Читать книгу: «The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 08, No. 47, September, 1861», страница 16
One only watched her breathing through the night,—he who for fifteen years had ministered to her with all the tenderness of a woman. It was a night devoid of suffering to her. As morning approached, and for two hours previous to the dread moment, she seemed to be in a partial ecstasy; and though not apparently conscious of the coming on of death, she gave her husband all those holy words of love, all the consolation of an oft-repeated blessing, whose value death has made priceless. Such moments are too sacred for the common pen, which pauses as the woman-poet raises herself up to die in the arms of her poet-husband. He knew not that death had robbed him of his treasure, until the drooping form grew chill and froze his heart's blood.
At half-past four, on the morning of the 29th of June, Elizabeth Barrett Browning died of congestion of the lungs. Her last words were, "It is beautiful!" God was merciful to the end, sparing her and hers the agony of a frenzied parting, giving proof to those who were left of the glory and happiness in store for her, by those few words, "It is beautiful!" The spirit could see its future mission even before shaking off the dust of the earth.
Gazing on her peaceful face with its eyes closed on us forever, our cry was her "Cry of the Human."
"We tremble by the harmless bed
Of one loved and departed;
Our tears drop on the lips that said
Last night, 'Be stronger-hearted!'
O God! to clasp those fingers close,
And yet to feel so lonely!
To see a light upon such brows,
Which is the daylight only!
Be pitiful, O God!"
On the evening of July 1st, the lovely English burying-ground without the walls of Florence opened its gates to receive one more occupant. A band of English, Americans, and Italians, sorrowing men and women, whose faces as well as dress were in mourning, gathered around the bier containing all that was mortal of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Who of those present will forget the solemn scene, made doubly impressive by the grief of the husband and son? "The sting of death is sin," said the clergyman. Sinless in life, her death, then, was without sting; and turning our thoughts inwardly, we murmured her prayers for the dead, and wished that they might have been her burial-service. We heard her poet-voice saying,—
"And friends, dear friends, when it shall be
That this low breath is gone from me,
And round my bier ye come to weep,
Let one most loving of you all
Say, 'Not a tear must o'er her fall,—
He giveth His beloved sleep.'"
But the tears would fall, as they bore her up the hill, and lowered "His beloved" into her resting-place, the grave. The sun itself was sinking to rest behind the western hills, and sent a farewell smile of love into the east, that it might glance on the lowering bier. The distant mountains hid their faces in a misty veil, and the tall cypress-trees of the cemetery swayed and sighed as Nature's special mourners for her favored child; and there they are to stand keeping watch over her.
"Oh, the little birds sang east, and the little birds sang west, Toll slowly! And I said in under-breath, All our life is mixed with death, And who knoweth which is best?
* * * * *
"Oh, the little birds sang east, and the little
birds sang west,
Toll slowly!
And I 'paused' to think God's greatness
flowed around our incompleteness,—
Round our restlessness, His rest."
Dust to dust,—and the earth fell with a dull echo on the coffin. We gathered round to take one look, and saw a double grave, too large for her;—may it wait long and patiently for him!
And now a mound of earth marks the spot where sleeps Elizabeth Barrett Browning. A white wreath to mark her woman's purity lies on her head; the laurel wreath of the poet lies at her feet; and friendly hands scatter white flowers over the grave of a week as symbols of the dead.
We feel as she wrote,—
"God keeps a niche
In heaven to hold our idols; and albeit
He brake them to our faces, and denied
That our close kisses should impair their white,
I know we shall behold them raised, complete,
The dust swept from their beauty, glorified,
New Memnons singing in the great God-light."
It is strange that Cavour and Mrs. Browning should have died in the same month, within twenty-three days of each other,—the one the head, the other the heart of Italy. As head and heart made up the perfect life, so death was not complete until Heaven welcomed both. It seemed also strange, that on the night after Mrs. Browning's decease an unexpected comet should glare ominously out of the sky. For the moment we were superstitious, and believed in it as a minister of woe.
