Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol III, No 13, 1851

And thy bright garland, let me crown my song!
Effusive source of evidence, and truth!
A lustre shedding o'er the ennobled mind,
Stronger than summer noon; and pure as that
Whose mild vibrations soothe the parted soul,
New to the dawning of celestial day.
Hence through her nourish'd powers, enlarg'd by thee,
She springs aloft, with elevated pride,
Above the tangling mass of low desires
That bind the fluttering crowd; and, angel-wing'd.
The heights of science and of virtue gains,
Where all is calm and clear; with nature round,
Or in the starry regions, or the abyss,
To reason's and to fancy's eye display'd:
The first up-tracing, from the dreary void,
The chain of causes and effects to him,
The world-producing Essence, who alone
Possesses being; while the last receives
The whole magnificence of heaven and earth,
And every beauty, delicate or bold,
Obvious or more remote, with livelier sense,
Diffusive painted on the rapid mind.
Tutor'd by thee, hence poetry exalts
Her voice to ages; and informs the page
With music, image, sentiment, and thought,
Never to die! the treasure of mankind,
Their highest honor, and their truest joy!
Without thee, what were unenlighten'd man?
A savage roaming through the woods and wilds,
In quest of prey; and with the unfashion'd fur
Rough-clad; devoid of every finer art,
And elegance of life. Nor happiness
Domestic, mix'd of tenderness and care,
Nor moral excellence, nor social bliss,
Nor guardian law, were his; nor various skill
To turn the furrow, or to guide the tool
Mechanic; nor the heaven-conducted prow
Of navigation bold, that fearless braves
The burning line or dares the wintry pole,
Mother severe of infinite delights!
Nothing, save rapine, indolence, and guile,
And woes on woes, a still revolving train!
Whose horrid circle had made human life
Than non-existence worse; but, taught by thee,
Ours are the plans of policy and peace:
To live like brothers, and conjunctive all
Embellish life. While thus laborious crowds
Ply the tough oar, philosophy directs
The ruling helm; or, like the liberal breath
Of potent heaven, invisible, the sail
Swells out, and bears the inferior world along.
Nor to this evanescent speck of earth
Poorly confin'd – the radiant tracts on high
Are her exalted range; intent to gaze
Creation through; and, from that full complex
Of never-ending wonders, to conceive
Of the Sole Being right, who spoke the word,
And nature mov'd complete. With inward view
Thence on the ideal kingdom swift she turns
Her eye; and instant, at her powerful glance,
The obedient phantoms vanish or appear;
Compound, divide, and into order shift,
Each to his rank, from plain perception up
To the fair forms of fancy's fleeting train;
To reason then, deducing truth from truth,
And notion quite abstract; where first begins
The world of spirits, action all, and life
Unfetter'd, and unmix'd. But here the cloud,
So wills Eternal Providence, sits deep.
Enough for us to know that this dark state,
In wayward passions lost, and vain pursuits,
This infancy of being, can not prove
The final issue of the works of God,
By boundless Love and perfect Wisdom form'd,
And ever rising with the rising mind.

THE SIGHT OF AN ANGEL

'Tis to create, and in creating live
A being more intense, that we endow
With form our fancy, gaining as we give
The life we image.

The date of the year was – no matter what; the day of the month was – no matter what; when a great general undertook to perform a great victory – a great statesman undertook to pass a great political measure – a great diplomatist undertook a most important mission – a great admiral undertook the command of a great fleet; all which great undertakings were commanded by the very same great monarch of a very great nation. At the same time did a great nobleman give a great entertainment at a great house, and a great beauty made a great many great conquests. On the same day, in the same year, in a very small room, in a very small house, in a very small street, in a very small town in Germany, did a very poor mason commence a very rude carving on a very rough stone. All the public journals of the day told a thousand times over the names of the great general, the great statesman, the great diplomatist, the great admiral, and the great monarch; all the fashionable papers of the day did the same of the great nobleman, the great company, and the great beauty: but none of them spoke of poor Johan Schmit, of the little town of – , on the Rhine.

