Newspaper Page Text
PUBLISHED 81-WEEKLY.
VOLUME 11.
§0? twj.
The Human Face.
“ The human face is a marvellous book
And it opens whenever we heed ;
Time hath a tale in each wrinkle and nook,
Life hath its legend in every look ;
And he that runneth may read.
Our sunimer’s are deepening the dimple of mirth,
Our winter’s the crowsfoot of care;
Till years have worn threadbare the velvet of
birth
A”d left it a lesson of beauty’s light worth—
Os promises gone to the air.
The bearing of hearts that are breaking unseen
The secret of closeted thought;
As the hands of a watch, show the workings
within,
So the innermost hours of the heart and the
brain
May be known by the furrows without.
How closely the sorrowful miniatures stand
And preach to the pulses of youth !
Forever around us their voiceless command,
Their mute, inexpressible warnings at hand—
The passionless presence of truth."
|Cdta tom [piTOmk
Home™ Naples—Pompeii—Yesu
vius, etc., etc.
My Bear Colonel:
This evening, I have set apart fur
you. But. really what to write about
in the midst of so much to engVoss
one’s thoughts, is quite a pu?z!o. If
a man's pen could have apoplexy, I
am sute it would be after he had
made a tour from Brussels to Naples
and proposed to condense it into a
letter.
Berlin, Munich, Xnnspruck, Alps
for three days and snow to boot—
Verona, Venice, Florence, “ fair Flo
rence”—ali will have to stay where
they are, hundreds of miles off from
this letter-sheet. And R .me can on
ly have a few lines. One week, I
.gave to old Rome. A second week,
1 gave to modern Rome.
I saw all the great ruins. In the
light of such resplendent days as 1
never dreamed could shine on this
earth, and yet again “in the light
that never shone on sea or shore,”
the mind’s own light, I looked again
and again on the long lines of the
great Aqueducts, on the Coliseum,
on the Palace of the Caesars, on the
Pantheon and on the Caropagna.—
And 1 went through the Baths, down
into the Prison, into Cloaca Maxima,
into the Catacombs and into other
wonders innumerable. No man, I
apprehend, ever saw Rome thorough
ly. I did all I could, and what I did
see, I saw well. Each object was
smdied. 1 tried to take from each
object its p.ecisc impression and, to
some extent, I was successful. And
now I have an idea of Rome and of
her varied life, such as no books
„ould have given uie.
CLIMBING THE HEICHTS.
ATHENS, GEORGIA, OCT. 1,1870.
Modern Rome is to be chiefly seen
in St. Peter's arid the Vatican. The
joy I had in both, was mainly due to
the idea they gave me of Michael
Angelo and Raphael. There and on
ly there, can their biographies be
read.
iThe greatest frescoes I have seon,
are the Last Judgment, by Angelo,
and the School of Athens, by Raphael.
The former has defects, marked de
fects; but in power, overwhelming
power, powerof wrath, it is unmatch
ed If it were the Judgment of Sin,
then nine-tenths of the assailable
points are set aside Mercy, none ;
Pity, none; Love, none; all wrath,
unveiled, unchecked, unmitigated
wrath. I never before saw painted
figures that looked like sculptures.
Raphael in his fresco, is thoroughly
satisfying His great painting, the
Transfiguration, is incomparab 1 y
greater than 1 expected. It can ne
ver he copied.
Among the statues, hundreds of
which I have seen, but one power
fully moved me, and that is the Dy
ing Gladiator. I put this above eve
ry thing in the world of Art. For
expression, for force, for all that is
expressible in the fact of death and
for all that can only be hinted at in
the idea, this work is the final form
of genius in marble. And I should
just as soon expect to see another
Niagara or Mont Blanc as to behold
its equal.
But enough of this gossamer thread
of criticism.
I earno on to Naples last Monday.
Pompeii and Vesuvius brought me,
not Naples. On yesterday, I saw
Pompeii. Through its silent streets,
clean and well-paved ; into its houses
—the private dwellings, shops, stores
and villas; through its Forum, The
atres, Temples, Amphitheatre; I
wandered on and on until it was
Pompeii living around me. Such a
reality, brought up out of the grave,
set in the light of the sun, re-clothed
and re-vivified, no man can under
stand unless by seeing it. Almost
eighteen hundred years under
ground, and yet it looks as if vaca
ted last week. How startling it all
is ! To see the very bread, the fruit,
the commonest articles of daily life,
the furniture—why enumerate? —
Well; the bouses are generally small,
most of them one story. They were
not homes; at least, the home-idea
as we have it, never was in Pompeii.
Yet some of them are superb. 1 saw 7
floors of richly-wrought mosaics,
halls laid in marble, grottoes of shell
work, marble tables, such as no mo->
ney could now purchase.
