"Again mine eyes were opened ;- By shadowed lake and winding stream The howling demons quaked to hear I saw along the winter snow And high above their broken ranks The light of Heaven's own kindling "Once more;-the strife is ended, The solemn issue tried, The Lord of Hosts, his mighty arm "A crash,-as when some swollen cloud Whose thunders strive to quell "O trembling Faith! though dark the morn, A heavenly torch is thine; While feebler races melt away, And paler orbs decline, Still shall the fiery pillar's ray To light the chosen tribe that sought "I see the living tide roll on ; It crowns with flaming towers The icy capes of Labrador, The Spaniard's land of flowers!' He ceased, the grim old Puritan,—-- The pilgrim-child whose wasting face From cheeks that never changed in woe, The weary pilgrim slumbers, His resting-place unknown; His hands were crossed, his lids were closed, The drifting soil, the mouldering leaf, His mound has melted into earth, So let it live unfading, The memory of the dead, Springs where their tears were shed, The wild rose sprinkles with its leaves Yea, when the frowning bulwarks One hoary rock shall stand, HERE WAS THE PILGRIM'S LAND! Since our previous notice was closed, in 1855, Dr. Holmes has struck out an entirely new vein of popular literature, in his admirable series of prose articles in the Atlantic Monthly. Boston had been for a long time without any journal of a general literary interest, to serve as a repository for the miscellaneous writings of its many men of wit and refined scholars, when that periodical was commenced, at the end of the year 1857. Fortunately for its success, Dr. Holmes was enlisted at the start as a contributor. His reputation with the public was chiefly that of a poet and lecturer; few, perhaps, were prepared to anticipate his rapid development in a new walk of composition. He began his articles with the revival of a title which he had given twenty-five years before to a couple of pleasant papers in Buckingham's New England Magazine, The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. At first the device appeared a mere vehicle for the delivery of various opinions and observations, wittily expressed, on the conversational topics of the day; but as the author, encouraged by the applause of the public, proceeded, his work assumed something more of a dramatic nature, and the slight sketches of character took form and consistency. Before he got through even with this first series, it was evident that the humorous essayist was fast crystallizing into a sufficiently profound novelist. By a few simple touches, he brought out in strong relief several characters about the breakfast table, who somehow became present to our minds when they had served their immediate purpose as interlocutors, in breaking and giving new impulse to the stream of the autocrat's monologue. The divinity student, the schoolmistress, the poor relation, the landlady's daughter, our Benjamin Franklin," and especially "the young fellow called John," were as distinct as if they had been introduced to our notice with the formal regularity of Mr. James's two horsemen, or any other duly authenticated heroes of romance. In fact, the Doctor's essays had become a book of more unity and felicity of construction than ninety-nine out of a hundred of the volumes laying claim to that title. When it was published, at the end of the year, with illustrations of the dramatis persona, by Hoppin, the public read it with avidity, and naturally asked for more. To the Autocrat then succeeded in the magazine The Professor at the Breakfast Table, a thought graver in its matter, with a decided leaning to theological discussion. with an infusion of liberal principles, and a deeper pathos and interest in the romance of "Iris," and a quaint personage entitled "Little Boston, creation dedicated to the pride and antiquity of that renowned city. Some of the previous characters of the "Autocrat " appeared in company with the "Professor," and the monthly instalment, as usual, was enlivened or rendered pathetic by a humorous or serious copy of verses. a was delivered before the Massachusetts Medical In February, 1862, Dr. Holmes communicated This second series of papers having run their annual course in the magazine, and, like their predecessors, been gathered into a volume, the author next commenced, in the same journal, The Professor's Story, which, on its conclusion, was published with the new title, Elsie Venner : a Romance of Destiny. It was an advance of the writer into the regular domain of the novelist, with a greater dependence upon plot and character than in any of his previous writings. The story turns upon a curious physiological condition. A daughter inherits the traits of the rattlesnake, infused into her system from her mother, who had been bitten by that poisonous reptile when the birth of the child was expected. The development of the strange, wayward impulses consequent upon this taint, in the midst of the society of a New England village, the seat of a ladies' academy, and filled with the