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circle that hemmed him in. Muttering still of “ruin,” “beggary,” and similar topics, so admirably adapted to cheer the convalescent, he swallowed his breakfast like an animal, left the room without his usual bland “good morning,” and slammed the street-door after him.

A fit of hysterics was the natural consequence. The kind and sisterly widow bore, rather than led, Marcia to an upper room, propped her with pillows in an arm-chair, and employed every tender and womanly art to soothe her excited nerves. Calmness came, but only with exhaustion. The door-bell rang. Mrs. Sandford gave an inaudible direction to the servant. But Marcia exclaimed, “It is George! I heard his step on the pavement. I must see him. Let him in.” Mrs. Sandford remonstrated to no purpose, and then went to her own room.

It _was_ “George.” He entered the room with a pale face, and a look betokening both suffering and resolution. He was evidently struck by the appearance of Miss Sandford, rightly judging that she was not able to bear what he had come to tell her. He would have uttered a few commonplace courtesies, and deferred his weighty communication to another time. But Marcia’s senses were preternaturally sharpened; weak as a vine without its trellis, instinct seemed to guide her to clasp by every tendril the support to which she had been wont to cling. She noticed a certain uneasiness in Greenleaf’s demeanor; ready to give the worst interpretation to everything, she exclaimed, in a quick, frightened manner, “George, dear George, what is the matter? You are cold, you are distant. Are _you_ in trouble, too, like all the world?”

“Deeply in trouble,” he answered gravely,–still standing, hat in hand.

“Trouble that I cannot soothe?”

“I am afraid not.”

“And you won’t tell me?”

“Not to-day.”

“Then you don’t love me.”

Greenleaf was silent; his lips showing the emotion he strove to control. Her voice took a more cheerful tone, as if she would assure herself, and, with a faint smile, she said,–

“You are silent; but I am only childish. You do love me,–don’t you, George?”

“As much as I ever did.”

A mean subterfuge; for though it was true, perhaps, to him, he knew it was a falsehood to her. She attempted to rise from her chair; he sprang to support her.

“You are so gloomy, reserved, to-day!” she continued.

Still Greenleaf was silent. He aided her to resume her seat; but when he had done so, she detained him, seizing his arm and then his hand. His heart beat rapidly, and he turned away his head to avoid the fond but keen scrutiny of her eyes,–at the same time gently, but ineffectually, attempting to free his hand. Once more he resolved, since the conversation had taken such a turn, to risk the consequences, and prepare her mind for a separation. But a sudden thought struck her, and, before he could frame a sentence, she spoke:–

“You have heard bad news this morning?”

He shook his head.

“No,–I know you are not mercenary; I would not wrong you with the suspicion.”

“What suspicion, pray?” he asked, turning suddenly towards her.

“You have not heard?”

“I have heard nothing.”

“Pity my foolishness. But my brother is in difficulty; he may fail; perhaps has failed even now. Pray, don’t chide me for my fears. All the world goes with the rich and the prosperous.”

“The world has very little company just now, then,” said Greenleaf, with a grim smile. “But assure yourself,” he continued; “the dowry of my wife is a matter I have never considered. _With the woman I love_,” said he, with deep emphasis, “honest poverty is what I do not dread.”

Interpreting this fervent declaration in the natural way, Marcia reached forth her arms with sudden fervor, drew him nearer, and covered his forehead, lips, and cheeks with kisses. Every kiss fell like a spot of mildew on his flesh; her caresses filled him with shame. Could he undeceive her? In her feeble condition, the excitement into which she had been thrown by her brother’s danger was all she could bear. False as his position was, heartless and empty as his soothing words and caresses were, he must continue to wear the mask, and show himself as he was at some time when she had no other trouble to weigh her down. Still she chid his gloomy reserve, his absent air, and mechanical movements. Was he weak, if under such influences his fixed resolves bent?–if his nerves felt the old thrill?–if his voice took a softer tone?–and if he parted from her with something of his former tenderness? He tried to excuse himself to his conscience by the plea, that the deception once begun must be kept up until it could be ended with safety. For he saw that her heart was really bound up in him. She no longer kept up the brilliant fence of repartee; she had abandoned all coquettish arts, and, for once at least, was sincerely, fondly, even foolishly, in love. Home he went, sadder than before, his conscience yet more aroused, and his resolutions farther than ever from accomplishment.

Poor little Alice!

CHAPTER XIV.

EVERY MAN FOR HIMSELF.

Mr. Sandford walked towards his office, that fine autumn morning, in no amiable mood. Nature seemed to protest against his angry violence; the very stones of the pavement seemed to say,–“He need not thump us in that way; _we_ can’t pay his notes.” The trees along Mount Vernon Street rustled their leaves with a shudder, as he passed under them; they dropped no benison upon a face which even the golden morning could not lighten. “Let him stride on!” said they; “we shall be more cheerful in company with the maids washing the sidewalks or taking out the children (blessed darlings!) for an airing.” Canaries ceased their songs in the windows; urchins stopped their hoops and stood on the curbstones, eyeing the gloomy man askance. When he passed the Granary Burying-Ground, he saw a squirrel dart down a tree, and scamper over the old graves in search of some one of his many stores; then rising on his haunches, he munched the pea-nut which he had unearthed, (the gift of some schoolboy, months ago,) as much as to say, “_We_ know how to look out for hard times; but what have you done with _your_ pea-nuts, old fellow, that you look so cross? Can’t get ’em, eh? You should put ’em where you’ll know where they are.” A whisk of his tail and he flew up the tree. The lesson was lost upon the financier. At the office-door he met Bullion,–his face a trifle more ruddy, his eye with a colder glitter, and his queer eyebrow pointing with an odder significance.

“How are you, Sandford?”–A very short nod.–“Cool, this morning.”– Standing with his dumpy legs apart, he nibbled at the ivory head of his cane.

“Mr. Bullion,” said Sandford, “you must help me. You must lift that note. Come, I know you can do it,–and I’ll make it worth your while.”

“Can’t do it; you want a long extension, I s’pose.”

“Say three or four months.”

“Time is money, as I told you before. In four months, with forty thousand dollars, I could–do pretty well,” ending the sentence in a lower tone, that indicated a desire to keep his first thought back.

“In a time like this, Mr. Bullion, it is the duty of every man to assist his neighbor to the extent of his ability. If there is no forbearance, no brotherly aid, how are the complicated settlements of a mad community like this to be made? There is not money enough to pay what must be paid.”

The eyebrow was stiffly pointed as Bullion answered,–

“I do forbear. I must forbear. Stearine owes me; you indorse; you can’t pay, neither of you. I sha’n’t get the money. I must go without.”

It was an injured tone.

“Then why do you let it go to protest?”

“Only a form, Sandford. Usage of the mercantile world. Very irregular not to do it. Sorry, but can’t help it.”

Mr. Sandford’s patience was exhausted.

“It is my turn to-day, Bullion; I have no further resource; I am ruined. You feel strong and look upon my distress in triumph. But your turn will come. Mark my words. Within a fortnight I shall see you rushing down State Street in despair; your property will be swept away with a flood, and you will be a beggar,–as you deserve to be. Damn your stony heart!”

It was the first outburst of profanity from Mr. Sandford,–too fastidious, usually, to allow himself the use of such expletives.

“Sorry to see you excited, Sandford. Best to keep temper. Guess you and Fayerweather will raise the money. Pity Stearine hadn’t wick enough in him to stand alone. Rather a poor candle, he is,–he! he! Morning!”

The gray eyes twinkled, the eyebrow whisked, and the sturdy legs bore the creditor away.

Entering the office, Mr. Sandford tried to assume a cheerful look. He looked over the list of failures, in the “Independent,” with something of the interest which a patient in a hospital would feel when overhearing the report from the dead-house. Was there no one of the bald or grizzly-haired gentlemen who smiled so benignly whom he could ask for aid? Not one; he knew their circumstances; they had no money at command; all their property was locked up in investments. He thought of the many chairmen and directors in benevolent associations with whom he was connected. No,–they were either men of moderate means, or had some son or nephew or brother in business whose credit they must uphold. How gladly would he barter all his parchment testimonials for one good “promise to pay”! He groaned almost audibly, and wondered how he could pass the time till the close of bank-hours. The suspense was a torture as keen as the calamity itself.

A visitor entered; it was Plotman. He came with a cheerful, even exulting, look.

“Good news, Sandford!”

“News!” exclaimed Sandford, impetuously. “What news? How much?”

In his absent state he forgot that Plotman was not aware of his thoughts, and associated good news only with an accommodation to serve his present need. But his fluttering expectations were dashed to the ground with the reply.

“‘How much,’ did you say? A clean majority over all. Your name stands at the head of the ticket.”

“I am obliged to you,” replied Sandford, sadly, “but I don’t think I can accept the nomination.”

“Well, that _is_ rather strong,” said Plotman. “You’d best keep your modesty for the papers; it’s thrown away on me.”

“I really can’t bother with politics.”

“Why in the Devil, then, did you lay your corns to get the place, and make me all this trouble for nothing?”

“I am really sorry, Plotman; but, to tell you just how it is, I am so much involved in this fearful monetary pressure that I have no time nor heart for anything else.”

“Confounded spooney!” muttered Plotman, between his teeth. “If I’d known he was so weak in the knees. I’d have gone in for Spreadeagle, who offered a handsome figure.”

“Come in to-morrow, Plotman, and we’ll talk about it. I can’t think about it now. I’ll make all right with you.”

Still muttering, the disappointed politician departed, leaving Sandford in a deeper abyss than before. To prevent unwelcome visits, the latter left word with his clerks that he could see no one whatever.

To wile away the time, he took out his cash-book and private papers. There was about a thousand dollars in bank.

“It will be best to draw that,” thought he, “for there’s no knowing what may happen.”

And the office-boy was dispatched with a check for the amount.

“Let us see what other resources. There are Monroe’s notes,–ten thousand dollars. I can raise something on them. I’ll borrow from Tonsor, who seems to have funds enough.”

He sent a clerk and succeeded in obtaining eight thousand dollars for five days, by depositing the notes.

“If worst comes to worst, I have nine thousand to fall back upon. Now, what next? Fletcher’s note for five hundred, with the rather peculiar admission at the beginning. I wonder, now, what he would give for this little paper? Possibly he is in funds. He’s a scheming devil and hasn’t been idle in this gale of wind. I’ll send for him.”

Fletcher entered with an air of confidence.

“Well, Mr. Sandford, you don’t bear malice, I see. If you didn’t want to get a saucy answer, you shouldn’t have threatened, the other day.”

“You were hardly civil, Fletcher,” said Sandford, gravely, “and rather forgetful, besides. If I were you, I wouldn’t bluster until a certain piece of paper was safe in my possession.”

“Do you suppose I ever forget that paper, or how you bullied it out of me? But you know that at the time when I used that five hundred dollars, I had money enough, and felt as sure of returning it the next day as you do of paying the ten thousand you had of Monroe.”

