'Tis like the sickly smile that sits On hidden sorrow's brow, Or with the last faint hectic flits When life is ebbing low.
From such heart-chilling smiles as these Winter, I turn to thee-- Thy frowning skies and leafless trees More welcome are to me.
Of all the "death-bed sayings" on record, none please me more than that of Beausobre to his son: Go, said he,
"Argentum et marmor vetus, æraque et artis Suspice. Suspice, et forma non fragilis Movebit in pectore delectationis multum. Ibi, cum Euroauster, tum erit admiratio-- Flori felicitatis suavis et jucunda."
Moving among the solid temples of "silver," and of "marble," reared by ancient literature, the intruder finds the holy beauty around him giving softness to his step, and banishing all ungentle levity. The plastic mind gradually yielding to the touch of that loveliness which has crept in through the senses, becomes of itself grand and lovely. The heart too receives its coloring--even as the cheek is colored, when standing beneath the stained windows of some real temple.
These truths have come home to _me_, at too late an hour, and a quill or two will not be worn out sinfully, in an attempt to impress their importance upon younger men.
If I fail, as most probably I shall, the consciousness of having consumed a day in useful effort, will be a tolerable reward--perhaps reward enough.
"The inner man moulds the outer," is an old and true saw. Its truth may be seen, reader, by looking around you--indeed, by looking _at yourself_. If you are a philosopher--a genuine philosopher--your glass will image forth an aspect of serene dignity. If a sophist, one of perplexed cunning. In the first instance, your _manner_ will be lofty yet affable--a key to the better feelings of all:--in the latter grovelling, yet scornful--to every one food for the most unreserved contempt. Yielding that these different appearances are produced by the workings of the inner man, can you hit upon a mode for ennobling these workings, in themselves confused and feeble, so evidently effectual as the introduction of knowledge and its all-arranging hand? Some may say that the manner is of no moment. The effects produced under every one's own observation would, if remembered, serve to stifle this assertion. Why was it that the most eloquent of Grecians struggled for years to remove the defects of a faulty bearing, if no valuable end was to be attained?