 | Letters from New York |  |
LETTER XXXVIII.
Here it is the 17th of March, and I was rejoicing that
winter had but a fortnight longer to live, and imagination
already began to stir its foot among last year's fallen leaves,
in search of the hidden fragrant treasures of the trailing
and most beautiful of the season! The snow-spirit has been
abroad, careering on the wings of the wind, in the finest
style imaginable; throwing diamonds and ermine mantles
around him, with princely prodigality.
Is all his own, retiring, as he were not,
Loaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art
To mimic, in slow structures, stone by stone,
Built in an age, the mad wind's night work,
The frolic architecture of the snow.”
I had wealth of fairy splendor on my windows this morning.
Alpine heights, cathedral spires, and glittering grottoes.
It reminded me of the days of my youth, when on
the shores of the Kennebec I used to watch to see “the
river go down,” as the rafters expressed it. A magnificent
spectacle it was, in those seasons when huge masses of ice
were loosened by sudden warmth, and came tumbling over
the falls, to lie broken into a thousand fantastic shapes of
beauty. Trees, mountains, turrets, spires, broken columns,
went sailing along, glancing and glittering in the moonlight,
like petrified Fata-Morgana of Italian skies, with the
rainbows frozen out. And here I had it painted in crystal,
by the wild artist whom I heard at his work in the nighttime,
between my dreams, as he went by with the whistling
storm.
“Nature, dear goddess,” is so beautiful! always so beautiful!
Every little flake of the snow is such a perfect crystal;
and they fall together so gracefully, as if fairies of the
air caught water-drops, and made them into artificial flowers
to garland the wings of the wind! Oh, it is the saddest of
all things, that even one human soul should dimly perceive
the Beauty, that is ever around us, “a perpetual benediction.”
Nature, that great missionary of the Most High,
preaches to us for ever in all tones of love, and writes truth
flowers. But we are not in harmony with the whole, and
so we understand her not.
Here and there, a spirit less at discord with Nature,
hears semitones in the ocean and the wind, and when the
stars look into his heart, he is stirred with dim recollections,
of a universal language, which would reveal all, if he only
remembered the alphabet. “When one stands alone at
night, amidst unfettered Nature,” says Bettine, “it seems
as though she were a spirit praying to man for release! And
should man set Nature free? I must at some time reflect
upon this: but I have already very often had this sensation,
as if wailing Nature plaintively begged something of
me; and it cut me to the heart, not to be able to understand
what she would have. I must consider seriously of this;
perhaps I may discover something which shall raise us
above this earthly life.”
Well may Nature beg plaintively of man; for all that
disturbs her harmony flows from his spirit. Age after age,
she has toiled patiently, manifesting in thunder and lightning,
tempest and tornado, the evils which man produces,
and thus striving to restore the equilibrium which he disturbs.
Every thing else seeks earnestly to live according
to the laws of its being, and therefore each has individual
excellence, the best adapted of all things to its purpose.
Because Nature is earnest, spontaneous, and true, she is
perfect. Art, though it makes a fair show, produces nothing
perfect. Look through a powerful microscope at the
finest cambric needle that ever was manufactured, and it
shall seem blunt as a crowbar; but apply the same test to
the antennæ of a beetle or a butterfly, and thou wilt see
them taper to an invisible point. That man's best works
should be such bungling imitations of Nature's infinite perfection,
matters not much; but that he should make himself
an imitation, this is the fact which Nature moans over, and
free, and thus be individuals! is the song she sings through
warbling birds, and whispering pines, and roaring waves,
and screeching winds. She wails and implores, because
man keeps her in captivity, and he alone can set her free.
To those who rise above custom and tradition, and dare to
trust their own wings never so little above the crowd, how
eagerly does she throw her garland ladders to tempt them
upward! How beautiful, how angelic, seems every fragment
of life which is earnest and true! Every man can
be really great, if he will only trust his own highest instincts,
think his own thoughts, and say his own say. The stupidest
fellow, if he would but reveal, with childlike honesty,
how he feels, and what he thinks, when the stars wink at
him, when he sees the ocean for the first time, when music
comes over the waters, or when he and his beloved look
into each others' eyes,—would he but reveal this, the world
would hail him as a genius, in his way, and would prefer
his story to all the epics that ever were written, from Homer
to Scott.