Sandford started.

“How did you know whose money I had?”

“Never mind. I hear a great many things. As I was saying, I didn’t steal the money, for you didn’t miss it till I told you; and if I hadn’t been a coward and a fool to boot, I should never have signed that cursed paper.”

“I have it, though. The law calls it a confession of theft.”

Fletcher winced.

“You have told me that often enough before. You needn’t touch me on the raw to make me remember it.”

He waited, but Sandford made no reply. Fletcher continued:–

“Well, what is it? You’ve something on hand, or you wouldn’t have sent for me.”

“You propose to pay sometime, I believe?”

“Of course, I do. I’ve offered to pay times enough, you know. I can get the money in ten minutes.”

“Can you! How much?”

“Why, the five hundred and interest.”

“I rather think the document is worth more money.”

“You’d take my heart’s blood for it, I know. But you can’t get any more money than I have got.”

“You were very ready in promising five hundred in ten minutes. It seems to me that in an hour you might raise a larger sum.”

“Do you suppose I am a capitalist?–that I own Fogarty, Danforth, and Dot?”

“I’m sure, I can’t tell. Stranger things have happened.”

“I wonder if he suspects my connection with old Bullion?” thought Fletcher.

“I’ll make you a fair proposition, Fletcher. I need some money, for a few days. Get me thirty thousand dollars for a week, say; I’ll pay a liberal interest and give up the paper.”

“I can’t do it. The figure is altogether above me. You don’t want me to rob my employers?”

“‘Rob’ is a hard word, Fletcher. No, I counsel no crime. You don’t want anything more to think of. But you may know some chance to borrow that sum?”

Fletcher mused. “If Sandford comes to a man like me for such a sum, it must be because he is devilish hard up; and if I get him the money, it would likely be sunk. I can’t do it.”

“No, Mr. Sandford, it’s out of the question. Everybody that has money has twenty applications for every dollar.”

“Then you’d rather see this paper in an officer’s hands?”

Fletcher’s face blanched and his knees shook, but he kept his resolution in spite of his bodily tremor.

“I have been like a mouse cuffed between a cat’s paws so long that I don’t care to run. If you mean to pounce up on me and finish me, go ahead. I may as well die as to be always dreading it. But you’ll please remember what I said about overhauling your accounts.”

Sandford found his man firmer than he had expected. He changed his tactics.

“Fletcher, as you can’t do what I want, how much will you give outright for the little obligation? You shall have it for fifteen hundred dollars. Come, now, that’s reasonable.”

“Reasonable as the fellow who puts a pistol to your head on a dark night in the middle of Cambridge bridge.”

“Tut, tut! Don’t talk of highway-robbery! I think I am letting you off cheap.”

“How do you suppose I can raise fifteen hundred dollars?”

“That is your affair.”

“You are as cruel as a bloodhound after a runaway nigger.”

“I have once or twice remonstrated against your use of harsh words.”

“What’s the use of being mealy-mouthed? I owe you five hundred dollars. Every dollar beyond that you get from me you rob me of; and it doesn’t matter whether it is a pistol or a writ that you threaten me with.”

“You persist in a violent tone.”

“I can’t talk to suit you, and I shall stop. We shall never agree. I’ll tell you, though, what I will do. I’ll give you a note, to-morrow, for a thousand dollars, on short time, with a good name.”

“Money, Fletcher!–money! I don’t want any note.”

“Well, I’ll see what I can do. Perhaps I can get the money.”

“And, Fletcher, I advise you to settle the affair to-day. It has stood quite long enough. Just devote to-day to this little matter. Come in before two,–not later than three, at any rate. Perhaps your employers might advance it,–that is, rather than have their clerk compromised. Suppose I lay the matter before them?”

Fletcher’s rage broke out afresh. He gnashed his teeth and foamed at the mouth. If he had had a weapon, it might have fared hard with his oppressor. But his anger was inarticulate,–too mighty, too tumultuous, for words. He left the office, his eyes glowing like a cat’s, and his fringy moustache trembling over his white teeth.

Mr. Sandford was somewhat exhilarated, and rubbed his smooth hands with energy. “I think he’ll come back,” thought he. “Failure is inevitable. Let it come! We must bear it as we can. And for a ruined man I don’t know of any consolation like a little ready money. Now to play my last cards. These shares which I own in the Vortex are worth more to-day than they are likely to be to-morrow. It would be a shame not to dispose of them while they will bring something. Fayerweather and the others who have agreed to buy at ninety per cent. are at the Board. I’ll get a new hand to take them in. They won’t suspect, for they think Stearine’s note has been extended.”

He called a junior clerk and dispatched the shares to a broker to be sold for cash on account of whom it might concern. He then locked himself in the back office to be free from troublesome visitors, keeping a cautious lookout for Fletcher, whom he expected, and for the clerk who was to bring the money. His chief anxiety was lest Mr. Fayerweather should come before the sale was effected; and he was in a fever until the money was brought to him. Through the window he saw his friends Monroe, Bullion, and others, who called for him and were denied by his order; he chose to remain unseen.

Fletcher did not return. In going out he met Bullion, and, telling him that he had to pay Sandford a thousand dollars, asked for a part of the money due him.

“Don’t be a fool,” replied that sturdy financier, “Sandford will fail to-day, probably. That’s the reason for his hurry to get the money. Let him sweat. Keep your funds. You can pay his assignee any time these six months to come.”

It was near two o’clock. Mr. Sandford had in his pocket the proceeds of the Vortex shares, the loan from Tensor, and his balance from bank,–a comfortable sum altogether; and he thought it not prudent to risk the whole by waiting for Fletcher, who, after all, might not come. So, seeing the coast clear, he put on his surtout and walked out of the front door with an unconcerned air.

The notary came with the inevitable protest. Mr. Fayerweather was the astounded individual who received it. A sudden light broke upon him. He was swindled. He took out the Vortex shares which he had just bought by agreement, and, turning to the transfer-book, found that they were Sandford’s. The Secretary had weathered the President with a vengeance.

The lawyer to whom the protested note came happened to hold other claims against Mr. Fayerweather and the Vortex, and, naturally judging that the Company might be involved in the difficulties of its officers, he commenced suit without a moment’s delay. Ill news flies fast. In an hour after the first writs were served, suit was brought by Tonsor and other creditors, and the office was shut. The safe was found to hold nothing more valuable than duplicates of policies, the Company’s bank-account was overdrawn, its stocks and bonds were sold or pledged, and its available assets consisted of the office-furniture, a few reams of paper, and half a dozen sticks of sealing-wax.

[To be continued.]

* * * * *

“THE NEW LIFE” OF DANTE.

[Continued.]

II.

Were the author of the “Vita Nuova” unknown, its story of youth and love would still possess a charm, as standing in the dawn of modern literature,–the first book in which modern sentiment finds free expression. It would be of interest, as contrasted with the later growth of the sentimental element in literature, which speedily exhibits the influence of factitious feeling, of self-conscious effort, and of ambitious display. The sentiment of the “Vita Nuova” is separated by the wide gulf that lies between simplicity and affectation from the sentimentality of Petrarch’s sonnets. But connected as it is with Dante’s life,–the first of that series of works in which truth, intensity, and tenderness of feeling are displayed as in the writings of no other man,–its interest no longer arises merely from itself and from its place in literature, but becomes indissolubly united with that which belongs by every claim to the “Divina Commedia” and to the life of Dante.

When the “Vita Nuova” was completed, Dante was somewhat less than twenty-eight years old. Beatrice had died between two and three years before, in 1290; and he seems to have pleased himself after her loss by recalling to his memory the sweet incidents of her life, and of her influence upon himself. He begins with the words:–

“In that part of the book of my memory before which little can be read is found a rubric which says: _Incipit Vita Nova_ [‘The New Life begins’]. Under which rubric I find the words written which it is my intention to copy into this little book,–if not all of them, at least their meaning.”

This introduction, short as it is, exhibits a characteristic trait of Dante’s mind, in the declaration of his intention to copy from the book of his memory, or, in other words, to write the true records of experience. Truth was the chief quality of his intellect, and upon this, as upon an unshaken foundation, rest the marvellous power and consistency of his imaginations. His heart spoke clearly, and he interpreted its speech plainly in his words. His tendency to mysticism often, indeed, led him into strange fancies; but these, though sometimes obscure, are never vague. After these few words of preface, the story begins:–

“Nine times now, since my birth, the heaven of light had turned almost to the same point in its gyration, when first appeared before my eyes the glorious lady of my mind, who was called Beatrice, by many who did not know why they thus called her.[A] She had now been in this life so long, that in its time the starred heaven had moved toward the east one of the twelve parts of a degree;[B] so that about the beginning of her ninth year she appeared to me, and I near the end of my ninth year saw her. She appeared to me clothed in a most noble color, a becoming and modest crimson, and she was girt and adorned in the style that suited her extreme youth. At that instant, I say truly, the spirit of life, which dwells in the most secret chamber of the heart, began to tremble with such violence, that it appeared horribly in the least pulses, and, trembling, said these words: _Ecce deus fortior me, qui veniens dominabitur mihi!_ [Behold a god, stronger than I, who, coming, shall rule me![C]]

[Footnote A: It may be that Dante here refers to the meaning of the name Beatrice,–_She who renders happy. She who blesses._]

[Footnote B: According to the astronomy of the times, the sphere of the stars moved from west to east one degree in a hundred years. The twelfth of a degree was, therefore, eight and a half years. See the _Convito_, Tratt. II. c. vi.]

[Footnote C: Compare with this passage Canzone x, st. 5, 6. Especially the lines,

“E, se ‘l libro non erra,
Lo spirito maggior tremo si forte, Che parve ben, che morte
Per lui in questo mondo giunta fosse.”

“And, if the book errs not, the chief spirit so greatly trembled, that it plainly appeared that death for him had arrived in this world.”

When Dante meets Beatrice in Purgatory, he says, referring to this time,–and it is pleasant to note these connections between his earliest and his latest works,–

“Tosto che nella vista mi percosse
L’ alta virtu, che gia m’ avca trafitto Prima ch’ io fuor di puerizia fosse.”
Canto xxx. l. 40-42.
]

“At that instant, the spirit of the soul, which dwells in the high chamber to which all the spirits of the senses bring their perceptions, began to marvel greatly, and, addressing the spirits of the sight, said these words: _Apparuit jam beatitudo vestra._ [Now hath appeared your bliss.] At that instant the natural spirit, which dwells in that part where the nourishment is supplied, began to weep, and, weeping, said these words: _Heu miser! quia frequenter impeditus ero deinceps._ [Woe is me wretched! because frequently henceforth shall I be hindered.]

