Chapter IV: Front Matter (4)

There was a pretty picture of the _Immaculée Conception_ over the sofa, one of those lithographs that you see in every bookstore, that Bertha fancied because it was 'sweet.' The Virgin, a woman with a child-angel's face, and the mezzo-luna beneath her feet. That artist knew what he was about, sir. I'd give more for a picture with a good, deep idea, boldly launched forth, than for a thousand of your smiling, proper, natural 'studies,' and Bridal Scenes, and Dramatic or Historical Snatches. If artists, now, were all poets and scholars, as they should be, it would be the work and delirious rapture of a life to go through a gallery as large as our Dusseldorf. Men would go there to write novels and histories, and women to learn to be good and beautiful--that is, to learn to think. Oh, what a school for great and small! But when is this new era of the real and the true in art to begin? You boy artists, who are just opening glad eyes to the glorious light, the great world looks to _you_ to inaugurate the new, to pour ancient lore and mystic symbols and grand old art into the waiting crucible, and melt the whole, with your burning, creative genius, into forms and conceptions before which, hearts shall be silent in very rapture. But the time is not yet. One here and there cannot change the Iron to a Golden Age, and it is to thoughts rather than their great embodiments that earnest art-worshippers now bow. And yet men fancy they are artists, dream of a fame glorious as that of Phidias! Why there's young Acajou, who chiselled a very respectable hound out of a stray lump of marble, stealthily, by a candle, or more probably a spirit lamp, in his father's cellar--was discovered and straightway heroized. I don't say the boy hasn't talent, genius if you will; but it isn't the genius that will overflow his soul and etherealize his whole nature. Yet already he 'progresses like a giantess,' has attracted some attention in the Academy, and will directly be sent to Rome. But the idea! I know him too well! The other night I heard him criticizing Michael Angelo! and when I gave him an engraving of that delicious Psyche of Theed's to admire, the creature talked as if she were a manikin or a robed skeleton! Is there nothing due to the idea, Acajou? 'The idea!' dear me, why he didn't exactly know what the _idea_ was! So he'll go trolling about the Louvre and the Luxembourg gallery, the Pitti palace and all Rome, and his mind will be as full of elbows and collar bones as the catacombs; he'll talk to you of the Grecian line of beauty and of 'pose,' and sketch you such a glorious arm or ankle that you, fair lady, wouldn't know it from your own! But do you see a single softened line in his own face? Has he ever drunk deep draughts from old fountains of poesy? Has he ever thought of the Vatican library--even though to long is all he may do? Oh no! He says mythology is a wornout dream, and insulting to a Christian age; that it's all well enough to know Jupiter and Bacchus (Silenus too?) and Venus and the head men back there, but this century wants originality, progress! Oh, pshaw!

Oh, but I was saying that Our Lady stood over the half moon, and Henrietta sat below it, with that soft cashmere morning dress, fighting all around her to see which fold should cling most lovingly to her graceful form. It was all a delicious poem to me, and if I were Horace, you would have had a splendid ode. Oh, well!

'Why, what a Joseph he is!' said Henrietta, waking me out of this reverie.

'Oh,' said I, starting, 'how did you know that?'

'Only conjecture, my dear friend; but when we see a man with his eyes fixed in that ghostly way, and his mustaches and all in perfect repose, we reasonably imagine that he's seeing visions; and I suppose you'll come flaming out presently with some dreams that shall have, for remote consequences, a throne in some Eastern paradise, and a princess, perhaps--who knows?'

'Who knows?' echoed I; 'but go on, Hypatia.'

'Oh yes! where shall I begin? Oh! there is Penhurst Lane, girls, you remember?'

'The raven?' said Bertha.

'No,' said Fanny, 'that is Mr. Rawdon. Penhurst Lane is an idealist.'

