Kitabı oku: «Harper's New Monthly Magazine. No. XVI.—September, 1851—Vol. III», sayfa 14

It is in no fanciful or arbitrary spirit of system that, while we assign to Byron the empire over the world of fashion and of pleasure, and seek the mainspring of Scott's popularity in the sway of old historical traditions over a landed aristocracy, and the longing regret with which they look back to a state of society passed or rapidly passing away, we should regard Shelley as the poetical representative of those whose hopes and aspirations and affections rush forward to embrace the great Hereafter, and dwell in rapturous anticipation on the coming of the golden year, the reign of universal freedom, and the establishment of universal brotherhood. By nature and by circumstance he was marvelously fitted for his task – gentle, sensitive, and fervid, he shrank from the least touch of wrong, and hated injustice with the zeal and passion of a martyr; while, as if to point him unmistakably to his mission, and consecrate him by the divine ordination of facts, he was subjected at his first entrance into life to treatment, both from constituted authority and family connection, so unnecessarily harsh, so stupidly cruel, as would have driven a worse man into reckless dissipation, a weaker man into silent despair. "Most men," he says himself,

 
"Are cradled into poetry by wrong;
They learn in suffering what they teach in song."
 

Whether this be the best or most usual training for the poet may well be doubted, but it is quite indubitable that such discipline will soonest open a man's eyes to the evils of existing institutions, and the vices of old societies; and will lend to his invectives that passion which raises them above satire – to his schemes, that enthusiasm which redeems them from being crotchets; will turn his abstract abhorrence of oppression into hatred against the oppressors – his loathing of corruption into a withering scorn and contempt for tyrants and their tools, the knaves and hypocrites who use holy names and noble offices to promote their selfish ends, and to fetter and enslave their brother men. And so it happened with Shelley. The feelings of poignant anguish and bitter indignation, which had been roused in him by cruelty and injustice toward himself, colored all his views of society, and at once sharpened his hostility to the civil and religious institutions of his country, and lent more glowing colors to the rainbow of promise that beamed upon him from the distance, through the storm of bloodshed and revolution. Add to to this, that his mind was ill-trained, and not well furnished with facts; that he reveled with the delight of an eagle on the wing in the most audacious speculations, and was drawn on by the force of mental gravitation toward the boldest and most startling conclusions; that he was at once pure and impassioned – sensuous and spiritual; that he could draw from form, color, and sound a voluptuous enjoyment, keener and more intense than the grosser animal sensations of ordinary men; that his intellect hungered and thirsted after absolute truth, after central being, after a living personal unity of all things. Thus he united in himself many of the mightiest tendencies of our time – its democratic, its skeptical, its pantheistic, its socialistic spirit; and thus he has become the darling and the watchword of those who aim at reconstructing society, in its forms, in its principles, and in its beliefs – who regard the past as an unmitigated failure, as an entire mistake – who would welcome the deluge for the sake of the new world that would rise after the subsidence of the waters. Nor has their affectionate admiration been ill-bestowed. With one exception, a more glorious poet has not been given to the English nation; and if we make one exception, it is because Shakspeare was a man of profounder insight, of calmer temperament, of wider experience, of more extensive knowledge; a greater philosopher, in fact, and a wiser man; not because he possessed more vital heat, more fusing, shaping power of imagination, or a more genuine poetic impulse and inspiration. After the passions and the theories, which supplied Shelley with the subject-matter of his poems have died away and become mere matters of history, there will still remain a song, such as mortal man never sung before, of inarticulate rapture and of freezing pain – of a blinding light of truth and a dazzling weight of glory, translated into English speech, as colored as a painted window, as suggestive, as penetrating, as intense as music.

