Chapter LXXX: Act I: Scene 2. New York, towards the end of the summer of 1780 (11)

One morning while I was engaged in my usual speculations, the door of the library was suddenly opened, and Lucy entered, exclaiming! "Your cousin Isa has arrived; shut your books! and do, my dear Lionel, arrange your disordered dress. Look at your dishevelled hair. 'Twill curl in graceful ringlets! and now do take it away from your pale and melancholy brow." Twining her fingers in my hair, "I declare," cried she, "I will not leave you till you come into the parlor. Isa is a lovely girl, and is now receiving the affectionate salutations of the whole family. Do, for my sake! for our mother's! and for the character of the name you bear, grant my request." I could not hesitate, when she impressed her entreaty with a kiss; and promising that I would appear before my cousin, I soon commenced the unusual labors of my toilette. I felt a wish, from some unaccountable emotion, to impress my cousin with my appearance, and went into my toilette as a warrior into an armory. Scipio's countenance was lit up with joy, when I summoned his assistance; and with much deference he ventured to hope that I would now let the old books rest--that I would sometimes sail in our pleasure boat--that I would look at the Janus colts--that I would let him go with me to our old walks, and that we would be boys again.

So soon as I had descended into the parlor, my mother advancing towards me, led me to a recess in the dormant window; and with much solemnity introduced me in due form to my cousin Isa Gordon! My fair relative was much abashed at the gravity of my introduction, and something like fear checked the furtive glance which was beaming over her countenance. For my own part I was confused, alarmed, and agitated, and trembled beneath that silent eloquence, and impassioned sympathy, which in making woman lovely, ever makes man a fool. To me the situation was painful and singular, for I had never before quailed under the smiles or frowns of female society. I had gained their contempt by apathy; and studiously avoiding the little attentions demanded by the honor of gallantry, I stood among them a heartless being, whose company was tolerated only because his satire was dangerous.

"I am truly happy to see you at Chalgrave," were the first words which were stammered through my confusion!

She blushed more deeply when I had spoken, and was hesitating a reply, when Lucy advancing relieved her from her embarrassment. At the call of my mother they moved across the room, and I was left gazing in mute rapture, at the grace and sylph-like gentleness, which characterized the footsteps of my cousin.

This was Isa Gordon! that morning star which still shines on with purity and brightness over the dark horizon of memory, and which even now pours its bold and mellow light over the dreary waste of my affections. Though not of tall stature, her form was one of exquisite grace and symmetry, and her beauty mingled itself with the eye and memory of the beholder. Her golden locks relieved a blushing cheek, where laughing summer had set its seal, while her countenance expressed a sensibility, intelligence, sweetness of temper and innocence which disarmed flattery, and kindled affection. She was grave more from gentle thoughtfulness than melancholy; and the low, rich and soft music of her voice, stole upon the heart like the swelling cadence of the Æolian harp. To firmness she united delicacy of character, and possessing softness without weakness, humility without arrogance, and beauty without affectation, her life became a rare and happy combination of dignity, elevation and gentleness, with the virtues which ennoble man, and the winning graces which endear woman. She was in all the pride and power of conquering seventeen, yet still no girlishness weakened the unobtrusive dignity of her character. Romance might have decked her with all the gorgeous hues of its fond imaginings. Poetry might have lingered around the silent purity of her life, but reason alone could truly love--and wisdom adore her.

On that day I felt a new passion adding itself to my dreamy solitude; and when I returned to my tranquil room, I found myself the victim of wild and impassioned love, betraying every symptom of its curious and wayward power. I was alternately humble and arrogant--stubborn and infirm--now a gallant cavalier, winning woman's heart by martial prowess--now a finished coxcomb with a plentiful store of that harmless folly which is frittered away from common sense, and now a rhyme stricken poet, drawing inspiration from my own distempered vanity, and struggling for metre in the odds and ends of language. I loved with a holy and fervent ardor; yet the purity which I fondly believed was the characteristic of my passion, was stained into grossness by individual pride. Self love made me a little deity, and woman's regard was an offering demanded by my insatiate egotism. I do not know that I erred more than most young lovers, in thus reasoning from the cause to the effect, and in believing that the existence of love arises solely from our own latent merits and fascinations. Kindness makes us arrogant, while pride deduces from a blush or a smile, positive evidence of woman's unhesitating love. If she reason with the folly of our passion, she is cold--if she shew the least sunshine of tenderness, she is indelicate, and if she exercise the common prudence of a reasoning being, she is a coquette. Man must have all the constancy of her love, all the devotion of her guileless heart, and he alone must mould its delicate texture to the wanton caprice of his own vanity. He grants her all that love which he can spare from the faction and turmoil of the world, and demands in return her esteem for his errors, and her adoration for his infirmities. We treat them as fools, when we breathe our false and treacherous love, and thus cheat ourselves into a belief of our own purity and truth. A woman of dignity will smile at the fantastic tricks which duplicity enacts before her; and if she truly love she will crush our pride by coldness, and blind the searching eye of our vanity by indifference. She risks her total happiness--she nobly throws all her treasured hopes into the scale of marriage, {634} and when once resolved, she hesitates no longer over the trembling sacrifice of her implicit confidence. Man calls the considerations of her judgment insincerity--and the justifiable warfare of defence--coquetry. He loves from pride; while prudence teaches her to inspire him with that true passion, which takes its brightness like the diamond, only from the attrition of its own fragments.