'A _very_ idealist, just so,' returned Harry. 'Well, the way I've been a martyr to that man's caprice is perfectly heart-rending. He came of some gorgeous family in the middle of Pennsylvania, where all the tribes, like leaning towers, incline toward Germany. To be sure, you'd never dream it from his looks, for he is a perfect Mark Antony in that respect. You needn't laugh. Didn't he have _bonnes fortunes_ as well as Alcibiades? Not that Penhurst had _bonnes fortunes_, or ever dreamed of such things; but he always had such a proclivity toward any one who would listen to his harangues; and I must say, just _inter nos_ (the only bit of Latin I know, Lenox, I got it from the English 'Don Giovanni'), that I have quite a talent for listening well. But I'd as lief encounter a West India hurricane or a simoom. I used to feel him coming an hour beforehand. Then I would read a little in Blair, take a peep at Sir Charles Grandison, swallow half a page of Cowper's 'Task,' and look over the Grecian and Roman heroes; then I was fortified. 'Why didn't I take Shelley?' Oh my! why, he couldn't endure Shelley, said he was a poor, weak creature, _all gone to imagination_! Then I would assume a Sontag and thick boots, if the weather was cold, to appear sensible, you know, and await his coming; that is, if I didn't become exasperated before that stage, and rush in to see Lil Brennan to avoid him. And his opinions, such an unfolding! You never caught him looking with admiration, oh no! I might have laid a wilderness of charms on the floor, at his very feet, and he would have brushed them all away with indifference. His mind revolved around a weightier theme than any 'lady of fashion;' like a newly discovered moon, he flew around the earth, and with miraculous speed. He stopped in China to say 'Confucius;' in India, to say 'Brahma;' in Persia, to say 'Ormuzd;' and so on around. My dear Lenox, if you had asked him whether Ormuzd was at peace with all the world, he would have retired into himself, for he hadn't the faintest idea. As for music, or any fine art, he never approached it but once, when he led me to the piano, begging for some native American melody, and not a German romance. Well, I played him 'God save the Queen,' with extravagant variations, which he took for 'Yankee Doodle.' No matter! I made a mistake when I spoke of his opinions; he hadn't any. He was what some call 'well read,' that is, he had a distant desire to 'improve his mind,' but his magnificent self so filled his little vision, that his great desire was obscured and distorted. Like my beloved Jean Paul, he had once said to himself, _Ich bin ein Ich_ (I am a ME), and the noble consciousness overwhelmed him, and excluded all after thoughts on any minor subject. He never heard Grisi, never saw Rachel; they were triflers, 'life was too grave, too short;' but he escorted me occasionally to lectures and orations. I remember two or three of these. A lecture on the 'Fossils of Humanity and Primeval Formations,' which was unintelligible, consequently to him 'sublime;' one on 'the Exalted,' that soared out of sight and beyond the empire of gravity, and one on 'Architecture,' by Dr. Vinton, a splendid production, the fruit and evidence of years of study and rare talent, that sent me home with longings and unaccustomed reverence for the Great in every form, and with grief that my own ignorance rendered it only a half-enjoyed pleasure to me; while Penhurst talked as if it were only the echo of his own thoughts; pretended to say it was very 'sensible!' But you've had enough of Mr. Lane, who was never known to laugh except at his own wit, who patronized me because I was a 'solid' young lady, and not given to flights. You may readily imagine that our interviews were generally _tête-à-têtes_, for general society was to him a thing 'stale, flat, and unprofitable.' Of course you know I only endured his visits because among the girls it was considered a compliment to receive them, and they were all dying of envy. Besides and principally, it is neither politic nor pleasant to offend any one, and I could not have denied myself to him, without doing this; so'--

'But, Harry, he is married now.'

'Ah me! yes. He saw me in a cap and bells once with you, Lenox, and not many weeks afterward married a damsel who reveres him as a Solon, this man, who said:

----'The wanderings
Of this most intricate Universe
Teach me the nothingness of things.
Yet could not all creation pierce
Beyond the bottom of his eye.'

'_Are_ you done, Harry?'

'Yes, Lenox.'

'Then sing us Béranger's _Grace à la fêve, je suis roi_.'

She has such a delicious voice.

'And while I am on tiresome people, who think only of themselves, let me recall P. George Rawdon; the Raven, Bertha; I always believed his first name was Pluto, because of the shades around him. They say every one has a text book; his was neither the Bible, the Prayer Book, Thomas à Kempis, _La Nouvelle Héloise_, or 'Queechy,' but Mrs. Crowe's 'Night Side of Nature.' Talk of having a skeleton in the house! the most distressing ones that ever preceded Douglas and Sherwood's were nothing to him! he reminded one constantly of an Egyptian feast. He looked sadly at children, and gave little Henry Parsons, his godchild, a miniature dagger with a jewelled handle, with which the child nearly destroyed his right hand. When poor Mary was married, he walked mournfully up to the altar, and stared during the ceremony unmistakably at an imaginary coffin, hanging, like Mohammed's, midway between the ceiling and the floor. Poor man, it's really curious, but he contrives to be always in mourning, and everybody knows that he goes only to see tragedies, and has the dyspepsia, like Regina and her diamond cross, from principle. He composes epitaphs for all the ladies of his acquaintance, and presents them, like newspaper-carrier addresses, on New Year's days. I have one in my writing desk in a very secret drawer; a _soul_-cheering effusion, but not particularly agreeable to the physical humanity. This I intend to bequeath to the British museum, where it will be in future ages as great a treat to the antiquary as the Elgin marbles. What a doleful subject--pass him by!'

'Don't forget Leon Channing,' suggested Fanny, who was listening with great interest, and from a natural dread of ghosts and vampires was glad to see that Mr. Rawdon had come to a crisis.

'Dear me, no!' said Henrietta, cheerily, 'it's quite refreshing to come to an individual who creates a smile. I never was born for tears and lamentations, Bertha, any more than a lily was made to be merry; and if it were not for Len Channing, I don't suppose I should ever have been sharpened to such a dangerous degree; it's this constant friction, you know; well, as some darling of a cosmopolite has said, 'We must allow for friction in the most perfect machinery--yes, be glad to find it--for a certain degree of resistance is essential to strength. I like Leon very well. No one is more safe in a parlor engagement, always in the right place at the right tune, never embarrassed, never _de trop_; but then the queer consciousness, when he's giving you a meringué or an ice, that if you were a 'real pretty,' graceful, conversible fawn or dove he would be doing it with the same interest! _Why?_ Oh, because he says women belong to a lower order in the animal creation! Yes, veil your face, Mr. Lenox Raleigh, and be mournful that you are a man! 'A lower order of humanity!' Well, of course, I'm always quarrelling with him. To be sure he's a shallow kind of a philosopher, one of your rationalists; thinks Boston is the linchpin of the whole universe; has autograph letters from Emerson and Longfellow, and all that sort of thing. Now, I dare say it's very fine for a Schelling or a Hegel once in a while to beam over the earth, but it always seems inharmonious to me to see little jets of philosophers popping up in your face and then down again, all the time, thinking themselves great things. That's the way with Leon. Let me tell you what happened when I saw him last; and that was in Cologne, more than a year ago. I was sitting in our room with a great folio of Retzsch's engravings before me, and father writing horrible notes in his journal at the table, and wishing the eleven thousand virgins and all Cologne in the bottom of the Rhine, when I looked up, and somehow there was Leon. Of course we were rejoiced to see him, it's always so pleasant to meet friends abroad. After some talk, father went out to take another look at the cathedral, and indulge in speculations and legends, and left Leon and me in the window. It's as queer and horrible an old town, girls, as you ever dreamed of, and, as there was nothing external very fascinating, Leon soon turned his gaze inward, and, after twanging several minor strings, began to harp on his endless 'inferiority of woman.' I plied him, you may know; I gave him Zenobias and Didos and de Staels and de Medicis--in an emergency Pope Joan, and finally the Boston Margaret Fuller. Leon only stroked his beard and smiled.

