The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862

V >> Various >> The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862

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Calm and clear was the night on which I brought these my treasures
forth. Jupiter was blazing in the heavens, and challenged Art to seize
his majestic lineaments. It turned out a point of fire much like that
which my master had exhibited to me. I mixed a finer nitrate,
repolished my plate, and was this time rewarded by seeing, under all
the diameters which I had, the satellites also. Very much thrilled
even with this degree of success, and taking the picture on paper, I
put my plate away, and set myself to study what I should do next. It
had not yet occurred to me to inquire of myself what definite thing I
really was after. My deepest hope was in the undefinableness of its
object: I knew only that a clear idea (and Plato says all clear ideas
are true) of the subtile susceptibilities of nitrate of silver,
_limited only by materials_, had engendered within me, through
much pondering, an embryo idea, to the development of which my life
was intuitively consecrated. I would not define it to myself, because
I felt (intuitively, also) that it was something illimitable,
therefore indefinable.

I began to experiment now with lenses, placing various kinds and
powers one above another. It occurred to me that I had hitherto
brought their power to bear only upon _whole_, objects. But what
would be the result of magnifying an object daguerrotyped until it
covered the disc of the reflector, then photographing it, and
afterward magnifying a central segment of the picture to its utmost,
and again renewing the experiment on this? An infinite series of
analyses might be carried into the heart of an image; and might not
something therein, invisible not only to the naked eye, but to the
strongest magnifier, be revealed? Following this reflection, I took a
common stereoscopic view and subjected it to my lenses. It was an
ordinary view of a Swiss hamlet, the chief object of which was an inn
with a sign over the door surmounted by a bush. The only objects upon
the sign discernible with a common convex eye-glass were a mug of beer
on one side and a wine-bottle on the other. Their position indicated
that something else was on the sign: the stronger diameters presently
brought out "CARL ELZNERS"; the strongest I had were exhausted in
bringing out "GARTEN UND GASTHAUS." When this, the utmost dimension,
was reached, I photographed it. Then, taking ordinary magnifiers, I
began upon that part of the sign where, if anything remained unevoked,
it would be found. The reader will observe, that, each time that the
result of one enlargement was made the subject for another, the loss
was in the field or range which must be paid for intensity and
minuteness. Thus, in the end, there might appear but one letter of a
long sentence, or a part of a letter. In this case, however, the
result was better than I had expected: I read distinctly, "--EIN,
WEI--"; and Luther's popular lines, "_Wer liebt nicht wein,
weib_," etc., were brought to my mind at once. Thus I had the sign
in full: the powerful agent of the sun on earth had fixed Carl Elzner
and his Protestant beer-garden on the stereoscopic view forever,
whether the dull eyes of men could read them or not.

Thrilled and animated by this success, I hastened to apply the same
plan of magnifying segment by segment to my photograph of
Jupiter. But, alas, although something suggestive did appear, or so I
fancied, the image grew dimmer with each analysis, until, under the
higher powers, it disappeared, and the grainings of the card
superseded the planet. Had I not proved that my principle was good in
the case of the Swiss sign-board, I should now have given it up as the
whim of an over-excited brain. But now I thought only of the assertion
of the daguerrotypist, that "the nitrate was limited in sensitiveness
only by the imperfection of the materials," (i. e. plates, glass,
reflectors, etc.,) and I had heard the same repeated by the paper
which had finally replaced the picture it held. I now determined to
risk on the experiment the elegant steel plate on whose polish I had
spent so much pains and time. I took the portrait of Jupiter thereon,
and fixed it forever. This time I could not be mistaken in supposing
that as the field of vision shrank some strange forms appeared; but I
could be certain of none which were essentially different from those
revealed by the largest telescopes. My narrowing and intensifying
process then began to warn me of another failure: when I had reached
the last point at which the image could be held at all, the grain of
the steel plate was like great ropes, and it was only after resting my
eyes for some time, then suddenly turning them upon it, that I could
see any picture at all. For an instant it would look like an
exceedingly delicate lichen,--then nothing was visible but huge bars
of steel.

Ah, with what despair did I see the grand secret which had so long
hovered before me and led my whole life now threatening to elude and
abandon me forever! "But," I cried, "it shall not go so easily, by
Heaven! If there be a genius in the casket, unsealed it shall be!"

