IMMORTALITY. Oн, I shall live for ever! I read it in the sky, The stars reveal my destiny, in accents clear and loud! Whene'er sweet music cheers me, of instrument or bird, Proclaim'd by angel's trumpet, or written on a scroll When the new spring is decking the woods, the hills, and fields, A new assurance fills my heart; in ecstacy I cry, The gaily-painted butterfly, emerging on the wing, 'Tis night on earth, but heaven looks clearer than by day; 'Tis mostly by the star-light this ecstacy I find; J. N. B. THE MISER. A SKETCH. 'THERE is that scattereth and yet increaseth, and there is that withholdeth more than is meet, and it tendeth to poverty.' THE PROVERES OF SOLOMON. IT is more pleasing to depict the life of the good man, but light and shade make up the painter's canvass. I knew a miser, a churl; the hereditary bondsman of a master passion. Seventy years of solitary selfishness had procured him the merited contempt of the world. It is easier to look upon the boldest villany, than upon an inconceivable littleness of soul. His enormous wealth was like a great pool, dammed up and stagnant, and never yielding one precious drop to fertilize the earth. He was a recluse, a stranger to the ties which bind one to friends and kindred, and thence, by a thousand sweet linkings, to the whole family of man. Possessing nothing in common, and living supremely to himself, he was a constant exemplification that 'There is which withholdeth more than is meet, and it tendeth to poverty.' As the epicure revels upon a rich feast, so he gloated upon his wealth. Ah! it was pleasant, when no eye was gazing, when his doors were barred, and only the dim light stole in, which he regarded with jealousy, to bring it forth from its mysterious corners, dark holes, hidden nooks; to count it, to recount it, to touch it. Its music was sweeter than that of the spheres. He thought of it all day — he dreamed of it all night. It was the solitary idea which filled up his whole soul—his only darling - his life his light- his poetryhis star. His existence was a stagnant pool, a dead sea; no breeze ever stirred its waters into commotion. The hopes, the fears, the joys, and the ambition of other men, were narrowed down into one hope, one fear, one joy, and one ambition. While the expansive energies or benevolence of some minds have found the world itself too contemptible a theatre, his was compressed into a very speck, a point, possessing 'ample room and verge enough' within the limits of his coffers. From that sordid prison-house it went forth on no errands of mercy. It was enough that the same bounds which held him there, a willing slave, forbade the entrance of another. I have thought that a mother's affection surpassed every other passion of the human heart. But I considered not the miser's unremitting, soul-engrossing, self-denying love. I thought not of the piercing cry, 'My ducats, my ducats, my golden ducats!' more agonizing than that of My son, my son!' Like a fond parent, he could not let the light of his eyes go from him, lest the image that he loved to gaze on, should be tarnished; neither would he barter it for the world's comforts. He knew not the luxuries, nor even the commonest necessaries, of life. The premises on which he lived, had a povertystricken air. The house presented a strange contrast with the gay tenements of his neighbors. No cheerful paint adorned it. True, it had once received a coat, but that could not last alway, and the expenditure was too fearful to be renewed. Smoke was scarce seen to issue from the chimney, nor ever came it forth in a rich, dark volume, but in a lean, curling, silvery, vanishing streak. Within, all things were alike cheerless. The one inhabited apartment was like a prisoner's dreary cell. There was no sound, save the voice of the cricket from the hearth. A flock-bed, a few broken utensils, a table, and a chair, in the last stage of dissolution, made up all its furniture. His garden, which scarce had the appearance of such, contained a few scrubby vegetables, such as the gardens of Nova Zembla might produce. Yet they were quite enough for him who was guilty of a worse gluttony. Some fruit trees struggled with the thin soil, but the fruit scarcely had heart to ripen; it dropped withered, or worm-eaten, on the ground. The very dog looked as if he found few crumbs beneath his master's table. Lean, cadaverous, and morose, he lay snarling on the threshold; he was too poor to bark aloud. And yet there was some mysterious sympathy, some misery of his own to brood over, which kept him at his post. Attached to the premises, was a cow. She was a very picture, and chewed the perpetual cud of despair. Her bones were eloquent. The milk which a generous creature yields up without stint and willingly, appeared in her case a very robbery. And at last the horn-distemper seized on her, and she went down to death. He took what he could take her skin; and that was depriving the rattling bones of all which they possessed. What a cow! Had she fed in the Pontine marshes? So any one might have thought. Yet she starved within sight of the neighboring plenty, and when every breeze wafted the smell of clover to her nostrils. From that time, no milk ever moistened the lips of the miser. He had a fountain of brackish water, and in that he dipped his earthen mug. At premises so forbidding in their aspect, the unfortunate man and the beggar scarcely had the hardihood to apply. On his portals were written, as in blazing characters, BEGONE! To unloose his pursestrings would have been more hard than to relax the polar ices, or to unlock the iron grasp of death. Three score years and ten did he live, and in all that time he never knew the luxury of doing good. He never fed the hungry, clothed the naked, nor listened to the importunate voice of despair. Did the sick or the dying man lie in his path-way, and accost him, he turned a deaf ear to his supplications, and leaving him to some good Samaritan, passed by on the other side. A sister lay in a neighboring town, bed-ridden, needy, and ready to die. She pronounced the endearing word brother,' and said 'give, give.' But the 'genial current' of his soul was frozen. With brows