Various

“ The gray and stern arches, the hitherto colorless sky of the art temple, now take the azure hue of the heavens, while hovering cherubs look down from their cerulean depths; the relievos glow, and color defines, as it etherealizes, the works of man. Painting, at first absorbed in the plastic arts, scarcely begins to show symptoms of life until she is fully born, and living in her own distinctive form! As that power which develops the almost infinite variety of forms is to the universe, so is painting with its ever ready and vivid canvas to the temple of art. ”

“ May the rapt artist ever remember that the beauty of this earth was not intended to satisfy the requisitions of his longing soul, but to awaken and nourish in it the love of eternal beauty!
A golden thread of glories yet to be, twines through the woof of this our mortal life, and by tracing its wavy lines of glittering brilliancy, shining even through the dim symbolism of matter, many secrets of the life to come may be divined. The arts may be regarded as significant hieroglyphics of delights yet to be fulfilled in other spheres of being. ”

“ We should hear no more of North, South, East, and West, for all would be linked together by a unity of commerce and interests. Our Union would become a social, moral, geographical, political, and commercial necessity, and no State would risk by secession the benefit of participating in its commerce. We should be a homogeneous people, and slavery would disappear before the march of civilization, and of free schools, free labor, free soil, free lakes, rivers, and canals. ”

“ The innate longing for the infinite, with its accompanying intuitions of the eternal love, and the yearnings for that fulness of time when the past and future shall live with us as really as the present itself, are ever vivid within us, and are two of the great vital arteries of all true art. This burning human thirst for the fulness of eternity in opposition to our fragmentary time manifests itself in our agonizing efforts to bring back the past, to which sad efforts we have given the melancholy name of memory; shows itself in our restless longing for the future, which we call hope ”

“ But there is one thing which it has or suggests, which no other object of sight suggests in an equal degree, and that is—infinity. It is of all visible things the least material, the least finite, the farthest withdrawn from the earth prison-house, the most typical of the nature of God, the most suggestive of the glory of His dwelling place. For the sky of the night, though we may know it is boundless, is dark; it is a studded vault, a roof that shuts us in and down; but the transparent distance of sunrise and sunset has no limit; we feel its infinity as we rejoice in its purity of light. ”

“ Slavery kept perjured traitors for months in the cabinet and the two Houses of Congress, to aid in the overthrow of the Government. Then was formed a constitution avowedly based on slavery, setting it up as an idol to be worshipped, and upon whose barbaric altars is now being poured out the sacrificial blood of freemen. But it will fail, for the curse of God and man is upon it. And when the rebellion is crushed, and slavery extinguished, we shall emerge from this contest strengthened, purified, exalted. We shall march to the step and music of a redeemed humanity, and a regenerated Union. ”

“ Many a tearful eye turned backward to the land we are leaving—land beloved by woman, though stained with oppression, darkened by slavery, impoverished by lack of action, dwarfed in its proportions, devious in many of its loveliest lines—some of its sweetest paths leading those who set feet of [Pg 108] innocent trust in them down to hell at last; beloved despite all, because the heart of the traveller is tender and loving; cherished, because her repressed soul is timid and doubting. We have lacked light, freedom, space for action and growth, yet are there pleasant places there. ”

“ He will be comforted, too, by remembering that natural revolution does never dethrone. It only enthrones above the present ruler. Work out your kingdom. Define and fill its bounds and metes, and never will usurper's foot print its soil. No invasion of your sovereignty is possible. The magnetisms of the universe hold you there, and every other being outside—an infallible police, bent on the protection of your rights, charged to secure them to you without so much as a flaw in their finest edges. Nature knows your kingdom, and charges all yet unsettled parties to go aside. ”

“ From this mystic root springs much that is intellectually great, even the love of scientific certainty. Philosophy may, indeed, almost be termed the science of longing.
Developing in its normal growth, it gives us our true saints; those who live but to love God, and to serve man. But like all human gifts, it may be perverted. It is some such perverted apprehension or illusory longing for the infinite, which causes a man to surrender himself, heart and soul, to the despotic tyranny of some ruling habit, some favorite and engrossing pursuit. ”

