Chapter V (3)

THE water stood in our eyes, reader, (and it will stand in yours if you have a heart to feel,) as we perused the subjoined eloquent passage of a letter from a friend to whom our readers have often been indebted for amusement, entertainment, and instruction. What a startling picture it presents of the first approaches of that 'hectic,' 'phthisic,' 'consumption,' or whatever be the favorite title of that most wily and fatal foe, who in one hand presents the insidious olive-branch, and in the other conceals his inevitable sword, cutting down youth in its blossom and manhood in its fruit! 'For very many years, from twelve to two have been my hours of retiring, and my exercise has been nothing, or nearly so, during the day. One result has been, that I have read one half of the Greek and Roman classics, and feasted largely in modern literature. A parallel result has been, that owing to corporeal sluggishness and nervousness, the curse of the sedentary, I have no doubt reaped less pleasure and profit than I might have done from half that assiduity coupled with a due regard to the wants of the body. The final result is, that an iron constitution is now largely disorganized; and from the constant presence of a dull, deep, stationary pain in my left side beneath the ribs, and fixed I fear upon the lungs, I begin to indulge in sad and deep forebodings. Often, when wakened by its painful urgency, I lie in the silence of the night, listening to my heart's deep beatings, and recall my early and yet unfulfilled dreams--dreams oh! how glorious!--and array before my unsated eyes this world, with all its lovely learning, and sweet poetry, and burning passion; and reflect how unfit I am to die, and try the conditions of a new existence, before I have fulfilled the duties and perused the mysteries of this, and then think of the wormy bed, and anticipate the hour when I shall lie there, closing my eyes to coloring and my ears to sound; the impatient longing I have sometimes felt for death is repaid by an indefinable horror; and between the tenderness of natural regret and the shudderings of unconquerable awe, passion masters pride, and both sink to meekness and humility in a flood of gushing tears!' * * * '_The Warning_,' in its _spirit_ at least, is borrowed. We are sorry to intimate this, but it is a _fact_, friend 'P.' You could not say that you have not read the poem which commences as follows, (if we rightly remember,) 'could you, now?' Guess not:

'ALL in the wild March morning I heard the angels call;
It was when the moon was setting, and the dark was over all;
The trees began to whisper, and the wind began to roll,
And in the wild March morning I heard them call my soul!'

* * * * *

We gave on one occasion an extract from one of the 'Short Patent Sermons' of 'DOW, Jr.,' illustrating the endless extent of _for ever_. The same sublimity of conception is apparent in the subjoined glance at the magnitude of the planets, and the unsocial 'distance' they keep up between one another: 'If a person were sufficiently long-legged to step from star to star, and were to go at a decent dog-trot, he might as soon think of travelling from everlasting to everlasting and back again in a day, as to undertake to find an end to the planets which roll round their respective suns, as far beyond this insignificant solar system of ours as the farthest flight of imagination is beyond the jump of a ham-stringed grasshopper!' By the by, 'speaking of DOW,' here is a capital anecdote of the veritable LORENZO, which is worthy of record. 'It appears' that DOW, in one of his odd, quaint sermons, declared that he 'had known sinners so very wicked that they actually bu'st!' This statement threw an old, ignorant, and fat impenitent present into a state of alarm and perspiration; and home he waddled, in mortal terror. At night, in the horror of his anticipated explosion, he rolled about until he could no longer bear it. He fancied he was already swelling. He rose and attempted to dress himself, in order to go out 'al fresco.' Who can paint his consternation, when he found he could but just strain the garments over his limbs, and even then they would not meet! He was suffering a rapid sin-dropsy; his iniquities were coming to light! He screamed in the agony of his fear; and a lamp being brought in, he found that in his haste he had put on his brother's clothes. 'The impression, however, says our informant, a clergyman of the Church of England, 'was a salutary one, for he became a pious man.' * * * THE 'KNICKERBOCKER'-STEAMER, that floating palace of the Hudson, must not pass unnoticed by 'the editor hereof.' To _describe_ her, however, and her superb 'belongings,' her Dutch paintings and quaint adornments, is quite another thing. We have no space for an _essay_ in this department of MAGA. It shall suffice to say, therefore, that this truly magnificent vessel is in all respects worthy the honored _name_ she bears. Could we say more? Appropos of this: It was not until the first volume of the KNICKERBOCKER appeared, (this is our TWENTY-SECOND, reader; and, _non_-reader, an excellent opportunity for you to commence _your_ subscription,) that one met our noble potronymic 'about town.' How is it _now_? Let the KNICKERBOCKER steamers, bathing-houses, omnibii, restaurants, clubs--aquatic, literary, social, military, scientific, and artistic--and eke the Temperance-halls and root-beer _perambulatories_, make answer! Their reply is triumphant; and yet 'our' children play with the neighbor's children, just the same as if these were not 'parlous facts!' This, however, is one of the tendencies of that republican form of government under which it is our happiness to reside! * * * ARE not these lines of MOTHERWELL very beautiful? Such thoughts have we had a thousand times; and we desire to thank the writer for expressing them for us so well:

