the walls of houses, and having merely the decorations of street scenery. A ruined character is as picturesque as a ruined castle. There are dark abysses and yawning gulfs in the human heart, which can be rendered passable only by bridging them over with iron nerves and sinews, as Challey bridged the Sarine in Switzerland, and Telford the sea between Anglesea and England, with chain bridges. These are the great themes of human thought; not green grass, and flowers, and moonlight. Besides, the mere external forms of nature we make our own, and carry with us everywhere, by the power of memory." "I fear, however," interrupted Flemming, "that in towns the soul of man grows proud. He needs at times to be sent forth, like the Assyrian monarch, into green fields, 'a wondrous wretch and weedless,' to eat green herbs, and be wakened and chastised by the rain showers and winter's bitter weather. Moreover, in cities there is danger of the soul's becoming wed to pleasure, and forgetful of its high. vocation. There have been souls dedicated to heaven from childhood, and guarded by good angels as sweet seclusions for holy thoughts, and prayers, and all good purposes; wherein pious wishes dwelt like nuns, and every image was a saint; and yet in life's vicissitudes, by the treachery of occasion, by the thronging passions of great cities, have become soiled and sinful. They resemble those convents on the river Rhine, which have been changed to taverns; rom whose chambers the pious inmates have long departed, and in whose cloisters the footsteps of travellers have effaced the images of buried saints, and whose walls are written over with ribaldry and the names of strangers, and resound no more with holy hymns, but with revelry and loud voices." "Both town and country have their dangers," said the Baron; "and there.ore, wherever the scholar lives, he must never forget his high vocation. Other artists give them selves up wholly to the study of their art. It becomes with them almost religion. For the most part, and in their youth, at least, they dwell in lands where the whole atmosphere of the soul is beauty; laden with it, as the air may be with vapour, till their very nature is saturated with the genius of their art. Such, for example, is the artist's life in Italy." "I agree with you," exclaimed Flemming; "and such should be the poet's everywhere; for he has his Rome, his Florence, his whole glowing Italy, within the four walls of his library. He has in his books the ruins of an antique world,—and the glories of a modern one,-his Apollo and Transfiguration. He must neither forget nor undervalue his vocation; but thank God that he is a poet; and everywhere be true to himself, and to 'the vision and the faculty divine' he recognizes within him." "But, at any rate, a town life is most eventful," continued the Baron. "The men who make, or take, the lives of poets and scholars, always complain that these lives are barren of incidents. Hardly a literary biography begins without some such apology, unwisely made. I confess, however, that it is not made without some show of truth; if, by incidents, we mean only those startling events which suddenly turn aside the stream of time, and change the world's history in an hour. There is certainly a uniformity, pleasing or unpleasing, in literary life, which for the most part makes to-day seem twin-born with yesterday. But if, by incidents, you mean events in the history of the human mind (and why not ?), noiseless events, that do not scar the forehead of the world as battles do, yet change it not the less, then surely the lives of literary men are most eventful. The complaint and the apology are both foolish. I do not see why a successful book is not as great an event as a successful campaign; only different in kind, and not easily compared." "Indeed," interrupted Flemming, "in no sense is the complaint strictly true, though at times apparently so. Events enough there are, were they all set down. A life that is worth writing at all is worth writing minutely. Besides, all literary men have not lived in silence and solitude; -not all in stillness, not all in shadow. For many have lived in troubled times, in the rude and adverse fortunes of the state and age, and could say, with Wallenstein, Our life was but a battle and a march; And, like the wind's blast, never-resting, homeless, Many such examples has history recorded; Dante, Cervantes, Byron, and others, men of iron, men who have dared to breast the strong breath of public opinion, and, like spectre-ships, come sailing right against the wind. Others have been puffed out by the first adverse wind that blew, disgraced and sorrowful, because they could not please others. Had they been men, they would have made these disappointments their best friends, and learned from them. the needful lesson of self-reliance." "To confess the truth," added the Baron, "the lives of literary men, with their hopes and disappointments, and quarrels and calamities, present a melancholy picture of man's strength and weakness. On that very account the scholar can make them profitable for encouragement, consolation, warning." of literary men teach us, is Every man must patiently More particularly in lands "And after all," continued Flemming, "perhaps the greatest lesson which the lives told in a single word-Wait! bide his time. He must wait. like my native land, where the pulse of life beats with such feverish and impatient throbs, is the lesson needful. Our national character wants the dignity of repose. We seem to live in the midst of a battle-there is such a din, such a hurrying to and fro. In the streets of a crowded city it is difficult to walk slowly. You feel the rushing of the crowd, and rush with it onward. In the press of our life it is difficult to be calm. In this stress of wind and tide all professions seem to drag their anchors, and are swept out into the main. The voices of the Present say, 'Come!' But the voices of the Past say, 'Wait!' With calm and solemn footsteps the rising tide bears again the rushing torrent up stream, and pushes back the hurrying waters. With no less calm and solemn footsteps, nor less certainly, does a great mind bear up against public opinion, and push back its hurrying stream. Therefore should every man wait--should bide his time-not in listless idleness-not in useless pastime-not in querulous dejection, but in constant, steady, cheerful endeavours, always willing and fulfilling, and accomplishing his task, that, when the occasion comes, he may be equal to the occasion. And if it never comes, what matters it? What matters it to the world, whether I, or you, or another man did such a deed, or wrote such a book, so be it the deed and book were well done? It is the part of an indiscreet and troublesome ambition to care too much about fame-about what the world says of us; to be always looking into the faces of others for approval; to be always anxious for the effect of what we do and say; to be always shouting to hear the echo of our own voices. If you look about you, you will see men who are wearing life away in feverish anxiety of fame, and the last we shall ever hear of them will be the funeral bell that tolls them to their early graves! Unhappy men, and unsuccessful! because their purpose is, not to accomplish well their task, but to clutch the 'trick and phantasy of fame,' and they go to their graves with purposes unaccomplished and wishes unfulfilled. Better for them, and for the world in their example, had they known how to wait! Believe me, the talent of success is nothing more than doing what you can do well, and doing well whatever you do, without a thought of fame. If it come at all, it will come because it is deserved, not because it is sought after. And, moreover, there will be no misgivings, no disappointment, no hasty, feverish, exhausting excitement." Thus endeth the First Book of Hyperion. I made no record of the Winter. Paul Flemming buried himself in books, in old, dusty books. He worked his way diligently through the ancient poetic lore of Germany, from Frankish Legends of St. George, and Saxon Rhyme-Chronicles, and Nibelungen-Lieds, and Helden-Buchs, and songs of the Minnesingers and Mastersingers, and Ships of Fools, and Reynard the Foxes, and Death-Dances, and Lamentations. of Damned Souls, into the bright, sunny land of harvests, where, amid the golden grain and the blue corn-flowers, walk the modern bards, and sing. IT BOOK THE SECOND. "Something the heart must have to cherish, CHAPTER I. SPRING. T was a sweet carol which the Rhodian children sang of old in Spring, bearing in their hands from door to door a swallow, as herald of the season: "The swallow is come! The swallow is come! O, fair are the seasons, and light Are the days that she brings, With her dusky wings, And her bosom snowy white !" |