Excited by the influence of my new passion, I became a being of different habits, and boldly entered into the spirit of that social circle whose gaiety I had shunned. The rays of love had beamed athwart the darkness of my solitude, and I basked in their brilliancy till seclusion lost its philosophy and study its excitement. I was happy only in the company of Isa Gordon, and revelled like a martyr, in the funereal pyre, which consumed my tranquillity. With the quick penetration of her sex she perceived my love, and though it hourly disported its vagaries before her, it failed to move either her serenity of temper, or unbend her dignity of character. In her intercourse with me she was courteous, kind and polite, and I vainly labored to find some of those thousand signs of reciprocal attachment with which egotism flatters pride, and with which vanity sustains folly. I thought she was cold and heartless, and have often gazed on her beauty with that chilled rapture which would dwell on the rainbow that lends its glittering canopy to the brow of the glacier.

Time wore away on downy feet, and the period was rapidly approaching when Isa was to leave Chalgrave, and I was to enter college. I dared not breathe my love; for though blinded by excess of passion, I had enough of reason to know that I should be rejected; but could she refuse when I plainly declared my sentiments? My vanity whispered her acceptance, and I believed that her indifference proceeded not from dislike but from my silence on that necessary and important declaration which the pride and pretended ignorance of every woman imperiously demands.

"You are singularly romantic, Lionel!" said she, as I was earnestly employed in repeating some wild stanzas which I had inscribed to the evening star! "What a curious conceit to make it the bridal torch of the moon, and why people it with the genius of light. Many a poet has sighed away his sense in searching for metaphors to exalt it--yet it still shines on, careless of the poor folly which labors to adorn it."

"There is destiny in it, Isa! and even now as it arrests your gaze, does it not tell thee of futurity? and does it not give a dreamy melancholy--an incoherent imagining to thy young, thy cold, thy uncorrupted heart?"

"My heart cold!" replied she, smiling, "What a happy poet! In one moment basking in the light of the evening star, and in the next ungenerously censuring a heart of which you know nothing."

"I do know it! I know that you have chilled its better feelings by the dictates of reason, and from long obedience to stern prudence, you cannot, dare not love! You have seen the sincerity of my passion, and you have trampled on the purity of that love which adores you! Hear me, dear Isa," I continued, seizing her hand and arresting her departure, "hear my unworthy love. I am a wretched, desolate being, and live alone."

"Lionel!" said she, suddenly interrupting me, "I do not love you! You have noble qualities, and a genius which promises the highest distinctions of fame. Forget your idle passion, and be assured that I shall ever retain for you the most affectionate friendship. Enter into the busy throng of the world, and you will quickly gain that chastened wisdom which can laugh to scorn all your boyish dreams of romance, and in the race of ambition you must and will forget your fancied sorrows. Is it not true that

'Love seldom haunts the breast where learning lies
And Venus sets--ere Mercury can rise.'"

"I did not reckon on insult," I replied with much temper, "nor did I wish you to read me a homily on the extravagance of that passion which you alone have caused. You may scorn, yet I can love."

Lucy, accompanied by Arthur Ludwell, appeared at this moment, and relieved me from a scene of distress, confusion, and embarrassment. They returned with Isa to the parlor; and I, in a state of tempestuous feeling and subdued pride, sauntered to the shores of the Chesapeake. A _whip-poor-will_ seated on the leafless branch of a ruined oak, was carolling his funereal notes to the responsive echoes of the forest. The moon was rising far in the East, and the broad sea before me had already flushed its rippled surface in her mellow light. Here and there in the fretted horizon, might be dimly discovered the diminished sail, or the frail bark of the silent fisherman. All nature was slumbering in deathlike solitude, while I alone was the rude string whose vibrations jarred into discord the peaceful scene around me. In the bitterness of wounded pride I solemnly resolved to conquer my unrequited passion. I returned to Chalgrave, proud, stubborn and unconquerable. I looked up to its dreary grandeur and my eye caught the light form of Isa flitting athwart a window. My obstinacy vanished like the mist of the morning, and I was again the creature of love, hope, and imagination.

On the succeeding day she quitted Chalgrave. Her parting interview was simple and affecting. A kiss for my mother--a tear for Lucy, and a smile for me, were the little legacies her affections bequeathed. With strained eye and intense interest, I watched the chariot which bore her away, and when it had sunk into the forest, I turned off to meditate on her virtues and dream on her beauty. My old nurse gently touching me, placed in my hand a little packet which she said Miss Isa had left for me. I tore off the envelope, and a golden locket fell at my feet, on which was inscribed in faint though legible lines, "_Dinna forget_." That momento is now on my heart--a holy relic of the wreck of my happiness.

For the Southern Literary Messenger.

TO H. W. M.

When the cup is pledged, and the bright wine flowing,
At the festal board, in the halls of light;
And gentle eyes, like stars are glowing,
In the cloudless sky of a summer's night:
Oh! breathe but my name o'er the wine, for yet
I will dare to believe that all will not forget.

When the moon looks out on the leafy bowers,
Where the gladsome daughters of beauty are wreathing
The brightest and fairest of all the flowers,
To crown their altars with incense breathing,
Oh, name one flower for the absent one,
Who forgotten by thee is remembered by none. {635}

In that home, to thee brightest and best upon earth,
Where the spirits thou lovest are yearning to greet thee,
When round the light of the household hearth,
The smiles and the tears of affection greet thee,
Mid the beam of the smile and the glow of the tear,
Shall a thought ever whisper "I wish he were here?"

