Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863

'For she is more beautiful than the sun, and above all the order of the stars; being compared with the light, she is found before it.

'For after this cometh the night, – but no evil can overcome Wisdom.'

Again:

'The Lord possessed me in the beginning of His ways, before He made anything from the beginning.

'I was set up from Eternity, and of old before the earth was made.

'The depths were not as yet, and I was already conceived; neither had the fountains of the waters as yet sprung out:

'The mountains with their huge bulk had not yet been established; before the hills I was brought forth:

'He had not yet made the earth, nor the rivers, nor the poles of the world.

'When He prepared the heavens I was present; when with a certain law and compass He enclosed the depths:

'When He established the sky above, and poised the fountains of waters:

'When He compassed the sea with its bounds, and set a law to the waters that they should not pass their limits: when he weighed the foundations of the earth.

'I was with Him forming all things: and was delighted every day, playing before Him at all times;

'Playing in the world: and my delights were to be with the children of men.' – Proverbs.

As Order has been considered the symbol of Divine Wisdom, Symmetry has been regarded as the type of Divine Justice. In all beautiful things there is found the opposition of one part to another, while a reciprocal balance must be obtained or suggested. In animals the balance is generally between opposite sides; in the vegetable world it is less distinct, as in the boughs on the opposite sides of trees; it often amounts only to a certain tendency toward a balance, as in the opposite sides of valleys and the alternate windings of streams. In things in which perfect symmetry is, from their nature, impossible or improper, a balance must be in some measure expressed before they can be contemplated with pleasure. Absolute equality is not required, still less absolute similarity.

Symmetry must not be confounded with Proportion. Symmetry is the opposition of equal quantities; proportion is the due connection of unequal quantities with each other. A tree, in sending out equal boughs on opposite sides, is symmetrical; in sending out smaller boughs toward the top, proportional. In the human face its balance of opposite sides is symmetry; its division upward, proportion.

Symmetry is necessary to the dignity of every form. Orderly balance and arrangement are highly essential to the more perfect operation of the earnest and solemn qualities of the beautiful, being heavenly in their nature, and contrary to the violence and disorganization of sin. Minds which have been subjected to high moral influence generally delight in symmetry: witness the harmonious lines of Milton, and the works of the great religious painters. Where there is no symmetry, the effects of violence and passion are increased. Many works derive power from the want of it, but lose in proportion in the divine quality of beauty.

Want of moderation, extravagance, bombastic straining for effect, are destructive of beauty, whether in color, form, motion, language, or thought; – in color, they would be called glaring; in form, inelegant; in motion, ungraceful; in language, coarse; in thought, undisciplined; in all, unchastened: these qualities are always painful, because the signs of disobedient and irregular operation. In color, for example, it is not red, but rose color, which is the most beautiful; neither is it the brightest green, but such gray green as we see in the distant sky, in the clefts of the glacier, in the chrysophrase and sea foam; not but that the expression of feeling should be deep and full, but that to arrive at that passion of the soul excited by the beautiful, there should be a solemn moderation in such fulness, a reference to the high harmonies by which humanity is governed, and an obedience to which is its glory. The following short quotations serve to illustrate this point:

'And now and then an ample tear trilled down
Her delicate cheek; it seemed she was a queen
Over her passion, which, most rebel-like,
Sought to be king o'er her.'

'I found her on the floor
In all the storm of grief, yet beautiful;
Pouring forth tears at such a lavish rate,
That were the world on fire, they might have drowned
The wrath of heaven, and quenched the mighty ruin.'

Common writers are apt to forget that exaggerated expressions chill our sympathies; that passion becomes ignoble when entertained for ignoble objects; that when violent and unnatural, it is destructive of dignity. In the exaggeration of its outward signs, Passion is not exalted, but its reality is evaporized.

'The fire which mounts the liquor till it runs o'er,
In seeming to augment it, wastes it.'

