The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index
General
The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index
Literature -- Collections
As I gazed on the sculptured forms before me, and the little chapel
whose Gothic roof seemed to protect their marble sleep, my busy memory
swung back the dark portals of the past, and the picture of their sad
and eventful lives came up before me in the gloomy distance. What a
lesson for those who are endowed with the fatal gift of genius! It
would seem, indeed, that He who "tempers the wind to the shorn lamb"
tempers also His chastisements to the errors and infirmities of a
weak and simple mind--while the transgressions of him upon whose
nature are more strongly marked the intellectual attributes of the
Deity are followed, even upon earth, by severer tokens of the Divine
displeasure. He who sins in the darkness of a benighted intellect sees
not so clearly, through the shadows that surround him, the countenance
of an offended God; but he who sins in the broad noonday of a clear
and radiant mind, when at length the delirium of sensual passion has
subsided and the cloud flits away from before the sun, trembles
beneath the searching eye of that accusing Power which is strong in
the strength of a godlike intellect. Thus the mind and the heart are
closely linked together, and the errors of genius bear with them their
own chastisement, even upon earth. The history of Abelard and Heloise
is an illustration of this truth. But at length they sleep well. Their
lives are like a tale that is told; their errors are "folded up like a
book"; and what mortal hand shall break the seal that death has set
upon them?
Leaving this interesting tomb behind me, I took a pathway to the left,
which conducted me up the hillside. I soon found myself in the deep
shade of heavy foliage, where the branches of the yew and willow
mingled, interwoven with the tendrils and blossoms of the honeysuckle.
I now stood in the most populous part of this city of tombs. Every
step awakened a new train of thrilling recollections, for at every
step my eye caught the name of some one whose glory had exalted the
character of his native land and resounded across the waters of the
Atlantic. Philosophers, historians, musicians, warriors, and poets
slept side by side around me; some beneath the gorgeous monument, and
some beneath the simple headstone. But the political intrigue, the
dream of science, the historical research, the ravishing harmony of
sound, the tried courage, the inspiration of the lyre--where are they?
With the living, and not with the dead! The right hand has lost its
cunning in the grave; but the soul, whose high volitions it obeyed,
still lives to reproduce itself in ages yet to come.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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