Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 by Various

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Something about "warming his hands by thinking on the frosty Caucasus"
passed through Fred's mind, and some law of association impelled him to
look at the fire. It was queer enough, that, as many times as he had
looked at that fire by the hour together, he had never before noticed
its shape or expression. Only last night, he had watched it, dancing and
flickering just as it did now, and never once suspected the truth!

Mailed figures! Yes, plenty of them,--golden-helmeted and sworded like
the seraphim! A glorious band, gathering, twining, shooting past each
other,--jousting, tilting,--with blazing banners, and a field broader
than that of the "Cloth of Gold"; for this reached to and mingled with
the clouds--yea, tinted them with flame-color and roses,--and garlanded
the earth with crimson blossoms that nestled among her forests on the
far-off horizon. What a wide field, indeed! And how far might these
blazes and flames go, when once they set out? To the stars, perhaps.
Fred did not see what should stop them. The atmosphere might, possibly.
He must study that out.

Meanwhile how strangely far he could see! What a power it was! What a
new interest it gave to Nature! Nature, he must confess, had always
seemed rather flat to him, on the whole. He had always liked
the imitations better than the original,--pictures better than
people,--busts better than philosophers. But now the case is altered. He
has got what his friend Norris calls "glorification-spectacles." Now he
can have perpetual amusement. Why, it is vastly better than Asmodeus
peeping in at the tops of houses. By the same token, snow-flakes are
more interesting than humanity.

Speaking of snow-flakes, what does he see, but that she is evidently
yielding to the soft enchantment of the nearest flame-god,--drawn
thither by resistless affinity, and melting, in his burning arms, to
the most delicate vapor! Snow-flake no more, yet not absorbed nor lost!
Rather taking her true place, transported from the earth-tempests to a
warmer and higher sphere of action.

That might be, but not yet. In their new vaporous condition, in which
both had lost some of their prominent qualities, they had acquired new
relations, perhaps new duties. At all events, they did not at once
ascend to their kindred ether,--but swam, glided, floated, above
and around, and finally separated. Watching them keenly, Fred could
distinctly see that the sometime snow-flake left her sphere and came
gradually towards himself. As the vaporous shape floated nearer, it also
grew larger, so that, although Fred could not have said certainly that
the size was human, it relieved him from the impression of any fairy
or elf or sprite. No, it was nothing of that sort. It was just the
gentlest, calmest, serenest face and form in the world,--with the same
look of pure sweetness he had noticed on her first entrance,--with a
peculiar surprised look in her wide-open eyes, that he had seen but in
one human face. As well tell the truth,--the face, expression, and all,
were as like Annie Peyton's, as her portrait, drawn in water-colors,
could possibly have been.

The shape sat down by him,--her vaporous garment still folding softly
around her, and her clear, open eyes fixed on him. There was no need of
speech, for he read her face as if written by Heaven's own hand; and the
coarse and selfish philosophy which had sufficed partially to stun and
confuse Minnie fled at the presence of the spirit. Not a word still from
the calm, sweet face. It looked on him with pity and surprise. Then all
the ideas and convictions that throng on the mind warped, but not lost,
pressed on him. He hid his face in the sofa-cushions.

His presence of mind returned as a new thought struck him. It was an
ocular delusion, surely. He sprang up, took three or four turns across
the room, rubbed his eyes smartly, and took his seat again. For a moment
he would not look towards the chair. When at last he did look, the airy,
soft form was still there, looking steadily into his eyes.

"What an idea!" exclaimed he, impatiently. "I might put my hands through
it, like the flame of a candle. It is nothing but vapor. What is it made
of? Nothing but a snow-flake and the gas from cannel coal. I saw it,
myself, melting and falling together into this beautiful shape. But then
it is only a shape. It is not a body. Oh, but then it may be a soul! Who
knows what souls are made of? Snow-flakes and vapor, perhaps. Who knows
indeed?"

He looked about the room. Everything was in its natural and usual place.
The fire burned merrily; the wind swept fitfully without, and all
was quiet within. A very uncomfortable feeling, of mingled awe and
curiosity, took possession of him. He did not quite like to look at the
shape. He thought,--

"Can this be the spiritual body that St. Paul says is to supersede the
natural one? If this is indeed, the soul of Annie Peyton,--why, she
knows, somehow, what is in mine. And, by Jove! I can see her soul now,
too, without any trouble! She can't hide her real feelings now from me,
any more than I can my character from her. There's some good in it,
anyhow!"

