A Commonplace Book of Thoughts, Memories, and Fancies Part 8

"Or perhaps only sad?"

There are moments in the life of every contemplative being, when the healing power of Nature is felt-even as Wordsworth describes it-felt in the blood, in every pulse along the veins. In such moments converse, sympathy, the faces, the presence of the dearest, come so near to us, they make us shrink; books, pictures, music, anything, any object which has pa.s.sed through the medium of mind, and has been in a manner humanised, is felt as an intrusive reflection of the busy, weary, thought-worn self within us. Only Nature, speaking through no interpreter, gently steals us out of our humanity, giving us a foretaste of that more diffused disembodied life which may hereafter be ours.

Beautiful and genial, and not wholly untrue, were the old superst.i.tions which placed a haunting divinity in every grove, and heard a living voice responsive in every murmuring stream.

This present Sunday I set off with the others to walk to church, but it was late; I could not keep up with the pedestrians, and, not to delay them, turned back. I wandered down the hill path to the river brink, and crossed the little bridge and strolled along, pensive yet with no definite or continuous subject of thought. How beautiful it was-how tranquil! not a cloud in the blue sky, not a breath of air! "And where the dead leaf fell there did it rest;" but so still it was that scarce a single leaf did flutter or fall, though the narrow pathway along the water's edge was already enc.u.mbered with heaps of decaying foliage.

Everywhere around, the autumnal tints prevailed, except in one sheltered place under the towering cliff, where a single tree, a magnificent lime, still flourished in summer luxuriance, with not a leaf turned or shed. I stood still opposite, looking on it quietly for a long time. It seemed to me a happy tree, so fresh and fair and grand, as if its guardian Dryad would not suffer it to be defaced. Then I turned, for close beside me sounded the soft, interrupted, half-suppressed warble of a bird, sitting on a leafless spray, which seemed to bend with its tiny weight. Some lines which I used to love in my childhood came into my mind, blending softly with the presences around me.

"The little bird now to salute the morn Upon the naked branches sets her foot, The leaves still lying at the mossy root, And there a silly chirruping doth keep, As if she fain would sing, yet fain would weep; Praising fair summer that too soon is gone, And sad for winter, too soon coming on!" _Drayton._

The river, where I stood, taking an abrupt turn, ran wimpling by; not as I had seen it but a few days before,-rolling tumultuously, the dead leaves whirling in its eddies, swollen and turbid with the mountain torrents, making one think of the kelpies, the water wraiths, and such uncanny things,-but gentle, transparent, and flashing in the low sunlight; even the barberries, drooping with rich crimson cl.u.s.ters over the little pools near the bank, and reflected in them as in a mirror, I remember vividly as a part of the exquisite loveliness which seemed to melt into my life. For such moments we are grateful: we feel then what G.o.d _can_ do for us, and what man can not.-_Carolside, November 5th, 1843._

[Ill.u.s.tration]

71.

"In the early ages of faith, the spirit of Christianity glided into and gave a new significance to the forms of heathenism. It was not the forms of heathenism which encrusted and overlaid the spirit of Christianity, for in that case the spirit would have burst through such extraneous formulae, and set them aside at once and for ever."

[Ill.u.s.tration]

72.

Questions. In the execution of the penal statutes, can the individual interest of the convict be reconciled with the interest of society? or must the good of the convict and the good of society be considered as inevitably and necessarily opposed?-the one sacrificed to the other, and at the best only a compromise possible?

This is a question pending at present, and will require wise heads to decide it? How would Christ have decided it? When He set the poor accused woman free, was He considering the good of the culprit or the good of society? and how far are we bound to follow His example? If He consigned the wicked to weeping and gnashing of teeth, was it for atonement or retribution, punishment or penance? and how far are we bound to follow His example?

[Ill.u.s.tration]

73.

I marked the following pa.s.sage in Montaigne as most curiously applicable to the present times, in so far as our religious contests are concerned; and I leave it in his quaint old French.

"C'est un effet de la Providence divine de permettre sa saincte Eglise etre agitee, comme nous la voyons, de tant de troubles et d'orages, pour eveiller par ce contraste les ames pies et les ravoir de l'oisivete et du sommeil ou les avail plongees une si longue tranquillite. Si nous contrepesons la perte que nous avons faite par le nombre de ceux qui se sont devoyes, au gain qui nous vient par nous etre remis en haleine, ressuscite notre zele et nos forces a l'occasion de ce combat, je ne sais si l'utilite ne surmonte point le dommage."

[Ill.u.s.tration]

74.

"They (the friends of Ca.s.sius) were divided in opinion,-some holding that servitude was the extreme of evils, and others that tyranny was better than civil war."

Unhappy that nation, wherever it may be, where the question is yet pending between servitude and civil war! such a nation might be driven to solve the problem after the manner of Ca.s.sius-with the dagger's point.

"Surely," said Moore, "it is wrong for the lovers of liberty to identify the principle of resistance to power with such an odious person as the devil!"

[Ill.u.s.tration]

75.

"Where the question is of a great deal of good to ensue from a small injustice, men must pursue the things which are just in present, and leave the future to Divine Providence."

This so simple rule of right is seldom attended to as a rule of life till we are placed in some strait in which it is forced upon us.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

76.

A woman's patriotism is more of a sentiment than a man's,-more pa.s.sionate: it is only an extension of the domestic affections, and with her _la patrie_ is only an enlargement of _home_. In the same manner, a woman's idea of fame is always a more extended sympathy, and is much more of a presence than an antic.i.p.ation. To her the voice of fame is only the echo-fainter and more distant-of the voice of love.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

77.

"La doute s'introduit dans l'ame qui reve, la foi descend dans l'ame qui souffre."

The reverse is equally true,-and judging from my own experience, I should say oftener true.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

78.

"La curiosite est si voisine a la perfidie qu'elle peut enlaidir les plus beaux visages."

[Ill.u.s.tration]

79.

When I told Tieck of the death of Coleridge (I had just received the sad but not unexpected news in a letter from England), he exclaimed with emotion, "A great spirit has pa.s.sed away from the earth, and has left no adequate memorial of its greatness." Speaking of him afterwards he said, "Coleridge possessed the creative and inventive spirit of poetry, not the productive; he _thought_ too much to produce,-the a.n.a.lytical power interfered with the genius: Others with more active faculties seized and worked out his magnificent hints and ideas. Walter Scott and Lord Byron borrowed the first idea of the form and spirit of their narrative poems from Coleridge's 'Christabelle.'" This judgment of one great poet and critic pa.s.sed on another seemed to me worth preserving.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

80.

Coleridge says, "In politics what begins in fear usually ends in folly."

He might have gone farther, and added: In morals what begins in fear usually ends in wickedness. In religion what begins in fear usually ends in fanaticism. Fear, either as a principle or a motive, is the beginning of all evil.

[Ill.u.s.tration]