University of Virginia Library

MARGARET TO ANNA.

The end of my being is accomplished! The prophecy of
my life is fulfilled! My dreams have gone out in realities!
The Cross is erected on Mons Christi!! Yesterday, the
Anniversary of our National Independence, was the event
consummated. It was made by Mr. Palmer, from a superb
block of the purest marble, which he got from his quarry, and
is fifteen feet high, with a proportionate breadth. We met
near the Brook Kedron on the Via Salutaris. There were all
the members of Christ-Church, the Masonic Corps and a
multitude of others. I was to lead the procession, supported
by Mr. Evelyn; they had me seated on a milk-white horse,
dressed in white, and a wreath of twin-flowers vine on my
head. Then followed the Cross, borne on the shoulders of
twenty-four young men; next came the Bishop and wife, the

Deacons and their wives, Christ-Church members, two and
two, man and woman; these were succeeded by the Masons,
and the line was closed by the people at large. On the Head
was a band of Christ-Church musicians playing the Triumphs
of Jesus, which we got from Germany. We came over the
brook Kedron, traversed what we have made the broad, and
ornamental Via Salutaris, and entered the Avenue of the
Beautiful. At the foot of the hill I dismounted. By a winding
gravel-walk I went up—with a trembling, joyous step I went—
followed by the Cross-bearers. Reaching the summit, I wound
the arms and head of the Cross about with evergreens; the
young men raised it in its place, a solid granite plinth. Returning,
we assembled under the Butternut in the Avenue of
the Beautiful, where Frank made a discourse to the people;
some idea of which I would like to convey to you. He had
for his text, “God forbid that I should glory save in the Cross
of our Lord Jesus Christ.” The Cross he said stood to us in
two aspects; first the end of Christ's life, and second, the burden
of his life. Of the first he said it was the termination of
his career, the finale of a distinguished course of mercy and
love; hence as the finishing stroke of his life, he said it represented
his whole life. As the stars and stripes stand for our
country, our government, our liberties, our national all, so he
said the Cross stood for Christ's all. He said a Christian would
glory in the Cross of Christ as a citizen glories in the flag of
his country. But more than this, he said the Cross of Christ
had a deeper significance than was implied in merely his decease
on Calvary. He said it referred to what transpired before
his death, to events of his personal history and experience,
in a word, to the burden of his life. He said that Christ
bearing his own Cross, his telling his disciples to take up their
cross and follow him, Paul's expression “I am crucified with
Christ,” the declaration that “he died unto sin once,” all denoted
that he underwent a crucifixion in his life-time, a crucifixion
to the world, to sin and all evil; that his resistance to
the diabolical temptation, his strong crying and tears, his being
touched with the feeling of our infirmities, his agony and
bloody sweat, were such a crucifixion; that his watchings,
his labors, his deprivations, his rebuffs, the intrigues of his
enemies, the desertion of his friends, were a cross; that meeting
evil with good, repulse with kindness, insults with forbearance,
his blessing those who hated him, his grandeur in the
midst of what was low, his effulgence in the midst of what was
dark, his singleness and sincerity in a period of calculating
expediency, his advancement that overleaping his own, synchronized
with all ages and squared with an unlimited future,
his incarnation of God among sin-possessed men, his attempts
at the transfusion of himself into the race, and such things,
were all a cross. He said we bore the cross when we reversed
the practices of a fallen world and adopted those of the highest
humanity; when we shone as lights in the world; when we
were blameless and harmless in the midst of a crooked and
peverse nation; when we forbore one another in love; when
we were ready to be persecuted for righteousness' sake; when
we obeyed God rather than man; when we lived unspotted
from the world; when we put off the old man with his deeds,
and put on the new man; when we became the pillar and the
ground of truth; when we returned blessing for cursing,
and good for evil; and so whatever obstacle we overcame, or
impediment encountered in our progress towards perfection,
or in the extension of the kingdom of God in the earth, he
said was a cross. He said glorying in the Cross of Christ
would be the selectest ambition of every Christian. We have
adopted the Cross, he said, for our emblem, because it is so
good an exponent of Christ, and of our character, purposes
and principles as Christians. In allusion to the green flowering
aspect of the Cross, he said that betokened the Final
Triumph, the Conquest over Sin, the destruction of the Evil
by the Good; and also the bloom and lustre of Virtue.
While he was speaking, a milk-white Dove from our cot
flew and alighted on the top of the Cross. Hardly could we
contain ourselves; a most delicious tremor ran through me.
The Dove, said he, is the symbol of the sweet love, and pure
effluence of God!—I cannot tell you all he said; I repeat his
principal topics. That certain unction of his, that holy medium
in which his mind moves; that rosy sun-light of love
that tinges the peaks of his thoughts, that creative effect of
pure goodness wherein lies his forte—all this you will understand
better than it can be told. After the address, we went
into the woods to Diana's Walk, and had a collation, when the
Lord's Supper was administered, and hundreds partook. Returning,
Mr. Evelyn embraced me with tears—he does not
often weep. Christ has also embraced me with tears, and I
too must weep. The heart of the Beautiful One is touched,
and what can I do? I dreamed of him the other night, lying
prostrate under the Butternut. His Cross too had fallen, and
the flowers were withered. “I am aweary,” said he, “I have no
place to lay my head. I am a stranger in the world, and no
one takes me in; I am sick, and no one visits me. My heart
aches, Margaret. My locks are wet with the dews of the night.
I was bruised for their inquities, but they are iniquitous still.
From Calvary I have wandered over the earth. From age to
age I have been an outcast. My agony in the garden was too
true, too real; I was overshadowed by my destiny. I could
not bear the insupportable load.—I do not see the travail of my
soul. I have come hither to die, Margaret.” He leaned upon
my arm; he looked as he does in Moralez's Ecce Homo,
stricken with a divine grief, wasting under an inexpressible
disappointment. I brought him water from the spring Temperance,
and his spirit came again; his look changed into the
Transfiguration of Raphael. I sprinkled water on the cross-leaves,
and they revived. Our marble group, Faith, Hope, Love
and Beauty, appeared from under the trees, living, and ministered
unto him. He came into our house, I dreamed, with the
Sisters, gave a pleased glance at the rooms; said, “I dwell
with them that dwell with me,” and vanished.

