Chapter III: Part 3

* * * * *

LINES.

Why do we live? Is it to fade
From glory to the tomb,
Wrapt in its melancholy shade,
Inheritors of gloom?
Struck like the stars from Heav’n we die:
Quench’d is the spirit’s light;
Youth’s cheer and Hope’s sweet melody
Are hush’d in sorrow’s night.

Why are we here! but to depart?
’Tis anguish thus to fade.
Shall grief oppress a single heart
When we are lowly laid?
Thank God! th’ immortal soul no blight
Of earth can e’er decay;
On high, to realms of endless light
It flashes far away.

* * * * *

THE HEAD AND THE HEART.

BY W. LANDOR.

“This is certainly the most charming opera that was ever produced,” said Mrs. Althorp, as the curtain fell after the first act of Sonnambula, and she turned round to entertain the company in her box; “yet, after all, what an absurdity it is! However, I must remember that I am growing old.”

“Pardon me,” said Mr. Hartford, who sat behind her, “elegance and beauty have no age.”

“Surely elegance has its Age, and it is that in which Mr. Hartford lives.”

“Mrs. Althorp’s _fiat_ has, indeed, such potency that it can make even me, in fact at least, the model of elegance.”

“My stamp,” she replied, “like that of the mint, only ascertains the value of the metal.”

“But, in the mint of fashion which you administer, there is such a seignorage as makes the coin far more valuable than the bullion.”

“Mr. Hartford, you talk operas,” said Mrs. Althorp, who knew she could never beat him in the charming absurdities of compliment, and was willing to retire from the contest.

“What do you think of the Prima Donna to-night?” said Miss Stanhope.

“I think she has miscarried in nothing but her singing, her acting and her speaking,” replied Mr. Hartford.

“She certainly does not sing as well as she did. She has sung too much; her voice is worn out.”

“You were speaking of the absurdity of the opera, Mrs. Althorp,” said Hartford. “The matter has certainly not been improved since the time when the Earl of Chesterfield settled it, that when you go to the opera, you must take leave of your understanding and your senses with your half guinea at the door, and give yourself up to the dominion of the ears and eyes; in other words, you must live by sight, and not by faith. But the repugnancy to reason is increased by the manner of performing them in this country, where part of the dialogue is spoken. The illusion of the opera is by that means destroyed. You may in time become accustomed to a race of beings whose natural dialect is poetry, and whose common cadences are music; but a set of people who let us see from time to time that they can talk like ourselves, and who yet, whenever they are excited, break out into modulated strains of song—who speak their common-places, and warble their exclamations—such people shock our credulity.”

“Yet it would seem that at Athens, where they knew something about these things,” said Mr. Temple, “the same confusion of the natural and the impossible prevailed on the stage. The chorus usually chanted its part, and was accompanied by music; and as we find that the persons of the drama, in conversing with them, frequently adopt the measure of verse which they sung, we must suppose that the former at such times sang. The chorus also often employs the rhythm which was used in speaking, and thus seems to have used the double dialect of recitation and singing. Nay, the chorus, as it circled the altar, employed a gliding step which resembled dancing; so that the Greek drama partook of the threefold nature of our tragedy, opera and ballet.”

“I have lost all my respect for the taste of the Greeks,” said Mrs. Althorpe, “since I heard that they painted their temples.”

“It was savage, indeed, to paint their temples,” said Mr. Hartford; “the more refined moderns only paint their cheeks.”

“The French are the modern Athenians,” said Miss Stanhope. “De Bourrienne says that the soldiers who were with Napoleon in Egypt complained bitterly of their privations, and longed especially for the opera.”

“Do you know who that person is that is talking to the leader of the orchestra?” said Miss Stanhope, directing the attention of Mrs. Althorpe to a young man of very striking appearance, who stood just within the door of the orchestra, and who seemed to be giving some directions that were listened to with great attention.

“Oh! that is Mr. Nivernois,” said Mrs. Althorpe; “a very odd person, by the by; I intended to have sent for him to sup with us to-night.”

After a few moments, the door of the box opened, and Mr. Nivernois came in. There was something very remarkable in his appearance: regular, well-chiselled features, of an Italian cast; pale complexion; large, black, vivid eyes, and long, straight black hair; in his countenance was an aspect of force and fire, keen intellectual action, and the power of deep passion. He was negligently dressed, and was very careless in his manner.

“This opera does not seem to be very popular to-night,” said Mrs. Althorpe to him. “And yet it is a fine one.”

“Nay,” he replied, “if you were to set Austerlitz or the Angel Gabriel to music, people would still complain.”

He turned round to Mr. Hartford, and began to put to him a variety of questions about music, with such rapidity as gave him no time to answer one of them. Hartford was ambitious to display his knowledge, and would have been glad to confound his interrogator by his superior taste. But the answer which he had begun to one question was cut off by another, and before that could be attended to, a third had succeeded. When the string was ended, he was so perplexed as to what he should reply to, and so stunned by the fiery fervor of the questioning, that he remained silent.

Nivernois fixed his keen eyes upon him, and waited an instant for the reply, which came not. He then turned aside.

