Part 3

With the fierceness of a maniac, he bounds down the declivity. Constantine hears his pursuer, and quickens his pace. He is near the boat. On! on! if you would save your bride. Too late--too late. Yet there is one, though a desperate resource. Antonio’s pistol rings upon the air. Hah! he staggers with his burthen, but struggles forward--in vain--he supports his sinking form against a rock, while his life blood ebbs fast away. With the look of a baffled fiend, he turns towards his pursuer. Rage and disappointment writhe his lip, while his brow grows pale in death. He seeks his sash, and a stiletto gleams in the moonlight. What means that strange, ghastly smile? Oh God! he cannot mean----the blow is struck, and as he sinks to the earth, the life blood of Zara mingles with his own upon the sands. In an instant her lover kneels over her, but she hears him not, she answers him not. Thy pure soul has fled, unconscious of the blow thy ‘demon lover’ dealt. Thou hast gone ere the storm had desolated thy beautiful island-home--ere the sorrows of thy country had entered into thy soul. It is well with thee, sweet enthusiast, it is well with thee as thou art.

Antonio knelt over her, and called loudly upon her name, but he only heard it repeated, as if in derision, by the echoes of the cliffs. That tremendous moment when doubt struggles against a dreadful certainty passed by, and he knew that she was dead.

Pride, wealth, ambition, glory, what now are they to him? One word from those pale lips, one ray of light from those darkened eyes were worth them all.

The bodies were found the next morning on the spot where they had fallen, but Antonio had disappeared. He was never seen again in his native island. Life with him had ceased to have any attractions, and he sought release from it in the most desperate engagements with the enemies of Greece. He perished in battle, but not till he had obtained the glad assurance that the cause in which he had suffered so much would eventually triumph. As for Zara,

“She sleeps well, By the sea-shore whereon she loved to dwell.”

STORY AND SENTIMENT,

OR, CONVERSATIONS WITH A MAN OF TASTE AND IMAGINATION.

No. 1.

‘His thoughts were not the thoughts of other men.’

In the spring of 18--, in consequence of ill health I betook me to one of those lovely vallies on the Connecticut, where the traveler if he has taste enough to look about him, may find grouped within the circuit of half a mile, one of the loveliest villages in the world. Its clear warm airs gently tempered by the winds of the ocean--the freshness and verdure of the landscape sloping gradually backward from the water side--the high hills which surround it, still covered with dark and rolling forests, as when first the white man took possession of them--and the thousand other natural beauties which are ever found in quiet New England villages, made me bless the fate which carried me thither, and the hour I made it my home.

My first want was a companion. From my boyhood, the book of nature was familiar. I had loved to ramble by woods and streams--gather flowers on meadow and hillside--and, with some favorite book, something to pleasure me, while away the mornings in many a gay bewilderment of fancy. But from the peculiarity of my disease, the bliss of solitary thought was denied me; while my natural bent which was quiet and meditative, it was thought might be indulged in to a degree, if shared with some gentle and kindred spirit. This lack was supplied me. I had been accustomed to observe in my rambles a pale thoughtful looking man, whose peculiarly fine countenance made me wish his acquaintance. This was brought about in some ordinary way, and would little interest the reader--so I pass it at once; but the result of that acquaintance, the knowledge I gained from it, the pleasure I derived from his friendship, are things to be forgotten by me never; and it is with reminiscences of my intercourse with this individual, that I intend to supply myself with subject matter for these occasional papers. So much was I delighted with him, that the first morning of our acquaintance I committed to paper the results of our conversation; so I have but little to do, save copying as from a register, such passages as I deem will be entertaining--which thing I hope to do in an unostentatious manner, at the same time throwing in such reflections as I think apposite, and rambling backwards and forwards as suits the mood of my mind. If I please, my time is well spent.

