The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858

The history of every brave girl is parallel with that of her play-fellow and yoke-fellow. She sighs for sympathy, for a gallant company of youths and maidens worthy of all desire. Her music, drawing, and Italian are only doors which she hopes to open upon such a company. She longs for society to make the hours lyrical, for tasks to make them epic and heroic. The attitudes and actions of imaginative young persons are exalted every moment by the invisible presence of lovers, poets, inspired and inspiring companions. Such as they are we also shall be; when we walk among them and with them, we shall wash our hands of all injustice, meanness, and pretension. Women are as tired as men of our silly civilization, its compliments, restraints, and compromises. They feel the burden of routine as heavily, and keep their elasticity under it as long as we. What they cannot hope to do, a great-hearted man, some lover of theirs, shall do for them; and they will sustain him with appreciation, anticipating the tardy justice of mankind. Every generous girl shares with her sex that new development of feminine consciousness, which the vulgar have named, in derision, a movement for woman's rights. She will seek to be more truly woman, to assert her special power and privilege, to approach from her own side the common ideal, offering a pure soprano to match the manly bass.

We all look for a future, not only better than our won past, but better than any past. Humanity is our inheritance, but not historical humanity. Man seems to be broken and scattered all abroad. The great lives are only eminent examples of a single virtue, and by admiration of every hero we have been crippled on some one side. If he is free, he is also coarse; if delicate, he is overlaid by the gross world; saints are timid and feverish, afraid of being spattered in the first puddle; heroes are profane. We must melt up all the old metal to make a new man and carry forward the common consciousness. Every failure was part of the final success. We go over a causeway in which every timber is some soldier fallen in this enterprise. Who doubts the result doubts God. We say, regretfully "If I could only continue at my best!" and we ach with the little ebb, between wave and wave, of an advancing tide. But this tide is Omnipotence. It rises surely, if it were only an inch in a thousand years. The changes in society are like the geologic upheaval and sinking of continents; yet man is morally as far removed from the savage as he is physically superior to the saurian. We do not see the corn grow or the world revolve; yet if motion be given as the primal essence, we must look for inconceivable results. Wisdom will take care of wisdom, and extend. Consider the growth of intellect in the history of your own parish for twenty years. See how old views have died out of New England and new ones come in. Every man is fortified in his opinions, yet no man can hold his opinions. The closer they are hugged, the faster in any community they change. The ideas of such men as Swedenborg, Goethe, Emerson, float in the air like spores, and wherever they light they thrive. The crabbedest dogmatist cannot escape; for, if he open his eyes to seek his meet, some sunshine will creep in. We have combustibles stored in the stupidest of us, and a spark of truth kindles our slumbering suspicion. Since the great reality is organized in man, and waits to be revealed in him, it is of no avail to shut out the same reality from our ears. Thinkers have held to be dangerous, and excluded from the desks of public instruction; but the boys were already occupied with the same thoughts. They would hear nothing new at the lecture, and they are more encouraged by the terror of the elders than by any word the wise man could speak. In pursuit of truth, the difficulty is to ask a question; for in the ability to ask is involved ability to reach an answer. The serious student is occupied with problems which the doctors have never been able to entertain, and he knows that their discourse is not addressed to him. If you have not wit to understand what I seek, you may croak with the frogs: you are left out of my game.