Many years had passed away, and the date of the year was – no matter what; but history was telling of a great general who, with consummate wisdom, courage, and skill, and at the cost of numberless nameless lives, gained a great victory, which determined the fate and fortune of a great monarch and a great nation; consequently affecting the fate and fortunes of the world. It entered into minute detail of how his forces were disposed; where lay the right wing, where lay the left; where the cavalry advanced, and how the infantry sustained the attack; how the guns of the artillery played upon the enemy's flank and rear; and how the heavy dragoons rode down the routed forces, and how, finally, the field was covered with the enemy's dead and wounded, while so few of "our own troops" were left for the kite and the carrion crow. Then did history speak of the honors that awaited and rewarded the triumphant hero, of the clamorous homage of his grateful country, and the approving smiles of his grateful monarch; of the fêtes, the banquets, the triumphal processions, all in his honor; of the new titles, the lands, estates, and riches poured upon him; of the state and luxury in which he lived: until the tolling of every bell throughout the kingdom, the eight-horse hearse, the mile-long procession, the Dead March in "Saul," and the volley over the grave, announced that a public statue, on a column a hundred feet high, in the largest square of the largest town, was all that could now record the name of the greatest general of the greatest nation in the world.

History then spoke of a great statesman who on a certain day in a certain year, passed a certain most important measure, affecting the interest of a great nation, and consequently of the whole world. It spoke of his wisdom and foresight, the result of great intellect, energy and labor, giving a biographic sketch of his career from cradle to coffin; dismissing him with a long eulogium on his talents, integrity, and activity, and lamenting the loss such great men were to their country. Then came the name of the great diplomatist whose services had been equally important, and who was dismissed with a similar memoir and eulogium. Then the great admiral, who lived through a whole chapter all to himself, and had his name brought in throughout the whole history of the great monarch whose reign had been rendered so brilliant by the great deeds of so many great men. Of the great feast given by the great nobleman, and the conquests of the great beauty, there remains to this day a record, of the former in the adulatory poems of his flatterers, though the giver was gone – no matter where; of the latter many fair portraits and many fond sonnets, though the object had gone – no matter where. But no scribe told the history, no poet made a sonnet, no artist drew the portrait of poor Johan Schmit, the mason, who made the rude carving on the rough stone in the little town of – , on the Rhine. This task remains for an historian as obscure as himself, who now begins a rude carving on the rough stone of a human life.

After the example of the great historian already alluded to, I shall touch but lightly on the early history of my hero; merely stating that thirty years before the present date, Johan Schmit was born to Johan Schmit the elder, by his wife Gretchen, after a similar presentation of five others; that he got through the usual maladies childhood is heir to, and was at the age of fifteen apprenticed to Herman Schwartz, a master-builder in the town of Bonn. There, after some years of hod-carrying, mortar-spreading, and stone-cutting – ascending steadily, both literally and metaphorically, the ladder of his profession – honest Johan took a prudent, diligent woman to wife, who lost no time in making him the father of three thriving heirs to his house and his hod. Johan was in tolerably good work, lived in the small house in the small street already mentioned, and kept his family, without much pinching on the part of the thrifty Gertrude, in their beer, thick bread, and sauerkraut. His work, his wife, his children, and his two companions, Karl Vratz, and Caspar Katzheim, with whom he drank very hoppy beer at the "Gold Apfel," just round the corner of the street, comprised the whole interests which occupied the heart and brain of Johan Schmit, of the little town of – , on the Rhine. Johan had no other idea in his head when he rose in the morning than the day's work, the same as it was yesterday, and would be to-morrow; no other thought when he returned from it in the evening than that Frudchen had his supper ready for him, that little Wilhelm and Johan would run to meet him, and that little Rosechen, the baby, would crow out of her cradle at him, if awake, and that after his supper he would just walk down to the "Gold Apfel," and smoke a pipe with Karl and Caspar as usual. But Johan went to church occasionally with his wife, going through his routine of crossings, genuflexions, and sprinklings with holy water as orderly as any man. He heard the priest speak of doing his duty and obeying the church. Johan believed he did both; his duty – hard work – lay plainly before him; he was honest, sober, and kind to his family, and had certainly no idea or intention of disobeying the church. Thus, in a monotonous task of hard labor for daily bread and the support of an increasing family, plodded contentedly away the life of Johan Schmit of the little town of – , on the Rhine.

