Her pious devotion and faith were rewarded by his cure, and (a French story would be entirely incomplete otherwise) with money, plaudits and garlands, from the by-standers.
Though the story ends in this vulgar manner, it is, in its conduct, extremely sweet and touching, not only as to the beautiful qualities developed by these trials in the brother and sister, but in the purifying and softening influence exerted, by the sight of his helplessness and her goodness, on all around them.
Those who are the victims of some natural blight often fulfil this important office, and bless those within their sphere more, by awakening feelings of holy tenderness and compassion, than a man healthy and strong can do by the utmost exertion of his good-will and energies. Thus, in the East, men hold sacred those in whom they find a distortion or alienation of mind which makes them unable to provide for themselves. The well and sane feel themselves the ministers of Providence to carry out a mysterious purpose, while taking care of those who are thus left incapable of taking care of themselves; and, while fulfilling this ministry, find themselves refined and made better.
The Swiss have similar feelings as to those of their families whom cretinism has reduced to idiocy. They are attended to, fed, dressed clean, and provided with a pleasant place for the day, before doing anything else, even by very busy and poor people.
We have seen a similar instance, in this country, of voluntary care of an idiot, and the mental benefits that ensued. This idiot, like most that are called so, was not without a glimmer of mind.
His teacher was able to give him some notions, both of spiritual and mental facts; at least she thought she had given him the idea of God, and though it appeared by his gestures that to him the moon was the representative of that idea, yet he certainly did conceive of something above him, and which inspired him with reverence and delight. He knew the names of two or three persons who had done him kindness, and when they were mentioned, would point upward, as he did to the moon, showing himself susceptible, in his degree, of Mr. Carlyle’s grand method of education, hero-worship. She had awakened in him a love of music, so that he could be soothed in his most violent moods by her gentle singing. It was a most touching sight to see him sitting opposite to her at such tunes, his wondering and lack-lustre eyes filled with childish pleasure, while in hers gleamed the same pure joy that we may suppose to animate the looks of an angel appointed by Heaven to restore a ruined world.
We know another instance, in which a young girl became to her village a far more valuable influence than any patron saint who looks down from his stone niche, while his votaries recall the legend of his goodness in days long past.
Caroline lived in a little, quiet country village—quiet as no village can now remain, since the railroad strikes its spear through the peace of country life. She lived alone with a widowed mother, for whom, as well as for herself, her needle won bread, while the mother’s strength, and skill sufficed to the simple duties of their household. They lived content and hopeful, till, whether from sitting still too much, or some other cause, Caroline became ill, and soon the physician pronounced her spine to be affected, and to such a degree that she was incurable.
This news was a thunder-bolt to the poor little cottage. The mother, who had lost her elasticity of mind, wept in despair; but the young girl, who found so early all the hopes and joys of life taken from her, and that she was seemingly left without any shelter from the storm, had even at first the faith and strength to bow her head in gentleness, and say, “God will provide.” She sustained and cheered her mother.
And God did provide. With simultaneous vibration the hearts of all their circle acknowledged the divine obligation of love and mutual aid between human beings. Food, clothing, medicine, service, were all offered freely to the widow and her daughter.
Caroline grew worse, and was at last in such a state that she could only be moved upon a sheet, and by the aid of two persons. In this toilsome service, and every other that she required for years, her mother never needed to ask assistance. The neighbors took turns in doing all that was required, and the young girls, as they were growing up, counted it among their regular employments to work for or read to Caroline.
Not without immediate reward was their service of love. The mind of the girl, originally bright and pure, was quickened and wrought up to the finest susceptibility by the nervous exaltation that often ensues upon affection of the spine. The soul, which had taken an upward impulse from its first act of resignation, grew daily more and more into communion with the higher regions of life, permanent and pure. Perhaps she was instructed by spirits which, having passed through a similar trial of pain and loneliness, had risen to see the reason why. However that may be, she grew in nobleness of view and purity of sentiment, and, as she received more instruction from books also than any other person in her circle, had from many visitors abundant information as to the events which were passing around her, and leisure to reflect on them with a disinterested desire for truth, she became so much wiser than her companions as to be at last their preceptress and best friend, and her brief, gentle comments and counsels were listened to as oracles from one enfranchised from the films which selfishness and passion cast over the eyes of the multitude.
The twofold blessing conferred by her presence, both in awakening none but good feelings in the hearts of others, and in the instruction she became able to confer, was such, that, at the end of five years, no member of that society would have been so generally lamented as Caroline, had Death called her away.
But the messenger, who so often seems capricious in his summons, took first the aged mother, and the poor girl found that life had yet the power to bring her grief, unexpected and severe.
And now the neighbors met in council. Caroline could not be left quite alone in the house. Should they take turns, and stay with her by night as well as by day?
“Not so,” said the blacksmith’s wife; “the house will never seem like home to her now, poor thing! and ’t would be kind of dreary for her to change about her nusses so. I’ll tell you what; all my children but one are married and gone off; we have property enough; I will have a good room fixed for her, and she shall live with us. My husband wants her to, as much as me.”
The council acquiesced in this truly humane arrangement, and Caroline lives there still; and we are assured that none of her friends dread her departure so much as the blacksmith’s wife.
“‘Ta’n’t no trouble at all to have her,” she says, “and if it was, I shouldn’t care; she is so good and still, and talks so pretty! It’s as good bein’ with her as goin’ to meetin’!”
De Maistre relates some similar passages as to a sick girl in St. Petersburgh, though his mind dwelt more on the spiritual beauty evinced in her remarks, than on the good she had done to those around her. Indeed, none bless more than those who “only stand and wait.” Even if their passivity be enforced by fate, it will become a spiritual activity, if accepted in a faith higher above fate than the Greek gods were supposed to sit enthroned above misfortune.
Ever-growing Lives.
“Age could not wither her, nor custom stale
Her infinite variety.”
So was one person described by the pen which has made a clearer mark than any other on the history of Man. But is it not surprising that such a description should apply to so few?
Of two or three women we read histories that correspond with the hint given in these lines. They were women in whom there was intellect enough to temper and enrich, heart enough to soften and enliven the entire being. There was soul enough to keep the body beautiful through the term of earthly existence; for while the roundness, the pure, delicate lineaments, the flowery bloom of youth were passing, the marks left in the course of those years were not merely of time and care, but also of exquisite emotions and noble thoughts. With such chisels Time works upon his statues, tracery and fretwork, well worth the loss of the first virgin beauty of the alabaster; while the fire within, growing constantly brighter and brighter, shows all these changes in the material, as rich and varied ornaments. The vase, at last, becomes a lamp of beauty, fit to animate the councils of the great, or the solitude of the altar.
Two or three women there have been, who have thus grown even more beautiful with age. We know of many more men of whom this is true. These have been heroes, or still more frequently poets and artists; with whom the habitual life tended to expand the soul, deepen and vary the experience, refine the perceptions, and immortalize the hopes and dreams of youth.
They were persons who never lost their originality of character, nor spontaneity of action. Their impulses proceeded from a fulness and certainty of character, that made it impossible they should doubt or repent, whatever the results of their actions might be.
They could not repent, in matters little or great, because they felt that their notions were a sincere exposition of the wants of their souls. Their impulsiveness was not the restless fever of one who must change his place somehow or some-whither, but the waves of a tide, which might be swelled to vehemence by the action of the winds or the influence of an attractive orb, but was none the less subject to fixed laws.
A character which does not lose its freedom of motion and impulse by contact with the world, grows with its years more richly creative, more freshly individual. It is a character governed by a principle of its own, and not by rules taken from other men’s experience; and therefore it is that
“Age cannot wither them, nor custom stale
Their infinite variety.”
Like violins, they gain by age, and the spirit of him who discourseth through them most excellent music,
“Like wine well kept and long,
Heady, nor harsh, nor strong,
With each succeeding year is quaffed
A richer, purer, mellower draught.”
Our French neighbors have been the object of humorous satire for their new coinage of terms to describe the heroes of their modern romance. A hero is no hero unless he has “ravaged brows,” is “blasé” or “brisé” or “fatigué.” His eyes must be languid, and his cheeks hollow. Youth, health and strength, charm no more; only the tree broken by the gust of passion is beautiful, only the lamp that has burnt out the better part of its oil precious, in their eyes. This, with them, assumes the air of caricature and grimace, yet it indicates a real want of this time—a feeling that the human being ought to grow more rather than less attractive with the passage of time, and that the decrease in physical charms would, in a fair and full life, be more than compensated by an increase of those which appeal to the imagination and higher feelings.
A friend complains that, while most men are like music-boxes, which you can wind up to play their set of tunes, and then they stop, in our society the set consists of only two or three tunes at most That is because no new melodies are added after five-and-twenty at farthest. It is the topic of jest and amazement with foreigners that what is called society is ‘given up so much into the hands of boys and girls. Accordingly it wants spirit, variety and depth of tone, and we find there no historical presences, none of the charms, infinite in variety, of Cleopatra, no heads of Julius C?sar, overflowing with meanings, as the sun with light.
Sometimes we hear an educated voice that shows us how these things might be altered. It has lost the fresh tone of youth, but it has gained unspeakably in depth, brilliancy, and power of expression. How exquisite its modulations, so finely shaded, showing that all the intervals are filled up with little keys of fairy delicacy and in perfect tune!
Its deeper tones sound the depth of the past; its more thrilling notes express an awakening to the infinite, and ask a thousand questions of the spirits that are to unfold our destinies, too far-reaching to be clothed in words. Who does not feel the sway of such a voice? It makes the whole range of our capacities resound and tremble, and, when there is positiveness enough to give an answer, calls forth most melodious echoes.
The human eye gains, in like manner, by tune and experience. Its substance fades, but it is only the more filled with an ethereal lustre which penetrates the gazer till he feels as if
“That eye were in itself a soul,”
and realizes the range of its power
“To rouse, to win, to fascinate, to melt,
And by its spell of undefined control
Magnetic draw the secrets of the soul.”
The eye that shone beneath the white locks of Thorwaldsen was such an one,—the eye of immortal youth, the indicator of the man’s whole aspect in a future sphere. We have scanned such eyes closely; when near, we saw that the lids were red, the corners defaced with ominous marks, the orb looked faded and tear-stained; but when we retreated far enough for its ray to reach us, it seemed far younger than the clear and limpid gaze of infancy, more radiant than the sweetest beam in that of early youth. The Future and the Past met in that glance,
O for more such eyes! The vouchers of free, of full and ever-growing lives!
Household Nobleness.
“Mistress of herself, though China fell.”
Women, in general, are indignant that the satirist should have made this the climax to his praise of a woman. And yet, we fear, he saw only too truly. What unexpected failures have we seen, literally, in this respect! How often did the Martha blur the Mary out of the face of a lovely woman at the sound of a crash amid glass and porcelain! What sad littleness in all the department thus represented! Obtrusion of the mop and duster on the tranquil meditation of a husband and brother. Impatience if the carpet be defaced by the feet even of cherished friends.
There is a beautiful side, and a good reason here; but why must the beauty degenerate, and give place to meanness?
To Woman the care of home is confided. It is the sanctuary, of which she should be the guardian angel. To all elements that are introduced there she should be the “ordering mind.” She represents the spirit of beauty, and her influence should be spring-like, clothing all objects within her sphere with lively, fresh and tender hues.
