Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 2.djvu/906

898 and this long swell, that now are here at work, have been ere now at home in the great inland sea of Europe, breathed on by soft, warm winds from fruit-groves, vineyards, and wide fields of flowers,—have sparkled in the many-colored lights, and felt the trivial oars and dallying fingers of the loiterers, on the long canals of Venice,—have quenched the ashes of the Dutchman's pipe, thrown overboard from his dull, laboring treckschuyt,—have wrought their patient tasks in the dim caverns of the Indian Archipelago,—have yielded to the little builders under water means and implements to rear their towering altar, dwelling, monument.

"These little waves have crossed the ocean, tumbling like porpoises at play, and, taking on a savage nature in the Great Wilderness, have thundered in close ranks and countless numbers against man's floating fortress,—have stormed the breach and climbed up over the walls in the ship's riven side,—have followed, howling and hungry as mad wolves, the crowded raft,—have leaped upon it, snatching off, one by one, the weary, worn-out men and women,—have taken up and borne aloft, as if on hands and shoulders, the one chance human body that is brought in to land, and the long spur, from which man's dancing cordage wastes by degrees, find yields its place to long, green streamers, much like those that clung to this tall, taper tree when it stood in the Northern forest.

"These waves have rolled their breasts about amid the wrecks and weeds of the hot stream that comes up many thousands of miles out of the Gulf of Mexico, as the great Mississippi goes down into it, and by-and-by these waves will move, all numb and chilled, among the mighty icebergs and ice-fields that must be brought down from the poles."

"She asked, 'Have you given up being a priest, Mr. Urston?'

Yes!' he answered, in a single word, looking before him, as it were along his coming life, like a quoit-caster, to see how far the uttered word would strike; then, turning to her, and in a lower voice, added, 'I've left that, once and forever.

"He stood still with his grief; and, as Mr. Wellon pressed his honest, hard hand, he lifted to his pastor one of those childlike looks that only come out on the face of the true man, that has grown, as oaks grow, ring around ring, adding each after-age to the childhood that has never been lost, but has been kept innermost. This fisherman seemed like one of those that plied their trade, and were the Lord's disciples, at the Sea of Galilee, eighteen hundred years ago. The very flesh and blood inclosing such a nature keep a long youth through life. Witness the genius, (who is only the more thorough man,) poet, painter, sculptor, finder-out, or whatever; how fresh and fair such an one looks out from under his old age! Let him be Christian, too, and he shall look as if—shedding this outward—the inward being would walk forth a glorified one."

"As he mentioned his fruitless visits, a startling, most repulsive leer just showed itself in Ladford's face; but it disappeared as suddenly and wholly as a monster that has come up, horrid and hideous, to the surface of the sea, and then has sunk again, bodily, into the dark deep, and is gone, as if it had never come, except for the fear and loathing that it leaves behind. This face, after that look, had nothing repulsive in it, but was only the more subdued and sad."

The author's mind so teems with images, that he does not always discriminate between the good and the bad. Occasionally we find some that are manifestly faulty and overstrained.

We do not admire any one of the above,—least of all the last, in which the human voice is embodied as a sexton going down the steps of a tomb. Why, too, as a matter of verbal criticism, should the author use such words as "tragedist," "exhibitress," and "cheaty?"

In the delineation of character the author shows uncommon power and is entitled to high praise. His portraits are animated, life-like, and individual. Father Terence is drawn with a firm and skilful touch. The task which the author prescribed to himself—to present an ecclesiastic without learning, without intellectual power, without enthusiasm, and with the easy habits of a careless and enjoyable tem-