For if life were changed, and its beamings of gladness,
Were shrouded in gloom by the veil of sorrow,
And the pale cold shade of unaltered sadness,
Found no ray of hope in the coming morrow;
Each pang could but render more precious to me,
The friendship of M----, the beauty of B.

MORNA.

For the Southern Literary Messenger.

LINES

Written on being accused of coldness of character and manners by some friends--1830.

They call me cold--they know me not, nor can they understand
The warmth of my affections, by the breeze of _kindness_ fanned;
My feelings may not show themselves in countenance or voice,
But my _heart_ can weep with those who weep--with those who sing,
rejoice!
My best affections lie concealed--I bring them not to light,
For I know that those with whom I dwell can never read them right;
But their fountain, tho' it calmly flow, is warm and full and deep,
And the stream of love within my breast, tho' _silent_, does not
_sleep_.
To all the dearest ties of life I cling most tenderly;
And the few whose unbought love is mine, compose the world to me:
It is not those who feel the most their feelings best express,
Nor those the most sincerely fond, who with the _tongue_ can bless--
The paltry counterfeit may shine with radiancy as bright
As the costly gem which monarchs wear--may look as pure and white;
The artificial rose may glow with a color full as fair
As the lovely flower which nature rears in sunshine and in air;
'Tis time, and time alone, can show the real gem and flower,
And time will oft on those we love, exert its magic power;
It may change the beaming smiles to frowns, kind greetings to
disdain,
And cause the _seeming_ friend to scorn our poverty and pain.
Oh! it is not thus with me, I know, the tide of feeling flows;
Affection may not speak in looks, but in my bosom glows,
With a warmth which time can never chill, scarce injuries suppress,
And my heart responds to every tone of the voice of tenderness.

E. A. S.

For the Southern Literary Messenger.

ON THE DEAF, DUMB, AND BLIND GIRL OF THE ASYLUM AT HARTFORD, CONNECTICUT.

Yet deem not, though so dark her path,
Heaven strew'd no comforts o'er her lot,
Or in its bitter cup of wrath
The healing drop of balm forgot.

Oh no!--with meek, contented mind,
The needle's humble task to ply,
At the full board her place to find,
Or close in sleep the placid eye.

With order's unobtrusive charm
Her simple wardrobe to dispose,
To press of guiding care the arm,
And rove where Autumn's bounty flows,

With Touch so exquisitely true,
That vision stands astonish'd by,
To recognize with ardor due
Some friend or benefactor nigh,

Her hand mid childhood's curls to place,
From fragrant buds the breath to steal,
Of stranger-guest the brow to trace,
Are pleasures left for her to feel.

And often o'er her hour of thought,
Will burst a laugh of wildest glee,
As if the living forms she caught
On wit's fantastic drapery,

As if at length, relenting skies
In pity to her doom severe,
Had bade a mimic morning rise,
The chaos of the soul to cheer.

But who, with energy divine,
May tread that undiscover'd maze,
Where Nature, in her curtain'd shrine,
The strange and new-born Thought arrays?

Where quick perception shrinks to find
On eye and ear the envious seal,
And wild ideas throng the mind,
Which palsied speech may ne'er reveal;

Where instinct, like a robber bold,
Steals sever'd links from Reason's chain,
And leaping o'er her barrier cold
Proclaims the proud precaution vain:

Say, who shall with magician's wand
That elemental mass compose,
Where young affections pure and fond
Sleep like the germ mid wintry snows?

Who, in that undecipher'd scroll
The mystic characters may see,
Save Him who reads the secret soul,
And holds of life and death the key?

Then, on thy midnight journey roam,
Poor wandering child of rayless gloom,
And to thy last and narrow home
Drop gently from this living tomb. {636}

Yes, uninterpreted and drear,
Toil onward with benighted mind,
Still kneel at prayers thou canst not hear,
And grope for truth thou may'st not find.

No scroll of friendship or of love,
Must breathe its language o'er thy heart,
Nor that Blest Book which guides above,
Its message to thy soul impart.

But Thou who didst on Calvary die,
Flows not thy mercy wide and free?
Thou, who didst rend of _death_ the tie,
Is _Nature's_ seal too strong for thee?

And Thou, oh Spirit pure, whose rest
Is with the lowly, contrite train,
Illume the temple of her breast,
And cleanse of latent ill the stain.

That she whose pilgrimage below
Was night that never hoped a morn,
That undeclining day may know
Which of eternity is born.

The great transition who can tell?
When from the ear its seal shall part
Where countless lyres seraphic swell,
And holy transport thrills the heart.

When the chain'd tongue, which ne'er might pour
The broken melodies of time,
Shall to the highest numbers soar,
Of everlasting praise sublime,

When those blind orbs which ne'er might trace
The features of their kindred clay,
Shall scan of Deity the face,
And glow with rapture's deathless ray.

L. H. S.

For the Southern Literary Messenger.

AN ELEGY

Sacred to the memory of the infant children of S. M. and C. W. S. of Campbell county, Va.

By Frederic Speece.

O, they were rose-buds, fresh and bright,
Fair flow'rets breathing of delight;
Young cherubs from a happier sphere,
Too gently sweet to linger here.

The rose-buds withered ere their bloom,
The flow'rets strewed an early tomb,
The gentle cherubs tasted pain,
Then sought their native skies again.

Infants are bright immortal things
Though robed in feeble, dying clay:
Death but unfolds their silken wings,
And speeds their joyful flight away;

Beyond these cold, sublunar skies,
They seek a home among the blest;
On strong unwearied pinions rise,
Cleave the blue vault and are at rest.