I resolved to give up steel for some metal or substance of finer
grain. I almost impoverished myself in purchasing plates of the finer
metals, before it occurred to me to try glass, and had to laugh at my
own stupidity when I discovered that in the last analysis glass showed
much smoother than any of the rest. I immediately obtained a great
many specimens of glass, and spent much time in subjecting them to my
lenses only to see how much fibrous appearance, or unevenness, could
be brought before the eye from a smooth surface. I found one excellent
specimen, and gave myself up to grinding it to the utmost extent
consistent with its strength.

I felt now that I was about to make a final test. It would be not only
a test of my new plate, but of my own sanity, which I had at various
times doubted. I felt, that, unless my idea should be proved true, I
could no longer trust my reason, which had at every step beckoned me
on to the next. I had studied medicine enough in my father's office
long ago to know that either sanity or insanity may come as a reality
from a mind's determined verdict on itself. When, therefore, I again
sat down to analyze my daguerrotype of the planet, it was with the awe
and fear which might beset one standing on a ledge between a frightful
chasm and a transcendent height, and not knowing which was to receive
him.

From the first burst of the sunlight over the world, I sat at my
task. Each instrument, each lens I used, I spent an hour or hours
over, giving it the finest polish or nicety of adjustment to which it
could be brought. Into that day I had distilled my past; into it I was
willing to distil the eternity that was before me. With each now
application, the field of the planet shrank a thousand leagues, but
each time the light deepened. According to my principle, there was no
doubt that some object would be revealed before the space became too
limited, provided nothing interfered with the distinctness of the
picture. At length I calculated that I was selecting about twenty
square miles from about seven hundred. Forms were distinct, but they
were rigid, and painfully reminded me of the astronomic maps. About
five removes from this, I judged that the space I was looking at must
be about ten feet square. I was sure that the objects really occupying
those ten feet must be in my picture, if I could evoke them.

On this I placed a mild power, and was startled at finding something
new. The picture which had been so full of rigid and sharp outlines
now became a confusion of ever-changing forms. Now it was light,--now
shadow; angles faded into curves; but out of the swarming mass of
shapes I could not, after hours of watching, obtain one that seemed
like any form of life or art that I had ever seen.

Had I, then, come to the end of my line? My eyes so pained me, and had
been so tried, that I strove to persuade myself that the evanescent
forms resulting from my unsatisfactory experiment must be optical
illusions. I determined to let matters rest as they were until the
next day, when my brain would be less heated and my eye calmer and
steadier.

They will never let a man alone,--they, the herd, who cry "Madman!"
when any worker and his work which they cannot comprehend rise before
them. In the great moment when, after years of climbing, I stood
victorious on the summit, they claimed that I had fallen to the
chasm's depths, and confined me here at Staunton as a hopeless
lunatic. This heart of mine, burning with the grandest discovery ever
made, must throb itself away in a cell, because it could not contain
its high knowledge, but went forth among men once more to mingle ideal
rays with their sunshine, and make every wind, as it passed over the
earth, waft a higher secret than was ever before attained. A lunatic!
I! But next me in array are the prisons of the only sane ones of
history, the cells dug by Inquisitorial Ignorance in every age for its
wisest men. Now I understand them; walls cannot impede the hands we
stretch out to each other across oceans and centuries. One day the
purblind world will invoke in its prayers the holy army of the martyrs
of Thought.

Yes, I was mad,--mad to think that the world's horny eyes could not
receive the severe light of knowledge,--mad as was he who ran through
the streets and cried, "_Eureka!_" The head and front of my
madness have this extent,--no more. And for this I must write the
rest of my story here amid iron gratings, through which, however,
thank God, my familiars, the stars, and the red, blue, and golden
planets, glance kindly, saying, "Courage, brother! soon thou shaft
rise to us, to whom thou belongest!" Yet I will write it: one day men
will read, and say, "Come, let us garnish the sepulchre of one immured
because his stupid age could not understand!" and then, doubtless,
they will go forth to stone the seer on whose tongue lies the noblest
secret of the Universe for that day.