But there is an era in the life of every one, even the most plodding and homely; and so it was with Johan Schmit. It happened one day that he was sent for to repair a broken wall in the château of the Count von Rosenheim, situated not far from the town where Johan lived, on the Rhine; and having completed his job, the housekeeper (the count being absent) took the poor mason through the splendid rooms as a treat. Here he beheld what he had never seen in his life before; velvet curtains, silken sofas, crystal mirrors, gilded frames, paintings, and sculpture; until his eyes were more dazzled than they had been since the first time he entered the cathedral of Bonn. But after gazing his fill upon all this gorgeous spectacle, his eyes happened to fall upon a small bronze statuette of an angel, which the housekeeper informed him was a copy of the Archangel Michael, from some church, she knew not where.

Here was Johan arrested, and here would he have stood forever; for, after looking upon this angel, he saw nothing more: every thing vanished from before him, and nothing remained but the small bronze statuette. Johan had seen plenty of angels before in the churches, fresh-colored, chubby children, and he often thought his own little Rosechen would look just like them if she had wings; but this was something far different. A youth under twenty, and yet it gave no more idea of either age or sex than of any other earthly condition. Clad in what Johan supposed would represent luminous scale-armor, something dazzling and transparent, like what he had heard the priests call the "armor of God" – the hands crossed upon the bosom, the head slightly bowed, the attitude so full of awe, obedience, and humility; and yet what attitude of human pride or defiance was half so lofty, so noble, so dignified? The sword hung sheathed by the side, the long wings folded; but the face – oh, how could he describe that face, so full of high earnestness and holy calm? so bright, so serious, so serene! He felt awed, calmed, and elevated as he looked at it.

"You must go now," exclaimed Madame Grossenberg; and Johan started from his reverie, made his bow, replaced his paper cap, and went home, with his head full of the angel instead of his work. He saw it there instead of stout Frudchen and the children, who climbed about, and wondered at his abstraction. He went to bed, and dreamed of the angel – glorified it seemed to be – and, perhaps for the first time in his life, recalled his dream, and saw the beautiful vision before his waking eyes all the next day at his work – even in the "Gold Apfel," the most unlikely place for an angel; and again when he closed his eyes to sleep. In short, the angel became to him what his gold is to the miser, his power is to the ambitious man, and his mistress to the lover: he saw nothing else in the whole world but the angel; and this now filled the heart and brain of poor Johan Schmit, of the little town of – , on the Rhine.

There are some things we desire to possess, and other things we desire to produce; the former is the feeling of the connoisseur and collector: the latter, of the artist. The first requires taste and money; the latter – we won't say what it requires, or what it evinces, for enough has been said on the subject already. Johan Schmit had no money; taste he must have had, or he could not have admired the angel; he was no artist, certainly; he had never drawn a line, or cut any thing but a stone in his life; and yet he felt he must do something about that angel. He saw it so plainly and so constantly before him, that he felt he could copy it, if he only knew how. Now, as he could not draw, he could not copy it in that manner; but as he could cut stone, no matter how hard, he did not see why he might not attempt to cut the angel upon a large stone, which he procured, and brought quietly up to a small garret at the top of his house for that purpose.

It was at this time that the general, the statesman, the diplomatist, and the admiral, all severally planned their great undertakings; and it was at this time that a strange thought passed through the brain of Johan Schmit, as he sate looking at the great rough stone before him. Johan was, as we have seen, quite an uneducated man; he hardly knew enough of writing to spell his own name; and as to reading, he had never looked into a book since he left school, at the age of twelve; he therefore hardly knew the nature of his own ideas. His thoughts, never arranged, were but like vague sensations passing through his mind, which he could not define; but if he could have defined them they would have taken something like the following expression: