Chapter 3

There is not much in a group of children coming out of school. So one might say at first sight, but a little reflection will show the fallacy of the remark. One would naturally suppose that in every well-regulated State of antiquity measures would have been taken to ensure the education of all classes of the community, but such was not the case. The Spartans under Lycurgus were educated, but their education was mainly a physical one, and it did not reach the lower orders. The education of Greece generally, even when the Greek mind had attained its highest culture, was still largely physical--philosophers, statesmen, and poets priding themselves as much upon their athletic feats as upon their intellectual endowments. The schools of Rome were private, and were confined to the patricians. There was a change for the better when Christianity became the established religion. Public schools were recommended by a council in the sixth century, but rather as a means of teaching the young the rudiments of their faith, under the direction of the clergy, than as a means of giving them general instruction. It was not until the close of the twelfth century that a council ordained the establishment of grammar schools in cathedrals for the gratuitous instruction of the poor; and not until a century later that the ordinance was carried into effect at Lyons. Luther found time, amid his multitudinous labors, to interest himself in popular education; and, in 1527, he drew up, with the aid of Melanchthon, what is known as the Saxon School System. The seed was sown, but the Thirty Years' War prevented its coming to a speedy maturity. In the middle of the last century several of the German States passed laws making it compulsory upon parents to send their children to school at a certain age; but these laws were not really obeyed until the beginning of the present century. German schools are now open to the poorest as well as the richest children. The only people, except the Germans, who thought of common schools at an early period are the Scotch.

It cost, we see, some centuries of mental blindness to discover the need of, and some centuries of struggling to establish schools.

_A GLIMPSE OF VENICE._

The spell which Venice has cast over the English poets is as powerful, in its way, as was the influence of Italian literature upon the early literature of England. From Chaucer down, the poets have turned to Italy for inspiration, and, what is still better, have found it. It is not too much to say that the "Canterbury Tales" could not have existed, in their present form, if Boccaccio had not written the "Decameron;" and it is to Boccaccio we are told that the writers of his time were indebted for their first knowledge of Homer. Wyatt and Surrey transplanted what they could of grace from Petrarch into the rough England of Henry the Eighth. We know what the early dramatists owe to the Italian storytellers. They went to their novels for the plots of their plays, as the novelists of to-day go to the criminal calendar for the plots of their stories. Shakspeare appears so familiar with Italian life that Mr. Charles Armitage Brown, the author of a very curious work on Shakspeare's Sonnets, declares that he must have visited Italy, basing this conclusion on the minute knowledge of certain Italian localities shown in some of his later plays. At home in Verona, Milan, Mantua, and Padua, Shakspeare is nowhere so much so as in Venice.

It is impossible to think of Venice without remembering the poets; and the poet who is first remembered is Byron. If our thoughts are touched with gravity as they should be when we dwell upon the sombre aspects of Venice--when we look, as here, for example, on the Bridge of Sighs--we find ourselves repeating:

"I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs."

If we are in a gayer mood, as we are likely to be after looking at the brilliant carnival-scene which greets us at the threshold of the present number of _THE ALDINE_, we recall the opening passages of Byron's merry poem of "Beppo:"

"Of all the places where the Carnival Was most facetious in the days of yore, For dance, and song, and serenade, and ball, And masque, and mime, and mystery, and more Than I have time to tell now, or at all, Venice the bell from every city bore."

* * * * *

"And there are dresses splendid, but fantastical, Masks of all times, and nations, Turks and Jews, And harlequins and clowns, with feats gymnastical, Greeks, Romans, Yankee-doodles, and Hindoos All kinds of dress, except the ecclesiastical, All people, as their fancies hit, may choose, But no one in these parts may quiz the clergy, Therefore take heed, ye Freethinkers! I charge ye."

The Bridge of Sighs (to return to prose) is a long covered gallery, leading from the ducal palace to the old State prisons of Venice. It was frequently traversed, we may be sure, in the days of some of the Doges, to one of whom, our old friend, and Byron's--Marino Faliero--the erection of the ducal palace is sometimes falsely ascribed. Founded in the year 800, A.D., the ducal palace was afterwards destroyed five times, and each time arose from its ruins with increasing splendor until it became, what it is now, a stately marble building of the Saracenic style of architecture, with a grand staircase and noble halls, adorned with pictures by Titian, Tintoretto, Paul Veronese, and other famous masters.

