Chapter V: BOSTON, By R.W. Emerson (8)

I have heard, that from the beginning of her life, she idealized herself as a sovereign. She told--she early saw herself to be intellectually superior to those around her, and that for years she dwelt upon the idea, until she believed that she was not her parents' child, but an European princess confided to their care. She remembered, that, when a little girl, she was walking one day under the apple trees with such an air and step, that her father pointed her out to her sister, saying, _Incedit regina._ And her letters sometimes convey these exultations, as the following, which was written to a lady, and which contained Margaret's translation of Goethe's "Prometheus."

To ----.

1838.--Which of us has not felt the questionings expressed in
this bold fragment? Does it not seem, were we gods, or could
steal their fire, we would make men not only happier, but
free,--glorious? Yes, my life is strange; thine is strange. We
are, we shall be, in this life, mutilated beings, but there
is in my bosom a faith, that I shall see the reason; a glory,
that I can endure to be so imperfect; and a feeling, ever
elastic, that fate and time shall have the shame and the
blame, if I am mutilated. I will do all I can,--and, if one
cannot succeed, there is a beauty in martyrdom.

Your letters are excellent. I did not mean to check your
writing, only I thought that you might wish a confidence
that I must anticipate with a protest. But I take my natural
position always: and the more I see, the more I feel that it
is regal. Without throne, sceptre, or guards, still a queen.

It is certain that Margaret occasionally let slip, with all the innocence imaginable, some phrase betraying the presence of a rather mountainous ME, in a way to surprise those who knew her good sense. She could say, as if she were stating a scientific fact, in enumerating the merits of somebody, 'He appreciates _me_.' There was something of hereditary organization in this, and something of unfavorable circumstance in the fact, that she had in early life no companion, and few afterwards, in her finer studies; but there was also an ebullient sense of power, which she felt to be in her, which as yet had found no right channels. I remember she once said to me, what I heard as a mere statement of fact, and nowise as unbecoming, that 'no man gave such invitation to her mind as to tempt her to a full expression; that she felt a power to enrich her thought with such wealth and variety of embellishment as would, no doubt, be tedious to such as she conversed with.'

Her impatience she expressed as she could. 'I feel within myself,' she said,

'an immense force, but I cannot bring it out. It may sound
like a joke, but I do feel something corresponding to that
tale of the Destinies falling in love with Hermes.'

In her journal, in the summer of 1844, she writes:--

'Mrs. Ware talked with me about education,--wilful
education,--in which she is trying to get interested. I talk
with a Goethean moderation on this subject, which rather
surprises her and ----, who are nearer the entrance of the
studio. I am really old on this subject. In near eight years'
experience, I have learned as much as others would in eighty,
from my great talent at explanation, tact in the use of
means, and immediate and invariable power over the minds of
my pupils. My wish has been, to purify my own conscience, when
near them; give clear views of the aims of this life; show
them where the magazines of knowledge lie; and leave the rest
to themselves and the Spirit, who must teach and help them to
self-impulse. I told Mrs. W. it was much if we did not injure
them; if they were passing the time in a way that was _not
bad_, so that good influences have a chance. Perhaps people
in general must expect greater outward results, or they would
feel no interest.'

Again:

'With the intellect I always have, always shall, overcome; but
that is not the half of the work. The life, the life! O, my
God! shall the life never be sweet?'

I have inquired diligently of those who saw her often, and in different companies, concerning her habitual tone, and something like this is the report:--In conversation, Margaret seldom, except as a special grace, admitted others upon an equal ground with herself. She was exceedingly tender, when she pleased to be, and most cherishing in her influence; but to elicit this tenderness, it was necessary to submit first to her personally. When a person was overwhelmed by her, and answered not a word, except, "Margaret, be merciful to me, a sinner," then her love and tenderness would come like a seraph's, and often an acknowledgment that she had been too harsh, and even a craving for pardon, with a humility,--which, perhaps, she had caught from the other. But her instinct was not humility,--that was always an afterthought.

This arrogant tone of her conversation, if it came to be the subject of comment, of course, she defended, and with such broad good nature, and on grounds of simple truth, as were not easy to set aside. She quoted from Manzoni's _Carmagnola_, the lines:--

"Tolga il ciel che alcuno
Piu altamente di me pensi ch'io stesso."

"God forbid that any one should conceive more highly of me than I myself." Meantime, the tone of her journals is humble, tearful, religious, and rises easily into prayer.

I am obliged to an ingenious correspondent for the substance of the following account of this idiosyncrasy:--

Margaret was one of the few persons who looked upon life as an
art, and every person not merely as an artist, but as a work
of art. She looked upon herself as a living statue, which
should always stand on a polished pedestal, with right
accessories, and under the most fitting lights. She would have
been glad to have everybody so live and act. She was annoyed
when they did not, and when they did not regard her from the
point of view which alone did justice to her. No one could
be more lenient in her judgments of those whom she saw to be
living in this light. Their faults were to be held as "the
disproportions of the ungrown giant." But the faults of
persons who were unjustified by this ideal, were odious.
Unhappily, her constitutional self-esteem sometimes blinded
the eyes that should have seen that an idea lay at the bottom
of some lives which she did not quite so readily comprehend as
beauty; that truth had other manifestations than those which
engaged her natural sympathies; that sometimes the soul
illuminated only the smallest arc--of a circle so large that
it was lost in the clouds of another world.