We have assigned to three great poets of our age the function of representing three classes, distinct in character, position, and taste. But as these classes intermingle and become confused in life, so that individuals may partake of the elements of all three, and, in fact, no one individual can be exactly defined by his class type, so the poets that represent them have, of course an influence and a popularity that extend far beyond the classes to whose peculiar characteristics and predominant tastes we have assumed them to have given form and expression. Men read for amusement, to enlarge the range of their ideas and sympathies, to stimulate the emotions that are sluggish or wearied out: and thus the poet is not only the interpreter of men and of classes to themselves, but represents to men characters, modes of life, and social phenomena with which they are before unacquainted, excites interest, and arouses sympathy, and becomes the reconciler, by causing misunderstandings to vanish, as each man and each class comprehends more fully the common humanity that lies under the special manifestation, the same elemental passions and affections, the same wants, the same desires, the same hopes, the same beliefs, the same duties. It is thus especially that poets are teachers, that they aid in strengthening and civilizing nations, in drawing closer the bonds of brotherhood.

Wordsworth has said of himself, "The poet is a teacher. I wish to be considered as a teacher, or as nothing." If we are asked wherein lay the value of his teaching, we reply, that it lay mainly in the power that was given him of unfolding the glory and the beauty of the material world, and in bringing consciously before the minds of men the high moral function that, belonged in the human economy to the imagination, and in thereby redeeming the faculties of sense from the comparatively low and servile office of ministering merely to the animal pleasures, or what Mr. Carlyle has called "the beaver inventions." That beside, and in connection with this, he has shown the possibility of combining a state of vivid enjoyment, even of intense passion, with the activity of thought, and the repose of contemplation. He has, moreover, done more than any poet of his age to break down and obliterate the conventional barriers that, in our disordered social state, divide rich and poor into two hostile nations; and he has done this, not by bitter and passionate declamations on the injustice and vices of the rich, and on the wrongs and virtues of the poor, but by fixing his imagination on the elemental feelings, which are the same in all classes, and drawing out the beauty that lies in all that is truly natural in human life. Dirt, squalor, disease, vice, and hard-heartedness, are not natural to any grade of life; where they are found, they are man's work, not God's; and the poet's business is not with the misery of man's making, but with the escape from that misery revealed to those that have eyes to see, and ears to hear – we mean, that no true poet will be merely a painter of that which is low, deformed, essentially inhuman, as his ultimate and highest aim, though, as means, he may, as the greatest poets have done, use them to move and rouse the sleeping soul. This, we say, in answer to those that asserted that Wordsworth was not a true painter of manners and character from humble life: we say he was, for that he painted, as minutely as served his aim, that which was essential to its occupations and its general outward condition – that which it must be, if Christian men are to look upon the inequalities of wealth and station as a permanent element in society. And all this which he taught in his writings, he taught equally by his life. And furthermore, he manifested a deep sense of the sacredness of the gift of genius, and refused to barter its free exercise for aught that the world could hold out to him, either to terrify or to seduce; and he lived to prove, not only that the free exercise of poetic genius is its own exceeding great reward, bringing a rich harvest of joy and peace, and the sweet consciousness of duty well discharged, and God's work done; but, what was quite as much needed in our time, he showed that for the support and nourishment of poetic inspiration, no stimulants of social vanity, vicious sensuality, or extravagant excitement, were requisite, and that it could flourish in the highest vigor on the simple influence of external nature, and the active exercise of the family affections.

THE LAST DAYS OF THE EMPEROR ALEXANDER

[Translated from the French of Alexandre Dumas with omissions and additions, by Miss Jane Strickland.]

The knowledge of an extensively organized conspiracy embittered the last years of the Emperor Alexander, and increased his constitutional melancholy. His attachment to Tzarsko Zelo made him linger longer at his summer palace than was prudent in a man subject to erysipelas. The wound in his leg re-opened with very unfavorable symptoms, and he was compelled to leave his favorite residence in a closed litter for St. Petersburgh; and the skill and firmness of Mr. Wyllie, his Scotch surgeon, alone saved the diseased limb from amputation. As soon as he was cured, he returned again to Tzarsko Zelo, where the spring found him as usual alone, without a court or chamberlain, only giving audience to his ministers twice a week. His existence resembled rather that of an anchorite weeping for the sins of his youth, than that of a great emperor who makes the happiness of his people.