With some effort, he raised his eyes,--very respectfully, indeed;
for though he was only about to look at a soul, he was full as much
overpowered as if it had been the body. His eyes fell.

"If I dared to look! But she knows how I feel. I suppose she sees me
now,--shivering from head to foot like a----Somehow, I can't look her
in the eyes. However, this won't do!" And he looked quickly and timidly
into the now smiling face.

He need not have been so timid. If a soul could discern evil, it could,
also, good; and this spirit was quick to see the last. Without a
word,--but when were words necessary to souls?--with only a glance, she
expressed so much love and pity for him, that Fred was ashamed to look
her in the face. "Oh! if she could really see him," he thought, "would
she look so?" Perhaps so. For the Intelligence that sees the evil
can clearest of all see the mitigations, the causes, and the sore
temptations; and the fruit of the widest knowledge is the widest love.

Something like this passed from the soul that sat opposite Fred into his
awakening and sensitive consciousness:--

"You have never tasted the pleasures of useful activity," the sweet face
said. "Come with me, and we will look together, and see what good may
come, and also what enjoyment, from it."

Now it was, for the first time, that Fred fully understood his position.
It came like a gleam of light on his puzzled intellect, and made that
quite clear which had before been so mystical and cloudy, that he had
been ready to rub his eyes, and to doubt, almost, the evidence of his
senses. He remembered his old and a thousand times repeated theory of
"projected images." Here it was. Instead of a fancy, a thought, here was
the whole of Annie Peyton's soul (which, to be sure, had often enough
occupied his mind) projected from his own, perhaps, so as to be a
subject of contemplation to his bodily eyes. Or, what was more likely,
the soul itself of Annie Peyton might have left her body for a time in
a dream. It was among the possibilities, though he had never before
believed it to be. But then, again, how could his soul go off on an
exploring tour with Annie's? His soul was safe in his body, and that,
namely, the body, lying on the sofa,--the room close, the window down.
Just then, he glanced toward the window, and remembered that he had not
fastened it at all. There was room enough for a soul to pass easily. But
then, again, how was his soul to pass,--to get out, in the first place,
of his body? Easily enough. The concentrated effort of will, which could
give shape to a fancy, and place it outside the eye, could, by sustained
action, separate all the perceptive powers from the senses,--in short,
the spirit from its envelope.

"To know, to perceive, to suffer, to rejoice, do not require skin and
bones. The heart weeps while the eye is dry; the lips smile while the
heart is breaking. One might have a conventional soul,--to keep house,
as it were, and do all the honors of society, while the real one went
abroad to regions of truth and beauty, and bathed in living waters!"

While Fred continued so to think and speculate, and also to separate,
and, as it were, classify his ideas, he was pleased to perceive,
that, without any very strong volition on his part, but only from the
analytical processes of his reason, that portion of his mind which
perceived and enjoyed the truth of things became condensed and separated
from the conventional, the factitious, and the merely sensual. The
qualities, or states, or whatever the metaphysician calls them, fell
off him, as garments do in a dream, and left himself, his very self,
separate, and a little distant, from his body. He perceived this rather
than saw it. He knew it, but could not assert it. The body, with its
bodily wants and limitations, leaned on the couch, half slumberously;
while the mind, himself, full of vague aspirations, keen intellectual
hunger, and overlaid with error, obstinacy, and the thick crust of
self-contemplation, which stifles all true progress,--these assimilated
qualities made himself, what he felt he was, not an attractive object to
himself more than to anybody else. All his perceptions pointed inward,
and cramped and narrowed his existence. He felt very, very small.

"This is strange," he reasoned, "that I should have such a sense of
contraction! I crowd on myself, as it were. My thoughts hit me, press
me, instead of elevating me. I cannot see why; for the habit of looking
up to no goodness or intelligence but the Supreme must surely be a good
one, and self-education and development the noblest process for a human
being."

He said this in a mechanical sort of way, as if it were a lesson he
remembered at school. But it made no impression on him, and did not
relieve his difficulty. He knew it, somehow, to be false, and felt
it falling off as he spoke, as if it were the last remnant of gauzy
sophistry.

