Various

“ This is not a world for the gentle or wayward in heart, and Tristo’s plans and fancies are daily crossed and crushed. Indeed, I sometimes think that his heart-strings have been jarred by a terrible concussion, and will never vibrate more, save in tones of mournful music. When in society, he usually represses his moodiness, and his thoughts come forth with a fluent brightness, which is purified and enhanced by their melancholy tinge. In our company he is more frank and cheerful than elsewhere, and will, at times, by his eloquence of feeling, call forth our sympathies and excite our admiration. ”

“ He can give you a masterly criticism on a pretty foot, or a well turned arm, and has caused alarming symptoms of a disease of the heart in more than one of ‘Nature’s fair defects.’ I have often known the fellow fling his dark locks around his brow in clustering beauty, and saunter with unstudied carelessness among some half dozen of his fair acquaintance, while the graceful dignity of his carriage, the significance of his tone, and the eloquence of his eye, sent to the innocent young heart a disturbing thrill, and called to the cheek a warm flush of unconscious pleasure. ”

“ For by the very constitution of our mind, our deepest sympathies can be excited only when the holier and lovelier sensibilities of our being are awakened by the exhibition of moral beauty. There is something so commanding, so godlike, in this subservience of great talents to high and noble ends, that while the graces and the fire of the orator delight the fancy and the taste, all our better feelings are enlisted in the purity and exaltation of his purpose. ”

“ It is only when the orator rises in the kindling majesty of virtue, when the soul of a patriot lightens in the flashing eye, when the wrongs of the oppressed pour the flush of noble indignation over his brow, and a nation’s voice is heard in the thunders of his eloquence, that we can know the full power of his appeals, and receive our most exquisite gratification. ”

“ Here had Jupiter been cradled in the mountains—there gushed a fountain from the foot-print of Neptune’s charger—here, from the sown teeth of the slaughtered dragon, sprang to life and fell in battle a field of steel-clad warriors—and there had Orpheus charmed the stones to life, and made the forests dance in chorus to his lyre. These were so many chords of interest, which the poet had but to touch, and the souls of his readers responded with a thrill. ”

“ Thus also with the poet—it is only when a spirit from above has breathed the inspiration over him, and his harp is tuned to the minstrelsy of Holiness,—when in the glories of antiquity, the ravages of time, and the mighty revolutions of empires, he leads us, with tender sublimity of feeling, to trace the wonder workings of that wisdom which ‘sees the end from the beginning’—that the imagination revels in the fullness of its enjoyment. ”

“ We roam with Plato through the shades of Academia; we stray with Socrates along the banks of the Ilissus; we enter the crowded forum, and listen to the soul-thrilling eloquence of the ‘prince of orators.’ We need not waste words to prove, that to the man of sensibility, there is a rich repast of intellectual luxuries in such exercises of the imagination. But rich as it is, there is one thing which can bestow a still higher flavor. ”

“ We delight to speak of him, not only as a poet—and as such he had few equals—but still farther, as a friend. In the first of these characters he has now been long before the public, and has gained from their decisions a conspicuous distinction—a rank higher we believe than his own expectations, although one of strictest justice and commensurate with merit. To us it is a matter of no slight regret, that a mind so richly-gifted, should have garnered up its beauties, and have been so very sparing of its splendid treasures. ”

“ Formerly, the only method of finding favor with the multitude, was to enlist heart and hand in supporting and extolling our glorious institutions; but he who would succeed in pursuit of the same object, at the present day, must find some real or imaginary imperfection, and by a torrent of ranting eloquence, display, on every occasion, his superior sagacity in detecting the errors of our fathers. Besides, the greater this blind confidence we have acquired in our institutions, the more negligent shall we be in support of them, and the more severe in exposing and decrying their imperfections. ”

“ By the benignity of our Creator, we have been endowed with the powers of taste and imagination, to throw a charm over the ruggedness of human life, and bring in a thousand tributes of enjoyment to cheer our hearts in our journeyings through this ‘vale of tears.’ These pleasures, as long as the powers themselves are uncorrupted by vice, and their purity free from the taint of unhallowed passions, are of a kind the most pure and innocent. ”