He regulated his time in the following manner: in summer he rose at five, and in winter at six o'clock every morning, and as soon as the duties of the toilet were ended, entered his cabinet, in which the greatest order was observed.

He found there a cambric handkerchief folded, and a packet of new pens. He only used these pens in signing his name, and never made use of them again. As soon as he had concluded this business, he descended into the garden, where, notwithstanding the report of a conspiracy which had existed two years against his life and government, he walked alone, with no other guards than the sentinels always stationed before the palace of Alexander. At five he returned, to dine alone, and after his solitary meal was lulled to sleep by the melancholy airs played by the military band of the guard regiment on duty. The selection of the music was always made by himself, and he seemed to sink to repose, and to awake, with the same sombre dispositions and feelings which had been his companions throughout the day.

His empress, Elizabeth, lived like her consort, in profound solitude, watching over him like an invisible angel. Time had not extinguished in her heart the profound passion with which the youthful Czarowitz had inspired her at first sight, and which she had preserved in her heart, pure and inviolate. His numerous and public infidelities could not stifle this holy and beautiful attachment, which formed at once the happiness and misery of a delicate and sensitive woman.

At this period of her life, the empress at five-and-forty retained her fine shape and noble carriage, while her countenance showed the remains of considerable beauty, more impaired by sorrow than time. Calumny itself had never dared to aim her envenomed shafts at one so eminently chaste and good. Her presence demanded the respect due to virtue, still more than the homage proper to her elevated rank.

She resembled indeed more an angel exiled from heaven, than the imperial consort of a prince who ruled a large portion of the earth.

In the summer of 1825, the last he was destined to see, the physicians of the emperor unanimously recommended a journey to the Crimea, as the best medicine he could take. Alexander appeared perfectly indifferent to a measure which regarded his individual benefit, but the empress, deeply interested in any event likely to restore her husband's health, asked and obtained permission to accompany him. The necessary preparations for this long absence overwhelmed the emperor with business, and for a fortnight he rose earlier, and went to bed later, than was customary to him.

In the month of June, no visible alteration was observed in his appearance, and he quitted St. Petersburgh after a service had been chanted, to bring down a blessing from above on his journey. He was accompanied by the empress, his faithful coachman Ivan, and some officers belonging to the staff of General Diebitch. He stopped at Warsaw a few days, in order to celebrate the birthday of his brother, the Grand-Duke Constantine, and arrived at Tangaroff in the end of August, 1825. Both the illustrious travelers found their health benefited by the change of scene and climate. Alexander took a great liking to Tangaroff, a small town on the borders of the Sea of Azof, comprising a thousand ill-built houses, of which a sixth-part alone are of brick and stone, while the remainder resemble wooden cages covered with dirt. The streets are large, but then they have no pavement, and are alternately loaded with dust, or inundated with mud. The dust rises in clouds, which conceals alike man and beast under a thick vail, and penetrates every where the carefully closed jalousies with which the houses are guarded and covers the garments of their inhabitants. The food, the water, are loaded with it; and the last can not be drunk till previously boiled with salt of tartar, which precipitates it; a precaution absolutely necessary to free it from this disagreeable and dangerous deposit.

The emperor took possession of the governor's house, where he sometimes slept and took his meals. His abode there in the day-time rarely exceeded two hours. The rest of his time was passed in wandering about the country on foot, in the hot dust or wet mud. No weather put any stop to his out-door exercise, and no advice from his medical attendant nor warning from the natives of Tangaroff, could prevail upon him to take the slightest precaution against the fatal autumnal fever of the country. His principal occupation was planning and planting a great public garden, in which undertaking he was assisted by an Englishman whom he had brought with him from St. Petersburgh for that purpose. He frequently slept on the spot on a camp-bed, with his head resting upon a leather pillow.

If general report may be credited, planting gardens was not the principal object that engrossed the Russian emperor's attention. He was said to be employed in framing a new constitution for Russia, and unable to contend at St. Petersburgh with the prejudices of the aristocracy, had retired to this small city, for the purpose of conferring this benefit upon his enslaved country.