What though no marble may attest
Where slumber lone their cold remains,
Their little cares are hushed to rest,
And terminated all their pains.

Nor Fame may deign a feeble blast,
To tell the world that _they have been_;
Nor snatch the record of the past
From the dark grave that locks it in.

Barren the theme--the legend trite
Of joys or griefs it could reveal--
The interchange of shade and light
That all _have_ felt and all _must_ feel.

Though grief has lost its keener edge,
Remembrance lingers where they lie,
To muse on ev'ry precious pledge
The loved ones left beneath the sky.

And ere oblivion's ebon wing
Sweep ev'ry vestige from the spot,
Affection shall its off'rings bring,
Nor leave them to be quite forgot.

Each lovely flow'r and drooping bell--
Bright daughters of the op'ning year,--
Those beauteous things they loved so well
Shall weep their annual tribute here.

Through dreary Winter's storm and cold,
These sleep from all his terrors free--
Again their blooming sweets unfold,
Emblem of all that they shall be.

For the Southern Literary Messenger.

SONNET.

BY ALEX. LACEY BEARD.

Sunset is past,--and now while all is still,
And softly o'er the plain the moonbeams fall,
I'll hold communion with myself and call
From mem'ry's caverns, feelings deep, that fill
My soul with gladness.... Now I feel the thrill
Of past delights;--I stand in that old hall,
My friends surround me,--yes, I see them all:--
My heart grows faint, my eyes with tear-drops fill.

And now they vanish, from my sight they go.
Farewell ye loved ones, we shall meet again
As oft we've met, at the dim twilight's wane;--
In dreams and visions which shall brightly show
Your sunny faces, and shall bring the glow
Of by-gone joys, back to my soul again.

For the Southern Literary Messenger.

TO MARY.

Mary, amid the cares--the woes
Crowding around my earthly path,
(Sad path, alas! where grows
Not ev'n one lonely rose,)
My soul at least a solace hath
In dreams of thee, and therein knows
An Eden of sweet repose.

And thus thy memory is to me
Like some enchanted, far-off isle,
In some tumultuous sea--
Some lake beset as lake can be
With storms--but where, meanwhile,
Serenest skies continually
Just o'er that one bright island smile.

E. A. P.

{637}

For the Southern Literary Messenger.

THE VISIONARY--A TALE.

BY EDGAR A. POE.

Stay for me there! I will not fail
To meet thee in that hollow vale.
[_Exequy on the death of his wife, by Henry King, Bishop of
Chichester_.

Ill-fated and mysterious man! Bewildered in the brilliancy of thine own imagination, and fallen in the flames of thine own youth! Again in fancy I behold thee! Once more thy form hath risen before me!--not--oh not as thou art--in the cold valley and shadow--but as thou _shouldst be_--squandering away a life of magnificent meditation in that city of dim visions, thine own Venice--which is a star-beloved elysium of the sea, and the wide windows of whose Palladian palaces look down with a deep and bitter meaning upon the secrets of her silent waters. Yes! I repeat it--as thou _shouldst be_. There are surely other worlds than this--other thoughts than the thoughts of the multitude--other speculations than the speculations of the sophist. Who then shall call thy conduct into question? Who blame thee for thy visionary hours, or denounce those occupations as a wasting away of life, which were but the overflowings of thine everlasting energies?

It was at Venice, beneath the covered archway there called the _Ponte di Sospiri_, that I met for the third or fourth time the person of whom I speak. It is with a confused recollection that I bring to mind the circumstances of that meeting. Yet I remember--ah! how should I forget?--the deep midnight, the Bridge of Sighs, the beauty of woman, and the demon of romance, who stalked up and down the narrow canal.

It was a night of unusual gloom. The great clock of the piazza had sounded the fifth hour of the Italian evening. The square of the Campanile lay silent and deserted, and the lights in the old Ducal Palace were dying fast away. I was returning home from the Piazetta, by way of the Grand Canal. But as my gondola arrived opposite the mouth of the canal San Marco, a female voice from its recesses broke suddenly upon the night, in one wild, hysterical, and long continued shriek. Startled at the sound, I sprang upon my feet: while the gondolier, letting slip his single oar, lost it in the pitchy darkness beyond a chance of recovery, and we were, consequently, left to the guidance of the current which here sets from the greater into the smaller channel. Like some huge and sable-feathered Condor, we were slowly drifting down towards the Bridge of Sighs, when a thousand flambeaus flashing from the windows, and down the stair-cases of the Ducal Palace, turned all at once that deep gloom to a livid and supernatural day.

A child, slipping from the arms of its own mother, had fallen from an upper window of the lofty structure into the deep and dim canal. The quiet waters had closed placidly over their victim; and, although my own gondola was the only one in sight, many a stout swimmer, already in the stream, was seeking in vain upon the surface, the treasure which was to be found, alas! only within the abyss. Upon the broad, black marble flagstones, at the entrance of the palace, and a few steps above the water stood a figure which none who then saw can have ever since forgotten. It was the Marchesa Aphrodite--the adoration of all Venice--the gayest of the gay--the most lovely where all were beautiful--but still the young wife of the old and intriguing Mentoni--and the mother of that fair child, her first and only one, who now deep beneath the murky water, was thinking in bitterness of heart upon her sweet caresses, and exhausting its little life in struggles to call upon her name.

