A DRIVE THROUGH THE COUNTRY NEAR BOSTON.

Aglauron and Laurie are two of the pleasantest men I know. Laurie combines, with the external advantages of a beautiful person and easy address, all the charm which quick perceptions and intelligent sympathy give to the intercourse of daily life. He has an extensive, though not a deep, knowledge of men and books,—his naturally fine taste has been more refined by observation, both at home and abroad, than is usual in this busy country; and, though not himself a thinker, he follows with care and delight the flights of a rapid and inventive mind. He is one of those rare persons who, without being servile or vacillating, present on no side any barrier to the free action of another mind. Yes, he is really an agreeable companion. I do not remember ever to have been wearied or chilled in his company.

Aglauron is a person of far greater depth and force than his friend and cousin, but by no means as agreeable. His mind is ardent and powerful, rather than brilliant and ready,—neither does he with ease adapt himself to the course of another. But, when he is once kindled, the blaze of light casts every object on which it falls into a bold relief, and gives every scene a lustre unknown before. He is not, perhaps, strictly original in his thoughts; but the severe truth of his character, and the searching force of his attention, give the charm of originality to what he says. Accordingly, another cannot, by repetition, do it justice. I have never any doubt when I write down or tell what Laurie says, but Aglauron must write for himself.

Yet I almost always take notes of what has passed, for the amusement of a distant friend, who is learning, amidst the western prairies, patience, and an appreciation of the poor benefits of our imperfectly civilized state. And those I took this day, seemed not unworthy of a more general circulation. The sparkle of talk, the free breeze that swelled its current, are always fled when you write it down; but there is a gentle flow, and truth to the moment, rarely attained in more elaborate compositions.

My two friends called to ask if I would drive with them into the country, and I gladly consented. It was a beautiful afternoon of the last week in May. Nature seemed most desirous to make up for the time she had lost, in an uncommonly cold and wet spring. The leaves were bursting from their sheaths with such rapidity that the trees seemed actually to greet you as you passed along. The vestal choirs of snow-drops and violets were chanting their gentle hopes from every bank, the orchards were white with blossoms, and the birds singing in almost tumultuous glee.

We drove for some time in silence, perhaps fearful to disturb the universal song by less melodious accents, when Aglauron said:

“How entirely are we new-born today! How are all the post cold skies and hostile breezes vanished before this single breath of sweetness! How consoling is the truth thus indicated!”

Laurie. It is indeed the dearest fact of our consciousness, that, in every moment of joy, pain is annihilated. There is no past, and the future is only the sunlight streaming into the far valley.

Aglauron. Yet it was the night that taught us to prize the day.

Laurie. Even so. And I, you know, object to none of the “dark masters.”

Aglauron. Nor I,—because I am sure that whatever is, is good; and to find out the why is all our employment here. But one feels so at home in such a day as this!

Laurie. As this, indeed! I never heard so many birds, nor saw so many flowers. Do you not like these yellow flowers?

Aglauron. They gleam upon the fields as if to express the bridal kiss of the sun. He seems most happy, if not most wealthy, when first he is wed to the earth.

Laurie. I believe I have some such feeling about these golden flowers. When I did not know what was the Asphodel, so celebrated by the poets, I thought it was a golden flower; yet this yellow is so ridiculed as vulgar.

Aglauron. It is because our vulgar luxury depreciates objects not fitted to adorn our dwellings. These yellow flowers will not bear being token out of their places and brought home to the centre-table. But, when enamelling the ground, the cowslip, the king-cup,—nay, the marigold and dandelion even,—are resplendently beautiful.

Laurie. They are the poor man’s gold. See that dark, unpointed house, with its lilac shrubbery. As it stands, undivided from the road to which the green bank slopes down from the door, is not the effect of that enamel of gold dandelions beautiful?

Aglauron. It seems as if a stream of peace had flowed from the door-step down to the very dust, in waves of light, to greet the passer-by. That is, indeed, a quiet house. It looks as if somebody’s grandfather lived there still.

Laurie. It is most refreshing to see the dark boards amid those houses of staring white. Strange that, in the extreme heat of summer, aching eyes don’t teach the people better.

Aglauron. We are still, in fact, uncivilized, for all our knowledge of what is done “in foreign parts” cannot make us otherwise. Civilization must be homogeneous,—must be a natural growth. This glistening white paint was long preferred because the most expensive; just as in the West, I understand, they paint houses red to make them resemble the hideous red brick. And the eye, thus spoiled by excitement, prefers red or white to the stone-color, or the browns, which would harmonize with other hues.

Laurie. I should think the eye could never be spoiled so far as to like these white palings. These bars of glare amid the foliage are unbearable.

Myself. What color should they be?

Laurie. An invisible green, as in all civilized parts of the globe. Then your eye would rest on the shrubbery undisturbed.

Myself. Your vaunted Italy has its palaces of white stucco and buildings of brick.

Laurie. Ay,—but the stucco is by the atmosphere soon mellowed into cream-color, the brick into rich brown.

Myself. I have heard a connoisseur admire our own red brick in the afternoon sun, above all other colors.

Laurie. There are some who delight too much in the stimulus of color to be judges of harmony of coloring. It is so, often, with the Italians. No color is too keen for the eye of the Neapolitan. He thinks, with little Riding-hood, there is no color like red. I have seen one of the most beautiful new palaces paved with tiles of a brilliant red. But this, too, is barbarism.

Myself. You are pleased to call it so, because you make the English your arbiters in point of taste; but I do not think they, on your own principle, are our proper models. With their ever-weeping skies, and seven-piled velvet of verdure, they are no rule for us, whose eyes are accustomed to the keen blue and brilliant clouds of our own realm, and who see the earth wholly green scarce two months in the year. No white is more glistening than our January snows; no house here hurts my eye more than the fields of white-weed will, a fortnight hence.

Laurie. True refinement of taste would bid the eye seek repose the more. But, even admitting what you say, there is no harmony. The architecture is borrowed from England; why not the rest?

Aglauron. But, my friend, surely these piazzas and pipe-stem pillars are all American.

Laurie. But the cottage to which they belong is English. The inhabitants, suffocating in small rooms, and beneath sloping roofs, because the house is too low to admit any circulation of air, are in need, we must admit, of the piazza, for elsewhere they must suffer all the torments of Mons. Chaubert in his first experience of the oven. But I do not assail the piazzas, at any rate; they are most desirable, in these hot summers of ours, were they but in proportion with the house, and their pillars with one another. But I do object to houses which are desirable neither as summer nor winter residences here. The shingle palaces, celebrated by Irving’s wit, were far more appropriate, for they, at least, gave free course to the winds of heaven, when the thermometer stood at ninety-five degrees in the shade.

Aglauron. Pity that American wit nipped in the bud those early attempts at an American architecture. Here in the East, alas! the case is become hopeless. But in the West the log-cabin still promises a proper basis.

Laurie. You laugh at me. But so it is. I am not so silly as to insist upon American architecture, American art, in the 4th of July style, merely for the gratification of national vanity. But a building, to be beautiful, should harmonize exactly with the uses to which it is to be put, and be an index to the climate and habits of the people. There is no objection to borrowing good thoughts from other nations, if we adopt the new style because we find it will serve our convenience, and not merely because it looks pretty outside.

Aglauron. I agree with you that here, as well as in manners and in literature, there is too ready access to the old stock, and, though I said it in jest, my hope is, in truth, the log-cabin. This the settler will enlarge, as his riches and his family increase; he will beautify as his character refines, and as his eye becomes accustomed to observe objects around him for their loveliness as well as for their utility. He will borrow from Nature the forms and coloring most in harmony with the scene in which his dwelling is placed. Might growth here be but slow enough! Might not a greediness for gain and show cheat men of all the real advantages of their experience!

(Here a carriage passed.)

Laurie. Who is that beautiful lady to whom you bowed?

Aglauron. Beautiful do you think her? At this distance, and with the freshness which the open air gives to her complexion, she certainly does look so, and was so still, five years ago, when I knew her abroad. It is Mrs. V——.

Laurie. I remember with what interest you mentioned her in your letters. And you promised to tell me her true story.

Aglauron. I was much interested, then, both in her and her story, But, last winter, when I met her at the South, she had altered, and seemed so much less attractive than before, that the bright colors of the picture are well-nigh effaced.

Laurie. The pleasure of telling the story will revive them again. Let us fasten our horses and go into this little wood. There is a seat near the lake which is pretty enough to tell a story upon.

Aglauron. In all the idyls I ever read, they were told in caves, or beside a trickling fountain.

Laurie. That was in the last century. We will innovate. Let us begin that American originality we were talking about, and make the bank of a lake answer our purpose.

We dismounted accordingly, but, on reaching the spot, Aglauron at first insisted on lying on the grass, and gazing up at the clouds in a most uncitizen-like fashion, and it was some time before we could get the promised story. At last,—

I first saw Mrs. V—— at the opera in Vienna. Abroad, I scarcely cared for anything in comparison with music. In many respects the Old World disappointed my hopes; Society was, in essentials, no better, nor worse, than at home, and I too easily saw through the varnish of conventional refinement. Lions, seen near, were scarcely more interesting than tamer cattle, and much more annoying in their gambols and caprices. Parks and ornamental grounds pleased me less than the native forests and wide-rolling rivers of my own land. But in the Arts, and most of all in Music, I found all my wishes more than realized. I found the soul of man uttering itself with the swiftness, the freedom and the beauty, for which I had always pined. I easily conceived how foreigners, once acquainted with this diverse language, pass their lives without a wish for pleasure or employment beyond hearing the great works of the masters. It seemed to me that here was wealth to feed the thoughts for ages. This lady fixed my attention by the rapturous devotion with which she listened. I saw that she too had here found her proper home. Every shade of thought and feeling expressed in the music was mirrored in her beautiful countenance. Her rapture of attention, during some passages, was enough of itself to make you hold your breath; and a sudden stroke of genius lit her face into a very heaven with its lightning. It seemed to me that in her I should find one who would truly sympathize with me, one who looked on the art not as a connoisseur, but a votary.

I took the speediest opportunity of being introduced to her at her own house by a common friend.

But what a difference! At home I scarcely knew her. Still she was beautiful; but the sweetness, the elevated expression, which the satisfaction of an hour had given her, were entirely fled. Her eye was restless, her cheek pale and thin, her whole expression perturbed and sorrowful. Every gesture spoke the sickliness of a spirit long an outcast from its natural home, bereft of happiness, and hopeless of good.