“Humph!” said he; “for my part, I know nothing of music; not I. I thought I did, until I played three months every morning with Paganini. I would not give up the struggle sooner. At the end of that time I broke my fiddle, and abandoned fiddling forever. It was necessary to do that, or throttle the old hair-scraper. I should strangle with anguish in my chair, if I knew that there was a man living who could excel me in any thing I undertook. But what can one do? We have but one life to live. We are like felons, fumbling with a bunch of keys at the outer door of the sanctuary of immortality, while the police of death are hurrying after us round the corner; and who knows whether he has got the right key? No lasting fame can be founded on music. No melody is immortal but that of the drum and the cannon. That alone is eternally re-produced. How the Corsican knew to touch that instrument!—the Handel of the iron flute! What brave tunes they played off at Borodino and at Eylau! What a concert was given under the pyramids—the companies in squares, the musicians at the angles, and the shod feet of the Mameluke cavalry marking time upon the crusted sand! For the rest, what composer is there whom you recognise as _great_—whose name rushes on the breathless soul, and echoes through the spirit with a sound like thunder, or the voice of Milton? Fashions vary; tastes change. Who plays Purcell?—who sings Arne? The musician cannot throw himself upon that broad, unchanging instinct of popular judgment which, after the subtleties of criticism are exhausted and the disputes of the schools are at an end, must decide upon questions of taste, and to which literary creators may directly appeal. The _people_ cannot get at music to judge of it. Overtures cannot play themselves; and the professors, whose taste is corrupted by the over-refinements of science, take good care that the world at large shall not hear that great, universal music of a past age which would sweep away their conspiracies against taste. Lightning itself would go out of fashion, and thunder be pronounced exploded, if you could prevent the people from hearing them; if the learned had the playing of them, they would swear to us that steam-guns and rockets were more sublime. Still it is better to compose good choruses than to write bad poetry, like the great Frederic, or read worse, like Napoleon. We must multiply and spin out the offices of life. We must cram full the charge of life, if we would have a loud report. We must coin sleep into immortality, and mould the waste of leisure into stars of glory. We have but one life to live.”

The curtain rose, but Mr. Nivernois still went on with his harangue. There presently occurred in the opera a passage of extraordinary beauty, and Mrs. Althorpe began to be annoyed by the unceasing voice behind her. Her impatience presently got the better of her courtesy.

“Tell Mr. Thingembob there to hush,” said she to Mr. Temple.

But the discourse still continued, and above the rapid din of words could be occasionally heard, “Napoleon,” “genius,” and “We have but one life to live.”

Mrs. Althorpe turned round.

“Mr. Nivernois, hush!”

Mr. Nivernois was silent. Mrs. Althorpe relented of her severity, and began to fear that the unfortunate man might pine away in despair under the infliction of her rebuke. She turned round again with one of her most gracious smiles, and begged the favor of his company at supper after the opera.

The passage in the play struck most of the company in the box as new; they did not remember to have heard it at the previous representations of the opera. The house seemed to agree with them as to its beauty. It was called for a second and even a third time, and the applause was loud and long.

“What do you think of that?” said Mrs. Althorpe to Nivernois.

“Read the prophecies of Isaiah to this people,” he replied; “if they applaud that fittingly, I should think their praise of this worth something.”

In a few moments, he left the box. Presently the leader of the orchestra came in, between the acts.

“I thought I saw Mr. Nivernois here.”

“He has just gone. But where did you get that magnificent passage you just played? It surely does not belong to the play.”

“You are indebted to Mr. Nivernois for it. He gave me, the other day, a mass of musical manuscripts of his own composition. I picked this out of them, not as being by any means the best, but the most suited for insertion in this play. He has more genius than all the men I have ever seen put together; but he has abandoned composition, because he says it is impossible to beat Bellini. The violin that I played with to-night was presented to him by Paganini, as a mark of his admiration; he gave it to me.”

“I wonder that he would part with such a gift,” said Miss Stanhope.

“I believe that he gave it to me,” said the other, “lest he should seem to himself to value the tribute of any man.”

“What a singular person he must be!” said Miss Stanhope, who had been much struck with his appearance, and greatly interested by the oddness and novelty of his character.

The company which had formed Mrs. Althorpe’s _cortège_ at the opera, together with two or three other invited guests, were seated around her small but elegant supper-table. A double circle of wax candles in an _or-molu_ chandelier, which hung over the centre of it, cast their pure white light upon the numerous silver dishes and richly cut glass which covered it. After a little while, Mr. Nivernois strode into the room. He was a small man, and the strides which he made were as long as himself. He took his place in a vacant seat which had been reserved for him, opposite to Miss Stanhope. They were talking about Napoleon. He listened in silence, till a pause occurred.

“When nature had finished making the devils,” said he, pouring out for himself a capacious goblet of Chambertin, “it threw together all the rubbish that remained, and out of it formed Napoleon.”

Miss Stanhope laughed. “Do you mean that for praise or censure, Mr. Nivernois?”

