The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 04, No. 22, August, 1859: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and PoliticsVarious
Religion
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 04, No. 22, August, 1859: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
of a little coffee and sugar, of which he was very fond. At night, he
accompanied some one or other of his friends to his room, and slept upon
the rug. He knew his friends, and valued them; but perhaps his most
remarkable quality was his impartiality. He dispensed his favors with an
even hand. He had few favorites, and called no man master. He never
outstayed his welcome "and told the jest without the smile," never
remaining with one person for more than two or three days at most. A
calmer character, a more balanced judgment, a better temper, a more
admirable self-respect,--in a word, a profounder sense of what belongs
to a gentleman, was never known in any dog. But Beefsteak is now no
more. Just after the agitations of the Revolution of '48, with which he
had little sympathy,--he was a conservative by disposition,--he
disappeared. He had always been accustomed to make a _villegratura_ at
L'Arriccia during a portion of the summer months, returning only now and
then to look after his affairs in Rome. On such visits he would often
arrive towards midnight, and rap at the door of a friend to claim his
hospitality, barking a most intelligible answer to the universal Roman
inquiry of "_Chi è_?" "One morn we missed him at the accustomed" place,
and thenceforth he was never seen. Whether a sudden homesickness for his
native land overcame him, or a fatal accident befell him, is not known.
Peace to his manes! There "rests his head upon the lap of earth" no
better dog.
In the Roman studio of one of his friends and admirers, Mr. Mason, I had
the pleasure, a few days since, to see, among several admirable and very
spirited pictures of Campagna life and incidents, a very striking
portrait of Beefsteak. He was sitting in a straw-bottomed chair, as we
have so often seen him in the Lepre, calm, dignified in his deportment,
and somewhat obese. The full brain, the narrow, fastidious nose, the
sagacious eye, were so perfectly given, that I seemed to feel the actual
presence of my old friend. So admirable a portrait of so distinguished a
person should not be lost to the world. It should be engraved, or at
least photographed.
ENCELADUS.
Under Mount Etna he lies;
It is slumber, it is not death;
For he struggles at times to arise,
And above him the lurid skies
Are hot with his fiery breath.
The crags are piled on his breast,
The earth is heaped on his head;
But the groans of his wild unrest,
Though smothered and half suppressed,
Are heard, and he is not dead.
And the nations far away
Are watching with eager eyes;
They talk together and say,
"To-morrow, perhaps to-day,
Enceladus will arise!"
And the old gods, the austere
Oppressors in their strength,
Stand aghast and white with fear,
At the ominous sounds they hear,
And tremble, and mutter, "At length!"
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