Chapter X: Part 10

and another bard avers that human blessings are always governing the future, and never the present tense,--or something to that effect. The truth of this nobody will deny who has passed from the boxes of childhood upon the stage of manhood which so charmed his youthful fancy, and finds that the heroes who dazzled him once by their splendid achievements are mere ordinary mortals like himself, whom the blindness or caprice of their fellows has allowed to be dressed in a little brief authority; that the cloud-capped towers and gorgeous palaces he used to gaze on from afar, prove, on a closer inspection, to be mere deceptions of paint and canvas, and that he has only to look behind them to see the rough bricks and mortar of every-day life.

The voyager who sails from the dark waters of the restless Atlantic into the deep blue Mediterranean, notices at sunset a rich purple haze which rises apparently from the surface of that fair inland sea, and drapes the hills and vales along the beautiful shore with a glory that fills the heart of the beholder with unutterable gladness. The distant, snow-covered peaks of old Granada, clad in the same bright robe, seem by their regal presence to impose silence on those whom their majestic beauty has blessed with a momentary poetic inspiration which defies all power of tongue or pen. It touches nothing which it does not adorn, and the commonest objects are transmuted by its magic into fairy shapes which abide ever after in the memory. Under its softening influence, the dingy sail of a fisherman's boat becomes almost as beautiful an object to the sight as the ruins of the temple which crowns the height of Cape Colonna. But when you approach nearer to that which had seemed so charming in its twilight robes, your poetic sense is somewhat interfered with. You find the fishing boat as unattractive as any that anchor on the Banks from which we obtain such frequent discounts of nasty weather, and the shore, though it may still be very beautiful, lacks the supernal glory imparted to it by distance. It is very much after this fashion with manhood, when we compare its reality with our childish expectations. We find that we have been deceived by a mere atmospheric phenomenon. But the destruction of the charm which age had for our eyes as children, is compensated for by the creation of a new glory which lights up our young days, as we look back upon them with the regret of manhood, and realize that their joys can never be lived over again.

Pardon me, gentle reader, for all this prosing. I have been reading that pleasant, hearty book, "Tom Brown's School Days at Rugby," during the past week, and it has set me a-thinking about my own boyhood; for, strange as it may seem, there was a time when this troublesome foot was more familiar with the football and the skate than with gout and flannel,--and Tom Brown's genial reminiscences have revived the memory of that time most wonderfully. There was considerable fun in Boston in my childhood, even though most of the faces which one met in Marlboro' Street and Cornhill were such as might have appropriately surrounded Cromwell at Naseby or Marston Moor. There were many people, even then, who did not regard religion as an affair of spasmodic emotions, and long, bilious-looking faces, and psalm-singing, and neck-ties. They thought that, so long as they were honest in their dealings, and did not swear to false invoices at the customhouse, and did as they would be done by, and lived virtuously, that He to whom they had been taught by parental lips to pray, would overlook the smaller offences--such as an occasional laugh or a pleasant jest--into which weak nature would now and then betray them. I cannot help thinking that they were about right, though I fear that I shall be set down as little better than one of the wicked by Stiggins, Chadband, Sleek & Co.

Yes, there was a good deal of fun among the boys in those old days. Boys will be boys, however serious the family may be; and if you take away their marbles, some other "vanity" will be sure to take their place. What jolly times we used to have Artillery Election! How good the egg-pop used to taste, in spite of the dust of Park Street, which mingled itself liberally with the nutmeg! How we used to save up our money for those festive days! How hard the arithmetic lessons seemed, particularly in the days immediately preceding vacation! How dreary were those long winters; and yet how short and pleasant they seemed to us! for we loved the runners, and skates, and jingling bells, and, as Pescatore, the Neapolitan poet, sings, "though bleak our lot, our hearts were warm."