I perceived, at first sight of her every-day face, that it was not unknown to me. Three or four years earlier, staying in the country-house of one of her friends, I had seen her picture. The house was very dull,—as dull as placid content with the mere material enjoyments of life, and an inert gentleness of nature, could make its inhabitants. They were people to be loved, but loved without a thought. Their wings had never grown, nor their eyes coveted a wider prospect than could be seen from the parent nest. The friendly visitant could not discompose them by a remark indicating any expansion of mind or life. Much as I enjoyed the beauty of the country around, when out in the free air, my hours within the house would have been dull enough but for the contemplation of this picture. While the round of common-place songs was going on, and the whist-players were at their work, I used to sit and wonder how this being, so sovereign in the fire of her nature, so proud in her untamed loveliness, could ever have come of their blood. Her eye, from the canvas, even, seemed to annihilate all things low or little, and able to command all creation in search of the object of its desires. She had not found it, though; I felt this on seeing her now. She, the queenly woman, the Boadicea of a forlorn hope, as she seemed born to be, the only woman whose face, to my eye, had ever given promise of a prodigality of nature sufficient for the entertainment of a poet’s soul, was—I saw it at a glance—a captive in her life, and a beggar in her affections.

Laurie. A dangerous object to the traveller’s eye, methinks!

Aglauron. Not to mine! The picture had been so; but, seeing her now, I felt that the glorious promise of her youthful prime had failed. She had missed her course; and the beauty, whose charm to the imagination had been that it seemed invincible, was now subdued and mixed with earth.

Laurie. I can never comprehend the cruelty in your way of viewing human beings, Aglauron. To err, to suffer, is their lot; all who have feeling and energy of character must share it; and I could not endure a woman who at six-and-twenty bore no trace of the past.

Aglauron. Such women and such men are the companions of everyday life. But the angels of our thoughts are those moulds of pure beauty which must break with a fall. The common air must not touch them, for they make their own atmosphere. I admit that such are not for the tenderness of daily life; their influence must be high, distant, starlike, to be pure.

Such was this woman to me before I knew her; one whose splendid beauty drew on my thoughts to their future home. In knowing her, I lost the happiness I had enjoyed in knowing what she should have been. At first the disappointment was severe, but I have learnt to pardon her, as others who get mutilated or worn in life, and show the royal impress only in their virgin courage. But this subject would detain me too long. Let me rather tell you of Mrs. V——‘s sad history.

A friend of mine has said that beautiful persons seem rarely born to their proper family, but amidst persons so rough and uncongenial that their presence commands like that of a reproving angel, or pains like that of some poor prince changed at nurse, and bound for life to the society of churls.

So it was with Emily. Her father was sordid, her mother weak; persons of great wealth and greater selfishness. She was the youngest by many years, and left alone in her father’s house. Notwithstanding the want of intelligent sympathy while she was growing up, and the want of all intelligent culture, she was not an unhappy child. The unbounded and foolish indulgence with which she was treated did not have an obviously bad effect upon her then; it did not make her selfish, sensual, or vain. Her character was too powerful to dwell upon such boons as those nearest her could bestow. She negligently received them all as her due. It was later that the pernicious effects of the absence of all discipline showed themselves; but in early years she was happy in her lavish feelings, and in beautiful nature, on which she could pour them, and in her own pursuits. Music was her passion; in it she found food, and an answer for feelings destined to become so fatal to her peace, but which then glowed so sweetly in her youthful form as to enchant the most ordinary observer.

When she was not more than fifteen, and expanding like a flower in each sunny day, it was her misfortune that her first husband saw and loved her. Emily, though pleased by his handsome person and gay manners, never bestowed a serious thought on him. If she had, it would have been the first ever disengaged from her life of pleasurable sensation. But when he did plead his cause with all the ardor of youth, and the flourishes which have been by usage set apart for such occasions, she listened with delight; for all his talk of boundless love, undying faith, etc., seemed her native tongue. It was like the most glowing sunset sky. It swelled upon the ear like music. It was the only way she ever wished to be addressed, and she now saw plainly why all talk of everyday people had fallen unheeded on her ear. She could have listened all day. But when, emboldened by the beaming eye and ready smile with which she heard, he pressed his suit more seriously, and talked of marriage, she drew back astonished. Marry yet?—impossible! She had never thought of it; and as she thought now of marriages, such as she had seen them, there was nothing in marriage to attract. But L—— was not so easily repelled; he made her every promise of pleasure, as one would to a child. He would take her away to journey through scenes more beautiful than she had ever dreamed of; he would take her to a city where, in the fairest home, she should hear the finest music, and he himself, in every scene, would be her devoted slave, too happy if for every now pleasure he received one of those smiles which had become his life.

He saw her yielding, and hastened to secure her. Her father was delighted, as fathers are strangely wont to be, that he was likely to be deprived of his child, his pet, his pride. The mother was threefold delighted that she would have a daughter married so young,—at least three years younger than any of her elder sisters were married. Both lent their influence; and Emily, accustomed to rely on them against all peril, and annoyance, till she scarcely knew there was pain or evil in the world, gave her consent, as she would have given it to a pleasure-party for a day or a week.

The marriage was hurried on; L—— intent on gaining his object, as men of strong will and no sentiment are wont to be, the parents thinking of the éclat of the match. Emily was amused by the preparations for the festivity, and full of excitement about the new chapter which was to be opened in her life. Yet so little idea had she of the true business of life, and the importance of its ties, that perhaps there was no figure in the future that occupied her less than that of her bridegroom, a handsome man, with a sweet voice, her captive, her adorer. She neither thought nor saw further, lulled by the pictures of bliss and adventure which were floating before her fancy, the more enchanting because so vague.

It was at this time that the picture that so charmed me was taken. The exquisite rose had not yet opened its leaves so as to show its heart; but its fragrance and blushful pride were there in perfection.

Poor Emily! She had the promised journeys, the splendid home. Amid the former her mind, opened by new scenes, already learned that something she seemed to possess was wanting in the too constant companion of her days. In the splendid home she received not only musicians, but other visitants, who taught her strange things.

Four little months after her leaving home, her parents were astonished by receiving a letter in which she told them they had parted with her too soon; that she was not happy with Mr. L——, as he had promised she should be, and that she wished to have her marriage broken. She urged her father to make haste about it, as she had particular reasons for impatience. You may easily conceive of the astonishment of the good folks at home. Her mother wondered and cried. Her father immediately ordered his horses, and went to her.

He was received with rapturous delight, and almost at the first moment thanked for his speedy compliance with her request. But when she found that he opposed her desire of having her marriage broken, and when she urged him with vehemence and those marks of caressing fondness she had been used to find all-powerful, and he told her at last it could not be done, she gave way to a paroxysm of passion; she declared that she could not and would not live with Mr. L——; that, so soon as she saw anything of the world, she saw many men that she infinitely preferred to him; and that, since her father and mother, instead of guarding her, so mere a child as she was, so entirely inexperienced, against a hasty choice, had persuaded and urged her to it, it was their duty to break the match when they found it did not make her happy.

“My child, you are entirely unreasonable.”

“It is not a time to be patient; and I was too yielding before. I am not seventeen. Is the happiness of my whole life to be sacrificed?”

“Emily, you terrify me! Do you love anybody else?”

“Not yet; but I am sure shall find some one to love, now I know what it is. I have seen already many whom I prefer to Mr. L——.”

“Is he not kind to you?”

“Kind! yes; but he is perfectly uninteresting. I hate to be with him. I do not wish his kindness, nor to remain in his house.”

In vain her father argued; she insisted that she could never be happy as she was; that it was impossible the law could be so cruel as to bind her to a vow she had taken when so mere a child; that she would go home with her father now, and they would see what could be done. She added that she had already told her husband her resolution.

“And how did he bear it?”

“He was very angry; but it is better for him to be angry once than unhappy always, as I should certainly make him did I remain here.”

After long and fruitless attempts to reason her into a different state of mind, the father went in search of the husband. He found him irritated and mortified. He loved his wife, in his way, for her personal beauty. He was very proud of her; he was piqued to the last degree by her frankness. He could not but acknowledge the truth of what she said, that she had been persuaded into the match when but a child; for she seemed a very infant now, in wilfulness and ignorance of the world. But I believe neither he nor her father had one compunctious misgiving as to their having profaned the holiness of marriage by such an union. Their minds had never been opened to the true meaning of life, and, though they thought themselves so much wiser, they were in truth much less so than the poor, passionate Emily,—for her heart, at least, spoke clearly, if her mind lay in darkness.

They could do nothing with her, and her father was at length compelled to take her home, hoping that her mother might be able to induce her to see things in a different light. But father, mother, uncles, brothers, all reasoned with her in vain. Totally unused to disappointment, she could not for a long time believe that she was forever bound by a bond that sat uneasily on her untamed spirit. When at last convinced of the truth, her despair was terrible.

“Am I his? his forever? Must I never then love? Never marry one whom I could really love? Mother! it is too cruel. I cannot, will not believe it. You always wished me to belong to him. You do not now wish to aid me, or you are afraid! O, you would not be so, could you but know what I feel!”

At last convinced, she then declared that if she could not be legally separated from L——, but must consent to bear his name, and never give herself to another, she would at least live with him no more. She would not again leave her father’s house. Here she was deaf to all argument, and only force could have driven her away. Her indifference to L—— had become hatred, in the course of these thoughts and conversations. She regarded herself as his victim, and him as her betrayer, since, she said, he was old enough to know the importance of the step to which he led her. Her mind, naturally noble, though now in this wild state, refused to admit his love as an excuse. “Had he loved me,” she said, “he would have wished to teach me to love him, before securing me as his property. He is as selfish as he is dull and uninteresting. No! I will drag on my miserable years here alone, but I will not pretend to love him nor gratify him by the sight of his slave!”

A year and more passed, and found the unhappy Emily inflexible. Her husband at last sought employment abroad, to hide his mortification.

After his departure, Emily relaxed once from the severe coldness she had shown since her return home. She had passed her time there with her music, in reading poetry, in solitary walks. But as the person who had been, however unintentionally, the means of making her so miserable, was further removed from her, she showed willingness to mingle again with the family, and see one or two young friends.