This apology reminds me of a little speech once made to her, at his own house, by Dr. Channing, who held her in the highest regard: "Miss Fuller, when I consider that you are and have all that Miss ---- has so long wished for, and that you scorn her, and that she still admires you,--I think her place in heaven will be very high."

But qualities of this kind can only be truly described by the impression they make on the bystander; and it is certain that her friends excused in her, because she had a right to it, a tone which they would have reckoned intolerable in any other. Many years since, one of her earliest and fastest friends quoted Spenser's sonnet as accurately descriptive of Margaret:--

"Rudely thou wrongest my dear heart's desire,
In finding fault with her too portly pride;
The thing which I do most in her admire
Is of the world unworthy most envied.
For, in those lofty looks is close implied
Scorn of base things, disdain of foul dishonor,
Threatening rash eyes which gaze on her so wide
That loosely they ne dare to look upon her:
Such pride is praise, such portliness is honor,
That boldened innocence bears in her eyes;
And her fair countenance, like a goodly banner,
Spreads in defiance of all enemies.
Was never in this world aught worthy tried,
Without a spark of some self-pleasing pride."

BOOKS.

She had been early remarked for her sense and sprightliness, and for her skill in school exercises. Now she had added wide reading, and of the books most grateful to her. She had read the Italian poets by herself, and from sympathy. I said, that, by the leading part she naturally took, she had identified herself with all the elegant culture in this country. Almost every person who had any distinction for wit, or art, or scholarship, was known to her; and she was familiar with the leading books and topics. There is a kind of undulation in the popularity of the great writers, even of the first rank. We have seen a recent importance given to Behmen and Swedenborg; and Shakspeare has unquestionably gained with the present generation. It is distinctive, too, of the taste of the period,--the new vogue given to the genius of Dante. An edition of Cary's translation, reprinted in Boston, many years ago, was rapidly sold; and, for the last twenty years, all studious youths and maidens have been reading the Inferno. Margaret had very early found her way to Dante, and from a certain native preference which she felt or fancied for the Italian genius. The following letter, though of a later date, relates to these studies:--

TO R.W.E.

'_December_, 1842.--When you were here, you seemed to think I
might perhaps have done something on the _Vita Nuova_; and the
next day I opened the book, and considered how I could do
it. But you shall not expect that, either, for your present
occasion. When I first mentioned it to you, it was only as a
piece of Sunday work, which I thought of doing for you alone;
and because it has never seemed to me you entered enough into
the genius of the Italian to apprehend the mind, which has
seemed so great to me, and a star unlike, if not higher than
all the others in our sky. Else, I should have given you
the original, rather than any version of mine. I intended to
translate the poems, with which it is interspersed, into plain
prose. Milnes and Longfellow have tried each their power at
doing it in verse, and have done better, probably, than I
could, yet not well. But this would not satisfy me for the
public. Besides, the translating Dante is a piece of literary
presumption, and challenges a criticism to which I am not sure
that I am, as the Germans say, _gewachsen_. Italian, as well
as German, I learned by myself, unassisted, except as to the
pronunciation. I have never been brought into connection
with minds trained to any severity in these kinds of elegant
culture. I have used all the means within my reach, but my not
going abroad is an insuperable defect in the technical part
of my education. I was easily capable of attaining excellence,
perhaps mastery, in the use of some implements. Now I know,
at least, _what I do not know_, and I get along by never
voluntarily going beyond my depth, and, when called on to do
it, stating my incompetency. At moments when I feel tempted to
regret that I could not follow out the plan I had marked
for myself, and develop powers which are not usual here, I
reflect, that if I had attained high finish and an easy range
in these respects, I should not have been thrown back on my
own resources, or known them as I do. But Lord Brougham should
not translate Greek orations, nor a maid-of-all-work attempt
such a piece of delicate handling as to translate the _Vita
Nuova_.'

Here is a letter, without date, to another correspondent:

'To-day, on reading over some of the sonnets of Michel Angelo,
I felt them more than usual. I know not why I have not read
them thus before, except that the beauty was pointed out to me
at first by another, instead of my coming unexpectedly upon
it of myself. All the great writers, all the persons who have
been dear to me, I have found and chosen; they have not been
proposed to me. My intimacy with them came upon me as natural
eras, unexpected and thrice dear. Thus I have appreciated, but
not been able to feel, Michel Angelo as a poet.

'It is a singular fact in my mental history, that, while I
understand the principles and construction of language much
better than formerly, I cannot read so well _les langues
méridionales_. I suppose it is that I am less _méridionale_
myself. I understand the genius of the north better than I
did.'

Dante, Petrarca, Tasso, were her friends among the old poets,--for to Ariosto she assigned a far lower place,--Alfieri and Manzoni, among the new. But what was of still more import to her education, she had read German books, and, for the three years before I knew her, almost exclusively,--Lessing, Schiller, Richter, Tieck, Novalis, and, above all, GOETHE. It was very obvious, at the first intercourse with her, though her rich and busy mind never reproduced undigested reading, that the last writer,--food or poison,--the most powerful of all mental reagents,--the pivotal mind in modern literature,--for all before him are ancients, and all who have read him are moderns,--that this mind had been her teacher, and, of course, the place was filled, nor was there room for any other. She had that symptom which appears in all the students of Goethe,--an ill-dissembled contempt of all criticism on him which they hear from others, as if it were totally irrelevant; and they are themselves always preparing to say the right word,--a _prestige_ which is allowed, of course, until they do speak: when they have delivered their volley, they pass, like their foregoers, to the rear.

