Chapter V: Part 5

The purely ornamental manner of treating the Scarabaeus seems to indicate that it had neither religious nor historical value. Had the contrary been the case, we should inevitably have found some artistic quality sacrificed to their meaning, which is not the case with the intaglio more than with the insect representation. The subjects include all the objects known to familiar life, with all the incidents of martial experience,--horses, chariots, arms,--warriors wounded, defeated, dying, victorious, struggling. One I remember of a surgeon dressing the wound of a warrior, who throws up his hands in expression of the pain he suffers; another, of the Genius of Death coming to Hercules; another still, of two winged genii burying a warrior; one, of two warriors dividing the dead body of a third, etc., etc. The style of cutting gradually changes, probably under the influence of Greek artists,--who are known to have emigrated to Etruria from Corinth, exiled by their native tyrants,--and becomes quite Greek in delicacy of finish and grace of proportion; and the subject becomes almost entirely of Greek history or mythology,--the heroes of the Trojan war figuring largely.

Some of these are the perfection of intaglio: nothing in the gem-cutting of the Greeks could be more exquisite and purely beautiful than they are _as intaglio_. Yet, excellent as is the work, there is an essential difference between the Etruscan and Greek design, which no similarity of workmanship will ever conceal,--a difference as radical as that between Roman and Greek sculpture, and still more marked. The Etruscan, in its highest artistic development, preserves something of an Oriental fantasy and want of repose, and invariably falls short of the dignified and purely imaginative character of the Greek. It makes no exception to this rule, that there are Etruscan Scarabaei which have purely Greek intaglii, since we know that there were Greek artists of the highest rank among those who emigrated to Etruria, and that it was customary for one workman to make the Scarabaeus, and another the incision. But these are rare, and the trained eye of an artist need not be more puzzled to determine the Greek or Etruscan character of an intaglio, than to distinguish a Florentine picture from a Venetian. The difference is radical,--that between the objective and subjective art,--between an Indian shawl and a bit of drapery by Paul Veronese.

As to the uses of the Scarabaeus, we may be sure that they were at first intended as signets and mounted as rings in the simple and charming way of which we find so many examples in the Etruscan tombs, each end of a gold wire being passed through the perforated Scarabaeus, and the extremities secured by being wound round the wire at the opposite side of the stone. As soon as they become mere ornaments, a more elaborate mounting is seen on those worn as rings; and they appear in bracelets, necklaces, etc., in such profusion and confusion of subject, and style and date of workmanship, as to show plainly that they had lost all superstitious value or personal significance, and had become, like diamonds and pearls, a part of the gold-worker's material.

What the wealth and luxuriousness of those cities, now more deeply buried than Thebes or Nineveh, must have been, we can only imagine from the few traditions preserved by Roman historians,--grudging the glory of rivals so long and masters so often, though finally subjects of the irresistible force of crescent empire,--and from the gold-work known after so many centuries of sepulture. We know that Porsenna built himself a tomb in the solid rock,--a labyrinth whose secret no searchers of modern times have yet found, though they have burrowed around Clusium like marmots; and that over this he raised himself a monument,--five towers of stone, on the top of which was laid a domed platform of brass, and above this still towers and other brass, and higher yet, towers and a crowning bronze dome; and that from the edges of all these platforms hung thousands of bells, rung by the sea-breeze which every midday came up, and still comes, across the low Etrurian hills, to find the children she wafted from the land of the Parsee and Chaldee. It is hard to define a "civilization"; and we talk of the ages of gold and of bronze as if we knew the history of the whole world and its generations; but to me the few glimpses I get through the crevices of the ages that hide Etruria, as the hills of the Black Forest hide the fairies from the German child, indicate an age more fitting the epithet Golden than any since, and a nation the like of which, as of the good-folk, we shall see no more on earth. There were confederation without over-centralization; states side by side, without mutual hate or subjugation; wealth and power, without the corruption that destroys nations; and military prowess, without the unscrupulous ambition that cannot live and let live. They were instructors of Rome in all that Rome knew of civilization; many times masters of the imperial city, without ever envying it its existence; mild conquerors, and just lawgivers; and the City of the Seven Hills owed to the proximity of her seven Etrurian sisters all her early wisdom in politics, all her knowledge of the arts which refine and preserve; and to their love of those arts, and of the peace in which they flourish, the permission of her existence in those early centuries which preceded the fall of Veii.

It is not here the place to develop the moral of Etruscan history, or to investigate the political and social condition of the Etruscan people; though the links we have of the former, and the glimpses of the latter seen athwart the prejudices and mortified pride of the Roman historians, give the subject a fascinating interest. It is said that when the Roman armies invaded the territory of the northern Etruscan states, and their commander asked the name of the first city they approached, the unsuspecting subject of the Lars replied only,--not understanding the barbarian language,--[Greek: Chaire], "Hail!" and ever since the city has been known as Caere (and to its present inhabitants as Cerevetere,--_Caere vetus_). Until the fatal dissension which permitted the Romans to conquer Veii, the Etruscan states calmly and steadily repelled all invasion,--rarely, as in the time of Porsenna, turning aside to retaliate on Rome,--and still pursued their peaceful career, the sages of Egypt and the artists and poets of Greece giving wisdom and grace to their daily lives,--their temples the richest, their domestic life the fairest, their political condition the most prosperous, and their commerce the widest of all Italy, if not of all Europe.

