Life Without and Life Within; or, Reviews, Narratives, Essays, and Poems.
acts calculated to injure the few or many; who has poisoned the ears and
the hearts he might have rightly informed; who has steeped in tears the
cup of thousands; who has put back, as far as in him lay, the
accomplishment of general good and happiness for the sake of his selfish
aggrandizement or selfish luxury; who has sold to a party what was meant
for mankind? If such sleep, dreadful shall be the waking.
"Deliver us from evil." In public or in private, it is easy to give
pain--hard to give pure pleasure; easy to do evil--hard to do good. God
does his good in the whole, despite of bad men; but only from a very
pure mind will he permit original good to proceed in the day. Happy
those who can feel that during the past year, they have, to the best of
their knowledge, refrained from evil. Happy those who determine to
proceed in this by the light of conscience. It is but a spark; yet from
that spark may be drawn fire-light enough for worlds and systems of
worlds--and that light is ever new.
And with this thought rises again the memory of the fair lines that
light has brought to view in the histories of some men. If the nation
tends to wrong, there are yet present the ten just men. The hands and
lips of this great form may be impure, but pure blood flows yet within
her veins--the blood of the noble bands who first sought these shores
from the British isles and France, for conscience sake. Too many have
come since, for bread alone. We cannot blame--we must not reject them;
but let us teach them, in giving them bread, to prize that salt, too,
without which all on earth must lose its savor. Yes! let us teach them,
not rail at their inevitable ignorance and unenlightened action, but
teach them and their children as our own; if we do so, their children
and ours may yet act as one body obedient to one soul; and if we act
rightly now, that soul a pure soul.
And ye, sable bands, forced hither against your will, kept down here now
by a force hateful to nature, a will alien from God! It does sometimes
seem as if the avenging angel wore your hue, and would place in your
hands the sword to punish the cruel injustice of our fathers, the
selfish perversity of the sons. Yet are there no means of atonement?
Must the innocent suffer with the guilty? Teach us, O All-Wise, the clew
out of this labyrinth; and if we faithfully encounter its darkness and
dread, and emerge into clear light, wilt thou not bid us "go and sin no
more"?
Meanwhile, let us proceed as we can, _picking our steps_ along the
slippery road. If we keep the right direction, what matters it that we
must pass through so much mud? The promise is sure:--
Angels shall free the feet from stain, to their own hue of snow,
If, undismayed, we reach the hills where the true olives grow.
The olive groves, which we must seek in cold and damp,
Alone can yield us oil for a perpetual lamp.
Then sound again the golden horn with promise ever new;
The princely deer will ne'er be caught by those that slack pursue;
Let the "White Doe" of angel hopes be always kept in view.
Yes! sound again the horn--of hope the golden horn!
Answer it, flutes and pipes, from valleys still and lorn;
Warders, from your high towers, with trumps of silver scorn,
And harps in maidens' bowers, with strings from deep hearts torn,--
All answer to the horn--of hope the golden horn!
There is still hope, there is still an America, while private lives are
ruled by the Puritan, by the Huguenot conscientiousness, and while there
are some who can repudiate, not their debts, but the supposition that
they will not strive to pay their debts to their age, and to Heaven, who
gave them a share in its great promise.
ST. VALENTINES DAY.
This merry season of light jokes and lighter love-tokens, in which Cupid
presents the feathered end of the dart, as if he meant to tickle before
he wounded the captive, has always had a great charm for me. When but a
child, I saw Allston's picture of the "Lady reading a Valentine," and
the mild womanliness of the picture, so remote from passion no less than
vanity, so capable of tenderness, so chastely timid in its
self-possession, has given a color to the gayest thoughts connected with
the day. From the ruff of Allston's Lady, whose clear starch is made to
express all rosebud thoughts of girlish retirement, the soft unfledged
hopes which never yet were tempted from the nest, to Sam Weller's
Valentine, is indeed a broad step, but one which we can take without
material change of mood.
But of all the thoughts and pictures associated with the day, none can
surpass in interest those furnished by the way in which we celebrated it
last week.
The Bloomingdale Asylum for the Insane is conducted on the most wise and
liberal plan known at the present day. Its superintendent, Dr. Earle,
has had ample opportunity to observe the best modes of managing this
class of diseases both here and in Europe, and he is one able, by
refined sympathies and intellectual discernment, to apply the best that
is known and to discover more.
Under his care the beautifully situated establishment at Bloomingdale
loses every sign of the hospital and the prison, not long since thought
to be inseparable from such a place. It is a house of refuge, where
those too deeply wounded or disturbed in body or spirit to keep up that
semblance or degree of sanity which the conduct of affairs in the world
at large demands, may be soothed by gentle care, intelligent sympathy,
and a judicious attention to their physical welfare, into health, or, at
least, into tranquillity.
