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Hart and others, proclaimed it the best
piece at the exhibition.
Our Legislature, 1 understand, contem
plates the erection of a statue of Jeffer
son in the University. This will afford
a fine opportunity for encouraging native
talent. No fear of failure on the part
of Galt need be apprehended. He feels
confident in his power, and I am greatly
mistaken in the character I have heard of
him, if he could be induced to undertake
a w 7 ork on which he would not be willing
to risk his reputation.
EMERSON.
* * Amid the general obscurity of Emerson’s
musings, occur passages of great clearness and
beauty. We ourselves always read the eloquent
mystic with a pleasure similar to that with which
we gaze upon a sky of mingled cloud and star
light. The following thoughts are fine and truth
lul:
“When the act of reflection takes place
in the mind, when w 7 e look at ourselves
in the light of thought, we discover that
our life is embosomed in beauty. Behind
us, as w r e go, all things assume pleasing
forms, as clouds do afar off. Not only
things familiar and stale, but even the
I tragic and terrible, are comely, as they
i take their place in the pictures of mein-
I ory. The river-bank, the weed at the
; water-side, the old house, the foolish per
! son, —however neglected in the passing,—
! have a grace in the past. Even the corpse
’ that has lain in the chambers has added
; a solemn ornament to the house.”
The rhapsody on Love, in the first series of the
Essays, is almost wholly free from the darkness of
1 Transcendentalism. The idea which it developes
I is traceable, we think, to a stanza of Wordsworth’s
Laodomia, upon which the Essay may be regarded
as a commentary at once poetic and philosophi
cal.
“Learn by a mortal yearning to ascend
Towards a higher object. Love was given,
i Encouraged, sanctioned chiefly lor that end :
S For this lire passion to excess was driven
; That self might be annulled—her bondage prove
The fetters ot a dream opposed to love.”
In the following passage there is a fine enthu
’ siam, which those only will appreciate who know
how to discriminate between sentiment and senti
mentality:
“1 have been told, that in some public
discourse of mine my reverence for the
intellect has made me unjustly cold to
the personal relations. But now 1 al
most shrink at the remembrance of such
disparaging words. For persons are
love’s world, and the coMest philosopher
cannot recount the debt of the young soul
wandering here in nature to the power of
love, without being tempted to unsay, as
I treasonable to nature, aught derogatory
to the social instincts. For, though the
celestial rapture falling out of heaven
seizes only upon those of tender age, and
although a beauty overpowering all ana-
SOUTHERN LITERARY GAZETTE.
lysis or comparison, and putting us quite
beside ourselves, we can seldom see after
thirty years, yet the remembrance of
these visions outlasts all other remem
brances, and is a wreath of flowers on
the oldest brows. But here is a strange
fact; it may seem to many men, in re
vising their experience, that they have no
fairer page in their life’s book than
the delicious memory of some passages
wherein affection contrived to give a
witchcraft surpassing the deep attraction
of its own truth to a parcel of accidental
and trivial circumstances. In looking
backward, they may find that several
things which were not the charm have
more reality to this groping memory
than the charm itself which embalmed
them. But be our experience in parti
culars what it may, no man ever forgot
the visitations of that power to his heart
and brain, which created all things new ;
which was the dawn in him of music, po
etry and art; which made the face of
nature radiant with purple light, the
morning and the night varied enchant
ments ; when a single tone of one voice
could make the heart bound, and the most
trivial circumstance associated with one
form is put in the amber of memory;
when he became all eye when one was
present, and all memory when one was
gone ; w hen the youth becomes a watcher
of windows, and studious of a glove, a
veil, a ribbon, or the wheels of a carriage;
when no place is too solitary, and none
too silent, for him who has richer com
pany and sweeter conversation in his
new’ thoughts, than any old friends,
though best and purest, can give him ;
for the figures, the motions, the words of
the beloved object are not like other im
ages written in water, but, as Plutarch
said, ‘enamelled in fire,’ and make the
study of midnight.
‘Thou art not gone being gone, where’er thou art,
Thou leav’st in him thy watchful eyes, in him thy
loving heart.’
In the noon and the afternoon of life we
still throb at the recollection of days
when happiness w'as not happy enough,
but must be drugged with the relish of’
pain and fear; for he touched the secret
of the matter, who said of love, —
‘All other pleasures are not worth its pains
and when the day was not long enough,
but the night, too, must be consumed in
keen recollections ; when the head boiled
all night on the pillow with the generous
deed it resolved on ; when the moonlight
was a pleasing fever, and the stars were
letters, and the flowers ciphers, and the
air was coined into song; when all busi
ness seemed an impertinence, and all the
men and women running to and fro in
the streets, mere pictures.
“The passion rebuilds the w T orld for the
youth. It makes all things alive and
significant. Nature grows conscious. Ev-
cry bud on the boughs of the tree sings
now to his heart and soul. The notes
are almost articulate. The clouds have
faces as he looks on them. The trees of
the forest, the waving grass, and the
peeping flowers have grown intelligent;
and he almost fears to trust them with
the secret which they seem to invite.
Yet nature soothes and sympathizes. In
the green solitude he finds a dearer home
thpn with men.
‘Fountain-heads and pathless groves,
Places which pale passion loves,
Moonlight walks, when all the fowls
Are safely housed, save baisand owls,
A midnight bell, a passing groan,—
These are the sounds vve teed upon.’
. “Behold there in* the wood the fine mad
man ! He is a palace of sweet sounds
and sights; he dilates; he is twice a man
he walks with arms akimbo ; he solilo
quizes ; ha accosts the grass and the
trees; he feels the blood of the violet,
the clover, and the lily in his veins; and
he talks with the brook that wets his foot.
“The heats that have opened his per
ceptions of natural beauty have made
him love music and verse. It is a fact
often observed, that men have written
good verses under the inspiration of pas
sion, who cannot write well under any
other circumstances.”
A WONDERFUL CLOCK.
Towards the end of the sixteenth cen
tury, Jaquet Droz, a Swiss clock-maker,
carried to Ferdinand the Catholic, King
of Spain, a clock which* was the wonder
of all Europe. The kipg paid the large
sum of five hundred thousand louis (or
about two thousand two hundred dollars)
for it, and when it arrived, gathered his
most illustrious noblemen to look at its
marvellous works. The clock represented
a landscape, and when it struck the hour,
a shepherd issued from behind some rock
and jdayed six different tunes upon his
flutepft hile his dog naturally fawned upon
him. To show the king that the dog was
faithful, as well as affectionate, Droz told
him to touch the fruit in a basket by the
side of the shepherd. The king laid hold
of an apple, and the dog at once sprang
at his hand, barking so naturally, that a
spaniel in the room replied with great fe
rocity and showed signs of fight. At this
all the court left, crying out, “Sorcery !”
and there was only left the king and the
minister of the navy. The king asked
the shepherd what time it was? The
clock-maker told him that he did not un
derstand Spanish ; but if he would ask
him in French he would reply. The king
then put his question in French, when
the shepherd instantly replied. This was
too much for the minister of the navy,
and he instantly ran aw r ay. The poor
clock maker was in danger of being burnt
for a sorcerer, bet he explained the won
der to the grand inquisitor, who was con-
[December 18,