“From this time forward I say that Love lorded over my soul, which had been thus quickly put at his disposal;[D] and he began to exercise over me such control and such lordship, through the power which my imagination gave to him, that I was obliged to perform completely all his pleasure. He commanded me many times that I should seek to see this youthful angel, so that I in my boyhood often went seeking her, and saw her of such noble and praiseworthy deportment, that truly of her might be said that saying of the poet Homer: ‘She does not seem the daughter of a mortal, but of God.’ And it befell that her image, which stayed constantly with me, inspired boldness in Love to hold lordship over me; but it was of such noble virtue, that it never suffered that Love should rule without the faithful counsel of Reason in those matters in which such counsel could be useful.”

[Footnote D: The text of the _Vita Nuova_ is often uncertain. Here, for example, many authorities concur in the reading, “_la quale fu si tosto a lui disponsata_,” “which had been so quickly betrothed to him.” But we prefer to read “_disposta_,” as being more in accordance with the remainder of the figure concerning Love. Many other various readings will be passed over without notice,–but a translation might be exposed to the charge of inaccuracy, if it were judged by the text of any special edition of the original, without comparison with others. The text usually followed in these versions is that of Fraticelli.]

Such is the account which Dante gives of the beginning of his love for Beatrice. The tenderness and purity of his passion are obscured, but not concealed, by quaintness of expression and formality of learning. In literary style the passage displays the uncertain hand of youth, and in a translation something is lost of the charm of simplicity which pervades the original. But in this passage the keynote of Dante’s life is struck.

Passing over many things, he says that exactly nine years were completed after the above-described appearance of this most gentle lady, when it happened that “she appeared before me clothed in purest white between two noble ladies, and, passing along the street, she turned her eyes toward that place where I stood very timidly, and, by her ineffable courtesy, which is now rewarded in eternity, saluted me with such virtue, that I seemed to behold all the bounds of bliss. The hour when her most sweet salutation reached me was exactly the ninth of that day; and since it was the first time that her words came to my ears, I felt such great delight, that, as it were intoxicated, I turned away from the crowd, and, betaking myself to the solitary place of my chamber, sat myself down to think of this most courteous lady, and, thinking of her, a sweet slumber came upon me, in which a marvellous vision appeared to me.” After describing this vision, he says, that, thinking of what had appeared to him, he “proposed to bring it to the knowledge of many who were famous poets at that time; and since I had already seen in myself the art of speaking words in rhyme, I proposed to write a sonnet, in which I would salute all the vassals of Love; and praying them to give an interpretation of my vision, I wrote to them that which I had seen in my slumber. And I began then this sonnet:–

“To every captive soul and gentle heart Before whose sight may come the present word,
That they may thereupon their thoughts impart,
Be greeting in Love’s name, who is their lord.

“Now of those hours wellnigh one third had gone
In which each star appears in heaven most bright,
When on a sudden Love before me shone, To think upon whose being gives me fright.

“Joyful seemed Love, and he was keeping My heart within his hands, while on his arm He held my Lady, covered o’er and sleeping.

“Then waking her, he with this flaming heart Did humbly feed her, fearful of some harm. Sudden I saw him weep, and quick depart.”

This sonnet is somewhat obscure in the details of its meaning, and has little beauty, but it is of interest as being the earliest poetic composition by Dante that has been preserved for us, and it is curious as being the account of a vision. In our previous article on the “New Life,” we referred to the fact of this book being in great part composed of the account of a series of visions, thus connecting itself in the form of its imaginations with the great work of Dante’s later years. As a description of things unseen except by the inward eye, this sonnet is bound in poetic connection to the nobler visions of the “Divina Commedia.” The private stamp of Dante’s imagination is indelibly impressed upon it.

He tells us that many answers were made to this sonnet, and “among those who replied to it was he whom I call the first of my friends, and he wrote a sonnet which began,

‘Thou seest in my opinion every worth.’

This was, as it were, the beginning of our friendship when he knew that it was I who had sent these verses to him.” This first of Dante’s friends was Guido Cavalcanti. Their friendship was of long duration, beginning thus in Dante’s nineteenth year, and ending only with Guido’s death, in 1300, when Dante was thirty-five years old. It may be taken as a proof of its intimacy and of Dante’s high regard for the genius of his friend, that, when Dante, in his course through Hell, at Easter in 1300, represents himself as being recognized by the father of Guido, the first words of the old man to him are,

“If through this blind prison thou goest through loftiness of soul, where is my son? oh, why is he not with thee?”[E]

[Footnote E: _Inferno_, x. 58-60.]

The sonnet of Guido, in reply to that sent him by Dante, has been preserved, together with the replies by two other contemporary poets; but Dante says of them all,–“The true meaning of my sonnet was not then seen by any one, though now it is plain to the simplest.”

After this vision, the poet, whose soul was wholly devoted to his most gentle lady, was brought by Love into so frail a condition of health, that his friends became anxious for him, and questioned him about that which he most wished to conceal. Then he told them that it was Love which had brought him to this pass. But when they asked him, “For whom has Love thus wasted thee?” he looked at them smiling, and said nothing.

“One day it happened,” he goes on to relate, “that this most gentle lady sat where words concerning the Queen of Glory are heard, and I was in a place from which I beheld my bliss. Between her and me in a direct line sat a gentle lady of most pleasing aspect, who looked at me often, wondering at my gaze, which seemed to terminate upon her; and many observed her looks. So great attention, indeed, was paid to this, that when I went out from the place I heard some one say, ‘Behold how that lady wastes the life of this man!’–and naming her, I heard that they spoke of her who had been in the path of the straight line which, parting from my most gentle Beatrice, had ended in my eyes.” Then he says he thought to make this lady serve as a screen for his real love, and he did this so well that in a short time many persons fancied they knew his secret. And in order to deceive them still more, he addressed to this lady many trifles in rhyme, of which he will insert in this account of his “New Life” only those which bear reference to Beatrice.

Some time after this, “it was the pleasure of the Lord of the Angels to call to his glory a young and beautiful lady, who had been very lovely in the city of Florence. And I saw her body lying without its soul, surrounded by many ladies who wept grievously. Then remembering that I had formerly seen her in company with that most gentle lady, I could not restrain some tears; and, weeping, I proposed to say some words about her death, as a return for that I had seen her sometimes with my lady.” Then, he says, he wrote two poems, of which we give the last, adding to it his verbal comment, as an example of the style of commentary with which he has accompanied all the poems of the “Vita Nuova”:–

“O villain Death, compassion’s foe,
The Mother from of old of woe,
Inexorable judge severe,
Thou givest sorrow for the heart to bear; Wherefore in grief I go,
And blaming thee my very tongue outwear.

“And if of every grace thou wouldst be bare,
It only needs that I declare
The guilt of this thy sinful blow, So that all those shall know,
And each shall be thy foe,
Who erst were nurtured with Love’s tender care

“For thou hast taken from the world the grace
And virtue which are woman’s praise, And in youth’s gayest days
The charm of loveliness thou dost deface.

“Who is this lady is not to be told, Save as these qualities do make her known. He who deserves salvation may alone
Have hope companionship with her to hold.

“This sonnet is divided into four parts.[F] In the first I address Death by certain of her proper names; in the second, speaking to her, I tell the reason why I am moved to blame her; in the third, I revile her; in the fourth, I speak to a person undefined, although definite as regards my intention. The second part begins at _Thou givest_; the third at _And if of every grace_; the fourth at _He who deserves_.”

[Footnote F: Dante calls this little poem a sonnet, although, strictly, the name does not belong to it.]

After this, Dante tells of a journey he was forced to take, in the direction of the city to which the lady who had afforded him the means of disguising his real love had gone. He says, that, on the way, which he calls the way of sighs, he met Love, who was sad in aspect, and clad like a pilgrim, and that Love told him the name of another lady who must thenceforth serve as his screen to conceal his secret. He goes on to relate, that, after his return,[G] he sought out this lady, and made her his defence so effectually, that many persons spoke of it beyond the terms of courtesy, which weighed on him heavily. And on account of this lying talk which defamed him greatly, he says that Beatrice, “the most gentle lady, who was the enemy of all the vices, and the queen of virtue, passing by a certain place, denied me her most sweet salute, in which consisted all my bliss. And departing a little from the present subject, I will declare that which her salutation effected within me. I say, then, that, whenever she appeared, in my hope for her admirable salutation I no longer had an enemy, for a flame of charity possessed me which made me pardon every one who had done me wrong; and if at that time any one had asked anything of me, my only answer would have been _Love_, and my face would have been clothed with humility. And when she was near to giving me a salutation, a spirit of Love, destroying all the other spirits of the senses, drove out the feeble spirits of the sight, and said to them, ‘Go and do honor to your lady,’ and he stayed in their place. And whoever had wished to know Love might have done so by looking at the trembling of my eyes.”

[Footnote G: In his few words of introduction to the _Vita Nuova_, Dante implies that he shall not copy out into his book all his compositions relating to its subject. Some of the poems of this period, not included in the _Vita Nuova_, have been preserved, and we propose to refer to them in their appropriate places. Compare with this passage Sonnet lxxix., _Poesie Liriche_, ed. Fraticelli,–

“Se ‘l bello aspetto non mi fosse tolto,”–

which was apparently written during Dante’s absence from Beatrice.]

After the salutation which had been wont to bring to him a joy almost beyond his capacity had been refused to him, Dante went weeping to his chamber, where he could lament without being heard; and there he fell asleep, crying like a little child who has been beaten. And in his sleep he had a vision of Love, who entered into talk with him, and bade him write a poem, adorned with sweet harmony, in which he should set forth the truth and fidelity of his love for Beatrice, and should sue for her pardon. Dante awoke at the ninth hour of the day, and at once began the poem, of which the following is a portion. He personifies his poem, and he bids it

“Tell her,–‘O Lady, this his heart is stayed On faithfulness so sure and firm,
Save to serve you it has no other care: Early ’twas yours, and never has it strayed.’ But if she trust not what thou dost affirm, Tell her to ask of Love, who will the truth declare; And at the end, beg her, with humble prayer, That she her pardon of its wrong would give; Then let her bid that I no longer live, And she shall see her servant quick obey.”[H]

[Footnote H: Compare Canz. x. and xi.]

After this poem was finished, Dante describes what he calls “a battle of thoughts” concerning Love within his mind, and then goes on to relate that it happened one day that he was taken, by a friend who thought to give him pleasure, to a feast at which many ladies were present. “They were assembled,” he says, “to attend a lady who was married that day, and, according to the custom of the city, they bore her company at her first sitting at table in the dwelling of her new husband.” Dante, believing thus to do pleasure to his friend, proposed to stand in waiting upon these ladies. But at the moment of this intention he felt a sudden tremor, which caused him to lean for support against a painting which ran round the wall,[I] and, raising his eyes, he beheld Beatrice. His confusion became apparent; and the ladies, not excepting Beatrice herself, laughed at his strange appearance. Then his friend took him from their presence, and having asked him what so ailed him, Dante replied, “I have set my feet on that edge of life beyond which no man can go with intent to return.” Then leaving him, he went to the chamber of tears, weeping and ashamed; and in his trouble he wrote a sonnet to Beatrice, in which he says, that, if she had known the cause of his trouble, he believes that she would have felt pity for him.[J]

[Footnote I: This is, perhaps, the earliest reference in modern literature to the use of painting as a decoration for houses. It is probable that it was a recent application of the art, and resulted from the revival of interest in its works which accompanied the revival of the art. We shall have occasion again to note a reference to painting.]

