Зображення сторінки
PDF
ePub
[blocks in formation]

"How soft the music of those village-
bells,

Falling at intervals upon the ear
In cadence sweet, now dying all away,
Now pealing loud again, and louder still,
Clear and sonorous as the gale comes on!
With easy force it opens all the cells
Where mem'ry slept. Wherever I have
heard

A kindred melody, the scene recurs,
And with it all its pleasures and its
pains.

Such comprehensive views the spirit
takes,

That in a few short moments I retrace (As in a map the voyager his course) The winding of my way."

Cowper had heard the chimes ringing in more than forty new years, when he wrote these beautiful verses, and had experienced the melancholy truth of Pope's remark, that every year carries something dear away with it; yet not destroying or defacing, but only removing it into a softer and more soothing twilight. Poussin's charming picture of a Tomb in Arcadia, is only the past year put into an allegory. And if so, this is the hour to read it in; when, in the happy words of a late naturalist, the repose of wearied nature seems to mark the decline and termination of existence in many things that animated the green and joyous months of summer. The rare note of a bird is feeble and melancholy, and no insect hums in the field; the breeze passes VOL. XXXIII. NO. CXCIII.

by us like a sigh; we hear it, and it is gone for ever.

From this solemn steeple of time to which we have ascended by three hundred and sixty-five steps, what a vast and diversified landscape is open to our eyes! A rich and woody scene! That elm-tree, which waved its dark branches before Eneas in his subterranean pilgrimage, might have been planted here, with its changefulness, its shadows, and its dreams: Quam sedem somnia vulgo Vana tenere ferunt, foliisque sub omnibus hærent."

[ocr errors]

How much hoped for, and how little won; what copious sowing, and what a blight upon the fruit! What tremendous leaps of ambition that lifted us to nothing, but only exhibited us, like Swift's landlord, always climbing, and always in the same place; and yet when the cold and frosty light of reasoning memory plays over these visions and dreams of the past, they seem to sparkle with a certain beauty. The winter trec of the poet might be taken for their image:

"The crystal drops
That trickle down the branches, fast con-
geal'd,

Shoot into pillars of pellucid length,
And prop the pile they but adorn'd be-

fore.

Here grotto within grotto safe defies

B

.

The sunbeam; there emboss'd and fretted wild,

The growing wonder takes a thousand

shapes,

Capricious, in which fancy seeks in vain The likeness of some object seen before."

We said that Poussin's picture of a Tomb in Arcadia is only the past year put into an allegory; and it is in the very nature of bells to bring out this tone of sorrow. Every chime has its connecting toll. Even in the festival and enjoyment of life the sound is audible to the heart. The voluptuary hears it. "I feel a something which makes me think that, if I ever reach near to old age, like Swift, I shall die at top first." This was the apprehension of Lord Byron. He tried to sneer it away. He did not fear idiotcy or madness; he even supposed that some quieter stages of both might be preferable to much of what men think the possession of their senses. In the garden of his fancy he had a sepulchre, and this spectral tomb of intellect cast a dreary shade over the bloom of Arcadia. The past year put into an allegory!—yes, but every year increases the size of that tomb. At first, flowers overhang and conceal it, but it gradually grows and lours upon the eye. Conscience is served by industrious, though invisible genii, who are perpetually labouring. Swift saw it during many years; one might say that he watched it building. He was, indeed, the most awful illustration of it. His death was a show in the literal sense. During the two dreadful years of the malady, his servants exhibited him.

The

father of one of Walter Scott's most intimate friends might have gratified his curiosity in this manner.

We are standing on this steeple of time, and reflection clears the air, and memory rings her bells all to no purpose and in vain, if we do not review the path we have been treading, and mark out a directer as well as a safer one for the next journey. We shall derive no benefit from climbing to the top, if we carry with us no increase of knowledge when we go down. Even while Gray was complaining that his own hours glided uselessly by, he urged Mason to activity, and declared his admiration of those travellers who leave some traces of their footsteps behind them.

