Read Ebook: Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXVII No. 6 December 1850 by Various Graham George R Editor

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Ebook has 777 lines and 77398 words, and 16 pages

Editor: George Rex Graham

Table of Contents

Fiction, Literature and Other Articles

Of and Concerning the Moon Minnie de la Croix Blanche of Bourbon Chateaubriand and His Career Thistle-Down The Comus of Milton Pedro de Padilh Ruffed Grouse Shooting Review of New Books Editor's Table

Poetry, Music, and Fashion

To Miss Martha Griffith Picture of Childhood To a Celebrated Singer Lines to a Bird To J. F. H. To a Summer Haunt The Death of Wordsworth The Grave's Pale Roses On San Francisco's Splendid Bay The Quiet Arbor I Think of Thee Le Follet Come Touch the Harp, My Gentle One Le Moniteur de la Mode

GRAHAM'S MAGAZINE.

OF AND CONCERNING THE MOON.

BY CALVIN W. PHILLEO.

Gentle Reader, we are lunatic!

In fine, we are not mad, most gentle reader, in any sense of the term; on the contrary, with all modesty, we fully believe ourself to be a very sane, very good-natured, very staid, very commonplace, most inveterate old bachelor, sleeping nightly on the third floor, and dining daily at the public table of a very quiet inn, as we before hinted.

But, that the moon exercises an influence over our imagination, we cannot deny; and this, saith that learned lexicographer, Dr. John Walker, it is to be lunatic.

There are some people in and of the world, so stolid, so matter-of-fact, so very commonplace, so unimaginative, so void of all sense of the beautiful, so much of the earth, earthy, as to look upon the moon--nay, though--as never to look upon the moon, except by accident, or to judge of the prospect of the weather--as to consider the moon then, to amend our phrase, only as the earth's satellite, a lesser light, a mere useful appendage to our mundane sphere, made only to regulate the time of high water at Greenwich, to save the corporation too great expense for gas, and to obviate a larger consumption of oil in lanterns and carriage-lamps; in fine, a thing of mere Paine-ful necessity. Such people value the heavenly bodies as children do pennies, according to their relative brightness; and so, in comparison with the sun, estimate the moon lightly, and the stars as of small account. They are more unsusceptible to gentle influences than the brutes.

Gentle reader, it may be that you are lunatic yourself! Most fervently hoping that this be so--in fine, taking it for granted--our presumption, for an obvious reason, grows apace--we shall seek to hold communion with you of the moon. Not, however, touching on those tedious topics which engage the attention of mere astronomers and philosophers. We leave the pursuit of such shadows to the shade of Sir William Herschel, now probably resident on its private estate in Uranus, to Professor Nichols, and to Tom Dick, and--that is to say, to that man of big figures and small means, the Rev. Thomas Dick.

And wherefore not? Who but these musty ones cares to know that the moon revolves around the earth once in every twenty-eight days, and so many odd hours and minutes. Satisfied are we to expect her coming each fourth week, and to count the hours and minutes of secondary importance.

If, gentle reader, on some delicious summer night, when the full moon is shining down upon the smiling earth, flooding it with glorious light, gilding the crests of the lake waves, silvering the leaves of the forest, casting a varying, many-colored mantle, sown with pearls, over the fields of waving grain, nodding, rustling, whispering to the coquettish zephyr like a group of silk-clad dames, if, "on such a night as this," you care to remember that the fleecy clouds the moon seems to kiss, are nearer to you by some 239,999 miles, why, then, you are no lunatic, and not the man or woman we took you to be. Pray read no further; you are too wise to waste time on such nonsense. Light your greasy solar lamp. Shut your blinds. Draw your curtains. Take down some useful book, and compose yourself for a nap. Light reading, especially of moonlight, is not your vocation.

Can it be that, like a leaky cistern, the moon holds no water? Let us consider a moment.

Turtles and soft-shelled crabs, oysters and canvas-back ducks cannot thrive in such a place. The race of aldermen must be extinct; and yet these same wiseacres of astronomers claim to have discovered cities in the moon! Cities without aldermen or oyster-saloons! What absurdity!