“ May we not, at least, without any humiliation, admit our kindred to the dust in which we dwell, and recognize in it a creation, coeval with the soul and intended for its use, with points of contact and mutual coöperation, which render matter and spirit not wholly at war with each other, but united in a common destiny, to be continued at least as long as the duration of the human race on the surface of the earth? ”

“ Emma Tenant was not a brilliant girl, but she had good sense and an honest nature. By degrees she recovered from the stupor into which Hiram's onslaught threw her; she began to feel something of her lover's purpose, and appreciate something of the position he might soon assume. Loving and trustful, these faint glimmerings of the truth appalled her. She did not cry any more. She became pale. She breathed short and quick.
'Hiram,' she gasped, 'you mean something—I fear you mean something. Papa knows best what is honest, better than you—a young man. To lose our property would make me unhappy. ”

“ In all their simple loveliness they rise from earth, and bloom before us as we read. Writers of such high finish, such delicate perceptions of beauty as T. W. Higginson, are seldom characterized by great originality—his expletives and imagery are as original as tender and beautiful. His illustrations are never morbid, but ever strong and healthful. If he be, as we have been informed he is, the Colonel Higginson now acting in the service of his country, Heaven preserve the life of the patriot, poet, and scholar—for such men are jewels in our national crown of glory! ”

“ Well could we afford to abide in the twilight-land when such struggle was going forward in our behalf, when the sunshine was descending upon such seedtime of the ages—to whose harvest we are drawing nigh.
The sceptre of Supreme Use on the earth is to the hand that is sovereign for that use. In its day every other power is subordinate to that, for it is the nature of sovereignty to be unitary, whether lodged in an idea or a person. It is because of this that personal sovereignty has been indispensable to human progress. ”

“ Is it not an art eminently addressed to this intuition of eternal love, this constant longing for the infinite? Do not its giddy flights and dying falls at once arouse this mystic yearning, seeking, feeling, which may appropriately be termed the passion of the soul? That music holds some deep relation to the soul not yet clearly developed, may be inferred, not only from the magic power it sways over our spirits, but from the fact that the inspired writers picture it among the joys of heaven. ”

“ We shall feel a new inspiration, and breathe an air in which slavery and every form of oppression must perish.
Standing upon these friendly shores, in a land which abolished slavery in the twelfth century, and surrounded by a people devoted to our welfare, looking westward, along the path of empire, across the Atlantic, to my own beloved country, these are my views of her glorious destiny, when the twin hydras of slavery and rebellion are crushed forever. ”

“ Higginson says: 'If, in the simple process of writing, one could physically impart to his page the fragrance of this spray of azalea beside me, what a wonder it would seem!—and yet one ought to be able, by the mere use of language, to supply to every reader the total of that white, honeyed, trailing sweetness which summer insects haunt and the Spirit of the Universe loves. The defect is not in language, but in men. There is no conceivable beauty of blossom so beautiful as words—none so graceful, none so perfumed. ”

“ But with slavery extinguished, with freedom strengthening labor's hand, with education elevating the soul and enlightening the understanding, and with such communications uniting all our great lakes and rivers, East and West, all crowned with nourishing towns and mighty cities, with cultured fields and smiling harvests, exchanging their own products and fabrics, and those of the world, by flying cars and rushing steamers, revolt or disunion would be impossible. ”

“ Those who have been rescued from the very jaws of death, frequently tell us that the moment preceding insensibility was crowded and filled with vivid recollections of the whole apparently forgotten past—thus bringing into the soul in the midst of time, a foretaste and interval of eternity! and those prophetic intimations of things yet to be, which frequently break in with startling power upon the human spirit, what indeed are they but sudden contacts between our fettered time, 'so out of joint,' and the fulness of eternity? ”

“ It will not be expressed, I know, but there is much unexpressed feeling which is none the less real for its silence.
'Every woman is an embodied revolution, now-a-days,' said a lank, grumbling dyspeptic, while the autumn leaves of '62 yet hung in bright profusion on the bordering forests of the Hudson. 'If you had said every woman is in these days an embodied revelation,' was the superb reply, 'you would have done both truth and my sex more even justice.' Man must not fear woman, for whatever nature designed for her is not only inevitable, but is his only means of salvation. ”