Newspapers were not a common luxury in those times, and I suppose that I took as little notice of passing events as most children; yet I well remember the effect produced upon my mind one dark, threatening afternoon, near the close of the last century, by the announcement of the death of General Washington. I had been accustomed to hear him talked about as the Father of his Country; I had studied the lineaments of his calm countenance, as they were set forth for the edification of my patriotism on some coarse handkerchiefs presented to me by a public-spirited aunt, until I began to look upon him as almost a supernatural being. If I had been told that the Old South had been removed to Dorchester Heights, or that the solar system was irreparably disarranged, I should not have been more completely taken aback than I was by that melancholy intelligence. I need not say that afterwards, when I grew up and found that Washington was not only a mortal like the rest of us, but that he sometimes spelt incorrectly enough to have suited Noah Webster, (the inventor of the American language,) my supernatural view of that estimable general and patriot was very materially modified. I remember, too, how much I used to hear said about an extraordinary man who had risen up in France, and who seemed to be bending all Europe to his will. I never shall forget my astonishment on finding that Marengo was not a man, but a place. The discovery shamed me somewhat, and afterwards I always read whatever newspapers came in my way. When some slow tub of a packet had come across the ocean, battling with the nor'-westers, and was announced to have made a "quick passage of forty-eight days," how eagerly I followed the rapid fortunes of the first Napoleon! His successes, as they intoxicated him, dazzled and bewildered my boyish imagination. I understood the matter imperfectly, but I loved Napoleon, and delighted to repeat to myself those stirring names, Austerlitz, Jena, Wagram, &c. How I hated Russia after the disastrous campaign of 1812! (By the way, the exhibition of the Conflagration of Moscow, which used to have its intermittent terms of exhibition here some years since, always brought back all my youthful feelings about the old Napoleon; the march of the artillery across the bridge, in the foreground of the scene, the rattling of the gun carriages,--that most warlike of all warlike sounds,--the burning city, the destruction of the Kremlin, all united in my mind to form a sentiment of admiration and sympathy for the baffled conqueror. If that admirable show were to be revived once more, I should be tempted to take a season ticket to it, for I have no doubt that it would thrill me just as it did before my head could boast of a single gray hair.) Nor was my admiration for Napoleon's old marshals much below that which I entertained for the mighty genius who knew so well how to avail himself of their surpassing bravery and skill. I felt as if the unconquerable Murat, Lannes, Macdonald, Davoust, were my dearest and most intimate friends. The impetuous Ney, "the bravest of the brave," as his soldiers called him; and the inflexible Massena, "the favourite child of victory," figured in all my dreams, heading gallant charges, and withstanding deadly assaults, and occupied the best part of my waking thoughts. I do not doubt that there is many a schoolboy nowadays who has dwelt with equal delight on the achievements of Scott and Taylor, of Canrobert, Bosquet and Pelissier, of Fenwick Williams and Havelock, and poor old Raglan, (that brave man upon whom the Circumlocution Office tried to fasten the blame of its own inefficiency, and who died broken-hearted, a melancholy illustration of the truth of Shakespeare's lines,--

"The painful warrior, famoused for fight,
After a thousand victories once foiled,
Is from the book of honour razed quite,
And all the rest forgot for which he toiled,")

and who cherishes them as I did the heroes of half a century ago.

But, as I was saying, Tom Brown's happy reminiscences of Rugby have awakened once more all my boyish feelings; for New England has its Rugby, and many of the readers of the old Rugby boy's pleasant pages will grow enthusiastic with the recollection of their schoolboy days at Exeter,--their snowballings, their manly sports, their mighty contests with the boys of the town,--and, though they may not claim the genius of the former head-master of Rugby for the guardian of their youthful sports and studies, will apply all of the old boy's praises of Dr. Arnold to the wise, judicious, and lovable Dr. Abbot.

I always cherished an unbounded esteem for boys. The boy--the genuine human boy--may, I think, safely be set down as the noblest work of God. Pope claims that proud distinction for the honest man, but at the present time, the nearest we can come to such a mythological personage as an honest man, (even though we add Argand burners, expensive Carcels, Davy safeties, and the Drummond light to the officially recognized lantern of Diogenes,) is a real human boy, without a thought beyond his next holiday, with his heart overflowing with happiness, and his pockets chock full of marbles. Young girls cannot help betraying something of the in-dwelling vanity so natural to the sex; you can discern a self-consciousness in their every action which you shall look for in vain in the boy. Bless your heart!--you may dress a real boy up with superhuman care, and try to impress on his young mind that he is the pride of his parents, and one of the most remarkable beings that ever visited this mundane sphere, and he will listen to you with becoming reverence and docility; but his pure and honest nature will give the lie to all your flattery as soon as your back is turned, and in ten minutes you will find him kicking out the toes of his new boots, or rumpling his clean collar by "playing horse," or using the top of his new cap for a drinking vessel, and mixing in with the Smiths, and Browns, and Jinkinses, on terms of the most unquestioned equality. The author of Tom Brown says that "boys follow one another in herds like sheep, for good or evil; they hate thinking, and have rarely any settled principles." This is undoubtedly true; but still there is a generous instinct in boys which is far more trustworthy than those sliding, and unreliable, and deceptive ideas which we call settled principles. The boy's thinking powers may be fallible, but his instinct is, in the main, sure. There is no aristocracy of feeling among boys. Linsey-woolsey and broadcloth find equal favour in their eyes. What they seek is just as likely to be found under coarse raiment as under purple and fine linen. If their companion is a real good feller, even though he be a son of a rich merchant or banker, he is esteemed as highly as if his father were an editor of a newspaper.

