The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844

‘When you are cool,’ said Dr. Kent, looking any thing but cool himself, ‘I will remind you of your promise, your positive promise; there is Mr. Lillburgh now approaching the house; ask both your heart and conscience how he ought to be received. Good morning to you.’

Without stopping to consult either of these counsellors, Mr. Lee hastily rang the bell. ‘We are both engaged, and cannot see the gentleman who is now coming to the door,’ said he to the servant. The doorbell was heard at the instant, and the servant hastened to obey his master’s directions.

The doctor was gone. Mr. Lee, pacing the parlor alone, imagined to himself all sorts of arguments to satisfy his conscience that he was in the right. Yet, thought he, my little darling must be made happy; all young girls love trinkets and finery; I will take her out with me this morning, and she shall indulge every caprice of her pretty fancy; pretty in every thing else but fixing itself on that Mr. Lillburgh. ‘Pshaw! he shall not have her; call Miss here,’ he continued to a servant who entered at the moment. The servant returned after a few minutes, saying that he had knocked repeatedly at her door, but received no answer. Vaguely apprehensive of something wrong, Mr. Lee hastened himself to her chamber; but how was he shocked on entering, to find his daughter lying senseless in a swoon near an open window. Ah! what voice whispered him that she had seen and heard at that window what her delicate nerves could not endure! He raised her tenderly in his arms, and having with some difficulty restored her to consciousness, placed her on the bed. ‘Good heavens!’ thought he, ‘can it be indeed so serious!’ But he could not long speculate upon this subject; Lucy’s cheek, but just now so pale and marble-like, soon began to glow with fever; her pulse, but just restored to action, now told with momently increasing hurry that illness had seized the delicate frame; the sudden revulsion from new-born hope to despair had been too much for it. Poor Mr. Lee! what did his heart say now? Did it yet upbraid him? Dr. Kent, who had set out on a course of visits, could not at once be found, and the wretched father sat gazing in agonizing helplessness on his suffering child until the decline of the day. What would he have given to live over again the last few hours! At length the physician appeared: ‘Now,’ said he, on accosting Mr. Lee, ‘do you think I know my own business or not? Do I make mountains of mole-hills or not? I knew what I was about, didn’t I?’

‘Alas, yes!’ replied the other, in a self-accusing tone, ‘and I did not; but oh! merciful Providence! is it too late now?’

‘Too late? Heaven knows, poor young lady! she’d have been better off if she’d been an ugly twelfth daughter, with no one to trouble themselves much about her, instead of a beautiful darling, that must have one particular sort of happiness and no other.’

‘Spare me! spare me, my friend!’ implored Mr. Lee.

‘I wish you had spared yourself,’ grumbled Dr. Kent.

The Doctor was, it must be allowed, a little rough; but he had been so thoroughly annoyed, after having, as he thought, with unparalleled cunning and discretion detected the difficulty and provided a remedy, to find his plans thwarted by an obstinate wilfulness, that he could not help boiling over a little: his kind feelings however soon got the ascendency; the deep contrition of the poor father touched his heart, and the lovely girl who had only increased his interest in her by making good his words, received from him the most attentive care; nor could he doubt that at length his advice was appreciated, when he heard Mr. Lee take every opportunity of mentioning Mr. Lillburgh’s name with approbation and kindness, always regretting that he had made such a mistake as to send him away the last time he had called at the house.

But who may venture to choose their own time for showing kindness? Who may, having refused to ‘do good when it was in the power of his hand to do it,’ resume at will the precious privilege? Dr. Kent, satisfied with his friend’s repentance, was willing to take any step which might avail to retrieve the mischief; but when this last would have lured back by civilities the repulsed lover, he was found to have left home the very day after his mortifying dismissal.

Let those who only by looking back can see the road by which misery might have been escaped, while before the vista seems quite closed up, conceive the deep and agonizing perplexity of the anxious father. His daughter, comforted no doubt by his frequent recurrence to the subject near her heart, and the manner in which he treated it, slowly raised her drooping head; but he, (the entire amende being still out of his power) hung over her night and day, oppressed by a constant sensation of guilt, scarcely aware of her partial restoration. For some days this ordeal lasted; there seemed a risk that the lover might in the bitterness of his disappointment prolong his stay indefinitely; what availed it then that the prejudice and ambition which had exiled him were now annihilated? The eagerly coveted-prize for which he would have sacrificed his daughter’s peace, had turned to ashes in his grasp.