She represents purity, and all that appertains to her should be kept delicately pure. She is modesty, and draperies should soften all rude lineaments, and exclude glare and dust. She is harmony, and all objects should be in their places ready for, and matched to, their uses.
We all know that there is substantial reason for the offence we feel at defect in any of these ways. A woman who wants purity, modesty and harmony, in her dress and manners, is insufferable; one who wants them in the arrangements of her house, disagreeable to everybody. She neglects the most obvious ways of expressing what we desire to see in her, and the inference is ready, that the inward sense is wanting.
It is with no merely gross and selfish feeling that all men commend the good housekeeper, the good nurse. Neither is it slight praise to say of a woman that she does well the honors of her house in the way of hospitality. The wisdom that can maintain serenity, cheerfulness and order, in a little world of ten or twelve persons, and keep ready the resources that are needed for their sustenance and recovery in sickness and sorrow, is the same that holds the stars in their places, and patiently prepares the precious metals in the most secret chambers of the earth. The art of exercising a refined hospitality is a fine art, and the music thus produced only differs from that of the orchestra in this, that in the former case the overture or sonata cannot be played twice in the same manner. It requires that the hostess shall combine true self-respect and repose,
“The simple art of not too much,”
with refined perception of individual traits and moods in character, with variety and vivacity, an ease, grace and gentleness, that diffuse their sweetness insensibly through every nook of an assembly, and call out reciprocal sweetness wherever there is any to be found.
The only danger in all this is the same that besets us in every walk of life; to wit, that of preferring the outward sign to the inward spirit whenever there is cause to hesitate between the two.
“I admire,” says Goethe, “the Chinese novels; they express so happily ease, peace and a finish unknown to other nations in the interior arrangements of their homes.
“In one of them I came upon the line, ‘I heard the lovely maidens laughing, and found my way to the garden, where they were seated in their light cane-chairs,’ To me this brings an immediate animation, by the images it suggests of lightness, brightness and elegance.”
This is most true, but it is also most true that the garden-house would not seem thus charming unless its light cane-chairs had lovely, laughing maidens seated in them. And the lady who values her porcelain, that most exquisite product of the peace and thorough-breeding of China, so highly, should take the hint, and remember that unless the fragrant herb of wit, sweetened by kindness, and softened by the cream of affability, also crown her board, the prettiest tea-cups in the world might as well lie in fragments in the gutter, as adorn her social show. The show loses its beauty when it ceases to represent a substance.
Here, as elsewhere, it is only vanity, narrowness and self-seeking, that spoil a good thing. Women would never be too good housekeepers for their own peace and that of others, if they considered housekeeping only as a means to an end. If their object were really the peace and joy of all concerned, they could bear to have their cups and saucers broken more easily than their tempers, and to have curtains and carpets soiled, rather than their hearts by mean and small feelings. But they are brought up to think it is a disgrace to be a bad housekeeper, not because they must, by such a defect, be a cause of suffering and loss of time to all within their sphere, but because all other women will laugh at them if they are so. Here is the vice,—for want of a high motive there can be no truly good action.
We have seen a woman, otherwise noble and magnanimous in a high degree, so insane on this point as to weep bitterly because she found a little dust on her picture-frames, and torment her guests all dinner-time with excuses for the way in which the dinner was cooked.
We have known others to join with their servants to backbite the best and noblest friends for trifling derelictions against the accustomed order of the house. The broom swept out the memory of much sweet counsel and loving-kindness, and spots on the table-cloth were more regarded than those they made on their own loyalty and honor in the most intimate relations.
“The worst of furies is a woman scorned,” and the sex, so lively, mobile, impassioned, when passion is aroused at all, are in danger of frightful error, under great temptation. The angel can give place to a more subtle and treacherous demon, though one, generally, of less tantalizing influence, than in the breast of man. In great crises, Woman needs the highest reason to restrain her; but her besetting sin is that of littleness. Just because nature and society unite to call on her for such fineness and finish, she can be so petty, so fretful, so vain, envious and base! O, women, see your danger! See how much you need a great object in all your little actions. You cannot be fair, nor can your homes be fair, unless you are holy and noble. Will you sweep and garnish the house, only that it may be ready for a legion of evil spirits to enter in—for imps and demons of gossip, frivolity, detraction, and a restless fever about small ills? What is the house for, if good spirits cannot peacefully abide there? Lo! they are asking for the bill in more than one well-garnished mansion. They sought a home and found a work-house. Martha! it was thy fault!
“Glumdalclitches.”
This title was wittily given by an editor of this city to the ideal woman demanded in “Woman in the Nineteenth Century.” We do not object to it, thinking it is really desirable that women should grow beyond the average size which has been prescribed for them. We find in the last news from Paris these anecdotes of two who “tower” an inch or more “above their sex,” if not yet of Glumdalclitch stature.
“Bravissima!—The 7th of May, at Paris, a young girl, who was washing linen, fell into the Canal St. Martin. Those around called out for help, but none ventured to give it. Just then a young lady elegantly dressed came up and saw the case; in the twinkling of an eye she threw off her hat and shawl, threw herself in, and succeeded in dragging the young girl to the brink, after having sought for her in vain several times under the water. This lady was Mlle. Adèle Chevalier, an actress. She was carried, with the girl she had saved, into a neighboring house, which she left, after having received the necessary cares, in a fiacre, and amid the plaudits of the crowd.”
The second anecdote is of a different kind, but displays a kind of magnanimity still more unusual in this poor servile world:
“One of our (French) most distinguished painters of sea-subjects, Gudin, has married a rich young English lady, belonging to a family of high rank, and related to the Duke of Wellington. M. Gudin was lately at Berlin at the same time with K——, inspector of pictures to the King of Holland. The King of Prussia desired that both artists should be presented to him, and received Gudin in a very flattering manner; his genius being his only letter of recommendation.
“Monsieur K—— has not the same advantage; but, to make up for it, he has a wife who enjoys in Holland a great reputation for her beauty. The King of Prussia is a cavalier, who cares more for pretty ladies than for genius. So Monsieur and Madame K—— were invited to the royal table—an honor which was not accorded to Monsieur and Madame Gudin.
“Humble representations were made to the monarch, advising him not to make such a marked distinction between the French artist and the Dutch amateur. These failing, the wise counsellors went to Madame Gudin, and, intimating that they did so with the good-will of the king, said that she might be received as cousin to the Duke of Wellington, as daughter of an English general, and of a family which dates back to the thirteenth century. She could, if she wished, avail herself of her rights of birth to obtain the same honors with Madame K——. To sit at the table of the king, she need only cease for a moment to be Madame Gudin, and become once more Lady L——.”
Does not all this sound like a history of the seventeenth century? Surely etiquette was never maintained in a more arrogant manner at the court of Louis XIV.
But Madame Gudin replied that her highest pride lay in the celebrated name which she bears at present; that she did not wish to rely on any other to obtain so futile a distinction, and that, in her eyes, the most noble escutcheon was the palette of her husband.
I need not say that this dignified feeling was not comprehended. Madame Gudin was not received at the table, but she had shown the nobleness of her character. For the rest, Madame K——, on arriving at Paris, had the bad taste to boast of having been distinguished above Madame Gudin, and the story reaching the Tuileries, where Monsieur and Madame Gudin are highly favored, excited no little mirth in the circle there.
“Ellen: Or, Forgive and Forget.”
We notice this coarsely-written little fiction because it is one of a class which we see growing with pleasure. We see it with pleasure, because, in its way, it is genuine. It is a transcript of the crimes, calumnies, excitements, half-blind love of right, and honest indignation at the sort of wrong which it can discern, to be found in the class from which it emanates.
That class is a large one in our country villages, and these books reflect its thoughts and manners as half-penny ballads do the life of the streets of London. The ballads are not more true to the facts; but they give us, in a coarser form, far more of the spirit than we get from the same facts reflected in the intellect of a Dickens, for instance, or of any writer far enough above the scene to be properly its artist.
So, in this book, we find what Cooper, Miss Sedgwick and Mrs. Kirkland, might see, as the writer did, but could hardly believe in enough to speak of it with such fidelity.
It is a current superstition that country people are more pure and healthy in mind and body than those who live in cities. It may be so in countries of old-established habits, where a genuine peasantry have inherited some of the practical wisdom and loyalty of the past, with most of its errors. We have our doubts, though, from the stamp upon literature, always the nearest evidence of truth we can get, whether, even there, the difference between town and country life is as much in favor of the latter as is generally supposed. But in our land, where the country is at present filled with a mixed population, who come seeking to be purified by a better life and culture from all the ills and diseases of the worst forms of civilization, things often look worse than in the city; perhaps because men have more time and room to let their faults grow and offend the light of day.
There are exceptions, and not a few; but, in a very great proportion of country villages, the habits of the people, as to food, air, and even exercise, are ignorant and unhealthy to the last degree. Their want of all pure faith, and appetite for coarse excitement, is shown by continued intrigues, calumnies, and crimes.
We have lived in a beautiful village, where, more favorably placed than any other person in it, both as to withdrawal from bad associations and nearness to good, we heard inevitably, from domestics, work-people, and school-children, more ill of human nature than we could possibly sift were we to elect such a task from all the newspapers of this city, in the same space of time.
We believe the amount of ill circulated by means of anonymous letters, as described in this book, to be as great as can be imported in all the French novels (and that is a bold word). We know ourselves of two or three cases of morbid wickedness, displayed by means of anonymous letters, that may vie with what puzzled the best wits of France in a famous law-suit not long since. It is true, there is, to balance all this, a healthy rebound,—a surprise and a shame; and there are heartily good people, such as are described in this book, who, having taken a direction upward, keep it, and cannot be bent downward nor aside. But, then, the reverse of the picture is of a blackness that would appall one who came to it with any idyllic ideas of the purity and peaceful loveliness of agricultural life.
But what does this prove? Only the need of a dissemination of all that is best, intellectually and morally, through the whole people. Our groves and fields have no good fairies or genii who teach, by legend or gentle apparition, the truths, the principles, that can alone preserve the village, as the city, from the possession of the fiend. Their place must be taken by the school-master, and he must be one who knows not only “readin’, writin’, and ‘rithmetic,” but the service of God and the destiny of man. Our people require a thoroughly-diffused intellectual life, a religious aim, such as no people at large ever possessed before; else they must sink till they become dregs, rather than rise to become the cream of creation, which they are too apt to flatter themselves with the fancy of being already.
The most interesting fiction we have ever read in this coarse, homely, but genuine class, is one called “Metallek.” It may be in circulation in this city; but we bought it in a country nook, and from a pedlar; and it seemed to belong to the country. Had we met with it in any other way, it would probably have been to throw it aside again directly, for the author does not know how to write English, and the first chapters give no idea of his power of apprehending the poetry of life. But happening to read on, we became fixed and charmed, and have retained from its perusal the sweetest picture of life lived in this land, ever afforded us, out of the pale of personal observation. That such things are, private observation has made us sure; but the writers of books rarely seem to have seen them; rarely to have walked alone in an untrodden path long enough to hold commune with the spirit of the scene.
