The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 03, No. 18, April, 1859

Speaking of snow-flakes, what does he see, but that she is evidently yielding to the soft enchantment of the nearest flame-god,—drawn thither by resistless affinity, and melting, in his burning arms, to the most delicate vapor! Snow-flake no more, yet not absorbed nor lost! Rather taking her true place, transported from the earth-tempests to a warmer and higher sphere of action.

That might be, but not yet. In their new vaporous condition, in which both had lost some of their prominent qualities, they had acquired new relations, perhaps new duties. At all events, they did not at once ascend to their kindred ether,—but swam, glided, floated, above and around, and finally separated. Watching them keenly, Fred could distinctly see that the sometime snow-flake left her sphere and came gradually towards himself. As the vaporous shape floated nearer, it also grew larger, so that, although Fred could not have said certainly that the size was human, it relieved him from the impression of any fairy or elf or sprite. No, it was nothing of that sort. It was just the gentlest, calmest, serenest face and form in the world,—with the same look of pure sweetness he had noticed on her first entrance,—with a peculiar surprised look in her wide-open eyes, that he had seen but in one human face. As well tell the truth,—the face, expression, and all, were as like Annie Peyton's, as her portrait, drawn in water-colors, could possibly have been.

The shape sat down by him,—her vaporous garment still folding softly around her, and her clear, open eyes fixed on him. There was no need of speech, for he read her face as if written by Heaven's own hand; and the coarse and selfish philosophy which had sufficed partially to stun and confuse Minnie fled at the presence of the spirit. Not a word still from the calm, sweet face. It looked on him with pity and surprise. Then all the ideas and convictions that throng on the mind warped, but not lost, pressed on him. He hid his face in the sofa-cushions.

His presence of mind returned as a new thought struck him. It was an ocular delusion, surely. He sprang up, took three or four turns across the room, rubbed his eyes smartly, and took his seat again. For a moment he would not look towards the chair. When at last he did look, the airy, soft form was still there, looking steadily into his eyes.

"What an idea!" exclaimed he, impatiently. "I might put my hands through it, like the flame of a candle. It is nothing but vapor. What is it made of? Nothing but a snow-flake and the gas from cannel coal. I saw it, myself, melting and falling together into this beautiful shape. But then it is only a shape. It is not a body. Oh, but then it may be a soul! Who knows what souls are made of? Snow-flakes and vapor, perhaps. Who knows indeed?"

He looked about the room. Everything was in its natural and usual place. The fire burned merrily; the wind swept fitfully without, and all was quiet within. A very uncomfortable feeling, of mingled awe and curiosity, took possession of him. He did not quite like to look at the shape. He thought,—

"Can this be the spiritual body that St. Paul says is to supersede the natural one? If this is indeed, the soul of Annie Peyton,—why, she knows, somehow, what is in mine. And, by Jove! I can see her soul now, too, without any trouble! She can't hide her real feelings now from me, any more than I can my character from her. There's some good in it, anyhow!"

With some effort, he raised his eyes,—very respectfully, indeed; for though he was only about to look at a soul, he was full as much overpowered as if it had been the body. His eyes fell.

"If I dared to look! But she knows how I feel. I suppose she sees me now,—shivering from head to foot like a–Somehow, I can't look her in the eyes. However, this won't do!" And he looked quickly and timidly into the now smiling face.

He need not have been so timid. If a soul could discern evil, it could, also, good; and this spirit was quick to see the last. Without a word,—but when were words necessary to souls?—with only a glance, she expressed so much love and pity for him, that Fred was ashamed to look her in the face. "Oh! if she could really see him," he thought, "would she look so?" Perhaps so. For the Intelligence that sees the evil can clearest of all see the mitigations, the causes, and the sore temptations; and the fruit of the widest knowledge is the widest love.

Something like this passed from the soul that sat opposite Fred into his awakening and sensitive consciousness:—

"You have never tasted the pleasures of useful activity," the sweet face said. "Come with me, and we will look together, and see what good may come, and also what enjoyment, from it."