And could it see them fairly writ, would wonder at its wealth.”
Nay, there is truth in the facetious assertion of Carlyle,
that the dog, who sits looking at the moon so seriously,
would doubtless be a poet, if he could but find a publisher.
Of this thing be assured, no romance was ever so interesting,
as would be a right comprehension of that dog's relation
to the moon, and of the relation of both to all things,
and of all things to thyself, and of thyself, to God. Some
glimmering of this mysterious relation of each to All may
disturb the dog's mind with a strange solemnity, until he
fancies he sees another dog in the moon, and howls thereat.
Could his howl be translated and published, it might teach
us somewhat that the wisest has not yet conjectured.
Let not the matter-of-fact reader imagine me to say that
it is difficult for puppies to find publishers. The frothy sea
of circulating literature would prove such assertion a most
manifest falsehood. Nor do I assert that puerile and common-place
minds are diffident about making books. There
is babbling more than enough; but among it all, one finds
little true speech, or true silence. The dullest mind has
some beauty peculiarly its own; but it echoes, and does not
speak itself. It strives to write as schools have taught, as
custom dictates, or as sects prescribe; and so it stammers,
and makes no utterance. Nature made us individuals, as
she did the flowers and the pebbles; but we are afraid to
be peculiar, and so our society resembles a bag of marbles,
or a string of mould candles. Why should we all dress
after the same fashion? The frost never paints my windows
twice alike.
As I write, I look round for the sparkling tracery; it is
gone, and I shall never see a copy. Well, I will not mourn
for this. The sunshine has its own glorious beauty, and
my spirit rejoices therein, even more than in the graceful
pencilings of the snow. All kinds of beauty have I loved
with fervent homage. Above all, do I worship it in its
highest form; that of a sincere and loving soul. Even here
in the city, amid bricks and mortar, and filth and finery, I
find it in all its manifestations, from the animal to the godlike.
This morning, our pavements were spread with jewelled
ermine, more daintily prepared than the foot-cloth of an
Eastern queen. But now the world has travelled through
it, as it does through the heart of a politician, and every
pure drift is mud-bespattered. But there is still the beauty
of the bells, and the graceful little shell-like sleighs, and
the swift motions. There is something exhilarating in the
rapid whirl of life, abroad and joyous in New-York, soon
after a new-fallen snow. It excites somewhat of the triumphant
or careering on the surging sea. It brings to my mind
Lapland deer, and flashing Aurora, and moon-images in the
sky, and those wonderful luminous snows, which clothe the
whole landscape with phosphoric fire.
But there is beauty here far beyond rich furs, and Russian
chimes, and noble horses, or imagination of the glorious refractions
in arctic skies; for here are human hearts, faithful
and loving, amid the fiercest temptations; still genial
and cheerful, though surrounded by storm and blight. Two
little ragged girls went by the window just now, their scanty
garments fluttering in the wind; but their little blue hands
were locked in each other, and the elder tenderly lifted the
younger through the snow-drift. It was but a short time
ago, that I passed the same children in Broadway. One
of them had rags bound round her feet, and a pair of broken
shoes. The other was barefoot, and she looked very red,
for it was pinching cold. “Mary,” said the other, in a
gentle voice, “sit down on the door-step, here, and I will
take off my rags and shoes. Your feet are cold, and you
shall wear them the rest of the way.” “Just a little while,”
replied the other; “for they are very cold; but you shall
have them again, directly.” They sat down, and made the
friendly exchange; and away jumped the little one, her
bare feet pattering on the cold stones, but glowing with a
happy heart-warmth.
You say I must make up such incidents, because you
never see humanity under such winning aspects, in the
streets of New-York. Nay, my friend, I do not make up
these stories; but I look on this ever-moving panorama of
life, as Coleridge describes his Cupid:
He guesseth but in part;
But what within is good and fair,
He seeth with the heart.”
| Letters from New York | |