In this book you find the very life; the most vulgar prose, and the most exquisite poetry. You follow the hunter in his path, walking through the noblest and fairest scenes only to shoot the poor animals that were happy there, winning from the pure atmosphere little benefit except to good appetite, sleeping at night in the dirty hovels, with people who burrow in them to lead a life but little above that of the squirrels end foxes. There is throughout that air of room enough, and free if low forms of human nature, which, at such times, makes bearable all that would otherwise be so repulsive.
But when we come to the girl who is the presiding deity, or rather the tutelary angel of the scene, how are all discords harmonized; how all its latent music poured forth! It is a portrait from the life—it has the mystic charm of fulfilled reality, how far beyond the fairest ideals ever born of thought! Pure, and brilliantly blooming as the flower of the wilderness, she, in like manner, shares while she sublimes its nature. She plays round the most vulgar and rude beings, gentle and caressing, yet unsullied; in her wildness there is nothing cold or savage; her elevation is soft and warm. Never have we seen natural religion more beautifully expressed; never so well discerned the influence of the natural nun, who needs no veil or cloister to guard from profanation the beauty she has dedicated to God, and which only attracts human love to hallow it into the divine.
The lonely life of the girl after the death of her parents,—her fearlessness, her gay and sweet enjoyment of nature, her intercourse with the old people of the neighborhood, her sisterly conduct towards her “suitors,”—all seem painted from the life; but the death-bed scene seems borrowed from some sermon, and is not in harmony with the rest.
In this connection we must try to make amends for the stupidity of an earlier notice of the novel, called “Margaret, or the Real and Ideal,” &c. At the time of that notice we had only looked into it here and there, and did no justice to a work full of genius, profound in its meaning, and of admirable fidelity to nature in its details. Since then we have really read it, and appreciated the sight and representation of soul-realities; and we have lamented the long delay of so true a pleasure.
A fine critic said, “This is a Yankee novel; or rather let it be called the Yankee novel, as nowhere else are the thought and dialect of our villages really represented.” Another discovered that it must have been written in Maine, by the perfection with which peculiar features of scenery there are described.
A young girl could not sufficiently express her delight at the simple nature with which scenes of childhood are given, and especially at Margaret’s first going to meeting. She had never elsewhere found written down what she had felt.
A mature reader, one of the most spiritualized and harmonious minds we have ever met, admires the depth and fulness in which the workings of the spirit through the maiden’s life are seen by the author, and shown to us; but laments the great apparatus with which the consummation of the whole is brought about, and the formation of a new church and state, before the time is yet ripe, under the banner of Mons. Christi.
But all these voices, among those most worthy to be heard, find in the book a real presence, and draw from it auspicious omens that an American literature is possible even in our day, because there are already in the mind here existent developments worthy to see the light, gold-fishes amid the moss in the still waters.
For ourselves, we have been most charmed with the way the Real and Ideal are made to weave and shoot rays through one another, in which Margaret bestows on external nature what she receives through books, and wins back like gifts in turn, till the pond and the mythology are alternate sections of the same chapter. We delight in the teachings she receives through Chilion and his violin, till on the grave of “one who tried to love his fellow-men” grows up the full white rose-flower of her life. The ease with which she assimilates the city life when in it, making it a part of her imaginative tapestry, is a sign of the power to which she has grown.
We have much more to think and to say of the book, as a whole, and in parts; and should the mood and summer leisure ever permit a familiar and intimate acquaintance with it, we trust they will be both thought and said. For the present, we will only add that it exhibits the same state of things, and strives to point out such remedies as we have hinted at in speaking of the little book which heads this notice; itself a rude charcoal sketch, but if read as hieroglyphics are, pointing to important meanings and results.
“Courrier Des Etats Unis.”
No other nation can hope to vie with the French in the talent of communicating information with ease, vivacity and consciousness. They must always be the best narrators and the best interpreters, so far as presenting a clear statement of outlines goes. Thus they are excellent in conversation, lectures, and journalizing.
After we know all the news of the day, it is still pleasant to read the bulletin of the “Courrier des Etats Unis.” We rarely agree with the view taken; but as a summary it is so excellently well done, every topic put in its best place, with such a light and vigorous hand, that we have the same pleasure we have felt in fairy tales, when some person under trial is helped by a kind fairy to sort the silks and feathers to their different places, till the glittering confusion assumes the order,—of a kaleidoscope.
Then, what excellent correspondents they have in Paris! What a humorous and yet clear account we have before us, now, of the Thiers game! We have traced Guizot through every day with the utmost distinctness, and see him perfectly in the sick-room. Now, here is Thiers, playing with his chess-men, Jesuits, &c. A hundred clumsy English or American papers could not make the present crisis in Paris so clear as we see it in the glass of these nimble Frenchmen.
Certainly it is with newspaper-writing as with food; the English and Americans have as good appetites, but do not, and never will, know so well how to cook as the French. The Parisian correspondent of the “Schnellpost” also makes himself merry with the play of M. Thiers. Both speak with some feeling of the impressive utterance of Lamartine in the late debates. The Jesuits stand their ground, but there is a wave advancing which will not fail to wash away what ought to go,—nor are its roarings, however much in advance of the wave itself, to be misinterpreted by intelligent ears. The world is raising its sleepy lids, and soon no organization can exist which from its very nature interferes in any way with the good of the whole.
In Germany the terrors of the authorities are more and more directed against the communists. They are very anxious to know what communism really is, or means. They have almost forgotten, says the correspondent, the repression of the Jews, and like objects, in this new terror. Meanwhile, the Russian Emperor has issued an edict, commanding the Polish Jews, both men and women, to lay aside their national garb. He hopes thus to mingle them with the rest of the mass he moves. It will be seen whether such work can be done by beginning upon the outward man.
The Paris correspondent of the “Courrier,” who gives an account of amusements, has always many sprightly passages illustrative of the temper of the times. Horse-races are now the fashion, in which he rejoices, as being likely to give to France good horses of her own. A famous lottery is on the point of coming off,—to give an organ to the Church of St. Eustache,—on which it does not require a very high tone of morals to be severe. A public exhibition has been made of the splendid array of prizes, including every article of luxury, from jewels and cashmere shawls down to artificial flowers.
A nobleman, president of the Horticultural Society, had given an entertainment, in which the part of the different flowers was acted by beautiful women, that of fruit and vegetables by distinguished men. Such an amusement would admit of much light grace and wit, which may still be found in France, if anywhere in the world.
There is also an amusing story of the stir caused among the French political leaders by the visit of a nobleman of one of the great English families, to Paris. “He had had several audiences, previous to his departure from London, of Queen Victoria; he received a despatch daily from the English court. But in reply to all overtures made to induce him to open his mission, he preserved a gloomy silence. All attentions, all signs of willing confidence, are lavished on him in vain. France is troubled. ‘Has England,’ thought she, ‘a secret from us, while we have none from her?’ She was on the point of inventing one, when, lo! the secret mission turns out to be the preparation of a ball-dress, with whose elegance, fresh from Parisian genius, her Britannic majesty wished to dazzle and surprise her native realm.”
’T is a pity Americans cannot learn the grace which decks these trifling jests with so much prettiness. Till we can import something of that, we have no right to rejoice in French fashions and French wines. Such a nervous, driving nation as we are, ought to learn to fly along gracefully, on the light, fantastic toe. Can we not learn something of the English beside the knife and fork conventionalities which, with them, express a certain solidity of fortune and resolve? Can we not get from the French something beside their worst novels?
“Courrier Des Etats Unis.”
OUR PROTéGéE, QUEEN VICTORIA.
The Courrier laughs, though with features somewhat too disturbed for a graceful laugh, at a notice, published a few days since in the Tribune, of one of its jests which scandalized the American editor. It does not content itself with a slight notice, but puts forth a manifesto, in formidably large type, in reply.
With regard to the jest itself, we must remark that Mr. Greeley saw this only in a translation, where it had lost whatever of light and graceful in its manner excused a piece of raillery very coarse in its substance. We will admit that, had he seen it as it originally stood, connected with other items in the playful chronicle of Pierre Durand, it would have impressed him differently.
But the cause of irritation in the Courrier, and of the sharp repartees of its manifesto, is, probably, what was said of the influence among us of “French literature and French morals,” to which the “organ of the French-American population” felt called on to make a spirited reply, and has done so with less of wit and courtesy than could have been expected from the organ of a people who, whatever may be their faults, are at least acknowledged in wit and courtesy pre?minent. We hope that the French who come to us will not become, in these respects, Americanized, and substitute the easy sneer, and use of such terms as “ridiculous,” “virtuous misanthropy,” &c., for the graceful and poignant raillery of their native land, which tickles even where it wounds.
We may say, in reply to the Courrier, that if Fourierism “recoils towards a state of nature,” it arises largely from the fact that its author lived in a country where the natural relations are, if not more cruelly, at least more lightly violated, than in any other of the civilized world. The marriage of convention has done its natural office in sapping the morals of France, till breach of the marriage vow has become one of the chief topics of its daily wit, one of the acknowledged traits of its manners, and a favorite—in these modern times we might say the favorite—subject of its works of fiction. From the time of Molière, himself an agonized sufferer behind his comic mask from the infidelities of a wife he was not able to cease to love, through memoirs, novels, dramas, and the volleyed squibs of the press, one fact stares us in the face as one of so common occurrence, that men, if they have not ceased to suffer in heart and morals from its poisonous action, have yet learned to bear with a shrug and a careless laugh that marks its frequency. Understand, we do not say that the French are the most deeply stained with vice of all nations. We do not think them so. There are others where there is as much, but there is none where it is so openly acknowledged in literature, and therefore there is none whose literature alone is so likely to deprave inexperienced minds, by familiarizing them with wickedness before they have known the lure and the shock of passion. And we believe that this is the very worst way for youth to be misled, since the miasma thus pervades the whole man, and he is corrupted in head and heart at once, without one strengthening effort at resistance.
Were it necessary, we might substantiate what we say by quoting from the Courrier within the last fortnight, jokes and stories such as are not to be found so frequently in the prints of any other nation. There is the story of the girl Adelaide, which, at another time, we mean to quote, for its terrible pathos. There is a man on trial for the murder of his wife, of whom the witnesses say, “he was so fond of her you would never have known she was his wife!” Here is one, only yesterday, where a man kills a woman to whom he was married by his relatives at eighteen, she being much older, and disagreeable to him, but their properties matching. After twelve years’ marriage, he can no longer support the yoke, and kills both her and her father, and “his only regret is that he cannot kill all who had anything to do with the match.”
Either infidelity or such crimes are the natural result of marriages made as they are in France, by agreement between the friends, without choice of the parties. It is this horrible system, and not a native incapacity for pure and permanent relations, that leads to such results.
We must observe, en passant, that this man was the father of five children by this hated woman—a wickedness not peculiar to France or any nation, and which cannot foil to do its work of filling the world with sickly, weak, or depraved beings, who have reason to curse their brutal father that he does not murder them as well as their wretched mother,—who, more unhappy than the victim of seduction, is made the slave of sense in the name of religion and law.
The last steamer brings us news of the disgrace of Victor Hugo, one of the most celebrated of the literary men of France, and but lately created one of her peers. The affair, however, is to be publicly “hushed up.”
