Miscellany: Ancient Aqueducts [pp. 339-341]

1874.1 SJA1?- qAZT~q.-ffisqE'LLAwy
339
and to-day, from the lonely shores of Lake
Babine to the bend of the Frazer at Quesnelle, the ruined wire hangs loosely through
the forest.
During the first two days of June they
journeyed through a wild, undulating coun.
try, filled with lakes and rolling hills; grassy
openings were numerous, and many small
streams, filled with fish, intersected the land.
The lakes of this northern plateau are singul arly beautifuL Many isles lie upon their
surface; from tiny promontories the huge
Douglas pine lifts his motionless head. The
great northern diver, the loon, dips his white
breast in the blue wavelets, and sounds his
melancholy cry through the solitude. There
is no sound which conveys a sense of inde.
scribable loneliness so completely as this
wail, which the loon sends at night over the
forest-shores. The man who wrote
"And on the mere the wailing died away,"
must have heard it in his dreams.
With this characteristic memory of the
sounds of the solemn and lonely wilderness
ends the story of our hardy and indefatigable
traveler. Far before him spread civilization
and the shining waters of the Pacific, behind
him a thousand reminiscences of the wild
North-land, thoughts which would soon become all the more vivid and striking, for he
was hurrying home to join the African expeditionary forces under his old friend and
leader, Sir Garnet Wolseley. Let`iS hope
that he will give us another hook of adventure and travel about the torrid antipodes no
less entertaining than the present one.
STAR-GAZING.
ET be what is: why should we strive and
wrestle,
With mobile skill, against a subtile doubt?
Or pin a mystery with our puny pestle,
And vainly tiw to bray its secret out?
What boots it me to gaze at other planets,
And speculate on sensate beings there?
It helps me not, that, since the moon began its
Well-ordered course, it knew no breath of
nil-.
There may be men and women up in Venus,
Where science finds both summer - green
and snow;
But arewe happier, asking, "Have they seen
us?
And, like us earth-men, do they yearn to
know?"
On greater globes than ours men may be
greater,
For all things ws see in proportion run;
But will it make our poor cup any sweeter
To think a nobler Shakespeare thrills the
sun?Or that our sun is hut itself a minor,
Like this small earth-a tenth-rate satellite
That swings submissive round an orb diviner,
Whose day is lightning, with our day for
night?
Or, farther still, that t~at sun has a centre,
Round which it meanly winds a servile road;
Ah, will it raise us or degrade, to enter
Where that sun's Shakespeare towers al most to God?
No, no; far better, "lords of all creation,"
To strut our ant-hill and to take our ease;
To look aloft and say," That constellation
Was lighted there my regal sight to
please!"
We owe no thanks to so-called men of science,
Who demonstrate that earth, not sun, goes
round;
`Twere better think the sun a mere appliance
To light man's villages and heat his ground.
There seems no use in asking or in humbling:
The mind incurious has the most of rest.
If we can live and laugh and pray, not grum bling,
`Tis all we can do here-and`tis the best.
The throbbing brain will burst its tender rai meat
With futile force, to see by finite light
How man's brief period and eternal payment
Are weighed as equal in the Infinite sight.
`Tis all in vain to struggle with abstraction The Milky -Way that tempts our mental
glass;
The study for mankind is, earth-horn action;
The highest wisdom, let the wondering pass.
The Lord knows best: He gave us thirst for
learning;
And deepest knowledge of his work betrays
No thirst left waterless. Shall our soul-yearn lug,
Apart from all things, he a quenchless
blaze?
Joux Bovnz O'REiLLY.
MISCELLANY.
"LFATHFi?-STO~KI~~" ON Tff~
STh(;~
HE production at Niblo's Theatre, in this
city, of a dramatized version of Fenimore
Cooper's "Last of the Mohicans" elicited
from Mr. Winter, the accomplished dramatic
critic of the Tri6une, an elaborate criticism,
from which we quote a passage marked by
singular beauty and poetic insight
"It ought to be considered that the inherent spiritual charms appertaining to different forms of art are not interchangeable.
The best Grecians are agreed that something
yet remains in Homer which translation has
never grasped. The characteristic magic of
a romance will not impart its thrill to a drama.