"Do not sit making verses that never will be written," was the lively remonstrance of Mrs. Thrale to her stout friend the philosopher, when he had exchanged the indolence of swinging upon gates for the idleness We cannot of meaning to write. help growing older, but the great thing is to grow wiser. Each successive week locks the gate of its predecessor; but though it closes the gate, it keeps the key. Thus every week is a monument guarded and shewn by the week that follows it; and, when studded with the rich jewels of wise hours and holy minutes, it not only diffuses a light into the distance, but attracts and cheers other pilgrims as well as ourselves. Of all the graves that ought to be visited, those of departed years have the strongest interest for ourselves.

Crusader of eastern lands, or martyr of our own, may be more dazzling to our fancy, or more eloquent to our hearts; but neither speaks such solemn lessons. The dust of our own creations-our hopes, our thoughts, our virtues, and our sins-are to us the most costly deposit in the great burial-ground of the universe. It would be a wild and a terrible spectacle if all the millions who fell beneath the Roman eagle were suddenly to start from the depths of the earth; if the fierce Briton were to spring up with his shield and bow under our forest oaks, or the Carthaginian fleet spread its sails to the Italian sun. We might tremble at the vision, and the cheek might grow pale. But how much more appalling

would be the instantaneous resurrection of the last year, with the history of every man in his hand! Adam Clarke has recorded the bewildering epitome of life that rushed upon him in the very moment and catastrophe of drowning; but this resurrection would give some things yet vivider and awfuller. It has been said of those by whom the blood of humanity was shed, that the sound of their own footstep startles them, as if it were the cry of an accuser, while the rustling of the tree and the murmur of the stream sound like a clamorous demand for punishment; that they feel as if they had arrayed against themselves the whole visible creation-sun, moon, stars, and forests, publishing their crime. Surely

this is a frightful visitation; but stabs of our own conscience speak in fiercer accents, and the apparition of our past days would be the most thrilling tale that could be uttered

[ocr errors]

By the chimney's edge, That in our ancient, uncouth, country style,

With huge and thick projection, over

brows

Large space beneath."

3

phecy, may the child become the
father of the man.

But let us not be mistaken. We
have neither recommendation nor
panegyric for all the languages and
none of the absurdities at ten years
old. We remember the description
of a larch; brittle, thin, perking,
premature, upstart, monotonous, with
no massiveness of limb, no variety of
outline, no prominences and recesses
for the lights and shadows to play in;
and we recollect, also, the moral of
the description;-when you have
seen one larch, you have seen all.
Not so with any child of whom the
man is the son. When you have
seen one specimen of the scholastical
patent, you have seen all. We want
a fruitfuller soil of learning to send
up richer juices to the trunk and the
branches. Then the rich gleams of
imagination may shine in the ver-
dant depths; the solemn shade of
philosophy may subdue and har-
monise the glare; and the youthful
scholar may resemble the charming
friend of Steele, who was never be-
held but with delight by her visitors,
and never admired but with pain to
herself. Of all common education
we say, in the exquisite simile of
Webster,-

It is a very happy thing for us when the chimes of the new year have called us up into the steeple before many of them have been rung in. It is always a delightful reflection to feel that we may shape our future conduct by our past. When, at all events, we are enabled to start with some capital, an occasional run by temptation or folly will not break us. We have still something to fall back on-still possess some specie in the cellar. "All my amusements are reduced to the idle business of my little garden, and to the reading of idle books, where the mind is seldom called on." This was the condition of Chesterfield, old, angry, and deaf, in his hermitage at Blackheath. He had gold, indeed, in the cellar, but it was of a base currency, and without the legal superscription. Bacon had not one good coin in his pocket when he made the despicable and desperate appeal to James I., Si tu deseris, perimus. How much happier the education given by Henry Sidney to his son ! "Bless you, my sweet boy! Perge, perge, my Robin, in the filial fear of God, and in the meanest imagination of yourself." And surely it would be a noble and an inspiring sight to behold the Grecian story of piety and affection thus transferred to a different country, and fulfilled in a different object; to see the time that is gone continually brought back to cherish, to strengthen, and to support the time that is come; to feel the wasted virtue of our manhood invigorated by the life-giving current of our youth, the decrepitude and exhaustion of the parent refreshed by the glowing bosom of the child. Thus, in a higher sense than even the poetic eye foresaw in its rapture and pro

"'Tis e'en like one, that on a winter's
night

Takes a long slumber o'er a dying fire,
As loath to part from 't; yet parts thence
more cold

Than when he first sat down."

