The Island of the Fay

Nullus enim locussine genio est.
SERVIUS

"LA MUSIQUE," says Marmontel, in those "ContesMoraux"* which in all
our translations, we have insisted upon calling "MoralTales," as if
in mockery of their spirit- "la musique est le seul destalents qui
jouissent de lui-meme; tous les autres veulent des temoins."He here
confounds the pleasure derivable from sweet sounds with thecapacity
for creating them. No more than any other talent, is that formusic
susceptible of complete enjoyment, where there is no second partyto
appreciate its exercise. And it is only in common with othertalents
that it produces effects which may be fully enjoyed in solitude.The
idea which the raconteur has either failed to entertain clearly,or
has sacrificed in its expression to his national love of point,is,
doubtless, the very tenable one that the higher order of music is
the most thoroughly estimated when we are exclusively alone. The
proposition, in this form, will be admitted at once by those who
love the lyre for its own sake, and for its spiritual uses. But
there is one pleasure still within the reach of fallen mortalityand
perhaps only one- which owes even more than does music to the
accessory sentiment of seclusion. I mean the happinessexperienced
in the contemplation of natural scenery. In truth, the man whowould
behold aright the glory of God upon earth must in solitude beholdthat
glory. To me, at least, the presence- not of human life only, butof
life in any other form than that of the green things which growupon
the soil and are voiceless- is a stain upon the landscape- is atwar
with the genius of the scene. I love, indeed, to regard the dark
valleys, and the gray rocks, and the waters that silently smile,and
the forests that sigh in uneasy slumbers, and the proud watchful
mountains that look down upon all,- I love to regard these as
themselves but the colossal members of one vast animate andsentient
whole- a whole whose form (that of the sphere) is the mostperfect and
most inclusive of all; whose path is among associate planets;whose
meek handmaiden is the moon, whose mediate sovereign is the sun;whose
life is eternity, whose thought is that of a God; whose enjoymentis
knowledge; whose destinies are lost in immensity, whosecognizance
of ourselves is akin with our own cognizance of the animalculae
which infest the brain- a being which we, in consequence, regardas
purely inanimate and material much in the same manner as these
animalculae must thus regard us.

* Moraux is here derived from moeurs, and its meaning is
"fashionable" or more strictly "of manners."

Our telescopes and our mathematical investigations assure us on
every hand- notwithstanding the cant of the more ignorant of the
priesthood- that space, and therefore that bulk, is an important
consideration in the eyes of the Almighty. The cycles in whichthe
stars move are those best adapted for the evolution, without
collision, of the greatest possible number of bodies. The formsof
those bodies are accurately such as, within a given surface, to
include the greatest possible amount of matter;- while thesurfaces
themselves are so disposed as to accommodate a denser population
than could be accommodated on the same surfaces otherwisearranged.
Nor is it any argument against bulk being an object with God,that
space itself is infinite; for there may be an infinity of matterto
fill it. And since we see clearly that the endowment of matterwith
vitality is a principle- indeed, as far as our judgments extend,the
leading principle in the operations of Deity,- it is scarcely
logical to imagine it confined to the regions of the minute,where
we daily trace it, and not extending to those of the august. Aswe
find cycle within cycle without end,- yet all revolving aroundone
far-distant centre which is the God-head, may we not analogically
suppose in the same manner, life within life, the less within the
greater, and all within the Spirit Divine? In short, we are madly
erring, through self-esteem, in believing man, in either his
temporal or future destinies, to be of more moment in theuniverse
than that vast "clod of the valley" which he tills andcontemns, and
to which he denies a soul for no more profound reason than thathe
does not behold it in operation.*

* Speaking of the tides, Pomponius Mela, in his treatise "DeSitu
Orbis," says "either the world is a great animal, or"etc.

These fancies, and such as these, have always given to my
meditations among the mountains and the forests, by the riversand the
ocean, a tinge of what the everyday world would not fail to term
fantastic. My wanderings amid such scenes have been many, and
far-searching, and often solitary; and the interest with which I
have strayed through many a dim, deep valley, or gazed into the
reflected Heaven of many a bright lake, has been an interestgreatly
deepened by the thought that I have strayed and gazed alone. What
flippant Frenchman was it who said in allusion to the well-known
work of Zimmerman, that, "la solitude est une belle chose;mais il
faut quelqu'un pour vous dire que la solitude est une bellechose?"
The epigram cannot be gainsayed; but the necessity is a thingthat
does not exist.
It was during one of my lonely journeyings, amid a far distant
region of mountain locked within mountain, and sad rivers and
melancholy tarn writhing or sleeping within all- that I chancedupon a
certain rivulet and island. I came upon them suddenly in theleafy
June, and threw myself upon the turf, beneath the branches of an
unknown odorous shrub, that I might doze as I contemplated the
scene. I felt that thus only should I look upon it- such was the
character of phantasm which it wore.
On all sides- save to the west, where the sun was about sinking-
arose the verdant walls of the forest. The little river whichturned
sharply in its course, and was thus immediately lost to sight,
seemed to have no exit from its prison, but to be absorbed by the
deep green foliage of the trees to the east- while in theopposite
quarter (so it appeared to me as I lay at length and glancedupward)
there poured down noiselessly and continuously into the valley, a
rich golden and crimson waterfall from the sunset fountains ofthe
sky.
About midway in the short vista which my dreamy vision took in,
one small circular island, profusely verdured, reposed upon the
bosom of the stream.