The effect on Margaret was complete. She was perfectly timed to it. She found her moods met, her topics treated, the liberty of thought she loved, the same climate of mind. Of course, this book superseded all others, for the time, and tinged deeply all her thoughts. The religion, the science, the Catholicism, the worship of art, the mysticism and dæmonology, and withal the clear recognition of moral distinctions as final and eternal, all charmed her; and Faust, and Tasso, and Mignon, and Makaria, and Iphigenia, became irresistible names. It was one of those agreeable historical coincidences, perhaps invariable, though not yet registered, the simultaneous appearance of a teacher and of pupils, between whom exists a strict affinity. Nowhere did Goethe find a braver, more intelligent, or more sympathetic reader. About the time I knew her, she was meditating a biography of Goethe, and did set herself to the task in 1837. She spent much time on it, and has left heaps of manuscripts, which are notes, transcripts, and studies in that direction. But she wanted leisure and health to finish it, amid the multitude of projected works with which her brain teemed. She used great discretion on this point, and made no promises. In 1839, she published her translation of Eckermann, a book which makes the basis of the translation of Eckermann since published in London, by Mr. Oxenford. In the Dial, in July, 1841, she wrote an article on Goethe, which is, on many accounts, her best paper.

CRITICISM.

Margaret was in the habit of sending to her correspondents, in lieu of letters, sheets of criticism on her recent readings. From such quite private folios, never intended for the press, and, indeed, containing here and there names and allusions, which it is now necessary to veil or suppress, I select the following notices, chiefly of French books. Most of these were addressed to me, but the three first to an earlier friend.

'Reading Schiller's introduction to the Wars of the League,
I have been led back to my old friend, the Duke of Sully,
and his charming king. He was a man, that Henri! How gay and
graceful seems his unflinching frankness! He wore life
as lightly as the feather in his cap. I have become much
interested, too, in the two Guises, who had seemed to me mere
intriguers, and not of so splendid abilities, when I was less
able to appreciate the difficulties they daily and hourly
combated. I want to read some more books about them. Do you
know whether I could get Matthieu, or de Thou, or the Memoirs
of the House of Nevers?

'I do not think this is a respectable way of passing my
summer, but I cannot help it.

'I never read any life of Molière. Are the facts very
interesting? You see clearly in his writing what he was: a
man not high, not poetic; but firm, wide, genuine, whose
clearsightedness only made him more noble. I love him well
that he could see without showing these myriad mean faults of
the social man, and yet make no nearer approach to misanthropy
than his Alceste. These witty Frenchmen. Rabelais, Montaigne,
Molière, are great as were their marshals and _preux
chevaliers_; when the Frenchman tries to be poetical,
he becomes theatrical, but he can be romantic, and also
dignified, maugre shrugs and snuff-boxes.'

* * * * *

'_Thursday Evening_.--Although I have been much engaged these
two days. I have read Spiridion twice. I could have wished
to go through it the second time more at leisure, but as I am
going away, I thought I would send it back, lest it should be
wanted before my return.

'The development of the religious sentiment being the same as
in Hélene, I at first missed the lyric effusion of that work,
which seems to me more and more beautiful, as I think of it
more. This, however, was a mere prejudice, of course, as the
thought here is poured into a quite different mould, and I was
not troubled by it on a second reading.

'Again, when I came to look at the work by itself, I thought
the attempt too bold. A piece of character-painting does not
seem to be the place for a statement of these wide and high
subjects. For here the philosophy is not merely implied in the
poetry and religion, but assumes to show a face of its own.
And, as none should meddle with these matters who are not in
earnest, so, such will prefer to find the thought of a teacher
or fellow-disciple expressed as directly and as bare of
ornament as possible.

'I was interested in De Wette's Theodor, and that learned and
(_on dit_) profound man seemed to me so to fail, that I did
not finish the book, nor try whether I could believe the
novice should ever arrive at manly stature.

'I am not so clear as to the scope and bearing of this
book, as of that. I suppose if I were to read Lamennais, or
L'Erminier, I should know what they all want or intend. And
if you meet with _Les paroles d'un Croyant_, I will beg you to
get it for me, for I am more curious than ever. I had supposed
the view taken by these persons in France, to be the same with
that of Novalis and the German Catholics, in which I have
been deeply interested. But from this book, it would seem to
approach the faith of some of my friends here, which has been
styled Psychotheism. And the gap in the theoretical fabric is
the same as with them. I read with unutterable interest the
despair of Alexis in his Eclectic course, his return to the
teachings of external nature, his new birth, and consequent
appreciation of poetry and music. But the question of Free
Will,--how to reconcile its workings with necessity and
compensation,--how to reconcile the life of the heart with
that of the intellect,--how to listen to the whispering breeze
of Spirit, while breasting, as a man should, the surges of the
world,--these enigmas Sand and her friends seem to have solved
no better than M.F. and her friends.

'The practical optimism is much the same as ours, except that
there is more hope for the masses--soon.

'This work is written with great vigor, scarce any faltering
on the wing. The horrors are disgusting, as are those of every
writer except Dante. Even genius should content itself in
dipping the pencil in cloud and mist. The apparitions of
Spiridion are managed with great beauty. As in Hélene, as in
Novalis, I recognized, with delight, the eye that gazed, the
ear that listened, till the spectres came, as they do to the
Highlander on his rocky couch, to the German peasant on his
mountain. How different from the vulgar eye which looks, but
never sees! Here the beautiful apparition advances from the
solar ray, or returns to the fountain of light and truth, as
it should, when eagle eyes are gazing.