contracted, first clenched, lips compressed, he shook his hoary head, and slowly turned upon his heel. In a few days after, she was carried to the grave. He followed on, and shed a tear; a bright, sparkling, affectionate tear. With his neighbors he never mingled in social intercourse. They beheld him only in the distance, and with scorn. What cared he for crops whose harvest was already garnered ? When the Sunday bells rang cheerily, and the old and the young, their faces beaming with gratitude, flocked to the temple of God, he devoutly worshipped at home. He had an altar there, a glittering altar. With greater rapture than the Christian bows down to his God, did he worship his gold, and the prayer which he offered up was this, that it would never leave him nor forsake him. He lit no lamps, he burned no oil. Was there not light enough in the day-time to perform the little business of his life? When night came on, and the cold winds of winter whistled through the crannies, he covered up the embers with a wise economy, and slunk away into bed. Twenty times in a night, would he wake up in trepidation. He thought he heard the step of the robber. It might not be, and yet it might be. It were better to set his mind at rest. So he rose up shivering from his couch, laid his hand upon his treasures, then soothed his heart with the watchman's cry, All's well, all's well.' Old age at last stole upon him, and the time arrived when in the course of nature he must die. But the ruling passion was strong in death. He only hugged his treasures the closer. They became his bed-fellows. As the sick and petulant man, who cannot bear to be alone, he said to them, 'Leave me not; stay with me, for I have but a short time to live.' His hands could still count them over, and when his hands were palsied, his glaring eye could still drink in their splendor. In delirium his mind wandered - but not from his gold. He said that he was going into a far country; he must make great preparations; he must provide sacks, and an escort of armed men, for there were robbers by the way. Then he murmured, I know not what, confusedly, of treasures on earth - ah! how much better to have provided treasures in heaven and departed to his own abode. His features retained their expression in death, as if a sculptor had carved them from the rigid marble. Thus he lived despised, thus he died unlamented. His negative virtue was his positive crime. He had done no evil, he had effected no good. No friend hung with solicitude over his sick bed. No mourner followed him to the grave. None ever had occasion to remember him with affection, and the best charity was to forget that he had lived. Such a life who would lead? Such a character who would envy? Other vices admit the exercise of redeeming virtues, and their victims we love, we pity, we condemn. This cannot. It wraps up the whole soul; it lies at the fountain-head of all benevolence, not like other vices embittering the waters, but actually forbidding them to flow. Few indeed are so entirely the slaves of the accursed lust of gold. Charity suggests that even these are laboring under a monomania, a mental disease; and that as we pity the tenants of a madhouse, so in their case, we ought to pity, yet we cannot. But if few have deserved the miser's name, with its intolerable burthen of contempt, do we not see thousands in the breathless, eager search of gold; sacrificing the flower of their youth, and the prime of their manhood, and heroically battling for it on the brink of the grave, as if it were the grandest object of their lives? They rise up early, they retire late; they make haste to gather winged riches, and at last old age comes on, and the period of enjoyment is not arrived. Oh! what is all the wealth of Croesus, if we have not the heart to let it flow? If it does not administer to the refined enjoyments of our nature, if we stifle the rational desires of the heart; how are we so happy then, as the laborer who earns his daily bread? The surplus of our wealth remains unconverted. The prayer of Midas is comparatively realized. We touch nothing but gold. We live not while we live, abstaining from what renders life desirable; the festivity of friends — the delight of books - the recreation of travelling through foreign parts-the culture of the arts and the tasteful adornment of our grounds. How few cubic inches of ductile gold would rescue acres from thorns and briars, and render them beautiful as the gardens of SHENSTONE! But what is all the wealth of Croesus, if not for a more exalted purpose; if not to shed on others the beams of our prosperity and to encourage the generous emotions of the heart? To go to the houses of mourning, to the abodes of the sick and the aged, whose pangs are rendered keener by penury, to succor them, and smooth their pathway to the grave, these are the peculiar privileges and luxuries of the rich. Oh! for treasures of silver and gold' to indulge in somewhat beside empty boastings! Ye who grope in the depth of poverty, and drink the world's obloquy, 'a bitter draught,' who pray with intensest earnestness to Heaven, 'Give us this day our daily bread,' smiles and sunshine should scatter your darkness, the spirit of joy be assumed for heaviness, and the desert of your hearts should blossom as the rose.' Oh! who would hesitate to barter his treasures for blessings, or for the gratitude of hearts too full for utterance? Who would withhold the happy gift which is twice - which blesseth him that gives, and him that takes?' But if the cheerful giver receives no return for his benevolence, blessed'. nay, if evil redounds to him for good, there is a small approving voice within, silent, impalpable, soothing as heart-melody. Virtue has its own reward. What though no trumpet blazon our charities, though our left hand know not what our right hand doeth,' it is enough to have within us an unblemished mind, and to be acquitted at our own tribunal. THE DYING ARTIST. THE air was faint with perfume of the flowers, That shrined the ideal of the sculptor's dreams. Of Crete, who hung enamored o'er the stone, A thousand visions cluster round his heart; The past! the lost! Oh, madness harbors there! |