The nature of the boy is full of the very essence of generosity. The boys who hide away their gingerbread, and eat it by themselves,--who lay up their Fourth of July five-cent pieces, for deposit in that excellent savings institution in School Street, instead of spending them for the legitimate India crackers of the "Sabbath Day of Freedom,"--are exceptions which only put the general rule beyond the pale of controversy. The real boy carries his apple in one of his pockets until it is comfortably warm, and he has found some companion to whom he may offer a festive bite; for he feels, with Goethe, that

"It were the greatest misery known
To be in paradise alone;"

and if, occasionally, when he sees his friend gratifying his palate with a fair round specimen of the same delicious fruit, he asks for a return of his kindness, with a beckoning gesture, and a free and easy--"I say, you know me, Bill!"--he is moved thereto by no mere selfish liking for apples, but by a natural sense of friendship, and of the excellence of the apostolic principle of community of goods. This spirit of generosity may be seen in the friendships of boys, which are more entire and unselfish than those by which men seek to mitigate the irksomeness of life. There are more Oresteses and Pyladeses, more Damons and Pythiases, at twelve years of age than at any later period of life. The devotedness of boyish friendship is peculiar from the fact that it is generally reciprocal. In this it is superior to what we call love, which, if we may believe the French satirist, in most instances consists of one party who loves, and another who allows himself or herself to be loved. This phenomenon has not escaped the notice of that great observer of human nature, Thackeray.

"What generous boy," he asks, "in his time has not worshipped somebody? Before the female enslaver makes her appearance, every lad has a friend of friends, a crony of cronies, to whom he writes immense letters in vacation; whom he cherishes in his heart of hearts; whose sister he proposes to marry in after life; whose purse he shares; for whom he will take a thrashing if need be; who is his hero."

The generosity, and all the priceless charms of boyhood, rarely outlive its careless years of happiness. They are generally severely shaken, if not wholly destroyed, when the youth enters upon that crepuscular period of manhood in which his jacket is lengthened into a sack, and he begins to take his share in the conceit, and ambition, and selfishness of full-grown humanity. It is sad to think that a human boy, like the morning star, full of life and joy, may be stricken down by death, and all his hilarity stifled in the grave; but to my mind it is even more melancholy to think that he may live to grow up, and be hard, and worldly, and ungenerous as any of the rest of us. For this latter fate is accompanied by no consolations such as naturally assuage our sorrow when an innocent child is snatched from among his playthings,--when "death has set the seal of eternity upon his brow, and the beautiful hath been made permanent" I have seen few men who would be willing to live over again their years of manhood, however prosperous and comparatively free from trouble they may have been; but fewer still are those whom I have met, in whose memory the records of boyhood are not written as with a sunbeam. No, talk as we may about the happiness of manhood, the satisfaction of success in life, of gratified ambition, of the possession of the Mary or Lizzie of one's choice,--what is it all compared to the unadulterate joy of that time when we built our card houses, and made our dirt pies, or drove our hoops, unvexed by the thoughts that Jinkins's house was larger than ours, or by any anxiety concerning the possibility of obtaining our next day's mutton-chop and potatoes? Except the momentary pain occasioned by the exercise of a magisterial rattan upon our persons, or an occasional stern reproof from a hair-brush or the thin sole of a maternal shoe, that halcyon period is imperturbed, and may safely be called the happiest part of life.

My venerated friend, Baron Nabem, who has been through all these "experiences," and therefore ought to know, insists upon it that no man really knows any thing until he is forty years old. For when he is eighteen or twenty years of age, he esteems himself to be a sort of combination of the seven wise men of Greece in one person, with Humboldt, Mezzofanti, and Macaulay thrown in to make out the weight; at twenty-five, his confidence in his own infallibility begins to grow somewhat shaky; at thirty, he begins to wish that he might really know a tenth part as much as he thought he did ten years before; at thirty-five, he thinks that if he were added up, there would be very little to carry; and at forty the great truth bursts upon him in all its effulgence that he is an ass. There are some who reach this desirable state of self-knowledge before they attain the age specified by the Baron; other some there are who never reach it at all,--as we all see numerous instances around us,--but these are mere exceptions strengthening rather than invalidating the common rule. It is a humiliating acknowledgment, but if we consider the uncertainty of all earthly things, if we try the depth of the sea of human science, and find how easy it is to touch bottom any where therein, if we convince ourselves of the impenetrability of the veil which bounds our mental vision,--I think that we shall be obliged to allow that the recognition of our own nothingness and asininity is the sum and perfection of human knowledge. Now, Solomon tells us that he who increases knowledge increases sorrow; and it naturally follows that when a man has reached the knowledge which generally comes with his fortieth year, he is less happy than he was when he wrapped himself in the measureless content of his twentieth year's self-deception. And it follows, too, most incontrovertibly, that he is happier when unpossessed by that exaggerated self-esteem which rendered the discovery of his fortieth year necessary to him; and when is that time, if not during the careless, happy years of boyhood?

