Night.

"A thousand ancient fancies I have read

Of that fair presence, and a thousund wrought
Wondrous and bright,

Upon the silver light,

Tracing fresh figures with the artist thought."

I Do not wonder that many poets have become so greatly enamored of the moon, as their verses (if veracious) declare. That is a very ancient weakness of humanity, carried by some sensuous heathen races to the extent of worship, and a public mourning at her monthly retirement. Moreover, the fact that the same feeling is expressed by enlightened members of the canine family, should prove to the satisfaction of every ingenuous metaphysician, that it is a natural and consequently rational affection. Hence the stimulus which the passion receives from a duplex walk on a summer evening beneath the "weird light." And no wonder that the substitution of promenades, under semicircles of gas flame, should educe an anomalous kind of sentimentalism called flirtation. Yet, I am inclined to think that the silver goddess gets more than her fair share of adulation. Romantic young ladies, like the moderate beaux at a watering place, are content to waft their sighs and tell their secrets to some favorite sympathetic star, but when lady Luna sweeps the saloon with her full-flounced circle, and bedims the simpering sisterhood, then the regular poets, the genuine Brummels of the Saratoga of sentiment, desert the poor pale orbs, and one and all make suit to the belle with their best bow and compliment. Well, after all, it is hardly probable that they care much about us or our homage. We used to think so, (we, i. e. the race,) but we used to think, too, that they had no better business than to roll round us and watch the doings on our mighty sphere, the universal center. We have learned now, that they mind their own business exclusively, and go where it calls them. Eudoxus was probably as proud of his system as Copernicus of his. And why should he not account it something to contrive an entirely new and original plan of celestial mechanics? What a hard time Copernicus and his successors have had, in trying, with all the vis veritatis on their side, to take out of us that conceit of centralization?

But how presumptuously Longfellow goes to the other extreme, in the Voices of the Night:

"All silently the little moon

Drops down behind the sky."

With what would he compare it? It is larger surely, than any of the other celestials. Perhaps, like De Quincy, he was thinking of a little lamb, frisking about its great dam, mother earth. I cannot help regarding the line as unnatural.

Astronomers may study out all the wonders of the heavens, but they cannot with all their bewildering sublimities, arouse our feelings more than the solemn night, as she has revealed herself to all, untutored and philosophers alike:

"

when evening descended from Heaven above,

And the earth was all rest and the air was all love,

And delight, though less bright, was far more deep;

And the day's veil fell from the world of sleep,

And the beasts and the birds, and the insects were drowned,

In an ocean of dreams without a sound:

Whose waves never mark, though they ever impress

The light sand which paves it-consciousness."

Aye, the day's veil-the veil that interposes its screen of pride and selfishness between the toil and strife of practical life, and the solemn truths that the soul discerns when it muses by itself; that hides from the heart, pressed down with sorrow, the luxury of secret tears; from the weary, the thoughtful, the priceless relief of solitude; that shuts from all men the mystery and knowledge, that, like the cherubim in the most holy place, stand over the ark of God's presence in the inner shrine of night. For what is darkness, whose approach like the greeting of death, only enshrouds this world and the light of it to usher us into the immeasurable and incomprehensible magnificence of the presence chamber of Heaven? It has nothing to do with those orbs it enables us to see, nor with the infinitude of space in which they float. Of all of those suns and systems, their Maker has written, "There is no night there. But to us it is a faithful Mentor, always traveling with our globe, and always pointing away from our center to the grand arch of Heaven and its unknown recesses. It is a daily Sabbath, with its balmy rest, and calm for worship. And as it is a sin to profane the weekly, so is it to abuse the other daily season of respose. An undevout astronomer, it is said, is mad; are they less so who practically do not acknowledge the genial Sabbath of darkness, by wasting in toil or gayety or wickedness those hours, when God has written His command in the book of nature, "Go worship and sleep?"

It will not answer, however, to have too much of it. For though a good sleep and a good dinner are very closely allied, and we may suppose that the

old Egyptians were as much used up by their three days' nap as by three days' incessant eating, we know that the old Romans had a way by which they could eat for an indefinite time, while no way has as yet been discovered by which we can sleep over indefinitely. Therefore, it is wisely ordained that none but very small children shall "lie down with the lamb and rise with the lark," while the most of us must spend a part of some of our evenings in cogitating on the vesture of the sable goddess.