The use and value of passion is not as a subject of contemplation in itself, but as it breaks up the fountains of the great deep of the heart, or displays its might and ribbed majesty, as the stability of mountains is best seen with the restless mist quivering about them, and the changeful clouds floating above them.

We have thus naturally arrived at the fact that Truth, another of the Divine Attributes, must make part of all art that would interest humanity; that the soul rejects violence, or the falsehood of exaggerated description.

'Sanctify your soul like a temple,' says Madame De Staël, 'and the angel of noble thoughts will not disdain to occupy it.' If the rays of 'Wisdom' were reflected through the rainbow of artistic beauty by the devout artist, he would again be, as of old, the Prophet; and the arts would find, in typification of the Divine Attributes, ceaseless variety, marvellous unity. Then might he stand before his Maker as the anointed high priest of nature, winning entrance into her mysteries and holy symbols, using his glorious gifts to lead his brethren back to God; and the artistic human word might become, in its appropriate sphere, the humble and devout interpreter of the Word Eternal!

REMEMBRANCE

Last night, emerging from the glaring gaslight into the starlight beautiful and dim, there came, borne to me by the night wind, a gay young voice, blithely carolling the sweet strains of a well-remembered song, familiar to me long years ago in another and distant clime. It was a simple ballad, one heard most frequently in my youth, old when I was young; it was like a voice from the dead – a thought from the shrouded past appealing to my soul. There was something so solemn and strange, so mystically spiritual in the fact that a stranger in a strange land should possess the power to conjure up for me a world of saddest memories, that I half fancied at first (pardon an old man's dreaming) that one who had lived long ago, and died before her prime, seeing now as those see where the mists of pride and passion are dispelled forever by the light of unshadowed truth, conscious now of the deep and lasting wrong she had done herself and me, that she it was who was now singing to me through the lips of the lad, striving to cheer the loneliness she had caused, and comfort my desolate heart by telling me she was near me; and, obedient to the impulse given me by the wild fancy, I raised my tremulous voice, broken long ago, and quavered an accompaniment, and I and the unknown singer sang the last remaining stanza together.

I can never hear that song without tears. I never hear it, even though its half-forgotten strains, dreamily warbled, are oddly mingled with a widely different tune, in a bootless effort at remembrance; but my youth, with its golden promise, which maturer manhood but meagrely fulfilled, turns with the shadowed years veiling its brightness, and looks sorrowfully upon my old age in its solitude and desolation; but my life, with its wasted energies and flagging purpose, rises up before me, darkly and reproachfully reminding me of what I might have done, have been! O Heaven! what bitter years of suffering and crushing disappointment, years on which the tracks of time have left their blight and mildew, have passed since first I listened to the bird-like warbling of its simple strains. Then was the blissful May-time of my existence, when I was governed by youth's generous impulses, led captive by its sweet delusions, when I fondly dreamed that my life was destined to become a victory and a triumph, not the failure it has proved to be! I heard it first when the love that has lived unchanged through the mournful wastes of nearly half a century, was in the gray dawn of its immortal being. She sang it to me then, sweet Jennie Grey, whom I wooed, but never won. Memory, faithful treasurer, points back with mystic finger, and looking through the long vista of intervening years, standing now almost where time shall merge into eternity, that vision illuminating like a star the surrounding gloom, I can see the very night – I can see now as clearly as then– the round full moon lighting the dark waters with a long line of silvery brightness, crowning the tiny ripples with light as they broke upon the shore, and flooding the well-remembered room with its mellow radiance – see her, in her fresh young beauty, seated at the old instrument, the moonlight falling on her bright hair; the sweet eyes averted from my too admiring gaze, veiled beneath the drooping lashes, cast down with a coy pretence of studying the half-forgotten tune.

I can see myself, handsome, ardent YOUNG (so widely different NOW, I can speak of my former self without vanity), seated near, with all the love that filled my soul for her looking from my eyes.