But, then, if this theory be correct, the country cannot be cursed with cotton manufactories, steam-engines, or foundries. The agitation of the tariff question must be dry business. The climate cannot be adapted to slave labor. The Lunars must be democrats to a man.

Howbeit, we don't believe all that we hear of the want of water in the moon. Tender-hearted reader, dry your eyes; we are confident that we used to hear our grandfather talk of a wet moon. To his opinion we seriously incline.

But whether the moon be a desert or an ocean, what care we? When she shines the dew falls on us. Let that suffice.

And what if there be no air around the moon? The Lunars breathe pure ether, then--and so do we, "of a shiny night!"

Inasmuch as our affection is for, and our subject is the moon itself, we shall have little to say of the inhabitants thereof. For all that we know they are a dirty set, as the philosophers would fain make us believe. Perhaps there may be none to speak of. In the ancient legends of Mother Goose, it is recorded, that the Man in the Moon made a descent upon the earth, about meridian one day. The hour would seem to indicate that his residence in the planet is for somewhat the same purpose as that which induces the presence of a light-house keeper at his lonely post. He comes down at noon, undoubtedly, as being the most convenient season, for at night he could not well be spared. Having spent the morning in preparing for his nightly illumination, and entertaining a laudable desire for earthly geographical information, he seizes this opportunity to visit this world, and forthwith inquires his most direct route to Norwich. We wonder which route was recommended to him--whether by the way of Hartford and the Willimantic Railroad, by steamboat direct, or by Jersey Island Railroad and Greenport Ferry.

Why it should have been a coincidence so remarkable as to be worthy of record on the pages of history, that a gentleman in Australia, on this day, scalded his mouth with a "hasty plate" of brose of moderate temperature, we have never been able to divine.

But the sun has thrown more light upon the moon, and the theory of its being inhabited, than any other luminary. The sun, we say--but not the real sun, nor the True Sun, but the sun which "shines for all"--The New York Sun--the Sun of Moses Y. Beach--and Son. In certain numbers of that useful newspaper, of the volume of 1834, if we recollect aright, we shall find that Mr. Locke has given us the key to many things which before were mysteries. The good people of that time, when they read the narrative of the extraordinary discoveries of Sir John Herschel and his learned companions, at the Cape of Good Hope, became firmly convinced that the Man in the Moon was no fabulous personage; but that he really existed, and a good many more of the same sort with him, to say nothing of women, children, and quadrupeds--all intelligent creatures, knowing more than the Man in the Moon was generally and proverbially supposed to know; students, probably--for each creature had a shade over his or her eyes, but one of Nature's providing, showing that the moon is not, probably, a good market for green silk and pasteboard.

Didst ever read Locke's Moon Hoax? We were a school-boy at Albany when it was first published, and we recollect well how gravely the old master of a certain school in North Pearl street--the boys used to call him the Centre of Gravity--announced his full belief in its authenticity, and advised the class in Algebra to look over the calculations. And how an old lady of our acquaintance wrote an article on the wonders of modern science, and the probabilities of a railroad to the moon in the course of a generation or two, which the editor of the Evening Journal wouldn't publish; whereat the old lady denounced him to us savagely. We have never been able ever since to think of Mr. Weed, except as a man radically opposed to internal improvements--externally projected. What a demand there was for telescopes and Extra Suns! What crowds of people there were for two or three nights on Capitol Hill, gaping at the full moon, as if they expected to discover one of Mr. Locke's hooded sheep grazing on the rays which shot from her broad, round disc.