But the door to returning happiness was not completely closed. Dr. Kent’s skill, aided no doubt by Lucy’s young confidence in her lover’s steadfastness, kept danger at bay, until one of those opportune accidents of life, which like many of the best things in it look threateningly until time takes off the veil, occurred in the shape of a fire on the premises of the wanderer; which news, forcing him to return, the indefatigable Dr. Kent at once offered to divert his mind from this untoward circumstance, by taking him to join the family dinner of his friend Mr. Lee. The sequel may be imagined; on the strength of this friendly invitation, aided no doubt by sundry blushes and smiles on Lucy’s part, Mr. Lillburgh ventured to resume his visits, and Lucy’s cheek always looked so particularly rosy on such occasions, that Mr. Lee soon became too entirely happy in the result, to cavil any longer at the cause of her renovated health and spirits. Sometimes, also, memory would recall for an instant that terrible period of anxiety, and then he would treat Mr. Lillburgh with such pointed cordiality, that before very long that young gentleman was emboldened to take advantage of his civility, and make some disclosure of his own plans for the fair Lucy’s happiness, according to the liberty of speech young gentlemen generally allow themselves when desirous of securing their own. Mr. Lee had gone too far to recede, and he soon found himself reduced to the necessity of resting all his hopes for the gratification of his favorite fancies and prejudices upon the anticipated course through life of another generation, whose future being happily so distant, promised him a long period of hope.

THE FRATRICIDE’S DEATH

A RHAPSODY

The following effort of a wild and maddened imagination, rioting in its own unreal world, is by the ‘American Opium-Eater,’ whose remarkable history was given in the Knickerbocker for July, 1842. The MS. is stained in several places with the powerful drug, to the abuse of which the writer was so irresistibly addicted. The subjoined remarks precede the poem: ‘This extravaganza is worthy of preservation only as ‘a psychological curiosity,’ like Coleridge’s ‘Kubla Khan,’ which was composed under similar circumstances; if that indeed can be called composition, in which all the images rose up before the writer as THINGS, with a parallel production of the correspondent expressions, without any sensation or consciousness of effort. On awaking, he appeared to have a distinct recollection of the whole: taking his pen, ink and paper, he instantly and eagerly wrote down the lines that are here preserved. The state of corporeal sleep but intellectual activity, during the continuance of which the phenomenon above described occurred, was caused by a very large dose of opium, and came upon me while reading the ‘Confession of a Fratricide,’ published by the priest who attended him in his last moments. I should warn the reader that the fratricide, like the author, could not be said to possess the ‘mens sana in corpore sano,’ both having been deranged.’

