Read Ebook: The Southern Literary Messenger Vol. I. No. 13 September 1835 by Various

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No sweeping denunciation is here intended against those who have the unspeakable misfortune to be destitute of religion; for I know many, and doubt not that many more are to be found in every class of society, who fulfil the duties of the present life in such an exemplary manner, as to be well worthy of our esteem and love. What I mean to assert, and deem it all important for the cause of Education to establish, is, that the above fact furnishes no adequate proof of the sufficiency of the worldly code of morals, either to preserve or to reclaim mankind from vice and crime. If their propensities happen to be vicious, their desires criminal, no obstacle whatever exists to their indulgence, but the ever variable opinions of the particular society in which they live, and the fear of detection by mere human, frail, and fallible witnesses. Their code may well be called a system of compromise between sensual appetites and regard for appearances--a calculation of chances and probabilities--a rule for conduct whose standard has no well defined, certain marks, by which right and wrong can always be accurately distinguished--no omnipotent sanction to sustain all its requirements; and consequently, that, as the governing principle of our whole lives, it will bear no just comparison whatever with the Christian code of morality, where every thing is not only sure, but forever unchangeable--full not only of the happiest assurances in regard to the present life, but of the most soul-cheering hopes as to that which is to come.

Should any person doubt the preference usually given to what are called accomplishments, over matters of infinitely higher real value, let them ask as many pupils as they please, "what inquiries do your parents, guardians, and friends most frequently make relative to your studies and progress at school?" The answers will furnish undeniable proof; for a very large proportion will be found to have been substantially like the following: "How do you come on in your Music, your Dancing, your Drawing, or your French?" according as they have been striving to acquire one or more of these inestimable outfits for their progress through Time to the realms of Eternity. It is pitiable, most pitiable, to see the thousands of innocent little girls throughout our country, many of them without the slightest taste or talent for these things, still laboring four, five, or six hours in every twenty-four, to gain a little elementary knowledge of what they will generally abandon immediately after leaving school, or at farthest, as soon as they get married--to gain which knowledge has been the chief object, the painful toil for so many irrevocable years of all this warring against nature, common sense, and moral fitness. But suppose the success of such training as ample as heart can wish, and the poor little creatures are made prodigies of early proficiency in arts, which are very soon to be of little or no real use to them? Is it politic--is it wise--in fact, is it not a most sinful breach of parental duty, to impart to our daughters, as among the most desirable things in life, strong tastes which they can scarcely gratify at all without frequently seeking company abroad, nor often indulge at home, unless by neglecting some of those important, indispensable domestic employments which devolve exclusively on the mistress of the family?

Milton is indebted for some of the finest passages in the Paradise Lost to Marino's "Sospetti D'Herode."

For the Southern Literary Messenger.

LOSS OF BREATH.

A TALE A LA BLACKWOOD. BY EDGAR A. POE.

The most notorious ill-fortune must, in the end, yield to the untiring courage of philosophy--as the most stubborn city to the ceaseless vigilance of an enemy. Salmanezer, as we have it in the holy writings, lay three years before Samaria: yet it fell. Sardanapalus--see Diodorus--maintained himself seven in Nineveh: but to no purpose. Troy expired at the close of the second lustrum: and Azoth, as Aristaeus declares upon his honor as a gentleman, opened at last her gates to Psammitticus, after having barred them for the fifth part of a century.

Yes! breathless. I am serious in asserting that my breath was entirely gone. I could not have stirred with it a feather if my life had been at issue, or sullied even the delicacy of a mirror. Hard fate!--yet there was some alleviation to the first overwhelming paroxysm of my sorrow. I found upon trial that the powers of utterance which, upon my inability to proceed in the conversation with my wife, I then concluded to be totally destroyed, were in fact only partially impeded, and I discovered that had I, at that interesting crisis, dropped my voice to a singularly deep guttural, I might still have continued to her the communication of my sentiments; this pitch of voice depending, I find, not upon the current of the breath, but upon a certain spasmodic action of the muscles of the throat.

Throwing myself upon a chair, I remained for some time absorbed in meditation. My reflections, be sure, were of no consolatory kind. A thousand vague and lachrymatory fancies took possession of my soul--and even the phantom Suicide flitted across my brain; but it is a trait in the perversity of human nature to reject the obvious and the ready, for the far-distant and equivocal. Thus I shudderd at self-murder as the most decided of atrocities, while the tabby cat purred strenuously upon the rug, and the very water-dog wheezed assiduously under the table, each taking to itself much merit for the strength of its lungs, and all obviously done in derision of my own pulmonary incapacity.

Oppressed with a tumult of vague hopes and fears, I at length heard the footstep of my wife descending the staircase. Being now assured of her absence, I returned with a palpitating heart to the scene of my disaster.

