The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 01, No. 04, February, 1858

A small number, and as frequently, perhaps, as otherwise, those apparently the most promising at entering, will make little or no progress. It cannot be predicted beforehand that such will be the result of any case, for the most hopeless at entering have often made decided advancement; but the fact remains, that no methods of instruction yet adopted will invariably develope the slumbering intellect, or strengthen and correct the enfeebled or depraved will.

The institutions for the training of idiots should be greatly multiplied, and should have a department for awkward, eccentric, and backward children. The methods adopted would be of great benefit to these, and would often call into activity intellects which might be useful in their proper spheres.

We regard this great movement for the improvement of a class hitherto considered so hopeless, as one of the most honorable and benevolent enterprises of our time. It is yet in its infancy; but we hope to see, ere many years have passed, in every State of our Union, asylums reared, where these waifs of humanity shall be gathered, and such training given them as may develope in the highest degree possible the hitherto rudimentary faculties of their minds, and render them capable of performing, in some humble measure, their part in the drama of life.

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AMOURS DE VOYAGE

  Oh, you are sick of self-love, Malvolio,  And taste with a distempered appetite! Shakspeare.Il doutait de tout, même de l'amour.—French Novel.Solvitur ambulando. Solutio Sophismatum.       Flevit amores  Non elaboratum ad pedem.—Horace.  Over the great windy waters, and over the clear crested summits,    Unto the sun and the sky, and unto the perfecter earth,  Come, let us go,—to a land wherein gods of the old time wandered,    Where every breath even now changes to ether divine.  Come, let us go; though withal a voice whisper, "The world that we      live in,    Whithersoever we turn, still is the same narrow crib;  'Tis but to prove limitation, and measure a cord, that we travel;    Let who would 'scape and be free go to his chamber and think;  'Tis but to change idle fancies for memories wilfully falser;    'Tis but to go and have been."—Come, little bark, let us go!

I.—CLAUDE TO EUSTACE

    Dear Eustatio, I write that you may write me an answer,  Or at the least to put us en rapport with each other.  Rome disappoints me much,—St. Peter's, perhaps, in especial;  Only the Arch of Titus and view from the Lateran please me:  This, however, perhaps, is the weather, which truly is horrid.  Greece must be better, surely; and yet I am feeling so spiteful,  That I could travel to Athens, to Delphi, and Troy, and Mount Sinai,  Though but to see with my eyes that these are vanity also.    Rome disappoints me much; I hardly as yet understand, but  Rubbishy seems the word that most exactly would suit it.  All the foolish destructions, and all the sillier savings,  All the incongruous things of past incompatible ages,  Seem to be treasured up here to make fools of present and future.  Would to Heaven the old Goths had made a cleaner sweep of it!  Would to Heaven some new ones would come and destroy me these churches!  However, one can live in Rome as also in London.  Rome is better than London, because it is other than London.  It is a blessing, no doubt, to be rid, at least for a time, of  All one's friends and relations,—yourself (forgive me!) included,—  All the assujettissement of having been what one has been,  What one thinks one is, or thinks that others suppose one;  Yet, in despite of all, we turn like fools to the English.  Vernon has been my fate; who is here the same that you knew him,—  Making the tour, it seems, with friends of the name of Trevellyn.

II.—CLAUDE TO EUSTACE

    Rome disappoints me still; but I shrink and adapt myself to it.  Somehow a tyrannous sense of a superincumbent oppression  Still, wherever I go, accompanies ever, and makes me  Feel like a tree (shall I say?) buried under a ruin of brick-work.  Rome, believe me, my friend, is like its own Monte Testaceo,  Merely a marvellous mass of broken and castaway wine-pots.  Ye gods! what do I want with this rubbish of ages departed,  Things that Nature abhors, the experiments that she has failed in?  What do I think of the Forum? An archway and two or three pillars.  Well, but St. Peter's? Alas, Bernini has filled it with sculpture!  No one can cavil, I grant, at the size of the great Coliseum.  Doubtless the notion of grand and capacious and massive amusement,  This the old Romans had; but tell me, is this an idea?  Yet of solidity much, but of splendor little is extant:  "Brickwork I found thee, and marble I left thee!" their Emperor vaunted;  "Marble I thought thee, and brickwork I find thee!" the Tourist may      answer.

