The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 by Various
V >>
Various >> The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
14 |
15 |
16 | 17 |
18 |
19
But it could not be. No invention, of which human intellect was
capable, could break down the barriers that Nature had erected. I
might feast my soul upon her wondrous beauty, yet she must always
remain ignorant of the adoring eyes that day and night gazed upon her,
and, even when closed, beheld her in dreams. With a bitter cry of
anguish I fled from the room, and, flinging myself on my bed, sobbed
myself to sleep like a child.
VI.
THE SPILLING OF THE CUP.
I arose the next morning almost at daybreak, and rushed to my
microscope. I trembled as I sought the luminous world in miniature
that contained my all. Animula was there. I had left the gas-lamp,
surrounded by its moderator's, burning, when I went to bed the night
before. I found the sylph bathing, as it were, with an expression of
pleasure animating her features, in the brilliant light which
surrounded her. She tossed her lustrous golden hair over her
shoulders with innocent coquetry. She lay at full length in the
transparent medium, in which she supported herself with ease, and
gambolled with the enchanting grace that the Nymph Salmacis might
have exhibited when she sought to conquer the modest Hermaphroditus.
I tried an experiment to satisfy myself if her powers of reflection
were developed. I lessened the lamp-light considerably. By the dim
light that remained, I could see an expression of pain flit across
her face. She looked upward suddenly, and her brows contracted. I
flooded the stage of the microscope again with a full stream of light,
and her whole expression changed. She sprang forward like some
substance deprived of all weight. Her eyes sparkled, and her lips
moved. Ah! if science had only the means of conducting and
reduplicating sounds, as it does the rays of light, what carols of
happiness would then have entranced my ears! What jubilant hymns to
Adonaοs would have thrilled the illumined air!
I now comprehended how it was that the Count de Gabalis peopled his
mystic world with sylphs,--beautiful beings whose breath of life was
lambent fire, and who sported forever in regions of purest ether and
purest light. The Rosicrucian had anticipated the wonder that I had
practically realized.
How long this worship of my strange divinity went on thus I scarcely
know. I lost all note of time. All day from early dawn, and far into
the night, I was to be found peering through that wonderful lens. I
saw no one, went nowhere, and scarce allowed myself sufficient time
for my meals. My whole life was absorbed in contemplation as rapt as
that of any of the Romish saints. Every hour that I gazed upon the
divine form strengthened my passion,--a passion that was always
overshadowed by the maddening conviction, that, although I could
gaze on her at will, she never, never could behold me!
At length I grew so pale and emaciated, from want of rest, and
continual brooding over my insane love and its cruel conditions,
that I determined to make some effort to wean myself from it.
"Come," I said, "this is at best but a fantasy. Your imagination has
bestowed on Animula charms which in reality she does not possess.
Seclusion from female society has produced this morbid condition of
mind. Compare her with the beautiful women of your own world, and
this false enchantment will vanish."
I looked over the newspapers by chance. There I beheld the
advertisement of a celebrated danseuse who appeared nightly at
Niblo's. The Signorina Caradolce had the reputation of being the
most beautiful as well as the most graceful woman in the world. I
instantly dressed and went to the theatre.
The curtain drew up. The usual semi-circle of fairies in white
muslin were standing on the right toe around the enamelled
flower-bank, of green canvas, on which the belated prince was
sleeping. Suddenly a flute is heard. The fairies start. The trees
open, the fairies all stand on the left toe, and the queen enters.
It was the Signorina. She bounded forward amid thunders of applause,
and lighting on one foot remained poised in air. Heavens! was this
the great enchantress that had drawn monarchs at her chariot-wheels?
Those heavy muscular limbs, those thick ankles, those cavernous eyes,
that stereotyped smile, those crudely painted checks! Where were the
vermeil blooms, the liquid expressive eyes, the harmonious limbs of
Animula?
The Signorina danced. What gross, discordant movements! The play of
her limbs was all false and artificial. Her bounds were painful
athletic efforts; her poses were angular and distressed the eye. I
could bear it no longer; with an exclamation of disgust that drew
every eye upon me, I rose from my seat in the very middle of the
Signorina's _pas-de-fascination_ and abruptly quitted the house.
I hastened home to feast my eyes once more on the lovely form of my
sylph. I felt that henceforth to combat this passion would be
impossible. I applied my eye to the lens. Aninula was there,--but
what could have happened? Some terrible change seemed to have taken
place during my absence. Some secret grief seemed to cloud the
lovely features of her I gazed upon. Her face had grown thin and
haggard; her limbs trailed heavily; the wondrous lustre of her
golden hair had faded. She was ill!--ill, and I could not assist her!