And the old people, unhappily, suspect that this boy, whose theory they do not comprehend, is master of their theory. They are puzzled and panic-stricken; they strike in the dark. In all controversy, the strong man's position is unassailed. His adversary does not see where he is, but attacks a man of straw, some figment of his own, to the amusement of intelligent spectators. Always our combatant is talking quite wide of the whole question. So the wise man can never have an opponent; for whoever is able to face and find him has already gone over to his side. By material defences, we shut our light for a little, by going where only our own views are repeated, and so boxing ourselves from all danger of conviction; but if a strong thinker could gain the mere brute advantage of having an audience confined in their seats to hear him out, he would carry them all inevitably to his conclusion. They know it and run away. But the press has made our whole world of civilization one great lecture-room, from which no reading man can escape, and the only defence against progress is stolid preoccupation with trade or trifles. Yet this persistency is holding the breath, and can no more be continued in the mind than that in the body. Blundering and falsehood become intolerable to the blunderers; they must return to thought, and that is proper in a single direction, is approached by ten thousand avenues toward the One. It is religious, not ignorance or dogma. We cannot think without exploration of the divine order and recognition of its divinity, without finding ourselves carried away by it to service and adoration. All good is assured to us in Truth, and Truth follows us hard, drives us into many a corner, and will have us at last. So Love surprises all, and every virtue has a pass-key to every heart. Out of conflicting experience, amid barbarism and dogmatism, from feathers that float and stones that fall, we deduce the great law of moral gravitation, which binds spirit to spirit, and all souls to the best. Recognition of that law is worship. We rejoice in it without a taint of selfishness. We adore it with entire satisfaction. Worship is neither belief nor hope, but this certainty of repose upon Perfection. We explore over our heads and under our feet a harmony that is only enriched by dissolving discords. The drag of time, the cramp of organization, are only false fifths. It is blasphemy to deny the dominant. We cannot escape our good; we shall be purified. When our destiny is thus assured to us, we become impatient of sleep and sin, and redouble exertion. We devote ourselves to this certainty, and our allegiance is religion. There is nothing in man omitted from the uplift of Ideality. That is a central and total expansion of him, is an inmost entering into his inmost, is more himself than he is himself. All reverence is directed toward this Creator revealed in flesh, though not compassed. We adore him in others, while yet we despise him in ourselves. Every other motion of man has an external centre, is some hunger or passion, acts on us from its seat in Nature or the body, and we can face it, deny and repudiate it with the body; but this is the man flowing down from his source.

We must not be tempted to call things by too fine names, lest we should disguise them. All that is great is plain and familiar. The Ideal Tendency is simple love of life, felt first as desire and then as satisfaction. The men who represent it are not seekers, but finders, who go on to find more and more; for in the poet desire has fulfilled itself. Enjoyment makes the artist. He has gone on before us, reaching into the abyss of possibility; but he has reached more mightily. He begins to know what is promised in the universal attraction, in this eager turning of all faces toward our future. There is a centre from which no eye can be diverted, for it is the beam of sight. Look which way you will, that centre is everywhere. The universe is flooded with a ray from it, and the light of common day on every object is a refraction or reflection of that brightness.

Shallow men think of Ideality as another appetite, to be fed with pretty baubles, as the body is satisfied with meat and sleep; but the representative of that august impulse feels in it his immortality, and by all his lovely allegories, mythologies, fables, pictures, statues, manners, songs, and symphonies, he seeks to communicate his own feeling, that by specific gravity man must rise. It is no wonder, then, that we love Art while it offers us reinforcement of being, and despise the pretenders, for whom it is pastime, not prophecy.

For, in spite of all discouragement from the materialists, men stultified by trade or tradition, we have trusted the high desire and followed it thus far. We felt the sacredness of life even in ourselves, and there was always reverence in our admiration. We could not be made to doubt the divinity of that which walked with us in the wood or looked on us in the morning. The grasses and pebbles, the waters and rocks, clouds and showers, snow and wind, were too brother-like to be denied. They sang the same song which fills the breast, and our love for them was pure. The men and women we sought, were they not worthy of honor? The artist comes to bid us trust the Ideal Tendency, and not dishonor him who moves therein. He is no trifler, then, to be thrust aside by the doctors with their sciences, or the economists with production and use. He offers manhood to man and womanhood to woman.

We have named Ideality a love of life. Nay, what is it but life itself,—and that loving but true living? What word can have any value for us, unless it is a record of inevitable expansions in character. The universe is pledged to every heart, and the artist represents its promise. He sings, because he sees the manchild advancing, by blind paths it may be, but under sure guidance, propelled by inextinguishable desires toward the largest experience. He is no longer afraid of old bugbears. He feels for one, that nothing in the universe, call it by what ugly name you will, can crush or limit the lift of that leaven which works in the breast. Out of all eyes there looks on him the same expectation, and what for others is a great perhaps for him has become unavoidable certainty.

