Tablets Part 5

How handsome our friends are! Say they were not moulded at the celestial potteries, we paint them fair behind the plain exterior they wear to indifferent eyes, and as they appear in our gallery of enamels. For who has not seen the plainest features light with a beauty the eyes had not conceived at the rise of a tender sentiment? a lively thought, the recollection of a n.o.ble deed, effacing every trace of ancestral meanness; the friend we love all there without blemish or spot, the image we clasp to our breast and cannot forget.

Spectral and cold, indeed, were life surveyed from the senses alone, not from the soul, wanting the enthusiasm that persons inspire, the faith which exalts us above ourselves, giving us friends to love, and a G.o.d to adore. We enter heaven through the gates of friendship. 'Tis by some supreme fellowship that we complete ourselves, and are united to our kind.

I esteem friendship the fairest as the eldest of religious faiths, being the worship of the unseen through the seen, and excusing many superst.i.tions coloring the need of a personal object of worship. The love and service rendered to persons symbolizes love and service due the Supreme Person; and he must be p.r.o.nounced deficient in piety who fails of winning the n.o.blest of victories,--a friend. A need of the heart, the best of our life is embosomed in others, much of it taken upon trust in some one or more whom we call by tender names, and whose words accost us with persuasions irresistible. How affectionately one name is p.r.o.nounced throughout a revering Christendom, because it symbolizes man's friend,--that fairest word in the human vocabulary.

"Fair flowery name, in none like thee And thy nectareal fragrancy, Hourly there meets A universal synod of all sweets, By whom it is defined thus: That no perfume May yet presume To pa.s.s for odoriferous, But such alone whose sacred pedigree Can prove itself some kin, sweet name, to thee."

We crave objects abreast and above us. And are bereft of ourselves without such. Friends are the leaders of the bosom, being more ourselves than we are, and we complement our affections in theirs. The pa.s.sionless laws that sway our unseen Personality are not made lovely to us till thus clothed in human attributes and brought near to our hearts, person embracing person. Not some _It_ in our friends, but the sentiment that transfigures the _It_ into _Him_, into _Her_,--this alone makes them ours personally and beloved. Theists in our faith, we pay our vows to the Friend in our friend, thus becoming personally One with the Three, and alone no longer.

Nor elsewise man shall fellow meet, In public place, in converse sweet, In holy aisles, at market gate, In learning's halls, or courts of state, Nor persons properly shall find, Save in the commonwealth of Mind; Fair forms herein their souls intrude, Peopling what else were solitude.

Persons are love's world. Our Paradise is too fair to be planted out of our b.r.e.a.s.t.s. We chase the fleeing beauty all our lives long;

"Nor is there near so brisk a fire In fruition, as desire; The n.i.g.g.ard sense, too poor for bliss, Pays us but dully with what is."

On, onwards, ever onwards are we led. Our Edens abreast of us journeying with ever-opening prospects in the distance.

THE CHASE.

O'er earth and seas, In sunshine, shade, Blest Beauty crossed, Nor stopt nor stayed, Nor temples took, Nor idols hewed, Apart she dwelt In solitude.

In solitude, Heart said: "Where find the maid?

My bride's a fugitive, From sight doth live, And hearts are hunters of the game, Pursuers of the same Through every pa.s.sing form, The Beauty that all eyes do seek, All eyes do but deform; The love our faithless lips would speak Dies on the listless air, Nature befriends us not, Nor hearthside doth prepare In all her ample plot; Life's but illusion, Cunning confusion; Flings shadows pale about our path, She shadow is, and nothing hath; Eyes are divorced from seeing, Hearts cloven clean from being; My bride I cannot find, My love I cannot bind; The thousand fair ones of our sphere, Fond, false ones all, nor mine, nor dear; The Paradise I would surprise, From all my following flies, And I'm a thousand infidelities; There's none for me In all I see; Surely the Fair One bides not here, Where dwells she, where, in any sphere?"

"In any sphere?"

Love whispered: "Where, where, if not here?

Here in thy breast the maiden find, Ideas sole imparadise the mind; Here heart's hymeneals begin, Here's ours and only ours housed here within: Through parting gates of human kind Enter thou blest the Unseen Mind."

II.--WOMAN.

"Virtue sure Were blind as fortune, should she choose the poor Rough cottage man to live in, and despise To dwell in woman's stately edifice; Woman's approved the fairer s.e.x, and we Mean men repent our pedigree.