“ The profoundest argument that man can frame, or the proudest monument of pure mind that he can offer, derives much of its impressive force from the garb in which it is presented. Unadorned it is the naked statue, modelled thus far by the youthful pupil, and that needs a master’s polish to display it in perfection. The materials for this statue, abstract intellect may, indeed must furnish, but it yet demands the touches of a cultivated taste. That education which has taught us how to reason has done well, but a different knowledge should be added ere we reap its full advantage. ”

“ It becomes, then, every lover of his country, and, especially, him who, in the prime of youth, is looking forward to it as the scene of a happy life, with high hopes of honor and power, to beware how he lends his aid to alienate public sentiment from this parent of his present joys and future hopes, and to enlist heart and hand in support of a government which has certainly, for more than half a century, secured to this community a greater amount of happiness than was ever before enjoyed by any portion of the earth’s population. ”

“ They bear with them a voice that wakes the soul to intense interest, now throwing over its powers the inspiration of sublimity, and now floating around it in tones as mellow and gentle as the last whisper of a summer breeze. Who, as he has listened to the voice of the living speaker, and been borne along on the full tide of eloquence at the will of the moving spirit, has not felt his heart swell within him to a loftier expansion, and his bosom throb with the pulsations of a new and more glorious [Pg 99] intelligence? ”

“ Nations, that have apparently past this eventful period, and settled down into the uniformity of civilized life, are sometimes shaken to their very foundations, by the agitation of some subject that had before escaped the trying test of reason, and from some peculiar cause, been suffered to remain upon the rotten foundation of prejudice and superstition. Indeed, no nation is entirely secure from revolution until all its institutions are established upon the basis of truth—of truth that is seen and felt by the great body of the community. ”

“ Over the wide realm of imagination our author seems to hold unlimited control, and to gather from it beauties, which he scatters with profusion. In whatever spot his fancy may detain him he is found at home, lingering around each scene with the familiarity of long acquaintance, and a perfect knowledge of each object and allurement. He is ever changing, too, in the visions he presents us. ”

“ His face when alone is grave and thoughtful; in company, it is jolly and careless, yet crossed here and there by lines of serious reflection, which, on the whole, form the general expression of his countenance. He, as well as Il Pulito, has dipped into almost every thing, and gone deeply into some—he has read extensively and foolishly, and is, very naturally, infected with the itch of quoting. ”

“ He never speaks heartlessly—his literary opinions, his views of society, are all colored by his feelings—and he will condemn a worthless publication, or espouse the cause of a favorite author, with as much earnestness as if he were a party in the case. His vehemence adds greatly to the life of our discussions, and his caustic, yet good-natured wit, to the merriment of our lighter moods. ”

“ The grave of a youthful poet is indeed a holy spot, but it is so not alone in reference to the moldering body it enshrouds, or to the impressive comment that it reads on death. That grave is sacred, rather as a remembrancer of intellect. ”

“ But a child, a gentle child—to see its little form gliding about your couch—to feel its little arms about your pillow—to catch its warm breath on your cheek as winds breathed from flowers—and see the kind and touching solicitude of the eye unused to sights of sorrow, yet enduring it like a martyr, and for ourselves too,—these make irritable diseases tolerable—may I not say happy? for the evidence of a pure and devoted affection in a human being, makes a misanthrope (and such I then was) contented with misery. ”

“ No intricate maze of reasoning leaves a dark corner to beget distrust, but like the insect upon a flying fragment, the contracted vision of the savage reaches not beyond the established creed of his predecessors; and upon that, however far it may be from reason and truth, he rests in secure repose. But when he has obtained one glance beyond that rude fabric, he feels the trembling of his basis, and his inquisitive mind becomes alive to all the realities of his situation. He begins to reason—he begins to doubt—and confidence once shaken in former belief, scepticism becomes [Pg 82] universal. ”

