 | Letters from New York |  |
LETTER XXXVII.
When I began to write these letters, it was simply as a
safety-valve for an expanding spirit, pent up like steam in
a boiler. I told you they would of be every fashion, according
to my changing mood; now a mere panorama of passing
scenes, then childlike prattle about birds or mosses; now a
serious exposition of facts, for the reformer's use, and then
the poet's path, on winged Pegasus, far up into the blue.
To-day I know not what I shall write; but I think I shall
be off to the sky; for my spirit is in that mood when smiling
faces peep through chinks in the clouds, and angel fingers
beckon and point upward. As I grow older, these glimpses
into the spiritual become more and more clear, and all the
visible stamps itself on my soul, a daguerreotype image of
the invisible, written with sunbeams.
I sometimes ask myself, Will it continue to be so? For
coming age casts its shadow before; and the rarest of attainments
is to grow old happily and gracefully. When I
look around among the old people of my acquaintance, I
am frightened to see how large a proportion are a burden to
themselves, and an annoyance to others. The joyfulness
of youth excites in them no kindlier feeling than gloom, and
lucky is it, if it does not encounter angry rebuke or supercilious
contempt. The happiness of lovers has a still worse
effect; it frets them until they become like the man with
a toothache, whose irritation impelled him to kick poor puss,
because she was sleeping so comfortably in the sunshine.
If this state were an inevitable attendant upon advanced
years, then indeed would long life be an unmitigated curse.
But there is no such necessity imposed upon us. We make
old age cheerless and morose, in the same way that we
pervert all things; and that is, by selfishness. We allow ourselves
to think more of our own convenience and comfort, in
little matters, than we do of the happiness and improvement
of others; and thus we lose the habit of sympathizing with
love and joy. I pray God to enable me to guard against
this. May I be ever willing to promote the innocent pleasure
of others, in their own way, even if be not my way.
Selfishness can blight even the abundant blossoms of youth;
and if carried into age, it leaves the soul like a horse enclosed
within an arid and stony field, with plenty of verdant
pastures all around him.
Childhood itself is scarcely more lovely than a cheerful,
kind, sunshiny old age.
Smiling through the veil of age!
And whene'er this man of years
In the dance of joy appears,
Age is on his temples hung,
But his heart—his heart is young!”
When Tithonus asked for an eternal life in the body, and
found, to his sorrow, that immortal youth was not included
in the bargain, it surely was because he forgot to ask the
perpetual gift of loving and sympathizing.
Next to this, is an intense affection for nature, and for
all simple things. A human heart can never grow old, if it
takes a lively interest in the pairing of birds, the re-production
of flowers, and the changing tints of autumn-ferns.
Nature, unlike other friends, has an exhaustless meaning,
which one sees and hears more distinctly, the more they
are enamoured of her. Blessed are they who hear it; for
through tones comes the most inward perceptions of the
spirit. Into the ear of the soul, which reverently listens,
Nature whispers, speaks, or warbles, most heavenly arcana.
And even they who seek her only through science, receive
a portion of her own tranquillity, and perpetual youth.
The happiest old man I ever saw, was one who knew how
the mason-bee builds his cell, and how every bird lines
her nest; who found pleasure in a sea-shore pebble, as
boys do in new marbles; and who placed every glittering
mineral in a focus of light, under a kaleidescope of his own
construction. The effect was like the imagined riches of
fairy land; and when an admiring group of happy young
people gathered round it, the heart of the good old man
leapt like the heart of a child. The laws of nature, as
manifested in her infinitely various operations, were to him
a perennial fountain of delight; and, like her, he offered
the joy to all. Here was no admixture of the bad excitement
attendant upon ambition or controversy; but all was
serenely happy, as are an angel's thoughts, or an infant's
dreams.
Age, in its outward senses, returns again to childhood;
and thus should it do spiritually. The little child enters a
rich man's house, and loves to play with the things that are
nor does he pride himself that another child cannot play
with the same. The farmer's home will probably delight
him more; for he will love living squirrels better than
marble greyhounds, and the merry bob o'lincoln better than
stuffed birds from Araby the blest; for they cannot sing into
his heart. What he wants is life and love—the power of
giving and receiving joy. To this estimate of things, wisdom
returns, after the intuitions of childhood are lost. Virtue
is but innocence on a higher plane, to be attained only
through severe conflict. Thus life completes its circle;
but it is a circle that rises while it revolves; for the path
of spirit is ever spiral, containing all of truth and love in
each revolution, yet ever tending upward. The virtue which
brings us back to innocence, on a higher plane of wisdom,
may be the childhood of another state of existence; and
through successive conflicts, we may again complete the
ascending circle, and find it holiness.
The ages, too, are rising spirally; each containing all,
yet ever ascending. Hence, all our new things are old,
and yet they are new. Some truth known to the ancients
meets us on a higher plane, and we do not recognise it,
because it is like a child of earth, which has passed upward
and become an angel. Nothing of true beauty ever
passes away. The youth of the world, which Greece embodied
in immortal marble, will return in the circling Ages,
as innocence comes back in virtue; but it shall return
filled with a higher life; and that, too, shall point upward.
Thus shall the Arts be glorified. Beethoven's music prophesies
all this, and struggles after it continually; therefore,
whosoever hears it, (with the inward, as well as the
outward ear,) feels his soul spread its strong pinions, eager
to pass “the flaming bounds of time and space,” and circle
all the infinite.
It is a beautiful conception of Fourier's, that the Aurora
and that when the moral and intellectual world are brought
into order by the right construction of society, these restless,
flashing northern lights will settle into an intensely
radiant circle round the poles, melt all the ice, and bring
into existence new flowers of unknown beauty.
Astronomers almost contemporary with Fourier, and probably
unacquainted with his theory of re-constructing society,
have suggested the idea of progressive changes in
the earth's motions, till her poles shall be brought into
exact harmony with the poles of the heavens, and thus
perpetual spring pervade the whole earth.
It is a singular fact, too, that the groups and series
of Fourier's plan of society are in accordance with
Swedenborg's description of the order in heaven. It
is said that Fourier never read Swedenborg; yet has he
embodied his spiritual order in political economy, as perfectly
as if he had been sent to answer the prayer, “Thy
kingdom come on earth, as it is in heaven.”
Visions! idle visions! exclaims the man of mere facts.
Very well, friend; walk by the light of thy lantern, if it
be sufficient for thee. I ask thee not to believe in these
visions; for peradventure thou canst not. But said I not
truly that their faces smile through chinks in the clouds,
and that their fingers beckon and point upward?
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