It would be difficult to find gloomier dungeons, even in the worst strongholds of despotism, than those in which the State prisoners of Venice were confined. These "pozzi," or wells, were sunk in the thick walls, under the flooring of the chamber at the foot of the Bridge of Sighs. There were twelve of them formerly, and they ran down three or four stories. The Venetian of old time abhorred them as deeply as his descendants, who, on the first arrival of the conquering French, attempted to block or break up the lowest of them, but were not entirely successful; for, when Byron was in Venice, it was not uncommon for adventurous tourists to descend by a trap-door, and crawl through holes, half choked by rubbish, to the depth of two stories below the first range. So says the writer of the _Notes_ to the fourth canto of "Childe Harolde" (Byron's friend Hobhouse, if our memory serves), who adds, "If you are in want of consolation for the extinction of patrician power, perhaps you may find it there. Scarcely a ray of light glimmers into the narrow gallery which leads to the cells, and the places of confinement themselves are totally dark. A little hole in the wall admitted the damp air of the passages, and served for the introduction of the prisoner's food. A wooden pallet, about a foot or so from the ground, was the only furniture. The conductors tell you a light was not allowed. The cells are about five paces in length, two and a half in width, and seven feet in height. They are directly beneath one another, and respiration is somewhat difficult in the lower holes. Only one prisoner was found when the Republicans descended into these hideous recesses, and he is said to have been confined sixteen years." When the prisoner's hour came he was taken out and strangled in a cell upon the Bridge of Sighs!

And this was in Venice! The grand old Republic which was once the greatest Power of Eastern Europe; the home of great artists and architects, renowned the world over for arts and arms; the Venice of "blind old Dandolo," who led her galleys to victory at the ripe old age of eighty; the Venice of Doge Foscari, whose son she tortured, imprisoned and murdered, and whose own paternal, patriotic, great heart she broke; the Venice of gay gallants, and noble, beautiful ladies; the Venice of mumming, masking, and the carnival; the bright, beautiful Venice of Shakspeare, Otway, and Byron; joyous, loving Venice; cruel, fatal Venice!

* * * * *

MODERN SATIRE.--A satire on everything is a satire on nothing; it is mere absurdity. All contempt, all disrespect, implies something respected, as a standard to which it is referred; just as every valley implies a hill. The _persiflage_ of the French and of fashionable worldlings, which turns into ridicule the exceptions and yet abjures the rules, is like Trinculo's government--its latter end forgets its beginning. Can there be a more mortal, poisonous consumption and asphyxy of the mind than this decline and extinction of all reverence?--_Jean Paul_.

_WINTER PICTURES FROM THE POETS._

Although English Poetry abounds with pictures of the seasons, its Winter pictures are neither numerous, nor among its best. For one good snow-piece we can readily find twenty delicate Spring pictures--twinkling with morning dew, and odorous with the perfume of early flowers. It would be easy to make a large gallery of Summer pictures; and another gallery, equally large, which should contain only the misty skies, the dark clouds, and the falling leaves of Autumn. Not so with Winter scenes. Not that the English poets have not painted the last, and painted them finely, but that as a rule they have not taken kindly to the work. They prefer to do what Keats did in one of his poems, viz., make Winter a point of departure from which Fancy shall wing her way to brighter days:

"Fancy, high-commissioned; send her! She has vassals to attend her, She will bring, in spite of frost, Beauties that the earth hath lost, She will bring thee, all together, All delights of summer weather."

But we must not let Keats come between us and the few among his fellows who have sung of Winter for us. Above all, we must not let him keep his and our master, Shakspeare, waiting:

"When icicles hang by the wall, And Dick the shepherd blows his nail, And Tom bears logs into the hall, And milk comes frozen home in pail, When blood is nipped, and ways be foul, Then nightly sings the staring owl, To-whoo; To-whit, to-whoo, a merry note, While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

"When all aloud the wind doth blow, And coughing drowns the parson's saw, And birds sit brooding in the snow, And Marian's nose looks red and raw. When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl, Then nightly sings the staring owl, To-whoo; To-whit, to-whoo, a merry note, While greasy Joan doth keel the pot."

From Shakspeare to Thomson is something of a descent, but we must make it before we can find any Winter poetry worth quoting. Here is a picture, ready-made, for Landseer to put into form and color:

"There, warm together pressed, the trooping deer Sleep on the new-fallen snows; and scarce his head Raised o'er the heapy wreath, the branching elk Lies slumbering sullen in the white abyss. The ruthless hunter wants nor dogs nor toils, Nor with the dread of sounding bows he drives The fearful flying race: with ponderous clubs, As weak against the mountain-heaps they push Their beating breast in vain, and piteous bray, He lays them quivering on the ensanguined snows, And with loud shouts rejoicing bears them home."

