curs. All kinds of job-work exe- head, one ear gone, and no debts cuted with neatness and despatch. paid of his contracting. California The Fine Arts and Literature fully gold, banks at par, pistareens, fipdiscussed. There will be a series penny bits and Uniten'd Stets' curof discriminating articles on music, rency in general, received in subto which we call the attention of scription. Also, store-pay, corn, amatoors. PRINCIPLES OF 'NINETY- potatoes, rye, oats, eggs, beans, EIGHT, and all the great measures pork, grits, hay, old rope, lambs'of the day, as well as all other prin- wool, shovels, honey, shorts, dried ciples, fully sustained; vice up-cod, catnip, oil, but'nut bark, paints, rooted by the heels, and cast him like a noxious weed away. For farther particulars see large head: RECOMMENDATIONS. IT is a good paper.' Bunkum Flag-Staff It beats our own paper all hollow; there is more humor into it.' Trumpet-Blast of Freedom. glass, putty, snake-root, cord-wood, hemp, live geese feathers, saxafax, dried apples, hops, new cider, axehandles, mill-stones, hemlock-gum, bacon and hams, gingshang-root, vinegar, punkins, harness, ellacompaine, hops, ashes, slippery-ellum bark, clams, nails, varnish, sheetiron, hogshead shooks, old junk, sapsago cheese, whisk-brooms, manure, and all other produce, taken in exchange. Those who do n't want the last number of the FLAG-STAFF please return it to this offis, postpaid, as the demand for that number is very great. A patent churn and washing-machine, to go by dog-power, are left here for inspexion. MILCH FARRER Cow; give eight WANTED TO HIRE, A NEW quarts of milk night and morning; also, to change milks with some neighbor with a cheese-press for a skim-milk cheese once't a week. Horses and cabs to let by the Contents of the Present Number, A-BORROWINK MONEY. XIII. A RIDICULUS THING. XV. CREATION BEATEN ALL HOLLER. HUNGARY. FROM THE PORTFOLIO OF AN OLD CONTRIBUTOR. I. AWAKE, full heart of an indignant earth! Is thy sword sheathed, thy voice of thunders mute? Far from their lone, forsaken homes, the prey Thou art not fallen, O land! though truth and right Vainly, ye crowned traitors! would ye stay The death-wail of the tyrant, rolling deep Newburyport, (Mass.) IV. Bear, then, your fortunes, patriot chiefs! We shed Who are not broken toys of changing Fate, GLEAMS OF BEAUTY. BY A NEW CONTRIBUTOR. WHEN the palace of nature sprang from chaos and light pierced the rayless matter, then first appeared that beauty which so much delights us throughout the works of creation; and it will continue to reveal its splendors until the Earth and the Heavens be rolled away, then shall these forms of grandeur return to the bosom of the CREATOR. There is the origin of Beauty and its perpetual home. It has flowed from exhaustless urns since the creation, and robed each thing that is fair with its grace. It flowed over the clouds, the waters and the plumage of birds; it poured its grace over the neck of the swan, and left its light on the face of man. It nestled in the bell of the flower, in the sinuosi. ties of the shells of ocean, and rested on the wings of the insects. It waves from the tops of the forests, moves amidst the plumes of battle, gathers its grace in a smile, or lightens from the East, robed in the jewels of the sun, and filled with the face of Heaven.' How or whence came this Beauty to dwell in flowery and cloud vestments? Where dwells the power that could fashion these; the evening and the morning, the mountains and the night, the groves and the lawns, the skies and the flowers. Morning precedes the noon and sunset gives place to the night. The verdure and flowers of spring succeed the wrecks of winter, each possessed of their appropriate delights. The storm and the night their grandeur; the clouds their manifold forms and fantastic tracery; winter its crystal palaces, and spring the variety of its verdure and its wilderness of sweets. It is present in every clime, in the golden haze of Italy and the rosy flood of its sky; it shines amidst the mists of Veleii and Niagara, and darts from the cones of the Aurora Borealis. And while it is spread out in every clime and before every eye, it has afforded delight from creation, till down through the lapse of time we behold its gleams to-day. The soul steeped in luxury 34 VOL. XXXI. may not respond to its delights; the crushed by oppression may not hail with so vigorous a hope its presence; the poor may find little leisure for its enjoyments, yet for all these it has a form though it be nameless, and though they be unconscious of its nearness while it 'sits smiling at the heart.' The heart has no formulas that guide its emotions, its impulses are quickened by a congenial object. The laws of our being are fulfilled though we be but automatons in the drama of life. The soul is like a harp with capabilities for plaintive, joyous or solemn music, and when Beauty with its train sweeps over it, it murmurs a response, chanting, like the choristers of old, praises to HIM who fashioned the Heavens with their glory and the Earth with its beauty. And man in all times has not only felt its influences, but has every where left behind him the memorials of his admiration, as witnessed in sculpture, architecture, painting and poetry; the castles of the Plantagenets, the mansions of the Stuarts and Tudors, the palaces and gardens of Semiramis and Alcinous, the magnificence of the temple of Solomon that dazzled the Queen of the South, and the sumptuousness of the Alhambra, likened to a