University of Virginia Library

MINUTE PHILOSOPHIES.

A summer or two since, I was wasting a college vacation
among the beautiful creeks and falls in the
neighborhood of New York. In the course of my
wanderings, up-stream and down-stream, sometimes
on foot, sometimes on horseback, and never without
a book for an excuse to loiter on the mossy banks and
beside the edge of running water, I met frequently a
young man of a peculiarly still and collected eye, and
a forehead more like a broad slab of marble than a human
brow. His mouth was small and thinly cut; his
chin had no superfluous flesh upon it; and his whole
appearance was that of a man whose intellectual nature
prevailed over the animal. He was evidently a
scholar. We had met so frequently at last, that, on
passing each other one delicious morning, we bowed
and smiled simultaneously, and, without further introduction,
entered into conversation.

It was a temperate day in August, with a clear but
not oppressive sun, and we wandered down a long

creek together, mineralizing here, botanizing there,
and examining the strata of the ravines, with that sort
of instinctive certainty of each other's attainments
which scholars always feel, and thrusting in many a
little wayside parenthesis, explanatory of each other's
history and circumstances. I found that he was one
of those pure and unambitious men, who, by close
application and moderate living while in college, become
in love with their books; and, caring little for
anything more than the subsistence, which philosophy
tells them is enough to have of this world, settle down
for life into a wicker-bottomed chair, more contentedly
than if it were the cushion of a throne.

We were together three or four days, and when I
left him, he gave me his address, and promised to write
to me. I shall give below an extract from one of his
letters. I had asked him for a history of his daily
habits, and any incidents which he might choose to
throw in—hinting to him that I was a dabbler in literature,
and would be obliged to him if he would do it
minutely, and in a form of which I might avail myself
in the way of publication.

After some particulars, unimportant to the reader,
he proceeds:—

“I keep a room at a country tavern. It is a quiet,
out-of-the-way place, with a whole generation of elms
about it; and the greenest grass up to the very door,
and the pleasantest view in the whole country round
from my chamber-window. Though it is a public
house, and the word `HOTEL' swings in golden capitals
under a landscape of two hills and a river, painted
for a sign by some wandering Tinto, it is so orderly a
town, that not a lounger is ever seen about the door;
and the noisiest traveller is changed to a quiet man, as
if it were by the very hush of the atmosphere.

“Here, in my pleasant room, upon the second floor,
with my round table covered with choice books, my
shutters closed just so much as to admit light enough
for a painter, and my walls hung with the pictures
which adorned my college chambers, and are therefore
linked with a thousand delightful associations—I
can study my twelve hours a day, in a state of mind
sufficiently even and philosophical. I do not want for
excitement. The animal spirits, thanks to the Creator,
are enough at all times, with employment and
temperate living, to raise us above the common shadows
of life; and after a day of studious confinement,
when my mind is unbound, and I go out and give it
up to reckless association, and lay myself open unreservedly
to the influences of nature—at such a time,
there comes mysteriously upon me a degree of pure
joy, unmingled and unaccountable, which is worth
years of artificial excitement. The common air seems
to have grown rarer; my step is strangely elastic; my
sense of motion full of unwonted dignity; my thoughts
elevated; my perceptions of beauty acuter and more
pleasurable; and my better nature predominant and
sublime. There is nothing in the future which looks
difficult, nothing in my ambition unattainable, nothing
in the past which can not be reconciled with good: I
am a purer and a better man; and though I am elevated
in my own thoughts, it will not lead to vanity,
for my ideas of God, and of my fellow-men, have been
enlarged also. This excitement ceases soon; but it
ceases like the bubbling of a fountain, which leaves
the waters purer for the influence which has passed
through them—not like the mirth of the world, which
ebbs like an unnatural tide, and leaves loathsomeness
and disgust.

“Let no one say that such a mode of life is adapted
to peculiar constitutions, and can be relished by those
only. Give me the veriest worldling—the most devoted,
and the happiest of fashionable ephemera, and
if he has material for a thought, and can take pride
in the improvement of his nature, I will so order his
daily round, that, with temperance and exercise, he
shall be happier in one hour spent within himself,
than in ten wasted on folly.