III.—GEORGINA TREVELLYN TO LOUISA –

  At last, dearest Louisa, I take up my pen to address you.  Here we are, you see, with the seven-and-seventy boxes,  Courier, Papa and Mamma, the children, and Mary and Susan:  Here we all are at Rome, and delighted of course with St Peter's,  And very pleasantly lodged in the famous Piazza di Spagna.  Rome is a wonderful place, but Mary shall tell you about it;  Not very gay, however; the English are mostly at Naples;  There are the A.s, we hear, and most of the W. party.  George, however, is come; did I tell you about his mustachios?  Dear, I must really stop, for the carriage, they tell me, is waiting.  Mary will finish; and Susan is writing, they say, to Sophia.  Adieu, dearest Louise,—evermore your faithful Georgina.  Who can a Mr. Claude be whom George has taken to be with?  Very stupid, I think, but George says so very clever.

IV.—CLAUDE TO EUSTACE

  No, the Christian faith, as at any rate I understood it,  With its humiliations and exaltations combining,  Exaltations sublime, and yet diviner abasements,  Aspirations from something most shameful here upon earth and  In our poor selves to something most perfect above in the heavens,—  No, the Christian faith, as I, at least, understood it,  Is not here, O Rome, in any of these thy churches;  Is not here, but in Freiberg, or Rheims, or Westminster Abbey.  What in thy Dome I find, in all thy recenter efforts,  Is a something, I think, more rational far, more earthly,  Actual, less ideal, devout not in scorn and refusal,  But in a positive, calm, Stoic-Epicurean acceptance.  This I begin to detect in St. Peter's and some of the churches,  Mostly in all that I see of the sixteenth-century masters;  Overlaid of course with infinite gauds and gewgaws,  Innocent, playful follies, the toys and trinkets of childhood,  Forced on maturer years, as the serious one thing essential,  By the barbarian will of the rigid and ignorant Spaniard.

V.—CLAUDE TO EUSTACE

  Luther, they say, was unwise; like a half-taught German, he could not  See that old follies were passing most tranquilly out of remembrance;  Leo the Tenth was employing all efforts to clear out abuses;  Jupiter, Juno, and Venus, Fine Arts, and Fine Letters, the Poets,  Scholars, and Sculptors, and Painters, were quietly clearing away the  Martyrs, and Virgins, and Saints, or at any rate Thomas Aquinas.  He must forsooth make a fuss and distend his huge Wittenberg lungs, and  Bring back Theology once yet again in a flood upon Europe:  Lo, you, for forty days from the windows of heaven it fell; the  Waters prevail on the earth yet more for a hundred and fifty;  Are they abating at last? The doves that are sent to explore are  Wearily fain to return, at the best with a leaflet of promise,—  Fain to return, as they went, to the wandering wave-tost vessel,—  Fain to reënter the roof which covers the clean and the unclean.  Luther, they say, was unwise; he didn't see how things were going;  Luther was foolish,—but, O great God! what call you Ignatius?  O my tolerant soul, be still! but you talk of barbarians,  Alaric, Attila, Genseric;—why, they came, they killed, they  Ravaged, and went on their way; but these vile, tyrannous Spaniards,  These are here still,—how long, O ye Heavens, in the country of Dante?  These, that fanaticized Europe, which now can forget them, release not  This, their choicest of prey, this Italy; here you can see them,—  Here, with emasculate pupils and gimcrack churches of Gesu,  Pseudo-learning and lies, confessional-boxes and postures,—  Here, with metallic beliefs and regimental devotions,—  Here, overcrusting with shame, perverting, defacing, debasing,  Michael Angelo's dome, that had hung the Pantheon in heaven,  Raphael's Joys and Graces, and thy clear stars, Galileo!

VI.—CLAUDE TO EUSTACE

    Which of three Misses Trevellyn it is that Vernon shall marry  Is not a thing to be known; for our friend's is one of those natures  Which have their perfect delight in the general tender-domestic,  So that he trifles with Mary's shawl, ties Susan's bonnet,  Dances with all, but at home is most, they say, with Georgina,  Who is, however, too silly in my apprehension for Vernon.  I, as before when I wrote, continue to see them a little;  Not that I like them so much, or care a bajocco for Vernon,  But I am slow at Italian, have not many English acquaintance,  And I am asked, in short, and am not good at excuses.  Middle-class people these, bankers very likely, not wholly  Pure of the taint of the shop; will at table d'hôte and restaurant  Have their shilling's worth, their penny's pennyworth even:  Neither man's aristocracy this, nor God's, God knoweth!  Yet they are fairly descended, they give you to know, well connected;  Doubtless somewhere in some neighborhood have, and careful to keep, some  Threadbare-genteel relations, who in their turn are enchanted  Grandly among county people to introduce at assemblies  To the unpennied cadets our cousins with excellent fortunes.  Neither man's aristocracy this, nor God's, God knoweth!