I believe at that moment I would have gladly forfeited all claims to
my human birthright, if I could only have been dwarfed to the size
of an animalcule, and permitted to console her from whom fate had
forever divided me.
I racked my brain for the solution of this mystery. What was it that
afflicted the sylph? She seemed to suffer intense pain. Her features
contracted, and she even writhed, as if with some internal agony.
The wondrous forests appeared also to have lost half their beauty.
Their hues were dim and in some places faded away altogether. I
watched Animula for hours with a breaking heart, and she seemed
absolutely to wither away under my very eye. Suddenly I remembered
that I had not looked at the water-drop for several days. In fact, I
hated to see it; for it reminded me of the natural barrier between
Animula and myself. I hurriedly looked down on the stage of the
microscope. The slide was still there,--but, great heavens! the
water-drop had vanished! The awful truth burst upon me; it had
evaporated, until it had become so minute as to be invisible to the
naked eye; I had been gazing on its last atom, the one that contained
Animula,--and she was dying!
I rushed again to the front of the lens, and looked through. Alas!
the last agony had seized her. The rainbow-hued forests had all
melted away, and Animula lay struggling feebly in what seemed to be
a spot of dim light. Ah! the sight was horrible: the limbs once so
round and lovely shrivelling up into nothings; the eyes--those eyes
that shone like heaven--being quenched into black dust; the lustrous
golden hair now lank and discolored. The last throe came. I beheld
that final struggle of the blackening form--and I fainted.
When I awoke out of a trance of many hours, I found myself lying amid
the wreck of my instrument, myself as shattered in mind and body as
it. I crawled feebly to my bed, from which I did not rise for months.
They say now that I am mad; but they are mistaken. I am poor, for I
have neither the heart nor the will to work; all my money is spent,
and I live on charity. Young men's associations that love a joke
invite me to lecture on Optics before them, for which they pay me,
and laugh at me while I lecture. "Linley, the mad microscopist," is
the name I go by. I suppose that I talk incoherently while I lecture.
Who could talk sense when his brain is haunted by such ghastly
memories, while ever and anon among the shapes of death I behold the
radiant form of my lost Animula!
THE SCULPTOR'S FUNERAL.
Amid the aisle, apart, there stood
A mourner like the rest;
And while the solemn rites were said,
He fashioned into verse his mood,
That would not be repressed.
Why did they bring him home,
Bright jewel set in lead?
Oh, bear the sculptor back to Rome,
And lay him with the mighty dead,--
With Adonais, and the rest
Of all the young and good and fair,
That drew the milk of English breast,
And their last sigh in Latian air!
Lay him with Raphael, unto whom
Was granted Rome's most lasting tomb;
For many a lustre, many an aeon,
He might sleep well in the Panthιon,
Deep in the sacred city's womb,
The smoke and splendor and the stir of Rome.
Lay him 'neath Diocletian's dome,
Blessed Saint Mary of the Angels,
Near to that house in which he dwelt,--
House that to many seemed a home,
So much with him they loved and felt.
We were his guests a hundred times;
We loved him for his genial ways;
He gave me credit for my rhymes,
And made me blush with praise.
Ah! there be many histories
That no historian writes,
And friendship hath its mysteries
And consecrated nights;
Amid the busy days of pain,
Wear of hand, and tear of brain,
Weary midnight, weary morn,
Years of struggle paid with scorn;--
Yet oft amid all this despair,
Long rambles in the Autumn days
O'er Appian or Flaminian Ways,
Bright moments snatched from care,
When loose as buffaloes on the wild Campagna
We roved and dined on crust and curds,
Olives, thin wine, and thinner birds,
And woke the echoes of divine Romagna;
And then returning late,
After long knocking at the Lateran gate,
Suppers and nights of gods; and then
Mornings that made us new-born men;
Rare nights at the Minerva tavern,
With Orvieto from the Cardinal's cavern;
Free nights, but fearless and without reproof,--
For Bayard's word ruled Beppo's roof.
O Rome! what memories awake,
When Crawford's name is said,
Of days and friends for whose dear sake
That path of Hades unto me
Will have no more of dread
Than his own Orpheus felt, seeking Eurydice!
O Crawford! husband, father, brother
Are in that name, that little word!
Let me no more my sorrow smother;
Grief stirs me, and I must be stirred.
O Death, thou teacher true and rough!