A true lunatic, as we have hinted, is not content with thinking of the moon as a mere planet, convenient for the light it sheds, and the facilities it affords to sailors in finding their longitude. He wishes to personify, to deify; to speak to her, to think of her as a sentient being, celestial, divine, to be sure, but with a human heart; rejoicing, sorrowing with the mortals she looks down upon. Will any blockhead prate of the unreasonableness of such unphilosophical wishes? Has not the moon a face, eyes, nose, mouth, clothed with unearthly beauty, like and yet unlike that of the Sphinx? How many generations of men like us have gazed upon those calm, changeless features! That cold, chaste, pitying face returned the wondering stare of Adam and Eve their first night in Eden. It shone upon the lifeless corpse of Abel. It looked sorrowfully down upon the last night of the antediluvian world, and in its next revolution saw itself everywhere reflected in the waters that covered the whole earth. Its rays have gilded the pinnacles which for ages have rested beneath the stagnant, bitter waters of the Dead Sea, and have trembled amidst the leaves and flowers of the hanging gardens of Nineveh and Babylon. The Chaldean shepherds used to gaze upon it as we do now, and held therewith an intercourse, intimate, mysterious, above our comprehension. It paled with fear and dread when Troy burned. The white temples of Athens, in the time of Pericles, glowed in the light of that very moon, upon which we of this later day may look at will. The streets of Rome were made brilliant by the same moon which to-night shines upon gas-lighted Broadway. It has seen the Temple of Solomon and its magnificent successor in all their glory. It saw England a savage waste, Germany and Gaul ere Caesar's legions were born. It knew and visited the wide extent of the New World before the foundations of Genoa were laid, but kept the secret safe. The moon saw London a humble village on the banks of the unstoried Thames; Paris, while yet the island in the Seine, contained all the metropolis of France; New York, no upstart in this connection, in the time of the puissant Peter Stuyvesant. Her face has not changed since the dear friend, over whose grave the grass has grown these twenty years, looked last upon it.

The sun's face is not familiar. Few are the times we look steadily at it, and then it is disguised; the memory of it is associated with smoked glass, eclipses and strange phenomena. The stars, as individuals, are too small, too much alike, for us to feel acquainted with. But the moon--why, her face, each feature of it, is as familiar as the face of our dearest friend and next door neighbor; and as it looks to us to-night, so have all mankind seen it since the foundations of the earth were laid. It is the same broad, pure, serene, changeless face; always smiling the same thoughtful, pitying smile. The world has changed beneath, but as she looked to Adam, so looks the moon to us, this glorious August night; and were the innumerable dead to rise to-night, that face would be the sole familiar object to greet the eyes of the astonished host.

And while we speak--this moment--how strange, how diverse the scenes she looks down upon and illuminates. As she slowly ascends our heavens, the early rising Moslem in Hindostan sees her pale face in the western sky, as in his morning devotions he bows his head toward Mecca and the tomb of his prophet. The western sides of the eternal pyramids glow in her brilliant light, as they have been wont to do for thousands of years. She is riding above the heads of wild Arabs, traversing in the cooler night, the sparkling, heated sands of the Great Desert. The fountain springs of the Niger and the Nile she spies out, and in them sees her image. The jungles of unknown Ethiopia are illuminated by her presence. The waves of the Mediterranean sparkle in her light, as they dash against the shores of Holy Palestine, of classic Greece, of storied Italy, and of hoary, ancient Egypt. She looks steadily down into the crater of Vesuvius. The ice-clad summit of Mont Blanc stands ghost-like, and catches first the silvery radiance of her beams. All Europe lies in deep sleep and varied beauty beneath her. All over the broad Atlantic the white sails of a thousand ships are glittering in her rays. On she comes, over Columbus' track, and the New World, from where Sir John Franklin lies imbedded in northern ice to the stormy Horn, hails her coming--not as but a few hundred years since. Now the steeples of New York, Havana, and Rio catch the silvery light. On, on she rides. In an hour the Father of Waters will be glowing beneath her vertical rays. A few hours more she will shine upon the snow-tops of the Rocky Mountains, and the western shores of our vast territory, and the eyes of our distant, gold-seeking friends, and our bold seamen on the wide Pacific, will be brightened by her presence. And then she will bid us good-night, and speed her way above the countless islands, coral-reefs, and tranquil waters of that far spreading sea, to spy out the secrets of jealous Japan and curious China.

Having proved that the moon is a person, it becomes important to ascertain its sex. Our minds are made up on this point. The poets have always spoken of her as a lady. But it is no more than fair to notice some of the objections which have been urged against the probability of this hypothesis.

It is well known that the fair sex, to a woman, are admirers of the moon; and, as ladies generally are not prone to speak in praise of beauties of their own sex, it has been supposed, therefore, that she cannot be of the feminine gender.