VII.—CLAUDE TO EUSTACE

    Ah, what a shame, indeed, to abuse these most worthy people!  Ah, what a sin to have sneered at their innocent rustic pretensions!  Is it not laudable really, this reverent worship of station?  Is it not fitting that wealth should tender this homage to culture?  Is it not touching to witness these efforts, if little availing,  Painfully made, to perform the old ritual service of manners?  Shall not devotion atone for the absence of knowledge? and fervor  Palliate, cover, the fault of a superstitious observance?  Dear, dear, what have I said? but, alas, just now, like Iago,  I can be nothing at all, if it is not critical wholly;  So in fantastic height, in coxcomb exaltation,  Here in the Garden I walk, can freely concede to the Maker  That the works of his hand are all very good: his creatures,  Beast of the field and fowl, he brings them before me; I name them;  That which I name them, they are,—the bird, the beast, and the cattle.  But for Adam,—alas, poor critical coxcomb Adam!  But for Adam there is not found an help-meet for him.

VIII.—CLAUDE TO EUSTACE

  No, great Dome of Agrippa, thou art not Christian! canst not,  Strip and replaster and daub and do what they will with thee, be so!  Here underneath the great porch of colossal Corinthian columns,  Here as I walk, do I dream of the Christian belfries above them;  Or on a bench as I sit and abide for long hours, till thy whole vast  Round grows dim as in dreams to my eyes, I repeople thy niches,  Not with the Martyrs, and Saints, and Confessors, and Virgins,      and children,  But with the mightier forms of an older, austerer worship;  And I recite to myself, how            Eager for battle here  Stood Vulcan, here matronal Juno,    And with the bow to his shoulder faithful  He who with pure dew laveth of Castaly  His flowing locks, who holdeth of Lycia  The oak forest and the wood that bore him,    Delos and Patara's own Apollo.7

IX.—CLAUDE TO EUSTACE

    Yet it is pleasant, I own it, to be in their company: pleasant,  Whatever else it may be, to abide in the feminine presence.  Pleasant, but wrong, will you say? But this happy, serene coexistence  Is to some poor soft souls, I fear, a necessity simple,  Meat and drink and life, and music, filling with sweetness,  Thrilling with melody sweet, with harmonies strange overwhelming,  All the long-silent strings of an awkward, meaningless fabric.  Yet as for that, I could live, I believe, with children; to have those  Pure and delicate forms encompassing, moving about you,  This were enough, I could think; and truly with glad resignation  Could from the dream of romance, from the fever of flushed adolescence,  Look to escape and subside into peaceful avuncular functions.  Nephews and nieces! alas, for as yet I have none! and, moreover,  Mothers are jealous, I fear me, too often, too rightfully; fathers  Think they have title exclusive to spoiling their own little darlings;  And by the law of the land, in despite of Malthusian doctrine,  No sort of proper provision is made for that most patriotic,  Most meritorious subject, the childless and bachelor uncle.

X.—CLAUDE TO EUSTACE

    Ye, too, marvellous Twain, that erect on the Monte Cavallo  Stand by your rearing steeds in the grace of your motionless movement,  Stand with your upstretched arms and tranquil regardant faces,  Stand as instinct with life in the might of immutable manhood,—  O ye mighty and strange, ye ancient divine ones of Hellas,  Are ye Christian too? to convert and redeem and renew you,  Will the brief form have sufficed, that a Pope has set up on the apex  Of the Egyptian stone that o'ertops you the Christian symbol?  And ye, silent, supreme in serene and victorious marble,  Ye that encircle the walls of the stately Vatican chambers,  Juno and Ceres, Minerva, Apollo, the Muses and Bacchus,  Ye unto whom far and near come posting the Christian pilgrims,  Ye that are ranged in the halls of the mystic Christian pontiff,  Are ye also baptized? are ye of the Kingdom of Heaven?  Utter, O some one, the word that shall reconcile Ancient and Modern!  Am I to turn me for this unto thee, great Chapel of Sixtus?