The bright remembrance of this is shining 'through the mists of years,' glowing and life-like as life's joyous spring time. I can see it all now, clearly, as if it were but yesterday. Oh, radiant picture of youth and beauty! Oh, life! life! If it be a truth, and I believe it to be such, that in all the vast and mighty universe there is but one nature perfectly and completely assimilated unto our own; one heart in which every pulse of feeling throbbing within our being, shall find a quick responsive echo; a second self, the same in thought, emotion, character, or with such slight shades of difference as shall make the blending more harmonious; one, and only one, to whom God has indissolubly joined us by the omnipotent law of a pure, immutable attraction – if this be an essential fact, then, as I sat drinking in the harmony of the song that night, this sublime truth in all its purity was revealed to me; and with the revelation came a purifying and exalting power, purifying my love from passion and every base and earthly alloy. For me, for a brief instant, the veil had parted that divides the earthly from the spiritual, and I had caught a dim, shadowy glimpse of how it would be with us, my idol and myself, in the great and mystic future that lay stretching far away before us; and through all my enraptured soul, filling it with sweetest melody, a voice was murmuring: 'She is thine, through all the countless years of thy immortality, lift up thine eyes and look upon thine own.' Then, with a deep reverence I had never felt for her before, with all my pure and passionate love, I raised the small hand, on which the moonlight fell white and cold, murmuring the while in solemn triumph: 'What God has joined together, let not man put asunder.' I had received the soul's highest and clearest intuition as a direct revelation from the Divine, and I relied upon it as such implicitly, undoubtingly. Oh, with what earnest faith, for a brief and fleeting season, I believed that the seal of the Omnipotent had been set upon our union, earthly as well as spiritual, and that no power on earth or in hell could prevail against its consummation! How I revelled in this sweet belief; how this blest and silent consciousness wrapped my soul in light, and hovered ever around me like a wordless blessing! This faith was the inspiration of my toil, the prompter to good deeds, the angel messenger which enabled me to overcome the evil of my wayward nature.

How the sweet thought of it grew and grew until it pervaded my entire being, making my whole life harmonious and beautiful as the song she sang to me – a sublime and glorious dream! I did not check this pure and fervid flow of happiness with doubts and fears. I did not rouse myself to inquire whether this great truth concerning us might not, owing to some peculiarity of my organization, be clearly and perfectly revealed to me, and me alone; so that the truth being but dimly and vaguely foreshadowed to her mind, the effect could not be as permanent and living as in mine. I did not ruffle my soul's serenity with dark forebodings and bootless queries.