“Few know the treasures in their own bosoms—
very few the elasticity and capacity of a well-regulated
mind for enjoyment. The whole world of philosophers,
and historians, and poets, seem, to the secluded
student, but to have labored for his pleasure; and as
he comes to one new truth and beautiful thought after
another, there answers a chord of joy, richer than
music, in his heart—which spoils him for the coarser
pleasures of the world. I have seen my college chum
—a man, who, from a life of mingled business and
pleasure, became suddenly a student—lean back in his
chair, at the triumph of an argument, or the discovery
of a philosophical truth, and give himself up for a few
moments to the enjoyment of sensations, which, he
assured me, surpassed exceedingly the most vivid
pleasures of his life. The mind is like the appetite—
when healthy and well-toned, receiving pleasure from
the commonest food; but becoming a disease, when
pampered and neglected. Give it time to turn in upon
itself, satisfy its restless thirst for knowledge, and it
will give birth to health, to animal spirits, to everything
which invigorates the body, while it is advancing
by every step the capacities of the soul. Oh! if
the runners after pleasure would stoop down by the
wayside, they might drink waters better even than
those which they see only in their dreams. They will
not be told that they have in their possession the golden
key which they covet; they will not know that the
music they look to enchant them, is sleeping in their
own untouched instruments; that the lamp which
they vainly ask from the enchanter, is burning in
their own bosoms!

“When I first came here, my host's eldest daughter
was about twelve years of age. She was, without being
beautiful, an engaging child, rather disposed to be
contemplative, and, like all children, at that age, very
inquisitive and curious. She was shy at first, but soon
became acquainted with me; and would come into
my room in her idle hours, and look at my pictures
and read. She never disturbed me, because her natural
politeness forbade it; and I pursued my thoughts
or my studies just as if she were not there, till, by-and-by,
I grew fond of her quiet company, and was happier
when she was moving stealthily around, and looking
into a book here and there in her quiet way.

“She had been my companion thus for some time,
when it occurred to me that I might be of use to her
in leading her to cultivate a love for study. I seized
the idea enthusiastically. Now, thought I, I will see
the process of a human mind. I have studied its philosophy
from books, and now I will take a single
original, and compare them, step by step. I have
seen the bud, and the flower full blown, and I am told
that the change was gradual, and effected thus—leaf
after leaf. Now I will watch the expansion, and while
I water it and let in the sunshine to its bosom, detect
the secret springs which move to such beautiful results.
The idea delighted me.

“I was aware that there was great drudgery in the
first steps, and I determined to avoid it, and connect
the idea of my own instruction with all that was delightful
and interesting to her mind. For this purpose
I persuaded her father to send her to a better
school than she had been accustomed to attend, and,
by a little conversation, stimulated her to enter upon
her studies with alacrity.

“She was now grown to a girl, and had begun to
assume the naive, womanly airs which girls do at her
age. Her figure had rounded into a flowing symmetry,
and her face, whether from associating principally
with an older person, or for what other reason I
know not, had assumed a thoughtful cast, and she
was really a girl of most interesting and striking personal
appearance.

“I did not expect much from the first year of my
experiment. I calculated justly on its being irksome
and common-place. Still I was amused and interested.
I could hear her light step on the stair, always at the
same early hour of the evening, and it was a pleasure
to me to say `Come in,' to her timid rap, and set her
a chair by my own, that I might look over her book,
or talk in a low tone to her. I then asked her about
her lessons, and found out what had most attracted her
notice, and I could always find some interesting fact
connected with it, or strike off into some pleasant association,
till she acquired a habit of selection in her
reading, and looked at me earnestly to know what I
would say upon it. You would have smiled to see
her leaning forward, with her soft blue eye fixed on
me, and her lips half parted with attention, waiting for
my ideas upon some bare fact in geography or history;
and it would have convinced you that the natural,
unstimulated mind, takes pleasure in the simplest
addition to its knowledge.

“All this time I kept out of her way everything
that would have a tendency to destroy a taste for mere
knowledge, and had the pleasure to see that she
passed with keen relish from her text books to my observations,
which were as dry as they, though recommended
by kindness of tone and an interested manner.
She acquired gradually, by this process, a habit of
reasoning upon everything which admitted it, which
was afterward of great use in fixing and retaining the
leading features of her attainments.