'FLOW down, cold rivulet, to the sea,
Thy tribute wave deliver;
No more by thee my steps shall be,
For ever and for ever.

Flow softly down, by lawn and lea,
A rivulet, then a river:
Nowhere by thee my steps shall be,
For ever and for ever.

But here will sigh thine alder-tree,
And here thine aspen shiver;
And here by thee will hum the bee,
For ever and for ever.

A hundred suns will stream on thee,
A thousand moons will quiver;
But not by thee my steps shall be,
For ever and for ever!'

* * * * *

SMALL game, Mein Herr, of Albany--small game! A 'two-penny dip' would be wasted on it. Our correspondent's critique reminds us of the tailor in Laputa, who being employed in making a suit for the facetious GULLIVER, disdained the vulgar measures of his profession, and took that gentleman's altitude by the help of a quadrant! We can pounce upon _fair_ game, but we cannot 'like French falcons, fly at any thing we see.' Beside, if the satire was 'caviare to the GENERAL' of the '_New-Mirror_,' how should it find a place in _these_ pages? Our friend 'the Brigadier' is a fastidious and a prudent person. Did he not alter a quotation from BYRON, in one of our friend GRAHAM's 'Sketches by a Briefless Lawyer,' wherein '_waistcoat_-pocket' was substituted for that startling indelicacy, '_breeches_-pocket?' Verily, he did! * * * THE following reflections upon the death of friends, and the memories of the departed, which we transcribe from a private letter to the Editor, are too beautiful and true to be confined to one or two readers only: 'I have read the exhortations of PLUTARCH, and SENECA, and JEREMY TAYLOR, and others, all hinging upon the idea that pain and bereavement are natural, necessary, inevitable, in this world of successive bloom and desolation. But pain is to me none the less painful because natural, nor separation less overwhelming for its necessity; nor yet is the blasting of cherished hopes less withering to my heart because the same blight has fallen on the verdure of other hearts, and kindred tears are falling from a world of mourners in a wide companionship of grief. 'The head may _reason_, but the heart will _feel_.' Time, however, is a great and effectual healer. Though a tree be lopped to the very root, the maimed giant will send up a new creation of vegetable strength. So the human soul, like some evergreen creeper, if you cut off or tear away its branches of affection with the object round which they entwined themselves, will send forth other tendrils, and wind its clinging arms around some other idol, embalming it with fragrance and clothing it in verdure. The sweet lines of WORDSWORTH are most practical and true, as well as poetical:

'There is a comfort in the strength of love:
'T will make a thing endurable, which else
Would overset tire brain, or break the heart.'

