The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 4, October, 1863. Various
His just due. He knew not from his own experience that Love is infinite, and grows on what it gives. He bore religious consolation to the afflicted, aid to the needy, sympathy to the suffering. He was universally esteemed, but the spirit of his brethren broke not into joy at his approach, for the trusting heart of genial humanity throbbed not in his sad breast. He was no Pharisee, but he dined not with the Publican, and the precious ointment of the Magdalen never bathed his weary head. His language was: 'All is fleeting and evil, save Thee, O my Father; in Thee alone can rest be found!'
Solace for human anguish can only be found upon the heart of love. 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, with all thy mind: and thy neighbor as thyself!' Blessed Son of Mary! Thou alone hast fully kept these two commandments!
'For wisdom is justified of her children!'
Angelo, Zophiel, and Jemschid also resolved to avoid the Evil spoken of in the Book of Life. But the far country into which the Father had sent them was lovely in their eyes, and they were charmed with the Beauty with which He had surrounded them. They dreamed by the shady fountains, with their silver flow and gentle ripples; roamed by the darker rivers as they hurry on to plunge themselves into the sea; gazed on the restless ocean breakers when the dying sun fringes their crest with rainbow hues, and the flushing sky, to cool her burning blushes, flings herself into the heart of the restless waters. They loved to breathe the 'difficult air' of mountain tops, so softly pillowed and curtained by the fleecy vapors, which they win again from heaven in limpid streams, leading them in wild leaps through gloomy chasms fringed by timid harebells, whose soft blue eyes look love upon the rocks, while the myriad forest leaves musically murmur above their flinty couch. They watched the fitful shadow-dance of clouds over the green earth. They loved to see these heaven tents where Beauty dwells chased by the young zephyrs, or, driven on in heavy masses by the bolder winds, blush under the fiery glances of the sun, and melt into the sky upon his nearer approach. Ah! these clouds and vapors had more than human tenderness, for had they not seen them throng around the ghastly disc of the star-deserted moon, weaving their light webs into flowing veils to shadow the majestic sorrow written upon her melancholy but lovely face, shielding the mystic pallor of the virgin brow from the desecrating gaze of the profane?
The three brothers were happy upon earth, for they looked into the heart of their fellow mortals, and felt the genial feeling beating there; and so luxuriantly twined its vivid green around, that the evil core was hidden from their charmed eyes, and they ceased not to bless the Father for a gift so divine as Human Love! They could not weep and pray the long night through, as did the saintly Anselm, for their eyes were fastened upon the wildering lustre of the thronging stars as they wove their magic rings through the dim abysses of distant space, yet the incense of constant praise rose from their happy souls to the Beauty-giving Father.
They struggled to awake the sleeping powers of men to a perception of the glories of creation; to lead them 'through nature up to nature's God.' The Artist-Brothers were closely united in feeling, striving through different mediums to refine the soul of man.
For the spirit of Beauty always awakens the spirit of Love, sent by God to elevate and consecrate the heart of man!
