Part 2

Pascal, a philosopher whom we both love, has said, how truly!—“_que tout notre raisonnement se rèduit à céder au sentiment_;” and it is not impossible that the sentiment of the natural, had time permitted it, would have regained its old ascendancy over the harsh mathematical reason of the schools. But this thing was not to be. Prematurely induced by intemperance of knowledge, the old age of the world drew on. This the mass of mankind saw not, or, living lustily although unhappily, affected not to see. But, for myself, the Earth’s records had taught me to look for widest ruin as the price of highest civilization. I had imbibed a prescience of our Fate from comparison of China the simple and enduring, with Assyria the architect, with Egypt the astrologer, with Nubia, more crafty than either, the turbulent mother of all Arts. In history[2] of these regions I met with a ray from the Future. The individual artificialities of the three latter were local diseases of the Earth, and in their individual overthrows we had seen local remedies applied; but for the infected world at large I could anticipate no regeneration save in death. That man, as a race, should not become extinct, I saw that he must be “_born again_.”

And now it was, fairest and dearest, that we busied our souls, daily, in dreams. Now it was that, in twilight, we discoursed of the days to come, when the Art-scarred surface of the Earth, having undergone that purification[3] which alone could efface its rectangular obscenities, should clothe itself anew in the verdure and the mountain-slopes and the smiling waters of Paradise, and be rendered at length a fit dwelling-place for man:—for man the Death-purged—for man to whose now exalted intellect there should be poison in knowledge no more—for the redeemed, regenerated, blissful, and now immortal, but still for the _material_, man.

Una. Well do I remember these conversations, dear Monos; but the epoch of the fiery overthrow was not so near at hand as we believed, and as the corruption you indicate did surely warrant us in believing. Men lived; and died individually. You yourself sickened, and passed into the grave; and thither your constant Una speedily followed you. And though the century which has since elapsed, and whose conclusion brings us thus together once more, tortured our slumbering senses with no impatience of duration, yet, my Monos, it was a century still.

Monos. Say, rather, a point in the vague infinity. Unquestionably, it was in the Earth’s dotage that I died. Wearied at heart with anxieties which had their origin in the general turmoil and decay, I succumbed to the fierce fever. After some few days of pain, and many of dreamy delirium replete with ecstasy, the manifestations of which you mistook for pain, while I longed but was impotent to undeceive you—after some days there came upon me, as you have said, a breathless and motionless torpor; and this was termed _Death_ by those who stood around me. Words are vague things. My condition did not deprive me of sentience. It appeared to me not greatly dissimilar to the extreme quiescence of him who, having slumbered long and profoundly, lying motionless and fully prostrate in a midsummer noon, begins to steal slowly back into consciousness, through the mere sufficiency of his sleep, and without being awakened by external disturbances. I breathed no longer. The pulses were still. The heart had ceased to beat. Volition had not departed but was powerless. The senses were unusually active, although eccentrically so—assuming often each other’s functions at random. The taste and the smell were inextricably confounded, and became one sentiment, abnormal and intense. The rose-water with which your tenderness had moistened my lips to the last, affected me with sweet fancies of flowers—fantastic flowers, far more lovely than any of the old Earth, but whose prototypes we have here blooming around us. The eyelids, transparent and bloodless, offered no complete impediment to vision. As volition was in abeyance, the balls could not roll in their sockets—but all objects within the range of the visual hemisphere were seen with more or less distinctness; the rays which fell upon the external retina, or into the corner of the eye, producing a more vivid effect than those which struck the front or interior surface. Yet, in the former instance, this effect was so far anomalous that I appreciated it only as _sound_—sound sweet or discordant as the matters presenting themselves at my side were light or dark in shade—curved or angular in outline. The hearing, at the same time, although excited in degree, was not irregular in action—estimating real sounds with an extravagance of precision, not less than of sensibility. Touch had undergone a modification more peculiar. Its impressions were tardily received, but pertinaciously retained, and resulted always in the highest physical pleasure. Thus the pressure of your sweet fingers upon my eyelids, at first only recognised through vision, at length, long after their removal, filled my whole being with a sensual delight immeasurable. I say with a sensual delight. _All_ my perceptions were purely sensual. The materials furnished the passive brain by the senses were not in the least degree wrought into shape by the deceased understanding. Of pain there was some little; of pleasure there was much; but of moral pain or pleasure none at all. Thus your wild sobs floated into my ear with all their mournful cadences, and were appreciated in their every variation of sad tone; but they were soft musical sounds and no more; they conveyed to the extinct reason no intimation of the sorrows which gave them birth; while the large and constant tears which fell upon my face, telling the bystanders of a heart which broke, thrilled every fibre of my frame with ecstasy alone. And this was in truth the _Death_ of which these bystanders spoke reverently, in low whispers—you, sweet Una, gaspingly, with loud cries.