Explain to me, Anna, what do these things mean? Have
Christians treated Christ so badly? You recollect the story
circulated when I was in Boston, that the French had torn
Raphael's Tapestries from the Vatican, and sold them; and
some one purchasing that which bore an image of Christ, burnt
it to ashes, for the gold and silver he hoped to get from it!
Does Christ haunt the world like Fionnulla, the daughter of
Lir, sighing for the first sound of the mass-bell that was to be
the signal for her release? Was his light hidden under ground
at the time of his death, and does it there burn eternally, like
the lamp in the Tomb of Pallas? Tell me, what is the significance
of this distress? Whither has fled the Redemption of
Man?—How far are we called upon to submit to an irretrievable
order of events? Was Christ done, eighteen hundred years
now last past? Were Calvary and Tyburn Hill alike as two
peas? Are the Star Chamber and Fanueil Hall the same? Is
it all one whether I pick strawberries on Mons Christi, or dance
a rigadoon in a raree-show? whether I am a geode or a Milliner's
baby? Eidepol! God is one, but man is many, and the
soul is none.

The green-wreathed Cross towers afar. It can be seen from
the Green, and beyond the River; at No. 4, Breakneck,
Snakehill, Five-mile-lot; and I presume in half a dozen towns.
From my window I see it piercing the clouds, which are its
perpetual aureola. The stars shall crown it; the sun shall
stoop to do it reverence. I mean to train over it a Boursalt
rose, and in winter drape it with running club-moss.