One of these, Almeria, effected what all the armament of praying and threatening friends had been unable to do. She devoted herself to Emily. She shared her employments and her walks; she sympathized with all her feelings, even the morbid ones which she saw to be sincerity, tenderness and delicacy gone astray,—perverted and soured by the foolish indulgence of her education, and the severity of her destiny made known suddenly to a mind quite unprepared. At last, having won the confidence and esteem of Emily, by the wise and gentle cheek her justice and clear perceptions gave to all extravagance, Almeria ventured on representing to Emily her conduct as the world saw it.

To this she found her quite insensible. “What is the world to me?” she said. “I am forbidden to seek there all it can offer of value to Woman—sympathy and a home.”

“It is full of beauty still,” said Almeria, looking out into the golden and perfumed glories of a June day.

“Not to the prisoner and the slave,” said Emily.

“All are such, whom God hath not made free;” and Almeria gently ventured to explain the hopes of larger span which enable the soul that can soar upon their wings to disregard the limitations of seventy years.

Emily listened with profound attention. The words were familiar to her, but the tone was not; it was that which rises from the depths of a purified spirit,—purified by pain, softened into peace.

“Have you made any use of these thoughts in your life, Almeria?”

The lovely preacher hesitated not to reveal a tale before unknown except to her own heart, of woe, renunciation, and repeated blows from a hostile fate.

Emily heard it in silence, but she understood. The great illusions of youth vanished. She did not suffer alone; her lot was not peculiar. Another, perhaps many, were forbidden the bliss of sympathy and a congenial environment. And what had Almeria done? Revenged herself? Tormented all around her? Clung with wild passion to a selfish resolve? Not at all. She had made the best of a wreck of life, and deserved a blessing on a new voyage. She had sought consolation in disinterested tenderness for her fellow-sufferers, and she deserved to cease to suffer.

The lesson was taken home, and gradually leavened the whole being of this spoiled but naturally noble child.

A few weeks afterwards, she asked her father when Mr. L—— was expected to return.

“In about three months,” he replied, much surprised.

“I should like to have you write to him for me.”

“What now absurdity?” said the father, who, long mortified and harassed, had ceased to be a fond father to his once adored Emily.

“Say that my views are unchanged as to his soliciting a marriage with me when too childish to know my own mind on that or any other subject; but I have now seen enough of the world to know that he meant no ill, if no good, and was no more heedless in this great matter than many others are. He is not born to know what one constituted like me must feel, in a home where I found no rest for my heart. I have now read, seen and thought, what has made me a woman. I can be what you call reasonable, though not perhaps in your way. I see that my misfortune is irreparable. I heed not the world’s opinion, and would, for myself, rather remain here, and keep up no semblance of a connection which my matured mind disclaims. But that scandalizes you and my mother, and makes your house a scene of pain and mortification in your old age. I know you, too, did not neglect the charge of me, in your own eyes. I owe you gratitude for your affectionate intentions at least.

“L—— too is as miserable as mortification can make one like him. Write, and ask him if he wishes my presence in his house on my own terms. He must not expect from me the affection, or marks of affection, of a wife. I should never have been his wife had I waited till I understood life or myself. But I will be his attentive and friendly companion, the mistress of his house, if he pleases. To the world it will seem enough,—he will be more comfortable there,—and what he wished of me was, in a great measure, to show me to the world. I saw that, as soon as we were in it, I could not give him happiness if I would, for we have not a thought nor employment in common. But if we can agree on the way, we may live together without any one being very miserable except myself, and I have made up my mind.”

The astonishment of the father may be conceived, and his cavils; L——‘s also.

To cut the story short, it was settled in Emily’s way, for she was one of the sultana kind, dread and dangerous. L—— hardly wished her to love him now, for he half hated her for all she had done; yet he was glad to have her back, as she had judged, for the sake of appearances. All was smoothed over by a plausible story. People, indeed, knew the truth as to the fair one’s outrageous conduct perfectly, but Mr. L—— was rich, his wife beautiful, and gave good parties; so society, as such, bowed and smiled, while individuals scandalized the pair.

They had been living on this footing for several years, when I saw Emily at the opera. She was a much altered being. Debarred of happiness in her affections, she had turned for solace to the intellectual life, and her naturally powerful and brilliant mind had matured into a splendor which had never been dreamed of by those who had seen her amid the freaks end day-dreams of her early youth.

Yet, as I said before, she was not captivating to me, as her picture had been. She was, in a different way, as beautiful in feature and coloring as in her spring-time. Her beauty, all moulded and mellowed by feeling, was far more eloquent; but it had none of the virgin magnificence, the untouched tropical luxuriance, which had fired my fancy. The false position in which she lived had shaded her expression with a painful restlessness; and her eye proclaimed that the conflicts of her mind had strengthened, had deepened, but had not yet hallowed, her character.

She was, however, interesting, deeply so; one of those rare beings who fill your eye in every mood. Her passion for music, and the great excellence she had attained as a performer, drew us together. I was her daily visitor; but, if my admiration ever softened into tenderness, it was the tenderness of pity for her unsatisfied heart, and cold, false life.

But there was one who saw with very different eyes. V—— had been intimate with Emily some time before my arrival, and every day saw him more deeply enamored.

Laurie. And pray where was the husband all this time?

Aglauron. L—— had sought consolation in ambition. He was a man of much practical dexterity, but of little thought, and less heart. He had at first been jealous of Emily for his honor’s sake,—not for any reality,—for she treated him with great attention as to the comforts of daily life; but otherwise, with polite, steady coldness. Finding that she received the court, which many were disposed to pay her, with grace and affability, but at heart with imperial indifference, he ceased to disturb himself; for, as she rightly thought, he was incapable of understanding her. A coquette he could have interpreted; but a romantic character like hers, born for a grand passion, or no love at all, he could not. Nor did he see that V—— was likely to be more to her than any of her admirers.

Laurie. I am afraid I should have shamed his obtuseness. V—— has nothing to recommend him that I know of, except his beauty, and that is the beauty of a petit-maitre—effeminate, without character, and very unlikely, I should judge, to attract such a woman as you give me the idea of.

Aglauron. You speak like a man, Laurie; but have you never heard tales of youthful minstrels and pages being preferred by princesses, in the land of chivalry, to stalwart knights, who were riding all over the land, doing their devoirs maugre scars and starvation? And why? One want of a woman’s heart is to admire and be protected; but another is to be understood in all her delicate feelings, and have an object who shall know how to receive all the marks of her inventive and bounteous affection. V—— is such an one; a being of infinite grace and tenderness, and an equal capacity for prizing the same in another.

Effeminate, say you? Lovely, rather, and lovable. He was not, indeed, made to grow old; but I never saw a fairer spring-time than shone in his eye when life, and thought, and love, opened on him all together.

He was to Emily like the soft breathing of a flute in some solitary valley; indeed, the delicacy of his nature made a solitude around him in the world. So delicate was he, and Emily for a long time so unconscious, that nobody except myself divined how strong was the attraction which, as it drew them nearer together, invested both with a lustre and a sweetness which charmed all around them.

But I see the sun is declining, and warns me to cut short a tale which would keep us here till dawn if I were to detail it as I should like to do in my own memories. The progress of this affair interested me deeply; for, like all persons whose perceptions are more lively than their hopes, I delight to live from day to day in the more ardent experiments of others. I looked on with curiosity, with sympathy, with fear. How could it end? What would become of them, unhappy lovers? One too noble, the other too delicate, ever to find happiness in an unsanctioned tie.

I had, however, no right to interfere, and did not, even by a look, until one evening, when the occasion was forced upon me.

There was a summer fête given at L——‘s. I had mingled for a while with the guests in the brilliant apartments; but the heat oppressed, the conversation failed to interest me. An open window tempted me to the garden, whose flowers and tufted lawns lay bathed in moonlight. I went out alone; but the music of a superb band followed my steps, and gave impulse to my thoughts. A dreaming state, pensive though not absolutely sorrowful, came upon me,—one of those gentle moods when thoughts flow through the mind amber-clear and soft, noiseless, because unimpeded. I sat down in an arbor to enjoy it, and probably stayed much longer than I could have imagined; for when I re?ntered the large saloon it was deserted. The lights, however, were not extinguished, and, hearing voices in the inner room, I supposed some guests still remained; and, as I had not spoken with Emily that evening, I ventured in to bid her good-night. I started, repentant, on finding her alone with V——, and in a situation that announced their feelings to be no longer concealed from each other. She, leaning back on the sofa, was weeping bitterly, while V——, seated at her feet, holding her hands within his own, was pouring forth his passionate words with a fervency which prevented him from perceiving my entrance. But Emily perceived me at once, and starting up, motioned me not to go, as I had intended. I obeyed, and sat down. A pause ensued, awkward for me and for V——, who sat with his eyes cast down and blushing like a young girl detected in a burst of feeling long kept secret. Emily sat buried in thought, the tears yet undried upon her cheeks. She was pale, but nobly beautiful, as I had never yet seen her.

After a few moments I broke the silence, and attempted to tell why I had returned so late. She interrupted me: “No matter, Aglauron, how it happened; whatever the chance, it promises to give both V—— and myself, what we greatly need, a calm friend and adviser. You are the only person among these crowds of men whom I could consult; for I have read friendship in your eye, and I know you have truth and honor. V—— thinks of you as I do, and he too is, or should be, glad to have some counsellor beside his own wishes.”

V—— did not raise his eyes; neither did he contradict her. After a moment he said, “I believe Aglauron to be as free from prejudice as any man, and most true and honorable; yet who can judge in this matter but ourselves?”

“No one shall judge,” said Emily; “but I want counsel. God help me! I feel there is a right and wrong; but how can my mind, which has never been trained to discern between them, be confident of its power at this important moment? Aglauron, what remains to me of happiness,—if anything do remain; perhaps the hope of heaven, if, indeed, there be a heaven,—is at stake! Father and brother have failed their trust. I have no friend able to understand, wise enough to counsel me. The only one whose words ever came true to my thoughts, and of whom you have often reminded me, is distant. Will you, this hour, take her place?”

“To the best of my ability,” I replied without hesitation, struck by the dignity of her manner.