When I left the last experiment mentioned in these pages, in order to
recover steadiness of brain and nerve, and to relieve my overtaxed
eyes, I had no hope of reaching success in any other way than that
pointed out in the principle which I was pressing,--a principle whose
importance is proved in the familiar experiments on stereoscopic
views, whereby things entirely invisible to the naked eye are
disclosed by lenses. But that night I dreamed out the success which
had eluded my waking hours. I have nothing to say here about the
phenomenon of dreaming: I state only the fact. In my dream there
appeared to me my father, bearing in his left hand a plate of glass,
and in his right a phial of bright blue liquid which he seemed to be
pouring on the polished surface. The phial was of singular shape,
having a long slender neck rising from a round globe. When I awoke, I
found myself standing in the middle of the floor with hands stretched
out appealingly to the vacant air.

Acknowledging, as I did, nothing but purely scientific
methods,--convinced that nothing could be reached but through all the
intervening steps fixed by Nature between Reason and Truth,--I should,
at any other than such a weary time, have forgotten the vision in an
hour. But now it took a deeper hold on my imagination. That my father
should be associated in my dream with these experiments was natural;
the glass plate which he had held was the same I was using; as for the
phial, might it not be some old compound that I had known him or the
daguerrotypist use, now casually spun out of the past and woven in
with my present pursuits? Nevertheless, I was glad to shove aside this
rationalistic interpretation: on the verge of drowning, I magnified
the straw to a lifeboat, and caught at it. I pardoned myself for going
to the shelves which still held my father's medicines, and examining
each of the phials there. But when I turned away without finding one
which at all answered to my dream, I felt mean and miserable; deeply
disappointed at not having found the phial, I was ashamed at my
retrogression to ages which dealt with incantations, and luck, and
other impostures. I was shamed to the conclusion that the phial with
its blue liquid was something I had read of in the curious old books
which my father had hidden away from me, and which, strange to say, I
had never been able to find since his death.

Whilst I was meditating thus, there was a knock at my door, and a
drayman entered with a chest, which he said had belonged to my father,
and had been by him deposited several years before with a friend who
lived a few miles from our village. I could scarcely close and bolt
the door after the man had departed; _as he brought in the chest, I
had seen through the lid the phial with the blue liquid_. So
certain was I of this, that before I opened it I went and withdrew my
glass plate, repolished it, and made all ready for a final
experiment. Opening the chest, I found the old books which had been
abstracted, and a small medicine-box, in which was the phial seen in
my dream.

But now the question arose, How was the blue fluid to be applied? I
had not looked closely at the plate which my father held to see
whether it was already prepared for an impression; and so I was at a
loss to know whether this new fluid was to prepare the glass with a
more perfect polish, or to mingle with the subtile nitrate
itself. Unfortunately I tried the last first, and there was no result
at all,--except the destruction of a third of the precious
fluid. Cleaning the plate perfectly, I burnt into it, drop by drop,
the whole of the contents of the phial. As I drained the last drop
from it, it reddened on the glass as if it were the last drop of my
heart's blood poured out.

At the first glance on the star-picture thus taken, I knew that I was
successful. Jupiter shone like the nucleus of a comet, even before a
second power was upon it. As picture after picture was formed, belts
of the most exquisite hues surrounded the luminous planet, which
seemed rolling up to me, hurled from lens to lens, as if wrested from
its orbit by a commanding force. Plainer and plainer grew its surface;
mountain-ranges, without crags or chasms, smooth and undulating,
emerged; it was zoned with a central sunlit sea. On each scene of the
panorama I lingered, and each was retained as well as the poor
materials would allow. I was cautious enough to take two pictures of
each distinct phase,--one to keep, if this happy voyage should be my
last, and the other of course as the subject from which a centre
should be selected for a new expansion.

At last there stood plainly before my eye a tower!--a tower, slender
and high, with curved dome, the work of Art! A cry burst from my
lips,--I fainted with joy. Afraid to touch the instrument with my
trembling hand, I walked the floor, imploring back my nervous
self-possession. Fixing the tower by photograph, I took the centre of
its dome as the next point for expansion. Slowly, slowly, as if the
fate of a solar system depended on each turn of the screw, I drew on
the final view. An instant of gray confusion,--another of tremulous
crystallization,--and, scarcely in contact with the tower's dome, as
if about to float from it, hovered an aerial ship, with two round
balls suspended above it. Again one little point was taken, for I felt
that this was not the culmination of my vision; and now two figures
appeared, manifestly human, but their features and dress as yet
undistinguishable.

Another turn, and I looked upon the face of a glorious man!

