The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 03, No. 15, January, 1859

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Various. The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 03, No. 15, January, 1859

OLYMPUS AND ASGARD

JUANITA

LEFT BEHIND

COFFEE AND TEA

MEN OF THE SEA

CHICADEE

A SECOND LETTER FROM PAUL POTTER, OF NEW YORK, TO THE DON ROBERTO WAGONERO, COMMORANT OF WASHINGTON, IN THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

"THE NEW LIFE" OF DANTE

AT SEA

BULLS AND BEARS

CHAPTER V. WHICH TREATS OF THE MODESTY OF CANDIDATES FOR OFFICE

CHAPTER VI. WHEREIN THE INVESTMENT IS DISCUSSED

CHAPTER VII. THE MUSICAL SOIRÉE

CHAPTER VIII. A YOUNG FINANCIER AT HOME

CHAPTER IX. STATE STREET

CHAPTER X. THE SIREN COMES TO THE SEA-SHORE

THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE

AN ELECTRO-CHEMICAL ECLOGUE

THE MINISTER'S WOOING

CHAPTER IV. THEOLOGICAL TEA

CHAPTER V. THE LETTER

WHITE'S SHAKSPEARE11 (FIRST NOTICE.)

REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES

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How remote from the nineteenth century of the Christian era lies the old Homeric world! By the magic of the Ionian minstrel's verse that world is still visible to the inner eye. Through the clouds and murk of twenty centuries and more, it is still possible to catch clear glimpses of it, as it lies there in the golden sunshine of the ancient days. A thousand objects nearer in the waste of past time are far more muffled, opaque, and impervious to vision. As you enter it through the gates of the "Ilias" and "Odusseia," you bid a glad adieu to the progress of the age, to railroads and telegraph-wires, to cotton-spinning, (there might have been some of that done, however, in some Nilotic Manchester or Lowell,) to the diffusion of knowledge and the rights of man and societies for the improvement of our race, to humanitarianism and philanthropy, to science and mechanics, to the printing-press and gunpowder, to industrialism, clipper-ships, power-looms, metaphysics, geology, observatories, light-houses, and a myriad other things too numerous for specification,—and you pass into a sunny region of glorious sensualism, where there are no obstinate questionings of outward things, where there are no blank misgivings of a creature moving about in worlds not realized, no morbid self-accusings of a morbid methodistic conscience. All there in that old world, lit "by the strong vertical light" of Homer's genius, is healthful, sharply-defined, tangible, definite, and sensualistic. Even the divine powers, the gods themselves, are almost visible to the eyes of their worshippers, as they revel in their mountain-propped halls on the far summits of many-peaked Olympus, or lean voluptuously from their celestial balconies and belvederes, soothed by the Apollonian lyre, the Heban nectar, and the fragrant incense, which reeks up in purple clouds from the shrines of windy Ilion, hollow Lacedaemon, Argos, Mycenae, Athens, and the cities of the old Greek isles, with their shrine-capped headlands. The outlooks and watch-towers of the chief deities were all visible from the far streets and dwellings of their earthly worshippers, in that clear, shining, Grecian atmosphere. Uranography was then far better understood than geography, and the personages composing the heavenly synod were almost as definitely known to the Homeric men as their mortal acquaintances. The architect of the Olympian palaces was surnamed Amphiguëeis, or the Halt. The Homeric gods were men divinized with imperishable frames, glorious and immortal sensualists, never visited by qualms of conscience, by headache, or remorse, or debility, or wrinkles, or dyspepsia, however deep their potations, however fiercely they indulged their appetites. Zeus, the Grand Seignior or Sultan of Olympus and father of gods and men, surpassed Turk and Mormon Elder in his uxoriousness and indiscriminate concubinage. With Olympian goddess and lone terrestrial nymph and deep-bosomed mortal lass of Hellas, the land of lovely women, as Homer calls it, did he pursue his countless intrigues, which he sometimes had the unblushing coolness and impudence to rehearse to his wedded wife, Herè. His list would have thrown Don Giovanni's entirely into the shade. Herè, the queen of Olympus, called the Golden-Throned, the Venerable, the Ox-Eyed, was a sort of celestial Queen Bess, the undaunted she-Tudor, whose father, bluff Harry, was not a bad human copy of Zeus himself, the Rejoicer in Thunder.

In that old Homeric heaven,—in those quiet seats of the gods of the heroic world, which were never shaken by storm-wind, nor lashed by the tempest that raved far below round the dwellings of wretched mortals,—in those quiet abodes above the thunder, there was for the most part nought but festal joy, music, choral dances, and emptying of nectar-cups, interrupted now and then by descents into the low-lying region of human life in quest of adventure, or on errands of divine intervention in the affairs of men, for whom, on the whole, Zeus and his court entertained sentiments of profound contempt. Once in a while Zeus and all his courtiers went on a festal excursion to the land of the blameless Ethiops, which lay somewhere over the ocean, where they banqueted twelve days. Why such a special honor as this was shown to these Ethiops is not explained. Within their borders were evidently the summer resorts, Newport and Baden-Baden, frequented by the Olympians. Only in great crises was the whole mythic host of the Grecian religion summoned to meet in full forum on the heights of the immemorial mountain. At such times, all the fountains, rivers, and groves of Hellas were emptied of their guardian daemons, male and female, who hastened to pay their homage to and receive their orders from the Cloud-Gatherer, sitting on his throne, in his great skyey Capitolium, and invested with all the pomp of mythic majesty, his ambrosial locks smoothly combed and brushed by some Olympian friseur, his eagle perched with ruffled plumes upon his fist, and everything else so arranged as most forcibly to impress the country visitors and rural incumbents with salutary awe for the occupant of their sky-Vatican. Whether these last were compelled to salute the Jovine great toe with a kiss is not recorded, there being no account extant of the ceremonial and etiquette of Olympus. Whatever it was, doubtless it was rigidly enforced; for the Thunderer, it would seem, had a Bastile, or lock-up, with iron doors and a brazen threshold specially provided for contumacious and disobedient gods.

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I struck the tinkling chords, and began a sweet love-ditty. Fixing my eyes on his, I made every word speak to his heart from mine. I saw his color change, his eyes melt;—when the song ended, he was at my feet.

I know not what he said; I only know it was passion, burning and intense. Oh, but it was balm both to my love and hate to hear him! I let him go on as long as he would,—then I said, gently caressing his bright hair,—

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