This instance is, however, the exception to the general rule, we suppose.

Some ill-natured person has endeavored to explain this fondness of ladies for the moon, by reminding us of the popular notion that the moon has a man in it. A most scandalous, malicious, and impertinent suggestion.

As an offset to the arguments adduced by those who take the masculine side of the question, other cynical, crusty old bachelors have cited the lines of Addison--

Soon as the Evening's shades prevail The Moon takes up the wondrous tale, And nightly to the listening Earth Repeats the story of her birth--

Meanwhile we shall believe the poets.

The moon, then, is a lady, and a beauty. But loveliness, to be appreciated, should bear the stamp of rank. Many beautiful women grow up unadmired and unsought, because their parentage is obscure, and their station humble; while pert, vulgar faces pass for handsome, only because their possessors have also wealth and rank. A gilded frame makes a good picture in the eyes of nearly all the world.

Now the moon is not only a beauty, but she is somebody--one of the higher classes. She moves in an elevated sphere; is of aristocratic, nay, of royal blood. We have said enough. Each fair republican reader is propitiated, and for the ears of their fat papas we will whisper, "She is enormously rich, 'tis said"--by the poets. These gentlemen, whose imaginations, after all, are not one half so lively as those of Wall-street brokers, will tell you that the moon is all silver; that her rays are silver, and that they silver every thing they rest upon. However, this last assertion must not be construed literally by people who cannot bear disappointment very well. If some such sanguine person should leave a bogus dollar in the moonlight over night, expecting by these means to make it good coin and legal tender, he would be chagrined in the morning, unless somebody had been cheated into stealing the base metal, to find it a bogus dollar still. A dead gold-fish, exposed of a warm summer night to the same influence, will be sadly "changed," as the housewifes express it, to be sure; but the transmutation will not be from gold to silver.

The ancestry and origin of the moon, though admitted to be highly respectable, are not so well known as some fastidious people might desire; and, as is usual where there is some mystery and uncertainty, there have been various and contradictory stories told by the divers persons who have undertaken to give us information on these points.

Moses tells us very briefly and positively, that she is twin sister of the sun, and that her birth-day was the 3d of January, in the year 0001. Since that time, with the sun for a partner, she has been constantly dancing attendance on the earth, ruling the night, while her brother, like the Grand Vizier of Algiers, has regulated the affairs of the Day. Once only have the twain rested from their labors. At the request of Joshua, who got somewhat belated in a skirmish with the Five Kings, some years ago, the sun stood still over Gibeon, while his sister reclined in the valley of Ajalon and fanned herself. We cannot tell certainly whether the moon has ever been able to recover from this delay, and catch up to the place in which she would have been if the detention had not happened. But an ingenious and learned Hibernian philosopher has very plausibly suggested, that she is still behind her time, and that this is the reason why she does not rise earlier of dark nights, for the illumination of which she was so evidently intended.

But the Mosaic account of the moon's origin and early life is esteemed to be the more prosaic; and the poets, who have taken great pains to look into these matters, give greater credence to the Pagan historians.

She then, the heathens say, was the daughter of Hyperion and Thea, and the sister of the sun and of Aurora--not Aurora Borealis; she came of a northern family, and is but distantly related. The moon, like some other children we have heard of, was born of one of her aunts; so that if she had been sent to call her father to Thea, she could very properly have addressed him as Uncle Hy. Her sister, Aurora, it seems, was also her cousin-german, and with equal propriety she might have called her brother, "my dear sun," or "Cousin Sol," as the humor seized her.

The moon has ever been a favorite with lovers; albeit she herself is a maiden averse to matrimony. Like some dear, good old maids we wot of, she is no hindrance to flirtations, never stands in the way of love declarations, and has assisted at some runaway matches. She smiles pleasantly on the extravagances of enamored young people, winks at their follies, and knows, but never tells their secrets. We firmly believe that she has heard more than half the solemn vows which lovers have uttered since the world began, and has witnessed a large majority of first kisses. Had it not been for the delicious attractive power with which her rays are pregnant, many are, and have been, the married pairs that never would have been drawn together. Bashful youths gather courage from moonlight. Cold natures are fired by its subtle, latent heat. Proud hearts are fused by it into one. Ascetic resolves melt in the focus of the moon's rays as easily as lead in a poacher's ladle.