Another, and the illusion, Space, shrank away beneath my feet, my eye
soared over her abysses, and gazed into the eye of an immortal.

But now,--oh, horror!--turning back to earth, I remembered that I had
not analyzed the precious liquid which could so link world with
world. Seized with a sudden agony, I tried to strain one least drop
more; but, alas! the power had perished from the earth!

For this loss I deserve all that has happened to me. My haste to
fulfil my life's object proved me the victim of a mental lust, and I
saw why the highest truth is not revealed: simply, it awaits those who
can receive and not be intoxicated by it. And now the planet which I
had disobeyed for another avenges itself,--seeing, naturally, in
strange results, whose methods are untraceable, nothing but
monomania. The photographs, in which the pollens of two planet-flowers
mingle, lie in my attic, dust-eaten:--"Above all, the patient must not
see anything of _that_ kind," has been the order ever since I
published a card announcing my discovery to my fellow-citizens.

But they were gentle; they did not take away all. The old books are
with me, each a benison from a brother. The best works of ancient
times are, I think, best understood when read by prison-light.

Hist! some visitor comes! Many come from curiosity to see one who
thinks he descried a man in a planet "Distinguished man of science
from Boston to see me,"--ah, indeed! Celebrated paper on tadpoles, I
suppose! But now that I look closer, I like my Boston man-of-science's
eye, and his voice is good. I have not yet exhausted the fingers of
one hand in counting up all the sane people who have visited me since
I have been immured.

How do I test them?

As now I test you.

Here my treasure of treasures I open. It is the old suppressed volume
of John de Sacro Bosco, inscribed to that Castilian Alphonso who dared
to have the tables of Ptolemy corrected. (Had he not been a king, he
had been mad: such men as Bosco were mad after Alphonso died.) And
thus to my curious scientific visitor I read what I ask may go into
his report along with the description of my case.

"John de Sacro Bosco sendeth this book to Alphonso de Castile. A. D.
1237."

"They alone are kings who know."

"Ken and Can are twins."

"God will not be hurried."

"Sacred are the fools: God understandeth them."

"Impatient, I cried, 'I will clear the stair that leadeth to God!'
Now sit I at His feet, lame and weak, and men scoff at knowledge,
--'Aha, this cometh of ascending stairways!'"

"The silk-worm span its way up to wings. I am ashamed and dumb, who
would soar ere I had toiled.

"When riseth an Ideal in the concave of some vaulting heart or brain,
it is a new heaven and signeth a new earth."

"Each clear Idea that ascendeth the vault of Pure Reason is a
Bethlehem star; be sure a Messias is born for it on the Earth; the new
sign lit up in the heaven of Vision is a new power set in motion among
men; and, do what the Herods will, Earth's incense, myrrh, yea, even
its gold, must gather to the feet of the Omnipotent Child,--the IDEA."

IN WAR-TIME.

INSCRIBED TO W.B.

As they who watch by sick-beds find relief
Unwittingly from the great stress of grief
And anxious care in fantasies outwrought
From the hearth's embers flickering low, or caught
From whispering wind, or tread of passing feet,
Or vagrant memory calling up some sweet
Snatch of old song or romance, whence or why
They scarcely know or ask,--so, thou and I,
Nursed in the faith that Truth alone is strong
In the endurance which outwearies Wrong,
With meek persistence baffling brutal force,
And trusting God against the universe,--
We, doomed to watch a strife we may not share
With other weapons than the patriot's prayer,
Yet owning, with full hearts and moistened eyes,
The awful beauty of self-sacrifice,
And wrung by keenest sympathy for all
Who give their loved ones for the living wall
'Twixt law and treason,--in this evil day
May haply find, through automatic play
Of pen and pencil, solace to our pain,
And hearten others with the strength we gain.
I know it has been said our times require
No play of art, nor dalliance with the lyre,
No weak essay with Fancy's chloroform
To calm the hot, mad pulses of the storm,
But the stern war-blast rather, such as sets
The battle's teeth of serried bayonets,
And pictures grim as Vernet's. Yet with these
Some softer tints may blend, and milder keys
Believe the storm-stunned ear. Let us keep sweet,
If so we may, our hearts, even while we eat
The bitter harvest of our own device
And half a century's moral cowardice.
As Nuernberg sang while Wittenberg defied,
And Kranach painted by his Luther's side,
And through the war-march of the Puritan
The silver stream of Marvell's music ran,
So let the household melodies be sung,
The pleasant pictures on the wall be hung,--
So let us hold against the hosts of Night
And Slavery all our vantage-ground of Light.
Let Treason boast its savagery, and shake
From its flag-folds its symbol rattlesnake,
Nurse its fine arts, lay human skins in tan,
And carve its pipe-bowls from the bones of man,
And make the tale of Fijian banquets dull
By drinking whiskey from a loyal skull,--
But let us guard, till this sad war shall cease,
(God grant it soon!) the graceful arts of peace:
No foes are conquered who the victors teach
Their vandal manners and barbaric speech.

