The national era. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1847-1860, 1859-11-17

with the purple clusters of fancy, make some
thing nice altogether of it, scattering moral
lessons, of course, la watercart, along the
dusty way, and being especially careful never,
on any temptation, to MIR metaphors!
But, dear me didn't know anything about
it. 1t is very charming to write letters in your
own chimneycorner. You can invent all sorts
of remarkable scenes, attractive, repulslve, ex-
perimental; perils by field and food thrilling
adventures and hair breadth escapes but if
you actually are humping round the world, you
find the hardest thing tn the world is to make
a note of it, When you were in school. you
doubtless wrote pages every day in your jour
nal. hammering out all your fancies and feel
ings to the utmost limits of malleability but
when you left school, and did the things you
had only dreamed of, your diary experienced a
| sudden collapse. This, take it, is generally
the case. You must live your life, one way or
another-on battlefield or quarterback; il
cabinet, laboratory, pulpit, VI nursery. Boys
expend theirs on Virgil an. handy; men, on
farm and ledger, with a small surplus that goes
to liquidate the claims of Smith and Jones to
the suffrages of an enligt ssned community.
Girls read Lalla Rookh, crochet lamp mats,
write interminable letters 70 immortal female
| friendship, and so manage TO drain OH their
spare life, till, in the course of human events,
it runs naturally TO housekeeping and babies,
and takes the whole force to keep the mill
| a-going.
But sometimes the farm, and nursery and
workshop, do not use up all the fluid then, &C.
cording as it makes for itself channel, or is
pent up in too narrow bounds, you have Shake
speare claiming the ages to his triumphal car,
or Chatterton ainging down life at sixteen
years, as burden too heavy to be borne. You
have Raleigh leaving the apple-orchards of
beautiful Devon, for an unknown Land of
Faery; new Jason wandering worldwide for
golden fleece; Spenser walking with Genii In
enchanted woods, and weaving mightier spell
than they; Burns, up-heaving not only the soil
with his pillow, but the land with his song !;
Browning, voicing on her many stringed Tyre
the "Cry of the Children who pass through
the fire to Moloch Bronte chained to her DESC
late rock and eating her own heart out with a
sharper than Promethean torture Stowe, throw
ing open to the shuddering day a sepulchre full
of dead mems bones, and all uncleanness Sap
pho, harping her own requiem on the Leuca-
dian cliff; Socrates, calmly quenching with
hemlock the life that would no otherwise be
stayed Dante, gazing in rapt beatiic vision on
the glorifed face of Beatrice Calico, spinning
the world around in spite of the pious ounces
who sat on it in solemn conclave to hold 1t
down; Kane, walking in silence with the Spirit
of Storms Paul, transported with holy ardor,
denouncing woe to himself if he reign, in the
| fiery words that leap to his lips; David, the
stripping, rudy and of beautiful countenance,
changed by the spear-touch of an heroic pur-
pose from the dreaming shepherd-boy to the
champion of Israel; and William of Orange,
and Alfred the Great, and Milton, and Tasso,
and Napoleon and Homer, and Mozart, and
me, PIN ever so himsy rag on the tail of a
kite and they will all rise together. l might
have strung my people up in chronological or
der, and not made such hash of ancients and
moderns, but / took them according to the
| Golden Rule 4" first come, first serve.')
Corollary l. Everybody has just so much life
to live, and if it is damned up in one direction
it will overflow in another.
Corollary 9 Greatness, heroism, glory, spring
| from what is left over and above necessity.
That is, some people have just soul enough for
salt You cannot conceive d further diminu-
ton of their mental endowments unattended by
immediate physical decomposition. Of course
they have nothing TO spare for fame. But the
highest must have body as well as the lowest
intellect. The body is the strong cord which
keeps the "animula vagula blandula from fly
ing off in a tangent. They cannot live i'll a
state of pure mind, any more than the Others
can live in state of pure matter. Consequently
there is a plane on which they both meet, and
| that plane is bread and butter. But the one
never scars above it, while the other never re
mains upon.it. Herein consists the difference
between the two 1t is from the latter, roam
inc about in the empyrean, that we get our
grandeur and sublimity, our pathos and poetry
Corollary B. Feminine authorship, instead o.
being deprecated, ought to be encouraged as
the great safetyva of society; and those who
ridicule and oppose 1t, show themselves lar be
hind the age in endeavoring to put down az
army of women with no better weapon than
that wherewith Samson slew a thousand Philis
tines, fifty centuries ago. THAT last turn Is sc
good. that don't believe it could have origi
mated with me- Somebody must have said il
before me, though don't recollect ever to have
seen or heard it. If anybody did, have only
to saw, with old Donatus "Peredm ista qua ante
nostra direrunt!') If were not the very SOU
of honor, | should let that quotation go as IT
happened to meet it in my intercourse with that
individual, but the fact is, got it second hand
from Sake As for Donatus, | never heard OF
the fellow in my life, before.
Now. as Cicero says, "ubniam 9entiun'
sn,nus ?" Where in the world are we? THAT
remarkable quotation is my own,) and where
| did leave my heap Of muslins and ribbons
No matter, however; what | wanted TO say is,
that nv plan about the letters did not work well.
I began bravely, but could not. like Yankee
Doodle, keep it up" Yet, as l always like to
have things finished in one way or another,
| have concluded to swoop up my experiences
and observations, and cram them as succinctly
as possible into this letter, or, this letter has
already reached tolerable Il hope not an intol-
erable) length, perhaps | would better " close
the concern" and defer my more last words y
till next week. GAIL HAMILTON.
MORAL OF THE HARPER's FERRY AFFAIR."
At the bar of disinterested and dispassionate
reason, the affair at Harper's Ferry is enough,
of itself, to prove that Slavery is wrong, and
a source of weakness and danger; that it can
never be the part of the Christian or the patriot
to defend or prolong its existence; that, on the
contrary, all who love their country, and who
would make their country lovely, and contribute
what they can to its union, strength. and pros
perity, in order that the people may dwell to-
gether in peace and quietness and mutual
helpfulness, through all our borders; that all
such ought earnestly to labor together to re-
move, as soon as practicable, this disturbing
and weakening and dividing and distracting
and debasing and every way wrong and dan
! gerous element
| Against what system not essentially and
enormously wrong, could such man as Brown
is described to be, even by Governor Wise,
ever be induced to plot and labor inrthat way
The primal guilt of the tragedy is palpably in
the system.