But we need not cite many instances to prove, what is known to the whole world, that these wrongs are, if not more frequent, at least more lightly treated by the French, in literature and discourse, than by any nation of Europe. This being the case, can an American, anxious that his country should receive, as her only safeguard from endless temptations, good moral instruction and mental food, be otherwise than grieved at the promiscuous introduction among us of their writings?
We know that there are in France good men, pure books, true wit. But there is an immensity that is bad, and more hurtful to our farmers, clerks and country milliners, than to those to whose tastes it was originally addressed,—as the small-pox is most fatal among the wild men of the woods,—and this, from the unprincipled cupidity of publishers, is broad-cast recklessly over all the land we had hoped would become a healthy asylum for those before crippled and tainted by hereditary abuses. This cannot be prevented; we can only make head against it, and show that there is really another way of thinking and living,—ay, and another voice for it in the world. We are naturally on the alert, and if we sometimes start too quickly, that is better than to play ”Le noir Faineant“—(The Black Sluggard).
We are displeased at the unfeeling manner in which the Courrier speaks of those whom he calls our models. He did not misunderstand us, and some things he says on this subject deserve and suggest a retort that would be bitter. But we forbear, because it would injure the innocent with the guilty. The Courrier ranks the editor of the Tribune among “the men who have undertaken an ineffectual struggle against the perversities of this lower world.” By ineffectual we presume he means that it has never succeeded in exiling evil from this lower world. We are proud to be ranked among the band of those who at least, in the ever-memorable words of Scripture, have “done what they could” for this purpose. To this band belong all good men of all countries, and France has contributed no small contingent of those whose purpose was noble, whose lives were healthy, and whose minds, even in their lightest moods, pure. We are better pleased to act as sutler or pursuivant of this band, whose strife the Courrier thinks so impuissante, than to reap the rewards of efficiency on the other side. There is not too much of this salt, in proportion to the whole mass that needs to be salted, nor are “occasional accesses of virtuous misanthropy” the worst of maladies in a world that affords such abundant occasion for it.
In fine, we disclaim all prejudice against the French nation. We feel assured that all, or almost all, impartial minds will acquiese in what we say as to the tone of lax morality, in reference to marriage, so common in their literature. We do not like it, in joke or in earnest; neither are we of those to whom vice “loses most of its deformity by losing all its grossness.” If there be a deep and ulcerated wound, we think the more “the richly-embroidered veil” is torn away the better. Such a deep social wound exists in France; we wish its cure, as we wish the health of all nations and of all men; so far indeed would we “recoil towards a state of nature.” We believe that nature wills marriage and parentage to be kept sacred. The fact of their not being so is to us not a pleasant subject of jest; and we should really pity the first lady of England for injury here, though she be a queen; while the ladies of the French court, or of Parisian society, if they willingly lend themselves to be the subject of this style of jest, or find it agreeable when made, must be to us the cause both of pity, and disgust. We are not unaware of the great and beautiful qualities native to the French—of their chivalry, their sweetness of temper, their rapid, brilliant and abundant genius. We would wish to see these qualities restored to their native lustre, and not receive the base alloy which has long stained the virginity of the gold.
On Books of Travel.
It need not be said, probably, that Margaret Fuller did not think the fact that books of travel by women have generally been piquant and lively rather than discriminating and instructive, a result of their nature, and therefore unavoidable; on the contrary, she regarded woman as naturally more penetrating than man, and the fact that in journeying she would see more of home-life than he, would give her a great advantage,—but she did believe woman needed a wider culture, and then she would not fail to excel in writing books of travels. The merits now in such works she considered striking and due to woman’s natural quickness and availing herself of all her facilities, and any deficiencies simply proved the need of a broader education.—ED.
Among those we have, the best, as to observation of particulars and lively expression, are by women. They are generally ill prepared as regards previous culture, and their scope is necessarily narrower than that of men, but their tact and quickness help them a great deal. You can see their minds grow by what they feed on, when they travel. There are many books of travel, by women, that are, at least, entertaining, and contain some penetrating and just observations. There has, however, been none since Lady Mary Wortley Montague, with as much talent, liveliness, and preparation to observe in various ways, as she had.
A good article appeared lately in one of the English periodicals, headed by a long list of travels by women. It was easy to observe that the personality of the writer was the most obvious thing in each and all of these books, and that, even in the best of them, you travelled with the writer as a charming or amusing companion, rather than as an accomplished or instructed guide.
Review of “Memoirs and Essays, by Mrs. Jameson.”
Mrs. Jameson appears to be growing more and more desperately modest, if we may judge from the motto:
“What if the little rain should say,
‘So small a drop as I
Can ne’er refresh the thirsty plain,—
I’ll tarry in the sky’”
and other superstitious doubts and disclaimers proffered in the course of the volume. We thought the time had gone by when it was necessary to plead “request of friends” for printing, and that it was understood now-a-days that, from the facility of getting thoughts into print, literature has become not merely an archive for the preservation of great thoughts, but a means of general communication between all classes of minds, and all grades of culture.
If writers write much that is good, and write it well, they are read much and long; if the reverse, people simply pass them by, and go in search of what is more interesting. There needs be no great fuss about publishing or not publishing. Those who forbear may rather be considered the vain ones, who wish to be distinguished among the crowd. Especially this extreme modesty looks superfluous in a person who knows her thoughts have been received with interest for ten or twelve years back. We do not like this from Mrs. Jameson, because we think she would be amazed if others spoke of her as this little humble flower, doubtful whether it ought to raise its head to the light. She should leave such affectations to her aunts; they were the fashion in their day.
It is very true, however, that she should not have published the very first paragraph in her book, which presents an inaccuracy and shallowness of thought quite amazing in a person of her fine perceptions, talent and culture. We allude to the contrast she attempts to establish between Raphael and Titian, in placing mind in contradistinction to beauty, as if beauty were merely physical. Of course she means no such thing; but the passage means this or nothing, and, as an opening to a paper on art, is indeed reprehensible and fallacious.
The rest of this paper, called the House of Titian, is full of pleasant chat, though some of the judgments—that passed on Canaletti’s pictures, for instance—are opposed to those of persons of the purest taste; and in other respects, such as in speaking of the railroad to Venice, Mrs. Jameson is much less wise than those over whom she assumes superiority. The railroad will destroy Venice; the two things cannot co?xist; and those who do not look upon that wondrous dream in this age, will, probably, find only vestiges of its existence.
The picture of Adelaide Kemble is very pretty, though there is an attempt of a sort too common with Mrs. Jameson to make more of the subject than it deserves. Adelaide Kemble was not the true artist, or she could not so soon or so lightly have stept into another sphere. It is enough to paint her as a lovely woman, and a woman-genius. The true artist cannot forswear his vocation; Heaven does not permit it; the attempt makes him too unhappy, nor will he form ties with those who can consent to such sacrilege. Adelaide Kemble loved art, but was not truly an artist.
The “Xanthian Marbles,” and “Washington Allston,” are very pleasing papers. The most interesting part, however, are the sentences copied from Mr. Allston. These have his chaste, superior tone. We copy some of them.
“What light is in the natural world, such is fame in the intellectual,—both requiring an atmosphere in order to become perceptible. Hence the fame of Michel Angelo is to some minds a nonentity; even as the Sun itself would be invisible in vacuo“
(A very pregnant statement, containing the true reason why “no man is a hero to his valet de chambre.”)
“Fame does not depend on the will of any man; but reputation may be given and taken away; for fame is the sympathy of kindred intellects, and sympathy is not a subject of willing; while reputation, having its source in the popular voice, is a sentence which may be altered or suppressed at pleasure. Reputation, being essentially contemporaneous, is always at the mercy of the envious and ignorant. But Fame, whose very birth is posthumous, and which is only known to exist by the echoes of its footsteps through congenial minds, can neither be increased nor diminished by any degree of wilfulness.”
“An original mind is rarely understood until it has been reflected from some half-dozen congenial with it; so averse are men to admitting the true in an unusual form; while any novelty, however fantastic, however false, is greedily swallowed. Nor is this to be wondered at, for all truth demands a response, and few people care to think, yet they must have something to supply the place of thought. Every mind would appear original if every man had the power of projecting his own into the minds of others.”
“All effort at originality must end either in the quaint or monstrous; for no man knows himself as on original; he can only believe it on the report of others to whom he is made known, as he is by the projecting power before spoken of.”
“There is an essential meanness in wishing to get the better of any one. The only competition worthy of a wise man is with himself.”
“Reverence is an ennobling sentiment; it is felt to be degrading only by the vulgar mind, which would escape the sense of its own littleness by elevating itself into the antagonist of what is above it.”
“He that has no pleasure in looking up is not fit to look down; of such minds are the mannerists in art, and in the world—the tyrants of all sorts.”
“Make no man your idol; for the best man must have faults, and his faults will naturally become yours, in addition to your own. This is as true in art as in morals.”
“The Devil’s heartiest laugh is at a detracting witticism. Hence the phrase ‘devilish good’ has sometimes a literal meaning.”
“Woman’s Mission and Woman’s Position” is an excellent paper, in which plain truths ere spoken with an honorable straight-forwardness, and a great deal of good feeling. We despise the woman who, knowing such facts, is afraid to speak of them; yet we honor one, too, who does the plain right thing, for she exposes herself to the assaults of vulgarity, in a way painful to a person who has not strength to find shelter and repose in her motives. We recommend this paper to the consideration of all those, the unthinking, wilfully unseeing million, who are in the habit of talking of “Woman’s sphere,” as if it really were, at present, for the majority, one of protection, and the gentle offices of home. The rhetorical gentlemen and silken dames, who, quite forgetting their washerwomen, their seamstresses, and the poor hirelings for the sensual pleasures of Man, that jostle them daily in the streets, talk as if women need be fitted for no other chance than that of growing like cherished flowers in the garden of domestic love, are requested to look at this paper, in which the state of women, both in the manufacturing and agricultural districts of England, is exposed with eloquence, and just inferences drawn.
“This, then, is what I mean when I speak of the anomalous condition of women in these days. I would point out, as a primary source of incalculable mischief, the contradiction between her assumed and her real position; between what is called her proper sphere by the laws of God and Nature, and what has become her real sphere by the laws of necessity, and through the complex relations of artificial existence. In the strong language of Carlyle, I would say that ‘Here is a lie standing up in the midst of society.’ I would say ‘Down with it, even to the ground;’ for while this perplexing and barbarous anomaly exists, fretting like an ulcer at the very heart of society, all new specifics and palliatives are in vain. The question must be settled one way or another; either let the man in all the relations of life be held the natural guardian of the woman, constrained to fulfil that trust, responsible in society for her well-being and her maintenance; or, if she be liable to be thrust from the sanctuary of home, to provide for herself through the exercise of such faculties as God has given her, let her at least have fair play; let it not be avowed, in the same breath that protection is necessary to her, and that it is refused her; and while we send her forth into the desert, and bind the burthen on her back, and put the staff in her hand, let not her steps be beset, her limbs fettered, and her eyes blindfolded.” Amen.