“Napoleon’s soul,” he replied, “was something larger than to be enkernelled in the shell of any definition. Put together all the moral epithets the lexicons furnish, of wisdom and of folly, of greatness and of littleness, of magnanimity and meanness, force and feebleness, and every thing else, and fling the whole mass, in a lump, at his character, and you may have some chance of hitting the mark. It would be difficult to say anything of him that would be wholly false; impossible to say anything altogether true. When you have circumnavigated him, you have sailed round the whole world. His character was somewhat like the poet’s vision of the temple of Fame. On one side you behold the severe and classic beauty of a Doric front, with images of antique strength and grace: on another, the grandeur and the gloom of a Gothic structure: on a third, the pride and splendor and magnificent exaggeration of Eastern pomp: on the fourth, the dull, impenetrable mystery of Egypt. His spirit was as various as the morning sky, and his chamberlain, on two successive days, never woke up the same man. The truth is, his life was an acted drama; not of the Æschylus kind, with some unity in it, but a Nat Lee drama of five-and-twenty acts. If we take it that he displayed his sincere character, and was that which he appeared to be, we must conclude that he was a glorious fool, among greater fools; a madman, whose frenzy was, however, the fatality of Europe. So viewed, he was born for bombast, as a trout for rising; his sentences have not a grain of sense to five quarts of syllables; a fortunate adventurer, who appeared at such a conjuncture of politics that his daring served him for talent, his selfishness for sagacity, his passion for power. But I suppose that Bonaparte always wore the buskin; that the historical Napoleon was but a character which the real one put on to dazzle and delude the fancies of men, and fire their passions, till, drunk as with wine, they might be bound and led by him. In his own more actual being, he was a cold, calculating, shrewd and wholly interested schemer. His performances were always for the author’s benefit. This Garrick sometimes blundered in the assumed characters in which he spent his life. He too frequently mistook ferocity for majesty; imagined he was royal when he was only brutal, and thought he was playing the hero when he was only playing the fool. He assumed the madman, generally, when he dealt with men, and only put on the blackguard when he talked to women. He knew the truth of Bacon’s saying that there is in human nature more of the fool than of the wise, and that that which addresses itself to the foolish part of men’s minds will prevail over that which speaks to the wiser. He built a great temple of delusion, in which he, the priest, should continually shout “Glory,” and all the people answer “Amen.” His breast was a natural mirror and antitype of all the passions and follies of the fools called Frenchmen. By studying his own foolishness, he knew what ropes to pull to make their fool’s bells jingle. He is, therefore, of the weaknesses and worser powers of men, the ablest metaphysician that has appeared. One of his remarks opens the mind, as snuff opens the head. He was a poet in practice. Sydney’s rule, “Fool! look into thy heart and write,” he obeyed; and wrote empires. Of course, an adventitious power like this cannot be measured; in fact, when supplied by so seething a fancy and so combining an intellect as he had, it is altogether illimitable; he had only to conceive a new idea to possess a new power. He therefore belongs to that class of men of whom Du Quesnay has said that one and one make a hundred and eleven. When you can define the genius of Shakspeare, you will be able to describe the _character_ of Napoleon; the two things are cognate. As we see him, he was not an entity, but a mere crystallization of ideas, which were continually depositing around him like the successive layers of an oyster shell. A philosophical Haüy might split off crystal after crystal of ideas, and he would find the ultimate crystal still an idea. Every thing of him was visionary, and not substance. Squeeze him in your hand, and he crushes like a dandy’s locks. Try that process on such a man as Wellington, and you soon feel the bone. In sooth, the Duke is all bone.”

“But you would not think of comparing Wellington and Napoleon,” said Mr. Temple.

“No more than I would compare the frothy forms of the rock with the granite substance of the Alps. There are some sentiments,” said he, with a fervent, suppressed tone, “which lie so deep within us that they seem to be a part of our souls; in me, veneration of Wellington is such. Since the Duke of Marlborough was buried, there has not lived, nor lives there, a man to whom I bow with an entire reverence, excepting Wellington. When I stood face to face with him, I felt how truly Scott had said that he was the only man in whose presence he felt himself nothing.”

“But do you think that he has Bonaparte’s genius?”

“Perhaps not; but where you see a man who is great without genius, you see the greatest kind of man the world knows any thing of; and where you see a poet who prevails without passion, you see an order of poetry high and enduring; such, on the one hand, is Wellington; on the other, Pope. All that such men do is done by force of intellect and might of character, and the results are true and permanent.”

“No doubt the Duke is a great man.”

