The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 08, No. 49, November, 1861. VariousЧитать онлайн книгу.
are sometimes inner citadels, impregnable to the magic torrent streaming through the Beautiful Gates, where she may survey intruders with calm disdain. In vain floods of delicious intoxication beat against her lofty retreat: she calmly analyzes the sweet poison, (as she thinks it,) separates and retains the solid fact whose solution had enriched the otherwise barren stream, and indifferently suffers the rest to flow by. These are the souls of philosophers and wise men, who never are drowned, never surprised. But the bountiful host had not cared only for these grand super-sensual people, but had striven perfectly to satisfy the eyes, the ears, the noses, the palates of the more numerous throng of weaker folk, whose inner fortifications were not so well defended. Hundreds of wax candles illuminated the far-reaching saloons with soft lustre. The walls were tinted with the most delicate hues, that afforded a pleasant cool background to the blazing rooms, and relieved the rich colors of the pictures. In all the pictures adorning the walls, the eye revelled in the luxurious coloring, careless of the absence of distinctness of form and grand pure outline. Scenes in the dark heart of tropical forests, the dense green foliage here and there startlingly relieved by a bright scarlet flower or the brilliant plumage of a songless bird,—gorgeous sunsets on American prairies, where the rolling purple ground contrasted with the crimson and golden glories of eventide,—vivid sketches along the Mediterranean, the blue sea embracing the twin sky,—vineyards ripening under the mellow Italian sun,—fields of yellow wheat bending to the sickles of English reapers,—and sometimes, half hidden by the folds of a heavy crimson curtain, one was startled to discover the solemn icebergs and everlasting snows of the Arctic regions. The wood-work of all the rooms was of dark oak, so that each appeared with its brilliantly dressed company to be a flashing gem set in a rich casket. A shadow of music wandered through the air, sometimes blended with the sound of the falling fountain in the green-house, sometimes almost absorbed in the fragrance of the flowers.
For two hours the carriages had been steadily streaming under the archway, and pouring their fair occupants, gauzy as summer, into the blazing saloons. The flashing candelabra drew the poor little moths from the outermost corners into the central vortex of light. Dazzled by the hot radiance, they strove to retreat again into the cool conservatories and side-rooms; but at that moment threads of music that had been carelessly winding through the crowd were caught up by an unseen hand and knotted,—and behold! already the moths found themselves imprisoned in a strong net-work of sound, whose intricate meshes entangled the rooms and the company, and the very light itself. The light, however, was too subtile for long confinement; it slipped along the melodious mazes, and melted into the rich odor that exhaled from the roses and jessamines in the conservatory. The light was a welcome visitor to the hyacinths and roses, obliged to hide in torturing silence in the still green-house, pouring out their passionate dumb life in intensity of fragrance. A life just hovering on the borders of the world, and yet forbidden to enter! But, bathed in the glowing effulgence of the light, this invisible fragrance could be born, and enter the visible world as color. For the fragrance is the unborn soul of the flower; color, that soul arrested in its restless wanderings,—embodied fragrance. Then the colors upon the purple hyacinths and white jessamines, and the flashing gems that rested on white bosoms like glittering drops of ice upon a snow-wreath, and the sheen of rustling silks, and the gilded picture-frames, and the florid carpets, and the twinkling feet on the carpets' roses, and the flushing of roses in the dancers' cheeks, and the radiant heads of the white-robed girls, ran into one another, blending into an intensity of color that dimmed itself. And the music still kept spinning and spinning, and finally wove in the color and fragrance and light with its subtile self; and the background of the woof was the hum and murmur of voices, and the continual rustling of feet. No wonder the poor moths were ensnared in such bewilderment!
Do you pity the captives? But it is a delicious imprisonment, and its fullest delights cannot be realized except by prisoners. In the vast halls of Intellect and Reason one may indeed be master, marching (a little chilled perhaps) with firm step and head erect. But on these enchanted grounds there is no medium between a wretched clearness of insight that reduces every curve to a number of straight lines, all clouds to precipitated vapor, all rainbows to an oblique coincidence between a sunbeam and a drop of water, and a total surrender of self to the influences of the flitting moment.
Away with these fellows, who would force their miserable microscopes before the eyes of these happy gauzy moths!—to-night is only the time for spinning cobwebs. Hold your breath, philosopher, lest you sweep them away too rudely! Alas for the airy cobwebs! In that cool anteroom is a philosopher's broom, hard at work, brushing them remorselessly into a perplexing dilemma,—the frightful increase of the human race.
"If," said the philosopher, emphatically, "if there were any prospect of emigrating to the moon, there would be some hope; but in the present state of affairs we shall soon be eating our own heads off, as the proverb says. Europe is almost exhausted, the ultima Thule of arable territory in America has been reached, Asia barely supports her own immense population; nothing is left but Africa, and she presents a merely hopeful prospect for the future. In a hundred years, what will society do for breadstuffs?"
"Live on rice and potatoes," suggested Anthrops.
"Rash boy, and check the advance of civilization! Have you not reflected that the culture of wheat has been an inseparable adjunct to progress and refinement? The difficulties required to be overcome in preparing the ground and sowing the grain promote prudence, foresight, and care."
"It is certainly hard work enough to dig potatoes," quoth Anthrops.
The philosopher passed over the interruption with a dignified wave of the hand, and continued:—
"The watching and waiting, during its progress to maturity, necessarily produce that patience which is so essential to all scientific effort; and the graceful loveliness of the plant in its various stages of growth materially assists in developing that love for the beautiful which is a necessary element in all harmonious individual or social character. Now what aesthetic culture can you evolve from that stubbed, straggling weed you call the potato?"
The discomfited pupil meekly suggested that he had been considering the dietetic, not the aesthetic properties of the despised vegetable.
"Impossible to separate them, Sir!" cried the philosopher. "If, indeed, you could fill the stomach without the intervention of any process of brain or hand, they might be considered apart. But consider the position of the stomach. Like a Persian monarch, it occupies the centre of the system; despotic from its remote situation and the absolute power it exercises, all parts of the external organism are its ministers: the feet must run for its daily food, the hands must prepare that food with cunning devices, the brain must direct the operations of feet and hands. Now, unlearned youth, wilt thou contend that the degree of refinement evinced by attention or indifference to the niceties of cooking, and so forth, has no bearing upon the character of the man and the race? Take as a standard the method of immediately conveying the food to the mouth, as it has progressed from barbarism. First, fingers; then, pieces of bark; then, rough wooden spoons, knives, two-pronged steel forks; and lastly, an epitome of civilization in each one that is used, five-pronged silver forks, evincing both the increased complexity of the nature that devises the extra prongs, and the refinement of taste that insists upon the silver. It is impossible to use wheat in any of its preparations," ("With five-pronged forks," murmured his attentive pupil parenthetically,) "without at least a piece of bark, for mixing and cooking, if not for eating. But in devouring potatoes, we are—I shudder to think of it—each moment upon the brink of being reduced to the absolute savageness of fingers. No, Sir! the moon and wheat both failing us, there is but one method of escaping universal famine,—peremptory reduction of the population."
Anthrops started; in that country murder was a capital offence.
"I do not mean," continued the philosopher, serenely, "by any forcible diminution of the existing populace: unfortunately, the vulgar prejudices in favor of life are so strong, owing to the miserable preponderance of the Egoistic over the Altruistic instincts, that such an expedient would be unadvisable. I refer to the"—
"What splendid hair!" suddenly exclaimed his young companion, starting forward with great animation to gain a nearer glimpse of its beauties. The owner had stopped for a moment in passing the secluded couple, and the rich chestnut head was presented in clear relief against the confused mass of color and