The sixth and last of these papers, on the relative social position of “mothers and governesses,” exhibits in true and full colors a state of things in England, beside which the custom in some parts of China of drowning female infants looks mild, generous, and refined;—an accursed state of things, beneath whose influence nothing can, and nothing ought to thrive. Though this paper, of which we have not patience to speak further at this moment, is valuable from putting the facts into due relief, it is very inferior to the other, and shows the want of thoroughness and depth in Mrs. Jameson’s intellect. She has taste, feeling and knowledge, but she cannot think out a subject thoroughly, and is unconsciously tainted and hampered by conventionalities. Her advice to the governesses reads like a piece of irony, but we believe it was not meant as such. Advise them to be burnt at the stake at once, rather than submit to this slow process of petrifaction. She is as bad as the Reports of the “Society for the relief of distressed and dilapidated Governesses.” We have no more patience. We must go to England ourselves, and see these victims under the water torture. Till then, à Dieu!
Woman’s Influence Over the Insane.
In reference to what is said of entrusting an infant to the insane, we must relate a little tale which touched the heart in childhood from the eloquent lips of the mother.
The minister of the village had a son of such uncommon powers that the slender means on which the large family lived were strained to the utmost to send him to college. The boy prized the means of study as only those under such circumstances know how to prize them; indeed, far beyond their real worth; since, by excessive study, prolonged often at the expense of sleep, he made himself insane.
All may conceive the feelings of the family when their star returned to them again, shorn of its beams; their pride, their hard-earned hope, sunk to a thing so hopeless, so helpless, that there could be none so poor to do him reverence. But they loved him, and did what the ignorance of the time permitted. There was little provision then for the treatment of such cases, and what there was was of a kind that they shrunk from resorting to, if it could be avoided. They kept him at home, giving him, during the first months, the freedom of the house; but on his making an attempt to kill his father, and confessing afterwards that his old veneration had, as is so often the case in these affections, reacted morbidly to its opposite, so that he never saw a once-loved parent turn his back without thinking how he could rush upon him and do him an injury, they felt obliged to use harsher measures, and chained him to a post in one room of the house.
There, so restrained, without exercise or proper medicine, the fever of insanity came upon him in its wildest form. He raved, shrieked, struck about him, and tore off all the raiment that was put upon him.
One of his sisters, named Lucy, whom he had most loved when well, had now power to soothe him. He would listen to her voice, and give way to a milder mood when she talked or sang. But this favorite sister married, went to her new home, and the maniac became wilder, more violent than ever.
After two or three years, she returned, bringing with her on infant. She went into the room where the naked, blaspheming, raging object was confined. He knew her instantly, and felt joy at seeing her.
“But, Lucy,” said he, suddenly, “is that your baby you have in your arms? Give it to me, I want to hold it!”
A pang of dread and suspicion shot through the young mother’s heart,—she turned pale and faint. Her brother was not at that moment so mad that he could not understand her fears.
“Lucy,” said he, “do you suppose I would hurt your child?”
His sister had strength of mind and of heart; she could not resist the appeal, and hastily placed the child in his arms. Poor fellow! he held it awhile, stroked its little face, and melted into tears, the first he had shed since his insanity.
For some time after that he was better, and probably, had he been under such intelligent care as may be had at present, the crisis might have been followed up, and a favorable direction given to his disease. But the subject was not understood then, and, having once fallen mad, he was doomed to live and die a madman.
From a Criticism on Browning’s Poems.
* * * * “The return of the Druses,” a “Blot in the ‘Scutcheon, and “Colombo’s Birthday,” all have the same originality of conception, delicate penetration into the mysteries of human feeling, atmospheric individuality, and skill in picturesque detail. All three exhibit very high and pure ideas of Woman, and a knowledge, very rare in man, of the ways in which what is peculiar in her office and nature works. Her loftiest elevation does not, in his eyes, lift her out of nature. She becomes, not a mere saint, but the goddess-queen of nature. Her purity is not cold, like marble, but the healthy, gentle energy of the flower, instinctively rejecting what is not fit for it, with no need of disdain to dig a gulf between it and the lower forms of creation. Her office to man is that of the muse, inspiring him to all good thoughts and deeds. The passions that sometimes agitate these maidens of his verso are the surprises of noble hearts unprepared for evil; and even their mistakes cannot cost bitter tears to their attendant angels.
The girl in the “Return of the Druses” is the sort of nature Byron tried to paint in Myrrha. But Byron could only paint women as they were to him. Browning can show what they are in themselves. In “A Blot in the ‘Scutcheon,” we see a lily, storm-struck, half-broken, but still a lily. In “Colombe’s Birthday,” a queenly rose-bud, which expands into the full-glowing rose before our eyes. It is marvellous in this drama how the characters are unfolded to us by the crisis, which not only exhibits, but calls to life, the higher passions and the thoughts which were latent within them.
We bless the poet for these pictures of women, which, however the common tone of society, by the grossness and levity of the remarks bandied from tongue to tongue, would seem to say to the contrary, declare there is still in the breasts of men a capacity for pure and exalting passion,—for immortal tenderness.
Of Browning’s delicate sheaths of meaning within meaning, which must be opened slowly, petal by petal, as we seek the heart of a flower, and the spirit-like, distant breathings of his lute, familiar with the secrets of shores distant and enchanted, a sense can only be gained by reading him a great deal; and we wish “Bells and Pomegranates” might be brought within the reach of all who have time and soul to wait and listen for such!
Christmas.
Our festivals come rather too near together, since we have so few of them;—Thanksgiving, Christmas-day, New-Years’-day, and then none again till July. We know not but these four, with the addition of a “day set apart for fasting and prayer,” might answer the purposes of rest and edification as well as a calendar full of saints’ days, if they were observed in a better spirit. But, Thanksgiving is devoted to good dinners; Christmas and New-Years’ days to making presents and compliments; Fast-day to playing at cricket and other games, and the Fourth of July to boasting of the past, rather than to plans how to deserve its benefits and secure its fruits.
We value means of marking time by appointed days, because man, on one side of his nature so ardent and aspiring, is on the other so indolent and slippery a being, that he needs incessant admonitions to redeem the time. Time flows on steadily, whether he regards it or not; yet, unless he keep time, there is no music in that flow. The sands drop with inevitable speed; yet each waits long enough to receive, if it be ready, the intellectual touch that should turn it to a sand of gold.
Time, says the Grecian fable, is the parent of Power, Power is the father of Genius and Wisdom. Time, then, is grandfather of the noblest of the human family; and we must respect the aged sire whom we see on the frontispiece of the almanacs, and believe his scythe was meant to mow down harvests ripened for an immortal use.
Yet the best provision made by the mind of society at large for these admonitions soon loses its efficacy, and requires that individual earnestness, individual piety, should continually reinforce the most beautiful form. The world has never seen arrangements which might more naturally offer good suggestions than those of the Church of Rome. The founders of that church stood very near a history radiant at every page with divine light. All their rites and ceremonial days illustrate facts of an universal interest. But the life with which piety first, and afterwards the genius of great artists, invested these symbols, waned at last, except to a thoughtful few. Reverence was forgotten in the multitude of genuflexions; the rosary became a string of beads rather than a series of religious meditations; and the “glorious company of saints and martyrs” were not regarded so much as the teachers of heavenly truth, as intercessors to obtain for their votaries the temporal gifts they craved.
Yet we regret that some of those symbols had not been more reverenced by Protestants, as the possible occasion of good thoughts, and, among others, we regret that the day set apart to commemorate the birth of Jesus should have been stript, even by those who observe it, of many impressive and touching accessories.
If ever there was an occasion on which the arts could become all but omnipotent in the service of a holy thought, it is this of the birth of the child Jesus. In the palmy days of the Catholic religion they may be said to have wrought miracles in its behalf; and in our colder time, when we rather reflect that light from a different point of view than transport ourselves into it, who, that has an eye and ear faithful to the soul, is not conscious of inexhaustible benefits from some of the works by which sublime geniuses have expressed their ideas?—in the adorations of the Magi and the Shepherds, in the Virgin with the infant Jesus, or that work which expresses what Christendom at large has not begun to realize,—that work which makes us conscious, as we listen, why the soul of man was thought worthy and able to upbear a cross of such dreadful weight,—the Messiah of Handel.
Christmas would seem to be the day peculiarly sacred to children; and something of this feeling is beginning to show itself among us, though rather from German influence than of native growth. The ever-green tree is often reared for the children on Christmas evening, and its branches cluster with little tokens that may, at least, give them a sense that the world is rich, and that there are some in it who care to bless them. It is a charming sight to see their glistening eyes, and well worth much trouble in preparing the Christmas-tree.
Yet, on this occasion, as on all others, we should like to see pleasure offered to them in a form less selfish than it is. When shall we read of banquets prepared for the halt, the lame, and the blind, on the day that is said to have brought their friend into the world? When will children be taught to ask all the cold and ragged little ones whom they have seen during the day wistfully gazing at the shop-windows, to share the joys of Christmas-eve?
We borrow the Christmas-tree from Germany; might we but borrow with it that feeling which pervades all their stories, about the influence of the Christ-child, and has, I doubt not (for the spirit of literature is always, though refined, the essence of popular life), pervaded the conduct of children there.
We will mention two of these as happily expressive of different sides of the desirable character. One is a legend of the saint Hermann Joseph. The legend runs that this saint, when a little boy, passed daily by a niche where was an image of the Virgin and Child, and delighted there to pay his devotions. His heart was so drawn towards the holy child that one day, having received what seemed to him a gift truly precious, a beautiful red and yellow apple, he ventured to offer it, with his prayer. To his unspeakable delight the child put forth his hand and took the apple. After that day, never was a gift bestowed upon the little Hermann, that was not carried to the same place. He needed nothing for himself, but dedicated all his childish goods to the altar.
After a while he was in trouble. His father, who was a poor man, found it necessary to take him from school, and bind him to a trade. He communicated his woes to his friends of the niche, and the Virgin comforted him like a mother, and bestowed on him money, by means of which he rose to be a learned and tender Shepherd of men.
Another still more touching story is that of the holy Rupert. Rupert was the only child of a princely house, and had something to give besides apples. But his generosity and human love were such that, as a child, he could never see poor children suffering without despoiling himself of all he had with him in their behalf. His mother was, at first, displeased with this; but when he replied, “They are thy children too,” her reproofs yielded to tears.
One time, when he had given away his coat to a poor child, he got wearied and belated on his homeward way. He lay down a while and fell asleep. Then he dreamed that he was on a river-shore, and saw a mild and noble old man bathing many children. After he had plunged them into the water, he would place them on a beautiful island, where they looked white and glorious as little angels. Rupert was seized with a strong desire to join them, and begged the old man to bathe him also in the stream. But he was answered, “It is not yet time.” Just then a rainbow spanned the island, and in its arch was enthroned the child Jesus, dressed in a coat that Rupert knew to be his own. And the child said to the others, “See this coat; it is one which my brother Rupert has just sent to me. He has given us many gifts from his love; shall we not ask him to join us here?” And they shouted a musical “Yes!” and Rupert started out of his dream. But he had lain too long on the damp bank of the river without his coat, and cold and fever soon sent him to join the band of his brothers in their home.
These are legends, superstitious, you will say. But, in casting aside the shell, have we retained the kernel? The image of the child Jesus is not seen in the open street. Does his heart find other means to express itself there? Protestantism does not mean, we suppose, to deaden the spirit in excluding the form.