The period of boyhood has been shortened very considerably within a few years; and real boys are becoming scarce. They are no sooner emancipated from the bright buttons which unite the two principal articles of puerile apparel, than they begin to pant for virile habiliments. Their choler is roused if they are denied a stand-up dickey. They sport canes. They delight to display themselves at lectures and concerts. Their young lips are not innocent of damns and short-sixes; and they imitate the vulgarity and conceit of the young men of the present day so successfully that you find it hard to believe that they are mere children. Since this period of dearth in the boy market set in, of course the genuine, marketable article has become more precious to me. I remember seeing an old physician in Paris, who was as true a boy as any beloved twelve-year-old that ever snapped a marble or stuck his forefinger into a preserve jar on an upper shelf in a china closet. A charming old fellow he was, too. He used to stop to see the boys play in the gardens of the Tuileries, and I knew him once to spend a whole afternoon in the avenue of the Champs Elysees looking at the puppet shows and other sights with the rest of the youngsters. He told me afterwards that that was one of the happiest days of his life; for he had felt as if he were back again in the pleasant time before he knew any thing of that most uncertain of all uncertain things--the science of medicine; and he doubted whether any boy there had enjoyed the cheap amusement more than himself. I envied him, for I knew that he who retained so much of the happy spirit of boyhood could not have outlived all of its generosity and simplicity. "Once a man and twice a child," says the old proverb; and I cannot help thinking that if at the last we could only recall something of the sincerity, and innocence, and unselfishness of our early life, second childhood would indeed be a blessed thing.

JOSEPHINE--GIRLHOOD AND GIRLS

A bright-eyed, fair, young maiden, whose satchel I should insist upon carrying to school for her every morning if I were half a century younger, came to me a day or two after the publication of my last essay, and, placing her white, taper fingers in my rough, Esau-like hand, said, "I liked your piece about the boys very much; and now I hope that you'll write something about girls." "My dear Nellie," replied I, "if I should do that I should lose all my female acquaintances. I have a weakness for telling the truth, and there are some subjects concerning which it is very dangerous to speak out 'the whole truth and nothing but the truth.'" The gentle damsel smiled, and looked

"Modest as justice, and did seem a palace
For the crown'd truth to dwell in,"

as she still urged me on, and refused to see any danger in my giving out the plainest truth about girlhood. _She_ had no fear, though all the truth were told; and I suppose that if we had some of Nellie's purity and gentleness remaining in our sere and selfish hearts, we should be much better and happier men and women, and should dread the truth as little as she does. But I must not begin my truth-telling by seeming to praise too highly, though it must be confessed, even at my time of life, if I were to describe the charming young person I have referred to, with the merciless fidelity of a daguerreotype and an absence of hyperbole worthy of the late Dr. Bowditch's work on Navigation, I should seem to the unfortunate "general reader" who does not know Nell, to be indulging in the grossest flattery, and panting poesy would toil after me in vain. So I will put aside all temptations of that kind, and come down to the plain prose of my subject.

There is, in fact, very little that can be said about girlhood. Those calm years that come between the commencement of the bondage of the pantalettes and emancipation from the tasks of school, present few salient points upon which the essayist (observe he never so closely) may turn a neat paragraph. They offer little that is startling or attractive either to writer or reader,--

"As times of quiet and unbroken peace,
Though for a nation times of blessedness,
Give back faint echoes from the historian's page."

The rough sports of boyhood, the out-door life which boys always take to so naturally, and all their habits of activity, give a strength of light and shade to their early years which is not to be found in girlhood. It is not enough to say that there is no difference in kind, but simply one in degree,--that the years of boyhood are calm and happy, and that those of girlhood are so likewise,--that the former resemble the garish sunshine, and the latter the mitigated splendour of the moon; for the characters of boys seem to be struck in a sharper die than those of girls, which gives them an absoluteness quite distinct from the feminine grace we naturally look for in the latter. The free-hearted boy, plunging into all sorts of fun without a thought of his next day's arithmetic lesson, and with a charming disregard of the expense of jackets and trousers, and the gentle girl, who clings to her mother's side, like an attendant angel, and contents herself with teaching long lessons to docile paper pupils in a quiet corner by the fireside, are representatives of two distinct classes in the order of nature, and (untheologically, of course, I might add) of grace. There is not a greater difference between a hockey and a crochet needle than there is between them.

I have, as a general thing, a greater liking for boys than for girls; for the vanity so common to all mankind is not developed in them at so early an age as in the latter. Still I must acknowledge that I have seen some splendid exceptions, the mere recollection of which almost tempts me to draw my pen through that last sentence. Can I ever forget--I can never forget--one into whose years of girlhood the beauty and grace of a long, pure life seemed to have been compressed? It was many years ago, and I was younger than I am now--so pardon me if I should seem to catch a little enthusiasm of spirit from the remembrance of those days. Like the ancient Queen of Carthage, _Agnosco veteris vestigia flammae_. I was living in London at that time, or rather at Hampstead, which had not then become a mere suburb of the great metropolis, but was a quiet town, whose bright doorplates, and well-scoured doorsteps, and clean window curtains contrasted finely with the dingy brick walls of its houses, and impressed the visitor with the general prosperity and quiet respectability of its inhabitants. In my daily walks to and from the city, I frequently met a gentleman whose gray hairs and simple dignity of manners always attracted me towards him, and exacted from me an involuntary tribute of respectful recognition. One day he overtook me in a shower, and gave me the benefit of his umbrella and his friendship--for an intimacy which ended only with his death commenced between us from that hour. He was a gentleman of good family and education, who had seen thirty years of responsible service in the employ of the Honourable East India Company, had attained a competency, and had forsworn Leadenhall Street for a pension and a quiet retreat on the heights of Hampstead. His wife was a lady of cultivated tastes, whose sober wishes never learned to stray from the path of simple domestic duty, and the presence of the books in which she found her daily pleasures.

