No voice of life-no living trace Is seen of all the mortal race, For ages long, in faded time, Of pleasure, if they even changed; In joys they lightly, freely, ranged- But, like the world, if nothing less, And look around for something new. The legend runs-it was their creed Some magic spell their souls confined, And from the charm they would be freed, If in the valley they could find The stream of life!-whose crystal flow, Was brighter than the silver's glow: Whose pearly drops of liquid white, To pleasure would give fresh delight: Whose virtues, fairy ban would sever,And all who drank, would live forever. PART IL It was a soft and gentle night The moon was streaming forth her light, The air was still-no sound was heard, When, on a high and greenwood steep, Whate'er she be, of earth or air- With here and there an azure one; She sleeps she dreams-or seeming dreams: A voice, as from the "Witches' Well," And thrice it sounded o'er again: "Light of the Sylphs! we've heard thy sigh, "It came upon the rainbow high: "We've tried it with the sacred dew, "And find thy wish is pure and true. "But all the sighs that ever fell "From Sylph! or Maid! or Eastern gale! "If pure as e'en the green-fern bell, "Would nothing now, thy wish avail. "One measure of the fabled stream, "The monster BANCO keeps the spring; "And Banco! sleeps but once a year: "If thou wilt seek, now Sylph awake! "With the speed of light, thro' elfin dells, The Sylph awakes-the voice is gone. Or old witch, who hurried her on ? The Sylph awakes--but not in fright; For she was glad: and it pleased her so, That the time had come, when she could go, To that valley far! which she doubted notWas, of all the world, the sweetest spot. PART III. The moon is shining lovely still- On the lake a shadow is seen Skimming on as the heron flies; The shadow is the yew-tree skiff, Like lightning streaking by, is pass'd. She passes by the dead-tree brake, And as she speeds, for miles along, The bark has stopp'd-with lightsome leap, And Banco sleeps!-he little dreams- The Sylph has gain'd the inmost ring, With eager joy, her willing hand, There comes no stream so soft and bright, Where's Banco? sleeping?-No! the sound And Banco seeks the mountain's brow, The wolf has reach'd the summit hill- Upon the waters, gaining still A thousand flitting spectres rise. And there his troubled vision sees A murdered Sylph! with torch on high, On every wave: which fast the breeze Is urging on, and bringing by. The wolf is stricken with despair- But, fiendish wolf! the waters roll In swelling surges o'er his head; And Banco! with his troubled soulNow yells among the restless dead, Long years have passed-a merry ring From every clime-from far and near— And Beauty comes, with face so bright! And oft a tear is there let fall- And then again-remember'd still- THE COPY-BOOK. NO. IV. By C. C*******, OF PETERSburg, Va. MY COUSIN BOB. I took it into my head once, to pay a visit to my cousin Bob. I am afraid he drank too much, though 1 never saw him intoxicated. However that may be, his house wore a neglected air-broken windows-dusty looking-glasses-torn curtains. The cows had broken down the hedge-the garden fence was decayed--and the gate choked up with grass. Lean, gaunt, hungry hounds, were dozing in the sun, Cousin Bob had never been farther from home than to Richmond, and seldom extended his thoughts far from home. As insects assume the color of the leaf they feed on, so he borrowed the complexion of his politics from his newspaper; and reading only one side of the question, he became dogmatical in his opinions, and seemed to feel pity for a man who should be so ignorant as to differ from him. His library was neither large nor select, consisting of some odd volumes of Shakspeare, Addison, Goldsmith, Scott's novels and Miss Porter's, Riley's Narrative, Mason's Farrier, Buchan's Family Medicine, Scott's Lessons, and the Almanack, which last was the only one he ever opened, and he frequently mentioned that there was some very good reading in it. With this relative of mine I passed some days in the year eighteen hundred and blank. The incidents of my stay were few and simple, as will appear in the succeeding chapters. WARWICK. There are no antiquities in Virginia except some of the old maids; but Warwick is an old fashioned structure, of perhaps the reign of William III, of happy memory. Rooms oak-pannelled-inside folding win dow-shutters-the house quite ruinous and desertedmartins build their nests in the walls-the dining room is occupied by an overseer and his family-the rest of the mansion, naked and untenanted-unhinged doors and broken windows-a sad picture of