Of it all, we have only the grave into which art sought to carry an immortality of its own, and from which religion strove to banish the drear gloom of the uncertain by surrounding the dead with all the objects familiar to their daily lives and the incidents which were the most antagonistic in impression to the darkness and silence to which they abandoned the beloved ones only when conquest and destruction had concealed the portals of their tombs, and ancestor and descendant had yielded to the same oblivion. Among the most interesting tombs at Tarquinii is one painted round with a wedding feast, the bridegroom kissing his bride, the wine-cups and garlands, the dance and song with the timing pipes, in colors fresh and sharp to-day amid the grave-damps, giving the challenge strangely to the all-destroyer. One much later in style of decoration has a procession of spirits driven by two demons,--Dantesque in power and simplicity of conception and evident faith, but telling a stranger story, in its contrast with the former, than anything we know in the history of the time,--a change from the golden to the iron days of Etruria.

The marvellous treasures of these tombs,--though only the few which, by comparative insignificance or fortunate accident, have escaped the unintelligent ravage of Roman or of Goth,--are like the scale or bone of Agassiz's saurian; and a necklace of Scarabaei alternated with the little pendent fantasies in gold, which we may see in the Campana collection, is the fragment from which we build Etruria, taking a little help from the time-defying walls, and a hint from the sarcophagus whose mutually embracing effigies of the two made one tell that position given to woman which made Rome what she was after the fraud of Romulus gave to Romans Etruscan wives.

The Etrurians were the gold-workers of all time. Like shawls of Cashmere, Greek statuary, Gothic architecture, and Saracenic tracery, Etruscan gold-work stands absolutely alone,--the result of an artistic instinct deeper than any rules or any instruction, and therefore not to be improved or repeated. It is characterized by the most subtile and lovely use of decorative masses and lines,--not for representation or imitation, which are not motives to enter into pure ornament, but for the highest effect of beautiful form and rich color, without giving the eye or mind any associative or intellectual suggestion. The vice of all modern ornamentation is, that it insists on mixing natural history with decoration. It cannot avoid preaching, as fairy stories now-a-days cannot stop without a moral for good children, and consequently is, like them, stupid and unreal. The best ornamentation is that which is farthest from imitation; and that, in gold-work, is the Etruscan. As we had occasion to say in the preceding pages, the Scarabaeus marks the difference between the moralizing Egyptian mind and the beauty-loving Etruscan. And if we might point a moral in an article defiant of morals, it would be in comparing the black, blood-stained history of Egypt with the fair record of the Larthian people. Beauty is its own moral and its own redeemer, and a mind that loves it may be corrupted to decay, but cannot be led into brutality or sunk into obscurity. Of the magnificence of the living people we can scarcely judge, since all we have now is the gorgeous array of those who were robed for the eternal rest. Castellani, in his pamphlet on the antique gold-work (_Dell' Oreficeria Antica, Discorso di August Castellani_), says: "But the excavations of Etruria which have preserved, what with pictures, apparel, and fabrics, so many of the antique sacerdotal ornaments, add almost nothing to the little we know about the names and uses of them. Micali says that 'the mechanism of the whole Etruscan government was beyond doubt priestly in its institutions.' After such a declaration by one of the most accurate narrators of ancient Italian history, I should scarcely know what to add to convey an idea of the pomp in which the priestly class of Etruria lived and robed itself. We can conjecture that the great poitrel in the Etruscan museum in the Vatican, the two magnificent bridles of the Campana museum, all the collars of extraordinary size and the large bullae of various forms and dimensions which come from the various collections, and the innumerable vases, paterae, cups, and goblets of gold, silver, and bronze found in the sepulchres, were all implements, furniture, and ornaments devoted to the service of religion. And such a multitude of objects may give some indication both of the multiplicity of the mysteries and sacred functions, and of the treasures which must have been contained in the antique temples, plundered by the barbarians, and then destroyed by the intolerant zeal of ignorant disciples of a new, triumphant religion."

What the wealth of the favored Etruscan fanes must have been may be conjectured from the fact that Dionysius carried from one on the sea-coast treasures to the amount of $40,000,000.

Of the gold-working, Castellani's restorations and imitations will give us a tolerable idea, so far as workmanship is concerned, though he himself confesses to be unable to equal all its qualities. I translate an interesting passage.

"Having proposed to ourselves, then, to restore as far as we could, and, so to speak, to renew the antique gold-work, we first set ourselves to search for the methods which the ancients must have used. It was observed that in the ornaments of gold all the parts in relief were by the ancients superimposed; that is to say, prepared separately and then placed in position by means of soldering or some chemical process, and not raised by stamping, casting, or chiselling. From this arises, perhaps, the something spontaneous, the freedom and artistic neglect which is seen in the works of the ancients, which appear all made by hands guided by thought, while the moderns impress, I would say, a certain perfect exactness on the things produced by them, which reveals the work of mechanical implements, and shows a want of the creative thought of the artist. Here, then, they sought to find means to compose and solder together so many pieces of gold of different forms, and of such minuteness, that, as we have said, it goes to the very extreme.

