To Mrs. S. B. Shaw.
John Stuart Mill's biography made me sad for him. He had too much soul to have it entirely pressed to death ; but I believe he would have been a much greater man, and certainly a much happier one, if it had not been for that loveless, dreary childhood, that incessant drilling, that cramming of his boyish brain, that pitiless crushing out of all spontaneity. With regard to his writings, I do not always like his tone, or always agree with his conclusions. It jarred upon my feelings to have him decide that because evil existed, therefore the Creator of the universe was either not all-good, or else he was not all-powerful. I grant that, taking the very limited view we finite beings are capable of, as many facts could, perhaps, be brought forward to prove that the world was made by a malevolent Being as that it was made by a benevolent Being; but we are such a small part of the whole, that it seems to me presumptuous to deny that the apparent discord may be [223] “harmony not understood.” Take Mill's writings all in all, they neither cheer nor strengthen me, though I greatly respect and admire the intellectual ability, the moral courage, and the perfect sincerity of the man; and as a woman, there is no limit to the gratitude I owe him. Anna D. has recently sent me a book which I like amazingly (you know you always laugh at me for my use of that word). It is “A princess of Thule.” The plan of it is original, even in these days, when one would think the invention of anything new in stories had become exhausted. The characters are well imagined and delineated with a good deal of power. Descriptions of scenery are apt to become tiresome; but these are not only graphic, but are finished with such exquisitely artistic touches, that I felt as if I had been sailing among the Hebrides through all their aspects of sunshine and storm. The book brought back very distinctly that overture of Mendelssohn's called “Fingal's Cave,” so wonderfully full of winds and waves, and Aeolian whistlings through the fissures of the rocks.
There is something very queer and inexplicable about the manner in which music comes to me. I am lamentably deficient in time and tune; but in some way or other music says things to me which skilful musicians often do not hear. The first time I heard the overture of “Fingal's Cave,” I was very much impressed by its sea-wildness, and I said: “Breathings of an Aeolian harp mingle with the voice of the ocean.” The musician to whom I said it smiled in a way that said, “You are full of odd conceits.” Several years after, when reading a description of Fingal's Cave, I found that there was a fissure in the rocks, through which, in certain states of the tide, the winds played [224] like a powerful aeolian harp. I don't know whether Mendelssohn ever went to Fingal's Cave and heard the weird music, but the harp of the winds is in his overture. When I meet him in another world, I mean to ask him, for my own private satisfaction, whether he did n't know he put it there. This fascinating “Princess of Thule” brings back the overture and the dream I once had of seeing Mendelssohn at a concert in the other world.