'And while there is one, and more than one, whose redemption from their iron sleep I would gladly purchase by a subtraction from the remnant of my own dismembered life, and principally that visible gushing tears, and the test of so great a sacrifice, might be some atonement for causeless misconceptions, and some proof of warm love beneath the outward shows of an inflexible hardness; yet I know that Time in his weary revolutions will soon bring us all together in a world of infinite knowledge, and liberal forgiveness, and uncircumscribed affection; a world where we shall 'see face to face,' and feel heart to heart; 'where no grief makes the heart heavy and the eye-lids red.' * * * STANDING with a friend the other day by the river-side, to take in the noble _coup d'oeil_ of the new steamer KNICKERBOCKER, we overheard a little anecdote connected with water-craft, which made our companion merry all the way home; which we shall here transcribe; '_and_ which it is hoped may please.' 'It seems there was' (nay, we know not _seems_, there _was_) a verdant youth from the interior of Connecticut, for the first time on board a steam-boat. His curiosity was unbounded. He examined here, and he scrutinized there; he wormed from the engineer a compulsory lecture on the steam-engine and mechanics in general, and from the fireman an essay on the power of white heat, and the 'average consumption of pine cord-'ood.' At length his inquiring mind was checked in its investigations, and 'the pursuit of knowledge under difficulties' made at once apparent. He had mounted to the wheel-house, and was asking the pilot: 'What you doin' _that_ for, Mister?--what _good_ does't do?' when he was observed by the captain, who said, in a gruff voice: 'Go away from there! Don't you see the sign, 'No talkin' to the man at the hellum? Go 'way!' 'Oh! certing--yäes; I only wanted to know ----' 'Well you _do_ know now that you can't talk to him; so go 'way!' With unwilling willingness, the verdant youth came down; and, as it was soon dark, he presently went below; but four or five times before he 'turned in,' he was on deck, and near the wheel-house, eyeing it with a thoughtful curiosity; but with the captain's public rebuff still in his ears, venturing to ask no questions. In the first gray of the dawn, he was up, and on deck; and after some hesitation, perceiving nobody near but the pilot, who was turning the wheel, as when he had last seen him, he preferred his 'suppressed question' in the oblique style peculiar to his region: 'Wal, goin' it _yit_ ha?--been at it all night?--_screëwin on her up?_--eh?' What vague conjectures must have bothered the poor querist's brain, during the night, may be partly inferred from the absurd but 'settled conviction' to which he had at length arrived! * * * WHAT a mingling of the dead Past with the busy, bustling Present pervades the mind of the thoughtful observer, as he looks down from the rising tower of the New Trinity Church upon tens of thousands of the dead whose bones crowd the grave-yard below; bones, and dust and ashes, over which are thrown in wild confusion huge blocks from the quarry, and piles of uprooted grave-stones, and slabs and urns of marble! As you have marked an elaborately-carved stone sink slowly from its ponderous 'drop' to its place in an edifice which is to stand for ages, did you never scan closely its grained streaks, its delicate chissellings, with the thought that when you were senseless clay, that _very stone_ might arrest the eye of another, gazing upon it with sensations like your own? So at least have we thought, concerning those who have gone before us, as we have looked at the ornamental marbles of our older public buildings, erected in another age. But from the countless Dead, who slumber below, how solemnly comes up toward this rising tower the voice of warning and monition! Each 'storied urn' takes the form of the Departed whom it commemorates, and seems to say:

'TIME was I stood, as thou dost now,
And viewed the Dead as thou dost me:
Ere long thou'lt lie as low as I,
And others stand to look on thee!'

* * * * *

Mr. WALLACE, the great musical _Wonder_, is not now in town, but, reader, should he return among us, be sure to neglect no opportunity to hear him. In his hands, the piano seems like an instrument hitherto unknown. It has the chant of woodland birds, the silver sound of dropping waters, and 'all voices of nature and of art.' We have heard no resemblance to Mr. WALLACE, as a pianist. But it is his violin which _speaks_ to us; and on this instrument no approach to Mr. WALLACE has been met with in this country. How exquisite the notes, pathetic, joyful, or in 'linked sweetness long drawn out' which he conjures from that most facile of all instruments! We would travel ten miles to hear him play, in his style, that ravishing melody, 'The Last Rose of Summer.' We shall have occasion, we hope, again to advert to the performances of Mr. WALLACE. He is yet a young man, and possesses the characteristic modesty of true genius; and has hardly yet learned that 'the world meets nobody half way;' in _his_ case, however, not a necessary lesson. * * * IF any of our town readers are fond, by way of literary variety and contrast, of disinterring the intellectual treasures of the buried Past, they will find 'pleasant employment and liberal wages' in glancing over the antique stores of Messrs. BARTLETT AND WELFORD, under the Astor House. We have been indebted to the courtesy of these gentlemen for sundry communings with authors who have been in their graves for five or six centuries. Every _ancient book_ is an argument in favor of the immortality of the soul. 'Fancy a deep-buried Mastodon, some fossil Megatherion, Icthyosaurus, were to begin to _speak_ from amid its rock-swathings, never so indistinctly! Yet the most extinct fossils of Men can do, and does, this miracle--thanks to the letters of the alphabet!' * * * THE friend who sends us, for 'a fragment of Gossip,' the anecdote of the verdant field-preacher who spoke of Saint PAUL's having 'sat at the foot of _Gammel-Hill_,' is informed that it has already appeared in the KNICKERBOCKER. The following specimen of kindred ignorance, however, is quite new to us, and worthy of repetition. It is a precious bit of ignorant bathos, which occurred in a discourse upon the sufferings of CHRIST: 'The blessed SAVIOUR, my hearers, was dreadfully persecuted. Once, when going to Jerusalem, the Jews put him on a wild young jack-ass, and scattered branches in the road, and put clothes onto 'em, in order for to scare the little colt, and make him break the blessed Redeemer's neck!' The speaker actually preached this _three times_, till one of his congregation corrected him!' * * * THE articles in the Edinburgh Review, and other eminent European periodicals, against the custom of the _duello_, would seem to be but the echoes of a prevalent public opinion. We perceive by late English journals that an _Anti-Duelling Association_ has recently been formed in London. 'It consists of three hundred and twenty-six members, including twenty-one noblemen, thirteen sons of noblemen, sixteen members of Parliament, fifteen baronets, thirty admirals and generals, forty-four captains R. N., twenty-three colonels and lieutenant-colonels, seventeen majors, twenty-six captains in the army, twenty lieutenants R. N., and twenty-four barristers. They denounce duelling as 'sinful, irrational, and contrary to the laws of GOD and man;' and pledge themselves to 'discountenance the practice, both by example and influence.' The association includes, says a London journal, many members who have been successful heretofore in 'killing their man.' * * * ONE of the most delightful as well as most accessible places of summer resort in the vicinity of New-York, is the 'HAMILTON HOUSE,' a spacious and elegant _palace_ of an edifice, situated on the south-westernmost extremity of Long-Island, on the picturesque bluff at the ocean-entrance to the Narrows, commanding a wide view of the sea, the lower bay, Staten-Island, and the rich and cultivated fields of Long-Island; a combination of scenery unsurpassed on the Atlantic sea-board. Here, amidst healthful and invigorating sea-airs, and charming views; with spacious and well-ventilated apartments, public and private; 'tables richly spread;' wines of the best, and the means of recreation, natural and artificial, in abundance; what could one want more?--save perhaps the ready attention and courtesy of the proprietor, Mr. J. R. CURTIS, and these are 'matters of course.' Go to the 'Hamilton House,' ye invalids and pining wights 'in populous city pent.' * * * WE find the annexed charming translation in the hand-writing of Mr. LONGFELLOW, among the papers of the late lamented WILLIS GAYLORD CLARK:

