Various
International Weekly Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science - Volume 1, No. 8, August 19, 1850
A month elapsed. As Ramin was coming down one morning from the attics, where he had been giving notice to a poor widow who had failed in paying her rent, he heard a light step on the stairs. Presently a sprightly gentleman, in buoyant health and spirits, wearing the form of Monsieur Bonelle, appeared. Ramin stood aghast.
"Well, Ramin," gaily said the old man, "how are you getting on? Have you been tormenting the poor widow up stairs? Why, man, we must live and let live!"
"Monsieur Bonelle," said the mercer, in a hollow tone; "may I ask where are your rheumatics?"
"Gone, my dear friend,—gone."
"And the gout that was creeping higher and higher every day," exclaimed Monsieur Ramin, in a voice of anguish.
"It went lower and lower, till it disappeared altogether," composedly replied Bonelle.
"And your asthma—"
"The asthma remains, but asthmatic people are proverbially long-lived. It is, I have been told, the only complaint that Methusalah was troubled with." With this Bonelle opened his door, shut it, and disappeared.
Ramin was transfixed on the stairs; petrified with intense disappointment, and a powerful sense of having been duped. When he was discovered, he stared vacantly, and raved about an Excellent Opportunity of taking his revenge.
The wonderful cure was the talk of the neighborhood, whenever Monsieur Bonelle appeared in the streets, jauntily flourishing his cane. In the first frenzy of his despair, Ramin refused to pay; he accused every one of having been in a plot to deceive him; he turned off Catharine and expelled his porter: he publicly accused the lawyer and priest of conspiracy; brought an action against the doctor and lost it. He had another brought against him for violently assaulting Marguerite, in which he was cast in heavy damages. Monsieur Bonelle did not trouble himself with useless remonstrances, but when his annuity was refused, employed such good legal arguments, as the exasperated mercer could not possibly resist.
Ten years have elapsed, and MM. Ramin and Bonelle still live on. For a house which would have been dear at fifty thousand francs, the draper has already handed over seventy thousand.
The once red-faced, jovial Ramin is now a pale haggard man, of sour temper and aspect. To add to his anguish he sees the old man thrive on that money which it breaks his heart to give. Old Marguerite takes a malicious pleasure in giving him an exact account of their good cheer, and in asking him if he does not think Monsieur looks better and better every day. Of one part of this torment Ramin might get rid, by giving his old master notice to quit, and no longer having him in his house. But this he cannot do; he has a secret fear that Bonelle would take some Excellent Opportunity of dying without his knowledge, and giving some other person an Excellent Opportunity of persecuting him, and receiving the money in his stead.
The last accounts of the victim of Excellent Opportunities represent him as being gradually worn down with disappointment. There seems every probability of his being the first to leave the world; for Bonelle is heartier than ever.
[From Household Words.]
THE OLD CHURCHWARD TREE
A PROSE POEM
There is an old yew tree which stands by the wall in a dark quiet corner of the churchyard.
And a child was at play beneath its wide-spreading branches, one fine day in the early spring. He had his lap full of flowers, which the fields and lanes had supplied him with, and he was humming a tune to himself as he wove them into garlands.
And a little girl at play among the tombstones crept near to listen; but the boy was so intent upon his garland, that he did not hear the gentle footsteps, as they trod softly over the fresh green grass. When his work was finished, and all the flowers that were in his lap were woven together in one long wreath, he started up to measure its length upon the ground, and then he saw the little girl, as she stood with her eyes fixed upon him. He did not move or speak, but thought to himself that she looked very beautiful as she stood there with her flaxen ringlets hanging down upon her neck. The little girl was so startled by his sudden movement, that she let fall all the flowers she had collected in her apron, and ran away as fast as she could. But the boy was older and taller than she, and soon caught her, and coaxed her to come back and play with him, and help him to make more garlands; and from that time they saw each other nearly every day, and became great friends.
Twenty years passed away. Again, he was seated beneath the old yew tree in the churchyard.
It was summer now; bright, beautiful summer, with the birds singing, and the flowers covering the ground, and scenting the air with their perfume.
But he was not alone now, nor did the little girl steal near on tiptoe, fearful of being heard. She was seated by his side, and his arm was round her, and she looked up into his face, and smiled as she whispered: "The first evening of our lives we were ever together was passed here; we will spend the first evening of our wedded life in the same quiet, happy place." And he drew her closer to him as she spoke.
The summer is gone; and the autumn; and twenty more summers and autumns have passed away since that evening, in the old churchyard.
