Text: Edgar Allan Poe (?), Literary, Broadway Journal (New York), May 10, 1845, vol. 1, no. 19, p. ???-???

PROFESSOR GOURAUD. — The following extract from Professor's lecture on Memory, is a remarkable instance of fluent writing in a foreigner, who, three or four years since, was almost ignorant of our languge [[language]]. M. Gouraud's style is somewhat too luxuriant for these days of classic severity, but it has wonderful ease as the production of a foreigner.

Already have the birds of night. preceded by the white-winged owl, who seems to serve them as a warning beacon, begun to regain their obscure retreats in the shadowy depths of the forests: timid hare [column 2:] and cautious deer have already left the open fields for the more propitious shadow of the woods. At their return, the implacable eagle and the voracious hawk begin to prepare anew their sharp talons tor the morning's hunt; while, disengaging their heads from underneath the warm wings which covered them during the night, the birds of day, among whom they must soon choose again their prey, little foreseeing the cruel fate which may and which must before long overtake them, open their eyes, shuffle their glossy feathers, and begin to hop from branch to branch, as if to stretch their little limbs, and prepare their light wings for flight.

All at once, the air rings with a melodious sound, which causes the atmosphere to vibrate afar, with a sweet and tremulous thrill; the echo hitherto silent, repeats it in successive adulations to the distant streamlet of the valley. Immediately cadencing a harmonious roulade, which seems to run over a thousand varied notes at once, the fairy voice which produced these ravishing sounds awakens all the surrounding echoes, and they repeat it in chorus — while the voice itself seems to pause, as if, submerged in the torrent of harmonies with which she has filled the atmosphere, she were listening to herself, in rapturous astonishment. At these enchanting accents, the joyous troop are suddenly arrested, as if under the infatuation of a spell, to listen also; for they have recognised the harmonious ringing notes of the lyric enchantress of the groves, the morning leader of the song. stern of the forest — the melodious nightingale! who, already preluding at her morning concerts, offers thus abruptly her first salutations to Aurora, always attentive to her songs. It would seem indeed that her melodious notes had been carried by the surrounding echoes even to the carminated gates of the horizon, and were understood by the elements; for Aurora at the moment seems to have redoubled her pace. The birds, preluding already to the harmonies of their matin hymns, seem to prepare themselves for singing her triumphs. At their head is the rustic cuckoo, the gay linnet, the lively red-breast, and the sensitive turtle-dove. The nightingale by their side, presiding over the concert, redoubles her harmonious cadences, as the Goddess of the dawn approaches. Most of the stars have vanished from the firmament; the heavens now appear like an ocean of shining gold and liquid gems of a thousand hues. And now Aurora reigns in undisputed sovereignty. But, alas! “a natural image of pleasure: as nothing is more beautiful than tier reign, so nothing is shorter than its duration.”

The god of day follows her with hasty steps; she must soon resign her empire, like the night, which just now fled so rapidly before her. In vain the hours, with redoubled energy, scatter in precipitated floods their bouquets of roses beneath her steps; she must finally yield — the god of day has almost overtaken her! Already he is announced by the more vivid tints which he pours around him. The glowing rays but just precede the dazzling glare: the east seems on fire: it appears suddenly all in flames. At their effulgency, the burning disc is each moment expected; at every instant he seems about to appear — at last he rises majestically from the liquid abyss! A brilliant pencil of flame, starting forth like a flash of lightning, and suddenly filling all space, seems, like the bow of a celestial orchestra, to Lave given the ast signal for the awakening of all nature. It is the Sun, who has ust touched upon the horizon with the edge of his inflamed disc. — Red as a purpuereal sphere of gleaming vermillion, and at first of an immense size. he gradually ascends from behind a wide-spreading curtain of clouds, which he soon pierces with a thousand pencils of light, forming a gigantic glory, whose superior rays curve themselves into an immense arch, which reaches to the zenith. “Then the veil if darkness being entirely effaced, man is again permitted to recognise his abode, which he finds everywhere beautified and embellished. The verdure has taken during the night fresh vigor and renewed freshness; the new-born day which shines upon it, the first rays which gild it, display it covered with a brilliant net-work of dew, which reflects o the eye the light and the colors of the rainbow!”

The merry troop is again arrested to contemplate with ecstatic feeling the glorious spectacle, which has been thus gradually developed before them. Meanwhile all nature has been awakened, at that sub-me moment, — when the disc of the sun touched lightly upon the orizon — the birds were re-united in chorus, and now they cause all he echoes of their melodious warblings to resound in concert. Not ne remains silent; their musical songs, feeble at first, are more ten. er and sweet than during the remainder of the day — they seem as if urged with the softness and mellowness of a languid awakening. — Imitating their merry concerts, the insects bum beneath the grass; he fishes in the streams dart along the surface of the water, and leap sparkling in the light with their silver scales; the reptiles crawl from their dark and humid holes, and come to bask in the warm sunlight; and even the serpent himself, raising up his hideous head hove his spiral coils and darting out his scarlet tongue, unable to sing raises, hisses forth his ceaseless curse! Every, thing, finally, is excited and moved throughout all nature; every thing breathes joy and happiness at the first rays of the rising Sun — and the planets themselves, do they not bound forward in their empyreal course more rapidly and more animatedly as they approach him nearer and nearer their perihelion? . . . . . .

But to speak only of things more accessible to the observer; at is appearance the camel of the desert is said to kneel while turning himself towards the east; the eagle stretches broad his extended wings, while fixing his piercing eye upon his burning disc; and the salutes him with his flexible proboscis: or rather, do not all the animals salute in his image, by an irresistible impulse, in this universal concert, and by these testimonials of respect and gladness, HIM of whom the Sun is but the shadow? — the universal Father and benefactor, above all empyreal suns! And yet, “although the concourse of all these objects carries to the sense an impression of freshness which seems to penetrate even to the soul,” man alone, of all crated beings, almost always forgets himself in presence of a specie so majestic and sublime . . . . . . . . . .

Soon the laborers resume their wonted toils; the flocks and herds are reconducted to the fields; the butterflies begin to flit from flower [page 300:] to flower, the bees of the neighbouring trees come to dispute with them for the sweet ambrosia of their streaming nectaria; the ladybirds leave their rosy couches; the gilded day-beetles quit their protecting recesses, while those of the night regain their mossy cells. The nocturnal flowers fold their humid petals, while the blossoms of the day unfold their fresh corollas. The dew evaporates beneath the increasing heat of the Sun, whose vivifying influence, animating all nature, infuses life, vigor, and gladness into every particle of matter, into every sensitive bosom . . . . . . .