Great as is this loss, Mrs. Browning's death is not without a sad consolation. From the shattered condition of her lungs, the physician feels assured that existence could not at the farthest have been prolonged for more than six months. Instead of a sudden call to God, life would have slowly ebbed away; and, too feeble for the slightest exertion, she must have been denied the solace of books, of friends, of writing, perhaps of thought even. God saved her from a living grave, and her husband from protracted misery. Seeking for the shadow of Mrs. Browning's self in her poetry, (for she was a rare instance of an author's superiority to his work,) many an expression is found that welcomes the thought of a change which would free her from the suffering inseparable from her mortality. There is a yearning for a more fully developed life, to be found most frequently in her sonnets. She writes at times as though, through weakness of the body, her wings were tied:—
"When I attain to utter forth in verse
Some inward thought, my soul throbs audibly
Along my pulses, yearning to be free,
And something farther, fuller, higher rehearse,
To the individual true, and the universe,
In consummation of right harmony!
But, like a wind-exposed, distorted tree,
We are blown against forever by the curse
Which breathes through Nature. Oh, the world is weak;
The effluence of each is false to all;
Add what we best conceive, we fail to speak!
Wait, soul, until thine ashen garments fall,
And then resume thy broken strains, and seek
Fit peroration without let or thrall!"
The "ashen garments" have fallen,—
"And though we must have and have had
Right reason to be earthly sad,
Thou Poet-God art great and glad!"
It was meet that Mrs. Browning should come home to die in her Florence, in her Casa Guidi, where she had passed her happy married life, where her boy was born, and where she had watched and rejoiced over the second birth of a great nation. Her heart-strings did not entwine themselves around Rome as around Florence, and it seems as though life had been so eked out that she might find a lasting sleep in Florence. Rome holds fast its Shelley and Keats, to whose lowly graves there is many a reverential pilgrimage; and now Florence, no less honored, has its shrine sacred to the memory of Theodore Parker and Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
The present Florence is not the Florence of other days. It can never be the same to those who loved it as much for Mrs. Browning's sake as for its own. Her reflection remains and must ever remain; for,
"while she rests, her songs in troops
Walk up and down our earthly slopes,
Companioned by diviner hopes."
The Italians have shown much feeling at the loss which they, too, have sustained,—more than might have been expected, when it is considered that few of them are conversant with the English language, and that to those few English poetry (Byron excepted) is unknown.
A battalion of the National Guard was to have followed Mrs. Browning's remains to the grave, had not a misunderstanding as to time frustrated this testimonial of respect. The Florentines have expressed great interest in the young boy, Tuscan-born, and have even requested that he should be educated as an Italian, when any career in the new Italy should be open to him. Though this offer will not be accepted, it was most kindly meant, and shows with what reverence Florence regards the name of Browning. Mrs. Browning's friends are anxious that a tablet to her memory should be placed in the Florentine Pantheon, the Church of Santa Croce. It is true she was not a Romanist, neither was she an Italian,—yet she was Catholic, and more than an Italian. Her genius and what she has done for Italy entitle her to companionship with Galileo, Michel Angelo, Dante, and Alfieri. The friars who have given their permission for the erection of a monument to Cavour in Santa Croce ought willingly to make room for a tablet on which should be inscribed,
SHE SANG THE SONG OF ITALY. SHE WROTE "AURORA LEIGH."
REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES
Edwin of Deira. By ALEXANDER SMITH. London: Macmillan & Co. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 16mo.
A third volume of verse by Alexander Smith certainly claims a share of public attention. We should not be at all surprised, if this, his latest venture, turn out his most approved one. The volcanic lines in his earlier pieces drew upon him the wrath of Captain Stab and many younger officers of justice, till then innocent of ink-shed. The old weapons will, no doubt, be drawn upon him profusely enough now. Suffice it for us, this month, if we send to the printer a taste of Alexander's last feast and ask him to "hand it round."
* * * * *
BERTHA
"So, in the very depth of pleasant May,
When every hedge was milky white, the lark
A speck against a cape of sunny cloud,
Yet heard o'er all the fields, and when his heart
Made all the world as happy as itself,—
Prince Edwin, with a score of lusty knights,
Rode forth a bridegroom to bring home his bride.
Brave sight it was to see them on their way,
Their long white mantles ruffling in the wind,
Their jewelled bridles, horses keen as flame
Crushing the flowers to fragrance as they moved!
