The observed in every work of the plastic arts. statue is then beautiful when it begins to be incomprehensible, when it is passing out of criticism and can no longer be defined by compass and measur. ing wand, but demands an active imagination to go with it and to say what it is in the act of doing. The god or hero of the sculptor is always represented in a transition from that which is representable to the senses, to that which is not. Then first it ceases to be a stone. The same remark holds of painting. And of poetry the success is not attained when it lulls and satisfies, but when it astonishes and fires us with new endeavors after the unattainable. Concerning it Landor inquires "whether it is not to be referred to some purer state of sensation and existence." So must it be with personal beauty which love worships. Then first it is charming and itself when it dissatisfies us with any end; when it becomes a story without an end; when it suggests gleams and visions and not earthly satisfactions; when it seems "too bright and good, For human nature's daily food;" when it makes the beholder feel his unworthiness; when he cannot feel his right to it, though he were Cæsar; he cannot feel more right to it than to the firmament and the splendors of a sunset. Hence arose the saying, "If I love you, what is that to you?" We say so, because we feel that what we love is not in your will, but above it. It is the radiance of you and not you. It is that which you know not in yourself and can never know. This agrees well with that high philosophy of beauty which the ancient writers delight in; for they said that the soul of man, embodied here on earth, went roaming up and down in quest of that other world of his own, out of which it came into this, but was soon stupefied by the light of the natural sun, and unable to see any other objects than those of this world, which are but shadows of real things. Therefore the deity sends the glory of youth before the soul, that it may avail itself of beautiful bodies as aids to its recollection of the celestial good and fair; and the man beholding such a person in the female sex runs to her and finds the highest joy in contemplating the form, movement and intelligence of this person, because it suggests to him the pres ence of that which indeed is within the beauty, and the cause of the beauty. If, however, from too much conversing with material objects, the soul was gross, and misplaced its satisfaction in the body, it reaped nothing but sorrow; body being unable to fulfil the promise which beauty holds out; but if, accepting the hint of these visions and suggestions which beauty makes to his mind, the soul passes through the body and fails to admire strokes of character, and the lovers contemplate one another in their discourses and their actions, then they pass to the true palace of beau, more and more inflame their love of it, and by this love extinguishing the base affection, as the sun puts out the fire by shining on the hearth, they become pure and hallowed. By conversation with that which is itself excellent, magnanimous, lowly, and just, the lover comes to a warmer love of these nobilities, and a quicker apprehension of them. Then he passes from loving them in one to loving them in all, and so is the one beautiful soul only the door through which he enters to the society of all true and pure souls. In the particular society of his mate he attains a clearer sight of any spot, any taint which her beauty has contracted from this world, and is able to point it out, and this with mutual joy that they are now able, without offence, to indicate blemishes and hindrances in each other, and give to each all help and comfort in curing the same. And, beholding in many souls the traits of the divine beauty, and separating in each soul that which is divine from the taint which it has contracted in the world, the lover ascends to the highest beauty, to the love and knowledge of the Divinity, by steps on this ladder of created souls. Somewhat like this have the truly wise told us of love in all ages. The doctrine is not old, nor is it new. If Plato, Plutarch and Apuleius taught it, so have Petrarch, Angelo and Milton. It awaits a truer unfolding in opposition and rebuke to that subterranean prudence which presides at marriages with words that take hold of the upper world, whilst one eye is eternally boring down into the cellar; so that its gravest discourse has ever a slight savor of hams and powdering-tubs. Worst, when the snout of this sensualism intrudes into the education of young women, and withers the hope and affection of human nature by teaching that marriage signifies nothing but a housewife's thrift, and that woman's life has no other aim. But this dream of love, though beautiful, is only one scene in our play. In the procession of the soul from within outward, it enlarges its circles ever, like the pebble thrown into the pond, or the light proceeding from an orb. The rays of the soul alight first on things nearest, on every utensil and toy, on nurses and domestics, on the house and yard and passengers, on the circle of household acquaintance, on politics and geography and history. But by the necessity of our constitution things are ever grouping themselves according to higher or more interior laws. Neighborhood, size, numbers, habits, persons, lose by degrees their power over us. Cause and effect, real affinities, the longing for harmony between the soul and the circumstance, the high, progressive, idealizing instinct, these predominate later, and ever the step backward from the higher to the lower relations is impossible. Thus even love, which is the deification of persons, must become more impersonal every day. Of this at first it gives no hint. Little think the youth and maiden who are glancing at each other across crowded rooms with eyes so full of mutual intelligence,-of the precious fruit long hereafter to proceed from this new, quite external stimulus. The work of vegetation begins first in the irritability of the bark and leaf-buds. From exchang ing glances, they advance