"Type of the wise, who soar, but never roam;
True to the kindred points of Heaven and Home."

Their only child, "one fair daughter, and no more," was a gentle and merry-hearted creature, who, in the short and murky days of November, filled that cottage with a more than June-like sunshine. Her parents always had a deep sympathy with that unfortunate Empress of France whose dismission from the throne was the commencement of the downward career of the first Napoleon, and bore witness to it by giving her name to their only child. They lived only three or four doors from my lodgings, and there were few days passed after the episode of the umbrella in which I did not find a welcome in their quiet home. Their daughter was their only idol, and I soon found myself a convert to their innocent system of paganism. We all three agreed that Josey was the incarnation of all known perfections, and the lapse of forty years has not sufficed to weaken that conviction in my mind. She had risen just above the horizon of girlhood, and the natural beauty of her character made the beholder content to forget even the promise of her riper years. I do not think she was what the world calls handsome. I sometimes distrust my judgment in the matter of female beauty; indeed, some of my candid friends have told me that I had no judgment in such things. Well, as I was saying, Josey was not remarkable for personal beauty--in fact, I think I remember some persons of her own sex who thought her "very plain"--"positively homely"--and wondered what there was attractive about her. There are circumstances under which I should not have hesitated to attribute such remarks to motives of envy and jealousy; but as they came from girls whose attractions of every kind were far below those of the gentle creature whom they delighted to criticise, how can I account for them? Josey's complexion was dark--her forehead, like those of the best models of female comeliness among the ancients, low. Her teeth were pearly and uniform, and her clear, dark eyes seemed to reflect the happiness and hope which were the companions of her youth. Her beauty was not of that kind which consists in mere regularity of features; it was far superior to that. You could discern under those traits, none of which were conspicuous, a combination of mental and social qualities which were far above the fleeting charms that delight so many, and which age, instead of destroying, would increase and perfect. She was quiet and gentle, without being dull or moody; light-hearted and cheery, without being frivolous; and witty, without being pert or conceited. Her unaffected goodness of heart found many an opportunity of exercise. I often heard of her among the poor, and among those who needed words of consolation even more than the necessaries of life. It was her delight to intercede with the magistrate who had inflicted a punishment on some disorderly brother of one of her poor clients, and to obtain his pardon by promising to watch over him and insure his future good behaviour; and there were very few, among the most reckless, who were not restrained by the thought that their offences would give pain to the kind-hearted girl who had so willingly become their protector.

During the months that I lived at Hampstead my intercourse with that excellent family was as familiar as if I had been one of their own kindred. A little attack of rheumatism, which confined me to my lodging for a fortnight or three weeks, proved the constancy of their friendship. The old gentleman came daily to see me--told me all the news from the city, and read to me; the mother sent me some of her favourite books; and Josey came to get assistance in her Latin and French, and brought me sundry little pots of grape jelly and other preserves, which tasted all the sweeter for being the work of her fair hands. It was a sad parting when I was called away to America--sad for me; for I told them that I hoped that my absence from England would be but temporary, when I felt inwardly that it might extend to several years.

Two or three months after my arrival at home, I received a letter from the old gentleman, written in his deliberate, round, clerk-like style, informing me of his wife's death. A note was enclosed from Josey, in which she described with her pencil the spot where her mother was buried in the old churchyard, and told me of her progress in her studies. More than a year passed by without my hearing from them at all, two or three of my letters to them having miscarried. Nearly seven years elapsed before I visited England again. Two years before that, I had read the decease of the old gentleman, in a stray London newspaper. I had written to Josey, sympathizing with her in her desolation, but had received no answer. So, the day after my arrival in London, I determined to make a search for the beloved Josey. I went to Hampstead, and my heart beat quicker as I approached the cottage where I had spent so many happy hours. My throat felt a little choky, as I recognized the neat bit of hedge before the door, the graceful vine which overhung it, and the familiar arrangement of the flower pots in the frames outside the windows; but my hopes received a momentary check when I found a strange name on the plate above the knocker. I knocked, and inquired concerning the former occupants of the house. After a severe effort to overcome the Boeotian stupidity of the housemaid, she ushered me into the little breakfast room, and said she would "call her missus." Almost before I had time to look about me, Josey entered the room. The little girl whose Latin exercises I had corrected, and who had always lived in my memory as she appeared in those days, suddenly came before me

"A perfect woman, nobly planned,
To warn, to comfort, and command;
And yet a spirit still and bright
With something of an angel light."