“You know,” she said, “all my past history; all do so here, though they do not talk loudly of it. You and all others have probably blamed me. You know not, you cannot guess, the anguish, the struggles of my childish mind when it first opened to the meaning of those words, Love, Marriage, Life. When I was bound to Mr. L——, by a vow which from my heedless lips was mockery of all thought, all holiness, I had never known a duty, I had never felt the pressure of a tie. Life had been, so far, a sweet, voluptuous dream, and I thought of this seemingly so kind and amiable person as a new and devoted ministrant to me of its pleasures. But I was scarcely in his power when I awoke. I perceived the unfitness of the tie; its closeness revolted me.

“I had no timidity; I had always been accustomed to indulge my feelings, and I displayed them now. L——, irritated, averted his mastery; this drove me wild; I soon hated him, and despised too his insensibility to all which I thought most beautiful. From all his faults, and the imperfection of our relation, grew up in my mind the knowledge of what the true might be to me. It is astonishing how the thought grow upon me day by day. I had not been married more than three months before I knew what it would be to love, and I longed to be free to do so. I had never known what it was to be resisted, and the thought never came to me that I could now, and for all my life, be bound by so early a mistake. I thought only of expressing my resolve to be free.

“How I was repulsed, how disappointed, you know, or could divine if you did not know; for all but me have been trained to bear the burden from their youth up, and accustomed to have the individual will fettered for the advantage of society. For the same reason, you cannot guess the silent fury that filled my mind when I at last found that I had struggled in vain, and that I must remain in the bondage that I had ignorantly put on.

“My affections were totally alienated from my family, for I felt they had known what I had not, and had neither put me on my guard, nor warned me against precipitation whose consequences must be fatal. I saw, indeed, that they did not look on life as I did, and could be content without being happy; but this observation was far from making me love them more. I felt alone, bitterly, contemptuously alone. I hated men who had made the laws that bound me. I did not believe in God; for why had He permitted the dart to enter so unprepared a breast? I determined never to submit, though I disdained to struggle, since struggle was in vain. In passive, lonely wretchedness I would pass my days. I would not feign what I did not feel, nor take the hand which had poisoned for me the cup of life before I had sipped the first drops.

“A friend—the only one I have ever known—taught me other thoughts. She taught me that others, perhaps all others, were victims, as much as myself. She taught me that if all the wrecked submitted to be drowned, the world would be a desert. She taught me to pity others, even those I myself was paining; for she showed me that they had sinned in ignorance, and that I had no right to make them suffer so long as I myself did, merely because they were the authors of my suffering.

“She showed me, by her own pure example, what were Duty and Benevolence and Employment to the soul, even when baffled and sickened in its dearest wishes. That example was not wholly lost: I freed my parents, at least, from their pain, and, without falsehood, became less cruel and more calm.

“Yet the kindness, the calmness, have never gone deep. I have been forced to live out of myself; and life, busy or idle, is still most bitter to the homeless heart. I cannot be like Almeria; I am more ardent; and, Aglauron, you see now I might be happy,”

She looked towards V——. I followed her eye, and was well-nigh melted too by the beauty of his gaze.

“The question in my mind is,” she resumed, “have I not a right to fly? To leave this vacant life, and a tie which, but for worldly circumstances, presses as heavily on L—— as on myself. I shall mortify him; but that is a trifle compared with actual misery. I shall grieve my parents; but, were they truly such, would they not grieve still more that I must reject the life of mutual love? I have already sacrificed enough; shall I sacrifice the happiness of one I could really bless for those who do not know one native heart-beat of my life?”

V—— kissed her hand.

“And yet,” said she, sighing, “it does not always look so. We must, in that case, leave the world; it will not tolerate us. Can I make V—— happy in solitude? And what would Almeria think? Often it seems that she would feel that now I do love, and could make a green spot in the desert of life over which she mourned, she would rejoice to have me do so. Then, again, something whispers she might have objections to make; and I wish—O, I long to know them! For I feel that this is the great crisis of my life, and that if I do not act wisely, now that I have thought and felt, it will be unpardonable. In my first error I was ignorant what I wished, but now I know, and ought not to be weak or deluded.”

I said, “Have you no religious scruples? Do you never think of your vow as sacred?”

“Never!” she replied, with flashing eyes. “Shall the woman be bound by the folly of the child? No!—have never once considered myself as L——‘s wife. If I have lived in his house, it was to make the best of what was left, as Almeria advised. But what I feel he knows perfectly. I have never deceived him. But O! I hazard all! all! and should I be again ignorant, again deceived”——

V—— here poured forth all that can be imagined.

I rose: “Emily, this case seems to me so extraordinary that I must have time to think. You shall hear from me. I shall certainly give you my best advice, and I trust you will not over-value it.”

“I am sure,” she said, “it will be of use to me, and will enable me to decide what I shall do. V——, now go away with Aglauron; it is too late for you to stay here.”

I do not know if I have made obvious, in this account, what struck me most in the interview,—a certain savage force in the character of this beautiful woman, quite independent of the reasoning power. I saw that, as she could give no account of the past, except that she saw it was fit, or saw it was not, so she must be dealt with now by a strong instalment made by another from his own point of view, which she would accept or not, as suited her.

There are some such characters, which, like plants, stretch upwards to the light; they accept what nourishes, they reject what injures them. They die if wounded,—blossom if fortunate; but never learn to analyze all this, or find its reasons; but, if they tell their story, it is in Emily’s way;—“it was so;” “I found it so.”

I talked with V——, and found him, as I expected, not the peer of her he loved, except in love. His passion was at its height. Better acquainted with the world than Emily,—not because he had seen it more, but because he had the elements of the citizen in him,—he had been at first equally emboldened and surprised by the ease with which he won her to listen to his suit. But he was soon still more surprised to find that she would only listen. She had no regard for her position in society as a married woman,—none for her vow. She frankly confessed her love, so far as it went, but doubted as to whether it was her whole love, and doubted still more her right to leave L——, since she had returned to him, and could not break the bond so entirely as to give them firm foot-hold in the world.

“I may make you unhappy,” she said, “and then be unhappy myself; these laws, this society, are so strange, I can make nothing of them. In music I am at home. Why is not all life music? We instantly know when we are going wrong there. Convince me it is for the best, and I will go with you at once. But now it seems wrong, unwise, scarcely better than to stay as we are. We must go secretly, must live obscurely in a corner. That I cannot bear,—all is wrong yet. Why am I not at liberty to declare unblushingly to all men that I will leave the man whom I do not love, and go with him I do love? That is the only way that would suit me,—I cannot see clearly to take any other course.”

I found V—— had no scruples of conscience, any more than herself. He was wholly absorbed in his passion, and his only wish was to persuade her to elope, that a divorce might follow, and she be all his own.

I took my part. I wrote next day to Emily. I told her that my view must differ from hers in this: that I had, from early impressions, a feeling of the sanctity of the marriage vow. It was not to me a measure intended merely to insure the happiness of two individuals, but a solemn obligation, which, whether it led to happiness or not, was a means of bringing home to the mind the great idea of Duty, the understanding of which, and not happiness, seemed to be the end of life. Life looked not clear to me otherwise. I entreated her to separate herself from V—— for a year, before doing anything decisive; she could then look at the subject from other points of view, and see the bearing on mankind as well as on herself alone. If she still found that happiness and V—— were her chief objects, she might be more sure of herself after such a trial. I was careful not to add one word of persuasion or exhortation, except that I recommended her to the enlightening love of the Father of our spirits.

Laurie. With or without persuasion, your advice had small chance, I fear, of being followed.

Aglauron. You err. Next day V—— departed. Emily, with a calm brow and earnest eyes, devoted herself to thought, and such reading as I suggested.

Laurie. And the result?

Aglauron. I grieve not to be able to point my tale with the expected moral, though perhaps the true denouement may lead to one as valuable. L—— died within the year, and she married V——.

Laurie. And the result?

Aglauron. Is for the present utter disappointment in him. She was infinitely blest, for a time, in his devotion, but presently her strong nature found him too much hers, and too little his own. He satisfied her as little as L—— had done, though always lovely and dear. She saw with keen anguish, though this time without bitterness, that we are never wise enough to be sure any measure will fulfil our expectations.

But—I know not how it is—Emily does not yet command the changes of destiny which she feels so keenly and faces so boldly. Born to be happy only in the clear light of religious thought, she still seeks happiness elsewhere. She is now a mother, and all other thoughts are merged in that. But she will not long be permitted to abide there. One more pang, and I look to see her find her central point, from which all the paths she has taken lead. She loves truth so ardently, though as yet only in detail, that she will yet know truth as a whole. She will see that she does not live for Emily, or for V——, or for her child, but as one link in a divine purpose. Her large nature must at last serve knowingly.

Myself. I cannot understand you, Aglauron; I do not guess the scope of your story, nor sympathize with your feeling about this lady. She is a strange, and, I think, very unattractive person. I think her beauty must have fascinated you. Her character seems very inconsistent.

Aglauron. Because I have drawn from life.

Myself. But, surely, there should be a harmony somewhere.

Aglauron. Could we but get the right point of view.

Laurie. And where is that?

He pointed to the sun, just sinking behind the pine grove. We mounted and rode home without a word more. But I do not understand Aglauron yet, nor what he expects from this Emily. Yet her character, though almost featureless at first, gains distinctness as I think of it more. Perhaps in this life I shall find its key.
The Wrongs of American Women. The Duty of American Women.

The same day brought us a copy of Mr. Burdett’s little book,—in which the sufferings and difficulties that beset the large class of women who must earn their subsistence in a city like New York, are delineated with so much simplicity, feeling, and exact adherence to the facts,—and a printed circular, containing proposals for immediate practical adoption of the plan wore fully described in a book published some weeks since, under the title, “The Duty of American Women to their Country,” which was ascribed alternately to Mrs. Stowe and Miss Catharine Beecher. The two matters seemed linked to one another by natural parity. Full acquaintance with the wrong must call forth all manner of inventions for its redress.

The circular, in showing the vast want that already exists of good means for instructing the children of this nation, especially in the West, states also the belief that among women, as being less immersed in other cares and toils, from the preparation it gives for their task as mothers, and from the necessity in which a great proportion stand of earning a subsistence somehow, at least during the years which precede marriage, if they do marry, must the number of teachers wanted be found, which is estimated already at sixty thousand.

We cordially sympathize with these views.