Why choose the father's name, when we may take The mother's a more honor'd blood to make, Woman's of later, though of n.o.bler birth, For she of man was made, man made of earth, The son of dust, and though her sin did breed His fall, again she raised him in her seed; Who had he not her blest creation seen, An Anchorite in Paradise had been."

Pythagoras said that only good things were to be predicted of women, since they were the mothers of ornaments, of conversation and of confidence, and that he who invented names, perceiving that women were adapted to piety and friendship, gave to each of their ages the name of some Deity--to a maiden, Core, or Proserpine, to a bride Nymphe, to a mother, Mater, to a grandmother, according to the Dorian dialect, Maia.

And in accordance with the like persuasion the oracles were always unfolded into light by women. Tacitus tells us that the Northern nations also held women in high esteem, "believing ladies had something divine about them." And this faith has descended to men of the Saxon name, the best regarding her as endowed with magical properties, the type of the highest culture the advanced nations have attained. Endowed with magnetic gifts; by necessity of s.e.x, a realist and diviner, she lives nearest the cardinal facts of existence, instinct with the mysteries of love and fate; a romance ever attaching itself to her name and destiny.

Entering the school of sensibility with life, she seizes personal qualities by a subtlety of logic overleaping all deductions of the slower reason; her divinations touching the quick of things as if herself were personally part of the chemistry of life itself. We cannot conceive her as distinct, distant, unrelated, she seems so personal, concrete, so near; yet can never come quite up to her discernments, nor gainsay their delicacy and truthfulness. Then constancy, fidelity, fort.i.tude, kindness, grat.i.tude, grace, courtesy, discretion, taste, conversation, the adornments of life, were bare names without the splendor of ill.u.s.tration of which the history of the s.e.x affords so many brilliant examples. It seems as if in moulding his world the Creator reserved his choicest work till the last, and consummated his art in her endowments. Shall our s.e.x confess to some slight in not having been mingled more freely of her essence, that so we too might have had access to the crypts into which she is privileged by birthright to enter? Hers is the way of persuasion, of service, forbearance:

"If thou dost anything confer that's sweet, In me a grateful relish it shall meet, But if thy bounties thou dost take away, The least repining word I will not say."

As there was only solitude till she brought company, conversation, civility, so stooping still to conquer, she is fast gaining ascendancy over pa.s.sions and prejudices that have held her subservient and their victim. Can we doubt the better rule will be furthered indefinitely by a partnership in power thus intimate and acknowledged by States? What ideal republics have fabled, ours is to be. Nor need we fear the boldest experiments which the moral sense of the best women conceive and advocate. Certainly liberty is in danger of running into license while woman is excluded from exercising political as well as social restraint upon its excesses. Nor is the state planted securely till she possess equal privileges with man of forming its laws and taking a becoming part in their administration. No jury of men, however honorable or wise, are equal to p.r.o.nounce upon questions relating to woman; questions involving considerations that concern the whole structure, not only of society, but of humanity itself. The public morals are insecure till the family is chastely planted, the state guarded by the continency of its male members.

A man defines his standing at the court of chast.i.ty by his views of women. He cannot be any man's friend nor his own if not hers. Either nature dealt coldly by him in his descent, else he is the victim of vices which his pa.s.sions have inflamed till they have their own way with him.

"They meet but with unwholesome springs, And summers which infectious are; They hear but when the mermaid sings, And only see the falling star Who ever dare Affirm no woman chaste and fair."

The very name of woman becomes soiled if we seek to be related to her by the coa.r.s.e ties of appet.i.te, instead of the tender threads of affection, the charm of ideas. There are pleasures for keeping as enjoying,--for using delicately, the zest lasting long, the more affluent when tasted with moderation and seldom.

"Who can to love more rich gift make Than to love's self, for love's own sake?

Love, that imports in every sense delight, Is fancied in the soul, not appet.i.te: Why love among the virtues is scarce known Is that love is them all contract in one."

III.--FAMILY.

"How fruitful may the smallest circle grow When we the secret of its culture know."

Here is room enough, however humble and unfurnished, for the most expansive friendships, the purest delights, the n.o.blest labors; for where women are, there open forth all possibilities of culture.

Here high o'er head of spiteful fate, Jove cradles safe the ideal state.