'I am astonished at her insight into the life of thought. She
must know it through some man. Women, under any circumstances,
can scarce do more than dip the foot in this broad and deep
river; they have not strength to contend with the current.
Brave, if they do not delicately shrink from the cold water.
No Sibyls have existed like those of Michel Angelo; those
of Raphael are the true brides of a God, but not themselves
divine. It is easy for women to be heroic in action, but when
it comes to interrogating God, the universe, the soul, and,
above all, trying to live above their own hearts, they dart
down to their nests like so many larks, and, if they cannot
find them, fret like the French Corinne. Goethe's Makaria
was born of the stars. Mr. Flint's Platonic old lady a _lusus
naturæ_, and the Dudevant has loved a philosopher.

'I suppose the view of the present state of Catholicism no way
exaggerated. Alexis is no more persecuted than Abelard was,
and is so, for the same reasons. From the examinations of the
Italian convents in Leopold's time, it seems that the grossest
materialism not only reigns, but is taught and professed in
them. And Catholicism loads and infects as all dead forms do,
however beautiful and noble during their lives.' * *

GEORGE SAND, AGAIN.

'1839.--When I first knew George Sand, I thought I found tried
the experiment I wanted. I did not value Bettine so much;
she had not pride enough for me; only now when I am sure of
myself, would I pour out my soul at the feet of another. In
the assured soul it is kingly prodigality; in one which cannot
forbear, it is mere babyhood. I love _abandon_ only when
natures are capable of the extreme reverse. I knew Bettine
would end in nothing, when I read her book. I knew she could
not outlive her love.

'But in _Les Sept Cordes de la Lyre_, which I read first, I
saw the knowledge of the passions, and of social institutions,
with the celestial choice which rose above them. I loved
Hélene, who could so well hear the terrene voices, yet keep
her eye fixed on the stars. That would be my wish, also, to
know all, then choose; I ever revered her, for I was not sure
that I could have resisted the call of the Now, could have
left the spirit, and gone to God. And, at a more ambitious
age, I could not have refused the philosopher. But I hoped
from her steadfastness, and I thought I heard the last tones
of a purified life:--Gretchen, in the golden cloud, raised
above all past delusions, worthy to redeem and upbear the wise
man, who stumbled into the pit of error while searching for
truth.

'Still, in _André_, and in _Jacques_, I traced the same high
morality of one who had tried the liberty of circumstance
only to learn to appreciate the liberty of law, to know that
license is the foe of freedom. And, though the sophistry of
passion in these books disgusted me, flowers of purest hue
seemed to grow upon the dank and dirty ground. I thought she
had cast aside the slough of her past life, and began a new
existence beneath the sun of a true Ideal.

'But here (in the _Lettres d'un Voyageur_) what do I see? An
unfortunate bewailing her loneliness, bewailing her mistakes,
writing for money! She has genius, and a manly grasp of mind,
but not a manly heart! Will there never be a being to combine
a mail's mind and woman's heart, and who yet finds life too
rich to weep over? Never?

'When I read in _Leone Lioni_ the account of the jeweller's
daughter's life with her mother, passed in dress and in
learning to be looked at when dressed, _avec un front
impassible_, it reminded me exceedingly of ----, and her
mother. What a heroine she would be for Sand! She has the same
fearless softness with Juliet, and a sportive _naïveté_, a
mixture of bird and kitten, unknown to the dupe of Lioni.

'If I were a man, and wished a wife, as many do, merely as an
ornament, or silken toy, I would take ---- as soon as any I
know. Her fantastic, impassioned, and mutable nature would
yield an inexhaustible amusement. She is capable of the most
romantic actions;--wild as the falcon, and voluptuous as the
tuberose,--yet she has not in her the elements of romance,
like a deeper and less susceptible nature. My cold and
reasoning E., with her one love lying, perhaps, never to be
unfolded, beneath such sheaths of pride and reserve, would
make a far better heroine.

'Both these characters are natural, while S. and T. are
_naturally factitious_, because so imitative, and her mother
differs from Juliet and her mother, by the impulse a single
strong character gave them. Even at this distance of time,
there is a slight but perceptible taste of iron in the water.

'George Sand disappoints me, as almost all beings have,
especially since I have been brought close to her person
by the _Lettres d'un Voyageur_. Her remarks on Lavater seem
really shallow, and hasty, _à la mode du genre feménin_. No
self-ruling Aspasia she, but a frail woman mourning over a
lot. Any peculiarity in her destiny seems accidental. She is
forced to this and that, to earn her bread forsooth!

'Yet her style,--with what a deeply smouldering fire it
burns!--not vehement, but intense, like Jean Jacques.'

ALFRED DE VIGNY.

'_Sept._, 1839.

'"La harpe tremble encore, et la flûte soupire."

'Sometimes we doubt this, and think the music has finally
ceased, so sultry still lies the air around us, or only
disturbed by the fife and drum of talent, calling to the
parade-ground of social life. The ear grows dull.

'"Faith asks her daily bread,
And Fancy is no longer fed."

'So materialistic is the course of common life, that we _ask
daily_ new Messiahs from literature and art, to turn us from
the Pharisaic observance of law, to the baptism of spirit. But
stars arise upon our murky sky, and the flute _soupire_ from
the quarter where we least expect it.