XI.—CLAUDE TO EUSTACE

    These are the facts. The uncle, the elder brother, the squire, (a  Little embarrassed, I fancy,) resides in a family place in  Cornwall, of course. "Papa is in business," Mary informs me;  He's a good sensible man, whatever his trade is. The mother  Is—shall I call it fine?—herself she would tell you refined, and  Greatly, I fear me, looks down on my bookish and maladroit manners;  Somewhat affecteth the blue; would talk to me often of poets;  Quotes, which I hate, Childe Harold; but also appreciates Wordsworth;  Sometimes adventures on Schiller; and then to religion diverges;  Questions me much about Oxford; and yet, in her loftiest flights, still  Grates the fastidious ear with the slightly mercantile accent.    Is it contemptible, Eustace,—I'm perfectly ready to think so,—  Is it,—the horrible pleasure of pleasing inferior people?  I am ashamed my own self; and yet true it is, if disgraceful,  That for the first time in life I am living and moving with freedom.  I, who never could talk to the people I meet with my uncle,—  I, who have always failed,—I, trust me, can suit the Trevellyns;  I, believe me,—great conquest,—am liked by the country bankers.  And I am glad to be liked, and like in return very kindly.  So it proceeds; Laissez faire, laissez aller,—such is the watchword.  Well, I know there are thousands as pretty and hundreds as pleasant,  Girls by the dozen as good, and girls in abundance with polish  Higher and manners more perfect than Susan or Mary Trevellyn.  Well, I know, after all, it is only juxtaposition,—  Juxtaposition, in short; and what is juxtaposition?

XII.—CLAUDE TO EUSTACE

    But I am in for it now,—laissez faire, of a truth, laissez aller.  Yes, I am going,—I feel it, I feel and cannot recall it,—  Fusing with this thing and that, entering into all sorts of relations,  Tying I know not what ties, which, whatever they are, I know one thing,  Will and must, woe is me, be one day painfully broken,—  Broken with painful remorses, with shrinkings of soul, and relentings,  Foolish delays, more foolish evasions, most foolish renewals.  But I am in for it now,—I have quitted the ship of Ulysses;  Yet on my lips is the moly, medicinal, offered of Hermes.  I have passed into the precinct, the labyrinth closes around me,  Path into path rounding slyly; I pace slowly on, and the fancy,  Struggling awhile to sustain the long sequences, weary, bewildered,  Fain must collapse in despair; I yield, I am lost and know nothing;  Yet in my bosom unbroken remaineth the clue; I shall use it.  Lo, with the rope on my loins I descend through the fissure; I sink, yet  Inly secure in the strength of invisible arms up above me;  Still, wheresoever I swing, wherever to shore, or to shelf, or  Floor of cavern untrodden, shell-sprinkled, enchanting, I know I  Yet shall one time feel the strong cord tighten about me,—  Feel it, relentless, upbear me from spots I would rest in; and though the  Rope sway wildly, I faint, crags wound me, from crag unto crag re-  Bounding, or, wide in the void, I die ten deaths ere the end, I  Yet shall plant firm foot on the broad lofty spaces I quit, shall  Feel underneath me again the great massy strengths of abstraction,  Look yet abroad from the height o'er the sea whose salt wave I      have tasted.

XIII.—GEORGINA TREVELLYN TO LOUISA –

    DEAREST LOUISA,—Inquire, if you please, about Mr. Claude –.  He has been once at R., and remembers meeting the H.s.  Harriet L., perhaps, may be able to tell you about him.  It is an awkward youth, but still with very good manners;  Not without prospects, we hear; and, George says, highly connected.  Georgy declares it absurd, but Mamma is alarmed and insists he has  Taken up strange opinions and may be turning a Papist.  Certainly once he spoke of a daily service he went to.  "Where?" we asked, and he laughed and answered, "At the Pantheon."  This was a temple, you know, and now is a Catholic church; and  Though it is said that Mazzini has sold it for Protestant service,  Yet I suppose the change can hardly as yet be effected.  Adieu again,—evermore, my dearest, your loving Georgina.

P.S. BY MARY TREVELLYN.

    I am to tell you, you say, what I think of our last new acquaintance.  Well, then, I think that George has a very fair right to be jealous.  I do not like him much, though I do not dislike being with him.  He is what people call, I suppose, a superior man, and  Certainly seems so to me; but I think he is frightfully selfish.* * * * *  Alba, thou findest me still, and, Alba, thou findest me ever,    Now from the Capitol steps, now over Titus's Arch,  Here from the large grassy spaces that spread from the Lateran portal,    Towering o'er aqueduct lines lost in perspective between,  Or from a Vatican window, or bridge, or the high Coliseum,    Clear by the garlanded line cut of the Flavian ring.  Beautiful can I not call thee, and yet thou hast power to o'ermaster,    Power of mere beauty; in dreams, Alba, thou hauntest me still.  Is it religion? I ask me; or is it a vain superstition?    Slavery abject and gross? service, too feeble, of truth?  Is it an idol I bow to, or is it a god that I worship?    Do I sink back on the old, or do I soar from the mean?  So through the city I wander and question, unsatisfied ever,    Reverent so I accept, doubtful because I revere.