In looking to ourselves, we are, in
the truest sense of the word, pro-
tecting our country. The decline
and fall of an empire begin in a
family.
family. National guilt is only the
multiplication of individual vices.
Commerce interdicted, laws violated,
population thinned, kingdoms vanish-
ing, the fabric of society crumbling

who has not read that tempestuous
page in European history, and who
does not know its authors? Who
shall remove every apprehension of
that page being again set up in type,
which the hastiest eye may be able
to read? But though it never be
reprinted, there are signs in the sky
that may well induce us to look to
our moral as well as to our physical

Guesses at Truth.

[ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors]

strength. There are other defences of a country beside those of her

coasts.

It has been asserted of every imperial state, that it must be constantly in movement, advancing or retiring, never stationary. Aggression is the condition of its existence. Conquest thus becomes the animating principle of its frame, the source of its motion and its grandeur. Whatever interferes with the action of this principle, affects also the energy and nerve of the state itself. An impeded circulation is shewn in the torpor of the members. And as, when the heart ceases to beat, the body ceases to move; so, when the state ceases to conquer, it ceases to be.

We may read this truth upon the monuments of the past, but he must be blind, indeed, who does not perceive it in the history of the present. We recognise at this hour the action of the same tremendous tide of empire, which, during so many centuries, has been setting into the shores of barbarism or civilisation; at one time sweeping from Greece into Persia, and at another, from Rome into Britain; which now thunders in the ears of Morocco, startles the Circassian chief in his mountain solitude, and dies away with a sullen murmur in the recesses of the Punjaub. The stormy echo in India is, indeed, only the roar of our own assault. She, so far as foreign enemies are concerned, still wears

"Her plumed And jewell'd turban with a smile of peace."

With regard to ourselves, the tide of advancing and impatient empire beats upon distant countries. The defiles of the Caucasus are beyond our fears, while the wave of French ambition breaks over the burning sands of Algeria. But our day of terror and of trial may be advancing. Of every tide there is a receding swell. Repelled, or triumphant in one direction, it turns in another. Retiring from Africa, it may roll upon Europe. That principle of aggression, which is the principle of imperial existence, will manifest its presence by the restless energy it communicates; and we may yet behold the foam of the breakers, of

which we have hitherto heard only the remote thunder.

And if that tide shall ever dash upon England, may we not expect it to set in with storm and fury from the opposite coast of France? From the wise, the generous, the brave of that nation-from the men who love their country, and cherish her renown, we have no unprovoked hostilities to anticipate or to fear. They will feel that France can give ample room to the swelling spirit of her imperial heart in the glorious labours of peace and colonisation. But what nation is composed of patriots? In France the revolutionary temper still lives; repressed, it was not subdued; its languor may be quickened at any hour by popular stimulants into ferocity and hatred. In the altered words of Montesquieu, the tyranny was struck, but not the tyrant. The despotism of the masses continues, if not asserted; the electrical flame wants only a conductor; the first flash will kindle an atmosphere charged with fire; and a future Mirabeau might hurry a Joinville to Brest, or a Bugeaud to Boulogne.

It is not that we fear the threat or the invader. The insulted majesty of the nation would speedily rise in its collected might, to rebuke and demolish the assailants. But warfare has an awful method of concentrating the sufferings and the losses of years. Moreover, every crisis teaches desperation; this most of all. An English fleet behind; an enthusiastic army before; a national insurrection around, crops blasted, cities burning-the meanest soldier in the enemy's camp would feel that the scabbard had been thrown away. And if any sentence were borrowed from the fiery lips of Catiline to quicken the drooping valour of the invading legions, it would surely be this, "Animus, ætas, virtus vestra hortantur; PRÆTEREA NECESSITUDO QUE ETIAM TIMIDOS FORTES FACIT."

