Mary Baldwin College - Bluestocking Yearbook (Staunton, VA)

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14 The Augusta Seminary Annual. with amusement at each new discovery of a weakness or pet sin, and soften with pity at each newly revealed misfortune or hidden skeleton. The periwig seems never so ridiculous; the coffee- house never so full of bustle, wine and wit; the doubtful gal- lantries of these merry men never so extravagant or fascinating as when shown by Thackeray. But the heart of the writer appears under all this account of frivolity in the words, Ah ! it is a weary feast, that banquet of wit where no love is. He pen- etrates into the cavern of Swift ' s gloomy heart and finds even in its dim recesses some fitful gleams of tenderness. There is still a lock of Stella ' s hair in existence wrapped in a paper on which is inscribed in Swift ' s own hand, Only a woman ' s hair. Some critics have denounced this little phrase as a desire of Swift ' s to veil his feelings under a cynical mask of indifference, but Thack- eray sees only a pathetic shrinking from the cold eyes of the world, a remorseful shuddering over the grave of a tender victim whom he had not the heart to see die. In his impartial judg- ment of this lonely giant, he shows his hatred of meanness, his hori ' or of skepticism, and his thorough knowledge of life. It is in his Essay on Steele that his geniality, his philosophy, his tenderness, his sympathy, are displayed most. He takes us to Dick Steele ' s house where the Christian Hero is hastily excusing his departure to his wife, then down to The Rose, where the young Captain cuts quite a smart figure and where Dick bragged not a little ; but with all his swagger we love him every step of the way, seeing with tlie charitable eyes and feeling with the kind heart of Thackeray. His wit sparkles through all his essays. Perhaps it is shown at its brightest in his Essay on Congreve. His description of the Phoebus Apollo of the Mall and Spring Gardens is fairly ablaze. But even while Congreve ' s comic feast, which is set before us, flares with lights and while we are yet dazzled by its brilhancy, the heart of Thackeray cries to us that A touch of Steele ' s ten- derness is worth all this finery — a flash of Swift ' s lightning — a beam of Addison ' s pure ray, and this tawdry playhouse taper is invisible. It is in this mirror of his OAvn workmanship, this portrayal of The English Humorists, that the image of Thackeray is reflected,

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The Augusta Serninm y Aimual. 13 Thackeray, as Reflected in The English Humorists. IT is amusing as well as interesting to see the mirrored like- nesses of the literary men where they have been unconsciously reflected in their own works. The candid admiration, the wit and humor, the unerring penetration, and above all that touch of sympathy which makes the whole world kin, shows us the nature of the man infinitely better than the most polished and correct biography ever could. Who that has read Macaulay ' s great Third Chapter has not felt the force of the man ' s intellect ' { Hifi repeated images, like so many dazzling lights, make the eyes of less gifted mortals bUnk at their brilliancy. Who has not felt the gentleness, the wit and the humor of Lowell in reading his Essays, and, charmed by his grace, involuntarily wished to make him a bosom friend :• Is there one of us who does not feel the rugged manliness of Carlyle on reading his ' ' Essay on John- son, of whom he says, He was nowise a Clothes-horse or a Patent- digester, but a genuine man ? If we see in their writings the characters of Macaulay, of Low- ell and of Carlyle, far more plainly do we trace the outlines of Thackeray in his English Humorists. What could be more generous than the words in which he commends to us the dear parson in the tie-wig : When this man looks from the world, whose weaknesses he has so benevolently described, up to the Heaven which shines over us all, I can hardly fancy a human face lighted up with a more serene rapture, a human intellect thrilling with a purer love and adoration than Joseph Addison ' s, There could hardly be sweeter praise, there could hardly be words which would betray Thackeray ' s own benevolence, humanity and piety more plainly than those in which he himself describes another. The society and the lives of these lordly, laughing, careless wits, hide not a secret from this great reader of the mind and heart. He has di ' ined them all, and when we read of them as he has portrayed them, we can almost see his blue eyes twinkle

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The Augusta Seminary Annual. 15 keen, Immorous, penetrative, but softened by a halo of sympa- thetic love and real tenderness ; here he is not the cxmc. bnt the magician who wins us to his very self by showing us in a thousand artless ways all that is in his own great heart. M. L. Street. Pastoral Sketches — I. IN Piedmont Virginia, close to the Southwest Mountains and looking out upon the more distant Blue Ridge, lies my grand- father ' s farm — the farm whose every hill and vale and meadow, whose every stream and deep and shady wood is linked with recol- lections of my childhood. And as I now recall those days many a picture of the mind revives again, and again I watch the laborers at the various occupations on the farm. Now it is Ma ' time and they are busy with the sheep-shearing. The very words bring to my mind a bright spring morning and a grove of large old oaks, tall poplars and spreading chestnut trees — a grove which, from matchless depth of- shade, is chosen for the shearers ' covert from the sun. There the flock is driven into a pen around the sides of which are built rough plank tables, where the shearers stand. The sheep are tied down to the boards to pre- vent their struggles, and, though nnich frightened at first, they soon become quiet, only lifting their heads from time to time, and turning their soft eyes to the shearer, as if to ask, Must I wait much longer? The lambs outside of the pen for a while bleat piteously, but as they see the sheep set free one by one they seem to understand what is going on, and bound off to their play. Xear the shearing-pen is a large table on which the fleeces are spread, and around this the women and boys stand to pick the burrs out of the wool before it is weighed and packed into the large sack standing near. How many happy hours we children used to spend ; now lean- ing on the fence and watching the shears flash in and out of the snowy wool ; now helping to pick the burrs or guessing what the