“ We have received these institutions upon the faith of our fathers, and, hitherto, been engaged, not in fairly discussing, but in eulogizing and defending them, without ever allowing ourselves to doubt their excellence and superiority over all others. These venerable fathers have now gone down to their graves; our enemies have become our friends; the distorting medium of prejudice through which we have hitherto viewed the world is removed, and we are left to scrutinize at our leisure the fair fabric which has been committed to us. ”

“ Had not the French been left to be carried headlong by the first transports of passion, or had the pure principles of religion and freedom been presented in such a way as to be imbibed and felt, they might have risen to a lofty elevation, and been able to look back upon that horrid scene of anarchy and bloodshed only as the harbinger of liberty and peace. ”

“ No one, save he who has witnessed with a heart all susceptible to the beauties of nature, can even picture to himself the delightful scene of a summer’s evening in the fair region of Granada. The mellowed tints of the declining sun gilding every object with a fairy brightness ”

“ During this interval, the young Moor had had leisure to reflect upon his situation. He was a brave warrior; and like every one who is truly brave, he possessed not only a spirit of boldness and daring during the raging of the battle, and in the hour of triumph, but could yield to disappointment and defeat, and meet the reverses of fortune with equal fortitude. So now, though he knew from the first that slavery would be the mildest lot for which he could even hope, nevertheless, he willingly yielded to necessity, and seemed to the observer, as if regardless of his situation. ”

“ The grave even of the young, the gifted, and the beautiful, differs not in outward fashion or adornment, from the many which surround it. It is hollowed out from the same earth with them—closes over the same lifeless and decaying bodies—furnishes the same victim for the worm, the same banquet for corruption. ”

“ He is thrown upon the resources of his own rude mind; prejudice wars with passion and impressions from the world, and reason roams, and often roams in vain, in search of those pure principles from which spring the happiness of enlightened communities.
In this incipient stage of knowledge, the field from which individuals derive their impressions and opinions is contracted; and influenced as they are by different circumstances and associations, it is not surprising that their ideas should rarely concur. ”

“ But we do intend to assert, that a knowledge of literature and science merely, however much they may contribute to it, is not sufficient for a nation’s security; and that when man has been roused to investigation, unless inexperienced reason is aided in its search after truth, he is liable to fall into the most fatal errors. This height of civilization has been attained only by the accumulated wisdom of ages, and it is not, therefore, to be expected that unassisted reason will arrive at it at once. ”

“ In one instance, as he breaks through the spell of prejudice—grasps the sword of reason, and enters upon his rude analysis of mind and matter, he is directed by some apparently fortuitous agency, at once to the elements of peace and happiness, and advances in rapid strides from barbarism to refinement. In another instance, in the same rude contest—the same clashing of mental and physical energy, a nation falls exhausted in the struggle, and sinks, if possible, to a state even more hopeless than before. ”

“ How brilliant, yet how rapid, has been its career. Meteor-like, it has vanished from our sight, while the hopes that we had cherished have gone down for ever.
The volume, whose title we have placed at the commencement of this article, and whose merits we propose to examine with our readers, is a beautiful memorial of departed genius. The perusal of its pages has naturally led us to indulge in those reflections we have hitherto pursued. The memory of Drake—his early and untimely grave—has tended to associate with his, the same sad fate of others. ”

“ All that is grand—all that is terrible—all horrible, loathsome, fearful images, that the mind had ever while healthy repulsed, then come back on the heart like vultures that have been scared awhile from their prey, whose fasts have only whetted their ungorged appetites. At one moment, I seemed borne through the Eternal void chained to the lightnings ”

“ It may be supposed that this subject has little application to a country so enlightened as ours, and so accustomed to submit every thing to the scrutiny of unbiassed reason. When we consider that our institutions derive their origin from the most profound minds our country has ever produced, and that they have prospered, for more than half a century, beyond the most sanguine expectations of their founders, we are apt to forget that the prosperity of all institutions depends upon the attachment of the people, and to imagine that ours are inherently secure. ”

“ But Narvaez saw the marks of a noble mind within, as he drew up his manly figure to its height, displaying to the best advantage his finely proportioned limbs, whilst his brow contracted with a look almost of defiance. He saw that there was something more than his present misfortune which so powerfully affected him,—and at once he became deeply interested in the youth. ”