usual employments, religious and social, of such assemblages of country people, supplies the material of the tale. As a shrewd sketch of social life, in the region where the scene is laid, the book has extraordinary merits. Its characters are clearly perceived and discriminated, and strongly drawn. The style is eminently bright, yet pure and simple, excellent in straightforward narrative, idiomatic in dialogue, and an admirable vehicle for the frequently witty or half-satirical turn of observation and reflection. Like all the great novelists, the author is a bit of a reformer in his work. He has been a close student of human nature, and particularly of New England human nature; he brings also a professional microscopic insight into his study of manners and character. The result is, that his pictures have an air of truth and originality. In spite of the allowance for the problematical condition of the heroine, it may be questioned whether America has produced a more real, life-like work of fiction than Elsie Venner--certainly none which has been more happily relieved by wit and humor. Shortly after the publication of this last work, Dr. Holmes, in 1861, issued a collection of his professional writings, with the title, Currents and Counter-currents in Medical Science, with other Addresses and Essays. Its leading paper is an address bearing the name, "Currents and Counter-currents in Medical Science," which During the recent civil war, Dr. Holmes wrote a number of spirited war lyrics, which did much to animate the national heart in the prolonged struggle. He has also, from time to time, published other occasional poems, which have been incorporated in several new editions of his poetical works, recently issued by Messrs. Ticknor & Fields. **The later writings of Oliver Wendell Holmes show the same gifts of versatility, and the oldtime fascination, whether his pen chance to be that of the poet, humorist, philosophic moralist, or exact scientific practitioner. Soundings from the Atlantic, published in 1864, divided its ten articles between topics of war times, chief of which was "My Hunt After the Captain," and pencillings on scientific themes. It was followed by Border Lines in some Provinces of Medical Science; and in 1871 appeared a kindred essay on Mechanism in Thought and Morals. This thoughtful exposition of the functions of the brain, was originally delivered as an address before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Harvard, and was printed with notes and after-thoughts. Dr. Holmes gave the public another story of New England in 1867, The Guardian Angel a natural sequence to Elsie Venner, wherein, on a ground-plan of commonplace village-life made attractive by his shrewd and witty delineations of character, he worked out a philosophic purpose of exhibiting "successive developments of inherited bodily aspects and habitudes," specially trenching on some of the mysterious phases of hysteria. A relief to the sober shades of the story is given in the droll sketch of Gifted Hopkins, the village poet, or rather rhymester. The Poet at the Breakfast Table, issued in 1873, completed the series of the most brilliant and well-sustained magazine articles written in America. It had to do more with various phases of professional life, and illustrated the peculiar effects of occupations on the personal thoughts and manners. Before laying down the pen, Dr. Holmes wrote: "I have unburdened myself in this book, and in some other pages, of what I was born to say. Many th things that I have said in my riper days have been aching in my soul since I was a mere child. I say aching, because they conflicted with many of my inherited beliefs, or rather traditions. I did not know then that two strains of blood were striving in me for the mastery-two! twenty, perhaps twenty thousand, for aught I know but represented to me by two paternal and maternal. But I do know this: I have struck a good many chords, first and last, in the consciousness of other people. I confess to a tender feeling for my little brood of thoughts. When they have been welcomed and praised, it has pleased me; and if at any time they have been rudely handled and despitefully treated, it has cost me a litle worry, I don't despise reputation, and I should like to be remembered as having said something worth lasting well enough to last." THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST TABLE. At my left hand sits as singular-looking a human being as I remember seeing outside of a regular museum or tent-show. His black coat shines as if it had been polished; and it has been polished on the wearer's back, no doubt, for the arms and other points of maximum attrition are particularly smooth and bright. Round shoulders, stooping over some minute labor, I suppose. Very slender limbs, with bends like a grasshopper's; sits a great deal, I presume; looks as if he might straighten them out all of a sudden, and jump instead of walking. Wears goggles very commonly; says it rests his eyes, which he strains in looking at very small objects. Voice has a