to acts of courtesy, of gallantry, then to fiery passion, to plighting troth and marriage. Passion beholds its object as a perfect unit. The soul is wholly embodied, and the body is wholly ensouled. "Her pure and eloquent blood Spoke in her cheeks, and so distinctly wrought, That one might almost say her body thought." Romeo, if dead, should be cut up into little stars to make the heavens fine. Life, with this pair, has no other aim, asks no more, than Juliet,-than Romeo. Night, day, studies, talents, kingdoms, religion, are all contained in this form full of soul, in this soul which is all form. The lovers delight in endearments, in avowals of love, in comparisons of their regards. When alone, they solace themselves with the remembered image of the other. Does that other see the same star; the same melting cloud, read the same book, feel the same emotion, that now delight me? They try and weigh their affections, and adding up all costly advantages, friends, oppor. tunities, properties, exult in discovering that willingly, joyfully, they would give all as a ransom for the beautiful, the beloved head, not one hair of which shall be harmed. But the lot of humanity is on these children. Danger, sorrow and pain arrive to them as to all. Love prays. It makes covenants with Eternal Power in behalf of this dear mate. The union which is thus affected and which adds a new alue to every atom in nature, for it transmutes every thread throughout the whole web of relation into a golden ray, and bathes the soul in a new and sweeter element, is yet a temporary state always can flowers, pearls, poetry, protestations, nor even home in another heart, content the awful soul that dwells in clay. It arouses itself at last from these endearments, as toys, and puts on the harness and aspires to vast and universal aims. The soul which is in the soul of each, craving for a perfect beatitude, detects incongruities, defects and disproportion in the behavior of the other. Hence arise surprise, expostulation and pain. Yet that which drew them to each other was signs of loveliness, signs of virtue; and these virtues are there, however eclipsed. They appear and reappear and continue to attract; but the regard changes, quits the sign and attaches to the substance. This repairs the wounded affection. Meantime, as life wears on, it proves a game of permutation and combination of all possible positions of the parties, to extort all the resources of each and acquaint each with the whole strength and weakness of the other. For, it is the nature and end of this relation, that they should represent the human race to each other. All that is in the world, which is or ought to be known, is cunningly wrought into the texture of man, of woman. Not "The person love does to 18 fit, Like manna, has the taste of all in it." The world rolls: The circumstances vary every hour All the angels that inhabit this temple of the body appear at the windows, and all the gnomes and vices also. By all the virtues they are united. If there be virtue, all the vices are known as such; they confess and flee. Their once flaming regard is sobered by time in either breast, and losing in violence what it gains in extent, it becomes a thorough good understanding. They resign each other without complaint to the good offices which man and woman are severally appointed to discharge in time, and exchange the passion which once could not lose sight of its object, for a cheerful, disengaged furtherance, whether present or absent, of each other's designs. At last they discover that all which at first drew them together, those once sacred features, that magical play of charms,-was deciduous, had a prospective end, like the scaffolding by which the house was built; and the purification of the intellect and the heart from year to year is the real marriage, foreseen and prepared from the first, and wholly above their consciousness. Looking at these aims with which two persons, a man and a woman, so variously and correlatively gifted, are shut up in one house to spend in the nuptial society forty or fifty years, I do not wonder at the emphasis with which the heart prophesies this crisis from early infancy, at the profuse beauty with which the instincts deck the nuptial bower, and nature and intellect and art emulate each other in the gifts and the melody they bring to the epithalamium. Thus are we put in training for a love which knows not sex, nor person, nor partiality, but which seeketh virtue and wisdom everywhere, to the end of increasing virtue and wisdom. We are by nature observers, and thereby learners. That is our permanent state. But we are often made to feel that our affections are but tents of a night. Though slowly and with pain, the objects of the affections change, as the objects of thought do. There are moments when the affections rule and absorb the man and make his happiness dependent on a person or persons. But in health the mind is presently seen again,-its overarching vault, bright with galaxies of immutable lights, and the warm loves and fears that swept over us as clouds must lose their finite character and blend with God,, to attain their own perfection. But we need not fear that we can lose anything by the progress of the soul. The soul may be trusted to the end. That which is so beautiful and attractive as these relations, must be succeeded and supplanted only by what is more beautiful, and so on forever. TEMPTATION.-Arbitrary power is the natural object of temptation to a prince; as wine or women to a young fellow, or a bribe to a judge, or avarice to old age, or vanity to a woman.-Swift. FROM POET, SAGE AND HUMORIST. THANATOPSIS. WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. im who in the love of nature holds, union with her visible forms, she speaks ɔus language; for his gayer hours s a voice of gladness, and a smile quence of beauty, and she glides s darker musings, with a mild aling sympathy, that steals away harpness, ere he is aware. last bitter hour come like a blight y spirit, and sad images So shalt thou rest-and what if thou withdraw 55 When thoughts The youth in life's green spring, and he who goes stern agony, and shroud, and pall, ge. Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim wth, to be resolved to earth again, t each human trace, surrendering up he sluggish clod, which the rude swain u retire alone-nor couldst thou wish g in pensive quietness between; e the meadows green; and, poured round all, 's gray and melancholy waste, he solemn decorations all eat tomb of man. The golden sun, the still lapse of ages. All that tread 4 TO A WATERFOWL WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. Whither, 'midst falling dew, While glow the heavens with the last steps of day, Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue Thy solitary way! Vainly the fowler's eye Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong, Seek'st thou the plashy brink Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide, There is a power whose care Lone wandering, but not lost. All day thy wings have fanned, And soon that toil shall end; Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest, And scream among thy fellows; reeds shal' bend, Soon, o'er thy sheltered nest. Thou'rt gone, the abyss of heaven Hath swallowed up thy form; yet, on my heart Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given, And shall not soon depart. A power is on the earth and in the air, From which the vital spirit shrinks afraid, And shelters him, in nooks of deepest shade, From the hot steam and from the fiery glare. Look forth upon the earth-her thousand plants Are smitten, even the dark sun-loving maize Faints in the field beneath the torrid blaze; The herd beside the shaded fountain pants; For life is driven from all the landscape brown; The bird has sought his tree, the snake his den, The trout floats dead in the hot stream and men Drop by the sun-stroke in the populous town; As if the Day of Fire had dawned and sent Its deadly breath into the firmanent. JOHN GIL PIN, WM. COWPER. John Gilpin was a citizen Of credit and renown, A train band captain eke was he John Gilpin's spouse said to her dear: My sister, and my sister's child, Myself and children three, Will fill the chaise; so you must ride On horseback after we.' He soon replied: 'I do admire And you are she, my dearest dear; 'I am a linen-draper bold, As all the world doth know, And my good friend the calender Will lend his horse to go.' Quoth Mrs. Gilpin: That's well said; John Gilpin kissed his loving wife; O'erjoyed was he to find That, though on pleasure she was bent, She had a frugal mind. The morning came, the chaise was brought, But yet was not allowed To drive up to the door, lest all Should say that she was proud. So three doors off the chaise was stayed, Where they did all get in; Six precious souls, and all agog To dash through thick and thin. Smack went the whip, 'round went the wheels, John Gilpin at his horse's side Seized fast the flowing mane, And up he got, in haste to ride, But soon came down again; For saddle-tree scarce reached had he, His journey to begin, When, turning round his head, he saw Three customers come in. So down he came; for loss of time, 'Twas long before the customers Were suited to their mind, When Betty screaming came down-stairs: 'The wine is left behind!' 'Good lack!' quoth he- yet bring it me, My leathern belt likewise, In which I bear my trusty sword Now Mrs. Gilpin-careful soul!- Each bottle had a curling ear, Through which the belt he drew, And hung a bottle on each side, To make his balance true. Then over all, that he might be His long red cloak, well brushed and neat, Now see him mounted once again Upon his nimble steed, But finding soon a smoother road So, 'Fair and softly,' John he cried, FROM POET, SAGE AND HUMORIST. 57 So stooping down, as needs he must Who cannot stoop upright, He grasps the mane with both his hands, His horse, which never in that sort The wind did blow, the cloak did fly, Like streamer long and gay, Till, loop and button failing both, Then might all people well discern A bottle swinging at each side, The dogs did bark, the children screamed, nd every soul cried out: 'Well done!' As loud as he could bawl. way went Gilpin-who but he? His fame soon spread around; He carries weight! he rides a race! 'Tis for a thousand pound! nd still, as fast as he drew near, 'Twas wonderful to view ow in a trice the turnpike-men Their gates wide open threw. nd now, as he went bowing down His reeking head full low, ne bottles twain behind his back Were shattered at a blow. own ran the wine into the road, Most piteous to be seen, hich made his horse's flanks to smoke, As they had basted been. t still he seemed to carry weight, With leathern girdle braced; -r all might see the bottle necks Still dangling at his waist. us all through merry Islington These gambols he did play, til he came unto the wash Of Edmonton so gay. d there he threw the wash about On both sides of the way, t like unto a trundling mop, Or a wild goose at play. Edmonton, his loving wife From the balcony spied ☛ tender husband, wondering much Co see how he did ride. 'Stop, stop, John Gilpin-Here's the house! They all at once did cry; "The dinner waits, and we are tired! Said Gilpin: 'So am I!' But yet his horse was not a whit The calender, amazed to see His neighbor in such trim, Laid down his pipe, flew to the gate, And thus accosted him: "What news? what news? your tidings tell; Tell me you must and shall Say, why bareheaded you are come, Now Gilpin had a pleasant wit, And loved a timely joke; And thus unto the calender In merry guise he spoke: 'I came because your horse would come;! And, if I well forebode, My hat and wig will soon be here They are upon the road.' The calender, right glad to find But to the house went in; Whence straight he came with hat and wig, A wig that flowed behind, A hat not much the worse for wear, Each comely in its kind. He held them up, and in his turn They therefore need must fit. Said John: 'It is my wedding day, If wife should dine at Edmonton, So turning to his horse, he said: 'Twas for your pleasure you came here, You shall go back for mine.' |