THE HOUR BEFORE DAWN

"The mind of man is first led to adore the forces of Nature, and certain objects of the material world; at a later period, it yields to religious impulses of a higher and purely spiritual character."

Humboldt

CHAPTER I

Alpheus and Eleusa, Thessalian Greeks, travelled in their old age, to escape poverty and misfortune, which had surely taken joint lease with themselves of a certain hut among the hills, and managed both household and flock.

The Halcyon builds its nest upon a floating weed; so to the drifting fortunes of these wanderers clung a friendless child, innocent and beautiful Evadne.

Some secret voice, the country-people say, lured the shepherd from his home, to embark on the Ægean Sea, and lead the little one away, together with his aged wife, to look for a new home in exile. Mariners bound for Troas received them into their vessel, and the voyage began.

The Greeks lamented when they beheld the shores of Asia. Heavy clouds and the coming night concealed the landmarks which should have guided their approach, and, buffeted by the uncertain winds, they waited for the morning. By the light of dawn, they saw before them an unknown harbor, and the dwellings of men; and here the mariners determined to be rid of their passengers, who vexed them by their fears; while to these three any port seemed desirable, and they readily consented to put off towards the shore. At the hour when the winds rise, at early dawn, they gladly parted from the seamen and the tossing ship, and took the way before them to the little town.

No fisherman, shadowless, trod the sands; no pious hand lighted the fire of sacrifice in the vanishing twilight; even the herds failed to cry out for the coming day. Strange fears began to chill the hearts of the Thessalians. They walked upon a trackless way, and when they entered the dwellings they found them untenanted. Over the doorways hung vines dropping their grapes, and birds flew out at the open windows. They climbed a hill behind the town, and saw how the sea surrounded them. The land on which they stood was no promontory, but an island, separated by a foaming interval of water from the shore, which they now saw, not distant, but inaccessible.

Then these miserable ones clung to each other on the summit of the rock, gazing, until they were fully persuaded of their misfortune. The winds waved and fluttered their garments, the waters uttered a voice breaking on the rocky shore, and rose mute upon the farther coast. The rain now began to fall from a morning cloud, and the travellers, for the first time, found shelter under a foreign roof.

All day they watched the sails approaching the headlands, or veering widely away and beating towards unseen harbors, as when a bird driven by fear abandons its nest, but drawn by love returns and hovers around it. Four days and nights had passed before the troubled waves ceased to hinder the craft of the fisherman. The Greeks saw with joy that their signals were answered, and a boat approached, so that they could hear a man's voice crying to them,—

"What are you who dwell on the island of the profane, and gather fruits sacred to Apollo?"

"If I may be said to dwell here," replied the old man, "it is contrary to my own will. I am a Greek of Thessaly. Apollo himself should not have forbidden me to gather the wild grapes of this island, since I and this child and Eleusa, my wife, have not during many days found other food."

"It is indeed true," exclaimed the boatman, "that madness presently falls upon those who eat of these grapes, since you speak impious words against the god. Behold, yonder is woody Tenedos, where his altar stands; it is now many years, since, filled with wrath against the dwellers here, he seized this rock, and hurled it into the sea; the very hills melted in the waves. I myself, a child then, beheld the waters violently urged upon the land. Moved without winds, they rose, climbing upon the very roofs of the houses. When the sea became calm, a gulf lay between this and the coast, and what had been a promontory was left forever an island. Nor has any man dared to dwell upon it, nor to gather its accursed fruits. Many men have I known who saw gods walking upon this shore, visible sometimes on the high cliffs inaccessible to human feet. Therefore, if you, being a stranger, have ignorantly trespassed on this garden, which the divinities reserve, perhaps for their own pleasure, strive to escape their resentment and offer sacrifices on the altar of Tenedos."

"Give me a passage in your boat to the land yonder, and I will depart out of your coasts," replied the Greek.