dry creak, as if made by some small piece of mechanism that wanted oiling. I don't think he is a botanist, for he does not smell of dried herbs, but carries a camphorated atmosphere about with him, as if to keep the moths from attacking him. I must find out what is his particular interest. One ought to know something about his immediate neighbors at the table. This is what I said to myself, before opening a conversation with him. Everybody in our ward of the city was in a great stir about a certain election, and I thought I might as well begin with that as anything. -I mean the election to the Presidency of the Entomological Society, sir, he creaked, with an air of surprise, as if nobody could by any possibility have been thinking of any other. Great competition, sir, between the dipterists and the lepidopterists as to which shall get in their candidate. Several close ballotings already; adjourned for a fortnight. Poor concerns both of em. Wait till our turn comes. -I suppose you are an entomologist? -- I said with a note of interrogation. Not quite so ambitious as that, sir. I should like to put my eyes on the individual entitled to that name! A society may call itself an Entomological Society, but the man who arrogates such a broad title as that to himself, in the present state of science, is a pretender, sir, a dilettante, an impostor! No man can be truly called an entomologist, sir; the subject is too vast for any single human intelligence to grasp. May I venture to ask, I said, a little awed by his statement and manner, what is your special province of study? he I am often spoken of as a Coleopterist, said, but I have no right to so comprehensive a name. The genus Scarabæus is what I have chiefly confined myself to, and ought to have studied exclusively. The beetles proper are quite enough for the labor of one man's life. Call me a Scarabeeist if you will; if I can prove myself worthy of that name, my highest ambition will be more than satisfied. I think, by way of compromise and convenience, I shall call him the Scarabee. He has come to look wonderfully like those creatures, the beetles, I mean, by being so much among them. His room is hung round with cases of them, each impaled on a pin driven through him, something as they used to bury suicides. These cases take the place for him of pictures and all other ornaments. That Boy steals into his room sometimes, and stares at them with great admiration, and has himself undertaken to form a rival cabinet, chiefly consisting of flies, so far, arranged in ranks superintended by an occasional spider. The Old Master, who is a bachelor, has a kindly feeling for this little monkey, and those of his kind. --I like children, --he said to me one day at table,—I like 'em, and I respect 'em. Pretty much all the honest truth-telling there is in the world is done by them. Do you know they play the part in the household which the king's jester, who very often had a mighty long head under his cap and bells, used to play for a monarch? There's no radical club like a nest of little folks in a nursery. Did you ever watch a baby's fingers? I have, often enough, though I never knew what it was to own one. - The Master paused half a minute or so, sighed, --perhaps at thinking what he had missed in life, --looked up at me a little vacantly. I saw what was the matter; he had lost the thread of his talk. Baby's fingers, I intercalated. -- Yes, yes; did you ever see how they will poke those wonderful little fingers of theirs into every fold and crack and crevice they can get at? That is their first education, feeling their way into the solid facts of the material world. When they begin to talk it is the same thing over again in another shape. If there is a crack or a flaw in your answer to their confounded shoulder-hitting questions, they will poke and poke until they have got it gaping just as the baby's fingers have made a rent out of that atom of a hole in his pinafore that your old eyes never took notice of. Then they make such fools of us by copying on a small scale what we do in the grand manner. I wonder if it ever occurs to our dried-up neighbor there to ask himself whether That Boy's collection of flies is n't about as significant in the Order of Things as his own Museum of Beetles? -I could n't help thinking that perhaps That Boy's questions about the simpler mysteries of life might have a good deal of the same kind of significance as the Master's inquiries into the Order of Things. O, indeed, no!