[Footnote J: To this period, apparently, belong Sonnets xxix. and xxx. of the general collection. The last may not unlikely have been omitted in the _Vita Nuova_ on account of the tenderness with which the death of Beatrice had invested every memory of her, preventing the insertion of a poem which might seem harsh in its expression:–

“I curse the day on which I first beheld The light of thy betraying eyes.”
]

The foregoing passage, like many others in the “Vita Nuova,” is full of the intense and exaggerated expressions of passionate feeling. But this feeling is recorded with a frank simplicity which carries conviction of the sincerity of emotion. It may be laughed at, but it cannot be doubted. It is possible, though hardly probable, that the scene took place at the wedding festival of Beatrice herself. She was married sometime previous to 1287, and unless a reference to this event be found here, no notice of it is taken by Dante in what he has written concerning her. That the fact of her marriage changed in no degree the feeling with which Dante regarded her is plain. His love was of no low quality, to be altered by earthly circumstance. It was a love of the soul. No change or separation that left the being untouched could part him from it. To the marriage of true souls there was no impediment, and he would admit none, in her being the wife of another. The qualities which she possessed as a maiden belonged to her no less as a wife.

It was in the same year, probably, as that in which the “Vita Nuova” was composed and published, that Dante himself was married to Gemma Donati. There are stories that their married life was unhappy. But these stories have not the weight of even contemporary gossip. Possibly they arose from the fact of the long separation between Dante and his wife during his exile. Boccaccio insinuates more than he asserts, and he concludes a vague declamation about the miseries of married life with the words, “Truly I do not affirm that these things happened to Dante, _for I do not know_.” Dante keeps utter silence in his works,–certainly giving no reason to suppose that domestic trials were added to his other burdens. One thing is known which deserves remembrance,–that, when, after some years, a daughter was born to him, the name which she received was Beatrice.

In the next few pages of the “Vita Nuova” Dante describes various thoughts which came to his mind concerning his appearance when in presence of his lady; but, passing over these, we come to a passage which we give in full, as containing a delightful picture from Florence in its old time, and many sentences of sweet and characteristic feeling.

“Many persons had now learned from my looks the secret of my heart. And it happened that certain ladies, who well knew my heart, each of them having witnessed many of my discomfitures, had assembled together, taking pleasure in each other’s company. And I, by chance passing near them, was addressed by one of these gentle ladies. She who called to me was very graceful in her speech, so that when I reached them, and saw well that my most gentle lady was not with them, reassuring myself, I saluted them, and asked what might be their pleasure. The ladies were many, and some of them were laughing together, and others looked at me, waiting for what I might say, while others spoke among themselves, and one of them, turning her eyes toward me, and calling me by name, said, ‘To what end dost thou love this lady, since thou canst not support her presence? Tell us, for it is certain that the object of such a love must be a very strange one.’ And when she had said these words to me, not only she, but all the others, began to attend in expectation of my reply. Then I said to them, ‘Ladies, the object of my love was, in truth, the salutation of that lady of whom perhaps you speak; and in that dwelt the bliss which was the end of all my desires. But since it has pleased her to deny it to me, my lord Love, thanks be to him, has placed all my bliss in that which cannot be taken from me.’ Then these ladies began to speak together, and, as we sometimes see rain falling mingled with beautiful snow, so, it seemed to me, I saw their words mingled with sighs. And after they had spoken for some time among themselves, the same lady who had first spoken to me said to me, ‘We pray thee that thou wouldst tell us in what consists this thy bliss.’ And I, replying to her, said, ‘In those words which speak my lady’s praise.’ And she answered, ‘If thou sayest truth in this, those words which thou hast spoken concerning thine own condition must have been written with another intention.'[K] Then I, thinking on these words, and, as it were, ashamed of myself, departed from them, and went, saying to myself, ‘Since there is such bliss in those words which praise my lady, why has my speech been of other things?’ And I proposed to take always for my subject, henceforward, the praise of this most gentle lady. And thinking much on this, I seemed to myself to have taken too lofty a subject for my power, so that I did not dare to begin. Thus I delayed some days, with the desire to speak, and with a fear of beginning.

[Footnote K: This refers to the sonnets Dante had written about his own trouble and the conflict of his thoughts. It will be observed that the words “speak” and “speech” are used in reference to poetic compositions. In those days the poet was commonly called _il dicitore in rima_, “the speaker in rhyme,” or simply _il dicitore_.]

“Then it happened, that, walking along a road, at the side of which ran a very clear stream, so great a wish to speak came to me, that I began to think on the method I should observe; and I thought that to speak of her would not be becoming, unless I addressed my words to ladies,–and not to every lady, but only to those who are gentle, and not mere women.[L] Then I say that my tongue spoke as if moved by its own accord, and said, ‘Ladies who have intelligence of Love.’ These words I laid by in my mind with great joy, thinking to take them for my beginning. And returning to the city, after some days I began this Canzone:–[M]

[Footnote L: The epithet which Dante constantly applies to Beatrice is “most gentle,” _gentillisima_, while other ladies are called _gentile_, “gentle.” Here he makes the distinction between the _donna_ and the _donna gentile_. The word is used with a signification similar to that which it has in our own early literature, and fuller than that which it now retains. It refers both to race, as in the phrase “of gentle birth,” and to the qualities of character. “Gentleness means the same as nobleness,” says Dante, in the _Convito_; “and by nobleness is meant the perfection of its own nature in anything.” Tratt. iv. c. 14 16.

The delicacy and the dignity of meaning attaching to the word render it an epithet especially appropriate to Beatrice, as implying all that is loveliest in person and character. Its use in the _Vita Nuova_ is the more to be remarked, as in the _Divina Commedia_ it is never applied to Beatrice. Its appropriateness ceased with her earthly life, for there was “another glory of the celestial body.”]

[Footnote M: This Canzone is one of the most beautiful of Dante’s minor poems. We have preferred to give it in a literal translation, rather than to attempt one in which the involved rhyme of the original should be preserved, fearing lest this could not be done without sacrifice of the meaning to the form. The original must be read by those who would understand its grace of expression combined with its depth of feeling. Dante himself prized this Canzone, and represents Buonagiunta da Lucca in Purgatory as addressing him,–

“Ma di s’ io veggio qui colui che fuore Trasse le nuove rime, cominciando:
_Donne, ch’ avete intelletto d’Amore.”

“But tell me if I see him who wrote the new rhymes, beginning, ‘Ladies who have intelligence of Love.'” _Purgat_. c. xxiv. l. 49-51.]

“Ladies who have intelligence of Love, I of my lady wish with you to speak;
Not that to tell her praise in full I think, But to discourse that I may ease my mind.

“I say that when I think upon her worth, So sweet doth Love make himself feel to me, That if I then did not my courage lose, Speaking I would enamor all mankind.
I do not wish so loftily to speak, Lest I should fail and fall through very fear. But of her gentle nature I will treat
With lightest touch compared with her desert, Ladies and damsels bound to Love, with you; For unto others this may not be told.

“An Angel cries aloud in tongue divine, And says, ‘O Sire! in the world is seen A miracle in action, that proceeds
From out a soul which far as here doth shine.’ The Heavens, which have no other want, indeed, But that of her, demand her of her Lord, And every Saint doth for this favor beg; Only Compassion our part defends.
What sayeth God? what of Madonna means? ‘O my delights, now be content in peace That, while I please, your hope should there remain Where dwelleth one who loss of her awaits, And who shall say in Hell to the condemned, I have beheld the hope of those in bliss.'”[N]

[Footnote N: Note the reference implied in these words to the journey of Dante through Hell.]

“My lady is desired in high heaven.
Her virtues now will I make known to you. I say, whoso a gentle lady would appear Should go with her: for when she passeth by, Love casts a frost upon all villain hearts, So that their every thought doth freeze and die; And whoso bears to stay and look on her Will nobler thing become or else will die; And when one finds that he may worthy be To look on her, he doth his virtue prove: For then that comes to him which gives him health, And humbleth him till he forgets all wrong; And God hath given a still greater grace, That who hath spoke with her cannot end ill.

“Love says of her, ‘How can a mortal thing Be thus in every part adorned and pure?’ Then, gazing on her, to himself he swears That God in her a creature new designs. Color of pearl doth clothe her, as it were,– Not in excess, but most becomingly.
Whate’er of good Nature can make she is; And by her model Beauty proves itself.
From out her eyes, wherever they may move, Spirits inflamed with love do issue forth, Which strike the eyes of whoso looks on her, And enter so that every heart they find. Love you behold depicted on her face,
On which with fixed look no one can gaze.

“I know, Canzone, thou wilt go to speak With many ladies, when I send thee forth; And now I bid thee, having bred thee up Like to a young and simple child of Love, That where thou goest thou shouldst praying say, ‘Teach me which way to go, for I am sent To her with praise of whom I am adorned.’ And if thou wishest not to go in vain,
Remain not there where villain folk may be; Endeavor, if thou mayst, to be acquaint Only with ladies, or with courteous men, Who thee will guide upon the quickest way. Love thou wilt find in company with her, And to them both commend me as thou shouldst.”

After explaining, according to his custom, and marking the divisions of this poem, Dante copies out a sonnet in which he answers the question of one of his friends, who, he says, perhaps entertaining an expectation of him beyond what was due, asked him, ‘What is Love?’ Many of the poets of that time tried their hands in giving an answer to this difficult question, and Dante begins his with confirming the opinion expressed by one of them:–

“Love is but one thing with the gentle heart, As in the saying of the sage we find.”[O]

[Footnote O: it is probable that Dante refers to the first of a Canzone by Guido Guinicelli, which says,

“Within the gentle heart Love always stays,”

–a verse which he may have had still in his memory when he makes Francesca da Rimini say, (_Inf_. v. 100,)

“Love which by gentle heart is quickly learned.”

For other definitions of Love as understood by the Italian poets of the trecento, see Guido Cavalcanti’s most famous and most obscure Canzone, _Donna mi priega_; the sonnet (No. xlii.) falsely ascribed to Dante, _Molti volendo dir che fosse Amore_; the sonnet by Jacopo da Lentino, _Amore e un desio che vien dal core_; and many others.]