The thought of Jesus, as a child, has great weight with children who have learned to think of him at all. In thinking of him they form an image of all that the morning of a pure and fervent life should be and bring.
In former days I knew a boy-artist whose genius, at that time, showed high promise. He was not more than fourteen years old—a pale, slight boy, with a beaming eye. The hopes and sympathy of friends, gained by his talent, had furnished him with a studio and orders for some pictures. He had picked up from the streets a boy, still younger and poorer than himself, to take care of the room and prepare his colors, and the two boys were as content in their relation as Michael Angelo with his Urbino. If you went there, you found exposed to view many pretty pictures—“A Girl with a Dove,” “The Guitar-player,” and such subjects as are commonly supposed to interest at his age. But, hid in a corner, and never shown, unless to the beggar-page or some most confidential friend, was the real object of his love and pride, the slowly-growing work of secret hours. The subject of this picture was Christ teaching the Doctors. And in those doctors he had expressed all he had already observed of the pedantry and shallow conceit of those in whom mature years have not unfolded the soul: and in the child, all he felt that early youth should be and seek, though, alas! his own feet failed him on the difficult road. This one record of the youth of Jesus, had, at least, been much to his mind.
In earlier days the little saints thought they best imitated the Emanuel by giving apples and cents; but we know not why, in our age, that esteems itself so much enlightened, they should not become also the givers of spiritual gifts. We see in them, continually, impulses that only require a good direction to effect infinite good. See the little girls at work for foreign missions; that is not useless; they devote the time to a purpose that is not selfish; the horizon of their thoughts is extended. But they are perfectly capable of becoming home-missionaries as well. The principle of stewardship would make them so.
I have seen a little girl of thirteen, who had much service, too, to do for a hard-working mother, in the midst of a circle of poor children whom she gathered daily to a morning school. She took them from the door-steps and the gutters; she washed their faces and hands; she taught them to read and sew, and told them stories that had delighted her own infancy. In her face, though in feature and complexion plain, was something already of a Madonna sweetness, and it had no way eclipsed the gayety of childhood.
I have seen a boy, scarce older, brought up for some time with the sons of laborers, who, so soon as he found himself possessed of superior advantages, thought not of surpassing others, but of excelling that he might be able to impart; and he was able to do it. If the other boys had less leisure, and could pay for less instruction, they did not suffer by it. He could not be happy unless they also could enjoy Milton, and pass from nature to natural philosophy. He performed, though in a childish way, and in no Grecian garb, the part of Apollo amidst the herdsmen of Admetus.
The cause of education would be indefinitely furthered if, in addition to formal means, there were but this principle awakened in the hearts of the young, that what they have they must bestow. All are not natural instructors, but a large proportion are; and those who do possess such a talent are the best possible teachers to those a little younger than themselves. Many have more patience with the difficulties they have lately left behind, and enjoy their power of assisting more than those further removed in age and knowledge do.
Then the intercourse may be far more congenial and profitable than where the teacher receives for hire all sorts of pupils as they are sent him by their guardians. Here be need only choose those who have a predisposition for what he is best able to teach; and, as I would have the so-called higher instruction as much diffused in this way as the lower, there would be a chance of awakening all the power that now lies latent.
If a girl, for instance, who has only a passable talent for music, but who, from the advantage of social position, has been able to gain thorough instruction, felt it her duty to teach whomsoever she know that had a talent without money to cultivate it, the good is obvious.
Those who are learning, receive an immediate benefit by the effort to rearrange and interpret what they learn; so the use of this justice would be two-fold.
Some efforts are made here and there; nay, sometimes there are those who can say they have returned usury for every gift of fate; and would others make the same experiments, they might find Utopia not so far off as the children of this world, wise in securing their own selfish ease, would persuade us it must always be.
We have hinted what sort of Christmas-box we would wish for the children; it must be one as full, as that of the Christ-child must be, of the pieces of silver that were lost and are found. But Christmas with its peculiar associations has deep interest for men and women no less. At that time thus celebrated, a pure woman saw in her child what the Son of man should be as a child of God. She anticipated fur him a life of glory to God, peace and good-will towards men. In any young mother’s heart, who has any purity of heart, the same feelings arise. But most of these mothers carelessly let them go without obeying their instructions. If they did not, we should see other children, other men than now throng our streets. The boy could not invariably disappoint the mother, the man the wife, who steadily demanded of him such a career.
And Man looks upon Woman, in this relation, always as he should. Does he see in her a holy mother, worthy to guard the infancy of an immortal soul? Then she assumes in his eyes those traits which the Romish church loved to revere in Mary. Frivolity, base appetite, contempt, are exorcised, and Man and Woman appear again, in unprofaned connection, as brother and sister, children and servants of one Divine Love, and pilgrims to a common aim.
Were all this right in the private sphere, the public would soon right itself also, and the nations of Christendom might join in a celebration such as “Kings and Prophets waited for,” and so many martyrs died to achieve, of Christ-mass.
Children’s Books.
There is no branch of literature that better deserves cultivation, and none that so little obtains it from worthy hands, as this of Children’s Books. It requires a peculiar development of the genius and sympathies, rare among men of factitious life, who are not men enough to revive with force and beauty the thoughts and scenes of childhood.
It is all idle to talk baby-talk, and give shallow accounts of deep things, thinking thereby to interest the child. He does not like to be too much puzzled; but it is simplicity be wants, not silliness. We fancy their angels, who are always waiting in the courts of our Father, smile somewhat sadly on the ignorance of those who would feed them on milk and water too long, and think it would be quite as well to give them a stone.
There is too much amongst us of the French way of palming off false accounts of things on children, “to do them good,” and showing nature to them in a magic lantern “purified for the use of childhood,” and telling stories of sweet little girls and brave little boys,—O, all so good, or so bad! and above all, so little, and everything about them so little! Children accustomed to move in full-sized apartments, and converse with full-grown men and women, do not need so much of this baby-house style in their literature. They like, or would like if they could get them, better things much more. They like the Arabian Nights, and Pilgrim’s Progress, and Bunyan’s Emblems, and Shakspeare, and the Iliad and Odyssey,—at least, they used to like them; and if they do not now, it is because their taste has been injured by so many sugar-plums. The books that were written in the childhood of nations suit an uncorrupted childhood now. They are simple, picturesque, robust. Their moral is not forced, nor is the truth veiled with a well-meant but sure-to-fail hypocrisy. Sometimes they are not moral at all,—only free plays of the fancy and intellect. These, also, the child needs, just as the infant needs to stretch its limbs, and grasp at objects it cannot hold. We have become so fond of the moral, that we forget the nature in which it must find its root; so fond of instruction, that we forget development.
Where ballads, legends, fairy-tales, are moral, the morality is heart-felt; if instructive, it is from the healthy common sense of mankind, and not for the convenience of nursery rule, nor the “peace of schools and families.”
O, that winter, freezing, snow-laden winter, which ushered in our eighth birthday! There, in the lonely farm-house, the day’s work done, and the bright woodfire all in a glow, we were permitted to slide back the panel of the cupboard in the wall,—most fascinating object still in our eyes, with which no stateliest alcoved library can vie,—and there saw, neatly ranged on its two shelves, not—praised be our natal star!—Peter Parley, nor a History of the Good Little Boy who never took anything that did not belong to him; but the Spectator, Telemachus, Goldsmith’s Animated Nature, and the Iliad.
Forms of gods and heroes more distinctly seen, and with eyes of nearer love then than now!—our true uncle, Sir Roger de Coverley, and ye, fair realms of Nature’s history, whose pictures we tormented all grown persons to illustrate with more knowledge, still more,—how we bless the chance that gave to us your great realities, which life has daily helped us, helps us still, to interpret, instead of thin and baseless fictions that would all this time have hampered us, though with only cobwebs!
Children need some childish talk, some childish play, some childish books. But they also need, and need more, difficulties to overcome, and a sense of the vast mysteries which the progress of their intelligence shall aid them to unravel. This sense is naturally their delight, as it is their religion, and it must not be dulled by premature explanations or subterfuges of any kind. There has been too much of this lately.
Miss Edgeworth is an excellent writer for children. She is a child herself, as she writes, nursed anew by her own genius. It is not by imitating, but by reproducing childhood, that the writer becomes its companion. Then, indeed, we have something especially good, for,
“Like wine, well-kept and long,
Heady, nor harsh, nor strong,
With each succeeding year is quaffed,
A richer, purer, mellower draught.”
Miss Edgeworth’s grown people live naturally with the children; they do not talk to them continually about angels or flowers, but about the things that interest themselves. They do not force them forward, nor keep them back. The relations are simple and honorable; all ages in the family seem at home under one roof and sheltered by one care.
The Juvenile Miscellany, formerly published by Mrs. Child, was much and deservedly esteemed by children. It was a healthy, cheerful, natural and entertaining companion to them.
We should censure too monotonously tender a manner in what is written for children, and too constant an attention to moral influence. We should prefer a larger proportion of the facts of natural or human history, and that they should speak for themselves.
Woman in Poverty.
Woman, even less than Man, is what she should be as a whole. She is not that self-centred being, full of profound intuitions, angelic love, and flowing poesy, that she should be. Yet there are circumstances in which the native force and purity of her being teach her how to conquer where the restless impatience of Man brings defeat, and leaves him crushed and bleeding on the field.
Images rise to mind of calm strength, of gentle wisdom learning from every turn of adverse fate,—of youthful tenderness and faith undimmed to the close of life, which redeem humanity and make the heart glow with fresh courage as we write. They are mostly from obscure corners and very private walks. There was nothing shining, nothing of an obvious and sounding heroism to make their conduct doubtful, by tainting their motives with vanity. Unknown they lived, untrumpeted they died. Many hearts were warmed and fed by them, but perhaps no mind but our own ever consciously took account of their virtues.
Had Art but the power adequately to tell their simple virtues, and to cast upon them the light which, shining through those marked and faded faces, foretold the glories of a second spring! The tears of holy emotion which fell from those eyes have seemed to us pearls beyond all price; or rather, whose price will be paid only when, beyond the grave, they enter those better spheres in whose faith they felt and acted here.
From this private gallery we will, for the present, bring forth but one picture. That of a Black Nun was wont to fetter the eyes of visitors in the royal galleries of France, and my Sister of Mercy, too, is of that complexion. The old woman was recommended as a laundress by my friend, who had long prized her. I was immediately struck with the dignity and propriety of her manner. In the depth of winter she brought herself the heavy baskets through the slippery streets; and, when I asked her why she did not employ some younger person to do what was so entirely disproportioned to her strength, simply said, “she lived alone, and could not afford to hire an errand-boy.” “It was hard for her?” “No, she was fortunate in being able to get work at her age, when others could do it better. Her friends were very good to procure it for her.” “Had she a comfortable home?” “Tolerably so,—she should not need one long.” “Was that a thought of joy to her?” “Yes, for she hoped to see again the husband and children from whom she had long been separated.”
Thus much in answer to the questions, but at other times the little she said was on general topics. It was not from her that I learnt how the great idea of Duty had held her upright through a life of incessant toil, sorrow, bereavement; and that not only she had remained upright, but that her character had been constantly progressive. Her latest act had been to take home a poor sick girl who had no home of her own, and could not bear the idea of dying in a hospital, and maintain and nurse her through the last weeks of her life. “Her eye-sight was failing, and she should not be able to work much longer,—but, then, God would provide. Somebody ought to see to the poor, motherless girl.”
