Exchange Yale University 1850.] JAN 2 '40 THE MIDNIGHT APPARITION. 215 Why not, a word, you must cultivate the emotions of your heart. then, think of the innocence of childhood, of the sweetness of love and friendship, of the thousand hopes and affections that still cluster around you? Thus you will be nerved with strength to toil, that the poor, the outcast and the guilty may know the blessings that you have experienced; thus you will repent over all that has been foolish or wrong, and be inspired with new energy to retrieve what you have lost. Such thoughts warm and invigorate the intellect, give health and elevation to the soul. And especially on such a night as I have described do these thoughts come with a deep power. The purity of the scene combines with the hallowed memory, starts often the tear, deepens and hallows the emotion. But there is another theme on which, at such a time, it is impressive to dwell. When the sound of living beings is all hushed till one can hear the steady beating of great Nature's pulses when no noise arrests the ear, and no motion the eye-the spirit easily asserts its peculiar prerogative, and sees and hears those sights and sounds that have for ages passed away. It calls up whole nations, long ago perished, in all the particularity and reality of life, as by a magician's power. It sees life in all its phases, men in all their chief characteristics then as they are to-day. The poverty-stricken unfortunate then, as now, toils and suffers, hopes and is disheartened, wishes and is silent. The poor slave listens and trembles, weeps and obeys. His thoughts are few and simple, his mind is weak, but his heart is full, and his soul is immortal. The child of disease turns on his couch and wishes for the morning, and, when the morning comes, suffers on in patience. The mourner, heavy-hearted and desolate, weeps at the strange dreariness of the world, and refuses comfort. On the other hand, the rich man gathers and enjoys, feeds, perhaps, one of the thousand starving children of want in his reach, and prides himself on his charity. Like a traveler pursued by wolves, he drops an occasional morsel, merely to check the clamors of an aroused conscience. The man of power crushes the weak, as if they were brutes, and is proud when they bow down to him, as if they were men. The sons and daughters of love and pleasure laugh and sin, and forget that they are mortal. I see, also, the uncorrupted patriot, struggling amid suspicion and calumny, suffering and toiling for the glory of his country. I hear, on the still air, earnest tones of eloquence, or, it may be, impassioned strains of song, by which he would arouse his countrymen to their dangers and privileges, bid them beware of the oppressor, and guard their rights and their freedom. Now he triumphs, and his unselfish toil is rewarded less by the praises than by the success of his country. Again, he is discomfited; ambition is victorious, but he retires from the conflict, grieved indeed, though not disheartened, still to hope and labor for a better day. I see, alone in his closet, the philosopher of humanity, fixed in tireless thought, laboring to develop the great principles of human progress. Nor is his a fruitless toil; for when did a mind, sincerely eager for the truth, and aided by the glow ་ ing impulses of philanthropy, fail of success? Truth ever unveils herself cheerfully to an earnest seeker. Thought on thought, pure and beautiful as the flame of a vestal, leaps from his deep and fervid genius, till his heart dilates in view of the sublime truths which they reveal. In this new-born joy he persuades himself that a golden era is just at hand; but, alas! he goes out from his retirement only to meet the cold repulse of an incredulous world. Sadly was he deceived. The disciple of truth must learn to labor and wait; he must seize the torch that has been borne by the true-hearted before him, and bear it patiently onward, content to add his drop to the increasing flame, and leaving to others the experience of the day when all minds, however prejudiced and benighted, shall receive its light. Oh, how many self-denying men, true friends of their race, have thus been painfully disappointed by too sanguine hopes! Noble men they were; but their toils are ended-they are blessings no longer, save by the power of their memory. Thus I wander away, and witness the stirring scenes of ages past. Wearied at length with roaming, I return again to my own generation; and at once comes up the irresistible inquiry, where now are the thousands, of all characters and conditions, who have lived before me? Hearts have beat as warmly as now, earthly hopes have been as bright, earthly objects as important, earthly attachments as absorbing; but where are they who have loved and rejoiced, hoped and toiled, as if this life were an immortality? Such a question, put to one's self in the solitary stillness of the midnight hour, is unspeakably impressive. A voice comes on the night, as from the tombs of those dead ages, speaking of littleness, frailty, and decay. The grave of thousands, who once vainly dreamed of immortal fame, but whose very names are now as if they had not been, bid me beware of the deceiver, Ambition. The ashes of the