"We made innumerable experiments, and put in operation successively all the chemical agents, many metallic alloys, and the most powerful fluxes. We searched the writings of Pliny, of Theophilus, and of Cellini; the works of the Indian gold-workers and those of Genoa and of Malta were studied with all care; in short, there was forgotten no one of those sources whence we might hope for some hint. Finally, whence least we expected it came some real assistance.

"Hidden in the highest mountains of the Apennine range is a little town called St. Angelo in Vado, where are made gold and silver ornaments, with which the fair mountaineers decorate themselves. Here it appears that they preserve, at least in part, the oldest traditions of the art of working in gold and silver; and these workmen,... shut, so to speak, from all contact with modern things, make crowns of filigree strung with gilded pearls and ear-rings of that peculiar form which is called the 'navicella,' by such methods as perhaps the antique were made, so that these jewels resemble not a little those found in the Greek and Etruscan sepulchres, although for elegance of form and for taste they are far from equalling them....

"Not long since, when, examining with a lens the Etruscan jewels of our own collection, I discerned in the zones of the tiny grains (which are characteristic of the work of these patient artists) certain defects, such as those which are made in enamel by the melting of the gold. These observations suggested to me to try a new process, in order to reproduce this exceedingly fine grain-work, believed hitherto impossible to be even distantly imitated by modern gold-workers. I immediately commenced the new experiments, and the results were sufficiently satisfactory to enable me to say, at present, that the problem is nearly solved which for almost twenty years has defied us."

And even now Castellani's best grain-work is far from equalling in delicacy and perfection of workmanship some of the antiques in his own collection.

Our Scarabaeus has got into magnificent company, and modern taste finds that he deserved it; and certainly, _me judice_, nothing can be more purely artistic than a fine Scarabaeus, and the fascination that comes over whoever has ventured to dabble in that kind of wares is as dangerous as the chances of play. Be content with a single one! If you once get into comparison, you have abandoned yourself to the witchery of the unknown and unattainable perfection.

Engraved gems or simple intaglios in _pietra dura_ seem to belong to Greek art rather than Etruscan. The style of finishing the stone was more in accordance with the simple and elegant ideal of the Greek intellect. The intaglio was all to the Greek artist, and anything more was labor worse than wasted. His intaglio ceased to be ornamentation, and passed into the category of ideal work. And there are intaglii of Greek workmanship which are as lovely as it is possible to conceive anything,--all the spirit and perfect proportion of the antique sculpture concentrated in an oval, an inch by three quarters of an inch, executed with a delicacy which defies the naked eye to measure it!

A critical study of gems is an affair of years; yet, so far as all principles of design are concerned or characteristics of art, we may always consider the intaglii with the sculpture of the same epoch. The spirit and manner and perfections are the same. The first are, of course, the Greek; and a fine example is rarely found,--heads only, of Dioscorides or any equally famous artist, being valued at from $400 to $800, and even $1200 in the case of the Ariadne. The next in value are Etruscan, very fine examples being nearly as much esteemed as Greek, while the best Roman is, like Roman sculpture, but a far-off emulation in design, though often admirable in execution and finish. Very fine examples of either are not largely current, being taken up by collectors and consigned at once to public or private cabinets; but now and then one turns up, or is turned up by an unenterprising share-holder of the Campagna of Rome, or by some excavator or vineyard-digger in Sicily, Magna Graecia, or Greece proper, and, if it gets into commerce, finds its way generally to Rome, the centre of exchange for classical antiquities. The Scarabaei are mostly found in the Etruscan tombs, and occasionally outside the walls of the Etruscan cities,--swept out, may be, with the antique dust. But there are Roman imitations, made doubtless for some aristocratic descendant of the mythic Etrurian kings, like Maecenas, proud of that remote if subjugated ancestry, and looking wistfully backward to the Arcadia of which his family traditions only preserved the record. The Roman lapidaries were not nice workmen, and their imitations are most palpable.

Then, in the fifteenth century, came other and better lapidaries, and of better taste, many of whose Scarabaei are of great value, though still not difficult to distinguish from the Etruscan, when we study the design. The modern demand for them has produced innumerable impositions in the shape of copies,--poor Scarabaei retouched to fine ones, still bearing the marks of antiquity, and others whose under surface, being originally left blank, is engraved by the hired workmen of the modern Roman antiquaries, by whom they are sold as guaranteed antiques. This is the most common and dangerous cheat, and one which the easy conscience of the Italian merchant regards as perfectly justifiable; for has not the stone all the aroma of antiquity? A little shade darker in iniquity is the selling of stones entirely recut from broken larger ones, so that, though the stone remains identical, the workman puts a new face on it; and even this the antiquary will sell you as a veritable antique. Then there is the unmitigated swindle of the pure imitation, oftentimes so perfect that the most experienced judges are deceived. There is in fact no absolute certainty in the matter. There are antiques of which no doubt can be entertained, with characteristics utterly inimitable; but there are others as certainly antique which have none of these, but, taken without reference to their _placer_, are not to be distinguished with absolute certainty. I remember a necklace in the Campana museum, which, in a large number of unmistakable Scarabaei, had one for which I would not have paid two scudi on the Piazza Navona, so like the modern imitations did it look. The only reliable criterion for the majority of cases is the spirit of the design in the intaglio. Castellani says: "Antique Etruscan, Greek, or Roman Scarabaei are at present very rare, and their high price tempts the moderns to counterfeit them. And to such a perfection have they carried their business that it is with difficulty the best-trained eye can discover the fraud. It is not the stone, not the polish, nor even the incision, but a peculiar smoothness and _morbidezza_, which distinguishes the antique; and which only they who for many years have studied such kinds of work, or who, either in the way of trade or otherwise, have seen and handled many of the gems, are able to perceive."