[To be continued.]

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MY AQUARIUM

On the tenth of May, 1857, I became the glad possessor of a tank capable of holding thirteen or fourteen gallons of water. Its substantial frame of well-seasoned oak, its stout plank bottom, lavishly covered with cement, promised to resist alike the heat and dryness from without and the wet within. The sides and ends, of double flint-glass, seemed to invite the eye across their clearness. Its chosen site was at a south window, so shaded by a wing of the house as to receive only the morning sun for about two hours; and clustering vines overhung the window, so that the beams fell in checkered light. All was now ready.

A few fragments of white quartz were arranged in rude imitation of ocean recesses, and in their fissures were placed four or five small plants of Enteromorpha and Corallina. Sand was strewn upon the bottom, to the depth of two inches, and ten gallons of sea-water were then poured in. This had been brought from one of the wharves, at high tide, twenty-four hours previously, and twice drawn off with a siphon,—each time after twelve hours' rest. It was not, however, perfectly translucent, and at the end of a week was still cloudy. On the fifth day after the tank was filled, I began to introduce the animals to their future home.

Ten Buccina were first put in possession, in the hope that they would perform the part of gardeners to the young plants. On the sixth day, seven Actinias were disposed upon the rock-work. On the seventh, a Horsefoot (or, as our Southern neighbors call it, a King-Crab, though of most unregal aspect) was allowed to make his burrow in the sand. On the eighth day, four Hermit and Soldier Crabs and two Sand-Crabs were invited to choose their several retreats. On the ninth, three fine Sticklebacks and three Minnows were made free of the mimic ocean; and on the tenth, an Eel and two Prawns.

All seemed well until the evening of the twelfth day, when a small white cloud was seen rising from the bottom. The spot was searched for some dead member of the new colony; but none was found, either there, or in any other part of the tank.

Supposing that the impure gas might be generated by the decay of minute creatures congregated in the cloudy corner, a lump of charcoal was tied to a stone and sunk upon the spot. Next morning, the cloud had cleared from around the charcoal, but slender wreaths of similar appearance were rapidly rising from the sand in every other part of the Aquarium. The fishes came oftener to the surface than they were wont, and all the animals had lost vigor.

Aeration was resorted to, which was performed by dipping up the water, and pouring it back in a thin stream from a height of several feet, continuing the operation for ten minutes. This was repeated four or five times during the day, and at night more charcoal was added. Some of the pieces were sunk to the bottom, and others were suspended at different depths in the water.

Two or three days passed in this way,—the putrescence kept in check by the means used, but not entirely overcome. Meantime, though none of the stock had died, there was less vitality than at first; especially each morning, after seven or eight hours unaided by aeration.

Tired of what seemed an ineffectual struggle, I determined to leave the Aquarium untouched for a day, and await the result. Accordingly, the charcoal was withdrawn and aeration discontinued. The milky cloud increased in density, and the whole mass of water became turbid. The fishes kept constantly near the surface, swam languidly, and snatched mouthfuls of atmospheric air. The Eel became bloodshot about the gills, and, writhing, gasped for breath. The Soldier-Crabs hung listlessly from their shells, and no longer went about in quest of food. Even the Actinise shrunk to half their former size; and the Buccina, crawling above the water, ranged themselves in a row upon the dry glass.

Disappointed, but not discouraged, I filled several shallow pans with pure sea-water, clean sand, and fresh plants, and transferred to them my suffering and wellnigh exhausted animals. A day restored them to their normal condition, and now I was ready to begin my Aquarium anew.

But to what purpose should I begin anew? Would there not be the same failure? What had been wrong?

At least two great faults were evident. First, in order to guard against the possibility of a leak, the bottom and posts of the tank had been covered with many coats of an alcoholic varnish. Now it was probable that time enough had not elapsed between the several applications for the thorough evaporation of the alcohol. Might not its gradual infusion in the water have caused the death of the animalcula in such numbers as to taint the whole by their decay?

The second fault was, strewing upon the surface of the sand a handful or two of white powdered quartz, which, from having been pulverized in an iron mortar, was so oxydized as to turn a deep yellow. This might have poisoned the animalcula.

The first fault seemed to me the chief, but I proceeded to remedy both. The whole contents of the tank being removed, it was thoroughly washed on the inside, exposed for several days to the sun and air, and then soaked for twelve hours in clean sea-water. This being thrown away, the stones, scalded and well-washed, were restored, and clean sand, replaced the old.