She stood alone. Her small, bare, and silvery feet gleamed in the black mirror of marble beneath her. Her hair, not as yet more than half loosened for the night from its ball-room array, clustered amid a shower of diamonds, round and round her classical head, in curls like the young hyacinth. A snowy white and gauze-like drapery seemed to be nearly the sole covering to her delicate form--but the midsummer and midnight air was hot, sullen, and still, and no motion--no shadow of motion in that statue-like form itself, stirred even the folds of that raiment of very vapor which hung around it as the heavy marble hangs around the Niobe. Yet--strange to say!--her large lustrous eyes were not turned downwards upon that grave wherein her brightest hope lay buried--but riveted in a widely different direction! The prison of the Old Republic is, I think, the stateliest building in all Venice--but how could that lady gaze so fixedly upon it, when beneath her lay stifling her only child? Yon dark gloomy niche too yawns right opposite her chamber window--what, then, _could_ there be in its shadows--in its architecture--in its ivy-wreathed and solemn cornices that the Marchesa di Mentoni had not wondered at a thousand times before? Nonsense! Who does not remember that, at such a time as this, the eye, like a shattered mirror, multiplies the images of its sorrow, and sees in innumerable far off places, the woe which is close at hand.

Many steps above the Marchesa, and within the arch of the Water-Gate, stood in full dress, the Satyr-like figure of Mentoni himself. He was occasionally occupied in thrumming a guitar, and seemed _ennuied_ to the very death, as at intervals he gave directions for the recovery of his child. Stupified and aghast, I had myself no power to move from the upright position I had assumed upon first hearing the shriek, and must have presented to the eyes of the agitated group, a spectral and ominous appearance, as, with pale countenance and rigid limbs, I floated down among them in that funereal gondola.

All efforts proved in vain. Many of the most energetic in the search were relaxing their exertions, and yielding to a gloomy sorrow. There seemed but little hope for the child--but now, from the interior of that dark niche which has been already mentioned as forming a part of the Old Republican Prison, and as fronting the lattice of the Marchesa, a figure, muffled in a cloak stepped out within reach of the light, and pausing a moment upon the verge of the giddy descent, plunged headlong into the canal. As, in an instant afterwards, he stood with the still living and breathing child within his grasp upon the marble flagstones by the side of the Marchesa, his cloak heavy with the drenching water became unfastened, and, falling in folds about his feet, discovered to the wonder-stricken spectators, the graceful person of a very young man, with the sound of whose name the greater part of Europe was then ringing.

No word spoke the deliverer. But the Marchesa! {638} She will now receive her child--she will press it to her heart--she will cling to its little form, and smother it with her caresses. Alas! _another's_ arms have taken it from the stranger--_another's_ arms have taken it away, and borne it afar off, unnoticed, into the palace! And the Marchesa! Her lip--her beautiful lip trembles: tears are gathering in her eyes--those eyes which, like Pliny's own Acanthus, are "soft and almost liquid." Yes! tears are gathering in those eyes--and see! the entire woman thrills throughout the soul, and the statue has started into life! The pallor of the marble countenance, the swelling of the marble bosom, the very purity of the marble feet, we behold suddenly flushed over with a tide of ungovernable crimson; and a slight shudder quivers about her delicate frame, as a gentle air at Napoli about the rich silver lilies in the grass. Why _should_ that lady blush? To this demand there is no answer--except that, having left in the eager haste and terror of a mother's heart, the privacy of her own _boudoir_, she has neglected to enthral her tiny feet in their slippers; and utterly forgotten to throw over her Venitian shoulders that drapery which is their due. What other possible reason could there have been for her so blushing?--for the glance of those wild appealing eyes?--for the unusual tumult of that throbbing bosom?--for the convulsive pressure of that trembling hand?--that hand which fell, as Mentoni turned into the palace, accidentally, upon the hand of the stranger. What reason could there have been for the low--the singularly low tone of those unmeaning words which the lady uttered hurriedly in bidding him adieu? "Thou hast conquered"--she said, or the murmurs of the water deceived me--"thou hast conquered--one hour after sunrise--we shall meet--so let it be."

* * * * *

The tumult had subsided, the lights had died away within the palace, and the stranger, whom I now recognized, stood alone upon the flags. He shook with inconceivable agitation, and his eye glanced around in search of a gondola. I could not do less than offer him the service of my own, and he accepted the civility. Having obtained an oar at the Water-Gate, we proceeded together to his residence, while he rapidly recovered his self-possession, and spoke of our former slight acquaintance in terms of great apparent cordiality.

There are some subjects upon which I take pleasure in being minute. The person of the stranger--let me call him by this title, who to all the world was still a stranger--the person of the stranger is one of these subjects. In height he might have been below rather than above the medium size: although there were moments of intense passion when his frame actually _expanded_ and belied the assertion. The light, almost _slender_ symmetry of his figure, promised more of that ready activity which he evinced at the Bridge of Sighs, than of that Herculean strength which he has been known to wield without an effort, upon occasions of more dangerous emergency. With the mouth and chin of a deity--a nose like those delicate creations of the mind to be found only in the medallions of the Hebrew--singular, wild, full, liquid eyes, whose shadows varied from pure hazel to intense and brilliant jet, and a profusion of glossy, black hair, from which a forehead rather low than otherwise, gleamed forth at intervals all light and ivory--his were features than which I have seen none more classically regular, except, perhaps, the marble ones of the Emperor Commodus. Yet his countenance was, nevertheless, one of those which all men have seen at some period of their lives, and have never afterwards seen again. It had no peculiar--I wish to be perfectly understood--it had no _settled predominant expression_ to be fastened upon the memory; a countenance seen and instantly forgotten--but forgotten with a vague and never-ceasing desire of recalling it to mind. Not that the spirit of each rapid passion failed at any time, to throw its own distinct image upon the mirror of that face--but that the mirror, mirror-like, retained no vestige of the passion, when the passion had departed.