The fisherman, hitherto so friendly, remained silent, and words were wanting to him wherewith to instruct the stranger. When he again spoke, he said,—

"Why, old man, not having the vigor or the carelessness of youth, have you quitted your home, leading this woman into strange lands, and this child, whose eyes are tearful for the playmates she has left? I call a little maid daughter, who is like unto her, and she remains guarded at home by her mother, until we shall give her in marriage to one of her own nation and language."

"Waste no more words," answered the old man, "I will narrate my story as we row towards your harbor."

"It were better for you," said the boatman, "that they who brought you hither should take you into their ship again. Enter our town, if you will, but be not amazed at what shall befall you. It is a custom with us to make slaves of those who approach us unsolicited, in order to protect ourselves against the pirates and their spies, who have formerly lodged themselves among us in the guise of wayfaring men, and so robbed us of our possessions. Therefore it is our law, that those who land on our coast shall, during a year, serve us in bondage."

Anger flamed in the eye of the stranger.

"You do well," he cried, "to ask of me why I left the land which bore me. Never did I there learn to suspect vile and inhospitable customs. If you have pity for the aged and the unfortunate, and would not gladly see them cast into slavery, bring hither some means of life to this rock, which cowards have abandoned for me. Meanwhile, I will watch for some friendly sail, which, approaching, may bear me to any harbor, where worse reception can hardly await me.—Know that I fear not the anger of your gods; many years have I lived, and I have never yet beheld a god. My father has told me, that, in all his wanderings, among lonely hills, at the hour of dawn, or by night, or, again, in populous places, he has never seen one whom he believed to be a god. Moreover, in Athens itself are those who doubt their existence. Leave me to gather the grapes of Apollo!"

So saying, he turned away from the shore, not deigning to ask more from the stranger.

When the golden crescent moon, no sooner visible than ready to vanish in the rosy western sky, was smiling on the exiles with the old familiar look she wore above the groves of Thessaly, the sad-hearted ones were roused again by the voice of their unknown friend.

"Come down to the shore," he cried; "I have returned to you with gifts; my heart yearns to the child; she is gentle, and her eyes are like those of the stag when the hunters surround him. Take my flasks of oil and wine, and these cakes of barley and wheat. I bring you nets, and cords also, which we fishermen know how to use. May the gods, whom you despise, protect you!"

Late into the night the Greeks remained upon the border of the sea, wondering at their strange fate. To the idle the day is never sufficiently long,—the night also is wasted in words.

CHAPTER II

The days which the exiles passed in solitude were not unhappy. The child Evadne pruned the large-leaved vines, and gave the rugged cheeks of certain melons to the sun. The continual hope of departure rendered all privations supportable.

Was it hope, or was it fear, that stirred their bosoms when at last a sail appeared not distant? They hoped that its white wings might turn seaward!

"Mother," cried the shepherd, "no seaman willingly approaches this shore, for the white waves warn him how the rocks He beneath the water. Even walls and roofs of houses are seen, or guessed at, ingulfed formerly by the sea; and the tale of that disaster, as told us by the fisherman, is doubtless known to mariners, who, fearing Apollo, dare not land upon this island. While, on the other hand, we have heard how pirates, and even poor wayfaring folk, are so ill-received in the bay, that from them, though they be not far off, we yet look for no assistance. Let us, then, be content, and cease to seek after our fate, which doubtless is never at rest from seeking after us. And let us not be in haste to enter again into a ship, (so fearful and unnatural a thing for those born to walk upon the land,) nor yet to beg our way along painful and unknown roads, in search of men of a new religion and a different language from that of Greeks. Neither, dear wife, if we must suffer it, let us dread slavery too much. Life is long enough for those who die young, and too long for the aged. One year let us patiently give, more especially if it be unavoidable to give it. Vex me with no more lamentations; some unforeseen accident may relieve us from our misfortunes."

Eleusa, the good old wife, ever obedient to the husband of her youth, talked no more of departure, nor yet complained of their miserable lodgings in the ruined huts, on which her housewifely care grieved to expend itself in vain.