Now it was, for the first time, that Fred fully understood his position. It came like a gleam of light on his puzzled intellect, and made that quite clear which had before been so mystical and cloudy, that he had been ready to rub his eyes, and to doubt, almost, the evidence of his senses. He remembered his old and a thousand times repeated theory of "projected images." Here it was. Instead of a fancy, a thought, here was the whole of Annie Peyton's soul (which, to be sure, had often enough occupied his mind) projected from his own, perhaps, so as to be a subject of contemplation to his bodily eyes. Or, what was more likely, the soul itself of Annie Peyton might have left her body for a time in a dream. It was among the possibilities, though he had never before believed it to be. But then, again, how could his soul go off on an exploring tour with Annie's? His soul was safe in his body, and that, namely, the body, lying on the sofa,—the room close, the window down. Just then, he glanced toward the window, and remembered that he had not fastened it at all. There was room enough for a soul to pass easily. But then, again, how was his soul to pass,—to get out, in the first place, of his body? Easily enough. The concentrated effort of will, which could give shape to a fancy, and place it outside the eye, could, by sustained action, separate all the perceptive powers from the senses,—in short, the spirit from its envelope.

"To know, to perceive, to suffer, to rejoice, do not require skin and bones. The heart weeps while the eye is dry; the lips smile while the heart is breaking. One might have a conventional soul,—to keep house, as it were, and do all the honors of society, while the real one went abroad to regions of truth and beauty, and bathed in living waters!"

While Fred continued so to think and speculate, and also to separate, and, as it were, classify his ideas, he was pleased to perceive, that, without any very strong volition on his part, but only from the analytical processes of his reason, that portion of his mind which perceived and enjoyed the truth of things became condensed and separated from the conventional, the factitious, and the merely sensual. The qualities, or states, or whatever the metaphysician calls them, fell off him, as garments do in a dream, and left himself, his very self, separate, and a little distant, from his body. He perceived this rather than saw it. He knew it, but could not assert it. The body, with its bodily wants and limitations, leaned on the couch, half slumberously; while the mind, himself, full of vague aspirations, keen intellectual hunger, and overlaid with error, obstinacy, and the thick crust of self-contemplation, which stifles all true progress,—these assimilated qualities made himself, what he felt he was, not an attractive object to himself more than to anybody else. All his perceptions pointed inward, and cramped and narrowed his existence. He felt very, very small.

"This is strange," he reasoned, "that I should have such a sense of contraction! I crowd on myself, as it were. My thoughts hit me, press me, instead of elevating me. I cannot see why; for the habit of looking up to no goodness or intelligence but the Supreme must surely be a good one, and self-education and development the noblest process for a human being."

He said this in a mechanical sort of way, as if it were a lesson he remembered at school. But it made no impression on him, and did not relieve his difficulty. He knew it, somehow, to be false, and felt it falling off as he spoke, as if it were the last remnant of gauzy sophistry.

Fred had never been fond of church-going, nor was he much given to reading the Holy Scriptures. Indeed, he rather affected the style of the Latter-Day Saints, who look for a better and nobler Messiah than came in the Son of Mary. But just now, fifty texts of Scripture, which he must have learned long ago at his mother's knee, came crowding upon his memory.

"Though I have all gifts, and have not charity, I am nothing."

"He that is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he."

"He that loveth not his brother, whom he hath seen, how can he love God, whom he hath not seen?"

"Little children, love one another."

"Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ."

And so on,—interminably. In a helpless, vague way, he looked at the shadow by his side.

"You like pictures, and paint them," said she, speaking for the first time;—and the voice was precisely the tone he had recognized in the music of the wind; he had thought then it was like hers;—"look with me at these two."

They were, indeed, magnificent pictures. They reached from floor to ceiling. Fred was artist enough to enjoy fully the wide sweep of sky and land,—the mountains in the distance, and the firmament studded with stars. A figure wandered up and down the space, sometimes to the tops of the mountains, sometimes to the clefts of the rocks. When he saw the stars, he calculated their distances;—when he saw the moon, he weighed her, and guessed about the atmosphere on the other side;—when the gold and diamonds shone in the clefts of the rocks, he gathered and analyzed them. The Leviathan he studied and classed. He groped and reached constantly, and, having gathered, looked at his gatherings, dissatisfied. He was ever searching out knowledge. Meanwhile, a gnat put him in a passion, and unleavened bread destroyed his peace. Though he might sleep on rose-leaves, as he could not command the wind, they came often to double under him, and annoy him with bad dreams.