Now flashed they past the solitary crag,
Now glimmered through the forest's dewy gloom,
Now issued to the sun. The summer night
Hung o'er their tents, within the valley pitched,
Her transient pomp of stars. When that had paled,
And when the peaks of all the region stood
Like crimson islands in a sea of dawn,
They, yet in shadow, struck their canvas town;
For Love shook slumber from him as a foe,
And would not be delayed. At height of noon,
When, shining from the woods afar in front,
The Prince beheld the palace-gates, his heart
Was lost in its own beatings, like a sound
In echoes. When the cavalcade drew near,
To meet it, forth the princely brothers pranced,
In plume and golden scale; and when they met,
Sudden, from out the palace, trumpets rang
Gay wedding music. Bertha, among her maids,
Upstarted, as she caught the happy sound,
Bright as a star that brightens 'gainst the night.
When forth she came, the summer day was dimmed;
For all its sunshine sank into her hair,
Its azure in her eyes. The princely man
Lord of a happiness unknown, unknown,
Which cannot all be known for years and years,—
Uncomprehended as the shapes of hills
When one stands in the midst! A week went by,
Deepening from feast to feast; and at the close,
The gray priest lifted up his solemn hands,
And two fair lives were sweetly blent in one,
As stream in stream. Then once again the knights
Were gathered fair as flowers upon the sward,
While in the distant chambers women wept,
And, crowding, blessed the little golden head,
So soon to lie upon a stranger's breast,
And light that place no more. The gate stood wide:
Forth Edwin came enclothed with happiness;
She trembled at the murmur and the stir
That heaved around,—then, on a sudden, shrank,
When through the folds of downcast lids she felt
Burn on her face the wide and staring day,
And all the curious eyes. Her brothers cried,
When she was lifted on the milky steed,
'Ah! little one, 't will soon be dark to-night!
A hundred times we'll miss thee in a day,
A hundred times we'll rise up to thy call,
And want and emptiness will come on us!
Now, at the last, our love would hold thee back!
Let this kiss snap the cord! Cheer up, my girl!
We'll come and see thee when thou hast a boy
To toss up proudly to his father's face,
To let him hear it crow!' Away they rode;
And still the brethren watched them from the door,
Till purple distance took them. How she wept,
When, looking back, she saw the things she knew—
The palace, streak of waterfall, the mead,
The gloomy belt of forest—fade away
Into the gray of mountains! With a chill
The wide strange world swept round her, and she clung
Close to her husband's side. A silken tent
They spread for her, and for her tiring-girls,
Upon the hills at sunset. All was hushed
Save Edwin; for the thought that Bertha slept
In that wild place,—roofed by the moaning wind,
The black blue midnight with its fiery pulse,—
So good, so precious, woke a tenderness
In which there lived uneasily a fear
That kept him still awake. And now, high up,
There burned upon the mountain's craggy top
Their journey's rosy signal. On they went;
And as the day advanced, upon a ridge,
They saw their home o'ershadowed by a cloud;
And, hanging but a moment on the steep,
A sunbeam touched it into dusty rain;
And, lo, the town lay gleaming 'mong the woods,
And the wet shores were bright. As nigh they drew,
The town was emptied to its very babes,
And spread as thick as daisies o'er the fields.
The wind that swayed a thousand chestnut cones,
And sported in the surges of the rye,
Forgot its idle play, and, smit with love,
Dwelt in her fluttering robe. On every side
The people leaped like billows for a sight,
And closed behind, like waves behind a ship.
Yet, in the very hubbub of the joy,
A deepening hush went with her on her way;
She was a thing so exquisite, the hind
Felt his own rudeness; silent women blessed
The lady, as her beauty swam in eyes
Sweet with unwonted tears. Through crowds she passed,
Distributing a largess of her smiles;
And as she entered through the palace-gate,
The wondrous sunshine died from out the air,
And everything resumed its common look.
The sun dropped down into the golden west,
Evening drew on apace; and round the fire
The people sat and talked of her who came
That day to dwell amongst them, and they praised
Her sweet face, saying she was good as fair.
