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- 2026-01-30T20:48:52.918Z
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- 2992
- text
- I.
In their precise tracings-out and subtile causations, the strongest and
fieriest emotions of life defy all analytical insight. We see the cloud,
and feel its bolt; but meteorology only idly essays a critical scrutiny
as to how that cloud became charged, and how this bolt so stuns. The
metaphysical writers confess, that the most impressive, sudden, and
overwhelming event, as well as the minutest, is but the product of an
infinite series of infinitely involved and untraceable foregoing
occurrences. Just so with every motion of the heart. Why this cheek
kindles with a noble enthusiasm; why that lip curls in scorn; these are
things not wholly imputable to the immediate apparent cause, which is
only one link in the chain; but to a long line of dependencies whose
further part is lost in the mid-regions of the impalpable air.
Idle then would it be to attempt by any winding way so to penetrate into
the heart, and memory, and inmost life, and nature of Pierre, as to show
why it was that a piece of intelligence which, in the natural course of
things, many amiable gentlemen, both young and old, have been known to
receive with a momentary feeling of surprise, and then a little
curiosity to know more, and at last an entire unconcern; idle would it
be, to attempt to show how to Pierre it rolled down on his soul like
melted lava, and left so deep a deposit of desolation, that all his
subsequent endeavors never restored the original temples to the soil,
nor all his culture completely revived its buried bloom.
But some random hints may suffice to deprive a little of its
strangeness, that tumultuous mood, into which so small a note had thrown
him.
There had long stood a shrine in the fresh-foliaged heart of Pierre, up
to which he ascended by many tableted steps of remembrance; and around
which annually he had hung fresh wreaths of a sweet and holy affection.
Made one green bower of at last, by such successive votive offerings of
his being; this shrine seemed, and was indeed, a place for the
celebration of a chastened joy, rather than for any melancholy rites.
But though thus mantled, and tangled with garlands, this shrine was of
marble--a niched pillar, deemed solid and eternal, and from whose top
radiated all those innumerable sculptured scrolls and branches, which
supported the entire one-pillared temple of his moral life; as in some
beautiful gothic oratories, one central pillar, trunk-like, upholds the
roof. In this shrine, in this niche of this pillar, stood the perfect
marble form of his departed father; without blemish, unclouded,
snow-white, and serene; Pierre's fond personification of perfect human
goodness and virtue. Before this shrine, Pierre poured out the fullness
of all young life's most reverential thoughts and beliefs. Not to God
had Pierre ever gone in his heart, unless by ascending the steps of that
shrine, and so making it the vestibule of his abstractest religion.
Blessed and glorified in his tomb beyond Prince Mausolus is that mortal
sire, who, after an honorable, pure course of life, dies, and is buried,
as in a choice fountain, in the filial breast of a tender-hearted and
intellectually appreciative child. For at that period, the Solomonic
insights have not poured their turbid tributaries into the pure-flowing
well of the childish life. Rare preservative virtue, too, have those
heavenly waters. Thrown into that fountain, all sweet recollections
become marbleized; so that things which in themselves were evanescent,
thus became unchangeable and eternal. So, some rare waters in Derbyshire
will petrify birds'-nests. But if fate preserves the father to a later
time, too often the filial obsequies are less profound; the canonization
less ethereal. The eye-expanded boy perceives, or vaguely thinks he
perceives, slight specks and flaws in the character he once so wholly
reverenced.
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