“I proceeded in this way till she was fifteen. Her
mind had now become inured to regular habits of inquiry,
and she began to ask difficult questions and
wonder at common things. Her thoughts assumed a
graver complexion, and she asked for books upon subjects
of which she felt the want of information. She
was ready to receive and appreciate truth and instruction,
and here was to begin my pleasure.

“She came up one evening with an air of embarrassment
approaching to distress. She took her usual
seat, and told me that she had been thinking all day
that it was useless to study any more. There were so
many mysterious things—so much, even that she could
see, which she could not account for, and, with all her
efforts, she got on so slowly, that she was discouraged.
It was better, she said, to be happy in ignorance, than
to be constantly tormented with the sight of knowledge
to which she could not attain, and which she only knew
enough to value. Poor child! she did not know that
she was making the same complaint with Newton, and
Locke, and Bacon, and that the wisest of men were
only `gatherers of pebbles on the shore of an illimitable
sea!' I began to talk to her of the mind. I spoke
of its grandeur, and its capacities, and its destiny. I
told her instances of high attainment and wonderful
discovery—sketched the sublime philosophies of the
soul—the possibility that this life was but a link in a
chain of existences, and the glorious power, if it were
true, of entering upon another world, with a loftier capacity
than your fellow-beings for the comprehension
of its mysteries. I then touched upon the duty of self-cultivation—the
pride of a high consciousness of improved
time, and the delicious feelings of self-respect
and true appreciation.

“She listened to me in silence, and wept. It was
one of those periods which occur to all delicate minds,
of distrust and fear; and when it passed by, and her
ambition stirred again, she gave vent to her feelings
with a woman's beautiful privilege. I had no more
trouble to urge her on. She began the next day with
the philosophy of the mind, and I was never happier
than while following her from step to step in this delightful
study.

“I have always thought that the most triumphant
intellectual feeling we ever experience, is felt upon the
first opening of philosophy. It is like the interpreta
tion of a dream of a lifetime. Every topic seems to
you like a phantom of your own mind, from which a
mist has suddenly melted. Every feature has a kind
of half-familiarity, and you remember musing upon it
for hours, till you gave it up with an impatient dissatisfaction.
Without a definite shape, this or that very
idea has floated in your mind continually. It was a phenomenon
without a name—a something which you
could not describe to your friend, and which, by-and-by,
you came to believe was peculiar to yourself, and
would never be brought out or unravelled. You read
on, and the blood rushes to your face in a tumultuous
consciousness—you have had feelings in peculiar
situations which you could not define, and here
are their very features—and you know, now, that it was
jealousy, or ambition, or love. There have been moments
when your faculties seemed blinded or reversed.
You could not express yourself at all when you felt
you should be eloquent. You could not fix your
mind upon the subject, of which, before, you had been
passionately fond. You felt an aversion for your very
partialities, or a strange warming in your heart toward
people or pursuits that you had disliked; and when
the beauty of the natural world has burst upon you,
as it sometimes will, with an exceeding glory, you
have turned away from it with a deadly sickness of
heart, and a wish that you might die.

“These are mysteries which are not all soluble even
by philosophy. But you can see enough of the machinery
of thought to know its tendencies, and like
the listener to mysterious music, it is enough to have
seen the instrument, without knowing the cunning
craft of the player.

“I remembered my school-day feelings, and lived
them over again with my beautiful pupil. I entered
with as much enthusiasm as she, into the strength and
sublimity which I had wondered at before; and I believe
that, even as she sat reading by herself, my blood
thrilled, and my pulses quickened, as vividly as her
own, when I saw, by the deepening color of her cheek,
or the marked passages of my book, that she had found
a noble thought or a daring hypothesis.

“She proceeded with her course of philosophy rapidly
and eagerly. Her mind was well prepared for its
relish. She said she felt as if a new sense had been
given her—an inner eye which she could turn in upon
herself, and by which she could, as it were, stand aside
while the process of thought went on. She began to
respect and to rely upon her own mind, and the elevation
of countenance and manner, which so certainly
and so beautifully accompanies inward refinement,
stole over her daily. I began to feel respectful in her
presence, and when, with the peculiar elegance of a
woman's mind, she discovered a delicate shade of
meaning which I had not seen, or traced an association
which could spring only from an unsullied heart,
I experienced a sensation like the consciousness of an
unseen presence—elevating, without alarming me.