"So, while the town hummed on as was its wont,
With mill, and wheel, and scythe, and lowing steer
In the green field,—while, round a hundred hearths,
Brown Labor boasted of the mighty deeds
Done in the meadow swaths, and Envy hissed
Its poison, that corroded all it touched,—
Rusting a neighbor's gold, mildewing wheat,
And blistering the pure skin of chastest maid,—
Edwin and Bertha sat in marriage joy,
From all removed, as heavenly creatures winged,
Alit upon a hill-top near the sun,
When all the world is reft of man and town
By distance, and their hearts the silence fills—
Not long: for unto them, as unto all,
Down from love's height unto the world of men
Occasion called with many a sordid voice.
So forth they fared with sweetness in their hearts,
That took the sense of sharpness from the thorn.
Sweet is love's sun within the heavens alone,
But not less sweet when tempered by a cloud
Of daily duties! Love's elixir, drained
From out the pure and passionate cup of youth,
Is sweet; but better, providently used,
A few drops sprinkled in each common dish
Wherewith the human table is set forth,
Leavening all with heaven. Seated high
Among his people, on the lofty dais,
Dispensing judgment,—making woodlands ring
Behind a flying hart with hound and horn,—
Talking with workmen on the tawny sands,
'Mid skeletons of ships, how best the prow
May slice the big wave and shake off the foam,—
Edwin preserved a spirit calm, composed,
Still as a river at the full of tide;
And in his eye there gathered deeper blue,
And beamed a warmer summer. And when sprang
The angry blood, at sloth, or fraud, or wrong,
Something of Bertha touched him into peace
And swayed his voice. Among the people went
Queen Bertha, breathing gracious charities,
And saw but smiling faces; for the light
Aye looks on brightened colors. Like the dawn
(Beloved of all the happy, often sought
In the slow east by hollow eyes that watch)
She seemed to husked find clownish gratitude,
That could but kneel and thank. Of industry
She was the fair exemplar, us she span
Among her maids; and every day she broke
Bread to the needy stranger at her gate.
All sloth and rudeness fled at her approach;
The women blushed and courtesied as she passed,
Preserving word and smile like precious gold;
And where on pillows clustered children's heads,
A shape of light she floated through their dreams."
History, Theory, and Practice of the Electric Telegraph. By GEORGE B. PRESCOTT, Superintendent of Electric Telegraph Lines. Boston: Ticknor and Fields. 1861. 12mo.
It may be safely said that no one of the wonder-working agencies of the nineteenth century, of an importance in any degree equal to that of the Electric Telegraph, is so little understood in its practical details by the world at large. Its results come before us daily, to satisfy our morning and evening appetite for news; but how few have a clear knowledge of even the simplest rules which govern its operation, to say nothing of the vast and complicated system by which these results are made so universal! The general intelligence, at present, doubtless outruns the dull apprehension of the typical Hibernian, who, in earlier telegraphic times, wasted the better part of a day in watching for the passage of a veritable letter over the wires; but even now,—after twenty years of Electric Telegraphy, during which the progress of the magic wire has been so rapid that it has already reached an extent of nearly sixty thousand miles in the United States alone,—even now the ideas of men in general as to the modus operandi of this great agency are, to say the least, extremely vague. Even the chronic and pamphlet-producing quarrel between the managers of our telegraphic system and their Briarean antagonist, the daily-newspaper-press, fails to convey to our general sense anything beyond the impression that the most gigantic benefits may be so abused as to tempt us into an occasional wish that they had never existed.
One reason of this general ignorance has been the absence of any text-book or manual on the subject, giving a clear and thorough exposition of its mysteries. The present is the first American work which takes the subject in hand from the beginning and carries it through the entire process which leads to the results we have spoken of. Its author brings to his work the best possible qualification,—a long familiarity with the subject in the every-day details of its development. His Introduction informs the reader that he has been engaged for thirteen years in the business of practical telegraphing. He is thus sure of his ground, from the best of sources, personal experience.
