Part 1

GRAHAM’S MAGAZINE. VOL. XXXVII. November, 1850. NO. 5.

Table of Contents

Fiction, Literature and Articles

Enchanted Beauty. A Myth. The Vision of Mariotdale Tamaque The Sunflower Minnie de la Croix Pedro de Padilh Nettles on the Grave Familiar Quotations From Unfamiliar Sources Two Crayon Sketches Quail and Quail Shooting Review of New Books Editorial. To Rev. Rufus Wilmot Griswold

Poetry, Music, and Fashion

Hylas Sorrow Sonnet.—Moral Strength. The Reconciliation Unhappy Love The Wife’s Last Gift I Dreamed Theodora Charlotte Corday Sonnet—To Arabella, Sleeping The Spectre Knight and His Ladye-Bride To L——. with Some Poems Wordsworth Le Follet

Transcriber’s Notes can be found at the end of this eBook.

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GRAHAM’S MAGAZINE.

VOL. XXXVII. PHILADELPHIA, November, 1850. NO. 5.

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ENCHANTED BEAUTY. A MYTH.

The mythologies, in which the faiths, philosophies and fancies of the world have taken form, have such truth and use in them that they endure, under corresponding changes, through the reformations of creeds and modifications of ceremony which mark the history of natural religion throughout all ages and countries. The essential unity of the race, its kindred constitution of mind and affections, its likeness of instincts, passions and aspirations, naturally account for the under-lying agreement in principles, and central similarity of beliefs, which are traceable clean through, from the earliest to the most modern, and from the most polished and elaborate eastern to the rudest northern opinions; and the nice transitions of doctrine from the infancy to the maturity of faith and philosophy, are marked by an answering variance in their significant ceremonials. But, however mingled and marred, the inevitable truth is imbedded in all the forms of fable, and, under an invariable law of mind, the inspirations of fancy correspond in essentials to the oracles of revelation, just because human nature is one, and its relations to all truth are fixed and universal.

Creeds and formulæ, like the geological crusts of the earth, at once retain and record the revolutions, disintegrations, intrusions and submersions from which they result. In the long succession of epochs whole continents have risen from the deep, and the vestiges of the most ancient ocean are found upon the modern mountain tops; promontories have been slowly washed away by the ceaseless waves, and new islands have shot up from the ever-heaving sea. Through the more recent crusts the primitive formations frequently crop out upon the surface of the present, and the comparatively modern, in turn, is often found fossilized beneath the most ancient; dislocated fragments are encountered at every step, and icebergs, from the severer latitudes, are found floating far into the tropical seas. Nevertheless, through all changes of system, revolution has been ever in the same round of celestial influences and relations, and the alterations of form and structure have been only so many different mixtures of unchanging elements, from the simple primitives to the rich composite moulds, into which the waters, winds and sun-light have, in the lapse of ages, modified them. The constancy of essential principles, through all mutations of systematic dogmas, is strikingly analagous. The law of adaptation links the material globe and the rational race which occupies it in intimate relations, and the universal unity in the great scheme of being establishes such correspondences of organisms and processes with ideas and ends, that the symbolisms of poetry and mythology are really well based in the truth of nature, and the essential harmonies of all things are with equal truth, under various forms, embraced by fiction and fact, fable and faith, superstition and enlightened reason.

“The true light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world;” “the grace that hath appeared unto all men;” and “the invisible things of the Creator, clearly seen and understood by the things which are made,” are propositions which have the formal warrant of our sacred books to back the authority of logical demonstration. Moreover, it is pleasant and profitable to believe that “He hath not left himself without a witness” among any of the tribes of men. The human _brotherhood_ is so involved in the divine fatherhood, that the individual’s hold on the infinite and eternal must stand or fall with the universality of His regards and providence. If Canaan had been without a “Prophet of the Most High,” if Chaldea had been left without soothsayer and seer, and classic Greece and Rome destitute of oracles and Sibylline revelations, the Jewish theology and the Christian apocalypse would stand unsupported by “the analogy of faith,” and our highest hopes would be shifted from the broad basis of an impartial benevolence, to a narrow caprice of the “Father of all Men.” But, happily, the sympathies of nature, the deductions of reason, and the teachings of the Book, are harmonious on this point, for we find Melchisedec, who could claim no legal or lineal relation to the Levitical priesthood, the chosen type of the perpetual “High Priest of our profession;” and Balaam, notwithstanding his heathen birth, and ministry among the Canaanites when their cup of iniquity was full; and the eastern Magi, who brought their gifts from afar among the Gentiles, to the new-born “King of the Jews,” all alike guided by the same light, and partakers and fellow-laborers in the same faith, with the regular hierarchy of Mount Zion. So, the Star of Jacob is the “desire of nations,” and the heart and hope of the wide world turneth ever toward the same essential truth, and strive after it by the same instinct through a thousand forms, “if haply they may find it.”