Upon leaving him on the night of our adventure, he solicited me, in what I thought an urgent manner, to call upon him very early the next morning. Shortly after sunrise, I found myself accordingly at his Palazzo, one of those huge piles of gloomy, yet fantastic grandeur, which tower above the waters of the Grand Canal in the vicinity of the Rialto. I was shown up a broad winding staircase of mosaics, into an apartment whose unparalleled splendor burst through the opening door with an actual glare, making me sick and dizzy with luxuriousness.

I knew my acquaintance to be wealthy. Report had spoken of his possessions in terms which I had even ventured to call terms of ridiculous exaggeration. But as I gazed about me, I could not bring myself to believe that the wealth of any subject in Europe could have supplied the far more than imperial magnificence which burned and blazed around.

Although, as I say, the sun had arisen, yet the room was still brilliantly lighted up. I judged from this circumstance, as well as from an air of exhaustion in the countenance of my friend, that he had not retired to bed during the whole of the preceding night. In the architecture and embellishments of the chamber, the evident design had been to dazzle and astound. Little attention had been paid to the _decora_ of what is technically called _keeping_, or to the proprieties of nationality. The eye wandered from object to object, and rested upon none--neither the _grotesques_ of the Greek painters--nor the sculptures of the best Italian days--nor the huge carvings of untutored Egypt. Rich draperies in every part of the room trembled to the vibrations of low, melancholy music, whose unseen origin, undoubtedly lay in the recesses of the crimson trelliss work which tapestried the ceiling. The senses were oppressed by mingled and conflicting perfumes, reeking up from strange Arabesque censers, which seemed actually endued with a monstrous vitality, as their particolored fires writhed up and down, and around about their extravagant proportions. The rays of the newly risen sun poured in upon the whole, through windows formed each of a single pane of crimson-tinted glass. Glancing to and fro, in a thousand reflections, from curtains which rolled from their cornices like cataracts of molten silver, the beams of natural glory mingled at length fitfully with the artificial light, and lay weltering in subdued masses upon a carpet of rich, liquid looking cloth of Chili gold. Here then had the hand of genius been at work. A chaos--a wilderness of beauty lay before me. A sense of dreamy and incoherent {639} grandeur took possession of my soul, and I remained within the door-way speechless.

Ha! ha! ha!--ha! ha! ha!--laughed the proprietor, motioning me to a seat, and throwing himself back at full length upon an ottoman. "I see," said he, perceiving that I could not immediately reconcile myself to the _bienseance_ of so singular a welcome--"I see you are astonished at my apartment--at my statues--my pictures--my originality of conception in architecture and upholstery--absolutely drunk, eh? with my magnificence. But pardon me, my dear sir, (here his tone of voice dropped to the very spirit of cordiality) pardon me, my dear sir, for my uncharitable laughter. You appeared so _utterly_ astonished. Besides, some things are so completely ludicrous that a man must laugh or die. To die laughing must be the most glorious of all glorious deaths! Sir Thomas More--a very fine man was Sir Thomas More--Sir Thomas More died laughing, you remember. Also there is a long list of characters who came to the same magnificent end, in the _Absurdities_ of Ravisius Textor. Do you know, however,"--continued he musingly--"that at Sparta (which is now Palæochori), at Sparta, I say, to the west of the citadel, among a chaos of scarcely visible ruins, is a kind of _socle_ upon which are still legible the letters [Greek: LASM]. They are undoubtedly part of [Greek: GELASMA]. Now at Sparta were a thousand temples and shrines to a thousand different divinities. How exceedingly strange that the altar of Laughter should have survived all the others! But in the present instance"--he resumed, with a singular alteration of voice and manner--"in the present instance I have no right to be merry at your expense. You might well have been amazed. Europe cannot produce anything so fine as this, my little regal cabinet. My other apartments are by no means of the same order--mere _ultras_ of fashionable insipidity. This is better than fashion--is it not? Yet this has but to be seen to become the rage--that is with those who could afford it at the cost of their entire patrimony. I have guarded, however, against any such profanation. With one exception you are the only human being besides myself, who has been admitted within the mysteries of these imperial precincts."

I bowed in acknowledgement: for the overpowering sense of splendor and perfume, and music, together with the unexpected eccentricity of his address and manner, prevented me from expressing in words my appreciation of what I might have construed into a compliment.

"Here"--he resumed, arising and leaning on my arm as he sauntered around the apartment--"here are paintings from the Greeks to Cimabue, and from Cimabue to the present hour. Many are chosen, as you see, with little deference to the opinions of Virtû. They are all, however, fitting tapestry for a chamber such as this. Here too, are some _chéf d'oeuvres_ of the unknown great--and here unfinished designs by men, celebrated in their day, whose very names the perspicacity of the academies has left to silence and to me. What think you"--said he, turning abruptly as he spoke--"what think you of this Madonna della Pietà?"

"It is Guido's own!" I said, with all the enthusiasm of my nature, for I had been poring intently over its surpassing loveliness. "It is Guido's own!--how _could_ you have obtained it?--she is undoubtedly in painting what the Venus is in sculpture."