We shall not criticize the work in detail, but shall rest satisfied with saying that the author has succeeded in his design of making the whole subject clear to any reader who will follow his lucid and systematic exposition. The plan of the work is simple, and the arrangement orderly and proper. A concise statement is given of the fundamental principles of electricity, and of the means of its artificial propagation. This includes, of course, a description of the various batteries used in telegraphing. Then follows a chapter upon electro-magnetism and its application to the telegraph. This prepares the way for a statement of the physical conditions under which the electrical current may be conveyed. The author then describes the instruments necessary for the transmission and recording of intelligible signs, under which general head of "Electric Telegraph Apparatus" the various telegraphic systems are made the subject of careful description. A chapter is given to the history of each system,—the Morse, the Needle, the House, the Bain, the Hughes, the Combination, and others of less note. These chapters are very complete and very interesting, embodying, as they do, the history of each instrument, the details of its use, and a statement of its capabilities. The system most used in America is the Combination system, the printing instrument of which is the result of an ingenious combination of the most desirable qualities of the House and Hughes systems. Of this fine instrument a full-page engraving is given, which, with Mr. Prescott's careful explanation, renders the recording process very clear.
The next division of the work relates to subterranean and submarine telegraphic lines. Of this the greater portion is devoted to the Atlantic cable, the great success and the great failure of our time. The chapter devoted to this unfortunate enterprise gives the completest account of its rise, progress, and decline that we have ever seen. It seems to set at rest, so far as evidence can do it, the mooted question whether any message ever did really pass through the submerged cable,—a point upon which there are many unbelievers, even at the present day. We think these unbelievers would do well to read the account before us. Mr. Prescott informs us, that, from the first laying of the cable to the day when it ceased to work, no less than four hundred messages were actually transmitted: one hundred and twenty-nine from Valentia to Trinity Bay, and two hundred and seventy-one from Trinity Bay to Valentia. The curious reader may find copies of all these messages chronologically set down in this volume. Mr. Prescott expresses entire confidence in the restoration of telegraphic communication between the two hemispheres. It may be reasonably doubted, however, if direct submarine communication will ever be resumed. Two other routes are suggested as more likely to become the course of the international wires. One is that lately examined by Sir Leopold M'Clintock and Captain Young, under the auspices of the British Government. This route, taking the extreme northern coast of Scotland as its point of departure, and touching the Faroe Islands, Iceland, and Greenland, strikes our continent upon the coast of Labrador, making the longest submarine section eight hundred miles, about one-third the length of the Atlantic cable. There is not a little doubt, however, as to the practicability of this route; and as the British Government has already expended several hundred thousand pounds in experimenting upon submarine cables, it is not likely that it will venture much more upon any project not holding out a very absolute promise of success. What seems more likely is, that our telegraphic communication with Europe will be made eventually through Asia. Even now the Russian Government is vigorously pushing its telegraphic lines eastward from Moscow; and its own interest affords a strong guaranty that telegraphic communication will soon be established between its commercial metropolis and its military and trading posts on the Pacific border. A project has also recently taken form to establish a line between Quebec and the Hudson Bay Company's posts north of the Columbia River. With the two extremes so near meeting, a submarine wire would soon be laid over Behring's Straits, or crossing at a more southern point and touching the Aleutian Islands in its passage.
Two of the chapters of this work will be recognized by readers of the "Atlantic" as having first appeared in its pages,—a chapter upon the Progress and Present Condition of the Electric Telegraph in the various countries of the world, and a description of the Electrical Influence of the Aurora Borealis upon the Working of the Telegraph. These, with a curiously interesting chapter upon the Various Applications of the Telegraph, and an amusing miscellaneous chapter showing that the Telegraph has a literature of its own, complete the chief popular elements of the volume. The remainder is devoted mainly to a technical treatise on the proper method of constructing telegraphic lines, perfecting insulation, etc. In an Appendix we have a more careful consideration of Galvanism, and a more detailed examination of the qualities and capacities of the various batteries.
As is becoming in any, and especially in an American, treatise upon this great subject, Mr. Prescott devotes some space to a detailed account of the labors of Professor Morse, which have led to his being regarded as the father of our American system of telegraphing. In a chapter entitled "Early Discoveries in Electro-Dynamics," he publishes for the first time some interesting facts elicited during the trial, in the Supreme Court of the United States, of the suit of the Morse patentees against the House Company for alleged infringement of patent. In this chapter we have a résumé of the evidence before the Court, and an abstract of the decision of Judge Woodbury. This leads clearly to the conclusion, that, although Professor Morse had no claims to any merit of actual invention, yet he had the purely mechanical merit of having gone beyond all his compeers in the application of discoveries and inventions already made, and that he was the first to contrive and set in operation a thoroughly effective instrument.