“A greater there never lived. It is the misfortune of this age that it has no guides or leaders; no profound, thinking men, who, knowing the past and caring for the future, can judge rightly of the present, and give laws to the opinions of the time. Now, the multitude decide on every thing for themselves; and every thing is despised which is beyond the taste of the vulgar. Napoleon was essentially a hero for the vulgar; fools, who have no idea of power but in tumult, or of strength but in struggle, cannot comprehend the calm, unapproachable grandeur of Wellington—a grandeur too high for sympathy. I have studied him in his despatches; I have talked with him—I have seen him all round—there is in that man more of innate, imperturbable greatness than in all the world beside. When Napoleon was about to strike a blow, he raised up around him a cloud, a very tempest, of passions and fancies, through which every thing was magnified and mistaken. Wellington goes to work plainly, indifferently, frigidly, and it is only by the result that you recognise _in scena Roscium_. In the deep perturbation which came over the spirit of Napoleon when he essayed any vast work: in the mighty effort, the tremendous strain—inevitably successful though it may have been—you see one whose undertakings are above his nature; who must lash his energies to make them efficient enough. In the cool, common-place, regular, business-like proceedings of Wellington—never erring or unprosperous—we behold one whose native, unalterable strength is so high that the loftiest enterprise is to him not exciting; who, in conquering glory, is doing his ordinary work. His trade was to be always successful, and he was perfect master of it. There is the same difference between the two that there is between the youth and manhood of genius: in the former, more fervor and greater consciousness of power; in the latter, far more real might. The distinction may be marked by the names of the two demons who, in Æschylus, bind Prometheus to the rock; one was Force, the other Strength. There is the same diversity which exists between the calm, grey light of the sun, and the lurid, flashing, noisy brilliance of fire-works. Wellington is the representative of the genius of England, which, from the beginning of history, bearing aloft the standard of integrity, good sense and solid freedom, has stood like a rock in the sea of human passions and powers: one while baffling the frantic tyranny of the Papacy, and at another stamping under its iron heel the struggling fiend of Jacobinism. Napoleon is the type of France—a nation which has no power save of paroxysms, and cannot cease to be frivolous but by becoming ferocious. Wellington rides through life like a Tartar horseman, with one perpetual posture, that of the lance in rest; with one fixed gaze, that on the object of his attack. Napoleon scoured through his existence like a monkey on a circus horse, brandishing a flag, stooping over his nag’s head or under his body, jumping down to jump up again, and all to gain the wonder and applause of the spectators; going round and round, and ending where he began. I must finish the parallel by saying that his course was marked out for him by the whip of a base necessity. Napoleon was the slave and courtier of opinion, which he at length flattered into the belief that it was a master. Wellington despised and neglected opinion, till it has come fawning about his feet. Vanity had grasped Napoleon by the throat, and he was her garlanded victim. You never see in Wellington that sycophancy to circumstances, that obsequiousness to fortune. He seized Destiny by the collar, and fairly swung her round. Consider the wonderful, sublime achievement of Assaye; study the political skill which he displayed in the Peninsula, the miraculous combination of ingenuity, temper, firmness and authority by which he threw order into a chaos of difficulties, and, himself alone, sustained a world of jarring interests; contemplate the glorious action of the Arapeiles, of which Austerlitz was a dull and broken reflection; ponder the campaign of Torres Vedras, the master-piece of art, the wonder of history—a conception as felicitous as the brightest of Newton’s, and executed with a perfection which delights the observer even to mirthfulness—a model of _beauty_ in war, by which victory was reduced to certainty, and war became one of the exact sciences: review these, and tell me by what proofs of intellectual power in Napoleon’s history they are exceeded. Remember, too, that of all Wellington’s doings we have unvarnished and exact accounts; while of Napoleon’s actions we have in many cases only the statements of himself, the most enormous liar that ever breathed the upper air. Wellington was a great man; Napoleon was a child, who, by the despair of an infinite and hopeless ambition, had strengthened himself into a giant.”

“There is this remarkable consideration in Wellington’s case, that the whole of his wide and free career was wholly run within the limits of duty. In that respect, no man in history may be compared with him, except Belisarius. What such men do is done without the inspiration of the passions.”

“Yes: when a man flings himself free from all human ties, and is self-hurled into the infinite abandonment of the lusts of the mind, his soul becomes charged with the might and the magnificence of all the fires of Hell. The infernal saints all minister their power to his spirit:—Vanity, with its craving eyes—Pride, with its vaulting restlessness—the steel-tipped thongs of Ambition, the fiendish vigor of Despair. It was a dangerous thing to conquer Napoleon; he recoiled from defeat with the spring of a demon. When you remember that Wellington had neither this power, which was possessed by Alexander and Gustavus and Napoleon, nor yet the religious enthusiasm of Cromwell, but did all by the natural and native strength of his ordinary intellect, you must yield him a respect which the others cannot share. He has considered that, in politics as in geometry, the shortest line is the straightest. Napoleon was made up of artifice, of which Mirabeau has said that it may indicate intellect, but it never exists in intellect of a superior order, unless accompanied with meanness of heart; it is a lie in action, and it springs from fear and personal interest, and consequently from meanness.”

“To be sure, the moral eminence of the men will bear no comparing.”

“Persons of great souls and lofty meditations recognise the dignity of nature even in the degradation of fate. They are conscious of its great origin, its mournful condition, its high destiny; henceforth there is for them no scorn, but a sympathising tolerance, a respectful compassion. Napoleon’s moral power was the power of ferocious contempt; it was based upon a disdainful hatred of his species. Depend upon it, that no thinking man can cherish an habitual disgust who has himself a soul, or abhor his fellows who has any self-respect. You find in Wellington none of these wild, these savage sentiments, these extremenesses of counsel or of motive. He is always sane, practical, right-hearted and right-minded. His actions illustrate that useful wisdom which the affairs of life demand, and I know no writer from whom so valuable precepts may be learned. In or out of Oxford, he has been the hardest student of his times; for the saddle is, after all, the true chair of thought. As for Napoleon being great, it seems to me that the idea is an absurdity. Alfred, William the Conqueror, Charlemagne, these were great men; and such men build up all that is built, and the history of a nation from their time till you come to another great man, is only the record of pulling down what they built up. But Napoleon pulled down everything, and built up nothing. He built, to be sure, ideally or in opinion; that is, he made systems and structures and constitutions, on paper, notionally, and by name, but not in things, in substance, of the elements of real existence; else by a word, or a reversed look, they could not have been destroyed. What the hand creates, only the thousand hands of Time can destroy; what the breath makes, a breath obliterates, for the thing made was no more than a breath. Draw a line around certain states on the map, and call it the confederation of the Rhine; give geographical nicknames to a quantity of soldiers, and call it an aristocracy: behold the creations of Napoleon! Alfred established tithings, hundred courts and county courts; that principle of self-government—for the administration of law is the most important part of government—that little flame, shrined in those humble vestal temples, and there kept safe against the blasts of ages of tyranny’s turbulence, blazed up eight centuries later, and wrapt the throne of Charles in combustion. Plantaganet kings might call their system an absolute monarchy; the Tudors and Stuarts might diffuse the idea of divine right; but Alfred, by establishing juries and the common law, had made the _thing_ republic, and that was sure to beat down the _name_, monarchy. Call you a man great whose life-work is swept away in half an hour, without any principle of re-action or re-establishment showing itself? Nay, his works always carried with them the germ of their own destruction. The light that shone around his system was the phosphorescence of decay.”