Fred had never been fond of church-going, nor was he much given to
reading the Holy Scriptures. Indeed, he rather affected the style of the
Latter-Day Saints, who look for a better and nobler Messiah than came in
the Son of Mary. But just now, fifty texts of Scripture, which he must
have learned long ago at his mother's knee, came crowding upon his
memory.

"Though I have all gifts, and have not charity, I am nothing."

"He that is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he."

"He that loveth not his brother, whom he hath seen, how can he love God,
whom he hath not seen?"

"Little children, love one another."

"Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ."

And so on,--interminably. In a helpless, vague way, he looked at the
shadow by his side.

"You like pictures, and paint them," said she, speaking for the first
time;--and the voice was precisely the tone he had recognized in the
music of the wind; he had thought then it was like hers;--"look with me
at these two."

They were, indeed, magnificent pictures. They reached from floor to
ceiling. Fred was artist enough to enjoy fully the wide sweep of sky and
land,--the mountains in the distance, and the firmament studded with
stars. A figure wandered up and down the space, sometimes to the tops
of the mountains, sometimes to the clefts of the rocks. When he saw the
stars, he calculated their distances;--when he saw the moon, he weighed
her, and guessed about the atmosphere on the other side;--when the gold
and diamonds shone in the clefts of the rocks, he gathered and analyzed
them. The Leviathan he studied and classed. He groped and reached
constantly, and, having gathered, looked at his gatherings,
dissatisfied. He was ever searching out knowledge. Meanwhile, a gnat put
him in a passion, and unleavened bread destroyed his peace. Though he
might sleep on rose-leaves, as he could not command the wind, they came
often to double under him, and annoy him with bad dreams.

"When shall I be a disembodied spirit, and no longer subject to the
petty annoyances that belong to the flesh?" cried he, fretfully. "My
knowledge, too, is a moth,--only vexing me by a sense of the limitations
of my condition. If I could grasp Nature,--if I could handle the
stars,--if I could wake the thunder,--if I could summon the cloud! That
would be worth something,--to send the comets on their errands! But what
avails it, to know that they go?--how far from me when they start, and
how many millions of miles before they turn to come back? If I could
move only one of these subtile energies that mock me while I look them
in the face!"

The philosopher dozed. A storm came on, and swept over all creation.
When he awoke, it was clearing away, and one side of the heavens was
heaped with gold-lined clouds, and the darkness of the other spanned
with the seven-hued bow. He looked admiringly at the clouds and
critically at the rainbow, and added to his memorandum-book.

"What use?" said he, mournfully; "delicate dew, and refracted light!"

He continued to ponder and murmur, to explore, to ascertain, to grumble.
He had rheumatic pains, for the elements had no mercy on him; he rubbed
himself as he was able, and added to his stores of knowledge. He was
very, very learned. When he reached a shelter, he lay down. If no human
love welcomed him, and no gentle lip soothed him, he had self-culture,
especially in the sciences.

All this Fred knew as soon as he looked at him.

"If he were wise, he would not stop at knowledge, which is, of course,
unsatisfactory,--but dive beyond, as I have done, into the essence of
things," said Fred to himself. "If he could pierce through the veil that
covers all things, he would find amusement enough to last a lifetime. In
vegetable life, the jealousies and passions of flowers,--in the quiet
eventfulness of the mineral kingdom, to see forms of living beauty in
crystals,--finally, in all the under-mechanism of creation, what a
fund of enjoyment and instruction! I think I should never cease to be
delighted and entertained."

Fred glanced from the picture to the fireplace. The shovel and tongs
were just laughing at him; and though they composed their countenances
immediately, he had caught the expression, and was excessively annoyed.
Philosophy at length came to his aid, especially as the poker expressed
only profound deference, preserving a martial attitude and immovable
features. After all, why should he care for a pair of tongs? One must
cultivate phlegm, if one is a philosopher; and a shovel, after all, is
not so bad as a pretty woman. He heard the cool wind distinctly blowing
across the mountains in the picture, and saw the stars coming out again.
Then Fred knew he had been looking at a diorama, and that the exhibition
was over.