They attired me for the coffin—three or four dark figures which flitted busily to and fro. As these crossed the direct line of my vision they affected me as _forms_; but upon passing to my side their images impressed me with the idea of shrieks, groans, and other dismal expressions of terror, of horror, or of wo. You alone, habited in a white robe, passed in all directions musically about me.

The day waned; and, as its light faded away, I became possessed by a vague uneasiness—an anxiety such as the sleeper feels when sad real sounds fall continuously within his ear—low distant bell-tones, solemn, at long but equal intervals, and commingling with melancholy dreams. Night arrived; and with its shadows a heavy discomfort. It oppressed my limbs with the oppression of some dull weight, and was palpable. There was also a moaning sound, not unlike the distant reverberation of surf, but more continuous, which, beginning with the first twilight, had grown in strength with the darkness. Suddenly lights were brought into the room, and this reverberation became forthwith interrupted into frequent unequal bursts of the same sound, but less dreary and less distinct. The ponderous oppression was in a great measure relieved; and, issuing from the flame of each lamp, (for there were many,) there flowed unbrokenly into my ears a strain of melodious monotone. And when now, dear Una, approaching the bed upon which I lay outstretched, you sat gently by my side, breathing odor from your sweet lips, and pressing them upon my brow, there arose tremulously within my bosom, and mingling with the merely physical sensations which circumstances had called forth, a something akin to sentiment itself—a feeling that, half appreciating, half responded to your earnest love and sorrow; but this feeling took no root in the pulseless heart, and seemed indeed rather a shadow than a reality, and faded quickly away, first into extreme quiescence, and then into a purely sensual pleasure as before.

And now, from the wreck and the chaos of the usual senses, there appeared to have arisen within me a sixth, all perfect. In its exercise I found a wild delight—yet a delight still physical, inasmuch as the understanding had in it no part. Motion in the animal frame had fully ceased. No muscle quivered; no nerve thrilled; no artery throbbed. But there seemed to have sprung up in the brain, _that_ of which no words could convey to the merely human intelligence even an indistinct definition. Let me term it a mental pendulous pulsation. It was the moral embodiment of man’s abstract idea of _Time_. By the absolute equalization of this movement—or of such as this—had the cycles of the firmamental orbs themselves, been adjusted. By its aid I measured the irregularities of the clock upon the mantel, and of the watches of the attendants. Their tickings came sonorously to my ears. The slightest deviations from the true proportion—and these deviations were omni-prævalent—affected me just as violations of abstract truth were wont, on earth, to affect the moral sense. Although no two of the time-pieces in the chamber struck the individual seconds accurately together, yet I had no difficulty in holding steadily in mind the tones, and the respective momentary errors of each. And this—this keen, perfect, self-existing sentiment of _duration_—this sentiment existing (as man could not possibly have conceived it to exist) independently of any succession of events—this idea—this sixth sense, upspringing from the ashes of the rest, was the first obvious and certain step of the intemporal soul upon the threshold of the temporal Eternity.

It was midnight; and you still sat by my side. All others had departed from the chamber of Death. They had deposited me in the coffin. The lamps burned flickeringly; for this I knew by the tremulousness of the monotonous strains. But, suddenly these strains diminished in distinctness and in volume. Finally they ceased. The perfume in my nostrils died away. Forms affected my vision no longer. The oppression of the Darkness uplifted itself from my bosom. A dull shock like that of electricity pervaded my frame, and was followed by total loss of the idea of contact. All of what man has termed sense was merged in the sole consciousness of entity, and in the one abiding sentiment of duration. The mortal body had been at length stricken with the hand of the deadly _Decay_.

Yet had not all of sentience departed; for the consciousness and the sentiment remaining supplied some of its functions by a lethargic intuition. I appreciated the direful change now in operation upon the flesh, and, as the dreamer is sometimes aware of the bodily presence of one who leans over him, so, sweet Una, I still dully felt that you sat by my side. So, too, when the noon of the second day came, I was not unconscious of those movements which displaced you from my side, which confined me within the coffin, which deposited me within the hearse, which bore me to the grave, which lowered me within it, which heaped heavily the mould upon me, and thus left me in blackness and corruption to my sad slumbers with the worm.