“This much,” said Mr. Temple, “may be said for Napoleon, that he raised himself to absoluteism without degrading others to slavery.”

“Why, ’tis a monkey’s trick to mount up on people’s heads. Richelieu got there, as a man does; not by walking up men’s backs, but by making them stoop for him to get on. In effect, the true and bright view of Napoleon’s empire is, to consider it a democracy. Viewed as a monarch, rising and reigning in a constitution fashioned after the old forms, he was a mountebank and an impostor; considered as the controlling spirit in a democracy of powerful spirits, the head-idea in a nation—tumult of ideas—the odd man who is pushed up in a crowd of men—he becomes a spectacle of wonder, a riddle of infinite wisdom. The last of the old system, he is nothing; the first of a new one, everything. Regarded as the type of that democratic system which will overrun the world, his empire is a splendid, infinitely-crowded rehearsal of the coming drama of ages. He who would understand the whole nature, power and philosophy of democracy, must study that empire. Many thoughts belong to that subject. But I have harangued too long. Pitt was the man who said with absolute truth, that Napoleon was “the child and champion of democracy.” The spectacle of the force of old monarchy in the person of the stern, iron duke, slowly advancing and destroying this young system, is the picture of the gloomy Saturn relentlessly devouring his joyous giant-boys. The Jupiter of that old deity nestles yet a babe near his bosom; his begetting was in Pitt’s time, his birth at the Reform Bill.”

“Napoleon must certainly be tried by new principles of judgment. The maxims upon which the fame of Turenne and Marlboro’ has been settled, will not give him his true position.”

“Napoleon made glory according to a receipt of his own. But the misfortune is, that he not only imposed this false stuff upon us, but he revolutionized the chemistry by which its spuriousness should be detected. He depraved the opinions, and bent backwards the consciences of people. But upon the whole, I think we may say, that in life, the most beautiful of the fine arts, his taste was anything but classical. He belonged to the David school, and painted on the canvass of Time, such pictures as that man hung up in the Louvre—bombast conceptions, executed in the daub. But after all he was a splendid creature; he made a glorious pastime in Europe; he showed the world a magnificent sport; he filled the pages of history with matter which possessed an endless interest. Strike out his career, and what blankness remains! The truth is, this life of ours is enveloped in endless coverings, coats, over-coats and blankets of common-place—an atmosphere of common-place, dull, dense, unbreathable—a waking, inlaid with sleep—life overlaid with death. Walled in, and under-buried in a mass of tedium, one cannot get one’s breath. Sometimes, the world becomes intensely conscious of this imprisonment, and goes mad in trying to get free from itself. What wonder, if suffocated by being wrapped in a dun, drowsy, over-growing thraldom of common-place—its eye sick with sameness, its ear vexed with a cracked monotony, its soul should grow convulsive, become volcanic, and throwing off the whole disgusting encumbrance of the social system, it should rush forth to the free wilderness where it may once more see the fresh, eternal stars, and breathe a living air. And we must thank Napoleon for his battles; for war is the glory of our disgraced existence. Struggle is the parent of all the greatness of our being. It is only when minds wrestle in the energy of desperation with other minds, or with things, as in war, that the last degrees of intellectual and moral power are seen. The literary man goes half to sleep, and keeps awake only enough to purr his satisfaction at his demi-unconsciousness. In this world we must fight even to keep ourselves alive. The politicians of this piping time doze away their days as if they had a hundred existences to enjoy: as if life were a chair to loll in, a corridor to walk, or a hall to dance in, and not a general battle-field on which to fight for everything.”

There was that in the appearance and manner of Mr. Nivernois—his eye, his glowing countenance, the intense life which there was about him, rendered amiable by an entire simplicity of spirit—which was admirably adapted to captivate the heart and fancy of a woman, especially an enthusiastic one. What effect had been produced upon the imaginative temperament of Miss Stanhope, we cannot say. As she was going away, Mrs. Althorpe said to her,

“This Mr. Nivernois is certainly a man of genius, but he is mad, stark mad—like Mazeppa’s steed—

Wild as the wild deer, and untaught,
With spur and bridle undefiled.

But he has blood and fortune. I sincerely wish you would take him in hand and tame him: he is worthy of your attention, and if properly brought under, would make a great addition to good society.”