And while, with hearts of thankfulness, we bear
Of the great common burden our full share,
Let none upbraid us that the waves entice
Thy sea-dipped pencil, or some quaint device,
Rhythmic and sweet, beguiles my pen away
From the sharp strifes and sorrows of to-day.
Thus, while the east-wind keen from Labrador
Sings in the leafless elms, and from the shore
Of the great sea comes the monotonous roar
Of the long-breaking surf, and all the sky
Is gray with cloud, home-bound and dull, I try
To time a simple legend to the sounds
Of winds in the woods, and waves on pebbled bounds,--
A song of breeze and billow, such as might
Be sung by tired sea-painters, who at night
Look from their hemlock camps, by quiet cove
Or beach, moon-lighted, on the waves they love.
(So hast thou looked, when level sunset lay
On the calm bosom of some Eastern bay,
And all the spray-moist rocks and waves that rolled
Up the white sand-slopes flashed with ruddy gold.)
Something it has--a flavor of the sea,
And the sea's freedom--which reminds of thee.
Its faded picture, dimly smiling down
From the blurred fresco of the ancient town,
I have not touched with warmer tints in vain,
If, in this dark, sad year, it steals one thought from pain.

AMY WENTWORTH.

Her fingers shame the ivory keys
They dance so light along;
The bloom upon her parted lips
Is sweeter than the song.

O perfumed suitor, spare thy smiles!
Her thoughts are not of thee:
She better loves the salted wind,
The voices of the sea.

Her heart is like an outbound ship
That at its anchor swings;
The murmur of the stranded shell
Is in the song she sings.

She sings, and, smiling, hears her praise,
But dreams the while of one
Who watches from his sea-blown deck
The icebergs in the sun.

She questions all the winds that blow,
And every fog-wreath dim,
And bids the sea-birds flying north
Bear messages to him.

She speeds them with the thanks of men
He perilled life to save,
And grateful prayers like holy oil
To smooth for him the wave.

Brown Viking of the fishing-smack!
Fair toast of all the town!--
The skipper's jerkin ill beseems
The lady's silken gown!

But ne'er shall Amy Wentworth wear
For him the blush of shame
Who dares to set his manly gifts
Against her ancient name.

The stream is brightest at its spring,
And blood is not like wine;
Nor honored less than he who heirs
Is he who founds a line.

Full lightly shall the prize be won,
If love be Fortune's spur;
And never maiden stoops to him
Who lifts himself to her.

Her home is brave in Jaffrey Street,
With stately stair-ways worn
By feet of old Colonial knights
And ladies gentle-born.

Still green about its ample porch
The English ivy twines,
Trained back to show in English oak
The herald's carven signs.

And on her, from the wainscot old,
Ancestral faces frown,--
And this has worn the soldier's sword,
And that the judge's gown.

But, strong of will and proud as they,
She walks the gallery-floor
As if she trod her sailor's deck
By stormy Labrador!

The sweet-brier blooms on Kittery-side,
And green are Elliot's bowers;
Her garden is the pebbled beach,
The mosses are her flowers.

She looks across the harbor-bar
To see the white gulls fly,
His greeting from the Northern sea
Is in their clanging cry.

She hums a song, and dreams that he,
As in its romance old,
Shall homeward ride with silken sails
And masts of beaten gold!

Oh, rank is good, and gold is fair,
And high and low mate ill;
But love has never known a law
Beyond its own sweet will!

THOREAU.

Henry David Thoreau was the last male descendant of a French ancestor
who came to this country from the Isle of Guernsey. His character
exhibited occasional traits drawn from this blood in singular
combination with a very strong Saxon genius.

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