Another sonnet follows upon this, telling how this Love was awakened by Beatrice and beginning with the exquisite praise,

“Within her eyes my lady beareth Love, So that who looks on her is gentle made.”[P]

[Footnote P: Compare with this Sonnet xl.,–

“Dagli occhi della mia donna si muove.” ]

Not many days after this, the father of Beatrice died.[Q] “And inasmuch as it is the custom in the above-mentioned city for ladies to assemble with ladies, and men with men, in such affliction, many ladies assembled at the house where Beatrice was weeping piteously. And seeing certain of them returning from her, I heard them speak of this most gentle lady, how she was lamenting…. When these ladies had passed, I remained in such grief that tears began to fall, and, putting my hands before my eyes, I covered my face. And if it had not been that I expected to hear further of her, for I stood near by where most of the ladies who came from her passed, I should have hidden myself as soon as the tears assailed me. While I still delayed, more ladies passed by, talking together and saying, ‘Who of us should ever be joyful after hearing this lady speak so piteously?’ After these others passed, who said, as they went by, ‘This one who is here weeps neither more nor less than if he had seen her as we have.’ And then others said of me, ‘See! so overcome is he, that he seems not himself.’ And thus these ladies passing by, I heard speech of her and of myself.” And going away, after this, he wrote two sonnets, telling of what he had seen and heard.[R]

[Footnote Q: Folco Portinari died December 31, 1289.]

[Footnote R: Compare with this passage Sonnet xlvi., which seems to have been written on this occasion;–

“Voi, donne, che pietoso atto mostrate,”

and Sonnet xlvii.,–

“Onde venite voi, cosi pensose?”
]

It happened not long after this time that Dante was seized with grievous illness, which reduced him to such a state of weakness that he lay as one unable to move. And on the ninth day, suffering greatly, he thought of his lady, and, reflecting on the frailty of life even at its best, the thought struck him that even the most gentle Beatrice must at some time die. And upon this, such consternation seized him that his fancy began to wander, and, he says, “It seemed to me that I saw ladies, with hair dishevelled, and marvellously sad, pass weeping by, and that I saw the sun grow dark, so that the stars showed themselves of such a color as to make me deem they wept. And it appeared to me that the birds as they flew fell dead, and that there were great earthquakes. And struck with wonder at this fantasy, and greatly alarmed, I imagined that a friend came to me, who said, ‘Dost thou not know? Thy admirable lady has departed from this world.’ Then I began to weep very piteously, and wept not only in imagination, but with my eyes shedding real tears. Then I imagined that I looked toward heaven, and it seemed to me that I saw a multitude of angels who were returning upwards, having before them a little cloud of exceeding whiteness. It seemed to me that these angels sang gloriously, and that the words of their song were these: ‘_Osanna in excelsis!_’–and other than these I did not hear.[S]

[Footnote S: In the _Divina Commedia_ frequent reference is made to the singing of Osanna by the Angels. See _Purgat_. xi. 11; xxix. 51; _Par_. vii. 1; xxviii. 94, 118; xxxii. 135; and especially viii. 28.]

“Then the heart in which abode such great love seemed to say to me, ‘It is true that our lady lies dead.’ And thereupon I seemed to go to behold the body in which that most noble and blessed soul had been. And the erring fancy was so powerful that it showed to me this lady dead, and it appeared to me that ladies were covering her head with a white veil, and that her face had such an aspect of humility that it seemed to say, ‘I behold the beginning of peace.'”

Then Dante called upon Death to come to him; and when he had beheld in his imagination the sad mysteries which are performed for the dead, he seemed to return to his own chamber. And so strong was his imagining, that, weeping, he said with his true voice, “O most beautiful soul! how is he blessed who beholds thee!” Upon this, a young and gentle lady, who was watching by his bed, thinking that he was grieving for his own pain, began to weep; whereon other ladies who were in the chamber drew near and roused him from his dream. Then they asked him by what he had been troubled; and he told all that he had seen in fancy, keeping silence only with regard to the name of Beatrice; and when, some time after, he recovered from his illness, he wrote a poem which related his vision.

The next incident of his new life which Dante tells is one of a different nature, and of pleasant character. One day he saw Love coming to him full of joy; and his own heart became so joyful that it seemed to him it could not be his heart, so changed was its condition. Then he saw approaching him a lady of famous beauty, who had been the lady of his first friend. Her name was Giovanna, but on account of her beauty she was called Primavera, which means _Spring_. And with her was Beatrice. Then Love, after they had passed, explained the hidden meaning of the name Primavera, and said, that, by one considering subtilely, Beatrice would be called _Love_, on account of the great resemblance she bore to him. Then Dante, thinking over these things, wrote this sonnet to his friend, believing that he still admired the beauty of this gentle Primavera:–

“An amorous spirit in my heart who lay I felt awaken from his slumber there;
And then I saw Love come from far away, But scarce I knew him for his joyous air.

“‘Honor to me,’ he said, ‘think now to pay,’ And all his words with smiles companioned were. Then as my lord awhile with me did stay, Along the way whence he appeared whilere

“The Lady Joan and Lady Bice I see,
Coming toward the place wherein I was; And the two marvels side by side did move.

“Then, as my mind now tells it unto me, Love said, ‘This one is Spring, and this, because She so resembleth me, is named Love.'”[T]

[Footnote T: See the charming Sonnet lii.:–

“Guido vorrei che tu, e Lappo, ed io.” ]

After this sonnet, Dante enters on a long and fanciful discourse on the use of figurative language, to explain how he speaks of Love as if it were not a mere notion of the intellect, but as if it had a corporeal existence. There is much curious matter in this dissertation, and it is one of the most striking examples that could be found of the youthful character of the literature at the time in which Dante was writing, and of the little familiarity which those in whose hands his book was likely to fall possessed of the common forms of poetry, and of the style of the ancient Latin poets.

Returning from this digression, he says: “This most gentle lady, of whom there has been discourse in what precedes, reached such favor among the people, that when she passed along the way persons ran to see her, which gave me wonderful delight. And when she was near any one, such modesty took possession of his heart, that he did not dare to raise his eyes or to return her salutation; and to this, should any one doubt it, many, as having experienced it, could bear witness for me. She, crowned and clothed with humility, took her way, displaying no pride in that which she saw and heard. Many, when she had passed, said, ‘This is not a woman; rather is she one of the most beautiful angels of heaven.’ Others said, ‘She is a miracle. Blessed be the Lord who can perform such a marvel!’ I say that she showed herself so gentle and so full of all beauties, that those who looked on her felt within themselves a delight so pure and sweet that they could not smile; nor was there any who could look at her and not feel need at first to sigh. These and more wonderful things proceeded from her, marvellously and in reality. Wherefore I, thinking on all this, proposed to say some words, in which I would exhibit her marvellous and excellent influences, to the end that not only those who might actually behold her, but also others, might know of her whatever words could tell. Then I wrote this sonnet:–

“So gentle and so modest doth appear My lady when she giveth her salute,
That every tongue becometh trembling mute,
Nor do the eyes to look upon her dare.

“And though she hears her praises, she doth go
Benignly clothed with humility,
And like a thing come down she seems to be
From heaven to earth, a miracle to show.

“So pleaseth she whoever cometh nigh, She gives the heart a sweetness through the eyes,
Which none can understand who doth not prove.

“And from her lip there seems indeed to move A spirit sweet and in Love’s very guise, Which goeth saying to the soul, ‘Ah,
sigh!'”[U]

[Footnote U: Perhaps the spirit of the latter part of this sonnet may be better conveyed by rendering thus:–

“So pleaseth she all those approaching nigh her,
* * * * *
Which goeth saying to the soul, ‘Aspire!'”

Compare the very beautiful Ballata vi. and Sonnet xlviii., beginning,

“Di donne io vidi una gentile schiera.” ]

With this incomparable sonnet we close that part of the “Vita Nuova” which relates to the life of Beatrice. It fitly completes the golden record of youth. Its tender lines are the epitaph of happy days, and in them is found that mingled sweetness and sadness which in this world are always the final expression of love. Its tone is that of the wind of autumn sighing among the leaves of spring. Beneath its outward meaning lies a prophecy of joy,–but that joy is to be reached only through the gates of death.

* * * * *

THE PHILTER.

“A draught of water, maiden fair,”
I said to the girl beside the well. Oh, sweet was the smile on her face of guile, As she gave me to drink,–that witch of hell!

I drank, and sweet was the draught I drank, And thanked the giver, and still she smiled; And her smile like a curse on my spirit sank, Till my face grew wan, and my heart grew wild.

And lo! the light from the day was gone, And gone was maiden, and gone was well: The dark instead, like a wall of stone, And rivers that roared through the dark, and fell.

Was it the draught, or was it the smile, Or my own false heart? Ah, who shall tell? But the black waves beat at my weary feet, And sits at my side the witch of hell.

DID I?

“Giorno d’orrore.”

Wheels rolled away in the distance; the corner of a gray cloak fluttered where the drive turns down hill. From under the fore-wheel of Juggernaut I struggled back to life with a great sob, that died before it sounded. I looked about the library for some staff to help me to my feet again. The porphyry vases were filled with gorgeous boughs, leaves of deep scarlet, speckled, flushed, gold-spotted, rimmed with green, dashed with orange, tawny and crimson, blood-sprinkled, faint clear amber; all hues and combinations of color rioted and revelled in the crowded clusters. To what hand but hers could so much beauty have gathered? to what eye but hers did the magnificent secrets of Nature reveal themselves, so that out of a whole forest her careless straying hand should bring only its culminating glories, its most perfect results, whether of leaf or flower or fruit. For in an urn of tintless alabaster, that had lain centuries in the breathless dust and gloom of an Egyptian tomb, that hand had set a sheaf of gentians, every fringed cup blue as the wild river when a noon sky tints it, or as the vaulted azure of a June midnight on the edge of the Milky Way,–a sheaf no Ceres owned, no foodfull garner coveted, but the satiating aliment of beauty, fresh as if God that hour had pronounced them good, and set his sign-manual upon each delicate tremulous petal, that might have been sapphire, save for its wistful translucence. And on the teapoy in the window stood two dainty baskets of clean willow, in which we had that day brought home chestnuts from the wood;–mine was full of nuts, but they were small and angular and worm-eaten, as the fruitage of a wet season might well be; hers scantily freighted, but every nut round, full, and glossy, perfect from its cruel husk, a specimen, a type of its kind. And on the handle of the basket hung a little kid glove. I looked at it closely; the tiny finger-tops and oval nails had left light creases on the delicate leather, and an indescribable perfume, in which violet predominated, drove away the vile animal scent that pervades such gloves. I flung it on the fire.

All about the room lay books that were not of my culling, from the oak cases, whose every door stood ajar,–novels innumerable,–“The Arabian Nights,” Vaughan’s “Silex Scintillans,” with a scarlet leaf laid in against “Peace,” and “Tennyson” turned on its face at “Fatima,” a heavy volume of French moral philosophy, a Methodist hymn-book, Sir Thomas Browne’s “Hydriotaphia,” and a gilded red-bound history of “Five Little Pigs.”