I must first give you a description of him, gentle reader, and the place in which I found him, even if it take up my whole sheet. Conceive yourself then on a little eminence about fifty yards removed from the water side, the ground sloping gradually to the stream; and conceive a small, low-roof’d farm house upon it with its windows facing the east, and its white roof partly covered and quite shaded by a clump of tall beech trees; and after you have looked at the creeper, and wild rose, and honeysuckles that grow in profusion about the door, you may stand and listen to the sound of the clearest, sweetest, sparkling little rivulet, that ever gushed from its native bed, to go and mix its sweet waters with the weltering waves of the ocean.

You may now stand with your back towards the farm-house, and look down before you. The broad Connecticut sweeps majestically by, its clear surface crinkled only by the sportings of some wanton fish as it darts through it, dashing a shower of pearls into the sunbeams; or perchance the form of a water fowl as it skims unwarily over it, gently catching the liquid on its pinions to scatter it off again with the next evolution. The soft piles of white clouds that sleep in the upper heaven, are as moveless below you; and as the startled dor-hawk sweeps out from the wood behind, and wends his course across to the distant mountains, you may watch his small form on the water growing fainter and fainter, till it becomes a speck and fades from the vision.

Now enter with me the dwelling. Is it not a scholar’s dwelling? That finely stocked library, with its newly-dusted curtain of green cotton-stuff--that row of antique busts over the mantel-piece--that engraving of the fiery Byron--that fine one of Scott--and that pleasing one of the gentle and melancholy Cowper--say, do you like it? A table stands in the middle of the room, and on it are books of a dozen languages--some thumbed and turned down as if they had seen good service, and others uncut as fresh from the book-seller’s. Here’s the antiquarian Homer. There’s the mellifluous Anachreon. This is the shrewd Horace--and there’s the philosophic Seneca. How worn they all are! No common one surely is the spirit of this place--But you shall see him.

He sits by the table, writing. There’s a forehead for you, shaded with fine dark hair--there’s an eye, deep, crystaline, full--there’s a cheek, delicate, perhaps too delicate--and above a prominent chin, there’s the pale thin lip of the scholar. His countenance is gentle, but there’s something of severity about the small closed mouth, and in the glitter of that eye--and yet all is calm, all is serenity, all is gentleness. No dark passions have had commission to mark that noble forehead--no feverish and fiery ambition have dared to light their hectic taper on that cheek--all is natural. And his voice--that is gentle too--woman would not wish softer. And now he smiles--how gentle! There’s so much of peace in it, you _feel_ its gentleness.

Such was my friend. Alas! that he is not--that I have but the poor satisfaction of poring over these few, brief-sketched passages of his history.

HIS FIRST LOVE.

I found him one evening sad and solitary, seated by an open window with a book in his hand, and gazing out into the moonlight. I addressed him, but he answered me not. I took his hand and pressed it--he turned to me, and to my surprise, his eyes were filled with tears.

I did not offer him my pity--his feelings were too holy. I let him weep.

‘My friend,’ said he, after a pause, ‘you are welcome.’

I ventured to ask if any thing had disturbed him.

‘There are moments,’ replied he, ‘in the life of every man, when, whether he will or no, the simplest circumstance, such as a note of music, a word, or a moonlight evening like this, will by the subtle law of association call up a train of dead memories, and pour them in a flood tide on the heart; and as these are pleasant or melancholy, will his feelings take their coloring. Here is a little book of Sir Humphry Davy’s, and it has set me weeping; for as I have followed him through one and another of his foolish though beautiful theories, it has called up passages of my life I would fain forget. They are sweet though--

‘Pleasant are the memories of days in the shades of Morven’--

and I know not but I thank the philosopher though he makes me womanish.’

My companion’s history was unknown to me--I had once or twice wished to ask him--here was a chance. I delicately hinted as much.

‘You ask to your hurt I fear, my young friend,’ said he. ‘Little in my life can interest another. It has seen little action. Feeling--strong, continuous, deep feeling with small variation, is all it boasts; and pleasant as it is to me, it may little please you.’

I was importunate.

