Martinsburg Gazette And Public Advertiser

UNWRITTEN PHILOSOPHY

"When I first came here, my host's eldest daughter was about twelve years of age. She was, without being beautiful, an engaging child, rather disposed to be contemplative, and, like all children at that age, very inquisitive and curious. She was shy at first, but soon became acquainted with me, and would come into my room in her idle hours, and look at my pictures and read. She never disturbed me, because her natural politeness forbade it, and I pursued my thoughts or my studies just as if she was not there, till, by and by, I grew fond of her quiet company, and was happier when she was moving stealthily around, and looking here and there into a book in her quiet way.

"She had been my companion thus for some time, when it occurred to me that I might be of use to her in leading her to cultivate a love for study. I seized the idea enthusiastically. Now thought I, I will see the process of a human mind. I have studied its philosophy from books, and now I will take a single original, and compare them, step by step. I have seen the bud, and the flower full blown, and I am told that the change was gradual, and effected thus--leaf after leaf. Now I will watch the expansion, and while I water it and let in the sunshine to its bosom, detect the secret springs which move to such beautiful results. The idea delighted me.

"I was aware that there was great drudgery in the first steps, and I determined to avoid it, and connect the idea of my own instruction with all that was interesting and beautiful in her mind. For this purpose I persuaded her father to send her to a better school than she had been accustomed to attend, and by a little conversation, stimulated her to enter upon her studies with alacrity.

"She was now grown to a girl, and had begun to assume the naive, womanly airs which girls do at her age. Her figure had rounded into a flowing symmetry, and her face, whether from associating principally with an older person, or for what other reason I know not, had assumed a thoughtful cast, and she was really a girl of most interesting and striking personal appearance.

"I did not expect much from the first year of my experiment, I calculated justly on its being irksome and common place. Still I was amused and interested. I could hear her light step on the stair, always at the same early hour of the evening, and it was a pleasure to me to say, 'Come in,' to her timid rap, and set her a chair by my own, that I might look over her book, or talk in a low tone to her. I then asked her about her lessons, and found out what had most attracted her notice, and I could always find some interesting fact connected with it, or strike off into some pleasant association, till she acquired a habit of selection in her reading, and looked at me earnestly to know what I would say upon it. You would have smiled to see her leaning forward, with her soft blue eyes fixed on me, and her lips half parted with attention, waiting for my ideas upon some bare fact in geography or history: and it would have convinced you that the natural, unstimulated mind takes pleasure in the simplest addition to its knowledge.

"All this time I kept out of her way everything that would have a tendency to destroy a taste for mere knowledge, and had the pleasure to see that she passed with a keen relish from her text books to my observations, which were as dry as they, though recommended by kindness of tone and an interested manner. She acquired gradually, by this process, a habit of reasoning upon everything which admitted it, which was, afterwards, of great use in fixing and retaining the leading features of her attainments.

"I proceeded in this way till she was fifteen. Her mind had now become one of regular habits of thought, and she began to ask difficult questions and wonder at common things. Her thoughts assumed a graver complexion, and she asked for books upon subjects of which she felt the want of information. She was ready to receive and appreciate fine truth and beautiful instruction, and here was to begin my pleasure.

She came up, one evening, with an air of embarrassment approaching to distress. She took her usual seat, and told me that she had been thinking all day that it was useless to study any more. There were so many mysterious things--so much, even that she could see, which she could not account for, and, with all her efforts, she progressed so slowly, that she was discouraged. It was better, she said, to be happy in ignorance, than to be constantly tormented with the sight of knowledge to which she could not attain, and which she only knew enough to value. Poor child! she did not know that she was making the same complaint with Newton, and Locke, and Bacon, and that the wisest of men were only "gatherers of pebbles on the shores of the illimitable sea!" I began to talk to her of the mind. I spoke of its grandeur, and its capacities, and its destiny. I told her instances of high attainment and wonderful discovery---sketched the sublime philosophies of the soul --the possibility that this life was but a link in a chain of existences, and the glorious power, if it were true, of entering upon another world with a holier capacity than her fellow beings for the comprehension of its mysteries. I then touched upon the duty of self-cultivation--the pride of a high consciousness of improved time, and the delicious feelings of self-respect and true appreciation. She listened to me in silence and wept. It was one of those periods, which occur to all delicate minds, of distrust and fear; and when it passed by, and her ambition stirred again, she gave vent to her feelings with a woman's beautiful privilege. I had no more trouble to urge her on. She began the next day with the philosophy of the mind, and I was never happier than while following her from step to step in this delightful study.

"I remembered my school-day feelings, and lived them over again with my beautiful pupil. I entered with as much enthusiasm as she, into the strength and sublimity which I had wondered at before; and I believe that, even as she sat reading by herself, my blood thrilled, and my pulses quickened as vividly as her own, when I saw, by the deepening color of her cheek, or the marked passages of my book, that she had found a noble thought or a daring hypothesis.

"She proceeded with her course of philosophy, rapidly and eagerly. Her mind was well prepared for its relish. She said she felt as if a new sense had been given her-an inner eye which she could turn in upon herself and by which she could, as it were, stand aside while the process of her thoughts went on. She began to respect and rely upon her own mind, and the elevation of countenance and manner, which so certainly and so beautifully accompanies inward refinement, stole over her daily. I began to feel respectful in her presence, and when, with the peculiar elegance of a woman's mind, she discovered a delicate shade of meaning which I had not seen, or traced an association which could spring only from an unsullied heart, I experienced a sensation like the consciousness of an unseen presence--elevating without accusing me.