'_La jeune France_! I had not believed in this youthful
pretender. I thought she had no pure blood in her veins, no
aristocratic features in her face, no natural grace in her
gait. I thought her an illegitimate child of the generous, but
extravagant youth of Germany. I thought she had been left at
the foundling hospital, as not worth a parent's care, and that
now, grown up, she was trying to prove at once her parentage
and her charms by certificates which might be headed, Innocent
Adultery, Celestial Crime, &c.

'The slight acquaintance I had with Hugo, and company, did not
dispel these impressions. And I thought Chateaubriand (far too
French for my taste also,) belonged to _l'ancien régime_, and
that Béranger and Courier stood apart. Nodier, Paul de Kock,
Sue, Jules Janin, I did not know, except through the absurd
reports of English reviewers; Le Maistre and Lamennais, as
little.

'But I have now got a peep at this galaxy. I begin to divine
the meaning of St. Simonianism, Cousinism, and the movement
which the same causes have produced in belles-lettres. I
perceive that _la jeune France_ is the legitimate, though far
younger sister of Germany; taught by her, but not born of her,
but of a common mother. I see, at least begin to see, what
she has learned from England, and what the bloody rain of
the revolution has done to fertilize her soil, naturally too
light.

'Blessed be the early days when I sat at the feet of Rousseau,
prophet sad and stately as any of Jewry! Every onward movement
of the age, every downward step into the solemn depths of my
own soul, recalls thy oracles, O Jean Jacques! But as these
things only glimmer upon me at present, clouds of rose and
amber, in the perspective of a long, dim woodland glade, which
I must traverse if I would get a fair look at them from the
hill-top,--as I cannot, to say sooth, get the works of these
always working geniuses, but by slow degrees, in a country
that has no heed of them till her railroads and canals are
finished,--I need not jot down my petty impressions of the
movement writers. I wish to speak of one among them, aided,
honored by them, but not of them. He is to _la jeune France_
rather the herald of a tourney, or the master of ceremonies
at a patriotic festival, than a warrior for her battles, or an
advocate to win her cause.

'The works of M. de Vigny having come in my way, I have read
quite through this thick volume.

'I read, a year since, in the London and Westminster,
an admirable sketch of Armand Carrel. The writer speaks
particularly of the use of which Carrel's experience of
practical life had been to him as an author; how it had
tempered and sharpened the blade of his intellect to the
Damascene perfection. It has been of like use to de Vigny,
though not in equal degree.

'De Vigny _passed_,--but for manly steadfastness, he would
probably say _wasted_,--his best years in the army. He is now
about forty; and we have in this book the flower of these best
years. It is a night-blooming Cereus, for his days were passed
in the duties of his profession. These duties, so tiresome and
unprofitable in time of peace, were the ground in which the
seed sprang up, which produced these many-leaved and calm
night-flowers.

'The first portion of this volume, _Servitude et Grandeurs
Militaires_, contains an account of the way in which he
received his false tendency. Cherished on the "wounded
knees" of his aged father, he listened to tales of the great
Frederic, whom the veteran had known personally. After an
excellent sketch of the king, he says: "I expatiate here,
almost in spite of myself, because this was the first great
man whose portrait was thus drawn for me at home,--a portrait
after nature,--and because my admiration of him was the first
symptom of my useless love of arms,--the first cause of one of
the most complete delusions of my life." This admiration
for the great king remained so lively in his mind, that even
Bonaparte in his gestures seemed to him, in later days, a
plagiarist.

'At the military school, "the drum stifled the voices of our
masters, and the mysterious voices of books seemed to us cold
and pedantic. Tropes and logarithms seemed to us only steps to
mount to the star of the Legion of Honor,--the fairest star of
heaven to us children."

'"No meditation could keep long in chains heads made
constantly giddy by the noise of cannon and bells for the _Te
Deum_. When one of our former comrades returned to pay us a
visit in uniform, and his arm in a scarf, we blushed at
our books, and threw them at the heads of our teachers. Our
teachers were always reading us bulletins from the _grande
armée_, and our cries of _Vive l'Empereur_ interrupted Tacitus
and Plato. Our preceptors resembled heralds of arms, our study
halls barracks, and our examinations reviews."

'Thus was he led into the army; and, he says, "It was only
very late, that I perceived that my services were one long
mistake, and that I had imported into a life altogether
active, a nature altogether contemplative."

'He entered the army at the time of Napoleon's fall, and,
like others, wasted life in waiting for war. For these young
persons could not believe that peace and calm were possible to
France; could not believe that she could lead any life but one
of conquest.

'As De Vigny was gradually undeceived, he says: "Loaded with
an ennui which I did not dream of in a life I had so ardently
desired, it became a necessity to me to detach myself by night
from the vain and tiresome tumult of military days. From these
nights, in which I enlarged in silence the knowledge I had
acquired from our public and tumultuous studies, proceeded
my poems and books. From these days, there remain to me these
recollections, whose chief traits I here assemble around one
idea. For, not reckoning for the glory of arms, either on
the present or future, I sought it in the souvenirs of my
comrades. My own little adventures will not serve, except
as frame to those pictures of the military life, and of
the manners of our armies, all whose traits are by no means
known."

'And thus springs up, in the most natural manner, this little
book on the army.