I rang the bell, and ordered all the books to be gathered up and put into an old bookcase, long banished to a dark attic. I walked to the fire and leaned my head against the mantel. The embers were all dead; in the gray ashes was the print of a little foot, whose arched instep had left no trace between the light track of the small heel and the deeper impression that the slender toe had left. That footprint told the secret of her airy motion,–that step so akin to flight, that on an overhanging mountain-ledge I had more than once held my breath, looking to see her extended wings float over the silent tree-tops below, or longed to grasp her carelessly trailed shawl, that I might detain her upon earth. To me the track had yet another language. An hour before, as I stood there beside her, the bitter passion of a man solitary and desperate shaking every faculty before the level rays of her scornful eye, she had set her embroidered slipper in the ashes, and said,–“Look! I leave a print there which the first breath of air shall dissipate; all fire becomes ashes, and ashes blow away,”–and so left me. I stood before the fire, that had been, still looking at that foot-mark; my brain was stunned and stupid, my heart beat slow and loud; I knew nothing, I felt nothing. I was nothing. Presently a bell rang.

The world is full of magicians, transformations, magnetic miracles, juggling, chemical astonishments, moral gymnastics, hypocrisies, lies of wonder,–but what is so strange, so marvellous, so inexplicable, as the power of conventions? One minute found me tempting the blackness of darkness, every idea astray and reeling, every emotion benumbed; the next, a bell rang, and I went to the tea-table, sat in my own place, answered my mother’s questions, resumed the politenesses and habits of daily life, seemed to be myself to those who had known me always,–ate, drank, jested,–was a man,–no more the trodden ashes under a girl’s foot, no longer the sport of a girl’s cool eye, no slave, no writhing idolater under the car-wheel; and this lasted-half an hour! You have seen the horses of Pharaoh following the glittering sand-track of the Judaean host, walled in with curling beryl battlements, over whose crests the white sea-foam dares no more laugh and threaten? You know those curved necks clothed with strength, the bent head whose nostrils flare with pride, the tossed and waving mane, the magnificent grace of the nervous shoulder, the great, intelligent, expectant eyes? Suddenly the roar of waves at the farther shore! Look at that head! strong and quiet no more; terror erects the quivering ears; the nostril sinks and contracts with fear; the eye glares and glances from side to side, mad with prescient instinct; the corded veins that twist forkedly from the lip upward swell to the utmost tension of the fine skin; that sweeping mane rises in rough undulations, the forelock is tossed back, the shoulder grows rigid with horror, the chest rises with a long indrawn breath of dismay. Horrible beyond all horrid sounds, the yell of a horse in mortal fear. Do you hear it? No,–it is a picture,–the picture of a moment between one animal that sees the impending fate, and another that has not yet caught it;–it is human that such moments interpose between two oceans of agony, that man can momentarily control the rush of a sea which the brute must yield to.–So the sea rushed back.

All night long, all the long night!–long as lifetimes are, measured with slow-dropping arteries that drip away living blood. Once I watched by a dying woman; wild October rains poured without, but all unheard; in the dim-lit room, scented with quaint odors of lackered cases and chests of camphor-wood, heavy with perfumes that failed to revive, and hushed with whispers of hopeless comment, that delicate frame and angelic face, which the innumerable lines of age could only exalt and sweeten, shivered with the frosts of death; every breath was a sob; every sigh, anguish; the terrible restlessness of the struggle between soul and body in their parting writhed in every limb;–but there were no words other than broken cries of prayer, only half-heard on earth, till at length the tender, wistful eyes unclosed, and in a hoarse whisper, plaintive beyond expression, full of a desolate and immortal weariness, bearing a conviction of eternity and exhaustion that words cannot hope to utter, she said, “Will it never be morning?” And so this night stayed its pace; my room grew narrow and low; the ceiling pressed on my head; the walls forever clasped me, yet receded ever as I paced the floor; the floor fell in strange waves under me,–yet I walked steadily, up and down, up and down! Still the night stayed. Fever set its hurried pulses fleeting like wild-fire through every vein; a band of hot iron pressed above my eyes;–but these were adjuncts; the curse consumed me within. In every moment I heard those calm and fatal words, “I do not love you,” sounding clear and sweet through the dull leaden air of night,–an air full of ghostly sounds, sighs about the casements, creaking stairs, taps at the window, light sounds of feet in the long hall below; all falling heedless on my ear, for my ghost walked and talked with me, a ghastly reality, the galvanized corpse of a murdered life.

Still the night stayed. A weight of lead pressed on my brain and concentrated it to frantic power; the months in which I had known her, the only months I could call life, came back to me inch by inch, grain by grain. I recalled our first meeting,–the sudden springing into acquaintance,–the sympathetic power that had transfused those cold blue eyes into depths of tenderness and pity,–the gay and genial manner that aroused and charmed me,–the scornful lip that curled at the world for its worldliness,–that fresh imagination, which, like the spirit of frost, decked the commonest things with beauty; and I recalled those early letters that had passed between us,–mine, insipid enough,–hers, piquant, graphic, refined, tender, delicately passionate, sparkling, full of lofty thought and profound feeling. Good God! could she not have taken my heart, and wrung it, and thrown it away, under some more commonplace pretext than the profaned name of Friendship? Her friend! It is true I had called myself her friend; I had been strenuous in the nomenclature to quiet my own conscience,–to satisfy her conventional scruples; but had she no instinct to interpret the pretence? What friend ever lived on every look, studied every phrase, watched every action and expression, was so torn with jealousy and racked with doubt, bore so humbly with caprices, and forgave every offence so instantly and utterly,–nay, was scarce conscious that anything her soul entertained could be an offence, could be wrong? Friendship!–ah, that deity is calm and serene; that firm lip and pale cheek do not flush with apprehension or quiver with passion; that tranquil eye does not shine with anything but quiet tears. Rather call the dusky and dark-haired Twilight, whose pensive face is limned against the western hills, by the name of that fierce and fervid Noon that stands erect under the hot zenith, instinct with the red blood of a thousand summers, casting her glittering tresses abroad upon the south-wind, and holding in her hands the all-unfolded rose of life. And if I was only her friend, was that a reason why she should permit in me the thousand intimacies of look and caress that are the novitiate of love? Was it a friend’s calm duty to give me her tiny hand to hold in mine, that I might fold and unfold the rosy fingers, and explore the white dimples that were its ornamenting gems,–to rest her tired head against my shoulder, even,–watching all day by the chair where pain, life-long ministrant, held me on the rack?–was it only friendly that she should press her soft little mouth to mine, and soothe me into quiet as a mother soothes her last, her dearest child? No! no! no! never could that be! She knew, she had known, that I loved her! Deliberate cruelty outlined those lovely lips; every statue-like moulding of that proud face told the hard and unrelenting nature of the soul within. God forgive her!–the exclamation escaped me unaware, and recoiled in a savage exultation that such treachery had no forgiveness in heaven or on earth,–one gleam of desperate satisfaction in that black night. But in its light, what new madness seized me? I had held her stainless and holy, intact of evil or deceit; what was she now? My whole brain reeled; the foundations were taken away; earth and heaven met; even as when the West forges tempest and lightning-bolts upon its melancholy hills, brooding and muttering hour by hour, till at length the livid gloom rushes upward against sun and stars, and the blackening sky shuts down upon the blackened earth, cowering at the shock, and the torrents and flames are let loose upon their prey,–so an accumulated storm of unutterable agony flung wave on wave above me, wrecked and alone.

Still the night stayed; the black mass of forest that swept up the hill-side stood in mystical gloom, in silence that could be felt; when at once,–not suddenly,–as if the night could forbear no more, but must utter some chord with the culmination of midnight horrors, a bird uttered one sharp cry, desolate utterly, hopeless, concentred, as if a keen blade parted its heart and the outraged life within remonstrated and despaired,–despaired not of life, for still the note repeated its monotone, but of death, of period to its pangs. That cry entered into my brain; it was unjust of Nature so to taunt me, so to express where I was speechless; yet I could not shut it out. A pitiful chill of flesh and sense seized me; I was cold,–oh, how cold!–the fevered veins crept now in sluggish ice; sharp thrills of shivering rigor racked me from head to foot; pain had dulled its own capacity; wrapped in every covering my room afforded, with blunted perceptions, and a dreadful consciousness of lost vitality, which, even when I longed to die, appalled me with the touch of death’s likeness, I sunk on the floor,–and it was morning!

Morning! “a day of darkness and of gloominess, a day of clouds and of thick darkness, as the morning spread upon the mountains!” A pale sun lit the earth, but earth and sky were black,–no sun touched me in heart or eye; I saw nothing, felt nothing, but heavy and impenetrable gloom. Yet again the ceremonies of life prevailed, and my real life slept undiscovered. Whatever pallor or shadow lined my face was no stranger there at that hour. The gray morning passed away; the village on the hill sent down busy sounds of labor and cheer; flies buzzed on the sunny pane, doors clicked and slammed in the house, fires crackled behind the shining fire-dogs. I went to the library,–_the first breath of air_ had–_dissipated it_! What a mockery! I went away,–out of the house,–on, anywhere. Dry leaves rustled in my path and sent up a faint aromatic breath as they were crushed in the undried dew; squirrels chattered in the wood; here and there a dropping nut stirred the silence with deliberate fall, or an unseen grouse whirred through the birches at my approaching step. The way was trodden and led me by gradual slope and native windings through the dull red oaks downward to the river. Once on the path, a low cluster of sweet fern attracted me;–strange assertion of human personality, that in the deepest grief a man knows and notices the trivial features of Nature with microscopic fidelity! that the veining of a leaf or the pencilling of a blossom will attract the eye that no majesty or beauty of unwonted manifestation could light with one appreciative spark! Is it that the injured and indignant soul so vindicates its own essential and divine strength, and says, unconsciously, to the most uncontrolled anguish, “There is in me a life no mortal accident can invade; the breath of God is not altogether extinct in any blast of man’s devising; shake, torture, assault the outer tenement,–darken its avenues with fire to stifle, and drench its approaches with seas to drown,–there is that within that God alone can vanquish,–yours is but a finite terror”? Half-crazed as I was, the fern-bed attracted me, as I said, and I flung myself wearily down on the leaves, whose healing and soothing odor stole up like a cloud all about me; and I lay there in the sun, noting with pertinacious accuracy every leaf or bloom that was within the range of sight,–the dark green leaves of the wax-flower springing from their red stem, veined and threaded with creamy white, stiff and quaint in form and growth,–the bending sprays of goldenrod that bowed their light and brittle stems over me, swaying gently to and fro in the gentle wind,–the tiny scarlet cups of moss that held a little drop of dew brimming over their rims of fire, a spark in the ashy gray moss-beds where they stood,–the shrinking and wan wood-asters, branched out widely, but set with meagre bloom,–every half-tint of the lichens, that scantily fed from the relentless granite rock, yet clung to its stern face with fearless persistence,–the rough seams and velvet green moss-tufts of the oak-trunks,–the light that pierced the dingy hue of oak-leaves with vivid and informing crimson: all these stamped themselves on my mind with inevitable minuteness; the great wheel of Fate rolled over me, and I bore the marks even of its ornamental rim; the grooves in its tire left traces of its track.