These are terrors which we have no intention of quieting by any arrangement of Sir Willoughby Gordon, excellent as that would assuredly be. The War-Office can raise regiments, but not men. The highest kind of drill cannot be taught by the serjeant. Heroes of Marathon are never enlisted. But they can be

created; and the great instrument in the work is the moral discipline of a religious education. Every patriot is a soldier; and the Greek poet shewed himself a statesman, when he affirmed a living fortification to be of all ramparts the most impregnable. We think that a warning cry comes from this steeple of 1845 years; and that a mournful recollection of national opportunities of improvement neglected and lost, may be heard intermingled with the joyous chimes that welcome the stranger. It is never too late to improve. Let the exhortation of Chalmers be remembered. Let the streets, and lanes, and those deep intricacies that teem with human life, be explored and cleansed; let that "mass which is so dense of mind, and therefore so dense of immortality, be penetrated in the length and breadth of it." Bolingbroke remarked, in reference to his plan for a general history of Europe, that every man ought to feel himself bound to give an account even of his leisure; and in the midst of solitude, to be of some use to society. We hope that the lesson will not be forgotten by any of our readers. The slightest effort in a good cause will not be without some profit. The spare minutes of a year are sure labourers, if they be kept to their work. They can throw down and build up; they can dig, or they can empty. Despise not their stature or their strength. There is a tradition in Barbary, that the sea was once entirely absorbed and swallowed by ants.

from ourselves, which the noble and
misguided Algernon Sidney admired
and cherished, is one of the rare
achievements of valorous discipline
and triumphant self-denial. The
multitude shut out their brethren by
a high wall of partition, and enjoy
themselves leisurely upon the sunny
side; others, on the contrary, sit
shivering on the shady side, and re-
fuse, with all the indignation of mar-
tyrdom, a glimpse of the sun.
And
here we have the voluptuary, and
there the ascetic. Cannot the wall
be broken down, so as to admit the
air and the heat at the same time?
so as to make men what Coleridge
says St. Paul was - Christians and
gentlemen? The father of Philip
Sidney thought so, when he ad-
monished him: "Give yourself to
be merry, for you degenerate from
your father, if you find not your-
self most able in wit and body
to do any thing when you be most
merry." And again, "Study, and en-
deavour yourself to be virtuously oc-
cupied." There is only one method
of achieving this object, according to
the last publication of Mr. Newman,
"It is in vain to look out for mis-

A determination to do good wherever, whenever, and however we can, will be an excellent step in the right direction. It will be one of the most harmonious chimes for the new year; nay, it will help to make the steeple of time musical in our praise; thus celebrating the sacred marriage of meditation and activity, of theory and practice. Wordsworth has sung with truth, if not with his usual eloquence :

"Farewell, farewell the heart that lives alone,

Housed in a dream, at distance from

the kind!

Such happiness, wherever it be known,
Is to be pitied, for 't is surely blind."

The absolute abstraction of thought

sionaries for China or Africa, or
evangelists for our great towns, or
Christian attendants on the sick, or
teachers of the ignorant, on such a
scale of numbers as the need requires,
without the doctrine of Purgatory;
for thus the sins of youth are turned
to account by the profitable penance
of manhood; and terrors, which the
philosopher scorns in the individual,
become the benefactors and earn the
gratitude of nations." This is a com-
fortable encouragement to the Na-
tional Society and the Bishop of Lon-
don's lay-readers. They will ac-
complish nothing without a fraud;
and all their offices and institutions
I will be of no avail without a Fire-
assurance! Alas! no chimes, we

hope, from Time's venerable tower,
will welcome this pestilent doctrine
into the fair domains of the year that
is coming. At least if chimes there
The dis-
be, they shall not be ours.
mal howl of a false tradition shall
never terrify us from its twilight
cave of antiquity. We listen to its
voice as to the melancholy roar of
the Virgilian gate-keeper. We know
where to gather the golden bough
that shall ensure a safe and happy

[ocr errors][ocr errors]
« НазадПродовжити »