“It was probably well that with all this change in
her mind and manner, her person still retained its
childish grace and flexibility. She had not grown
tall, and she wore her hair yet as she used to do—falling
with a luxuriant fulness upon her shoulders.
Hence she was still a child, when, had she been taller
or more womanly, the demands upon her attention,
and the attractiveness of mature society, might have
divided that engrossing interest which is necessary to
successful study.

“I have often wished I was a painter; but never so
much as when looking on this beautiful being as she
sat absorbed in her studies, or turned to gaze up a
moment to my face, with that delicious expression of
inquiry and affection. Every one knows the elevation
given to the countenance of a man by contemplative
habits. Perhaps the natural delicacy of feminine features
has combined with its rarity, to make this expression

less observable in woman; but, to one familiar
with the study of the human face, there is, in the
look of a truly intellectual woman, a keen subtlety of
refinement, a separation from everything gross and
material, which comes up to our highest dream of the
angelic. For myself, I care not to analyze it. I leave
it to philosophy to find out its secret. It is enough
for me that I can see and feel it in every pulse of my
being. It is not a peculiar susceptibility. Every man
who approaches such a woman feels it. He may not
define it; he may be totally unconscious what it is
that awes him; but he feels as if a mysterious and invisible
veil were about her, and every dark thought is
quenched suddenly in his heart, as if he had come
into the atmosphere of a spirit. I would have every
woman know this. I would tell every mother who
prays nightly for the peculiar watchfulness of good
spirits over the purity of her child, that she may weave
round her a defence stronger than steel—that she may
place in her heart a living amulet whose virtue is like
a circle of fire to pollution. I am not `stringing pearls.'
I have seen, and I know, that an empty mind is not a
strong citadel; and in the melancholy chronicle of
female ruin, the instances are rare of victims distinguished
for mental cultivation. I would my pen were
the `point of a diamond,' and I were writing on living
hearts! for when I think how the daughters of a house
are its grace and honor—and when I think how the
father and mother that loved her, and the brother that
made her his pride, and the sister in whose bosom she
slept, are all crushed, utterly, by a daughter's degradation,
I feel, that if every word were a burning coal,
my language could not be extravagant!

“My pupil, had, as yet, read no poetry. I was uncertain
how to enter upon it. Her taste for the beautiful
in prose had become so decided, that I feared for
the first impression of my poetical world. I wished it
to burst upon her brilliantly—like the entrance to an
inner and more magnificent temple of knowledge. I
hoped to dazzle her with a high and unimagined
beauty, which should exceed far the massive but plain
splendors of philosophy. We had often conversed on
the probability of a previous existence, and, one evening,
I opened Wordsworth, and read his sublime
`Ode upon Intimations of Immortality.' She did not
interrupt me, but I looked up at the conclusion, and
she was in tears. I made no remark, but took Byron,
and read some of the finest passages in Childe Harold,
and Manfred, and Cain—and, from that time, poetry
has been her world!

“It would not have been so earlier. It needs the
simple and strong nutriment of truth to fit us to relish
and feel poetry. The mind must have strength and
cultivated taste, and then it is like a language from
Heaven. We are astonished at its power and magnificence.
We have been familiar with knowledge as
with a person of plain garment and a homely presence
—and he comes to us in poetry, with the state of a
king, glorious in purple and gold. We have known
him as an unassuming friend who talked with us by
the wayside, and kept us company on our familiar
paths—and we see him coming with a stately step, and
a glittering diadem on his brow; and we wonder that
we did not see that his plain garment honored him
not, and his bearing were fitter for a king!

“Poetry entered to the very soul of Caroline Grey.
It was touching an unreached string, and she felt as
if the whole compass of her heart were given out. I
used to read to her for hours, and it was beautiful to
see her eye kindle, and her cheek burn with excitement.
The sublimed mysticism and spirituality of
Wordsworth were her delight, and she feasted upon
the deep philosophy and half-hidden tenderness of
Coleridge.

“I had observed, with some satisfaction, that, in the
rapid development of her mental powers, she had not
found time to study nature. She knew little of the
character of the material creation, and I now commenced
walking constantly abroad with her at sunset,
and at all the delicious seasons of moonlight and starlight
and dawn. It came in well with her poetry. I
can not describe the effect. She became, like all who
are, for the first time, made sensible of the glories
around them, a worshipper of the external world.