''Miss Henrietta,' said he, at last, when I stopped in exultation, 'do you grant the Africans the vigor or variety of intellect of the Europeans?'

''No,' said I.

''Yet you concede that there may be instances among them, where education and culture have developed great results.'

''Yes,' I thought, 'there might be.'

''Just as I, bewildered by Miss Henrietta's keen shafts and graceful manoeuvres, yield that a woman is, once in a century, gifted with a man's depth of thought and her sex's loveliness.' The comparison was odious. What did I do? Oh, I (the swarthy Ethiop) only rose from my faded arm chair, saluted Mr. Channing (the lordly European) as if I were his partner in a quadrille, and brought out my cameos and mosaics to show him. In about half an hour the beauty of his reasoning and comparison reached his brain, but mine was impenetrable to his most honeyed apologies; as I very sweetly assured him, 'I couldn't understand, didn't see the drift, couldn't connect the links.' Leon says ancient history is a fable, and Herodotus a myth, and all because a _woman_ sat upon the tripod at Delphi, and because a _woman_ wore the helmet and carried the shield of wisdom.'

'What's the matter, Harry?' asked Fanny, compassionately, as her small fingers were stretched like infant grid-irons before her eyes, and a silence ensued.

'My new bonnet, Fanny dear, I am wondering what it shall be; we must go down this very morning and decide.'

Did you ever think, Narcissus, and you, Gustav, and all of you boys, when you are engaged in your small diplomacies and _coups de main_, and feeling like giants in intellect beside the dear little girls who play polkas for you of evenings and sing sweet ballads, that _pour bien juger les grands, il faut les approcher_? I thought so that morning, as I heard the animated discussion that succeeded Henrietta's monologue; a discussion into which all sorts of delicate conceits of lace and flowers entered largely, and which savored about as much of the preceding elements as last night's Charlotte Russe of this morning's coffee.

Since Henrietta's oration, I am more than ever afraid of a Vulcan. It is very plain that our most fashionably cut suits and most delicately perfumed billets are not all powerful,--that the dear creatures are either waking or we have been asleep. _Reveillons!_

'_Aux armes, citoyens!_'

Now, while I was writing that last word, a heavy hand was laid on my shoulder, and looking up, I saw--Nap. I love Nap. I have a girlish weakness (let some lady arraign me for this hereafter) for him; so I shouted out and grasped his hands.

'How are the boys?'

'Flourishing. Come to stay?

'Yes, old fellow.'

'Stocks up?'

'To the sky.'

'The governor?'

'All right.'

_I_ haven't any governor. Nap has; and one that saw fit to persecute him from twenty to thirty, because he declined to take 'orders.' _Per Bacco!_ Never mind, a fit of paralysis has shaken the opposition out of the old gentleman at last, and Nap is in sunshine in consequence, and rushes around Wall street like a veteran.

But I didn't promise to tell you about Nap, or the girls either; it was only a few rays of light I had to dash over 'our beaux;' so where is your mother, belle Beatrice? I must make my adieux.

What say you, little one? You like Henrietta; you want to see her again? You pull me back with your wee white hands; I will talk to you for an hour longer, if I may hold the little kittens in my own. I may? And kiss each finger afterward? Ah! you dear child! Well, then--

'Are you going to Van Wyck's to-night, Lenox?' asked Bertha of me, as we rose from dinner, a month afterward.

'Yes, after the opera. And you? I fancy--yes--from your eyes.'

Bertha did not answer, and I strolled up stairs into the little back drawing room. From the library above I could hear Fanny's merry voice and the ring of Nap's cheery replies. Such a comfort as it was to me to see those two so fond of each other. You see I am, in a way, Fanny's father, and took no very great credit to myself when she half laid her hand in the extended one of Snowe. How curiously that witch Harry managed the thing, though! Dear little Fan; she stood in more than one twilight by the garden window, and whispered over: '_Addio_, FRANCESCA! _addio_, CECCO!' and Snowe faded in the returning spring of her heart, and into the blooming vista of their separation, hopefully walked Nap, and was welcomed with many smiles.

This afternoon, I walked over to the garden window, and there was Harry, scrawling an old, bearded hermit on the glass with her diamond ring. We both looked out--nothing much to see--a New York garden, thirty feet square, with the usual gorgeousness of our winter flowers!

'You are thinking of Shiraz, Harry.'

'Yes,' said she, dreamily, 'I am thinking of Shiraz!'

She didn't say it, but don't you suppose I knew just as well that she was wishing for her Vulcan and a great rose garden? I began to sing the 'Last Man,' but didn't succeed admirably; then I lighted my pipe--Harry didn't mind, you know, indeed she only looked at it wishfully.