The next day Nivernois was walking in the street and had his attention attracted by a sign-board, which gave notice of a gallery of pictures. Having nothing better to do, he went into it. The collection was a good one, and he spent some time in looking at different productions of the old masters. The feeling which chiefly occupied his mind was regret that genius so exalted as many of these artists possessed should have left no monument more durable than a perishing canvass, which would one day cause all that marvellous skill to be nothing but a name. His eye was presently drawn to a portrait of a young lady of singular beauty. The picture was a fresh one, and he thought that he had seen the features before, but where or when, he could not remember. The side of the figure was presented, with the face turned round over the shoulder towards the spectator. Her dress was blue; a laced veil was on her head, and in her hand a _bouquet_ of flowers, around which was a band on which was the word “Love.”

“Beautiful creature!” said he aloud, as he gazed upon the portrait, “and whom do you love?”

“Thee,” faintly said a soft voice above him. He started and looked up. There was a gallery above, and upon it a door covered by a curtain. He saw the curtain move as if some one retreated rapidly through it, and he thought that he had caught a glimpse of a blue dress. He ran rapidly up to the gallery and through the curtained door, in hopes of discovering the speaker, perhaps the original of the portrait. He searched every apartment of the building, but in vain: no one was to be found. He returned to the picture and sat down before it.

“Love!” said he, “what is that? I never thought of it before.” The portrait hung near to an open door, through which the soft air of spring was bearing the enchanting odour of a bed of violets which grew in the garden: above was the rich softness of the blue sky. As he sat amid influences so soothing, and gazed upon the overpowering beauty of those splendid features, on which a hazy sunlight coming through a window in the roof, threw a more peculiar lustre there arose within the stern, constrained, and wholly intellectual being of this earnest, scheming man, the slow but strong movement of a passion which he never before had known. The rigid stress of mind, so long kept up—the high-wound force of feeling, so necessary, yet so painful—softened and melted away in the delicious mildness of sentiment that flowed in upon his nature. It wrestled, did that sentiment, with the cold hardness of that logical frame of being, as the still growing wind with the outer barriers of a thick forest, and gradually burst in and wandered where it pleased. The disdainful solitude of soul in which he had fortified himself against a hostile world, was changing into a spirit which fraternized with all the universe. It was the birth of sympathy within a bosom before entirely and fiercely personal.

“Where has it kept so long?—this soft, this delicate emotion?” said he. As the blue zephyr, born amidst the depths of the sky, raises and opens out the dried, mast-bound sail of some long-locked bark, and floats away the vessel into seas of unknown loveliness, so did this delicious sentiment expand and quicken that spirituality which had before lain senseless and collapsed. It diffused a joy and beauty like that of the golden sunshine gleaming into a clouded forest, flowing and flashing with an ever brightening splendor, rolling a yellow flowerage over the mind, vesting the trees in airy robes of silver, and spreading through the teeming woods a mysterious troop of shadows, the dusky-haired daughters of light. Like the refreshing rain upon the fevered earth, there fell upon his spirit a fragrant shower of soft hopes and immortal dreams. The rough and hardened bough was become a branch of leaves and fruits. He who had dwelt ever in the outwardness of thought, first entered the portals of the inner world of feeling: he who had been ever passionate only to DO, recognized a state in which to BE was bliss, to move was ecstacy.

Such is the passionate constitution of genius that its mental nature, “like a cloud, moves all together, if it move at all;” the moral being of men of that stamp, intense and entire, never conceives an idea of character or life, but it straightway throws forth all its energy to realize that idea in its imaginary completeness: impelled towards evil, they dash downwards with a frenzied force and reach a depth of degradation at which colder sinners are astounded: when but one aspiration dawns in their bosom, they spring up from the shores of that gulph, and soaring above the clouds, wave in the sparkling sun their fresh-plumed wings with not one feather moulted: they can mould all their thinkings in the form and pressure of pure logic; and again their feelings will be expanding in all the chastened feelings of luxurious sentiments. These changes make genius a puzzle to its companions, but delicious to itself.

It is not wonderful then if this man rose from that seat another being. But the picture was still the centre and object of his thoughts. Rare indeed, and transcendant was the beauty of that countenance: a depth of passion, and an elevation of thought were characterized upon it, which fired the imagination of the youth who gazed. He thought that he had seen those features before; but where, and how? He had a faint impression that Miss Stanhope might be the person. But in fact, so little had he been interested in woman before, that he had scarce paid any attention to her appearance—had no distinct remembrance of her face. Supposing that the voice which he had heard had proceeded from the original of the picture, and that it indicated that he was loved by her, he was deeply anxious to discover who it was.

He pulled a bell which he discovered near the door, and there issued forth in reply from a small door, an old gray-haired man, very tall, and bent like a crozier.

“What picture is this?” said Nivernois.

“Why, it’s a portrait,” said the old man, with a look of great contempt at the simplicity of the question.

From the tone in which he shouted, it seemed that he added deafness to his other virtues.

“Of whom?”

“A lady,” roared the other, with increased scorn.

“True; but of what lady is it the portrait?”

“Oh, I don’t know;” and he began to hobble back to his cage.

“Is it for sale?”

“No: none of them are for sale; none of them; not one of them:” and he closed the door behind him.

Nivernois walked up to the picture, took it down from the nail, unscrewed the board behind it, and rolling up the canvass, put it under his arm and marched out of the room.

When he reached the street he saw a woman dressed in blue passing round the corner. From a glimpse which he had of her features he thought it was the picture-lady. He darted forward, but the street which she had turned into was vacant. There stood a large double house at the corner, and beyond it there was a garden wall of some length; he concluded that she must have gone into that house. He rushed in, and turning into the first door he came to, found himself in an elegant drawing-room in which there were a dozen persons paying morning visits.