“ Could I work for outward success only, or chiefly, subordinating aspiration to what stifles aspiration? Would riches satisfy me? Would actual power over men, ecclesiastical, civil, or social? Could I live for ambition, and sit down unapproved of my better life to enjoy its achievements? Would the acquisition of knowledge and its employment as a means of worldly power, distinction, and advantage satisfy the inner hunger which longs for the truth, the light, the harmony of highest heavens? ”

“ From our quiet homes, on the western bank of the Mississippi, very nearly in Boston latitude, we send daily thoughts of business, friendly interest, and political sympathy unto you who dwell upon our Atlantic shore. Some of us look back unto you as the prodigal son is said to have regarded his father's house. All of us have intimate ties binding us unto you. From you, as the fountain head of literature and intelligence, through your magazines and journals, we are constantly supplied with the living current of thought and mental activity. ”

“ But yet we are in fact much nearer to your golden markets than to the hidden ore of our new Territories. Time and space, whose natural demands have been so rudely disregarded by the iron progress of science and skill between you and us, still to a great degree maintain their ancient rule over the lands west of us. That vast, thrifty vine of speedy transportation, which has wound itself about the trunk of our national tree, strikes here and there one of its tendrils out upon the branches beyond us, over the region of a few counties. ”

“ These fearful contests of party have run their course up to the present time, without serious trouble; and it is now apparent that the mass of the people are settled in their devotion to the Union, and will sustain no man or party in factious opposition to the Government, or even in ill-timed exertions to obtain redress of acknowledged wrongs, when those exertions are calculated to embarrass the nation in its mortal struggle for safety and triumph. The existence of the nation, its unity and tranquillity, are paramount to all personal or party rights and interests ”

“ Strike down every barrier that separates the business of the North and East from that of the South and West, and you render dissolution impossible. In commerce, we would be a unit, drawing to us, by the irresistible attraction of interest, intercourse, and trade, the whole valley of the lakes and St. Lawrence. Whom God had united by geography, by race, by language, commerce, and interest, political institutions could not long keep asunder. ”

“ It is almost alike certain that slavery has been shaken to its very foundations in every State, whether the rebellion shall now either succeed or fail. The rebels have been wrong in all their calculations. Exactly the reverse of their aims and expectations will be the reward of their treason. They sought to overthrow the Government in order to perpetuate slavery; they have only succeeded in overthrowing slavery, to the certain strengthening and probable perpetuation of the Government they hate. ”

“ But a class of hirelings, debased in morals by the cruel selfishness of their employers, tempted almost irresistibly to unfaithfulness by the five thousand miles of ocean between them and their principals, and to recklessness and tyranny by the uncertain tenure of their places, and connected with the slaves by none but the grossest and most sordid ties—such management, in such a crisis, when the ties of old subjection were suddenly dissolved, and the negro stood independent, and knowing his independence, before his masters, would have ruined any country under the sun. ”

“ It would be vain to deny the vast injury suffered by the whole nation, from the inauguration and continuance of this most unnatural strife. It is chiefly this widespread mischief which constitutes the stupendous crime of the rebellion. Thousands upon thousands of valuable lives have been sacrificed; the maimed victims of the war appeal to our sympathies on every side; widows and orphans fill the whole land with lamentation. These are calamities that cannot be compensated by any material prosperity, however great and imposing. ”

“ No work of art can be considered truly beautiful unless it recalls or reproduces, even in its finite form, some of the divine attributes; not that the work must treat of them, or consciously suggest them to the intellect, but that they must enter into the creation of the artist, that the immediate and intuitive perception of beauty, always attached to their manifestation, may appeal to those faculties or instincts which ever answer in delight when these attributes are suggested to the human spirit; for, consciously or unconsciously, the soul yearns for a clearer view of the beauty of God. ”

“ Thus the Cross of the feminine life embodies the idea of the revolution in its favor: revolution, which, above all its wars, national or civil, its struggles for or against freedom, above all its discoveries in the world of matter and of force, above all its inventions, its new arts and its improved old arts, its philanthropies, its religious agitations, is destined to command for the nineteenth century the respect of the coming ages. ”