Much has been written about woman’s keeping within her sphere, which is defined as the domestic sphere. As a little girl she is to learn the lighter family duties, while she acquires that limited acquaintance with the realm of literature and science that will enable her to superintend the instruction of children in their earliest years. It is not generally proposed that she should be sufficiently instructed and developed to understand the pursuits or aims of her future husband; she is not to be a help-meet to him in the way of companionship and counsel, except in the care of his house and children. Her youth is to be passed partly in learning to keep house and the use of the needle, partly in the social circle, where her manners may be formed, ornamental accomplishments perfected and displayed, and the husband found who shall give her the domestic sphere for which she is exclusively to be prepared.

Were the destiny of Woman thus exactly marked out; did she invariably retain the shelter of a parent’s or guardian’s roof till she married; did marriage give her a sure home and protector; were she never liable to remain a widow, or, if so, sure of finding immediate protection from a brother or new husband, so that she might never be forced to stand alone one moment; and were her mind given for this world only, with no faculties capable of eternal growth and infinite improvement; we would still demand for her a for wider and more generous culture, than is proposed by those who so anxiously define her sphere. We would demand it that she might not ignorantly or frivolously thwart the designs of her husband; that she might be the respected friend of her sons, not less than of her daughters; that she might give more refinement, elevation and attraction, to the society which is needed to give the characters of men polish and plasticity,—no less so than to save them from vicious and sensual habits. But the most fastidious critic on the departure of Woman from her sphere can scarcely fail to see, at present, that a vast proportion of the sex, if not the better half, do not, cannot have this domestic sphere. Thousands and scores of thousands in this country, no less than in Europe, are obliged to maintain themselves alone. Far greater numbers divide with their husbands the care of earning a support for the family. In England, now, the progress of society has reached so admirable a pitch, that the position of the sexes is frequently reversed, and the husband is obliged to stay at home and “mind the house and bairns,” while the wife goes forth to the employment she alone can secure.

We readily admit that the picture of this is most painful;—that Nature made an entirely opposite distribution of functions between the sexes. We believe the natural order to be the best, and that, if it could be followed in an enlightened spirit, it would bring to Woman all she wants, no less for her immortal than her mortal destiny. We are not surprised that men who do not look deeply and carefully at causes and tendencies, should be led, by disgust at the hardened, hackneyed characters which the present state of things too often produces in women, to such conclusions as they are. We, no more than they, delight in the picture of the poor woman digging in the mines in her husband’s clothes. We, no more than they, delight to hear their voices shrilly raised in the market-place, whether of apples, or of celebrity. But we see that at present they must do as they do for bread. Hundreds and thousands must step out of that hallowed domestic sphere, with no choice but to work or steal, or belong to men, not as wives, but as the wretched slaves of sensuality.

And this transition state, with all its revolting features, indicates, we do believe, an approach of a nobler era than the world has yet known. We trust that by the stress and emergencies of the present and coming time the minds of women will be formed to more reflection and higher purposes than heretofore; their latent powers developed, their characters strengthened and eventually beautified and harmonized. Should the state of society then be such that each may remain, as Nature seems to have intended, Woman the tutelary genius of home, while Man manages the outdoor business of life, both may be done with a wisdom, a mutual understanding and respect, unknown at present. Men will be no less gainers by this than women, finding in pure and more religious marriages the joys of friendship and love combined,—in their mothers and daughters better instruction, sweeter and nobler companionship, and in society at large, an excitement to their finer powers and feelings unknown at present, except in the region of the fine arts.

Blest be the generous, the wise, who seek to forward hopes like these, instead of struggling, against the fiat of Providence and the march of Fate, to bind down rushing life to the standard of the past! Such efforts are vain, but those who make them are unhappy and unwise.

It is not, however, to such that we address ourselves, but to those who seek to make the best of things as they are, while they also strive to make them better. Such persons will have seen enough of the state of things in London, Paris, New York, and manufacturing regions everywhere, to feel that there is an imperative necessity for opening more avenues of employment to women, and fitting them better to enter them, rather than keeping them back.

Women have invaded many of the trades and some of the professions. Sewing, to the present killing extent, they cannot long bear. Factories seem likely to afford them permanent employment. In the culture of fruit, flowers, and vegetables, even in the sale of them, we rejoice to see them engaged. In domestic service they will be aided, but can never be supplanted, by machinery. As much room as there is here for Woman’s mind and Woman’s labor, will always be filled. A few have usurped the martial province, but these must always be few; the nature of Woman is opposed to war. It is natural enough to see “female physicians,” and we believe that the lace cap and work-bag are as much at home here as the wig and gold-headed cane. In the priesthood, they have, from all time, shared more or less—in many eras more than at the present. We believe there has been no female lawyer, and probably will be none. The pen, many of the fine arts, they have made their own; and in the more refined countries of the world, as writers, as musicians, as painters, as actors, women occupy as advantageous ground as men. Writing and music may be esteemed professions for them more than any other.

But there are two others—where the demand must invariably be immense, and for which they are naturally better fitted than men—for which we should like to see them better prepared and better rewarded than they are. These are the professions of nurse to the sick, and of the teacher. The first of these professions we have warmly desired to see dignified. It is a noble one, now most unjustly regarded in the light of menial service. It is one which no menial, no servile nature can fitly occupy. We were rejoiced when an intelligent lady of Massachusetts made the refined heroine of a little romance select this calling. This lady (Mrs. George Lee) has looked on society with unusual largeness of spirit and healthiness of temper. She is well acquainted with the world of conventions, but sees beneath it the world of nature. She is a generous writer, and unpretending as the generous are wont to be. We do not recall the name of the tale, but the circumstance above mentioned marks its temper. We hope to see the time when the refined and cultivated will choose this profession, and learn it, not only through experience and under the direction of the doctor, but by acquainting themselves with the laws of matter and of mind, so that all they do shall be intelligently done, and afford them the means of developing intelligence, as well as the nobler, tenderer feelings of humanity; for even this last part of the benefit they cannot receive if their work be done in a selfish or mercenary spirit.

The other profession is that of teacher, for which women are peculiarly adapted by their nature, superiority in tact, quickness of sympathy, gentleness, patience, and a clear and animated manner in narration or description. To form a good teacher, should be added to this, sincere modesty combined with firmness, liberal views, with a power and will to liberalize them still further, a good method, and habits of exact and thorough investigation. In the two last requisites women are generally deficient, but there are now many shining examples to prove that if they are immethodical and superficial as teachers, it is because it is the custom so to teach them, and that when aware of these faults, they can and will correct them.

The profession is of itself an excellent one for the improvement of the teacher during that interim between youth and maturity when the mind needs testing, tempering, and to review and rearrange the knowledge it has acquired. The natural method of doing this for one’s self, is to attempt teaching others; those years also are the best of the practical teacher. The teacher should be near the pupil, both in years and feelings; no oracle, but the eldest brother or sister of the pupil. More experience and years form the lecturer and director of studies, but injure the powers as to familiar teaching.

These are just the years of leisure in the lives even of those women who are to enter the domestic sphere, and this calling most of all compatible with a constant progress as to qualifications for that.

Viewing the matter thus, it may well be seen that we should hail with joy the assurance that sixty thousand female teachers are wanted, and more likely to be, and that a plan is projected which looks wise, liberal and generous, to afford the means, to those whose hearts answer to this high calling, of obeying their dictates.

The plan is to have Cincinnati as a central point, where teachers shall be for a short time received, examined, and prepared for their duties. By mutual agreement and cooperation of the various sects, funds are to be raised, and teachers provided, according to the wants and tendencies of the various locations now destitute. What is to be done for them centrally, is for suitable persons to examine into the various kinds of fitness, communicate some general views whose value has been tested, and counsel adapted to the difficulties and advantages of their new positions. The central committee are to have the charge of raising funds, and finding teachers, and places where teachers are wanted.

The passage of thoughts, teachers and funds, will be from East to West—the course of sunlight upon this earth.

The plan is offered as the most extensive and pliant means of doing a good and preventing ill to this nation, by means of a national education; whose normal school shall have an invariable object in the search after truth, and the diffusion of the means of knowledge, while its form shall be plastic according to the wants of the time. This normal school promises to have good effects, for it proposes worthy aims through simple means, and the motive for its formation and support seems to be disinterested philanthropy.

It promises to eschew the bitter spirit of sectarianism and proselytism, else we, for one party, could have nothing to do with it. Men, no doubt, have oftentimes been kept from absolute famine by the wheat with which such tares are mingled; but we believe the time is come when a purer and more generous food is to be offered to the people at large. We believe the aim of all education to be to rouse the mind to action, show it the means of discipline and of information; then leave it free, with God, Conscience, and the love of Truth, for its guardians and teachers. Woe be to those who sacrifice these aims of universal and eternal value to the propagation of a set of opinions! We can accept such doctrine as is offered by Rev. Colvin E. Stowe, one of the committee, in the following passage:

“In judicious practice, I am persuaded there will seldom be any very great difficulty, especially if there be excited in the community anything like a whole-hearted and enlightened sincerity in the cause of public instruction.

“It is all right for people to suit their own taste and convictions in respect to sect; and by fair means, and at proper times, to teach their children and those under their influence to prefer the denominations which they prefer; but further than this no one has any right to go. It is all wrong to hazard the well-being of the soul, to jeopardize great public interests for the sake of advancing the interests of a sect. People must learn to practise some self-denial, on Christian principles, in respect to their denominational prejudices as well as in respect to other things, before pure religion can ever gain a complete victory over every form of human selfishness.”

The persons who propose themselves to the examination and instruction of the teachers at Cincinnati, till the plan shall be sufficiently under way to provide regularly for the office, are Mrs. Stowe and Miss Catharine Beecher, ladies well known to fame, as possessing unusual qualifications for the task.

As to finding abundance of teachers, who that reads this little book of Mr. Burdett’s, or the account of the compensation of female labor in New York, and the hopeless, comfortless, useless, pernicious lives of those who have even the advantage of getting work must lead, with the sufferings and almost inevitable degradation to which those who cannot are exposed, but must long to snatch such as are capable of this better profession (and among the multitude there must be many who are or could be made so) from their present toils, and make them free, and the means of freedom and growth in others?