Such revelations are certainly, in consequence of their greater spirituality, more frequently made to women than to men, and I rested upon this, not thinking the reverse might be the case in the present instance; and through the long days of that golden summer I dreamed on and on. The powerful attraction, whose nature was so plainly revealed to me that night, and faintly shadowed forth to her, now drew us together more and more, and for a time our companionship was almost constant. We read, we walked, we talked together; we wandered through summer groves in the twilight, or, seated on the mossy root of some old tree, watched the light dying in the west, and the stars come out one by one; or viewed the sun slowly and majestically disappearing beneath the horizon, gorgeous with clouds of purple and of gold; or marked the varied changes of the sky on the calm expanse of summer water, stretching far away before us. And when the light had disappeared, leaving but a dull leaden surface, we closed our eyes and listened to the wild, mysterious murmur of the waters as they touched the sounding shore. Oh, brief and fleeting dream of earthly joy! Oh, light, warmth, and sunshine! Happiness too spiritual; companionship too blest for earth! Mortal type of the immortal bliss that awaits me, which is drawing nearer to me day by day! I never shall believe that she did not love me then, unconsciously as it must have been, for it was not in a nature like hers to prove recreant to a holy impulse. Yes, I know she then loved me! It was this belief alone which upheld me in the chill night darkness that fell upon my soul after shutting out the warmth and light. I'm sure she loved me then. I could note the silent working of the great law that was unconsciously impressing her slowly, drawing her nearer to me day by day; mark the electric thrill which made the slender fingers tremulous when my hand lay near her own, an expressive and eloquent gesture, as if, all unconsciously, her hand was stretching forth in the sweet endeavor to clasp mine. The averted eyes, the beautiful color that flushed her cheeks, and, best and dearest sight of all, the perplexed, mystified, dimly conscious expression in the far-off distant gaze, as if the soul was vainly struggling to grasp and clearly comprehend a great truth but vaguely felt. I could see all this as I sat by her side, permitting the love I had not words to speak to betray me in every look, tone, and gesture. But even while I watched her thus, serenely awaiting the time when a full consciousness should pervade her spirit as it was pervading mine – now when the sun of my happiness was slowly approaching its zenith, there appeared above the horizon the little cloud doomed to overspread and darken the calm heaven of my joy. We were no longer entirely alone: a third person was added to the sweet enchanted number that first walked the groves of Eden, and the complete spirituality of our communion was gone! Other eyes gazed on what we gazed; other eyes looked into the blue depths of hers, and sought with mine their smiling approval, and the brightest charm of our intercourse had departed forever. The last time in which it still remained unbroken – the last sweet time that I could call her wholly mine, was on a placid autumn evening. We had strolled farther than usual, tempted by the tranquil beauty around us, and during that walk I had been strangely, wonderfully happy. Many times, as we walked silently side by side, a strong, an almost irresistible impulse seemed to force me to utter those three passionate words that have caused a flutter in the heart-beat of so many thousands since the world began; and as many times the reverence I felt for her, and the diffidence arising from it, held me back, and the words remained unspoken. Yet this contest of feeling had led me to venture more upon outward expression: I had held her hand in mine, and twice or thrice had pressed it mutely and reverently to my lips; and she, seeing nothing of the ardor of a lover in this (the very excess of my emotion had made me outwardly calm), had allowed me to retain it, bestowed upon me her sunniest smile, calling me the while friend and brother. It was not the terms my heart most earnestly longed for; but I looked forward with a lover's eye, and was content. And thus we wandered slowly back again – back to meet one who possessed the power to change the aspect of both our lives; the power to darken mine on earth – and who was he? A mere boy – a lover of Jennie's, who impatiently awaited our return that very night. They had been playmates in childhood, but had not met since then.

Had I been less certain that her love would be mine in the future, I should have trembled when I looked upon this man; for he possessed those gifts in their richness and fulness that most easily win a woman's love. Then, too, he was her mother's guest – with Jennie, morning, noon, and night – invariably our companion in our frequent walks – always by her side, and with a mingling of tenderness and reverence proffering that devoted and delicate homage which most readily finds its way to the affections of an artless maiden.

I was too unused to the world then to know it; but have deeply realized since how irresistibly she must have charmed one so accustomed to the heartless coquetry of fashionable flirts, by the timid, wondering, child-like simplicity with which she received all this homage.

I should have known how this would end; but my faith had made me blind. Indeed, I was even then conscious how infinitely he was my superior in all that pertained to outward things: he was rich, I poor; he possessed the varied information of the travelled man, the ease and grace of one familiar with the world, and I had all the awkwardness and abstracted reserve of an absorbed student. I was deeply, painfully conscious of this. Yet, while I felt she did not return his ardent, ever-increasing love, perhaps did not even comprehend it; while the spirituality of our communion still in some degree remained unbroken, I was content.