So blended bank and shadow there
That each seemed pendulous in air-

so mirror-like was the glassy water, that it was scarcelypossible
to say at what point upon the slope of the emerald turf itscrystal
dominion began.
My position enabled me to include in a single view both the
eastern and western extremities of the islet; and I observed a
singularly-marked difference in their aspects. The latter was all
one radiant harem of garden beauties. It glowed and blushedbeneath
the eyes of the slant sunlight, and fairly laughed with flowers.The
grass was short, springy, sweet-scented, and Asphodel-interspersed.
The trees were lithe, mirthful, erect- bright, slender, andgraceful,-
of eastern figure and foliage, with bark smooth, glossy, and
parti-colored. There seemed a deep sense of life and joy aboutall;
and although no airs blew from out the heavens, yet every thinghad
motion through the gentle sweepings to and fro of innumerable
butterflies, that might have been mistaken for tulips with wings.*

* Florem putares nare per liquidum aethera.- P. Commire.

The other or eastern end of the isle was whelmed in the blackest
shade. A sombre, yet beautiful and peaceful gloom here pervadedall
things. The trees were dark in color, and mournful in form and
attitude, wreathing themselves into sad, solemn, and spectralshapes
that conveyed ideas of mortal sorrow and untimely death. Thegrass
wore the deep tint of the cypress, and the heads of its bladeshung
droopingly, and hither and thither among it were many small
unsightly hillocks, low and narrow, and not very long, that hadthe
aspect of graves, but were not; although over and all about themthe
rue and the rosemary clambered. The shade of the trees fellheavily
upon the water, and seemed to bury itself therein, impregnatingthe
depths of the element with darkness. I fancied that each shadow,as
the sun descended lower and lower, separated itself sullenly from
the trunk that gave it birth, and thus became absorbed by the
stream; while other shadows issued momently from the trees,taking the
place of their predecessors thus entombed.
This idea, having once seized upon my fancy, greatly excited it,and
I lost myself forthwith in revery. "If ever island wereenchanted,"
said I to myself, "this is it. This is the haunt of the fewgentle
Fays who remain from the wreck of the race. Are these green tombs
theirs?- or do they yield up their sweet lives as mankind yieldup
their own? In dying, do they not rather waste away mournfully,
rendering unto God, little by little, their existence, as these
trees render up shadow after shadow, exhausting their substanceunto
dissolution? What the wasting tree is to the water that imbibesits
shade, growing thus blacker by what it preys upon, may not thelife of
the Fay be to the death which engulfs it?"
As I thus mused, with half-shut eyes, while the sun sank rapidly
to rest, and eddying currents careered round and round theisland,
bearing upon their bosom large, dazzling, white flakes of thebark
of the sycamore-flakes which, in their multiform positions uponthe
water, a quick imagination might have converted into any thing it
pleased, while I thus mused, it appeared to me that the form ofone of
those very Fays about whom I had been pondering made its wayslowly
into the darkness from out the light at the western end of theisland.
She stood erect in a singularly fragile canoe, and urged it withthe
mere phantom of an oar. While within the influence of thelingering
sunbeams, her attitude seemed indicative of joy- but sorrowdeformed
it as she passed within the shade. Slowly she glided along, andat
length rounded the islet and re-entered the region of light."The
revolution which has just been made by the Fay," continuedI,
musingly, "is the cycle of the brief year of her life. Shehas floated
through her winter and through her summer. She is a year nearerunto
Death; for I did not fail to see that, as she came into theshade, her
shadow fell from her, and was swallowed up in the dark water,making
its blackness more black."
And again the boat appeared and the Fay, but about the attitudeof
the latter there was more of care and uncertainty and less of
elastic joy. She floated again from out the light and into thegloom
(which deepened momently) and again her shadow fell from her into
the ebony water, and became absorbed into its blackness. Andagain and
again she made the circuit of the island, (while the sun rusheddown
to his slumbers), and at each issuing into the light there wasmore
sorrow about her person, while it grew feebler and far fainterand
more indistinct, and at each passage into the gloom there fellfrom
her a darker shade, which became whelmed in a shadow more black.But
at length when the sun had utterly departed, the Fay, now themere
ghost of her former self, went disconsolately with her boat intothe
region of the ebony flood, and that she issued thence at all I
cannot say, for darkness fell over an things and I beheld her
magical figure no more.


THE END