At length the minuteness of Nature oppressed me. The thousand odors, spicy, acrid, aromatic, honeyed, that an autumnal dew expressed from every herb, through that sense that is the slave of association, recalled my youth, my boyhood, the free and careless hours I knew no more, when, on just such mornings of hazy and splendid autumns, I had just so lain on the fern-beds, heedless of every beauty that haunted the woods, full of fresh life, rejoicing in dog and gun and rod as no man ever rejoices in title-deeds or stocks or hoarded gold. The reminiscence stung me to the quick; I could endure no more. Rising, I went on, and through the oak-wood came to the brink of the river, and in a vague weariness sat down upon the massive water-wall, and looked over into the dark brown stream. It was deep below me; a little above were clear shallows, where the water-spider pursued its toil of no result, and cast upon the yellow sand beneath a shadow that was not a shadow, but, refracted from the broken surface, spots of glittering light, clustered like the diamonds of a brooch, separate, yet linked, and tremulously bright. This, also, did I note; but below my feet the river flowed darker and more deeply, darkness and depth broken only by the glancing fins of little fishes, that slanted downward, catching a gleam as they went. No other light pierced the sullen, apprehensive flood that rolled past in tranquil gloom, leaden from the skies above, and without ripple or fall to break its glassy quiet. Beside the wall grew a witch-hazel; in my vague grasp at outside objects I saw it, full of wrinkled and weird bloom, as if the golden fleece had strayed thereby, and caught upon the ungainly twigs of the scragged bush, and left glittering curled threads in flecked bunches scattered on every branch; the strange spell-sweet odor of the flowers struck me before I saw them, and the whole expression of their growth affected me with helpless admiration, so brave as it was!–defying all Autumn to daunt the immortal Spring ever surviving in its soul,–here, on October’s edge, putting out its freshness and perfume, as if seasons were an accident, and circumstance a chimera,–as if will, good-will, will to be of strength and cheer, were potent enough to laugh at Nature, and trust the God-given consciousness within, whatever adverse fate ruled and triumphed without. Not that all these ideas came to me then, else perhaps I had been spared that morning’s experience; but they entered my brain as lightning is sometimes said to enter a tree and stamp some image from without upon its heart, thereafter to be revealed by the hewing axe and the persistent saw. No! I sat by the river and looked down into its dark serenity, and again the horror of the past day swept over me with fresh force. Could I live? The unswerving river lay before me; in its bed nothing stirred; neither pang nor passion in those chill depths could utter a cry; there she could not come; there was rest. I did not yield; oh, no, I did not yield! I resisted,–passively. I laid hold upon the eternal fact that there was a God; the blind and blank universe spun about me; its pillars of support wavered like waterspouts; all that I had ever believed or loved whirled up and down in one howling chaos, and circled through all space in clouds of dust and floating atoms; but through all I knew there was a God,–feel it I could not, neither did I see nor did one of Nature’s tongues spell me the lesson,–I only knew it. And I did not, no, I did not rush before Him; but I lay at the bottom of the river.

I have heard it said that drowning persons recall, as by a sudden omniscience, all their past lives, as soon as the water closes above them and the first shock of horror is past. It was not so with me. I remembered nothing beyond the events of the past week; but, by some strange action of the mind, as soon as the gasping sense of an unnatural element passed away, my thoughts went forward. I became, as it were, another man; and above me on the bank I saw calmly the stone where my living double had left his cripple’s cane, and thought to myself for one sharp moment, “Fool!”–for I looked forward. _If I had not drowned_, that was the key-note of the theme. Something that was me and was not me rose up from the water-wall and went away,–a man racked and broken by a great sorrow, it is true, but a man conscious of God. Life had turned its darkest page for him, but there was the impassable fact that it was the darkest; no further depths remained to dread; the worst had come, and he looked it in the face and studied it; suffer he might, but with full knowledge of every agony. Life had been wrecked, but living remained. Calmly he took up the cripple’s cane and went home; the birds sang no song,–after tempests they do not sing until the sun shines,–neither did the blossoms give him any greeting. Nature wastes no trivialities on such grief; the mother, whose child comes in to her broken-limbed and wounded, does not give it sugar-plums and kisses, but waits in silence till the surgeon has done his kindly and appalling office,–then, it may be, she sings her boy to sleep!

But this man took up life again and conquered it. Home grew about him into serenity and cheer; as from the roots of a felled tree a thousand verdant offshoots spring, tiny in stature, but fresh and vivid in foliage, so out of this beheaded love arose a crowd of sweet affections and tender services that made the fraternity of man seem possible, and illustrated the pervasive care of God. He went out into life, and from a heart wrung with all man can endure, and a brain tested in the fire, spoke burning and fluent words of strength and consolation to hundreds who, like him, had suffered, but were sinking under what he had borne. And these words carried in them a reviving virtue. Men blessed him silently, and women sang him in their hearts as they sing hymns of prayer. Honors clustered about him as mosses to a rock; Fame relented, and gave him an aureole in place of a crown; and Love, late, but sweeter than sweet, like the last sun-ripened fruit of autumn, made honors and fame alike endurable. This man conquered, and triumphed in the victory.

I held out my hand in that water and touched–a skeleton! What! had any other man preceded me? I looked at it; it was the water-washed frame of a horse,–brutes together! And death was at hand; the grasp tightened on my breast with that acrid sense of weight and suffocation that the redundant blood suffusing the lungs must needs produce. “The soul of the brute goeth downward.” Coward! what might not life have been? and I had lost it!–lost it for the sting of a honey-bee!–for the contempt of a woman! Every magnificent possibility, every immortal power, every hope of a future, tantalizing in its grand mystery, all lost! What if that sweeping star-seraph that men call a comet, speeding through heaven in its lonely splendor, with nitent head, and pinions trailing with the very swiftness and strength of its onward flight, should shudder from its orbit, fling into star-strewn space its calm and awful glory, and go crashing down into the fury and blackness of chaos, carrying with it wrecks of horror, and the yelling fragments of spheres no longer choral, but smitten with the lawless stroke of a creature regardless of its Creator, an orb that made its solitary fate, and carried across the order and the law of God ruin and wreck embodied?

And I had a soul;–I had flung it away; I had set my will up for my destiny, and the one had worked out the other. But had I? When that devilish suggestion came to me on the bank, did I entertain it? Have I not said how I grasped at the great idea of a God, and held it with a death-gripe in the midst of assault? How did I come in the water? I did not plunge nor fall. No shock of horror chilled me; no remembrance of a voluntary assent to the Tempter could I recall. I was there, it was true; but was I guilty? Did I, in the eyes of any watching angel, consciously cast my life, brittle and blind as it was, away in that fashion? In the water, helpless now for any effort after upper air, side by side with the fleshless anatomy of a brute, over-sailed by gray fishes with speckled sides, whose broad, unwinking eyes glared at me with maddening shine and stare,–oppressed, and almost struggling, yet all unable to achieve the struggle with the curdling blood that gorged every vein and air-cell with the hurried rush of death,–did I go out of this life red with the sin of murder? Did I commit suicide?

Who knows?

* * * * *

THE MINISTER’S WOOING.

[Continued.]

CHAPTER VI.

THE DOCTOR.

It is seldom that man and woman come together in intimate association, unless influences are at work more subtile and mysterious than the subjects of them dream. Even in cases where the strongest ruling force of the two sexes seems out of the question, there is still something peculiar and insidious in their relationship. A fatherly old gentleman, who undertakes the care of a sprightly young girl, finds, to his astonishment, that little Miss spins all sorts of cobwebs round him. Grave professors and teachers cannot give lessons to their female pupils just as they give them to the coarser sex, and more than once has the fable of “Cadenus and Vanessa” been acted over by the most unlikely performers.

The Doctor was a philosopher, a metaphysician, a philanthropist, and in the highest and most earnest sense a minister of good on earth. The New England clergy had no sentimental affectation of sanctity that segregated them from wholesome human relations; and consequently our good Doctor had always resolved, in a grave and thoughtful spirit, at a suitable time in his worldly affairs, to choose unto himself a helpmeet. Love, as treated of in romances, he held to be a foolish and profane matter, unworthy the attention of a serious and reasonable creature. All the language of poetry on this subject was to him an unknown tongue. He contemplated the entrance on married life somewhat in this wise:–That at a time and place suiting, he should look out unto himself a woman of a pleasant countenance and of good repute, a zealous, earnest Christian, and well skilled in the items of household management, whom accosting as a stranger and pilgrim to a better life, he should loyally and lovingly entreat, as Isaac did Rebekah, to come under the shadow of his tent and be a helpmeet unto him in what yet remained of this mortal journey. But straitened circumstances, and the unsettled times of the Revolution, in which he had taken an earnest and zealous part, had delayed to a late bachelorhood the fulfilment of this resolution.

When once received under the shadow of Mrs. Scudder’s roof, and within the provident sphere of her unfailing housekeeping, all material necessity for an immediate choice was taken away; for he was exactly in that situation dearest to every scholarly and thoughtful man, in which all that pertained to the outward life appeared to rise under his hand at the moment he wished for it without his knowing how or why.

He was not at the head of a prosperous church and society, rich and well-to-do in the world,–but, as the pioneer leader of a new theology, in a country where theology was the all-absorbing interest, he had to breast the reaction that ever attends the advent of new ideas. His pulpit talents, too, were unattractive. His early training had been all logical, not in the least aesthetic; for, like the ministry of his country generally, he had been trained always to think more of what he should say than of how he should say it. Consequently, his style, though not without a certain massive greatness, which always comes from largeness of nature, had none of those attractions by which the common masses are beguiled into thinking. He gave only the results of thought, not its incipient processes; and the consequence was, that few could follow him. In like manner, his religious teachings were characterized by an ideality so high as quite to discourage ordinary virtue.

There is a ladder to heaven, whose base God has placed in human affections, tender instincts, symbolic feelings, sacraments of love, through which the soul rises higher and higher, refining as she goes, till she outgrows the human, and changes, as she rises, into the image of the divine. At the very top of this ladder, at the threshold of paradise, blazes dazzling and crystalline that celestial grade where the soul knows self no more, having learned, through a long experience of devotion, how blest it is to lose herself in that eternal Love and Beauty of which all earthly fairness and grandeur are but the dim type, the distant shadow. This highest step, this saintly elevation, which but few selectest spirits ever on earth attain, to raise the soul to which the Eternal Father organized every relation of human existence and strung every chord of human love, for which this world is one long discipline, for which the soul’s human education is constantly varied, for which it is now torn by sorrow, now flooded by joy, to which all its multiplied powers tend with upward hands of dumb and ignorant aspiration,–this Ultima Thule of virtue had been seized upon by our sage as the _all_ of religion. He knocked out every round of the ladder but the highest, and then, pointing to its hopeless splendor, said to the world, “Go up thither and be saved!”