'In my rose garden,' said she, with a laugh, 'I shall smoke to kill the rosebugs.'

'Don't wait,' said I, taking down a dainty _écume de mer_ (the back drawing room was my peculiar 'study,' and the repository of several gentlemanly 'improprieties'), and I adjusted the amber mouth piece to the cherry stem, 'Don't wait for Persia, make your rose garden here.'

Harry shook her head: 'You know, Len,' she said, 'that my roses would grow like so many witches in a Puritan soil. I always thought that story of the Norwegians' taking rosebuds for bulbs of fire, and being terrified, was a very delicate and poetical satire upon _all_ superstition.'

'Are you going to wash away _all_ superstition?' I asked hastily.

'No,' said she, with a smile at my fierceness; 'no, I like to see the sun shine on the dew drops that the webs catch and swing between the tops of the grasses.'

I looked at her as she laid her head back against the curtains. My nonchalance was as striking as hers, and--as genuine! We were no children to be awkward in any event. I took her hand; it was a glowing pulse--and mine? She wore one of those curious little cabal rings; there were the Hebrew characters for Faith, traced as with a gold pen dipped in melted pearls on black enamel. My seal was an emerald, Faith also, impaled. I snatched it up and laid it by the ring on her hand. She smiled--such a smile! intensest sympathy, deepest! Could it be? to love the same old symbols, the same weird music? I caught her close, and bent over her lips. The gold hair waved over my shoulder; the great, glittering eyes foamed into mine, then melted and swam into deep, quivering seas of dreams. I whispered, '_Zoe mou!_' Oh, the quick, golden whisper, the flash of genial heartiness, the daring--oh, _how_ tender! '_Sas agapo._' I held her off, radiant, glowing, fragrant, and Bertha's dress rustled up the stairs.

Henrietta stooped to pick up the seal, which had fallen; she balanced it on the tip of her finger--the nervy Titan queen! and drew Bertha down by her side on the sofa. It was growing dark.

'I must be off, girls, and get your camelias. What will you have, Bertha? a red or a white, you've a moment to decide?'

'Neither, Len; I do not go.'

'Why, Bertha? Oh! I remember, it is your anniversary,' and I kissed her.

'And you, princess!' I turned to Henrietta.

'Only roses, good my liege.'

What was the opera that night? Pshaw! what a rhetorical affectation this question! as if I could ever forget! _Die Zauberflöte_, and it rang pure and clear through my thrilled heart. It followed me around to Van Wyck's, where I found Henrietta and Fanny. A compliment to madame, a German with mademoiselle, and home again. A great light streamed out of the drawing room. I pushed the door open. With a cry of joy, Fan rushed into the arms of the grave, fair man who put Bertha off his knee to welcome her. Nap, who had followed us in, for a moment stood transfixed, and Henrietta, more quiet, stood by their side, saying: 'Here is Harry, Fred, when you choose to see her.' And he did choose, her own brother, whom she had not seen for three years!

'Come in, Nap,' I said. 'Fred Ruyter.'

'Nap and Fanny,' I whispered; Fred smiled invisibly.

And Bertha? Oh, you know, of course, that she's Bertha Ruyter, and that Fred is her husband, just home from six months in Rio, and exactly a year from his wedding night! Oh, Lionardo! what mellow, transparent, flowing shades drowned us all that night!

'Harry,' I said, the next morning, before I went down town, as I lounged over her sofa, 'you have my emerald?'

'Yes!' and her bright face turned up to mine.

'You will keep it, and take me also, dear?'

'_Ma foi! oui_,' was the sweet, smiling reply.

'I'm not quite ugly enough for a Vulcan, I know; but after a while, if you are patient, who knows? What sayest thou, Venus?'

'I will try you, _bon camarade_.'

'Your hand upon it, Harry.'

She gave it; I kissed the gold hair that waved against my lips. Fanny rushed impetuously upon us, with half-opened eyes, and stifled us with caresses.

'Such a proposal,' said she musingly, after she had returned to her wools and beads, '14° above zero!'

'And the Polyphemus, Fanny?'

'Is for Nap,' and Fanny blushed and laughed. She was wondering if that great event, an 'engagement,' always came about in so prosaic a way. But looking at Bertha, I caught the bright, long, gravely humorous gleam from her dark eyes, and walked upon it all the way down to Exchange Place.

Adieu, little Beatrice; my story hath at last an ending. Keep the little hands and little heart warm for somebody brave by and by. Go shining about and dancing, and smiling, Hummingbird; may sweetest flowers always bloom around you; may you dwell in a fragrant rose garden of your own, _mignonne_! Adieu.

ETHEL.

FITZ FASHION'S WIFE.

Take the diamonds from my forehead--their chill weight but frets my brow!
How they glitter! radiant, faultless--but they give no pleasure now.

Once they might have saved a Poet, o'er whose bed the violet waves:
Now their lustre chills my spirit, like the light from new-made graves.

Quick! unbind the braided tresses of my coroneted hair!
Let it fall in single ringlets such as I was wont to wear.

Take that wreath of dewy violets, twine it round their golden flow;
Let the perfumed purple blossoms fall upon my brow of snow!

Simple flowers, ye gently lead me back into the sunny years,
Ere I wore proud chains of diamonds, forged of bitter, frozen tears!

Bring the silver mirror to me! I am changed since those bright days,
When I lived with my sweet mother, and a Poet sang my praise.