Yet she was hardly changed at all. She had lost none of those charming qualities which had made the thought of her precious to me during long years of absence. She had gained the maturity and dignity of womanhood without losing any of the simplicity and light-heartedness of girlhood. She was married. Her husband was a literary man of considerable reputation. Though only in middle age, he was a great sufferer with the gout. He was, generally speaking, a patient man; but I found, after I became intimate with him, that his pains sometimes made him express himself with a force of diction somewhat in advance of the religious prejudices of his gentle Josey, who tended him and ministered to his wants like an angel, as she was. But excuse me for wandering so far from my theme. To make a long story short, Josey went to Italy with her husband, who had been ordered thither by his physicians, and I never saw her afterwards. She deposited her husband's remains in the cemetery where those of Shelley and Keats repose, and found for two or three years a consolation for her bereaved spirit in residence in that city which more than all others proclaims to our unwilling hearts the vanity and transitoriness of this world's hopes, and the glory of the unseen eternal. Years after, I met one of her husband's friends in Paris, who told me that some four years after his death, she had entered a convent of a religious order devoted to the reclaiming of the degraded of her sex, in Brussels. There she had found a fitting occupation for the natural benevolence of her heart, and the peace which the world could not give. She had concealed the glory of her good works under her vow of obedience--her personality was hidden under the common habit of her Order--the very name which was so dear to me had been exchanged for another on the day that saw her covered with the white veil of the novice. I was about returning to England from the continent when I heard this, and I resolved to take Belgium's fair capital in my route. I found the convent readily enough, and waited in its uncarpeted but scrupulously clean parlour some time for the Lady Superior. She was a lady of dignified mien, with the clear complexion, the serene brow, and the dovelike eyes so common among nuns, and her face lighted up, as she spoke, with a gentle smile, which seemed almost like a presage of immortality. I explained my errand, and she told me that the good English sister had been dead more than a year. The intelligence pained me, and it gave me a feeling of self-reproach to notice that the nun, who had been with her in her last hour, spoke of her as if she had merely passed into another part of the convent we were in. The Superior, perceiving my emotion, conducted me through the garden of the convent to a shady corner of the grounds, where there were several graves. She stopped before a mound, over which a rose bush bent affectionately, as if its white blossoms craved something of the purity which was enshrined beneath it. At its head was a simple wooden cross, on which was inscribed the name of "Sister Helen Agnes," the date of her death, and the common supplication that she might rest in peace; and that was the only memorial of Josey that remained to me.

I have not forgotten, dear reader, that I am writing about girls; but having brought forward one who always seemed to me to be about as near perfection as it is vouchsafed to poor humanity to approach, I could not help following her to the end, and showing how she went from a beautiful girlhood to a still more beautiful womanhood, and a death which all of us might envy; and how lovely and harmonious was her whole career. For I feel that the consideration of the contrast which most of the young female readers of these pages will discover between themselves and Josey, will do them some good.

I do not know of a more quietly funny sight than a group of school-girls, all talking as fast as their tongues can wag, (forty-woman power,) and clinging inextricably together like a parcel of macaroni, _a la Napolitaine_. Their independence is quite refreshing. Lady Blessington in her diamonds never descended the grand staircase at Covent Garden Opera House with half the consciousness of making a sensation, that you may notice in these school-girls whenever you take your walks abroad. It is delightful to see them step off so proudly, and look you in the face so coolly, thinking all the time of just nothing at all. Their boldness is the boldness of innocence; for perfect modesty does not even know how to blush. How vain they grow as they advance in their teens! How careful they are that the crinoline "sticks out" properly before they venture on the road to school! If Mother Goose (of blessed memory) could take a look into this world now, she would wish to revise her ancient rhyme to her patrons,--

"Come with a whoop--come with a call," &c.,--

for she would find that it is now their custom to come with a _hoop_ when they come for a call.

When unhappy Romeo stands in old Capulet's garden, under the pale beams of the "envious moon," and watches the unconscious Juliet upon the balcony, he utters, in the course of his incoherent soliloquial apostrophe, these remarkable words concerning that interesting young person:--

"She speaks, yet she says nothing."

I have seen many young ladies of Juliet's time of life in my day of whom the same thing might be said. They indeed speak, yet say nothing. Yet take them on such a subject as the trimming of a new bonnet for Easter Sunday, or any of those entertaining topics more or less connected with the adornment of their persons, and how voluble they are! To the stronger sex, which of course cares nothing about dress, being entirely free from vanity, the terms used in their never-ending colloquies on such themes are mere unmeaning words; but I must do the gentler side of humanity the justice to say that they are not all vanity, as their fathers and husbands find to their dismay, when the quarterly bills come in, that gimp, and flounces, and trimming generally, have a real, tangible existence.