Cowper is superior to Thomson as a painter of Winter, although it is doubtful whether he was by nature the better poet. Here is one of his pictures:

"The cattle mourn in corners, where the fence Screens them, and seem half petrified with sleep In unrecumbent sadness. There they wait Their wonted fodder; not like hungering man, Fretful if unsupplied; but silent, meek, And patient of the slow-paced swain's delay. He, from the stack, carves out the accustomed load, Deep plunging, and again deep plunging oft, The broad keen knife into the solid mass: Smooth as a wall, the upright remnant stands, With such undeviating and even force He severs it away: no needless care, Lest storms should overset the leaning pile Deciduous, or its own unbalanced weight. Forth goes the woodman, leaving, unconcerned, The cheerful haunts of man, to wield the axe And drive the wedge in yonder forest drear, From morn to eve his solitary task. Shaggy, and lean, and shrewd, with pointed ears And tail cropped short, half lurcher and half cur, His dog attends him. Close behind his heel Now creeps he slow; and now, with many a frisk, Wide scampering, snatches up the drifted snow With ivory teeth, or ploughs it with his snout; Then shakes his powdered coat, and barks for joy. Heedless of all his pranks, the sturdy churl Moves right toward the mark; nor stops for aught, But now and then, with pressure of his thumb To adjust the fragrant charge of a short tube That fumes beneath his nose: the trailing cloud Streams far behind him, scenting all the air. Now from the roost, or from the neighboring pale, Where, diligent to cast the first faint gleam Of smiling day, they gossiped side by side, Come trooping at the housewife's well-known call The feathered tribes domestic. Half on wing, And half on foot, they brush the fleecy flood, Conscious and fearful of too deep a plunge. The sparrows peep, and quit the sheltering eaves, To seize the fair occasion; well they eye The scattered grain, and thievishly resolved To escape the impending famine, often scared As oft return, a pert voracious kind. Clean riddance quickly made, one only care Remains to each, the search of sunny nook, Or shed impervious to the blast. Resigned To sad necessity, the cock foregoes His wonted strut; and, wading at their head, With well-considered steps, seems to resent His altered gait and stateliness retrenched."

The American poets have excelled their English brethren in painting the outward aspects of Winter. Here is Mr. Emerson's description of a snow storm:

"Announced by all the trumpets of the sky Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields, Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven, And veils the farm-house at the garden's end. The sled and traveler stopped, the courier's feet Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit Around the radiant fire-place, enclosed In a tumultuous privacy of storm. Come see the north wind's masonry. Out of an unseen quarry evermore Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer Curves his white bastions with projected roof Round every windward stake, or tree, or door. Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work So fanciful, so savage, nought cares he For number or proportion. Mockingly On coop or kennel he hangs Parian wreaths; A swan-like form invests the hidden thorn: Fills up the farmer's lane from wall to wall, Maugre the farmer's sighs, and at the gate A tapering turret overtops the work. And when his hours are numbered, and the world Is all his own, retiring, as he were not, Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone, Built in an age, the mad wind's night-work, The frolic architecture of the snow."

In Mr. Bryant's "Winter Piece" we have a brilliant description of frost-work:

"Look! the massy trunks Are cased in the pure crystal; each light spray Nodding and tinkling in the breath of heaven, Is studded with its trembling water-drops, That glimmer with an amethystine light. But round the parent stem the long low boughs Bend, in a glittering ring, and arbors hide The glassy floor. Oh! you might deem the spot The spacious cavern of some virgin mine, Deep in the womb of earth--where the gems grow, And diamonds put forth radiant rods and bud With amethyst and topaz--and the place Lit up, most royally, with the pure beam That dwells in them. Or haply the vast hall Of fairy palace, that outlasts the night, And fades not in the glory of the sun;-- Where crystal columns send forth slender shafts And crossing arches; and fantastic aisles Wind from the sight in brightness, and are lost, Among the crowded pillars. Raise thine eye; Thou seest no cavern roof, no palace vault; There the blue sky and the white drifting cloud Look in. Again the wildered fancy dreams Of spouting fountains, frozen as they rose, And fixed, with all their branching jets, in air, And all their sluices sealed. All, all is light; Light without shade. But all shall pass away With the next sun. From numberless vast trunks, Loosened, the crashing ice shall make a sound Like the far roar of rivers, and the eve Shall close o'er the brown woods as it was wont."

Winter, itself, has never been more happily impersonated than by dear old Spenser. We meant to close with his portrait of Winter, but, on second thoughts, we give, as more seasonable, his description of January. The fourth line can hardly fail to remind the reader of the second line of Shakspeare's song, and to suggest the query--whether Shakspeare borrowed from Spenser, Spenser from Shakspeare, or both from Nature?

"Then came old January, wrapped well In many weeds to keep the cold away; Yet did he quake and quiver like to quell, And blow his nayles to warme them if he may; For they were numbed with holding all the day An hatchet keene, with which he felled wood And from the trees did lop the needlesse spray: Upon an huge great earth-pot steane he stood, From whose wide mouth there flowed forth the Romane floud."

* * * * *

As long as you are engaged in the world, you must comply with its maxims; because nothing is more unprofitable than the wisdom of those persons who set up for reformers of the age. 'Tis a part a man can not act long, without offending his friends, and rendering himself ridiculous.--_St. Gosemond_.