I could calmly watch his ever-varying moods from gay to grave, from grave to sad, striving by each in turn with finished art to touch the heart he felt he had not won – smiling securely, I would sometimes murmur in my happiness the while: 'Passion born of earth, not the true love that discerneth its own, impels thee. Thy soul's betrothed is perchance of another country; turn to seek thy own; Jennie is mine, not thine!' No need to tell how, at first all unconsciously to herself, he gained the priceless treasure of her love. No need to tell how he won her heart from mine. The memory of all this is very painful even now – enough, that after long and skilful trial he succeeded. The arrow at last struck its mark, and my boding heart then whispered how this would end. I saw the pitying tenderness of her artless nature, shining in her soft and dreamy eye, suffusing every speaking feature, making the sweet face still more lovely, until presently compassion grew into something yet more tender. Then her eyes would brighten at his coming, a deep crimson color her cheeks, a sweet and timid consciousness betray itself in every look and movement; and then, oh, anguish of spirit! I felt her soul gradually withdrawing itself from mine, and my heart torn from the loving one on which it rested. Then followed days and nights of extreme mental anguish, a time of suffering that I cannot dwell upon even now without a shudder, when I lost faith in God and man, and cursed the day when I beheld the light; when amid blackness, darkness, and tempest, my storm-tossed soul cried in vain for light, vainly seeking for peace amid its wrecks and desolations. A fiery furnace, through which I passed that I might come out purified.

They were to be married very soon. She told me this as we sat together one evening in the brief wintry twilight. The first wild transports of a newly found bliss had subsided into a calmer feeling of happiness in her heart, as with me had passed the first 'bitter bitterness' of a life-long grief, and I was enabled to receive her confidence with a show of brotherly regard.

Christmas was the time set for the ceremony, and the first fall of snow was even now lying on the ground.

She did not impart this information with the coy and hesitating timidity usual to her; but thoughtfully, as she sat gazing out on the dull leaden sky, watching the snowflakes falling through the dreary air. There followed then a long, long pause, in which I had time to recover from the effect her words had produced, and to frame and stammer forth such congratulations as seemed required by the occasion. These she did not answer, or even seem to comprehend, but roused from her revery by the sound of my voice, she crossed the room and seated herself beside me, and took my hand within her own.

'Brother,' she murmured, in a dreamy, half-abstracted manner, 'there has been something solemn and strange in our intercourse, a mysterious something, which my mind has vainly striven to grasp and comprehend. I had thought the secret rested with you, and through you would be revealed to me; but the time for such revelation is passed; God has willed it otherwise. Brother,' her voice sank to a solemn cadence; I hear the low tones now, as I heard them then: 'I am the better and purer for your affection; you have led me, by what process I know not, from the sensuous and the earthly, to the spiritual and the holy, and there is no epithet applied to mortals, reverently endearing enough to be coupled with your name. I would that my words were as eloquent as my feelings, that you might know what immeasurable gratitude I vainly strive to compress in the brief words: I thank you.'

She wept, and I laid my hand on the bowed head in mute and speechless blessing.

'O Father!' I cried, in my voiceless anguish, 'Omnipotent and good! is there nothing that can open her eyes even now, and give me the being thine own holy laws have made my own?' No! no! The wild hope that prompted the useless prayer died within my heart as I breathed it. Jealous of the brief interest that could draw his betrothed's attention from himself but for a moment, he, the boy lover, now entered, and there were no longer gentle looks nor solemn words. He loved her best in her moods of artless gayety, and she hurriedly brushed her tears away, and hastened to be merry. Brief as had been the glimpse she had given me of her inner nature, the knowledge proved my comforter in this my time of trial, and I thanked God for it humbly and gratefully.

I then had really led her from the earthly to the spiritual and holy. Her heart had unawares entertained an angel visitant; mine had unconsciously performed an angel's ministry; I, next to God and his messengers, had power to satisfy the deepest wants of her nature. Oh, solitary drop of consolation! The love cherished by her, and her heart's mistaken choice, was only of this earth; there was no element of spirituality to render it immortal. It was doomed to die with the passion that gave it birth, and from the grave there should be no resurrection.