And here, in the prison-house, which has few secrets to disclose, there rolled away days and weeks and solemn months, and the soul watched narrowly each second as it flew, and, without effort, took record of its flight—without effort and without object. Meantime the worm, with its convulsive motion, writhed untorturing and unheeded about me.

A year passed. The consciousness of _being_ had grown hourly more indistinct, and that of mere _locality_ had, in great measure, usurped its position. The idea of entity was becoming merged in that of _place_. The narrow space immediately surrounding what had been the body, was now growing to be the body itself. At length, as often happens to the sleeper (by sleep and its world alone is _Death_ imaged)—at length, as sometimes happened on Earth to the deep slumberer, when some flitting light half startled him into awaking, yet left him half enveloped in dreams—so to me, in the strict embrace of the _Shadow_, came _that_ light which alone might have had power to startle—the light of enduring _Love_. Men toiled at the grave in which I lay darkling. They upthrew the damp earth. Upon my mouldering bones there descended the coffin of Una.

And now again all was void. That nebulous light had been extinguished. That feeble thrill had vibrated itself into quiescence. Many lustra had supervened. Dust had returned to dust. The worm had food no more. The sense of being had at length utterly departed, and there reigned in its stead—instead of all things—dominant and perpetual—the autocrats _Place_ and _Time_. For _that_ which _was not_—for that which had no form—for that which had no thought—for that which had no sentience—for that which was soulless, yet of which matter formed no portion—for all this nothingness, yet for all this immortality, the grave was still a home, and the corrosive hours, co-mates.

[1] “It will be hard to discover a better [method of education] than that which the experience of so many ages has already discovered; and this may be summed up as consisting in gymnastics for the body, and _music_ for the soul.”—Repub. lib. 2. “For this reason is a musical education most essential; since it causes Rhythm and Harmony to penetrate most intimately into the soul, taking the strongest hold upon it, filling it with _beauty_ and making the man _beautiful-minded_. . . . . . He will praise and admire _the beautiful_; will receive it with joy into his soul, will feed upon it, and _assimilate his own condition with it_.”—Ibid, lib. 3. Music (μουσικη) had, however, among the Athenians, a far more comprehensive signification than with us. It included not only the harmonies of time and of tune, but the poetic diction, sentiment and creation, each in its widest sense. The study of _music_ was with them, in fact, the general cultivation of the taste—of that which recognizes the beautiful—in contra-distinction from reason, which deals only with the true.

[2] “History” from ιστορειν, to contemplate.

[3] The word “_purification_” seems here to be used with reference to its root in the Greek πυρ, fire.

* * * * *

“I KNOW THAT THOU WILT SORROW!”

BY MRS. R. S. NICHOLS.

I know that thou wilt sorrow, when first I pass from earth, And at thy pale and quivering lip shall gleam no sign of mirth, For grief shall sit upon thy brow, in sad, unseemly guise, And tears, e’en though thou art a man, shall well up to thine eyes.

For each young plant, each speaking flower, and old familiar place Will seem to gaze with sadness, up to thine averted face; And when, perchance, another hand my own sweet chords shall sweep, Thou’lt list to those remembered tones, and turn aside and weep!

And when another’s thoughtless voice, shall breathe to thee my name, And whisper that the sound was linked with an undying fame, No pride shall mantle o’er thy cheek, nor darkle in thine eye, For idle words breathed of the dead, should pass as idly by.

Thou’lt miss my step at even, when thou drawest near thy home, When gleam the ever-sleepless stars, from yon eternal dome; And thou wilt sit and gaze at them, nor shall thou gaze unmoved, For, oh! thou’lt think, that I too well their startling beauty loved!

Thou’lt miss me, and will seek to claim the tempest of thy soul, For passions all untamed as those, shall bend to thy control; And grief, that erst sat on thy brow, thou’lt spurn from out thy heart, And with each old remembrancer most willingly will part.

When my dim-remembered features shall pass from memory, When the music of my name, shall wake no answering melody, Thou wilt turn thee to another, and she will be to thee, E’en all that I have ever been,—all I could hope to be!

* * * * *

THE ASSAULT.

BY J. H. DANA.