My blue eyes are larger, dimmer; thicker lashes veil their light;
Upon my cheek the crimson rose fast is fading to the white.

I am taller, statelier, slighter, than I was in days of yore:--
If his eyes in heaven behold me, does he praise me as before?

Proudly swells the silken rustle--all around is wealth and state,--
Dearer far the early roses twining round the wicker gate,

Where my mother came at evening with the saint-like forehead pale,
And the Poet sat beside her, conning o'er his rhythmed tale.

As he read the linked lines over, she would sanction, disapprove:
Soft and musical the pages, but he never sang of love.

I had lived through sixteen summers, he was only twenty-one,
And we three still sat together at the hour of setting sun.

Lowly was the forest cottage, but the sweetbrier wreathed it well;
'Mid its violets and roses, bees and robins loved to dwell.

Wilder forms of larch and hemlock climbed the mountain at its side;
Fairy-like a rill came leaping where the quivering harebells sighed.

Glittering, bounding, singing, dancing, ferns and mosses loved its track;
Lower in it dipped the willows, as to kiss the cloudland's rack.

Soon there came a stately lover,--praised my beauty, softly smiled:
'He would make my mother happy,'--I was but a silly child!

Came a dream of sudden power--fairest visions o'er me glide--
Wider spheres would open for me;--dazzled, I became a bride:

Fondly deemed my lonely mother would be freed from sordid care;
Splendor I might pour around her, every joy with her might share.

Then the Poet, who had never breathed one word of love to me,--
We might shape his life-course for him, give him culture wide and free.

How I longed to turn the pages, with a husband's hand as guide,
Of the long-past golden ages, art and science at my side!

To my simple fancy seemed it almost everything he knew--
Ah! he might have won affection, faithful, fervent, trusting, true!

I was happy, never dreaming wealth congeals the human soul,
Freezing all its generous impulse--I but saw its wide control.

Years have passed--a larger culture poured strange knowledge through
my mind--
I have learned to read man's nature: better I were ever blind!

How can I take upon me what I look upon with scorn,
Or learn to brook my own contempt, or trample the forlorn?

I cannot live by rote and rule; I was not born a slave
To narrow fancies; I must feel, although a husband rave!

I cannot choose my friends because I know them rich, or great;
My heart elects the noble,--what cares love for wealth or state?

Very lovely are my pictures, saints and angels throng my hall--
But with shame my cheek is flushing, and my quivering lashes fall:

Can I gaze on pictured actions, daring deeds, and emprise high,
And not feel my degradation while these fetters round me lie?

Once the Poet came to see me, but it gave me nought but pain;
I was glad to see the Gifted go, ne'er to return again.

For my husband scorning told me: 'True, his lines were very sweet,
But his clothes, so worn and seedy--scarce for me acquaintance meet!

Artists, poets, men of genius, truly should be better paid,
But not holding our position, cannot be our friends,' he said.

'As gentlemen to meet them were a very curious thing;
They were happier in their garrets--there let them sigh or sing.

There were Travers and De Courcy--could he ask them home to dine,
At the risk of meeting truly such strange fellows o'er their wine?'

Then he said, 'My cheeks were peachy, lips were coral, curls were gold,
But he liked them braided crown-like, and with pearls and diamonds
rolled.

I was once a little peasant; now I stood a jewelled queen--
Fitter that a calmer presence in his stately wife were seen!'

Then he gave a gorgeous card-case; set with rubies, Roman gold,
Handed me a paper with it, strands of pearls around it rolled;

Names of all his wife should visit I would find upon the roll:--
Found I none I loved within it--not one friend upon the scroll!

And my mother, God forgive me! I was glad to see her go,
Ere the current of her loving heart had turned like mine to snow.

Must I still seem fair and stately, choking down my bosom's strife,
Because 'all deep emotions were unseemly in his wife'?

Must I gasp 'neath diamonds' glitter--walk in lustrous silken sheen--
Leaving those I love in anguish while I play some haughty scene?

I am choking! closer round me crowds convention's stifling vault--
Every meanness's called a virtue--every virtue deemed a fault!

Every generous thought is scandal; every noble deed is crime;
Every feeling's wrapped in fiction, and truth only lives in rhyme!

No;--I am not fashion's minion,--I am not convention's slave!
If 'obedience is for woman,' still she has a soul to save.

Must I share their haughty falsehood, take my part in social guile,
Cut my dearest friends, and stab them with a false, deceitful smile?

Creeping like a serpent through me, faint, I feel a deadly chill,
Freezing all the good within me, icy fetters chain my will.

Do I grow like those around me? will I learn to bear my part
In this glittering world of fashion, taming down a woman's heart?

Must I lower to my husband? is it duty to abate
All the higher instincts in me, till I grow his fitting mate?

Shall I muse on noble pictures, turn the poet's stirring page,
And grow base and mean in action, petty with a petty age?

I am heart-sick, weary, weary! tell me not that this life,
Where all that's truly living must be pruned by fashion's knife!--

I can make my own existence--spurn his gifts, and use my hands,
Though the senseless world of fashion for the deed my memory brands.

Quick! unbraid the heavy tresses of my coroneted hair--
Let its gold fall in _free_ ringlets such as I was wont to wear.

I am going back to nature. I no more will school my heart
To stifle its best feelings, play an idle puppet's part.

I will seek my banished mother, nestle closely on her breast;
Noble, faithful, kind, and loving, there the tortured one may rest.