Ed. Knickerbocker.The universe shook as the monarch passedOn the way to his northern throne;His robe of snow around him he cast,He rode on the wings of the roaring blast,And beneath him dark clouds were blown.His furrow’d and hoary brow was wreathedWith a crown of diamond frost;Even space was chill’d wherever he breathed,And the last faint smiles which summer bequeathed,Ere she left the world, were lost.The leaves which wan Autumn’s breath had searedStern Winter swept away;Dark and dreary all earth appeared—The very beams of the bright sun fearedTo pursue their accustom’d way.Mirth’s merry laugh at that moment fled,And Pleasure’s fair cheek grew pale:The living sat like the stony dead,The rough torrent froze in its craggy bed,And Heaven’s dew turned to hail.The forest trees waved their heads on high,And shrunk from the storm’s fierce stroke;The lightning flash’d as from God’s own eye,The thunderbolt crash’d through the startled sky,As it split the defying oak.The proud lion trembled and hush’d his roar,The tigress crouch’d in fear;The angry sea beat the shuddering shore,And the deafening voice of the elements’ warBurst terribly on the ear.I stood by the bed where the prisoner lay;The lamp gave a fitful light:His soul was struggling to pass away;Oh, God! how I pray’d for the coming of day!Death was awful in such a night.His cheek was hollow, and sunk, and wan,And his lips were thin and blue;The unearthly look of that dying man,As his tale of horror he thus began,Sent a chill my warm heart through:‘The plague-spots of crime have sunk deep in my heart,And withered my whirling brain;The deep stamp of murder could never departFrom this brow, where the Angel of Death’s fiery dartHad graven the curse of Cain.‘Remorse has oft waved his dusky wingsO’er the path I was doom’d to tread;Despair has long frozen Hope’s warm springs;I have felt the soul’s madness which Memory brings,When she wakes up the murder’d dead.‘Tell me not now of God’s mercy or love!All hope of pardon is past:A brother’s blood cries for vengeance above;This brand on my brow will my foul crime prove—My torment for ever must last!‘Thou needst not tremble; this arm is bound,And its iron strength is gone;Despair came down in the hollow soundOf my fetters, which clank’d on the loathing groundWhere my wearied limbs I had thrown.‘I snatched the knife from my jailor’s sideAnd buried it in my breast,But they cruelly staunched the gushing tide,And closed the wound, though ’twas deep and wide,And still I might not rest!‘Day after day I had gnawed my chain,Till I sharpened the stubborn link;But when I had pierced the swollen vein,And was writhing in death’s last dreadful pain,While just on eternity’s brink:‘Even then the leech’s skill prevailed;I was saved for a darker fate!My very guards ’neath my stern glance quailed,And with their cloaks their faces veiledAs they passed the fast-barred grate.‘I LOVED! Thou know’st not half the powerOf woman’s love-lit eye;Her voice can soothe death’s gloomy hour,Her smiles dispel the clouds which lowerWhen Affliction’s sea rolls high.‘My heart seemed cold as the frozen snowWhich binds dark Ætna’s form,But Love raged there with the lava’s flow,And madden’d my soul with the scorching glowOf strong passion’s thunder-storm.’‘I told my love: O God! even stillI hear the Tempter’s voice,Which whispered the thought in my mind, to fillMy page of crime with a deed of illThat made all hell rejoice.‘I knelt at her feet, and my proud heart burn’dWhen she spoke of my brother’s love;Affection’s warmth to deep hate was turn’d;His proffered hand in my wrath I spurn’d—Not all his prayers could move.‘At dead of night to his room I crept,As noiseless as the grave;Disturbed in his dreams, my brother wept,And softly murmur’d her name while he slept;That word new fury gave!‘The sound from his lip had scarcely passed,When my dagger pierced his heart:One dying look on me he cast—That awful look in my soul will lastWhen body and soul shall part!‘When the deed was done, in horror I gazedOn the face of the murder’d dead;His dark and brilliant eye was glazed:When I thought for a moment his arm he raised,I hid my face in the bed.‘I could not move from the spot where I stood;A chilliness froze my mind:My clothes were dyed with my brother’s blood,The body lay in a crimson flood,Which clotted his hair behind!‘And over my heart that moment pass’dA vision of former years,Ere sin upon my soul had castIt’s withering blight, it’s poison-blast,It’s cloud of guilty fears.‘The home where our youth’s first hours flew by,In its beauty before me rose;The holy love of our mother’s eye,Our childhood’s pure and cloudless skyAnd its light and fleeting woes.‘When our hearts in strong affection’s chainWere so closely, fondly tied,That our thoughts and feelings, pleasure and pain,Were one: why did we not remainThrough life thus side by side?‘And my brother’s gentle voice then fellUpon my tortured ear;Those tones I once had loved so well,Now wither’d my soul like a flame from hellWith vain remorse and fear!‘All, all that memory still had keptIn her hidden and silent reign,My youth’s warm feelings, which long had slept,Like a torrent of fire that moment sweptIn madness o’er my brain.‘For before me there his pallid faceIn death’s cold stillness lay;Even murder could not all effaceIts beauty, whose sad and shadowy traceStill lingered round that clay.‘Sternly I bent me over the dead,And strove my breast to steel,When the dagger from hilt to point blood-red,Flash’d on my sight, and I madly fled,The torture of life to feel.‘Since that dread hour o’er half the earthMy weary path has lain;I have stood where the mighty Nile has birth,Where Ganges rolls his blue waves forthIn triumph to the main.‘In the silent forest’s gloomy shadeI have vainly sought for rest;My sunless dwelling I have madeWhere the hungry tiger nightly stray’d,And the serpent found a nest.‘But still, where’er I turn’d, there layMy brother’s lifeless form;When I watched the cataract’s giant playAs it flung to the sky its foaming spray,When I stood ’midst the rushing storm:‘Still, still that awful face was shown,That dead and soulless eye;The breeze’s soft and soothing toneTo me still seemed his parting groan—A sound I could not fly!‘In the fearful silence of the nightStill by my couch he stood,And when morn came forth in splendor bright,Still there, between me and the light,Was traced that scene of blood!’·····He paused: Death’s icy hand was laidUpon his burning brow;That eye, whose fiery glance had madeHis sternest guards shrink back afraid,Was glazed and sightless now.And o’er his face the grave’s dark hueWas in fixed shadow cast;His spasm-drawn lips more fearful grewIn the ghastly shade of their lurid blue;With a shudder that ran that cold form through,The murderer’s spirit passed!