From the shining pavements and
beautiful frescoes of Pompeii, from
those magnificent altars, from the
shrine of the oracles, from the Urns
and the Tombs, I often turned my
eyes to Vesuvius. The white smoke
rose in wreathing grace and lay
above the cone, and all along its
sides, the soft lines of beauty waved.
And such beauty ! No mountain has
a more perfect form. Imagine a
mountain clad in velvet, the air gent
ly ruffling it, the sunshine streaming
down it, the eye absolutely reposing
upon it in the stillness of slumber aod
yet thrillingly wakeful; and then
perchance you may have some image
ofVe.-uvius. I would give up any
view in the woild for Vesuvius. And
then, at night, the glowing streams
of lava—the huge, black mass and
theso streaking lines like long auro
ras—this 1 have seen again and
again. Oh, me! if lam not wiser,
belter, humbler, gladder, nobler for
all this, what a sad, sad memory it
will be !
Frank has been wiih me all the
route from Berlin. And he has en
tered into the soul of every thing and
enjoyed it to the full boundary of
feeling. In a day or two, we start
for Berlin.
My thr< at has been very bad.—
Within those last ten days, it has
given me much pain. In this re
spect, and only in this, the trip has
disappointed me. I am somewhat
better here. My general health is
much improved.
So far as I can judge, a visit to
Europe cannot be exaggerated, if one
will come here to learn. Os this I
am fully satisfied, that it gives a spe
cies of culture not otherwise attaina
hie. But a man mast prepare him l *
self for it. And when he reaches
Europe, let him control his curiosity
and only indulge in sight-seeing as
an exceptional recreation.
Italy has far surpassed my expec
tations in all respects. But lam too
feeble to write more to night.
How I have longed to hear from
you! No letter yet.
But you will not forget me—this,
I know. My heart yearns for home
and Athens. 1 have seen enough,
enough. The Alps, Rome, Pompeii,
Vesuvius; what else is there?
As ever, yours, as now,
A A. L.
Col. W. L. Mitchell.
...A gentleman the other day in
lending a book to a friend, cautioned
him to bo punctual in returning it.
This said he, in apology, is really ne
cessary, for though 1 And some of
my friends bad arithmeticians , yet
most of them are good book keepers.
TERMS---#2.50 PER ANNUM.
NUMBER 4.
femt#.
For the Georgia Collegian.
Mottoes:
For instance, “ Magna servitus est
inagna fortuna ” quod una est “ magnas
inter opes fortuna ” —“ A great fortune
is a great slavery, for one is poor inthe
midst of wealth.”
“ Nothing truer under the sun,”
yet out of ten thousand times ten
thousand people, you will not get one
to believe it. It is a perfect paradox
—“an assertion apparently false or
absurd, but not really so.” No ! for
we have already said, there is noth
ing truer under the sun—which we
sincerely believe, for it admits of a
demonstration as clear as a Freeh’s
TONS ASSINORUM.
What is freedom ? Liberty, privi
leges, license. Now,J heard a Yan
kee soldier say on the beautiful banks
of the Oconee, (for it is beautiful, on
ly nobody has time, liberty', to see it,)
in a conversation upon Northern and
Southern agriculture, under the eha*
dow of a picturesque mill near the
armory, that was—“ Sir, a man who
owns a three hundred acre farm in
the State of Pennsylvania, has’nt
time to go to a circus; no damn it,
not if he wanted to.” Wby? “Be
cause he is a slave to the farm, and
his absence fora day would cost him
more than forty circuses; he can’t
afford it.” How was it my friend,
with you ? “Oh ! I could always go,
because lam a day laborer. I lost
half a day’s work, and paid half a
day’s wages, but I could afford that;
it was only one day lost; so with his
three hundred acres of land, he has
not half my liberty nor half my fun ;
no, sir, I would not own three hnn*
dred acres of land in the State of
Pennsylvania—not if you gave it to
me—l mean if I had to live on it.”
I state this conversation as accu
rately as 1 can remember it, and as a
fact. I was a miller then, covered
with flour from heel to head, sitting
cheek byrjowl on a rough bench with
a Yankee soldier, who had not only
licked me, and taken all of my prop*
erty, but was now teaching me the
purest philosophy, most generously ;
and I behanged if I did’nt believe the
fellow was right, by my own expe
rience and from facts diawn from the
experience of others.
Reflections are odius — sed, John
Jacobs sits up every night of his life
until twelve or one o’clock, laboring
like a slave, harder than any of his
clerks, if he has any, with a head
cracked with the weightof gold; gol
den metalic thoughts of “cent^per*