However this might be, the emperor did not stay long at a time at Tangaroff, where his empress, unable to share with him the fatigues of his long journeys, permanently resided, during his frequent absences from his head-quarters. Alexander, in fact, made rapid excursions to the country about the Don, and was sometimes at Tcherkask, sometimes at Donetz. He was on the eve of departure for Astracan, when Count Woronzoff in person, came to announce to his sovereign, the existence of the mysterious conspiracy which had haunted him in St. Petersburgh, and which extended to the Crimea, where his personal presence could alone appease the general discontent.

The prospect of traversing three hundred leagues appeared a trifle to Alexander, whom rapid journeys alone diverted from his oppressive melancholy. He announced to the empress his departure, which he only delayed till the return of a messenger he had sent to Alapka. The expected courier brought new details of the conspiracy, which aimed at the life, as well as the government of Alexander. This discovery agitated him terribly. He rested his aching head on his hands, gave a deep groan, and exclaimed, "Oh, my father, my father!" Though it was then midnight, he caused Count Diebitch to be roused from sleep and summoned into his presence. The general, who lodged in the next house, found his master in a dreadfully excited state, now traversing the apartment with hasty strides, now throwing himself upon the bed with deep sighs and convulsive starts. He at length became calm, and discussed the intelligence conveyed in the dispatches of Count Woronzoff. He then dictated two, one addressed to the Viceroy of Poland, the other to the Grand-Duke Nicholas.

With these documents, all traces of his terrible agitation disappeared. He was quite calm, and his countenance betrayed nothing of the emotion that had harassed him the preceding night.

Count Woronzoff, notwithstanding this apparent calmness, found him difficult to please, and unusually irritable, for Alexander was constitutionally sweet-tempered and patient. He did not delay his journey on account of this internal disquiet, but gave orders for his departure from Tangaroff, which he fixed for the following day.

His ill-humor increased during the journey; he complained of the badness of the roads and the slowness of the horses. He had never been known to grumble before. His irritation became more apparent when Sir James Wyllie, his confidential medical attendant, recommended him to take some precaution against the frozen winds of the autumn; for he threw away with a gesture of impatience the cloak and pelisse he offered, and braved the danger he had been entreated to avoid. His imprudence soon produced consequences. That evening he caught cold, and coughed incessantly, and the following day on his arrival at Orieloff, an intermittent fever appeared, which soon after, aggravated by the obstinacy of the invalid, turned to the remittent fever common to Tangaroff and its environs in the autumn.

The emperor, whose increasing malady gave him a presage of his approaching death, expressed a wish to return to the empress, and once more took the route to Tangaroff; contrary to the prayers of Sir James Wyllie, he chose to perform a part of the journey on horseback, but the failure of his strength finally forced him to re-enter his carriage. He entered Tangaroff on the fifth of November, and swooned the moment he came into the governor's house. The empress, who was suffering with a complaint of the heart, forgot her malady, while watching over her dying husband. Change of place only increased the fatal fever which preyed upon his frame, which seemed to gather strength from day to day. On the eighth, Wyllie called in Dr. Stephiegen, and on the thirteenth they endeavored to counteract the affection of the brain, and wished to bleed the imperial patient. He would not submit to the operation, and demanded iced-water, which they refused. Their denial irritated him, and he rejected every thing they offered him, with displeasure. These learned men were unwise to deprive the suffering prince of the water, a safe and harmless beverage in such fevers. In fact, nature herself sometimes, in inspiring the wish, provides the remedy. The emperor, on the afternoon of that day wrote and sealed a letter, when, perceiving the taper remained burning he told his attendant to extinguish it, in words that plainly expressed his feelings in regard to the dangerous nature of his malady. "Put out that light, my friend, or the people will take it for a bier candle, and will suppose I am already dead."