‘I had a lovely cousin,’ began he, ‘a very lovely creature, and one for whom I felt all that ardor of attachment, for the description and stories of which, poets and novelists have been so much laughed at. I shall not describe her to you. The graces of her mind only shall I acquaint you with, and through them you must see her countenance. Her parents were dead; and, taken into our house as one of the family, our love went far back beyond our memories, even into childhood, where if we love, it is by some subtle affinity which unconsciously draws kindred spirits together--since at that age we seldom think to dwell upon individual excellences of character. Our love as we knew not when it began, so we knew not its force; yet it was pure, deep, spiritual, and dreaming--that passion which instead of being modified, modifies--instead of becoming assimilated, assimilates--belonging not to the other power, but making those powers its own. Hence our characters were alike. This unity softened down every unhappy prepossession; and the result was, that our loves were like two streams, which though they gush not from the same source, soon after mingle and go quietly on together.

‘From what I have said, you will readily perceive we were dreamers. My cousin was a dreamer--you would know it from the deep, full, swimming eye, without any body’s telling it you; and we were wont to go of a summer’s evening to the church yard, and seated on her mother’s grave, drink in from the silence, and darkness, and solitude of the scene, that witchery and madness which dreamers so much love. From such habits it will easily be seen, that our characters must soon be sobered over with the sad shapings of melancholy. Such habits cultivate this mood; and persisted in, the sensibilities if naturally exquisite, become so much the more so that they soon unfit us for every thing else, and win us from the laughter-making and foolish.

‘We were seated one evening as I have mentioned, and our thoughts very naturally turned upon spirits, their intercourse, and the laws which govern them, and the conversation took such a tone as fastened it forever in my memory.

‘I sometimes think,’ said she, clinging tenderly to me, and clasping my hand firmly in both of hers--‘that when we are free from this world, and disenthralled, are ushered into a new existence, we shall lose our identity, and have to find out new sympathies and sources of enjoyment; and the thought saddens me.’

‘Why saddens you?’

‘O! I would not forget this world. I would not forget its beauties--its rocks, woodlands, wilds,

‘Its human and its natural beauties all.’--

I would not forget them. They _must_ be a source of felicity ever--ever pleasant to be remembered--ever spots to which memory shall turn her saddened eye, when the heart is sick with its melancholies.’

‘Fanny, think you the blessed weep?’

‘O! I know not--‘but I could not bear to forget this beautiful world, and those I love in it.’

‘Think you’--said I--‘that he who made the spirit and knows its capacities, will not find for it something more substantial than earth proffers us? You know the aged tell us, there’s no bliss here; and we see the young, and gay, and beautiful, fall around us like leaves in Autumn-time. What matters it then if we take other minds, as distinct as our own bodies?’

‘Arthur! Arthur!--you pain me. Would you not know _me_ hereafter?’

‘Doubt it not--we _shall_ know each other.’

‘I would think so.’

‘From God’s benevolence we cannot prove it; for as benevolence leads to giving the highest good, it may lead him to give us faculties above those we now possess, and felicities in comparison with which all that we have here shall instantly be forgotten. But it is seen from our natures. Our faculties, in their aspirations for something higher, by those very aspirations _evidence_ faculties, which earth puts not in requisition. Few are the thinking minds who have not sometimes in the calm of the evening, as they have sent their gaze away into the heavens, and watched the stars come out to join the mighty sisterhood of planets and rolling worlds, felt a thirst and a lifting up within them as the pulsations of immortality. This _is_ immortality. The world (not to speak poetically,) is forgotten. I myself have been so far enrapt in this mystery, that I have as completely lost my mortal consciousness as if I had never possessed any; at the same time I have been partly conscious of the same powers as those I use when admiring things around me. I was translated to another sphere--worlds of light were rolling around me--I myself was a source of light and magnificence, rolling on forever

‘Still quiring to the young eyed Cherubim!’