Full oft I fear that we have erred,
And have not loved enough;
But oh, ye friends, this side of Acheron,
Who cling to me to-day,
I shall not know my love till ye are gone
And I am gray!
Fair women with your loving eyes,
Old men that once my footsteps led,
Sweet children,--much as all I prize,
Until the sacred dust of death be shed
Upon each dear and venerable head,
I cannot love you as I love the dead!
But now, the natural man being sown,
We can more lucidly behold
The spiritual one;
For we, till time shall end,
Full visibly shall see our friend
In all his hand did mould,--
That worn and patient hand that lies so cold!
When on some blessed studious day
To my loved Library I wend my way,
Amid the forms that give the Gallery grace
His thought in that pale poet I shall trace,--
Keen Orpheus with his eyes
Fixed deep in ruddy hell,
Seeking amid those lurid skies
The wife he loved so well,--
And feel that still therein I see
All that was in my Master's thought,
And, in that constant hand wherewith he wrought,
The eternal type of constancy.
Thou marble husband! might there be
More of flesh and blood like thee!
Or if, in Music's festive hall,
I come to cheat me of my care,
Amid the swell, the dying fall,
His genius greets me there.
O man of bronze! thy solemn air--
Best soother of a troubled brain--
Floods me with memories, and again
As thou stand'st visibly to men,
Beloved musician! so once more
Crawford comes back that did thy form restore.
* * * * *
Well,--_requiescat_! let him pass!
Good mourners, go your several ways!
He needs no further rite, nor mass,
Nor eulogy, who best could praise
Himself in marble and in brass;
Yet his best monument did raise,
Not in those perishable things
That men eternal deem,--
The pride of palaces and kings,--
But in such works as must avail him there,
With Him who, from the extreme
Love that was in his breast,
Said, "Come, all ye that heavy burdens bear,
And I will give you rest!"
THE PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE.
As a mere literary production, the Message of Mr. Buchanan is so
superior to any of the Messages of his immediate predecessor, that
the reader naturally expects to find in it a corresponding
superiority of sentiment and aim. When we meet a man who is
well-dressed, and whose external demeanor is that of a gentleman, we
are prone to infer that he is also a man of upright principles and
honorable feelings. But we are very often mistaken in this inference;
the nice garment proves to be little better than a nice disguise;
and the robe of respectability may cover the heart of a very scurvy
fellow.
Mr. Buchanan's sentences run smoothly enough; they are for the most
part grammatical; the tone throughout is sedate, if not dignified;
and the general spirit unambitious and moderate. But the doctrine,
in our estimation, is, on the most essential point, atrocious, and
the objects which are sought to be compassed are unworthy of the man,
the office, the country, and the age. We refer, of course, to what
is said of the one vital question with us now, the question of
Slavery in Kansas; but before proceeding to a discussion of that,
let us say a word or two of other parts of this important document.
The President introduces, as the first of his topics, the prevailing
money pressure, which he treats at considerable length, with some
degree of truth, but without originality or comprehensiveness of view.
He profiles to inquire into the causes of the unfortunate disasters
of trade, and into the remedies which may be devised against their
recurrence; but on neither head is he remarkably profound or
instructive. It is merely reiterating the commonplaces of the
newspapers, to talk about "the excessive loans and issues of the
banks," and to ring changes of phraseology on the vices of
speculation, over-trading, and stock-jobbing. All the world is as
familiar with all that as the President can be, and scarcely needed
a reminder on either score; what we wanted of the head of the nation,--
what a real statesman, who understood his subject, would have given
us,--that is, if he had pretended to go at all beyond the simple
statement of the fact of commercial revulsion, into a discussion of
it,--was a comprehensive and philosophic analysis of all the causes
of the phenomenon, a calm and careful review of all its circumstances,
and a rigid deduction of broad general principles from an adequate
study of the entire case. But this the President has not furnished.
In connecting our commercial derangements with the disorders of the
banking system he has unquestionably struck upon a great and
fundamental truth; but it is merely a single truth, and he strikes
it in rather a vague and random way. In considering these reverses,
there are many things to be taken into account besides the
constitution and customs, whether good or bad, of our American banks,--
many things which do not even confine themselves to this continent,
but are spread over the greater part of the civilized world.
