Various - The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 05, No. 29, March, 1860

So Grammar taught Ivy to reverence language.

History, in the light of a guiding mind, ceased to be a bare record of slaughter and crime. Before her eyes filed, in a statelier pageant than they knew, the long procession of "simple great ones gone for ever and ever by," and the countless lesser ones whose names are quenched in the darkness of a night that shall know no dawn. She saw the "great world spin forever down the ringing grooves of change"; but amid all the change, the confusion, the chaos, she saw the finger of God ever pointing, and heard the sublime monotone of the Divine voice ever saying to the children of men, "This is the way, walk ye in it." And Ivy thought she saw, and rejoiced in the thought, that, even when this warning was unheeded,—when on the brow of the mournful Earth "Ichabod, Ichabod," was forever engraven,—when the First Man with his own hand put from him the cup of innocence, and went forth from the happy garden, sin-stained and fallen, the whole head sick, and the whole heart faint,—even then she saw within him the divine spark, the leaven of life, which had power to vitalize and vivify what Crime had smitten with death. Though sea and land teemed with strange perils, though night and day pursued him with mysterious terrors, though the now unfriendly elements combined to check his career, still, with unswerving purpose, undaunted courage, she saw him march constantly forward. Spirits of evil could not drive from his heart the prescience of greatness; and his soul dwelt calmly under the foreshadow of a mighty future.

And as Ivy looked, she saw how the children of men became a great nation, and possessed the land far and wide. They delved into the bosom of the pleased earth, and brought forth the piled-up treasures of uncounted cycles. They unfolded the book of the skies, and sought to read the records thereon. They plunged into the unknown and terrible ocean, and decked their own brows with the gems they plucked from hers. And when conquered Nature had laid her hoards at their feet, their restless longings would not be satisfied. Brave young spirits, with the dew of their youth fresh upon them, set out in quest of a land beyond their ken. Over the mountains, across the seas, through the forests, there came to the ear of the dreaming girl the measured tramp of marching men, the softer footfalls of loving women, the pattering of the feet of little children. Many a day and many a night she saw them wander on towards the setting sun, till the Unseen Hand led them to a fair and fruitful country that opened its bounteous arms in welcome. Broad rivers, green fields, laughing valleys wooed them to plant their household gods,—and the foundations of Europe were laid. Here were sown the seeds of those heroic virtues which have since leaped into luxuriant life,—seeds of that irresistible power which fastened its grasp on Nature and forced her to unfold the secret of her creation,—seeds of that far-reaching wisdom which in the light of the unveiled past has read the story of the unseen future.

And still under Ivy's eye they grouped themselves. Some gathered on the pleasant hills of the sunny South, and the beauty of earth and sea and sky passed into their souls forever. They caught the evanescent gleam, the passing shadow, and on unseemly canvas limned it for all time in forms of unuttered and unutterable loveliness. They shaped into glowing life the phantoms of grace that were always flitting before their enchanted eyes, and poured into inanimate marble their rapt and passionate souls. They struck the lyre to wild and stirring songs whose tremulous echoes still linger along the corridors of Time. Some sought the icebound North, and grappled with dangers by field and flood. They hunted the wild dragon to his mountain-fastnesses, and fought him at bay, and never quailed. Death, in its most fearful forms, they met with grim delight, and chanted the glories of the Valhalla waiting for heroes who should forever quaff the "foaming, pure, and shining mead" from skulls of foes in battle slain. Some crossed the sea, and on

And History taught Ivy to reverence man.

But there was one respect in which Ivy was both pupil and teacher. Never a word of Botany had fallen upon her ears; but through all the unconscious bliss of infancy, childhood, and girlhood, for sixteen happy years, she had lived among the flowers, and she knew their dear faces and their wild-wood names. She loved them with an almost human love. They were to her companions and friends. She knew their likings and dislikings, their joys and sorrows,—who among them chose the darkest nooks of the old woods, and who bloomed only to the brightest sunlight,—who sent their roots deep down among the mosses by the brook, and who smiled only on the southern hill-side. Around each she wove a web of beautiful individuality, and more than one had received from her a new christening. It is true, that, when she came to study from a book, she made wry faces over the long, barbarous, Latin names which completely disguised her favorites, and in her heart deemed a great many of the definitions quite superfluous; but she had strong faith in her teacher, and when the technical was laid aside for the real, then, indeed, "her foot was on her native heath, and her name was MacGregor." A wild and merry chase she led her grave instructor. Morning, noon, or night, she was always ready. Under the blue sky, breathing the pure air, treading the green turf familiar from her infancy, she could not be otherwise than happy; but when was superadded to this the companionship of a mind vigorous, cultivated, and refined, she enjoyed it with a keen and intense delight. Nowhere else did her soul so entirely unfold to the genial light of this new sun which had suddenly mounted above her horizon. Nowhere else did the freshness and fulness and splendor of life dilate her whole being with a fine ecstasy.

And what was the end of all this? Just what you would have supposed. She had led a life of simple, unbounded love and trust,—a buoyant, elastic gladness,—a dream of sunshine. No gray cloud had ever lowered in her sky, no thunderbolt smitten her joys, no winter rain chilled her warmth. Only the white fleeciness of morning mist had flitted sometimes over her summer-sky, deepening the blue. Little cooling drops had fluttered down through the leafiness, only to span her with a rainbow in the glory of the setting sun. But the time had come. From the deep fountains of her heart the stone was to be rolled away. The secret chord was to be smitten by a master-hand,—a chord which, once stirred, may never cease to quiver.

At first Ivy worshipped very far off. Her friend was to her the embodiment of all knowledge and goodness and greatness. She marvelled to see him so at home in what was to her so strange. Every word that fell from his lips was an oracle. She secretly contrasted him with all the men she had ever met, to the utter discomfiture of the latter. Washington, the Apostle Paul, and Peter Parley were the only men of the past or present whom she considered at all worthy to be compared with him; and in fact, if these three men and Felix Clerron had all stood before her, and offered each a different opinion on any given subject, I have scarcely a doubt as to whose would have commended itself to her as combining the soundest practical wisdom and the highest Christian benevolence.

So the summer passed on, and her shyness wore off,—and their intimacy became less and less that of teacher and pupil, and more and more that of friend and friend. With the sudden awakening of her intellectual nature, there woke also another power, of whose existence she had never dreamed. It was natural, that, in ranging the fields of thought so lately opened to her, she should often revert to him whose hand had unbarred the gates; she was therefore not startled that the image of Felix Clerron was with her when she sat down and when she rose up, when she went out and when she came in. She ceased, indeed, to think of him. She thought him . She lived him. Her soul fed on his life. And so—and so—by a pleasant and flowery path, there came into Ivy's heart the old, old pain.