A state of purity was there. I admired it--but it was the same as my love of virtue here, though incomparably higher; and I was conscious of the same though more elevated communion, as the music of the spheres

‘Harping along their viewless boundaries,’

came floating about me. And these things prove that the same faculties go with us from earth, though their reachings and exercises may be as much nobler, as time is less than eternity.’

‘My sweet cousin was re-assured--and we soon betook us home.

‘This evening,’ continued he, ‘its stillness, its soft moonlight, and this foolish little treasure of a book in my hand, have recalled that evening, and that conversation--they have set me weeping. ’Tis seldom I speak of the past, but your importunity stands apology.’

I quickly and firmly assured him, that so far from seeking apology, my interest was unaccountable; and I begged the sequel in relation to his cousin.

‘Ask it not--ask it not’--said he, with deep solemnity.

He spake no farther.

Such was a single evening’s intercourse with this mysterious being. More I learned from him--which in good time the reader shall have from me. Till then, adieu.

*

FANNY WILLOUGHBY.

“I love thee, Fanny Willoughby, And that’s the why, ye see, I woo thee, Fanny Willoughby, And cannot let thee be,-- I sing for thee, I sigh for thee, And O! you may depend on’t, I’ll weep for thee, I’ll die for thee, And that will be the end on’t.

“I love thy form so tall and straight, To me it always seems, As if it were the counterfeit Of some I’ve seen in dreams,-- It makes me feel as if I had An angel by my side, And then I think I am so bad, You will not be my bride.

“I love thy clear and hazel eye-- They say the blue is fairer, And I confess that formerly I thought the blue the rarer,-- But when I saw thine eye so clear, Though perfectly at rest, I did kneel down, and I did swear The hazel was the best.

“I love thy hand so pale and soft, The which, in days lang syne, Ye innocent as trusting, oft Would softly clasp in mine; I thought it sure was chiseled out Of marble by the geniuses, The which the poets rant about, The virgins and the Venuses.

“I love the sounds that from thy lip Gush holily and free, As rills that from their caverns slip, And prattle to the sea; The melody for aye doth steal To hearts by sorrow riven, And then I think, and then I _feel_ That music comes from Heaven.

“Now listen, Fanny Willoughby, To what I cannot keep, My days ye rob of happiness, My nights ye rob of sleep; And if ye don’t relent, why I Believe you will me kill; For passion must have vent, and I Will kill myself I will.”

’Twas thus, when love had made me mad For Fanny Willoughby, I told my tale, half gay, half sad, To Fanny Willoughby; And Fanny look’d as maiden would When love her heart did burn, And Fanny sigh’d as maiden should, And murmur’d a return.

And so I woo’d Fan Willoughby-- A maiden like a dove, And so I won Fan Willoughby-- The maiden of my love; And though sad years have pass’d since that, And she is in the sky, I never, never can forget Sweet Fanny Willoughby.

*

CONFESSIONS OF A SENSITIVE MAN.

No. 1.

The first time I left Droneville, was for the purpose of joining the Junior Class in Yale College. Having received letters of introduction to Dr. ----, I was ushered by his misjudged kindness, with all my awkwardness upon me, into the very center of fashionable life. Fashionable life! what a variety of blunders, of ludicrous mistakes, of embarrassing scenes, rise up at the very phrase, mingled with the uproarious laughter of young men, and the suppressed titter of young ladies, the mere memory of which is sufficient to drive distracted a sensitive man. To my miserable, rustic education, I am indebted for a great share of my calamities. Before relating my experience in the world of fashion, I will attempt to convey to my readers an idea of some of the peculiarities of Droneville people.