A friend in Rome came to me one day with a request that I would go with him to see a Scarabaeus which he had taken a fancy to, and had engaged to buy if it were counted genuine by good judges. It was a superb stone, a deep carnelian, nearly opaque, exquisitely elaborated, and with an intaglio which I doubt not was Greek. It was the most beautiful one I had ever seen, and I gave my opinion, such as it was, in favor of its antiquity. It was purchased, and afterwards shown to a well-known dealer, by whom it was pronounced a cheat; and on inquiry it was discovered that the seller had had a copy made of the original, and, while he offered the latter for sale, delivered the former, which was so carefully and perfectly copied as to puzzle the eye even of the best-instructed amateur.

A merchant of antiquities with whom I have occasional dealings--we will call him A. because that is not his initial--brought me one day a large intaglio, which had the appearance of an archaic Etruscan work. A. is known as one of the _piu cognoscenti_ of Rome; and his dictum is worth any other two. He declared it an original antique of the rarest quality; and Odelli, the best gem-cutter in Rome, coincided in the opinion. He held it at two thousand francs, but would have sold it to me for eighteen hundred, I suppose. I didn't bite, and after a few weeks lured the collector of whom he had bought it--one of those who make it a business to haunt the markets, and visit distant cities and excavations, to purchase and sell again to the Roman antiquaries--to boast his prowess as compared with that of A., who had bitten him severely several times in their dealings; and, in the full tide of his self-glorification, I turned the conversation on the black agate, now become famous among the dealers. He could not resist the temptation, and told me all about it. "A. believes it to be antique, don't he?" "O, he is certain of it," said I. "Well, I'll tell you how it is: I bought the thing of the man who made it, and paid him three scudi for it. I took it to A. and offered it to him for six; but he refused it, thinking it to be a paste. I took it away again, and, having had it tested as a stone, offered it to him for twenty. After examining it and keeping it a few days, he offered me twelve. I said no,--eighteen. _He_ said no. I said sixteen, and he offered me fourteen, which I took. The fact is," said he, "no one is able to say for certain if a stone is antique or not. A. has the best judgment in Rome, but you see how he is deceived." I bought of the same man a small engraved emerald, which he had just purchased of a peasant, and, without much examination, sold me for one scudo, as a basso-impero of ordinary quality. My eyes were better, and had seen, in what he thought a handful of flowers, a cross; and on cleaning it we found it to be an early Christian stone of much greater value than he supposed, to his great chagrin.

If the perfections of our Scarabaeus give us a glimpse of Etruscan existence, we may perhaps gather from the gems some notion of what Rome was, beyond what historians have written, or the ruins of her palaces and tombs have shown. The quantity of intaglii alone, such as they are, which are dug up in the gardens and vineyards around Rome every year, is incredible to one who has not watched day by day the acquisitions of the antiquity shops, and the stalls of the Piazza Navona. Very few of them are of any artistic value; but the fact that so many were made use of is a marvel in itself, and implies a greater luxury than marble palaces even hint at. I one day remarked to a peasant who brought me some intaglii to sell, that the ancients must have worn a great many rings; and he replied, that in his country the richer people wore so many that they had to hold their hands up to keep them from falling off. On inquiry I found that he came from the Abruzzi, where it seems that the people still hold on to something of the antique customs; for we know that the Romans began the fashion of covering the fingers to that extravagant degree, so that the number of rings possessed by a family of great wealth must have been almost inestimable. At every irruption of the barbarians, the villas that covered the Campagna for miles around Rome must have felt the first fury of their ravages; and as the stones contained in the ornaments were of no use to the plunderers, they were broken out and thrown away, many of them to be uncovered, more than a thousand years later, by the spade of the trencher in the vineyards. One of a number of peasants playing at bowls in one of the roads near Rome struck with his ball a point of hardened mud, which flew in pieces, disclosing an exquisite intaglio head of Nero in carnelian, in perfect condition, for which the finder received ten scudi.

The laborers in the fields have so far learned the value of the stones they find, that it becomes almost impossible anywhere in the vicinity of Rome to buy them of the finders, even at the most extravagant prices. Unable to distinguish in quality, and knowing that certain stones have brought such and such prices, they refuse to sell any for a smaller price, but retain them until the next _festa_, when they carry them in succession to all the _mercanti di pietre_ in Rome, to see which will offer the highest price,--a kind of vendue which evinces greater trade-cleverness than the Italians get credit for, and which has the effect of bringing the dealers at once to their best terms. No matter what price you offer, they never accept it until they have tried the value it has for others. It is only when a stone has such great value that it justifies paying a price passing the imagination of the peasant, that the buyer can profit by buying from the first hand.

Of the finer kind of intaglii, there is little danger of buying counterfeits, since the art of gem-cutting is too low now to permit of such counterfeits as might be mistaken for first-rate antiques. Of the common kind, again, there are those which, cut with a certain conventionalism in design and a facility in execution which incessant repetition only can produce, cannot be imitated except at a cost utterly beyond their market value. Like the designs on the Etruscan vases, their main excellence is, that, being so good, they should be done so facilely. An imitator loses the rapidity and spirit of execution. The mass of imitations are of things only tolerably good, and of things whose characteristics are in the execution merely, as in the Roman and conventional Etruscan work.