'It has the truth, the delicacy, and the healthiness of a
production native to the soil; the merit of love-letters,
journals, lyric poems, &c., written without any formal
intention of turning life into a book, but because the writer
could not help it. What, more than anything else, engaged the
attention of De Vigny, was the false position of two beings
towards a factitious society: the soldier, now that standing
armies are the mode, and the poet, now that Olympic games
or pastimes are not the mode. He has treated the first best,
because with profounder _connoissance du fait_. For De Vigny
is not a poet; he has only an eye to perceive the existence
of these birds of heaven. But in few ways, except their own
broken harp-tone's thrill, have their peculiar sorrows and
difficulties been so well illustrated. The character of the
soldier, with its virtues and faults, is portrayed with such
delicacy, that to condense would ruin. The peculiar reserve,
the habit of duty, the beauty of a character which cannot look
forward, and need not look back, are given with distinguished
finesse.

'Of the three stories which adorn this part of the book,
_Le Cachet Rouge_ is the loveliest, _La Canne au Jonc_ the
noblest. Never was anything more sweetly naïve than parts of
_Le Cachet Rouge_. _La pauvre petite femme_, she was just such
a person as my ----. And then the farewell injunctions,--_du
pauvre petite maré_,--the nobleness and the coarseness of
the poor captain. It is as original as beautiful, _c'est dire
beaucoup_. In _La Canne au Jonc_, Collingwood, who embodies
the high feeling of duty, is taken too raw out of a book,--his
letters to his daughters. But the effect on the character of
_le Capitaine Renaud_, and the unfolding of his interior life,
are done with the spiritual beauty of Manzoni.

'_Cinq-Mars_ is a romance in the style of Walter Scott. It
is well brought out, figures in good relief, lights well
distributed, sentiment high, but nowhere exaggerated,
knowledge exact, and the good and bad of human nature painted
with that impartiality which becomes a man, and a man of the
world. All right, no failure anywhere; also, no wonderful
success, no genius, no magic. It is one of those works which
I should consider only excusable as the amusement of leisure
hours; and, though few could write it, chiefly valuable to the
writer.

'Here he has arranged, as in a bouquet, what he knew,--and a
great deal it is,--of the time of Louis XIII., as he has of
the Regency in "La Marechale d'Ancre,"--a much finer work,
indeed one of the best-arranged and finished modern dramas.
The Leonora Galigai is better than anything I have seen in
Victor Hugo, and as good as Schiller. Stello is a bolder
attempt. It is the history of three poets,--Gilbert, André
Chenier, Chatterton. He has also written a drama called
Chatterton, inferior to the story here. The "marvellous boy"
seems to have captivated his imagination marvellously. In
thought, these productions are worthless; for taste, beauty of
sentiment, and power of description, remarkable. His advocacy
of the poets' cause is about as effective and well-planned
as Don Quixote's tourney with the wind-mill. How would you
provide for the poet _bon homme_ De Vigny?--from a joint-stock
company Poet's Fund, or how?

'His translation of Othello, which I glanced at, is good for a
Frenchman.

'Among his poems, La Frégate, La Sérieuse, Madame de Soubise,
and Dolorida, please me especially. The last has an elegiac
sweetness and finish, which are rare. It also makes a perfect
gem of a cabinet picture. Some have a fine strain of natural
melody, and give you at once the key-note of the situation, as
this:--

'"J'aime le son du cor le soir, au fond des bois,
Soit qu'il chante," &c.

And

'"Qu'il est doux, qu'il est doux d'ecouter les histoires
Des histoires du temps passe
Quand les branches des arbres sont noires,
Quand la neige est essaisse, et charge un sol glacé,
Quand seul dans un ciel pâle un peuplier s'élance,
Quand sous le manteau blanc qui vient de le cacher
L'immobile corbeau sur l'arbre se balance
Comme la girouette au bout du long clocher."

'These poems generally are only interesting as the leisure
hours of an interesting man.

'De Vigny writes in an excellent style; soft, fresh,
deliberately graceful. Such a style is like fine manners;
you think of the words select, appropriate, rather than
distinguished, or beautiful. De Vigny is a perfect gentleman;
and his refinement is rather that of the gentleman than that
of the poets whom he is so full of. In character, he looks
naturally at those things which interest the man of honor
and the man of taste. But for literature, he would have
known nothing about the poets. He should be the elegant
and instructive companion of social, not the priest or the
minstrel of solitary hours.

'Neither has he logic or grasp with his reasoning powers,
though of this, also, he is ambitious. Observation is his
forte. To see, and to tell with grace, often with dignity and
pathos, what he sees, is his proper vocation. Yet, where he
fails, he has too much tact and modesty to be despised; and
we cannot enough admire the absence of faults in a man whose
ambition soared so much beyond his powers, and in an age and
a country so full of false taste. He is never seduced into
sentimentality, paradox, violent contrast, and, above all,
never makes the mistake of confounding the horrible with the
sublime. Above all, he never falls into the error, common
to merely elegant minds, of painting leading minds "_en
gigantesque_." His Richelieu and his Bonaparte are treated
with great calmness, and with dignified ease, almost as
beautiful as majestic superiority.

'In this volume is contained all that is on record of the
inner life of a man of forty years. How many suns, how many
rains and dews, to produce a few buds and flowers, some sweet,
but not rich fruit! We cannot help demanding of the man of
talent that he should be like "the orange tree, that busy
plant." But, as Landor says, "He who has any thoughts of any
worth can, and probably will, afford to let the greater part
lie fallow."

'I have not made a note upon De Vigny's notions of abnegation,
which he repeats as often as Dr. Channing the same watch-word
of self-sacrifice. It is that my views are not yet matured,
and I can have no judgment on the point.'

BÉRANGER.

