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perhaps only one--which owes even more than does music to the accessory sentiment of seclusion. I mean
the happiness experienced in the contemplation of natural scenery. In truth, the man who would behold aright
the glory of God upon earth must in solitude behold that glory. To me, at least, the presence--not of human
life only, but of life in any other form than that of the green things which grow upon the soil and are
voiceless--is a stain upon the landscape--is at war with the genius of the scene. I love, indeed, to regard the
dark valleys, and the grey rocks, and the waters that silently smile, and the forests that sigh in uneasy
slumbers, and the proud watchful mountains that look down upon all--I love to regard these as themselves
but the colossal members of one vast animate and sentient whole--a whole whose form (that of the sphere) is
the most perfect and most inclusive of all; whose path is among associate planets; whose meek handmaiden is
the moon; whose mediate sovereign is the sun; whose life is eternity; whose thought is that of a God; whose
enjoyment is knowledge; whose destinies are lost in immensity; whose cognizance of ourselves is akin with
our own cognizance of the animalculae which infest the brain--a being which we, in consequence, regard as
purely inanimate and material, much in the same manner as these animalculae must thus regard us.
Our telescopes and our mathematical investigations assure us on every hand--notwithstanding the cant of the
more ignorant of the priesthood--that space, and therefore that bulk, is an important consideration in the eyes
of the Almighty. The cycles in which the stars move are those best adapted for the evolution, without
collision, of the greatest possible number of bodies. The forms of those bodies are accurately such as, within
a given surface, to include the greatest possible amount of matter;-- while the surfaces themselves are so
disposed as to accommodate a denser population than could be accommodated on the same surfaces
otherwise arranged. Nor is it any argument against bulk being an object with God, that space itself is infinite;
for there may be an infinity of matter to fill it. And since we see clearly that the endowment of matter with
vitality is a principle--indeed as far as our judgments extend, the leading principle in the operations of
Deity--it is scarcely logical to imagine it confined to the regions of the minute, where we daily trace it, and
not extending to those of the august. As we find cycle within cycle without end--yet all revolving around
one fardistant centre which is the Godhead, may we not analogically suppose, in the same manner, life within
life, the less within the greater, and all within the Spirit Divine? In short, we are madly erring, through
self-esteem, in believing man, in either his temporal or future destinies, to be of more moment in the
universe than that vast 'clod of the valley' which he tills and contemns, and to which he denies a soul for no
more profound reason than that he does not behold it in operation.
These fancies, and such as these, have always given to my meditations among the mountains, and the forests,
by the rivers and the ocean, a tinge of what the everyday world would not fail to term the fantastic. My
wanderings amid such scenes have been many, and far-searching, and often solitary; and the interest with
which I have strayed through many a dim deep valley, or gazed into the reflected Heaven of many a bright
lake, has been an interest greatly deepened by the thought that I have strayed and gazed alone. What flippant
Frenchman was it who said, in allusion to the well-known work of Zimmerman, that 'la solitude est une
belle chose; mais il faut quelqu'un pour vous dire que la solitude est une belle chose'. The epigram cannot be
gainsaid; but the necessity is a thing that does not exist.
It was during one of my lonely journeyings, amid a fardistant region of mountain locked within mountain,
and sad rivers and melancholy tarns writhing or sleeping within all--that I chanced
The Black Cat and Other Stories 73
 The Black Cat and Other Stories
Speaking of the tides, Pomponius Mela, in his treatise De Situ Orbis, says: 'Either the world is a great
animal, or,' etc.
Balzac--in substance--I do not remember the words.
upon a certain rivulet and island. I came upon them suddenly in the leafy June, and threw myself upon the
turf, beneath the branches of an unknown odorous shrub, that I might doze as I contemplated the scene. I felt
that thus only should I look upon it--such was the character of phantasm it wore.
On all sides--save to the west, where the sun was about sinking--arose the verdant walls of the forest. The
little river which turned sharply in its course, and was thus immediately lost to sight, seemed to have no exit
from its prison, but to be absorbed by the deep green foliage of the trees to the east-- while in the opposite
quarter (so it appeared to me as I lay at length and glanced upward) there poured down noiselessly and
continuously into the valley, a rich golden and crimson waterfall from the sunset fountains of the sky.
About midway in the short vista which my dreamy vision took in, one small circular island, profusely
verdured, reposed upon the bosom of the stream.
So blended bank and shadow there, That each seemed pendulous in air-- so mirror-like was the glassy
water, that it was scarcely possible to say at what point upon the slope of the emerald turf its crystal dominion
began.
My position enabled me to include in a single view both the eastern and western extremities of the islet; and I
observed a singularly-marked difference in their aspects. The latter was all one radiant harem of garden
beauties. It glowed and blushed beneath the eye of the slant sunlight, and fairly laughed with flowers. The
grass was short, springy, sweet-scented, and Asphodel-interspersed. The trees were lithe, mirthful, erect--
bright, slender, and graceful--of eastern figure and foliage, with bark smooth, glossy, and parti-coloured.
There seemed a deep sense of life and joy about all; and although no airs blew from out the Heavens, yet
everything had motion through the gentle sweepings to and fro of innumerable butterflies, that might have
been mistaken for tulips with wings.
Florem putares mare per liquidum aethera.--P. COMMIRE.
The other or eastern end of the isle was whelmed in the blackest shade. A sombre, yet beautiful and peaceful
gloom here pervaded all things. The trees were dark in colour and mournful in form and attitude--wreathing
themselves into sad, solemn, and spectral shapes, that conveyed ideas of mortal sorrow and untimely death.
The grass wore the deep tint of the cypress, and the heads of its blades hung droopingly, and, hither and
thither among it, were many small unsightly hillocks, low and narrow, and not very long, that had the aspect
of graves, but were not; although over and all about them the rue and rosemary clambered. The shade of the
trees fell heavily upon the water, and seemed to bury itself therein, impregnating the depths of the element
with darkness. I fancied that each shadow, as the sun descended lower and lower, separated itself sullenly
from the trunk that gave it birth, and thus became absorbed by the stream; while other shadows issued
momently from the trees, taking the place of their predecessors thus entombed.
This idea, having once seized upon my fancy, greatly excited it, and I lost myself forthwith in reverie. 'If ever
island were enchanted'--said I to myself--'this is it. This is the haunt of the few gentle Fays who remain
from the wreck of the race. Are these green tombs theirs?--or do they yield up their sweet lives as mankind
yield up their own? In dying, do they not rather waste away mournfully; rendering unto God little by little
their existence, as these trees render up shadow after shadow, exhausting their substance unto dissolution? [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]