"Ha!" said he, thoughtfully, "the Venus?--the beautiful Venus--the Venus of the Medicis?--she of the gilded hair?--the work of Cleomenes, the son of the Athenian? Part of the left arm (here his voice dropped so as to be heard with difficulty,) and all the right are restorations, and in the coquetry of that right arm lies, I think, the quintessence of all affectation. The Apollo too!--is a copy--there can be no doubt of it--blind fool that I am, who cannot behold the boasted inspiration of the Apollo! I cannot help--pity me!--I cannot help preferring the Antinous. Was it not Socrates who said that the statuary _found his statue in the block of marble_? Then Michæl Angelo was by no means original in his couplet--

'Non ha l'ottimo artista alcun concetto
Chè un marmo solo in se non circunscriva.'"

* * * * *

It has been, or should be remarked, that, in the manner of the true gentlemen, we are always aware of a difference from the bearing of the vulgar, without being at once precisely able to determine in what such difference consists. Allowing the remark to have applied in its full force to the outward demeanor of my acquaintance, I felt it, on that eventful morning, still more fully applicable to his moral temperament and character. Nor can I better define that peculiarity of spirit which seemed to place him so essentially apart from all other human beings, than by calling it a _habit_ of intense and continual thought, pervading even his most trivial actions--intruding upon his moments of dalliance--and interweaving itself with his very flashes of merriment--like adders which writhe from out the eyes of the grinning masks in the cornices around the temples of Persepolis.

I could not help, however, repeatedly observing, through the mingled tone of levity and solemnity with which he rapidly descanted upon matters of little importance, a certain air of trepidation--a degree of nervous _intensity_ in action and in speech--an unquiet excitability of manner, which appeared to me at all times unaccountable, and, upon some occasions, even filled me with alarm. Frequently, too, pausing in the middle of a sentence whose commencement he had apparently forgotten, he seemed to be listening in the deepest attention, as if either in momentary expectation of a visiter, or to sounds which must have had existence in his imagination alone.

It was during one of these reveries, or pauses of apparent abstraction, that, in turning over a page of the poet and scholar Politian's beautiful tragedy "The Orfeo," (the first native Italian tragedy) which lay near me upon an ottoman, I discovered a passage underlined in pencil. It was a passage towards the end of the third act--a passage of the most heart-stirring excitement--a passage which, although tainted with impurity, no man shall read without a thrill of novel emotion--no woman without a sigh. The whole page was blotted with fresh tears, and, upon the opposite interleaf, were the following lines, written in a hand so very different from the peculiar characters of my acquaintance, that I had some difficulty in recognizing it as his own.

Thou wast that all to me, love,
For which my soul did pine--
A green isle in the sea, love, {640}
A fountain and a shrine,
All wreathed around about with flowers;
And the flowers--they all were mine.

But the dream--it could not last;
And the star of Hope did rise
But to be overcast.
A voice from out the Future cries
"Onward!"--while o'er the Past
(Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies,
Mute, motionless, aghast!

For alas!--alas!--with me
Ambition--all--is o'er.
"No more--no more--no more,"
(Such language holds the solemn sea
To the sands upon the shore,)
Shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree,
Or the stricken eagle soar!

And all my hours are trances;
And all my nightly dreams
Are where thy dark eye glances,
And where thy footstep gleams,
In what ethereal dances,
By what Italian streams.

Alas! for that accursed time
They bore thee o'er the billow,
From Love to titled age and crime,
And an unholy pillow--
From me, and from our misty clime,
Where weeps the silver willow!

That these lines were written in English--a language with which I had not believed their author acquainted--afforded me little matter for surprise. I was too well aware of the extent of his acquirements, and of the singular pleasure he took in concealing them from observation, to be astonished at any similar discovery; but the place of date, I must confess, occasioned me no little amazement. It had been originally written _London_, and afterwards carefully overscored--but not, however, so effectually, as to conceal the word from a scrutinizing eye. I say this occasioned me no little amazement; for I well remember that, in a former conversation with my friend, I particularly inquired if he had at any time met in London the Marchesa di Mentoni, (who for some years previous to her marriage had resided in that city,) when his answer, if I mistake not, gave me to understand that he had never visited the metropolis of Great Britain. I might as well here mention, that I have more than once heard, (without of coarse giving credit to a report involving so many improbabilities,) that the person of whom I speak was not only by birth, but in education an _Englishman_.

* * * * *

"There is one painting," said he, without being aware of my notice of the tragedy--"there is still one painting which you have not seen." And throwing aside a drapery, he discovered a full length portrait of the Marchesa Aphrodite.

Human art could have done no more in the delineation of her superhuman beauty. The same ethereal figure which stood before me the preceding night upon the steps of the Ducal Palace, stood before me once again. But in the expression of the countenance, which was beaming all over with smiles, there still lurked (incomprehensible anomaly!) that fitful stain of melancholy which will ever be found inseparable from the perfection of the beautiful. Her right arm lay folded over her bosom. With her left she pointed downwards to a curiously fashioned vase. One small, fairy foot, alone visible, barely touched the earth--and, scarcely discernible in the brilliant atmosphere which seemed to encircle and enshrine her loveliness, floated a pair of the most delicately imagined wings. My glance fell from the painting to the figure of my friend, and the vigorous words of Chapman's _Bussy D'Ambois_ quivered instinctively upon my lips--

"He is up
There like a Roman statue! He will stand
Till Death hath made him marble!"

