The emperor Isaac Angelus made a treaty with Saladin, and tried to purchase the Holy Sepulchre with gold. Richard Lion-heart scorned such alliance, and sought to recover it by battle. Thus do weak minds make treaties with the passions they cannot overcome, and try to purchase happiness at the expense of principle. But the resolute will of a strong man scorns such means; and struggles nobly with his foe4, to achieve great deeds. Therefore, whosoever thou art that sufferest, try not to dissipate thy sorrow by the breath of the world, nor drown its voice in thoughtless merriment. It is a treacherous5 peace that is purchased by indulgence. Rather take this sorrow to thy heart, and make it a part of thee, and it shall nourish thee till thou art strong again.
The shadows of the mind are like those of the body. In the morning of life they all lie behind us; at noon, we trample6 them under foot; and in the evening they stretch long, broad, and deepening before us. Are not, then, the sorrows of childhood as dark as those of age? Are not the morning shadows of life as deep and broad as those of its evening? Yes; but morning shadows soon fade away, while those of evening reach forward into the night and mingle8 with the coming darkness. Man is begotten9 in delight and born in pain; and in these are the rapture10 and labor11 of his life fore-shadowed from the beginning. But thelife of man upon this fair earth is made up for the most part of little pains and little pleasures. The great wonder-flowers bloom but once in a lifetime.
A week had already elapsed since the events recorded in the last chapter. Paul Flemming went his way, a melancholy12 man, "drinking the sweet wormwood of his sorrow." He did not rail at Providence13 and call it fate, but suffered and was silent. It is a beautiful trait in the lover's character, that he thinks no evil of the object loved. What he suffered was no swift storm of feeling, that passes away with a noise, and leaves the heart clearer; but a dark phantom14 had risen up in the clear night, and, like that of Adamastor, hid the stars; and if it ever vanished away for a season, still the deep sound of the moaning main would be heard afar, through many a dark and lonely hour. And thus he journeyed on, wrapped in desponding gloom, and mainly heedless of all things around him. His mind was distempered. That one face was always before him; that one voice forever saying;
"You are not the Magician."
Painful, indeed, it is to be misunderstood and undervalued by those we love. But this, too, in our life, must we learn to bear without a murmur15; for it is a tale often repeated.
There are persons in this world to whom all local associations are naught16. The genius of the place speaks not to them. Even on battle-fields, where the voice of this genius is wont17 to be loudest, they hear only the sound of their own voices; they meet there only their own dull and pedantic18 thoughts, as the old grammarian Brunetto Latini met on the plain of Roncesvalles a poor student riding on a bay mule19. This was not always the case with Paul Flemming, but it had become so now. He felt no interest in the scenery around him. He hardly looked at it. Even the difficult mountain-passes, where, from his rocky eyrie the eagle-eyed Tyrolese peasant had watched his foe, and the roaring, turbid20 torrent21 underneath22, which had swallowed up the bloody23 corse, that fell from the rocks like a crushed worm, awakened24 no lively emotion in his breast. All around him seemed dreamy and vague; all within dim, as in a sun's eclipse. As the moon, whether visible or invisible, has power over the tides of the ocean, so the face of that lady, whether present or absent, had power over the tides of his soul; both by day and night, both waking and sleeping. In every pale face and dark eye he saw a resemblance to her; and what the day denied him in reality, the night gave him in dreams.
"This is a strange, fantastic world," said Berkley, after a very long silence, during which the two travellers had been sitting each in his corner of the travelling carriage, wrapped in his own reflections. "A very strange, fantastic world; where each one pursues his own golden bubble, and laughs at his neighbour for doing the same. I have been thinking how a moral Linnæus would classify our race. I think he would divide it, not as Lord Byron did, into two great classes, the bores and those who are bored, but into three, namely; Happy Men, Lucky Dogs, and Miserable25 Wretches26. This is more true and philosophical27, though perhaps not quite so comprehensive. He is the Happy Man, who, blessed with modest ease, a wife and children,--sits enthroned in the hearts of his family, and knows no other ambition, than that of making those around him happy. But the Lucky Dog is he, who, free from all domestic cares, saunters up and down his room, in morning gown and slippers28; drums on the window of a rainy day; and, as he stirs his evening fire, snaps his fingers at the world, and says, 'I have no wife nor children, good or bad, to provide for.' I had a friend, who is now no more. He was taken away in the bloom of life, by a very rapid--widow. He was by birth and by profession a beau,--born with a quizzing-glass and a cane29. Cock of the walk, he flapped his wings, and crowed among the feathered tribe. But alas30! a fair, white partlet has torn his crest31 out, and he shall crow no more. You will generally find him of a morning, smelling round a beef-cart, with domestic felicity written in every line of his countenance32; and sometimes meet him in a cross-street at noon, hurrying homeward, with a beef-steak on a wooden skewer33, or a fresh fish, with a piece of tarred twine34 run through its gills. In the evening he rocks the cradle, and gets up in the night when the child cries. Like a Goth, of the Dark Ages, he consults his wife on all mighty35 matters, and looks upon her as a being of more than human goodness and wisdom. In short, the ladies all say he is a very domestic man, and makes a good husband; which, under the rose, is only a more polite way of saying he is hen-pecked. He is a Happy Man. I have another dear friend, who is a sexagenary bachelor. He has one of those well-oiled dispositions36, which turn upon the hinges of the world without creaking. The hey-day of life is over with him; but his old age is sunny and chirping37; and a merry heart still nestles in his tottering38 frame, like a swallow that builds in a tumble-down chimney. He is a professed39 Squire40 of Dames41. The rustle42 of a silk gown is music to his ears, and his imagination is continuallylantern-led by some will-with-a-wisp in the shape of a lady's stomacher. In his devotion to the fair sex,--the muslin, as he calls it,--he is the gentle flower of
Join or Log In!
You need to log in to continue reading