I will close with one bit of advice to my readers. If your fancy finds any satisfaction in _Scarabaei ed altri_, let your acquisition stop with the first example,--take a sample brick from antiquity. If you once commence collecting them in ever so small a way, or with any excuse to your own pocket, you will find yourself subject to a fascination more irresistible than the love of money,--more absorbing than the search for the philosopher's stone. While you are in Rome, you will find yourself unable to keep your feet from ways that lead to the antiquaries, or your money out of the hands of a class (with two or three exceptions) of cheats. You will find the extravagances of one day coming to be the niggardness of the next; and feverish anxieties lest you should not succeed in getting this gem, and irritating regrets that you too soon bought that, will divide your tortured soul. And when you finally leave Rome, as you must some day, you will always harbor a small canker-worm of immitigable grief, that you did not purchase one stone you saw and thought too high-priced; and will pass thenceforward no curiosity-shop without looking in the windows a moment, in the hope of finding some gem strayed away into parts where no man knows its value. If you feel in you the capacity of loving them, let them alone.

MIANTOWONA.

Long ere the Pale Face
Crossed the Great Water,
Miantowona
Passed, with her beauty,
Into a legend
Pure as a wild-flower
Found in a broken
Ledge by the sea-side.

Let us revere them,--
These wildwood legends,
Born of the camp-fire!
Let them be handed
Down to our children,--
Richest of heirlooms!
No land may claim them:
They are ours only,
Like our grand rivers,
Like our vast prairies,
Like our dead heroes!

In the pine-forest,
Guarded by shadows,
Lieth the haunted
Pond of the Red Men.
Ringed by the emerald
Mountains, it lies there
Like an untarnished
Buckler of silver,
Dropped in that valley
By the Great Spirit!
Weird are the figures
Traced on its margins,--
Vine-work and leaf-work,
Knots of sword-grasses,
Moonlight and starlight,
Clouds scudding northward!
Sometimes an eagle
Flutters across it;
Sometimes a single
Star on its bosom
Nestles till morning.

Far in the ages,
Miantowona,
Rose of the Hurons,
Came to these waters.
Where the dank greensward
Slopes to the pebbles,
Miantowona
Sat in her anguish.
Ice to her maidens,
Ice to the chieftains,
Fire to her lover!
Here he had won her,
Here they had parted,
Here could her tears flow.

With unwet eyelash,
Miantowona
Nursed her old father,
Oldest of Hurons,
Soothed his complainings,
Smiled when he chid her
Vaguely for nothing,--
He was so weak now,
Like a shrunk cedar
White with the hoar-frost
Sometimes she gently
Linked arms with maidens,
Joined in their dances:
Not with her people,
Not in the wigwam,
Wept for her lover.

Ah! who was like him?
Fleet as an arrow,
Strong as a bison,
Lithe as a panther,
Soft as the south-wind,
Who was like Wawah?
There is one other
Stronger and fleeter,
Bearing no wampum,
Wearing no war-paint,
Ruler of councils,
Chief of the war-path,--
Who can gainsay him,
Who can defy him?
His is the lightning,
His is the whirlwind.
Let us be humble,
We are but ashes,--
'T is the Great Spirit!

Ever at nightfall
Miantowona
Strayed from the lodges,
Passed through the shadows
Into the forest:
There by the pond-side
Spread her black tresses
Over her forehead.
Sad is the loon's cry
Heard in the twilight;
Sad is the night-wind,
Moaning and moaning;
Sadder the stifled
Sob of a widow!

Low on the pebbles
Murmured the water:
Often she fancied
It was young Wawah
Playing the reed-flute.
Sometimes a dry branch
Snapped in the forest:
Then she rose, startled,
Ruddy as sunrise,
Warm for his coming!
But when he came not,
Back through the darkness,
Half broken-hearted,
Miantowona
Went to her people.

When an old oak dies,
First 't is the tree-tops,
Then the low branches,
Then the gaunt stem goes:
So fell Tawanda,
Oldest of Hurons,
Chief of the chieftains.

Miantowona
Wept not, but softly
Closed the sad eyelids;
With her own fingers
Fastened the deer-skin
Over his shoulders;
Then laid beside him
Ash-bow and arrows,
Pipe-bowl and wampum,
Dried corn and bear-meat,--
All that was needful
On the long journey.
Thus old Tawanda
Went to the hunting
Grounds of the Red Man.

Then, as the dirges
Rose from the village,
Miantowona
Stole from the mourners,
Stole through the cornfields,
Passed like a phantom
Into the shadows
Through the pine-forest.

One who had watched her--
It was Nahoho,
Loving her vainly--
Saw, as she passed him,
That in her features
Made his stout heart quail.
He could but follow.
Quick were her footsteps,
Light as a snow-flake,
Leaving no traces
On the white clover.

Like a trained runner,
Winner of prizes,
Into the woodlands
Plunged the young chieftain.
Once he abruptly
Halted, and listened;
Then he sped forward
Faster and faster
Toward the bright water.
Breathless he reached it.
Why did he crouch then,
Stark as a statue?
What did he see there
Could so appall him?
Only a circle
Swiftly expanding,
Fading before him;
But, as he watched it,
Up from the centre,
Slowly, superbly
Rose a Pond-Lily.