"When shall I be a disembodied spirit, and no longer subject to the petty annoyances that belong to the flesh?" cried he, fretfully. "My knowledge, too, is a moth,—only vexing me by a sense of the limitations of my condition. If I could grasp Nature,—if I could handle the stars,—if I could wake the thunder,—if I could summon the cloud! That would be worth something,—to send the comets on their errands! But what avails it, to know that they go?—how far from me when they start, and how many millions of miles before they turn to come back? If I could move only one of these subtile energies that mock me while I look them in the face!"

The philosopher dozed. A storm came on, and swept over all creation. When he awoke, it was clearing away, and one side of the heavens was heaped with gold-lined clouds, and the darkness of the other spanned with the seven-hued bow. He looked admiringly at the clouds and critically at the rainbow, and added to his memorandum-book.

"What use?" said he, mournfully; "delicate dew, and refracted light!"

He continued to ponder and murmur, to explore, to ascertain, to grumble. He had rheumatic pains, for the elements had no mercy on him; he rubbed himself as he was able, and added to his stores of knowledge. He was very, very learned. When he reached a shelter, he lay down. If no human love welcomed him, and no gentle lip soothed him, he had self-culture, especially in the sciences.

All this Fred knew as soon as he looked at him.

"If he were wise, he would not stop at knowledge, which is, of course, unsatisfactory,—but dive beyond, as I have done, into the essence of things," said Fred to himself. "If he could pierce through the veil that covers all things, he would find amusement enough to last a lifetime. In vegetable life, the jealousies and passions of flowers,—in the quiet eventfulness of the mineral kingdom, to see forms of living beauty in crystals,—finally, in all the under-mechanism of creation, what a fund of enjoyment and instruction! I think I should never cease to be delighted and entertained."

Fred glanced from the picture to the fireplace. The shovel and tongs were just laughing at him; and though they composed their countenances immediately, he had caught the expression, and was excessively annoyed. Philosophy at length came to his aid, especially as the poker expressed only profound deference, preserving a martial attitude and immovable features. After all, why should he care for a pair of tongs? One must cultivate phlegm, if one is a philosopher; and a shovel, after all, is not so bad as a pretty woman. He heard the cool wind distinctly blowing across the mountains in the picture, and saw the stars coming out again. Then Fred knew he had been looking at a diorama, and that the exhibition was over.

He heard a hearty laugh at a little distance, and perceived that the picture, which at first had seemed to spread out over the whole wall, was really divided into two parts, something like an exhibition he remembered of dissolving views. This was delightful. The first picture faded out into gloom, and gave place to a bright, cheerful room in the third story of a house in the city. There were only two rooms,—this, and a small anteroom. The furniture was simple, even poor. Through the window the snow was seen falling, and the blaze flickered, in cheerful contrast, on the hearth. A woman, neither young nor pretty, stood with an astonished expression, and an elderly man laughed loudly, and sat down before the fire.

"What in the world shall I do?" said the woman.

"Do, my dear?—why, bring me my dressing-gown"; said he, laughing again so cheerily, that it was contagious; and as she brought the coarse wadded garment he asked for, she laughed too.

"A pretty kettle of fish!" said she.

"Yes! Now what shall we do? Not a dollar in our pockets!"

"Nor a coat to your back!" broke in the woman.

Then they both laughed again, loudly and heartily.

Fred remembered now what they were laughing at. The man was a minister, well known in Boston, and the woman was his wife. He had just come in, running through the storm, and almost out of breath.

"Wife! my coat! Don't you see I am in my shirt-sleeves? I've got a snow-bank on my back!"

"Why! where in the world—what have you done with your coat?"

"Oh! that I am almost ashamed to tell you; it seems such a parading sort o' thing to do in the streets! But you may depend, I didn't stand at the corners long, to be seen of men, in this driving storm! Fact was, wife, I just took it off of my back, and gave it to poor old M'Carty;—he'd nothing on but rags, and was fairly shaking with the cold. I knew I'd another to home,—and what does a man want of two coats? One's enough for anybody. Besides, didn't our Lord particularly tell his disciples not to have but one? Say, now, wife!"

The wife looked blank and embarrassed.

"Well, wife! what now?"

"Only"–and she paused again.