How sentimental they are! In my young days albums were all the rage among young ladies; but now they seem to be somewhat out of date, and young ministers have taken their place. What pains will they not take to get a bow from the Rev. Mr. Simkins! They swarm around him after service, like flies around the bung of a molasses cask. Raphael never had such a face as his; Massillon never preached as he does. What a wilderness of worsted work are they not willing to travel over for his sake! How do they exhaust their inventive faculties in the search after new patterns for lamp mats, watch cases, pen wipers, and slippers to encase the feet at which they delight to sit! But when Simkins marries old Thompson's youngest daughter and a snug property, he finds a sad abatement in his popularity. The Rev. Mr. Jenkins, a young preacher with a face every whit as milk-and-watery as his own, succeeds to the throne he occupied, and reigns in his stead among the volatile devotees; and Simkins then sees that his popularity was no more an evidence of the favour his preaching of the gospel found among those thoughtless young people than was the popularity of the good-looking light comedian, after whom the girls ran as madly as they did after his own white neckerchief and nicely-brushed black frock coat.

Exaggeration is one of the great faults of girlhood. Whatever meets their eyes is either "splendid" or "horrid." They delight to exaggerate their likes and dislikes. Self-restraint seems to be a term not contained in their lexicon. They take a momentary fancy to a young man, and flatter him with their smiles until some new face takes his place in their fleeting memory. In this way many young hearts are frittered away in successive flirtations before their possessors have reached womanhood. But it would be wrong to confine action from mere blind impulse and exaggeration to young girls alone. I think it is St. Paul who gives us some good counsel about "speaking the truth in love." I fear that very few victims of the tender passion, from Pyramus and Thisbe down to Petrarch and Laura, and from the latter couple down to Mr. Smith with Miss Brown hanging on his arm,--who have not sadly needed the advice of the Apostle of the Gentiles. I have seen very few people in my day who really speak the truth in love. Therefore I will not blame girls for a fault which is common to all mankind.

Impulse is commonly supposed to be inconsistent with cunning; but in most girls I think the two things are singularly combined. I am told that there is an academy in this city, frequented by many young women, known as the School of Design. The fact is a gratifying one to me; for my observation of girlish nature had led me to suppose that there were very few indeed of the young ladies of these days who required any tuition in the arts of design. I hail the fact as a good omen for the sex. Action from impulse carries its young victims to the extremes of good and evil. Queen Dido is a fair type of the majority of her sex. Defeated in their hopes, they are willing to make a funeral pile of all that remains to them. But there is a spirit of generosity in them which does not find a place in the hearts of men. It was the part of Eve to bring death into this world, and all our woe, by her inquisitiveness and credulity; but it was reserved for Adam to inaugurate the meanness of mankind by laying all the blame to his silly little wife. The accusation ought to have blistered Adam's cowardly tongue.

But I am making a long preachment, and yet I have said very little. I must leave my young friends, however, to draw their own lessons from the portrait I have given of one whose perfections would far outweigh the silliness and vanity of a generation of girls. Let them take the gentle Josey as the model of their youth, and they will not wish to sculpture their later career after any less perfect shape. There will then be fewer heartless flirts, fewer vain exhibitors of the works of the milliner and dressmaker parading the streets, and more true women presiding over the homes of America. The imitation of her virtues will be found a better preservative of beauty than any _eau lustrale_; for it will create a beauty which "time's effacing fingers" are powerless to destroy, and give to those who practise it a serene and lovely old age, whose recollection of the past, instead of awakening any self-reproach, shall be a source of perpetual benediction.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS COMMENTATORS

It was a favourite wish of the beneficent Caligula that all mankind had but one neck, that he might finish them off at a single chop. It would ill comport with my known modesty, were I to lay claim to any thing like the all-embracing humanity of the old Roman philanthropist; but I must acknowledge that I have frequently felt inclined to apply his pious aspiration to the commentators on Shakespeare. Impatience is not my prevailing weakness; but these pestilent annotators have often been instrumental in convincing me that I am no stoic. I have frequently regretted the days of my youth, when no envious commentary obscured the brilliancy of that genius which has consecrated the language through which it finds utterance, and made it venerable to the scholars of all lands and ages. My love of Shakespeare, like the gout which has been stinging my right foot all the morning, is hereditary. My revered grandmother was very fond of solid English literature. She had not had, it is true, the advantages which the young people of the present day rejoice in; she had not studied in any of those seminaries which polish off an education in a most Arabian-Nightsy style of expedition, and send a young lady home in the middle of her teens, accomplished in innumerous ologies, and knowing little or nothing that is really useful, or that will attract her to intellectual pursuits or pleasure in after life. She had acquired what is infinitely better than the superficial omniscience which is so much cultivated in these days. The more active duties of life pleased her not; and Shakespeare was the never-failing resource of her leisure hours. Mr. Addison's Spectator was for her a "treasure of contentment, a mine of delight, and, with regard to style, the best book in the world." I shall never forget that happy day (anterior even to the jacket era of my life) when she took me upon her knee, and read to me the speeches of Marullus, and Mark Antony, and Brutus. In that hour I became as sincere a devotee as ever bent down before the shrine of Shakespeare's genius. Nor has that innocent fanaticism abated any of its ardour under the weight laid upon me by increasing years. The theatre has lost many of its old charms for me. The friendships of youth--the only enduring intimacies, for our palms grow callous in the promiscuous intercourse of the world, and cannot easily receive new impressions--have either been terminated by that inexorable power whose chilling touch is merciless alike to love and enmity, or have been interfered with by the varying pursuits of life. But Shakespeare still maintains his wonted sway, and my loyalty to him has not been disturbed by any of the revolutionary movements which have made such changes in most other things. Martin Farquhar Tupper has written, but I am so old-fashioned in my prejudices that I find myself constantly turning to my Shakespeare, in preference even to that gifted and proverbially philosophic bard.