It was not merely the greatness of the act, for one in such circumstances, but the quiet matter-of-course way in which it was done, that showed the habitual tone of the mind, and made us feel that life could hardly do more for a human being than to make him or her the somebody that is daily so deeply needed, to represent the right, to do the plain right thing.
“God will provide.” Yes, it is the poor who feel themselves near to the God of love. Though he slay them, still do they trust him.
“I hope,” said I to a poor apple-woman, who had been drawn on to disclose a tale of distress that, almost in the mere hearing, made me weary of life, “I hope I may yet see you in a happier condition.” “With God’s help,” she replied, with a smile that Raphael would have delighted to transfer to his canvas; a Mozart, to strains of angelic sweetness. All her life she had seemed an outcast child; still she leaned upon a Father’s love.
The dignity of a state like this may vary its form in, more or less richness and beauty of detail, but here is the focus of what makes life valuable. It is this spirit which makes poverty the best servant to the ideal of human nature. I am content with this type, and will only quote, in addition, a ballad I found in a foreign periodical, translated from Chamisso, and which forcibly recalled my own laundress as an equally admirable sample of the same class, the Ideal Poor, which we need for our consolation, so long as there must be real poverty.
“THE OLD WASHERWOMAN.
“Among yon lines her hands have laden,
A laundress with white hair appears,
Alert as many a youthful maiden,
Spite of her five-and-seventy years;
Bravely she won those white hairs, still
Eating the bread hard toll obtained her,
And laboring truly to fulfil
The duties to which God ordained her.
“Once she was young and full of gladness,
She loved and hoped,—was wooed and won;
Then came the matron’s cares,—the sadness
No loving heart on earth may shun.
Three babes she bore her mate; she prayed
Beside his sick-bed,—he was taken;
She saw him in the church-yard laid,
Yet kept her faith and hope unshaken.
“The task her little ones of feeding
She met unfaltering from that hour;
She taught them thrift and honest breeding,
Her virtues were their worldly dower.
To seek employment, one by one,
Forth with her blessing they departed,
And she was in the world alone—
Alone and old, but still high-hearted.
“With frugal forethought; self-denying,
She gathered coin, and flax she bought,
And many a night her spindle plying,
Good store of fine-spun thread she wrought.
The thread was fashioned in the loom;
She brought it home, and calmly seated
To work, with not a thought of gloom,
Her decent grave-clothes she completed.
“She looks on them with fond elation;
They are her wealth, her treasure rare,
Her age’s pride and consolation,
Hoarded with all a miser’s care.
She dons the sark each Sabbath day,
To hear the Word that falleth never!
Well-pleased she lays it then away
Till she shall sleep in it forever!
“Would that my spirit witness bore me.
That, like this woman, I had done
The work my Master put before me
Duly from morn till set of sun!
Would that life’s cup had been by me
Quaffed in such wise and happy measure,
And that I too might finally
Look on my shroud with such meek pleasure!”
Such are the noble of the earth. They do not repine, they do not chafe, even in the inmost heart. They feel that, whatever else may be denied or withdrawn, there remains the better part, which cannot be taken from them. This line exactly expresses the woman I knew:—
“Alone and old, but still high-hearted.”
Will any, poor or rich, fail to feel that the children of such a parent were rich when
“Her virtues were their worldly dower”?
Will any fail to bow the heart in assent to the aspiration,
“Would that my spirit witness bore me
That, like this woman, I had done
The work my Maker put before me
Duly from morn till set of sun”?
May not that suffice to any man’s ambition?
[Perhaps one of the most perplexing problems which beset Woman in her domestic sphere relates to the proper care and influence which she should exert over the domestic aids she employs. As these are, and long must be, taken chiefly from one nation, the following pages treating of the Irish Character, and the true relation between Employer and Employed, can hardly fail to be of interest. They contain, too, some considerations which Woman as well as Man is too much in danger of overlooking, and which seem, even more than when first urged, to be timely in this reactionary to-day.—ED.]
The Irish Character.
In one of the eloquent passages quoted in the ”Tribune“ of Wednesday, under the head, “Spirit of the Irish Press,” we find these words:
“Domestic love, almost morbid from external suffering, prevents him (the Irishman) from becoming a fanatic and a misanthrope, and reconciles him to life.”
This recalled to our mind the many touching instances known to us of such traits among the Irish we have seen here. We have known instances of morbidness like this. A girl sent “home,” after she was well established herself, for a young brother, of whom she was particularly fond. He came, and shortly after died. She was so overcome by his loss that she took poison. The great poet of serious England says, and we believe it to be his serious thought though laughingly said, “Men have died, and worms have eaten them, but not for love.” Whether or not death may follow from the loss of a lover or child, we believe that among no people but the Irish would it be upon the loss of a young brother.
Another poor young woman, in the flower of her youth, denied herself, not only every pleasure, but almost the necessaries of life to save the sum she thought ought to be hers before sending to Ireland for a widowed mother. Just as she was on the point of doing so she heard that her mother had died fifteen months before. The keenness and persistence of her grief defy description. With a delicacy of feeling which showed the native poetry of the Irish mind, she dwelt, most of all, upon the thought that while she was working, and pinching, and dreaming of happiness with her mother, it was indeed but a dream, and that cherished parent lay still and cold beneath the ground. She felt fully the cruel cheat of Fate. “Och! and she was dead all those times I was thinking of her!” was the deepest note of her lament.
They are able, however, to make the sacrifice of even these intense family affections in a worthy cause. We knew a woman who postponed sending for her only child, whom she had left in Ireland, for years, while she maintained a sick friend who had no one else to help her.
The poetry of which I have spoken shows itself even here, where they are separated from old romantic associations, and begin the new life in the New World by doing all its drudgery. We know flights of poetry repeated to us by those present at their wakes,—passages of natural eloquence, from the lamentations for the dead, more beautiful than those recorded in the annals of Brittany or Roumelia.
It is the same genius, so exquisitely mournful, tender, and glowing, too, with the finest enthusiasm, that makes their national music, in these respects, the finest in the world. It is the music of the harp; its tones are deep and thrilling. It is the harp so beautifully described in “The Harp of Tara’s Halls,” a song whose simple pathos is unsurpassed. A feeling was never more adequately embodied.
It is the genius which will enable Emmet’s appeal to draw tears from the remotest generations, however much they may be strangers to the circumstances which called it forth, It is the genius which beamed in chivalrous loveliness through each act of Lord Edward Fitzgerald,—the genius which, ripened by English culture, favored by suitable occasions, has shed such glory on the land which has done all it could to quench it on the parent hearth.
When we consider all the fire which glows so untamably in Irish veins, the character of her people, considering the circumstances, almost miraculous in its goodness, we cannot forbear, notwithstanding all the temporary ills they aid in here, to give them a welcome to our shores. Those ills we need not enumerate; they are known to all, and we rank among them, what others would not, that by their ready service to do all the hard work, they make it easier for the rest of the population to grow effeminate, and help the country to grow too fast. But that is her destiny, to grow too fast: there is no use talking against it. Their extreme ignorance, their blind devotion to their priesthood, their pliancy in the hands of demagogues, threaten continuance of these ills; yet, on the other hand, we must regard them as most valuable elements in the new race. They are looked upon with contempt for their wont of aptitude in learning new things; their ready and ingenious lying; their eye-service. These are the faults of an oppressed race, which must require the aid of better circumstances through two or three generations to eradicate. Their virtues are their own; they are many, genuine, and deeply-rooted. Can an impartial observer fail to admire their truth to domestic ties, their power of generous bounty, and more generous gratitude, their indefatigable good-humor (for ages of wrong which have driven them to so many acts of desperation, could never sour their blood at its source), their ready wit, their elasticity of nature? They are fundamentally one of the best nations of the world. Would they were welcomed here, not to work merely, but to intelligent sympathy, and efforts, both patient and ardent, for the education of their children! No sympathy could be better deserved, no efforts wiselier timed. Future Burkes and Currans would know how to give thanks for them, and Fitzgeralds rise upon the soil—which boasts the magnolia with its kingly stature and majestical white blossoms,—to the same lofty and pure beauty. Will you not believe it, merely because that bog-bred youth you placed in the mud-hole tells you lies, and drinks to cheer himself in those endless diggings? You are short-sighted, my friend; you do not look to the future; you will not turn your head to see what may have been the influences of the past. You have not examined your own breast to see whether the monitor there has not commanded you to do your part to counteract these influences; and yet the Irishman appeals to you, eye to eye. He is very personal himself,—he expects a personal interest from you. Nothing has been able to destroy this hope, which was the fruit of his nature. We were much touched by O’Connell’s direct appeal to the queen, as “Lady!” But she did not listen,—and we fear few ladies and gentlemen will till the progress of Destiny compels them.
The Irish Character.
Since the publication of a short notice under this head in the ”Tribune,” several persons have expressed to us that their feelings were awakened on the subject, especially as to their intercourse with the lower Irish. Most persons have an opportunity of becoming acquainted, if they will, with the lower classes of Irish, as they are so much employed among us in domestic service, and other kinds of labor.
We feel, say these persons, the justice of what has been said as to the duty and importance of improving these people. We have sometimes tried; but the want of real gratitude which, in them, is associated with such warm and wordy expressions of regard, with their incorrigible habits of falsehood and evasion, have baffled and discouraged us. You say their children ought to be educated; but how can this be effected when the all but omnipotent sway of the Catholic religion and the example of parents are both opposed to the formation of such views and habits as we think desirable to the citizen of the New World?
We answer first with regard to those who have grown up in another land, and who, soon after arriving here, are engaged in our service.
First, as to ingratitude. We cannot but sadly smile on the remarks we hear so often on this subject.
Just Heaven!—and to us how liberal! which has given those who speak thus an unfettered existence, free from religious or political oppression; which has given them the education of intellectual and refined intercourse with men to develop those talents which make them rich in thoughts and enjoyment, perhaps in money, too, certainly rich in comparison with the poor immigrants they employ,—what is thought in thy clear light of those who expect in exchange for a few shillings spent in presents or medicines, a few kind words, a little casual thought or care, such a mighty payment of gratitude? Gratitude! Under the weight of old feudalism their minds were padlocked by habit against the light; they might be grateful then, for they thought their lords were as gods, of another frame and spirit than theirs, and that they had no right to have the same hopes and wants, scarcely to suffer from the same maladies, with those creatures of silk, and velvet, and cloth of gold. Then, the crumbs which fell from the rich man’s table might be received with gratitude, and, if any but the dogs came to tend the beggar’s sores, such might be received as angels. But the institutions which sustained such ideas have fallen to pieces. It is understood, even In Europe, that
“The rank is but the guinea’s stamp,
The man’s the gowd for a’ that,
A man’s a man for a’ that.”
And being such, has a claim on this earth for something better than the nettles of which the French peasantry made their soup, and with which the persecuted Irish, “under hiding,” turned to green the lips white before with famine.