Blessed be God forever!.. Lo! The rustic church is trimmed with evergreen, and lighted for the marriage service. Curious lookers on are there; and with that perverse desire to test the might of their endurance, common with those who suffer, I too, am there, though I know that her image, as she stands at the altar, where I shall see her for the last time, through the days and nights of anguish sure to follow this, will be ever present with me! Yet, with my face half hidden by the evergreens, I stand and wait her coming. They enter, bride and bridegroom; she leaning trustfully upon his arm. O Jennie! my Jennie; thou who shouldst have been my bride! Great waves of tearless anguish rolled over my soul at the sight! Jennie, the priest who ministers at the altar before which thou standest, is idly repeating words whose holy meaning he does not comprehend: is separating, not uniting those whom God has joined together. O Jennie! companion of my spirit! is there no far-off, distant echo awakened in thy soul by the bitter waves of anguish surging over mine? Not now, in this thine hour of earthly love and triumph; not now. Even in spirit, 'lover and friend,' hast thou been put far from me. The low, measured tones of the minister fall on my ear; and I count the brief moments that give her to the keeping of another for all her mortal life, as the watcher counts the last moments of the dying and the loved. They kneel in prayer before the mockery of those last words is spoken, and I kneel too, crying to the Almighty: 'Wrest even now my treasure from him, or still the anguished throbbings of my heart forever! Let me die!' O Thou tempted in all points even as we, yet without sin, it was meet in this my hour of extremest suffering, that Thou shouldst send the promised comforter, not to bestow the earthly good I prayed for, but to raise me above earth and all of earthly good. Opening my inner vision to behold, far as the eye of the finite may behold, what is comprehended in the omniscient glance of the Infinite – removing the clouds brooding so darkly over my spirit, and filling it with holy joy, by imparting radiant glimpses of the soul's calmer and higher life in the land beyond – 'the life that rights the wrongs, and reveals the mysteries of this,' – the words that were once my hope and the inspiration of my toil, came now, when that hope was dead, to soothe and comfort me – the spirit of prophecy, that cheered my spirit with the hopeful promise of good in the time to come, and stirring my soul to its depths, sounding through it like a song of solemn triumph.

What though thou beholdest her the bride of another, her own heart blinded so that she cannot see aright! She is thine through all the countless years of thy immortality! His but for a brief and fleeting season! He holds his treasure in a trembling, uncertain grasp. Change may separate her heart from his; death may wrest it from him; the grave cover her form forever from his sight; but neither Time, nor Change, nor Death – nothing in the present world, or in that which is to come, shall be able to separate thee from the soul that was formed for thine! She is his by man's frail and perishing enactments; thine by the great law of attraction, by the immutable decrees of God. Seeing now, with the eye of the spirit, the frail uncertain nature of the happiness which he fondly dreamed was founded on a rock, sorrow and envy left me, and I could pity him as one deluded; and with a strange triumphant feeling, I pressed forward and imprinted the first kiss on the pure brow of my heart's chosen as the bride of another. Was she dimly, vaguely conscious for a moment of the nature of the attraction that bound our souls together, as she clung tearfully to me for an instant, murmuring a loving farewell? It has given me comfort through all the long years that have passed since then, to think so. She leaned from the carriage, her sweet eyes meeting mine in a sad adieu. I looked my last then on the face of the mortal Jennie. But in a land of perpetual summer, lighted by the smile of God, robed in garments of everlasting light, faithful and true, there awaits me Jennie the immortal! She knows it all now. Those bright seraphic eyes lighted with heaven-born love, have turned from celestial light to mark my gloomy wanderings. When she died, there was added to the band of ministering spirits the one whose silent influence was most powerful for good, most potent to aid me in overcoming evil. I have been better and purer since then. She possesses some mystic power to make me feel her presence, and to draw me toward her.

Slowly, very slowly, the feeling of solitude and isolation departed from me, and I am not lonely now; bright unseen visitants soothe my solitude; their noiseless steps break not its solemn stillness; soft hands clasp mine; where'er I move, the spirit of loving companionship is with me. Ah! to the eyes and ears of the aged, whose material perceptions are closing forever on the sights and sounds of earth, there come, borne across the dark-waved river on whose brink they stand, sounds from the other side; and ever and anon the mist that broods there lifts and parts itself, revealing radiant but imperfect glimpses of the promised land beyond.

Ere long the shadow will pass from these dimmed eyes forever, and I shall look on what she looks in heaven.