myriad humble but honesthearted, exultingly ask to be measured with those of the proud tyrant who once controlled them. But I am wearying you with my endless wanderings. To-night I had been thinking of a very different and far less salutary theme. My thoughts were all of the future, and they were thrilling thoughts! Fame, Fame! that same deceptive but enchanting bubble, had caught and chained my mental vision. The alluring object presented itself as with the accumulated power of the thousand dreams of my boyhood, "Pouring Through every vein a tide of restless thought That drowned the milder minstrelsy of heaven." Any thing but heavenly were the feelings it awakened. Every moment of indulgence I knew to be adding poison to my spirit; but I was enthralled, delirious, powerless, under its fascinations. I was like the bird caught by the serpent's magic eye, conscious of danger, yet chained to the destroyer! By degrees I suffered every nobler feeling to be crushed before the one absorbing thought, till my crazed soul was on the point of yielding forever to its dominion. Excited, bewildered, I turned to the window and looked out upon the tombs. The marble monuments were still, white, and meek, as if in adoration before the saintly moon above them. The pine, cedar, and willow, interspersed among the graves, just trembled in the strolling night-air with a silvery glitter, but with no otherwise perceptible motion. The whole scene was so pure, and mild, and spiritual, that a feeling of fear and dread stole in upon my perturbed mind, as I gazed, with a wonderful power. Something seemed to whisper to me of beauty, of perfection, of a higher life. Every image of glorious purity and loveliness, that the mind ever fancied, floated before my vision, as if in cruel aggravation of the dark deformity within. At this moment of strange delirium, my eye received an impression that sent a thrill through my very bones. I am nervously fearful by nature, and the thousand stories of ghosts and spectres, told me in boyhood, have always worked upon me, in seasons like that of which I speak, with intense power. I had long been persuaded, however, that, whatever might have been the deceptions of art or imagination, these pretended supernatural appearances had no foundation in reality, and though I had often labored under strong excitement, I had never seen, or fancied I saw, any thing of the description. I was therefore deeply moved by the sight which now met my eye, and yet greatly distrustful of the fidelity of my senses. In a dim part of the cemetery, among the dusky cedars, where the struggling moonbeams displayed the sculptured marble with various distinctness, I seemed to see an object, still as the stone, yet wonderfully resembling a human figure arrayed in white. I tried to believe it a mistake. I strained my eyes in the attempt to reduce it to a simple monument which my imagination had distorted, but all in vain; the awful truth of my first impression gained new confirmation with every effort. Gazing in wild confusion, I was making one more struggle to dissolve the charm, when the figure suddenly turned with an easy motion, passed behind a cedar, and appeared again beyond it. With this demonstration, a sensation like that of an electric shock, thrilled through my system, and a trickling chillness seemed creeping under the skin all over my body. Slowly, but lightly as a breath of wind, and without a step, it moved from the shade out, into the bright moonlight, and advanced a little towards me. Oh, the sight that was then revealed! I would that I might see it once more! I would that I had a magician's power, that I might conjure up before you, dear reader, the enchanting vision! It would make you more serious, gentler, holier. Such grace, such melting tenderness, such ethereal purity! Oh! it was heavenly beautiful. It stood a moment over a recent grave, whereon the tender grass was just springing, then knelt down upon it, raised its swimming eyes to heaven, and lifted a thin, white hand to the sky : "It was so wan and transparent of hue, You might have seen the moon shine through!" As the saintly being was kneeling thus in an attitude of adoring worship, tumultuous were the emotions that swelled my breast. At first, a mingled feeling of guilt, remorse, and fear, made my whole frame to tremble. Soon, however, I grew calmer. A gleam of light, love, and forgiveness from Heaven, entered my soul and scattered the gloom. I could not but believe that a blessing so extraordinary, so undeserved, and almost unsought, had come in answer to the prayer of the mysterious worshiper before me. I now gazed no longer with dread and terror, but with love and gratitude. As I was about offering a prayer of thanksgiving, the huge bell of the Centre steeple doled out, with stunning suddenness, the first peal of the midnight hour, and it flew moaningly, like a lost spirit, away through the dead silence, over hill and valley, till it soon ceased in the distance. Then followed a second and a third, until that faithful old chronicler, who does his duty thoroughly, though there be none to hear, had tolled the full requiem of another day. When I had recovered from the shock, which all who have heard the abrupt bursting of that bell