“There is a time when nature first loses its familiarity,
and seems suddenly to have become beautiful.
This is true even of those who have been taught early
habits of observation. The mind of a child is too
feeble to comprehend, and does not soon learn, the
scale of sublimity and beauty. He would not be surprised
if the sun were brighter, or if the stars were
sown thicker in the sky. He sees that the flower is
beautiful, and he feels admiration at the rainbow; but
he would not wonder if the dyes of the flower were
deeper, or if the sky were laced to the four corners
with the colors of a prism. He grows up with these
splendid phenomena at work about him, till they have
become common, and, in their most wonderful forms,
cease to attract his attention. Then his senses are
suddenly, as by an invisible influence, unsealed, and,
like the proselyte of the Egyptian pyramids, he finds
himself in a magnificent temple, and hears exquisite
music, and is dazzled by surpassing glory. He never
recovers his indifference. The perpetual changes of
nature keep alive his enthusiasm, and if his taste is not
dulled by subsequent debasement, the pleasure he receives
from it flows on like a stream—wearing deeper
and calmer.

“Caroline became now my constant companion.
The changes of the natural world have always been
my chief source of happiness, and I was curious to
know whether my different sensations, under different
circumstances, were peculiar to myself. I left her,
therefore, to lead the conversation, without any expression
of my feelings, and, to my surprise and delight,
she invariably struck their tone, and pursued the
same vein of reflection. It convinced me of what I
had long thought might be true—that there was, in
the varieties of natural beauty, a hidden meaning, and
a delightful purpose of good; and, if I am not deceived,
it is a new and beautiful evidence of the proportion
and extent of God's benevolent wisdom.
Thus, you may remember the peculiar effect of the
early dawn—the deep, unruffled serenity, and the perfect
collectedness of your senses. You may remember
the remarkable purity that pervades the stealing
in of color, and the vanishing of the cold shadows of
gray—the heavenly quiet that seems infused, like a
visible spirit, into the pearly depths of the east, as the
light violet tints become deeper in the upper sky, and
the morning mist rises up like a veil of silvery film,
and softens away its intensity; and then you will remember
how the very beatings of your heart grew
quiet, and you felt an irresistible impulse to pray!
There was no irregular delight, no indefinite sensation,
no ecstacy. It was deep, unbroken repose, and
your pulses were free from the fever of life, and your
reason was lying awake in its chamber.

“There is a hush also at noon; but it is not like
the morning. You have been mingling in the business
of the world, and you turn aside, weary and distracted,
for rest. There is a far depth, in the intense blue of
the sky which takes in the spirit, and you are content
to lie down and sleep in the cool shadow, and forget
even your existence. How different from the cool
wakefulness of the morning, and yet how fitted for the
necessity of the hour!

“The day wears on and comes to the sunsetting.
The strong light passes off from the hills, and the
leaves are mingled in golden masses, and the tips of the
long grass, and the blades of maize, and the luxuriant
grain, are all sleeping in a rich glow, as if the daylight

had melted into gold and descended upon every living
thing like dew. The sun goes down, and there is a
tissue of indescribable glory floating upon the clouds,
and the almost imperceptible blending of the sunset
color with the blue sky, is far up toward the zenith.
Presently the pomp of the early sunset passes away;
and the clouds are all clad in purple, with edges of
metallic lustre; and very far in the west, as if they
were sailing away into another world, are seen spots
of intense brightness, and the tall trees on the hilly
edge of the horizon seem piercing the sky, on fire with
its consuming heat. There is a tumultuous joy in
the contemplation of this hour which is peculiar to
itself. You feel as if you should have had wings; for
there is a strange stirring in your heart to follow on—
and your imagination bursts away into that beautiful
world, and revels among the unsubstantial clouds till
they become cold. It is a triumphant and extravagant
hour. Its joyousness is an intoxication, and its pleasure
dies with the day.