But I am wandering. From the day I have mentioned, Robinson Crusoe was obliged to abdicate, and England's "monarch bard" (as Mr. Sprague calls Anne Hathaway's husband) reigned in his stead. I first devoured the Julius Caesar. I say "devoured," for no other word will express the eager earnestness with which I read. The last time I read that play through, it was "within a bowshot where the Caesars dwelt," and but a few minutes' walk from the palace which now holds great Pompey's statua, at whose foot the mighty Julius fell. Increase of appetite grew rapidly by what it fed on, and I was not long in learning as much about the black-clad prince, the homeless king, the exacting usurer, the fat knight and his jolly companions, the remorseful Thane, and generous, jealous Moor, as I knew about Brutus and the other red republican assassins of imperial Rome. My love of Shakespeare was greatly edified by a friendship which I formed in my earliest foreign journeyings. It was before the days of railways,--which, convenient as they are, have robbed travelling of half its zest, by rendering it so common. I had been making a little tour through the north of France. I had admired the white caps and pious simplicity of the peasants of Normandy, and had drunk in that exaltation of soul which the lofty nave of the majestic Cathedral of Amiens always imparts, and was about returning to Paris, when a rheumatic attack arrested my progress and prolonged my stay in the pleasant city of Douai. I there met accidentally with an English monk of that grand old Benedictine order, whose history for more than twelve centuries has been the history of civilization, and literature, and religion. He was descended from one of those old families which refused to modify their creed at the demand of a divorce-seeking king. He was a man of clear intellect and fascinating simplicity of character. He seemed to carry sunshine with him wherever he went. He occupied a professional chair in the English College attached to the Benedictine Monastery at Douai, and when his class hours were ended, he daily came to visit me. His sensible and sprightly conversation did more towards untying the rheumatic knots in my poor shoulder, than all the pills and lotions for which _M. le Medecin_ charged me so roundly. When I visited him in his cell, I found that a well-worn copy of Shakespeare was the only companion of his Breviary, his Aquinas and St. Bernard on his study table. He loved Shakespeare for himself alone. He never used him as a lay figure on which he might display the drapery of a pedant. He hated commentators as heartily as a man so sincerely religious can hate any thing except sin, and was as earnest in his predilection for Shakespeare, "without note or comment," as his dissenting fellow-countrymen would have wished him to be for a similar edition of the only other inspired book in the world. He had his theories, however, concerning Shakespeare's characters, and we often talked them over together; but I must do him the justice to say that he never published any of them. I always regarded this fact as a splendid evidence of the entireness of his self-abnegation, and of his extraordinary advancement in the path of religious perfection. Many have taken the three monastic vows by which he was bound, and have lived up to them with conscientious fidelity; but few scholars have studied Shakespeare as he did, and yet resisted the temptation to tell the world all about it in a book.

Mousing the other day in the library of a venerable citizen of Boston, who is no less skilled in the gospel (let us hope) than in the law, I stumbled over a seedy-looking folio containing _A Treatise of Original Sinne_, by one Anthony Burgesse, who flourished in England something more than two centuries ago. One of the discoloured fly-leaves of this entertaining tome informed me, in a hand-writing which resembled a dilapidated rail-fence looked at from the window of an express train, that _Jacobus Keith me possedit, An. Dom. 1655_; and also bore this inscription, so pertinent to my present theme: "Expositors are wise when they are not otherwise." I feel that it is safe to leave my readers to make the application of this apothegm to the Shakespearean annotators of their acquaintance, so few of whom are wise, so many otherwise. I think it was the late Mr. Hazlitt who said (and if it was not, it ought to have been) that if you desire to know to what sublimity human genius is capable of ascending, you must read Shakespeare; but that if you seek to ascertain to what a depth of imbecility the intellect of man may be brought down, you must read his commentators.

Notwithstanding the low estimate which I am inclined to place upon the labour of the majority of the commentators on Shakespeare, still I have often felt a strong temptation to enroll myself among them. Not all their stupidity in explaining things which are clear to the meanest capacity, not all their pedantry in elucidating matters which are simply inexplicable, not all their inordinate voluminousness, could quench my ambition to fasten my roll of waste paper to the bob (already so unwieldy) of the Shakespearean kite. Others have soared into fame by such means; why should not I? We ought not to study Shakespeare so many years for nothing, and I feel that a sacred duty would be neglected if the result of my researches were withheld from my suffering fellow-students. But let me be more merciful than other commentators; let me confine my remarks to a single play. From that one you may learn the tenor of my theories concerning the others; and if you wish for another specimen, I shall consider that I have achieved an unheard-of triumph in this department of literature.