On the fourteenth of November, the physicians again urged their refractory patient to take the medicines they prescribed, and were seconded by the prayers of the empress. He repulsed them with some haughtiness, but quickly repenting of his hastiness of temper, which in fact was one of the symptoms of the disease, he said, "Attend to me, Stephiegen, and you too, Sir Andrew Wyllie. I have much pleasure in seeing you, but you plague me so often about your medicine, that really I must give up your company if you will talk of nothing else." He however was at last induced to take a dose of calomel.

In the evening, the fever had made such fearful progress that it appeared necessary to call in a priest. Sir Andrew Wyllie, at the instance of the empress, entered the chamber of the dying prince, and approaching his bed with tears in his eyes, advised him "to call in the aid of the Most High, and not to refuse the assistance of religion as he had already done that of medicine."

The emperor instantly gave his consent. Upon the fifteenth, at five o'clock in the morning, a humble village priest approached the imperial bed to receive the confession of his expiring sovereign. "My father, God must be merciful to kings," were the first words the emperor addressed to the minister of religion; "indeed they require it so much more than other men." In this sentence all the trials and temptations of the despotic ruler of a great people – his territorial ambition, his jealousy, his political ruses, his distrusts, and over-confidences, seem to be briefly comprehended. Then, apparently perceiving some timidity in the spiritual confessor his destiny had provided for him, he added, "My father, treat me like an erring man, not as an emperor." The priest drew near the bed, received the confession of his august penitent, and administered to him the last sacraments.

Then having been informed of the emperor's pertinacity in rejecting medicine, he urged him to give up this fatal obstinacy, remarking, "that he feared God would consider it absolutely suicidal." His admonitions made a deep impression upon the mind of the prince, who recalled Sir Andrew Wyllie, and, giving him his hand, bade him do what he pleased with him. Wyllie took advantage of this absolute surrender, to apply twenty leeches to the head of the emperor, but the application was too late, the burning fever continually increased, and the sufferer was given over. The intelligence filled the dying chamber with weeping domestics, who tenderly loved their master.

The empress still occupied her place by the bed-side, which she had never quitted but once, in order to allow her dying husband to unbosom himself in private to his confessor. She returned to the post assigned her by conjugal tenderness directly the priest had quitted it.

Two hours after he had made his peace with God, Alexander experienced more severe pain than he had yet felt; "Kings," said he, "suffer more than others." He had called one of his attendants to listen to this remark, with the air of one communicating a secret. He stopped, and then as if recalling something he had forgotten, said in a whisper, "they have committed an infamous action."

What did he mean by those words? Was he suspicious that his days had been shortened by poison? or did he allude, with the last accents he uttered, to the barbarous assassination of the Emperor Paul? Eternity can alone reveal the secret thoughts of Alexander I. of Russia.

During the night, the dying prince lost consciousness. At two o'clock in the morning, Count Diebitch came to the empress, to inform her that an old man, named Alexandrowitz, had saved many Tartars in the same malady. A ray of hope entered the heart of the imperial consort at this information, and Sir Andrew Wyllie ordered him to be sought for with haste.

This interval was passed by the empress in prayer, yet she still kept her eyes fixed upon those of her husband, watching with intense attention the beams of life and light fading in their unconscious gaze. At nine in the morning, the old man was brought into the imperial chamber almost by force. The rank of the patient, perhaps, inspiring him with some fear respecting the consequences that might follow his prescriptions, caused his extreme unwillingness. He approached the bed, looked at his dying sovereign, and shook his head. He was questioned respecting this doubtful sign. "It is too late to give him medicine; besides, those I have cured were not sick of the same malady."

With these words of the peasant physician, the last hopes of the empress vanished; but if pure and ardent prayers could have prevailed with God, Alexander would have been saved.

On the sixteenth of November, according to the usual method of measuring time, but on the first of December, if we follow the Russian calendar, at fifty minutes after ten in the morning, Alexander Paulowitz, Emperor of all the Russias, expired. The empress, bending over him felt the departure of his last breath. She uttered a bitter cry, sank upon her knees, and prayed. After some minutes passed in communion with heaven, she rose, closed the eyes of her deceased lord, composed his features, kissed his cold and livid hands, and once more knelt and prayed.