To many books on such subjects—among others to “Woman in the Nineteenth Century”—the objection has been made, that they exhibit ills without specifying any practical means for their remedy. The writer of the last-named essay does indeed think that it contains one great rule which, if laid to heart, would prove a practical remedy for many ills, and of such daily and hourly efficacy in the conduct of life, that any extensive observance of it for a single year would perceptibly raise the tone of thought, feeling and conduct, throughout the civilized world. But to those who ask not only such a principle, but an external method for immediate use, we say that here is one proposed which looks noble and promising; the proposers offer themselves to the work with heart and hand, with time and purse. Go ye and do likewise.
George Sand.

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

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

Still, in “André” and “Jacques,” I trace the same high morality of one who had tried the liberty of circumstance only to learn to appreciate the liberty of law;—to know that license is the foe of freedom; and, though the sophistry of Passion in these books disgusted me, flowers of purest hue seemed to grow upon the dark and dirty ground. I thought she had cast aside the slough of her past life, and begun a new existence beneath the sun of a new ideal.

But here, in the “Lettres d’un Voyageur,” what do I see? An unfortunate, wailing her loneliness, wailing her mistakes, writing for money! She has genius, and a manly grasp of mind, but not a manly heart. Will there never be a being to combine a man’s mind and a woman’s heart, and who yet finds life too rich to weep over? Never?

When I read in “Leon Leoni” the account of the jeweller’s daughter’s life with her mother, passed in dressing, and learning to be looked at when dressed, “avec un front impassible,” it reminded me of —— and her mother. What a heroine she would be for Sand! She has the same fearless softness with Juliet, and a sportive na?veté a mixture of bird and kitten, unknown to the dupe of Leoni.

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

—— and her mother differ from Juliet and her mother by the impulse a single strong character gave them. Even at this distance of time there is a light but perceptible taste of iron in the water.

George Sand disappoints me, as almost all beings do, especially since I have been brought close to her person by the “Lettres d’un Voyageur.” Her remarks on Lavater seem really shallow, à la mode du genre feminin. No self-ruling Aspasia she, but a frail woman, mourning over her lot. Any peculiarity in her destiny seems accidental; she is forced to this and to that to earn her bread, forsooth!

Yet her style—with what a deeply smouldering fire it burns! Not vehement, but intense, like Jean Jacques.
From a Notice of George Sand.

It is probably known to a great proportion of readers that this writer is a woman, who writes under the name, and frequently assumes the dress and manners, of a man. It is also known that she has not only broken the marriage-bond, and, since that, formed other connections, independent of the civil and ecclesiastical sanction, but that she first rose into notice through works which systematically assailed the present institution of marriage, and the social bonds which are connected with it.

No facts are more adapted to startle every feeling of our community; but, since the works of Sand are read here, notwithstanding, and cannot fail to be so while they exert so important an influence abroad, it would be well they should be read intelligently, as to the circumstances of their birth and their tendency.

George Sand we esteem to be a person of strong passions, but of original nobleness and a love of right sufficient to guide them all to the service of worthy aims. But she fell upon evil times. She was given in marriage, according to the fashion of the old régime; she was taken from a convent, where she had heard a great deal about the law of God and the example of Jesus, into a society where no vice was proscribed, if it would only wear the cloak of hypocrisy. She found herself impatient of deception, and loudly appealed to by passion; she yielded, but she could not do so, as others did, sinning against what she owned to be the rule of right and the will of Heaven. She protested, she examined, she “hacked into the roots of things,” and the bold sound of her axe called around her every foe that finds a home amid the growths of civilization. Still she persisted. “If it be real,” thought she, “it cannot be destroyed; as to what is false, the sooner it goes the better; and I, for one, would rather perish by its fall, than wither in its shade.”

Schiller puts into the mouth of Mary Stuart these words, as her only plea: “The world knows the worst of me, and I may boast that, though I have erred, I am better than my reputation.” Sand may say the same. All is open, noble; the free descriptions, the sophistry of passion, are, at least, redeemed by a desire for truth as strong as ever beat in any heart. To the weak or unthinking, the reading of such books may not be desirable, for only those who take exercise as men can digest strong meat. But to any one able to understand the position and circumstances, we believe this reading cannot fail of bringing good impulses, valuable suggestions; and it is quite free from that subtle miasma which taints so large a portion of French literature, not less since the Revolution than before. This we say to the foreign reader. To her own country, Sand is a boon precious and prized, both as a warning and a leader, for which none there can be ungrateful. She has dared to probe its festering wounds; and if they be not past all surgery, she is one who, most of any, helps towards a cure.

Would, indeed, the surgeon had come with quite clean hands! A woman of Sand’s genius—as free, as bold, and pure from even the suspicion of error—might have filled an apostolic station among her people with what force had come her cry, “If it be false, give it up; but if it be true, keep to it,— one or the other!”

But we have read all we wish to say upon this subject lately uttered just from the quarter we could wish. It is such a woman, so unblemished in character, so high in aim, so pure in soul, that should address this other, as noble in nature, but clouded by error, and struggling with circumstances. It is such women that will do such others justice. They are not afraid to look for virtue, and reply to aspiration, among those who have not dwelt “in decencies forever.” It is a source of pride and happiness to read this address from the heart of Elizabeth Barrett:—
To George Sand.

A DESIRE.

Thou large-brained woman and large-hearted man,

Self-called George Sand! whose soul amid the lions

Of thy tumultuous senses moans defiance,

And answers roar for roar, as spirits can,—

I would some wild, miraculous thunder ran

Above the applauding circus, in appliance

Of thine own nobler nature’s strength and science,

Drawing two pinions, white as wings of swan,

From the strong shoulders, to amaze the place

With holier light! That thou, to woman’s claim,

And man’s, might join, beside, the angel’s grace

Of a pure genius, sanctified from blame,

Till child and maiden pressed to thine embrace,

To kiss upon thy lips a stainless fame!
To the Same.

A RECOGNITION.

True genius, but true woman! dost deny

Thy woman’s nature with a manly scorn,

And break away the gauds and armlets worn

By weaker woman in captivity?

Ah, vain denial! that revolted cry

Is sobbed in by a woman’s voice forlorn:—

Thy woman’s hair, my sister! all unshorn,

Floats back dishevelled strength in agony,

Disproving thy man’s name; and while before

The world thou burnest in a poet-fire,

We see thy woman-heart beat evermore

Through the large flame. Beat purer, heart! and higher,

Till God unsex thee on the spirit-shore,

To which, alone unsexing, purely aspire!

This last sonnet seems to have been written after seeing the picture of Sand, which represents her in a man’s dress, but with long, loose hair, and an eye whose mournful fire is impressive, even in the caricatures.

For some years Sand has quitted her post of assailant. She has seen that it is better to seek some form of life worthy to supersede the old, than rudely to destroy it, heedless of the future. Her force is bending towards philanthropic measures. She does not appear to possess much of the constructive faculty; and, though her writings command a great pecuniary compensation, and have a wide sway, it is rather for their tendency than for their thought. She has reached no commanding point of view from which she may give orders to the advanced corps. She is still at work with others in the breach, though she works with more force than almost any.

In power, indeed, Sand bears the palm above all other French novelists. She is vigorous in conception, often great in the apprehension and the contrast of characters. She knows passion, as has been hinted, at a white heat, when all the lower particles are remoulded by its power. Her descriptive talent is very great, and her poetic feeling exquisite. She wants but little of being a poet, but that little is indispensable. Yet she keeps us always hovering on the borders of enchanted fields. She has, to a signal degree, that power of exact transcript from her own mind, in which almost all writers fail. There is no veil, no half-plastic integument between us and the thought; we vibrate perfectly with it.

This is her chief charm, and next to it is one in which we know no French writer that resembles her, except Rousseau, though he, indeed, is vastly her superior in it; that is, of concentrated glow. Her nature glows beneath the words, like fire beneath ashes,—deep, deep!

Her best works are unequal; in many parts written hastily, or carelessly, or with flagging spirits. They all promise far more than they can perform; the work is not done masterly; she has not reached that point where a writer sits at the helm of his own genius.

Sometimes she plies the oar,—sometimes she drifts. But what greatness she has is genuine; there is no tinsel of any kind, no drapery carefully adjusted, no chosen gesture about her. May Heaven lead her, at last, to the full possession of her best self, in harmony with the higher laws of life!

We are not acquainted with all her works, but among those we know, mention ”La Roche Maupart,” ”André,” ”Jacques,” ”Les Sept Cordes de la Lyre,” and ”Les Maitres Mosaistes,” as representing her higher inspirations, her sincerity in expression, and her dramatic powers. They are full of faults; still they show her scope and aim with some fairness, which such of her readers as chance first on such of her books as ”Leone Leoni“ may fail to find; or even such as ”Simon,” and ”Spiridion,” though into the imperfect web of these are woven threads of pure gold. Such is the first impression made by the girl Fiamma, so noble, as she appears before us with the words ”E l’onore;” such the thought in Spiridion of making the apparition the reward of virtue.

The work she is now publishing, ”Consuelo“ with its sequel, ”Baroness de Rudolstadt,” exhibits her genius poised on a firmer pedestal, breathing a serener air. Still it is faulty in conduct, and shows some obliquity of vision. She has not reached the Interpreter’s house yet. But when she does, she will have clues to guide many a pilgrim, whom one less tried, less tempted than herself could not help on the way.
From a Criticism on “Consuelo.”

* * * * *. The work itself cannot fail of innumerable readers, and a great influence, for it counts many of the most significant pulse-beats of the tune. Apart from its range of character and fine descriptions, it records some of the mystical apparitions, and attempts to solve some of the problems of the time. How to combine the benefits of the religious life with those of the artist-life in an existence more simple, more full, more human in short, than either of the two hitherto known by these names has been,—this problem is but poorly solved in the “Countess of Rudolstadt,” the sequel to Consuelo. It is true, as the English reviewer says, that George Sand is a far better poet than philosopher, and that the chief use she can be of in these matters is, by her great range of observation and fine intuitions, to help to develop the thoughts of the time a little way further. But the sincerity, the reality of all he can obtain from this writer will be highly valued by the earnest man.