And if this begins to be understood in Europe, can you suppose it is not by those who, hearing that America opens a mother’s arms with the cry, “All men are born free and equal,” rush to her bosom to be consoled for centuries of woe, for their ignorance, their hereditary degradation, their long memories of black bread and stripes? However little else they may understand, believe they understand well this much. Such inequalities of privilege, among men all born of one blood, should not exist. They darkly feel that those to whom much has been given owe to the Master an account of stewardship. They know now that your gift is but a small portion of their right.
And you, O giver! how did you give? With religious joy, as one who knows that he who loves God cannot fail to love his neighbor as himself? with joy and freedom, as one who feels that it is the highest happiness of gift to us that we have something to give again? Didst thou put thyself into the position of the poor man, and do for him what thou wouldst have had one who was able to do for thee? Or, with affability and condescending sweetness, made easy by internal delight at thine own wondrous virtue, didst thou give five dollars to balance five hundred spent on thyself? Did you say, “James, I shall expect you to do right in everything, and to attend to my concerns as I should myself; and, at the end of the quarter, I will give you my old clothes and a new pocket-handkerchief, besides seeing that your mother is provided with fuel against Christmas?”
Line upon line, and precept upon precept, the tender parent expects from the teacher to whom he confides his child; vigilance unwearied, day and night, through long years. But he expects the raw Irish girl or boy to correct, at a single exhortation, the habit of deceiving those above them, which the expectation of being tyrannized over has rooted in their race for ages. If we look fairly into the history of their people, and the circumstances under which their own youth was trained, we cannot expect that anything short of the most steadfast patience and love can enlighten them as to the beauty and value of implicit truth, and, having done so, fortify and refine them in the practice of it.
This we admit at the outset: First, You must be prepared for a religious and patient treatment of these people, not merely uneducated, but ill-educated; a treatment far more religious and patient than is demanded by your own children, if they were born and bred under circumstances at all favorable.
Second, Dismiss from your minds all thought of gratitude. Do what you do for them for God’s sake, and as a debt to humanity—interest to the common creditor upon principal left in your care. Then insensibility, forgetfulness, or relapse, will not discourage you, and you will welcome proofs of genuine attachment to yourself chiefly as tokens that your charge has risen into a higher state of thought and feeling, so as to be enabled to value the benefits conferred through you. Could we begin so, there would be hope of our really becoming the instructors and guardians of this swarm of souls which come from their regions of torment to us, hoping, at least, the benefits of purgatory.
The influence of the Catholic priesthood must continue very great till there is a complete transfusion of character in the minds of their charge. But as the Irishman, or any other foreigner, becomes Americanized, he will demand a new form of religion to suit his new wants. The priest, too, will have to learn the duties of an American citizen; he will live less and less for the church, and more for the people, till at last, if there be Catholicism still, it will be under Protestant influences, as begins to be the case in Germany. It will be, not Roman, but American Catholicism; a form of worship which relies much, perhaps, on external means and the authority of the clergy,—for such will always be the case with religion while there are crowds of men still living an external life, and who have not learned to make full use of their own faculties,—but where a belief in the benefits of confession and the power of the church, as church, to bind and loose, atone for or decide upon sin, with similar corruptions, must vanish in the free and searching air of a new era.
Between employer and employed there is not sufficient pains taken on the part of the former to establish a mutual understanding. People meet, in the relations of master and servant, who have lived in two different worlds. In this respect we are much worse situated than the same parties have been in Europe. There is less previous acquaintance between the upper and lower classes. (We must, though unwillingly, use these terms to designate the state of things as at present existing.) Meals are taken separately; work is seldom shared; there is very little to bring the parties together, except sometimes the farmer works with his hired Irish laborer in the fields, or the mother keeps the nurse-maid of her baby in the room with her.
In this state of things the chances for instruction, which come every day of themselves where parties share a common life instead of its results merely, do not occur. Neither is there opportunity to administer instruction in the best manner, nor to understand when and where it is needed.
The farmer who works with his men in the field, the farmer’s wife who attends with her women to the churn and the oven, may, with ease, be true father and mother to all who are in their employ, and enjoy health of conscience in the relation, secure that, if they find cause for blame, it is not from faults induced by their own negligence. The merchant who is from home all day, the lady receiving visitors or working slippers in her nicely-furnished parlor, cannot be quite so sure that their demands, or the duties involved in them, are clearly understood, nor estimate the temptations to prevarication.
It is shocking to think to what falsehoods human beings like ourselves will resort, to excuse a love of amusement, to hide ill-health, while they see us indulging freely in the one, yielding lightly to the other; and yet we have, or ought to have, far more resources in either temptation than they. For us it is hard to resist, to give up going to the places where we should meet our most interesting companions, or do our work with an aching brow. But we have not people over us whose careless, hasty anger drives us to seek excuses for our failures; if so, perhaps,—perhaps; who knows?—we, the better-educated, rigidly, immaculately true as we are at present, might tell falsehoods. Perhaps we might, if things were given us to do which we had never seen done, if we were surrounded by new arrangements in the nature of which no one instructed us. All this we must think of before we can be of much use.
We have spoken of the nursery-maid as the hired domestic with whom her mistress, or even the master, is likely to become acquainted. But, only a day or two since, we saw, what we see so often, a nursery-maid with the family to which she belonged, in a public conveyance. They were having a pleasant time; but in it she had no part, except to hold a hot, heavy baby, and receive frequent admonitions to keep it comfortable. No inquiry was made as to her comfort; no entertaining remark, no information of interest as to the places we passed, was addressed to her. Had she been in that way with that family ten years she might have known them well enough, for their characters lay only too bare to a careless scrutiny; but her joys, her sorrows, her few thoughts, her almost buried capacities, would have been as unknown to them, and they as little likely to benefit her, as the Emperor of China.
Let the employer place the employed first in good physical circumstances, so as to promote the formation of different habits from those of the Irish hovel, or illicit still-house. Having thus induced feelings of self-respect, he has opened the door for a new set of notions. Then let him become acquainted with the family circumstances and history of his new pupil. He has now got some ground on which to stand for intercourse. Let instruction follow for the mind, not merely by having the youngest daughter set, now and then, copies in the writing-book, or by hearing read aloud a few verses in the Bible, but by putting good books in their way, if able to read, and by intelligent conversation when there is a chance,—the master with the man who is driving him, the lady with the woman who is making her bed. Explain to them the relations of objects around them; teach them to compare the old with the new life. If you show a better way than theirs of doing work, teach them, too, why it is better. Thus will the mind be prepared by development for a moral reformation; there will be some soil fitted to receive the seed.
When the time is come,—and will you think a poor, uneducated person, in whose mind the sense of right and wrong is confused, the sense of honor blunted, easier of access than one refined and thoughtful? Surely you will not, if you yourself are refined and thoughtful, but rather that the case requires far more care in the choice of a favorable opportunity,—when, then, the good time is come, perhaps it will be best to do what you do in a way that will make a permanent impression. Show the Irishman that a vice not indigenous to his nation—for the rich and noble who are not so tempted are chivalrous to an uncommon degree in their openness, bold sincerity, and adherence to their word—has crept over and become deeply rooted in the poorer people from the long oppressions they have undergone. Show them what efforts and care will be needed to wash out the taint. Offer your aid, as a faithful friend, to watch their lapses, and refine their sense of truth. You will not speak in vain. If they never mend, if habit is too powerful, still, their nobler nature will not have been addressed in vain. They will not forget the counsels they have not strength to follow, and the benefits will be seen in their children or children’s children.
Many say, “Well, suppose we do all this; what then? They are so fond of change, they will leave us.” What then? Why, let them go and carry the good seed elsewhere. Will you be as selfish and short-sighted as those who never plant trees to shade a hired house, lest some one else should be blest by their shade?
It is a simple duty we ask you to engage in; it is, also, a great patriotic work. You are asked to engage in the great work of mutual education, which must be for this country the system of mutual insurance.
We have some hints upon this subject, drawn from the experience of the wise and good, some encouragement to offer from that experience, that the fruits of a wise planting sometimes ripen sooner than we could dare to expect. But this must be for another day.
One word as to this love of change. We hear people blaming it in their servants, who can and do go to Niagara, to the South, to the Springs, to Europe, to the seaside; in short, who are always on the move whenever they feel the need of variety to re?nimate mind, health, or spirits. Change of place, as to family employment, is the only way domestics have of “seeing life”—the only way immigrants have of getting thoroughly acquainted with the new society into which they have entered. How natural that they should incline to it! Once more; put yourself in their places, and then judge them gently from your own, if you would be just to them, if you would be of any use.
Educate Men and Women as Souls.
Had Christendom but been true to its standard, while accommodating its modes of operation to the calls of successive times, Woman would now have not only equal power with Man,—for of that omnipotent nature will never suffer her to be defrauded,—but a chartered power, too fully recognized to be abused. Indeed, all that is wanting is, that Man should prove his own freedom by making her free. Let him abandon conventional restriction, as a vestige of that Oriental barbarity which confined Woman to a seraglio. Let him trust her entirely, and give her every privilege already acquired for himself,—elective franchise, tenure of property, liberty to speak in public assemblies, &c.
Nature has pointed out her ordinary sphere by the circumstances of her physical existence. She cannot wander far. If here and there the gods send their missives through women as through men, let them speak without remonstrance. In no age have men been able wholly to hinder them. A Deborah must always be a spiritual mother in Israel. A Corinna may be excluded from the Olympic games, yet all men will hear her song, and a Pindar sit at her feet. It is Man’s fault that there ever were Aspasias and Ninons. These exquisite forms were intended for the shrines of virtue.
Neither need men fear to lose their domestic deities. Woman is born for love, and it is impossible to turn her from seeking it. Men should deserve her love as an inheritance, rather than seize and guard it like a prey. Were they noble, they would strive rather not to be loved too much, and to turn her from idolatry to the true, the only Love. Then, children of one Father, they could not err nor misconceive one another.
Society is now so complex, that it is no longer possible to educate Woman merely as Woman; the tasks which come to her hand are so various, and so large a proportion of women are thrown entirely upon their own resources. I admit that this is not their state of perfect development; but it seems as if Heaven, having so long issued its edict in poetry and religion without securing intelligent obedience, now commanded the world in prose to take a high and rational view. The lesson reads to me thus:—
Sex, like rank, wealth, beauty, or talent, is but an accident of birth. As you would not educate a soul to be an aristocrat, so do not to be a woman. A general regard to her usual sphere is dictated in the economy of nature. You need never enforce these provisions rigorously. Achilles had long plied the distaff as a princess; yet, at first sight of a sword, he seized it. So with Woman; one hour of love would teach her more of her proper relations than all your formulas and conventions. Express your views, men, of what you seek in women; thus best do you give them laws. Learn, women, what you should demand of men; thus only can they become themselves. Turn both from the contemplation of what is merely phenomenal in your existence, to your permanent life as souls. Man, do not prescribe how the Divine shall display itself in Woman. Woman, do not expect to see all of God in Man. Fellow-pilgrims and helpmeets are ye, Apollo and Diana, twins of one heavenly birth, both beneficent, and both armed. Man, fear not to yield to Woman’s hand both the quiver and the lyre; for if her urn be filled with light, she will use both to the glory of God. There is but one doctrine for ye both, and that is the doctrine of the SOUL.