'_Sept._, 1839.--I have lately been reading some of Béranger's
_chansons_. The hour was not propitious. I was in a mood the
very reverse of Roger Bontemps, and beset with circumstances
the most unsuited to make me sympathize with the prayer--

'"Pardonnez la gaieté
De ma philosophie;"

yet I am not quite insensible to their wit, high sentiment,
and spontaneous grace. A wit that sparkles all over the ocean
of life, a sentiment that never puts the best foot forward,
but prefers the tone of delicate humor, to the mouthings of
tragedy; a grace so aerial, that it nowhere requires the aid
of a thought, for in the light refrains of these productions,
the meaning is felt as much as in the most pointed lines.
Thus, in "Les Mirmidons," the refrain--

'"Mirmidons, race féconde,
Mirmidons
Enfin nous commandons,
Jupiter livre le monde,
Aux mirmidons, aux mirmidons, (bis.)"

'The swarming of the insects about the dead lion is expressed
as forcibly as in the most sarcastic passage of the chanson.
In "La Faridondaine" every sound is a witticism, and levels
to the ground a bevy of what Byron calls "garrison people."
"Halte là! ou la système des interpretations" is equally
witty, though there the form seems to be as much in the
saying, as in the comic melody of sound.

'In "Adieux à la Campagne," "Souvenirs du Peuple," "La Déesse
de la Liberté," "La Convoi de David," a melancholy pathos
breathes, which touches the heart the more that it is
so unpretending. "Ce n'est plus Lisette," "Mon Habit,"
"L'Indépendant," "Vous vieillirez, O ma belle Maitresse," a
gentle graceful sadness wins us. In "Le Dieu des Bonnes Gens,"
"Les Etoiles qui filent," "Les Conseils de Lise," "Treize à
Table," a noble dignity is admired, while such as "La Fortune"
and "La Métempsycose" are inimitable in their childlike
playfulness. "Ma Vocation" I have had and admired for many
years. He is of the pure ore, a darling fairy changling of
great mother Nature; the poet of the people, and, therefore,
of all in the upper classes sufficiently intelligent and
refined to appreciate the wit and sentiment of the people.
But his wit is so truly French in its lightness and sparkling,
feathering vivacity, that one like me, accustomed to the
bitterness of English tonics, suicidal November melancholy,
and Byronic wrath of satire, cannot appreciate him at once.
But when used to the gentler stimuli, we like them best,
and we also would live awhile in the atmosphere of music and
mirth, content if we have "bread for to-day, and hope for
to-morrow."

'There are fine lines in his "Cinq Mai;" the sentiment is as
grand as Manzoni's, though not sustained by the same majestic
sweep of diction, as,--

'"Ce rocher repousse l'espérance,
L'Aigle n'est plus dans le secret des dieux,
Il fatiguait la victoire à le suivre,
Elle était lasse: il ne l'attendit pas."

'And from "La Gérontocratie, ou les infiniment petits:"

'"Combien d'imperceptibles êtres,
De petits jésuites bilieux!
De milliers d'autres petits prêtres,
Lui portent de petits bons dieux."

'But wit, poet, man of honor, tailor's grandson and fairy's
favorite, he must speak for himself, and the best that can be
felt or thought of him cannot be said in the way of criticism.
I will copy and keep a few of his songs. I should like to keep
the whole collection by me, and take it up when my faith in
human nature required the gentlest of fortifying draughts.

'How fine his answer to those who asked about the "de" before
his name!--

'"Je suis vilain,
Vilain, vilain," &c.
J'honore une race commune,
Car, sensible, quoique malin,
Je n'ai flatté que l'infortune."

'In a note to "Couplets on M. Laisney, _imprimeur à Peronne_,"
he says: "It was in his printing-house that I was put to
prentice; not having been able to learn orthography, he
imparted to me the taste for poetry, gave me lessons in
versification, and corrected my first essays."

'Of Bonaparte,--

'"Un conquérant, dans sa fortune altière,
Se fit un jeu des sceptres et des lois,
Et de ses pieds on peut voir la poussière
Empreinte encore sur le bandeau des rois."

'I admire, also, "Le Violon brisé," for its grace and
sweetness. How fine Béranger on Waterloo!--

'"Its name shall never sadden verse of mine."'

TO R.W.E.

'_Niagara, 1st June, 1843_.--I send you a token, made by
the hands of some Seneca Indian lady. If you use it for a
watch-pocket, hang it, when you travel, at the head of your
bed, and you may dream of Niagara. If you use it for a
purse, you can put in it alms for poets and artists, and the
subscription-money you receive for Mr. Carlyle's book. His
book, as it happened, you gave me as a birthday gift, and you
may take this as one to you; for, on yours, was W.'s birthday,
J.'s wedding-day, and the day of ----'s death, and we set out
on this journey. Perhaps there is something about it on the
purse. The "number five which nature loves," is repeated on
it.

'Carlyle's book I have, in some sense, read. It is witty, full
of pictures, as usual. I would have gone through with it, if
only for the sketch of Samson, and two or three bits of fun
which happen to please me. No doubt it may be of use to rouse
the unthinking to a sense of those great dangers and sorrows.
But how open is he to his own assault. He rails himself out of
breath at the short-sighted, and yet sees scarce a step before
him. There is no valuable doctrine in his book, except the
Goethean, _Do to-day the nearest duty_. Many are ready for
that, could they but find the way. This he does not show. His
proposed measures say nothing. Educate the people. That cannot
be done by books, or voluntary effort, under these paralyzing
circumstances. Emigration! According to his own estimate of
the increase of population, relief that way can have very
slight effect. He ends as he began; as he did in Chartism.
Everything is very bad. You are fools and hypocrites, or you
would make it better. I cannot but sympathize with him about
hero-worship; for I, too, have had my fits of rage at the
stupid irreverence of little minds, which also is made a
parade of by the pedantic and the worldly. Yet it is a
good sign. Democracy is the way to the new aristocracy, as
irreligion to religion. By and by, if there are great
men, they will not be brilliant exceptions, redeemers, but
favorable samples of their kind.