In one respect the book is entirely successful—in showing how inward purity and honor may preserve a woman from bewilderment and danger, and secure her a genuine independence. Whoever aims at this is still considered, by unthinking or prejudiced minds, as wishing to despoil the female character of its natural and peculiar loveliness. It is supposed that delicacy must imply weakness, and that only an Amazon can stand upright, and have sufficient command of her faculties to confront the shock of adversity, or resist the allurements of tenderness. Miss Bremer, Dumas, and the northern novelist, Andersen, make women who have a tendency to the intellectual life of an artist fail, and suffer the penalties of arrogant presumption, in the very first steps of a career to which an inward vocation called them in preference to the usual home duties. Yet nothing is more obvious than that the circumstances of the time do, more and more frequently, call women to such lives, and that, if guardianship is absolutely necessary to women, many must perish for want of it. There is, then, reason to hope that God may be a sufficient guardian to those who dare rely on him; and if the heroines of the novelists we have named ended as they did, it was for the want of the purity of ambition and simplicity of character which do not permit such as Consuelo to be either unseated and depraved, or unresisting victims and breaking reeds, if left alone in the storm and crowd of life. To many women this picture will prove a true Consuelo (consolation), and we think even very prejudiced men will not read it without being charmed with the expansion, sweetness and genuine force, of a female character, such as they have not met, but must, when painted, recognize as possible, and may be led to review their opinions, and perhaps to elevate and enlarge their hopes, as to “Woman’s sphere” and “Woman’s mission.” If such insist on what they have heard of the private life of this writer, and refuse to believe that any good thing can come out of Nazareth, we reply that we do not know the true facts as to the history of George Sand. There has been no memoir or notice of her published on which any one can rely, and we have seen too much of life to accept the monsters of gossip in reference to any one. But we know, through her works, that, whatever the stains on her life and reputation may have been, there is in her a soul so capable of goodness and honor as to depict them most successfully in her ideal forms. It is her works, and not her private life, that we are considering. Of her works we have means of judging; of herself, not. But among those who have passed unblamed through the walks of life, we have not often found a nobleness of purpose and feeling, a sincere religious hope, to be compared with the spirit that breathes through the pages of Consuelo.

The experiences of the artist-life, the grand and penetrating remarks upon music, make the book a precious acquisition to all whose hearts are fashioned to understand such things.

We suppose that we receive here not only the mind of the writer, but of Liszt, with whom she has publicly corresponded in the ”Lettres d’un Voyageur.” None could more avail us, for “in him also is a spark of the divine fire,” as Beethoven said of Ichubert. We may thus consider that we have in this book the benefit of the most electric nature, the finest sensibility, and the boldest spirit of investigation combined, expressing themselves in a little world of beautiful or picturesque forms.

Although there are grave problems discussed, and sad and searching experiences described in this work, yet its spirit is, in the main, hopeful, serene, almost glad. It is the spirit inspired from a near acquaintance with the higher life of art. Seeing there something really achieved and completed, corresponding with the soul’s desires, faith is enlivened as to the eventual fulfilment of those desires, and we feel a certainty that the existence which looks at present so marred and fragmentary shall yet end in harmony. The shuttle is at work, and the threads are gradually added that shall bring out the pattern, and prove that what seems at present confusion is really the way and means to order and beauty.
Jenny Lind,

THE “CONSUELO” OF GEORGE SAND.

Jenny Lind, the prima donna of Stockholm, is among the most distinguished of those geniuses who have been invited to welcome the queen to Germany. Her name has been unknown among us, as she is still young, and has not wandered much from the scene of her first triumphs; but many may have seen, last winter, in the foreign papers, an account of her entrance into Stockholm after an absence of some length. The people received her with loud cries of homage, took the horses from her carriage and drew her home; a tribute of respect often paid to conquerors and statesmen, but seldom, or, as far as we know, never to the priesthood of the muses, who have conferred the higher benefit of raising, refining and exhilarating, the popular mind.

An accomplished Swede, now in this country, communicated to a friend particulars of Jenny Lind’s career, which suggested the thought that she might have given the hint for the principal figure in Sand’s late famous novel, “Consuelo.”

This work is at present in process of translation in “The Harbinger,” a periodical published at Brook Farm, Mass.; but, as this translation has proceeded but a little way, and the book in its native tongue is not generally, though it has been extensively, circulated here, we will give a slight sketch of its plan.

It has been a work of deepest interest to those who have looked upon Sand for some years back, as one of the best exponents of the difficulties, the errors, the aspirations, the weaknesses, and the regenerative powers of the present epoch. The struggle in her mind and the experiments of her life have been laid bare to the eyes of her fellow-creatures with fearless openness—fearless, not shameless. Let no man confound the bold unreserve of Sand with that of those who have lost the feeling of beauty and the love of good. With a bleeding heart and bewildered feet she sought the truth, and if she lost the way, returned as soon as convinced she had done so; but she would never hide the fact that she had lost it. “What God knows, I dare avow to man,” seems to be her motto. It is impossible not to see in her, not only the distress and doubts of the intellect, but the temptations of a sensual nature; but we see too the courage of a hero and a deep capacity for religion. This mixed nature, too, fits her peculiarly to speak to men so diseased as men are at present. They feel she knows their ailment, and if she find a cure, it will really be by a specific remedy.

An upward tendency and growing light are observable in all her works for several years past, till now, in the present, she has expressed such conclusions as forty years of the most varied experience have brought to one who had shrunk from no kind of discipline, yet still cried to God amid it all; one who, whatever you may say against her, you must feel has never accepted a word for a thing, or worn one moment the veil of hypocrisy; and this person one of the most powerful nature, both as to passion and action, and of an ardent, glowing genius. These conclusions are sadly incomplete. There is an amazing alloy in the last product of her crucible, but there is also so much of pure gold that the book is truly a cordial, as its name of Consuelo (consolation) promises.

The young Consuelo lives as a child the life of a beggar. Her youth is passed in the lowest circumstances of the streets of Venice. She brings the more pertinacious fire of Spanish blood to be fostered by the cheerful airs of Italy. A vague sense of the benefits to be derived, from such mingling of various influences, in the formation of a character, is to be discerned in several works of art now, when men are really wishing to become citizens of the world, though old habits still interfere on every side with so noble a development.

Nothing can be more charming than the first volume, which describes the young girl amid the common life of Venice. It is sunny, open, and romantic as the place. The beauty of her voice, when a little singing-girl in the streets, arrested the attention of a really great and severe master, Porpora, who educated her to music. In this she finds the vent and the echo for her higher self. Her affections are fixed on a young companion, an unworthy object, but she does not know him to be so. She judges from her own candid soul, that all must be good, and derives from the tie, for a while, the fostering influences which love alone has for genius. Clear perception follows quickly upon her first triumphs in art. They have given her a rival, and a mean rival, in her betrothed, whose talent, though great, is of an inferior grade to hers; who is vain, every way impure. Her master, Porpora, tries to avail himself of this disappointment to convince her that the artist ought to devote himself to art alone; that private ties must interfere with his perfection and his glory. But the nature of Consuelo revolts against this doctrine, as it would against the seclusion of a convent. She feels that genius requires manifold experience for its development, and that the mind, concentrated on a single object, is likely to pay by a loss of vital energy for the economy of thoughts and time.

Driven by these circumstances into Germany, she is brought into contact with the old noblesse, a very different, but far less charming, atmosphere than that of the gondoliers of Venice. But here, too, the strong, simple character of our Consuelo is unconstrained, if not at home, and when her heart swells and needs expansion, she can sing.

Here the Count de Rudolstadt, Albert, loves Consuelo, which seems, in the conduct of the relation, a type of a religious democracy in love with the spirit of art. We do not mean that any such cold abstraction is consciously intended, but all that is said means this. It shadows forth one of the greatest desires which convulse our age.

A most noble meaning is couched in the history of Albert, and though the writer breaks down under such great attempts, and the religion and philosophy of the book are clumsily embodied compared with its poesy and rhetoric, yet great and still growing thoughts are expressed with sufficient force to make the book a companion of rare value to one in the same phase of mind.

Albert is the aristocratic democrat, such as Alfieri was; one who, in his keen perception of beauty, shares the good of that culture which ages have bestowed on the more fortunate classes, but in his large heart loves and longs for the good of all men, as if he had himself suffered in the lowest pits of human misery. He is all this and more in his transmigration, real or fancied, of soul, through many forms of heroic effort and bloody error; in his incompetency to act at the present time, his need of long silences, of the company of the dead and of fools, and eventually of a separation from all habitual ties, is expressed a great idea, which is still only in the throes of birth, yet the nature of whose life we begin to prognosticate with some clearness.

Consuelo’s escape from the castle, and even from Albert, her admiration of him, and her incapacity to love him till her own character be more advanced, are told with great naturalness. Her travels with Joseph Haydn, are again as charmingly told as the Venetian life. Here the author speaks from her habitual existence, and far more masterly than of those deep places of thought where she is less at home. She has lived much, discerned much, felt great need of great thoughts, but not been able to think a great way for herself. She fearlessly accompanies the spirit of the age, but she never surpasses it; that is the office of the great thinker.

At Vienna Consuelo is brought fully into connection with the great world as an artist. She finds that its realities, so far from being less, are even more harsh and sordid for the artist than for any other; and that with avarice, envy and falsehood, she must prepare for the fearful combat which awaits noble souls in any kind of arena, with the pain of disgust when they cannot raise themselves to patience—with the almost equal pain, when they can, of pity for those who know not what they do.

Albert is on the verge of the grave; and Consuelo, who, not being able to feel for him sufficient love to find in it compensation for the loss of that artist-life to which she feels Nature has destined her, had hitherto resisted the entreaties of his aged father, and the pleadings of her own reverential and tender sympathy with the wants of his soul, becomes his wife just before he dies.

The sequel, therefore, of this history is given under the title of Countess of Rudolstadt. Consuelo is still on the stage; she is at the Prussian court. The well-known features of this society, as given in the memoirs of the time, are put together with much grace and wit. The sketch of Frederic is excellent.

The rest of the book is devoted to expression of the author’s ideas on the subject of reform, and especially of association as a means thereto. As her thoughts are yet in a very crude state, the execution of this part is equally bungling and clumsy. Worse: she falsifies the characters of both Consuelo and Albert,—who is revived again by subterfuge of trance,—and stains her best arrangements by the mixture of falsehood and intrigue.

Yet she proceeds towards, if she walks not by, the light of a great idea; and sincere democracy, universal religion, scatter from afar many seeds upon the page for a future time. The book should be, and will be, universally read. Those especially who have witnessed all Sand’s doubts and sorrows on the subject of marriage, will rejoice in the clearer, purer ray which dawns upon her now. The most natural and deep part of the book, though not her main object, is what relates to the struggle between the claims of art and life, as to whether it be better for the world and one’s self to develop to perfection a talent which Heaven seemed to have assigned as a special gift and vocation, or sacrifice it whenever the character seems to require this for its general development. The character of Consuelo is, throughout the first part, strong, delicate, simple, bold, and pure. The fair lines of this picture are a good deal broken in the second part; but we must remain true to the impression originally made upon us by this charming and noble creation of the soul of Sand.