decay. The family portraits, the hereditary heirlooms, were gonea few fine old English prints survived; but time has no doubt ere this consigned them also to the tomb of the Capulets. I observed an antiquarian looking-glass on the wall, surmounted by an eagle, whose head had been knocked off, no doubt by some old tory. Around the house spreads a smooth lawn-a clump of patriarchal oaks fanning their leaves in the breeze. Under these, perhaps, the naked Indian has reposed his limbs, wearied with the chase; and the children that played under their shade, have grown up and been scattered, and many, perhaps, descended to the dust, while these old trees still lift their heads to the winds and defy the storm. In front of the house a river meandered lazily through broad, flat meadows of tall grass, in which cattle were wading for pasture. The roses of evening were fading in the western sky, when, mounting my horse, I bade adieu to Warwick, whose present state seemed an emblem of life-the gaiety and pomp of wealth had yielded "to dumb oblivion and decay." The coachman, the footman, the butler had disappeared, and the hunter's horn had ceased to rouse the early dawn. These scenes are forgotten, or recollected only by some superannuated slave, or some small antiquary like myself. OLD DUNMORE. After we had finished our tea, cousin Bob moved an adjournment to the porch, where, he observed, we should enjoy the twofold advantage of moonlight and mosquitoes. My kinsman, leaning back in his chair, threw his legs over the railing, and having thus brought his head and his heels nearly to a level, he called for his pipe. In the course of the evening, our conversation happened to take a genealogical turn, and I learned several new particulars of my forefathers. Cousin Bob, finding me quite interested in these reminiscences, sent for old Dunmore. He shortly made his appearance-a tall, erect mulatto of about seventy, or according to his chronology, for slaves always exaggerate their age, eighty large odd. He lodged, as it appeared, in a cabin in the orchard, by himself, with no companion but a cat, to which he had taken a sort of Robinson Crusoe fancy. As the priestess of Delphi would never utter her oracles until an offering of gold was made to Apollo, so an old negro will never spin long yarns about old times without a dram: a dram in all such cases is a sine qua non. Cousin Bob gave the old fellow a glass of whiskey, adding, "Now he will tell you lies enough to shingle a barn." Dunmore being thus put upon his voir dire, underwent a crossexamination on his genealogical reminiscences, which being ended, his master dismissed him with another dram of whiskey and the parting compliment of "It's all a pack of lies." When he had shut the gate after him, my kinsman remarked, that there was some truth in the old man's story. After all, the ancestral developments of Dunmore and his master did not prove to be of any great consequence, as will more clearly appear in the next chapter. GENEALOGY. The first stock of our family we take to be Adam and Eve. Not caring, however, to push matters so far back, we are content to begin with a worthy gentleman who came over, about the year 1700, from England. He located several thousand acres of land on the river before mentioned; and by the culture of tobacco and indigo, he came to be the master of a large fortune and miscellaneous mass accumulated during several generaa great number of slaves. He built Warwick-house, tions--containing a little of every thing, from Plato to and several others on the river and; his tombstone and Peter Porcupine. that of his wife I found half covered with sand in the From the windows of this room the James lay in full garden. About the time of the siege of York, Lafay-view; sometimes smooth and clear-purple clouds reette encamped at Warwick with a division of theflected in its glassy bosom-or swollen and turbid, American army. Lafayette, with his staff and suite, bearing on its foamy tide hay-stacks, timber trees, had his head-quarters at the great-house. Dunmore heaps of cornstalks and floating brushwood; and again had the honor to brush the general's boots-gold and a stormy day would toss the white caps, and curl the silver being very plenty, he got a guinea for his share. green and ridgy waves. Ships lie at anchor, taking in Lafayette had with him two servants, a negro and a tobacco and cotton; and the cry of the sailors at work, Frenchman. The head of Warwick-house at that is heard across the water; and occasionally a steamer time, the great grandfather of cousin Bob and me, was passes by, the parted waters heaving a rippling surge a good