-I am not ashamed to make you laugh, occasionally. I think I could read you something I have in my desk which would probably make you smile. Perhaps I will read it one of these days, if you are patient with me when I am sentimental and reflective; not just now. The ludicrous has its place in the universe; it is not a human invention, but one of the Divine ideas, illustrated in the practical jokes of kittens and monkeys long before Aristophanes or Shakespeare. How curious it is that we always consider solemnity and the absence of all gay surprises and encounter of wits as essential to the idea of the future life of those whom we thus deprive of half their faculties and then call blessed! There are not a few who, even in this life, seem to be preparing themselves for that smileless eternity to which they look forward, by banishing all gayety from their hearts and all joyousness from their countenances. I meet one such in the street not unfrequently, a person of intelligence and education, but who gives me (and all that he passes) such a rayless and chilling look of recognition, something as if he were one of Heaven's assessors, come down to "doom" every acquaintance he met, that I have sometimes begun to sneeze on the spot, and gone home with a violent cold, dating from that instant. I don't doubt he would cut his kitten's tail off, if he caught her playing with it. Please tell me, who taught her to play with it? No, no! give me a chance to talk to you, my fellow-boarders, and you need not be afraid that I shall have any scruples about entertaining you, if I can do it, as well as giving you some of my serious thoughts, and perhaps my sadder fancies. I know nothing in English or any other literature more admirable than that sentiment of Sir Thomas Browne: EVERY MAN TRULY LIVES, SO LONG AS HE ACTS HIS NATURE, OR SOME WAY MAKES GOOD THE FACULTIES OF HIMSELF. I find the great thing in this world is, not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving. To reach the port of heaven, we must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it, but we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor. There is one very sad thing in old friendships, to every mind that is really moving onward. it is this: that one cannot help using his early friends as the seaman uses the log, to mark his progress. Every now and then we throw an old schoolmate over the stern with a string of thought tied to him, and look I am afraid with a kind of luxurious and sanctimonious compassion -to see the rate at which the string reels off, while he lies there bobbing up and down, poor fellow! and we are dashing along with the white foam and bright sparkle at our bows; the ruffled bosom of prosperity and progress, with a sprig of diamonds stuck in it! But this is only the sentimental side of the matter; for grow we must, if we outgrow all that we love. Some Don't misunderstand that metaphor of heaving the log, I beg you. It is merely a smart way of saying that we cannot avoid measuring our rate of movement by those with whom we have long been in the habit of comparing ourselves; and when they once become stationary, we can get our reckoning from them with painful accuracy. We see just what we were when they were our peers, and can strike the balance between that and whatever we may feel ourselves to be now. No doubt we may sometimes be mistaken. If we change our last simile to that very old and familiar one of a fleet leaving the harbor and sailing in company for some distant region, we can get what we want out of it. There is one of our companions;her streamers were torn into rags before she had got into the open sea, then by and by her sails blew out of the ropes one after another, the waves swept her deck, and as night came on we left her a seeming wreck, as we flew under our pyramid of canvas. But lo! at dawn she is still in sight, it may be in advance of us. deep ocean-current has been moving her on, strong, but silent, yes, stronger than these noisy winds that puff our sails until they are swollen as the cheeks of jubilant cherubim. And when at last the black steam-tug with the skeleton arms, which comes out of the mist sooner or later and takes us all in tow, grapples her and goes off panting and groaning with her, it is to that harbor where all wrecks are refitted, and where, alas! we, towering in our pride, may never come. So you will not think I mean to speak lightly of old friendships, because we cannot help instituting comparisons between our present and former selves by the aid of those who were what we were, but are not what we are. Nothing strikes one more, in the race of life, than to see how many give out in the first half of the course. "Commencement day" always reminds me of the start for the "Derby," when the beautiful highbred three-year olds of the season are brought up for trial. That day is the start, and life is the race. Here we are at Cambridge, and a class is just "graduating." Poor Harry! he was to have been there too, but he has paid forfeit; step out here into the grass back of the church; ah! there it is:"HUNC LAPIDEM POSUERUNT SOCII MERENTES. But this is the start, and here they are, coats bright as silk, and manes as smooth as eau lustrale can make them. Some of the best of the colts are pranced round, a few minutes each, to show their paces. What is that old gentleman crying about? and the old lady by him, and the three girls, what are they all covering their eyes for? O, that is their colt which has just been trotted up on the stage. Do they really think those little thin legs can do anything in such a slashing sweepstakes as is coming off in these next forty