silver vase filled with myrtles and jacinths.' And not only is the past rich in these storied relics, but the present every where teems with its offerings. Each art vies with the other in a gift that is meet. The canvass glows in every shade of coloring, and copies every form of grace; language swells in the cadences of music, and sends forth in its flow accents of pity and tones of mirth. The marble leaves its bed in the quarry and comes forth crowned with grace. Cassandra raises her eyes glowing to Heaven; her eyes, for chains bind her tender hands; and Venus, shining from her rosy neck, reveals the goddess in her unequalled mien. Though the glory has passed away from the mount, it still illumines the prophecies and shines in His words, who spake as never man spake. In the Bible, the true God is revealed as he would be worshipped and obeyed. The sweets of Creation are treasured there amidst precepts for the young and delights for the aged; amidst glimmerings of happiness and life immortal; amidst polished temples and flowery wreaths, and palaces and queen's daughters in clothing of gold, and language, plaintive, wild or sweet as strains Æolian. Nor is Beauty only of outward forms, but it inhabits the soul of things, and its votaries must seek her within and beyond, and cease not as suppliants until its revealings are present to their vision; until it glows before them in so varied forms as if Castalia reflected from its waves gems of every hue, till they shone like the rainbow or the west. Whatever there is of loveliness on earth or in air, is typical of its form. The perfume that the lily tolls on the air, the warbling of music through the vales, the music of bells, the voice of love; the voice of the past amidst cherished scenes; the memory of the loved or cherished buds of hope; the aloe's blossom, the sandal tree's fragrance, the rose's blush, the violet's perfume; the forms of angels, the splendors of seraphs. Here it is skirted with downy gold and colors dipped in Heaven; and there the intolerable blaze of its sapphire gleams is reflected from its throne. Remove it from the earth and you leave a cheerless waste. With what will you robe the forests and the lawns; with what supply the graceful stems and branches of the one, or the waving outline of the other; for streams winding through meadows of flowers; for the tassels and silver of the birch; for all the richness of coloring and variety of form, what will you exchange? If you tire with the round of sameness, the expansiveness that has been given to your heart will in like manner be given to those that come after you. And when you have torn its mantle from the earth, remove the blue that sparkles above, you remove the cunning workmanship from the Heavens; nor let Iris ever more appear with her diverse-colored bow; nor leave even Luna to wander amidst the desolation; no lone pine to sigh back the requiem; nor lone star to irradiate the gloom, as if the gloomy Dis tore Proserpine anew from her loved parent's arms, or Eurydice vanished again from Orpheus' gaze. And this Beauty is no idle ornament: diverse are its uses, and its influences are never lost. No influence is lost. If it be evil, it leaves its stain, if it be good it still smoulders there, and is liable at each instant to burst into a flame. Each day some beautiful creation should be impressed upon the mind; each day the examples of heroism should receive their moments of meditation. Youth should be continually surrounded with ennobling influences: so GoD works, so man does not work: a love of truth should be early awakened in them. To correct the heart, all humiliating influences must be removed, and converse be held with the ennobling forms of art. In the language of Goëthe, we have an imagination before which, inasmuch as it should not seize upon the first conceptions that present themselves, we must place the fittest and most beautiful images, and thereby accustom the mind to recognise the beautiful every where, and in nature itself, under its fixed and true as also in its finer features. Our feelings, affections and passions should all be advantageously developed and purified. That man is little to be envied whose patriotism would not be enkindled on the plains of Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer among the ruins of Iona; who sees aught unholy amidst the lofty conceptions of Raffaelle, or feels his heart not dilated amidst the aisles of Westminster; who could cherish in memory the heroism of the revolution and experience no emotions for his country, or be constant in the presence of the Ecce Homo and not be moved by the inspiration of its divineness and majesty. Art is a store-house within which are accumulated the beauties of the past. Each jem and jewel is locked within its recess. Within its aisles and along its corridors, the canvass is ripe with the matchless beauties, the intense though noble expression, the variety and loftiness of the invention of Raffaelle; the brilliancy of the coloring of Titian; the sweetness of Guido; the splendor, the opulency of Rubens; the richness, the truthfulness, the magic of Rembrandt's gloom. And here too architecture presents before us the splendors of Versailles or Blenheim, the lengthened aisles and fretted vaults, the towering domes and sumptuous decorations of ecclesiastical pomp. And sculpture within displays its creation glowing in the celestial loveliness of the Venus Anadyomene, or crowned with the effulgence that radiated from the temples of Apollo. |