IMMORTALITY. THERE are some subjects which stand intimately connected with man as he is in the present state, upon which depend his well-being here and hereafter, which, from the mystery in which they appear— the depth, profoundness, and abstruseness of questions which naturally arise therefrom-he is content to set aside now, or, at least, view them as belonging more to the poet or philosopher than to himself as something which is pro tempore, altogether beyond his individual sphere in this life. This is too often the case with the great subject of man's immortality. The great mass of mankind view it only in the abstract as it will be; not as it now is. The great fact of the immortality of individual man does not enter into his every-day life, or cast its halo of light and glory over his individual action. He does not travel the journey of life with it impressed on his heart and mind. Men hear of immortality from the rostrum of the orator or the pulpit of the preacher, or, perhaps, read of it in some popular author. They pronounce it a fine thing and a glorious feature of the "to come." But this only serves to make and keep it an abstraction, rather than a great, present and eternal truth, linked to every individual man. They, in fine, believe in the immortality of the soul, because the orthodox preacher teaches it; because the philosopher proves it by the supposed modicum of argument or logic; because the poet lavishes his eloquence and beauty of thought, symbol, and expression upon it. But all this avails nothing. Out of this, a practical belief in the great fact never came, can or will come. Religious teaching, though it combine the elements of philosophy and poesy, of itself never produced a true belief in the great truth. No truth can be said to be a matter of genuine faith, unless it become the possession of the soul; or, if we may use a figure, entwined about it as the ivy round the oak, so intensely that it becomes part of itself. Genuine faith is inevitably practical. It influences the spiritual habitudes of our inner being, and manifests itself in the life, character, and action. The greatest argument on the immortality of the soul is within a man's self. When a man passes from all foreign and outward evidences on it, and turns his mental vision inward, and comes in contact with self-consciousness, he believes in the fact, and no longer dilates upon the immortality of the soul, but on his individual immortal selfhood. The life, character, and action of him that thus believes are all impressed with it; while he, in the common course of this life, keeps his eye fixed on the great fact, and, with Pompey, exclaims, "I prefer the glory that will last for ever to that of a day." Addison, in his "Cato," when he speaks of the soul as surviving "the war of elements, the wreck of matter, and the crush of worlds," only brings the great truth before the mental eye as an abstract truth. We see it not in these words, but in Cato-the dying, but ever-living Cato-who, conscious of the great truth, snaps the brittle thread of this life that he may more fully enjoy the reality. The beautiful words of Montgomery, "The sun is but a spark of fire, A transient meteor in the sky: do but present the truth to the mind in the abstract: but when he says, "There is a calm for those who weep- A rest for weary pilgrims found; he brings it home with greater power, because he excites the soul to the perception of its immortality as a present fact. All the arguments to be derived from nature and reason of themselves, at the most, only bring the truth before the mind in the abstract. Poetry, reason, nature and philosophy can but confirm immortality as a truth. Immortality, if it be a matter of practical belief, must have its origin in our self consciousness: then it is that a man exclaims with Cato, "It must be so." This belief does not exist where the individual cannot in truth say, "I feel that I am immortal, and that the life which I now live is but one phase of my immortality." Men of all nations and in all ages there have been, who have not only professedly believed in the immortality of the soul, but have manifested their belief in their lives and actions. Why have men in all ages observed funeral obsequies as sacred to their memories? Why did the Egyptians embalm their dead and keep them in their homes? Why has the Indian oft voluntarily cast himself into the flame in honour of his God? Why has the oriental widow composed herself upon the funeral pyre of her deceased husband? Why have all men in all ages considered it good and glorious to die for their country? What is it that inspires the warrior band with valour and fearlessness in the very midst of death? Whence all the monuments, arches, and temples of Rome and Greece? Whence the heaven of the Indian hunter, where nature's bloom fades not and the chase never ends? Or whence Mahomet's Paradise of heroes brave? What mean all these things, if men who practised and conceived them did not believe in the duration of existence, or "That there's a SELF which after death shall be." E. W. S. VOL. II. SOUL-LIGHT. Let the sun's light pass away, If within the soul 'tis day: We in our own hearts possess What the world can ne'er suppress.