One cry of wonder,
Shrill as the loon's call,
Rang through the forest,
Startling the silence,
Startling the mourners
Chanting the death-song.
Forth from the village,
Flocking together
Came all the Hurons,--
Striplings and warriors,
Maidens and old men,
Squaws with pappooses.

No word was spoken:
There stood the Hurons
On the dank greensward,
With their swart faces
Bowed in the twilight.
What did they see there?
Only a Lily
Rocked on the azure
Breast of the water.

Then they turned sadly
Each to the other,
Tenderly murmuring,
"Miantowona!"
Soft as the dew falls
Down through the midnight,
Cleaving the starlight,
Echo repeated,
"Miantowona!"

PASSAGES FROM HAWTHORNE'S NOTE-BOOKS.

X.

Sunday, _April 9_, 1843.--....After finishing my record in the journal, I sat a long time in grandmother's chair, thinking of many things.... My spirits were at a lower ebb than they ever descend to when I am not alone; nevertheless, neither was I absolutely sad. Many times I wound and rewound Mr. Thoreau's little musical box; but certainly its peculiar sweetness had evaporated, and I am pretty sure that I should throw it out of the window were I doomed to hear it long and often. It has not an infinite soul. When it was almost as dark as the moonlight would let it be, I lighted the lamp, and went on with Tieck's tale, slowly and painfully, often wishing for help in my difficulties. At last I determined to learn a little about pronouns and verbs before proceeding further, and so took up the phrase-book, with which I was commendably busy, when, at about a quarter to nine, came a knock at my study-door, and, behold, there was Molly with a letter! How she came by it I did not ask, being content to suppose it was brought by a heavenly messenger. I had not expected a letter; and what a comfort it was to me in my loneliness and sombreness! I called Molly to take her note (enclosed), which she received with a face of delight as broad and bright as the kitchen fire. Then I read, and re-read, and re-re-read, and quadruply, quintuply, and sextuply re-read my epistle, until I had it all by heart, and then continued to re-read it for the sake of the penmanship. Then I took up the phrase-book again; but could not study, and so bathed and retired, it being now not far from ten o'clock. I lay awake a good deal in the night, but saw no ghost.

I arose about seven, and found that the upper part of my nose, and the region round about, was grievously discolored; and at the angle of the left eye there is a great spot of almost black purple, and a broad streak of the same hue semicircling beneath either eye, while green, yellow, and orange overspread the circumjacent country. It looks not unlike a gorgeous sunset, throwing its splendor over the heaven of my countenance. It will behoove me to show myself as little as possible; else people will think I have fought a pitched battle.... The Devil take the stick of wood! What had I done, that it should bemaul me so? However, there is no pain, though, I think, a very slight affection of the eyes.

This forenoon I began to write, and caught an idea by the skirts, which I intend to hold fast, though it struggles to get free. As it was not ready to be put upon paper, however, I took up the Dial, and finished reading the article on Mr. Alcott. It is not very satisfactory, and it has not taught me much. Then I read Margaret's article on Canova, which is good. About this time the dinner-bell rang, and I went down without much alacrity, though with a good appetite enough.... It was in the angle of my _right_ eye, not my left, that the blackest purple was collected. But they both look like the very Devil.

_Half past five o'clock._--After writing the above,... I again set to work on Tieck's tale, and worried through several pages; and then, at half past four, threw open one of the western windows of my study, and sallied forth to take the sunshine. I went down through the orchard to the river-side. The orchard-path is still deeply covered with snow; and so is the whole visible universe, except streaks upon the hillsides, and spots in the sunny hollows, where the brown earth peeps through. The river, which a few days ago was entirely imprisoned, has now broken its fetters; but a tract of ice extended across from near the foot of the monument to the abutment of the old bridge, and looked so solid that I supposed it would yet remain for a day or two. Large cakes and masses of ice came floating down the current, which, though not very violent, hurried along at a much swifter pace than the ordinary one of our sluggish river-god. These ice-masses, when they struck the barrier of ice above mentioned, acted upon it like a battering-ram, and were themselves forced high out of the water, or sometimes carried beneath the main sheet of ice. At last, down the stream came an immense mass of ice, and, striking the barrier about at its centre, it gave way, and the whole was swept onward together, leaving the river entirely free, with only here and there a cake of ice floating quietly along. The great accumulation, in its downward course, hit against a tree that stood in mid-current, and caused it to quiver like a reed; and it swept quite over the shrubbery that bordered what, in summer-time, is the river's bank, but which is now nearly the centre of the stream. Our river in its present state has quite a noble breadth. The little hillock which formed the abutment of the old bridge is now an island with its tuft of trees. Along the hither shore a row of trees stand up to their knees, and the smaller ones to their middles, in the water; and afar off, on the surface of the stream, we see tufts of bushes emerging, thrusting up their heads, as it were, to breathe. The water comes over the stone wall, and encroaches several yards on the boundaries of our orchard. [Here the supper-bell rang.] If our boat were in good order, I should now set forth on voyages of discovery, and visit nooks on the borders of the meadows, which by and by will be a mile or two from the water's edge. But she is in very bad condition, full of water, and, doubtless, as leaky as a sieve.