whig, but his wife, who happened to be the to the shore. daughter of a former governor of the colony, unfurled In spring, the fruit trees shower their blossoms, the a tory banner. The merits of the revolution was fre- flowers bloom, and the bee, humming, "quaffs his necquent matter of debate at table and by the fireside, the tar from the cups of gold." The mocking-bird, perchfamily upon such occasions forming a sort of domestic ed on the top of a cherry tree, repeats his mimic recicommittee of the whole house upon the state of the titavo, while the oriel, like a bolt of fire, darts warbling colonies. My great grandmother, dear old lady, was through the foliage, and the butterfly revels in the sunremarkably eloquent upon these occasions, (the oppo- shine, or reposes amid beds of flowers. A broad wheatsition always is,) and seldom failed to have the last field waves, its bearded stalks bending to the breeze; word; but, in spite of her efforts, she was pretty gene- and a corn-field hangs its silver tassels in the sun, and rally thrown into a minority. In one of these political luxuriant clover spreads its rich carpet. Here and conclaves it was moved and carried, my great grand-there a beech tree or an oak has been spared for its mother contradicente, to discontinue the use of tea. beauty or its shade. The negroes are at work in the The old lady entered a formal protest against the field; the overseer seated hard by on the fence, whitwhole proceeding, declaring that she would drink her ling a stick. cup of tea in spite of general Washington, congress, and the continental army to boot. She kept her word, drank her dish of tea in her closet, and, after the war, declared that nothing could add such a flavor to the herb as to think it was treason to drink it. HAREWOOD. Occasionally the uniformity of a country life is varied by a dinner party—a dinner, a hum-drum affair, a nuisance, a bore. After the first glass of wine goes round, the ladies retire, cigars are now introduced, the decanter circulates, conversation proceeds in an easy, slip-shod mood-politics, horses, crops. The ladies in the meanwhile in the drawing room; some play at battledore, or strum on the old harpsichord, or look over a book of prints-and others discourse of weather, health, children, fashions, sermons, flowers, new novels, &c. The sun is now descending the western sky-coaches are wheeled up to the door; silks rustle; adieus are exchanged; and Harewood is left to its accustomed solitude. AN ESSAY. By this name I shall distinguish one of the old plantations on the James River. The river is three miles wide there, and from the opposite side the front of Harewood appears to be white-the effect of the white pillars of the porticoes-but on a nearer approach, it proves to be a heavy square edifice of brick, with a sharp roof, and rows of dormant windows, as old, perhaps, as the time of Charles the Second. Well built store-houses and offices of brick shew that this was a plantation of consequence in the old colonial times. In the hall may be seen the family coat of arms, and Pythagoras, it is said, imposed absolute silence on several portraits, one of them of the founder of the his disciples for a number of years. We may presume house, a youth in robe and sandals. In the dining to doubt whether this philosopher ever carried his room also are a number of portraits, some of them, per- scheme into effect. However that may be, the singular haps, from the pencil of Sir Godfrey Kneller; and over system of Pythagoras was undoubtedly based on a great the mantel is carved the family escutcheon, under truth. Suppose a man of liberal education should sudwhich hangs a design from Hogarth. In the drawing denly find himself immured in a naked, unfurnished room is a full length portrait of General Washington, room, without books, or society, or any single external standing by a brass cannon, thoughtful; a servant hold-resource left him. Imagine that he could endure a life ing his horse-in the back ground is Princeton College, of this desolate sort for a considerable length of time, and a party of British prisoners of war. A print of supplied with food by an unseen hand, and that he Bunker Hill battle, and the fall of Montgomery at Que- should have the fortitude to retain a firm and constant bec; and a series of illustrations of Homer, mind in this lonely apartment? Perhaps the case just hypothetically presented, has in all substantial points occurred, (and not unfrequently too,) in real life; as when Raleigh was the second time, (after his unsuePortraits, prints, chessmen, books, battledores and an cessful expedition to Guiana,) closely