He heard a hearty laugh at a little distance, and perceived that the
picture, which at first had seemed to spread out over the whole wall,
was really divided into two parts, something like an exhibition he
remembered of dissolving views. This was delightful. The first picture
faded out into gloom, and gave place to a bright, cheerful room in the
third story of a house in the city. There were only two rooms,--this,
and a small anteroom. The furniture was simple, even poor. Through the
window the snow was seen falling, and the blaze flickered, in cheerful
contrast, on the hearth. A woman, neither young nor pretty, stood with
an astonished expression, and an elderly man laughed loudly, and sat
down before the fire.

"What in the world shall I do?" said the woman.

"Do, my dear?--why, bring me my dressing-gown"; said he, laughing again
so cheerily, that it was contagious; and as she brought the coarse
wadded garment he asked for, she laughed too.

"A pretty kettle of fish!" said she.

"Yes! Now what shall we do? Not a dollar in our pockets!"

"Nor a coat to your back!" broke in the woman.

Then they both laughed again, loudly and heartily.

Fred remembered now what they were laughing at. The man was a minister,
well known in Boston, and the woman was his wife. He had just come in,
running through the storm, and almost out of breath.

"Wife! my coat! Don't you see I am in my shirt-sleeves? I've got a
snow-bank on my back!"

"Why! where in the world--what have you done with your coat?"

"Oh! that I am almost ashamed to tell you; it seems such a parading sort
o' thing to do in the streets! But you may depend, I didn't stand at the
corners long, to be seen of men, in this driving storm! Fact was, wife,
I just took it off of my back, and gave it to poor old M'Carty;--he'd
nothing on but rags, and was fairly shaking with the cold. I knew I'd
another to home,--and what does a man want of two coats? One's enough
for anybody. Besides, didn't our Lord particularly tell his disciples
not to have but one? Say, now, wife!"

The wife looked blank and embarrassed.

"Well, wife! what now?"

"Only"----and she paused again.

"Only what? Out with it! You think it was silly! But, wife, you'd 'a'
done the same thing;--you couldn't 'a' helped it, nohow. Providence
seemed to 'a' cast him in my way o' purpose. I tell you, wife, it was as
plain-spoken as it could be,--'Be ye warmed!' Why, you'd 'a' done the
same thing, wife!"

"My goodness! I _have_ done it, husband! A man and his wife and three
little children came along, not half an hour ago, looking so miserable
and cold, that, as I thought, as you say, you had one coat, and that
was all you really needed, I just out with the other, and put it on the
man's back. The thankfullest creature you ever saw!"

And here the man had broken into the hearty laugh Fred heard.

When the man put on his dressing-gown, which was comfortable for the
fireside, the wife renewed her question. He answered with a bright
smile,--

"The Son of Man, my dear we know, had not where to lay his head; but
then he always trusted in God. God never fails his children. Thanks to
Him!" added he, reverently, and raising loving eyes to heaven, as if he
really spoke to somebody there,--"Thanks to Him! there's bountiful hands
and tender hearts, a plenty of 'em, in the city of Boston. I've only got
to strike, and the waters 'll flow out! yes,--rivers of water!"

The wife looked down, and said, meditatively, "It makes me think what
our dear Saviour said to poor Peter,--'O thou of little faith, wherefore
didst thou doubt?'"

The man answered in a clear, joyful tone, "Oh, you won't doubt more'n
half a minute to time, wife!--and I won't doubt at all!"

With that, the two aged Christians struck up a sweet Wesleyan melody;
and that, too, was in the same soft minor key that Fred had heard
singing through the gas-burner. They finished the little hymn, and
the woman scraped some corn from a cob into the corn-popper. In a few
minutes, she had filled a large bowl with the parched corn.

"I declare, they look like them hyacinths in the window,--don't they?
What a lovely white color!"

"I think, wife," answered the man, as he took a handful of the kernels
and looked at them, "this corn is a good deal like human nature. When
we're all shut up in ourselves, we're poor creatures;--but touch us with
the live coals of the Holy Spirit, and we turn out something refreshing.
Fact is, wife, we're good for nothing, till we're turned inside out."

The picture faded. It was a very homely one.

Fred turned to the soul by his side, but she was no longer visible.

"Escaped, somehow! I wonder, now, how?"