The religious system of the Jews and Chaldeans agreed, with wonderful exactness, in the doctrine of angelic beings and their interposition in the affairs of men. The superintendence of the destinies of nations and individuals, and the allotment of provinces, kingdoms and families among these ministering spirits, are as distinctly taught in the book of Daniel of the old testament, and in the gospel of St. Matthew of the new, as in the popular beliefs of the Arabians and Persians; indeed, the Bible sanction is general, particular, and ample, for the doctrine of angelic ministry as it has been held in all ages and throughout the world.

The order and organization of these celestial beings, among whom the infinite multiplicity of providential offices is thus distributed, falling within the domain of marvelousness and ideality, of course, took the thousand hues and shapes which these prismatic faculties would bestow; and in the various accommodations and special applications of the doctrine, it naturally grew complicated, obscure, and sometimes even incoherent; but in all the confusion of a hundred tongues, kindreds and climates, a substantial conformity to a common standard is apparent enough to prove the identity of origin and the fundamental truth common to them all.

It is to introduce one of these remarkable correspondences that these reflections are employed.

Fairy tales, it is said by encyclopedists, were brought from Arabia into France in the twelfth century, but this can only mean that that was the epoch of the exotic legends. In England, if they were not indigenous, they certainly were naturalized centuries before Chaucer flourished; and they were as familiar as the catechism, and almost as orthodox, when Spencer, wrote his Fairy Queen, and Shakspeare employed their agency in his most exquisite dramas. But their date is, in fact, coeval with tradition, and earlier than all written records, and their origin is without any necessary locality, for they spring spontaneously from faith in the supernatural. They are inseparable from poetry. The priesthood of nature, which enters for us the presence of the invisible and converses familiarly with the omnipresent life of the creation, recognizes the administration of an ethereal hierarchy in all the phenomena of existence; they serve to impersonate the spiritual forces, which are felt in all heroic action, and they graduate the responsive sympathies of Heaven to all the supernatural necessities of humanity. The live soul can make nothing dead; it can take no relation to insensate matter; it invests the universe with a conscious life, answering to its own; and an infinite multitude of intermediate spirits stand to its conceptions for the springs of the universal movement. Rank upon rank, in spiral ascent, the varied ministry towers from earth to heaven, answering to every need, supporting every hope, and environing the whole life of the individual and the race with an adjusted providence, complete and adequate. In the great scale, place and office are assigned for spirits celestial, ethereal and terrestrial, in almost infinite gradation. The highest religious sentiments, the noblest styles of intellect and imagination, and the lower and coarser apprehensions of the invisible orders of being, are all met and indulged by the accommodating facility of the system.

The race of Peris of Persia, and Fairies of western Europe, hold a very near and familiar relation to the every day life of humanity, by their large intermixture of human characteristics and the close resemblance and alliance of their probationary existence and ultimate destiny to the life and fortunes of men. A commonplace connection with ordinary affairs and household interests constitutes the largest part of the popular notion of them; and their interferences among the vulgar are almost absurd and ludicrous enough to impeach the earnestness of the superstition; but our best poets have shown them capable of very noble and beneficent functions in heroic story. Like our own various nature, they are a marvellous mixture of the mighty and the mean, the magnanimous, the malignant and the mirthful; they stand, in a word, as our own correspondents in a subtler sphere, and serve to illustrate, by exaggerating, all that is true and possible in us, but more probable of them—our own shadows lengthened, and our own light brightened into a higher life. In some countries the legends are obscure, in others clear; but they all agree well enough in ascribing their origin to the intermarriage of angels with “the daughters of men,” and that they are put under penance and probation for the recovery of their paradise. So, like our own race, they have fallen from a higher estate; their natures are half human, and their general fortunes are freighted on the same tide.

