EVELINE MORRISAuthor(s): David TaylorSource: Cosmopolitan Art Journal, Vol. 3, No. 4 (September, 1859), p. 173Published by:Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/42004842 .

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COSMOPOLITAN ART JOURNAL. 173

any one ! All one's holy and sweet im- pulses, and warm emotions - all one7s misgivings, and errors, and temptations, and quick, passionate, hot flashes of the soul in anger, or grief, or danger, mixed with sorrow and devotion, and penitence and resignation. If each passion or feel- ing were depicted by a different color, what a motley ghost would be the ghost of our secret thoughts ! The more one thinks, the more the mystery of the spiritual life absorbs the mind. I long so much to know what we are like in capacity and desire, that I feel impatient for the curtain to be drawn, even though it be by Death's hand that the mystery is revealed. Yet, a shadow stands tever on the threshold of the higher existence - a doubt, dark and appalling. Will we love our friends with the same love which we feel for them here ? It is so sweet in this life to love, and to be loved ! And then, true love is almost divine. It com- forts and forbears, and blesses, and sacri- fices, and forgives, with a compassion and devotion quite angelic - because it is the angel part of our nature. Why, then, shall it not be continued in another and higher life? And yet, is it? I feel, sometimes, like petitioning God for this assurance - that I can take my love

" Unsullied to the stars, When the great Father calls his children home." Did you ever think what it is that makes love so exquisite ? I think it is the pleasure we have in giving and in receiv- ing. If every one should say, u Love me, because I love you," I believe he must be dissatisfied to have his requests strictly complied with. We love to think it is for ourselves alone, and not for anything we have done, that we are preferred. And, in the same way, I think an un confessed passion more perfectly satisfactory than when we have asked and won a return ; for. in the first case, we have given every- thing, without any expectation of remune- ration and the voluntary sacrifice has a kind of religion in it, which makes us better and loftier for the time it lasts. Festus says, « Respect is what we owe ; love what we give ; and men would mostly rather give than pay." Besides, this is the only earthly thing which we can really, truly and wholly give.

'•Earth gets its price for what Earth gives us ; The beggar is taxed for a corner to die in,

The priest has his pay who comes and shrives us ; We bargain for the graves we lie in,

At the devil's booth all things are sold, Each ounce of dross costs its ounce of gold.

For a cap and .bells our lives we pay, Bubbles we earn with a whole soul's tasking J

'Tis heaved alone that is given away, 'Tis only God may be had for the asking."

Did the poet forget love ? or shall I say "God is love," and end the argument?

There is a " low south wind" blowing to-day - a summer wind in December : and you cannot think how it affects my spirits. I hear the mournful rustling of withered leaves, through my own window, and it seems to me that the sound is of Hope's withered leaves and flowers upon my brain. Yet it is nothing ! Why should it be anything to us to part with the fairy dreams which fill up the sea of life, like islands of perpetual summer ? Are they not followed constantly by others ? Ay, so they are. But in this voyage of life, so many of us sail from south to north, passing from bright and flower-wreathed lands, to cold and barren icebergs ! To all such, with myself, 1 cry u About ship !" We will have no more sailing in that di- rection. For must we, if we live to old age, be less worthy the society of the great and good, than we were a few years before, in youth, or at middle age ? That would make it seem better to die u before our time," that we might enter a higher sphere in our best state. Ought we not so to live that each year adds to our ex- cellences, and so to our happiness ? If we thus live, we shall be old while young, and young when old, youthful always, for

" We live in deeds, not years, In thoughts not breath ;

In heart-throbs, not in figures on a dial."

Thus live the "men whose great thoughts possess us like a passion - " " Men whom we build our love round, like an arch

Of triumph, as they pass us on their way To glory and to immortality."

EVELINE MORRIS.

Oh ' are you still by the gardens of moonlight, By the roses that bend o:er the clear, lovely

stream ; Where the breeze comes in sighs from the far dewy

forest, And all, save yeur eyes, is the haze of a dream ?

Oh ! still let your smiles beam forth on your lover, For yet o'er his heart you are queen all alone ;

Ah ! know you not that his life's in your shadow - His soul's on his lips when they're pressed to your

own1

Oh ! Eveline Morris, your form is an angel's ; Your foot falls as soft as the sigh of love's breath ;

Your eyes are as bright as the meteors of darkness, But cruel in their will as the arrows of death !

David Taylor.

MASTERS OF ART AWD LITERATURE

Eleventh Article.

ORLANDO W. WIGHT.

(wjw RLANDO W. WIGHT, one of ^TP) I the youngest among the dii

'^J/ majores of American literature > born it the town of Centre-

ville, Alleghany county, State of New-York, February 19, 1824.

His father was born in New-England, and was descended from Thomas Wight, who emigrated from the Isle of Wight, and settled at Dedham, Massachusetts, in 1637. The earliest history of the family may be read on the monuments at Ryde, Cowes, and Oarisbrook.

The mother of Mr. Wight was a Van Buren, a distant relative of the ex-presi- dent.

A volume published in London, a few years since, by the subject of this sketch, will best depict the scene of his birth and the bent of his early training : u The cottage was located near the brow of a high hill, overlooking a deep, wide valley, through which ran a stream, there called a creek, but which, anywhere in Europe, would be called a river. Right in front, in the midst of the valley, were some mills and scattered houses, the nascent village of Millville.* Toward the west, on the right, the valley was lined with the primeval forest, far as the eye could see. Down the valley, to the left, was visible the little village of Otterville, with its new white houses. Between Millvill9 and Otterville, the forest was chequered with clearings, that lay soft before the eye, like ' sweet, fairy islands in the waste.' In the distance, bounding the sun-illumined landscape, a blue moun- tain reared its head high in the clear air." 11 The father and mother are seated under the spreading branches of a tree, near a brook that was frozen over and out of sight in the winter. A little waterfall utters its soft, monotonous, dreamy music, and there is a multitudinous hum of in- sects in the summer air. The forest begins to cast shadows on a field of growing corn, as the sun begins to take his downward course in the heavens. Now and then the chattering of a squirrel echoes in the woods, and there is heard the tinkling of bells from flocks gra-

* The Dames are fictitious.

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