-GOETHE C GLANCES AT A FEW OF THE WRITINGS OF THE SPANISH POETS. PART I. CLOSE your Dante and your Tasso, gentle reader; replace your Göethe on the shelf, and leave for a time Lamartine and Byron, to glance with me at a few of the poets of Spain-to hear some of the words of those who have written amongst that brave and chivalrous nation; whose pride and dignity, that have passed into a proverb, reflect themselves in their sonorous lines; whose spirit and pomp belong not to Europe, but to another sphere of ideas-another and an oriental world. It has been remarked, that the rich language of Spain reveals to us, in a great degree, the literature of the East, and, familiarizing us with a genius and a taste differing widely from that of our country, enables us to inhale, in a tongue allied to our own, the perfumes of the East and the incense of Arabia. We may view, as in a faithful mirror, those palaces of Bagdad and that luxury of the caliphs which revived the lustre of departed ages; and we may appreciate, through the medium of a people of Europe, that brilliant Asiatic poetry which was the parent of so many beautiful fictions of the imagination.* The Spanish language is evidently the result of a mixture of the Latin with the German, the termination of the words in the former language being contracted. It was afterwards enriched with a number of Arabic expressions, which have had a considerable influence on the pronunciation and general effect. The Italian and Spanish, though possessing a common origin, differ in a decided manner. The latter more sounding, more full of aspirates and accents-has something in it far more dignified, imposing, and firm; while, on the other hand, it loses in flexibility and precision. Pleasant is it to recall the old and almost barbaric strains which celebrate the achievements and the strange history of Es Sayd, or Ruy Diaz the Cid, that great hero of the Peninsula who occupies the debatable ground between history and romance-to whom the historian and the poet assert their equal claims: to listen to the sweetness and delicacy of expression-the mixture of sadness and love-of the fear and desire of death-which win upon us in some of the sonnets of Garcilaso de la Vega; the wild imaginativness of Luis Gongora de Argote; the mixture of morality, satire, and pleasantry in the "muses," "visions," and lyrics of Francisco de Quevedo y Villegas. Still more agreeable is it to dive into the pages of Pedro Calderon de la Barca, the Shakspere of Spain, or the voluminous works * Sismondi. of the fertile Lope Felix de Vega Carpio, the author of more than twenty-one millions three hundred thousand lines! The task of a guide even along these few paths of Spanish poetry which I have chosen, is, however, an unenviable one, since translations almost always fail to give a true and just idea of the original author when his compositions are in verse. The Spanish poems have often need of all their ornaments to sustain their grace and dignity; and deprived even of a few of these, defects become visible, and insipidity and monotony creep in. A translation is as injurious to a poet from a too extreme fidelity, which exposes the feebleness of the composition and suffers the charm to evaporate, as from an unjust discursiveness which weaves in other ideas and totally different forms of expression. All due allowances being made, then, let us listen to a few of those voices of the past and the present that come from the olden regions of Abdalrahman the Great-from the plains of La Mancha and the plateau of Madrid—from the Tagus-washed Toledo and the city of the Moors, ancient Granada-from the flowery banks of the gentle Dauro and the Genil*—from My Shakspere tells me, that the comedy of "As You Like It," in which the well-known speech of Jacques, "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players," occurs, was published about 1628. In a poem of Quevedo's published, so far as I can discover, about 1640, the following passage is introduced, singular from its similarity: Now wreathed with smiles, now bathed with tears, This changeful life a play appears— The world a stage, whose thousand scenes Melt like the tints of splendid dreams: The countless actors, far and wide, By all the human race supplied. O'er the great drama, vast and grand, Can spread no veil from mortal hand. Only the author, Lord of all, Has power to bid the curtain fall. The myriad actions, swift or slow, The surging thoughts that ebb and flow, * Y ver la orilla florida Del manso Dauro anheleba Y del Genil.-MARTINEZ DE LA ROSA. The words of love, or deeds of hate, His life was Don Francisco de Quevedo y Villegas was born at Madrid, in 1580, of an illustrious family attached to the court. chequered by varying turns of good and evil fortune. At one time he was distinguished as an accomplished and chivalric cavalier; at another, expatriated and pursued by assassins: now enjoying wealth and devoting himself to studies and philosophy; and a short time after confined in a narrow dungeon in a convent, and treated with the greatest inhumanity as the author of a libel against good manners and the government, his estates confiscated, and his health seriously impaired. The following complimentary verse is by Quevedo, and is a specimen of a style much adopted by some of the Spanish poets in their small pieces: Cæsar the Great, who dared the world defy,* Had he thy brilliant eyes, like me, beheld, Not "VENI, VIDI, VICI," still his cry Had been but this, thou never canst deny :- This author has written more than a thousand sonnets; some of them of great beauty. One, on the Ruins of Rome, is thus translated: Stranger, 'tis vain! Midst Rome, thou seek'st for Rome In vain. Thy foot is on her throne-her grave: Yea! the proud Aventine is its own womb; The royal Palatine is ruin's slave; And medals, mouldering trophies of the brave, Worshipp'd the Queen of Cities on her throne, *Si os viera como yo os vi, Sin duda dixera ansi: Vine, cegué y fui vencido.-QUEVEDO |