THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS.

VOL. VI.--AUGUST, 1860.--NO. XXXIV.







THE CARNIVAL OF THE ROMANTIC.


Whither went the nine old Muses, daughters of Jupiter and the Goddess
of Memory, after their seats on Helicon, Parnassus, and Olympus were
barbarized? Not far away. They hovered like witches around the seething
caldron of early Christian Europe, in which, "with bubble, bubble, toil
and trouble," a new civilization was forming, mindful of the brilliant
lineage of their worshippers, from Homer to Boethius, looking upon the
vexed and beclouded Nature, and expecting the time when Humanity should
gird itself anew with the beauty of ideas and institutions. They were
sorrowful, but not in despair; for they knew that the children of men
were strong with recuperative power.

The ear of Fancy, not long since, heard the hoofs of winged Pegasus
striking the clouds. The long-idle Muses, it seemed, had become again
interested in human efforts, and were paying a flying visit to the
haunts of modern genius from the Hellespont to the Mississippi.