_THE PAVILIONS ON THE LAKE._

FROM THE FRENCH OF THEOPHILE GAUTIER.

In the province of Canton, several miles from the city, there once lived two rich Chinese merchants, retired from business. One of them was named Tou, the other Kouan. Both were possessed of great riches, and were persons of much consequence in the community.

Tou and Kouan were distant relatives, and from early youth had lived and worked side by side. Bound by ties of great affection, they had built their homes near together, and every evening they met with a few select friends to pass the hours in delightful intercourse. Both possessed of much talent, they vied with each other in the production of exquisite Chinese handiwork, and spent the evenings in tracing poetry and fancy designs on rice-paper as they drank each other's success in tiny glasses of delicate cordial. But their characters, apparently so harmonious, as time went on grew more and more apart; they were like an almond tree, growing as one stem, until little by little the branches divide so that the topmost twigs are far from each other--half sending their bitter perfume through the whole garden, while the other half scatter their snow-white flowers outside the garden wall.

From year to year Tou grew more serious; his figure increased in dignity, even his double chin wore a solemn expression, and he spent his whole time composing moral inscriptions to hang over the doors of his pavilion.

Kouan, on the contrary, grew jolly as his years increased. He sang more gaily than ever in praise of wine, flowers, and birds. His spirit, unburdened by vulgar cares, was light like a young man's, and he dreamed of nothing but pure enjoyment.

Little by little an intense hatred sprang up between the friends. They could not meet without indulging in bitter sarcasm. They were like two hedges of brambles, bristling with sharp thorns. At last, things came to such a pass that they could no longer endure each other's society, and each hung a tablet by the door of his dwelling, stating that no person from the neighboring house would be allowed to cross the threshold on any pretext whatever.

They would have been glad to move their houses to different parts of the country, but, unhappily, this was not possible. Tou even tried to sell his property but he set such an unreasonable price that no buyer appeared, and he was, moreover, unwilling to leave all the treasures he had accumulated there--the sculptured wainscotting, the polished panels, like mirrors, the transparent windows, the gilded lattice-work, the bamboo lounges, the vases of rare porcelain, the red and black lacquered cabinets, and the cases full of books of ancient poetry. It was hard to give up to strangers the garden where he had planted shade and fruit trees with his own hands, and where, each spring he had watched the opening of the flowers; where in short, each object was bound to his heart by ties delicate as the finest silk, but strong as iron chains.

In the days of their friendship, Tou and Kouan had each built a pavilion in his garden, on the shore of a lake, common to both estates. It had been a great delight to sit in their separate balconies and exchange friendly salutations while they smoked opium in pipes of delicate porcelain. But after becoming enemies they built a wall which divided the lake into two equal portions. The water was so deep that the wall was supported on a series of arches, through which the water flowed freely, reflecting upon its placid surface the rival pavilions.

These pavilions were exquisite specimens of Chinese architecture. The roofs, covered with tiling, round and brilliant as the scales which glisten on the sides of a gold-fish, were supported upon red and black pillars which rested on a solid foundation, richly ornamented with porcelain slabs bearing all manner of artistic designs. A railing ran all around, formed by a graceful intermingling of branches and flowers wrought in ivory. The interior was not less sumptuous. On the walls were inscribed verses of celebrated Chinese poems, elegantly written in perpendicular lines, with golden characters on a lacquered background. Shades of delicately carved ivory, softened the light to a faint opal tint, and all around stood pots of orchis, peonies, and daisies, which filled the air with delicious perfume. Curtains of rich silk were draped over the entrance, and on the marble tables within were scattered fans, tooth-picks, ebony pipes, and pencils with all conveniences for writing.

All around the pavilions were picturesque grounds of rock, among whose clefts grew clumps of willows, their long green twigs swaying on the surface of the water. Under the crystal waves sported myriads of gold-fish, and ducks with gay plumage floated among the broad, shining leaves of water-lilies. Except in the very centre of the pool, where the depth of the water prevented the growth of aquatic plants, the whole surface was covered with these leaves, like a carpet of soft green velvet.

Before the unsightly wall had been placed there by the hostile owners, it was impossible to find a more picturesque spot in the whole empire, and even now no philosopher would have wished for a more retired and delicious retreat in which to pass his days.

Both Tou and Kouan felt deeply the loss of the enchanting prospect, and gazed sadly upon the barren wall which rose before their eyes, but each consoled himself with the idea that his neighbor was as badly off as himself.

Things went on in this way for several years. Grass and weeds choked up the pathway between the two houses, and brambles and branches of low shrubs intertwined across it, as though they would bar all communication forever. It appeared as if the plants understood the quarrel between the two old friends, and took delight in perpetuating it.