Carefully locking the door on the inside, I commenced a vigorous search. It was possible, I thought, that concealed in some obscure corner, or lurking in some closet or drawer, might be found the lost object of my inquiry. It might have a vapory--it might even have a tangible form. Most philosophers, upon many points of philosophy, are still very unphilosophical. William Godwin, however, says in his "Mandeville," that "invisible things are the only realities." This, all will allow, is a case in point. I would have the judicious reader pause before accusing such asseverations of an undue quantum of absurdity. Anaxagoras--it will be remembered--maintained that snow is black. This I have since found to be the case.

My exertions, as I have before said, proved fruitless. Closet after closet--drawer after drawer--corner after corner--were scrutinized to no purpose. At one time, however, I thought myself sure of my prize, having, in rummaging a dressing-case, accidentally demolished a bottle of Hewitt's "Seraphic and Highly-Scented Extract of Heaven or Oil of Archangels"--which, as an agreeable perfume, I here take the liberty of recommending.

I practised for some time by the borders of a well-frequented marsh--herein, however, having no reference to a similar proceeding of Demosthenes, but from a design peculiarly and conscientiously my own. Thus armed at all points, I determined to make my wife believe that I was suddenly smitten with a passion for the stage. In this I succeeded to a miracle; and to every question or suggestion found myself at liberty to reply in my most frog-like and sepulchral tones with some passage from the tragedies, any portion of which, as I soon took great pleasure in observing, would apply equally well to any particular subject. It is not to be supposed, however, that in the delivery of such passages I was found at all deficient in the looking asquint--the showing my teeth--the working my knees--the shuffling my feet--or in any of those unmentionable graces which are now justly considered the characteristics of a popular performer. To be sure they spoke of confining me in a straight jacket--but good God! they never suspected me of having lost my breath.

The coach was crammed to repletion--but in the uncertain twilight the features of my companions could not be distinguished. Without making any effectual resistance I suffered myself to be placed between two gentlemen of colossal dimensions; while a third, of a size larger, requesting pardon for the liberty he was about to take, threw himself upon my body at full length, and falling asleep in an instant, drowned all my guttural ejaculations for relief, in a snore which would have put to the blush the roarings of a Phalarian bull. Happily the state of my respiratory faculties rendered suffocation an accident entirely out of the question.

Thereupon all, one after another, believed it their duty to pull me by the ear. A young practising physician, too, having applied a pocket-mirror to my mouth, and found me without breath, the assertion of my persecutor was pronounced a true bill; and the whole party expressed their determination to endure tamely no such impositions for the future, and to proceed no farther with any such carcasses for the present.

I was here accordingly thrown out at the sign of the "Crow," without meeting with any farther accident than the breaking of both my arms under the left hind wheel of the vehicle. I must besides do the driver the justice to state that he did not forget to throw after me the largest of my trunks, which, unfortunately falling on my head, fractured my skull in a manner at once interesting and extraordinary.

The landlord of the "Crow," who is a hospitable man, finding that my trunk contained sufficient to indemnify him for any little trouble he might take in my behalf, sent forthwith for a surgeon of his acquaintance, and delivered me to his care with a bill and receipt for five and twenty dollars.

The purchaser took me to his apartments and commenced operations immediately. Having, however, cut off my ears, he discovered signs of animation. He now rang the bell, and sent for a neighboring apothecary with whom to consult in the emergency. In case, however, of his suspicions with regard to my existence proving ultimately correct, he, in the meantime, made an incision in my stomach, and removed several of my viscera for private dissection.

Not being able to arrive at a conclusion, the practitioners remanded me for further examination. I was taken up into a garret; and the surgeon's lady having accommodated me with drawers and stockings, the surgeon himself fastened my hands, and tied up my jaws with a pocket handkerchief--then bolted the door on the outside as he hurried to his dinner, leaving me alone to silence and to meditation.

But, as the loss of his ears proved the means of elevating to the throne of Cyrus, the Magian or Mige-Gush of Persia, and as the cutting off his nose gave Zopyrus possession of Babylon, so the loss of a few ounces of my countenance proved the salvation of my body. Aroused by the pain, and burning with indignation, I burst, at a single effort, the fastenings and the bandage. Stalking across the room I cast a glance of contempt at the belligerents, and throwing open the sash to their extreme horror and disappointment, precipitated myself--very dexterously--from the window.

It was not long ere we arrived at the place of destination. Of course nothing could be said in my defence. Hanging was my inevitable fate. I resigned myself thereto, with a feeling half stupid, half acrimonious. Being little of a cynic, I had all the sentiments of a dog. The hangman, however, adjusted the noose about my neck. The drop fell. My convulsions were said to be extraordinary. Several gentlemen swooned, and some ladies were carried home in hysterics. Pinxit, too, availed himself of the opportunity to retouch, from a sketch taken upon the spot, his admirable painting of the "Marsyas flayed alive."