'Mr. C.'s tone is no better than before. He is not loving, nor
large; but he seems more healthy and gay.

'We have had bad weather here, bitterly cold. The place is
what I expected: it is too great and beautiful to agitate or
surprise: it satisfies: it does not excite thought, but fully
occupies. All is calm; even the rapids do not hurry, as we see
them in smaller streams. The sound, the sight, fill the senses
and the mind.

'At Buffalo, some ladies called on us, who extremely regretted
they could not witness our emotions, on first seeing Niagara.
"Many," they said, "burst into tears; but with those of most
sensibility, the hands become cold as ice, and they would not
mind if buckets of cold water were thrown over them!"'

NATURE.

Margaret's love of beauty made her, of course, a votary of nature, but rather for pleasurable excitement than with a deep poetic feeling. Her imperfect vision and her bad health were serious impediments to intimacy with woods and rivers. She had never paid,--and it is a little remarkable,--any attention to natural sciences. She neither botanized, nor geologized, nor dissected. Still she delighted in short country rambles, in the varieties of landscape, in pastoral country, in mountain outlines, and, above all, in the sea-shore. At Nantasket Beach, and at Newport, she spent a month or two of many successive summers. She paid homage to rocks, woods, flowers, rivers, and the moon. She spent a good deal of time out of doors, sitting, perhaps, with a book in some sheltered recess commanding a landscape. She watched, by day and by night, the skies and the earth, and believed she knew all their expressions. She wrote in her journal, or in her correspondence, a series of "moonlights," in which she seriously attempts to describe the light and scenery of successive nights of the summer moon. Of course, her raptures must appear sickly and superficial to an observer, who, with equal feeling, had better powers of observation.

Nothing is more rare than a talent to describe landscape, and, especially, skyscape, or cloudscape, although a vast number of letters, from correspondents between the ages of twenty and thirty, are filled with experiments in this kind. Margaret, in her turn, made many vain attempts, and, to a lover of nature, who knows that every day has new and inimitable lights and shades, one of these descriptions is as vapid as the raptures of a citizen arrived at his first meadow. Of course, he is charmed, but, of course, he cannot tell what he sees, or what pleases him. Yet Margaret often speaks with a certain tenderness and beauty of the impressions made upon her.

TO ----.

'_Fishkill, 25 Nov., 1844_.--You would have been happy as I
have been in the company of the mountains. They are companions
both bold and calm. They exhilarate and they satisfy. To live,
too, on the bank of the great river so long, has been the
realization of a dream. Though I have been reading and
thinking, yet this has been my life.'

'After they were all in bed,' she writes from the "Manse," in Concord,

'I went out, and walked till near twelve. The moonlight filled
my heart. These embowering elms stood in solemn black, the
praying monastics of this holy night; full of grace, in every
sense; their life so full, so hushed; not a leaf stirred.'

* * * * *

'You say that nature does not keep her promise; but, surely,
she satisfies us now and then for the time. The drama is
always in progress, but here and there she speaks out a
sentence, full in its cadence, complete in its structure; it
occupies, for the time, the sense and the thought. We have no
care for promises. Will you say it is the superficialness of
my life, that I have known hours with men and nature, that
bore their proper fruit,--all present ate and were filled, and
there were taken up of the fragments twelve baskets full? Is
it because of the superficial mind, or the believing heart,
that I can say this?'

* * * * *

'Only through emotion do we know thee, Nature! We lean upon
thy breast, and feel its pulses vibrate to our own. That is
knowledge, for that is love. Thought will never reach it.'

ART.

There are persons to whom a gallery is everywhere a home. In this country, the antique is known only by plaster casts, and by drawings. The BOSTON ATHENÆUM,--on whose sunny roof and beautiful chambers may the benediction of centuries of students rest with mine!--added to its library, in 1823, a small, but excellent museum of the antique sculpture, in plaster;--the selection being dictated, it is said, by no less an adviser than Canova. The Apollo, the Laocoon, the Venuses, Diana, the head of the Phidian Jove, Bacchus, Antinous, the Torso Hercules, the Discobolus, the Gladiator Borghese, the Apollino,--all these, and more, the sumptuous gift of Augustus Thorndike. It is much that one man should have power to confer on so many, who never saw him, a benefit so pure and enduring.

To these were soon added a heroic line of antique busts, and, at last, by Horatio Greenough, the Night and Day of Michel Angelo. Here was old Greece and old Italy brought bodily to New England, and a verification given to all our dreams and readings. It was easy to collect, from the drawing-rooms of the city, a respectable picture-gallery for a summer exhibition. This was also done, and a new pleasure was invented for the studious, and a new home for the solitary. The Brimmer donation, in 1838, added a costly series of engravings, chiefly of the French and Italian museums, and the drawings of Guercino, Salvator Rosa, and other masters. The separate chamber in which these collections were at first contained, made a favorite place of meeting for Margaret and a few of her friends, who were lovers of these works.