A young man, on a bright moonlight night, comes reeling through the little white gate, and stumbling over the graves. He shouts and he sings, and is presently followed by others like unto himself, or worse. So, they all laugh at the dark solemn head of the yew tree, and throw stones up at the place where the moon had silvered the boughs.
Those same boughs are again silvered by the moon, and they droop over his mother's grave. There is a little stone which bears this inscription:—
"HER HEART BRAKE IN SILENCE."
But the silence of the churchyard is now broken by a voice—not of the youth—nor a voice of laughter and ribaldry.
"My son!—dost thou see this grave? and dost thou read the record in anguish, whereof may come repentance?"
"Of what should I repent?" answers the son; "and why should my young ambition for fame relax in its strength because my mother was old and weak?"
"Is this indeed our son?" says the father, bending in agony over the grave of his beloved.
"I can well believe I am not;" exclaimeth the youth. "It is well that you have brought me here to say so. Our natures are unlike; our courses must be opposite. Your way lieth here—mine yonder!"
So the son left the father kneeling by the grave.
Again a few years are passed. It is winter, with a roaring wind and a thick gray fog. The graves in the Church-yard are covered with snow, and there are great icicles in the Church-yard. The wind now carries a swathe of snow along the tops of the graves as though the "sheeted dead" were at some melancholy play; and hark! the icicles fall with a crash and jingle, like a solemn mockery of the echo of the unseemly mirth of one who is now coming to his final rest.
There are two graves near the old yew tree; and the grass has overgrown them. A third is close by; and the dark earth at each side has just been thrown up. The bearers come; with a heavy pace they move along; the coffin heaveth up and down, as they step over the intervening graves.
Grief and old age had seized upon the father, and worn out his life; and premature decay soon seized upon the son, and gnawed away his vain ambition, and his useless strength, till he prayed to be borne, not the way yonder that was most opposite to his father and his mother, but even the same way they had gone—the way which leads to the Old Churchyard Tree.
In dreamy hours the dormant imagination looks out and sees vague significances in things which it feels can at an after time be vividly conceived and expressed; the most familiar objects have a strange double meaning in their aspects; the very chair seems to be patiently awaiting there the expounder of its silent, symbolical language.—Boston Morning Post.
[From Bentley's Miscellany.]
GREECE AND TURKEY.2
Whatever Mr. AUBREY DE VERE sees, he picturesquely describes; and so far as words can do so, he makes pictures of all the subjects he writes upon; and had he painted as he has written, or used his pencil equally well with his pen, two more delightful volumes, to any lover of Greece, it would be difficult to name. With an evidently refined taste, and a perfect acquaintance with the ancient history of the country he traveled through, and the ever famous characters that made its history what it is, his descriptions combine most pleasingly together, the past with the present. He peoples the scenery with the men whose deeds give to that scenery all its interest; and whether on the plain of Marathon, or the site of Delphi or the Acropolis, he has a store of things to say of their past glories, and links together, with great artistic skill, that which is gone with that which remains.
By the scholar and the man of taste the volumes will be read with no little delight, as they abound much more with reflections and sensible observations, than with the commonplace incidents of travel. Indeed, the author has left but small space for his accidents at sea and his hardships on shore, since all the chapters but four are devoted to Athens, Delphi, and Constantinople. The classical reader will prefer the chapters on the two first-named places; the general reader will find perhaps more interesting his sketches of the city of the Sultan, and an anecdote which he gives of the present Sultan, and which declares him to possess more of decision, and firmness of character, and good sense, than the world gives him credit for. His description of the Bosphorus will create in many a desire to see what he has seen, and to look upon some, at least, of the fifty-seven palaces which the sultans have raised upon its banks; and upon the hundreds of others, which, while the Commander of the Faithful permits it, are the property of his subjects.
It argued far more of a wild spirit of adventure than of a sober understanding in Aubrey de Vere, to go with that clever Frenchman to the Turk's house, and to play off all those tricks in the presence of its master and his ten unvailed wives. Rarely indeed, if ever before, has an Englishman passed an hour so comfortably with the whole of a rich man's harem, and seen them as de Vere saw them in all their artlessness and beauty. We live, indeed, in strange times, when the once scorned and loathed Giaours contrive to possess themselves of such extraordinary privileges, and to escape unharmed from such hitherto unheard-of enjoyments.