In this particular case, accordingly, those
who should expect, in any play, a reproduction of the soul of Cooper's genius would inevitably be disappointed. Certain dramatic
elements his genius and his stories do, indeed,
possess; but the essential quality of them is
the evanescent spirit of romance and that
can no more be cramped within stage-grooves
than the notes of the wind-harp can be prisoned in a bird-cage. Often, when Cooper is
imaginative, his mind revels over vast spaces,
alike in the trackless wilderness and on the
trackless ocean-forests that darken half a
continent, and tremendous icebergs that crash
and crumble upon unknown seas. More of7;2380]ten he is descriptive and meditative, morarlzing, like Wordsworth, on rock and river and
the tokens of God in the wonders of creafion.
His highest mood of feeling is that of calmeyed philosophy.His highest ideal of virtue
is self-sacrifice. His best pictures are too
broad in scope and too voluminous in details
for illustration in a theatre. Neither jes
per's white-winged descent upon the Indian
ambuscade, nor the flight of Hutter's ark, nor
Ckingeekgook singing his death-song, nor the
mystenous ~ilot steering his ship, in night
and tempest, through a perilous channel and
a thousand dangers of death, could ever be
shown in scenery. His highest figures, moreover, are types of the action that passes within the heart; of passion that is repressed;
of what is suffered rather than of what is
done. He never painted better than when he
painted the Patkftne'er vanishing on the dusky
edge of-the forest, after the parting with Mabe? and in this lovely and pathetic incident,
as in many that are kindred with it, there is
.iot a particle of dramatic effect. Salient
features are alone available for the purpose of
the dramatist, and it is not in salient features
that the spell of Cooper's genius resides.
"If these views are sound, Mr. Rowe has
succeeded as thoroughly as any one could reasonably be expected to succeed, under the peculiar conditions of the case. The most that
could be exacted is that the adapter of
`Leather-stocking' should choose the representative story of the series, bring out the
strong points, suggest the central character,
and keep abreast of his subject, in taste and
dignity. All this Mr. Rowe has accomplished
in dramatizing`The Last of the Mohicans;'
and if his play does not match his model, in
rounded ideal, entire naturalness, and protracted, breathless interest, that result comes
by obvious necessity, and is not a ilault The
essence of the novel-the wildwood fragrance
of fancy, and the reiterated yet constantly
varied mood of suspense - eludes dramatic
treatment. The reader of the story is constantly aware of this charm, and never so
much aware of it, perhaps, as in that absorbing chapter which describes the commencement of ~l'nro's quest of his daughters, after the massacre. The spectator of
tlie play is never aware of it at all. He is
continually interested, indeed, and at times
he is excited a~d impressed; but he is no
longer ruled by the massive sincerity of
Cooper's feeling, and the honest, minute
thoroughness of his simple text, and he is no
longer swayed by his own imagination. In
the silence of the library the reader may listen with Hawkeye for the rustle of a leaf, or
the cracking of a twig, or the lonesome call of
the loon across the darkening lake at sunset.
In the glare of the theatre-lamps, and when
neither the situation nor the language is
ideal, the spectator perceives that his vision
is limited by the picture before him-and the
inward ear is shut and the inward eye is
darkened. It is the nature of some books
that they lure us intO a dream of pleasure
and keep us there; and it is the nature of
some stage pictures that they confront fancy
with fact and stop our dreaming with a
shock. Notiting in Cooper's delineation of
wilderness life seems incongruous or absurd
till flie stage copy preselits it as actual. His
books have an atmosphere of their own-like
the odor of pine-trees on the wind of nightand this the stage cannot preserve. They
were not written for it and they cannot ho
fitted to its powers and its needs. They will
yield it romantic pictures and strong in cidents and a single and limited set of chnracters; but they will not yield it their glamour.
The poet who brought home the sea-shells
found that they had left their beauty on the
beach."
A~O&iENT 10 tWB U('TS.
(F~m the ~~~eed"A~~~ c~~~~~~~,"
ef p~b1i~~ie by ~. Appiete & ci.)
Aquznucr (Lat. aqu~ of water, and Juetus, a channel; formerly spelled equ~Juet),
a cha'iiiel for the conveyance of water or
in ti~c more general acceptation of the