I will endeavor to depict my sensations upon the gallows. To write upon such a theme it is necessary to have been hanged. Every author should confine himself to matters of experience. Thus Mark Antony wrote a treatise upon drunkenness.

The latter feeling, however, grew momentarily more painful. I heard my heart beating with violence--the veins in my hands and wrists swelled nearly to bursting--my temples throbbed tempestuously--and I felt that my eyes were starting from their sockets. Yet when I say that in spite of all this my sensations were not absolutely intolerable, I will not be believed.

There were noises in my ears--first like the tolling of huge bells--then like the beating of a thousand drums--then, lastly, like the low, sullen murmurs of the sea. But these noises were very far from disagreeable.

Memory, which, of all other faculties, should have first taken its departure, seemed on the contrary to have been endowed with quadrupled power. Each incident of my past life flitted before me like a shadow. There was not a brick in the building where I was born--not a dog-leaf in the primer I had thumbed over when a child--not a tree in the forest where I hunted when a boy--not a street in the cities I had traversed when a man--that I did not at that time most palpably behold. I could repeat to myself entire lines, passages, names, acts, chapters, books, from the studies of my earlier days; and while, I dare say, the crowd around me were blind with horror, or aghast with awe, I was alternately with AEschylus, a demi-god, or with Aristophanes, a frog.

A dreamy delight now took hold upon my spirit, and I imagined that I had been eating opium, or feasting upon the Hashish of the old Assassins. But glimpses of pure, unadulterated reason--during which I was still buoyed up by the hope of finally escaping that death which hovered, like a vulture above me--were still caught occasionally by my soul.

I now reasoned, rapidly I believe--profoundly I am sure--upon principles of common law--propriety of that law especially, for which I hung--absurdities in political economy which till then I had never been able to acknowledge--dogmas in the old Aristotelians now generally denied, but not the less intrinsically true--detestable school formulae in Bourdon, in Garnier, in Lacroix--synonymes in Crabbe--lunar-lunatic theories in St. Pierre--falsities in the Pelham novels--beauties in Vivian Grey--more than beauties in Vivian Grey--profundity in Vivian Grey--genius in Vivian Grey--every thing in Vivian Grey.

Then came, like a flood, Coleridge, Kant, Fitche, and Pantheism--then like a deluge, the Academie, Pergola, La Scala, San Carlo, Paul, Albert, Noblet, Ronzi Vestris, Fanny Bias, and Taglioni.

A rapid change was now taking place in my sensations. The last shadows of connection flitted away from my meditations. A storm--a tempest of ideas, vast, novel, and soul-stirring, bore my spirit like a feather afar off. Confusion crowded upon confusion like a wave upon a wave. In a very short time Schelling himself would have been satisfied with my entire loss of self-identity. The crowd became a mass of mere abstraction.

About this period I became aware of a heavy fall and shock--but, although the concussion jarred throughout my frame, I had not the slightest idea of its having been sustained in my own proper person; and thought of it as of an incident peculiar to some other existence--an idiosyncrasy belonging to some other Ens.

It was at this moment--as I afterwards discovered--that having been suspended for the full term of execution, it was thought proper to remove my body from the gallows--this, the more especially as the real culprit had now been retaken and recognized.

Much sympathy was now exercised in my behalf--and as no one in the city appeared to identify my body, it was ordered that I should be interred in the public sepulchre early in the following morning. I lay, in the meantime, without signs of life--although from the moment, I suppose, when the rope was loosened from my neck, a dim consciousness of my situation oppressed me like the night-mare.

I was laid out in a chamber sufficiently small, and very much encumbered with furniture--yet to me it appeared of a size to contain the universe. I have never before or since, in body or in mind, suffered half so much agony as from that single idea. Strange! that the simple conception of abstract magnitude--of infinity--should have been accompanied with pain. Yet so it was. "With how vast a difference," said I, "in life and in death--in time and in eternity--here and hereafter, shall our merest sensations be imbodied!"

But the morning broke at length--and with its misty and gloomy dawn arrived in triple horror the paraphernalia of the grave. Then--and not till then--was I fully sensible of the fearful fate hanging over me. The phantasms of the night had faded away with its shadows, and the actual terrors of the yawning tomb left me no heart for the bug-bear speculations of Transcendentalism.