On coming from supper, I found that little Puss had established herself in the study, probably with intent to pass the night here. She now lies on the footstool between my feet, purring most obstreperously. The day of my wife's departure, she came to me, talking with the greatest earnestness; but whether it was to condole with me on my loss, or to demand my redoubled care for herself, I could not well make out. As Puss now constitutes a third part of the family, this mention of her will not appear amiss. How Molly employs herself, I know not. Once in a while, I hear a door slam like a thunder-clap; but she never shows her face, nor speaks a word, unless to announce a visitor or deliver a letter. This day, on my part, will have been spent without exchanging a syllable with any human being, unless something unforeseen should yet call for the exercise of speech before bedtime.

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_Monday, April 10._--I sat till eight o'clock, meditating upon this world and the next,... and sometimes dimly shaping out scenes of a tale. Then betook myself to the German phrase-book. Ah! these are but dreary evenings. The lamp would not brighten my spirits, though it was duly filled.... This forenoon was spent in scribbling, by no means to my satisfaction, until past eleven, when I went to the village. Nothing in our box at the post-office. I read during the customary hour, or more, at the Athenaeum, and returned without saying a word to mortal. I gathered from some conversation that I heard, that a son of Adam is to be buried this afternoon from the meeting-house; but the name of the deceased escaped me. It is no great matter, so it be but written in the Book of Life.

My variegated face looks somewhat more human to-day; though I was unaffectedly ashamed to meet anybody's gaze, and therefore turned my back or my shoulder as much as possible upon the world. At dinner, behold an immense joint of roast veal! I would willingly have had some assistance in the discussion of this great piece of calf. I am ashamed to eat alone; it becomes the mere gratification of animal appetite,--the tribute which we are compelled to pay to our grosser nature; whereas in the company of another it is refined and moralized and spiritualized; and over our earthly victuals (or rather _vittles_, for the former is a very foolish mode of spelling),--over our earthly vittles is diffused a sauce of lofty and gentle thoughts, and tough meat is mollified with tender feelings. But oh! these solitary meals are the dismallest part of my present experience. When the company rose from table, they all, in my single person, ascended to the study, and employed themselves in reading the article on Oregon in the Democratic Review. Then they plodded onward in the rugged and bewildering depths of Tieck's tale until five o'clock, when, with one accord, they went out to split wood. This has been a gray day, with now and then a sprinkling of snow-flakes through the air.... To-day no more than yesterday have I spoken a word to mortal.... It is now sunset, and I must meditate till dark.

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_April 11._--I meditated accordingly, but without any very wonderful result. Then at eight o'clock bothered myself till after nine with this eternal tale of Tieck. The forenoon was spent in scribbling; but at eleven o'clock my thoughts ceased to flow,--indeed, their current has been wofully interrupted all along,--so I threw down my pen, and set out on the daily journey to the village. Horrible walking! I wasted the customary hour at the Athenaeum, and returned home, if home it may now be called. Till dinner-time I labored on Tieck's tale, and resumed that agreeable employment after the banquet.

Just when I was at the point of choking with a huge German word, Molly announced Mr. Thoreau. He wished to take a row in the boat, for the last time, perhaps, before he leaves Concord. So we emptied the water out of her, and set forth on our voyage. She leaks, but not more than she did in the autumn. We rowed to the foot of the hill which borders the North Branch, and there landed, and climbed the moist and snowy hillside for the sake of the prospect. Looking down the river, it might well have been mistaken for an arm of the sea, so broad is now its swollen tide; and I could have fancied that, beyond one other headland, the mighty ocean would outspread itself before the eye. On our return we boarded a large cake of ice, which was floating down the river, and were borne by it directly to our own landing-place, with the boat towing behind.

Parting with Mr. Thoreau I spent half an hour in chopping wood, when Molly informed me that Mr. Emerson wished to see me. He had brought a letter of Ellery Channing, written in a style of very pleasant humor. This being read and discussed, together with a few other matters, he took his leave, since which I have been attending to my journalizing duty; and thus this record is brought down to the present moment.

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_April 25._--Spring is advancing, sometimes with sunny days, and sometimes, as is the case now, with chill, moist, sullen ones. There is an influence in the season that makes it almost impossible for me to bring my mind down to literary employment; perhaps because several months' pretty constant work has exhausted that species of energy,--perhaps because in spring it is more natural to labor actively than to think. But my impulse now is to be idle altogether,--to lie in the sun, or wander about and look at the revival of Nature from her deathlike slumber, or to be borne down the current of the river in my boat. If I had wings, I would gladly fly; yet would prefer to be wafted along by a breeze, sometimes alighting on a patch of green grass, then gently whirled away to a still sunnier spot.... O, how blest should I be were there nothing to do! Then I would watch every inch and hair's breadth of the progress of the season; and not a leaf should put itself forth, in the vicinity of our old mansion, without my noting it. But now, with the burden of a continual task upon me, I have not freedom of mind to make such observations. I merely see what is going on in a very general way. The snow, which, two or three weeks ago, covered hill and valley, is now diminished to one or two solitary specks in the visible landscape; though doubtless there are still heaps of it in the shady places in the woods. There have been no violent rains to carry it off: it has diminished gradually, inch by inch, and day after day; and I observed, along the roadside, that the green blades of grass had sometimes sprouted on the very edge of the snowdrift, the moment that the earth was uncovered.