"A married life is most beautiful. For what other thing can be such an ornament to a family as the a.s.sociation of husband and wife? For it must not be said that sumptuous edifices, walls covered with pictures, and piazzas adorned with stones,--so admired by those who are ignorant of the Good; nor yet painted windows, myrtle walks; nor anything else which is the subject of astonishment to the stupid,--are the ornaments of a family. But the beauty of a household consists in the conjunction of man and wife who are united to each other by destiny, are consociated to the G.o.ds who preside over nuptials, births, and houses; and who accord, indeed, with each other, and have all things in common as far as to their bodies, or rather their souls themselves;--who exercise a becoming authority over their house and servants, are properly solicitous about the education of their children and pay an attention to the necessaries of life, which is neither expensive nor negligent, but moderate and appropriate. For what can be better and more excellent, as the most admirable Homer says,

'Than when at home the husband and the wife Unanimously live.'"

THE GOBLET.

I drank delights from every cup, Arts, inst.i.tutions, I drank up; Athirst, I quaffed life's flowing bowls, And sipped the flavors of all souls.

A sparkling cup remained for me, The br.i.m.m.i.n.g fount of Family; This I am still drinking, Since, to my thinking, Good wine beads here, Flagons of cheer, Nor laps the soul In Lethe's bowl.

Wine of immortal power Into my chalice now doth pour; Prevailing wine, Juice of the Nine, Flavored of sods, Vintage of G.o.ds; Joyance benign This wondrous wine Ever at call;-- Wine maddening none, Wine saddening none, Wine gladdening all, Makes love's cup ruddier glow, Genius and grace its overflow.

I drained the drops of every cup, Times, inst.i.tutions I drank up: Still Beauty pours the enlivening wine, Fills high her gla.s.s to me and mine; Her cup of sparkling youth, Of love first found, and loyal truth: I know, again I know, Her fill of life and overflow.

When I find my friends are not of the same age as when I first knew them, I may conclude myself, not them, to be decaying and losing flavor.

Still youth and innocency are the sole solvents of all doubts and infidelities; the faiths of women and children in friendship, ever fresh demonstrations of life's sufficiency and imperishableness. Families never die, since they trace their pedigree to Adam the First, who is of immortal ancestry. First suckled at our mother's breast our faiths survive all subsequent modifications; embrace the friendships we form, and color the whole of life. Our intellectual creed may change; temperament, calling, social position, fortune, sect, may phrase differently the delightful lay she sang to us--its tone still lingers in the memory of our affections, holding the heart loyal, and if trusted to the end takes us triumphantly through life. "Ever the feminine leadeth us on." Every prospect the mother gains is soon commanded by her children: our comforts and satisfactions life-long having the voice and countenance of woman.

IV.--CHILDREN.

"Heaven lies about us in our infancy."

Our notion of the perfect society embraces the family as its centre and ornament. Nor is there a paradise planted till the children appear in the foreground to animate and complete the picture. Without these, the world were a solitude, houses desolate, hearts homeless; there were neither perspectives, nor prospects; ourselves were not ourselves, nor were there a future for us:

In their good gifts we hopeful see The fairer selves we fain would be.

Socrates comprised all objects of his search in

"Whate'er of good or ill can man befall In his own house,"

rightly conceiving this to be the seminary of the virtues and foundation of states. There it stands, the ornament of the landscape, and for the human hospitalities: we cannot render it too attractive. Let it be the home of beauty, the haunt of affection, of ideas. Let its chambers open eastward admitting the sunshine for our own and children's sake. Do they not covet the clear sky, delighting in the blue they left so lately, nay cannot wholly leave in coming into nature, whereof they are ever asking news? These gay enthusiasts must run eagerly, and never have enough of it. How soon the clouds clear away from their faces! How sufficient they are to the day, and the joy it brings them! Their poise and plenitude rebuke us.

"Happy those early days when I Shined in my angel infancy; Before I taught my soul to wound My conscience with a sinful sound, Or taught my soul to fancy aught But a white celestial thought, Or had the black art to dispense A several sin to every sense, But felt through all this fleshly dress Bright shoots of everlastingness."

Charming pictures these bright boys, confiding girls, as full of promise to themselves as we were at their age; are still, if faithful to the beautiful vision. Why else should the flame pale as we come up into life, we pleasing ourselves nor others more, perhaps despair of maintaining the virtues we espoused so eagerly in our youth? Must we