THE SOLITUDES OF MAN. Physical Solitude and Spiritual Loneliness. AFTER every description of the monotonous wastes and wilds of outward nature, we receive a heightened impression of what true lonesomeness is, by turning to the intenser inner deserts of mental and moral being. Bleak and monstrous and unvaried as the sterile and gloomy steppes of Mongolia and Tartary are, the feeling of vastness and terror they impart is weak in comparison with that obtained from contemplating the character of Tamerlane, Timour-he Whom the astonished people saw The Sahara-spirit and Simoon-career of Attila, the schemes revolving in the colossal brain of Mirabeau, the Titanic aloofness and pessimism of Schopenhauer, the oceanic soul of Spinoza ringed only by the All and calmly heaving forever, are more appalling, more suggestive of the infinite, than any material bulks, abysses, or wildernesses. Is it a terrible chasm in which the sprinkled ranks of the galaxy are hung? What, then, is the lonely mystery of the mind in whose meditations the spectral infinitude of astronomy lies like a filmy dot? The physical solitudes of nature are without any feeling of their own incommunicable separation and dreariness: but the spiritual solitudes of man are conscious, and either pine under the burden of isolation or groan for relief. The sea, as its murmuring lip caresses the shore, or its mountainous surges shatter against the cliff, seems not to feel lonely, is company enough for itself, until deserted yearning man approaches to give it contrast and interpretation. When shipwrecked man lies tossed on the strand, thoughts and fears of home, love, death, eternity, thundering at the base of reason, then first the sympathizing phenomena without form a scene of genuine solitude, and loneliness becomes an experience of anguish. Obviously there can be no external expanse so deserted, so sublime, as that night-scene of the soul when it muses, alone, with faith and wonder, overhung by a still immensity of starry thoughts. Physical solitude and spiritual loneliness suggest, but do not imply, each other. Either may blend with the other to heighten it, or to relieve it. Either may inIclude or exclude the other. On a morning of May, long ago, a young man rode across an Illinois prairie, with a friend. They passed, on the boundless expanse, far out of sight of any human habitation, thousands of crab-apple-trees in full bloom, their beauty and fragrance surpassing all that ..e had ever dreamed of vegetable loveliness and perfume. It seemed as if the whole world had been converted into green grass, blue sky, apple-blossoms, odor, golden sunrise, and two men on horseback. Yet loneliness was an impossible feeling. Every capacity of the soul was crowded by the complex and strange exhilaration of that hour. Compare with such a scene and experience those presented by a convict undergoing execution in front of a hundred thousand spectators. While the officer adjusts the cap and rope, the most awful interests of man are brought to bear on the soul of the unhappy victim. Eternity seems condensed in the dropping moments. There is no solitude here, but how dread a loneliness! There is also often a profound loneliness, full of pain, in the upper rooms of those high houses in great cities, in which the poor single occupants hearken to the almost inaudible murmur of the streets below, and look up at the stars. Countless thousands of men close around each wretched garreteer, yet he as bleakly alone as though drifting on a plank in mid ocean! |