We will turn the Poets' pages, learn the noblest deeds to act,
Till the fictions in their beauty shall be lived as simple fact.

I will mould a living statue, make it generous, strong, and high,
Humble, meek, self-abnegating, formed to meet the Master's eye.

Oh, the glow of earnest culture! Oh, the joy of sacrifice!
The delight to help another! o'er all selfish thoughts to rise!

Farewell, cold and haughty splendor--how you chilled me when a bride!
Hollow all your mental efforts; meanness all your dazzling pride!

Put the diamonds in their caskets! pearls and rubies, place them there!
I shall never sigh to wear them with the violets in my hair.

Freedom! with no eye upon me freezing all my fiery soul;
Free to follow nature's dictates; free from all save God's control.

I am going to the cottage, with its windows small and low,
Where the sweetbrier twines its roses and the Guelder rose its snow.

I will climb the thymy mountains where the pines in sturdy might
Follow nature's holy bidding, growing ever to the light;

Tracking down the leaping streamlet till the willows on it rise,
Watch its broad and faithful bosom strive to mirror back the skies.

Through the wicker gate at evening with my mother I will come,
With a little book, the Poet's, to read low at set of sun.

'Tis a gloomy, broken record of a love poured forth in death,
Generous, holy, and devoted, sung with panting, dying breath.

By the grassy mound we'll read it where he calmly sleeps in God,--
My gushing tears may stream above--they cannot pierce the sod!

Hand in hand we'll sit together by the lowly mossy grave--
Oh, God! I blazed with jewels, but the noble dared not save!

I am going to the cottage, there to sculpture my own soul,
Till it fill the high ideal of the Poet's glowing roll.

* * * * *

Stay, lovely dream! I waken! hear the clanking of my chain!
Feel a hopeless vow is on me--I can ne'er be free again!

His wife! I've sworn it truly! I must bear his freezing eye,
Feel his blighting breath upon me while all nobler instincts die!

Feel the Evil gain upon me as the weary moments glide,
Till I hiss, a jewelled serpent, fit companion, at his side.

Vain is struggle--vain is writhing--vain are sobs and stifled gasps--
I must wear my brilliant fetters though my life-blood stain their clasps!

Hark! he calls! tear out the violets! quick! the diamonds in my hair!
There's a ball to-night at Travers'--'tis his will I should be there.

Splendid victim in his pageant, though my tortured head should ache,
Yet I must be brilliant, joyous, if my throbbing heart should break!

I shudder! quick! my dress of rose, my tunic of point lace--
If fine enough, he will not read the anguish in my face!

I know one place he dare not look--it is so still and deep--
He dare not lift the winding sheet that veils my last, long sleep!

He dreads the dead! the coffin lid will shield me from his breath--
His eye no more will torture----Joy! I shall be free in death!

Free to rest beside the Poet. He will shun the lowly grave:
There my mother soon will join us, and the violets o'er us wave.

THE SKEPTICS OF THE WAVERLEY NOVELS.

It is remarkable that while, in a republic, which is the mildest form of government, respect for law and order are most highly developed, there is in an aristocracy (which is always the most deeply based form of tyranny) a constant revolt against all law. Puritanism in England, Pietism in Germany, and Huguenotism in France, were all directly and strongly republican and law-abiding in their social relations; while for an example of the contrary we need only glance at our own South. Aristocracy--a regularly ordered system of society into ranks--is the dream of the slaveholder, and experience is showing us how extremely difficult it is to uproot the power of a very few wicked men who have fairly mudsilled the majority; and yet, despite this strength, there was never yet a country claiming to be civilized, in which the wild caprices and armed outrages of the individual were regarded with such toleration.

_Republicanism is Christian._ When will the world see this tremendous truth as it should, and realize that as there is a present and a future, so did the Saviour lay down one law whereby man might progress in this life, and another for the attainment of happiness in the next, and that the two are mutually sustaining? There was no real republicanism before the Gospels, and there has been no real addition to the doctrine since. The instant that religion or any great law of truth falls into the hands of a high caste, and puts on its livery, it becomes--ridiculous. What think you of a shepherd's crook of gold blazing with diamonds?

It is interesting to trace an excellent illustration of the natural affinity between the fondness for feudalism and the love of law-breaking in Sir WALTER SCOTT. Whatever his head and his natural common sense dictated (and as he was a canny Scot and a shrewd observer, they dictated many wise truths), his heart was always with the men of bow and brand; with dashing robbers, moss troopers, duellists, wild-eagle barons, wild-wolf borderers, and the whole farrago of autocratic scoundrelism. With his soul devoted to dreams of feudalism, his fond love of its romance was principally based on the constant infractions of law and order to which a state of society must always be subject in which certain men acquire power out of proportion to their integrity. The result of this always is a lurking sympathy with rascality, a secret relish for bold selfishness, which is in every community the deadliest poison of the rights of the poor, and all the disinherited by fortune.

