The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866. Various
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out. Would not this, in other words, be the separation of the intellect from the heart?
There are some faces that have no more expression in them than any other part of the body. The hand of one person may express more than the face of another.
An ugly person with tact may make a bad face and figure pass very tolerably, and more than tolerably. Ugliness without tact is horrible. It ought to be lawful to extirpate such wretches.
To represent the influence which dead men have among living affairs. For instance, a dead man controls the disposition of wealth; a dead man sits on the judgment-seat, and the living judges do but repeat his decisions; dead men's opinions in all things control the living truth; we believe in dead men's religions; we laugh at dead men's jokes; we cry at dead men's pathos; everywhere, and in all matters, dead men tyrannize inexorably over us.
When the heart is full of care, or the mind much occupied, the summer and the sunshine and the moonlight are but a gleam and glimmer,—a vague dream, which does not come within us, but only makes itself imperfectly perceptible on the outside of us.
Biographies of eminent American merchants,—it would be a work likely to have a great circulation in our commercial country. If successful, there might be a second volume of eminent foreign merchants. Perhaps it had better be adapted to the capacity of young clerks and apprentices.
For the virtuoso's collection:—Alexander's copy of the Iliad, enclosed in the jewelled casket of Darius, still fragrant with the perfumes Darius kept in it. Also the pen with which Faust signed away his salvation, with the drop of blood dried in it.
October 13, 1844.—This morning, after a heavy hoar-frost, the leaves, at sunrise, were falling from the trees in our avenue without a breath of wind, quietly descending by their own weight. In an hour or two after, the ground was strewn with them; and the trees are almost bare, with the exception of two or three poplars, which are still green. The apple and pear trees are still green; so is the willow. The first severe frosts came at least a fortnight ago,—more, if I mistake not.
Sketch of a person, who, by strength of character or assistant circumstances, has reduced another to absolute slavery and dependence on him. Then show that the person who appeared to be the master must inevitably be at least as much a slave as the other, if not more so. All slavery is reciprocal, on the supposition most favorable to the masters.
Persons who write about themselves and their feelings, as Byron did, may be said to serve up their own hearts, duly spiced, and with brain-sauce out of their own heads, as a repast for the public.
To represent a man in the midst of all sorts of cares and annoyances, with impossibilities to perform, and driven almost distracted by his inadequacy. Then quietly comes Death, and releases him from all his troubles; and he smiles, and congratulates himself on escaping so easily.
What if it should be discovered to be all a mistake, that people, who were supposed to have died long ago, are really dead? Byron to be still living, a man of sixty; Burns, too, in extreme old age; Bonaparte likewise; and many other distinguished men, whose lives might have extended to these limits. Then the private acquaintances, friends, enemies, wives, taken to be dead, to be all really living in this world. The machinery might be a person's being persuaded to believe that he had been mad; or having dwelt many years on a desolate island; or having been in the heart of Africa or China; and a friend amuses himself with giving this account. Or some traveller from Europe shall thus correct popular errors.
The life of a woman, who, by the old Colony law, was condemned to wear always the letter A sewed on her garment in token of her sin.
To make literal pictures of figurative expressions. For instance, he burst into tears,—a man suddenly turned into a shower of briny drops. An explosion of laughter,—a man blowing up, and his fragments flying about on all sides. He cast his eyes upon the ground,—a man standing eyeless, with his eyes thrown down, and staring up at him in wonderment, etc., etc., etc.
An uneducated countryman, supposing he had a live frog in his stomach, applied himself to the study of medicine, in order to find a cure, and so became a profound physician. Thus some misfortune, physical or moral, may be the means of educating and elevating us.
Concord, March 12, 1845.—Last night was very cold, and bright starlight; yet there was a mist or fog diffused all over the landscape, lying close to the ground, and extending upwards, probably not much above the tops of the trees. This fog was crystallized by the severe frost; and its little feathery crystals covered all the branches and smallest twigs of trees and shrubs; so that, this morning, at first sight, it appeared as if they were covered with snow. On closer examination, however, these most delicate feathers appeared shooting out in all directions from the branches,—above as well as beneath,—and looking, not as if they had been attached, but had been put forth by the plant,—a new kind of foliage. It is impossible to describe the exquisite beauty of the effect, when close to the eye; and even at a distance this delicate appearance was not lost, but imparted a graceful, evanescent aspect to great trees, perhaps a quarter of a mile off, making them look like immense plumes, or something that would vanish at a breath. The so-much admired sight of icy trees cannot compare with it in point of grace, delicacy, and beauty; and, moreover, there is a life and animation in this, not to be found in the other. It was to be seen in its greatest perfection at sunrise, or shortly after; for the slightest warmth impaired the minute beauty of the frost-feathers, and the general effect. But in the first sunshine, and while there was still a partial mist hovering around the hill and along the river, while some of the trees were lit up with an illumination that did not shine,—that is to say, glitter,—but was not less bright than if it had glittered, while other portions of the scene were partly obscured, but not gloomy,—on the contrary, very cheerful,—it was a picture that never can be painted nor described, nor, I fear, remembered with any accuracy, so magical was its light and shade, while at the same time the earth and everything upon it were white; for the ground is entirely covered by yesterday's snow-storm.
Already, before eleven o'clock, these feathery crystals have vanished, partly through the warmth of the sun, and partly by gentle breaths of wind; for so slight was their hold upon the twigs that the least motion, or thought almost, sufficed to bring them floating down, like a little snow-storm, to the ground. In fact, the fog, I suppose, was a cloud of snow, and would have scattered down upon us, had it been at the usual height above the earth.
All the above description is most unsatisfactory.
ON TRANSLATING THE DIVINA COMMEDIA
FOURTH SONNET
How strange the sculptures that adorn these towers!
This crowd of statues, in whose folded sleeves
Birds build their nests; while canopied with leaves
Parvis and portal bloom like trellised bowers,
And the vast minster seems a cross of flowers!
But fiends and dragons from the gargoyled eaves
Watch the dead Christ between the living thieves,
And underneath the traitor Judas lowers!
Ah! from what agonies of heart and brain,
What exultations trampling on despair,
What tenderness, what tears, what hate of wrong,
What passionate outcry of a soul in pain,
Uprose this poem of the earth and air,
This mediæval miracle of song!
FIVE HUNDRED YEARS AGO
We who enjoy the fruits of civil and religious liberty as our daily food, reaping the harvest we did not sow, seldom give a thought to those who in the dim past prepared the ground and scattered the seed that has yielded such plenteous return. If occasionally we peer into the gloom of by-gone centuries, some stalwart form, like that of Luther, arrests our backward glance, and all beyond is dark and void. But generations before Martin Luther the work for the harvest