I have before mentioned that my eyes were but imperfectly closed--yet as I could not move them in any degree, those objects alone which crossed the direct line of vision were within the sphere of my comprehension. But across that line of vision spectral and stealthy figures were continually flitting, like the ghosts of Banquo. They were making hurried preparations for my interment. First came the coffin which they placed quietly by my side. Then the undertaker with attendants and a screw-driver. Then a stout man whom I could distinctly see and who took hold of my feet--while one whom I could only feel lifted me by the head and shoulders. Together they placed me in the coffin, and drawing the shroud up over my face proceeded to fasten down the lid. One of the screws, missing its proper direction, was screwed by the carelessness of the undertaker deep--deep--down into my shoulder. A convulsive shudder ran throughout my frame. With what horror, with what sickening of heart did I reflect that one minute sooner a similar manifestation of life, would, in all probability, have prevented my inhumation. But alas! it was now too late, and hope died away within my bosom as I felt myself lifted upon the shoulders of men--carried down the stairway--and thrust within the hearse.

During the brief passage to the cemetery my sensations, which for some time had been lethargic and dull, assumed, all at once, a degree of intense and unnatural vivacity for which I can in no manner account. I could distinctly hear the rustling of the plumes--the whispers of the attendants--the solemn breathings of the horses of death. Confined as I was in that narrow and strict embrace, I could feel the quicker or slower movement of the procession--the restlessness of the driver--the windings of the road as it led us to the right or to the left. I could distinguish the peculiar odor of the coffin--the sharp acid smell of the steel screws. I could see the texture of the shroud as it lay close against my face; and was even conscious of the rapid variations in light and shade which the flapping to and fro of the sable hangings occasioned within the body of the vehicle.

In a short time however, we arrived at the place of sculpture, and I felt myself deposited within the tomb. The entrance was secured--they departed--and I was left alone. A line of Marston's "Malcontent,"

"Death's a good fellow and keeps open house,"

From what I overheard early in the morning, I was led to believe that the occasions when the vault was made use of were of very rare occurrence. It was probable that many months might elapse before the doors of the tomb would be again unbarred--and even should I survive until that period, what means could I have more than at present, of making known my situation or of escaping from the coffin? I resigned myself, therefore, with much tranquillity to my fate, and fell, after many hours, into a deep and deathlike sleep.

How long I remained thus is to me a mystery. When I awoke my limbs were no longer cramped with the cramp of death--I was no longer without the power of motion. A very slight exertion was sufficient to force off the lid of my prison--for the dampness of the atmosphere had already occasioned decay in the woodwork around the screws.

The sepulchre was large and subdivided into many compartments, and I busied myself in examining the peculiarities of their construction. I determined the length and breadth of my abode. I counted and recounted the stones of the masonry. But there were other methods by which I endeavored to lighten the tedium of my hours. Feeling my way among the numerous coffins ranged in order around, I lifted them down, one by one, and breaking open their lids, busied myself in speculations about the mortality within.

"This," I reflected, tumbling over a carcass, puffy, bloated, and rotund--"this has been, no doubt, in every sense of the word, an unhappy--an unfortunate man. It has been his terrible lot not to walk, but to waddle--to pass through life not like a human being, but like an elephant--not like a man, but like a rhinoceros.

"His attempts at getting on have been mere abortions--and his circumgyratory proceedings a palpable failure. Taking a step forward, it has been his misfortune to take two towards the right, and three towards the left. His studies have been confined to the Philosophy of Crabbe.

"He has never ascended the summit of a hill. He has never viewed from any steeple the glories of a metropolis.

"Heat has been his mortal enemy. In the dog-days his days have been the days of a dog. Therein, he has dreamed of flames and suffocation--of mountains upon mountains--of Pelion upon Ossa.

"He was short of breath--to say all in a word--he was short of breath.

"He thought it extravagant to play upon wind instruments. He was the inventor of self-moving fans--wind-sails--and ventilators. He patronized Du Pont the bellows-maker--and died miserably in attempting to smoke a cigar.

"His was a case in which I feel deep interest--a lot in which I sincerely sympathize."

"But here," said I--"here"--and I dragged spitefully from its receptacle a gaunt, tall, and peculiar-looking form, whose remarkable appearance struck me with a sense of unwelcome familiarity--"here," said I--"here is a wretch entitled to no earthly commiseration." Thus saying, in order to obtain a more distinct view of my subject, I applied my thumb and forefinger to his nose, and, causing him to assume a sitting position upon the ground, held him, thus, at the length of my arm, while I continued my soliloquy.

--"entitled," I repeated, "to no earthly commiseration. Who indeed would think of compassionating a shadow? Besides--has he not had his full share of the blessings of mortality? He was the originator of tall monuments--shot-towers--lightning-rods--lombardy-poplars. His treatise upon 'Shades and Shadows' has immortalized him.

"He went early to college and studied Pneumatics. He then came home--talked eternally--and played upon the French horn.

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