But he had scarcely spoken, when he saw, by a slight movement of the
door, that she must have gone out that way. It was just closing. With a
tremendous effort of will, he tried to follow her, but in vain. He
had been so much in the habit of looking after himself only, that his
untrained faculties refused to obey him. As a last resource, he sank
passively towards the form which still lay prone on the couch. How he
was again to join soul and body he could not guess. But, apparently,
there was no difficulty. The spirit which had called him out of himself,
for a little while, had departed, and, with her, both the power and the
desire of separation. He joined his sensuous existence with ease and
pleasure, and with no perceptible lapse of consciousness. No sooner had
he obtained the use of his tongue, than he made an inarticulate noise.
The door, which had been all that time swinging, opened again, and the
velvet-footed Martin appeared.

"Who went out, Martin?"

"Out of here, Sir? No one, Sir."

"Who opened the door, then?--What's that in your hand?"

"The chloroform, Sir, you just handed me."

"Just handed you?"

"Yes, Sir;--you gave it back to me not a quarter of a minute ago."

"Have I been asleep, Martin?"

"I should judge not, Sir. You didn't take more than two sniffs at the
bottle. I just had time to go to the door when you spoke to me."

"Martin,--is the window close?"

"Perfectly close, Sir."

"You may go."

* * * * *

PALFREY'S AND ARNOLD'S HISTORIES.[A]

[Footnote A: _History of New England during the Stuart Dynasty._ By John
Gorham Palfrey. Vol. I. Boston: Little, Brown, & Co. 1858. 8vo. pp. 638.

_History of the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations._ By
Samuel Greene Arnold & Co. 1859. 8vo. pp. 574.]

The London "Times," in its comments upon a recent desponding utterance
of foreboding for our republic, by President Buchanan, in his Fort
Duquesne Letter, affirms that the horizon of England is clearing while
our own is darkening. Mr. Bright, true to the omen of his name, thinks
better of our country. He seizes upon all fit occasions, as in his late
speech at Manchester, to hold up to his countrymen the opposite view,
so far at least as concerns our republic. He loves to recommend to
his constituents American notions and institutions. Perhaps it may be
allowed,--though this is hardly to be affirmed, if any decisive argument
depends upon it,--that the peculiar institutions, political and social,
of the two nations, have been on trial long enough, side by side,
through the same race of men and in the pursuit of the same interests,
to enable a wise discerner to strike the balance between them, in
respect to their efficiency and their security as intrusted with the
welfare and destiny of millions. If we can learn to look at the
large experiment in that light, all that helps to put the real issue
intelligently before us will be of equal interest to us, from whichever
side of the water it may present itself. For ourselves, we believe that
the best security against despair for our country is a knowledge of its
history. If the study of our annals does not train up patriots among us,
we must consent to lose our heritage. We are glad to be assured that our
historians do not intend to allow the republic to decay before they have
written out in full the tale of its life. Their records, well digested,
may prove to be the pledges of its vigor and permanence.

There are those in the land, who, for reasons suggested by President
Buchanan, and for others, of darker omen, to which he makes no
reference, do despair, or greatly fear. What with an honest hate of some
public iniquities among us,--the tolerance and strengthening of which
many of our politicians regard as the vital conditions of our national
existence,--and a dread of the excesses incident to our large liberty,
it is not strange that some of our own citizens should accord in
sentiment with the London "Times." Probably the same proportion of
persons may be now living among the native population of our national
soil, appeared at the era of the Revolution, preferring English
institutions to our own, and predicting that her government will outlast
our own. Discussions raised upon the present aspect of affairs in either
country will not settle the issue thus opened. A real knowledge of our
own institutions and a reasonable confidence in their permanence are
to be found only in an intelligent and very intimate acquaintance with
their growth and development. In our histories are to be found the
materials of our prophecies.

We welcome, therefore, with infinite satisfaction, the two admirable
volumes whose titles we have set down. For reasons which will appear
before we conclude our remarks upon them, we find it convenient to unite
their titles and to write about them together; but for distinctness of
subject and marked individuality in the mode of treatment, no two books
can stand more widely apart. Abilities and culture and aptitudes of the
very highest order have been brought to the composition of each of
them. An exhaustive use of abundant materials, and a most conscientious
fidelity in digesting them into high-toned philosophical narrations, are
marked features of both the volumes, and we will not venture upon the
ungracious office of instituting comparisons, in these respects, between
their authors. We must make a slight report of the story of each of
them, and of the method and spirit in which it is told, and then
confront them for mutual cross-examination.

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