years? O, this terrible gift of second-sight that comes to some of us when we begin to look through the silvered rings of the arcus senilis! Ten gears gone. First turn in the race. A few broken down; two or three bolted. Several show in advance of the ruck. Cassock, a black colt, seems to be ahead of the rest; those black colts commonly get the start, I have noticed, of the others, in the first quarter. Meteor has pulled up. Twenty years. Second corner turned. Cassock has dropped from the front, and Judex, an irongray, has the lead. But look! how they have thinned out! Down flat, five, six, how many? They lie still enough! they will not get up again in this race, be very sure! And the rest of them, what a "tailing off"! Anybody can see who is going to win, perhaps. Thirty years. Third corner turned. Dives, bright sorrel, ridden by the fellow in a yellow jacket, begins to make play fast; is getting to be the favorite with many. But who is that other one that has been lengthening his stride from the first, and now shows close up to the front? Don't you remember the quiet brown colt Asteroid, with the star in his forehead? That is he; he is one of the sort that lasts; look out for him! The black colt," as we used to call him, is in the background, taking it easily in a gentle trot. There is one they used to call the Filly, on account of a certain feminine air he had; well up, you see; the Filly is not to be despised, my boy! Forty years. More dropping off, but places much as before. Fifty years. Race over. All that are on the course are coming in at a walk; no more running. Who is ahead? Ahead? What! and the winningpost a slab of white or gray stone standing out from that turf where there is no more jockeying or straining for victory! Well, the world marks their places in its betting-book; but be sure that these matter very little, if they have run as well as they knew how! THE BRAIN FROM THE AUTOCRAT. Our brains are seventy-year clocks. The Angel of Life winds them up once for all, then closes the case, and gives the key into the hand of the Angel of the Resurrection. Tic-tac! tic-tac! go the wheels of thought; our will cannot stop them; they cannot stop themselves; sleep cannot still them; madness only makes them go faster; death alone can break into the case, and, seizing the ever-swinging pendulum, which we call the heart, silence at last the clicking of the terrible escapement we have carried so long beneath our wrinkled foreheads. If we could only get at them, as we lie on our pillows and count the dead beats of thought after thought and image after image jarring through the overtired organ! Will nobody block those wheels, uncouple that pinion, cut the string that holds those weights, blow up the infernal machine with gunpowder? What a passion comes over us sometime for silence and rest! that this dreadful mechanism, unwinding the endless tapestry of time, embroidered with spectral figures of life and death, could have but one brief holiday! Who can wonder that men swing themselves off from beams in hempen lassos? that they jump off from parapets into the swift and gurgling waters beneath? that they take counsel of the grim friend who has but to utter his one peremptory monosyllable and the restless machine is shivered as a vase that is dashed upon a marble floor? Under that building which we pass every day there are strung dungeons, where neither hook, nor bar, nor bed-cord, nor drinking-vessel from which a sharp fragment may be shattered, shall by any chance be seen. There is nothing for it, when the brain is on fire with the whirling of its wheels, but to spring against the stone wall and silence them with one crash. Ah, they remembered that, the kind city fathers, and the walls are nicely padded, so that one can take such exercise as he likes without damaging himself on the very plain and serviceable upholstery. If anybody would only contrive some kind of a lever that one could thrust in among the works of this horrid automaton and check them, or alter their rate of going, what would the world give for the discovery? **THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS. This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign, The venturous bark that flings On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair. Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl; And every chambered cell, Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell, As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell, Before thee lies revealed, Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed! He left the past year's dwelling for the new, Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no more. Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee, Child of the wandering sea, Cast from her lap forlorn! From thy dead lips a clearer note is born. Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings: Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, Leave thy low-vaulted past! Let each new temple, nobler than the last, Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea! |