Mr. Prescott has produced a very readable and useful book. It has been thoroughly and appropriately illustrated, and is a very elegant specimen of the typographer's art.
Great Expectations. By CHARLES DICKENS. Philadelphia: T.B. Peterson & Brothers. 8vo.
The very title of this book indicates the confidence of conscious genius. In a new aspirant for public favor, such a title might have been a good device to attract attention; but the most famous novelist of the day, watched by jealous rivals and critics, could hardly have selected it, had he not inwardly felt the capacity to meet all the expectations he raised. We have read it, as we have read all Mr. Dickens's previous works, as it appeared in instalments, and can testify to the felicity with which expectation was excited and prolonged, and to the series of surprises which accompanied the unfolding of the plot of the story. In no other of his romances has the author succeeded so perfectly in at once stimulating and baffling the curiosity of his readers. He stirred the dullest minds to guess the secret of his mystery; but, so far as we have learned, the guesses of his most intelligent readers have been almost as wide of the mark as those of the least apprehensive. It has been all the more provoking to the former class, that each surprise was the result of art, and not of trick; for a rapid review of previous chapters has shown that the materials of a strictly logical development of the story were freely given. Even after the first, second, third, and even fourth of these surprises gave their pleasing electric shocks to intelligent curiosity, the dénouement was still hidden, though confidentially foretold. The plot of the romance is therefore universally admitted to be the best that Dickens has ever invented. Its leading events are, as we read the story consecutively, artistically necessary, yet, at the same time, the processes are artistically concealed. We follow the movement of a logic of passion and character, the real premises of which we detect only when we are startled by the conclusions.
The plot of "Great Expectations" is also noticeable as indicating, better than any of his previous stories, the individuality of Dickens's genius. Everybody must have discerned in the action of his mind two diverging tendencies, which, in this novel, are harmonized. He possesses a singularly wide, clear, and minute power of accurate observation, both of things and of persons; but his observation, keen and true to actualities as it independently is, is not a dominant faculty, and is opposed or controlled by the strong tendency of his disposition to pathetic or humorous idealization. Perhaps in "The Old Curiosity Shop" these qualities are best seen in their struggle and divergence, and the result is a magnificent juxtaposition of romantic tenderness, melodramatic improbabilities, and broad farce. The humorous characterization is joyously exaggerated into caricature,—the serious characterization into romantic unreality, Richard Swiveller and Little Nell refuse to combine. There is abundant evidence of genius both in the humorous and the pathetic parts, but the artistic impression is one of anarchy rather than unity.
In "Great Expectations," on the contrary, Dickens seems to have attained the mastery of powers which formerly more or less mastered him. He has fairly discovered that he cannot, like Thackeray, narrate a story as if he were a mere looker-on, a mere "knowing" observer of what he describes and represents; and he has therefore taken observation simply as the basis of his plot and his characterization. As we read "Vanity Fair" and "The Newcomes," we are impressed with the actuality of the persons and incidents. There is an absence both of directing ideas and disturbing idealizations. Everything drifts to its end, as in real life. In "Great Expectations" there is shown a power of external observation finer and deeper even than Thackeray's; and yet, owing to the presence of other qualities, the general impression is not one of objective reality. The author palpably uses his observations as materials for his creative faculties to work upon; he does not record, but invents; and he produces something which is natural only under conditions prescribed by his own mind. He shapes, disposes, penetrates, colors, and contrives everything, and the whole action, is a series of events which could have occurred only in his own brain, and which it is difficult to conceive of as actually "happening." And yet in none of his other works does he evince a shrewder insight into real life, and a clearer perception and knowledge of what is called "the world." The book is, indeed, an artistic creation, and not a mere succession of humorous and pathetic scenes, and demonstrates that Dickens is now in the prime, and not in the decline of his great powers.
