AMBITION;
OR THE HEART OVERTASKED.
By John S. Jenkins
CHAPTER I.
The hour was evening. The last lingering rays of sunset fell in a rich flood of silver light over the bright and gorgeous landscape. From every nook and corner of the earth ; from the tall dark mountain, the forest of pines and maples, the thicket of the sheltering grove, and the deep glen where the purling brook echoed its gentle murmurs ; from the sunny hill-side, the grassy glade, and gay parterre, there came swelling the melody of Nature's unwritten music; that melody which fills the heart to overflowing with gladness; which causes the eye to sparkle, the cheek to glow, the bosom to throb, and the soul to feel that the hand is good which fashioned these things for erring man; that we do not live altogether in vain; and that, despite the petty annoyances which harass and perplex us, there are here ten thousand sources of enjoyment, to which we can always turn when the cares of the world press heavily upon us. It causes us to know in our hearts that we have a mission to perform, a high behest to fulfill, a destiny, for good or for evil, to accomplish, and it forces from us the often unwilling acknowledgment that in the far beyond there is a future life, of which the present is but the hopeful promise!
Beneath the shade of a lofty elm, which reared itself conspicuously on the summit of a verdant knoll, at whose base flowed the clear waters of one of our fairest rivers, and carelessly leaning against its heavy trunk, stood a young man, whose lithe form and easy attitude gave evidence that he was yet in the fulness and vigor of early manhood. He was not what some would have called handsome; there was but little mere beauty in the high and massive forehead, which, so cold and still in its repose, seemed as if hewn out of the rugged marble; but there was something in the fixedness of his look and the half-concealed air of hauteur, which gave his finely chiseled lip the least perceptible curl—in the free expansion of his nostrils and the swelling of his broad chest, as he inhaled the freshening breeze, that forcibly attracted attention. Yet no one could have looked on him as he stood there, with his arms folded over his breast and his pale, stern brow bared to the winds of heaven, which played so wantonly with the long masses of his rich, raven hair, and have failed to observe the wild, fierce play of his features, the lines that thought and passion had traced on his countenance, or the fire of genius that glowed so brightly in his sunken eye. The homage due to a superior intellect would have been involuntarily rendered to him, but was involuntarily succeeded by an emotion of fear—a thrilling fear for one, whose bosom was evidently pent a slumbering volcano, which, when its dormant fires were once aroused, could only be quenched in the death or destruction of him who cherished it.
"These are indeed beautiful!" He spoke in a deep, spirit-like tone, and over his face there passed a glorious flush of enthusiasm—the handiwork alone of a power, in whose ineffable presence we poor, weak mortals are but as nothing! love them well—the scenes and voices of my native land! They awaken in my breast emotions akin to those the patriot countryman of Tell may feel as he hears the joyous notes of the Kühreihen echoed among the frowning cliffs and dark forests of Underwalden, or along the banks of the sweet Lucerne. My feet have trodden many a more storied spot and prouder clime. My hand has brushed the climbing ivy from the Coliseum and the collected dust of ages from the tombs of the Pharaohs. From the summit of St. Bernard, I have seen the lightning playing beneath my feet, and from the Appenines, I have looked down on the wrecks of empires. I have stood upon the heights of the Sierra Morena, and feelings of delight have stolen over me as I witnessed the graceful movements of the dark-eyed and dark-browed Spanish maidens when they mingled in the gay Bolero or listened to the merry sounds of castanet and guitar, rising sweetly from the smiling vallies of Andalusia. From the Bridge of Sighs'—
'A palace and a prison on each hand'-
I have heard the wild improvisations of the happy, light-hearted gondoliers on the canals of Venice—yet have I never felt as now! Nor is it wonderful that this should be so: I have been where Liberty was; I am where Liberty is—where man is free to indulge in the high and lofty aspirations of his nature—where genuine merit and sterling intellect give no place to entailed reputation, titled ignorance, or hereditary arrogance. There are no privileged competitors for place and station. All start equal; the palm is for the humblest as well as the proudest; whoever wins may wear it! It is a bright thought—that palm may yet be mine! It cannot be in vain that I have, owl-like, shut myself out from the world and buried myself amid the musty relics and philosophic lore of olden time; that I have preferred the companionship of books to the society of the pleasure-seeking crowd; not all in vain that I have wooed science with the ardor and devotion of a lover, and perilled health and happiness to win applause from the many! Are all the imaginings of my boyhood but shadows? —and may I never grasp the reality of the bright visions that flit before me in the solitude of my chamber? As for Rosalie, ah, there is yet too much tenderness in that word! - I pity her from the bottom of my heart.