“Humph! humph!” said he, as he scrutinized the face of every woman in the circle, and found that the object of his search was not among them. He took up a volume that lay on the table, it was lettered “Love.” He walked towards a grand piano which stood open, with a piece of music on the frame. The music was entitled “Love.”

“Love!” said he; “Love! wherever I go this morning, it is still love. I will give you my ideas of love.” He took off his hat, and laying down his roll in it, seated himself before the instrument.

He began with some sad and heavy strains which might express the joylessness of a breast which was a stranger to sympathy. The music was cheerless, monotonous, and full of startling discords. Presently there struck into this painful turbulence a light strain of delicious melody, like a sunbeam bursting into the primal chaos. It extended and gathered strength, and the disorder of the rest gradually subsided, and melted away to give place to it. Then there arose the most brilliant and enchanting notes that that instrument had ever given forth; a flood of varied rapture flowed out. It was the picture of a world of bliss; a world whose turf was of the choicest flowers,—whose breezes were airs from paradise,—whose sky knew not the color of a cloud.

The performer turned his head round and got a glimpse through the window of some one passing along the street.

“There she goes!” he exclaimed, and seizing his hat and roll, rushed out with the same vehemence that he had entered, leaving the company not a little astonished at the oddity of his behaviour.

When he got into the street, nothing was to be seen; “I must discover that woman,” said he; “what is life to me, if I cannot find her? All my happiness is garnered in her being; to enjoy my own soul, I must possess her: to live, I must live with her. By the bye, I must have done rather an absurd thing in going into that house and playing on the piano, without knowing any body. By Jove, I’ll go back and apologize. Ah! ha! there is Mrs. Althorpe going in; she will present me.”

When they got into the room, the company which had been there had gone, and the lady of the house was sitting alone. Mrs. Althorpe called her Mrs. Stanhope.

“Madam,” said Mr. Nivernois, “I just met an eccentric friend of mine going out of the door, who I imagine must have made a most unauthorized entry into your house, in a fit of absence, and behaved in a very ridiculous manner, when in it. In fact, he requested me to offer on his behalf the fullest apology for his maniacal conduct, and to beg from your courtesy an act of oblivion. He is a harmless madman,—one of that numerous class who are suffered by their friends to go abroad without strait-jackets.”

“Any friend of yours,” said Mrs. Stanhope, “is extremely welcome to come into my house at all times; and even had the eccentricities of this gentleman been at all objectionable, we should have been more than compensated by the admirable display which he made upon the piano. As a pupil of Calebrenner’s, I consider myself something of a judge; and I never heard so rich a strain of harmony.”

“Why, as for that, I do not know that he differs materially from any one else. Everybody carries a Marengo, a Childe Harold, and a Sonnambula in his blood; the only difficulty is to get them out.”

“Pray, Mr. Nivernois,” said Mrs. Althorpe, with a certain look of a high bred woman, not unmixed with something of comic, “What is it you have under your arm.”

“Portable bliss,—the potentiality of a happiness beyond the dreams of one who is not a lover,—ecstasy in a roll,—perfect delight on canvass;” and he opened the picture and held it up.

Mrs. Althorpe made a sign to Mrs. Stanhope to be silent.

“Do you know whose portrait it is?” said Mrs. Althorpe.

“I cannot for my life discover.”

“Do you then so much wish to find the original?”

“A question, truly! I do.”

“Is it not beautiful?”

“Is not what beautiful?”

“The painting.”

“I cannot speak of these matters now. For the moment I am at war with _virtû_. It _may_ be divine—perhaps it is so. One thing I feel—the impotence of the artist. What he has succeeded in en-canvassing speaks only to my soul of a more radiant loveliness—that of motion, of thought, of heart—for which the pencil has no outline, the pallet no dye.”

“You are an enigma, and my query is unanswered. I will put it in another form. Is _she_ not beautiful?”

“She is.”

“How did you become possessed of the picture?”

“I saw it in the exhibition, and as they refused to sell it to me, I cut it out and brought it away.”

Mrs. Althorpe fell back into her chair, overpowered by irresistible laughter at the oddness of the incident, and the solemn gravity with which Nivernois stood eyeing the picture. An idea occurred to her by which she might give this matter a turn to her mind.

“I cannot imagine, of course,” said she, “whose portrait it is. But if you will come to my house to-night, I shall have some young ladies there, and it is possible that the fair original may be among them. We shall have _tableaux vivants_, and I think you will find it pleasant.”

“I will come with the utmost pleasure, even if the lady be not there.”

“And when I say that the party will be pleasant, I imply thereby an invitation to Mrs. Stanhope, who of course can make it so. But, Mr. Nivernois, are you not afraid that the officers of justice will be after you for abstracting that picture?”

“Oh! I am only taking it to be copied; after that I shall take it back.”

“Well! put up your roll then, and we will go.”

When they had walked some distance, Mrs. Althorpe took leave of him, and bent her steps again towards Mrs. Stanhope’s.