Where one thought was given to Constantinople a hundred years since from the west of the Dalmatian coast, ten thousand eyes are now constantly directed to it, and with continually increasing anxiety. The importance of that city is now understood by all the European powers, and its future fate has become a subject of deep interest to all the western states, in consequence of the determined set made upon it by its powerful northern neighbor. With the Cossacks at Istamboul instead of Turks, we should be very ill satisfied, and the whole charm of this city on its seven hills would have departed: already is it on the wane. Sultan Mahmoud's hostility to beards and to flowing robes, to the turban and the jherid, has deprived his capital city of much of its picturesqueness and peculiarity; but still enough remains of eastern manners and costumes to make it one of the most interesting cities in the world to visit and roam over. Such as, like ourselves, may not hope to sport a caique on the Bosphorus, will do well to acquaint themselves with the information Aubrey de Vere can give them, and to suffer their imagination to transport them to scenes among the fairest and the loveliest on the earth's surface, and which are presented to them in these volumes as graphically as words can paint them.
By the possessor of Wordsworth's Greece, where every spot almost, of the slightest historical interest, is given in a picture on its pages, these "Picturesque Sketches" will be read with the highest gratification that scenes and descriptions together can supply. There is so much of mind in them; so much of sound philosophy in the observations; such beautiful thoughts; so well, so elegantly expressed; so many allusions to the past, that are continually placing before us Pericles, Themistocles, or Demosthenes, that we are improved while amused, and feel at every page that we are reading a work far above the general works on such subjects; a work of lasting interest, that may be read and re-read, and still with delight and advantage.
DEATH AND SLEEP
FROM THE GERMAN OF KRUMMACHER
In brotherly embrace walked the Angel of Sleep and the Angel of Death upon the earth.
It was evening. They laid themselves down upon a hill not far from the dwelling of men. A melancholy silence prevailed around, and the chimes of the evening-bell in the distant hamlet ceased.
Still and silent, as was their custom, sat these two beneficent Genii of the human race, their arms entwined with cordial familiarity, and soon the shades of night gathered around them.
Then arose the Angel of Sleep from his moss-grown couch, and strewed with a gentle hand the invisible grains of slumber. The evening breeze wafted them to the quiet dwelling of the tired husbandman, infolding in sweet sleep the inmates of the rural cottage—from the old man upon the staff, down to the infant in the cradle. The sick forgot their pain: the mourners their grief; the poor their care. All eyes closed.
His task accomplished, the benevolent Angel of Sleep laid himself again by the side of his grave brother. "When Aurora awakes," exclaimed he, with innocent joy, "men praise me as their friend and benefactor. Oh! what happiness, unseen and secretly to confer such benefits! How blessed are we to be the invisible messengers of the Good Spirit! How beautiful is our silent calling!"
So spake the friendly Angel of Slumber.
The Angel of Death sat with still deeper melancholy on his brow, and a tear, such as mortals shed, appeared in his large dark eyes. "Alas!" said he, "I may not, like thee, rejoice in the cheerful thanks of mankind; they call me upon the earth their enemy, and joy-killer."
"Oh! my brother," replied the gentle Angel of Slumber, "and will not the good man, at his awakening, recognize in thee his friend and benefactor, and gratefully bless thee in his joy? Are we not brothers, and ministers of one Father?"
As he spake, the eyes of the Death-Angel beamed with pleasure, and again did the two friendly Genii cordially embrace each other.
THE MODERN SCHOOLS OF ATHENS.—I visited, with equal surprise and satisfaction, an Athenian school, which contained seven hundred pupils, taken from every class of society. The poorer classes were gratuitously instructed in reading, writing, and arithmetic, and the girls in needlework likewise. The progress which the children had made was very remarkable; but what particularly pleased me was that air of bright alertness and good-humored energy which belonged to them, and which made every task appear a pleasure, not a toil. The greatest punishment which can be inflicted on an Athenian child is exclusion from school, though but for a day. About seventy of the children belonged to the higher classes, and were instructed in music, drawing, the modern languages, the ancient Greek, and geography. Most of them were at the moment reading Herodotus and Homer. I have never seen children approaching them in beauty; and was much struck by their Oriental cast of countenance, their dark complexions, their flashing eyes, and that expression, at once apprehensive and meditative, which is so much more remarkable in children than in those of a more mature age.—De Vere.
At Berlin, the Academy of Sciences has been holding a sitting, according to its statutes, in honor of the memory of Leibnitz. In the course of the oration delivered on the occasion, it was stated that the 4th of August being the fiftieth anniversary of the admission of Alexander Von Humboldt as a member of the Academy, it had been resolved, in celebration of the event, to place a marble bust of the "Nestor of Science" in the lecture room of the society.