Of a more subtle genius and more daring spirit than Zophiel or Jemschid, Angelo boldly launched into the bewildering chaos of the realm of sound. As yet the laws of the Acoustic Prism were unknown; the seven-ranged ladder was all unformed, and without its aid it seemed impossible to scale the ever-renewing heights, to sound the ever-growing depths of this enchanted kingdom. But Angelo was a bold adventurer. Haunted by the heaven sounds, vague memories of his antenatal existence, although he had entirely lost the meaning of their flow, as one may recall snatches of the melody of a song when he cannot remember one of its words—he commenced his subtle task. He resolved the Acoustic Prism; he built the seven-runged ladder; he charmed the wandering Tones, and bound them in the holy laws of Rhythm. Divining the hidden secrets of their affiliations, relations, loves, and hates, he wrought them into gorgeous webs of harmonics, to clothe the tender but fiery soul of ever-living melodies. Soothing their jarring dissonances into sweet accord, he filled their pining wails with that 'divine sorrow,' that mystic longing for the Infinite, which is the inner voice of every created heart. If he could not find the heaven sense of the tones, he found their earthly meaning, and caused them to repeat or suggest every joy and sorrow of which our nature is capable. He forced the heaven tongue to become human, while it retained its divine. Without a model or external archetype, he formed his realm and divined its changing limits; wide enough to contain all that is noble, holy enough to exclude all that is low or profane. He forever exorcised the spirits of Evil—the strong Demons of materialism—from his rhythmed world. Flinging his spells on the unseen air, he forced it to breathe his passion, his sighs; he saddened it with his tears, kindled it with his rapture, until fired and charged with the electric breath of the soul, it glowed into an atmosphere of Life, swaying at will the wild and restless heart. He created Music, the only universal language, holding the keys of Memory, and wearing the crown of Hope. Angelo, strange architect in that dim domain of chaos, thy creation, fleeting, invisible, and unembodied, is in perpetual, flow; changeful as the play of clouds, yet stable as the eternal laws by which they form their misty towers, their glittering fanes, and foam-crested pinnacles! Trackless as the wind, yet as powerful, thy sweet spirit, Music, floats wherever beats the human heart, for Rhythm rocks the core of life. Music nerves the soul with strength or dissolves it in love; she idealizes Pain into soul-touching Beauty; assuming all garbs, robing herself in all modes, and moving at ease through every phase of our complicated existence. White and glittering are her robes, yet she is no aristocrat. She disdains not to soothe the weary negro in his chains, or to rock the cradle of the child of shame, as the betrayed and forsaken girl murmurs broken-hearted lullabies around the young 'inheritor of pain.' She is with the maiden in the graceful mazes of the gay Mazourka; she inflames the savage in the barbaric clang of the fierce war-dance; or marks the measured tramp of the drilled soldiery of civilization. She is in the court of kings; she makes eloquent the ripe lip of the cultured beauty; she chants in the dreary cell of the hermit; she lightens the dusty wallet of the wanderer. She glitters through the dreams of the Poet; she breathes through the direst tragedies of noblest souls. On—on she floats through the wide world, everywhere present, everywhere welcome, refining, and consecrating our dull life from the Baptismal Font to the Grave!
All the inner processes of life are guarded by the hand of nature. In vain would the curiosity of the scalpel knife invade the sanctuary of the beating heart to lay open the burning mystery of Being. The outraged Life retreats before it to its last citadel, and the indignant heart, upon its entrance, refuses to throb more. The citadel is taken; but the secret of Life is not to be discovered in the kingdom of Death. It is because Music is essentially a living art that we find it impossible to read the mystery of its being. If Painting touch us, we can always trace the emotion to its exciting cause; if we weep over the pages of the Poet, it is because we find our own blighted hopes imaged there. But why does Music sway us? Where did we learn that language without words? in what consists its mystic affinities with our spirits? Why does the harp of David soothe the insanity of Saul? Is not its festal voice too triumphant to be the accompaniment of our own sad, fallen being; its breath of sorrow too divine to be the echo of our petty cares? All other arts arise from the facts of our earthly existence, but Music has no external archetype, and refuses to submit her ethereal soul to our curious analysis. 'I am so, because so I am,' is the only answer she gives to the queries of materialism. Like the primitive rock, the skeleton of earth's burning heart, she looms up through the base of our existence. Addressing herself to some mystic faculty born before thought or language, she lulls the suffering baby into its first sleep, using perhaps the primeval and universal language of the race. For the love which receives the New Born, cadences the monotonous chant; and human sympathies are felt by the innocent and confiding infant before his eyes are opened fully upon the light, before his tongue can syllable a word, his ear detect their divisions, or his mind divine their significations. But Music looms not only through the base of our being; like the encompassing sky, her arch spans our horizon. Lo! is it not the language through which the Angels convey the secrets of their profound adoration to the Heart of God!
'Having every one of them harps'—'and they sung a new song'—in which are to join 'every creature which is in heaven, and on the earth,