Mr. Buchanan is still lamer in his suggestion of remedies than he is
in his inquiry after causes. The Federal Government, he thinks, can
do little or nothing in the premises,--a fatal admission at the
outset,--and we are coolly turned over to the most unsubstantial and
impracticable of all reliances, "the wisdom and patriotism of the
State legislatures"! Why cannot the Federal Government do anything
in the premises? The President tells us that the Constitution has
conferred upon Congress the exclusive right "to coin money _and
regulate the value thereof_," and that it has prohibited the States
from "issuing bills of credit,"--which phrase, if it mean anything,
means making paper-money; and the inference would seem to be
inevitable that Congress has a sovereign authority and power over
the whole matter. It may, moreover, touch the circulation of bills,
by means of its indisputable right to lay a stamp-tax upon paper;
and Mr. Gallatin long ago recommended the exercise of this power, as
an effectual method of restraining the emission of small notes. Upon
what principle, then, can the President assert so dictatorially as
he does, that the Federal Government is concluded from action? If
the excesses of the State Banks are so enormous as he represents,
and so perpetually and so widely disastrous, why should it not
interpose to avert the fearful evil? Why refer us for relief to the
proceedings of thirty-one different legislative bodies, no three of
which, probably, would agree upon any coherent system? We do not
ourselves say that Congress ought to interfere and undertake by main
force to regulate the currency, because we hold to other and, as we
think, better methods of arriving at a sound and stable currency;
but from the stand-point of the President, and with his views of the
efficiency of legislative restrictions upon banks, we do not see how
he could consistently avoid recommending the instant action of
Congress. On the heel of his grandiloquent description of the evils
of redundant paper money,--evils which are felt all over the country,--
it is a lamentably impotent conclusion to say, "After all, we can't
do much to help it! Yes, let us confide piously in 'the wisdom and
patriotism of the State legislatures,'"--which are almost the last
places in the world, as things go, where we should look for either
quality.
Not being able to do anything himself, however, what does he urge
upon the wise and patriotic State legislatures? Why, a series of
flimsy restrictions, which would have about as much effect in
preventing the tremendous abuses of banking which he himself depicts,
as a bit of filigree iron-work would have in restraining the
expansion of steam. Restrictions! restrictions! _toujours_
restrictions!--as if that method of correcting the evil had not been
utterly exploded by nearly two centuries of experience! Mr. Buchanan
calls himself a Democrat; he is loud in his protestations of respect
for the sagacity, the good-sense, and the virtue of the people; his
political school takes for its motto the well-known adage, "That
government is best which governs least"; his party, if he does not,
purports to be a great advocate of the emancipation of trade from
all the old-fashioned restraints which take the names of protections,
tariffs, bounties, etc. etc.; and we wonder how it is, that, in his
presumed excursions over the entire domain of free-trade, he should
have got no inkling of a thought as to the benefits of free-trade in
banking. We wonder that so great a subject could be dismissed with
the suggestion of a few petty restraints.
"If the State legislatures," remarks the President, summing up his
entire thought, "afford us a real specie basis for our circulation,
by increasing the denomination of bank-notes, first to twenty, and
afterwards to fifty dollars; if they will require that the banks
shall at all times keep on hand at least one dollar of gold and
silver for every three dollars of their circulation and deposits;
and if they will provide, by a self-executing enactment, which
nothing can arrest, that the moment they suspend they shall go into
liquidation; I believe that such provisions, with a weekly
publication by each bank of a statement of its condition, would go
far to secure us against future suspensions of specie payments."
Singular blindness! Mr. Buchanan lived for several years, as
American ambassador, in England. It is to be presumed that while
there he used his eyes, and possibly his brains. He must have
noticed occasionally, at least, in his walks through "the city," the
immense marble structure in Threadneedle Street, known as the Bank
of England. It is certain that he has read the history of that bank,
inasmuch as it is twice or thrice alluded to in his Message; he
cannot be ignorant, therefore, that the "circulation" of England has
essentially "a specie basis"; that no bank-notes are issued there for
less than the amount of twenty-five dollars; that the banks at all
times keep on hand "one dollar of gold for every three dollars of
their circulation and deposits"; and that the laws of bankruptcy are
alike rigid in regard to institutions and individuals. These are
precisely the provisions which he commends to the adoption of wise
and patriotic State legislatures as an admirable corrective for
suspensions; yet he forgets to explain to us how it happens that the
Bank of England, to which they are all applied, has virtually
suspended payment six times in the course of its existence, having
been saved from open dishonor only by the timely assistance of the
government,--while the trade of England, in spite of the staid and
conservative habits of the people, is quite as liable to those
terrific tarantula-dances, called revulsions, as our own. Before
urging his "restraints," the President ought to have inquired a
little into the history of such restraints; and he would then have
saved himself from the absurdity of patronizing remedies which an
actual trial had proved ludicrously inapt and inefficacious.