Dr. Earle, in addition to modes of turning the attention from causes of
morbid irritation, and promoting brighter and juster thoughts, which he
uses in common with other institutions, has this winter delivered a
course of lectures to the patients. We were present at one of these some
weeks since. The subjects touched upon were, often, of a nature to
demand as close attention as an audience of regular students (not
college students, but real students) can be induced to give. The large
assembly present were almost uniformly silent, to appearance interested,
and showed a power of decorum and self-government often wanting among
those who esteem themselves in healthful mastery of their morals and
manners. We saw, with great satisfaction, generous thoughts and solid
pursuits offered, as well as light amusements, for the choice of the
sick in mind. For it is our experience that such sickness arises as
often from want of concentration as any other cause. One of the noblest
youths that ever trod this soil was wont to say, "he was never tired, if
he could only see far enough." He is now gone where his view may be less
bounded; but we, who stay behind, may take the hint that mania, no less
than the commonest forms of prejudice, bespeaks a mind which does not
see far enough to correct partial impressions. No doubt, in many cases,
dissipation of thought, after attention is once distorted into some
morbid direction, may be the first method of cure; but we are glad to
see others provided for those who are ready for them.
St. Valentine's Eve had been appointed for one of the dancing parties at
the institution, and a few friends from "the world's people" invited to
be present.
At an early hour the company assembled in the well-lighted hall, still
gracefully wreathed with its Christmas evergreens; the music struck up
and the company entered.
And these are the people who, half a century ago, would have been
chained in solitary cells, screaming out their anguish till silenced by
threats or blows, lost, forsaken, hopeless, a blight to earth, a libel
upon heaven!
Now, they are many of them happy, all interested. Even those who are
troublesome and subject to violent excitement in every-day scenes, show
here that the power of self-control is not lost, only lessened. Give
them an impulse strong enough, favorable circumstances, and they will
begin to use it again. They regulate their steps to music; they restrain
their impatient impulses from respect to themselves and to others. The
Power which shall yet shape order from all disorder, and turn ashes to
beauty, as violets spring up from green graves, hath them also in its
keeping.
The party were well dressed, with care and taste. The dancing was better
than usual, because there was less of affectation and ennui. The party
was more entertaining, because native traits came out more clear from
the disguises of vanity and tact.
There was the blue-stocking lady, a mature belle and bel-esprit. Her
condescending graces, her rounded compliments, her girlish, yet "highly
intellectual" vivacity, expressed no less in her head-dress than her
manner, were just that touch above the common with which the illustrator
of Dickens has thought fit to heighten the charms of Mrs. Leo Hunter.
There was the travelled Englishman, _au fait_ to every thing beneath the
moon and beyond. With his clipped and glib phrases, his bundle of
conventionalities carried so neatly under his arm, and his "My dear
sir," in the perfection of cockney dignity, what better could the most
select dinner party furnish us in the way of distinguished strangerhood?
There was the hoidenish young girl, and the decorous, elegant lady
smoothing down "the wild little thing." There was the sarcastic observer
on the folly of the rest; in that, the greatest fool of all, unbeloved
and unloving. In contrast to this were characters altogether lovely,
full of all sweet affections, whose bells, if jangled out of tune, still
retained their true tone.
One of the best things of the evening was a dance improvised by two
elderly women. They asked the privilege of the floor, and, a suitable
measure being played, performed this dance in a style lively,
characteristic, yet moderate enough. It was true dancing, like peasant
dancing.
An old man sang comic songs in the style of various nations and
characters, with a dramatic expression that would have commanded
applause "on any stage."
And all was done decently and in order, each biding his time. Slight
symptoms of impatience here and there were easily soothed by the
approach of this, truly "good physician," the touch of whose hand seemed
to possess a talismanic power to soothe. We doubt not that all went to
their beds exhilarated, free from irritation, and more attuned to
concord than before. Good bishop Valentine! thy feast was well kept, and
not without the usual jokes and flings at old bachelors, the exchange of
sugar-plums, mottoes, and repartees.
This is the second festival I have kept with those whom society has
placed, not outside her pale, indeed, but outside the hearing of her
benison. Christmas I passed in a prison! There, too, I saw marks of the
miraculous power of love, when guided by a pure faith in the goodness of
its source, and intelligence as to the design of the creative
intelligence. I saw enough of its power, impeded as it was by the
ignorance of those who, eighteen hundred years after the coming of
Christ, still believe more in fear and force: I saw enough, I say, of
this power to convince me, if I needed conviction, that love is indeed
omnipotent, as He said it was.
A companion, of that delicate nature by which a scar is felt as a
wound, was saddened by the thought how very little our partialities,
undue emotions, and manias need to be exaggerated to entitle us to rank
among madmen. I cannot view it so. Rather let the sense that, with all
our faults and follies, there is still a sound spot, a presentiment of
eventual health in the inmost nature, embolden us to hope, to _know_ it
is the same with all. A great thinker has spoken of the Greek, in
highest praise, as "a self-renovating character." But we are all Greeks,