It is very remarkable that Walter Scott, a Tory to the soul, should, by his apparently contradictory yet still most consistent love of the _outré_, have had a keen amateur sympathy for outlaws. It is much more remarkable, however, that, still retaining his faith in king and nobles, Church and State, he should have pushed his appreciation of such men to the degree of marvellously comprehending--nay, enjoying--certain types of skepticism which sprang up in fiercest opposition to authority; urged into existence by its abuses, as germs of plants have been thought to be electrified into life by sharp blows. And it is most remarkable of all, that he did this at a time when none among his English readers seem to have had any comprehension whatever of these characters, or to have surmised the fact that to merely understand and depict them, the writer must have ventured into fearful depths of reflection and of study. In treating these characters, Walter Scott seems to become positively _subjective_--and I will venture to say that it is the only instance of the slightest approach to anything of the kind to be found in all his writings. Unlike Byron, who was painfully conscious, not of the nature of his want in this respect, but of _something_ wanting, Scott nowhere else betrays the slightest consciousness of his continual life under limitations, when, _plump!_ we find him making a headlong leap right into the very centre of that terrible pool whose waters feed the forbidden-fruit tree of good and of evil.

The characters to which I particularly refer in Sir Walter Scott's novels are those of the Templar, Brian de Bois Guilbert, in 'Ivanhoe;' of the gypsy Hayraddin Maugrabin in 'Quentin Durward;' of Dryfesdale, the steward, in 'The Abbot;' and of the 'leech' Henbane Dwining, in 'The Fair Maid of Perth.' There are several others which more or less resemble these, as, for instance, Ranald Mac Eagh, the Child of the Mist, in 'Montrose,' and Rashleigh, in 'Rob Roy;' but the latter, considered by themselves, are only partly developed. In fact, if Scott had given to the world only _one_ of these outlaws of faith, there would have been but little ground for inferring that his mind had ever taken so daring a range as I venture to claim for him. It is in his constant, wistful return, in one form or the other, to that terrible type of humanity--the man who, as a matter of intensely sincere faith, has freed himself from all adherence to the laws of man or GOD--that we find the clue to the _real_ nature of the author's extraordinary sympathy for the most daring, yet most subtle example of the law-breaker. In comparing these characters carefully, we find that each by contrast appears far more perfect than when separate--as the bone, which, however excellent its state of preservation may be, never seems to the eye of the physiologist so complete as when in its place in the complete skeleton. And through this contrast we learn that Scott, having by sympathy and historical-romantic study, comprehended the lost secret of all _illuminée_ mysteries--that of human dependence on nought save the laws of a mysterious and terrible Nature--could not refrain from ever and anon whispering the royal secret, though it were only to the rustling reeds and rushes of fashionable novels. Having learned, though in an illegitimate way, that the friend of PAN, the great king of the golden touch, had ass's ears, he _must_ tell it again, though in murmurs and whispers:

'Qui cum ne prodere visum
Dedecus auderet, cupiens efferre sub auras,
Nec posset reticere tamen, secedit, humumque
Effodit: et domini quales aspexerit aures,
Vox refert parva; terræque immurmurat haustæ.'[10]

It is to be remarked, in studying collectively these outlaws as set forth by Scott, that while the same characteristic lies at the basis of each, there is very great variety in its development, and that the author seems to have striven to present it in as many widely differing phases as he was capable of doing. When we reflect that Scott himself could not be fairly said to be perfectly _at home_ in more than half a dozen departments of history, and yet that he has taken pains to set forth as many historical varieties of minds absolutely emancipated from all faith, and finally, when we recall that at the time when he wrote, the great proportion of the characteristics of these _dramatis personæ_ were utterly unappreciated, and that by even the learned they were simply reviewed as 'infidels,' we cannot but smile at the care with which (like the sculptor in the old story) he carved his images, and buried them to be dug up at a future day by men who, as he possibly hoped, would appreciate more fully than did his contemporaries his own degree of forbidden knowledge. I certainly do not exaggerate the importance of these characters when speaking in this manner. They could not have been conceived without a very great expenditure of study and of reflection. They are, as I said, subjective, and such portraits of humanity always involve a vastly greater amount of penetrative and long-continued thought, than do the mere historical and social photographs which constitute the bulk of Scott's, as of all novels, and form the favorites of the mass of readers for entertainment.

First among these characters, and most important as indicating direct historical familiarity with the obscure subject of the Oriental heresies of the Middle Ages in Europe, I would place that of the Templar, Brian de Bois Guilbert, who is generally regarded by readers as simply 'a horrid creature,' who chased 'that darling Rebecca' out of the window to the verge of the parapet; or at best as a knightly ruffian, who, like most ruffianly sinners, quieted conscience by stifling it with doubt. Very different, however, did the Templar appear to Scott himself, who, notwithstanding the poetic justice meted to the knight, evidently sympathized in secret more warmly with him than with any other character in the gorgeous company of 'Ivanhoe.' Among them all he is the only one who fully and fairly appreciates the intellect of Rebecca, and, seen from the stand-point of rigid historical probability which Scott would not violate, _all allowance being made for what the Templar was_, he appears by far the noblest and most intelligent of all the knightly throng. I say that though a favorite, Scott would not to favor him, violate historical probability. Why should he? It formed no part of his plan to give the public of his day lessons in _illuminée_-ism. Had he done so he would have failed like 'George Sand' in 'Consuelo;' but a very small proportion indeed of whose readers retain a recollection of the doctrines which it is the main object of the book to set forth. I trust there is no slander in the remark, but I _must_ believe it to be true until I see that the majority of the readers of that work have also taken to zealously investigating the sources of that most forbidden lore, which has most certainly this peculiarity, that no one can _comprehend_ it ever so little without experiencing an insatiable, never-resting desire to exhaust it, like everything which is prohibited. There is no such thing as knowing it a little. As one of its sages said of old, its knowledge rushes forth into infinite lands.