The physicians entreated her to leave the chamber of death, and the pious empress consented to withdraw to her own. The autopsy exhibited the same appearance generally discovered in those subjects whose death has been caused by the fever of the country: the brain was watery, the veins of the head were gorged, and the liver was soft. No signs of poison were discovered; the death of the emperor was in the course of nature.

The body of the emperor lay in state, on a platform raised in an apartment of the house where he died. The presence-chamber was hung with black, and the bier was covered with a cloth of gold. A great many wax tapers lighted up the gloomy scene. A priest at the head of the bier prayed continually for the repose of his deceased sovereign's soul. Two sentinels, with drawn swords, watched day and night beside the dead, two were stationed at the doors, and two stood on each step leading to the bier. Every person received at the door a lighted taper, which he held while he remained in the apartment. The empress was present during these masses, but she always fainted at the conclusion of the service. Crowds of people united their prayers to hers, for the emperor was adored by the common people. The corpse of Alexander I. lay in state twenty-one days before it was removed to the Greek monastery of St. Alexander, where it was to rest before its departure for interment in St. Petersburgh.

Upon the 25th December, the remains of the emperor were placed on a funeral car drawn by eight horses, covered to the ground with black cloth ornamented with the escutcheons of the empire. The bier rested on an elevated dais, carpeted with cloth of gold; over the bier was laid a flag of silver tissue, charged with the heraldic insignia proper to the imperial house. The imperial crown was placed under the dais. Four major-generals held the cords which supported the diadem. The persons composing the household of the emperor and empress, followed the bier dressed in long black mantles, bearing in their hands lighted torches. The Cossacks of the Don every minute discharged their light artillery, while the sullen booming of the cannon added to the solemnity of the imposing scene.

Upon its arrival at the church, the body was transferred to a catafalco covered with red cloth, surmounted by the imperial arms in gold, displayed on crimson velvet. Two steps led up to the platform on which the catafalco was placed. Four columns supported the dais upon which the imperial crown, the sceptre, and the globe rested.

The catafalco was surrounded by curtains of crimson velvet and cloth of gold, and four massy candelabra, at the four corners of the platform, bore wax tapers sufficient to dispel the darkness, but not to banish the gloom pervading the church, which was hung with black, embroidered with white crosses. The empress made an attempt to assist at this funeral service, but her feelings overpowered her, and she was borne back to the palace in a swoon; but as soon as she came to herself, she entered the private chapel, and repeated there the same prayers then reciting in the church of St. Alexander.

While the remains of the Emperor Alexander were on their way to their last home, the report of his dangerous state which had been forwarded officially to the Grand-Duke Nicholas, was contradicted by another document, which bore date of the 29th of November, announcing that considerable amendment had taken place in the emperor's health, who had recovered from a swoon of eight hours' duration, and had not only appeared collected, but declared himself improved in health.

Whether this was a political ruse of the conspirators or the new emperor, remains quite uncertain; however, a solemn Te Deum was ordered to be celebrated in the cathedral of Casan, at which the empress-mother and the Grand-Dukes Nicholas and Michael were present. The joyful crowds assembled at this service scarcely left the imperial family and their suite a free space for the exercise of their devotions. Toward the end of the Te Deum, while the sweet voices of the choir were rising in harmonious concert to heaven, some official person informed the Grand-Duke Nicholas, that a courier from Tangaroff had arrived with the last dispatch, which he refused to deliver into any hand but his own. Nicholas was conducted into the sacristy, and with one glance at the messenger divined the nature of the document of which he was the bearer. The letter he presented was sealed with black. Nicholas recognized the handwriting of the empress-consort, and hastily opening it, read these words:

"Our angel is in heaven; I still exist on earth, but I hope soon to be re-united to him."

The bishop was summoned into the sacristy by the new emperor, who gave him the letter, with directions to break the fatal tidings it contained to the empress-mother with the tenderest care. He then returned to his place by the side of his august parent, who alone, of the thousands assembled there, had perceived his absence.