SUMMER TIME IN GERMANY.

FROM JEAN PAUL.

THE summer alone might elevate us! Heaven! what a season! In sooth, I often know not whether to stay in the city, or go forth into the fields, so alike is it every where, and beautiful. If we go outside the city gate, the very beggars gladden our hearts, for they are no longer a-cold; and the post-boys can pass the whole night merrily on horse-back; and the shepherds lie asleep in the open air. We want no gloomy house. We make a chamber of every bush; and so have my good industrious bees before us, and the most gorgeous butterflies. In gardens on the hills sit school-boys, and in the open air look out words in the dictionary. On account of the game-laws there is no shooting now; and every living thing in bush and furrow and on the green branches, can enjoy itself right heartily and safely.

In all directions come travellers along the roads. They have their carriages, for the most part, thrown back. The horses have branches stuck in their saddles, and the drivers roses in their mouths. The shadows of the clouds go trailing along, and the birds fly between them up and down. Even when it rains do we love to stand out of doors, and inhale the quickening influence; and the wet does the herdsman harm no more!

And is it night, so sit we only in a cooler shadow, from which we plainly discern the day-light on the northern horizon, and on the sweet, warm stars of heaven. Whithersoever I look, there do I find my beloved blue; on the flax in blossom, on the corn-flowers, and the godlike, endless heaven, into which I would fain plunge as into a river!

And now if we turn homeward again, we find only fresh delight. The whole street is one great nursery; for in the evening after supper, the little ones, though they have but few clothes upon them, are again let out into the open air, and not driven to bed as in winter. We sup by day-light, and hardly know where the candle-sticks are. In the bed-chambers the windows are open day and night, and likewise most of the doors, without danger. The oldest women stand by the window without a chill, and sew. Flowers lie about every where; by the ink-stand, on the lawyer's papers, on the judge's desk, and the tradesman's counter. The children make a great noise, and one hears the rolling of nine-pin alleys. Half the night through, one walks up and down the street, and talks loud, and sees the stars shoot in the high heaven. The foreign musicians, who wend their way homeward toward midnight, go fiddling along the street, and the whole neighborhood runs to the window. The extra posts arrive late, and the horses neigh. One sits in the noise by the window, and drops asleep, and the post-horns awake him; and the whole starry heaven hath spread itself open. Oh, GOD! what a joyous life, on this little earth!

_Cambridge, July 20._

LONGFELLOW.

* * * * *

The following we derive from the same source with the above. It is placed in type from the MS. of Mrs. FANNY KEMBLE BUTLER:

THE PARTING PLEDGE.