It was, I believe, some time before 'Ivanhoe' appeared, that Baron von Hammer Purgstall had published his theory that the Knights Templars were, although most unjustly treated, still guilty, in a certain sense, of the extraordinary charges brought against them. It seems at least to be tolerably certain that during their long residence in the East they had acquired the Oriental secrets of initiation into societies which taught the old serpent-lore of _eritis sicut Deus_, and positive knowledge; the ultimate secret, being the absolute nothingness of all faith, creeds, laws, ties, or rules to him who is capable of rising above them and of drawing from Nature by an 'enlightened' study of her laws the principles of action, of harmony with fellow men, and of unlimited earthly enjoyment. Such had been for ages the last lessons of all the 'mysteries' of the East--mysteries which it was the peculiar destiny of the Hebrew race to resist through ages of struggle. It was through the teaching of such mysteries of pantheistic naturalism that, as the unflinching Jewish deists and anthropomorphists believed, man fell, and their belief was set forth in their very first religious tradition--the history of the apple, the serpent, and the Fall. And it is to the very extraordinary nature of the Hebrew race, by which they presented for the first time in history the spectacle of a people resisting nature-worship, that they owe their claim to be a peculiar people.

The Templars, under the glowing skies of the East, among its thousand temptations, those of superior knowledge not being the least; in an age when the absurdities of the Roman church were, to an enlightened mind, at their absurdest pitch, fell readily into 'illumination.' Whether they literally _worshipped_ the Oriental Baphomet, a figure with two heads, male and female, girt with a serpent, typifying the completest abnegation of all moral relations, and the rights of knowledge, no one can say now--it is, however, significant that this symbol, which they undoubtedly used, actually found its way under the freemasons into the Christian churches of the West, as a type of 'prudence' among the representations of Christian virtues. When we remember that the Gnostics taught that _prudence_ alone was virtue,[11] we have here a coincidence which sufficiently explains the meaning of this emblem of 'the baptism of mind.'

Nothing is more likely than that a portion of the Knights Templars were initiated in the mysteries of such Oriental sects as those of the _House of Wisdom_ of Al Hakem, the seventh and last degree of which at first 'inculcated the vanity of all religion, and the indifference of actions which are neither visited with recompense nor chastisement here or hereafter.' At a later age, when the doctrines of this society had permeated all Islam, it seems to have labored very zealously to teach both women and men gratuitously all learning, and give them the freest use of books. At this time it was in the ninth degree that the initiate 'learnt the grand secret of atheism, and a code of morals, which may be summed up in a few words, as believing nothing and daring everything.'[12]

Bearing this in mind, Walter Scott may be presumed to have studied with shrewd appreciation the character of the Templars, and to have conjectured with strange wisdom their great ambition, when we find Brian de Bois Guilbert declaring to Rebecca that his Order threatened the thrones of Europe, and hinting at tremendous changes in society--'hopes more extended than can be viewed from the throne of a monarch.' For it was indeed the hope--it _must_ have been--for the proud and powerful brotherhood of the Temple to extend their secret doctrines over Europe, regenerate society, and overthrow all existing powers, substituting for them its own crude and impossible socialism, and for Christianity the lore of the serpent. How plainly is this expressed in the speech of Bois Guilbert to Rebecca:

'Such a swelling flood is that powerful league. Of this mighty
Order I am no mean member, but already one of the Chief Commanders,
and may well aspire one day to hold the baton of Grand Master. The
poor soldiers of the Temple will not alone place their foot upon
the necks of Kings--a hemp-sandall'd monk can do that. Our mailed
step shall ascend their throne--our gauntlet shall wrench the
sceptre from their gripe. Not the reign of your vainly expected
Messiah offers such power to your dispersed tribes as my ambition
may aim at. I have sought but a kindred spirit to share it, and I
have found such in thee.'

'Sayest thou this to one of my people?' answered Rebecca. 'Bethink
thee'--

'Answer me not,' said the Templar, 'by urging the difference of our
creeds; within our secret conclaves we hold these nursery tales in
derision. Think not we long remain blind to the idiotic folly of
our founders, who forswore every delight of life for the pleasures
of dying martyrs by hunger, by thirst, and by pestilence, and by
the swords of savages, while they vainly strove to defend a barren
desert, valuable only in the eyes of superstition. Our Order soon
adopted bolder and wider views, and found out a better
indemnification for our sacrifices. Our immense possessions in
every kingdom of Europe, our high military fame, which brings
within our circle the flower of chivalry from every Christian
clime--these are dedicated to ends of which our pious founders
little dreamed, and which are equally concealed from such weak
spirits as embrace our Order on the ancient principles, and whose
superstition makes them our passive tools. But I will not further
withdraw the veil of our mysteries.'

We may well pause for an instant to wonder what would have been the present state of the now civilized world had this order with its Oriental illuminéeism actually succeeded in undermining feudal society and in overthrowing thrones. That it was jointly dreaded by Church and State appears from the excessive, implacable zeal with which it was broken up by Philip the Fair and Pope Clement the Fifth--a zeal quite inexplicable from the motives of avarice usually attributed to them by the modern freemasonic defenders of the Knights of the Temple. I may well say modern, since in a freemasonic document bearing date 1766, reprinted in a rare work,[13] we find the most earnest protest and denial that freemasonry had anything in common with the Templars. But the Order did not die unavenged. It is by no means improbable that the secret heresies which, bearing unmistakable marks of Eastern origin, continually sprang up in Europe, and finally led the way to Huss and the Reformation, were in their origin encouraged by the Templars.