upon the dead of night have experienced, and which was aggravated in me threefold by the nervous excitement I was in, the apparition, whose radiant image was still vivid in my mind, had vanished. I looked eagerly where it had knelt, and where I had first seen it, but it nowhere appeared. Though it had at first so frightened me, its absence now was no relief. On the contrary, I longed, with ardent yearnings of spirit, to see again the being who had so fascinated, so bewildered my soul. I sat long, I know not how long, dwelling with intensest rapture on its angel lineaments, its transparent beauty. I felt a desire to perpetuate the shining image in the inmost shrine of my being, that I might behold it there forever. But then there came a thought of the morrow- -of the harmony and discord, innocence and guilt, joy and sorrow, beauty and deformity, which compose this poor, imperfect world, and by contact with which that image I knew would be dimmed and distorted, if not utterly destroyed. I was about giving way to a feeling of despair-despair of ever rising in this life above the material, into permanent union with the spiritual-when, joy to my heart! the same resplendent figure stood immediately before me. A slight tremor even now shook my frame, from the proximity and increased awfulness of the vision, and I bowed down my head with a feeling of deep impurity. Presently a voice, rich and sweet as the tone of a lute-string, fell upon my ear, whose mild but measured accents gradually encouraged me to lift my eyes upon the speaker. Words so heavenly sweet I never heard before, nor shall I ever forget them, for they are set like diamonds in the tablet of my mind. "Hope, O young man, look up and hope! Behold yon star twinkling eternally in the blue ether! Thy soul is as quenchless; it may be as exalted, as stainless. In my grave I felt the silence above, I felt the moonbeam sleeping there, I awoke to a deed of pity. I saw the poison work in thy soul. I know it is now spreading a fascinating but deadly light over the midnight dreams of many of thy companions. I appeared unto thee. I saw the tear of penitence and joy. Again, I saw the gathering clouds of discouragement and despair. There is, O young man, indeed a heavy weight upon the human soul; the veil of sensual things is dense and difficult to penetrate, but yet thou mayest hope, for to earnest, consistent toil is reserved a glorious victory! The sensualized world, the timeserving and short-sighted ways and maxims of men, nay, even the very sun-light of the morning, will be likely to clog thy perception of the true and the spiritual, to fasten thy heart on the ephemeral good which earth holds out to the impatient mind. The false light of Fame, the dazzling show of Wealth, the proud superiority of Rank, the fascinations of Social Indulgence, will assail thee, as they have assailed millions, and blinded them to the glory of their nature, the sublimity of their destiny. But with faith in God, with a heart of unwavering courage, with a strong, manly, persistent effort, thou mayest attain the nobler prize thou wouldst pursue, even a triumph over these temporal aims, and a sympathetic union with eternal truth and love. 66 Many an ardent young mind, within the walls of your venerable Institution, is daily feasting upon the external and the earthly; the whole circle of whose hopes and aspirations is bounded by time; who looks for satisfaction and joy from other sources than from within; who turns not his eyes from the priceless worth, the unfathomable richness of his imperishable soul, but leaves it to itself, stained, neglected, lost! Upon such a one the pure minds of the world unseen can look only with yearning pity and sorrow, for they comprehend, in its full force and compass, how deeply he has mistaken the true end of existence. But a soul, conscious of its bondage, and struggling after the light, they contemplate with approving interest, and fly to impart to it their silent, holy cooperation. Be not, then, O young man, be not disheartened. Keep thine eye fixed on the true and the pure, remembering that thou dealest with a thing that is immortal. Search diligently for the broken strings of this divine instrument, remembering that its harmony, when once restored, will perish never. A suffering world is before thee. Go forth to thy toil, but forget not the inner life. In the intervals of labor, in thy hours of retirement, maintain a communion with thy inward being. Get a view of its nature and its destiny, of the worthlessness of earth's favors, and be strengthened to a nobler self-sacrifice for the elevation and regeneration of thyself and thy race. Thus thou wilt attain the only true nobility within human reach, and thy reward shall be as lasting as truth, thy joy as limitless as eternity!" Heavily and mournfully, at this moment, rolled out upon the night a solitary peal from the old belfry, signaling the passage of the first hour in the new-born day. With that peal the apparition once more vanished, and I lingered long, repeating over and over the words it had spoken. At length, with the radiant image vivid in my mind, and those musical tones still playing on my ear, I laid myself down and slept quietly till the morning. O. L. W. |