“The night, starry and beautiful, comes on. The
sky has a blue, intense almost to blackness, and the
stars are set in it like gems. They are of different
glory, and there are some that burn, and some that
have a twinkling lustre, and some are just visible and
faint. You know their nature, and their motion; and
there is something awful in so many worlds moving on
through the firmament so silently and in order. You
feel an indescribable awe stealing upon you, and your
imagination trembles as it goes up among them. You
gaze on, and on, and the superstitions of olden time,
and the wild visions of astrology, steal over your memory,
till, by-and-by, you hear the music which they
`give out as they go,' and drink in the mysteries of
their hidden meaning, and believe that your destiny is
woven by their burning spheres. There comes on
you a delirious joy, and a kind of terrible fellowship
with their sublime nature, and you feel as if you could
go up to a starry place and course the heavens in company.
There is a spirituality in this hour, a separation
from material things, which is of a fine order of
happiness. The purity of the morning, and the noontide
quietness, and the rapture of the glorious sunset,
are all human and comprehensible feelings; but this
has the mystery and the lofty energy of a higher world,
and you return to your human nature with a refreshed
spirit and an elevated purpose: see now the wisdom
of God!—the collected intellect for the morning prayer
and our daily duty—the delicious repose for our
noontide weariness—and the rapt fervor to purify us
by night from our worldliness, and keep wakeful the
eye of immortality! They are all suited to our need;
and it is pleasant to think, when we go out at this or
that season, that its peculiar beauty is fitted to our peculiar
wants, and that it is not a chance harmony of our
hearts with nature.

“The world had become to Caroline a new place.
No change in the season was indifferent to her—nothing
was common or familiar. She found beauty in
things you would pass by, and a lesson for her mind or
her heart in the minutest workmanship of nature. Her
character assumed a cheerful dignity, and an elevation
above ordinary amusements or annoyances. She was
equable and calm, because her feelings were never
reached by ordinary irritations; and, if there were no
other benefit in cultivation, this were almost argument
enough to induce it.

“It is now five years since I commenced my tutorship.
I have given you the history of two of them. In
the remaining three there has been much that has interested
my mind—probably little that would interest
yours. We have read together, and, as far as possible,
studied together. She has walked with me, and shared
all my leisure, and known every thought. She is now a
woman of eighteen. Her childish graces are matured,
and her blue eye would send a thrill through you. You
might object to her want of fashionable tournure, and
find fault with her unfashionable impulses. I do not.
She is a high-minded, noble, impassioned being, with
an enthusiasm that is not without reason, and a common
sense that is not a regard to self-interest. Her
motion was not learned at schools, but it is unembarrassed
and free; and her tone has not been educated
to a refined whisper, but it expresses the meaning of
her heart, as if its very pulse had become articulate.
The many might not admire her—I know she would
be idolized by the few.

“Our intercourse is as intimate still; and it could
not change without being less so—for we are constantly
together. There is—to be sure—lately—a slight
degree of embarrassment—and—somehow—we read
more poetry than we used to do—but it is nothing at
all—nothing.”

My friend was married to his pupil a few months
after writing the foregoing. He has written to me
since, and I will show you the letter if you will call,
any time. It will not do to print it, because there are
some domestic details not proper for the general eye;
but, to me, who am a bachelor, bent upon matrimony,
it is interesting to the last degree. He lives the same
quiet, retired life, that he did before he was married.
His room is arranged with the same taste, and with
reference to the same habits as before. The light
comes in as timidly through the half-closed window,
and his pictures look as shadowy and dim, and the
rustle of the turned leaf adds as mysteriously to the
silence. He is the fondest of husbands, but his affection
does not encroach on the habits of his mind. Now
and then he looks up from his book, and, resting his
head upon his hand, lets his eye wander over the pale
cheek and drooping lid of the beautiful being who sits
reading beside him; but he soon returns to his half-forgotten
page, and the smile of affection which had
stolen over his features fades gradually away into the
habitual soberness of thought. There sits his wife,
hour after hour, in the same chair which she occupied
when she first came, a curious loiterer to his room;
and though she does not study so much, because other
cares have a claim upon her now, she still keeps pace
with him in the pleasanter branches of knowledge, and
they talk as often and as earnestly as before on the
thousand topics of a scholar's contemplation. Her
cares may and will multiply; but she understands the
economy of time, and I have no doubt that, with every
attention to her daily duties, she will find ample time
for her mind, and be always as well fitted as now for
the companionship of an intellectual being.