SICILIAN SCENERY AND ANTIQUITIES

NUMBER TWO

We proceed, in another and concluding paper, as promised in the last number of the Knickerbocker, to direct the reader’s attention to the Architectural Antiquities of Sicily, especially those of Grecian structure, which will be described in the order in which they were visited. The first are those of Egesta, or Segeste, as it is sometimes called; a city said to have been built in the remote age of the Siculi, and which was destroyed by Agathocles, the potter’s son, who reduced all Sicily two hundred and eighty years before the Christian era. It lies about forty or fifty miles from Palermo, among the mountains which cluster round the famed Mount Erix, on which once stood a temple dedicated to Venus. On leaving Alcamo, which may be called a city of convents, midway between Palermo and Segeste, the broad slopes of an ample valley lie before the traveller, which though almost treeless, are waving with beans, and grain and grass. In the depth, is a river meandering among fragrant oleanders; on the left, the valley is intersected by a range of distant mountains; on the right is a beautiful bay of the Mediterranean. Across the valley the mountains form a green amphitheatre, and high in its remotest part is seen the Temple of Segeste, but merely as a point of light and shade upon the bosom of the mountain. The next view, if he takes our route, is from the ancient Grecian city of Catafimi, itself perched on a mountain’s top. He looks down a deep luxuriant vale, and on a grassy knoll about three miles distant, lifted from the depths of the valley by precipitous crags, stands the solitary temple; and if seen as we saw it, receiving the last golden rays of the setting sun while all below is wrapped in shade. The next day, would he visit the temple, his road lies through the valley of which I have last spoken. And surely he never passed through such an Arcadian scene as this. Almond and orange trees fill the air with fragrance; his path struggles through the tangled flowers, the cistus and the blue convolvulus, and he disturbs the nightingale in her pleasant haunt. At length, emerging from the valley, and climbing the steep side of a mountain, he stands before the temple. It is a majestic pile, about two hundred feet in length and eighty-eight in breadth, having fourteen columns on each side and six at each end, in all thirty-six columns, of about six feet in diameter; not fluted, as is usual in Grecian Doric temples, but having a very peculiar form. It stands on a platform raised on three gigantic steps. All the columns are standing; the entablatures and pediments are in pretty good preservation, but it is roofless, and flowers and weeds are now waving where once trode the white-robed priests. The breezes from the fragrant mountains and the distant sea, of which it commands a fine view, sigh through it in harmony with its sad and solitary grandeur.

On a neighboring hill are the vestiges of the ancient city, a few ruined towers, probably of the citadel, and a theatre, the stone seats of which are almost entire; part of the sculptured figure of a faun still remains on the proscenium; wild shrubs shade a great part of the ruin, and where manhood and beauty once sat, listening to the tragedies of an Eschylus or Euripides, the adder and the lizards sun themselves. The next ruins we visited were those of Selinunte, anciently Selinus or Selinuntium, which lies on the southern coast of the island. This city was founded by a colony of Greeks about twenty-five hundred years ago. It was taken during the Carthaginian wars, and in a great measure destroyed by Hannibal the son of Giscon, four hundred and nine years before Christ. The country on approaching Selinunte is a dreary plain covered with the palmetto. On gazing toward the sea, when distant two or three miles, the traveller’s eye catches what he would take for a rocky hill, were it not for a few mutilated columns which rise above the blue horizon. As he approaches, the stupendous scene of ruin strikes him with awe. There in a mighty heap lie column and capital, metope and cornice; and the mind is lost in wonder at the power that raised these giant structures, and the power that overthrew them. Only one complete column, and that without its capital, and several mutilated ones, remain standing of the great temple supposed to be of Neptune; the rest are prostrate; and all lying in one direction, bear evidence that they have been thrown down by an earthquake.