"Only what? Out with it! You think it was silly! But, wife, you'd 'a' done the same thing;—you couldn't 'a' helped it, nohow. Providence seemed to 'a' cast him in my way o' purpose. I tell you, wife, it was as plain-spoken as it could be,—'Be ye warmed!' Why, you'd 'a' done the same thing, wife!"

"My goodness! I have done it, husband! A man and his wife and three little children came along, not half an hour ago, looking so miserable and cold, that, as I thought, as you say, you had one coat, and that was all you really needed, I just out with the other, and put it on the man's back. The thankfullest creature you ever saw!"

And here the man had broken into the hearty laugh Fred heard.

When the man put on his dressing-gown, which was comfortable for the fireside, the wife renewed her question. He answered with a bright smile,—

"The Son of Man, my dear we know, had not where to lay his head; but then he always trusted in God. God never fails his children. Thanks to Him!" added he, reverently, and raising loving eyes to heaven, as if he really spoke to somebody there,—"Thanks to Him! there's bountiful hands and tender hearts, a plenty of 'em, in the city of Boston. I've only got to strike, and the waters 'll flow out! yes,—rivers of water!"

The wife looked down, and said, meditatively, "It makes me think what our dear Saviour said to poor Peter,—'O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?'"

The man answered in a clear, joyful tone, "Oh, you won't doubt more'n half a minute to time, wife!—and I won't doubt at all!"

With that, the two aged Christians struck up a sweet Wesleyan melody; and that, too, was in the same soft minor key that Fred had heard singing through the gas-burner. They finished the little hymn, and the woman scraped some corn from a cob into the corn-popper. In a few minutes, she had filled a large bowl with the parched corn.

"I declare, they look like them hyacinths in the window,—don't they? What a lovely white color!"

"I think, wife," answered the man, as he took a handful of the kernels and looked at them, "this corn is a good deal like human nature. When we're all shut up in ourselves, we're poor creatures;—but touch us with the live coals of the Holy Spirit, and we turn out something refreshing. Fact is, wife, we're good for nothing, till we're turned inside out."

The picture faded. It was a very homely one.

Fred turned to the soul by his side, but she was no longer visible.

"Escaped, somehow! I wonder, now, how?"

But he had scarcely spoken, when he saw, by a slight movement of the door, that she must have gone out that way. It was just closing. With a tremendous effort of will, he tried to follow her, but in vain. He had been so much in the habit of looking after himself only, that his untrained faculties refused to obey him. As a last resource, he sank passively towards the form which still lay prone on the couch. How he was again to join soul and body he could not guess. But, apparently, there was no difficulty. The spirit which had called him out of himself, for a little while, had departed, and, with her, both the power and the desire of separation. He joined his sensuous existence with ease and pleasure, and with no perceptible lapse of consciousness. No sooner had he obtained the use of his tongue, than he made an inarticulate noise. The door, which had been all that time swinging, opened again, and the velvet-footed Martin appeared.

"Who went out, Martin?"

"Out of here, Sir? No one, Sir."

"Who opened the door, then?—What's that in your hand?"

"The chloroform, Sir, you just handed me."

"Just handed you?"

"Yes, Sir;—you gave it back to me not a quarter of a minute ago."

"Have I been asleep, Martin?"

"I should judge not, Sir. You didn't take more than two sniffs at the bottle. I just had time to go to the door when you spoke to me."

"Martin,—is the window close?"

"Perfectly close, Sir."

"You may go."

* * * * *

PALFREY'S AND ARNOLD'S HISTORIES.2

The London "Times," in its comments upon a recent desponding utterance of foreboding for our republic, by President Buchanan, in his Fort Duquesne Letter, affirms that the horizon of England is clearing while our own is darkening. Mr. Bright, true to the omen of his name, thinks better of our country. He seizes upon all fit occasions, as in his late speech at Manchester, to hold up to his countrymen the opposite view, so far at least as concerns our republic. He loves to recommend to his constituents American notions and institutions. Perhaps it may be allowed,—though this is hardly to be affirmed, if any decisive argument depends upon it,—that the peculiar institutions, political and social, of the two nations, have been on trial long enough, side by side, through the same race of men and in the pursuit of the same interests, to enable a wise discerner to strike the balance between them, in respect to their efficiency and their security as intrusted with the welfare and destiny of millions. If we can learn to look at the large experiment in that light, all that helps to put the real issue intelligently before us will be of equal interest to us, from whichever side of the water it may present itself. For ourselves, we believe that the best security against despair for our country is a knowledge of its history. If the study of our annals does not train up patriots among us, we must consent to lose our heritage. We are glad to be assured that our historians do not intend to allow the republic to decay before they have written out in full the tale of its life. Their records, well digested, may prove to be the pledges of its vigor and permanence.