The moon has a peculiar fascination for dogs, too. Her influence upon the canine race is no less potent than that which she exercises over the feelings of human lovers. All the world over

"The waking dogs bark at the silent moon."

But for this we should have been a married gentleman of large fortune. The moon and a Newfoundland puppy did us an ill-turn once upon a time.

In our early youth, while a sophomore at college, we attended the obsequies of Euclid, for which devout act, taken in connection with divers previous doings, not pleasant to the Faculty, we received sentence of suspension, and forthwith retired, like Sir William Temple, into the country. Our retreat was the residence of an extremely worthy and learned, but somewhat prosy clergyman; who, having been ousted from his pastoral charge of the discontented souls in his parish, occupied his time and gained a living by the culture of corn, potatoes, tame oats and wild young gentlemen. Near by lived a retired ship-chandler, happy in the possession of a solid fortune, an ethereal daughter, a white villa and a black Newfoundland dog. How well we remember the lovely Matilda. She was very fair, with bright brown hair that hung, every afternoon, in ringlets over her neck and shoulders; her blue eyes were of the color of the sky; her form was sylph-like; her teeth were pearls; her lips were rubies; and--so forth. Moreover, her age tallied with ours almost exactly--that is to say, she was eighteen, and we a quarter past; and her fortune, in expectation, was three times as many thousands. We will not stop now to relate how romantically we became acquainted with this very lovely young person--how extremely wet and grateful she was, and how exceedingly muddy and gratified we were--how profuse were her father's thanks and perspiration, as he met us at the garden-gate, after a severe run down the gravel-walk; how urgent were his invitations to make ourself at home in future at his house--how we aided the lovely and very damp Matilda to gain the door--how belligerent were the manifestations of the Newfoundland dog, as we met him on our return to the street; how charming the gentle Matilda appeared the next morning; how slowly, after that, we progressed in Greek, and how rapidly in romantic experiences; how gracious was the old gentleman; how excessively sly was his wit--for that was before our father died insolvent, to the great astonishment and chagrin of all his creditors, and just as everybody else said they always knew he would. All this has nothing to do with the moon's influence on the dog. The latter never took kindly to us. Our appearance at our first interview with him seemed to impress him unfavorably. He always behaved as if he thought we had usurped his prerogative, in rescuing his young mistress from a muddy-watery grave. He eyed us askance; he appeared to believe our gentlemanly clothing a disguise over the damp and discolored raiment which had invested our limbs at the time we first encountered him, and manifested an evident and almost irrepressible longing to strip us of our assumed garb. In consequence of which he was doomed to close confinement, every night, in a kennel beneath the back piazza.

In this conjuncture we invoked the Moon.

It was a most glorious August night. We sat in the back piazza, a perfect heaven of a place, embowered in a clump of locusts, and shaded by a wilderness of vines and flowering shrubs. As far as the eye could see, from between the whispering boughs, extended the magnificent valley of the Connecticut, stretching far away to the south; the course of the beautiful river in its midst plainly marked, here by a broad ribbon of glittering silver, and yonder by the long, slender line of mist, through which the distant landscape shone more heavenly and in softer light than the smiling country all around, where fields and villages, groves and steeples, straight highways and meandering brooks showed us plainly in the rich moonlight as if the noonday sun were shining. The air was soft, and not too warm, heavily laden with the perfume of flowers. From the village green, ever an anon, rose and swelled faint, sweet strains of music. The band was practicing for September training. We always thought the bugle had something to do with the catastrophe.

The dog died a few days afterward in strong convulsions--upon which event Matilda conceived a strong aversion to us, which continued until we went back to college. The last we knew of her she was married to an eminent hardware merchant, and was the mother of two fine children.

The moon exercises a strong and mysterious influence upon other matters than lovers' hearts and dogs' voices. 'Tis said she is more benevolently inclined in her youthful weeks than when, having grown round and full, she has passed the "turn of life" and begins to wane. So, we have heard, it is with other belles.

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