The Cecil Whig. [volume] (Elkton, Md.) 1841-current, 1873-04-26

emptest dream that ever passed for a
moment across a crazy brain. He might,
at least, have been left to his self-delusion
but even that baseess support he had cut
away with his own hands.
There is great deal in all this that is
comic enough and even ridiculous enough.
! The idea of hideous old money lender,
who could not open his lips without com,
hitting high treason against the English
tongue, who was cursed from his cradle
with the most unpoetic and contemplate
/ of all the passions-that of gresd-who
/ had not thought of feeling that was not
of self alone, bowling down like any slave
/ to romance before a toy, because it repre-
sented to him the whole beauty of the uni
verse, and then waking to despair because
it turned out to be only worth eighteen
pence, and finding it no longer beautiful
| because it was no longer true, is certainly
grotesque for tragedy. But-well, l need
not continue; the reader will know as well
as | myself what would say. In real life
things are tragic to a mans own self al
most exactly in proportion as they are gro,
. tesque to others.
He did not take into account his hideous-
ness; lie did no. think of himself as that
stock-subject for sarcasm, money-lender;
he did know that his bad grammar and his
ter; he was not ashamed of his greed any
more than the profligate is ashamed of his
more poetical though equally contempt
| IDLE passions. He did not despise his own
instinct Of self-leve; if he had thought
about it at all, he would have considered it
an instinct in which all men shared. lie
did not regard it as mere jewel worth six
millions of pounds. And so lie could not,
as wise man should do, laugh at the van
ity of his dream and let it go. Though
but dream, it had left its effect behind
the terrible effects of reaction of hopeless
remorse.
But, worst of all, the self,evolved spirits
whom he had fondly believed to be the
immortal genii of truth and of beauty did
not, because their secret was discovered,
ceased their song. They but took their
true guise, and, in the place of the jewel,
fairies stood forth in the shape Of hooking
imps, fashioned in his own image, to din
their chorus into his ears, SO that he could
see no other sight and hear no other sound.
How should he speak to the constables of
Bow street about these things? While
they regarded him as sullen criminal, he
was, in truth, wandering about wildly in
that region of hell wherein mans lost
illusions and persisted dreams play the part
of the Eumendes. And SO did his lost
illusions and persisted dreams scourge him
with snakes for thongs, while the ACCUSE
tions of old Judith, more true than she had
known, pierced him like arrows, and the
face of Felicia looked on him once more,
but without a word and without a SIN lie
the face of messenger of truth, indeed,
whose touch had disenchanted the palace
of his especial Morgana, but not that of 4
messenger of mercy any more.
We have led thee from earthly places,
We have borne thee to heights afar;
We have taught thee what the grace is
OF sun, and moon, and star;
We have brought thee before the faces
OF impossible things that are.
We have given to thy sight the seeing
OF more than the soul may see;
We have given to thy life the being
OF more than a man may be;
We have given to thy hands the freeing
OF life from mortality.
We have lured thee unto heaven
Than heaven itself more fair;
Unto thee have given
The kingdoms of the air,
And all the planets seven,
And the round world everywhere.
We have throned thee or. hills Elysian,
And DER gods have crowned thee;
We have fed thee with the vision
OF more than may ever be;
We have Knocked thee with derision,
And hurled thee into the sea.
/ do not, of course, mean to say that
Nathan Levi heard these very words in his
ears But something to their effect he did
hear, and great deal more besides. And
even as one dominant note had run through
the whole music of his transcendent
dreams, and blent them all into one har-
mony, so now through the terrible music of
his waking ran the same one note-the
same, only changed into bitterness
We have mocked thee with derision,
And hurled thee into the sea!
No WONDER then, that the constable had
doubted the perfect sanity of his prisoner;
though it by no means follows that man
is mad because he hears and sees what 9TH
er men may not hear or see. So absorbed
was he in his self-contempt and in the
disappointment of his soul that he neither
saw nor heard the entrance of his visitors.
The count had, in his impotence, to shake
him by the shoulders before he could be
reused to consciousness. Even then he
was only reused into torpor.
But this rough recall to life, acting upon
a frame worn out by bodily privation, and
by the long weight of dreams too large and
too heavy for soul like his to bear, had
the effect of an over-strong blast of air
upon lingering spark of flame that leaps
under it into sudden life, only the next
moment to be e1tinguished forever.
"Levi," began the count; but sudden
change in the Jews face arrested him.
"SAema IshraeW" said the latter, slowly,
beginning the proper ejaculation of apious
and orthodox Jew when he sees the end of
all things. ",Shema IsAreal" The shtone
ish a good shtone."
| He was not addressing the count, though
the latter thought so.
"Where is it, then? By Saint Niceph-
"And | shee i'm now
! And so he turned himself over upon the
bench with his face to the wall, and died,
simply and literally of broken heart
Why should he not die, when the Great
Emerald of Kandahar was false, and yet
there was nothing in the whole universe
! but the Great Emerald of Kandaharo