"Come!" he said at length, turning towards a table of richly enamelled and massive silver, upon which were a few goblets fantastically stained, together with two large Etruscan vases, fashioned in the same extraordinary model as that in the foreground of the portrait, and filled with what I supposed to be Vin de Barâc. "Come!" he said abruptly, "let us drink! It is early--but let us drink! It is _indeed_ early," he continued thoughtfully as a cherub with a heavy golden hammer, made the apartment ring with the first hour after sunrise--"It is _indeed_ early, but what matters it? let us drink! Let us pour out an offering to the solemn sun, which these gaudy lamps and censers are so eager to subdue!" And, having made me pledge him in a bumper, he swallowed in rapid succession several goblets of the wine.

"To dream," he continued, resuming the tone of his desultory conversation, as he held up to the rich light of a censer one of the magnificent vases--"to dream has been the business of my life. I have therefore framed for myself, as you see, a bower of dreams. In the heart of Venice could I have erected a better? You behold around you, it is true, a medley of architectural embellishments. The chastity of Ionia is offended by antediluvian devices, and the sphynxes of Egypt are stretching upon carpets of gold. Yet the effect is incongruous to the timid alone. Proprieties of place, and especially of time, are the bugbears which terrify mankind from the contemplation of the magnificent. _Once_ I was myself _a decorist_: but that sublimation of folly has palled upon my soul. All this is now the fitter for my purpose. Like these Arabesque censers, my spirit is writhing in fire, and the delirium of this scene is fashioning me for the wilder visions of that land of real dreams whither I am now rapidly departing." Thus saying, he confessed the power of the wine, and threw himself at full length upon an ottoman.

A quick step was now heard upon the staircase, and a loud knock at the door rapidly succeeded. I was hastening to anticipate a second disturbance, when a page of Mentoni's household burst into the room, and faltered out, in a voice chokeing with emotion, the incoherent words, "My mistress!--my mistress!--poisoned!--poisoned! Oh beautiful--oh beautiful Aphrodite!"

Bewildered, I flew to the ottoman, and endeavored to arouse the sleeper to a sense of the startling intelligence. But his limbs were rigid--his lips were livid--his lately beaming eyes were riveted in _death_. I staggered back towards the table--my hand fell upon a cracked and blackened goblet--and a consciousness of the entire and terrible truth flashed suddenly over my soul.

{641}

For the Southern Literary Messenger.

PETER'S MOUNTAIN.

An extract from the unpublished Journal of a Tourist.

The third and last mountain over which the traveller passes, as he proceeds from Fincastle to the Sweet Springs, is Peter's Mountain--here called the Sweet Spring Mountain. This is, on several accounts, one of the most remarkable mountains in Virginia. It is remarkable, in the first place, for the appearance of regularity which it presents to the eye of the traveller, when viewed from the west. It extends sixty or seventy miles, between Jackson river on the north, and New river on the south, apparently in a straight line, and of nearly a uniform elevation. But this is not its whole extent. The mountain north of Jackson river, and that south of New river, are evidently continuations of the same mountain, and exhibit the same unbroken and regular appearance. While on the east there are numerous spurs extending from it in every direction, there is nothing of the kind observable on the west. Were it not for the magnitude of this mountain, its elevation, and its peculiar structure, we might readily have imagined it to be, like the Chinese wall, the work of man, constructed by the line and the plummet, in a former age, as a bulwark of defence, by some hardier race than ours; but these point us to the heavens for its great original.

As we looked back upon it from the valley on its west, our thoughts reverted to the period, when the red men of the forest took up the line of march, and relinquished the east to the peaceable possession of their treacherous invaders. Here, it was natural to suppose, they halted, and pitched their tents, and constructed their villages, and began again to feel as though they were "monarchs of all they surveyed." As they looked upon the mountain behind them, feelings of security would be restored, and they would consider this mountain as a barrier, reared by the Great Spirit for their protection.

"It is true, the white men made them wings--they flapped the winds, and passed over the wide waters, and up the big rivers. They gathered on the plains--they cleared the land, and made it theirs. But their wings were made for the waters, and not for the rugged mountains--and their feet are tender--they cannot encounter the flinty rock. Here, then, shall the waves of pride and oppression be stayed. Here may our wives and our children once more sit them down secure from foes, and build their fires, and gather their nuts, while we chase the deer and the buffalo in the far off west." Such we may suppose to have been the reflections of some savage chieftain, _nescius auræ fallacis_, as he looked upon the lofty, and seemingly interminable mountain bulwark before him. But, if such they were, they proved deceptive. A few revolving years passed away, and the white man was again on his borders. His track was seen on the mountain, and the stroke of his axe, and the shrill sound of his rifle were heard in the hollows. A few years more, and the Indian again disappeared, and the white man stood in his place--and the green grass grew, and the corn-blade rustled, and the farm house was seen, where once stood the rude villages, in which the chieftains had told the tale of the white man's fraud, and of their own and their father's wrong, and their own and their father's valor.

The circumstance which, more than any other, renders this mountain remarkable, is its intersection with that chain of mountains known as the Alleghany, which divides the waters that flow east into the Atlantic, from those which flow west into the Ohio and Mississippi. At about an equal distance between the Sweet Springs and Peterton, or the Grey Sulphur, the Alleghany dips under this mountain, and emerges again on its eastern side. The principal branches of the James river, head on the west of Peter's Mountain, but east of the Alleghany; while New river, the principal branch of the Great Kanawha, arises far to the east of Peter's Mountain, though west of the Alleghany. The waters of the Warm, Hot and Sweet Springs pass off to the ocean through the James river; while those of the White, Salt, Red and Grey Sulphur communicate with the Ohio, through the Kanawha.