"It was probably well, that, with all this change in her mind and manner, her person still retained its childish grace and flexibility. She had not grown tall, and she wore her hair yet as she used to do--falling with a luxuriant fullness upon her shoulders. Hence, she was still a child when, had she been taller or more womanly, the demands upon her attention, and the attractiveness of mature society might have divided that engrossing interest which is necessary to successful study.

"I have often wished I was a painter; but never so much as when looking on this beautiful being as she sat absorbed in her studies, or turned to gaze a moment to my face, with that delicious expression of inquiry and affection. Every one knows the elevation given to the countenance of a man by contemplative habits. Perhaps the natural delicacy of feminine features has combined with its rarity, to make this expression less observable in woman; but to one familiar with the study of the human face, there is, in the looks of a truly intellectual woman, a keen subtlety of refinement, a separation from everything gross and material, which comes up to our highest dreams of the angelic. For myself, I care not to analyze it. I leave it to philosophy to find out its secret. It is enough for me that I can see it and feel it in every pulse of my being. It is not a peculiar susceptibility. Every man who approaches such a woman feels it. He may not define it; he may be totally unconscious what it is that awes him; but he feels as if a mysterious and invisible veil were about her, and every dark thought is quenched suddenly in his heart, as if he had come into the atmosphere of a spirit. I would have every woman know this. I would tell every mother who prays nightly for the peculiar watchfulness of good spirits over the purity of her child, that she may weave round her a defence stronger than steel that she may place in her heart a living amulet whose virtue is like a circle of fire to pollution. I am not "stringing pearls." I have seen, and I know, that an empty mind is not a strong citadel, and to the melancholy chronicle of female ruin the instances are rare of victims distinguished for mental cultivation. I would that my pen were "the point of a diamond," and I were writing on living hearts! for when I think how the daughters of a house are its grace and honor- and when I think how the father and mother that loved her, and the brother that made her his pride, and the sister in whose bosom she slept, are all crushed utterly, by a daughter's degradation, I feel that if every word were a burning coal, my language could not be extravagant!

My pupil had, as yet, read no poetry. I was uncertain how to enter upon it. Her taste for the beautiful in prose had become so decided, that I feared for the first impression of my poetical world. I wished it to burst upon her brilliantly-like the entrance to an inner and more magnificent temple of knowledge. I hoped to dazzle her with a high and unimagined beauty, which should exceed far the massive but plain splendors of philosophy. We had often conversed on the probability of a previous existence, and one evening I opened Wordsworth, and read his sublime "Ode upon Intimations of Immortality." She did not interrupt me, but I looked up at the conclusion and she was in tears. I made no remark, but took Byron, and read some of the finest passages in Childe Harold, and Cain-and from that time, poetry has been her world!

"The world had become to Caroline a new place. No change in the season was indifferent to her---nothing was common or familiar. She found beauty in things you would pass by, and a lesson for her mind or heart in the minutest workmanship of nature. Her character assumed a cheerful dignity, and an elevation above ordinary amusements or annoyances. She was equal and calm, because her feelings were never reached by ordinary irritations: and, if there were no other benefit in cultivation, this were almost argument enough to induce it.

"It is now five years since I commenced my tutorship. I have given you the history of two of them. In the remaining three there has been much that has interested my mind--probably little that would interest yours. We have read together, and, as far as possible, studied together.

"She has walked with me, and shared all my leisure and known every thought. She is now a woman of eighteen. Her childish graces are matured, and her blue eye would send a thrill through you. You might object to her want of fashionable tournure, and find fault with her unfashionable impulses. I do not. She is a high-minded, noble, impassioned being---with an enthusiasm that is not without reason, and a common sense that is not a regard to self-interest. Her motion was not learnt at schools, but it is unembarrassed and free, and her tone has not been educated to a refined whisper, but it expresses the meaning of her heart as if its very pulse had become articulate. The many might not admire --but I know the few would idolize her.

"Our intercourse is as intimate still; and it could not change without being less so-for we are constantly together. There is--to be sure--lately--a slight degree of embarrassment-and--somehow--we read more poetry than we used to do-but it is nothing at all nothing."

My friend was married to his pupil a few months after writing the foregoing. He has written to me since, and I will show you the letter if you call, any time. It will not do to print it, because there are some domestic details not proper for the general eye; but to me, who am a bachelor, bent upon matrimony, it is interesting to the last degree. He lives the same quiet, retired life, that he did before he was married. His room is arranged with the same taste, and with reference to the same habits as before. The light comes in as timidly through the half closed window, and his pictures look as shadowy and dim, and the rustle of the turned leaf adds as mysteriously to the silence. He is the fondest of husbands, but his affections do not encroach on the habits of his mind. Now and then he looks up from his book, and, resting his head upon his hand, lets his eye wander over the pale cheek and drooping lid of the being who sits reading beside him; but he soon returns to his half forgotten page, and the smile of affection which had stolen over his features fades gradually away in the habitual soberness of thought. There sits his wife, hour after hour, in the same chair which she occupied when she first came, a curious loiterer to his room; and though she does not study so much, because other cares have a claim upon her now, she still keeps pace with him in the pleasanter branches of knowledge, and they talk as often and as earnestly as before on the thousand topics of a scholar's contemplation.