The nursery tale of the Sleeping Beauty will serve capitally to illustrate our theme. Handed down from age to age, and passed from nation to nation, through the agency of oral tradition chiefly, it has of course taken as many shapes as the popular fancy could impart to it; but the essential points, seen through all the existing forms, are substantially these:

A grand coronation festival of a young queen abruptly opens the story. The state room of the palace is furnished with Oriental magnificence. The representatives of every order, interest and class in the kingdom—constructively the whole community—are present to witness and grace the scene. The fairies who preside over the various departments of nature, and the functions and interests of society, are assembled by special invitation to invoke the blessings and pledge the favors of their several jurisdictions to the opening reign. The ceremony proceeds; the young queen is crowned; the priest pronounces the benediction, and the generous sprites bestow beauty and goodness, and every means of life and luxury, until nothing is left for imagination to conceive or heart to wish. But an unexpected and unwelcome guest arrives—an old Elf, of jealous and malignant character, whose intrusion cannot be prevented, and whose power, unhappily, is so great, that the whole tribe of amicable spirits cannot unbind her spells. Neither can she directly revoke their beneficences; for such is the constitution of fairy-land that the good and evil can neither annihilate each other’s powers nor check each other’s actions, and their active antagonism can have place and play only in issues and effects. The good commanded and dispensed cannot be utterly annulled, the profusion of blessings prepared and pledged cannot be hindered in their source or interrupted in their flow, but the recipients are the debatable ground; they are, within certain limits, subject to the control of the demon, and the _end_ is as well attained by striking them incapable of the intended good. The queen and her household are cast into a magic slumber until (for the Evil will be ultimately destroyed by the Good) an age shall elapse and bring a Deliverer, who, through virtue and courage, shall dissolve the infernal charm. The blight fell upon the paradise in its full bloom, and it remained only for the youngest fairy present, who had withheld her benefactions to the last, to mitigate the doom she could not avert, by bestowing pleasant dreams upon the long and heavy sleepers. A century rolls round. The Knight of the Lion undertakes the enterprise; encounters the horrible troops of monsters and foul fiends which guard the palace; overcomes them; enters the enchanted hall, and wakens the whole company to life, liberty and joy again. The knight is, of course, rewarded with the love he so well deserves and the hand he has so richly earned.

This is obviously the story of the apostacy and redemption of the human family, in the form of a fairy legend. It conforms closely to the necessary incidents of such a catastrophe, and answers well and truly to the intuitive prophecy of man’s final recovery. In substance and method the correspondence is obvious. Every notion of “the fall,” whether revealed or fictitious, assumes the agency of “the wicked one;” and the final recovery, universally expected, involves the sympathies and employs the services of the “ministering spirits,” as important instruments in the happy consummation.

This tale was presented as a dramatic spectacle last winter at the Boston Museum. The play is a minutely faithful expositor of the legend; and it is by the aid of this fine scenic exhibition that I am able to adjust the details, of which the primitive story is so legitimately capable, to the answering points in the great epic of human history “as it is most surely believed among us.” The parallel presented does not seem to me fanciful, but the circumstantial exactness of resemblance may, I think, be accounted for without supposing a designed imitation.

Before tracing the specialties and their allusions, let us notice the general parallelism found between the pivotal points of the fabulous and authentic representations.

The Bible Eden is introduced at the same stage of the story’s action and in the same attitude to the principal characters of the narrative; it stands on the coronation day of its monarch, perfect in all its appointments; the realms of air, earth and ocean in auspicious relation, every element harmoniously obedient, and the garden still glows with the smile which accompanied the approving declaration, “it is very good.” Dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the face of the earth, is conferred, and the heavens add their felicities to the inaugural rejoicings—“the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy.” The gifts are without measure or stint, and the Divine beneficence cannot be tainted in its source nor impeded in its efflux, but the intended recipients, by “the wiles of the enemy,” are rendered incapable of the enjoyment. The sin-blunted sense and passion blinded soul of the fallen race, are plunged into a spiritual stupor, which sleep—the sister and semblance of death—strikingly illustrates; and through the long age of moral incapacity which follows, the highest mode of life is but dimly recognized and feebly felt in the dreams of a paradise lost and the visions of a millenium to come; till, “in the fullness of time,” when a complete psychical age shall be past. The Deliverer, having first overcome the wicked one, shall lead captivity captive, and by the “marriage of the Lamb” with “the bride which is the Church,” perfect the redemption and bring in the new heavens and new earth.

But to the fable, the dramatic representation and the interpretation thereof.