confined in the antiquated harpsichord, complete the catalogue. tower of London; or Galileo, when imprisoned in Italy, My favorite part of the house was the blue room, up or Cervantes in Spain. As far as the gloom of confinestairs, to which belonged two closets full of books-ament would permit, an energetic mind would not wait "Videt Iliacas ex ordine pugnas Atridas, Priamum-que et sævum ambobus Achillem," long before it would begin to inquire what stock of resources it still had left within itself; deprived now of all extraneous helps, it must hang "suis ponderibus librata," on its own centre, poised. Objects of sensation being now narrowed down to a small number, the mind is almost wholly occupied by reflection, "Et sola in siccâ secum spatiatur arenâ." The first subject which would engage his thoughts, would, no doubt, be his confinement, its causes, the persons who had brought it about, its probable duration, and the like. When this matter was settled in his mind, so that no farther action of the mind could possibly result in deductions more satisfactory than those already attained, he would naturally turn the current of his reflections into some other channel. He would recollect the various events of his life, from his childhood to the present hour. The scenes of past life would probably come into his mind, disconnectedly, at different times, and without reference to chronological order. Incidents would turn up in the mind, when least looked for, and most remote from the thoughts immediately preceding, by an involuntary process of memory. He will recall the books he has read; familiar passages will recur-he will remember precisely the page or the part of the page where they are found. He will no doubt muster up such pieces of prose or verse as he may know by heart; and reciting them aloud, contrive to vary, by the sound of his own voice, the gloomy silence of his prison. In his mind's eye he would revisit the countries in which he has travelled, the habitations in which he has lived, the school house, the village church, the play ground, the scene of his youthful loves, all associated with his earliest thoughts and tenderest feelings. As the fancy of Milton seems to have soared to a more heavenly pitch, after the world was shut out by loss of sight; so, perhaps, the conception of the person we have supposed will assume a new vigor in his confinement, and images will stand out from the canvass, in a bold and palpable basso relievo, hitherto unknown. After a time, such an one will have surveyed the whole circumference of his mind, and sounded all its depths; and he will then discover with surprise, perhaps, how small a stock of knowledge is really his own, appropriated, inherent, and absolute. He now retains no definite, available idea of subjects, which before he had always supposed to be completely within his grasp. He has now no friend or book to refer to, and what he cannot find in his mind, he is conscious he is ignorant of. He can now form a just estimate of his own intellectual calibre, and strike a balance between his suppositious knowledge and the genuine; the chaff being blown away, he can now leisurely measure the grain that remains. The mists which at once obscure and magnify, being dispelled from the mind, it would appear in its true light; the circle of mental action would be contracted to its just extent-but what might seem lost in bulk, would be found to be more than made up in density. An humble estimate of our powers is not only consistent with, but, perhaps, indicative of mental faculties of a superior order. Sir Isaac Newton said that he was "only a child on the margin of an ocean, gathering here a pebble and there a shell." TO A BACHELOR OF ARTS, ON HIS MARRIAGE. BY A BROTHER A. B. I did not think, when last we met, But truth was ever prone to vie, With fiction's strangest hue; How could you, John, how could you tear The which have cost as much to wear, A Bachelor's degree; And though by you 'tis lightly prized, Mayhap, howe'er, I put the case Wishing, perhaps, to prove your grace You built the syllogism on Your skill in sieging hearts; Thinking success would doubly crown You-Bachelor of Arts. Alas! we read in Holy Writ, When Samson tried to show And thus, to prove how seemly peered Go! like a leper-crowned with shame! Of eighteen thirty-six ; What tho' with minstrelsy imbued, A different warble waits thine ear- Oh! worst of evils 'neath the sun! Styled, truly, dear delights; Who tax, for all they give of fun By day, our sleep o' nights. What shape of ill-what mortal strifeSo direful as their squall? A smoky house-a scolding wifeOr both-'tis worse than all ! |