Short of that absolute self-abnegation, that unconditional surrender to the Infinite, there was nothing meritorious,–because, if _that_ were commanded, every moment of refusal was rebellion. Every prayer, not based on such consecration, he held to be an insult to the Divine Majesty;–the reading of the Word, the conscientious conduct of life, the performance of the duties of man to man, being, without this, the deeds of a creature in conscious rebellion to its Eternal Sovereign, were all vitiated and made void. Nothing was to be preached to the sinner, but his ability and obligation to rise immediately to this height.

It is not wonderful that teaching of this sort should seem to many unendurable, and that the multitude should desert the preacher with the cry, “This is an hard saying; who can hear it?” The young and gay were wearied by the dryness of metaphysical discussions which to them were as unintelligible as a statement of the last results of the mathematician to the child commencing the multiplication-table. There remained around him only a select circle,–shrewd, hard thinkers, who delighted in metaphysical subtilties,–deep-hearted, devoted natures, who sympathized with the unworldly purity of his life, his active philanthropy and untiring benevolence,–courageous men, who admired his independence of thought and freedom in breasting received opinion,–and those unperceiving, dull, good people who are content to go to church anywhere as convenience and circumstance may drift them,–people who serve, among the keen feeling and thinking portion of the world, much the same purpose as adipose matter in the human system, as a soft cushion between the nerves of feeling and the muscles of activity.

There was something affecting in the pertinacity with which the good Doctor persevered in saying his say to his discouraging minority of hearers. His salary was small; his meeting-house, damaged during the Revolutionary struggle, was dilapidated and forlorn,–fireless in winter, and in summer admitting a flood of sun and dust through those great windows which formed so principal a feature in those first efforts of Puritan architecture.

Still, grand in his humility, he preached on,–and as a soldier never asks why, but stands at apparently the most useless post, so he went on from Sunday to Sunday, comforting himself with the reflection that no one could think more meanly of his ministrations than he did himself. “I am like Moses only in not being eloquent,” he said, in his simplicity. “My preaching is barren and dull, my voice is hard and harsh; but then the Lord is a Sovereign, and may work through me. He fed Elijah once through a raven, and he may feed some poor wandering soul through me.”

The only mistake made by the good man was that of supposing that the elaboration of theology was preaching the gospel. The gospel he was preaching constantly, by his pure, unworldly living, by his visitations to homes of poverty and sorrow, by his searching out of the lowly African slaves, his teaching of those whom no one else in those days had thought of teaching, and by the grand humanity, outrunning his age, in which he protested against the then admitted system of slavery and the slave-trade. But when, rising in the pulpit, he followed trains of thought suited only to the desk of the theological lecture-room, he did it blindly, following that law of self-development by which minds of a certain amount of fervor _must_ utter what is in them, whether men will hear or whether they will forbear.

But the place where our Doctor was happiest was his study. There he explored, and wandered, and read, and thought, and lived a life as wholly ideal and intellectual as heart could conceive.

And could _Love_ enter a reverend doctor’s study, and find his way into a heart empty and swept of all those shreds of poetry and romance in which he usually finds the material of his incantations?

Even so;–but he came so thoughtfully, so reverently, with so wise and cautious a footfall, that the good Doctor never even raised his spectacles to see who was there. The first that he knew, poor man, he was breathing an air of strange and subtile sweetness,–from what paradise he never stopped his studies to inquire. He was like a great, rugged elm, with all its lacings and archings of boughs and twigs, which has stood cold and frozen against the metallic blue of winter sky, forgetful of leaves, and patient in its bareness, calmly content in its naked strength and crystalline definiteness of outline. But in April there is a rising and stirring within the grand old monster,–a whispering of knotted buds, a mounting of sap coursing ethereally from bough to bough with a warm and gentle life; and though the old elm knows it not, a new creation is at hand. Just so, ever since the good man had lived at Mrs. Scudder’s, and had the gentle Mary for his catechumen, a richer life seemed to have colored his thoughts,–his mind seemed to work with a pleasure as never before.

Whoever looked on the forehead of the good Doctor must have seen the squareness of ideality giving marked effect to its outline. As yet ideality had dealt only with the intellectual and invisible, leading to subtile refinements of argument and exalted ideas of morals. But there was lying in him, crude and unworked, a whole mine of those artistic feelings and perceptions which are awakened and developed only by the touch of beauty. Had he been born beneath the shadow of the great Duomo of Florence, where Giotto’s Campanile rises like the slender stalk of a celestial lily, where varied marbles and rainbow-glass and gorgeous paintings and lofty statuary call forth, even from childhood, the soul’s reminiscences of the bygone glories of its pristine state, his would have been a soul as rounded and full in its sphere of faculties as that of Da Vinci or Michel Angelo. But of all that he was as ignorant as a child; and the first revelation of his dormant nature was to come to him through the face of woman,–that work of the Mighty Master which is to be found in all lands and ages.

What makes the love of a great mind something fearful in its inception is that it is often the unsealing of a hitherto undeveloped portion of a large and powerful being; the woman may or may not seem to other eyes adequate to the effect produced, but the man cannot forget her, because with her came a change which makes him forever a different being. So it was with our friend. A woman it was that was destined to awaken in him all that consciousness which music, painting, poetry awaken in more evenly developed minds; and it is the silent breathing of her creative presence that is even now creating him anew, while as yet he knows it not.

He never thought, this good old soul, whether Mary were beautiful or not; he never even knew that he looked at her; nor did he know why it was that the truths of his theology, when uttered by her tongue, had such a wondrous beauty as he never felt before. He did not know why it was, that, when she silently sat by him, copying tangled manuscript for the press, as she sometimes did, his whole study seemed so full of some divine influence, as if, like St. Dorothea, she had worn in her bosom, invisibly, the celestial roses of paradise. He recorded honestly in his diary what marvellous freshness of spirit the Lord had given him, and how he seemed to be uplifted in his communings with heaven, without once thinking from the robes of what angel this sweetness had exhaled.

On Sundays, when he saw good Mrs. Jones asleep, and Simon Brown’s hard, sharp eyes, and Deacon Twitchel mournfully rocking to and fro, and his wife handing fennel to keep the children awake, his eye glanced across to the front gallery, where one earnest young face, ever kindling with feeling and bright with intellect, followed on his way, and he felt uplifted and comforted. On Sunday mornings, when Mary came out of her little room, in clean white dress, with her singing-book and psalm-book in her hands, her deep eyes solemn from recent prayer, he thought of that fair and mystical bride, the Lamb’s wife, whose union with her Divine Redeemer in a future millennial age was a frequent and favorite subject of his musings; yet he knew not that this celestial bride, clothed in fine linen, clean and white, veiled in humility and meekness, bore in his mind those earthly features. No, he never had dreamed of that! But only after she had passed by, that mystical vision seemed to him more radiant, more easy to be conceived.

It is said, that, if a grape-vine be planted in the neighborhood of a well, its roots, running silently underground, wreathe themselves in a net-work around the cold, clear waters, and the vine’s putting on outward greenness and unwonted clusters and fruit is all that tells where every root and fibre of its being has been silently stealing. So those loves are most fatal, most absorbing, in which, with unheeded quietness, every thought and fibre of our life twines gradually around some human soul, to us the unsuspected wellspring of our being. Fearful it is, because so often the vine must be uprooted, and all its fibres wrenched away; but till the hour of discovery comes, how is it transfigured by a new and beautiful life!

There is nothing in life more beautiful than that trancelike quiet dawn which precedes the rising of love in the soul. When the whole being is pervaded imperceptibly and tranquilly by another being, and we are happy, we know not and ask not why, the soul is then receiving all and asking nothing. At a later day she becomes self-conscious, and then come craving exactions, endless questions,–the whole world of the material comes in with its hard counsels and consultations, and the beautiful trance fades forever.

Of course, all this is not so to you, my good friends, who read it without the most distant idea what it can mean; but there are people in the world to whom it has meant and will mean much, and who will see in the present happiness of our respectable friend something even ominous and sorrowful.

It had not escaped the keen eye of the mother how quickly and innocently the good Doctor was absorbed by her daughter, and thereupon had come long trains of practical reflections.

The Doctor, though not popular indeed as a preacher, was a noted man in his age. Her deceased husband had regarded him with something of the same veneration which might have been accorded to a divine messenger, and Mrs. Scudder had received and kept this veneration as a precious legacy. Then, although not handsome, the Doctor had decidedly a grand and imposing appearance. There was nothing common or insignificant about him. Indeed, it had been said, that, when, just after the declaration of peace, he walked through the town in the commemorative procession side by side with General Washington, the minister, in the majesty of his gown, bands, cocked hat, and full flowing wig, was thought by many to be the more majestic and personable figure of the two.

In those days, the minister united in himself all those ideas of superior position and cultivation with which the theocratic system of the New England community had invested him. Mrs. Scudder’s notions of social rank could reach no higher than to place her daughter on the throne of such preeminence.

Her Mary, she pondered, was no common girl. In those days, it was a rare thing for young persons to devote themselves to religion or make any professions of devout life. The church, or that body of people who professed to have passed through a divine regeneration, was almost entirely confined to middle-aged and elderly people, and it was looked upon as a singular and unwonted call of divine grace when young persons came forward to attach themselves to it. When Mary, therefore, at quite an early age, in all the bloom of her youthful beauty, arose, according to the simple and impressive New England rite, to consecrate herself publicly to a religious life, and to join the company of professing Christians, she was regarded with a species of deference amounting even to awe. Had it not been for the childlike, unconscious simplicity of her manners, the young people of her age would have shrunk away from her, as from one entirely out of their line of thought and feeling; but a certain natural and innocent playfulness and amiable self-forgetfulness made her a general favorite.

Nevertheless, Mrs. Scudder knew no young man whom she deemed worthy to have and hold a heart which she priced so highly. As to James, he stood at double disadvantage, because, as her cousin’s son, he had grown up from childhood under her eye, and all those sins and iniquities into which gay and adventurous youngsters will be falling had come to her knowledge. She felt kindly to the youth; she wished him well; but as to giving him her Mary!–the very suggestion made her dislike him. She was quite sure he must have tried to beguile her,–he must have tampered with her feelings, to arouse in her pure and well-ordered mind so much emotion and devotedness as she had witnessed.

How encouraging a Providence, then, was it that he was gone to sea for three years!–how fortunate that Mary had been prevented in any way from committing herself with him!–how encouraging that the only man in those parts, in the least fitted to appreciate her, seemed so greatly pleased and absorbed in her society!–how easily might Mary’s dutiful reverence be changed to a warmer sentiment, when she should find that so great a man could descend from his lofty thoughts to think of her!

In fact, before Mrs. Scudder had gone to sleep the first night after James’s departure, she had settled upon the house where the minister and his young wife were to live, had reviewed the window-curtains and bed-quilts for each room, and glanced complacently at an improved receipt for wedding-cake which might be brought out to glorify a certain occasion!

CHAPTER VII.

THE FRIENDS AND RELATIONS OF JAMES.