This Cross has travailed in my soul, Anna; I could not rest
till it had gone forth in substance. We have trimmed the path
up the Head with rose-bushes, amaranths, angelicas, thyme,
bitter-sweet night-shade, and here and there a thorn. Can you
realize how much Christ has been to me? How much of
beauty, goodness, virtue, love, peace, hope, light, strength, I
owe him! I do find his yoke easy and his burden light. Even
when I knew him not, he blessed me. I could not be more
happy if I had had my birth in his soul. The Eider Duck of
Heaven, he lines the nest of his offspring with down plucked
from his own breast. He offered himself for our sins; he suffered
for us. The voluntary Prometheus, he bound himself to
the Caucasian rock of humanity, his heart was preyed upon by
all the evils of the race. He sympathizes with us. Why is
the world so insensible to him! Venus, bewailing the death of
Adonis, changed his blood into the wind-flower. Christ, bewailing
the death of man, would have changed his blood into
beautiful soul-flowers. But—Venus running to the aid of her
boy, pricked her foot with a thorn, and that blood changed the
white rose into the red. Christ pricked his feet with thorns,
the roses of the woods are red, humanity still welters in its
blood.

To Mr. Evelyn and Frank how much I owe. They have
removed the dross, the dogmatic obscurity and wanton frivolity,
that attached to the New Testament; and made it a luminous,
divine book to me. When Mr. Evelyn was in England, this
was told him. Lord Northwick had just brought from Italy a
picture of St. Gregory, by Annibal Caracci. For some cause
connected with the troubles of the times, in order to get possession
of the picture, a poor dauber had been hired to paint
over it in body-color, an imitation of some inferior artist.
When it was opened, his Lordship's friends, who had been
looking for something admirable, stared in mortified astonishment.
“It has got soiled, I see,” said his Lordship, “give me
a sponge.” Whereupon, with a sponge, he began to rub the
piece, nor had he long done so, when out peeped the head of
St. Gregory; soon the attendant Angels were seen, and in a
short time the whole of that magnificent picture became visible.
So the Bible has been daubed over to my eyes. I have
seen in it not the work of God, but the production of some
poor artist. I have turned from it as a miserable travesty.
The sponge has been applied; the false colors removed, and the
original is inexpressibly beautiful.—The Gospels are the Word

of Christ, as he was the Word of God. Before the Gospels,
Christ was. He shines through them. They stand in him,
like the Apocalyptic Angel in the Sun. Mr. Evelyn reads
them to us from the Greek, whereby, he says, he himself has a
better sense of them, and can impart a better sense.

Come, Anna, come to Mons Christi. Come and see our
happiness, come and feel it. I am running over. I wish there
was a silver pipe reaching from here to you, such as I once
saw let down from the blue sky, that you might draw off and
be surcharged like me. I wish from the great spring-head of
Jesus, an aqueduct could be laid that should fill your beautiful
Common with fountains! And, Oh, I wish all hearts might
become gardens of fountains, like what Mr. Evelyn saw in the
Tuilleries at Paris. I never feared death. I was never troubled
about the hereafter. I have an immortality each moment of
my life. I am inundated with ages of bliss. I could die tomorrow,
and feel that I had lived forever. I could live forever,
and never be sensible of an addition to what I now have.
Rose is here playing one of Beethoven's Waltzes; it is a jet of
music spriting into my ecstasy. My life is hid with Christ in
God. The One circumflows and in-heavens us. The Infinite
Father bears us in his bosom, shepherd and flock. I feel that
all good beautiful souls live forever. Rose says she begins to
feel so too. She brought me a bunch of flowers from the Via
Dolorosa! The birds are jubilating in the woods. I see Pa and
Mr. Evelyn at work in the garden. Come and spend the Summer
with us.—I am but a child. I feel only a child's feelings.
I lie on the grass, and frisk with my hands and feet, a mere baby
in God's Universe. Come, and you shall instruct me.—Let me
be Jesus' child; I ask no more.

For the nonce, I sign myself,

Margaret Christi.