There are those in the land, who, for reasons suggested by President Buchanan, and for others, of darker omen, to which he makes no reference, do despair, or greatly fear. What with an honest hate of some public iniquities among us,—the tolerance and strengthening of which many of our politicians regard as the vital conditions of our national existence,—and a dread of the excesses incident to our large liberty, it is not strange that some of our own citizens should accord in sentiment with the London "Times." Probably the same proportion of persons may be now living among the native population of our national soil, appeared at the era of the Revolution, preferring English institutions to our own, and predicting that her government will outlast our own. Discussions raised upon the present aspect of affairs in either country will not settle the issue thus opened. A real knowledge of our own institutions and a reasonable confidence in their permanence are to be found only in an intelligent and very intimate acquaintance with their growth and development. In our histories are to be found the materials of our prophecies.

We welcome, therefore, with infinite satisfaction, the two admirable volumes whose titles we have set down. For reasons which will appear before we conclude our remarks upon them, we find it convenient to unite their titles and to write about them together; but for distinctness of subject and marked individuality in the mode of treatment, no two books can stand more widely apart. Abilities and culture and aptitudes of the very highest order have been brought to the composition of each of them. An exhaustive use of abundant materials, and a most conscientious fidelity in digesting them into high-toned philosophical narrations, are marked features of both the volumes, and we will not venture upon the ungracious office of instituting comparisons, in these respects, between their authors. We must make a slight report of the story of each of them, and of the method and spirit in which it is told, and then confront them for mutual cross-examination.

Our historians have learned to write their books with full as much reference to their being read abroad as at home. The problem with which they first have to deal, therefore, is, how to make the men and the incidents and the cardinal points of our annals look as large to foreigners as they do to us. Many of our town-histories are written in the tone and style of Mr. Poole's "Little Pedlington,"—the epithet Little being suppressed in the title, but obtruded on every page. The intensity and emphasis of our historic strain appear to foreigners to be disproportionate to the subject-matter of the story. Mr. Punch always represents a Yankee as larger than his garments. His trousers never cover his ankles; his cuffs stop far short of his wrists; his long neck extends beyond the reach of even his capacious collar; and the bone in him lacks amplitude of muscle. But Mr. Punch, with all his wisdom, does not fully understand the composition of a Yankee, as the greatest common multiple of a Teuton, Dane, Norman, Frank, Kelt, and Englishman. Dr. Palfrey's volume will largely conciliate our cousins beyond the water to our own conceit of our annals, because, more distinctly and cogently than any previous record in pamphlet or folio, it identifies the springs and purposes of our heroic age with an era and a type of men which English historians now exalt on their own noblest pages.

Dr. Palfrey has had precisely that natural endowment, training, experience, mental discipline, and intercourse with the world in public and private relations, to furnish him with the best qualifications for the work to which he has devoted the autumn of an eminently useful and honored life. The sinewy fibre of his theme is religion. And he is a religious man of the highest pattern, deeply skilled in its scholarly lore, erudite in its Scriptural and controversial elements, and practised in the sagacity which it imparts for understanding and interpreting human nature. Religion enters into the subject-matter of his narrative, not so much in its philosophical bearings as in its civico-ecclesiastical and institutional relations; where it becomes the spine of the social fabric, traversed and perforated with the nervous life-chords for all the members of the organism. His education has been that of the highest ideal of New England,—through books and men, through professional duties and public services, bringing him into relations with youth, with men and women, and with the forms and the routine work of civil and political administrations. He has at his command the language of devotion, the rhetoric and logic of philosophy, and the technicalities of jurisprudence. To his personal friends, and they are very many in every walk of life, it is a matter of grateful recognition that he escaped from a political arena whose conflicts were not congenial with his delicacy of taste or of conscience, in season to give the vigor of his best years to the composition of a work which will spread his fame to other lands and identify it forever with what is of most reverent and honored remembrance on his native soil.