In one of the western counties of Massachusetts, is situated the village of Droneville--the Rip Van Winkle of the state--the very focus of stupidity. Droneville people are a century behind the rest of the world. One would imagine that old Time had pitched them out of his car in 1700, while he has been driving on the rest of the world like Jehu. Without the least scruple, they use those rank provincialisms, which would make the most legitimate Yankee tongue of other parts, feel “considerably streaked.” Droneville people are opposed to all your modern refinements in education. “We are satisfied with the language of our fathers, without bringing it to the test of any of your grammar rules.” As a necessary consequence, the king’s English is murdered by them without the least mercy. Double comparatives and superlatives dance through their conversation in an intricate maze of the sublimest obscurity. To Droneville people I was indebted for my pure, classical dialect, which was so extremely pleasing that I never addressed a polite speech to a young lady, without making her giggle in spite of her most vigorous efforts. “Hisen” and “hern,” “yourn” and “theirn,” and such phrases, might be expected as a matter of course; but Droneville people are no common Yankees; they have words and expressions which are perfectly unique. “Chirk” is a favorite of theirs. If you enquire respecting some invalid who is convalescing, the answer is, “he is more chirk.” A young Miss of Droneville, (for whom, by the way, I always had a sneaking partiality,) once replied to a question as to her mother’s health--an old bedridden dame of eighty, “Why, she is not very _chirk_, but more _chirker_ than she has been; all our folks appear more _chirker_ than they really feel, in order to _chirk_ her up.” “Comper” is another of their expressions. Any fracas or tumult, like the Calethump of Christmas eve memory, would be styled by them a “comper.” Their language is certainly original:

“Mrs. Doublechin, what is the matter with your good man?”

“I don’t hardly know, ‘Squire, he seems to be _kinder fevery and kinder aguery_.”

Droneville people are profound philosophers. You will not find them chattering incessantly upon every topic under the sun; their ideas are connected by none of your “obvious relations;” they are slow, but sure thinkers, and when they _do_ speak, you may expect to hear something. Catch Droneville people doing any thing in a rash, hasty manner? catch a weasel asleep. They are equally considerate in their mental and physical operations. If a man begins to build a house, without reflecting upon it for some twenty years, Droneville people shake their heads in a very significant manner, muttering something about not “counting the cost.” A house is commenced by one generation, allowed to “season” through another, and completed by the third. Droneville people are not composed of any of your inflammable materials; you will not find them acting under the influence of “excitement” or “passion.” They like to “take things coolly”--to think deliberately.

Deacon Snuffle was informed that widow Switchtail had been _recently_ converted, and hastened to converse with her. “How long is it, Mrs. Switchtail,” said he, “since you first began to see the error of your ways?”

“Why, Deacon, it is as long ago as what we old folks call the _hard winter_.” Deacon Snuffle made his exit with all imaginable speed, exclaiming, “your religion, widow, is something like an old clock, in considerable need of being wound up.”

A minister was “settled” among Droneville people, several years since, who is about as ardent as they are phlegmatic, suggesting the image of a spirited young steed, yoked to a contemplative ox. He exhorts, preaches, frets, drives his flesh off in attempting to “rouse them up;” but they take it “just as easy” as conceivable. What can be more tantalizing! He appoints meetings upon week days, but Droneville people are not so fond of meetings upon week days; it savors too much of _driving_ people into religion. The parson consoles himself with the thought that they will come to church upon the Sabbath, and prepares for them a warm reception. And they _do_ come upon the Sabbath, and sleep, yea, snore as loud as if they were in their beds. Miss Catnip, a snappish old maid, once complained that “Deacon Snuffle’s wife snored so loud that she couldn’t get the least bit of rest.” My Aunt Tabitha is never absent from church. She has so constantly seated herself upon the same bench, that she has fairly impressed her own proportions there. She has one invariable reply to the parson’s oft repeated exhortations, “young people may die, old people must die.”

The parson wishes to do great things for all the benevolent operations of the day, but what do Droneville people know about benevolent operations? Instruct them? “Droneville people ar’nt to be instructed; they know a thing or two.” Besides, Droneville people are half inclined to think that “charity begins at home.” Turn them? You may turn a mule, when he has once “placed his foot down,” with a mule’s determination, but there is no turning _them_. They are as obstinate and headstrong as doctors of theology; coaxing and cuffs are equally unavailing.