The Tell-Tale Heart - The Pioneer, January 1843 — reading text

declares from the first, that he would believed in his manliness? or by boasting of educate a daughter precisely as he would a son, their favors? What should prevent a man of or to use his own words, that ‘* female education this character from lying, or from forging letters should in no respect differ from that of young from anybody — like Don Mathias de Silva in men.” But how would he educate young men ! Gil Blas—even from the admirable woman, Look at his private journal, where he brags of afterwards the wife of one of our presidents, his reputation for gallantry, and keeps a record whom he declared to have been his mistress of all his pitiful intrigues — for the amusement before marriage ; when he was talking with of a beloved daughter on his return. How he a stranger too, over sea, about other and would have educated a son may be inferred in very different matters ; and that stranger, the fact from his whole life, abroad and at home, man whom he pretended most to revere among by precept and example. From Miss Moncrief all the great men he had ever seen, or heard, or to the Duchess of Gordon, and through all the read of — Jeremy Bentham ! intermediate stages of the vulgar and the disso- To be guilty of such things in the flush of Inte, he was always the same Aaron Burr, youth is bad enough; but to keep the damning more anxious to be thought successful with records always open for the inspection of the women of character, good or bad, than for any- world —to leave names and families to the thing else under heaven. mercy of accident — to commit them both to But it is high time to hear the testimony of the calculating forbearance, of a biographer and his biographer and friend. ‘‘ On this point ”’ a bookseller — and this, upon a man’s death-bed —his bonnes fortunes — ‘‘ he was excessively — to keep a profit-and-loss account with aban- vain, and regardless of all ties which ought doned women — to huddle them together with to control an honorable mind. She that ls- the trusting and the betrayed; to tell of their tened was lost.’? ‘This reminds one of Rous- frailties in the presence of strangers ; to boast seau, always a favorite with Burr. She who of them at the dinner-table ; to hoard up the reads my book, says the Frenchman, is une evidence for old age, and to gloat over it, up to fille perdue. ‘* For more than half a cen- the last hour of a Jong and profligate and hope- tury,’’ continues the biographer of Aaron Burr, less life — is it not ten thousand times worse ? ‘*the women seemed to absorb his whole Garnered thus for the grave, and full of rotten- thoughts. His intrigues were without num- ness, what are they but loathsome and filthy ber; his conduct most licentious. The sacred abominations, of themselves enough to render bonds of friendship were unhesitatingly violated, probable anything told to the prejudice of such when they operated as barriers to the indul- a man’s moral character? But enough — Aaron gence of his passions.”’ Nor isthisall. ‘* For Burr is no more. LOLOLww THE FOLLOWER. To one who drifteth with opinion’s tide Things on the firm shore seem to shift and glide, While he, his fantasy’s unwitting thrall, Seems the sole thing that moveth not at all.  -bs 12 THE PIONEER. ea RRS a Pa, om- art ROBES, THE COLD SPRING IN NORTH SALEM. BY JONES VERY. ae Tuov small, yet ever-bubbling spring, Hid by low hillocks round, And oaks whose stretching branches.fling Their shadows on the ground; I stoop upon thy stony brim To taste thy waters sweet, For I am weary and worn of limb, And joy thy sight to meet. ee I would not from thy free bow! scare The birds from the boughs above, But learn with them this fount to share As the gift of a Father’s love. Thou hast joy in this thy wilderness, In thy still yet constant flow, Such as one from pure and perfect bliss Alone with thee can know. Oh, seldom may the sea, that near Sends up its frequent tide, Mix with thy cooling waters clear eee And in thy breast abide! And if perchance a lengthened wave Should o’er thy margin swell, Quick may thy bubbling freshness save, And the salt brine repel. _CATALOGUE OF THE SIXTEENTH EXHIBITION OF PAINTINGS AT THE BOSTON ATHENA2UM — MDCCCXLILI. BY I. B. WRIGHT. ° —--- Tue Atheneum Gallery of Paintings has as labors, and we have a cheerful satisfaction, usual been open during the last season, afford- in acknowledging, that Art is much mdebted ing an opportunity to all who are interested in to this institution for a kindly nurture, while it the Fine Arts to gratify their taste or at least was struggling against prejudice and ignorance. their curiosity. We have for a long time Yet it seems to us that the only true ticket wished that this exhibition was free to the of admission should be a love of Art, and we public, and its necessary expenditures borne would gladly see no barriers interposed to pre- by subscription, or by some fund raised for vent our common people from cultivating and ee that purpose. The object of such an insti- refining their minds by a contemplation of Art. tution is evidently to awaken and extend an It is from the middle and lower classes that the interest in Art, and not to exhibit pictures as a greatest artists have sprung. But beside this, means of trade and for the sake of compensa- in order to modify the spirit of a people, Art tion. We very well know the liberal feeling nfust be made as common and open as sunshine. which animates the directors of the Atheneum The exhibition contains as usual all grades and governs their exertions. ‘The public cer- of pictures, from those which have been con- tainly owes them its thanks for their beneficent ceived and executed in the spirit of poetic truth  EXHIBITION OF PAINTINGS AT THE ATHENZEUM. 13 down to the feeblest abortions of Art. Every glanced aside from the homely truth of this such exhibition impresses us with the fact, that picture to the cold lifeless Madonna which nature, which is uniform in itself, becomes mul- stands beside it, and is of the so-called ideal tiform in Art, and is endowed by the mind of school, we could not but wish that Murillo had every individual with a different hue and sent- always confined himself to the real, and allowed ment. No two persons can see alike, because the ideal to take care of itself. The luxurious no two persons are alike. ‘Thus we find some epicureanism of the reclining boy, who suspends pictures which evince that the artist had eyes over his open mouth a bunch of purple grapes, and exercised them faithfully, and others, the and leers with askant eyes at his companion, is painter of which must either have been blind finely contrasted with the serious yet vibrating or wilful or most strangely heedless. Very few attention of the other boy, who having just of us in this world actually see anything. We crammed his mouth with a slice of a luscious see generalities, we get a vague vision of what yellow melon, which lies in his lap, glances in passes before us, but into the heart and reality greedy sympathy at the grapes, while almost of the thing our eyes do not pierce. ‘The eye surfeiting in the delicious flavor of his own cannot see of itself, but through the mind, and share of the feast. The poetic refraining of our hearts, feelings and modes of thought are the one who dallies with a certain pleasure and the colored glasses through which all nature postpones its enjoyments, and the eager sensu- represents itself to us. ous delights expressed in the humorous desire Most of our pictures are bad, however, not of the other, are admirably conceived. ‘This is because the painters were heedless, but because what even our picture-dealers would affect to they were wilful and fearful. That is, they call ‘* a delicious bit.’’ REE