With regard to the second topic of the Message,--our foreign
relations,--it may be said that the positions assumed are frank,
manly, and explicit; unless we have reason to suspect, in the
slightly belligerent attitude towards Spain, a return, on the part
of the President, to one of his old and unlawful loves,--the
acquisition of Cuba. In that case, we should deplore his language,
and be inclined to doubt also the sincerity of his just
denunciations of Walker's infamous schemes of piracy and brigandage.
Until events, however, have developed the signs of a sinister policy
of this sort, we must bestow an earnest plaudit upon his decided
rebuke of the filibusters, coupling that praise with a wish that the
"vigilance" of his subordinates may hereafter prove of a more
wide-awake and energetic kind than has yet been manifested.
But for the terms in which the President has disposed of his third
topic,--the Kansas difficulty,--we can scarcely characterize their
disingenuousness and meanings. We have already spoken of the object
of this part of the document as atrocious,--and we repeat the word,
as the most befitting that could be used. That object is nothing
less than an attempt to cover the enormous frauds which have marked
the proceedings of the Pro-Slavery agents in Kansas, from their
initiation, with a varnish of smooth and plausible pretexts.
Adroitly taking up the question at the point which it had reached
when his own administration began, he leaves out of view all the
antecedent crimes, treacheries, and tricks by which the people of
the Territory had been led into civil war, and thus assumes that the
late Lecompton Convention was a legitimate Convention, and that the
Constitution framed by it (or said to have been framed by it,--for
there is no official report of the instrument as yet) was framed in
pursuance of proper authority or law. He does not tell us that the
Territorial legislature which called this Convention was a usurping
legislature, brought together, as the Congressional records show, by
an invading horde from a neighboring State; he does not tell us, that,
even if it had been a properly constituted body in itself, it had no
right to call a Convention for the purpose of superseding the
Territorial organization; he does not tell us that the Convention,
as assembled, represented but one-tenth of the legal voters of the
Territory; nor does he seem to regard the fact, that the other
nine-tenths of the people were virtually disfranchised by that
Convention, so far as their right to determine the provisions of
their organic law is concerned, as at all a vital and important fact.
By a miserable juggle, worthy of the frequenters of the
gambling-house or the race-course, the people of Kansas have been
nominally allowed to decide the question of Slavery, and that
permission, according to Mr. Buchanan, fulfils and completes all that
he ever meant, or his associates ever meant, by the promise of
popular sovereignty!
Now this may be all that the President and his party ever meant by
that phrase, but it is not all that their words expressed or the
country expected. In the course of the last three or four years, and
by a series of high-handed measures, the established principles of
the Federal Government, in regard to its management of the
Territories,--principles sanctioned by every administration from
Washington's down to Fillmore's,--have been overruled for the sake
of a new doctrine, which goes by the name of Popular Sovereignty.
The most sacred and binding compacts of former years were annulled
to make way for it; and the judicial department of the government
was violently hauled from its sacred retreat, into the political
arena, to give a gratuitous _coup-de-grace_ to the old opinions and
the apparent sanction of law to the new dogma, so that Popular
Sovereignty might reign triumphant in the Territories. At the
convention of the party which nominated Mr. Buchanan as a candidate
for his present office,--"a celebrated occasion," as he calls it,--
the members affirmed in the most emphatic manner the right of the
people of all the Territories, including Kansas, to form their own
Constitutions as they pleased, under the single condition that it
should be republican. Mr. Buchanan reiterated that assertion in his
Inaugural address, and in subsequent communications. When he
appointed Mr. Robert J. Walker Governor of the Territory, he
instructed him to assure the people that they should be guarantied
against all "fraud or violence" when they should be called upon
"to vote for or against the Constitution which would be submitted to
them," so that there might be "a fair expression of the popular will."
Nothing, in short, could have been clearer, more direct, more
frequently repeated, than the asseverations of the "Democratic Party,"
made through its official representatives, its newspapers, and its
orators,--to the effect, that its only object, in its Kansas policy,
was to secure "the great principle of Popular Sovereignty." On the
strength of these assurances alone, it was enabled to achieve its
hard-won victory in the last Presidential campaign. Mr. Buchanan
owes his position to them, as is repeatedly admitted by Mr. Douglas
in his speech of December 9th last,--and the whole nation, having
discussed and battled and voted on the principle, acquiesced, as it
is accustomed to do after an election, in the ascendency of the
victors. It prepared itself to see the application of the principle
which had been announced and defended as so important and wise.
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
14 |
15 |
16 | 17 |
18 |
19