The scene opens upon a rustic society, a hamlet, in the infancy of civilization, such as, upon ballad authority, was “merrie England” before the age of her conquests in arts, sciences and arms, and before the crimes and cares of her age of glory replaced the days of her innocence and contentment. Simplicity of manners, modest abundance, moderate labor, aspirations limited to the range of things easy of attainment, and opinions comfortably at rest on questions of policy and religion, describe the rural life upon Monsieur Bonvive’s domain. The master, in bachelor ease, superintends the simple affairs of his village; Madam Babillard, the house-keeper, has the necessary excitement without the anxiety of her post—just the amount of trouble that is interesting with the pigs, poultry and pets of the homestead. The girls, indeed, are too hasty in ripening into womanhood, and the beaux are over-bold in their gallantries; but then, these are things of great consequence to her, and she is, through them, a matter of great consequence to the community, and the exercise of authority amply repays all its troubles and responsibilities. The affairs of the commonwealth take good enough care of themselves generally; the people are happy in the enjoyment of what they have, and equally happy in the unconsciousness of what they have not; the holydays come at least once a-week, and there is space and place for work and play every hour of every day. Good consciences, light hearts, and natural living, carry them along very happily, and they have enough of the little risks and changes of fortune to keep the life within them well alive. The wilderness upon which their village borders is known to be infested with hobgoblins and demons, and there is a current belief that in the centre of the forest there is a princely family bound in a spell for a hundred years, but they have never penetrated the mystery nor clearly ascertained the facts.

Among these simple people there is an ancient dame, who was old when the oldest villager first knew her, and she has lived through all the known generations of men. Her whole life has been a continual exercise of the best offices among the people; she has been nurse and doctress, friend and counselor, by turns, to the whole community, and they repay her with the love and veneration which her goodness and wisdom command. She is now apparently in the decrepitude of extreme age, but the frame only assumes the marks of age—the mind is as young and the affections as fresh as they were “a hundred years ago.” She is the “Fairy of the Oak,”—the youngest at the coronation scene, and the tutelary spirit of the enchanted family. Ever since the hour of their evil fortunes she has inhabited a human form, performing the charitable offices of ordinary life and mitigating its incident evils; but, especially she has been cultivating whatever of virtuous enterprise and aspiration appeared among the youth from generation to generation, directing it into the best service and endeavoring by it the deliverance of the imprisoned spirits under her charge. Patiently and lovingly she has striven, earnestly and anxiously she has watched, every promise of a deliverance that the race from age to age produced. Patriarch, prophet, apostle and philanthropist, has each in his degree done his own good work, and the world has been the better that they lived; each has added another assurance of the ultimate success, but themselves “have died without the sight.” Her own powers, and those of her auxiliaries, are vast and supernatural, indeed, but the champion age of human redemption must be human, and she can but inspire, direct, sustain and guard the mighty effort.

Now, a young Christian Knight “the Knight of the Lion,” famous for deeds of valor in Holy Land, gives promise of the great achievement to the quick perception of the Guardian Spirit. She has aroused his enthusiasm and sustained his zeal, disciplining him by trial after trial, and training him from triumph to triumph, for still greater deeds, which take continually more definite shape and more attractive forms in the dreams and reveries which she inspires, until he has grown familiar with the vision and conscious of its supernatural suggestion, and she is able at last to intimate the duty and the trial which invite him by songs in the air addressed to his waking ear.

“The enchanted maiden sleeps——in vain To hope redress from other arm, Foul magic forged the mighty chain, Honor and love will brake the charm.

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Dread perils shall thy path surround, Wild horrors ranged in full array, Courage shall take the vantage ground, Bright virtue turn dark night to day.”

Drawn westward by her art toward the scene of the great enterprise, he reaches the village on the border of the wilderness, and from the legend current among the rustics inferring more definitely the character of his mission, he accepts it in the true chivalric spirit of faith, love and hope. His squire, or man-at-arms, who has followed him heretofore with an unquestioning fidelity, consents to incur the risks, though he has a very imperfect apprehension of the heroic undertaking; but the devotion of a faithful follower answers instead of knowledge in his rank of service. He would rather encounter a dozen flesh and blood swordsmen than one ghostly foe; nevertheless, where his master leads he will follow, whatever the character of the fight. The knight comprehends the nature of the conflict fully; it is not with flesh and blood, but with “spiritual wickedness in high places” that he “has his warfare.” To him the great battle is not in the outward and actual, but is transferred to the inward and spiritual sphere—into the real life—whence the ultimate facts of existence derive all their currents and ends. So felt the hero who said, in the great faith, “we have our conversation in heaven”—“we sit in heavenly places;” and so felt and thought the reformer who deliberately threw his ink-stand at the devils’ head. The region of the ideal is the fields of the highest heroism, and every life given to the world in noble service and generous sacrifice is living in the spirit sphere in familiar sympathy with the good, and constant strife with evil angels. This faith is the main impulse in all chivalric action; even a heroic poem cannot be created without it. It cannot be false, for it differs nothing in the constancy and efficiency of its presence from the most palpable facts, and is proved true by the test of harmonizing with all other truth.