It is in reference to our Consuelo that a correspondent 25 writes, as to Jenny Lind; and we are rejoiced to find that so many hints were, or might have been, furnished for the picture from real life. If Jenny Lind did not suggest it, yet she must also be, in her own sphere, a Consuelo.

“Jenny Lind must have been born about 1822 or 1828. When a young child, she was observed, playing about and singing in the streets of Stockholm, by Mr. Berg, master of singing for the royal opera. Pleased and astonished at the purity and suavity of her voice, he inquired instantly for her family, and found her father, a poor innkeeper, willing and glad to give up his daughter to his care, on the promise to protect her and give her an excellent musical education. He was always very careful of her, never permitting her to sing except in his presence, and never letting her appear on the stage, unless as a mute figure in some ballet, such, for instance, as Cupid and the Graces, till she was sixteen, when she at once executed her part in ‘Der Freyschutz,’ to the full satisfaction and surprise of the public of Stockholm. From that time she gradually became the favorite of every one. Without beauty, she seems, from her innocent and gracious manners, beautiful on the stage and charming in society. She is one of the few actresses whom no evil tongue can ever injure, and is respected and welcomed in any and all societies.

“The circumstances that reminded me of Consuelo were these: that she was a poor child, taken up by this singing-master, and educated thoroughly and severely by him; that she loved his son, who was a good-for-nothing fellow, like Anzoleto, and at last discarded him; that she refused the son of an English earl, and, when he fell sick, his father condescended to entreat for him, just as the Count of Rudolstadt did for his son; that, though plain and low in stature, when singing her best parts she appears beautiful, and awakens enthusiastic admiration; that she is rigidly correct in her demeanor towards her numerous admirers, having even returned a present sent her by the crown-prince, Oscar, in a manner that she deemed equivocal. This last circumstance being noised abroad, the next time she appeared on the stage she was greeted with more enthusiastic plaudits than ever, and thicker showers of flowers fell upon her from the hands of her true friends, the public. She was more fortunate than Consuelo in not being compelled to sing to a public of Prussian corporals.”

Indeed, the picture of Frederic’s opera-audience, with the pit full of his tall grenadiers with their wives on their shoulders, never daring to applaud except when he gave the order, as if by tap of drum, opposed to the tender and expansive nature of the artist, is one of the best tragicomedies extant. In Russia, too, all is military; as soon as a new musician arrives, he is invested with a rank in the army. Even in the church Nicholas has lately done the same. It seems as if he could not believe a man to be alive, except in the army; could not believe the human heart could beat, except by beat of drum. But we believe in Russia there is at least a mask of gayety thrown over the chilling truth. The great Frederic wished no disguise; everywhere he was chief corporal, and trampled with his everlasting boots the fair flowers of poesy into the dust.

The North has been generous to us of late; she has sent us Ole Bull. She is about to send Frederika Bremer. May she add JENNY LIND!

25 We do not know how accurate is this correspondent’s statement of facts. The narrative is certainly interesting.—Ed.
Caroline.

The other evening I heard a gentle voice reading aloud the story of Maurice, a boy who, deprived of the use of his limbs by paralysis, was sustained in comfort, and almost in cheerfulness, by the exertions of his twin sister. Left with him in orphanage, her affections were centred upon him, and, amid the difficulties his misfortunes brought upon them, grew to a fire intense and pure enough to animate her with angelic impulses and powers. As he could not move about, she drew him everywhere in a little cart; and when at last they heard that sea-bathing might accomplish his cure, conveyed him, in this way, hundreds of miles to the sea-shore. Her pious devotion and faith were rewarded by his cure, and (a French story would be entirely incomplete otherwise) with money, plaudits and garlands, from the by-standers.

Though the story ends in this vulgar manner, it is, in its conduct, extremely sweet and touching, not only as to the beautiful qualities developed by these trials in the brother and sister, but in the purifying and softening influence exerted, by the sight of his helplessness and her goodness, on all around them.

Those who are the victims of some natural blight often fulfil this important office, and bless those within their sphere more, by awakening feelings of holy tenderness and compassion, than a man healthy and strong can do by the utmost exertion of his good-will and energies. Thus, in the East, men hold sacred those in whom they find a distortion or alienation of mind which makes them unable to provide for themselves. The well and sane feel themselves the ministers of Providence to carry out a mysterious purpose, while taking care of those who are thus left incapable of taking care of themselves; and, while fulfilling this ministry, find themselves refined and made better.

The Swiss have similar feelings as to those of their families whom cretinism has reduced to idiocy. They are attended to, fed, dressed clean, and provided with a pleasant place for the day, before doing anything else, even by very busy and poor people.

We have seen a similar instance, in this country, of voluntary care of an idiot, and the mental benefits that ensued. This idiot, like most that are called so, was not without a glimmer of mind.

His teacher was able to give him some notions, both of spiritual and mental facts; at least she thought she had given him the idea of God, and though it appeared by his gestures that to him the moon was the representative of that idea, yet he certainly did conceive of something above him, and which inspired him with reverence and delight. He knew the names of two or three persons who had done him kindness, and when they were mentioned, would point upward, as he did to the moon, showing himself susceptible, in his degree, of Mr. Carlyle’s grand method of education, hero-worship. She had awakened in him a love of music, so that he could be soothed in his most violent moods by her gentle singing. It was a most touching sight to see him sitting opposite to her at such tunes, his wondering and lack-lustre eyes filled with childish pleasure, while in hers gleamed the same pure joy that we may suppose to animate the looks of an angel appointed by Heaven to restore a ruined world.

We know another instance, in which a young girl became to her village a far more valuable influence than any patron saint who looks down from his stone niche, while his votaries recall the legend of his goodness in days long past.

Caroline lived in a little, quiet country village—quiet as no village can now remain, since the railroad strikes its spear through the peace of country life. She lived alone with a widowed mother, for whom, as well as for herself, her needle won bread, while the mother’s strength, and skill sufficed to the simple duties of their household. They lived content and hopeful, till, whether from sitting still too much, or some other cause, Caroline became ill, and soon the physician pronounced her spine to be affected, and to such a degree that she was incurable.

This news was a thunder-bolt to the poor little cottage. The mother, who had lost her elasticity of mind, wept in despair; but the young girl, who found so early all the hopes and joys of life taken from her, and that she was seemingly left without any shelter from the storm, had even at first the faith and strength to bow her head in gentleness, and say, “God will provide.” She sustained and cheered her mother.

And God did provide. With simultaneous vibration the hearts of all their circle acknowledged the divine obligation of love and mutual aid between human beings. Food, clothing, medicine, service, were all offered freely to the widow and her daughter.

Caroline grew worse, and was at last in such a state that she could only be moved upon a sheet, and by the aid of two persons. In this toilsome service, and every other that she required for years, her mother never needed to ask assistance. The neighbors took turns in doing all that was required, and the young girls, as they were growing up, counted it among their regular employments to work for or read to Caroline.

Not without immediate reward was their service of love. The mind of the girl, originally bright and pure, was quickened and wrought up to the finest susceptibility by the nervous exaltation that often ensues upon affection of the spine. The soul, which had taken an upward impulse from its first act of resignation, grew daily more and more into communion with the higher regions of life, permanent and pure. Perhaps she was instructed by spirits which, having passed through a similar trial of pain and loneliness, had risen to see the reason why. However that may be, she grew in nobleness of view and purity of sentiment, and, as she received more instruction from books also than any other person in her circle, had from many visitors abundant information as to the events which were passing around her, and leisure to reflect on them with a disinterested desire for truth, she became so much wiser than her companions as to be at last their preceptress and best friend, and her brief, gentle comments and counsels were listened to as oracles from one enfranchised from the films which selfishness and passion cast over the eyes of the multitude.

The twofold blessing conferred by her presence, both in awakening none but good feelings in the hearts of others, and in the instruction she became able to confer, was such, that, at the end of five years, no member of that society would have been so generally lamented as Caroline, had Death called her away.

But the messenger, who so often seems capricious in his summons, took first the aged mother, and the poor girl found that life had yet the power to bring her grief, unexpected and severe.

And now the neighbors met in council. Caroline could not be left quite alone in the house. Should they take turns, and stay with her by night as well as by day?

“Not so,” said the blacksmith’s wife; “the house will never seem like home to her now, poor thing! and ’t would be kind of dreary for her to change about her nusses so. I’ll tell you what; all my children but one are married and gone off; we have property enough; I will have a good room fixed for her, and she shall live with us. My husband wants her to, as much as me.”

The council acquiesced in this truly humane arrangement, and Caroline lives there still; and we are assured that none of her friends dread her departure so much as the blacksmith’s wife.

“‘Ta’n’t no trouble at all to have her,” she says, “and if it was, I shouldn’t care; she is so good and still, and talks so pretty! It’s as good bein’ with her as goin’ to meetin’!”

De Maistre relates some similar passages as to a sick girl in St. Petersburgh, though his mind dwelt more on the spiritual beauty evinced in her remarks, than on the good she had done to those around her. Indeed, none bless more than those who “only stand and wait.” Even if their passivity be enforced by fate, it will become a spiritual activity, if accepted in a faith higher above fate than the Greek gods were supposed to sit enthroned above misfortune.
Ever-growing Lives.

“Age could not wither her, nor custom stale

Her infinite variety.”

So was one person described by the pen which has made a clearer mark than any other on the history of Man. But is it not surprising that such a description should apply to so few?

Of two or three women we read histories that correspond with the hint given in these lines. They were women in whom there was intellect enough to temper and enrich, heart enough to soften and enliven the entire being. There was soul enough to keep the body beautiful through the term of earthly existence; for while the roundness, the pure, delicate lineaments, the flowery bloom of youth were passing, the marks left in the course of those years were not merely of time and care, but also of exquisite emotions and noble thoughts. With such chisels Time works upon his statues, tracery and fretwork, well worth the loss of the first virgin beauty of the alabaster; while the fire within, growing constantly brighter and brighter, sho............