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282 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,