Those old philosophers who reasoned about the harmony of the spheres would have been puzzled to assign parts to so many of them as are found traveling about our system now. Perhaps, though if they had attended one of Jullien's monster concerts, with sixty or more instruments scraping and blowing together, they would not readily give up their idea. Suppose Saturn, for instance, had a place corresponding to first fiddle, why then, of course, there must be six or seven second fiddles to fill up the pauses while he turns over a leaf, and to execute all sorts of erratic variations on his grand aria. The first fidddle, too, it will be noted, always wears spectacles, corresponding evidently to the planet's rings. And so we might arrange the rest, giving to each of the great "stars" the assistance of "distinguished talent" to the extent of as many moons as the case permits. The asteroids being of no great consequence, though very numerous, might be assigned to the bones, triangles, kettle drums, &c. Those who were not thus employed would answer, at least, to shout hurrah, and stamp, in chorus, when something like Yankee doodle, (with twenty variations,) was performing. Having disposed of all the planets, the new and more rational philosophy would have Sol no longer a mere instrumentician, but the potent conductor of the whole. And I ask any one who recalls the great maestro, his magnificent downsittings and uprisings, the full orbed splendor with which his white vest and seven seals burst upon the assembly, calmed the inbarmonious "tuning" and set his "system" in motion, whether there need be sought a better type of the god of day than this leader of the night?

Undoubtedly there is no more sensible proof of our imperfect state than the experience that we cannot very long surrender ourselves to music or musing, to metaphysical speculation or mechanical investigation, to pleasure or labor, without finding that there is "a time for all things." When the greatest minds have pushed their way, as far as their faculties permit, and the dim light has failed, and their path has become obliterated, they find that they have ascended but a little distance, and that soon children begin to climb just as far, while the great unexplored heights of science remain as before, unapproachable. Thus, in the con

templation of night, there is mingled pride and humility; pride that our intellects can compass all that other mind shave achieved, humility that we cannot stir or think, without meeting at the first and every succeeding step, mysteries unexplained, inexplicable. Then the baffled understanding calls in fancy to her aid, and she solves the riddles, peoples the stars, disports with fairies on the grassy hillocks, roams with the breezes and the dim shadows, creating her own world, or altering this, or leaving both for her sublimest thoughts:

It was the soul-picture of the early followers of Columbus and Pizarro, that in those Eldorado regions, whither their ships were steering, gold and emerald of measureless value were strewn thick as forest leaves; and historians tells us that, often, as these dreamy wanderers reached for the first time some newly discovered land, eager to find their phantom realms at last taking on reality, they sprang in greedy haste upon the shore, and gathering the stones and sand pebbles which were everywhere scattered, stood, like fierce sentries, over worthless heaps, which, in the bitter hallucination of avarice, they had mistaken for "riches beyond

compare." So of human character, we are all for a time Eldorado painters ; and until many a disastrous voyage, and until many a frantic deception, have staggered our credulity, and taught us the distinction between Truth and its base semblances, we are ever accepting that which merely glitters for genuine gold, and hugging to our hearts paltry pebbles, because we fancy them diamonds and pearls.

It would constitute no unsound philosophy of life to say that society is, after all, a struggle for aristocracy. Mournful though be the statement, how can it be denied, that the chief energies of the half of mankind seem expended that they may outdazzle the other half! Nine hundred millions of beings, whose breasts are the living tenements of immortal faculties, and whose thoughts might mingle in communion with stars, content themselves, like the meadow fire-fly, with flickering imitations of warmth and light. Look out upon the world, and pierce through the mere shows of things, and say, can you count up the shallow pretences, the shams, and the gilded pomps which men are striving everywhere to exhibit? All over this earth, in the unchastened idolatry of dress, in the tumultuous cravings of avarice, in the asserted superiority of high-born lineage, in the rough, beastly displays of the professional pugilist, in the marshaling and riot of war, and ofttimes even in the noble and subtle pursuits of literary enthusiasm, we discern the same restlessness in obscurity, the same master passion to flame out into notoriety, the same burning propensity to acquire merely to exhibit, and, by whatsoever means, to rear perpetually a platform, whereon a man may mount, and say to his neighbor below, "I am higher and holier

than thou!"

This unconquerable resolve to seize hold upon the world's admiration, or to exasperate it to jealousy, works out through many modes. We seek not far among men before we find representatives of each :

1. He who is the most conspicuous of all, and who perhaps was the earliest to assert his claims, is the individual who prides himself on his noble ancestry. The family wealth may have flown; the gay equipage and the splendid livery, and the array of vassals may have departed; even the family mansion itself may have crumbled to decay, or have fallen into alien hands; and yet, amid all these adversities, he looks down upon the race of common men with the most patronizing pity, and regards them with some such feeling as Olympic Jove might have contemplated the rats of the river Nile. And what is this mysterious principle of inflation? Whence cometh this assurance of august superiority? Ah! he declares himself a Patrician of the purest stock-he quaffs the