The pastures and grass-fields have not yet a general effect of green; nor have they that cheerless brown tint which they wear in later autumn, when vegetation has entirely ceased. There is now a suspicion of verdure,--the faint shadow of it,--but not the warm reality. Sometimes, in a happy exposure,--there is one such tract across the river, the carefully cultivated mowing-field, in front of an old red homestead,--such patches of land wear a beautiful and tender green, which no other season will equal; because, let the grass be green as it may hereafter, it will not be so set off by surrounding barrenness. The trees in our orchard, and elsewhere, have as yet no leaves; yet to the most careless eye they appear full of life and vegetable blood. It seems as if, by one magic touch, they might instantaneously put forth all their foliage, and the wind, which now sighs through their naked branches, might all at once find itself impeded by innumerable leaves. This sudden development would be scarcely more wonderful than the gleam of verdure which often brightens, in a moment, as it were, along the slope of a bank or roadside. It is like a gleam of sunlight. Just now it was brown, like the rest of the scenery: look again, and there is an apparition of green grass. The Spring, no doubt, comes onward with fleeter footsteps, because Winter has lingered so long that, at best, she can hardly retrieve half the allotted term of her reign.

The river, this season, has encroached farther on the land than it has been known to do for twenty years past. It has formed along its course a succession of lakes, with a current through the midst. My boat has lain at the bottom of the orchard, in very convenient proximity to the house. It has borne me over stone fences; and, a few days ago, Ellery Channing and I passed through two rails into the great northern road, along which we paddled for some distance. The trees have a singular appearance in the midst of waters. The curtailment of their trunks quite destroys the proportions of the whole tree; and we become conscious of a regularity and propriety in the forms of Nature, by the effect of this abbreviation. The waters are now subsiding, but gradually. Islands become annexed to the mainland, and other islands emerge from the flood, and will soon, likewise, be connected with the continent. We have seen on a small scale the process of the deluge, and can now witness that of the reappearance of the earth.

Crows visited us long before the snow was off. They seem mostly to have departed now, or else to have betaken themselves to remote depths of the woods, which they haunt all summer long. Ducks came in great numbers, and many sportsmen went in pursuit of them, along the river; but they also have disappeared. Gulls come up from seaward, and soar high overhead, flapping their broad wings in the upper sunshine. They are among the most picturesque birds that I am acquainted with; indeed, quite the most so, because the manner of their flight makes them almost stationary parts of the landscape. The imagination has time to rest upon them; they have not flitted away in a moment. You go up among the clouds, and lay hold of these soaring gulls, and repose with them upon the sustaining atmosphere. The smaller birds,--the birds that build their nests in our trees, and sing for us at morning-red,--I will not describe.... But I must mention the great companies of blackbirds--more than the famous "four-and-twenty" who were baked in a pie--that congregate on the tops of contiguous trees, and vociferate with all the clamor of a turbulent political meeting. Politics must certainly be the subject of such a tumultuous debate; but still there is a melody in each individual utterance, and a harmony in the general effect. Mr. Thoreau tells me that these noisy assemblages consist of three different species of blackbirds; but I forget the other two. Robins have been long among us, and swallows have more recently arrived.

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_April 26._--Here is another misty day, muffling the sun. The lilac shrubs under my study-window are almost in leaf. In two or three days more, I may put forth my hand and pluck a green bough. These lilacs appear to be very aged, and have lost the luxuriant foliage of their prime. Old age has a singular aspect in lilacs, rose-bushes, and other ornamental shrubs. It seems as if such things, as they grow only for beauty, ought to flourish in immortal youth, or at least to die before their decrepitude. They are trees of Paradise, and therefore not naturally subject to decay; but have lost their birthright by being transplanted hither. There is a kind of ludicrous unfitness in the idea of a venerable rose-bush; and there is something analogous to this in human life. Persons who can only be graceful and ornamental--who can give the world nothing but flowers--should die young, and never be seen with gray hairs and wrinkles, any more than the flower-shrubs with mossy bark and scanty foliage, like the lilacs under my window. Not that beauty is not worthy of immortality. Nothing else, indeed, is worthy of it; and thence, perhaps, the sense of impropriety when we see it triumphed over by time. Apple-trees, on the other hand, grow old without reproach. Let them live as long as they may, and contort themselves in whatever fashion they please, they are still respectable, even if they afford us only an apple or two in a season, or none at all. Human flower-shrubs, if they will grow old on earth, should, beside their lovely blossoms, bear some kind of fruit that will satisfy earthly appetites; else men will not be satisfied that the moss should gather on them.

Winter and Spring are now struggling for the mastery in my study; and I yield somewhat to each, and wholly to neither. The window is open, and there is a fire in the stove. The day when the window is first thrown open should be an epoch in the year; but I have forgotten to record it. Seventy or eighty springs have visited this old house; and sixty of them found old Dr. Ripley here,--not always old, it is true, but gradually getting wrinkles and gray hairs, and looking more and more the picture of winter. But he was no flower-shrub, but one of those fruit-trees or timber-trees that acquire a grace with their old age. Last Spring found this house solitary for the first time since it was built; and now again she peeps into our open windows and finds new faces here....