The first temple is Grecian Doric, as are all those of which I shall speak. Its columns are about eleven feet across, and they must have been, including their capitals, more than sixty feet high. Above these lofty columns was placed the architrave, one of the stones of which, that we measured, was twenty-five feet in length, eight in height, and six in thickness; but another is still larger; forty feet long, seven broad, and three deep. To transport these enormous masses of stone from their quarry, which is several miles distant, with a deep valley and river intervening, would trouble the modern engineer; but to poise and place them on the top of the columns, seventy feet from the ground, with our mechanical means, were indeed a great feat. The columns were not of single pieces, but composed of several, and they now lie, to use an unpoetical phrase, like rows of enormous cheeses. The great temple was three hundred and thirty-four feet long, one hundred and fifty-four wide; its porticoes at each end were four columns in depth, eight in width; a double row on the sides of the cella or interior edifice, which in all Grecian temples was the sanctum sanctorum. In all, there must have been eighty columns. There is one remarkable feature about this temple, which is, that none of the columns were fluted except those of the eastern end. About thirty paces from this ruin, which the Sicilians call the Pileri di Giganti, or Pillars of the Giants, are the remains of another temple which was about two hundred feet long: its entablature was supported by thirty-six fluted columns of seven feet in diameter and thirty-five feet long, each of a single piece of stone. Only a few fragments of the columns remain standing in their places. Treading another thirty paces, you come to a temple which is of rather larger dimensions than the one last mentioned. The columns of this were also fluted, but no part of the edifice is standing, except a solitary pilaster, which was probably a portion of the cella. These temples were built of a hard but porous stone, of a light color, and were probably covered with a thin coat of cement. They command an extensive view both of sea and land, and in their primal days must, with their tower-like columns, their sculptured entablatures and pediments, have risen above the scene in majestic grandeur.

Three quarters of a mile from these temples was the ancient port, now choked with sand, and near it are the remains of edifices supposed to have been the magazines. On an adjoining hill are remnants of three temples and two towers, in almost undistinguishable ruin. We left Selinunte with a lasting but melancholy impression, and were reminded of the lines:

‘Two or three columns and many a stone,Marble and granite, with grass o’ergrown:·····Remnants of things which have passed away,Fragments of stone rear’d by creatures of clay!’

Girgenti, anciently called Agragas and Agrigentum, is situated on the southern coast of Sicily, in a delicious country; the modern city was built by the Saracens on the summit of a hill upward of eleven hundred feet above the level of the sea. The site of the ancient city is lower, and about a mile distant. It was probably founded in the eighth century before Christ. In its flourishing state it contained two hundred thousand inhabitants, who were celebrated for their hospitality, their love of the arts and luxurious style of living. Plato was so much struck with the solidity of their buildings and the sumptuousness of their dinners, that he said they ‘built as though they thought themselves immortal, but ate as though they never expected to eat again.’ The horses of Agrigentum were celebrated; and one of the citizens returning from the Olympic games, on entering his native town, was followed by three hundred chariots, each drawn by four white horses sumptuously caparisoned. The government of this little state, whose inhabitants never amounted to more than eight hundred thousand, was at first monarchical, afterward democratic; but neither the forms of its institutions, nor its riches and grandeur, could save it from misfortune: it was besieged several times by the Carthaginians, and at length, after a siege of three years, was taken and sacked by Hannibal, the son of Giscon. In alluding to these misfortunes, the historian says: ‘Yet of all the Sicilian cities, the fate of Agrigentum seemed the most worthy to be deplored, from the striking contrast of its fallen state with its recent splendor and prosperity. The natural beauties of Agrigentum were secured by strength and adorned with elegance; and whoever considered either the innumerable advantages of the city itself, or the gay cultivation of the surrounding territory, which abounded in every luxury of the sea and land, was ready to pronounce the Agrigentines the most favored inhabitants of the earth. The exuberant fertility of the soil, particularly the rich luxuriance of the vines and olives, exceeded every thing that is related of the happiest climates, and furnished the means of lucrative commerce with the populous coast of Africa, which was sparingly provided with those valuable plants. The extraordinary wealth of the Agrigentines was displayed in the magnificence of public edifices and in the splendid enjoyment of private fortunes. They had begun and almost completed the celebrated Temple of Jupiter, built in the grandest style of architecture, employed by the Greeks on the greatest and most solemn occasions.’