Evadne would not be restrained from wandering. She penetrated alone the wildest thickets; the nests of timid birds were known to her; and she traced the bee to his hidden city. Deep in the woods she discovered a wide chasm, in which the water of the sea palpitated with the beating of the great heart of Ocean from which it flowed. Trees were still erect, clasped by the salt waves, but quite dead; and all around their base were hung fringes of marine growth, touched with prismatic tints when seen through the glittering water, but brown and hideous when gathered, as the trophy remaining in the hand which has dared to seize old Proteus by the locks. All around this avenue, into which the sea sometimes rushed like an invading host of armed men, the laurels and the delicate trees that love to bend over the sources of the forest-streams hung half-uprooted and perilously a-tiptoe over the brink of shattered rocks, and withered here and there by the touch of the salt foam, towards which they seemed nevertheless fain to droop, asking tidings of the watery world beyond.

The skeleton-arms of the destroyed ones were feeble to guard the passage of the ravine. Evadne broke a way over fallen trees and stepping-stones imbedded in sea-sand, and gained the opposite bank. The solitude in which she found herself appeared deeper, more awful, than before the chasm lay between the greater island and the less. She listened motionless to the soft, but continual murmur of the wood, the music of leaves and waves and unseen wings, by which all seeming silence of Nature is made as rich to the ear as her fabrics to the eye, so that, in comparison, the garments of a king are mean, though richly dyed, embroidered on every border, and hung with jewels.

While the little wood-ranger stood and waited, as it were, for what the grove might utter, her eye fell upon the traces of a pathway, concealed, and elsewhere again disclosed, overgrown by sturdy plants, but yet threading the shady labyrinth. She followed the often reappearing line upon the hillside, and as she climbed higher, with her rose the mountains and the sea. The shore, the sands, the rocky walls, showed every hue of sunbeams fixed in stone. The leafy sides of Tenedos had caught up the clear, green-tinted blue of the sea, and wore it in a noonday dream under the slumberous light that rested on earth and sea and sky. Above the horizon, far away, the very clouds were motionless; and where the sunbeams marked a tranquil sail, it seemed, with wave and cloud, to express only Eternal Repose. But the eager child pressed onward, for the crown of the hill seemed almost reached, and she longed for a wider, wider view of the beautiful Ægean.

Suddenly she arrived where a sculptured stone lay in the pathway. Some patient and skilful hand had wrought there the emblem of a rose, and among the chiselled petals stood drops of rain, collected as in a cup. On the border a pure white bird had just alighted, and Evadne watched how it bent and rose and seemed to caress the flower of stone, while it drank of the dew around and within it. Her eyes filled with tears as she mused on the vanished hand of Art, whose work Nature now reclaimed for this humble, but grateful use. The dove took wing, and the child proceeding came to a level turf where a temple of white marble stood. Eight slender columns upheld a marble canopy, beneath which stood the image of a god. One raised hand seemed to implore silence, while the other showed clasping fingers, but they closed upon nothing. Around the statue's base lay scattered stones. Evadne gathered them, and reunited they formed the lyre of Apollo. She replaced, for an instant, in the cold and constant grasp a fragment of the ruined harp. Then the aspect of the god became regretful, sad, as of one who desires a voice from the lips of the dead. Hastily she flung the charm away, and gentle grace returned to the listening boy, from whom, sleeping, some nymph might have stolen his lyre, whose complaining chords now vibrated to his ear and called their master to the pursuit. Evadne reposed on the steps of the temple, and fixedly gazed upon the god. Her fancy endowed the firm hand with an unbent bow; then the figure seemed to pause in the chase, and listen for the baying of the hounds. Then she imaged a shepherd's staff, and the shepherd-god waited tenderly for the voice of a lost lamb.

"So stood Apollo in Thessaly," she softly said, "when he carried the shepherd's staff. Oh that I were the lost Thessalian lamb for whom he waits, that he might descend and I die for joy on his breast!"

Then, half afraid that the lips might break their marble stillness in reply, she asked the protection of the deity, whom she was fain to adore, but whom her adopted parents dared to despise.