In the evening, Mr. Nivernois went to Mrs. Althorpe’s. The _tableaux_ were exhibited in the hall: the company stood at one end, and a curtain was drawn at the other, behind which was the frame. They went off with great effect. The first was the Magdalen of Corregio, a recumbent figure, “with loose hair and lifted eye,” the light thrown strongly upon a volume open before her. The second and third were scenes from the Corsair. While the fourth was preparing, Mr. Nivernois got engaged in explaining to a person near him a new method by which _tableaux_ might be presented in a much more striking manner, and he did not take notice of the rising of the curtain, until he heard several of the company exclaiming, “Beautiful!”—“how beautiful!” He turned and beheld the very picture which he had that day been contemplating: the glorious features, the blue dress, the veil falling over the back, the head turned round over the shoulder. He stepped a little forward, and his keen eye caught the glance of the performer; there was a momentary wavering, a blush, the face was turned aside, and the curtain fell. Nivernois passed into a room at the side, and hastened towards the place where the pictures were shown. He found three or four persons there engaged in arranging the next performance. A door stood open in the rear leading into a large and very elegant garden. He looked out, and through the bright moonlight saw among the bushes a female figure. He rushed forth; the lady fled, but soon stopped by the limits of the ground, turned her head round, and again presented the living portrait of the morning. It was Miss Stanhope. He seized her hand in both of his.

“Oh! glorious being!” he exclaimed, “accept the homage of my soul. Take all the worship of my being. I love you beyond the expression of all words.”

She timidly extended towards him the bouquet which she had.

“Give me the motto with the flowers,” said he, “and you make me the happiest of mankind.”

There was a soft consenting in her form and gestures, though she spoke not. He pressed her to his bosom, and kissed her glowing cheek, I do not know how often. He took her hand and they sat down upon a bench; a bed of violets beneath their feet, the bright young foliage around them, and above, the glittering moon smiling a pearly lustre on the floating clouds.

“Thou art, within my soul, a birth of happiness and peace. I have been, of all men, the most ambitious: not as valuing the opinions of the world, for I am not yet sunk so low; but that I might in the interest of action and creation find some comfort to my spirit. I have had some applause; as much as satisfied the most craving vanity of many around me. It wearied and fretted me unutterably, and as praise increased, I feared to go mad with the anguish of disappointment. In this distress of an intellect always seeking but incapable of finding, thy gentle beauty beamed upon my heart. It awoke therein life and a fountain of light. Yet was it not its own light, but the reflection of thy glorious lustre; as in the blank waters on a starry night we recognise the impassioned splendor of the heavens. I have placed thee within my heart; and henceforth shall I find thee, forever, a source of joy and a spring of inspiration.”

* * * * *

STANZAS.

BY E. CLEMENTINE STEDHAM.

“My harp also is turned to mourning.—Where is God my Maker, who giveth
songs in the night?”

The flush of young Hope, and the smile have departed,
That tinted my cheek—that enlivened my brow;
In sackcloth I sit, with the desolate-hearted,
And hushed is the song of my mirthfulness now.
All Nature rejoiceth to welcome gay Summer:
The out-going morn “walks in beauty” more bright;
And the streamlet replenished, forgetting its murmur,
Is dancing along in the gush of delight.

All, all save my heart, beats responsive to Nature!
In vain do _I_ hear the sweet warbling of birds,
In vain the rejoicing of each living creature—
The bleat of the lambs, or the low of the herds;
My spirit returneth no echo of gladness;
“The harp of the heart,” by affliction unstrung,
Can only reply in the numbers of sadness,
Or, silent with grief, on the willows is hung.

Great Parent of Nature! if to the bleak mountains,
The light of thy smile bringeth verdure again;
Doth gladden the desert with palm trees and fountains,
And scatter new beauties o’er valley and plain;
If the wealth of thy bounty, in showers descending,
Can make “the waste-places” bloom fresh as the rose;
And thy rainbow of promise, in loveliness bending
Upon the dark cloud, hush the storms to repose;

Oh! cannot the light of thy favor awaken
The well-springs of joy in a desolate heart,
And clothe with new verdure the bosom forsaken
Of all that could pleasure or solace impart?
And hast thou not showers for the _spirit’s_ refreshing,
And songs in the night-time of sorrow to give?
Then open thy windows and pour down a blessing—
O smile! and this wilderness heart shall revive.

Cedar Brook, Plainfield, N. J.

* * * * *

TO THE MOCKING-BIRD.

Arch imitator! ’mid thy varied tone,
That revels so acquisitively sweet,
Rivalling e’en Nature’s self, when doth thine own
Wild native air my rapt delusion greet?
Hast thou a voice to echo every note
Of liquid melody that erst hath dwelt
’Mid the greenwood, or where soft zephyrs float:
Yet of thine own hath not, in ecstacy to melt?

What modulation, what inflected grace,
Breathes through the volume of that warbling spell!
An intonation clear, that doth embrace
The woven minstrelsy from rock to dell.
The spring-tide melody, the summer lay,
The plaintiveness of darkly shadow’d night—
Who hath her choral charms, as beaming day—
These in their change are thine, to ’wilder and delight.

That rich, full swell of sweetness and of force,
That seem’d to wrap thy life-stream with the song,
In its wild strength—as struggling springs their source,
Break, and are borne in murm’ring sounds along:
Say, was it thine?—thy Parent-giving strain,
The innate warbling of thy purer soul,
That gush’d, as if it would to bowers attain
Where flowers unwith’ring bloom, and strains divine e’er roll?