I have, like all bachelors, speculated a great deal
upon matrimony. I have seen young and beautiful
women, the pride of gay circles, married—as the world
said—well! Some have moved into costly houses, and
their friends have all come and looked at their fine
furniture and their splendid arrangements for happiness,
and they have gone away and committed them to
their sunny hopes, cheerfully, and without fear. It is
natural to be sanguine for the young, and, at such
times, I am carried away by similar feelings. I love to
get unobserved into a corner, and watch the bride in
her white attire, and with her smiling face and her soft
eyes moving before me in their pride of life, weave a
waking dream of her future happiness, and persuade
myself that it will be true. I think how they will sit
upon that luxurious sofa as the twilight falls, and build
gay hopes, and murmur in low tones the now unforbidden
tenderness, and how thrillingly the allowed kiss
and the beautiful endearments of wedded life, will
make even their parting joyous, and how gladly they
will come back from the crowd and the empty mirth
of the gay, to each other's quiet company. I picture
to myself that young creature, who blushes, even now,
at his hesitating caress, listening eagerly for his footsteps

as the night steals on, and wishing that he would
come; and when he enters at last, and, with an affection
as undying as his pulse, folds her to his bosom, I
can feel the very tide that goes flowing through his
heart, and gaze with him on her graceful form as
she moves about him for the kind offices of affection,
soothing all his unquiet cares, and making him
forget even himself, in her young and unshadowed
beauty.

I go forward for years, and see her luxuriant hair
put soberly away from her brow, and her girlish graces
ripened into dignity, and her bright loveliness chastened
with the gentle meekness of maternal affection.
Her husband looks on her with a proud eye, and
shows the same fervent love and delicate attention
which first won her, and fair children are growing
up about them, and they go on, full of honor and
untroubled years, and are remembered when they
die!

I say I love to dream thus when I go to give the
young bride joy. It is the natural tendency of feelings
touched by loveliness that fears nothing for itself,
and, if I ever yield to darker feelings, it is because the
light of the picture is changed. I am not fond of
dwelling on such changes, and I will not, minutely,
now. I allude to it only because I trust that my simple
page will be read by some of the young and beautiful
beings who move daily across my path, and I
would whisper to them as they glide by, joyously and
confidingly, the secret of an unclouded future.

The picture I have drawn above is not peculiar. It
is colored like the fancies of the bride; and many—oh
many an hour will she sit, with her rich jewels lying
loose in her fingers, and dream such dreams as these.
She believes them, too—and she goes on, for a while,
undeceived. The evening is not too long while they
talk of their plans for happiness, and the quiet meal is
still pleasant with the delightful novelty of mutual reliance
and attention. There comes soon, however, a
time when personal topics become bare and wearisome,
and slight attentions will not alone keep up the social
excitement. There are long intervals of silence, and
detected symptoms of weariness, and the husband, first
in his impatient manhood, breaks in upon the hours
they were to spend together. I can not follow it circumstantially.
There come long hours of unhappy
listlessness, and terrible misgivings of each other's worth
and affection, till, by-and-by, they can conceal their
uneasiness no longer, and go out separately to seek
relief, and lean upon a hollow world for the support
which one who was their “lover and friend” could not
give them!

Heed this, ye who are winning, by your innocent
beauty, the affections of highminded and thinking
beings! Remember that he will give up the brother
of his heart with whom he has had, ever, a fellowship
of mind—the society of his contemporary runners in
the race of fame, who have held with him a stern
companionship—and frequently, in his passionate love,
he will break away from the arena of his burning ambition,
to come and listen to the “voice of the charmer.”
It will bewilder him at first, but it will not long;
and then, think you that an idle blandishment will
chain the mind that has been used, for years, to an
equal communion? Think you he will give up, for a
weak dalliance, the animating themes of men, and the
search into the fine mysteries of knowledge?—Oh no,
lady!—believe me—no! Trust not your influence to
such light fetters! Credit not the old-fashioned absurdity
that woman's is a secondary lot—ministering
to the necessities of her lord and master! It is a
higher destiny I would award you. If your immortality
is as complete, and your gift of mind as capable
as ours of increase and elevation, I would put no wisdom
of mine against God's evident allotment. I
would charge you to water the undying bud, and give
it healthy culture, and open its beauty to the sun—
and then you may hope, that when your life is bound
up with another, you will go on equally, and in a
fellowship that shall pervade every earthly interest!