It was the last morning of the assault. The sun had risen heavily across the eastern highlands, flinging his slant beams upon the embattled armies of the cross, and disclosing, as the mists rolled upwards from the valley, mangonel, and tower, and battering-ram, and serried troops of warriors, drawn up in array before Jerusalem,—and now as the shout “to the Holy City,” swelled out upon the air, and the priests, in sacerdotal robes, lifted up their chaunt again, the whole vast mass, as if by a simultaneous impulse, moved forward from their stations, and with lance, and shield, and banner, and shouts of triumph, and clashing of arms, marched on to the assault. All Europe was up. Prince and subject; noble and serf; layman and monk; the rich and the poor; the proud and the humble; old, young, and middle aged; stalwart men and feeble women; the knight in his armor, and the boor in his capote,—the bishop with his crozier, and the friar in his cowl; the halt, the deaf, the blind; all ranks and conditions of life swelled the gigantic host, which, gathering new accessions to its numbers in every land it traversed, had rolled on with threatening aspect over Palestine, carrying terror and desolation to the Saracens, until at length the mighty army was now arrayed before Jerusalem, burning to achieve the redemption of the sepulchre. Yes! Europe was there in arms, moved as one man, by one spirit. From hill and dale; from city and hamlet; from the castle of the noble and the cottage of the boor; from cloister, and forge, and plough, the sons of the church had gathered at her summons, fired with a lofty determination to avenge an insulted faith, and scourge back to the fastnesses from whence they came the sacrilegious followers of the crescent. There was the bluff Englishman, the fair-haired German, the tall gaunt Scot, the gay cavalier from Provence, the dark eyed son of Italy, and the wild and uncouth child of that green “Erin,” of the ocean, lying on the utmost verge of civilization, and known only by vague rumor as the habitation of man. Ay! all these were there—there, with spear, and sword, and cross-bow—there, in glittering casque, and homely jerkin—there, on proudly caparisoned steeds, or marching with soiled buskin humbly on foot. Soldiers of every garb, tongue, and nation; men who had been enemies but were now friends; warriors, who had hitherto lived only for rapine, joined in that wild shout, and with an enthusiasm they had never felt before, swept on the second time to the assault—and ever as they marched, in solid phalanx or open column, Frank, or Saxon, or Italian, they swelled out the cry, “Ho! soldiers of the cross—on to the Holy City!”

And now the battle was joined. Foremost of all, in his lofty tower, stood Godfrey of Bouillon, cheering on the attack, and directing his unerring shafts against every one who appeared upon the walls;—while beneath and around him, plying mangonel and battering-ram, or showering arrows on the foe, pressed on the humbler soldiers of the cross—ay! pressed on, although the missiles of the Saracens poured down like rain, and melted lead, and scalding water, and fire itself, fell thick and fast upon the hosts of the assailants. And still on they pressed, and though the ground was strewed with the dying, and every moment some new assailant fell, the gallant line of the Crusaders never swerved, but as fast as one went down another filled his place; and as the long hours of the morning passed away, and the Saracens maintained their walls, fighting with the desperation of men who were contending for their homes, the fearless assailers kept pressing on to the attack, determined to succeed in the assault or leave their bones to bleach before the walls. One universal enthusiasm pervaded the whole host. Old and young; peaceful monks and timid women; the sick, the halt, the dumb, came forth from the camp, bringing weapons for those who had spent their missiles, carrying water for the parched combatants, or cheering the dying in their last moments of mortal agony. And higher and higher mounted the sun, and sultry and more sultry grew the air, yet still the Saracens made good their walls, and when the exhausted soldiers were almost fainting from the fatigues of the day, the beseiged made one more desperate rally, and, collecting all their strength for a last effort, they bore down upon the soldiers of the cross, and drove them, with terrific slaughter, from the walls. Back—back—back they fled, in wild dismay. In vain their leaders attempted to rally the worn-out soldiers; they themselves could scarcely support their frames, exhausted by their heavy armor and the stifling heat of noonday. Further effort was hopeless. The despair was general. A wild shout of exultation rung out from the walls, as the Saracens seized the image of a cross, spat upon it, and cast it, with insulting gestures, into the ditch. The taunt stung the assailants to the heart. At that instant a shining horseman, clad in armor brighter than the day, and waving on high a sword that shone with the brilliancy of the sun seven times brightened, was seen upon the Mount of Olives, beckoning to the discomposed assailants, and pointing onwards to the Holy Sepulchre; and as one after another of the wearied crusaders beheld the blessed vision, sighs, groans, and tears burst from the assembled thousands, and clashing their arms deliriously aloft, and waving their banners wildly to and fro upon the air, they cried out, “Ho! soldiers of the cross—on to the Holy City!”